410 The Later Years
from Budapest in a diplomatic car, they arranged an accident near the border.
The son of a diplomat from the Soviet Embassy in Belgrade was implicated
in the smuggling. In his baggage the police found leaflets the young man was
bringing to Bar. The authorities acted immediately, arresting the participants in
the congress and sentencing them to jail for two to fourteen years.^86
This event was a heavy blow for Tito and his comrades, who had to acknowl-
edge that the leaders of the Soviet Union, in spite of their declared friendship,
had not renounced their “hegemonic plans” and must have been behind this
ploy. In case of internal troubles, caused for instance by the marshal’s death,
they could presumably exploit the expedient that had proven so useful during
the Hungarian and Czechoslovak crises and invade the country after an “appeal”
from the “legitimate” CPY to “restore order.”^87 That would have come from
this “Kiev group,” had their subversive activities not been foiled. As Vladimir
Bakarić said to the Danish journalist Gunnar Nissen, the conviction was spread
in Moscow that only Tito was “trustworthy,” whereas his colleagues were not.^88
In spite of the assurances that the discovery of the anti-party group would
not influence relations with the Soviet Union, a notable chill entered the air,
since the Yugoslavs could not free themselves from the suspicion that the sub-
versives were controlled by the Russians.^89 General Jan Šejna, a former chief
of the political office of the Czechoslovak army who had defected to the United
States in 1968, reinforced this conviction. In February 1974, he published an
interview in the Vienna magazine Profil revealing a Warsaw Pact military plan:
in case of a crisis, the troops of the Soviet bloc would invade Yugoslavia, passing
through Austrian territory.^90
In the past, the Yugoslavs had not hidden their suspicions about subversive
Soviet activities, denouncing them from time to time and claiming that they
were remarkably widespread. Privately they accused the Soviets of being involved
in the Kosovo uprising in 1968 and in subsequent emigrant intrigues of all
ideological shades. In January 1970 Tito had a harsh discussion with the Soviet
ambas sador, Ivan A. Benediktov, but to no avail.^91 Even during the most cordial
periods between the marshal and Brezhnev, the Soviet secret services did not
give up the idea of creating a fifth column in Yugoslavia, as evidenced by the
June 1973 decision by KGB director Yuri V. Andropov to warn Dobrica Ćosić,
through his agent, to beware top personalities (obviously Tito himself ). The
Soviets evidently saw a possible ally in the famous writer, considered at that
time to be the standard-bearer of Serb nationalistic opposition.^92
Although according to Yugoslav intelligence only twelve people took part
in the Bar congress, Tito did not take the matter lightly: he ordered an inquiry
that ended with the arrest of thirty-two Cominformists, mostly Montenegrins,
and the confiscation of a large amount of material printed in the Soviet Union.