L-I: Kosovo: Post/2

["Owen Jones" <owen.jones@ultramail.co.uk>]

----------
From: "Owen Jones" <owen.jones@ultramail.co.uk>
To: marxism@lists.panix.com
Subject: Re: How it is done: Taking over the Trepca mines - Plans and
Propaganda
Date: Sat, Mar 4, 2000, 20:31


 Comrade,

> << > Yugoslavia, in 1989. Albanian Trepca miners waved slogans such as
>  > "Brotherhood and Unity", demanding the reversal of the revoking of
>  > autonomy, and in defence of workers' democracy, etc.... They were
>  > brutally attacked by the Yugoslav police >>
>
> Right.  A rehash of familiar nonsense. Much like the humantiaran demands of
> the certain 1939 Germans living in Czech territory - they wanted brother hood
> too.  This is socialism all right, but even better cause of the NATIONAL part
> tacked on..

 I think it is unfair to imply that these working class Albanians were
fascists. There is a very real danger that by sufficiently misusing the word
'fascist', its proper meaning will be stripped and there will be no way to
characterise real fascists; much like the "boy who cried wolf" if you like.
It is not a swear word, an obscenity to be slung around, it is a political
characterisation that should not be taken lightly.

 You could argue that these Kosovar Albanians were demanding unification
with Albania (they weren't, but I'll play ball); on this basis, you imply
these miners to be fascist when compared to Germany 1938. Yet in 1989,
Albania was a Stalinist state, more so than any of the other in the Eastern
bloc. It was (and indeed is) an extremely small, backward country, with no
imperial might. Germany in 1938 (you are referring to events in this year,
and not 39 as you write above) was a fascist state, and an imperialist
nation. If you are going to argue that Albania in 1989 was a fascist and
imperialist state, then go right ahead, but I doubt there are many facts to
justify such a claim. It was the Kosovar Albanians themselves who struggled
for unification with Albania, though of course the Albanian Hoxhaite regime
exploited these nationalist sentiments as part of its hostility to
"revisionist" Yugoslavia dating from the Soviet split with Titoism; in your
scenario you are talking about a fascist regime that used as a pretext the
supposed oppression of the Sudetenland Germans to annex the main industrial
zones of Czechoslovakia, mainly by stirring up petty-bourgeois fascists to
demand unification. One could argue the Albanian regime infiltrated the
movement with Hoxhaite-types, which especially if we keep your past in mind
cannot be deemed anything to do with fascism.

 But back to the Trepca demonstrations...they were not demanding unification
with Albania, a Greater Albania, etc... At the time there were protests in
Novi Sad by reactionaries wearing Chetnik war memorials demanding the
ousting of Albanians, chants including a demand for weapons - reactionaries
who there is perhaps better justification to label 'fascists' if we were to
loosen this term; mainly petty-bourgeois elements that existed under the
"market-socialism"-style Titoist system. In any case, on November 17, 1988,
the main Albanian leaders in the Communist League were dismissed and removed
>from the federal Presidency. Autonomy was then crushed. Miners from Trepca
in Kosovska Mitrovica (formally Titova Mitrovica, but as with the Russian
counter-revolution these names were altered) marched 55km to Pristina and
camped out in the winter cold with students outside the local party
headquarters. They waved Albanian and Yugoslav flags together and
demonstrated in support of the 1974 Constitution.

 This demonstration was the last in history in support of Yugoslavia and
Titoism. There has been none since. This is the heritage of the Trepca
miners...the last ever progressive struggle in Yugoslavia in the midst of
capitalist counter-revolution which former Stalinist bureaucrats in all
Yugoslavia were carrying out, playing the card of nationalism to gain
popular support.

> "demanding the reversal of the revoking of
>  > autonomy"
> \
> is the key phrase here, the giveaway, for in Yugoslavia in 1990  it had the
> same meaning as "states rights" had in the 1965 US South: the maintenance of
> a regime of racial oppression.

