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Tito: The Formation of a Disloyal Bolshevik*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

G. R. Swain
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Tito rose to lead the Yugoslav Communist Party by stressing his loyalty to Lenin. As a “Left” critic of “Right Liquidationism” his views coincided with the Left turn in the Comintern which climaxed with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. During the “imperialist” war, Tito, like Lenin, wrote only of the armed uprising and the proletarian revolution; for him this began with the German invasion of April 1941. However, Tito's experiences in Moscow during the height of the purges enabled him to get the measure of Stalin. Twice he emerged unscathed from accusations of Trotskyism, and in his writings began to explore the differences between Leninism and Stalinism.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , August 1989 , pp. 248 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1989

References

1 The best known representative of this school writing in English is Vladimir Dedijer.

2 For a recent example of this approach, see Beloff, Nora, Tito's Flawed Legacy (London, 1985).Google Scholar

3 Lenin's controversy with the Liquidators is explored in Swain, Geoffrey, Russian Social Democracy and the Legal Labour Movement (London, 1983).Google Scholar

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8 Jovanović, , “Milan Gorkić”, p. 51.Google Scholar

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11 ACK, KI 1937/121, 1937/161; and Jovanović, , “Milan Gorkić”, p. 51.Google Scholar See also Djilas, Milovan, Memoires of a Revolutionary (New York, 1973), p. 159.Google Scholar It is perhaps worth quoting from ACK, KI 1937/121, to reinforce the charge of Liquidationism against Gorkić. This document comprises a series of translated excerpts from Gorkić's correspondence with the Comintern. He says: “The illegal [party] leadership must legalize as much of its work as possible, enlarging its size and quality by bringing in activists from legal work and legal organizations – its directives must, where-ever possible, be sent legally; its links with cells, groups and the party membership maintained legally […]. In general, there is no longer any point in talking about an illegal technical apparatus.” Someone, presumably the Comintern official preparing the German translation of these excerpts for the commission looking into Gorkić's fate, has put exclamation marks against these passages. To abolish the technical apparatus which linked the party to the emigré leadership, and to encourage activists of the legal labour movement to take the lead in party affairs, was precisely what Lenin opposed as Liquidationism between 1908–1912, see note 3. However reasonable Gorkić's proposals might seem, they were un-Leninist.

12 ACK, KI 1937/1.

13 ACK, KI 1937/61, and 1937/121.

14 ACK, KI 1937/55, and 1937/82.

15 ACK, KI 1938/3. Gorkić did visit Britain in the course of his Comintern work, see Jovanović, , “Milan Gorkić”, p. 36.Google Scholar The spy story probably gained some credence, in the atmosphere of the purge trials, form Gorkić's disastrous attempt to organize the mass transport of Yugoslav volunteers to Republican Spain on board a French ship which the police successfully intercepted. The archives show the whole question of handling volunteers to Spain was removed from his control and he himself was prevented from visiting Spain, see ACK, KI 1937/32 and 19037/61. Gorkić was warned prior to his fateful trip to Moscow that “he had fallen far short” of what was expected of him, see ACK, KI 1937/83.

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24 ACK, KI 1938/4; and Damjanović, Pero, Tito na Čelu partije (Belgrade, 1968), p. 78.Google Scholar

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27 ACK, KI 1938/3.

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30 Cenčić, , Kopinič, I, p. 86.Google Scholar

31 ACK, KI 1937/112 and 1938/8.

32 Tito, , Works, IV, pp. 124, 129.Google Scholar

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35 Tito, , Works, IV, p. 144.Google Scholar

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42 ACK, KI 1939/23.

43 Tito, , Works, IV, pp. 231–232, and V, p. 28Google Scholar; and ACK, SP I–b/12.

44 Tito, , Works, IV, pp. 196–197, 233.Google Scholar

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49 ACK, CK KPJ 1940/28. An archivist has written on these notes – made on the content of Proleter, no. 2, 1940 – that they were “probably” written by Tito. The tone of the criticisms of various aspects of the paper makes it virtually impossible to imagine the author was anyone but Tito. In a comment on the “imperialist” war the author notes that communist propaganda for neutrality and good trade relations between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany meant communists were “actually on the side of the Germans”; this perhaps explains why the editors of Tito's Works preferred to leave out the notes.

50 Tito, , Works, V, p. 197.Google Scholar

51 Djilas, , Memoires, p. 340.Google Scholar

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55 Cenčić, , Kopinič, I, p. 128.Google Scholar

56 Proleter, no. 7/8, 1940.Google Scholar

57 Proleter, no. 5, 1940.Google Scholar

58 For examples of use by Tito, see Works, V, pp. 132, 149.Google Scholar

59 Tito, , Works, VI, p. 203.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., p. 201.

61 Ibid., pp. 205, 225–226.

62 For a more detailed discussion of the debates within the Comintern at this time, see Swain, Geoffrey, “The Comintern in Southern Europe, 1938–43”, in Judt, Tony (ed.), Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe (London, 1989).Google Scholar

63 We know Tito discussed events in Spain with Yugoslav volunteers who had taken refuge in Moscow, see Maslarić, Bozidar, Moskva-Madrid-Moskva (Zagreb, 1952), pp. 95–96.Google Scholar

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66 Ibid.; Meshcheryakov, M. T., Ispanskaya respublika i Komintern (Moscow, 1981), p. 67Google Scholar; and Togliatti, Palmiro, Opere (Rome, 1974), IV vol. I, p. 406.Google Scholar

67 Funk, K., “Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg: Internationaler der Tat”, Die Kommunistische Internationale, 2 (1941), pp. 46–51.Google Scholar

68 Proleter, no. 1, 1941.Google Scholar

69 Tito, , Works, VI, p. 126.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., pp. 151–181.

71 Ibid., p. 215.

72 ACK, CK KPJ 1941/205.

73 ACK, CK KPJ 1941/15.

74 Tito, , Works, VI, p. 213.Google Scholar

75 Jelić, Ivan, “Majsko savjetovanje rukovodstva KPJ u Zagrebu 1941.g.”, Časopis za suvremenu povijest (1984), pp. 3–15.Google Scholar

76 Tito, , Works, VII, pp. 26–40.Google Scholar

77 Jelić, , “Majsko savjetovanje”, p. 16.Google Scholar

78 Dedijer, Vladimir, Novi prilozi za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita (Rijeka, 1981), I–II, pp. 421–422.Google Scholar

79 Tito, , Works, VII, p. 41.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., p. 23.

81 Dedijer, , Novi prilozi, I–II, p. 430.Google Scholar

82 Ibid., p. 45.

83 Peta zemaljska konferencija, pp. 210–213Google Scholar; and Marjanović, Jovan, “Jugoslavija, KPJ i KI (april-septembar 1941)”, Zbornik filozofskog fakulteta, knj. II–I, p. 738.Google Scholar

84 Izvori za istoriju SKJ: dokumenti centralnih organa KPJ, NOR, i Revolucije 1941–45(Belgrade, 1985), I, p. 450Google Scholar n. 136 [hereafter Izvori]; Dedijer, , Novi prilozi, I–II, pp. 430, 474Google Scholar; and Cenčić, , Kopinič, I, pp. 292, 303.Google Scholar There are numerous other negative comments on the role played by Srebrenjak: Kopinič believed Srebrenjak was also a German agent.

85 Early in July 1941, Kopinič, claiming to be acting on the instructions of the Comintern, dismissed the Central Committee of the Croatian Communist Party and appointed a temporary leadership based on the Zagreb Municipal Committee. This “Kopinič affair”

86 Izvori, I, p. 66.Google Scholar

87 Ibid., p. 63.