The Presidential Years 371
assigned even more to me. But it will be a temporary obligation.”^585 He was
in fact offered the presidency for life, which he refused, stressing that he would
fill the post of head of state as long as he was able to perform it with dignity,
perhaps a year or a little bit more, while the new institution developed the abil-
ity to function properly. It was expedient to name this sui generis office a “pres-
idency without limitation of mandate.”^586 The constitutional amendments pro-
hibited the accumulation of state and party offices, but this did not apply to
Tito, who remained president of both the SFRY and the LCY. This was yet
another confirmation of his autocracy and provoked outrage in the Serb pub-
lic, which accused him ever more openly of being too compliant toward the
Croats. He visited the Belgrade National Theater on 3 July 1971 to celebrate its
centenary, and for the first time since the war nobody rose to applaud him
when he arrived.^587
The Croat leaders welcomed the constitutional reforms as a great victory,
seeing them as a starting point for the achievement of their economic aspira-
tions. In their euphoria they hurried to introduce offices that had been taken
away from the federal government and given to the administration of the
republic, as suggested by intellectuals of the “Matica” and Zagreb University.
Meanwhile, the Serb minority in Croatia, which constituted about 15 percent
of the population and had not forgotten the horrors of the Ustaša regime,
began to make its voice heard. Its representatives, who were numerous in the
veterans’ association and its cultural organization, Prosvjeta (Instruction), criti-
cized the climate created in the republic and asked to be protected, both on
cultural and socioeconomic levels. In fact, they had been experiencing discrim-
ination when seeking employment.^588
The Belgrade press followed the plight of the Serb minority with great
attention and sympathy. It put Savka Dabčević-Kučar and her collaborators on
trial, accusing them of being anti-Serb and anti-Yugoslav, asserting that they
were destroying the state and that perhaps they were even in the service of an
unnamed but well-known “foreign enemy.”^589 It is true that the Serb leaders
were not tempted by the sirens of nationalism, and on the contrary tried to begin
a dialogue with the Croats, believing that this policy would bear fruit. But there
was no response from the Croatian side.^590
That fateful 1971 visit Tito made to Zagreb at the beginning of Sep tember
showed, in an emblematic fashion, how uncertain he was as to how best to move
forward. At the airport he was met by a guard of honor, which first played the
national anthem but then also the Croatian anthem, which had not been heard
in public since the days of the Ustaša. The marshal, surprised, made a step to
move on but then stood at attention. In the capital, where they celebrated the