TITO CLIQUE WIPES OUT COMMUNIST IN YUGOSLAVIA.

TITO CLIQUE WIPES OUT COMMUNIST IN YUGOSLAVIA. Pero Popivoda

The nationalist Tito clique has treacherously attacked the finest section of the Yugoslav Communist Party. After the publication of the Information Bureau Resolution, thousands of Yugoslav Communists who realised the danger threatening their Party, the working class and the people, fought back against the Tito-Rankovic clique. In some places—Sarajevo, Montenegro, Belgrade, East Serbia, Skoplje and Zagreb—entire Party organisations opposed the bourgeois-nationalist policy demanding that the Central Committee of the Party should abandon the path of treachery along which the nationalist leadership was taking it.

Seeing that they lacked support among either the Party or the people, the Tito-ites resorted to terror hoping in this way to halt the growing mistrust of the Party for the leadership, and break the resistance of the healthy forces. The cruelty of the Rankovic terror in Yugoslavia surpasses even that of the Gestapo and the Hiller invaders.

Arrests and murder of honest Communists known to favour friendship with the Soviet Union have taken on a mass scale. During the week that followed the publication of the Information Bureau Resolution, the Rankovic janissaries threw 80 Communists—officers and junior commanders of the Yugoslav Army—into the Belgrade military prison.

Talking glibly about “democracy” in the Yugoslav Communist Party and proclaiming new “theories” about building Socialism, the bourgeois nationalists set out to commit dastardly acts. One of Rankovic’s henchmen, S. Penezic, Serbian Minister of the Interior, made this revealing statement at a meeting of officials of the State Security Board (UDB) from the districts bordering on Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria “After person caught on the border should be closely examined. If he turns out to be a Party member he should be quietly killed on the spot, no matter who he is, Central Committee member or Minister. The execution must be reported but there is no need keep such people in prison”.

The janissaries are diligently putting this order into effect. “Killed while attempting to escape” is an old Gestapo method, a favourite of the hangmen. They killed Arso Jovanovic, hero of the Yugoslav people in this way. In August 1948, at the village of Zombol, near Kikind, UDB men shot three Rumanian comrades, who supported the Information Bureau Resolution. Too cowardly to face their victims, the executioners staged an “escape” and shot their unsuspecting victims in the back. The man responsible for this execution is Andjelkovic, chief of the UDB highways department. He is getting considerable experience in this kind of thing. A few days later he shot seven more people “while attempting to escape.”

In the Toplicevo region, Comrade Janja, Secretary of the regional Party committee, was killed “on a hunting trip”. At Mali Hetin near Zrenjanin, four other comrades were killed. In the district centre of Ruma, Jovan Todorovic, Communist and partisan since 1941, was killed in a hotel. The number of victims of the Rankovic terror is enormous.

The regime in the prisons and concentration camps filled with Communists and honest patriots who rebelled against the Tito-Rankovic clique is so terrible that it would make the “holy fathers” of the Inquisition envious. Letter of prisoners who managed to escape from the Rankovic torture-chambers, reveal a grim picture of the physical annihilation of hundreds and thousands of Yugoslav Communists. No method of betraying the people is too vile for the bourgeois nationalists who have entrenched themselves in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The baseness of the Rankovic provocateurs goes to the length of stirring up distrust between brothers and sisters, parents and children. In its numerous directives the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party orders each Communist to become an informer, spying on colleagues and acquaintances.

