[Militant No. 503, 16th May 1980, p. 8-9]
The post-war split between Russia and Yugoslavia gave rise to the myth that Tito was “different”, with wide-spread illusions that his regime was less dictatorial, more democratic than Stalin’s.
Despite Tito’s undoubted popularity as the leader of the mass guerrilla struggle which liberated the country from Nazi domination, however, the Yugoslav leader established a Bonapartist regime fundamentally no different from that in Russia.
Following the death on 4 May of Josip Broz “Tito” [1892-1980] Lynn Walsh describes how he came to power.
The conflict between Tito and Stalin also gave rise to the idea that Tito pursued an independent line from the beginning. Many of the recent tributes and obituaries imply that Tito began the Partisan war with the conscious aim of separating himself from Moscow and establishing an independent ‘Communist’ Yugoslavia. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When the guerrilla war was launched against the Nazi occupiers in 1941, there was no one more loyal to Stalin’s Comintern than Tito.
Hitler invaded Yugoslavia early in April 1941, ordering the country be pulverised “with merciless brutality.” Yet the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party still accepted the Comintern’s characterisation of the war as a conflict between fascist rivals. It was only after the Nazi-Soviet pact was shattered by Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, that the armed struggle was begun.
Tito responded to Stalin’s appeal for guerrilla struggle behind the German lines be establishing General Headquarters for National Liberation Partisan Detachments, and transforming the Communist Party into a military organisation.
The Comintern leadership saw guerrilla struggle in countries like Yugoslavia essentially as part of the “defence of the USSR,” as a supplement to the bureaucracy’s newly-formed alliance with the capitalist democracies. “Remember,” Stalin’s Comintern organiser Dimitrov warned Tito, “that at present it is a question of liberation from Fascist domination and not a question of socialist revolution.”
This “popular front” approach was not challenged by Tito. When the partisans in Montenegro, where the Communist Party was strong, scored rapid successes against the Nazis and began to establish local Soviets, Tito sent his lieutenant ‘Tempo’ to curb the partisans and disband the Soviets.
Loyalty to Stalin’s policies was hardly surprising in light of Tito’s record. He had joined the Yugoslav Communist Party in the early 20s after serving for a period with the Red Guards in Russia. Conscripted into the Austrian army, he had been held as a prisoner-of-war in Russia during the first world war, and was liberated by the Bolsheviks in 1917. But Tito had emerged as a leader in the Yugoslav CP in 1928, when the Yugoslav party like the other European ‘Communist’ parties, was already completely dominated by Moscow and its leadership had become a tool of the Russian bureaucracy. Later Tito went to Moscow and worked in the Balkan secretariat of the Comintern. Stalin’s assessment of his loyalty and ‘reliability’ may be gauged from the fact that he was made General Secretary of the Yugoslav CP following the ruthless purging of the Yugoslav CP’s leaders, over 100 of whom were murdered by Stalin’s secret police.
Stalin was not to know that it was a case of driving out Satan (his current opponents) with Beelzebub (his future opponent). It was not premeditated ‘Titoist’ plans for independence, but the momentum of struggle in Yugoslavia which carried the Yugoslav leader to power and brought him into conflict with Stalin’s leadership.
Tito proved himself to be a tenacious, skilful, and extremely courageous guerrilla leader. Unaided from the outside until mid-1943, the Partisans held down 18 German, Italian and ‘Quisling’ divisions. The German armies made repeated attempts to exterminate the Partisans, and came near success several times in the course of a ferocious war.
The mountainous areas provided an ideal refuge for the Partisans. But above all the peasantry in most areas was sympathetic to the Partisans, and helped to sustain them. The brutal methods of the occupying Axis powers, particularly the Nazi rulers, drove more and more of the youth to join the Partisans.
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Despite Tito’s adherence to the ‘Popular Front’ line, the fight against the Nazis spilled over into a civil war from the beginning. This process was speeded up by the intervention of Mihailović and his Četnik movement. Mihailović also claimed to be leading an anti-Nazi movement for national liberation. But he was officially Minister of War in the Royalist government-in-exile, and this reactionary monarchist was closely linked with the old ruling class. His idea of ‘national liberation’ owed more to Serbian chauvinism than genuine support for a re-unified, independent Yugoslavia.
Mihailović showed that his opposition to Nazi occupation was outweighed by his opposition to the Communist-led Partisans, and he cynically collaborated with the German and Italian occupying armies against Tito’s Partisan forces.
By 1942 the Partisans comprised over 80,000 men and women. In the liberated areas which were opened up, the Partisan leaders, through the Committees of Liberation, unavoidably assumed responsibility for the local administration. The old state had been smashed to pieces by the Germans, and surviving officials and property owners carried on only through collaboration with the Fascists. When they, together with Mihailović’s forces, were pushed out of areas, it left only the Partisans to take control.
The core of the Partisan armies, moreover, were the ‘Proletarian Brigades,’ formed from the most energetic and committed of the young workers who joined the struggle. They were certainly not fighting to restore the old ruling class, or to accept collaborators. There was enormous pressure, despite the liberation army’s commitment to respect private property, to carry through a social and political revolution.
