– Predrag Miličević –
A reasonable question may arise for the reader: why did the United States, along with the IMF and the West as a whole — having so generously financed Tito’s regime between the 1950s and 1980s — suddenly cease financial support at the end of the decade and completely reverse their policies? Why did the “civilized” West decide to dismantle and destroy the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), and why did it become unnecessary?
An objective analysis reveals that, during the 1950s-80s, Tito’s regime was essential to the West as a Trojan horse in the fight against the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union. It served as a powerful megaphone against everything Soviet, socialist, Russian, as well as Slavic and Orthodox.
But all things come to an end. Tito died in 1980, and by the mid-1980s, the Yugoslav megaphone of anti-Sovietism became entirely unnecessary. It may seem incredible, but bitter facts are stubborn things.
It was no longer Churchill, but the “Iron Lady” who found real promoters of anti-Soviet ideas in Soviet Russia itself — staunch enemies of communism, counter-revolutionaries led by Gorbachev and his supporters from the ranks of the “Sixtiers,” the corrupt party bureaucracy and the sharks of the shadow economy.
And so, the West faced a legitimate question: what to do with the outdated, debt-ridden and now entirely unnecessary Yugoslav megaphone?
They say that “nature abhors a vacuum.” Yugoslavia, drowning in debt and lacking reliable allies, drew the attention of German capital, whose ambitions had been subdued until the late 1980s but were now reignited. Germany, as the primary proxy of America in Europe, had an historically familiar goal: access to the warm waters of the Adriatic Sea and the realization of a long-standing dream — to deal with that thorn in their side, Yugoslavia/Serbia, which had thwarted German expansion twice before, in 1914 and 1941.
The way Western external and internal forces were deployed to achieve their goals in this newly created situation is of interest.
By the early 1990s, the balance of power had shifted decisively in favour of the West. West Germany, having absorbed East Germany, truly became the leading force in Europe. Meanwhile, Russia — historically Serbia/Yugoslavia’s ally and protector — was brought to its knees before the West, begging for handouts, thanks to the betrayal of the Gorbachev-Yeltsin tandem. Under such circumstances, for Germany to break up Yugoslavia, especially with the blessing of the United States, was a trivial task — a matter of logistics and execution.
The internal alignment of forces in Yugoslavia at the time also favoured its destruction. The party elite of the “League of Communists” had lost all credibility among the people, making it easier for the West to implement its plans.
A detailed account of the tragic events in the SFRY, orchestrated and executed by the West, is provided in the aforementioned book, Six Aggressions of the West Against the Southern Slavs in the 20th Century.
As life has shown and as Comrade Stalin predicted, Tito led the SFRY to complete catastrophe, rendering the socialist state utterly incapable of defending the historic achievements of the working people. This is the tragic result of Tito’s revisionist-reformist policies.
In examining the revisionism of Khrushchev and Gorbachev and their roles in the decay of the socialist camp and the international workers’ movement, it is crucial to recall one of V.I. Lenin’s most important warnings, repeated many times — that without systematic struggle against revisionism in all its forms, neither the consolidation of the international communist and workers’ movement nor, moreover, victory in socialist construction in an individual country is possible.
Undoubtedly, for society to move forward, a Marxist-scientific analysis is necessary to evaluate both the achievements and mistakes of the communist and workers’ movements worldwide. Particularly important in today’s context is an analysis of the reasons for the emergence of a vast number of traitors and defectors within the communist movement, especially figures as sinister as Khrushchev, Tito, Gorbachev, A. Yakovlev and many others.
(Excerpt from the Russian book “Beware: Revisionism” — “Ostorozhno: revizionizm”)