Boris Ziherl
Communism and Fatherland
V.
In the course of her People's Revolution,
Yugoslavia — faithfully implementing the principles of Marxist-Leninist national policy, under
the leadership of the CPY — took the shape of
a multi-national socialist fatherland.
The formation of a common state of the
Yugoslav peoples, and of all the South Slavs in
general was, throughout the 19th century and the
first decades of the 20th century, the most ardent
desire of Yugoslavs whose nationality was increasingly threatened by German, Italian and
other imperialisms. For decades before World
War I, Yugoslavia represented, for all Yugoslav
democrats and the Yugoslav masses in Austria-Hungary, and also in Turkey and Serbia, the
negation of all national oppression and a guarantee of free national development in all the
spheres of social activity.
Yugoslavia came into being 1918, but —
owing to external and internal objective circumstances and owing to the lack of the subjective
factor of the people's revolution — a revolutionary proletarian party, tempered in struggle and
strong ideologically — she became the personification of the bourgeois concept of the fatherland. By their policy of social exploitation, deprivation of political rights and national oppression, the ruling bourgeoisie, for the sake of its
foreign imperialist protectors, did everything to
divide the Yugoslav peoples and to disarm them
in the face of the threatening German-Italian
aggression.
Linking its struggle to the democratic traditions of the struggle for a state community of
equal Yugoslav peoples, the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia unmasked the treacherous policy of
the bourgeoisie: it tirelessly pointed out to the
masses the road of struggle for transformation
of Yugoslavia into a fatherland of working
people, the road of struggle for the closest cooperation and friendship with the Soviet Union.
It is not a mere coincidence that the peoples
of Yugoslavia started to rally around the Communist Party of Yugoslavia en masse, especially
after the April catastrophe in 1941. that they
remained under its leadership during the most
difficult conditions of struggle, completely surrounded, when the armies of the anti-Hitler
Coalition were far from Yugoslavia and the
armies of the Hitlerite Coalition were on the
offensive. This is the result of the long and persevering struggle waged by the Communist Party
for the masses, a consequence of the successful
struggle for the ever-increasing bolshevisation of
the Party itself, for its transformation into a
genuine people's party, a party of the masses.
The history of the national liberation struggle
and of the people's socialist revolution in Yugoslavia is inseparable from the whole previous
history of the subjective factor of revolution in
Yugoslavia — from the history of the Communist
Party of Yugoslavia.
The Soviet publicist, P. E. Vishinsky wrote
an article last year entitled "Communism and
Fatherland" which was published in the second
number of the review "Questions of Philosophy"
in 1948. Re-digesting in a standardized manner
the accusations of the herostratic Vidovilan Resolution of the Information Bureau of certain
communist parties, the writer, supposedly teaching the leaders of the CP of Yugoslavia, says
that the 'national tasks' of the people of the
country, are in their essence class tasks, the
tasks of the oppressed classes and can, therefore,
be solved only in the course of the class struggle,
and not through compromises, not through the
'unification' of the exploiters and exploited into
a united 'national front', consequently, not
through a 'reconciliation of classes'. Submitting
these discoveries to the Yugoslav communists,
Vishinsky continues:
"One thing is the struggle for national independence as conceived by the proletariat and
its party, which must link the national
liberation
struggle to the social liberation of working
people,
to the struggle against imperialism on a world
level, and, consequently, to loyalty to the cause
of proletarian internationalism (united front with
the USSR and other revolutionary forces). Another
thing is 'national independence' according to
bourgeois, opportunist and nationalistic concepts,
in the sense of national exclusiveness and national isolation from the common struggle of
peoples... The nationalistic clique of Tito has
degenerated to such a bourgeois concept of the
question of national independence,"1
How the Yugoslav communists understand
national independence under conditions of the
existence of several socialist states will be
discussed later. Now we shall deal briefly with
the struggle for national independence, in the
light of the obligatory interdependence of the
national liberation struggle and the social liberation of the working people.
We have to stress that a profound study of
the problems of new Yugoslavia has never been
one of the strong points of our "critics", especially those in the USSR. This holds for Vishinsky
also. In his "scientific-philosophical" study he
only repeats the fabricated and frayed theses of
the resolution of the lnformbureau, which are far
removed front all science, if by science we understand the search for and discovery of truth in
the objective world and not a Hegelian speculation by means of which facts are pulled
over pre-fabricated forms.
Yes, during the War of National Liberation
from 1941-1945 there were also opinions that an
understanding should be reached with the
treacherous bourgeoisie, represented by Drazha
Mikhailovich, because such an agreement would
"strengthen" the liberation front in Yugoslavia,
which was allegedly being weakened by the
"narrow-mindedness" of the communists. The
people who thought so forgot the fact that the
bourgeoisie had embarked upon the road of
treason not because of the "narrow-mindedness"
of the communists, but because of the broadmindedness of the people who joined the ranks
of the Liberation Front and the Army of National Liberation Above all the bourgeoisie feared
the activation, organization and awakening of
the people through struggle. The people thinking
that way forgot that such an agreement at any
cost would have been tantamount to the self-
liquidation of the National Liberation Movement
in Yugoslavia as a revolutionary movement of
the broad masses of the people.