 I entirely agree with you that Kosovar Serbs were an oppressed national
minority under the Kosovar Albanian administration. But actually the tables
have turned 5 times in sixty years, as I have previously summarised:

" - 1939: Rule by the Serbian monarchy over Kosovo; systematic oppression of
Albanian population, who are deprived of their basic rights; attempt at
their "Serb-isation".

 1939 - 45: Fascist occupation of Kosovo. Mussolini unites it with Albania.
Massive oppression against the Serbs - Albanian collaborators commit
pogroms, massacres, etc... Many are sent to concentration camps.

 1945 - 66: Kosovo is liberated by the partisans. Tito orders a crackdown,
thousands of suspected Fascist collaborators are killed. It is re-integrated
into Kosovo, but settlement from Albania is allowed. The Deputy
President/Interior Minister, Rankovic, rules with an iron fist.

 1966 - 89: Rankovic is removed from his position, the Titoist bureaucracy
apologises for oppression. Albanian political, cultural and economic rights
are granted. In 1971, it becomes an autonomous republic. From then on, the
Kosovan State machinery was used to conduct oppression against Serbs, and
thousands fled.

 1989 - 99: A counter-revolutionary bureaucrat, Milosevic, comes to power,
gaining popular legitimacy by stirring up nationalism; his faction
conducts capitalist restoration. Kosovar Albanian leaders, including
Milosevic's former allies, are rounded up and imprisoned. Autonomy is
crushed, direct rule imposed. Albanians are stripped of their rights and
their occupations. Liberal-pacifist leader Rugova gains widespread support,
Albanians boycott national elections making Kosovo Milosevic's electoral
stronghold. The KLA emerge in 1995 - begin by beating up and killing
so-called Albanian "collaborators" and Albanian socialists, then by killing
Serbian refugees and bombing cafes frequented by Serbs. In 1998 the Yugoslav
State responds with a crackdown. Civil war breaks out; from March 1998-99
1500 Albanians and 500 Serbs are killed. In March, NATO launches bombing;
Yugoslav State proceeds to expel Albanians, whilst the KLA terrorises and
murders its Left faction and other Albanian dissidents; some battles over a
few villages, though KLA retreat to the border. Their ranks are swelled by
recruits from Albania and foreign Albanians, as well as many ordinary
Albanians who naively believe the KLA will defend Albanians.

 1999- : Yugoslav Army flees, NATO invades. A colonial administration is set
up, and the KLA are institutionalised. A systematic attempt to expel all
non-Albanians and Albanian dissidents is initiated; hundreds of thousands
flee. Most of the Serbian population is purged, with violent attacks,
murders, kidnaps, intimidation, their houses burnt, health care and
education denied, their jobs taken off them, their property seized mainly by
gangsters from Northern Albania. Other non-Albanian populations to be
devastated include Romas - most have fled, but a few remain in camps - and
Montenegrins, Turks, Jews, Muslims, etc... In the case of Serbs, those few
that remain live in ghettos and cantons. Kosovo is headed to becoming an
ethnically pure state in a few months, exclusively Albanian.

 Such periods are over; the repeated reversal of roles from oppressed to
oppressor people both make can no longer continue because all non-Albanian
Kosovars are to be driven away. This will not just be the fate of Kosovo;
western Macedonia, and parts of Montenegro and Serbia will follow, to form a
Greater Albanian state. "

> Unfortunately that movement had a considerable
> base among Kosovo Albanians precisely of a) the historical strength of
> fascism in Kosovo and b) Tito's policy of currying favor with these fascists
> and c) because of the Serbian government's practical policy of excessive
> tolerance.

 Let's go through your points one by one.

 Firstly, a). An historical strength of fascism in Kosovo? It is true that
Albanian nationalism has a particularly reactionary character, and that
during the war some Albanian reactionary nationalists collaborated with the
Fascist occupiers who granted them unification with Albania; for the very
same reasons as the occupied Soviet republics especially in the Baltic
states and the Ukraine, but that does not mean fascism has a historical
strength in any of these nations, or that their secession was pioneered by
fascists. Fascism itself has never flourished in Kosovo, that's just plain
wrong, and I think this is edging towards claiming widespread support
amongst the Albanian working class - working class fascism? Or the small /
landless peasantry? Perhaps you could give us a social context for this
mystical fascism...like the elements of the Kosovar Albanian
petty-bourgeoisie or something.

