PROGRAM AND STATUTE OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA

PROGRAM OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA

THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA UNDER MAOISM IS THE MAIN TASK OF THE CONSCIOUS SOCIALIST PROLETARIAT

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia, as the flesh and blood of the Yugoslav proletariat, despite the difficult and turbulent periods that befell it along the way, persevered in the struggle for the historical communist program and undertook the magnificent task of seizing power in the service of the World Proletarian Revolution. Above these lands she raised her crimson-red flag, the seal of her service to the proletariat of the world and to the only idea worthy of the sacrifice of her best daughters and sons – communism.

Those who fought for the emancipation of humanity did not care about the price. Communist fighters paid for their uncompromising class position with unprecedented suffering. Proudly carrying the red banner, the storms of class enemy and insidious revisionism could not erase their vast, invaluable revolutionary legacy that forever chained them in immortality. The enemies of the people today are trying to drag the proletariat away from the glorious path that it had conquered in decades of struggle, beginning with the liquidation of the Party in 1948, the treacherous hands of revisionism have taught the masses their modus operandi – the practices of social-fascism sugarcoated with the story of social transformation. To this day, wherever they appear, the revisionist dogs, shamelessly plundering the name of the Party, try to exhaust the forces of the popular masses in a losing struggle. And yet, the years of revisionism's influence have time and time again shown its rotten nature and thus robbed it of all credibility. The proletariat and the oppressed classes can no longer be deceived by revisionist lies and deceptions. The most revolutionary class, which once soaked the country with blood in order to liberate it from traitors and occupiers, understands best what the real, truly revolutionary Communist Party of Yugoslavia stands for – it understands it best because it cries out for it.

In the midst of complex historical circumstances, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is today in the phase of its own reconstitution. We wage slaves do not need formal education, to see clearly that the main need of the class struggle of the proletariat in former Yugoslavia is the reconstitution of that party, that is, of the advanced and organized detachment of our class. Accordingly, the main contradiction that the communists in formation of the former Yugoslavia must face today is the contradiction between liquidation and reconstitution. The final touch adorns the work, the conscious socialist proletariat that rises up against liquidation and overthrows the enemy in front of it, will clean up from its trough all the liquidator's rubbish that has accumulated there, and if revisionism dares to try to reverse the tide of this force, it will take it away and wipe off the face of the earth everything that opposes the class, because progress is much dearer than promises, phrases and chatter.

It is quite understandable that our, still essentially pioneering work, has so far been able to set itself only modest tasks. Thus, the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was originally founded on the basis of a short document “Raise the red flag of Maoism in order to fulfill the task of reconstituting the Communist Party of Yugoslavia!” – although still immature and undeveloped in its content, the significance of this short document was that it called for unification under the flag of Maoism for the first time in the territory of the former Yugoslavia and that, in the face of our communists in formation, it established as a great task the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Estimating that the movement in the territory of the former Yugoslavia was in an epoch of theoretical confusion, the activity of the like-minded people united in our organization in the following period dealt primarily with the renewal of the theoretical foundations of Marxism and with the theoretical confrontation with revisionism.

Our work now moves from the general and abstract to the particular and concrete, which is a necessary condition for the fruitful struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. This extraordinary task can be accomplished, as the whole experience of the international proletariat has shown, only with the establishment of a program (the immediate and final goals of the movement) which gives the revolutionary fighters for communism the basis and foundation of ideological unity, a flag that mobilizes and unites. However, just as there are two programs in the revolution, two strategic plans – the Bolshevik and the opportunist – so there are two forms of organization. Only the Bolshevik unity of programmatic, tactical, and organizational conceptions can be the real granite foundation that will guarantee the success of our effort of reconstitution. That is why it is not enough for Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, unless they want to become something like a family circle, to fight only for a revolutionary program. The reality that is much more radical than ourselves demands that we simultaneously fight for a revolutionary organization, that is, for the creation of such an organization that is capable of realizing this program.

It is clear that our task is particularly complex, and for this reason we confine ourselves at this moment to indicating the general direction and the main questions of our revolution. We do not have the opportunity here to prove every one of our theses with exhaustive evidence, but we are ready to do so if our opponents wish. We believe that this is precisely where the significance of this Program and the Statute that was adopted at the First National Conference of the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia lies.

I. CAPITALISM

Since its inception, the existing social order has contained all the elements of its own ruin. The revolutionary bourgeoisie, whose mode of production could not be brought into harmony with local and noble privileges, broke up the feudal order and raised on its ruins the empire of equality of commodity owners, free competition, and other bourgeois wonders. This world-historical undertaking has allowed the capitalist mode of production to develop freely and to overcome its feudal shackles at an unprecedented speed. But this development leads the existing social order to its own dissolution, turning the vast majority of the population more and more into proletarians, a class that sees in its self-alienation the reality of its inhuman existence.

The main feature of capitalist society consists of commodity production, which has developed to a great extent its highest form, capitalist commodity production. The essence of the capitalist mode of production is the appropriation of social labor, organized by commodity economy, by individual persons. Whereas in pre-capitalist formations exploitation served exclusively the ends of consumption, in capitalist society it is no longer produced directly for ones own needs or for the needs of the exploiting family, but for the market. The fundamental contradiction of this society is the contradiction between the social character of production and private ownership of the means of production.

This contradiction inherent in the capitalist mode of production is the source of the social war between labor and capital, that is, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is also the source of the surplus production characteristic of our society, which is expressed in more or less acute crises of hyper production. Since the development of capitalism means the extended reproduction of its fundamental contradictions, the only solution to all those evils arising from the capitalist mode of production is to overcome it by means of a socialist revolution.

Over the proletariat as a class which, because of its economic position, has to sell its labor-power, the conditions of existence of bourgeois society are placed as something accidental, over which individual proletarians have no control and over which no social organization can give them control. For this reason, in order to gain recognition of itself as an individual, the proletariat must abolish and transcend its own conditions of life, but it cannot abolish them without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of the existing social order which are summed up in its situation. This makes it the leading force of the revolution and the most revolutionary class in history. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie sees in its self-alienation its own power and possesses in it the illusion of human existence. Both are creations of the world of private property and stand in contradiction with each other.

The division of society into classes implies that the “view of life and the world” characteristic of a given epoch does not have a unified character – it is different and varies according to their position, their aspirations and the course of their struggle with each other. The Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia emphasizes the following in this regard:

• Bourgeois philosophy, in its various idealistic shades, carries out the social mandate of its class: it seeks to perpetually maintain the order of the exploitation of man by man, but it is compelled to disguise this exploitation as progress and progressiveness, and to present its class interest as the interest of society as a whole. Bourgeois ideology is thus permeated with hypocrisy, and if life reveals the falsity of this ideology, the more exalted and moral the language of the bourgeoisie becomes.

• Proletarian philosophy, that is, contemporary dialectical materialism, arose as a lawful result of human society, of the centuries-long development of science, and as a theoretical generalization of this development from the position of the most revolutionary class in the history of society – the proletariat. It was only when the social contradictions that had matured in the bosom of capitalism began to manifest themselves in the fierce class struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie that it became possible for the ingenious minds of Marx and Engels to destroy the theoretical foundations of metaphysics and to create a new, truly scientific, dialectical method, and to draw from the position of the proletariat all the conclusions that stemmed from social development, and especially from the above-mentioned struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The social revolution of the proletariat, which replaces private ownership of the means of production and exchange with social property, and introduces a planned organization of the social process of production, in order to ensure the welfare and real development of all, will destroy the division of society into classes and thus liberate the whole of oppressed humanity, destroying all forms of exploitation of one part of society over another. The indispensable condition for this social revolution is the dictatorship of the proletariat and of successive cultural revolutions, that is, the establishment by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it to destroy all resistance of the exploiters. The Communist Party sets itself the task of enabling the proletariat to carry out its great historical mission, organizing it into an independent political party capable of winning power in opposition to all bourgeois parties, revealing to the entire working masses of the people the necessity of social revolution.

II. IMPERIALISM

The process of concentration and centralization of capital, destroying freedom of competition, led at the beginning of the twentieth century to the fusion of finance capital with highly concentrated industrial capital and the formation of powerful alliances of capitalists that acquired decisive importance for the whole economic life. In this way, capitalism has tried to replace the anarchic mode of capitalist production in the large capitalist countries, but without removing its inherent contradictions. On the contrary, the contradictions intensified and the economic division of the world, already divided between the richest countries, began. This new, final stage of capitalism, the stage of finance capital, which inevitably intensifies the struggle between individual capitalist states, is the stage of imperialism.

