The Presidential Years 377
growing unemployment in the late sixties and early seventies, Tito’s regime was
in trouble again. In order to move forward they asked for a loan of $600 million
from the International Monetary Fund, the United States, and some West-
ern European countries. The loan was granted. In Washington, however, the
authorities presumed that because the economic situation was so shaky other
pressing requests for help should be expected in the near future.^618
In spite of the feverish activity displayed after 1968 at the international level
among the non-aligned, China, and the West, the Yugoslavs repeatedly empha-
sized that their policy was not anti-Soviet. The result was an improvement in
the dialogue between Belgrade and Moscow at the beginning of the seventies
following a period of severe strain. When, in the summer of 1971, the news came
that Tito had been officially invited to the United States—the first president of
a communist state to receive such an invitation—Brezhnev hurried to Belgrade
on his own initiative. Between 22 and 25 September, for the first time in three
and a half years, the Soviets and the Yugoslavs had a direct contact at the high-
est level, laying their cards on the table. This included a talk of seven hours
between the two leaders during a hunt at the game reserve at Karadjordjevo
(which generated suppositions, suspicions, and fears that Tito had a soft spot for
the Soviet Union and would promise too much to Brezhnev).^619 After a lively
exchange of opinions, at the close of this “unofficial and friendly visit” Brezhnev
published a statement that Tito had long been asking for. In it, he confirmed
the validity of the Belgrade Declaration with which Khrushchev had recog-
nized Yugoslavia’s right to follow its own path to socialism in 1955. In exchange,
Tito promised to regulate the internal situation of the country and furthermore
allowed that “socialist internationalism” was mentioned in their joint statement,
as well as the “bonds between the communist parties in the world.”^620 The
marshal certainly did not delude himself into thinking that the Soviets had
renounced their hegemonic objectives, and declared that Brezhnev’s assurances
were “words, words, words.” But he accepted them as a truce, a welcome one,
even more so since the Soviets had promised a loan of $600 million.^621
At the end of October 1971, Tito visited the United States as a “mediator”—
to quote his words—between the two great powers, the US and the USSR.^622 It
was an opportunity to extract a press communiqué from the Americans in which
they declared inseparable the peace and the security of the “entirety of Europe.”
Never before had the US engaged in such explicit support of Yugoslav inde-
pen dence, further characterizing non-alignment as an “important factor” that
“contributed considerably to the solution of world problems” and to the “devel-
opment of international relations.”^623 Not to mention the compliments Tito
enjoyed from the American authorities, starting with Nixon, who recalled in
his toast at the gala dinner that they met in the same room of the White House