386 The Presidential Years
wanted a Stalinist party. They criticized “democratic centralism” and proclaimed
that “somebody” wanted to have a party that would be able to command.^673
To clear up any misunderstanding, Tito convened a meeting on 11 April
at Brioni with Marko Nikezić, Latinka Perović, and their collaborators, who
attempted to soothe him. He was only partially satisfied, inviting them to
show with facts their capacity to confront “enemy elements” in Serbia. Conse-
quently, trials were held in Belgrade against students accused of “Trotskyism,”
against a university professor suspected of being a nationalist, but in particu-
lar against the Serb literary cooperative, one of the most prestigious institutions
in Serbia. Its management, headed by Dobrica Ćosić, was compelled to resign.
This test of loyalty toward Tito could not, however, save Nikezić and his friends.
As Dobrica Ćosić said, “In the boat, sailing on the Yugoslav sea, they tried
to save themselves from the crocodile, throwing slaves into its open maw.”^674
But in vain.
In July 1972, an open split developed between the liberals and their adver-
saries, led by Draža Marković, a member of the collective presidency of the
federation and Tito’s crony.^675 These adversaries believed that Marko Nikezić,
Latinka Perović, and their colleagues had taken too tolerant an attitude toward
Croatia and had favored the establishment of an overly democratic regime in
Serbia, compromising its “guiding role” in case of Tito’s “departure.” As a result,
they should be removed as soon as possible so they could not continue their
wrongheaded policy aimed at finding agreements with other republics, even
with the Kosovo Albanians, to the detriment of the nation. The clash was re-
solved, however, in favor of the liberals, who held the majority in the party.^676
In spite of their victory, Tito, backed by Kardelj and Bakarić, continued to
plot against them. During a visit to the Soviet Union in June 1972, when he
was awarded the Lenin Prize and the field marshal baton of the Red Army for
his eightieth birthday (he was the only foreign statesmen to be so honored),
Brezhnev complimented him on the firmness shown in Croatia. Tito replied:
“I have not finished yet: the main task awaits me in Serbia.”^677
After that “summer rest,” when he lived nearly cloistered for fear of being
kidnapped, Tito gave a speech in Prijedor on 10 September, the thirtieth anni-
versary of the Battle of Kozara, where Germans had massacred Partisans in a
mountainous region of Bosnia. In it he made clear just who the enemies of the
working class were: the nationalists, the technocrats, the profiteers, and the uni-
versity professors who corrupted the young with Western ideas.^678 The experi-
ence of Ustaša terrorism had evidently strengthened his hostile attitude toward
the West, convincing him that a return to Marxist orthodoxy was urgently
needed for the good of Yugoslavia. The next stage was a session of the Execu-
tive Bureau on 18 September 1972, where Stane Dolanc proposed that they send