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L-I: Re: Book revirew: Dimitrije Tucovic: Serbia and Albania
Johannes posted this:
>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]>
<snip>
>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.
<snip>
>The Stalinization of the Yugoslav CP, the multinational successor to the
>SDPS, has unfortunately blocked this perspective.
Since I haven't read _Serbia and Albania_ in its entirety, perhaps I should
refrain from commenting on it, but according to Miranda Vickers' _Between
Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo_, the creation of a "Balkan
Federation that included Albania and Bulgaria -- with Kosovo becoming part
of Albania" _was_ contemplated by both Tito and Hoxha (p. 146). The reason
why such a Federation didn't come into being, however, had _nothing_ to do
with the "Stalinization" of the Yugoslav CP, according to Vickers. First
of all, a good number of Albanians were quite frankly hostile to the
Communists & rebelled against the new regime after the WW2: "[I]n the
difficult period immediately after the war the Albanian nationality
remained 'the most hostile element', and in dealing with them the new
regime was guilty of extreme measures" (p. 148). Vickers argues that
various Albanian sources estimate that, during 1944-6, from 36,000 to
47,000 Albanians were murdered through the CPY's effort to pacify the
region full of nationalists -- many of them "the followers of Balli
Kombetar" (p. 148). You may criticize the CPY for harsh measures it
employed in quelling the Kosovo Albanian nationalists after the WW2, but at
the same time you'd have to acknowledge that rebel Albanian nationalists
were not at all interested in the Communist Balkan Federation of the kind
envisioned by Tito & Hoxha. Secondly, the Yugoslav leadership eventually
broke with Moscow, as you know, and the split was in part motivated by
different visions that Tito and Stalin had about the future of the Balkan
communist movements:
***** Stalin objected to the leading role the Yugoslavs were beginning to
play vis-a-vis the other Balkan communist movements, especially in Greece
where the uprising in 1946 was strongly supported by the CPY. However, it
was the plans of Tito and the Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov for a Balkan
federation that finally precipitated the open rift in Soviet-Yugoslav
relations....As a result, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in
June 1948....
One of the many consequences of Tito's break with Stalin was the increased
threat posed by Yugoslavia's Albanian population. Enver Hoxha, having
foreseen the developing break between Stalin and Tito, decided to throw in
his lot with the Soviets, and thus Albania became the first of the
communist states openly to attack Tito. The split between Yugoslavia and
Albania in 1948, as a result of Yugoslavia's conflict with the Cominform,
marked the end of speculations that Kosovo might be unified with Albania.
(Vickers, p.149) *****
In short, pace Tucovic, it was the dream of the Balkan Federation that
fueled the CPY's resistance to Staliniztion, which in turn caused the CPY's
eventual break with Stalin and Hoxha and therefore doomed the idea of the
Balkan Federation.
Yoshie
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