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increasingly succumbed to the influence of the ypa. The fact that he
was physically weak and old may explain why he relied on the ypa in
the midst of deteriorating intercommunal relations. “’Brotherhood
and Unity’ are inseparably linked with our Army,” Tito declared.
“Our Army must not merely watch vigilantly over our borders, but
also be present inside the country. … [T]here are those who write
that one day Yugoslavia will disintegrate. Nothing like that will happen
because our Army ensures that we will continue to move in the
direction we have chosen for the socialist construction of our country.”
174 The gradual delegitimization of the political system, which
could offer no solutions for Yugoslavia’s mounting economic and
political crisis, created a vacuum at the federal level into which the
Army moved, at the same time wriggling free of civilian control
and imposing itself as an autonomous force in the Yugoslav Federation.
The civilian “command” mechanisms of society, though still in
existence, began to function increasingly erratically.
THE SOVIET INFLUENCE
The Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia and the developments
that preceded it underscored the challenges of dealing with
the national issue in a complex state with a centralist concept. After
the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (cpsu) in 1956, the Czechoslovak leadership had tried to construct
“a new, deeply democratic model of Socialist society compatible
with [the] Czechoslovak condition” but received no support for
the undertaking. 175 Czechoslovakia’s attempts to chart its own path
failed because the country was invaded and occupied by Soviet forces
174 Marko Milivojević in Yugoslavia’s Security Dilemmas, Berg Publishers Ltd .1988,
edited by Marko Milovojević, John B . Allock and Pierre Maurer, p .22
175 Reports on events in Czechoslovakia by Tanjug (Telegrafic Agency of New
Yugoslavia) quoted in Latinka Perović, Zatavaranje kruga.p .71 (Tanjug was
founded on November 5, 1943 . It had a leading role in the Non-Aligned
News Agencies Pool . It is now a Serbian agency based in Belgrade .)