The Presidential Years 391
and a prerequisite for all those who aimed to achieve a position in the party or
state administration. “It is a euphemism to say ‘class and party membership,’”
Dobrica Ćosić commented indignantly, as one of the relatively few famous
intellectuals unafraid to protest.^700
While Tito celebrated his eightieth birthday, behind these revolutionary
slogans lurked the inevitable succession struggle so full of intrigue as to cause
Serb liberal Zdravko Vuković to call to mind the biblical admonishment: sow
the wind and reap the whirlwind. He lamented that the final result “will be ter-
rible and devastating for Yugoslav socialist society and for self-management—
it will be conservative, full of pan-Serbian nationalism, the enemy of self-
management and socialism.”^701 Tito naturally explained the coup d’état in a
different way. According to him, there was the danger of civil war, which he was
set on preventing with his army, if necessary, and without intervention of the
Soviets.^702 Was this not an excuse to conceal his thirst of power? Aleksandar
Ranković’s description of Tito’s mentality, written after he was “retired,” sounds
quite convincing: “For him, political crises were a necessity, which became in
time an obsession: he seemed to enjoy having power over others. He never
doubted his success, no matter how dirty, lurid, or how well or poorly the
devised crisis was planned.”^703