Yes, such opinions existed, only not among
its, not in the ranks of the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia.
The policy adhered to by the leadership of
the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the
National Liberation Movement was based on
awareness of the inseparable interconnection
between the national and the social, on the
knowledge that the people's struggle against the
fascist invaders and their hirelings would be the
more persevering and broader insofar as the
National Liberation Struggle was more closely
linked with the struggle for the emancipation of
the Yugoslav working people, for the liquidation
of the bourgeois "homeland" and for the creation
of a new, people's-socialist homeland of the
Yugoslav working people. This idea is clearly
expressed in Comrade Tito's well known article
"The National Question in Yugoslavia in the
Light of the National Liberation Struggle", written in 1942.2 It is given also in his article "What
Are the Special Features of the Liberation
Struggle and of the Revolutionary Transformation
of the New Yugoslavia", where he writes:
"If we had called upon the people only to
fight the invader, while not letting them understand at the same time that the struggle would
also bring something new, something much finer,
that there was to be no return to the past — it
would not have been possible to arouse all the
peoples to that struggle, and to awaken the
interest of such broad masses in it, nor indeed
would it have been possible to hold out the end,
to victory."3
The policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation War was based
on a correct Marxist-Leninist appraisal of the
relationship of class forces in Yugoslavia, on the
feelings of the working masses which bore the
brunt of the Liberation Struggle, on a thorough
knowledge of the political and moral features of
the Yugoslav bourgeoisie, of its propensity to
treason. The platform of the Communist Party
of Yugoslavia in the National Liberation Struggle
from 1941 to 1945 was a platform of revolutionary democratic patriotism and internationalism:
it was unacceptable to the bourgeoisie, because
it was acceptable to the masses of the people, it
was acceptable to the masses because it was
unacceptable to the bourgeoisie. That was the
class logic of events in Yugoslavia. To have
adopted the platform of the bourgeoisie and its
representative, Drazha Mikhailovich, would have
meant to alienate the masses, and that would
not only have weakened the National Liberation
Struggle but even liquidated it, reducing to a
minimum or to naught the aid which the Yugoslav peoples were rendering their Soviet brothers
in their life and death struggle with Hitlerite
Germany.
If the National Liberation War in Yugoslavia
is to be understood it must be regarded as
people's revolution which was consciously organized and led by the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia, armed with the powerful teachings of
Marxism-Leninism. To understand the revolution
in Yugoslavia which, under the conscious leadership of the Communists, bore the fruits of a
socialist revolution means to grasp the fact that
the Yugoslav working masses, too,are capable
of independent revolutionary action, that they,
too, engendered a conscious Marxist-Leninist
vanguard which, having steeled itself and gained
the confidence of the masses during twenty years
of struggle against the Yugoslav bourgeoisie —
correctly appraised the objective foreign political
and internal factors for victory of the people in
Yugoslavia in the conditions of the Second World
War, and dauntlessly led them into the liberation
war, into revolution.
No one in Yugoslavia ever thought of disparaging, much lass denying the struggle of the
Soviet Union against Hitlerite Germany as being
the most important and decisive objective factor
in the victory of the Yugoslav peoples in the
Liberation War. This is an irrefutable
fact. But,
likewise, no denial can be made of the people'
revolution in Yugoslavia, the fact cannot be
denied that the greater part of Yugoslav
territory
was liberated exclusively by the fighters of the
Yugoslav armed forces with the technical aid of
the Soviet and other allies of that time; the
Liberation War in Yugoslavia cannot be presented as having been something more or less
accidental, as a number of unorganized partizan
skirmishes nor can the Yugoslav peoples be
presented exclusively as an object of liberation
by the Soviet Army. The merits of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the war cannot
be placed on an equal footing with the merits
of the communist parties in countries where
there was no resistance movement against the
Germans and their domestic hirelings, or almost
none, where the parties were disrupted (as in
Hungary and Rumania) and founded only after
the liberation. The Yugoslav Communists and
the Yugoslav peoples sincerely rejoice at every
success which the communists and peoples of the
countries of people's democracy are achieving
in respect of revolutionary transformation and
social-economic, political and cultural advancement. They have proved their readiness to extend
them every support and to forget everything that
once used to divide them from these peoples in
the past, but they do not see, nor can they, nor
indeed should they see any practical purpose in
the distortion of historical facts.
