BIG STORIES | There were Tito, Andrić and Krleža... and only one Nobel Prize (1)
Josip Broz was fascinated by Miroslav Krleža, no less than Krleža was fascinated by him.
Is smoking dangerous, or are these just claims by the spin masters of the candy industry, who are trying to increase the sale of soft things, at the expense of tobacco?
Ivo Andrić told this thesis to Josip Broz Tito, at the reception to which the president agreed with difficulty, and the occasion was the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the writer, after a long time he reluctantly listened to the arguments of Dobrica Čosić, who assured the marshal that if he did not receive it, a serious international scandal will break out.
- Now I enjoy eucalyptus candies - said Tito to his famous peer.
- And cigarettes... - recommended Andric - you should smoke only half, because the nicotine is in the upper part.
Smoking was Tito's sore spot. He smoked a hundred cigarettes a day, Jasper Ridley testifies, until he was in danger of losing his sight in the late sixties - then switched to cigars. Then Tito and Andrić, at the only meeting in their lives, moved on to the topic of Egyptian antiquities. Both were opposed to investing billions in their conservation, as Egypt is rich in archaeological remains.
- Luxor looks miserable - said Andric. – Everything tops from old English and American women. It is very hot there.
Tito agrees and calls the relocation of the temples from Abu Simbel a "stupid project", since there are thousands of ancient monuments in Egypt, especially those with the image of Ramses.
- I wouldn't give a dinar for that - concludes Tito.
Why the dominance of these bizarre topics in the conversation? Tito and Andric wanted to overcome the severe discomfort with them.
– How on earth am I going to do that? Krleža will be offended - said Tito to Dobrica Kosić, rejecting his idea to meet the writer whom he had never seen or loved. He should have won the Nobel Prize, not Andric. "And now I should congratulate Ivo Andrić!?"
Before Tito, Andrić was already congratulated with a telegram by the American ambassador in Belgrade, the famous George Kenan, as well as many other fans. Josip Broz eventually swallowed the frog. For him, state reason could have justified a greater sacrifice, even this, not insignificant one, to resent his old friend, the icon of youth, the vain and insecure Miroslav Krleža.
The writer met him when, as a young locksmith, he had just returned from Russia, from "Lenin's other shore". In 1920, he approached the writer at the "Kutnjak" inn on Zagreb's Ilica, with the desire to meet him. Today it is hard to imagine a picture that a craftsman approaches the writer with admiration, and it is even terribly difficult, but those were other times.
Their friendship, from that meeting in "Kutnjak", until their death, six decades later, was really not disturbed by anything. Neither did Krleža's attack on party doctrines and sacred cows in the late 30s (Tito attacked his writings in "Proleter" in 1938, but he - alone among those branded - never called him by name; even then kept), nor Krleža's revolt from Stalin's terror, expressed in the long walks with Tito, from Šestyn to Črnomerc (where he spoke openly to him about the "slaughter" that Stalin was carrying out on the Yugoslav communists and Tito agreed, only claiming that everything it's not yet time to talk about it), nor why he didn't go to the partisans...
Josip Broz was fascinated by Miroslav Krleža, no less than Krleža was fascinated by him.
- Krleža is... - he explained to Dobrica Kšosić on "Galeb" - he sees sectarianism.
"They notice him for not joining the partisans. He couldn't. I know why. People don't know that. He is the first proletarian writer of this country. He is the first writer who went beyond the national in the name of class. Many things disappointed him. Stalin, Moscow trials, Siberian camps. I remember when I returned to the country from Paris in 1938 as party secretary, I talked to Krleža all night. He did not believe in the victory of the revolution, because he looked at the physical and material relationship of forces, and I told him: these are correct facts, but they lack a moral factor. Will and consciousness to win. That's how he looked at the war. He looked again at the mathematical ratio of military forces. If you look at it that way, then the winner is wrongly predicted…”
- Klerža - concluded Tito - is underestimated... His plays are the strongest. And that Seal... These are all things that have not yet been clarified. He was mostly attacked by those who are no longer in the Party. He was the first to understand what socialist realism meant.
Tito and Krleža differed regarding the use of violence. Before the war, Tito supported Stalin because he believed that the priority of a country facing war with Germany must be accelerated industrialization, the likes of which the world had not seen before. A million tons of steel, Magnitogorsk, thousands of tanks, cannons - it must be in the foreground, and now, staged trials, shootings, camps, all these are childhood diseases of socialism, which, until Hitler is dealt with, should be seen through through fingers.
In the thirties, Krleža believed, and wrote about it in "On the edge of the mind", that a better society cannot be achieved by using worse means, from Machiavellianism to terror. After the war, Miroslav Krleža will admit that Tito was right. Soviet heavy industry, together with the unlimited raw material base of the vast Soviet land, already in 1942 became, together with people, the decisive factor of the war. Magnitogorsk and Donbas overcame the Ruhr. Today, many years later, it seems that Krleža was right - revolutions eat their children, and then they eat themselves. "What is born with a hump, time does not straighten."
Dobrica Qosic on "Galeb", seeing Tito's luxury, wanted to throw herself into the sea - if we believe him - and Lazar Kolishevski had the same intention, outraged because Jovanka Broz has an advantage over her old party and state comrades.
And why didn't Krleza join the partisans?
Tito's wife, Herta, an elegant and smart lady (by the way, Tito, according to Olga Humo, had an unmistakable "gift for choosing bad women"), revealed the reason in the series by Mira Šuvar and Lordan Zafranović.
"One day, Stevo Krajacic came to me and said, here you are going now, these days Krleza is also going, so there will be a lot of security, so you will definitely reach the liberated territory. But in a few days he came again and told me - there's nothing to it, Krleža can't leave the house because his wife got angina. It got dark, I thought, I'm leaving a small child, and Krleža, the great propagator of the left, can't because of his wife's angina..."
A tick with Bella was bothering them with something more than angina. If he had joined the partisans, he would have left his wife Leposava "Bela" Kangrga at the shooting range in Zagreb. Bela would surely die at the hands of Dido Kvaternik (the fact that he "doesn't care whether he kills Dido or Jido" was apparently invented by Krleža, after 1953, because he certainly wouldn't have dared to express such an opinion at the time when Djilas was at the head of Agitprop and a member of the Big Four, and he is a writer who with great difficulty washed away from the conflict in the left and remained in the NDH during the war).
After the fall of Djilas, that sentence sounded good in Tito's ear, and the writer - who was already openly behaving "according to the line of opportunity" - did not hesitate to announce it to all the bells, it was music to his friend's ears. Moreover, Krleža – as can be guessed from Tito's sentence “he could not join the partisans… and I know why” – did not believe in the victory of the partisans; in 1942, the marshal himself, known for his unwavering optimism, doubted her.
(Continued)
Prepare
Ivan Beckovic
