BANNEDTHOUGHT

Suppression of News in and about Yugoslavia and the Balkans

      [Intro to be added later.]

      If you know of other suppressed documents, news reports or international commentary that should be posted here, contact us at: freespeech@bannedthought.org

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Documents about the Current Suppression of Speech and Ideas in the Balkan Region

• [To be added as we obtain them.]

Yugoslavia and Its Political and Economic System

• General Information:
  • [Pocket-Book:] “1000 Facts About Yugoslavia”, (Beograd: Izdavacki Zavoc “Yugoslavija”, 1963), 134 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [4,109 KB]
  
  
• Writings of Josip Broz Tito   (1892-1980):
  • About 25 articles and statements by Tito are available in HTML format on the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA) at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/index.htm
  
  
• Writings of Other Leaders of the CP of Yugoslavia:
  • [Book:] “Conversations With Stalin”, by Milovan Djilas, (London: 1967), 173 pages. Originally written in 1961, and giving Djilas’s reports of conversations in 1944, 1945 and 1948. Djilas was a long-time leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, who developed into an open revisionist in his later years (even to the right of Tito!). But this book still has things of interest. Stalin’s admission of bad advice to the Chinese Communist Party about not proceeding with the revolution there is on page 141. His opposition to the Greek Revolution starts on the previous page.   Searchable PDF format   [3,555 KB]  
  
  
• Yugoslavia’s Socio-economic System and Economy:
  • [Book:] “Yugoslav Workers’ Self-Management”, Proceedings of a Symposium held in Amsterdam, 7-9 January 1970, ed. by M. J. Broekmeyer, (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel, 1970), 271 pages. A symposium by Western academics with varying degrees of sympathy for the Yugoslavian system which added elements of syndicalism to their basicallly capitalist economy which was often falsely termed “market socialism”.   Searchable PDF format   [5,430 KB]
  • [Book:] “Business Cycles in Yugoslavia”, by Branko Horvat, (White Plains, NY: IASP, Eastern European Economics, Vol. IX, No. 3-4, Spring-Summer 1971), 276 pages. Written by a Yugoslavian economist who maintains that their system of “market socialism” really does count as “socialism”, even though it leads to economic cycles and overproduction crises in much the same way that Western-style monopoly capitalism does.   Searchable PDF format   [4,699 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Yugoslav Experiment: 1948-1974”, by Dennison Rusinow, (Berkeley, CA: UC Press, 1978), 436 pages. An extensive discussion of the Yugslavian system by a sympathetic foreigner who spent years living in the country.   Searchable PDF format   [9,433 KB]
  