The UDH rules the Party. All Party organs are under its control. The leaders of the majority of the Party organisations are Ronkovic agents. One of the orders of lieutenant-colonel Karic, assistant commander of the Fifth Department of the Serbian UPB, reads: “We have insufficient information about the real sentiments of the Party membership. The net-work of agents in the Party and in towns, villages and regions must be extended immediately, and complete control of all Party organisations and committees ensured. Anyone who has supported the Information Bureau Resolution, should be arrested at once; anyone showing signs of vacillation should be closely watched and all possible information about him collected. Detailed reports on the situation in Party organisations should be sent in the course of ten days to the address: No. 25/1 UDB of Serbia, lieutenant-colonel Radivoi Radovic”. Tito and Rankovic lavishly reward their servants for each example of provocation and treachery. In Zemun, Salih Djaferagic, a UDB major, insolently boasted that if he could catch two or three more Communists supporting the Information Bureau Resolution, he would be promoted to lieutenant-colonel. In the course of six months the provocateur Savo Joksimovic, assassin of Comrade Ilya Bulatovic in Montenegro, “advanced” from being a major to major-general. Bojidar Maslarie, who distinguished himself in slandering the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, has been rewarded with the post of Minister of Communications. The traitor Dimitrie Georgevic, a UDB colonel, “rose” to the rank of lieutenant-general in less than a year.

In their struggle against Communists and honest patriots the Yugoslav bourgeois nationalists are making use of declassed elements, former Gestapo agents and policemen who place wealth and rank above the interests of their people.

The Rankovic terror took us Yugoslav Communists unawares. We suffered from illusions and never believed that our frank and open criticism of the Party leadership would be dealt with in this manner. Many of our comrades began to discuss the policy of the Central Committee at Party meetings in a Communist fashion. We supported the Information Bureau Resolution in the hope that the problems it raised would be solved on the basis of democratic principles by a free expression of the will of the majority of the membership.

The brutal persecution of honest Communists by the Rankovic janissaries compelled the healthy forces in the Party to find other methods of combating the nationalists who had seized the leadership of the Party and the country. The question arose of going underground. This was a difficult matter, and its realisation took some time. At first a section of the Party members vacillated, still nursing illusions about the possibility of a peaceful solution of the “controversy”, as some people at that time defined the treachery of the bourgeois-nationalist Tito-Rankovic clique.

But despite the difficulties, underground groups of genuine Communists and youth grew up spontaneously setting themselves the task of resolutely combating the Tito-ites. In Belgrade, Zagreb and Montenegro leaflets appeared exposing the treachery on the Party leadership and calling on the people to fight nationalism. These true Communists circulated news broadcasts from Moscow, Budapest and Prague. Gradually the mistrust created among the membership by the Rankovic provocateurs began to disappear, and the separate groups began to contact each other and work together.

In letter to the journal “Nova Borba”, Belgrade University students wrote: “We are answering the intensified terror of the traitors with more resolute and organised struggle against the Tito-Rankovic clique. We are forming groups and circles, we listen to Moscow radio, read and circulate “Nova Borba”, and give other students hard facts about the treachery of the Tito-Rankovic clique. We will do our utmost to keep our University a centre of struggle against the enemies of the working class.” But this is not only indicative of the situation at Belgrade University. At hundreds of factories, in towns and villages, and everywhere where there are Communists and genuine patriots, the movement against the traitors of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party is growing in numbers and scope.

When the leaders of the underground organisations were faced with the task of helping the starving families of those Communists who had been killed or imprisoned, thousands of factory and office workers and peasants rallied to their aid, giving all they had. The working people of our country know that their future depends on their participation in the struggle against the traitors. The people are sheltering comrades persecuted by the Rankovic janissaries, helping them materially, warning them of the danger, circulating leaflets and newspapers and sabotaging the measures of the Tito-Rankovic clique.

in protest against the disastrous situation to which the criminal policy of the present Yugoslav leaders has brought the working people, workers of many enterprises have had recourse to strike action. Organised actions of workers took place at the Shtura iron and steel works, at the carriage-building works in Maribor and other places. Despite the draconic measures of the authorities and the UDB, Yugoslav working people are avoiding all the so-called voluntary work. The youth newspaper “Omladina” for June 7, wrote that “in April the programme of drawing young people into the Five-Year Plan jobs was fulfilled only by 80.6 per cent”. In No. 57, May 17, “Omladina” wrote: “In the course of one month 75 out of 184 young workers left the iron and steel plant in Zeniza, and 355 out of 758 young workers left the Kreka mine”. As evident from the statement by V. Shestan, of the Central Council of the People’s Youth of Yugoslavia, published in the same newspaper on April 28, the Tito-ites this year had to send 80,000 men and officers of the Army to the Belgrade-Zagreb motor road. This is how “construction by the youth” and “voluntary” labour look in reality.

