Boris Ziherl
Communism and Fatherland
III.
Until the Great October Socialist
Revolution
in Russia the fatherland of the working people
had been established nowhere. It was only a
program, a goal and an ideal of the revolutionary
movements for the overthrow of the bourgeois,
and generally every exploitive, order. It is in
the light of this non-existence of a fatherland of
the working people as a direct reality that we
have to understand the famous words from
Marx's and Engels's "Manifesto of the Communist
Party": '' The workers have no fatherland". Lenin
explained this passage in the same way in his
letter to Inez Armand of November 30, 1916,1
stressing that the above passage from the "Manifesto" should never be detached from the following sentences in which the writers' stress the
necessity for the proletariat "to seize political
power, to raise itself to the rank of a national
class".2 The fact that Lenin thought of this
passage from the "Manifesto of the Communist
Party" exactly in this manner is proved not
only by the above-mentioned article on the
national pride of Great-Russians, written in
1914, but also by a series of other quotations
from his works, including his speech delivered
at the 1st All-Russian Congress of Working
Cossacks on March 1. 1920, when he said:
"This Russia which has freed itself, which
has defended its Soviet revolution through two
years of fighting and sufferings, this Russia we
shall defend to the last drop of our blood.3
The power of workers and peasants, Soviet
power, was established almost throughout the
whole territory of the former Russian Empire
in 1917. The working people of the Soviet land
won their fatherland. Created as a result of the
revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie and
big landowners from power, built on the basis
of Marxist-Leninist national policy, the Soviet
Union was the first multi-national state which
actually became the common fatherland of all its
peoples.
The example of the Soviet Union, and today
also the example of Federal Yugoslavia, proves
that a common, multi-national socialist fatherland does not destroy the national fatherlands of
various peoples but is their higher synthesis.
Its universal, socialist, social substance exists
through their national form and is manifested
and enriched through the multiform national
characteristics of the respective republics. Speaking of the relations between socialist, proletarian culture and national culture, Comrade
Stalin said in 1925:
"Proletarian universal culture does not exclude but presupposes and nourishes national
culture, in the same way as national culture does
not abolish but supplements and enriches universal proletarian culture."4
In the multi-national socialist fatherland, the
greatest unity of the international and national,
of the internationalism and the patriotism of
working men has been achieved.
For the whole world proletariat, for all the
working people and oppressed peoples, the Soviet Union became an example and support in
their struggle against the bourgeois "fatherlands", for the free fatherland of working people.
Being the only fatherland of the working people,
the Soviet Union became the fatherland of the
world proletariat. The all-round support of the
Soviet Union in its struggle against the imperialist plotters, interventionists, warmongers and
aggressors meant strengthening of the Soviet
Union, and by this fact itself brought the working masses of the capitalist countries nearer to
the attainment of their social ideal towards
which they were led by the proletariat headed
by the Communist Party. Each new success in
the building of socialism in the USSR was a
further proof of the superiority of the socialist
state over the capitalist states which were
sinking into unbridgeable internal contradictions:
each new success in the building of socialism was
a further incentive to the working masses all
over the world to fight even more resolutely for
the transformation of their country into a socialist fatherland of working people, and thereby
also for the consolidation of the international
position of the Soviet Union, the first fatherland
of the working people of the world.
The amount of the support given by the
working masses of various countries, led by
their communist parties, to the Soviet Union was,
therefore, at the same time, the measure of their
revolutionary proletarian patriotism and internationalism, it was an expression of the inseparable interdependence of the struggle for the
genuine freedom and progress of one's own
country with the struggle for the strengthening
of the first socialist state, main pillar of the
liberation movement in all the countries of the
world.
Today it has become the fashion among some
communist and workers' parties to give lessons on
every occasion to the Yugoslav communists and
their leaders on internationalism and love of the
Soviet Union.
In spite of all the misrepresentations of historical facts, nothing can erase the fact that the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia has completely
understood the world-historical importance of
the Soviet Union as the first fatherland of
working people. It has constantly consolidated
among the Yugoslav working masses the knowledge that the fate of Yugoslavia is inseparably
linked with the Soviet Union, that support of
the Soviet Union is at the same time a struggle
for the transformation of Yugoslavia into a socialist fatherland of the Yugoslav peoples. The
Communist Party of Yugoslavia gave eloquent
proof of its correct and deep understanding of
the inseparable interconnection of the fate of its
country and of the Soviet Union at a time when
the latter needed practical proofs most: in the
years of the great war against Hitlerite Germany.
Commenting on a lecture delivered over
the Moscow radio by Potemkin, Comrade Tito
said the following on the occasion of the bestowal of a flag upon the 2 Proletarian Brigade,
on October 17, 1942:
"The Soviet people understood that they
were fighting, and if need be, that they would
fight alone until the final destruction of Hitlerite
fascism and of all those who were aiming at
enslaving the world again. We can only add that
we, too, shall fight together with the Soviet
Union, as we have done so far, alone in our
country in spite of all the dark reactionary
forces which have united with the invaders in
order again to put a yoke upon the necks of
our people."5
Comrade Kardelj in his article "Join the
Partisans", published in September 1941, identified the active support of the Soviet Army with
the honour of the Slovene and other Yugoslav
peoples:
"It is the duly of the Slovene people to help
the Red Army by armed action in their own
country and thus prevent — according to their
strength — the concentration of fascist hordes in
the East. It is shameful and unworthy for a
freedom-loving people to wait for others to
redeem its liberty with their blood."6
No one — except perhaps a miserable forger
of history — can assert that the above words
remained words alone.
Notes
1. "Bolshevik", 1949, No. 1. p. 41. Lenin's letters
to Inez Armand were published for the first time in
this number.
2. Marx-Engels: "Manifesto of the Communist
Party", Belgrade, 1948. p. 59.
3. Lenin: Works, III Edition, Vol. XXV. P. 69.
4. Stalin: Marxism and the National-Colonial Question, p. 227.
5. Tito: Struggle for the Liberation of Yugoslavia.
Belgrade, 1947, p. 88.
6. Kardelj: The Course of New Yugoslavia. Belgrade. 1946, p. 226.