229. Intelligence Information Cable1

TDCS DB–315/04377–71

COUNTRY

Yugoslavia/USSR

DOI

29 April–4 July 1971

SUBJECT

  • Appeal by President Tito for Croatian Party Unity in Face of Danger From the USSR

SOURCE

[5½ lines not declassified]

[Page 564]
1.
On 4 July 1971, President Josip Broz Tito called a meeting of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia (LCC) at Villa Zagorje in Zagreb where he delivered a strong and angry appeal for LCC unity and emphasized that the country was in real danger from the USSR.2 As evidence, he described a personal telephone call he had received from CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev on 29 April 1971 at Brioni, during a closed meeting of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) Executive Bureau, the Republic Executive Bureaus, and the Republic Assembly Presidents. Tito said that Brezhnev had offered Soviet “assistance” in the event of serious trouble among rival national factions in Yugoslavia, but that he had declined the Soviet offer. (Headquarters comment: See also paragraph 2 of confidential Vienna telegram, Vienna 4580, dated 27 July 1971,3 in which the Yugoslav Ambassador to Austria mentioned Brezhnevʼs offer of assistance to Tito, an offer the Ambassador said that Tito did not accept.)
2.
Tito spoke only eight minutes, but in such an angry tone that he nearly lost control. He concluded with the statement that there was a genuine threat of Soviet invasion. He gave no details about Soviet invasion plans, but he said he was “ready to become a dictator again,” if the Soviet threat persisted.
3.
The story of the Brezhnev telephone call had been circulating in Croatian party circles since early May. It apparently originated with two members of the LCC Central Committee present at Brioni; when Tito was called out to take an important telephone call, the two Croatian leaders accidently overheard part of Titoʼs end of the conversation. During discussion of the telephone call during May and June, some LCC officials compared Brezhnevʼs “offer” to the “assistance” which the USSR had given the Czechoslovak leadership in August 1968. However, other Croatian party officials claimed that the telephone call was a hoax perpetrated by Tito to promote national cohesiveness by exaggerating the Soviet threat. The latter action infuriated Tito, and he called the 4 July meeting at least in part to squelch the claim.
4.
[less than 1 line not declassified]
  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 733, Country Files—Europe, Yugoslavia, Vol. II Aug 70–Aug 71. Secret; No Foreign Dissem; Controlled Dissem; No Dissem Abroad. Prepared in the CIA and sent to agencies in the Intelligence Community. A notation on the cable reads: “HAKed.”
  2. Intelligence Information Cable TDCS DB 315/04385–71, August 3, reported that Yugoslav military intelligence had information that six Soviet divisions had been moved to Central Asia for training in connection with a possible invasion of Yugoslavia. (Ibid.)
  3. It transmitted a report on Soviet-Yugoslav relations provided by the Yugoslav Embassy in Vienna. (Ibid., RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL USSR–YUGO)