From Trotsky To Tito. James Klugmann 1951
Like his forerunner Trotsky, Tito’s role is not only to aid the war plans of imperialism against Socialism, but to supply imperialism with a permanent stream of anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, anti-Socialist lies and slanders, dressed up in left-wing language, in revolutionary phrases. This is shown most clearly by the mass of material put out by the Yugoslav embassies in nearly all countries of the world and also, in foreign languages, from Belgrade.
Never in history has the world been flooded with such a mass of official government-inspired propaganda, sent out in dozens of languages to hundreds of thousands of people, free, unasked for, unwanted, as appeared from Yugoslav official sources inside and outside of Yugoslavia in the last three years. From the weight (literally) in tons of wordage despatched in all directions it is perfectly clear that the payment for this propaganda does not derive only or even mainly from Yugoslav sources, but that dollars and pounds have got mixed up with the dinars. Djilas, who plays a role of the Goebbelsian type in the Yugoslav state machine, has added to the Yugoslav Information Office a special ‘Department for Propaganda Against the Communist Information Bureau’, which in 1948 received 40 million dinars, and in 1949 over 100 million. The Yugoslav radio disseminates its slanders abroad in some fourteen languages: it can now be understood why the British government so readily acquiesced in the Yugoslav demand towards the end of the war for equipment to repair the main radio stations and to enlarge the radio service.
It is sufficient to take any series of recent Titoite publications and to do a brief mathematical analysis, to see how these ‘new kinds of Communists’ devote their attention to attacks on Communists and progressives, whilst they leave unscathed the Western capitalists except for an odd occasional remark of mild criticism thrown in for demagogy.
Take, for instance, the first thirty issues of the Yugoslav Bulletin published by the Yugoslav authorities in London between November 1949 and June 1950. Here is a brief analysis. No 1 contains attacks on the World Peace Congress and the British Peace Congress; no attacks on Western imperialism. No 2 contains attacks on the Daily Worker, on Hungarian People’s Democracy; no attacks on Western imperialism. No 3 contains attacks on the British Peace Committee, the International Union of Students, the British-Yugoslav Association (an organisation of friends of the Yugoslav people, and therefore critical of Tito’s regime); no attacks on Western imperialism. No 4 contains attacks on the British-Yugoslav Association, the new Hungary and the Communist Information Bureau; no attacks on Western imperialism. No 5 contains attacks on Bulgarian People’s Democracy, falsehoods on Dimitrov, attacks on the Soviet Union; no attacks on Western imperialism. No 6 contains attacks on the World Federation of Trade Unions and on the new Hungary; no attacks on Western imperialism. No 7 contains attacks on the Bulgarian government; no attacks on Western imperialism. No 8 contains attacks on the Communist Information Bureau and attempts by a series of twists to justify Yugoslav trade with the West by pointing to Soviet trade policy. No 9 contains attacks on the Soviet Union and a boost for the anti-Soviet propaganda of Mr Zilliacus.
Numbers 11 to 20 contain, amongst other things, attacks on the Communist Information Bureau (many), on the British Yugoslav-Association, the International Union of Students, members of the British Communist Party, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the Bulgarian government, the World Federation of Trade Unions, and the Soviet Union (many).
Numbers 21 to 30 contain attacks on the International Union of Journalists, on the Communist Information Bureau (many), on the Soviet Union (many), on the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, on Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Rumania, Hungary, on the Peace Petition campaign, and on the Spanish Communist Party.
This is a very short summary of the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, anti-progressive attacks and slanders of thirty issues. In many cases they take up the major part of the bulletin. The criticisms of Western imperialism, if enlarged, could be put in a teaspoon.
Is it surprising that this ‘new kind of Communism’ pleases the capitalists?
This type of analysis could be repeated for any section of the Yugoslav press in the last two and a half years. Take, for instance, For the Defence of Peace, published by the so-called ‘Yugoslav Committee for the Defence of Peace’. No 1-2 for January-February 1950 contains, amongst other items, attacks on the Communist Information Bureau, on the World Federation of Trade Unions, on Soviet science, plus articles on Yugoslav mediaeval art, and on Mo-tse, a Chinese philosopher contemporary with Confucius. There is an attack on capitalism in a reprint of a speech made in 1910 by a Serbian Socialist, but nothing more modern along these lines. No capitalist warmonger or high financier would hesitate to give this to his children. Here is a thoroughly ‘nice’ kind of peace movement, a joy to the warmongers.
Or take the first issue of the so-called Review of International Affairs, published in July 1950 by the Federation of Yugoslav (Titoite) Journalists in English and other languages. This peculiarly reactionary journal, the aim of which is to create an international Titoite forum, contains amongst other things: attacks on the Communist Information Bureau, the Communist Party of Italy, the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of Israel, Soviet philosophy, the Soviet magazine Znanye, the Italian Communist organ Unità, on Izvestia, on the Soviet writer Simonov, on the Moscow radio, the Czechoslovak government, the Belgian Communist organ Drapeau Rouge, Radio Prague, Radio Budapest, on the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the Communist Party of Western Germany, and on the Spanish Communist Party. Most of the articles are written in ‘left-wing’ language. It would be difficult to find in any Tory journal, or even in any old publication of Goebbels, so much concentrated anti-Soviet and anti-Communist slander in so relatively short a space. It should be added that this is a ‘mild’ issue compared with more recent numbers.
Or take the organ of the so-called Yugoslav Communist Party, Borba. In the 105 issues starting from 7 January 1949, covering four months, there is not one editorial or signed article attacking British or US imperialism. In these same 105 issues there are 174 leading articles and long reports containing general attacks on the USSR and the People’s Democracies. Between 1 March and 1 May 1949, Borba contained thirteen long articles attacking Albania, fifteen attacking Bulgaria, eight attacking Hungary, etc, etc. But all this belongs to the earlier, ‘milder’, more ‘impartial’ period of Titoite propaganda. In 1950 the attacks on the Soviet Union, People’s Democracies, Communist parties, peace and democratic organisations, grew larger, louder and more frequent. And the silence on Western capitalism was replaced by more openly whitewashing articles lauding the home and foreign policy of the imperialist powers.
Is it difficult to understand, therefore, why Tito’s Borba is one of the most quoted papers in the right-wing press and the press of the right-wing Labour leaders in Britain, America, France and Western Germany?
The anti-Soviet, anti-democratic slanders of the Titoite press are taken up avidly by the right-wing press of the capitalists. Tito’s Yugoslavia has become a principal arsenal of such fabrications.
Amongst a whole section of the people the open sources of the Tories, trusts and their ilk in other lands are suspect. The more cunning and twisted Titoite lies are taken up, therefore, as those of the Trotskyists were taken up in the 1930s. The Times and Telegraph, Daily Express or Daily Mail, New York Times or New York Herald Tribune, Hearst press or Wall Street Journal repeat almost verbatim, sometimes with acknowledgement and sometimes without, the inventions of their colleague, Borba.
