tito in the service of imperialism

8/3/2019 Tito in the Service of Imperialism

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TITO-IN THE SERVICE OF IMPERIALISMJAMES KLUGMANN

MR. ZILLIACUS, trumpeter of the Titoites, discovered in Tito's Yugo-slavia a "new kind of Communism"-a kind of Communism of whichhe approves in no uncertain terms. Nor is he alone in expressing suchapproval. ML Churchill and the Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden, Tory M.P.Harold Macmillan and Tory Lord Balfour of Inchrye, The Times,Economist, and Daily Telegraph, the Hearst press, the New York Timesand the New Y (Irk Herald Tribune, all the spokesmen of Wall Street,the press of the West German monopolies, the old gang of Trotskyites,red-haters and red-baiters, unite in calling for the support of Tite.Here, indeed, is a very new kind of "Communism", a kind of "Com-munism" that captivates the capitalists and is even respectable withTransport House.Why do they praise him and why do they support him?They support him in the first place as an anti-Soviet force. Tito's

Yugoslavia, declared Lord Balfour of Inchrye to the Swinton Con-servative College (The Times, 5.12.49), is "a direct challenge to theMoscow decreed pattern of existence". "In terms of the cold war,"wrote the Washing ton Star (28.10.49), "Yugoslavia is one of the most.important countries of the world." Business Week (April 1950), organof the U.S. trusts, considers that the "encouragement of Tito has provedto be one of the cheapest ways of containing Russian Communism".They support Tito because they see a Tito-dominated Yugoslavia as

a bridge for Western imperialism to penetrate into the lands where the


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218 COMMUNIST REVIEWworking people rule. In the Aesopian jargon of The Times editorialists(8.4.50):

"The Yugoslav Government deserves the friendly support of theWestern Powers, not only because of its courageous stand againstRussian aggression, but also because so long as Yugoslavia survivesthe present abrupt division between East and West will be a littleless than absolute and there will remain, in consequence, a fainthope of a better [for The Times-f. K.] order."

Or in the smooth periods of Anthony Eden:"His [Tito's] example and influence can decisively change the

course of events in Central and Eastern Europe .... Our states-manship has an opportunity for which few would have dared tohope a year or so ago:'

They laud the Titoites because they are erecting no real SOCIalistorCommunist society, but a regime of exploitation led by political gang-sters who talk the same language and whom they can use:

"During the past two years the Yugoslav masses have beenforced to make appalling sacrifices. The most trivial necessitiesof daily life-soap, needles, razor blades, cheap textiles and shoes-are almost wholly unobtainable .... The Minister of EconomicPlanning, Kidric, in fact told this correspondent that the ultimategoal is the entire elimination of compulsion from Yugoslaveconomy ... the result will be utterly different from the Sovietsystem." (New York Herald Tribune correspondent from Bel-grade, 27.4.50.)If you want to know in a few words why Mr. Churchill

rejoices that Yugoslavia and not Czechoslovakia was elected lastDecember to the Security Council, and why Wall Street lifts the ban onforbidden exports to Tito alone in Eastern Europe, grants passportsfor U.S. citizens to visit Yugoslavia alone in Eastern Europe, why theWorld Bank and Import-Export Bank grant loans to Tito alone inEastern Europe, it is because, as the New 'York Times put it afterthe Marshal's speech in the National Assembly at the end of April 1950,Tito, as an adversary of Communism, can render inestimable servicesto the West.The "new kind of Communism" that Zilliacus has discovered is oi

the same order as the "new kind oi Socialism" that Western reactiondiscovered in Hitlerite Germany: It is precisely as a weapon againstCommunism-and against the working people+that the West needs,lauds, and utilises Tito.

* * *Hitler and Tito were not the only ones to discover new sorts of"Socialism" and new kinds of "Communism"-brands of "Socialism"and "Communism" that were extolled by the trusts and relished by


