Five Years Since Liberation of Belgrade
Major-General Popivoda, Yugoslav Army
Five years ago, on October 20, 1944, the Soviet Army, together with units of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, liberated Belgrade from the fascist yoke.
The liberation of Yugoslavia and its capital was the result of the victories of the Soviet Army in the Great Patriotic War and its sweeping westward offensive.
This was more than indirect aid to our people and our People’s Liberation Army.
The 1944 operations on the Eastern front were distinguished by the general offensive of the Soviet Army which smashed the enemy front from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In 1944, ten victorious Stalinist blows, smashed and disorganised the Hitler fascist army along the entire front and forced it to retreat.
The seventh of these Stalinist offensives launched on August 20 and 21 by the troops of the Second and Third Ukrainian Fronts in the Jassy-Kishinev area smashed and completely wiped out the powerful fascist group deployed there to prevent the Soviet Army breaking through to the Balkans. As a result of this blow, Rumania and Bulgaria capitulated and their troops turned their arms against fascism. This sealed the fate of the German forces in the Balkans. The Soviet Army cleared its path for a continued offensive toward Hungary and Austria and soon reached the Yugoslav frontier, preparing the way for the speedy and complete liberation of Yugoslavia.
At that time the national-liberation movement in Yugoslavia was in a critical situation. The Yugoslav High Command, smashed by German paratroops in Drvar (Bosnia), abandoned Yugoslav territory and sought refuge with the Anglo-Americans in Italy. The partisan units were abandoned and left to their own devices. The enemy, fearing encirclement and destruction at the hands of the Soviet Army, began to retreat from Greece, Macedonia and Montenegro. He smashed the partisan units of Serbia and Macedonia which represented a very inconsiderable force, and forced them into the mountains. On their own initiative these partisans units and their local commanders, moved from Bosnia and Montenegro to link up with the Soviet Army. They suffered heavy losses (some units losing as much as 50 to 70 per cent) in men and equipment when they crossed the rivers Drina, Lima and Ibra in Serbia and Western Morava.
The difficulties of the Yugoslav national liberation movement just before the liberation of Belgrade were increased by the fact that, as in Greece, the Anglo-Americans were preparing to invade the country and crush the national liberation movement. The Anglo-American imperialists hold completed their preparations for the occupation of Yugoslavia. Certain partisan units, such as the 7th Liberation Crops, operating on the territory of Slovenia along the Slovenian coast, received direct instructions from the High Command not to put any obstacles in the way of the Anglo-Americans but to welcome them cordially and to help them. Even during the war years the Tito clique in Yugoslavia was pursuing a policy of treachery. Today it is clear to us that the crisis in the national liberation movement was due entirely to the treacherous behaviour and activities of the Tito-Rankovic fascist gang which conducted secret negotiations with the Anglo-Americans in Italy, and later on the island of Vis, and for which purpose the ringleader, the traitor Tito, personally met Churchill.
At this very difficult period for our peoples and our liberation movement, the Soviet Army reached the Yugoslav frontier. After the Soviet Government had asked the consent of our peoples for the Soviet troops to enter Yugoslav territory, the troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts crossed the rivers Drava and Tisza, liberated Serbia and Vojevodina and, on October 20, 1944, the capital of Yugoslavia, Belgrade.
The 1st and 12th Corps of the People’s Liberation Army took part in the battle of Belgrade. The heroic partisans fought bravely and made their contribution to the liberation of their beloved city. Their greatest praise was Comrade Stalin’s Order of the Day in which, along with the Soviet units, due recognition was accorded our proletarian shock divisions which had taken part in the fighting for Belgrade.
Commenting on those historic days and the role of the Soviet Army in our liberation, our unforgettable comrade, General Jovanovic, wrote in his brochure “The Belgrade Operation”: “The great Russian people has been our hope and guarantee throughout the ages. Such was also the case this time. Confidence in the strength and ultimate victory of our struggle were the decisive factors over a period of difficult years… The Soviet army gave us fraternal, disinterested aid. Soviet soldiers shed their blood on the soil of our native land — in Serbia, in the streets of Belgrade, in Srem. Out of the joint suffering and bloodshed there grew the invincible fraternity and unity of the two Slav countries. This is the only correct foreign political orientation which corresponds to the age-old strivings, cultural and historical development of our peoples. This is the sole guarantee that our peoples will save themselves from national misfortune—and there have been many misfortunes in our bitter history”.
The liberation of Belgrade was a great political, moral and military victory of the Soviet Army and our People’s liberation Army. More than anything, this victory was of great and decisive significance for the further liberation of the Yugoslav peoples from the fascist yoke and capitalist slavery and for building a new Yugoslav army.
The fact that Yugoslavia and its capital had been liberated with the direct participation of the Soviet Army was regarded by our peoples as a guarantee that they would be able to express their will freely and realise their age-old aspirations, that they would be able to liberate themselves from capitalist oppression and establish a new, people’s power in the country. Liberated Belgrade was the symbol of the speedy and complete victory of the Yugoslav peoples.
These aspirations of the Yugoslav peoples were realised thanks to the selfless and inestimable fraternal aid rendered by the Soviet Union and the Soviet Army. Once again Belgrade became the political, cultural and administrative centre of Yugoslavia. A mortal blow was inflicted not only on the German invaders who had been lording it in Belgrade for several years, but also on Yugoslav reaction and the quislings both at home and abroad.