The New York Herald Tribune correspondent in Belgrade writes in the continental edition of 6 April 1950: ‘Belgrade charges the Cominform every few days with new obscure anti-Yugoslav acts of an unsavoury nature.’ He cites a few of the ‘charges’ of the first few months of 1950 – ‘acts of Rumanian secret police’, attacks on Czechoslovak government, ‘acts of Bulgarian secret police’, attacks on Danube Commission, etc, etc. All these slanders were widely reproduced in the capitalist press. All the capitalist press in Britain and America joyfully recorded the Titoite version of the alleged ‘slow murder’ in a Czechoslovak prison of a Yugoslav, DM Dimitriević. Borba’s inventions, disseminated all over the world in the Tanjug Bulletins and other Titoite publications, gave rise to countless articles in the capitalist press on the evils of the ‘police states behind the iron curtain’ – for all the red-baiting and red-hating editors a cheap source of iron curtain stories. In fact, Dimitriević was arrested in Prague along with a number of other Yugoslavs as a party to a conspiracy against the Czechoslovak government and to illegal currency dealings. He died, medically well cared for, from a long-standing heart disease.
Ten thousand examples could be given. The New York Herald Tribune (continental edition) of 4 July 1950 headlines a sensational story of Russians seizing Czechoslovak oil fields. In this story there is not a grain of truth, but its acknowledged source – Belgrade. The same paper on 6 July 1950, splashes the headline ‘Eugene Varga Called Boss of Hungarian Trade’, with the sub-title ‘Tito Newspaper Glas Says Soviet Economist is “Economic Dictator"’. There is not a grain of truth in this, but its acknowledged source is – Belgrade. The Communist leaders of Italy and France, Palmiro Togliatti and Maurice Thorez, both very ill, receive much-needed medical treatment in the Soviet Union. The capitalist press wants a ‘gutter story’, some special piece of anti-Communist nastiness. The New York Herald Tribune (continental edition) of 11 January 1951 carries the story that they have been summoned to Moscow to receive orders for the subordination of their countries to the USSR.
Even the capitalist press seems to jib at inventing this on their own initiative, so it is reproduced with the date-line – Belgrade. A patient study of all that is most reactionary in the right-wing press of the capitalist world would show that it has one of its most fertile sources for anti-Soviet, anti-People’s Democratic, red-baiting material – the press and information offices of Tito’s Yugoslavia.
If in 1949 the main line of the Titoite press was to launch attacks and slanders on the countries of Socialism and People’s Democracy, leaving the West unmentioned, in 1950 it began to pass more openly to praising and whitewashing Western imperialism. Exactly as had been disclosed at the Rajk trial, the plan of campaign was: first, to boost Yugoslavia, make Tito Yugoslavia the centre of attraction of all eyes, distracting attention from the role of the Soviet Union; secondly, to pass by stages into open attack against the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, ignoring the West except for a few faint criticisms to add realism to the anti-Soviet slanders; and thirdly, to pass more and more openly to whitewashing Western capitalism.
On 7 April 1950, Tito interviewed The Times. His theme was ‘the West is better than the East’. On 27 April 1950, Tito addressed the joint session of both Houses of the Yugoslav National Assembly.
The Daily Herald (28 April 1950) reporting him, headlined ‘Tito Says We Turn to West’ and described it as ‘his most conciliatory speech to the West’. On 29 April 1950, Alexander Werth reported in the Manchester Guardian Tito’s press conference of the previous day in these words:
Tito remarked that there had been no political pressure from the West. Altogether, he suggested, development of economic ties with the West had made up economically for the damage inflicted by the Cominform boycott...
The American government, the Tories and Transport House were trying with increasing difficulty to justify the Marshall plan and to disguise the colonising nature of American ‘aid’. They were meeting with increasing resistance. So Tito was thrown in to explain the ‘generous’ nature of Western imperialism, to explain that capitalism had ceased to be capitalism.
But on what issue do the capitalists most need the assistance of Titoite propaganda? Surely it is in carrying out their central purpose – the preparation of aggressive war against the countries of Socialism and People’s Democracy.
As step by step the people in the rear of capitalism begin to feel the danger of approaching war, imperialism needs the help of Tito to lull them into inaction.
As step by step the people in the rear of capitalism begin to see that it is their own governments, their own rulers who are preparing aggression, the capitalists try and cover up their war preparations by disguising their aggressive aims and plans as defence against the alleged aggression of the USSR and the People’s Democracies. Truth has to be turned on its head, what better instrument than Tito?
As step by step the people in the rear of capitalism hear the Soviet Union’s concrete proposals for peace, for the peaceful solution of all problems and issues arising between West and East, between the great powers, and come to see that the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies want peace and are working for peace, Western imperialism tries to conceal and then to distort the peace policy and all the peace proposals of the Soviet Union. Here again is a role for the Titoites.
As step by step the peoples in the rear of capitalism, together with the peoples of the new world of Socialism and People’s Democracy, begin to band together, unite, organise in a world movement for the defence of peace, isolating and exposing the warmongers, it becomes essential for the governments of the USA and Britain, for the trusts, Tories and right-wing Labour leaders to attack, compromise, disrupt this movement, which they so much hate and fear. So to complement the open attacks on the peace movement from the open reactionaries, the wily arguments of the Titoites are thrown into the struggle.
An essential role of the Titoite propaganda is to try and break the unity of the international progressive movement – the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, the International Union of Students and above all the World Peace Movement.
Under the cover of their usual pseudo-revolutionary phrases the Titoites set out to lull the peoples into a false sense of security by denying the imperialist drive to war: ‘I do not think there is any immediate danger of war... A hot war is unlikely to replace a cold war.’ (Tito: Interview with The Times, 8 April 1950)
Next they set out to prove that the ceaseless efforts of the USSR and the People’s Democracies for peace are nothing but an insincere and hypocritical manoeuvre. This became increasingly important as the continued and patient efforts of the Soviet Union and People’s Democracies for peace, their repeated concrete peace proposals and attempts at peace negotiation began to impress even right-wing people in the capitalist countries. So the big capitalists turn on the Tito tap:
In a leading article on the fifth anniversary of VE Day, Borba, the official organ of the Yugoslav Communist Party, attacked Soviet policy as ‘essentially imperialist’, and said that the insincerity of the slogans for peace was manifest in the Russian attitude towards Yugoslavia, with its propaganda campaign, economic blockade, and ‘warmongering speeches’. (The Times, 10 May 1950)
Next the Titoite propagandists set out to prove that the danger of war comes not from Western imperialism but from the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. Whenever the Western capitalists are launching some new campaign of aggression – in Vietnam or Korea or Malaya – or preparing some new warlike bloc or some new rearmament, the Titoites are put up to launching a ‘war scare’ replete with slanders against the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. Whenever the Titoites themselves take some new war-like step on their frontiers they try to throw the responsibility on to their neighbours. If Western war propaganda is ‘threatened’ by a spell of peace, the Titoite press is put up to discovering some new ‘menace’ on their borders.
