BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET

Suppression of News in and about Yugoslavia and the Balkans

      Former Yugoslavia and the Balkans have been a site of both intense reactionary nationalism and revolutionary solidarity, the former being co-opted countless times in history to enable imperialist plunder including during the 90s. These divisions were for decades allowed to fester and worsened instead of being repaired under the revisionist Yugoslavian state from 1949 until the breakup of the federation.

     After the Second World War, the communist parties of the Balkans (Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Communist Party of Albania) established socialist states instead of being reabsorbed into bourgeois democracies. However, in the case of Yugoslavia, President Tito’s split with Stalin and the Soviet Union in 1948/49 marked a consolidation to the capitalist road accompanied with socialist trimmings and rhetoric.

     This page features various writings on the manifestations and results of revisionism in Yugoslavia like workers self-management, the non-alignment movement, and national oppression. Other writings focus on the wars of the 90s as well as the neocolonial domination that the region is under nowadays.

      If you know of other suppressed documents, news reports or international commentary that should be posted here, contact us at: freespeech@bannedthought.net

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Documents about the Current Suppression of Speech and Ideas in the Balkan Region

• [To be added as we obtain them.]

Yugoslavia and Its Political and Economic System

• General Information:
  • [Pocket-Book:] “1000 Facts About Yugoslavia”, (Beograd: Izdavacki Zavoc “Yugoslavija”, 1963), 134 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [4,109 KB]
  
  
• League of Yugoslav Communists:
  • [Book:] “The Programme of the League of Yugoslav Communists”, adopted at the 7th Congress in 1958, (Beograd: 1958), 263 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [9,851 KB]
  
  
• Writings of Josip Broz Tito   (1892-1980):
  • About 25 articles and statements by Tito are available in HTML format on the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA) at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/index.htm
  
  
• Writings of Other Leaders of the CP of Yugoslavia:
  • [Book:] “Conversations With Stalin”, by Milovan Djilas, (London: 1967), 173 pages. Originally written in 1961, and giving Djilas’s reports of conversations in 1944, 1945 and 1948. Djilas was a long-time leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, who developed into an open revisionist in his later years (even to the right of Tito!). But this book still has things of interest. Stalin’s admission of bad advice to the Chinese Communist Party about not proceeding with the revolution there is on page 141. His opposition to the Greek Revolution starts on the previous page.   Searchable PDF format   [3,555 KB]
  
  
• Yugoslavia’s Socio-economic System and Economy:
  • [Book:] “Yugoslav Workers’ Self-Management”, Proceedings of a Symposium held in Amsterdam, 7-9 January 1970, ed. by M. J. Broekmeyer, (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel, 1970), 271 pages. A symposium by Western academics with varying degrees of sympathy for the Yugoslavian system which added elements of syndicalism to their basicallly capitalist economy which was often falsely termed “market socialism”.   Searchable PDF format   [5,430 KB]
  • [Book:] “Business Cycles in Yugoslavia”, by Branko Horvat, (White Plains, NY: IASP, Eastern European Economics, Vol. IX, No. 3-4, Spring-Summer 1971), 276 pages. Written by a Yugoslavian economist who maintains that their system of “market socialism” really does count as “socialism”, even though it leads to economic cycles and overproduction crises in much the same way that Western-style monopoly capitalism does.   Searchable PDF format   [4,699 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Yugoslav Experiment: 1948-1974”, by Dennison Rusinow, (Berkeley, CA: UC Press, 1978), 436 pages. An extensive discussion of the Yugoslavian system by a sympathetic foreigner who spent years living in the country.   Searchable PDF format   [9,433 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Economics of Non-Alignment”, ed. by Ljubiša Adamović, (Belgrade: Marxist Centre of the League of Communists of Belgrade, 1985), 237 pages. This is a collection of essays from 1983-1985 in anticipation of the New Delhi Conference of the Non-Aligned Countries. “The compilation, if nothing else, is a valuable snapshot of the debates within some of the currents of the Yugoslav Marxist community in the early-to-mid eighties. The ‘revolutionary’ and ‘counter-revolutionary’ lines upheld by the various authors provides an insightful context to understand other contemporary works like Samir Amin’s Delinking, which attempt to take account of the so-called ‘Bandung era’, before the emergence of the 21st century proper.”   Searchable PDF format   [2,352 KB]
  