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reaction. Tito and the Titoites are following in the footsteps ofTrotsky and the Trotskyists, of whom they are the direct descendantsand disciples.. The Trotskyites, too, pretended that they were the true Communists,the real Marxists, while the "Stalinites" had "betrayed Marxism".The Trotskyite teachings, "real Communism" as they were described

by the forerunners of Zilliacus, found favour with the great trusts andmonopolies. When to be a member of the Communist Party meantdeath or torture or both in Hitler Germany or Mussolini's Italy, thewritings of Trotsky, regularly translated into German and Italian, weresold and boosted throughout the period of fascist rule in Germany andItaly. The Hearst Press published the anti-Soviet outpourings of Trotskyand his followers. They were published in the Franco Press at Burgosand Salamanca. The secret police of the Polish dictatorship werespecially educated in Trotskyism in order to facilitate their work ofdisruption inside the working-class movement. Despite their ultra-revolutionary phrases the Trotskyites always found a ready press in thepapers of the capitalist press-lords. Indeed, it was precisely their"revolutionary" phraseology, their facade of "revolution" that madethem such valuable weapons for reaction. The Trotskyites were aform of division of labour with the capitalist propagandists and agentsof espionage; disguised as revolutionaries they could find an echo whereopen spokesmen of Toryism and reaction, and even Social Democrats,would have been immediately rebuffed.By the mid-thirties the Trotskyites in all countries were serving three

main purposes for world reaction: (1) They supplied in pseudo-revolutionary language an arsenal of propaganda and slander againstthe Soviet Union and the Communist Parties. (2) They served thecapitalists by their efforts to penetrate the working class, popular andnational liberation movements, above all the Communist Parties, byspying on them, confusing them and disrupting them from inside.(3) They acted as the main weapon by which Western reaction hopedto gain foothold inside the land of Socialism, the U.S.S,R., and there-fore aided the anti-Soviet war preparation by espionage and sabotageinside the Soviet Union.No one studying the role of the Trotskyists can fail to see that Tito

and his gang, most of whom have direct connections with theTrotskyites, are fulfilling today the same role and using the samemethods.

* * *With Tito's aid Western reaction is endeavouring to build up a warbloc directed against the U.S.S,R. and the New Democracies stretchingfrom Austria southwards through Yugoslavia to Greece and from Italyeastwards through Yugoslavia and Greece to Turkey. Cyrus Sulzberger


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220 COMMUNIST REVIEWwrites in the New York Times (4.11.49)of the creation of the "Vienna-Belgrade-Athens diagonal", and the Sunday Times (25.5.50) explainsthat the Turkish Press (despite the new Government) is still preoccupiedwith the question of co-operation with the West, and especially withthe creation of a "security bloc" composed of Greece, Italy, Yugo-slavia and Turkey. Of these Wesetrn war plans in South-East EuropeTito's Yugoslavia forms the pivot.Leading politicians of Greek reaction and of the British Tory Party

have joined in expressing their gratitude to Tito for his interventionagainst the Greek democratic army. "Without the aid given by Yugo-slavia, we could never have been so successful," declared Venizelos,Vice-President of the Council of the former monarcho-fascist Govern-ment. Now the relations between Belgrade and Athens are still furtherstrengthening, and the Tito Press is busy boosting the Plastiras Govern-ment, that continues the persecution of the Greek people and sub-ordination to Wall Street.The Tito gang have joined with the Greek monarcho-fascists in the

political offensive against Albania and in the organisation of provoca-tions on the Albanian frontiers. On December 5, 1949, Sulzbergerreported from Paris that:

"Marshal Tito has moved a so-called 'Koci Xoxe Brigade' ofAlbanian refugees to the Scutari frontier region. Theoretically,its job is to work on land reclamation, but actually it is causingworry to the Government of Premier Enver Hoxha."

And the New York Times correspondent Cianfarra reported acouple of weeks later (17.12.50) that Tito was preparing to invadeAlbania "when the time comes". Meanwhile he is pursuing a policyof infiltration of spies, bombastic propaganda threats and efforts tocut off Albania by denying transit through Yugoslav territory.Closer political and military relations are being knit between Tito'sYugoslavia and Austrian reaction. It was announced in Vienna on

April 28, 1950, that following a meeting of the Austrian Minister inBelgrade with the Yugoslav Deputy Foreign Minister the sentences ofall Austrian war criminals sentenced in Yugoslavia would be cut byhalf. Many have been released already, making room for YugoslavCommunists and patriots arrested for the crime of friendship for theU.S.S.R. or proletarian internationalism. Thus, whilst Tito's press andradio pour out their daily slanderous attacks on the U.S.S.R. and thePopular Democracies, relations become ever more friendly with theother satellites of Western reaction.Yugoslavia itself is being hastily converted into a U.S. war base.