Thus in Belgrade on 17 May 1950, the Titoite Information Chief Dedijer proclaimed that there were hostile troop movements on Yugoslavia’s frontiers. This was propaganda invented specially for foreign consumption:
It is perhaps significant that the more alarming statements in M Dedijer’s speech on Soviet war preparations in the neighbourhood of Yugoslavia were not quoted in today’s Belgrade press... it would seem probable that the statements were primarily intended to put foreign opinion on the alert. (Manchester Guardian correspondent in Yugoslavia, 18 May 1950)
In mid-July a new incitement campaign was launched – the Narodna Armija (Army paper at Belgrade) invented reports about Bulgarian troop movements together with ‘extraordinary measures’ adopted by Rumanian troops on the Yugoslav borders. On 23 July 1950, Eric Bourne, Sunday Times correspondent in Yugoslavia, reported, from the usual Titoite sources, Hungarian, Rumanian and Bulgarian troop movements on the Yugoslav frontier. This corresponded with a particularly urgent need to whitewash the movements of American troops in Korea. On 29 December 1950, the New York Herald Tribune correspondent in Belgrade took up the same refrain. US aggression in Korea needed to be forgotten. Yugoslav rearmament coinciding with a desperate economic situation needed to be ‘justified’, so:
Marshal Tito charged Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria tonight with having 600,000 men under arms... the Marshal accused them of carrying out widespread military preparations against his regime. (New York Herald Tribune, continental edition, 29 December 1950)
This was at a moment when events in Korea were leading towards a widespread movement in Britain, America and the West generally for a negotiated peace. So, along with Truman and Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek, Marshal Tito’s aid was required to divert the peoples from the path of peaceful settlement:
Assailing, at length the notion of peace at any price with Soviet Russia, the Marshal denounced what he termed the ‘Munich type of peace’ [see also Hearst press for this slogan – JK]. It is the peace of the aggressor... in which one or several nations are enslaved in the hope that eventually the aggressor will be satisfied. This peace is only fiction. It is not peace. (New York Herald Tribune, continental edition, 29 December 1950)
So whenever Truman or Churchill or Morrison need an excuse for their warlike moves, the Titoites provide the pretext.
And, finally, in their work of abetting the Wall Street drive to war, the Titoites set out to prove that the world-wide popular movement for peace is a Communist manoeuvre, just as the Trotskyists in the 1930s set out to show that the world-wide movement for collective security and against fascism was a manoeuvre of the Communist International. When the world petition against the atomic bomb was in the first place in the popular struggle for peace, it was against this campaign that Tito, banning the petition in Yugoslavia, directed his propaganda machine. To compromise the organised peace drive of the World Peace Committee the Titoites set up a phoney Yugoslav Peace Committee whose sole efforts were to try and divide from within the broad peace committees of other countries:
Cominform propaganda slogans for peace are hypocritical. (The Times, 10 May 1950, reporting a Borba article)
Marshal Tito said ‘precious time’ was being wasted in debates on the outlawing of the atomic weapon... No empty declarations and catchwords but concrete acts can show who is for peace and who is not. (United Nations Correspondents’ Association interview with Tito by telephone, reported in Manchester Guardian, 26 May 1950)
So at a time when the fight for peace, in the face of the war-drive of Western imperialism, is the central task facing all progressive people in the world, the Titoites set out to whitewash the warmongers, to turn truth on its head and put the onus of blame on the peace-loving powers, to slander the peace proposals of the Soviet Union, to disrupt the world peace movement. Hitler too had his ‘peace propagandists’ working along these lines.
This same role has been played by the Titoites inside the United Nations Organisation.
By the end of 1949 it was becoming increasingly difficult inside UNO to hide from the peoples in the capitalist countries that the obstacle to peace came from imperialism, that the USSR and the People’s Democracies were loyal to the UNO Charter and were ceaselessly putting forward concrete plan after concrete plan for the preservation of peace according to the UNO Charter. The ‘Molotov says no’ myth was wearing very thin; it was Bevin, Hector McNeil, Acheson, Truman who were saying ‘no’ to every concrete peace proposal. The Soviet representatives proposed the abolition of the atomic bomb with international control. The answer was ‘no’. They proposed a reduction by one-third of the armaments of the five great powers. The answer was ‘no’. They proposed a Five-Power Peace Pact. The answer was ‘no’. They made proposal after proposal, concession after concession, the answer remained always – ‘no’.
Public opinion became restive, impatient. Some new weapon was needed to throw cold water on the Soviet proposals, to justify the Bevin – Acheson rejection of every proposal for peace. This was the special role of the Titoite representatives at UNO. The right-wing attacks on the Soviet proposals were threadbare – so throw in attacks from the ‘left’. There followed the usual division of labour.
At the fourth and fifth General Assemblies of UNO, both at the plenary sessions and in the sessions of all the committees, whenever Soviet or People’s Democratic representatives rose with a concrete proposal, up jumped the Titoites – Kardelj or Vilfan or Dedijer or another – violently attacked the proposal in pseudo-revolutionary phrases, branded it as ‘hypocritical’, ‘insincere’, launched a savage series of slanders on the country of the proposer, and sat down to the applause of the US, British, Chiang Kai-shek, Philippine and other US satellite delegates. Then up got the US or British representative, heartily agreed with the intervention of their ‘colleague from Yugoslavia’, took up the slanders, and rejected even discussion of the original proposal. Here and there the Yugoslav delegate would abstain, to prove his ‘independence’, but on all critical issues he voted ‘westwards’. When sectors of the US right-wing press objected to these occasional abstentions, other sections, more far-sighted, would answer: ‘These abstentions are necessary to show the “independence of Tito,” because if he was not “independent” he could not remain a really useful satellite.’
At the beginning of October 1949, the Soviet representatives were making concrete peace proposals at the plenary session of the Fourth General Assembly. The ball was passed to Kardelj for the Titoites:
In debate last week before the General Assembly, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Kardelj specifically charged the Soviet Union with interference in Yugoslavia’s internal affairs. He also said that a nation ‘cannot profess peaceful intentions while heaping upon Yugoslavia the threats the government of the USSR is showering upon her’. (United States Information Bulletin, put out by US embassy in London, 7 October 1949)
Of course, Mr Kardelj, our colleague, is correct, echoed British and American representatives. How can we even discuss so hypocritical a proposal? And the capitalist press, concealing or distorting the Soviet proposals, headlined the Titoite slanders.
Or a few days later, in the Economic Committee of the same General Assembly, the Soviet Union and People’s Democracies drew attention to the policy of boycott of East-West trade followed by the US government and put forward concrete proposals for better and wider East-West trade relationships in the interests of peace and of the economic conditions of the people. Up jumps the Titoite Dr Vilfan:
The United Nation’s Economic Committee has been presented with an analysis showing the sharp contrast between Soviet methods in international economic relations and the proposed United Nations programme for technical assistance to under-developed areas.
The comparison was drawn by Dr Joža Vilfan of Yugoslavia, who accused the Soviet Union of imperialist practices... (United States Information Service, 10 October 1949)
‘Of course’, echo the British and American representatives, ‘Dr Vilfan is right. The Soviet Union is imperialist. Long live Truman’s Point IV.’
