by International Minister
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Violence between ethnic Albanians and Serbs
flared in ex-Yugoslavia on March 17th. Rioters killed
28 Serbians, injured hundreds, burned hundreds of homes, dug up
graves and destroyed
Serbian churches hundreds of years old. Serbs burned mosques
in Belgrade in retaliation. Two or three Albanian
boys depending on the report also drowned in the turmoil.
The short-run cause appears to be some maneuvering leading up to a referendum or UN considerations in 2005 regarding Kosova--spelled "Kosovo" in the old Yugoslavia days and still referred to that way by Serbs. Others believed that the short-run cause was that Serbian men had chased the two Albanian boys who ended up drowning in a river, an event preceded of course by another event in which Serbians believed a drive-by shooting was by Albanians. MIM will say bluntly it is not interested much in this "we said/they said" detail. By now everyone should know there are murderous backward nationalists running about in eastern Europe and the Caucusus. Former Finnish prime minister and head of the United Nations organization in Kosova Harri Holkeri says that both Serbia-Montenegro's government and Albania's government agreed that the violence should cease.(1) On the 23rd, the Finns acting for the UN arrested Shukri Buja, a former commander of the KLA--an organization using a name not unlike famous liberation armies of the past. Shukri Buja is also a leader of the second-largest party there, the PDK.(2) Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister of Serbia-Montenegro accused Germany of blocking the way in the Security Council for action on the outrages in Kosova. Goran Svilanovic said that Germany favors Kosova's independence from Yugoslavia.(3) When imperialist troops landed with UN sanction, they simultaneously told the Serbs that they would not sanction independence and they told the Albanians they would keep the Serbian military forces away from Kosova. Because the Serbs had an objectively better military situation on the ground for this sort of ethnic cleansing, the NATO intervention objectively aided the Albanian ethnicity, but now the Albanians are chafing under international occupation. Because we supported the only party of Serbians and other ex-Yugoslav people opposing Serbian great nationalism-- the Partija Rada--we now feel justified in condemning narrow nationalism among Albanians. The National Albanian American Council issued a press release March 19th saying: "Nothing justifies acts of retribution or burning of churches and mosques."(4) At the same time, even this positive statement asking for "maturity" said that the Serbs' political statements were worse than the violence. The violence in March, 2004--five years after the last war--led the imperialists to dispatch another 2000 Italian, German and other troops to the scene.(5) These same imperialists denounce Stalin for the hard line he took on the small nationalities between Germany and the Soviet Union and north of Iraq, but the same imperialists usually propagandizing against Stalin now also face the same need to send troops for a crackdown to keep ethnic bloodletting from happening. The difference between the UN/imperialist crackdown and Stalin's is this: the economy is going no where as these small nationalities fight and that adds to the bitterness. The United $tates is Serbia's biggest foreign investor and the u.$. economy is going no where. Under Stalin, the whole Soviet Union and its allied countries moved forward economically. Furthermore, under Stalin, even if people had to migrate thanks to Stalin's iron hand, they still all belonged to the same country and had the same citizenship rights to visit Moscow and so on. In the worst circumstance, internally deported people cooperated with each other at a distance. Now in Kosova today, we have all the same violence and problems that Stalin also encountered in similar regions he controlled, but the repressive violence by supposed peacekeepers ends up in another round of ethnic cleansing! Imperialism does not have any other answer. Now Kosova has had 80% of its Serbs kicked out and it is more ethnically pure than even the rest of Europe with its restrictive immigration policies. In both Stalin's case and NATO's case, there was terrible repressive violence in questions like these, but only in Stalin's case was there any hope of advance from that. If no internationalist authority cracks down in this whole Balkan region and ex-Soviet bloc territory extending down into Baku and further, the ethnicities trade ethnic cleansing actions. Today, Albanians attack minority Serbs in Kosova. The next day Serbs retaliate against mosques in Belgrade or somewhere else and so on down the line, because no geographic areas are ethnically "pure," as if there could be such a thing anyway. The same thing happened between Azerbaijan and Armenia when hotheads in one province called Karabakh leading the break up of the Soviet Union evicted Azeris only to face retaliation by Azeris against Armenians in the rest of Azerbaijan. The actions of some nationalists ended up creating millions of refugees on both sides. Yugoslavia and its leader Tito was the darling of all mushy "socialists" opposed to Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union after World War II. Tito brought "market socialism," subsequently adopted by the revisionists in China and the Soviet Union. In Tito's version of "market socialism" there was also "local control;" thus he gained the support of various half-baked "anarchists" as well. Today, all the petty-bourgeois advocates of the Yugoslavian model are no where to be found, except in total stupor in younger generations. There are no mea culpas coming forward from any of the people who found Tito preferable to Stalin. In the sense that