  
• Criticism of Yugoslavia’s Socio-economic System from a Left Perspective and from an MLM Perspective:
  • “Resolution of the Information Bureau Concerning the Situation in the C.P. of Yugoslavia”, Communique of a meeting of the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties, July 1, 1948. Included, along with two related articles by the CPUSA in their journal Political Affairs, August 1948, pp. 690-710.   Available online at: http://www.bannedthought.net/USA/CPUSA/Periodicals/PoliticalAffairs/1948/PoliticalAffairs-1948-08-OCR-sm.pdf
  • “Minutes of Mao’s Conversation with a Yugoslavian Communist Union Delegation”, Beijing, n.d. (but September 1956). (Wilson Center Digital Archive: English translation from a Chinese historical archive of “Selected Diplomatic Papers of Mao Zedong”), 8 pages. These are very important comments by Mao, apologizing to the Yugoslavians for their treatment by both Stalin and China during the late 1940s period (as illustrated by the documents above). More importantly, these comments include an extensive criticism of Stalin with regard to the Chinese Revolution, and an explanation as to why China had so far not been more publicly critical of Stalin. [Note, however, that soon after this, Yugoslavia moved strongly toward revisionism, of the market socialism variety, and the Soviet Union also soon became totally revisionist (though of the different state capitalist variety). In light of these new developments, both Mao and People’s China became very critical again of Yugoslavia and the USSR and at the same time found it necessary to greatly ease off on the criticism of Stalin, who the revisionists were so ferociously attacking. —Ed.]   Searchable PDF format   [117 KB]
  • “The Soviet-Yugoslav Controversy, 1948-1958: A Documentary Record”, ed. by Robert Bass & Elizabeth Marbury, (NY: East European Institute/Prospect, 1959), public domain volume, has some underlining, 241 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [4,896 KB]  
  • “On the Draft Program of the Communist League of Yugoslavia”, consisting of English translations of two separate newspaper articles, one from China and the other from the Soviet Union, which provides an interesting contrast between the differing emphases in the two criticisms themselves. (From the CPUSA journal, Political Affairs, June 1958, pp. 50-58. The complete issue of this magazine is available at: https://www.bannedthought.net/USA/CPUSA/Periodicals/PoliticalAffairs/1958/PoliticalAffairs-1958-06-OCR-sm.pdf ) The Peking article is from People’s Daily, May 5, 1958 [also included in the pamphlet “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism” below]; the Moscow article is from Pravda, May 9, 1958.   Searchable PDF format   [181 KB]
  • “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism”, (Peking: FLP, 1958), 98 pages, which includes the following articles:
    • “Resolution on the Moscow Meetings of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties”, May 23, 1958.
    • “Modern Revisionism Must Be Repudiated”, Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) editorial, May 5, 1958.
    • “Modern Revisionism Must Be Fought to the End”, Renmin Ribao editorial, June 4, 1958.
    • “Yugoslav Revisionism—Product of Imperialism”, by Chen Po-ta
      Also available as a separate article: which originally appeared (in Chinese) in Hongqi [Red Flag], June 1, 1958, 17 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [929 KB]
    • “Yugoslav Revisionism is Just What U.S. Imperialism Needs”, by Kang Sheng
      Also available as a separate article: which originally appeared in Renmin Ribao [People’s Daily], June 14, 1958, 13 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [705 KB]
    • “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism’s Reactionary Theory of the State”, by Wang Chia-hsiang
    • “The More They Try to Hide, the More They are Exposed”, on Tito’s Speech of June 15, 1958, by a Renmin Ribao Commentator Searchable PDF format   [3,084 KB]
    • “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism (Enlarged Edition)”, 1963.   Searchable PDF format   [9,089 KB]
  • “Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country? Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”, by the Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) and Hongqi (Red Flag), September 26, 1963, 56 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [2,289 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Belgrade Revisionist Clique — Renegades from Marxism-Leninism and Agents of Imperialism”, a collection of 13 articles published in Albania from 1962-1963. (Tirana: 1964), 336 pages.   PDF image format   [11,665 KB]
  • [Book:] “Marxist-Leninist Ideology Will Certainly Overcome Revisionism”, volume II [volume I not yet available], a large collection of critical articles from Albania focusing on Yugoslavia, Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, and other revisionists such as the Italian Communist Party, (Tirana: 1964), 470 pages.   PDF image format   [23,571 KB]
  • Three short articles from Peking Review, 1968 #24 (June 14, 1968): “Revisionist Rule Will Not Last Long”; “Yugoslav Students in Revolt”; and “The Aggravation of the Politico-Economic Crisis and Sharpening of Class Contradictions in Yugoslavia”, totalling 4 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [698 KB]
    [The complete Peking Review issue is available at: https://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1968/PR1968-24.pdf]
  • “Mao Zedong on Yugoslavia”, in HTML format on the Marxist Internet Archive. About a dozen quotations. At: https://www.marxists.org/subject/yugoslavia/maoism/index.htm
  • “Who Incites Hostility Amongst the Peoples of Yugoslavia?”, editorial of the Albanian journal, Zëri i Popullit, April 23, 1981, about the events in Kosova, (Tirana: 1981), 32 pages.   PDF image format   [562 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Titoites: Historical Notes”, by Enver Hoxha, (Tirana/London: 1982), 654 pages.   PDF image format   [14,795 KB]
  