Many Communists who were threatened with persecution by the Rankovic janissaries emigrated to the People’s Democracies and the Soviet Union. Thanks to the wide support given them by public opinion in these countries they have been able to take an active part in the struggle against the bourgeois nationalists who have betrayed the interests of our country and our people.

At present the Communist political emigrants issue four newspapers. “For a Socialist Yugoslavia!”, “Nova Borba”, “Under the Banner of Internationalism”, “Napred”, as well as other publications which are of great help to our comrades in their work of exposing the treachery of the Tito clique.

Each day our newspapers, pamphlets and leaflets are circulated among the people on an ever greater scale, reaching the most remote corners of the country. People are looking for them, reading them, passing them from hand to hand, recopying them. No terror or obstacle put up by Rankovic and his servants can bar the voice of truth, the words that call on Communists and all honest patriots to fight against the traitors to the motherland.

Tito and Rankovic are aware of their impotence. Even in the ranks of the UDB many Party members understand what a loathsome and shameful role they are playing. These comrades are coming into contact with underground organisations, helping to expose provocateurs, giving warnings and saving the lives of the condemned Communists. In the UDB’s plain clothes department, 20 men refused to obey orders. In Sarajevo the UDB colonels Stane Kovacevic, Rajko Petruka and Nenad Vasic—all of them partisans since 1941—were arrested for opposition to the nationalist policy of the Central Committee of the Party. The life of Comrade Riban, chief of the department of the interior of the Zagreb people’s committee, was tragically cut short. This comrade chose death rather than carry out the orders of the hangmen to arrest and kill honest Communists.

Suppressing real patriots and genuine Communists of Yugoslavia and driving the healthy forces underground, the bourgeois-nationalists have turned the Yugoslav Communist Party into auxiliary political apparatus of the hangman Rankovic.

All genuine Yugoslav Communists and the working class must re-create a party faithful to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. We can and must fulfil this task, for the future of our country depends on the re-creation of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

Workers of all lands, unite!

For a Lasting Peace, for a Peoples Democracy!

Bucharest. Organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties

No. 14 (41)

FRIDAY, JULY 15, 1949

YUGOSLAV TROTSKYITES’ PATH OF BETRAYAL AND TREACHERY. R. Zambrowski, Secretary, Central Committee, United Workers’ Party of Poland

In its unanimous resolution on the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the Information Bureau of Communist and Workers’ Parties stated: “by their anti-Party and anti-Soviet Views, incompatible with Marxism-Leninism, by their whole attitude and their refusal to attend the meeting of the Information Bureau; the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia have placed themselves in opposition to the Communist Parties affiliated to the Information Bureau, have taken the path of seceding from the united socialist front against imperialism, have taken the path of betraying the cause of international solidarity of the working people, and have taken up a position of nationalism”.

While severely criticising their mistakes, the Information Bureau Resolution gave the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party the opportunity to rectify them. We remember, however, how the Tito clique reacted to this Resolution. At the time, the Yugoslav renegades shed copious crocodile tears over the “injustice” of which, they alleged, they were victims and the “groundless” charges levelled against them. They swore fealty to the cause of Marxism-Leninism, to the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies.

Today, less than a year after the publication of the Information Bureau Resolution, the Tito-ites have gone over completely to the imperialist camp, while the outrageous role they are playing in the interests of Anglo-American imperialism is fully in line with that of the Trotskyite renegades at the time of their final degeneration.

Now that the American imperialists are fruitlessly trying to disguise the aggressive nature of the Atlantic Pact behind a flood of phrase mongering about its defensive nature and the alleged aggressive aims of the Soviet Union, the help given by the propaganda apparatus of the renegade Tito is particularly important to them. This help is by no means disinterested. It takes the form of slandering the Soviet Union and circulating the lie that the U.S.S.R. does not observe the principle of equality of small nations, that it makes the People’s Democracies dependent upon it, holding up their industrialisation and so on.