potential advocates of "local control" are so lacking in seriousness that they do not know Yugoslavia was a model of what they wanted, there is even another generation of unconscious Titoites arising. Now we see clearly where "local control" of the economy leads. Each ethnicity retained its own economic interests and never learned what centralized cooperation should be. Workers of each ethnicity never understood concretely how they were damaging each others' interests if at all. In fact, in Yugoslavia's case, the lack of centralized contact bred suspicions and illusions of damage from other ethnicities when it was really imperialism robbing Yugoslavia with Tito's blessings. Hence, without centrally coordinated economic contact among workers, real damages and illusions of damages may accrue in relations among nations. Not surprisingly as a result, when Western Liberalism swept eastern Europe, Yugoslavia had the biggest explosion of ugly ethnic violence, right out of Hitler's game plan from World War II. Even in the words of one nationalist supporter of the ethnic Albanians, "there were no good guys" in the conflict: it was that ugly. The recent term "ethnic cleansing" started with ex-Yugoslavia. Stalin's legacy Greece and Albania are two places where Stalin has had a stronger influence than in other countries, because of the negative example of Tito staring those countries in the face. No where is the influence of Stalin greater outside of Georgia and Russia than Albania, but even there we see that Stalin has been tossed aside. As ex-Yugoslavia nicely encapsulates all the problems of our current international communist movement, and because Stalin is such an influence still, we hope our readers will pardon us as we go into the details. After Mao died and Albania's leader Enver Hoxha broke with China, Hoxha took to preparing Albanian nationalism. While he was alive he had think tanks doing nationalist research on Albania and he prepared the ground for what we see today--people claiming to be communist and yet favoring ethnic cleansing in Kosova for "democratic" reasons--tryanny of the majority no different from that in Iran's theocracy today. Nonetheless, while Hoxha was alive, he did not implement the kind of things we see today. We can only guess that Hoxha was still calculating that a Stalin figure might arise in Russia or China that he might be able to get along with. When Hoxha died, the Albanians including his right-hand in the party, did not wait anymore. They went for capitalism outright. This was a big blow to the part of the "communist" movement that opposed Mao and upheld Enver Hoxha. It happened just as Mao said, by the hands of a bourgeoisie right in the party. Hoxha's hand-picked successor restored open free market capitalism. Most of the Hoxha-supporters quit their parties and degenerated politically, some even going for Gorbachev before totally abandoning politics. Nonetheless, the influence of Stalin and Hoxha in Albania did not completely disappear. As a result, Albanian nationalists have now appropriated Stalin as favoring a liberation struggle in Kosova; even though there is no basis in Stalin's writings for that notion. One writer on the Internet going by the name of "Tovarish Spetsnaz" has written thousands of articles in one forum alone while purporting to defend Stalin. According to "Tovarish Spetsnaz," (TS) which is a phrase meaning something like "Comrade Special Forces," Serbia is a "mini-imperialism."(7) MIM responded to this charge that Serbian chauvinism is "imperialism," as if imperialism were a cultural practice and not an economic system. "Where are the Fortune 500 banks in Serbia that make Serbia an exporter of capital and hence an imperialism? "For us scientists in the legacy of Lenin, 'imperialism' is a scientific term, not a slur we throw whenever we need some opportunist camouflage." TS had issued this charge of "mini-imperialism" in response to a quote from Stalin on nationalism: "This does not mean, of course, that the proletariat must support every national movement, everywhere and always, in every individual concrete case. It means that support must be given to such national movements as tend to weaken, to overthrow imperialism, and not to strengthen and preserve it. Cases occur when the national movements in certain oppressed countries come into conflict with the interests of the development of the proletarian movement. In such cases support is, of course, entirely out of the question."(8) Needless to say, "Comrade Special Forces" denied that fighting imperialism is first priority unless Yugoslavia is counted as imperialism. Not all defenders of Stalin in the world take the line that Stalin somehow endorsed the kind of conflict we see today which cleared the way for outright imperialist occupation in ex-Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, there are other organizations claiming to defend Stalin hideously fanning the fire. The central quote in all this comes from some writing of Hoxha's about his meeting with Stalin which says the people of Kosova have self-determination. Hoxha published the rather bland quote on self-determination after Stalin died and could not rebut Hoxha. The Hoxhaites now say that Stalin favored letting the Kosova people decide their future and use that as justification for inter-ethnic violence. In the exact same document by Hoxha, Stalin also said this: "The Yugoslav communists and the Yugoslav people must attend to that matter; it is up to them to solve the problems of the present and the future of their country. It is in this context, also, that I see the problem of Kosova and the Albanian population living in other parts of Yugoslavia. We must not leave any way for the Titoite enemy to accuse us later of allegedly waging our fight to break up the Yugoslav Federation. This is a delicate moment and needs very careful handling, because by saying, 'See, they want to break up Yugoslavia,' Tito not only gathers reaction around him, but also tries to win the patriotic elements over to his side."