Archive : ISG Pamphlets : War in the Balkans

The Murder of Bosnia - Part Two

Geoff Ryan

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia Takes Power

Firstly he rejected previous stageist conceptions in favour of an immediate struggle for state power.

Tito also created a genuinely popular Partisan army which, by the end of the 2nd World War, numbered some 800,000 members. Whilst the units of the Partisan army were frequently locally based Tito also created Proletarian Brigades, which brought together working class militants of all nationalities from throughout the Yugoslav state. Because of the broad support for the Partisan army it was able to defy the orders coming from Moscow, where Stalin and Molotov had agreed that Yugoslavia should be part of the British sphere of influence. They argued the CPY should form an alliance with the Cetniks and support the return of the monarchy.

In particular Stalin and Molotov objected to the formation of ’proletarian brigades` within the Partisan army. Tito refused to comply on all counts. The Partisans were forced to fight without assistance for nearly two years, relying on weapons they could capture from their enemies. Despite Stalin’s insistence on the CPY dropping any reference to socialist revolution in case they frightened off the Allies it was, ironically, Winston Churchill who was forced to recognise the reality that the Partisan army was the main force actually fighting the Nazis and therefore, eventually supplied arms. [1] Moreover, the partisan Army was based on the Antifasisticko vijece narodnog oslobodjenja Jugoslavije (AVNOJ: Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia), which was the only genuine national authority. AVNOJ was also formed on a federative basis that prefigures the future Republics. At its 2nd conference, held in Jacje, Bosnia-Hercegovina, AVNOJ agreed to refound Yugoslavia on a federal basis, though most of the details of what exactly that would imply were left unclear. The AVNOJ was also transformed into a Provisional National Government.

Communist Party Positions on the National Question

There had been frequent debates inside the CPY since its foundation on what attitude to take to the national question. From 1919 to 1923 it argued for a centralised unitary state based on the three named nations, dismissing national demands as essentially bourgeois. Such a view was particularly strongly expressed by Serbs, even by left-wing Serbs who split from the Serbian Social Democratic Party, to join the CPY. In some case this was a result of Great Serb chauvinism but there was also a view that in the process of developing the new Yugoslav nation old national loyalties would disappear in favour of working class unity. The party believed that Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were simply three different words for one nation and Slovenian was a dialect of Serbo-Croat. From 1923 however, following the adoption of a federal policy in the Soviet Union, fierce debate raged inside the CPY between advocates of a centralised state and supporters of a federal structure. By 1928 the CPY had been brought to heel by the Comintern leadership and put forward a line on the need to break up Yugoslavia into individual states, as a prelude to forming a Balkan Socialist federation. This line lasted until 1934 when the Comintern, after the victory of Hitler, decided that the national question could be resolved in a single Yugoslav state — though lip-service was still paid to the right to secession. The line on a Balkan Federation was consequently down-played. However, the practice of the CPY was often at variance with this stated position. For example, separate party organisations were established in Croatia and Slovenia (1937) at the same time as Kardelj (the main theoretician of the CPY) was arguing that:

"although it is necessary to recognise the right of the Slovenes and Croats to self-determination, nevertheless, every separatist action that at this moment attempts to break up Yugoslavia is in reality a preparation for a new enslavement, and not for self-determination." [2]

The CPY’s pragmatism during the War of National Liberation

The approach of the CPY to the National Question during the course of the war was essentially pragmatic. According to Djilas,

’We looked on the national question as a very important question, but a tactical question, a question of stirring up a revolution, a question of mobilising the national masses. We proceeded from the view that national minorities and national ambitions would weaken with the development of socialism, and that they are chiefly a product of capitalist development...Consequently the borders inside our country didn’t play a big role...We felt that Yugoslavia would be unified, solid, that one needed to respect languages, cultural differences, and all specificities which exist, but that they are not essential, and that they can’t undermine the whole and the vitality of the country, inasmuch as we understood that the communists themselves would be unified`. [3]

However, whilst the CPY had a pragmatic approach that does not mean they did not take national rights seriously. As Tito put it:

"The term National Liberation Struggle would be a mere phrase and even a deception if it were not invested with both an all-Yugoslav and national meaning for each people individually...The liberation and emancipation of the Croatians, Slovenes, Serbs, Macedonians, Albanians, Muslims, etc...Therein also lies the essence of the National Liberation War." [4]

The practice of the CPY on the national question, whatever its theoretical short-comings, was vastly superior to that of any other Communist Party. For example, whilst the CPY championed the national rights of the Macedonians the Communist Parties of Bulgaria and Greece refused to raise the issue. Indeed they frequently adopted the same chauvinist attitudes as their bourgeoisies’. [5]

On the basis of its new positions on the national question the CPY was the only force capable of organising on an all-Yugoslav scale. Because of these largely correct positions on the national question, and their practical application in the structures of the AVNOJ, the CPY was able to turn the war in each of the future Republics into a civil war between pro and anti-fascist forces, not a war between the different nationalities. [6] The Titoist slogan of bratstvo i jedinstvo (Brotherhood [sic] and Unity) was given a concrete form.

Nevertheless, these basic strengths of the Yugoslav CP also contained within them the seeds of the destruction of Yugoslavia.

Geoff Ryan

NOTES

[1] In fact collaboration between the Allies and Tito continued after the war. Escaped Cetniks and Ustase and other collaborators were handed over to the Partisans by the Allies, usually to be executed.

[2] S. Ramet, op cit, p49. Kardelj also argued that with economic progress and the acceptance of communist values the national question would eventually wither away. He was neither the first nor the last to put forward such ideas. Much of the left today still holds to these views in various forms.

[3] Quoted in L. Cohen, Breaking the Bonds, p24. Djilas remarks may show a pragmatic approach to the national question but they also reinforce the view that the CPY consciously set out to seize power.

[4] Cohen, op cit, p23.

[5] For a detailed account of the debates between the Communist Parties of Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia see S. Vukmanovic (General Tempo), Struggle for the Balkans.

[6] With varying degrees of success. The CPY was most successful in Bosnia and Croatia, which both fell within the N.D.H. and where the main battles of the war were fought. It was relatively successful in Montenegro and, eventually, Macedonia. It was at its weakest in Kosova and Serbia. Given the weakness of the CPY in Serbia the fact that a majority of the Partisans were Serbs shows the massive level of support for the CPY amongst the Serbs of Bosnia and Croatia.

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