Modern monopoly capitalism, in order to achieve more or less regular extended reproduction, needs to make not average, but maximum profit. This is the driving force of imperialism which determines all the most important phenomena in the sphere of its development and explains its contradictory development. The necessity to obtain maximum profits pushes monopoly capitalism to take steps such as the subjugation and systematic plundering of colonies and semi-colonies, the transformation of a number of independent countries into dependent countries, the organization of new wars, which for modern monopoly capital are the best “business” for extracting maximum profits, and finally, attempts to gain world economic domination. Hence inevitably arise imperialist wars, wars for domination over the greater part of the world's surplus value.

With the transition of capital to its monopolistic and final stage, the historical period of the world bourgeois revolution ends, the bourgeois class passes into the camp of the counter-revolution, and together with the Great October Socialist Revolution a new era is opened, the era of the decline of capitalism, the era of the world socialist revolution. The main force of this revolution is the proletariat of the capitalist countries, and its allies are the peoples of the oppressed colonies and semi-colonies. The bourgeoisie of the advanced countries has completely trampled on the principle of equality of nations and replaced it with the principle of the full rights of a handful of imperialist countries to freely exploit the vast majority of the world's population (Stalin). Imperialism ruthlessly and heartlessly plunders all the countries of the Third World, that is, 3⁄4 of humanity, while at the same time maintaining relative peace at home by feeding the fruits of its plunder to a vast layer of the bribed labor aristocracy.

The international proletarian movement, as a movement which is to carry out the great task of social transformation, must be anti-imperialist in the era of monopoly capitalism, because the changes in the international situation have transformed the national question from an element of bourgeois-democratic to an element of proletarian-socialist revolution. Regardless of which classes, parties or individuals in oppressed countries approach the revolution, and regardless of whether they are aware of this fact and understand it, their revolution becomes part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution, and they become its allies if they oppose imperialism. Therefore, the development of popular revolutions in the colonies and semi-colonies, to which all the countries of the former Yugoslavia belong, is an important moment for the proletariat class, because it fundamentally undermines the positions of capitalism and transforms these countries from the reserves of imperialism into reserves of the proletarian revolution.

In this task, however, the national bourgeoisie is not a consistent ally. Being under the pressure of imperialism, it can have revolutionary passions and at certain times and to a certain extent it can take part in the revolution and fight against imperialism – but it lacks the courage to break with imperialism and feudalism altogether because it is economically and politically weak and still economically linked to it. Since all this is true, the proletariat remains as the only class that can undertake the task of raising the national flag and being at the forefront of that struggle whose blade is directed against imperialism.

Under the leadership of the proletarian class, the struggle for national liberation from imperialism transcends its bourgeois nationalist content and takes on an internationalist content. Although in its social character such a revolution is still essentially bourgeois-democratic, it is no longer the old revolution led by the bourgeoisie for the purpose of establishing bourgeois society under bourgeois dictatorship. It is a new revolution whose aim in the first stage is to create a new democratic society and state under the common dictatorship of all revolutionary classes. Such a revolution attacks imperialism at its very roots and creates favorable conditions for a continuous transition to a socialist revolution. Therefore, a democratic revolution of a new type, a new democratic revolution, transcends the nationalist character of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and becomes an integral part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution.

The Great October Socialist Revolution proved by its appearance and its consequences that the foundations of the old capitalist order were crumbling. Unable to control the productive forces it had created, capitalism led to a world war and, through it, to its clear catastrophe by overthrowing the imperialist bourgeoisie in one of the largest capitalist countries of the world and putting the socialist proletariat in power. By undermining imperialism, the October Revolution at the same time created a powerful and open base of the world revolutionary movement, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the center around which a united front of proletarians and oppressed peoples of all countries against imperialism could gather and organize.

This great feat of the conscious socialist proletariat was greeted by the enemies of the revolution with loud prophecies that ordinary workers and peasants would not be able to manage the complex economic, cultural and political life of such a vast country. Soon the “prophecies” of the imperialists and their lackeys turned to dust. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics destroyed once and for all the reactionary idea that the proletariat could not govern without a class of exploiters. Despite enormous internal and external obstacles, soviet power, led by Lenin and Stalin, grew stronger day by day, boldly carrying out the most radical social changes and advancing towards communism.

All the policies pursued by the ruling classes of the entire capitalist world during and after the Great Socialist October Revolution have only further undermined the foundations of the existing order. Before the capitalist world could rest, the Second World War broke out for the same basic causes as the first. The immediate preparation for this war was the emergence of fascism as an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary and aggressive elements of finance capital. The victory of fascism in a number of countries, aided by the treacherous role of social-democracy and with the concessions given to it by the ruling monopoly circles of England, France, America and other countries in order to direct it against the international workers’ and anti-imperialist movement, marked the exacerbation of the crisis of capitalism and the preparation of aggressive plans for a new division of the world.

The Second World War ended with the disintegration of the single, comprehensive world market, the enormous growth of the forces and role of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the fall of the capitalist system in a number of countries, the most important of which was the Chinese revolution, the unprecedented expansion of the workers’ and anti-imperialist movements throughout the world, and the liberation wars in colonial and semi-colonial countries. The forces of imperialism were weakened, and the forces of socialism were greatly strengthened.

The revolutionary, democratic and socialist transformations that took place in a number of countries in the pre-war and post-war period are an integral part of the revolutionary world-historical events that were initiated by the Great October Socialist Revolution. In this process, the general development of modern society is manifested, the main tendency of which is revolution.

All this shows that, first of all, as Comrade Stalin so brilliantly explained, the October Revolution dealt a mortal wound to world capitalism, from which it will never recover. Capitalism can never regain that “balance” and that “stability” that it had before the Great October Socialist Revolution. The usurpation of the party of Lenin and Stalin by revisionism, the degeneration into social-fascism and the eventual dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics does not change the significance of this death blow dealt by the October Revolution, and no one is able to turn back history, because the development of capitalism has reached such a stage where the flame of revolution must inevitably break out, sometimes in the centers of imperialism, sometimes on the periphery.

III. KINGDOM OF YUGOSLAVIA

The Great October Socialist Revolution was of paramount importance for the development of the revolutionary and workers’ movement in the Balkans. In the general revolutionary ferment that encompassed Central and Southern Europe, every victory of the revolutionary Soviet government reverberated along even the most remote part of Serbia, Montenegro, and the Slavic parts of Austria-Hungary. Particularly influential for the oppressed South Slavic peoples was the national policy of the Bolsheviks, which decisively rejected and laid bare the old bourgeois conception of the national question, transforming it from a separate question of the struggle against national oppression into a general question of liberation from imperialism.

Originally, the imperialists of the Entente wanted to save Austria-Hungary, the bulwark of conservatism in Central Europe, from total destruction. The South Slavic bourgeoisie, at the behest of the Entente imperialists and with the support of international austrophiles and petty-bourgeois conciliators, advocated the autonomy of the oppressed Slavic peoples within the framework, and not the complete destruction, of the Habsburg Empire. It was only when it became obvious that in the face of the revolutionary crisis that the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Monarchy, in the midst of its own internal contradictions, could not be saved did the South Slavic bourgeoisie rush to establish its administrative apparatus in order to prevent the formation of Soviet republics such as those already formed in Vojvodina and Slavonia.

The creation of a unified state of the South Slavs – this was the historical task facing the South Slavic peoples and their true desire. Neither national oppression nor the incitement of religious differences would be possible within the framework of a Balkan Democratic Federation with full and consistent democracy. The South Slavic peoples would be provided with a wide and free development. Instead, through the compromise of counter-revolutionary forces and under pressure from the imperialists of the Entente, the “unified state” created on the ruins of the Habsburg Empire took the form of a dungeon of peoples forever tarnished in the memory of the Yugoslavs, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

The Greater Serbian bourgeoisie played a major role in the political life of Yugoslavia, and the central political figure in Yugoslavia was King Alexander. This resulted from the fact that only the Serbian bourgeoisie had an army at the time of unification, which was of great importance to the counter-revolutionary forces for the introduction of their own administrative apparatus in the territory of Yugoslavia. Initially, the regime of “liberal” monarchy was introduced, essentially a compromise between the Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian bourgeoisie, but the Greater Serbian bourgeoisie, in order to overtake its Slovenian and Croatian equivalents, had to adhere to the Greater Serbian program, which required it to make its power independent from the National Assembly and the government. Thus, with the Vidovdan Constitution, the rule of King Alexander was officially sanctioned, and later the entire parliamentary system gave way to a monarcho-fascist dictatorship. Such rule allowed the Greater Serbian bourgeoisie to create an advantageous position for itself in relation to the Slovenian and Croatian bourgeoisie, but also to conduct systematic persecutions and denationalization programs against the oppressed nations in Yugoslavia.