(9) In other words, Stalin knew that if Kosova left Yugoslavia, Serbian "patriots" might take it the wrong way and rally to revisionism. With NATO troops on the ground in the situation, MIM would say Stalin's warning is still relevant and that this was the wrong way to try to get independence and can do nothing good for Balkan relations. The late Bill Bland then residing in England published by the "Communist Party Alliance" said that imperialists will not grant freedom. His conclusion was that Kosova people should seize their nation with arms--in the midst of imperialist intervention. He supported the Kosova Liberation Army.(10) Yet Bill Bland's article also contains no relevant quotes from Stalin. His article is a call for inter-ethnic violence, a slaughter among proletarians and farmers. One pro-KLA "Marxist-Leninist" wrote in favor of imperialist intervention for the Kosova people. He said after all that Stalin called for the intervention of France and England against Germany!(11) This utter confusion of an imperialist country like Nazi Germany with ordinary non-imperialist countries like Serbia is typical of much eastern European false consciousness and most Hoxhaism as it exists today. MIM repeats: the only countries east of Germany and west of Russia that should be considered imperialist are Sweden, Norway & arguably Finland--not Iraq, not Yugoslavia, not Armenia, not Azerbaijan, not Georgia and not even Turkey. Others in the confused Hoxha camp referred to Serbia as a colonial power: "During the Tito years the region has always been exploited in a colonial way, being a producer of raw materials, by the bourgeoisie of the Federation richer regions." (12) Most of Hoxhaism died with the open capitalist restoration in Albania, but 90% of the remnant of Hoxhaism would be no where without this sort of Albanian nationalism which finds no home anywhere else in the international communist movement. There is no home for it, because it is not Leninist in regarding Serbia as an imperialist power. It goes without saying if the "communists" are coming up with lunacy regarding Serbian "imperialism," then the Albanian nationalists are just straight-up lynching Serbs. The sad truth is that we could change the names of the ethnicities and our statement would still be true in much of the rest of the same region. A few years from now, these same junk nationalists will be clamoring to join the European Union and crossing each others' borders at will in search of the perfect Gucci handbag--or so they dream. MIM is not sure that imperialism is going to be able to extract enough from the Third World to integrate all the eastern European peoples successfully, but 2 million people in Kosova should be no problem, less than the size of one u.$. county. If Kosova does manage to join the European Union plunder-machine on equal terms, the inter-ethnic violence of today is still going to look backward. Russian revisionism Russian revisionism plays a scandalous role in ex-Yugoslavia. It was Khruschev who abandoned Stalin and a principled position on the national question. It was also Khruschev who looked to nothing more than the size and economic strength of Yugoslavia as a reason to abandon principled relations with Albania and cosy up to Tito. When we see extreme actions of ethnic cleansing or rioting, as in ex-Yugoslavia, we can be sure that small nations are writhing in pain from the punishment of bigger nations. Once Khruschev abandoned Stalin on the national question and allowed for corruption to enter the party in the name of opposing dictatorship of the proletariat, all the nations smaller than Russia knew that bourgeois self-interest was the new watchword of the day. Instead of viewing imperialism as the source of economic problems, all ex-Soviet people since Khruschev have increasingly looked at their neighbors as the source of economic problems. Imperialist country revisionism The evil of imperialist country revisionism and its contribution in this situation cannot be underestimated. Many of the ex-Soviet bloc looked on in admiration at Yugoslavia's standard of living and this furthered the pro-Tito illusions propped up with billions in Western loans. To this day, we can be sure that a large portion of Albanians see Serbians as "relatively privileged." Albanians are defending themselves against charges that they are the spawn of privilege in the Ottoman Empire: that's right Turkey. The story goes that the Turks gave Albanians a special deal to push Serbs out of Kosova.(13) In return, the Albanians accuse the Serbs of some kind of special privilege. For example, the Serbs have a company in Kosova and the Albanians accuse it of the following: "While only a handful of Albanians, mainly in low key jobs in the administration, still retain their jobs, the Serbian regime has used the Kosova company to boost an image of economic prosperity in Kosova."(14) So it is when President Rugova issues a press release condemning "colonial exploitation," he is completely upside-down: "The Serbian press has reported high-profile contracts the Serbian regime has closed on behalf of the Kosova company with Greek and American firms, most notable of which Mitilineos Holdings and Trafiguro. "President of the Republic of Kosova Dr. Ibrahim Rugova has warned foreign governments and economic interests against closing deals with Serbs on the Kosova public economy, currently under Serbian control. 'Such deals will be treated null and void', the President emphasized."