The debates continue. The Socialist and People’s Democratic representatives make proposal after proposal. With demagogic phrases the Titoites launch their attacks:
Yugoslav delegate Sava Kosanović said it was a glaring contradiction for the Soviet Union to urge a new peace pact while its Cominform allies were being urged to use ‘any means’ to overthrow the Yugoslav government. (United States Information Service, 2 December 1949)
The United States press service throughout the world distributed the Titoite slanders, boycotting the peace proposals. The capitalist press echoed the Titoite slanders, keeping silent on or distorting the peace proposals. The imperialist delegates, happy to learn from the Titoites that Socialism was imperialist and imperialism generous, agreed with, supported and echoed – Titoism.
At the UNO Economic Committee for Europe meeting at Geneva in mid-1950, the same role fell to the Titoites. Once again the representatives of the countries of Socialism and People’s Democracy were calling attention to the reactionary trade policy of the USA, its orders to its ‘dependants’ to cut trade with Eastern Europe, and the delegates of imperialism felt embarrassed.
Feeling in countries like Britain, France and the Scandinavian states was growing more and more resentful of American economic dictatorship. The understanding was growing that submission to US orders to boycott or cut trade with the East was leading step by step to increased colonisation and subordination to crisis-ridden US economy. Opinion was growing for a turn to increased East-West trade. How could submission to the dictates of Wall Street be justified? Once again the ball was passed to the Titoites:
Mr J Vilfan of Yugoslavia replied that his country had had the opportunity to become ‘a colony – a colony of the Soviet Union’, but had refused the offer, and that ‘apparently the Soviet Union can think only in terms of satellites and masters, never of independent states’. (United States Information Service, Information Bulletin of Yugoslav embassy in London, 10 June 1950)
‘Splendid’, say the representatives of capitalism, ‘isn’t it clear as our “Communist colleague” says, that it is the Soviet Union and not imperialism that is imperialist? What is all this nonsense about the USA forbidding trade with the East? Think of poor little Yugoslavia boycotted by the imperialism of the Socialist countries’, and their eyes fill with tears as they think of it:
The Yugoslav delegate has made grave and convincing charges against the Soviet Union and other countries of Eastern Europe... The fact is that a small country finds itself completely and unilaterally cut off from trade with certain of its nearest neighbours... (Mr Asher of the US delegation speaking after the Yugoslav Representative at UNO Economic Committee for Europe, reported in United States Information Service, 10 June 1950)
How the Tito – Truman lie of ‘Soviet imperialism’ is the precise opposite of the truth, of the facts of history, we examine in detail in Chapter VII.
And at the Fifth UNO General Assembly at the end of 1950 the same comedy continued, not only on the general issue of peace, but on the concrete issue of Korea. Now the Titoites have been rewarded by US imperialism with a seat on the Security Council, to the joy of Churchill. There, too, an occasional abstention was permitted to the Titoites to add emphasis and increased ‘prestige’ to their general support of American aggression in Korea. There, too, there was division of labour, and whilst the openly right-wing press justified directly the American invasion and the illegal UNO decision, the Titoites concentrated on twisting the issue by endeavouring to show that the Korean war was the fault of the Soviet Union and the Communist Information Bureau.
When at the end of June 1951, the Soviet proposals were made known by Mr Malik for a cease-fire and for peace in Korea, it was the Titoites who privately took the initiative in ‘advising’ the US government against acceptance:
It has been the Yugoslavs who have taken the initiative and have been warning the Americans against any let-down of anti-Soviet alertness... [they] have gone so far as to caution the Americans against the danger of falling into a Soviet trap in the Korean affair. This type of uncompromisingly anti-Russian advice to the United States is reported to be relatively rare in other European capitals. (New York Herald Tribune, 9 July 1951)
Indeed such ‘advice’ as given by the Titoites came only from Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek.
When the Political Committee of the Fifth General Assembly of UNO discussed the Soviet proposal for a ‘Declaration for the elimination of the war danger and for strengthening peace and the security of nations’, Kardelj denounced the proposals and declared that he would vote against. When the violation of human rights was discussed, the Titoites denounced, not British authorities’ shooting down of Nigerian miners, not the Union of South Africa’s treatment of its African population, the overwhelming majority, not the US treatment of Negroes – but Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania. The Titoites supported the illegal re-election of Trygve Lie as General Secretary of UNO. But above all they have thrown in their weight on Korea. When the Soviet representative challenged the legality of the Security Council’s decision on Korea of 27 June, Yugoslavia abstained. When the Soviet delegates called on the USA to cease bombing the towns and civilian population of Korea, Yugoslavia abstained.
The Titoite Foreign Minister Kardelj blamed the Soviet Union and the Communist Information Bureau for American aggression in Korea.
It is not, he declared, a struggle of the Korean people for independence, but:
... the liberation hopes of the broad body of that nation here too, as in many other parts of the world, have been misused to serve the purposes of an alien hegemonistic policy... The peoples of Yugoslavia cannot help comparing the events in Korea with the fact that we are now in the third year of the incessant rabid aggressive campaign of the Cominform governments led by the USSR... (Kardelj’s speech on eve of departure from Belgrade to the General Assembly of UNO – Yugoslav Fortnightly, 15 September 1950)
Not one mention of American aggression, of the mass despatch of American troops to Korean soil, of the total absence of Soviet troops from Korean soil, not one word that could offend Truman or Churchill or Chiang Kai-shek!
In December 1950, Vladimir Dedijer, described by The Times correspondent in Belgrade as a ‘member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Yugoslav People’s Assembly, and a close associate of Marshal Tito’, published an article on Korea in the Communist, organ of the Central Committee of Tito’s ‘Communist’ Party. What caused the untold suffering of the Korean people? What is behind the ceaseless bombing by US planes and shelling by British and US warships of Korean towns and villages? Why are US, British, Turkish, Siamese, Philippine troops killing Koreans on Korean soil thousands of miles from their homelands? Mr Dedijer has an answer:
Mr Dedijer sees events in Korea as a manifestation of the Soviet will to dominate the world... if this is to be resisted successfully... the workers of the world must ‘realise that yet another pretender to world domination has appeared, and get rid of illusions about the Soviet Union representing some alleged force of democracy and peace'... The ‘basic task of the Soviet bureaucracy is to slow down the development of the Chinese revolution and to complicate her international situation for her...’. (The Times, from Belgrade correspondent, 27 December 1950)
Not even a word of concern about US policy. With all its pseudo-Marxist phraseology, Dedijer’s article makes The Times editorials or Walter Lippman’s articles in the New York Herald Tribune look like the writings of ‘reds’, and make the declarations of Jawaharlal Nehru appear like those of a dangerous revolutionary. Can it be wondered that the Titoite articles and speeches on Korea are headlined in the Hearst press?