Imperialism did not develop the productive forces of Yugoslavia. While the international pace of industrialization in the next twenty years after the end of World War I averaged 3%, the pace of industrialization of Yugoslavia was only 2% per year. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, essentially just an agrarian appendage of large imperialist states from which they extracted raw materials, consciously hindering the development of the manufacturing industry. Although it had extremely favorable natural conditions for the development of its economy, especially in terms of mineral wealth, then natural energy sources and agrarian and forest areas, imperialism held the key positions of the Yugoslav economy. Thus, for example, aluminum production in Yugoslavia was prevented in the midst of an agreement between world monopolies, because Yugoslavia was designated for the export of aluminum for certain German concerts. The extent to which the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was dependent on imperialism is revealed by reports that foreign capital comprised 98.2% of cotton yarn production, 76.1% of sugar production, 100% of copper and lead production, 100% of bauxite production, 70% of Yugoslav naval tonnage, 60.3% of Yugoslav electricity capacity, etc. The statistics are similar for all branches of the Yugoslav economy. Such exploitation of Yugoslavia took place at the expense of the consumption of the broad masses of the people. For example, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was one of the largest producers of sugar beet in Europe, and at the bottom of the list of consumption of the same.

The peasantry, which made up the vast majority of the population, was also subjected to brutal feudal exploitation by large landowners, often foreign, especially in Croatia and Vojvodina. What the feudal lords failed to squeeze out of their peasants on the basis of their feudal rights, they would squeeze out with a heavy state tax and purposeful impoverishment of the village. The general backwardness of Yugoslav villages is evidenced by the statistics that in 1931 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had only 800 doctors for every 11.5 million peasants.

Thus, during the First World War, the Yugoslav peoples were not only unable to achieve their national unification and liberation, not only could they not solve their national problems and remove the causes of their mutual hostilities, but they emerged from that war economically exhausted and destroyed, politically dependent on the great imperialist states of the Entente, whose domination was ensured by the militaristic-bureaucratic apparatus of the Greater Serbian bourgeoisie and landowners. The main cause of this sequence of events is the weakness of the proletariat in the Balkans at that time, the bankruptcy and conciliation of social democracy, and then the reactionary influences and pressures of the powerful imperialist bourgeoisie of the Entente.

IV. THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia was constituted from the organizations of the former Social Democratic Party as a consequence of the persistent two-line struggle of communist elements against the right and centrist elements and through the Party’s entry into the Communist International at the Vukovar Congress in 1920. In the tumultuous post-war years, the Party led the vast majority of the working class of Yugoslavia, but without completely breaking with its social-democratic deviations in the national and peasant question, it still did not have a militant Bolshevik program, nor was it capable of opposing the persecutions to which the white terror subjected it.

In the years that followed, in the period leading up to the III. Congress, several successes were achieved in the struggle against the Social-Democratic deviations and centrists, but nevertheless, just when the Party was about to become the headquarters of everything that was alive and capable of fighting among the masses of people of the country against the bourgeois reaction which was preparing the monarcho-fascist dictatorship, it was overwhelmed by fierce factional struggles which paralyzed the Party organizations and turned the Party leadership into a permanent discussion club.

The fatal practice of factionalism must not be confused with ideological struggle, which is a necessary and integral part of the process of Bolshevisation. Factionalism actually meant that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia adopted the decisions and advice of the Comintern in words, but systematically undermined and sabotaged them in deeds. Thus, for example, the September Plenum of 1926 and the April and November Plenums of 1927 correctly set out the tasks of the Party, gave an accurate criticism of mistakes and shortcomings, but the Party leadership did nothing to actually implement all these decisions of the Plenum. On the contrary, the living questions of the proletarian struggle were pushed into the background, and scholaristic wisdom was highlighted, where the only important thing was to outmanoeuvre the factional opponent.

Although they differed in many terminological and conceptual aspects, both the “left” and right factions were essentially bourgeois. Their unprincipled struggle led to the demoralization of the membership and threatened to disintegrate the Party as well as destroy the prestige it enjoyed within the masses of the people. In order to save the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from collapse, the Comintern in an open letter called on all Party members to resolutely rise up against factionalism and appointed a new workers’ leadership headed by Đuro Đaković. The Party membership resolutely accepted the contents of the Comintern’s open letter, and the new workers’ leadership immediately set about implementing it.

This course of the two-line struggle in the Party was a reflection of world events, primarily and most importantly of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, which played an important role in achieving the unity of the proletariat against opportunism and the alliance of social democracy with the reactionary governments.

In October 1928 the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was held in Dresden. The IV. Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia analyzed the economic and political situation in Yugoslavia and in the world and took a position on the most important theoretical and practical questions. Decisions of the IV. Congress gave the Party membership and the entire proletariat a clear and proper organization for future work. The “left” and right factions had to capitulate to the Congress, which encouraged all those numerous communist cadres who, despite the persecution and regardless of the factionalism in the party leadership, boldly carried the flag of struggle for the liberation of the proletariat and other working masses from the capitalist yoke.

It was at the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia that the question of the character of the impending revolution in Yugoslavia was raised for the first time. It has been rightly established that the Yugoslav revolution will be a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and that as such it forms an integral part of the World Proletarian Revolution, which is a complex process of peasant, national-revolutionary, colonial and proletarian movements and uprisings. The Congress also rightly established that the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations is not and cannot be the driving force of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, but that its victory is conceivable only as a revolutionary victory of the working class and peasantry against the bourgeoisie, with the establishment of a democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasantry on the basis of the Soviets.

The capitulation of the “left” and right factions was an important step forward, but it could not mean the end of the two-line struggle. There was no doubt that there was a group of Trotskyists, Zinovievites, and Bukharinists in the Party, who, in spite of their differences among themselves, participated together in undermining the line of the Open Letter. Thus, apart from the best of the Party’s cadres, a number of people with little or no connection with the Party, who did not grow up in it and who were brought up outside of it were elected to the leadership.

The Fourth Congress gave the Party a new life and in a short time significantly strengthened all its organizations. However, at the beginning of its consolidation after the Fourth Congress, the Party was caught by a coup d’état and the establishment of a bloody monarcho-fascist dictatorship. Thus, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, Đuro Đaković, was brutally murdered by the police only a few months after the Congress, on April 25, 1929.

Since its founding at the Vukovar Congress in 1920, the Party has only retreated in the face of the cruel blows inflicted on it by the reaction. The Party was suffocated by the lack of a firm Bolshevik orientation such as the one established with the Fourth Congress. In the case of the rule of terror, the Central Committee of the Party hoped that the regime would outlive itself quickly, without the active interference of the popular and above all proletarian masses, counting exclusively on the struggle within the ruling classes. Thus, the Party was repeatedly decapitated by the class enemy and forced to concentrate its energies and forces on reorganization. Although the IV. Congress was a turning point in the orientation of the Party, that Party which was accustomed to retreat, which always appealed to the working class and the broad masses of the people to avoid a confrontation with the class enemy, could not reorganize itself in the short term on a truly Bolshevik basis.

After the death of Đuro Đaković, the leadership, led by Martinović, fled abroad and adopted the wrong “leftist” line of armed uprising against the monarcho-fascist dictatorship. Without real directives and without the support of the leadership, with work made difficult by provocateurs and spies within the Party, the healthy elements that found themselves in Yugoslavia were decimated by the monarcho-fascist dictatorship. Martinović, as an agent of imperialism and with the support of Trotskyists and Zinovievites in the Party, stepped down from the line of the Open Letter, reviving factional struggles. His “third group” pursued a policy of unprincipled mutual cover-up of mistakes, shortcomings and disagreements, and the true state of the Party was hidden from the Comintern and the membership.