 Hoxhaites have always been the strongest movement amongst Albanians -
especially during the 1981 uprising, in which around 5 "Marxist-Leninist"
groups were the leading members; and presently liberal-pacifists like
Rugova.

 Secondly, b). Again you make the mistake of saying Tito curried favour with
"fascists" - this sounds very much a criticism from the viewpoint of a
Serbian nationalist, which I am sure you are not aspiring to. The leaders of
Kosovo were not fascists, they were bog-standard Titoist bureaucrats. There
was no fascist movement in Kosovo - any nascent form during Italian
occupation was crushed harshly after Kosovan liberation, and to think that
not only would the bureaucracy of workers' state would not only tolerate
fascism, but support it???

 In such states all the opinions of the masses are forced to be reflected
within the bureaucracy itself, and therefore there was a "secessionist"
faction. In actual fact (a) is a rather strange remark since the very reason
Tito kept Kosovo was that his regime feared losing the support of the
Serbian masses otherwise, because of the strong nationalist claim over
Kosovo - he was currying favour with Serbian nationalism, not Albanian
fascists. It would have been impossible to maintain the harsh rule that
existed for the first twenty years until the dismissal of Rankovic, and
therefore the bureaucracy made a concession to Albanian nationalism by
granting them autonomy, but this satisfied Serbian nationalism because
Kosovo was still in Yugoslavia.

 It should also be noted that, at first, Milosevic allied himself with
Kosovar Albanian bureaucrats like Vllasi. They were then all arrested. In
the end he had to arrest quite a number of people and pack the Kosovo
Assembly with dozens of supporters who weren't even elected representatives
to get it to politically commit suicide.

 And c), this is certainly not true. After the liberation of Kosovo by the
partisans in 1945, there was a massive crackdown in which MANY more people
died than this latest war. For twenty years Rankovic's faction ruled with an
iron fist, but this was risking a nationalist explosion in Kosovo so
autonomy was granted. Yet in the early 80s the vast majority of political
prisoners were Kosovars. There were five illegal "Marxist-Leninist" groups.
The uprising in 1981 was met with a brutal crackdown. I really don't see how
the bureaucracy could have been more heavy handed within reasonable
parameters.

> Following the Yugo line of giving every nationality cultural
> autonomy (which was NEVER revoked, including in '89; what was revoked was
> excessive political independence because it was leading to secession;

 That wasn't the excuse the Belgrade regime gave for it. Milosevic incited
mass demonstrations to stage a putsch against the Titoists in the party
using the pretext of Kosovo. The aim of him and his bureaucrats was the
restoration of capitalism in Yugoslavia; to gain legitimacy, they stirred up
nationalism over the question of the oppression of Kosovar Serbs and revoked
autonomy, etc... The reasons for it were first outlined by the Serbian
intelligentsia in their Memorandum which Milosevic adopted, which was mainly
"genocide" against Kosovar Serbs.

 Again, I have seen no evidence of the Kosovar Albanian bureaucracy heading
for secession. The Albanian bureaucrats were at first allies of Milosevic'
clique, mainly because they sympathised with his faction's aim of capitalist
restoration.

> rather,
> after '89 the Albanian leadership under Rugova organized a massive boycott of
> autonomous Albanian institutions - it sounds crazy, but it's true) -

 That isn't true, you know that. Autonomy was shut down and so the Kosovar
Albanians held a political boycott, especially after they were sacked
wholesale and had their rights stripped of them.

> following the line of giving every nationality all services in their own
> language, the Albanians in Kosovo were provided massive funding for a
> complete Albanian social-service structure, including schools.

 I haven't seen evidence of this. Comrade, could you provide me with the
appropriate evidence?

