318 The Presidential Years
The Approach to MoscowTogether with these dramatic internal events, there was an improvement of rela-
tions with Moscow that encouraged Tito, Ranković, and Gošnjak to propose
striking the denunciation of Soviet hegemony from the LCY program. Thanks
to the opposition of liberals like the Macedonian Lazar Koliševski, this initiative,
however, was dropped.^276 The process of rapprochement between the two parties
and states was topped off by Tito’s visit to the Soviet Union from 3 to 20 Decem-
ber 1962. The composition of the Yugoslav delegation spoke eloquently about the
power relationships in Belgrade: Ranković was included but not Kardelj, nor was
Foreign Secretary Koča Popović. Popović had long asserted that to see in the
USSR the “principal support of socialism” was wrong and that the “dogma of the
international proletarian movement” was fatal.^277 Tito did not share his opinion,
and talked at length with Khrushchev about the Yugoslav crisis, agreeing that
now was the time to distance Kardelj from public life. The consonance between
the Soviets and their guests was also shown by Tito’s criticism upon his return
of the decadent Western influence on literature and the arts in Yugoslavia, and
even more by Ranković’s speech in a plant in Kiev on 22 December, where he
spoke about “the world working class, under the guidance of the Soviet Union.”^278
This was the first time since Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform that
a Yugoslav politician had expressed such ideas, which provoked amazement
from the hosts and concern from the liberals at home, not to mention reactions
from the West. Since his words were later published by the Belgrade newspa-
per, Politika, it was evident that they were not a simple lapse in judgement.^279
Only three days after the departure of the Yugoslav delegation to Moscow,
on 16 December 1962, Kardelj went to Indonesia, where he spoke in a diametri-
cally opposed manner. Influenced by the “useful and important discussions” that
he had had a month before with the Swedish prime minister, Tage Erlander, he
repeated the statement of the Seventh Congress of the LCY, and of the Non-
Aligned Conference, stressing Yugoslavia’s commitment to the fight against
colonialism. At the same time, he attacked “hegemonism,” presenting it as a
contempo rary form of imperialism. The anti-Soviet bias of this discourse was
evident.^280 The Russian protests moved Tito to instruct Ranković to send Kardelj
a telegram in which his opinions were criticized with the threat of an official
rep rimand from the party. As a consequence, a furious quarrel erupted between
Kardelj and Ranković at the CC session on 27 December 1962 that was not
limited to foreign policy, but touched upon problems regarding the further
development of Yugoslav society. In protest, the Slovene practically withdrew
from public life, preserving just two more or less representative functions: mem-
bership in the Council of the Federation and in the LCY presidency.^281 In spite
of all obstacles, in the spring of 1963 he finished his work on the constitution. He