At the end of 1932 the Comintern removed Martinović’s leadership due to factionalism, and a temporary leadership was appointed, headed by Milan Gorkić. Gorkić was a student and personal friend of a well-known revisionist and one of the leaders of the Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites together with Krestinsky – Bukharin – on whose personal initiative he rose to prominence. Milan Gorkić presented himself to the Party membership as a return to the path outlined by the Open Letter. In reality, he was a revisionist of the Bukharin type and an accomplice in the opposition-led anti-Soviet conspiracy. Following the example of his mentor, Gorkić‘s philosophy can be explained by revising the essence of the law of contradiction that the one splits into two, arguing that the two antagonistic sides of a contradiction merge into one: the Bolsheviks and the Trotskyists; the rich kulaks and the poor peasants; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; etc…

At the Fourth National Conference of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia held in Ljubljana on December 24 and 25 1934, a new Politburo was formed. With the exception of Blagoje Parović, whose appointment was supposed to represent “continuity” with the line of comrade Đuro Đaković in front of the Party membership, the entire Politburo of the Party was in the hands of the revisionists. The Party did undergo a certain renewal and consolidation, but this was done primarily through the persistent work of the middle cadre, while the final goal of the Gorkićites was to position the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in an advantageous position after the usurpation of power by the bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. From the very beginning, Gorkić and his faction formed a bloc with the Trotskyists and Zinovievists in the Party, protecting them both from their own Party and from the Comintern. Although the middle cadre fought for the revival and consolidation of the Party, the revisionists at the head of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia actively liquidated it, sometimes from the “left”, sometimes from the right.

Protecting his revisionist accomplices, Gorkić blamed the Comintern for the crisis in the Party in the period after the execution of Đuro Đaković. The two-line struggle within the Comintern itself, where the proletarian section led by comrade Stalin clashed with non-proletarian elements and the world anti-Soviet conspiracy in which direction the international opposition was going, had a sometimes harmful, sometimes positive influence on the development of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. But it is not true, as many bourgeois historians believe, that the ultimate cause of the crisis in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was its subordination to the Comintern.

The Comintern had a primarily positive influence on the development and Bolshevization of the Party. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the Comintern, relying on healthy elements in the wing of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, through its advice and directives, significantly helped the Yugoslav communists to bolshevize, as well as to develop the Party in the direction of seizing power. The Comintern also repeatedly saved the Party from certain disintegration. To deny this would be to deny the enormous historical role of the Comintern and Comrade Stalin as the helm of the International Communist Movement. The main responsibility for numerous crises must be borne by the Yugoslav communists themselves.

After the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, which correctly faced the development of the world situation and which set the basic tasks within the international communist movement, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, led by Gorkić, thanks to his philosophy that two antagonistic sides merge into one, incorrectly applied the policy of the Popular Front, thus deepening its liquidation at the expense of the middle cadre who suffered the most sacrifices for it.

In Yugoslavia, at the organizational level, only the Penal Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, in which the middle cadre headed by Comrade Petko Miletić was extremely concentrated, was truly opposed to the opportunistic policy of the Gorkićites. Gorkić’s accusations that the Penal Committee opposed the Seventh Congress of the Comintern are not true. The only thing that is true is that they opposed the liquidationist interpretation of Gorkić which threatened to liquidate the entire Party. Gorkić was not able to suppress the influence of Comrade Miletić or to solve the “problem of the Penal Committee”, primarily because the middle cadre was on the side of Comrade Petko Miletić, and finally, because the international anti-Soviet conspiracy itself, which he and his clique of traitors and vermin advocated, was increasingly exposed.

When Gorkić’s involvement came to light, he and the other conspirators at the head of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were sentenced to death, and the main immediate task of the Party was a general reorganization. Only Josip Broz Tito, despite being a Gorkićite, managed to get out of the previous Politburo alive. Aware of his own role and opportunism, while extensive material was being prepared against him, Tito refused the directives of the Comintern to appear for questioning. Because of his own ambitions, Tito formally distanced himself from the Gorkićites, but his philosophical views were still essentially identical. During this period, Tito surrounded himself with opportunistic trash that resembled himself (Đilas, Kardelj, Ranković, etc…) and already in mid-1937 he began to behave as the general secretary of the Party.

He had no right to do so, and apart from a few renegades he gathered around him, no one in the Party supported his ambition. Everyone from exile of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Paris, as well as everyone in prison, knew him well as a notorious opportunist and were against his takeover of the Party.

From the very beginning, Tito pursued a policy of bribing and corrupting people, and he simply destroyed all those hardworking communists who had been educated and elevated in the Party for decades. Among Tito’s first steps were attacks on Ivan Marić and Labud Kusovac as “factionalists” within the Party who prevented its reorganization because they did not submit to his leadership. This was the precursor to the “final” conflict with the left that Tito had after the end of the imprisonment of comrade Petko Miletić, a former member of the Politburo and organizational secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, who had the sincere support of the vast majority of the Party. Comrade Petko Miletić immediately traveled to Moscow at the invitation of the Comintern, where he tried to expose Tito’s treacherous activities and philosophical views.

But Tito did not sit idly by either, and the revisionist eel knew how to get through. Tito, together with other opportunists, at the head of the so-called “Temporary Leadership” on behalf of the entire Party, demanded the arrest of Comrade Miletić, presenting the issue of his arrest as a matter of the fight against espionage and treason. He presented a multitude of falsified evidence and fabricated stories before the Comintern and appealed for his arrest on behalf of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Tito, of course, had no right to do so. He simply staged a coup d’état in the party and seized power. This sequence of events and the mistakes of the communists in the fight against Titoism in its beginnings deserve to be studied in depth, but it is important to point out firstly, that the left within the Communist Party of Yugoslavia acted “parliamentarily” and too passively, for them it was important that the issue be resolved through the Statute. The Communists allowed Tito to inflict a few heavy blows on them before Comrade Petko Miletić was even released from prison. Then secondly, that Tito’s life was saved thanks to his ability to bribe opportunistic scum, most notably Josip Kopinič, a degenerate who spent the rest of his life bragging about how he saved Tito with falsified evidence.

Immediately after the arrest of comrade Petko Miletić, Tito strengthened his position with the purge of the “Petkovites”, that is, all the best communists who, despite all those traitors and pests within the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, had been developing and defending the Party for decades.

V. PEOPLE'S LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Aware of the fact that a new imperialist war for the re-division of the world was inevitable, Comrade Stalin raised important strategic and tactical questions at the XVII. Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) about the defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the further development of the world proletarian revolution. This congress represented a decisive victory and further development of the red line that Comrade Stalin had defended since the XIV. Congress of the VKPB.

At the XVII. Congress of the VKPB, Comrade Stalin correctly characterized the international situation, exposed what was behind the rise of fascism in a number of countries, and, realizing that the coming imperialist war would inevitably direct its bayonets against the USSR, conceived the defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat as part of the international struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the oppressed peoples against imperialism. Comrade Stalin drew the correct conclusion that such a war would end fatally for imperialism, because it would mean the sure overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the landlords in many countries. Although at that time Stalin had in mind primarily the reckoning with revisionism within the VKPB, the strategic and tactical issues raised at this magnificent congress were of paramount importance for the course of the two-line struggle of all parties. With the demolition of the remaining Trotskyite-Bukharinist-Zinovievite illusions, the “left” opportunists of all countries were dealt a heavy blow. This is especially true in the period after the VII. Congress of the Comintern, at which, under Stalin's leadership, Comrade Dimitrov developed a strategic and tactical line that prepared the International Communist Movement for a confrontation with the armed counter-revolution and laid the foundations for the coming victory in the anti-fascist war.

The dialectic of the two-line struggle meant that the result of such a blow to “left” opportunism was not only the strengthening of the true, communist left, but inevitably also of right-wing opportunism, which took advantage of this course of the two-line struggle to conceal its own revisionist positions. Characteristic of Gorkić and later Tito was that they took advantage of the defeat of the ultra-left at the VII. Congress of the Comintern to present their revisionist views as more acceptable to their own party.

The permanent existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics alongside aggressive imperialist states is framed with a series of major conflicts. As long as the capitalist environment existed, there was also the danger of an attack by the imperialist states on the first country of socialism. The Second World War, which began as an imperialist war, exposed in a sharp form the contradictions in the camp of the capitalist countries between the camps of the bourgeois-democratic states, on the one hand, and the camps of the fascist states, on the other. These contradictions were a kind of reserve of the country of socialism, and their correct exploitation for the sake of solving the main problems of the World Proletarian Revolution brought a huge qualitative leap to the International Communist Movement culminating at the end of the war with the establishment of the socialist and democratic camp led by the USSR. The credit for this enormous success belongs primarily to the head of the VKPB and the Comintern, Comrade Stalin!