The Soviet bureaucracy constantly attempted to restrain Tito. They even urged that he should continue to work with Mihailović, and Moscow Radio, infuriating Tito, even attributed the Partisan’s successes to Mihailović’s right-wing Četniks.
Tito constantly requested assistance from Russia, but was repeatedly told that the Soviet Union was in no position to help. Tito received no financial aid from Russia until 1944, after the British government had already begun to give Tito significant support. However, although the Partisans were frequently in a desperate position, fighting without any medical supplies for instance, the lack of aid from Moscow had its advantages – it freed Tito from the direct interference that aid would certainly have entailed and gave him much greater freedom of action.
When, later, Dimitrov warned him against turning the National Anti-Fascist Council (the AVNOJ) into a government, Tito accepted the letter of Moscow’s advice, but steadily moved towards forming the nucleus of a new government.
Tito set up a National Liberation Executive Committee, which soon became a de facto government in the liberated areas.
Answering further complaints from Dimitrov, Tito angrily replied “If you cannot help us, at least do not hinder us.” Tito had no intention of severing the life-line to Russia, on whom he realised his leadership would still depend at the end of the war. Nevertheless, slowly but surely, Tito was cautiously following an independent course.
In November 1943 Tito publicly declared the National Liberation Committees to be the sole lawful authority of the people of Yugoslavia, and announced the formation of a Provisional Government for the whole country. It had its own presidium and executive committee with full governmental powers, and decisively replaced the King and the Royalist government-in-exile.
This set the alarm bells ringing in Moscow. Manuilsky warned a Yugoslav CP representative in Moscow: “The boss [meaning Stalin] is extremely angry. He says it is a stab in the back for the Soviet Union and Tehran decisions.” Stalin feared that Tito’s moves towards the ‘Sovietisation’ of Yugoslavia would alarm Churchill and Roosevelt, with whom he had agreed “spheres of influence,” according to which Yugoslavia would be 50/50 under Russian and Western capitalist influence. A Western reaction to Tito’s bold measures could, in Stalin’s view, delay the opening of the ‘Second Front’ in western Europe, the paramount aim of Stalin’s strategy at that point.
But Tito had arrived within grasp of power through the heroic struggle and enormous sacrifices of the Partisan movement, and he had no intention of deferring to Stalin on fundamental issues. “We do not wish to be used as small change in international bargaining.”
From mid-1943 Tito’s forces had received valuable support from the British government, which finally dumped the pro-Fascist Mihailović, and recognised that the Partisans were the only viable liberation movement in Yugoslavia. In September 1943, moreover, the Italian armies surrendered, the Partisans were able to help themselves to the arms and supplies of ten Italian divisions, and thousands of Italian soldiers volunteered to join the Partisans.
There was still bitter fighting in the final stages of the war. The Partisans’ ranks swelled to over 800,000 men and women. However, the war against the Axis forces, and the civil war within Yugoslavia, claimed about 1.7 million dead, over 10% of the pre-war population.
But through their own efforts, and with only a token presence of Russian forces, the Partisans inflicted a devastating defeat on the retreating German forces. Throughout the country, the Committees of Liberation took over power. There was nobody else to step into the vacuum left by the Nazis. The Partisan armies’ command structure already formed the embryo of a new state apparatus, and the Partisan leaders assumed power, with Tito at their head as the undisputed leader of a new regime.
As with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and the other East European and Balkan countries which were rapidly being transformed into satellites of the Russian bureaucracy, Stalin attempted to impose his control over the Yugoslav party, and bring the new regime firmly under his domination. But Tito had come to power, not on the bayonets of the Red Army like other Stalinist leaders in Eastern Europe, but through an independent armed struggle waged on the basis of mass support. Tito’s power did not depend on Moscow, and the Partisan leader saw no reason why he should now volunteer for the role of Stalin’s Yugoslav puppet.
There was a brief period of co-operation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, with economic relations being established. On the surface, it appeared that Yugoslavia was now firmly planted within the ‘Eastern Block.’ But beneath the surface, the tension between the new Yugoslav leadership and the Russian bureaucracy steadily increased. After a brief honeymoon, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform (Stalin’s replacement from the Comintern, dissolved in 1943)
In an hysterical propaganda campaign aimed at undermining Tito’s support and at swinging the world’s Communist Parties against the Yugoslav leadership, the Kremlin poured out a torrent of criticisms and allegations against Tito and the Yugoslav CP. According to Moscow, Tito was following a “criminal policy” which was “hostile to the Soviet Union” and “beginning to identify with the imperialist powers.”
One Cominform statement criticised the undemocratic appointment of officials from above and the limits on free criticism within the party. It accused Tito of maintaining in the CP a “disgraceful, purely Turkish, terrorist regime.” Criticising the efforts to build up a “Führer” complex around Tito, the Cominform leadership denounced Tito’s dictatorial methods, attacking the use of the secret police to purge opposition within the party.
