Tito’s Death and His Political Legacy, 1980 443
Bank of Zagreb. The press did not mention what had happened, but the
authorities were deeply concerned, fearing a plot to attack Yugoslavia after
Tito’s death on the part of various exile groups. “The boldness of recent terror-
ist actions,” a CIA document notes, “has led Belgrade to redouble its security
effort at home and to make representations to foreign governments with juris-
dictions over potential terrorists.”^67 But it was useless, since Kosovar national-
ism could not be bridled. Tito experienced this in relation to his own person
when, in October 1979, he visited the hostile province for what would be the
last time. On the eve of his arrival his photos at the faculty of humanities of the
University of Priština were torn down and ripped.^68
On an international level, Tito wanted to complete his plans to put things in
order while he still could, and once and for all cement relations with the Soviet
Union. In November 1976 he met Leonid Brezhnev, who returned to Belgrade
on an official visit after a five-year absence. This took place some weeks after
major military maneuvers known as “Goliath” occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Montenegro, and Serbia, which rehearsed an initial tank clash on the plains of
the Hungarian and Romanian border, and a long Partisan struggle in the core
of the country. Although it was not openly stated, it was evident that according
to the Yugoslav strategists the peril came from Russia.
Brezhnev, who had a string of frank and heated discussions with Tito, Kardelj,
and Dolanc, tried to dissipate these fears. At the gala dinner he said jokingly
during a toast that Yugoslavia was certainly not a Little Red Riding Hood in
danger of being eaten by the Big Bad Russian Wolf, as the Western press had
written. His assurances, however, did not convince the Yugoslavs. In the press
release published at the end of the visit there was a passage on the indepen-
dence of the LCY that had not appeared in previous joint declarations. But the
word “trust,” included in the declaration of 1972, was missing. In short, after
the “Cominform affair” the Yugoslavs no longer believed the Soviets and were
certain they were vulnerable to treachery at the most delicate moment: Tito’s
death.^69 When the Soviet press tried to present the summit in the context of a
“collective discussion on the strategy and tactics of the socialist countries,” the
Yugoslav commentators reacted firmly—obviously on orders from above—
stressing that a return of Yugoslavia to the “socialist community” was out of the
question.^70
Tito and his comrades were especially susceptible to allegations that they
were ready to return to the “camp” because they had the impression that the
West accepted the idea of their dependence on the Warsaw Pact. This was the
gist of what Helmut Sonnenfeldt, the chief of the Eastern European desk at
the State Department, said at a meeting in London of the American ambas-
sadors to the communist countries. He had developed the theory that the latent