Comrade Stalin did not make any strategic or line mistakes during the VII. Congress of the Comintern. On the contrary, it was with this congress that Comrade Stalin reaffirmed his role as the genius head of the International Communist Movement. The silly ideas that Comrade Stalin advocated some kind of policy of a perpetual Popular Front, a peaceful transition to socialism, or that he condemned the people's liberation struggles against the imperialist liberal democracies, are nothing more than Trotskyist fabrications with no basis in reality. The inability of the European communist parties that applied the tactics of the anti-fascist popular front to seize power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat does not stem from the policy of the Popular Front itself, but from its revisionist application. Thus, Stalin did not prevent the French or Italian communists from seizing power, but their own revisionism did.

When the Hitlerites declared war on the land of socialism, the war of liberation of all the peoples of the Soviet Union against fascist tyranny united with all those liberation movements of the European peoples which Hitler's imperialism had enslaved into one indestructible camp. Everywhere and in every place, the flame of the Partisan war spread, creating an unbearable situation for the German occupiers and their helpers. On such occasions, the struggle of the enslaved peoples of Europe took the form of the “rear” of the front of the Red Army, with which it was in unbreakable unity. It was clear that the main task of the Partisans in occupied Europe was to lighten the burden borne by the Red Army and the Soviet people at the front. The people's liberation struggle of the Yugoslav Partisans also falls into this category.

The opportunistic leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, led by Tito, managed to win the People's Liberation War because it sincerely followed the program of national liberation from fascist tyranny and did not accept compromises with the occupying forces. This meant that in the anti-fascist war, the Yugoslav leadership took the side of those invincible historical forces that ensured the defeat and destruction of the camps of the fascist countries. These historical forces include, first of all, the socialist state of the USSR, then the liberation movements of European peoples enslaved by Hitler's imperialism, and finally the anti-fascist coalition of democratic states. Despite this, the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia remained opportunistic. The party continued to rot from within and opportunism secured key positions of power for itself.

From the earliest days of the struggle against the occupation, the Yugoslav partisans saw themselves as an extension of the Red Army fighting in the rear. It cannot be overestimated how much the Yugoslav people truly loved the Soviet Union and with what enthusiasm they waited for the Red Army troops. There were no illusions among the Partisans or the Yugoslav leadership that the People's Liberation War against the fascist occupation could have been won without the extensive internationalist assistance provided by the country of socialism. The ridiculous idea that Yugoslavia liberated itself completely alone is an unfounded product of revisionist “historiography”. In reality, despite the heroic and absolutely justified struggles of the Yugoslav partisans, the fate of the enslaved Yugoslav people depended primarily on the front. It was the victories of the heroic Red Army at the front that enabled the unfavorable situation of the Yugoslav Partisans to turn into a victory and to transform Yugoslavia into a people's democracy.

In the heat of the Great Patriotic War, an anti-fascist coalition of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States of America was created with the aim of destroying the armed forces of the fascist states. Such a coalition was possible because during the war the contradiction between the Soviet Union and the imperialist countries of the coalition was secondary, the country of socialism fought to the death against the fascist occupier. The members of this coalition had different views in determining the goals of the war, but it is common knowledge that the enormous strength of the Soviet Union and the support shown to it by freedom-loving peoples around the world guaranteed its main, leading role in the coalition, thus giving it a liberating character, and this greatly influenced the outcome of the war.

With the end of World War II, the world capitalist system as a whole suffered another serious loss. As Comrade Zhdanov explained, while the most important result of the First World War was the breakthrough of the united imperialist front and the fall of Russia from the world system of capitalism, while due to the victory of the socialist order in the USSR, capitalism ceased to be the only, comprehensive system of the world economy, the Second World War and the defeat of fascism, the weakening of the world positions of capitalism and the strengthening of the anti-fascist movement led to the fall away from the imperialist system of a number of countries of central and South-East Europe. In these countries, including Yugoslavia, the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in the form of people's democracy. The European people's democracies achieved in a very short period of time aggressive democratic changes which the bourgeoisie had not previously tried or discussed.

Out of all the people's democracies, the Yugoslav one was the shortest-lived, and it was in Yugoslavia that we saw revisionism in power for the first time. The mythology of Titoist revisionism likes to pretend that Tito heroically opposed the subjugation of Yugoslavia to the USSR, but it couldn't be further from the truth that Comrade Stalin had any hegemonic ambitions. No country has helped post-war Yugoslavia as much as the USSR, to which we owe the establishment of people's democracy in our country. The USSR suffered the greatest sacrifices in order to provide the Yugoslav state with resources, food, technicians and experts, military equipment, and various other forms of assistance. That Stalin had any hegemonic ambition is simply an invention of Titoist revisionism and does not reflect how the masses of Yugoslavia perceived the Soviet Union.

In fact, it was Comrade Stalin, as the helmsman of the International Communist Movement, who said “no” to Tito, as Comrade Vlado Dapčević points out. The explanation lies in the fact that Tito's opportunism, now in a secure position of power, began a systematic campaign of undermining people’s democracy and returning Yugoslavia to the path of the bourgeoisie. Building on his predecessor Gorkić, Tito and his opportunist clique at the head of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia used the strategic issues of the anti-fascist war to change the Party's line. Titoist revisionism, from the position of state power, denied the necessity of class struggle in the countryside, refused to recognize class differences among the peasantry, undermined the leadership of the working class in the people's democratic state, and this is the most important characteristic of Titoist revisionism, liquidated the leading role of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, replacing it with the leading role of the Popular Front. That is why the Cominform, led by Comrade Stalin, presented its criticism, not out of some “hegemonic” ambition!

Due to the strength and breadth of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the Party as well as the broad masses of the people, Titoist revisionism could only be held in power by the most terrible white terror unknown and unprecedented until then. Titoist revisionism persecuted the communists worse than even King Alexander, those murderers and spies who found themselves in power used all means at their disposal to brutally crush not only their former comrades, but also anyone who showed any sympathy for them. Over 250,000 of the 400,000 members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were expelled or arrested, not counting many who, out of fear, decided to remain silent or completely exclude themselves from political life in order to preserve themselves and their families. The white terror of the Titoists spread like a plague to even the smallest enterprises. Former shock brigadists lost their jobs and became homeless, while their chairs were filled by careerists, mostly rehabilitated Chetniks, best described by the humorous folk saying “Partisans to the graves, Chetniks to the chairs!”

VI. THE CURRENT POSITION OF THE REPUBLICS OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Over the ruins of people’s democracy, the Titoist revisionists raised the “lost empire” of comprador-bureaucratic capitalism. It was nothing more than the restoration of bureaucratic capitalism as it existed in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, with the difference that this time the bureaucratic side was dominant in the formulation of comprador-bureaucratic capitalism. This stemmed from the important role that Yugoslavia played for imperialism, and from the fact that the power of the revisionist bureaucracy became all the more unlimited the more the means that this imperialism gave it into its hands grew. Due to the inability of the Yugoslav bourgeoisie to consolidate its position, Tito was a central figure in the political life of Yugoslavia, a Bonapartist figure for whose approval and influence the bureaucratic and comprador factions of the bourgeoisie fought. This formed the basis for various conflicts that arose within the revisionist circles of Yugoslavia, such as the famous conflict between “centralists and decentralists”, the removal of Ranković and later Đilas, etc.

In the midst of these struggles which various cliques waged to win over Tito, dragging him now to this side, and now to the other, because of this division which was immanent to every reactionary form of the Yugoslav state, there was an almost constant terrible confusion about the question of state policy, which developed in sharp turns. However, the bureaucratic faction was generally more dominant until Tito's death. The dominance of the bureaucratic fraction of the bourgeoisie within the Yugoslav state meant that the state actually took advantage of the concessions that imperialism gave it to create a large bureaucratic industry. At the same time, although industry in the cities did indeed prosper on the basis of bureaucratic state capital, Yugoslav capitalism developed in a scattered way, useful to imperialism. This is most evident when we look at the fact that feudal relations in Yugoslavia were not liquidated, but on the contrary were reproduced and reconstructed for the benefit of the comprador-bureaucratic bourgeoisie and their imperialist masters.

