336 The Presidential Years
the federal secretary for internal affairs, said in several interviews, its task was
to define the role of this body within the self-managed system, and to reestab-
lish public control over it.^392 De facto, everything remained as before: although
it was divided between the six republics, the UDBA continued to observe all
those who attracted its attention, sending the results of this activity to Bel-
grade, where the confidential material kept accruing.^393
More important than this commission was the one established to rejuvenate
the LCY. It had forty members and began work with great flourish on 15 July
- Its main task was to reshape the party administration so that it did not
end up in the hands of a single individual again. Mijalko Todorović, its presi-
dent and a supporter of Kardelj’s, declared to the press that the “LCY had, in
recent years, been lagging behind the general development of our society,” and
had even “hampered instead of promoted the development of our society at
many points.” The Fourth Plenum, in his opinion, had extended action for
further development or direct democracy and self-management to areas “which
have so far been closed or not opened far enough” and admitted that one of
those areas was LCY itself.^394 In October, a new plenum would be convened to
approve the work of the commission and to decide whether it was necessary to
organize an extraordinary congress.
The members of the Todorović Commission began tackling the problem
with zeal. The Slovenian, Mitja Ribičič, even questioned the principle of demo-
cratic centralism, while his Macedonian colleague Krste Crvenkovski ventured
to predict the disappearance of the LCY in the near future, asserting that the
country was on the eve of a “non-party democracy.” With their collaborators,
they wanted to “cut off the head” of those who were close to Ranković’s faction,
and to distribute power in the LCY to prevent its concentration in the hands
of the few. They believed that the ability to decide and the means to govern
should pass from four secretaries and the Executive Committee to the entire
CC, which had until then been an “amorphous body” without any real influ-
ence.^395 A cold shower came on 1 September in the form of a speech by Tito, in
which he distanced himself from this way of thinking, refused every hint that
the LCY might disappear and repeated the Leninist vision of party cadres,
subjected to military discipline.^396
At the Fifth Plenum, convened on 4 October, the participants agreed upon
a formal but not substantial reorganization of the League. It was clear that the
old guard held on to its power, since Tito himself “irritatedly” demanded that
the LCY must have the right to establish the political line and to apply it
directly, if necessary.^397 The democratization process had come to nothing. In
his closing speech, the marshal expressed his astonishment at the dissatisfac-
tion over the outcome of the plenum, which was conveyed by Koča Popović in