Pan-American Airways has obtained full rights on Yugoslav airfields.Zernun aerodrome, near Belgrade, is being enlarged to take U.S.bombers. New airfields to take U.S. jet planes are being constructed. A


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strategic highway has been constructed from Trieste through Zagreband Belgrade to Skoplje and will eventually unite the Anglo-Americanbase in Trieste with its bases in Greece. Over a million troops aremobilised, as well as hundreds of thousands of security police.Armaments are being transported by train from Salzburg in the US.zone of Austria to Yugoslavia (artillery, gun-carriers, army lorries,captured German military equipment).Meanwhile the economy of Yugoslavia is every day harnessed more

closely to the American war machine. Concession after concessionis granted to the great U.S. trusts like the Anaconda Mining Company,Bethlehem Steel, Mackenzie Engineering Company. Yugoslavia hasreverted to its pre-war status of a raw-material exporting semi-colonyfinanced by foreign capital. Millions of dollars worth of strategicraw materials--bauxite, copper, lead,' and other non-ferrous metals-are despatched to the United States. The workers of the Bor coppermines, who bore the burden of the franc and the mark, now bear theburden of dollar imperialism. The "generous" Export-Import Bankgrants its credits with a purpose and one of its leading representativesrecently told a press conference that 75 per cent of the first $20 millioncredit was to further the production for export (mainly to America)of non-ferrous metals, and the other 25 per cent for the productionof other needed (by the US.A.) export goods.None other of the Marshall Plan satellite leaders has so cheaply

sold his country. The praise of the Wall Street press is very com-prehensible. As Joseph Harsch and Emil Lengyel explained in theirpamphlet Eastern Europe Today, published by the U.S. Foreign PolicyAssociation at the end of 1949, earlier post-war US. diplomacy inYugoslavia, based on "dissident elements", "did not pay". But TitoIS a very paying proposition, a very cheap quisling:

"Tito is worth all the dissident elements put together ... it iscosting us a billion dollars to equip nine French divisions, whereasTito has brought twenty Yugoslav divisions over to the Westernside."

* * *But, like his forerunner Trotsky, Tito's role is not only to aid thewar and espionage plans of Western imperialism. His role is to supplythem with an important ideological weapon disguised as Marxism.His press and the "Information" Bulletins of his Embassies and Lega-

tions supply a steady stream of slanders on the U.S.S.R. and thePeople's Democracies that are readily reproduced in the right-wingpress of the capitalist countries. British and American imperialismpass unscathed in Borba, Tanjug, and the manifold foreign languagepublications that are distributed gratis, unasked for and in hugequantities abroad, Truman, Churchill or Bevin want supporting


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222. COMMUNIST REVIEW

arguments for their thesis that the Soviet Union is an "imperialist"country, or that the People's Democracies are "police States". So theirpress quotes the latest speech of Zilliacus's "new kind of communists"- Tito, Kardelj or Kidric or Rankovic or Dedijer. How welcome toall the imperialists was Tito's interview with The Times on April 7,1950, or what they called his "most conciliatory speech with the West"made in the Yugoslav National Assembly on April 27, with Zilliacusin the diplomatic gallery. The Tories or Transport House want tojustify the Marshall Plan, then what can be better than Tito's apologyfor U.S. "aid" in this same speech:

"Tito remarked that there had been no political pressure fromthe West. Altogether, he suggested, development of economicties with the West had made up economically for the damage in-flicted by the Cominform boycott."

Truly "a new kind of Communism"!An essential role of Titoite ideology is to try and break the unity

of the international progressive movement, the International Unionof Students, the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World Federa-tion of Democratic Youth, and, above all, of the rapidly growingWorld Peace Movement. What are the essential ideological lines ofthe imperialist warmongers? They try in the speeches of Acheson,Bevin, Schuman and Adenauer to prove that the Soviet Union is thewarmonger, that West war preparations are for defence, that therapidly advancing world movement for peace is a "Communistmanceuvre", that the concrete peace proposals of the U.S.S.R. are tobe rejected.Here, under the cover of their usual pseudo-revolutionary phrases,

the Titoites have their part to play. First they set out to lull thepeoples into a false sense of security by denying the imperialist driveto war:"I do not think there is any immediate danger of war. . .. A

hot war is unlikely to replace a cold war." (Tito: Interview withThe Times, 8.4.50.)Next they set out to prove that the constant efforts of the U.S.S.R.

for peace are nothing but a manceuvre:"Russia is howling about the fight for peace like a hysterical

woman and is doing everything not to fight for peace." (NewYork Herald-Tribune [5.5.50],report of article by Ivan Karaivanovin Belgrade's literary paper Kniizevne Novine.)Next they have to prove that the danger of war comes from the

