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L-I: Book revirew: Dimitrije Tucovic: Serbia and Albania
I am forwarding here a a review of 'Serbia and Albania' by Dimitrije
Tucovic. IMHO the work of Tucovic is among the most important Marxist
contributions on the national question in the Balkans.
Author of this review is German journalist A.Holberg.
Unfortunately at the moment it is only available in Serbo-Croatian and in
German. The German translation has been edited by the Austrian group
Arbeitsgruppe Marxismus. Its webpage can be found at:
www.agmarxismus.net
The table of contents of can be found at:
http://www.agmarxismus.net/lieferbnr/lieferbnr15.htm
Johannes
Book review: Dimitrije Tucovic: Serbia and Albania. (Publ.by Arbeitsgruppe
Marxismus), Wien 1999, 91 p., DM 12,-.orders to: AGM,PF 562, A-1151 Wien or
E-Mail <[email protected]>
"Unlimited enmity of the Albanian people against Serbia is the foremost real
result of the Albanian policies of the Serbian government. The second and
more
dangerous result is the strengthening of two big powers in Albania, which
have
the greatest interests in the Balkans".
A quotation from 1999? No, this is the quintessence of the lesson which
Dimitrije Tucovic drew in 1914 from the experience of the war, which he had
shared personally. The war aimed at opening the way to the Mediterranean Sea
for
the Serbian bougeoisie; as a result, the overwhelmingly Albanian Kosovo
became a
victim -- in Tucovic's words -- of Serbian colonialism.
Dimitrije Tucovic was the leader of the left faction of the
Social-democratic
Party of Serbia before World War I. Together with the faction of the
"narrows"
in the Bulgarian SP and Lenin's Russian Bolsheviks, this Serbian party was
the
only one to remain internationalist during WW1 and to deny war credits to
its
own bourgeoisie. This Marxist position had also been defended by Tucovic in
the
two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, which immediately preceded the world war.
The study 'Serbia and Albania' reviewed here, which the Vienna-based AGM
deserves thanks for republishing last year in both Serbo-Croatian and
German,
was first published in Belgrade in 1914.
D. Tucovic, who had been forced to take part in the war against Albania (at
that
time still part of the Ottoman empire), first describes the socio-economic
structures of Albania and counterposes a materialistic view of its social
and
cultural underdevelopment, whose victims the Albanians had become in the
course
of history, to the already widespread chauvinist Serbian
propaganda against the Albanian 'savages'. In three further chapters he
shows
the development of the Albanian national movement, the economic and
strategic
interests of the regional powers and finally the development of the policies
of
the Serbian bourgeoisie towards the Albanians. Precisely for those Serb- or
Yugoslav-nationalist leftists in our country, who for some time have
developed a
tendency to view Albanians as `ethno-terrorists', tools of NATO and
drug-traffickers, the parallel with the social and political development of
the
Kurds, so beloved by the same political milieu, and with the unfavorable
image
of the Kurds held by their neighbouring peoples, is often striking.
Dimitrije Tucovic is an invaluable spokesman for the internationalist
position,
otherwise linked with the name of Lenin, which holds that the only possible
progressive solution to the problems resulting from the ethnic diversity of
the
Balkans is unity within a federation of Balkan states on the basis of total
free
will. He shows how the disregard of such a position by Serbia's ruling
class
has furthered the national awakening of the Albanians and the interests of
imperialism. At the end of his study he writes about the failure of the
Serbian
push to the Mediterranean Sea:
"Since the long series of dangers and sacrifices for the freedom of the Serb
people and the future of Serbia has not ended with the defeat of the policy
of
conquest, it is now necessary to face the truth and to acknowledge against
all
prejudices that the struggle that the Albanian tribe is leading today is a
natural and unavoidable historic struggle for a different political life
than
that experienced under Turkish rule -- different also from that which its
neighbours Serbia, Greece and Montenegro would like to force upon the
Albanians.
The free Serbian people should appreciate this struggle, first because of
the
freedom of the Albanians, and second because of its own freedom, and it
should
deny every government the means for a policy of oppression."
The Stalinization of the Yugoslav CP, the multinational successor to the
SDPS,
has unfortunately blocked this perspective. The fact that this region in so
many
respects stands again today in the same position where it stood in 1914
according to Tucovic is the sad result.
The AGM's pamphlet is supplemented by a biographical section on Tucovic and
by a
chapter titled 'Revolutionary tradition - the Serbian workers' movement from
1870 to World War I'. There is also a foreword that makes some critical
points
about Tucovic's presentation and his position on the Balkan federation.
A.Holberg
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