(14) When Rugova says "colonial exploitation," he's not talking about Western companies operating in Kosova. He's talking about their signing contracts with the wrong lackeys, Serbian lackeys instead of Albanian lackeys. As usual, the tendency in the ex-Soviet bloc territory is to look at the neighbor and assume it is the source of poverty, when in truth, the only suspicions of that sort should fall on Russia or the NATO occupiers. That's why it is absolutely crucial that more people get on-board with the MIM agenda and show the people internationally and concretely what causes wealth and poverty in this world; what are the sources of economic development and how much in reparations are necessary from imperialism to the oppressed. Without the correct understanding of this scientific question, the people will continue to kill their best business partners. There are hundreds of millions of people in the West who could show these Serbs and Albanians what "special privilege" is. The Serbs' and Albanians' arguments about the Ottoman Empire or the measly Serb company in Kosova are way off the mark. The Albanians and Serbs need to study international political economy and realize that Amerikkkans, British, French, Italians etc. do not work so much harder than them: quite the contrary, the imperialist country populations work less and have less motivation. The poverty of the Balkan region stems from getting off the road of Lenin and Stalin and then getting connected to an imperialist web in which international finance capital robs the entire world. Virtually all the so-called Marxist parties of the West are really advocates of the parasitism of their own "working classes." They cannot be counted on as reliable sources of information. The "workers" there are not "exploited." Of special note in this right now is the modern day Amerikan version of Karl Kautsky, Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP=U$A ("Revolutionary Communist Party"). According to Avakian, the international proletariat of each country should target 10% of its population as enemies. That's according to his slogan of the "two 90/10s." Not surprisingly, the people of Kosova are carrying out the Avakian line protecting Amerikkkan privilege by attacking the company owners and relatively privileged workers known as Serbs. Kosova's people have "advanced" the struggle so far that they have nearly kicked out all the "exploiters." That's where the chauvinist line opposing MIM leads. On a global scale, the English worker making minimum wage legally-speaking is in the top 10.1% of the world by income. The chauvinist reply to the facts is that income is not class. For RCP=U$A and the rest of the exploiter country revisionists, class is something relative, not something based in the labor theory of value. That is why according to the RCP=U$A's official line there is an enemy of 10% of the population in every country including the u$a. The philistines are counting on people not realizing that anyone with assets generating less than the minimum wage of Amerikkkans may be rich in their country, but they are at most petty-bourgeoisie internationally, something that should be called "national bourgeoisie" in the oppressed nations. Yet it is this petty-bourgeoisie making under $10,000 a year which Avakian and company believes constitutes the majority of the world's enemy of the international proletariat! That is right in the RCP=U$A slogan of the "two 90/10s." This all stems from their refusal to acknowledge uneven development in the world caused by parasitism. It is only MIM teaching that 90% of the enemy of the international proletariat is right in the imperialist countries. That's just dialectics, the law of uneven development. The philistines at the RCP=U$A and elsewhere depend on global ignorance concerning the minimum wage in the majority-exploiter countries. They don't want anyone to know that they actually believe these minimum wage "workers" and much richer "workers" constituting 90% of the imperialist country populations are actually allies of the international proletariat; even though, these same people are in the top 10% richest in the world. RCP=u$A, the Trotskyists and social-democrats have all done this and in effect what they have done is take 9 out of 10 of the richest 10% of people of the world and say they are allies of the international proletariat. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people the RCP=U$A and other revisionists are calling "enemy" have such impressive control of the means of production that their income is under $10,000 a year. The RCP=U$A's line is an Amerikkkan chauvinist line attacking a huge Third World enemy while letting the world's richest people off the hook. That is why Yugoslavia brings all the issues of MIM's line together. Before the Communist Party of China let Mao talk so much about a "bourgeoisie in the party," Mao nonetheless explained this about Yugoslavia in 1963 in the essay "Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?": "not only is it possible for a working-class party to fall under the control of a labour aristocracy, degenerate into a bourgeois party and become a flunkey of imperialism before it seizes power." Furthermore, "Old-line revisionism arose as a result of the imperialist policy of buying over and fostering a labour aristocracy. Modern revisionism has arisen in the same way. Sparing no cost, imperialism has now extended the scope of its operations and is buying over leading groups in socialist countries and pursues through them its desired policy of 'peaceful evolution.'" An assortment of police agents, intelligence agents, zombies and the brain-dead are polluting the name of Stalin and Mao today. Hence, those calling themselves "communist" are all to blame for the situation in eastern Europe today. Yet it is of absolute urgency for survival that people dig deeper underneath all the decomposing revisionism to understand the true sources of prosperity and economic harmony.
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