World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 75
favor if the Partisans won. Indeed, the red flag with a hammer and sickle had
been raised in the first free territory, around the town of Užice, a fairly impor-
tant center of Yugoslav military industry, where Tito established his headquar-
ters on 23 September. They also introduced a new salute: “Death to Fascism!”
proposed by Tito, to which the answer, as suggested by Ranković, was “Free-
dom to the people!” Stalin’s pictures and proletarian slogans appeared on the
facades of the houses, while the hated gendarmes who had not run away in
time or who did not join the new masters, as well as several wealthy local men,
were “liquidated.”^131
It was estimated that, at that time, there were forty thousand Partisans in
Serbia, while six hundred members of the party and two thousand members of
SKOJ still lived in Belgrade.^132 “The peasants who brought food to Belgrade
were the only link with the surrounding areas, since the Partisans had inter-
rupted all communication with the capital.... The Partisan movement in Serbia
was at its peak,” wrote Kardelj in his memoirs, “the first Partisan patrols could
be found only fifteen kilometers from Belgrade.”^133 Tito was even more opti-
mistic. At the beginning of October he communicated to Moscow: “the Parti-
san army in Yugoslavia has a hundred thousand men and about thirty thousand
Chetniks, our allies.” He renewed the request for arms, stressing the fact that
he had several airports at his disposal where Soviet planes could land.^134
The political and organizational experiences of the “Republic of Užice,”
which covered nineteen thousand square kilometers and counted about three
hundred thousand inhabitants, gave the leaders of the CPY their first taste of
power,^135 and the first occasion for them to apply it in a cruel way. When Živojin
Pavlović, a former communist who rebelled against Stalin’s bloody dictatorship
by writing pamphlet entitled “Balance Sheet of the Soviet Thermidor” fell into
their hands, they accused him of being a spy, then tortured and shot him.^136
Naturally, Tito took up residence in the best building of the city, the National
Bank, where he discovered a rich bounty in cash and silver.^137 He recalled that
“at that time, 56 million was quite a haul. In those first days this was very useful,
since it permitted us to avoid molesting the peasants, whereas the Chetniks
robbed them wherever and whenever possible, without fighting. For instance,
our unit crossed a village, the fruit was ripe, it was autumn, but nobody touched
a plum or an apple. The peasants offered and were surprised that our men did
not drink slivovitz. They brought out jugs of brandy and wine. But nobody was
allowed to touch them. I prohibited the drinking of alcohol and the expropria-
tion of the peasants, under penalty of death. The discipline was really excep-
tional.”^138 In this army in formation, highly disciplined, nobody as yet wore
a proper uniform, apart from the šajkača—the traditional Serb military cap, on
which a red cloth star had been sewn. The only exception was Tito who, at the