Resolution of the Information Bureau "On the Situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia," June 29, 1948

Source: Tom 18

The Information Bureau, consisting of representatives of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists), the Romanian Workers' Party, the Hungarian Workers' Party, the Polish Workers' Party, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Communist Party of France, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and the Communist Party of Italy, having discussed the question of the situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and noting that the representatives of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia refused to appear at the session of the Information Bureau, unanimously agreed on the following conclusions:

1. The Information Bureau notes that the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party has lately been pursuing a fundamentally incorrect line on basic questions of foreign and domestic policy, representing a departure from Marxism-Leninism. In connection with this, the Information Bureau approves the actions of the CC of the VKP(b), which took the initiative in exposing the incorrect policy of Comrades Tito, Kardelj, Djilas, and Rankovic.

2. The Information Bureau establishes that the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party is pursuing a policy unfriendly toward the Soviet Union and the VKP(b). In Yugoslavia, an unworthy policy of slandering Soviet military specialists and discrediting the Soviet Army was permitted. A special regime was established for Soviet civilian specialists in Yugoslavia, under which they were placed under the surveillance of Yugoslav state security organs and subjected to surveillance. The representative of the VKP(b) in the Information Bureau, Comrade Yudin, and a number of official representatives of the USSR in Yugoslavia were subjected to the same surveillance and oversight by Yugoslav state security organs. All these and similar facts testify that the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia have adopted a position unworthy of Communists, by virtue of which the Yugoslav leaders have begun to equate the foreign policy of the USSR with the foreign policy of the imperialist powers and to conduct themselves toward the USSR in the same manner as they conduct themselves toward bourgeois states. It is precisely because of this anti-Soviet orientation that slanderous propaganda borrowed from the arsenal of counter-revolutionary Trotskyism about the "degeneration" of the VKP(b), about the "degeneration" of the USSR, etc., has gained currency in the CC of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The Information Bureau condemns these anti-Soviet attitudes of the leaders of the CPY as incompatible with Marxism-Leninism and befitting only nationalists.

3. In their domestic policy, the leaders of the CPY are departing from the positions of the working class and breaking with the Marxist theory of classes and class struggle. They deny the fact of the growth of capitalist elements in their country and the associated intensification of class struggle in the Yugoslav countryside. This denial proceeds from the opportunist position that supposedly during the transition period from capitalism to socialism, the class struggle does not intensify, as Marxism-Leninism teaches, but rather dies down, as was asserted by opportunists of the Bukharin type, who preached the theory of capitalism's peaceful absorption into socialism. The Yugoslav leaders are pursuing an incorrect policy in the countryside, ignoring class differentiation in the countryside and treating the individual peasantry as a single entity, contrary to the Marxist-Leninist teaching on classes and class struggle, contrary to the well-known thesis of Lenin that small individual farming generates capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. Meanwhile, the political situation in the Yugoslav countryside provides no grounds for complacency and self-satisfaction. Under conditions where individual peasant farming predominates in Yugoslavia, where there is no nationalization of land, where buying and selling of land exists, where kulaks hold significant land plots, where hired labor is employed, etc., one cannot educate the party in the spirit of glossing over class struggle and reconciling class contradictions without thereby disarming the party in the face of the difficulties of building socialism. The leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party are straying from the Marxist-Leninist path onto the path of a populist kulak party on the question of the leading role of the working class, asserting that the peasants are "the firmest foundation of the Yugoslav state." Lenin teaches that the proletariat, "as the only thoroughly revolutionary class of modern society... must be the leader, the hegemon in the struggle of the entire people for a full democratic transformation, in the struggle of all the toilers and exploited against the oppressors and exploiters." The Yugoslav leaders violate this thesis of Marxism-Leninism. As for the peasantry, the majority of it, i.e., the poor and middle peasants, can be or already is in alliance with the working class, with the leading role in this alliance remaining with the working class. The above-mentioned position of the Yugoslav leaders violates these theses of Marxism-Leninism. As is evident, this position expresses views that are appropriate for petty-bourgeois nationalists but not for Marxists-Leninists.

4. The Information Bureau considers that the leadership of the CPY is revising the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the party. According to the theory of Marxism-Leninism, the party is the fundamental leading and guiding force in the country, possessing its own special program and not dissolving itself in the non-party mass. The party is the highest form of organization and the most important weapon of the working class. However, in Yugoslavia the main leading force in the country is considered to be not the Communist Party but the People's Front. The Yugoslav leaders diminish the role of the Communist Party, in practice dissolving the party in the non-party People's Front, which includes very diverse class elements (workers, toiling peasants engaged in individual farming, kulaks, traders, small manufacturers, bourgeois intelligentsia, etc.), as well as diverse political groupings, including some bourgeois parties. The Yugoslav leaders stubbornly refuse to recognize the erroneousness of their position that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia supposedly cannot and should not have its own special program but should content itself with the program of the People's Front. The fact that in Yugoslavia only the People's Front appears on the political stage, while the party and its organizations do not speak openly in their own name before the people, not only diminishes the role of the party in the political life of the country but also undermines the party as an independent political force called upon to win ever greater trust of the people and to extend its influence over ever broader masses of toilers through open political activity, open propaganda of its views and its program. The leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party are repeating the errors of the Russian Mensheviks regarding the dissolution of the Marxist party in a non-party mass organization. All this testifies to the presence of liquidationist tendencies with respect to the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The Information Bureau considers that such a policy of the CC CPY threatens the very existence of the Communist Party and, in the final analysis, harbors the danger of degeneration of the Yugoslav People's Republic.