One of the most right-wing weeklies of imperialist America, the US News and World Report, published on 28 July 1950 a long interview with ‘a top Yugoslav official in Belgrade’. ‘The interview’, it declared, ‘that appears on these pages contains the answers made by a top official of the Yugoslav government. Both the questions and replies have been discussed by the Tito Cabinet, so the views expressed here represent the authoritative opinions of the Tito-Communists.’ To the question ‘What is your interpretation of the Korean situation?’, the ‘top official’ gave the following ‘authoritative opinion’:
This conflict in Korea is sheer camouflage on the part of the Russians. The USSR wants to confuse and complicate the situation in the Far East. It wants to provoke a war between the US and China. This is the key to the entire issue... Russia’s action in Korea is rank aggression. The USSR is planning aggression not only against Yugoslavia, but also against other countries in Europe. It would like to subordinate all of Europe.
The US News and World Report almost weekly calls for the arming of Western Germany, Japan, Franco-Spain and Tito Yugoslavia. It is more critical of Mr Attlee’s Britain than of Tito’s Yugoslavia. And can it be wondered? Can it be wondered that in November 1950, Truman declared that Tito Yugoslavia fully corresponds to America’s ‘strategic and political interests'?
In November 1949, the Communist Information Bureau, in its resolution on Yugoslavia, declared that:
... the transformation of the Tito – Ranković clique into a direct agency of imperialism and accomplices of the warmongers, culminated in the lining up of the Yugoslav government with the imperialist block in UNO, where the Kardeljs, Djilases and Beblers joined in a united front with the American reactionaries on vital matters of international policy.
The year that followed brought a still closer and more open identification of the Titoites with the war policy of Wall Street.
Like the Trotskyites of the 1930s, the Titoites, under the cover of pseudo-revolutionary phrases, provided an arsenal of anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, anti-progressive slanders that complemented the open propagandists of Tories, press lords and right-wing Labour leaders. Like the Trotskyites, their successors the Titoites supply endless copy to satisfy the requirement of everything most filthy, reactionary and warmongering in the press of the United States and the capitalist world.
The role of the Titoites is not confined to turning out in press and speeches a ceaseless stream of right-wing propaganda disguised in leftist phrases that is re-echoed through the world by the reactionary press and radio. Their third role, like that of their predecessors the Trotskyites, is to try and penetrate into the heart of the working-class and progressive movement, to spy on it, confuse it, divide it, and disrupt it from inside. The open attacks of open reaction are complemented by the boring from within of covert reaction. The stronger the progressive and revolutionary movement grows, both in the countries of Socialism and People’s Democracy, where the working people rule, and in the rear of capitalism, the more important for reaction becomes its Titoite secret weapon.
The German Gestapo, even in the last days before the defeat of Hitler, saw the need to lay the basis for a comeback by a secret ‘international’ within the left. Already on 28 September 1944, Paul Ghali, correspondent of the Chicago Daily News and New York Post, reported from Switzerland:
This scum of the French population is now being trained for Bolshevik activity in the tradition of Trotsky’s... International under the personal orders of Heinrich Himmler... They are being instructed to tell their fellow-countrymen that the present-day Soviet represents only a bourgeois degeneration of Lenin’s original principles and that it is high time to return to ‘sound’ Bolshevik ideology. This formation of groups of ‘real’ Leninists is Himmler’s most recent policy, aimed at creating a Fourth International, amply contaminated by Nazi germs...
It is such an International, with the control and leadership passed from the hands of Himmler of the Gestapo into the hands of Hoover of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with the same ‘scum’, the same ‘Nazi germs’, the same ‘platform’, that the Titoites represent today. The US News and World Report of 5 January 1951 discusses the possibility of a ‘Big War in 1951’. They weigh up the assets of American imperialism. They discuss the atom bomb, the American policy of scorching other people’s earth. Then they come to ‘Titoism, the kind of national Communism sponsored by Marshal Josip Broz Tito’. They see it as another weapon against the Soviet Union. They explain that ‘Tito-type Communists are active within the Communist parties of many countries. In all-out war they would make a bid for party control.’ They are seen by this organ of US reaction as a fifth column inside the labour and progressive movement of the world, of special use to imperialism in time of war.
In the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe the Titoites have tried and are trying to establish groups of agents centred around Belgrade inside the Communist and workers’ parties. We have seen something of their attempts along these lines in Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania as revealed in the Rajk, Kostov and Xoxe trials. These activities have not in any way been confined to these three countries. In early August 1950, a trial of twelve agents of the Titoites was held in Bucharest, showing a wide network of espionage controlled from Belgrade and dating from the Red Army’s liberation of Rumania in 1944. In the same month a group of Titoite agents was brought to trial in Prague, headed by Šefik Kević, a former Yugoslav Vice-Consul in Bratislava. This network, too, had been established immediately after the liberation of Czechoslovakia. Intensive efforts have been made by the Titoites to gain a foothold in Poland.
In Eastern Europe the Titoites have attempted to gain an influence in the Communist parties and indeed in the whole progressive movement, not only by recruiting former agents and reactionaries who are concealed inside the popular organisations, but also by putting forward distorted ‘Marxist’ theories calculated to appeal to unstable and weaker elements inside the progressive movement.
In Eastern Europe in general their main platform has been one of narrow bourgeois nationalism. They know that for centuries the best elements of the Balkan and East European peoples have been fighting against national oppression – against the Turkish invaders, the old Austrian-Hungarian domination, and later against the imperialism of the West. They know that national minorities have been persecuted, and that reaction has kept its rule by developing and inciting people against people in national feud and hatred. But now a new era has opened up in the People’s Democracies. Real independence has been achieved at last. The domination of one people by another has ended. The economic and political basis for the old bourgeois nationalism has been abolished and the economic and political basis established for a new progressive Socialist patriotism to be developed alongside real international solidarity, friendship and cooperation between the East European peoples. Moreover, it was the close friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union that brought them liberation. This friendship and cooperation is helping them to build up economically strong independent states and is necessary in order that the newly-won national sovereignty can be preserved.
The Titoites hope to trade on the remnants of the old nationalism surviving in the minds of men. For the old bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism cannot be wiped out overnight. And even the memories of the old just democratic national liberation struggles can be distorted by the bourgeois nationalists into reactionary chauvinism, if a strong and ceaseless campaign of ideological explanation is not carried out.
So the Titoites make bourgeois nationalism a principal platform in Eastern Europe. They try and incite hatred of the Yugoslav peoples against their Hungarian, Rumanian and Albanian neighbours. They try to foster a narrow Macedonian nationalism against the Bulgarian and Greek peoples and to put forward visions of an all-Macedonian grouping inside Tito Yugoslavia. They bring back to life all the old nationalists, Četniks and Ustaši, Great Serbs and nationalist Croats. They try above all to develop a narrow nationalism inside the left wing of the East European peoples and to direct it against the Soviet Union.
It is the Soviet Union that made and is making national sovereignty possible for the People’s Democracies, but the Titoite line is first to separate the People’s Democracies from friendship with the USSR, and then to incite nationalist elements against the Soviet Union. Whilst Tito Yugoslavia is becoming a semi-colony of US imperialism, the Titoites make their principal slogan in Eastern Europe – the fight against ‘Soviet imperialism’. This is truth exactly on its head – the Truman – Acheson ideological line.