The tendency to depict the National Liberation Struggle in Yugoslavia as an exclusively
national liberation struggle, and the results of
the consistently internationalist policy of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia exclusively as
the, expression of deeply-rooted pro-Russian
sentiments of the Yugoslav peoples, has for
years been expressed in a series of articles and
dissertations written by Soviet publicists and
journalists. While reading these lines one often
gets the impression that Yugoslavia is not
country in which there are peoples with significant state and revolutionary traditions and
republic with a high national culture and no
less high a civilization of the Central European
and Mediterranean type, but a somewhat exotic
"Balkan" country in which there are, it is true
freedom-loving, but backward highlanders who
lack elementary civilisation and who, of course
are incapable of conscious organised revolutionary
struggle and creative work in socialist construction.
According to the writer of the mentioned
"philosophico-scientific" article on communism
and the fatherland, the policy of "uniting" hit
exploiter and exploited into a firm "national"
front, the policy of national exclusiveness which
the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of Yugoslavia is today supposedly pursuing, is a
sequel to the policy pursued during the war
when the Yugoslav Communists supposedly considered the struggle against the invader as an
exclusively national struggle, as a matter of cooperation with the bourgeoisie in the defence of
the fatherland. It is on these arbitrary notions,
which testify to complete ignorance of Yugoslav
reality, that further "truths" have been construed
on the post-war policy of the Communist Party
of Yugoslavia, denial of the existence of socialist
construction in Yugoslavia, denial of Yugoslavia
as a country of people's democracy, as a socialist
country, as a component part of the common
socialist front, her purely speculative transformation into a bourgeois republic in the imperialist camp and many other countless "generally known" truths of the Cominform press and
radio. All this unprincipled casuistry and all
these political acrobatics are supposed to be a
"valuable contribution" to the enrichment of
Marxism-Leninism.
It is appropriate to discuss the correctness
or incorrectness of a political line, the errors
and omissions of this or that Party leadership.
That is as clear as daylight. It is also clear that
no services rendered in the past can exempt a
communist from criticism for his errors. But,
facts which are as obvious, for example, as that
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died on January 21, 1924,
cannot be doubted. That would be denying the
objective truth, sinking from positions of a
Marxist-Leninist party, which is building its
policy upon the concept of objective truth, to
positions of pragmatism. As we know, it is
irrelevant to pragmatism whether something is
useful because it is true, or whether something
is true because it is useful (James); it, actually
denies the objectivity of truth and proclaims as
true what — at the given moment — it is useful
and agreeable to create and present as the truth.
Whatever the motives of pragmatistic action in
relation, to fact, such action accustoms people
to overlooking the truth when building up line
of policy and jeopardizes the success of the
undertaking itself.
During the war and during peaceful construction, the Yugoslav Communists proved in
deed, and are still proving, their loyalty to the
ideal of international solidarity of all working
people. They have always held in high esteems
and availed themselves of, the valuable experiences of socialist constructions in the USSR, generalised in the works of Lenin and Stalin. But
the Yugoslav Communists with justification
simultaneously pride themselves upon their
people, upon their heroism, upon their unbreakable will to overcome all foreseen and unforeseen obstacles in their struggle for freedom and
building of socialism by their adroitness, their
gift for invention, their organisational abilities —
both in the field of socio-economic and cultural
and state political construction. The Yugoslav
Communists pride themselves with justification
upon the working people of their fatherland who
performed significant revolutionary deeds in the
liberation war from 1941 to 1945 and who are
today consolidating those deeds through their
selfless work in socialist construction, who knew
how to create for themselves a reliable weapon
with which to make those deeds secure — a
people's army and people's organs of security.
All this can only constitute a contribution to the
consolidation of the socialist front in the whole
world.
The Communists of Yugoslavia are entitled
to consider their peoples equal to all other
peoples and they have no reason to approach this
people, in any field of staye and social construction,
with less confidence than they would any other
people, to hold their creative abilities beneath the
corresponding abilities of other peoples, and in
any form whatever, to consider them as an object
for trusteeship. The Communists of Yugoslavia are
likewise entitled to hold themselves worthy of the
confidence of their people and to pride themselves
upon that confidence.
Therein lies the national pride of the Yugoslav Communists. Therein lies their entire "nationalism". Logically following this is the reply
to the question as to how the Yugoslav Communists conceive of national independence under
conditions of the existence of several socialist
countries.
Any policy by the Yugoslav Communists
which would — as a consequence — give rise
to the disparagement of the creative abilities of
their own people in relation to other peoples
would weaken the revolutionary enthusiasm of
Yugoslavia's working masses, it would give cause
them to distrust other peoples of the socialist
camp, distrust which would steadily grow no
matter how it might be couched in official expressions of loyal comradeship.
Such "internationalism" does not mean internal consolidation but internal weakening of
the socialist camp itself.
It is to this that our "critics" should give
more serious thought.
Notes
1. "Questions of Philosophy" ("Voprossy Filosofii"),
1948. No 2. (pp, 68-69.
2. Tito. The Struggle for the Liberation of Yugoslavia, Belgrade, 1947, pp. 136-137.
3. Tito. The Building Up of the New Yugoslavia.
Belgrade. 1948, Vol. II, p. 175.