YUGOSLAV COMMUNISTS DISCIPLINED

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 June 1948, Page 5

YUGOSLAV COMMUNISTS DISCIPLINED

Russia's Hand Expels Them From The Cominform

Recd. 6 p.m. London, June 29. The Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) has expelled the Yugoslav Communist Party. In a communique published in the Prague Communist newspaper “Rude Pravo,” the Cominform accuses Marshal Tito and his party of practically every crime in the Communist book, from Trotskyism and anti-Sovietism to “ineptness and false demogogie tactics,” says the British United Press correspondent in Prague An open appeal to true Communists in Yugoslavia to rise and overthrow the present leaders is contained in the Cominform eomfunique.

The communique urges them: “To force the present leaders to correct their errors open] / and honourably or, if The lenders prove incapable of this to replace them and build up from belew a new internationalist leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party ”

A- Russian delegation to a Cominfimi secret meeting, which decided on the expulsion, was led by Mr. A. Zhdanov, who is one of the top men of the Russians’ foreign policy department. The neeting is reported to have been held in ex-King Michael’s palace at Sinai. Delegates from other countries included Italy’s Signor Togliati and France’s M. Duclos. The Associated Press Prague correspondent says the signatures to the Cominform statement showed that it bore the approval of the highest Communist quarters. It castigated Tito and his aides as “Trotskvists,” which is one of »he supreme insults in Marxist vocabulary. The communique said: “The Corirnform agrees with the decision of the central, committee of the Soviet Communist Party, which toOK the initiative in revealing the wrong policy of the central committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and especially of Comrades Tito, vardeli. Djilas ' and Rankovie" (members of the Yugoslav Cabinet). Their anti-Russian policy was inconsistent with Marxism and Leninism, and suited only the bourgeois nationalism. Their internal policy renounced class war and they disregarded class differentiation in tallages. There was a dictatorship inside the Yugoslav Communist Party which avoided elections, criticism and self-criticism. Members who criticised leaders were excluded from the party or arrested. Premature laws were created regarding nationalism of small shops, for which Yugoslavia was not prepared. Simi’arly. Yugoslavia’s proposed liquidation of the Kulaks (owner farmers) must wait until preparatory work was done. Attempts to solve such matters by hasty decrees must mean catastrophe.” No statement has been issued in

Belgrade on the Cominform declaration. Tito is believed to be at his summer home at Bled.

Reuter’s Prague correspondent says observers regard the Cominform statement condemning Tito as saying that his crime was to consider Yugoslavia first and Communism second. A point noted most carefully about the statement in Prague was a sharp reminder that Communism is international. The Cominform’s swift action against Tito is regarded as a lesson in political theory for Czechs, Poles, Hungarians and Bulgarians, whose ideology has not yet been developed to a point where they willingly will sacrifice nationalist aspirations in the cause of “world hegemony.” The Cominform has shown its adherents that nationalist aspirations must fall into line—the Marxist-Lenin line.

British commentators regard Yugoslavia’s expulsion from membership of the Cominform as a significant and self-inflicted olow at Communist unity in Europe. The “Manchester Guardian” says that it destroyed in a stroke the whole legend of Slav solidarity, which Russian propaganda has so painfully created. It adds: "If this can happen in Yugoslavia, what of the far less solid satell tes like Rumania. Hungary and Poland? What of Russia herself?”

“The Times” says: "Nothing so seemingly unlikely has happened for a long time, and nothing so destructive of Communist unity since Trotsky’s expulsion by the Bolsheviks. Its repercussions are certain to be many and immediate. It is hard, indeed, to see how the present leadership in Yugoslavia can survive.’

The “Daily Telegraph's” political correspondent points out this breach in the Communist could not have come at a more embarrassing time for Russia, who is endeavouring to present a facade of eastern unity and strength in her conflict with the Western Powers over Berlin. This was the real purpose of last week’s meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Communist States, and the innocuous nature of the resulting communique caused surprise. It is now clear, the correspondent says, "that restraint was imposed on Russia by anxiety over the situation in Yugoslavia.’