It is with this knowledge that Western reaction pays tribute to Tito’s ‘nationalism’:
Nationalism is still a potent force in Eastern Europe... the downfall of Marshal Tito would be a heavy blow to millions who secretly – or openly – side with him... (The Times editorial on ‘Titoism in Eastern Europe’, 20 June 1949)
Tito’s movement lends heart to such hopes because its strength is drawn from nationalism. (Mr Eden in Daily Telegraph, 16 June 1949)
It is of the utmost importance ‘to encourage the line of thought developed by Marshal Tito in opposing Russia’s attempt to eliminate nationalism among the peoples of Eastern Europe’. (Hector McNeil in address to Canadian Clubs and UNA in Canada, quoted in The Times, 25 October 1949)
In Eastern Europe, where the task before the peoples is to build Socialism; where, in the People’s Democracies, national sovereignty has been achieved with the aid of the Soviet Union; where the sacrifices made by all those who fought throughout history for the national liberation of their countries have been rewarded; the platform of the Titoites is ‘nationalism’, that is, bourgeois nationalism.
It is very interesting to compare with this the role of the Titoites in the colonial and dependent countries, particularly in India and Africa and in the Middle and Far East. Like their Trotskyite predecessors, the Titoites have been charged by their masters to play a role of special importance in these areas.
The colonial people cannot be easily turned from their national liberation struggles by Social-Democracy. Whilst the exploitation of the colonial peoples provides an economic basis for Social-Democracy in the imperialist exploiting countries, there is no corresponding economic basis for Social-Democracy in the colonial countries themselves. Imperialism, therefore, has had to look for new ideological weapons to divert the colonial and dependent peoples from anti-imperialist struggle.
It is for this reason that already in the 1930s the Trotskyite agents of the bourgeoisie played a specially important disruptive role, not only inside the Communist parties but inside Socialist parties, where they existed, and inside the national movements. Abusing the ardent revolutionary spirit of these people, trading on the fact that in a number of colonial countries the theoretical level of the Marxist groupings was low and the progressive political organisations were weak, the Trotskyites, under ultra-leftist slogans, tried to break the broad unity of the anti-imperialist front, separate the vanguard from the masses, and divide the struggle of the colonial and dependent peoples from the struggle of the working class in the imperialist countries.
They called for an immediate struggle for Socialism when the revolutionary movement had not yet reached such a stage, they branded (in Ceylon, India, North Africa) the struggle against fascism as a manoeuvre of imperialism, they put forward bourgeois nationalist slogans which played into the hands of the fascists ('against white imperialism’, etc). In this way great harm was done to the anti-imperialist struggle in Indo-China, in Ceylon, in North Africa, in Indonesia. The Japanese secret police and the Gestapo set great store on the development of such groupings in the colonial lands.
Today, on this issue too, Trotsky’s mantle falls on Tito’s shoulders. The national liberation movement has made giant strides forward. Whole vast areas have won their independence. The working class has stepped or is stepping into the leadership of the liberation struggle. In many colonial and dependent countries strong Communist parties have developed or are developing. In all these countries the task is the struggle for national independence, the struggle against imperialism. The working class is faced with the task of building, under its leadership, the unity of the overwhelming majority of the people – workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie – against foreign imperialism, the feudal landlords and that section of the bourgeoisie – the big ('bureaucratic’) bourgeoisie – who have sold out to imperialism. The people’s democratic rule, the new regime of People’s Democracy for which the colonial and dependent peoples are striving, will not be in its first stage a dictatorship of the proletariat. The tasks of the revolution are, in the first instance, anti-imperialist, anti-feudal. The revolution has not yet got Socialist tasks.
So what is the main platform of the Titoites in the colonial and dependent countries? It is to preach immediate Socialism, immediate Socialist revolution. By urging the people to skip essential stages in the revolutionary struggle, they are trying to draw the proletarian vanguard far in advance of the masses, to ‘provoke’ them in the traditional manner of agents provocateurs, to lead them forward too far and fast and thus lay them open to be repressed and broken by imperialism. Wherever the level of Marxist understanding is not yet high, the Titoites seek to confuse the people and the revolutionary groupings by high-sounding, ultra-revolutionary phrases. They try to cash in on the people’s intense revolutionary fervour, their readiness for struggle and sacrifice, in order to distort, divert, divide and disrupt the anti-imperialist struggle, and transform the people’s desire for national independence into blind bourgeois nationalism.
This is why the Titoites are especially active in their efforts to contact the colonial people. It is now clear why already in 1945-46, Kardelj, posing as an expert in international affairs, made a ‘special study’ of the colonies, why the Yugoslav embassies in the imperialist countries contacted the revolutionary organisations, asking for information on the colonial struggle, why the Yugoslav Foreign Office has a special section dealing with colonial problems, and asks for every publication in the colonial world and especially the publications of the left-wing organisations. This is why the Titoites went out of their way to invite colonial revolutionary leaders to Belgrade in the postwar period. This is why the Yugoslav embassies in Britain, Belgium, France, Holland, etc, have as a special task to contact the colonial students in these countries in order to inveigle them to visit Yugoslavia. And this is why the imperialists, who are alarmed at the slightest contact of the colonial peoples with the Soviet Union and People’s Democracies, go out of their way to encourage and promote contact with Tito Yugoslavia.
The Titoites made a special drive on India. They sought to advise the Indian Communist movement that Belgrade was the new centre of the world revolutionary movement. They tried to promote ill-will between Indian revolutionaries and the British and other Communist parties. They sent their delegates, including Dedijer, a leading Titoite, to attend the Second Congress of the Indian Communist Party. They put forward both publicly and off the record what they called Kardelj’s new development of Marxist theory – ‘the intertwining of the national liberation struggle and the Socialist revolution’. They quoted and requoted Kardelj’s report to the first meeting of the Communist Information Bureau as a basis for development in India. These were the points that they stressed:
It can be said that the development of the national liberation uprising and the people’s power in Yugoslavia represents a specific example of the linking up of a national liberation war with a democratic people’s revolution under the leadership of the working class striving in its development to a higher Socialist form... The process of the development of the people’s democratic revolution interblended with the Socialist forms which today have become predominant. (Kardelj’s report to Communist Information Bureau, August 1947, reprinted in Indian Communist, January 1948)
What did this mean? It meant that the Titoites were using all their influence to persuade Indian revolutionaries to embark on a leftist course of action that would inevitably break the unity of the anti-imperialist Indian peoples, divorce the vanguard from the masses of the people, isolate the leading section of the working class and open it up to oppression and persecution by reaction.
The policy the Titoites advanced was in direct contradiction to the correct path forward for the Indian revolutionary movement, as set out in the historic Draft Programme of the Communist Party of India published in April 1951, and the statement of policy which followed it.
