Subtitle: Open letter from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International to the Central Committee and members of the Yugoslav Communist Party (CPY) Issuing body: International Secretariat of the Fourth International
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Comrades,
Although you believed it necessary to limit participation in your Fifth Congress to delegations from Communist parties alone — none of which, incidentally, responded to your invitation — our movement has attached particular importance to the discussions and decisions of this congress.
The line you have adopted is now clear: it is to defend yourselves against the accusations levelled by the Cominform without breaking with the Russian Communist Party and Stalin, the true instigators of the campaign waged against you. We salute your determination not to capitulate before Stalin, but we regret the inconsistency of your defence against the Kremlin's assault. Your leaders and your delegates to the congress have insisted that there exists no programmatic divergence between your party and the ideology of the Kremlin. It appears that you share this ideology on two fundamental points: the possibility of building socialism in a single country; and the "monolithism" of the revolutionary party, which entails the exclusion of ideological tendencies that may momentarily support a policy different from that of the party leadership.
"Socialism in a Single Country"
Your leaders and delegates to the congress reaffirmed the position that your party has long maintained, namely that Yugoslavia is already a country building socialism and that it is possible to complete the construction of it, admittedly in part thanks to the aid of the USSR and the other "new democracies." This very aid is now greatly reduced by the economic reprisal measures against you that the Kremlin has imposed on all its satellites.
The conception of "socialism in a single country" was never shared by Marx or by Lenin. It was Stalin who introduced it, from 1924 onward, into the Russian Communist Party and the Third International, as a theoretical cover for his nationalist policy, reflecting the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy then in formation, which showed itself increasingly hostile to world socialist revolution. Stalin, in formulating this anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist "theory," took care not to generalise the case and insisted on the special, one might say "messianic," character of the USSR, whose vast territory and riches made such an achievement possible.
More than twenty years have passed, and the USSR is still very far from that objective. On the contrary, the victory of the Soviet bureaucracy, which succeeded in politically expropriating power from the masses and establishing the most bureaucratic and police-ridden regime history has ever known in order to maintain and extend its own privileges, has caused the USSR to degenerate completely as a workers' state. You have had occasion to discern this degeneration in a series of facts which, however limited, remain nonetheless highly significant: the bourgeoisified way of life of Russian military and civilian envoys; the systematic espionage against your party and your government carried out by the GPU, the principal instrument of Kremlin policy; the Kremlin's opposition to the Balkan federation and to any progressive unification of the economies of the various "people's democracies," a unification so necessary to their development; and the bureaucratic, slanderous character of the Cominform's attacks, directed by the Kremlin.
What, then, would be the fate of Yugoslavia — under conditions materially far less favourable — were it to embark on the utopian path of "building socialism" within its own borders alone? Such a "theory" risks here too serving as cover for the nationalist policy of a privileged bureaucratic caste.
In our era of the worldwide division of labour and the universal character of the productive forces, whose development has already come into conflict with national frontiers even within the capitalist countries, socialism can flourish only on a world scale. To conceive that each country will separately build its own "socialist society" and will then associate with the others through ideological kinship is to fall into a petty-bourgeois utopianism oblivious to the reality of our epoch. Victory over capitalism, the victory of the proletarian revolution, is possible in a single country, but the completion of socialist construction is not possible without the combined efforts of at least a large number of countries, including the most advanced ones. To achieve socialism in Yugoslavia would mean attaining a level of development of the productive forces higher than that of the most advanced capitalist countries, making the differences between town and country disappear entirely, and building a classless society in which material abundance would already reign and in which the state would already have lost its coercive functions and been reduced to the simple administration of things, without police, without judges, without prisons, and without bureaucracy. In what historical perspective can such a goal be attained in Yugoslavia, a predominantly agricultural country with very limited reserves?
What is possible, by contrast, is to begin the construction of socialism while awaiting the extension of the proletarian revolution to other countries. The true framework for the socialist development of Yugoslavia is, to begin with, the Balkan socialist federation and the Socialist United States of Europe.