> The schools
> were key for in them the widespread fascist movement

 What is this phantom "widespread fascist movement". It doesn't exist. At
this time, the KLA were a meaningless sect who bombed Serbian refugees and
murdered and expelled Albanian dissidents/socialists occasionally. The only
movement that could conceivably be labelled "fascist" as it is actually
meant would be the Radical Party of Sesijl which is in coalition with
Milosevic presently. This isn't widespread particularly, though very
dangerous. In Kosovo the Kosovar Albanians overwhelmingly supported, and
still do, the bourgeois liberal-pacifist, Rugova.

 The schools were key in a phantom fascist movement? Oh really, no doubt
Kosovar radio stations broadcast hidden signals that brainwashed the
population with fascist thoughts and cravings for Greater Albania...

 There was for a time a detente of sorts between Albania and Yugoslavia.
Books from Albania were imported for schools. Then they had another fall out
and the Yugoslav regime decided they were full of Hoxhaite propaganda. Apart
>from that, they were taught Titoist material. I can't see where the fascist
propaganda comes in.

> (which had run Kosovo
> with a large base of support in W.W.II) had free reign to spread its
> racist-nationalist ideology and was isolated from the cultural influence of
> Serbs, Roma, Gorani (Slavic Muslims) and so on - all of them with a much more
> secular, tolerant culture, alas, than that of the Ghegs, which is remarkably
> male dominated, clan organized (all power in the hands of the eldest male)
> feud-oriented (the key text is a book which goes into detail on how to
> conduct a blood feud.)

 This is a bizarre theory of "conflict between nations". There is no trace
of class analysis in any of this. You are claiming that the cultural
heritage of a particular nationality makes them less or more predisposed to
fascism. That is not what fascism is, it is a reactionary movement of the
petty-bourgeoisie and all those classes above the proletariat who either
fear its rising militancy and/or see it as a threat or fear tumbling into
its ranks; as in Spain, Italy and Germany.

 You seem to be saying that the Serbs and other Kosovars should have imposed
their culture on the Albanians because the latter were culturally backward
and needed to be influenced by Slavic culture. Perhaps then it was a good
thing for the European settlers to impose their culture on the "backward,
tribal" culture of the native Americans, etc...

> Instead of being influenced by the more tolerant
> broader Yugoslav society, the Kosovo Albanians were allowed to live insulated
> lives where the racism of the large Nazi movement, not crushed by Tito for
> unfortunate reasons, could exert its influence.

 Jesus Christ, the liberating partisans had a massive crackdown in Kosovo in
which around 45,000 people died. The next 20 years, Belgrade ruled with an
iron fist.

 Nazi movement??? It wasn't the Italian Fascists who annexed Kosovo, and
nationalists there sympathised with their occupation for the same reason as
nationalists in places like the Ukraine and the Baltic States. Exert its
influence??? Stalinist bureaucrats were in fact influenced by Nazis? In a
workers' state? What on earth are you talking about?

> Just as there have been instances in the US of   white workers organizing
> AGAINSt blacks, the racist-nationalist movement in Kosovo had a working class
> component.

 The bourgeoisie sets proletarians of different ethnic groups against each
other via racism to blind them from their real enemy. In this case, you are
stepping dangerously close to a very undesirable edge. The KLA represent
this movement you describe, but they were [before the NATO bombing] made up
of the petty-bourgeoisie, small property owners, Northern Albanian
gangsters, etc...; though during the war some working class elements got
involved naively because they thought it was an armed defence against severe
national oppression, which it was not.

> To stand for "workers control" in the abstract can be quite
> misleading - one must examine circumstance in this PR-conscious world. Of
> course, in Yugoslavia, everyone used socialist slogans - those were the terms
> employed - .

 This analysis is so bizarre I'm not sure how to respond for it. When
workers are deprived of work they are hardly fighting for the right to
oppress their Kosovar brothers and sisters. There is nothing sinister about
fighting for workers' control; and it is not simply a slogan because they
have been arguing for its justification. They just don't want to be
exploited by the Yugoslav or American bourgeoisie, they want a return to the
"good old days" when they managed their own factories and mines.