The Titoites also tried to gain an influence in the Communist Party of Ceylon. Here they contacted the Trotskyite groupings of Ceylon and supplied them with anti-Soviet slanders, but the Ceylon Communists exposed their role and the Titoite propagandists were utterly routed. They made especial efforts to contact African Marxists and the African national movement through the medium of African students studying in the West; and the same with the students of Vietnam. They offered special radio receiving sets for reception of Yugoslav news agency reports to colonial movements. They made desperate but utterly vain attempts to win Chinese support for their anti-Soviet, bourgeois nationalist line and to contact Chinese students abroad. Until they were exposed, they tried to use their position in the international democratic organisations, the International Union of Students, World Federation of Trade Unions, World Federation of Democratic Youth, etc, to contact and indoctrinate the colonial people.
For Western imperialism, therefore, the Titoites were a weapon of special importance for the disruption of the anti-imperialist struggle. So the imperialists dreamed of new ‘national Communist’ groupings in the colonies and dependent countries:
The Communist danger in South-East Asia will be the main issue before the Conference of Commonwealth Ministers when they meet at Colombo...
Communism has so far found some difficulty in coming to terms with the new nationalism which today is perhaps the most potent force in South-East Asia.
There is indeed some evidence for the belief that quite a new Communist animal may eventually emerge from this part of the world. For some time, for instance, there has been a strong Trotskyist movement in Ceylon. In Burma the Communists have split into two groups...
National Communism existed in South-East Asia even before Tito successfully defied Moscow. It is too early to say what effect this is likely to have, but at the very least Tito’s survival can only be an encouragement to the dissident groups. (Observer, 25 December 1949)
The State Department exerted, and still exerts, every effort to extend the network of Tito Yugoslav legations throughout the world of dependent states, of which the Yugoslav legation in Delhi is to be the principal centre. The New Delhi correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reported early in 1950 that the US government was going to encourage the establishment of Titoite missions throughout Asia. The Belgian journal Libre Belgique (14 January 1950) wrote:
In its future actions, vis-à-vis the Asiatic states, Washington is counting on two factors – nationalism and national Communism of the Tito type. American experts have become convinced that the latter formula would be perfectly compatible with the aid that the USA intends to give to these countries. An American action of this type has already begun in Burma where American agents are actually supporting anti-Stalinist Communist groupings and are trying to organise a common bloc of these groups with the government parties... If this action is crowned with some success, the United States would even go as far as envisaging the creation of a centre whose essential task would be to check the action of the pro-Soviet elements.
By early 1951 the Americans were pressing hard for the establishment of a Yugoslav legation in Indonesia.
What could be clearer? To combat Communism in Asia and throughout the colonial and dependent world, imperialism needs an instrument which will look (a) nationalist and (b) revolutionary, but whose real purpose will be anti-Communist and anti-Soviet. They need an imperialist line dressed up in anti-imperialist phrases. The answer is Tito and the Titoites.
The activity of the Titoites is not confined to the People’s Democracies and the colonial and dependent countries. There is hardly a country under imperialist rule where, in some form or other, the Titoites are not working alongside the domestic reactionaries – sometimes as secret agents inside the Communist parties, sometimes more openly in Socialist or nationalist organisations, sometimes in Trotskyite grouplets, but always against the unity and against the interests of the working class and the working people.
In Western Germany they tried for a period to work underground, inside the Communist Party. But when they were exposed, they turned to the formation of a phoney ‘Communist Party’ on chauvinist lines with all the aid and encouragement of the Western occupation forces. The so-called ‘Independent German Communist Party’ was founded at Düsseldorf on 23 July 1950 under the leadership of a Titoite, Schappe, recently expelled from the Communist Party. The Manchester Guardian correspondent in Western Germany wrote (24 July 1950):
The Titoist split in Germany is, according to Herr Schappe, due to three main reasons. He and his followers refuse to accept the Oder – Neisse line... They further refuse to accept the political directives of a foreign country – Soviet Russia...
Herr Schappe said that his party would take the title of the ‘Independent Workers’ Party’. It would be prepared to make common cause with the Social-Democrats, but would advocate far more radical social reform...
Titoism is a model for this new party... The party has plenty of links with the Socialist Unity Party in the Soviet Zone, but would naturally maintain them ‘on a strictly underground basis’.
Herr Schappe, reporting the conference, which was held secretly, to a New York Herald Tribune correspondent, said that his party ‘condemned Russia’s prisoner-of-war policy’.
What did the imperialists need in Western Germany? They wanted something to complement amongst the workers the activities of the right-wing Social-Democratic leaders whose influence was waning, something that would talk left but would have a nationalist line directed against the Potsdam agreement and the Soviet Union, something that could be the basis for espionage activity inside the Socialist Unity Party of the Eastern Zone. Here was a ‘new sort of Communism’ that could bring tears of joy to imperialist eyes:
The long-term possibilities of a really strong independent Communism fighting a Moscow-controlled movement in Western Europe stirs all sorts of happy political visions in the minds of Western Allied officials. (New York Herald Tribune, Bonn correspondent, 4 August 1950)
In France the Titoites tried at first to find a foothold inside the Communist Party, but were quickly exposed. They carried out special activity, but with no success, amongst the Yugoslav émigré population in France. With Social-Democracy badly compromised, they were trying in 1951 to form an ‘independent’, ‘third-force’ party. Founded by the well-known Trotskyist Jean Rous and Yves Dechezelles, ex-assistant secretary of the Socialist Party, it called itself the ‘Independent Socialist Left’ and claimed to stand for a ‘democratic Socialism which will replace both Social-Democracy and Stalinite Communism’. It collaborates with the ‘Coordination Centre for Socialist and Democratic Action’ of which Louis Dalmas, ardent Titoite propagandist and tourist in Tito Yugoslavia, is a leading member.
In Italy, too, the Titoites tried at first to penetrate the Communist Party. Then they turned their attention to the Nenni Socialist Party, once more without success. They were particularly vociferous in calling for provocative forms of political demonstration that would have furnished the de Gasperi government with a much-needed pretext for repressive action. The Yugoslav embassy in Italy turns out a vast quantity of propaganda. Bribes are freely used in trying to attract delegations. Two members of the Italian Communist Party were expelled for maintaining contacts with the Titoites. On the publication of the news the local police (carabinieri) chief called to congratulate them and offer them his full support. This made them see very rapidly the real role of the Titoites.
Titoites have been active amongst the Spanish Republican exiles, trying to split and confuse the Republican movement. They were one of the sources of ‘information’ on the Spanish Republicans in France that led to the recent mass arrests by the French government. Even Franco has now seen the use of Tito. The Falange organ, Arriba, wrote in 1951, ‘Tito is not a real Communist’, while the Franco organ, Heraldo de Aragón, explained: ‘It is expedient for the Western world that Tito should continue to be called a Marxist.’
The work of the Titoites in Britain will be dealt with in a later chapter.
How can the efforts of the Titoites to penetrate, spy on and disrupt the left-wing movement from within be summarised? What methods are common to the Titoite groups in all countries?