In fact, the successes in industrialisation achieved by all People’ Democracies precisely because of the fraternal aid given by the Soviet Union, particularly expose the treachery of the Tito clique which is deflecting Yugoslavia onto the path of economic degeneration, the path of capitalism, of enslavement by the imperialists.

The Tito clique’s provocations in the Balkans, the constant threats to Bulgaria and Albania are of considerable use to the American imperialist warmongers who are surrounding the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies with a vast net-work of military-strategic bases and who are attaching particular importance to strategic bridgeheads in Italy and Greece. The imperialist press expresses the hope that Tito’s constant threat will hamstring the People’s Democracies in the Balkans.

Finally, an essential factor linking the Tito-ites with Anglo-American imperialism is their foreign trade policy which, under the cover of talk about Yugoslavia’s industrialisation, is actually drawing the country into the Anglo-American imperialist sphere of influence and is turning it into a base of strategical raw materials for Wall Street. Joseph Alsop, writing in the “New York Herald Tribune”, cynically stated that there was no need to fear that American arms sold to Yugoslavia would fall into Russian hands, for the bullet sold today to Yugoslavia would most likely find its way to Russia through the skull of a Russian. “News Week” let the cat out of the bag when it stated that the American Government had decided to enter into normal economic relations with Marshal Tito and to end Yugoslavia’s economic quarantine. Firstly, the export of strategically important goods on the 1 B list will he allowed (the export of certain goods to Eastern Europe is prohibited). Later the export of certain goods on the 1 A list (scarce raw materials, planes and military equipment) will be allowed.

True to their Trotskyite nature, the Tito-ites are trying to disguise the whole of this treacherous, renegade policy with Left, socialist phraseology. They either put forward the ridiculous argument that they are deceiving Anglo-American imperialism into helping Yugoslavia to “build Socialism”, or they refer to a “Borba” article in which in some obscure way, for appearance sake, they once expressed themselves against the Atlantic Pact, or to the speech of Tito at Brion who, according to the “Washington Post” of April 12, hurled imprecations and accusations against the Information Bureau and against the capitalist press for criticising his regime. It is well-known that the capitalist press stopped criticising Tito long ago and that Tito only brings the capitalist press into the picture in order to get more publicity for his slanderous attacks on the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. Incidentally, the capitalist press shows a considerable amount of understanding toward these “Left” manoeuvres of Tito. For example, the abovementioned article in the “Washington Post” declared: Tito must act with the greatest circumspection. There is no doubt that many of the Communist who support him... might leave him if it became known that this split was not only political but also ideological.

The speedy rapprochement between the United States and Tito is causing alarm among certain monarchist-fascist circles in Greece who are afraid that the stream of dollars pouring into Greece might diminish as a result of an agreement between the United States and Tito. For instance, the Greek fascist newspaper “Etnikos Kyais”, fearing Tito competition, made a pathetic appeal to the Americans. “What are you expecting from Tito?” it wrote. “He proved to be a poor friend to the Russians and will never be a good friend to the American... Beware of buying him too dearly. Devote your attention to Greece and to Greece alone”.


The Tito clique’s foreign policy which leads to Yugoslavia’s growing economic and political dependence on the war mongers’ camp and assigns her a temporary role of a disguised base of imperialism against the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, is closely linked with the Thermidor policy of the Yugoslav Trotskyites, with their course set for steering the country into a bourgeois State.

True, in all their speeches, the Yugoslav leaders swear that they are “building Socialism” and that they “remain loyal to internationalism”. Actually, under the mask of socialist phraseology, these Trotskyites are doing everything possible to plunge the peoples of Yugoslavia into the struggle against the Soviet Union and the People’ Democracies. Tito is trying to rally round his “platform’ all sections of the Yugoslav people, including the most reactionary political groups of Nedic and Pavelic. The Skupshtina, each regional council, university, diocesan gatherings of the clergy, sports club—all are forced by the Tito-ites to adopt “unanimously” slanderous resolutions attacking the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies.

