Tito’s Death and His Political Legacy, 1980 449
1978 as an aggression that had been suggested by the Soviet Union in the name
of “fraternal aid,” regardless of world public opinion. The assertion that Cambo-
dia under Pol Pot’s murderous regime could not be considered socialist was,
according to him, just an excuse with which the aggressors justified the evident
violation of international law. No one had the right to criticize the social char-
acter of any state, said the marshal, except the population and its leaders. Those
who asserted that the crimes of Pol Pot’s regime indicated its foreignness to
socialism had a poor knowledge of history. Under Stalin’s rule in the Soviet
Union there were millions of deaths, but nobody dared to conclude that its
socialist char acter was lost. According to Tito, Vietnam’s attack on Cambodia
created an extremely dangerous precedent, not just in the Southeast Asia but
around the world. It must be asked in all seriousness where this would lead.
The LCY thoroughly discussed what had happened in Indo-China, reaching
two conclusions: firstly, that Kardelj’s prophecy about the possibility of future
wars between socialist states had come true; secondly, that Yugoslavia should be
ready for anything, exposed as it was to repeated Soviet interference and to
Bulgarian irredentism. Preparations for defense had to embrace all sectors of
social, political, economic, and military life. In Tito’s opinion, the mass media
in the Soviet Union were creating an atmosphere hostile to Yugoslavia, while
Bulgaria was amassing its troops at the border. At the meeting he declared:
“Today we have a situation that we have not had since the war. At the end of the
war we said that we would work as if we had a hundred years of peace ahead of
us, but that we would prepare as if war could break out tomorrow. I think we
are there. We need to work by reinforcing internal unity, as if war really were
going to break out tomorrow. The complexity of international relations is such
that it is impossible to predict the immediate future.”^94 A comprehensive “cam-
paign of vigilance” was implemented, under the slogan “nothing should surprise
us,” an attempt to involve the entire population in the defense against an even-
tual invader, purposely creating a psychological state of fear and danger, as if the
entire world were conspiring against Yugoslavia.^95 It aimed mainly to strengthen
the regime and overcome the economic and political tensions that were accu-
mulating daily. After the fall of the Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian liberals,
the party recovered its central role in Yugoslav life, restoring its supreme author-
ity. Despite the proclamations about the “completeness of self-management,”
the levers of power remained in the hands of Tito’s inner circle, who still be-
lieved in the validity of democratic centralism. The Eleventh Congress of the
LCY in 1978 reinforced the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and
its vanguard, which did not intend to renounce control of the regime’s key
organs: the secret services, the army, and the diplomatic apparatus.^96 The situ-
ation can be summed up by an episode that occurred during the drafting of