  
• Criticism of Yugoslavia’s Socio-economic System from a Left Perspective and from an MLM Perspective:
  • “Resolution of the Information Bureau Concerning the Situation in the C.P. of Yugoslavia”, Communique of a meeting of the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties, July 1, 1948. Included, along with two related articles by the CPUSA in their journal Political Affairs, August 1948, pp. 690-710.   Available online at: http://www.bannedthought.org/USA/CPUSA/Periodicals/PoliticalAffairs/1948/PoliticalAffairs-1948-08-OCR-sm.pdf
  • “Minutes of Mao's Conversation with a Yugoslavian Communist Union Delegation”, Beijing, n.d. (but September 1956). (Wilson Center Digital Archive: English translation from a Chinese historical archive of “Selected Diplomatic Papers of Mao Zedong”), 8 pages. These are very important comments by Mao, apologizing to the Yugoslavians for their treatment by both Stalin and China during the late 1940s period (as illustrated by the documents above). More importantly, these comments include an extensive criticism of Stalin with regard to the Chinese Revolution, and an explanation as to why China had so far not been more publicly critical of Stalin. [Note, however, that soon after this, Yugoslavia moved strongly toward revisionism, of the market socialism variety, and the Soviet Union also soon became totally revisionist (though of the different state capitalist variety). In light of these new developments, both Mao and People’s China became very critical again of Yugoslavia and the USSR and at the same time found it necessary to greatly ease off on the criticism of Stalin, who the revisionists were so ferociously attacking. —Ed.]   Searchable PDF format   [117 KB]
  • “On the Draft Program of the Communist League of Yugoslavia”, consisting of English translations of two separate newspaper articles, one from China and the other from the Soviet Union, which provides an interesting contrast between the differing emphases in the two criticisms themselves. (From the CPUSA journal, Political Affairs, June 1958, pp. 50-58. The complete issue of this magazine is available at: https://www.bannedthought.org/USA/CPUSA/Periodicals/PoliticalAffairs/1958/PoliticalAffairs-1958-06-OCR-sm.pdf ) The Peking article is from People’s Daily, May 5, 1958 [also included in the pamphlet “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism” below]; the Moscow article is from Pravda, May 9, 1958.   Searchable PDF format   [181 KB]
  • “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism”, (Peking: FLP, 1958), 98 pages, which includes the following articles:
    • “Resolution on the Moscow Meetings of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties”, May 23, 1958.
    • “Modern Revisionism Must Be Repudiated”, Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) editorial, May 5, 1958.
    • “Modern Revisionism Must Be Fought to the End”, Renmin Ribao editorial, June 4, 1958.
    • “Yugoslav Revisionism—Product of Imperialism”, by Chen Po-ta
      Also available as a separate article: which originally appeared (in Chinese) in Hongqi [Red Flag], June 1, 1958, 17 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [929 KB]
    • “Yugoslav Revisionism is Just What U.S. Imperialism Needs”, by Kang Sheng
      Also available as a separate article: which originally appeared in Renmin Ribao [People’s Daily], June 14, 1958, 13 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [705 KB]
    • “In Refutation of Modern Revisionism’s Reactionary Theory of the State”, by Wang Chia-hsiang
    • “The More They Try to Hide, the More They are Exposed”, on Tito’s Speech of June 15, 1958, by a Renmin Ribao Commentator
    Searchable PDF format   [3,084 KB]
  • “Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country? Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”, by the Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) and Hongqi (Red Flag), September 26, 1963, 56 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [2,289 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Belgrade Revisionist Clique — Renegades from Marxism-Leninism and Agents of Imperialism”, a collection of 13 articles published in Albania from 1962-1963. (Tirana: 1964), 336 pages.   PDF image format   [11,665 KB]
  • [Book:] “Marxist-Leninist Ideology Will Certainly Overcome Revisionism”, volume II [volume I not yet available], a large collection of critical articles from Albania focusing on Yugoslavia, Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, and other revisionists such as the Italian Communist Party, (Tirana: 1964), 470 pages.   PDF image format   [23,571 KB]
  • Three short articles from Peking Review, 1968 #24 (June 14, 1968): “Revisionist Rule Will Not Last Long”; “Yugoslav Students in Revolt”; and “The Aggravation of the Politico-Economic Crisis and Sharpening of Class Contradictions in Yugoslavia”, totalling 4 pages.   Searchable PDF format   [698 KB]
    [The complete Peking Review issue is available at: https://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1968/PR1968-24.pdf]
  • “Mao Zedong on Yugoslavia”, in HTML format on the Marxist Internet Archive. About a dozen quotations. At: https://www.marxists.org/subject/yugoslavia/maoism/index.htm
  • “Who Incites Hostility Amongst the Peoples of Yugoslavia?”, editorial of the Albanian journal, Zëri i Popullit, April 23, 1981, about the events in Kosova, (Tirana: 1981), 32 pages.   PDF image format   [562 KB]
  • [Book:] “The Titoites: Historical Notes”, by Enver Hoxha, (Tirana/London: 1982), 654 pages.   PDF image format   [14,795 KB]
  
  
• The Collapse and Dismantling of Yugoslavia:
  • “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse)”, by Edward S. Herman & David Peterson, Monthly Review magazine, Vol. 59, #5, October 2007, 68 pages. Focuses mostly on foreign military intervention rather than on the underlying total economic failure of Yugoslavian market “socialism”.   Searchable PDF format   [1,670 KB]
  • “The Life and Death of Yugoslav Socialism”, by James Robertson, Jacobin magazine, July 17, 2017. This analysis correctly emphasizes the economic failure of the market “socialist” system in Yugoslavia that also had some major devisive syndicalist aspects to it. But, appearing as it does in the bourgeois social-democratic magazine, Jacobin, it provides no real solution to the inevitable fatal problems of market “socialism” and syndicalism. The implicit advice seems to be, well, let’s try it again and just not make the same mistakes. Good luck with that!   Available online at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/07/yugoslav-socialism-tito-self-management-serbia-balkans
  
  
• Academic and/or Bourgeois Works on Yugoslavia:
  • “Yugoslavia and the USSR, 1945-1980: The History of a Cold War Relationship”, by Petar Žarković, (original source and date unknown, but from internal evidence it seems have been written circa 2017), 119 pages. (We have added page numbers to the document.)   Searchable PDF format   [571 KB]  
  
  

Documents about the Countries and Political Organizations in the Balkan Region Since the Collapse of Yugoslavia

• [To be added as we obtain them.]

— NOTICE —       Due to the repressive legislation and judicial decisions in the United States, we at bannedthought.org want to make it completely clear that we do not have any connection whatsoever with any political parties or organizations in the former Yugoslavia or the Balkans, or in any other country for that matter. We do not aid, promote, assist, support, coordinate with, or provide any sort of services or advice to any party or organization in the Balkan region, nor to any of the other parties and organizations from other countries whose documents may be posted here. However, we do support the right of free speech, and the right of the people in both this region and internationally to read the views and publications of these and all other parties and organizations. And for this reason alone we are making copies of many of their documents available on this site.

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