> The word "brotherhood" tied to "returning autonomy" is quite a combo. Given
> the real fact, that throughout the period from 1941 to 1989 the fascists
> among Albanians dominated social life in Kosovo in one form or another, it
> would be imperative for a REAL: movement for working class power, based as it
> would have to be on the slogan raised by the M<ill Workers in England, during
> the US civil war, that "Labor cannot be free in the white skin when it is
> enslaved in the black"  - given the link to autonomy (that is, to the code
> word for racism) this made of  "brotherhood" the most cynical nonsense.  A
> real "brotherhood" would have started by denouncing the racism of Kosovo
> Albanian fascism - far more fanatical and more broadly based, by the way,
> than it ever was in Poland.

 Fascists dominating Albanian social life? These are mystical fascists for
whom you provide no evidence of existence. I would be quite tempted to
question whether these fascists are an invention of yours to demonise the
Kosovar Albanians. Politically the biggest faction BY FAR with Kosovar
Albanians were Hoxhaites and Titoists. However you are failing to
acknowledge the existence of extremely reactionary Chetniks amongst elements
of the Serbian petty-bourgeoisie - but your position almost implies if
somebody is a Serb they cannot be anything other than progressive.

 And really? The Milosevic regime - a regime that carried out capitalist
counter-revolution - attempted the expulsion of the entire Kosovar Albanian
population; plans pioneered by Draskovic and Sesijl, both arch-reactionaries
and the latter a fascist. 800,000 Kosovar Albanians were expelled. Massive
national oppression was committed against them for 10 years. I think this is
something that needs to be denounced, no?

 The "racism of Kosovo Albanian fascism"? Presently there is a despicable
ethnic cleansing being carried out by the most reactionary sections of the
KLA and Northern Albanian gangsters...but before the period when KLA purged
its Hoxhaite faction, there was nothing that could properly be termed
fascist.

> As everyone in Yugoslavia knew, the dominant force among Kosovo Albanians was
> secessionism,

 Which Kosovar Albanians and why? All Kosovar Albanians, whether they be
landowners and shopkeepers or landless peasants and workers? If it were true
for all classes, why?

 Jared, though the Kosovan administration oppressed Serbs for 15 years or
so, Kosovo itself was an oppressed province of Yugoslavia. A mass of people
don't just become "secessionist" for any old reason. The Irish aren't
fighting for a united Ireland for the hell of it. The Kurdish are fighting
for national self-determination, not because they hate the Turkish masses.

 I oppose independence, but I support national self-determination for
Kosovo. If the democratic decision of the Kosovar Albanians is for
independence - which imperialism is fundamentally opposed for - than I will
support the right of the masses to exercise their demand for s-d. If NATO or
the Yugoslav State in the future were to suppress the Kosovar right to
self-determination, we would fight for their right. They are clearly a
nation, being ethnically and culturally distinct from a state that is
explicitly Slavic (i.e. Yugoslav, or Southern Slavs). You use "secessionism"
like it is a despicable evil; your logic can be used against all peoples
fighting for self-determination, whether they be Irish, Palestinian, or
Kurdish.

> and that was by then in the service of the US which had
> committed (through Dole and the US Ambassador and the CIA)  to the
> secessionists starting in '86; all this is documented.  So this call for
> "workers power" - IN THAT CONTEXT - is shallow and rather horrifying.

 You fail to explain what struggles for self-determination have to do with
calling for workers' control of Trepca mines. Imperialism is opposed to this
as is their KLA proxy. US imperialism indeed did use the oppression of
Kosovar Albanians as a pretext to bomb Yugoslavia, and the Albanians turned
to them with the illusions imperialism would aid them (they would not do so
if there were a Communist movement there that would have fought for them
otherwise...and we all know who killed that off). Yet that does not mean
that these Trepca miners are imperialist proxies or fascists simply because
they are of Albanian background.