The agrarian structure of revisionist Yugoslavia was the clearest indicator of semi-feudalism. The peasantry, which made up the majority of the population in revisionist Yugoslavia as well, consisted mainly of small landowners who had less than 5 hectares of land. This enormous mass of peasantry played an essential role for the bourgeoisie in power as a semi-proletariat. Thanks to the fact that the peasantry produced for the market instead of for their own consumption, while they were trapped in the exchange systems rigged against them by merchants and agro-industrial bureaucratic capital, an unbearable state of affairs arose in the Yugoslav countryside responsible for the now well-known exodus of the peasantry to the cities. This peasantry was never fully integrated into the production process, but this newborn proletariat was sent as cheap labor for northern and western Europe, primarily West Germany, where, according to the official data of revisionist Yugoslavia, over 500,000 Yugoslavs worked at that moment.

The Yugoslav peasantry, who sought salvation from starvation in the cities, became the perfect “export commodity”!

Thanks to the revolutionary heritage and tradition of the Yugoslav peoples, the exploitation of the proletariat and peasantry by the social-fascists could not go smoothly. In fact, numerous uprisings against Titoism and the clashes of the popular masses with social-fascism forced the Yugoslav state to spend huge sums on the creation of a “welfare state” in order to succeed in preserving relative social peace. Finding in Tito an important ally, imperialism provided Yugoslavia with huge non-performing loans that the state used to finance this welfare state. Another important element was the import of labor from the poorer republics, primarily Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, to the richer republics, where they filled their already bloated service industries.

The bureaucratic faction, as already mentioned, was generally more dominant than the comprador faction, which does not mean that the influence of the comprador faction of the big bourgeoisie could not be felt. Comprador capitalists flooded the Yugoslav market with huge quantities of industrial and agricultural products from imperialist countries, importing them even when these products could be produced more cheaply in Yugoslavia or when existing stockpiles were enormous. Yugoslavia's rich raw materials were sent in masse to Western Europe and the United States of America at prices unfavorable to Yugoslavia. Many important industrial enterprises of Yugoslavia produced under licenses from Western countries, their production depended on semi-processed raw materials, spare parts and semi-finished products that they obtained exclusively from the monopoly companies of the imperialists of Europe and the United States of America.

In foreign policy, the Yugoslav bourgeoisie followed American imperialism by the tail, stabbing the oppressed peoples of Korea, Greece and Vietnam in the back so as not to anger their imperialist masters. Just as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was an important part of the cordon sanitaire, revisionist Yugoslavia also played an important role in suppressing and stopping the spread of the Bolshevik plague that was rapidly spreading throughout the world of exploiters.

Of course, the quarreling brothers, bureaucrats and compradors, would once again act in unison and close ranks around Tito when they noticed that the broad masses of the people were hostile to them. And yet, profit was their God, not Tito. When the internal contradictions of the economic system of Yugoslavia reached such a point where the state could no longer provide its own bourgeoisie with the same rate of exploitation, the bureaucratic and comprador bourgeoisie, who found support only in Titoism, agreed to undermine this support themselves. Unbelievable, but true. Yugoslav nationalism grew into the nationalism of individual republics, the influence of Tito declined, and the influence of individual nationalist forces grew.

Imperialism carefully observed the situation in Yugoslavia, supporting in accordance with its own interests various nationalists, sometimes several of them at the same time. The bureaucratic bourgeoisie of each individual republic cried out for “its field” for exploitation, freed from the competitors of other nations. In their insatiable greed and irrationality, they helped destroy their own empire and domination over Yugoslavia, paving the way for the complete domination of the comprador faction of the big bourgeoisie that we are witnessing today.

The break-up of Yugoslavia was against the wishes of all its peoples. It came unannounced and abruptly for the masses of the people, who were exploited in the genocidal fratricidal war that the bourgeoisie masked with any cultural differences that it could still find between the peoples of Yugoslavia. The most aggressive nationalism was Greater Serbian nationalism, which spread its flame of war to all Yugoslav peoples, until it was stopped by American imperialism out of its own interests.

After the nationalist madness, seven semi-colonial and semi-feudal disintegrated republics emerged on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia, divided along cultural lines by imperialism. Although the state and political form have changed, basically the same class of the great bureaucratic-comprador bourgeoisie now rules as in Tito's Yugoslavia, with the only difference that imperialism has now formalized the division of spheres of influence among the members of that class and that the comprador faction is now generally dominant in all the republics of the former Yugoslavia.

The perverted power of the irresponsible comprador cliques is incapable of satisfying the most general material and cultural needs of the broad masses of the people. The general crisis of imperialism, which does not bypass the former Yugoslavia, leads to the disintegration of capitalist enterprises and capitalist discipline, making it impossible to establish production on the old basis, and the struggle of the proletariat for an increase in wages does not bring the desired results, because the terrible cost of food nullifies any success in this direction. The game is still rigged against the peasantry and therefore it continues its continuous exodus to the cities, often going to Austria or Germany because it cannot be used in the production process. The petty bourgeoisie is becoming more and more agitated because the illusions of reactionary liberalism that the comprador bourgeoisie has instilled in them are shattered before their eyes. The national bourgeoisie makes miserable minimal profits, mostly in the bloated service sector, while the comprador bourgeoisie stands over it as a monopolistic bourgeoisie with unlimited political rights.

All the blame for this intolerable state of affairs belongs to the ruling class. By imposing burdens of various kinds over the masses of the people, it destroyed and then devastated the former Yugoslavia; With a fratricidal war, it drowned the country in a sea of blood, creating a generation of crippled people, widows and orphans. To the descendants of the victims of the war, the bourgeoisie has left only the illusions of the European Union and leaves things to their imagination. Every republic of the former Yugoslavia is dependent on imperialism, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that they would not have survived a day in their present form without the force of American militarism, the only force that keeps the present state of affairs as it is.

Interested only in enrichment, in mafia affairs and in criminal speculation, the comprador bourgeoisie, by the brutal exploitation of the Yugoslav peoples, secured profits for itself and its imperialist rulers, to whom, by the way, it sold the whole country and allowed foreign capital unlimited domination over all those spheres over which it could lay its bloody hands. But this was done at the expense of the masses of the people, who now do not have the opportunity to develop and solve their national question.

The broad masses of the former Yugoslavia therefore stand in sharp contradiction to the three great evils that hinder the development of the Yugoslav peoples and their strong tendency towards unification. These are: 1) imperialism; 2) feudalism; 3) bureaucratic capitalism. Of these, the main contradiction which determines the development of our socio-economic organism is the contradiction between the masses of the people and feudalism.

VII. RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA

From this situation, which has been brilliantly confirmed both by the present class struggles and by the general revolutionary situation, the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia sets itself the tasks of the historical communist program.

GENERAL PROGRAM OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA:

1. The Communists demand a permanent revolution up to the abolition of class distinctions in general, the abolition of all relations of production on which they rest, the abolition of all social relations corresponding to these relations of production, and the revolutionization of all ideas arising from these social relations.

2. The Communists demand the abolition of the distinction between town and country, the abolition of the division of labor resulting from the latter.

3. The communists demand the abolition of the division of physical and mental labor, not by lowering engineers and professors to the level of workers and peasants, but by elevating workers and peasants to the level of engineers and professors.

4. The communists demand the abolition of the family and the socialization of unproductive domestic work.

5. Communists demand the abolition of national antagonism, and then of nations in general.

6. The communists demand the free development of all, each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

The Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia concludes that in order to realize the historical communist program, it must fight for the following goals formulated in its concrete program of action:

ACTION PROGRAM OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA:

1. The New Democratic Republic. It is clear from the semi-colonial and semi-feudal character of the present Yugoslav society that the Yugoslav revolution must be divided into two stages, the first of which has the task of radically transforming the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society into an independent democratic society. The democratic Federal Yugoslavia that the Yugoslav peoples have to establish must be a democratic republic under the common dictatorship of a united front of all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal forces headed by the proletariat. The tasks of the new democratic government of the united front in Yugoslavia consist of the following:

1. The implementation of agrarian reform in order to liquidate semi-feudalism and to consolidate the alliance between the working class and the peasantry. Socialist agriculture will not be established, but the slogan of such an agrarian reform will be “Land to the tiller!”
2. Nationalization of all foreign companies and expropriation of bureaucratic capital. Their transformation on a socialist basis.
3. Ensuring full equality between the various nations of Yugoslavia, clearing the way for their national unification.
4. The renewal and development of the economy, the initiation of the actual industrialization of the country, thus ensuring the independence and sovereignty of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, the material and cultural well-being of the broad masses of the people.
5. The inclusion in active political and economic life of millions of people who today do not have the opportunity to devote themselves to it, primarily women, as a prerequisite for a Soviet-style proletarian democracy.
6. Expansion of public property and creation of favorable conditions for the socialist transformation of the economy.
7. The complete separation of church, mosque and state, which has not yet been fully implemented.
8. Complete destruction of misogynistic practices of selling women, arranged marriages, prostitution, pornography, etc.
9. The implementation of a cultural revolution which, by liberating the people's intellect, will create a scientific culture aimed at serving the broad masses of the people.