U.S.S.R. and not from Western imperialism:"It is perhaps significant that the more alarming statements in

Mr. Dedijer's speech on Soviet war preparations in the neighbour-hood of Yugoslavia are not quoted intoday's Belgrade Press ... it


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would seem probable that the statements were primarily intendedto put foreign opinion on the alert." (Manchester Guardiancorrespondent in Belgrade, 18.5.50.)Finally, in their work of abetting the imperialist war drive, theTitoites have to tty to prove that the world movement for peace isa Communist manoeuvre and that, in the first place, the world cam-paign for the petition against the atomic bomb must not be supported:"Cominform propaganda slogans for peace are hypocritical."(The Times [10.5.50] correspondent reporting a Borba article onVE Day.)So, at a time when the fight for peace, in the face of the war drive

of Western imperialism, is the central task facing all progressive peoplein the world, the Titoites, in line with Comisco, in line with the Acheson-Truman ideological offensive, set out to lull the people into a false anddangerous sense of security, to whitewash the warmongers, and toslander the forces of peace.

* * *In Eastern Europe, in the People's Democracies, the role of theTitoites has been unmasked, thanks to the vigilance of the workingpeople, and above all to - the Soviet Union. In the capitalist countries ofthe West, including Britain, the Titoites are hard at work trying tosplit the Labour and progressive movement, to penetrate the Com-munist Parties, and to divide Socialist workers from the Communists.Now they have been given a special assignment by their imperialistemployers to subvert the national liberation movement in the colonialand dependent countries. Before the real role of the Tito gang wasappreciated, every effort was made to attract to Belgrade leaders ofthe Indian and other national liberation movements, and to indoctrinatethem with the conception that Belgrade was henceforth the centre ofthe world revolutionary movement. The Yugoslav Embassy in /London is specially instructed to follow the political events in thlcolonial world and to make contact with colonial students in Britain.

IOn American instructions a Titoite Embassy has been established inDelhi, and others will follow in South-East Asia. Here again the Titoitesare following in the footsteps of the Trotskyites. A Daily Teleiraphcorrespondent announced some months ago that the United Stfttes isactively encouraging the establishment of Titoite diplomatic ;nissionsin key regions of Asia. The Belgian paper Libre Belgique!(14.1.50)most clearly outlined their purpose: I"In its future actions, vis-a-vis the Asiatic Statesj,'Washington

is counting on two factors-nationalism and national Communismof the Tito type. American experts have become convinced thatthis latter formula would be perfectly compatible/lith the aid thatthe U.S.A. intends to give to these countries. AI~ American action

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224 COMMUNIST REVIEW

of this type has already begun in Burma where American agentsare actually supporting anti-Stalinist Communist groupings andare trying to organise a common bloc of those groups with theGovernment Parties. . .. If this action is crowned with somesuccess, the United States would even go as far as envisaging thecreation of a centre of the Asiatic national Communist movement,a centre whose essential task would be to check the action ofthe pro-Soviet elements."Wall Street is reforming the "national Socialist" groupings in WesternGermany and organising "national Communist" groupings in the Far

East.* *In this light the gratitude of Trusts, Tories and Transport Housecan well be understood. The real spokesmen of big-business and thebig capitalist trusts well understand the use-value of their Titoite agents.The Economist summed it up (11.2.50):

"For four years the Americans have been told by their Govern-ments and their representatives in Congress that the United Statesis unalterably opposed to Communism. . .. Yet with surprisingfacility, without a word of debate, the American Government hasfor almost a year been lending ever-increasing economic aid andmoral support to the Communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia. Nowthe National Security Council has gone so far as to commit itselfto the idea of military aid ....'The policy has already paid its dividends. . .. Moreover theinterest accruing from this policy has far exceeded the principalexpended. In fact, it has been the cheapest and most rewardingof all Western investments so far. ... "These "new kind of Communists" that Washington (and Zilliacus)

have discovered are consistent only in one thing--in their unswervinghatred of, and hostility to, Communism, the Soviet Union, the Com-munist Parties, the working class, the working people, progress andpeace.What are their principles? They have none. Lenin once said:"It is impossible to argue with Trotsky about principles, for hehas no views at all."

Titoism is not a trend in the working-class movement, it has no"principles". But under the cover of "Marxist" phrases, denuded ofMarxism, Titoism serves the great monopolists of the U.S.A. and theWest in their drive for world domination.

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tito in the service of imperialism

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