The Tito clique sought to conceal from the masses its direct switch-over in the spring of 1948 to bourgeois nationalism, and the crusade against the Communists who had remained loyal to the cause of proletarian internationalism, with demagogic shouts about “unjust” attacks by Communist Parties.
The Communist Party of Yugoslavia was not a Party with a clear and definite strategy and tactics, with a definite political line of class struggle which, had the Party pursued it, would have enabled the Party to rally around itself the broad mass of the working class, the working people of town and countryside in the struggle against the exploiting classes.
The Party which, during the war, had lost a great number of its genuine Marxist-Leninist cadres (the majority of whom had been physically eliminated by the Titoites); the Party into which the Tito gang had brought various fascist and exploiting elements, placing imperialist spies in the leading posts: the Party in which the Marxist education of cadres was systematically substituted by the inculcation of bourgeois ideology—such a Party, after its remaining Marxist core had been smashed and after a crusade of terror, unprecedented in its ferocity, had been carried out, found itself in the power of assassins and spies.
The blows at the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were only the beginning of the onslaught undertaken by the fascist-espionage Tito gang on the orders of its Anglo-American masters against the working class and other masses of the working people, with the aim of abolishing their revolutionary gains. It eliminated the People’s Democratic system, detached Yugoslavia from the camp of Socialism which is headed by the Soviet Union, established a fascist regime in the country and turned Yugoslavia into a colony of U.S. imperialism.
The fascist-Gestapo Tito clique later launched an all-out offensive against the working people of Yugoslavia and their revolutionary gains. The working-class and the working peasantry were subjected to bloody terror and to severe exploitation, All representatives of the working class and the working peasantry were expelled from the organs of State power and replaced by the representatives of the urban bourgeoisie and the kulaks. The country was transformed into a huge forced labor camp where hundreds of thousands of working people are forced to work without pay to secure supplies of ore, timber and agricultural products for the Western capitalists and, above all, for the U.S. imperialists.
A brutal fascist regime was established in the country; a regime which is a weapon in the hands of the U.S. imperialists to turn the peoples of Yugoslavia into colonial slaves, and which is directed against the working masses and relies on this urban bourgeoisie and the kulaks.
The elimination of the People’s Democratic system and the institution of the fascist regime have resulted in the fact that the broad masses of the working people in Yugoslavia have come out against the espionage Tito-Rankovic gang and its bloody regime. Neither the slanderous propaganda of the Tito clique against the Soviet Union and the Socialist camp nor the mendacious tales about the ostensible “Building of Socialism” in Yugoslavia have been able to conceal from the broad mass of the working people the reactionary and fascist nature of the Tito regime and the essence of the policy and actions of the Tito gang. Therefore, after the open switch-over of the Tito clique to the imperialist camp the Yugoslav working people began a difficult and persistent struggle against the Tito regime.
Precisely because the fascist regime of the Tito clique has become a weapon in the hands of the Anglo-American imperialists for the enslavement of the peoples of Yugoslavia, the struggle of our peoples against this regime has assumed the character of a liberation struggle. The main force in the liberation movement In Yugoslavia is the alliance between the working class and the working peasantry, led by the working class and by the illegal Party groups of the Communist Party which is being regenerated.
Two characteristic features in the development of the revolutionary liberation of the peoples of Yugoslavia against the fascist regime of the Tito clique were that on the one hand this struggle was at first a spontaneous and unorganised struggle of the working people and, on the other, that a narrow, group-like approach had prevailed in the organisation and formation of a new Communist Party which must be a united leader of the liberation struggle of the people’s masses. It can be said that this stage in the development of the liberation struggle is coming to an end. And although, as yet, there is no new Communist Party which would be a single leader in the revolutionary liberation struggle of the masses, in many places and enterprises there are, at present, illegal Marxist-Leninist groups which guide this struggle and which, at the same time, fight for the formation and regeneration of the Communist Party.
The struggle of the working class of Yugoslavia has taken various forms indifferent periods.
At first it was of an unorganised nature and found expression mainly in individual resistance by the workers. Workers did not turn up to perform unpaid work, they did not work overtime, did not fulfil the daily targets and the work norms, produced goods of low quality and so on. In reply the Titoites resorted to various kinds of punishment: they deprived the workers of ration cards, reduced wages, curtailed holidays, deprived workers of free medical “treatment”, sacked and arrested them, and so on. However, the struggle did not die away but became more and more organised.
Workers passed from individual forms of struggle to collective ones. Absenteeism acquired mass dimensions. As admitted by the Titoites, more than 400,000 workers in 1949 alone did not turn up for work daily. At certain enterprises, particularly at those mine workings where ore for export to the U.S. is produced, from 500 to 1,000 workers absented themselves from work daily.
To counteract such forms of workers’ struggle, the Titoites passed a decision for the signing of labour agreements between workers and enterprises. According to official Yugoslav figures, not more than 15-30 per cent of workers signed the agreements at the great majority of the enterprises. Actually, there is no enterprise where more than 50 per cent of the workers signed the agreement. In addition, the vast majority of the workers who did sign the agreements soon tore them to pieces and left the enterprises. The Titoites began to punish the workers by long-term forced labour at enterprises, thus turning great masses of workers into convicts.
Workers replied to these fascist measures with strikes, sabotage, non-fulfilment of production plans and by leaving enterprises on a mass scale. This resulted in a great fall in output and in the failure of production plans. The majority of enterprises did not carry out their 1949 plans by even 50 per cent.
To break the struggle of the working class, the Tito clique set up a punitive apparatus to seize and punish workers participating in the struggle. All districts have their UDB branches. But the struggle of the working class, despite the terror, is growing in strength and becoming better organised. Its organised character became particularly marked this year. A good example is the activities of the railway workers who are always disrupting and sabotaging the export of raw materials to other countries by the Tito clique.