Only with such a policy will the proletariat, in spite of all the efforts of its enemies, secure for itself the support of that stratum which stands between it and the bourgeoisie, thus turning this middle stratum into the reserve of the revolution. By using democracy, the proletariat creates the preconditions for the complete overthrow of the bourgeoisie and ensures its victory in the coming class struggles. By solving the tasks of the democratic and national revolution, the proletariat opens wide the door to its unceasing advance towards the socialist revolution. Only such a republic can guarantee the true equality and unity of all Yugoslav peoples, the destruction of American militarism in the region and the winning over of the vast majority of the masses of the people through the satisfaction of their basic material needs.

2. Soviet Federative Republic. The experience of the Russian Revolution teaches us that the transition from capitalism to socialism is carried out by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of Soviet power. Soviet power exercises the rule of the working people, it gives all power – legislative, executive and judicial – to the working people, who are organized in workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ councils. The Soviet Federative Republic of Yugoslavia is to enter into a fraternal alliance with all neighboring peoples for the purpose of establishing a Soviet federation of the Balkan and Danube countries, which would be an integral part of the international federation of Soviet republics. This international federation of Soviet republics will create a general union and lasting peace among peoples. The tasks of the Soviet Federative Republic of Yugoslavia consist in fulfilling the historical communist program, building a brilliant communist society through class struggle. However, the immediate tasks of such a republic are:

1. The creation and creative empowerment of the workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ councils as instruments of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
2. The formation of the people's militia in order to secure all the achievements of the workers’ state and the final victory of socialism – all workers and poor peasants who are capable of bearing arms are armed. Military exercises are carried out in parallel with the physical education of youth in schools. The standing army will gradually lose its importance and its role will be taken over by the people's militia.
3. Expropriation and socialization of production and commerce – the proletariat takes away all means of production and turns them into common, social property. Socialization also begins in the countryside, where all major estates are socialized, until the entire peasantry is convinced that it is much more useful to cultivate the land together, collectively.
4. Socialization of pharmacies, hospitals, sanatoriums, spas. Free and compulsory medical and hospital assistance for all citizens, abolition of commodity production in healthcare.
5. The introduction of compulsory labor for all able workers and the complete destruction of all non-working classes, labor deserters, leeches, etc. The introduction of the socialist principle “he who does not work, neither shall he eat”, the distribution of products according to labor.
6. Shortening of the working day and increase in the number of days off – the working day will be gradually abolished and give way to communist labor.
7. Requisition of buildings, flats and houses – all buildings, flats and houses will be immediately requisitioned, their occupants will be provided with the necessary quarters for habitation. All barracks, unhygienic apartments and sheds where people live must be closed, and the population that lived in them will move to healthy apartments.
8. Cancellation of all debts. The proletariat and its allies will be freed from taxes and all debts created by the domination of imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie.
9. To assist all the peoples of the world in the world-historical task of building socialism and the oppressed nations in their struggle against imperialism.
10. Carrying out continuous cultural revolutions directed against revisionism, preventing the re-emergence of the bourgeoisie and advancing towards communism. The attacks of imperialism and revisionism on such a republic will become more and more fierce, and the class struggle more acute, the more communism develops and the more capitalist relations are exceeded. Only when communism becomes an organic system will the class struggle cease to be necessary.

The Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is convinced that the future of the Yugoslav peoples consists of new democracy, peace among peoples, and socialism. But in order for these programmatic demands to become a reality, the proletariat and its allies must first seize power. The revolutionary epoch of the proletariat requires it to employ such instruments of struggle and concentrate all its energy, which draw the broad masses of the people into great struggles, into actions which end in open conflict with the bourgeois state. Any thought of carrying out a socialist revolution by means of a compromise with the bourgeoisie on the ground of bourgeois democracy is a utopia. The experience of all previous revolutions has shown us that a new social order can only be created in the social war of the oppressed masses of the people against the dying ruling class. No party, and especially not the Communist Party, can claim to be revolutionary if it does not actively prepare for this inevitability.

The revolutionary situation will develop unevenly, and therefore the process of the Yugoslav people's revolution will not be a uniform and rapid process, but a protracted process of connected struggles between different classes and nations. Under the leadership of the proletariat, the broad masses of the people, in the struggle against the comprador bourgeoisie, will form democratic bases which will serve as the embryo of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes over the comprador bourgeoisie and its lackeys. And although the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia hopes for the peaceful defeat of the comprador bourgeoisie and imperialism, experience teaches us that imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie will not be able to tolerate such democratic bases, which will be organized now in the countryside and now in the cities, and will inevitably use their armed force to destroy them. This situation requires the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to organize a people's army as a tool for defending the gains of the broad masses of the people in the process of democratic revolution.

The proletariat and the broad masses of the people vying for power with the comprador bourgeoisie must use their advantages to attack the opponent on his weak sides. The comprador bourgeoisie is originally strong and the superiority of power is on its side, it relies on modern weapons, logistical and production capabilities provided by state power. On the other hand, the proletariat is initially weak, but it relies on the highly conscious revolutionary masses of the people and its own ability to lead the revolutionary people’s movement. The relation of forces is therefore not in favor of the proletariat, but this initial superiority of the hostile forces is not absolute, but relative. The strength of the enemy is undermined by other, unfavorable factors, at the same time compensating for our weakness. With the changes in this relation of forces, there arises a development in the stages of the social war itself, and this is the reason for its long-lasting nature.

The driving force behind this development is the proper handling of the contradictions that the warring parties face. The Party must rely on the masses of the people and establish appropriate methods of working with changes in the objective situation so as not to create organizational shackles for the further development of a protracted people's war. The party has only one basic goal – the conquest of power – and here the dialectic of construction and destruction stands out completely. The Party and its People's Army conquered the areas of support by revolutionary violence and, through the organization of the united front, created a new government, subsequently developing new relations.

Insofar as the proletariat properly utilize its reserves, the power of the united front will receive more and more support, while the old government will become more and more fragile, fragmented and incapable of keeping itself alive. Partisan warfare will become supplemented by maneuver warfare, but will remain the main form of warfare. Then, when the supremacy of the forces is on the side of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people, the Party will rush forward to seize complete power in the country, and the enemy will be completely crushed. Maneuver warfare will take on a major role, and partisan warfare will complement it. Thus, through three stages, a long-lasting revolutionary process will take place, through which the class and the people will overcome a far stronger enemy and establish a new democratic government. In order to prepare for this historic inevitability, the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia sets forth the following minimum program:

MINIMUM PROGRAM:

In the present circumstances of our struggle, the emerging Communists, who assume responsibility for the concise task of reconstituting the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as a war machine of the class, are striving for the following:

1. The struggle against revisionism and liquidation – because the main contradiction that communists face today is the contradiction between reconstitution and liquidation.
2. The struggle to remove the nationalist consciousness from the broad masses of the people and replace it with the internationalist proletarian consciousness – the Serbian worker must be ready to “renounce Kosovo”.
3. The struggle for the establishment of committee newspapers and a press through which our emerging intellectuals are trained and our line is defended.
4. The struggle for the comprehensive political and theoretical development of our cadres – the cadres of the committee must first of all lead impeccable personal lives, because the political work of a member of the committee cannot be separated from his or hers personal life. The cadres must have a connection with the masses, Bolshevik modesty and vigilance, militant discipline and a desire to sincerely study Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory.
5. The struggle for participation in all economic and political conflicts and demands from the position of the revolutionary proletariat, the explanation of these conflicts and demands from the position of the revolutionary class struggle, the conquest of leadership in these struggles by means of persistent and tireless work.
6. The struggle for the creation of mass democratic, anti-imperialist and communist organizations, with the aim of creating a favorable political environment for the effort to reconstitute the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
7. The struggle for the release of political prisoners who were captured by the reaction.
8. Through all of the above, the struggle to develop the effort of reconstitution and its gradual merging with the broad masses of the people.