The Titoites tried, in the first place, to penetrate into the Communist parties, to establish secret groups within them and to develop a distorted ‘Marxist’ theory, calculated to put these parties at the mercy of capitalism. But after the Information Bureau resolution of June 1948, and still more clearly after the revelations of the Rajk and Kostov trials, the role of the Titoites was exposed, and though their efforts to maintain secret groups within the Communist parties were, of course, continued, the Titoites were, in general, thrown out of the Communist organisation, while those sincere Communists who had fallen under their influence before their exposure came to see how they had been misled.
So today the Titoites, having failed to carry out their aim of organising a split in the world Communist movement, are endeavouring to carry on their work inside Social-Democratic and nationalist organisations, and also by the formation of little splinter-grouplets ‘independent’ ‘Socialist’ bodies, reminiscent of the countless Trotskyite splinter-grouplets of the 1930s – ‘Bolshevik-Leninist’, ‘Leninist-Internationalist’, ‘national-Communist’, etc, etc – all of which with the aid of the police of their various countries try to disrupt working-class and popular unity.
What is the ideology of these Titoite groups? There is no ideology, there are no principles in the Titoite groups. From country to country, from place to place, from time to time their slogans change, not with a changing situation nor with a changing relation of class forces, but according to what is expedient to help capitalism inside the progressive movement. Whatever is against the interests of the working class, whatever is anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, against unity of the working class, against peace, is served up in pretentious ultra-revolutionary pseudo-Marxist language as the slogan of the hour. The only thing common to the Titoites, as to the Trotskyites before them, is their utter lack of principle.
In the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe a certain bourgeois nationalism survives in the minds of even progressive elements; so in these countries bourgeois nationalism becomes an essential part of the Titoite ‘programme’. In these countries, in the 1947-49 period, the main progressive tasks were to carry forward the march to Socialism, fight for the leading position of the working class, cement the alliance of the working class with the working peasantry, isolate and restrict the kulaks, prepare the working people for intensifying class battles, strengthen the leading role of the Communist and workers’ parties. So the Titoites, overtly and covertly, taught the opposite. They developed what they called ‘new advances in Leninism’, they taught the opposite of Lenin – rejected the leading role of the working class, rejected the need to differentiate amongst the peasantry, taught the need to hide the Communist Party and to dissolve it into the People’s Front, taught that the class struggle would die away. When the struggle for Socialism was on the order of the day, the Titoites preached nationalism. When Socialism could only be built with the aid and friendship of the USSR, the Titoites preached enmity to the Soviet Union.
But in the colonial countries they changed their slogans. In these countries the revolutionary struggle had at this stage as its main tasks the fight against imperialism and against feudalism. Further periods of struggle and further stages of struggle were necessary before the fight for Socialism would be on the order of the day; so here the Titoites preached Socialism, the ‘intertwining of the national liberation struggle with the struggle for Socialism’. Where a national liberation is the main immediate task, the Titoites preach ‘Socialism’. But where the next task is the advance to Socialism the Titoites preach ‘nationalism’. Here they try to hold back the revolutionary advance, there they try to break the revolutionary movement by advancing provocative leftist slogans, destined to split the movement and cut off and destroy the vanguard. Everywhere they aid imperialism.
Thus, like their Trotskyite predecessors, and along with the old Trotskyites, with whom in most cases ranks have been fused, they have no principles, but only one standpoint – enmity to the working class and Socialism. The ‘Marxism’ which they preach can only be described as ‘police Marxism’, ‘MI5 Marxism’. It consists in expressing the aims of imperialism in a pseudo-Marxist jargon.
Have they a platform, an aim? Yes. It is the aim of their masters – the restoration of capitalism, subordination to American imperialism, war against the lands of Socialism and People’s Democracy.
But this is the platform of the inner ring of Titoites, and they dare not make it known to their supporters. Thus it was with the Trotskyite conspirators in the Soviet Union. They did not dare to make known their platform even to their own leading supporters:
Naturally the Trotskyites could not but hide such a platform from the people, from the working class. And they hid it not only from the working class, but also from the Trotskyites as a whole, and not only from the Trotskyite rank and file, but even from the leading group of the Trotskyites, consisting of a small handful of thirty or forty people. When Radek and Pyatakov asked Trotsky’s permission to call a small conference of Trotskyites, thirty or forty people, to inform them of the character of this platform, Trotsky forbade them, saying that it was inexpedient to talk of the real nature of the platform even to a small group of Trotskyites, as such an ‘operation’ might cause a split. (Stalin, Report at Plenum of the CC of the CPSU(B), 3 March 1937)
In the same way the real platform of Tito, Kardelj, Ranković, Djilas, has been concealed from all but the innermost ring of their immediate associates, agents of imperialism.
And to keep the support of their wider associates, to try and attract sincere workers who have not yet seen through their manoeuvres, to try and confuse and divide the workers and their allies, the Titoites, like the Trotskyites, put forward, without principle, any concatenation of phrases they consider useful for the moment. All the old Trotskyite catch-phrases are repeated – ‘Stalin has departed from Leninism’, ‘the Soviet Union is a bureaucracy’, ‘the Communist parties are the instrument of Soviet foreign policy’. There is nothing in Djilas, Pijade, Kardelj, Ranković and Tito that they could not have culled from the works of Trotsky as translated into German under Hitler and disseminated with the aid of the Gestapo. But the Titoites trade on the fact that large sections of the labour and progressive movement did not know or have forgotten the role of the Trotskyites.
Stalin, in the speech quoted above, showed that Trotskyism in the 1930s had ceased to be a trend in the working class:
Trotskyism has ceased to be a political trend in the working class... it has changed from the political trend in the working class which it was seven or eight years ago into a frantic and unprincipled gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers, acting on the instructions of the intelligence services of foreign states. (Stalin, Report at Plenum of the CC of the CPSU(B), 3 March 1937)
It is such an ‘unprincipled gang’ that the Titoites are today. Their platform, known only by an inner ring, is the restoration or maintenance of capitalism, world domination of US imperialism, war against the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. Their immediate slogans are a hotch-potch of pseudo-left phraseology aimed at confusion, division, disruption, and directed against whatever is in the interests of the working class and the working people.
Rajk made it clear. In the course of his trial the President of the Court asked him: ‘You say that you pursued a Trotskyist policy. What was the standpoint of this group?’ Rajk replied:
I could outline the essence in a few words: by saying that it was a refutation and disruption of everything which is in the interests of the revolutionary working-class movement, on a political basis that completely lacked all principle. (Rajk’s evidence, Verbatim Report of Rajk Trial, p 39)
Thus the Titoites today pursue within the world progressive movement the same three roles as the Trotskyites between the wars, of whom they are the successors:
1) As an instrument of the war plans of imperialism.
2) As an arsenal of anti-Communist, anti-Soviet, anti-progressive slanders dressed up in ‘left-wing’ language.
3) As a weapon of imperialism for the penetration of the Communist and progressive organisations and movements, for spying on them, for confusing them and disrupting them from inside.