The capture of Belgrade Popivoda grade by the Soviet Army and the advance into Hungary and Austria cut off the retreat of the Hitler divisions from the Balkan Peninsula. The so-called Balkan front crumbled and the life line of this enemy front — the Salonika-Belgrade-Budapest railway was occupied by the Soviet Army. Over 150,000 German fascist soldiers and vast quantities of military equipment were captured by the Yugoslav Army.
The actual liberation of Belgrade was of particular significance for our People’s Liberation Army. The Soviet Army rendered us every assistance in reorganising the partisan units into a modern regular army capable of waging frontal attacks against the enemy. It gave us modern equipment — artillery, tanks and aircraft — which we had not had hitherto. Our officers were advised by Soviet military experts sent to us on our request. They stayed and fought with us until Yugoslavia was completely liberated.
From 1943 onwards, the Soviet Army supplied our People’s liberation Army with equipment. At night in all weathers, Soviet pilots flew to different parts of the country to Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro, bringing arms and ammunition and evacuating the wounded. When the Soviet Army approached our frontiers, special mobile artillery and aircraft units were detached, on Comrade Stalin’s personal directive, from the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts. In less than 15 days these units liberated Belgrade and more than half of all Yugoslavia. How hard these Soviet Units fought can be seen from the advance of the 4th Mechanized Corps under General Zhdanov from Vidin (Bulgaria) to Belgrade, over mountains and through autumn mud in a roadless terrain. This advance took only six days — an average of 50 kilometres a day. Without resting, this Corps immediately went into battle playing a decisive role in the liberation of the capital.
The Soviet Army handed over to our army all the war material captured during the battle for Belgrade, a considerable number of light and heavy guns and several thousand gun-carriers. More than ten infantry divisions were supplied with arms from the Danube supply line. General Vitruk’s air-wing was placed at our disposal. All the equipment of this group together with several hundred planes was handed over to us and is still in the Yugoslav Army. When in January 1945, the Germans succeeded in breaking the Srem front, routing the 1st Yugoslav Army and threatening Belgrade once more, Marshal Tolbuchin, despite the German offensive at Lake Balaton, detached considerable forces which halted the drive, smashed and threw back the enemy from Belgrade.
These are but a few example of the great and decisive assistance given by the Soviet Army in the liberation of Yugoslavia. This assistance was essential for Yugoslavia’s liberation from fascist slavery and the capitalist yoke and to ensure that her people took the happy path of Socialism.
There is no need to prove this historical truth to anybody, and certainly not to the peoples of Yugoslavia who are the living witnesses of those memorable days and events. But it is imperative, particularly for the Yugoslav peoples, to defend this truth from the degenerates and traitors — the Tito-Rankovic clique which, in its bestial hatred for the Soviet Union and the liberating Soviet Army, is trying to distort, falsify and belittle the historical facts.
The fascist Tito gang ignores the services of the Soviet Army in liberating Yugoslavia, pretending that to admit the role of the Soviet Union would detract from the significance of the Yugoslav people’s liberation struggle. The Yugoslav people know very well who liberated our country and all other countries from Hitlerism, they know very well who was the first to recognise our heroic struggle and give it material help. The Yugoslav peoples are not ungrateful; the Tito clique will never succeed in deceiving them. Thousands of Soviet soldiers fell on our soil, fighting for our liberation. The Tito clique defiles the graves of these soldiers, insulting our peoples who love the U.S.S.R., the Bolshevik Party and Comrade Stalin to whom they will remain for ever grateful.
But Belgrade, liberated five years ago by the Soviet Army, is once again in the grip of a monstrous terror regime directed by the fascist Tito-Rankovic clique. The Glavnjacha prison, the Banista concentration camp, the Zemun military prison and many others are filled with Communists against whom the Rankovic janissaries commit unheard of atrocities. The prisons hold partisans who fought in the People’s Liberation War since 1941, leaders of the people’s uprising, soldiers who, together with the glorious Soviet Army troops, took part in the battle for Belgrade: Sreten Juiovic, Andrija Hebrang, Branko Petricevic, Vlado Dapcevic, Savo Stancevic, Moma Djuric and many others. One of these prisons saw the murder of General Jovanovic, the hero of the People’s Liberation War, beloved of the Yugoslav partisans. Five years after the liberation of Belgrade, police terror once again talks in the city. People are arrested in the streets. Rankovic agents make night raids on their homes, terrorising and plundering the people. It is sufficient to mention the services and assistance of the Soviet Union or to lay flowers on the grave of a Soviet soldier to be arrested, beaten up and kept into prison.
The traitors and deserters have taken Yugoslavia out of the socialist camp, wiped out the gains of our people’s liberation struggle, and have opened our country to the Anglo-American plunderers — the old enemies of Yugoslavia who for decades ruthlessly oppressed and exploited the country, who all through the war stabbed her in the back, who in 1944 without the slightest reason and contrary to our repeated protests, bombed Belgrade which was already in ruins.
But the fascist degenerates are wrong if they think they will be able to continue their treacherous policy and terrorise the Yugoslav peoples for much longer. The plans of the imperialists and of their agency in Yugoslavia have been exposed. The criminals have been caught red-handed.
Yugoslav patriots’ resistance to the traitors will inevitably grow into an armed struggle and will destroy the imperialist plans which have already been exposed.
(For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy, No. 23 (50), October 21, 1949)