5. The Information Bureau considers that the bureaucratic regime established by the Yugoslav leaders within the party is ruinous for the life and development of the Yugoslav Communist Party. There is no inner-party democracy in the party, no elections, no criticism and self-criticism. The CC CPY, despite the unfounded assurances of Comrades Tito and Kardelj, consists in its majority not of elected but of co-opted members. The Communist Party is effectively in a semi-legal position. Party meetings are either not held at all or are held in secret, which cannot but undermine the party's influence among the masses. This type of organization of the Yugoslav Communist Party can only be called sectarian-bureaucratic. It leads to the liquidation of the party as an active, self-governing organism, cultivating in the party military methods of leadership similar to the methods that were at one time imposed by Trotsky. It is absolutely intolerable that in the Yugoslav Communist Party the most elementary rights of party members are trampled, that the slightest criticism of improper conditions in the party entails harsh repression. The Information Bureau recognizes as disgraceful such facts as the expulsion from the party and arrest of CC CPY members Comrades Zujovic and Hebrang for having dared to criticize the anti-Soviet attitudes of the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party and for having spoken out in favor of friendship between Yugoslavia and the USSR. The Information Bureau considers that such a disgraceful, purely Turkish, terrorist regime cannot be tolerated in a Communist Party. The interests of the very existence and development of the Yugoslav Communist Party demand that such a regime be ended.

6. The Information Bureau considers that the criticism by the CC of the VKP(b) and the CCs of other Communist Parties of the errors of the CC CPY, being fraternal assistance to the Yugoslav Communist Party, created all the necessary conditions for the leadership of the CPY to correct their errors most swiftly. However, instead of honestly accepting this criticism and taking the path of Bolshevik correction of their errors, the leaders of the CPY, infected with immoderate ambition, arrogance, and conceit, met the criticism with hostility, took the anti-party path of wholesale denial of their errors, violated the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the attitude of a political party toward its mistakes, and thereby aggravated their anti-party errors. Having proved incapable of facing the criticism from the CC of the VKP(b) and the CCs of other fraternal parties, the Yugoslav leaders took the path of directly deceiving their party and people, concealing from the Yugoslav Communist Party the criticism of the incorrect policy of the CC CPY, and also concealing from the party and the people the real reasons for the reprisals against Comrades Zujovic and Hebrang. In recent times, already after the criticism by the CC of the VKP(b) and the fraternal parties of the errors of the Yugoslav leaders, the Yugoslav leaders attempted to decree a series of new leftist measures — laws. The Yugoslav leaders hastily issued a new resolution on the nationalization of small industry and trade, the implementation of which was completely unprepared and which, because of such haste, can only impede the supply of the Yugoslav population. They just as hastily issued a new law on a grain tax on the peasantry, which was also unprepared and which can therefore only disrupt the bread supply of the urban population. Finally, the Yugoslav leaders completely unexpectedly, in noisy declarations, recently proclaimed their love and devotion to the Soviet Union, although it is reliably known that they have up to now been conducting a policy unfriendly toward the USSR in practice. But that is not all. The leaders of the CPY have lately been declaring with great aplomb a policy of liquidating capitalist elements in Yugoslavia. In the letter of the CC CPY of April 13, Comrades Tito and Kardelj wrote that "the plenum" of the CC approved measures proposed by the Politburo of the CC for "the liquidation of the remnants of capitalism in the country." In accordance with this position, Kardelj in his speech in the People's Assembly of the FPRY on April 25 declared: "In our country the days of all remnants of the exploitation of man by man are numbered." Such a position of the leaders of the CPY on the liquidation of capitalist elements under the present conditions of Yugoslavia, and consequently of the kulaks as a class, can only be characterized as adventurist, non-Marxist. For this task cannot be accomplished while individual peasant farming predominates in the country, which inevitably engenders capitalism, while the conditions for mass collectivization of agriculture have not been prepared, and while the majority of the toiling peasantry has not become convinced of the advantages of the collective method of farming. The experience of the VKP(b) testifies that only on the basis of mass collectivization of agriculture is it possible to liquidate the last and most numerous exploiting class — the kulak class, that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class represents an organic component part of the collectivization of agriculture. In order to successfully carry out the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and consequently the liquidation of capitalist elements in the countryside, the party is required to conduct preliminary and prolonged preparatory work to restrict capitalist elements in the countryside, strengthen the alliance of the working class and the peasantry under the leadership of the working class, and develop socialist industry capable of organizing the production of machines for collective farming. Haste in this matter can only bring irreparable harm. Only on the basis of these measures, carefully prepared and consistently implemented, is a transition possible from restricting capitalist elements in the countryside to their liquidation. Any attempts by the Yugoslav leaders to solve this task through haste and bureaucratic decree-making constitute either an adventure foredoomed to failure or a boastful and empty demagogic declaration. The Information Bureau considers that by this kind of false and demagogic tactic the Yugoslav leaders wish to show that they not only stand on the ground of class struggle but go further than the demands that could be made of the Yugoslav Communist Party in the area of restricting capitalist elements from the standpoint of real possibilities. The Information Bureau considers that since these leftist decrees and declarations of the Yugoslav leadership are demagogic and unrealizable at the present time, they can only compromise the banner of socialist construction in Yugoslavia. Therefore, the Information Bureau regards this kind of adventurist tactic as an unworthy maneuver and an impermissible political game. As is evident, the above-mentioned leftist demagogic measures and declarations of the Yugoslav leaders are calculated to mask their refusal to acknowledge their errors and honestly correct them.

