The Presidential Years 317
relations cooled off.”^271 And there was not just the question of their mutual
relations. There had been many past disagreements among the “comrades,” but
these had always been overcome. Now the split was final. Ranković said: “We
all knew this, but we did not mention it. From where had all this come? Our
contacts became so sporadic that we met only at party sessions, on official occa-
sions, sometimes to hunt, but only when it was obligatory to go. As the nature
of these meetings was mandatory, there was ill-will on all sides, great difficulty
bearing each other, often verbal clashes.”^272
Tito’s speech provoked turbulent discussions in Yugoslavia, which sounded—
to quote Ranković—like an explicit repudiation of all particularisms, localisms,
and exaltations of nationalism. Commissions were created to investigate the
existence and the extent of illicit wealth in private hands, and measures were
taken against embezzlement and economic offences, which in many enterprises
provoked a real paralysis, since nobody was brave enough to make any decisions.
The private sector was particularly under pressure, since the authorities obliged
several artisans to close their businesses, and even aired the possibility of a new
collectivization of land. The marshal himself remained struck by the wave of
dogmatism that seemed to flood the country, so much so that he moderated
his words some weeks later, stressing that he had no intention of setting off a
“witch hunt.”^273 These afterthoughts did not have much influence on the con-
servatives, who were on the crest of a wave and did not hide how they proposed
to implement “brotherhood and unity.” As the ambassador of East Germany—
an arch-communist—observed with satisfaction, Tito’s criticism entailed a pro-
gressive renewal of central planning. She noted, “The Yugoslav comrades openly
recognize that they made great mistakes after 1950.”^274 The entire concept of
“integral self-management,” so desired by Kardelj, seemed in peril. Just when
he and Bakarić were ready to enact the new constitution, the “centralization of
decentralization” called their project into question, a project on which they had
been working since December 1960. The first draft, which featured enhanced
self-management as well as envisioning the possibility of opposition within the
framework of the party, should have been completed by the end of 1961. Because
of the authoritarian turn of events, it was radically reworked in the following
months. As Tito himself confided in 1962 to Adlai Stevenson, the American
ambassador to the UN, only 10 percent survived from the original text. The
rewritten version was presented to the public on 20 and 21 September 1962, just
at the moment Tito was attempting to convince the most important Slovenian
politicians to help him get rid of Kardelj. Stane Kavčič blocked this maneuver,
stressing resolutely that there was no Tito-Kardelj conflict, but only a disagree-
ment between Tito and Slovenia.^275