The poor and middle peasants are especially active in their opposition to the mobilisation of peasants for unpaid forced labour carried out by the Titoites and to the collection of agricultural produce for export. The Titoite clique has launched a violent crusade against the toiling peasantry to ensure the export of huge quantities of iron ore, timber and agricultural produce. The Titoites robbed the working people in Yugoslavia of ten billion dinars in 1949 alone by forcing the working people of Yugoslavia to work without pay. At first, the resistance of the toiling peasantry to forced unpaid labour was also unorganised and individual, but in 1949 it had already assumed a mass character. Whenever the Titoites succeeded in mobilising them the peasants at once fled from their jobs. Thus, of the 600,000 peasants mobilised for work in Serbia in 1949, 430,000 escaped. At present, the Titoites cannot mobilise any appreciable number of peasants for forced labour in the countryside at all. They are making the servicemen and the numerous prisoners who, under the fascist-Gestapo regime number several hundred thousand, do the job.
To frustrate these rapacious collections, the Yugoslav toiling peasantry left uncultivated nearly three million hectares of arable land last autumn and in the spring of this year. The working peasants are now resisting these collections in an organised way. About six hundred rural representatives in Serbia protested to the government against the rapacious collections. Peasants in different regions are offering armed resistance when the authorities take their grain and other agricultural produce or they organise protest demonstrations, as was the case in Bania, Lica, Cordune and other places.
The struggle of the broad people’s masses in Yugoslavia against the Titoite fascist regime in 1948 and 1949 mainly pursued economic aims. This year it has begun to develop into a struggle where political demands are advanced. This common struggle of the mass of the people against the Tito clique is rising to a higher stage.
In March this year the Tito clique held elections to the so-called “People’s Skupshtina of the FPRY”. These elections showed that the broad people’s masses politically condemn the fascist regime of the Tito clique. In a number of electoral areas the number of votes cast for the Titoite candidates did not exceed 30 per cent of the total number of registered electors. As reported by the London “Times”(which openly defends the Tito clique), the total number of votes cast for the Titoite candidates did not exceed in a number of places one third of the electorate.
The political demands—the overthrow of the fascist regime of the Tito clique, the establishment in Yugoslavia of a system of People’s Democracy and the return of the country to the camp of peace, democracy and Socialism—permeate the struggle of the broad masses in town and countryside ever more strongly.
Along with the struggle to win these demands, the working people in Yugoslavia are waging the struggle for peace, against the Anglo-American instigators of a new war, against the Tito clique which is their agency for unloosing war in the Balkans. The peoples of Yugoslavia know that the struggle for peace is linked indivisibly with the struggle against the Tito clique and that only the overthrow of this fascist regime will save them from the disaster of war into which they are being plunged by the Tito gang.
The transformation of the unorganised struggle into an organised one, the link between the struggle on economic questions with the political struggle and the transition of both to a higher form of struggle and this will undoubtedly follow only after the strengthening of the illegal Marxist-Leninist groups of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia which is being regenerated.
Following the arrest and assassination of the best members of the Communist Party, and after the rout of the internationalist nucleus, the Communists, who remained faithful to the teaching of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin, and who escaped arrest, have to carry on in the arduous conditions of fascist terror. For a long time their activities were those of a narrow group-like character and were not linked with the broad mass of working people because the Gestapo apparatus of Rankovic had succeeded in rounding up the illegal groups through the help of provocateurs and spies and because of insufficient vigilance among the Communists. In due time the groups acquired experience in underground activity, succeeded in strengthening their organisation and discovered a method of work which best guarantees them against police action.
The groups are passing from narrow propaganda work to widespread political agitation by spreading leaflets, illegal literature, chalking slogans on the walls of houses, etc. The groups linked themselves more and more with the masses and headed the mass struggle against the fascist regime of the Tito clique.
With the rising liberation struggle in the country, the Yugoslav revolutionary political emigrants in the U.S.S.R. and in the People’s Democracies strengthened and organised their ranks. These emigrants now render great assistance in the struggle of the peoples of Yugoslavia against the fascist regime of the Tito clique and are an important factor in this struggle.
The struggle which the Yugoslav refugees in the capitalist countries are waging against the fascist Tito gang also helps our peoples in their liberation struggle against imperialist oppression and fascist enslavement.
The Titoite fascist regime is now experiencing a political and economic crisis, for it has compromised itself in the eyes of the broad working masses of Yugoslavia.
The ranks of the fighters against the warmongering policy of the Tito clique are growing. The activities of the liberation front of the peoples of Yugoslavia are developing on an ever wider scale. The number is also growing of the rank and file, N.C.O’s and officers of the Yugoslav army—sons of the working people and genuine patriots of our country—who declare they will not wage war in the interests of the American oppressors and their servitors—the Titoite espionage gang.
Fearing their defeat and punishment by the people, the espionage Tito-Rankovic clique is intensifying the fierce fascist reign of terror, drawing Yugoslavia ever more into the yoke of the Anglo-American monopolies and, on the order of their imperialist bosses, pushing the country into war adventures against neighbouring People’s Democracies.
But by intensifying their struggle against the fascist regime of the Tito clique, the peoples of Yugoslavia are clearly expressing their will. They stand firmly for the camp of peace, democracy and Socialism, headed by the mighty Soviet Union and led by the standard-bearer of peace, the leader and teacher of the working people throughout the world—J. V. Stalin.
The day is not far off when the peoples of Yugoslavia will fully reveal
their strength and wipe the gang of warmongers in the Balkans and its
fascist regime off the face of the earth, returning the country to the
fraternal family of the peoples of the camp of peace, Socialism and
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