This campaign is accompanied by a systematic incitement to nationalism, the revival of Great Serb chauvinism and speculation on Croat and Slovene separatism.

The short-lived and ostentatious organisational regeneration in the Yugoslav Communist Party was undertaken by the Tito-ites because they feared that the Information Bureau would immediately be supported by the whole working class. The provisionally camouflaged People’s Front recently celebrated the triumph of the policy of the above class People’s Front as the “main political force in Yugoslavia”.

The Yugoslav Trotskyites’ rejection of the principle of the leading role of the working class both in theory and practice becomes clear when one considers also the mass enrolment of officials, petty bourgeois and kulak elements into the Communist Party, the fierce terror of Rankovic’s agents who are recruiting collaborators from among the Chetniks and Ustashi to work against the proletarian core of the Communist Party; when one considers that the Tito clique is systematically lowering the living standards of the working class, and placing the entire burden of Tito’s Ceasar-like plans on their shoulders; when one considers the mass exodus of workers to the countryside and, finally, the degeneration of the voluntary brigade movement into a system of compulsory labour.

The Tito clique has actually deprived the Yugoslav working class of its leading role; the working class is oppressed by an increasingly degenerating military-bureaucratic clique which, together with the kulaks, constitutes the pivot of the Tito dictatorship.

In 1937, Comrade Stalin defined Trotskyism in these words: Present-day Trotskyism cannot be described as a political trend in the working class movement. It is an unprincipled gang of wreckers, saboteurs, spies, murderers, of inveterate enemies of the working class hired by the intelligence services of foreign States.

Later the activities of the POUM trotskyite group in Spain and of the remnants of Polish trotskyism, who, under the Hitler occupation, engaged in anti-Soviet and subversive activities, fully confirmed this definition by Comrade Stalin.

The situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia differs from these examples in that this clique of Trotskyites is in power in Yugoslavia. Here we have a case of the Thermidor degeneration of people who ascribe to themselves the merits of the working people and who are cashing in on the Yugoslav people’s heroic struggle for social and national liberation, a struggle which was victorious only because of the Soviet Union’s victory over Hitler fascism and because of the concrete help the Soviet Union gave to the peoples of Yugoslavia.

The fact that they are in power determines the characteristic features of the Yugoslav Trotskyites. But no matter how much the woe-begone Trotskyite theoreticians of the Djilas and Moshe Pijade breed declaim about the “dialectics of Yugoslavia’s specific road to Socialism” about their “fidelity” to Marxism-Leninism, the activity during the last twelve months of the steadily degenerating Tito Trotskyites unquestionably proves that here we have to do with an “unprincipled, careerist clique of political swindlers, a gang of political double-dealers”, who are leading Yugoslavia along the path of increasing cooperation with Anglo-American imperialism, along the path of restoring capitalism and transforming the country into a bourgeois state.

The essence of Trotskyism as is well-known, was that it fought against the Soviet power, trying to undermine the prestige of the Soviet Union as the vanguard and stronghold of the international proletariat. Trotskyism sought to destroy the confidence which the working class of all countries reposed in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks); in the Bolshevik Party as the party embodying all that is most advanced in the international working class movement; as the party which, thanks to the genius of Lenin and Stalin, developed Marxism-Leninism and is rightfully recognised as the leader and teacher of international Communism.

The Yugoslav Trotskyites of the Tito clique, as was the case with Trotsky, are engaged solely in trying to destroy the confidence of the world proletariat in the Soviet Union. They are doing everything to undermine the international prestige of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in an attempt to prove that Bolshevism is not the most advanced science, is not the strategy and tactics and the model for all Marxist Parties.

Following in Trotsky’s footsteps, the Yugoslav Trotskyites are now parroting his words about the “dogmatism” of Bolshevism and its theory.