7. Taking into account the situation that has arisen in the CPY, and seeking to provide the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party with a way out, the CC of the VKP(b) and the CCs of other fraternal parties proposed that the question of the situation in the Yugoslav Communist Party be examined at a session of the Information Bureau on the same normal party basis on which the activities of other Communist Parties were examined at the first conference of the Information Bureau. However, to the repeated proposals of the fraternal Communist Parties to discuss the question of the situation in the Yugoslav Communist Party at the Information Bureau, the Yugoslav leaders responded with a refusal. Seeking to evade the just criticism of the fraternal parties at the Information Bureau, the Yugoslav leaders invented a version about their allegedly "unequal position." It should be said that there is not a word of truth in this version. It is well known that in organizing the Information Bureau, the Communist Parties proceeded from the indisputable principle that any party must report to the Information Bureau, just as any party has the right to criticize other parties. At the first conference of the nine parties, the Yugoslav Communist Party made wide use of this right. The refusal of the Yugoslavs to report on their actions before the Information Bureau and to hear the critical remarks of other Communist Parties constitutes an actual violation of the equality of Communist Parties and is tantamount to a demand to create a privileged position for the CPY in the Information Bureau.

8. Taking into account all of the above, the Information Bureau declares its solidarity with the assessment of the situation in the Yugoslav Communist Party, the criticism of the errors of the CC CPY, and the political analysis of these errors set forth in the letters of the CC of the VKP(b) to the CC CPY from March through May 1948. The Information Bureau arrives at the unanimous conclusion that by their anti-party and anti-Soviet views, incompatible with Marxism-Leninism, by their entire behavior and refusal to appear at the session of the Information Bureau, the leaders of the CPY have counterposed themselves to the Communist Parties belonging to the Information Bureau, have taken the path of splitting from the united socialist front against imperialism, the path of betrayal of the cause of international solidarity of the toilers and of transition to the position of nationalism. The Information Bureau condemns this anti-party policy and behavior of the CC CPY. The Information Bureau recognizes that by virtue of all this, the CC CPY has placed itself and the Yugoslav Communist Party outside the family of fraternal Communist Parties, outside the united Communist front, and consequently outside the ranks of the Information Bureau.

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The Information Bureau considers that the undeniable fact underlying all these errors of the leadership of the CPY is that in the leadership of the CPY over the last five to six months, nationalist elements that previously existed in concealed form have openly come to predominate, that the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party has broken with the internationalist traditions of the Yugoslav Communist Party and has taken the path of nationalism.

The Yugoslav leaders, greatly overestimating Yugoslavia's internal national forces and capabilities, think that they can preserve Yugoslavia's independence and build socialism without the support of the Communist Parties of other countries, without the support of the people's democratic countries, without the support of the USSR. They think that the new Yugoslavia can do without the help of these revolutionary forces.

Poorly understanding the international situation and intimidated by the blackmailing threats of the imperialists, the Yugoslav leaders believe that through a series of concessions to imperialist states they can win the favor of these states, reach an agreement with them on Yugoslavia's independence, and gradually instill in the Yugoslav peoples an orientation toward these states, i.e., toward capitalism. In doing so, they tacitly proceed from the well-known bourgeois-nationalist thesis according to which "the capitalist states represent a lesser danger to Yugoslavia's independence than the USSR."

The Yugoslav leaders apparently do not understand, or perhaps pretend not to understand, that such a nationalist orientation can only lead to the degeneration of Yugoslavia into an ordinary bourgeois republic, to the loss of Yugoslavia's independence, and to the transformation of Yugoslavia into a colony of imperialist countries.

The Information Bureau does not doubt that within the Communist Party of Yugoslavia there are sufficient healthy elements, faithful to Marxism-Leninism, faithful to the internationalist traditions of the Yugoslav Communist Party, faithful to the united socialist front.

The task of these healthy forces of the CPY consists in compelling their present leaders to openly and honestly acknowledge their errors and correct them, to break with nationalism, to return to internationalism, and to strengthen in every way the united socialist front against imperialism, or, if the present leaders of the CPY prove incapable of this — to replace them and to advance a new internationalist leadership of the CPY.

The Information Bureau does not doubt that the Communist Party of Yugoslavia will be able to fulfill this honorable task.

Pravda, June 29, 1948.