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Re: L-I: Book revirew: Dimitrije Tucovic: Serbia and Albania
En relaci�n a L-I: Book revirew: Dimitrije Tucovic: Serbia and ,
el 13 Mar 00, a las 9:36, Johannes Schneider dijo:
>
> "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.
Some comments:
1. If one looks at the maps, one readily discovers that the way to
the Mediterranean for the Serbian bourgeoisie (in fact, for the
Serbian nation as a whole in the sense we speak of the way to the
Baltic for the Polish nation in 1939) goes along Montenegro or, as
best, along Macedonia towards the great Mediterranean port of
Zessaloniki in Greek Thrace.
2. Whatever can be said against the policies of the Serbian regime
(we are talking of the regime that faced bravely Ottoman rule in the
Balkans, are we not?) in 1914, what has to be demonstrated (and you
are failing to do, dear Johannes) is that this policy is followed
WITH IDENTICAL METHODS by the current Yugoslav government.
Kossovo was not "overwhelmingly Albanian", by the way, in the sense
it became after WWII in the days Tucovic acted.
>
> 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.
Well, on this the journalist Trotsky did not inform. He rather sent
warm reports on the Serbian national plight, he could see beneath the
blood dripping Serbian war effort what was happening in the Balkans.
But in any case, the question is why do you suppose that Milosevic is
not in the lineage of Tucovic, and not in that of the Serbian
monarchy of 1912? This is a position you are taking in advance,
what is known as a prejudiced position.
[...]
> 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'.
Let me see: Tucovic fights his own bourgeoisie in Serbia. OK, perhaps
he was wrong (Trotsky would have probably told him so, who knows?).
But his attitude is not yours, Johannes. You are German, and you
consider Milosevic the representative of the Serbian bourgeoisie. You
consider the Albanians as oppressed by that Serbian bourgeoisie. I
will not debate this now. But as a German you should first and
foremost take care of your own bourgeoisie, which is supporting
Kossovo Albanian separatism against the regime at Belgrade. The true
way to act "a la Tucovic" in your case would be, IMHO, to stand for
those Albanians who struggle for reunification of the lost
Yugoslavian Federation, against those Albanians who fight for
separatism along ethnic lines with the support of the German
bourgeoisie.
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.
I will not expand on the Kurds, an issue I do not manage very well.
But as to the Albanians, who I admit not to know in detail, I do not
see them as `ethno-terrorists', tools of NATO and drug-traffickers,
people are just people. What I say is that the current leading force
in Kossovo is a gang of drug traffickers who are ethno-terrorists,
are fully backed by NATO and are carrying the whole Albanian
community to a disaster. I also say that in the historic record of
that community is, due to very good reasons as seen from a short term
standpoint, a record of relying on external powers against their
immediate neighbors. This is a record that does not diminish the
heroic figure of a Tucovic, who by the way could appear in Serbia
precisely because of the _progressive_ character of Serbian
nationalism, because he did what every socialist must do. But on this
occassion this record has put them in the hands of imperialism.
>
> 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:
This reminds me of the people on a balloon who, castaway after a
terrible storm on the ocean, suddenly see a man on a seashore, and
ask him as to where they are. "On a balloon, at some 300 meters from
me, at some 50 meters above sea level" is the answer. "Shit, of all
people in the world we had to bump on a mathematician", says one of
the castaways, "Everything he says is true, but absolutely useless".
The problem is that the situation now is different than in 1914. The
Albanians have good historical reasons to nurture mistrust for the
Serbians, OK. But this division has become a sore wound at the very
moment that, in 1945, a unified Socialist Yugoslavia came to the
fore. From that moment onwards (I do not dare speak of previous
times, just because I am too ignorant), we are not witnessing the
Albans victimized by a coast-thirsty bourgeoisie (among other
reasons, because the Donau is an international river now, and for
every practical purpose Belgrade is a seaport). We are witnessing a
people whose secessionist aspirations can only be fulfilled by an
alliance with the imperialist bourgeoisies. And, whatever you can say
on the "Serbian bourgeoisie", it is NOT an imperialist bourgeoisie.
>
> "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."
Wonderful words, indeed, and in the moment they were uttered worthy
of every praise. But what is jeopardized now is the freedom of the
Serb people, and the spearhead is the Albanian population of Kossovo
or, to say it in a less pungent way, their KLA leadership. A weak
Serbia, an unfree Serbian people, is the ultimate goal of
imperialists in the Balkans. The Serbians are made of such a stuff as
to have had people like Tucovic in 1914, while I am afraid nothing
the like will be found among their neighboring nationalities. This is
precisely why we should be with them against NATO and the allies of
the NATO in Kossovo. True self-determination for the Albanians in
Kossovo (and in Albania proper) implies a strong, not a weak Serbia.
>
> 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.
Well, I am a proud inheritor of the tradition of LDT, but I also
believe that it is a schematism that serves no good to explain
everything this way. Sorry, Johannes. Can't say things in a better
way.
N�stor Miguel Gorojovsky
[email protected]
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