A "Monolithic" Party?
As for your "monolithic" conception of the revolutionary party, it too derives from the Stalinist arsenal and not from that of Marx and Lenin. The revolutionary party is, by its very essence, democratic, allowing the free confrontation of ideological tendencies within its ranks.
Lenin's Bolshevik Party, up until his death, had nothing in common with the horrible caricature of it erected by Stalin's bureaucratic and police apparatus, which sealed its victory over the Soviet masses in the blood of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Trotsky — that is, of the men who made the Russian Revolution and who led the Communist International until Lenin's death. The "monolithic" conception of the revolutionary party is the infallible sign of a Bonapartist bureaucracy setting itself above the masses and above the party. Were you to maintain this conception, you would inexorably head toward the loss of your revolution and your party, toward the definitive installation in Yugoslavia of a bureaucratic and police dictatorship in the image of Stalin's regime.
What Does Your Silence Mean?
The very fact that your congress did not think it necessary to probe the meaning of your conflict with the Cominform, and contented itself with noting the slanderous character of the accusations while still shielding the Russian Communist Party and Stalin — that is, the true leaders of the campaign against you — is a sign of grave danger.
For what reasons do you pretend not to know who is hiding behind a Hoxha, a Rákosi, a Dimitrov, a Thorez, an Anna Pauker, when they attack your party, your government, when they plot to overthrow your leadership, when they decree measures of economic blockade against Yugoslavia? What does your silence about the Kremlin and Stalin mean, when all these men and women are their faithful puppets? And how could it be possible that this Kremlin and this Stalin, who orchestrate this campaign, could truly represent, within the workers' movement, leadership faithful to Marxism-Leninism? If that were truly so, history would be nothing but a sinister farce, and your conflict with the Cominform a scene from that farce, unintelligible to anyone who makes the effort to think.
Your position is in reality untenable and can have no result other than to demoralise the party and the Yugoslav masses, and to arm your adversaries — the direct agents of the Kremlin — who have sworn to bring about the downfall of your leadership and your party. Your conflict with the Cominform has in reality brought into the open a single question: the nature of the Stalinist regime which, from the Kremlin, directs the USSR and the Communist parties.
This regime has nothing in common with the proletarian revolution and socialism. It is the expression of the Soviet bureaucracy, raised up as an uncontrollable privileged caste in the USSR, which pursues throughout the world a policy of defending its own strict interests. The Communist parties serve it as an instrument for this policy, through direct and absolute control over them. The Kremlin has also sought to establish such direct and absolute control over your party and your government. You attempted to resist, and from that moment a conflict to the death with this regime became inevitable.
Your Path
Your duty, and equally your interest, is to raise the explanation of your conflict with the Cominform to the level of the true ideological reasons, which lie in the nature of Stalinism. It is only along this path that you will be able to arm your party and the Yugoslav masses to resist the formidable assault launched against you by the Kremlin, which now seeks to crush you.
Bureaucrats rely only on the police apparatus for their defence. Revolutionaries rely above all on the ideological and political mobilisation of the masses. Which of these paths will you choose?
Stalin is plotting in Yugoslavia because your resistance to his direct and absolute control could become a dangerously contagious example. He cannot seek common ground. He must crush you. In this terrible trial, your only defence is the conscious support of the Yugoslav and world masses.
Yugoslav Communists!
Appeal to them. To do so, break with Stalinism and denounce it openly. Establish a genuine regime of proletarian democracy within the party and the country. Smash every bureaucratic tendency within your own ranks. Set out on the path of the true proletarian revolution, made by the masses and for the masses.
Appeal to the true proletarian revolution in the other countries of Eastern Europe, of all Europe, and of the world. This is not the hour for evasions or for opportunist considerations.
We must go forward. We must confront Stalin with the uncovered face of revolutionary Marxism.