This was a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black. What right had Stalin, who eliminated a whole generation of old Bolsheviks, to criticise dictatorial methods? Criticism of Tito’s “Führer” complex was almost laughable in view of the “cult of personality” built up around Stalin. However, because there was a large element of truth in the Kremlin;s allegations, despite their manifest hypocrisy, the propaganda campaign caused confusion through the world labour movement. What could lie behind such a split?
The real reason for the conflict was not fundamental social or political differences between Russia and Yugoslavia, but Tito’s resistance to total domination by Stalin.
The Russian bureaucracy placed its own national interest before anything else. When the Red Army took over the countries of Eastern Europe and carried through a ‘Sovietisation’, it would have been impossible for Russia to annex these new states without provoking enormous national antagonisms. Nevertheless, Stalin was determined that although there would be nominal independence for the satellites, their regimes would be totally subordinated to Moscow.
However, when Stalin attempted through the intervention of his secret police to take direct control of the state and party apparatus in Yugoslavia, he met with fierce resistance. The Yugoslav CP leadership had fought its own way to power, they had an independent basis of mass support, and were not prepared to be subordinated in this way.
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Tito did not want Yugoslav “communism” to be “different”, simply independent. In its new, historical progressive economic foundations and its dictatorial political structure, Yugoslavia was now the same as Russia.
Although not dependent on the Russian Red Army, Tito used the same political manoeuvres in taking power as the Stalinist leaders in Eastern Europe. To appease the capitalist powers, five non-Communist Party members were included in the Provisional Government which took over in March 1945. The Anti-Fascist Council was also enlarged to include some members of Yugoslavia’s pre-war parliament.
In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Communist Party was merged into a Popular Front which included individual anti-Fascist members of some of the older parties. But the leaders of the old capitalist parties, like the Radicals, the Democrats, the Croatian Peasants, the Slavian Populists, etc., which had played no part in the struggle against the Nazis, had no real basis in the country. Some of their leaders were given a few public positions as a temporary expedient. But the real power was always in the hands of the CP leadership, the Partisan commanders, and their security services.
The Constituent Assembly elections were really a plebiscite in support of Tito, and predictably there was almost 100% vote for the Popular Front candidates. Soon, the leaders of the old capitalist parties were removed from all positions, and many of them were tired and executed or jailed for long periods. Systematic methods were, as Moscow alleged, made to build a personality cult around the figure of Tito.
If Tito used dictatorial, Bonapartist methods to install his new regime, however, he and his leadership nevertheless commanded enormous popular support as a result of the liberation struggle. A firm basis was secured for the regime, moreover, especially amongst the industrial working class and the poor peasants, by the progressive social and economic measures that were carried through, which transformed Yugoslavia from a backward capitalist country into a modern state with a nationalised, centrally-planned economy.
In August 1945 an agrarian reform was carried through. Since there were few rich land owners left after the pre-war reforms, the new laws were aimed primarily at the non-farming owners. All estates above 30 hectares owned by non-farmers were expropriated, and also the land owned by farmer in excess of that amount. Land farmed by German farmers was also expropriated and most of the expropriated or confiscated land was distributed free to 330,000 poor or landless peasant families, primarily those of veteran or dead Partisans. The remainder was kept for state-owned enterprises, or for the first collective farms. Shortly afterwards, all peasant debts were cancelled.
In the industrial and commercial sector of the economy, the immediate post-war period was marked by the radical transformation of property relations, through the processes of confiscation, expropriation and nationalisation.
In so far as they were not already German-owned, most big firms had been [taken – ID] over by the Nazis in the course of the war. As early as November 1944, the property of enemy nationals, war criminals, and collaborators was placed under government control in liberated territory. In December 1946, there was not much left to expropriate, when industrial enterprises and mines, wholesale and foreign trade enterprises, banks and transport facilities were formally nationalised.
As for retail trade, it was also taken under state control through a system of licensing. By the time of expropriation law passed in April 1947, which provided for the expropriation of any private property if made necessary by the public interest, the only large group of survivors of private enterprise, apart from the peasants, were the craftsmen.
These measures laid the basis for the reconstruction of Yugoslavia’s shattered economy and paved the way for a general improvement in living standards, which, although slow and uneven, was much faster than could have been achieved had capitalism continued.
Almost two years before any other of the Stalinist satellites in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia launched the first 5-year plan in 1947. The progressive nationalisation measures placed powerful tools in the hands of the state, which enabled the government to increase capital formation and achieve economic growth at an unsurpassed pace, although at considerable cost to the workers and the peasants.
This, then, was Stalinism without Stalin, presided over by a Stalinist leader in conflict with Stalin himself. Landlordism and capitalism had been abolished and fundamentally progressive property relation introduced. But as in Russia after the coming to power of the bureaucracy and the suppression of the workers’ democracy created by the October revolution, the centrally planned economy was controlled by a bureaucratic elite.
Despite the breach with the Russian leadership and the development of some economic links with Western capitalist countries, moreover, Yugoslavia remained fundamentally within the “eastern bloc”. The development of Yugoslavia’s economy and the appearance of political contradictions paralleled developments in the other Stalinist states throughout the whole post-war period. Events in Yugoslavia have never ceased to be affected by events throughout Eastern Europe, or themselves to have an effect on developments in the other Stalinist states.
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