SOUTHEAST EUROPE SERIES Vol. XXI No. 1 (Yugoslavia) YUGOSLAVIA'S RETURN TO LENINISM Notes on the Tenth Congress of the Yugoslav League of Communists by Dennison I. Rusinow June 1974 After more than two years of major and often the Second World War. It also marks the end of a dramatic changes in leaderships and policies, a clearly definable historic chapter, coincident in Congress of the League of Communists of duration with socialist Yugoslavia's third decade, Yugoslavia assembled in Belgrade May 27-30, which began with a series of bold experiments in 1974. Its object was to survey and endorse the re- further economic and political liberalization and sults and to declare urbi et orbi that what a ended with serious economic problems and a Belgrade newspaper in 1971 called "Yugoslavia's political crisis. most serious postwar political crisis" is over and The basic outline of the new that the regime and system are stable and back on course is clear both in the of their still different but course-corrected enough, proclamations the Congress again high- and in a new state road to socialism. Constitution adopted three months earlier. Personally initiated by President Josip Broz Tito Yugoslavia is to return to stricter control by a re- himself in December 1971,1 the purges and policy centralized and once again disciplined Party. The changes which have now been approved by the Party's right to "intervene" in decision-making and Party in Congress are tantamount to a Titoist coup selection of officers by enterprise and communities, against the system which the Western world calls which was denied and called outdated and "Titoism" but which had lately evolved in direc- pernicious by many of those purged since 1971, has tions that seemed to him and others of its guard- been explicitly reaffirmed. Within the Party itself, ians to be undermining both the unity and the whether or not there will be more genuine partici- socialist character of the Yugoslav community of pation "from the bottom upward" in making policy nations. and more genuine workers at all levels, both of which have once again been promised, the other The Tenth Congress of the League of Commu- and more commonly observed side of "democratic nists thus signifies more than a merely chrono- centralism," which is obligatory, unqualified logical transition from the third to the fourth acceptance and active implementation of policies decade of Yugoslavia's restored existence as a state, and directives issued by higher Party bodies, is to of its Communist regime, and of the reign of Tito, be strictly enforced again, with passivity as punish- at 82 the doyen of world communism, head of the able as opposition. "Liberalism," "spontaneity," Yugoslav Party since 1937, and father of the "pluralism," and "the federalization of the Party" country that he and his Partisans refounded during are categorically condemned. The advantages of an almost uncontrolled market economy, so uncriti- 1. For this beginning and its background, see the present cally accepted in the later 1960s that one was re- writer's four-part series, Crisis in Croatia [DIR-4, 5, 6, 7-'72 ], minded of nineteenth century Manchester school Fieldstaff Reports, Southeast Europe Series, Vol. XIX, Nos. liberalism, are being subjected to critical re-evalua- 4-7, 1972. tion. The state may continue to "wither away," as Copyright (C) 1974, American Universities Field Staff, Inc. [DIR-1-'74] DIR-l-'74 -2- more of its functions are transferred to the sector since the end of 1971, which is to restore the first of described as "direct social self-management" by these hyphens. It is in this context that particular "organizations of associated labor" in collabora- significance should be attached to Tito's statement, tion with "self-managing interest communities," on three separate occasions since that watershed but the Party will not. In brief, Yugoslav socialism date, that the "rot" in Yugoslavia is not of recent will continue to be based on autonomous enter- origin but began with the 1952 Congress. prises and communes and "social self-manage- ment," but with firm Party direction and more "The League of Communists," Tito said as he economic planning. opened the first plenary session of the Tenth Con- gress on May 27, "has once again demonstrated its It is noteworthy that the name of Vladimir Ilich strength by overcoming, in the struggle for the Lenin has been invoked more frequently at the unity, the monolithic character, and the purity of Tenth Congress and during the months that the Party, all those elements which had denied the preceded it than has been customary in Yugoslavia leading role of the League of Communists in Yugo- for many years. This, to use a popular Marxist slavia." phrase, "is not coincidental." What is happening here represents a conscious and explicit attempt to "The leading role of the Party" is a key phrase, return to Leninist principles of Party organization to which recent events have ascribed a r/ewor and Leninist doctrines concerning the role of the more