The Balkans in the Cold War by Svetozar Rajak Konstantina E. Botsiou Eirini Karamouzi & Evanthis Hatzivassiliou

Author:Svetozar Rajak, Konstantina E. Botsiou, Eirini Karamouzi & Evanthis Hatzivassiliou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

The Soviets were not the only party that sought to profit from Yugoslavia’s internal difficulties—political emigration also had its plans. On 2 December 1970, Dragutin Haramija, president of Croatia’s Executive Council (government), sent a letter to federal Prime Minister Mitja Ribičič, in which he charged that the foreign ministry intelligence officers (notably Đuro Pintarić of the Yugoslav Military Mission at Berlin) were spreading a ‘major insinuation’ that the leadership of Croatia was in contact with Dr. Branko Jelić, a Croat nationalist émigré, resident in West Berlin, who supposedly had established contacts with Moscow. The outcome of these ‘contacts’ would be an independent communist Croatia, from Trieste to the Drina River, integrated within the Soviet bloc and with the Soviet type of socialism. In exchange, the USSR would get military bases at Mostar and Rijeka. The source for these allegations was Jelić’s aide Velimir Tomulović, who was actually an agent of Yugoslav intelligence. Haramija demanded an inquiry and punishment for those responsible. The Soviets were very sensitive about these developments. On 9 December 1971, an employee of the Soviet embassy in Belgrade turned over a copy of Jelić’s newspaper Hrvatska država (Croatian State) to the Yugoslav foreign ministry, noting that the material was mailed from West Germany and that the Soviets were aware that this publication was forbidden, but that the Soviet side insisted ‘that they inform us of this, so that the impression would not be created that the embassy subscribes to such publications’. 9

The émigré affair escalated during the period of inquiry. The members of the federal commission could not agree on a conclusion. When the commission met at the Brioni Islands on 23 April 1971 the majority concluded that ‘the federal administrative organs, their services, and individuals employed in them did not participate in any kind of conspiracy or in the initiation and dissemination of political intrigues about the alleged connections between the hostile emigration and the political leadership of SR Croatia’. 10 The conclusion was not signed by a commission member Nikola Pavletić, himself from Croatia, and it was not accepted by two other Croat ministers, Mirjana Krstinić, and a Deputy Prime Minister Jakov Sirotković.

In order to resolve the matter the seventeenth session of the Presidency of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) met on the Brioni Islands on 28–30 April 1971. The atmosphere was tense and soul-searching. First the Executive Committee of the Presidency met on 28 April amid pleas from Edvard Kardelj (Slovenia) that the public must be soothed and also from Budislav Šoškić (Montenegro) that the matter ‘be left to the state organs’. 11 In line with the ambiguous attitudes to the ‘affair’, the Presidency concluded thatthere occurred a strengthening of the external hostile subversive activity, which utilized our internal difficulties and relied in its activities on the enemies in our country. In connection with this hostile—anti-Yugoslav and antisocialist—activity, an action that aimed at disqualifying the political leadership of SR [Socialist Republic] Croatia was organized with the aim of provoking political instability, inter-republic

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