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From Labor Action, Vol. 12 No. 27, 5 July 1948, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Cominform’s attack upon Tito and his bitter reply has suddenly revealed the granite-like solidity of Stalin’s empire to be susceptible to internal explosions fraught with the gravest consequences for the authority of the Kremlin, not only among its satellite nations, but in Russia itself.
The Cominform’s resolution accused Tito’s Yugoslavian Communist Party of every major crime in the Stalinist decalogue, among them the charge of using arguments “from the arsenal of Trotskyism,” hatred of the Soviet Union, efforts to adapt themselves to western imperialism, etc. It singled out Tito and his closest associates for specific mention as the leading culprits and called upon “the core of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia” to act against its leadership and depose them if necessary. In a police state like Yugoslavia, the latter is tantamount to a call for armed insurrection.
The Central Committee of the Yugoslavian Communist Party gave solid support to Tito and his associates in a reply that intransigently rejected all the charges and made sharp accusations against the Cominform parties and, specifically, against the Russian party leadership. Among its accusations are the charge that the Cominform and the Russian leaders are seeking to destroy the prestige of the Yugoslavian CP and, objectively, help its enemies overthrow it, that the Yugoslavian CP has been slandered and lied about, that the procedure followed against the Yugoslavian CP amounts to a frame-up, that the Yugoslavian leaders are asked to confess to things they are not guilty of, and that the charges of bureaucracy and suppression of party democracy apply more accurately to the Russian party.
Tito’s break with Stalin represents a major defeat for the latter, perhaps the most serious blow he has received since coming to power. Though the train of events which this break has set in motion is yet in its first stage, it already poses possibilities that could easily lead to Stalin’s eventual downfall, an event that could alter the course of history for decades and, perhaps, centuries.
Even if Stalin should emerge once more as master of the situation in Yugoslavia, Tito’s defiance will have proved a terrible setback to the Kremlin and a cause for increased caution in any effort to expand by means other than direct Russian military conquest. In any event, the outcome of the Yugoslavian crisis will have repercussions among the Stalinist rank and file throughout the world on a scale greater than any previous incident, including the Hitler-Stalin pact.
The Yugoslavian events are the first concrete manifestation of a problem posed in theory by the Workers Party in discussions that revolved around the means by which the Kremlin would keep its control of the satellite countries not occupied by Russian troops. The possibility that the native bureaucracies of the satellite countries would counterpose their own national interests to those of the Russian rulers was foreseen, though its sudden emergence came as a complete surprise.
The Workers Party’s analysis of Russian expansion as a new form of imperialism, based upon the bureaucratic-collectivist social order that emerged in the Stalinist period, noted that, unlike capitalist imperialism, the Russian system could not make its satellites economically dependent upon the ruling power, but, on the contrary, established such economic relations as to drain the satellite countries without any serious compensation. Such a relationship could be maintained only if the satellite countries were kept in an ironbound police dictatorship by their native Communist Parties and the latter were kept in an ironbound apparatus manipulated from Moscow.
In the last analysis, this could only mean the control of the Communist Parties outside of Russia proper by means of the GPU, the Russian secret service. The charges and countercharges between Moscow and Belgrade about secret police espionage reveal that both Stalin and Tito considered the role of the GPU as crucial in maintaining Kremlin control over Yugoslavian affairs.
The rebellion of the Tito leadership is the first instance of serious opposition within the Stalinist movement since the expulsion of the Trotskyist and rightist oppositions in the late 1920s, when monolithism was declared an official doctrine and all Stalinist parties accepted the authority of Moscow without question. Though not on the same ideological plane, if ideological differences can be said to play a role, the Tito opposition can prove to be far more dangerous to Stalin than that of Trotsky.
Tito, unlike Trotsky, is beyond the police power of the Russian state and bases himself upon his own state apparatus. Tito has already shown signs of carrying the fight into the other Stalinist parties and even the impoverished resources of a state like Yugoslavia give him ample means of conducting a political struggle, waged by all the traditional methods of the Stalinist movement, both in the countries behind the Iron Curtain and among the Stalinists of the West.
The external similarity of Tito’s Yugoslavia with the Russian social order permit him to pose as a “socialist state,” a “little Soviet Union,” in appealing for support among the pro-Stalinist elements of the West. His stand cannot but exert a profound influence upon the bureaucracies of the other satellite countries, which will sympathetically identify their problems with those Tito faced in Yugoslavia. The existence of a “second workers’ fatherland” that is anti-Moscow has such profound possibilities for the future development, of the Stalinist movement as to defy even speculation at this early date. It would strike at the very heart of the ideological hold of Stalinism upon workers and intellectuals everywhere.
It is not excluded that Tito’s defiance of Stalin is either already linked to elements with the Russian bureaucracy or can become an issue around which such elements can mobilize support. Tito’s defection will be understood clearly as a major catastrophe for Stalin among the rival tendencies of the Russian bureaucracy and Stalin’s loss of prestige may do more to embolden them than any event in the last two decades. Rumors of friction between Molotov and Zhdanov take on more serious proportions in the light of the Yugoslavian events.
The background and immediate circumstances of the crisis are compounded of many factors, making up in their totality a complex picture. They involve the unique origin of the Yugoslavian regime, created without direct Russian military assistance, Yugoslavia’s severe economic problems, internal opposition to Tito’s police regime, Yugoslavia’s vulnerable position in event of an American-Russian war, the lure of Marshall Plan aid for Yugoslavia’s impoverished economy, the Pan-Balkan dreams of the new Yugoslavian ruling class, the uncertain composition of the latter, the peasant character of Tito’s mass base, and Yugoslavia’s involvement in the civil war in Greece.
The rapidity with which events are unfolding and their profound implications make it impossible to analyze these factors at this writing in anything but a tentative and speculative vein. However, the crucial moves now being made will crystallize in a more definite pattern in the next week and our next issue will give more extensive treatment of the possible course of events.
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