The party is the unity between revolutionary theory and social practice, to build a party is to build a revolutionary movement. The Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia resolutely rejects anti-Bolshevik “alliances” with the politicized petty bourgeoisie, which claims to be “fighting for the same goal by other means.” Revisionism is the worst enemy of the proletariat, and revisionist organizations are worse for the effort of reconstitution than open reactionaries. We will defend our teachings of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, without ever looking for false originality or cheap popularity.

Confident in our path and conscious of our goal, we proclaim that there is no more honorable task than the one we have undertaken – to be a red fighter under the banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, under the banner of the world proletarian revolution. Let's be the people who will have the historical honor of having opened the era of Maoism in the former Yugoslavia! Let us show that we are worthy of this honor, let us develop the effort of reconstitution!

DEATH TO REVISIONISM!

LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, PRINCIPALLY MAOISM!

LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA AND ITS BOLSHEVIK FOURTH

CONGRESS!

FOR THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA.

STATUTE

1. NAME AND PURPOSE

Art. 1. The aim of the Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is to carry out the reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as a war machine of the proletariat class in the furnace of class struggle in order to liberate the proletariat and all oppressed strata of the popular masses by establishing a classless socialist society. The theoretical basis that guides our ideas is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Art. 2. Members may be only those persons of both sexes who have reached the age of 18 who adopt the Program and the Statute of the Committee and undertake to work in the Committee, fulfill all decisions of the competent bodies, duly pay the membership fee and declare this in writing in their application.

Art. 3. For admission to membership, the approval of the Central Committee Council (CCC) is required.

Art. 4. Local organizations of committees shall have the right to submit in writing an application for membership on behalf of any person whose correctness can be sufficiently established.

Art. 5. For persons whose correctness cannot be sufficiently determined, local organizations of committees may make a period of six months a condition for admission to the organization, that their work gives sufficient evidence of their correctness towards the committee.

Art. 6. Any member of the committee who changes the place of activity must report it to the secretary of the local organization. To cross into another country, you need a permit from the CCC.

Art. 7. Those who fail to fulfill their obligations towards the Committee, who damage its reputation by their actions and who violate the Program and the Statute of the Committee may not remain members of the Committee.

3. STRUCTURE OF THE COMMITTEE

Art. 8. The Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was built on the basis of democratic centralism. Democratic centralism presupposes universal and complete freedom of criticism, so long as this criticism does not interfere with the decisive and unified action of the committee.

Art. 9. Each organ of the Committee shall be elected at assemblies of members, conferences and congresses of reconstitution.

Art. 10. Each organ of the Committee shall periodically submit a report on its work to the CCC and to the members of the Committee who elected it.

Art. 11. In resolving local issues, each organization of the Committee shall be autonomous, within the framework of the existing decisions and directives of the Committee.

Art. 12. The highest instance of each organization of the Committee shall be the Plenary Assembly of the Membership, at which the executive body shall be elected to manage the entire day-to-day work of the organization.

Art. 13. The scheme of the party structure is as follows:

a) for a workplace, street, university, etc.; Secretary/Secretariat of the Cell.

b) for the territory of a town, village, city; local conference or assembly – local secretariat.

c) for the entire area of operation; Congress, National Conference – Central Committee Council

Art. 14. For the performance of certain tasks, the Committee appoints special bodies-commissions, for example: women's, agitation-propaganda, for work among national minorities and migrants, etc. These organizations are subordinate to the competent body of the Committee, work according to its directives and implement their decisions through it.

4. CELL

Art. 15. The basic organization of the committee is a cell at the workplace, university, street, etc. A cell is established by at least two members, with the confirmation of the Local Committee, and if it has not yet been established in the area of operation of the cell, then with the confirmation of the CCC.

Art. 16. Members who are not employed in enterprises but are not further educated (small craftsmen, housewives, pensioners, etc.) are formed into a street cell or assigned to one of the nearest cells.

Art. 17. The tasks of the cell are: to carry out work among the popular masses through systematic communist agitation and propaganda, cultural and educational work among the members, to recruit new members, to disseminate the literature of the committee, to participate in all economic and political conflicts and demands from the position of the revolutionary proletariat, to explain these conflicts and demands from the standpoint of the revolutionary class struggle, to win the leadership in these struggles by means of persistent and tireless work, participate in the life of the Committee.

Art. 18. A cell secretary shall be elected every three months to manage the current work, distribute work among the members of the cell, maintain contact with the competent instance of the committee and collect the membership fee. If a cell has more than ten members, a secretariat of three members is elected.

5. LOCAL COMMITTEE

Art. 19. A local organization consists of all cells on the territory of one locality. The highest instance in one place is the local assembly, which is held regularly at least once a month. An Extraordinary Assembly shall be convened by the Local Committee if necessary and at the request of at least one third of the members.

Art. 20. A secretary of the Local Committee shall be elected every three months at the local assembly to manage the work of all organizations of his/her place, to control their work, to manage the registration of all members, to organize assemblies, to organize lectures, etc., to establish new cells, to handle the local committee treasury, to give a monthly report to the CCC. Insofar as the Local Committee has more than ten members, a secretariat of three members shall be elected, and if it has more than twenty members, a secretariat of five members shall be elected.

6. NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Art. 21. As a rule, the National Conference meets once a year. The key to convening the National Conference is determined by the CCC. All territories are represented through delegates elected by local committees. The Central Committee Council may invite any member to the National Conference with an advisory vote.

Art. 22. The decisions of the National Conference shall enter into force after their approval by the Central Committee Council.

7. CONGRESS OF RECONSTITUTION

Art. 23. The Congress of Reconstitution is the highest instance in the Committee, convened by the Central Committee Council, when it deems it timely and in favor of the reconstitution efforts.

Art. 24. The convocation of the Congress and its agenda shall be communicated to the members of the Committee at least one month before it is held.

Art. 25. Congress of Reconstitution:

a) Receives reports from the Central Committee Council;

b) Decides on the Committee's agenda

c) Makes decisions on all political, tactical and organizational matters

d) Elects the Central Committee Council

Art. 26. Delegates to the Congress of Reconstitution shall be elected by the local conferences. On special occasions, and with the permission of the Central Committee Council, delegates may be appointed by cells without a local conference, or the Congress of Reconstitution may be replaced by a national conference.

8. CENTRAL COMMITTEE COUNCIL

Art. 27. The Central Committee Council shall be the supreme body of the Committee for the time when the Congress of Reconstitution is not in operation. It represents the Committee before foreign organizations and parties, establishes the various committee bodies, directs the entire political and organizational work of the committee, appoints the editorial offices of the central organs, which work under its direction and control, manages all affairs that are important to the committee as a whole, assigns the committee's forces and manages the central treasury. The Central Committee Council meets at least once a quarter.

Art. 28. The number of members of the Central Committee Council shall be determined by the Congress of Reconstitution.

Art. 29. The Central Committee Council elects from among itself persons for the various branches of its work (such as: organization, work in the countryside, agitation and propaganda, etc.).

Art. 30. The Central Committee Council divides the country into oblasts and, if necessary, changes their borders. It may territorially merge or divide existing organizations, according to the political and economic needs of the reconstitution.

9. FINANCES OF THE COMMITTEE

Art. 31. Funds for all committee organizations are obtained: by permanent monthly membership fees, collection of voluntary contributions, through committee enterprises, etc.

Art. 32. The amount of the membership fee as well as the scale of distribution from the cell to the Central Committee Council shall be determined by the Congress or the Central Committee Council.

Art. 33. A member of the Committee who fails to pay the membership fee in two months without sufficient justified reasons shall be deemed to have resigned from the Committee. This will be announced at the meeting of his cell. Unemployed members as well as disabled members are exempt from paying membership fees.

10. DISCIPLINE

Art. 34. The strictest Bolshevik discipline is the highest duty of all members of the committee and all its organizations. The decisions of the Congress, the Central Committee Council and all the higher instances of the committee must be carried out promptly and accurately.

Art. 35. Violation of discipline entails penalties on the part of the competent authorities. Penalties can be:

a) for the organization – warning, severe warning, dissolution of the organization and re-registration of members.

b) for individual members – warning, severe warning, removal from office, temporary expulsion and final total expulsion from the Committee.

Art. 36. Decisions on discipline violations shall be made by the competent instances of the Committee. The motion for exclusion shall be submitted by the assembly of the competent organization to the Central Committee Council, whose decision shall be enforceable.

11. FINAL PROVISION

Art. 37. This Statute, approved by the Central Committee Council, shall have temporary significance and shall remain in force until the first ordinary congress of reconstitution.

CENTRAL COMMITTEE COUNCIL OF CR-CPY