  
• The Collapse and Dismantling of Yugoslavia:
  • “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse)”, by Edward S. Herman & David Peterson, Monthly Review magazine, Vol. 59, #5, October 2007, 68 pages. Focuses mostly on foreign military intervention rather than on the underlying total economic failure of Yugoslavian market “socialism”.   Searchable PDF format   [1,670 KB]
  • “The Life and Death of Yugoslav Socialism”, by James Robertson, Jacobin magazine, July 17, 2017. This analysis correctly emphasizes the economic failure of the market “socialist” system in Yugoslavia that also had some major devisive syndicalist aspects to it. But, appearing as it does in the bourgeois social-democratic magazine, Jacobin, it provides no real solution to the inevitable fatal problems of market “socialism” and syndicalism. The implicit advice seems to be, well, let’s try it again and just not make the same mistakes. Good luck with that!   Available online at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/07/yugoslav-socialism-tito-self-management-serbia-balkans
  • “Yugoslavia Dismembered”, by Catherine Samary, translated by Peter Drucker, Monthly Review Press, 1995. A breakdown of heightened national divisions during the 90s, the historical, political, and economic origins, and imperialist meddling. 186 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [1,670 KB]
  
  
• Academic and/or Bourgeois Works on Yugoslavia:
  • “Key Soviet-Yugoslav Documents: A Reference Aid”, by the U.S. CIA/National Foreign Assessment Center. Includes some CIA analysis of the Soviet-Yugoslav dispute, 30 October 1979, 44 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [.. KB]  
  • “Yugoslavia and the USSR, 1945-1980: The History of a Cold War Relationship”, by Petar Žarković, (original source and date unknown, but from internal evidence it seems have been written circa 2017), 119 pages. (We have added page numbers to the document.)   Searchable PDF format   [571 KB]
  
  

The National Question in Former Yugoslavia

• Kosovo:
  • “Serbia and Albania: A Contribution to the Critique of the Conqueror Policy of the Serbian Bourgeoisie”, (Dimitrije Tucović, The November 8th Publishing House, Toronto, 2024; republished from the Kultura edition, Beograd-Zagreb 1946.) Text by socialist revolutionary leader who fought in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and participated in the Serbian state’s military conquest of Kosovo and attempted conquest of northern Albania. He describes the economic motivations of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which wanted access to the sea and used its historical myths and narratives to justify annexing Kosovo. 146 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [918 KB]
  • “The colonization of Kosovo”, (Vladan Jovanović, Peščanik, 4 August 2013.) An overview of driving forces of Serbian / Yugoslav colonization campaigns in Kosovo in the 20th century. 15 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [541 KB]
  • “The Resolution of Bujan”, (Passed at the Conference of Bujan, 31 December 1943 – 1-2 January 1944. Translated from the Albanian by Robert Elsie.) On New Year's Eve between 1943 and 1944, Albanian and Yugoslav partisans gathered at the town of Bujan, near Kukës in northern Albania, to discuss how Kosovo’s status would be handled after the war. Both Albanian and Yugoslav communists signed the agreement which stated that Kosovo would have the right to democratically decide whether it wants to remain in Albania or become part of Serbia. This was not respected or followed through on by the Yugoslav Communist Party, which unilaterally decided to keep Kosovo and imposed martial law when people resisted the decision. 2 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [406 KB]
  • “International Viewpoint Magazine No. 312”, (June 1999.) Several articles about the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo from International Viewpoint, the official publication of the Trotskyist "reunified Fourth International." These articles contain some useful background material, but with historical baggage from this tradition and a dubious political outlook.
    • Who are the KLA? (pg. 1 – 4) – an informative article about the communist beginnings of the KLA and its transformation into a US lackey, shedding light into the different factions within the armed group
    • Serbian opposition (pg. 5 – 7) – covers the general ignorance of the Serbian masses in regards to the Serbian state’s crimes in Kosovo, the bourgeois opposition parties during the wars of the 90s, and statements by progressive Serbs
    • Opposition in crisis (pg. 8 – 10) – covers the positions of left-leaning parliamentary parties (heavy focus on revisionist socialist and communist parties) on the war in Kosovo and NATO’s involvement
    • Dissolve NATO! (pg. 11 – 14) Article breaking down the contradictory aspects to the Kosovo war including Kosovo’s right to self-determination and the necessity of opposing NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention.
      Searchable PDF format   [25,067 KB]

Documents about the Countries and Political Organizations in the Balkan Region Since the Collapse of Yugoslavia

• [To be added as we obtain them.]

— NOTICE —       Due to the repressive legislation and judicial decisions in the United States, we at BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET want to make it completely clear that we do not have any connection whatsoever with any political parties or organizations in the former Yugoslavia or the Balkans, or in any other country for that matter. We do not aid, promote, assist, support, coordinate with, or provide any sort of services or advice to any party or organization in the Balkan region, nor to any of the other parties and organizations from other countries whose documents may be posted here. However, we do support the right of free speech, and the right of the people in both this region and internationally to read the views and publications of these and all other parties and organizations. And for this reason alone we are making copies of many of their documents available on this site.

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