> The reality is that as soon as the KLA reached northern Kosovo it laid siege
> to and then seized part of the mines and they, representing US capital, are
> now quarreling with the French for control - that is the dirty secret behind
> the massive secessionist attack on French troops in Mitrovica (gateway to the
> mines) and the reason the French are backing some multiethnic presence in
> northern Mitrovica - while the KLA, representing as always the US, is being
> used as a proxy to attack the French and provide the US with a pretext for
> smashing the Serbian resistance in northern Mitrovica.

 Any armed resistance against NATO is supportable. Here you appear to be
taking the side of the occupying French imperialist troops against the local
populations. It seems very much to me you will take anybody's side as long
as they are on the opposite side of the Albanians in a given question, and
you various statements against imperialism now seem insincere.

 If the KLA were to stage an insurrection against NATO, REGARDLESS of its
political character, we would support that. Any struggle against
imperialism, we support.

> As for the KLA rebelling (possibly) against international capital, right.
> Sure they will. After we organize their workers' rebellion, let's organize
> the Mafia hitmen.  Nest the KKK can take up the socialist banner.  The KLA
> Nazi's are slated to be the enforcement agency of international capital in
> Kosovo and they are not capable of independent existence, though like any
> attack dog, they may sometimes nip their masters.

 Just because the KLA are an imperialist proxy now, doesn't mean they always
will be. Take the far more reactionary Islamic fundamentalists in
Afghanistan; put into power because of American imperialism, yet
circumstance has changed this. If the KLA did split from imperialism, and
resisted occupying troops, then we would hardly be demanding NATO to
crackdown down on them. On the contrary, we would support the forcible
removal of occupying imperialist troops from Kosovar soil.

 So you've ruled out the Kosovar Albanians as a race being involved in the
socialist movement? Our job as communists is to struggle against reactionary
ideas in the working class; we do not dismiss Albanians as reactionary by
nature and predisposition, a ridiculous argument that itself is reactionary
to the core.

 I could just as easily say: who are you going to get from Serbia? There's
Milosevic's faction which has carried out capitalist counter-revolution and
stirred up nationalism with catastrophic results to provide legitimacy for
this project; his wife's pseudo-leftist party whose ranks include prominent
businessmen, which has happily stood by as Yugoslavia was pulled to bits,
Markovic recently saying that "both socialism and capitalism have run their
course"; a fascist movement led by Sesijl; a reactionary movement led by
Draskovic demanding the return of the Yugoslav monarchy and expressing
ultra-nationalism; and various Western imperialist puppet parties. What do
we do, give up on the Serbian masses in regards to the workers' movement
based on this? Do we claim that Serbs are by nature reactionary in nature?

 Obviously you know little about the KLA's origins; they are the offspring
of various former-Hoxhaite factions who I doubt imperialism nurtured, though
they certainly adopted it.

>> The only allies of the struggling miners can be the international workers
>> movement.  -- that is the hustle to fool well-intentioned but uninformed
> souls into the left's line for supporting the new fasicsm.  Everyone gets a
> line, you see, and of course for th left, its gotta be "help these workers
> who without us have nothing."  That's why in these situations, as a Russian
> one pointed out, we always have to look at the real, underlying  POLITICS of
> the situation, and not be suckered by "pure class demands."

 I disagree profoundly with this belief you imply, which I personally find
utterly reactionary and potentially dangerous; of contradiction and conflict
between nations, rather than in the context of class. I need not remind
people of those in history who peddled similar theories of 'proletarian
nations' (though I don't politically associate you with fascism in the
slightest). It is not the Serbian "nation" that will save the Balkans; it is
all the working class of the Balkans breaking from their ruling classes, who
are nothing more than former Stalinist bureaucrats who manipulated the
masses with nationalism to enable their transformation into the new
capitalist class, and fighting against THEM, their real enemy. If only
people like Milosevic and Sesijl and Tudjman and the factions they
represent/ed, had been riddled with bullets by the working class before they
had the opportunity, in alliance with US imperialism, to cause the biggest
catastrophe in the Balkans since Nazi occupation.

 I hope we both come closer to understanding one another's position after
this.

 Comradely

          Owen



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