accurately an oldermand stricter meaning. Party during the transitional period called socialism. This, however, is not the whole story, and what precisely the new course will mean for Yugoslav Therewith the wheel of Yugoslav Marxist theory worker-managers, intellectuals, and socialist en- in at least one key sector has come, if not full circle, trepreneurs thus remains unclear, both in intent most of the way around. In the beginning, which and in outcome. Authoritative speakers and docu- for Yugoslavia means 1945, there was Marxism-. ments at the Tenth Congress and during prepara- Leninism-Stalinism. By 1950 Stalinism had been tions for it repeatedly insisted that there will be no forcibly ejected from this original ideological return to the bad old days of absolute Party dicta- trilogy. Lenin remained and was important, but torship, centralism, and a command economy. primarily and almost exclusively for one work, Such a return, it is said, would not only be ideo- which was and still is largely ignored in the Soviet logically and politically undesirablesince the Union: his State and Revolution, the central thesis rationale and purpose of the return to Party rule is of which provided workers' councils and other early more self-management, not lessmbut also Yugoslav deviations from the Soviet pattern with impossible at the present, relatively advanced stage justification. Meanwhile, although it was never said of socioeconomic and political development and so openly and while icons of Lenin remained oblig- diffused decision-making. In any case, while Tito, atory, the new Yugoslav concept of the Party as an his new lieutenants, and the Congress may propose, ideological and moral mentor but no longer a polit- a more complex equation of social forces will ical monopoly, a concept formally accepted at the dispose, and even the Party is not as united about Yugoslavs' Sixth Congress in 1952 and taken seri- the quantity and quality of optimal intervention as ously in the later 1960s by some of those who have the carefully prepared performance at the Tenth now been purged, was an implicit rejection of the Congress was designed to demonstrate. central doctrine of Leninism as a political meth- odology. So too, was a less premeditated transition At the Congress from a "cadre" to a mass party. For the Yugoslavs, Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism as a set of normative The scene, like the event, was in part familiar principles had in effect if not declaratively lost both and in part different. its hyphenations and only an eclectic variant of Marxism remained. Jamming the parking lot were the same serried ranks of well-polished Mercedes, mostly black and Now the Tenth Congress has officially sanctified mostly new, which have characterized at least the what Tito has been trying to do by coup de main last four quinquennial congresses, bringing cynical -3- DIR-1-'74 smiles or puzzled frowns to the faces of foreign ob- Ribar Youth Choruses, 150 voices from a high bal- servers still naive enough to imagine that commu- cony creating an incongruous impression of a nist ethics or discretion should discourage such heavenly choir. (This time, however, we did not ostentation. The physical setting itself, however, have the Young Pioneers, school children in white was new. In place of the pretentiously austere with red neckerchiefs, who swarmed down the "early-socialist" trade union hall on Marx-Engels aisles during the singing of "The International" at Square in downtown Belgrade, site of all previous the Ninth Congress, throwing red carnations to the postwar Party congresses in the federal capital, the delegates.) The opening plenary session then con- 1974 meeting was held in a strikingly modern tinued in time-honoured sequence: greetings to sports center out near the Panevo bridge, a poly- visiting delegations (representatives this year of 98 chromatic building of prefabricated and precast "communist, workers', and other progressive par- concrete structural elements completed last year ties and national liberation movements"), routine for a world boxing championship. An official hand- appointment of a "working presidency" and other out describes the "Pionir Sports Palace" as "lavish Congress committees (no additions, discussion, or architectural sculpture...[which] marks the re- dissent), nonreading of book-length reports on the affirmation of colour as an element which had been work of the Presidency and other Federal Party virtually neglected in Belgrade architecture since bodies since the last Congress (texts already dis- the era of the Art Nouveau or Sezession style." tributed), and keynote speech by Party President Whether moving the Party Congress to such a Tito (only excerpts lasting about an hour read this structure has symbolic significance is a matter of time, a token of respect either to his age or to our conjecture, but the explanation offered by press patience; the text of 82 pages had already been spokesmen was that the sports palace has a far distributed).