The Tito clique is banking hard on the past, shamelessly monopolising all the credit. Because of this it has up till now succeeded in influencing certain sections of the working class and those groups of Communists less tempered in the spirit of internationalism. But at the same time, the ranks of those Communists faithful to the internationalist traditions of the Yugoslav working class and loyal to the Yugoslavia which not so long ago was developing and strengthening in the ranks of the camp of Socialism and democracy headed by the Soviet Union, are increasing.

These detachments of Yugoslav Communists will grow in spite of the Rankovic terror and the malicious propaganda of Djilas and Moshe Pijade. Their influence on the ranks of the Yugoslav working class and working peasantry will become stronger. They will be able to end the shameful period of Tito-ite treachery and bring People’s Yugoslavia back onto the path of Socialism and real national sovereignty, back into the fraternal family of the countries of Socialism and people’s democracy.

The Polish working class which moulded its internationalism in a stubborn fight against nationalism, a struggle which was fought over a number of years, watches the struggle of the Yugoslav Communists against the nationalist and Trotskyite Tito clique with hope and confidence. It is convinced that the struggle in Yugoslavia is a guarantee of the country’s revolutionary, and socialist regeneration.

Workers of all lands, unite!

For a Lasting Peace, for a Peoples Democracy!

Bucharest. Organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties

No 10(37)

SUNDAY, MAY 15, 1949

YUGOSLAV NATIONALISTS ALLY WITH GREEK MONARCHO-FASCISTS

The Ellas Press Agency reports a Communique from the General Headquarters of the Greek Democratic Army stating that on July 5 monarcho-fascist troops in the Kaimakchalan region entered Yugoslav territory in order to attack Democratic Army units from the rear. At 10.30 p. m. the monarcho-fascist troops crossed the border a second time.

According to the “Elefleri Ellada” agency, a meeting of Yugoslav, Greek monarcho-fascist and American and British officers took place on Yugoslav territory. After the meeting the Yugoslav officers signed an order permitting the monarcho-fascists free movement in crossing Yugoslav territory. The monarcho-fascist delegation to the meeting was headed by Petropulos, Commander of the 516th monarcho-fascist unit.

After the meeting units of the monarcho-fascist troops crossed the border on to Yugoslav territory.

The bare words of these agency reports give the facts without any comment. Nevertheless, they are an indictment of the entire counter-revolutionary Tito regime. The news of the Tito traitors stabbing the Greek revolutionaries in the back has shocked and angered democrats and honest people in all lands.

The plot between Tito and Tsaldaris recalls the secret agreement concluded between the Czar’s and Metternich’s police for joint struggle against the revolutionary movement.

To what depths have the Tito-ites descended!

The Tito-ites have “refuted” these facts reported by the two Greek telegraphic agencies. But what does another false “refutation” mean to swindlers who long ago lost count of their mass-produced “refutations” and slanderous statements? No matter how the Djilases and Rankovices try to remove the traces, it is clear that they are helping the Greek monarcho-fascists.

How can they do anything else but help Tsaldaris, when both Tsaldaris and Tito serve one and the same master—the Anglo-American imperialists. Bought with the same coin they are bound with the same dollar chain. What moral yard-stick is there to stop the Tito-ites from betraying the Greek people when they are ruthlessly eliminating honest Communists in their own country? Can people who obey the orders of British and American officers and who assist the executioners of the Greek people think of the interests of the working people?

This is where the logic of events has brought Judas Tito. From being a Marshal he has descended the scale and is now an obedient and diligent sergeant in the service of Anglo-American officers, turning a free country into a concentration camp and into a bridgehead for suppressing the revolutionary movement not only of his own people but also of the neighbouring peoples.

JAN MAREK

Workers of all lands, unite!

For a Lasting Peace, for a Peoples Democracy!

Bucharest. Organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties

No. 14 (41)

FRIDAY, JULY 15, 1949

the nationalist Trotskyite anti-Soviet Tito clique