316 The Presidential Years
silent, with tears in his eyes. This saved him, as perhaps did his final declaration
of loyalty to the marshal: “The greatness of our party lies in the fact that it is
headed by Tito: he is a genius, always capable of saving us in moments of crisis.
I am sure that he will also save the moment now.”^266
On 3 April, the Executive Committee sent all party members a letter asking
them to “put their ranks into order” and calling their attention to “unhealthy
liberalism,” but also to frequent manifestations of “chauvinism, nationalism,
localism and various bureaucratic and petit bourgeois ideas.” This was aimed
at the Slovenians, who were accused of being barely interested in Yugoslavia
and worrying mostly about their own republic.^267 The most eloquent sign of
the clash that continued to tear apart the Yugoslav leadership was the decision
to postpone the presentation of the new constitution that had been worked on
by Kardelj for six months. The Federal Assembly extended its mandate for a
year and reorganized some important economic sectors: it drastically limited
imports, tightened up penal legislation and on 19 April established a network
of commissions tasked with equalizing the income of different enterprises, in
contrast to the doctrine of self-management. The slogan of the day was: “We
have to fight against the deformity of society.”^268
The Split SpeechIn order to explain to the people what was going on, Tito gave an important
speech on 6 May 1962 at the inauguration of a hydroelectric station at Split,
in Dalmatia. To an audience of 150,000, he spoke about the crisis in the LCY,
stressing that the communists must resume the leading role in the country,
which had been lost because of their “carelessness.” Skirting the issue of the
democratization of Yugoslav society, the marshal criticized unplanned industri-
alization, corruption, and social differences, which had recently spread because
of the liberal climate and republican “localisms.” He condemned those who
threatened to strike in order to solve economic problems, railed against every
nationalism and chauvinism, and pointed the finger at the intellectuals, espe-
cially “bourgeois writers,” who were responsible for this mess.^269
The Split speech, seen in the liberal circles as a return to Stalinism, attracted
widespread public attention. Tito received an avalanche of letters with endorse-
ments by citizens and requests for a purge of public life. Many of the party and
state leaders, on the contrary, observed that “Tito has spoken severely, but this
is not important. Certainly he did not mean what he said, and everything will
be resolved shortly.”^270 Kardelj was of a different opinion, perceiving the speech
as directed against him and against Slovenia, and therefore persisted in his
fight against centralism. “This enraged me,” said Tito later, “and therefore our