Vol. 74/No. 30      August 9, 2010

The book is based on material from Pathfinder’s book The Truth About Yugoslavia: Why Working People Should Oppose Intervention, which Diethnes Vima published in Greek in 1995. The new edition contains articles from the Militant explaining how Washington and other imperialist powers took advantage of war between competing bureaucratic gangs of wannabe capitalists in Yugoslavia to intervene first in Bosnia and then in Kosova.

The authors explain how the breakup of Yugoslavia was not a product of the “age-old national and religious hatred that supposedly characterizes the Balkan peoples.” On the contrary, it was a product of the crisis of the world capitalist system and the sharpening interimperialist conflicts that it fuels. The purpose of imperialist intervention was never to stop brutal assaults and slaughtering of Muslims in Bosnia or Albanians in Kosova. The U.S. government “used military power and asserted its domination over its European rivals on the corpses of working people of Yugoslavia.” One of the articles is an eyewitness report on Washington’s bombing campaign in 1999 targeting the working class of Serbia.

The new book expands the sections on Kosova and Macedonia. It describes the unfolding struggle by Albanians in Kosova for self-determination against Serb domination, up to the declaration of independence in 2008 by Kosovar Albanians. The section on Macedonia contains articles from the Militant on the struggle by Albanians there for their national rights, and the continuing imperialist drive by Athens against the Macedonian people.

The book closes with an appendix containing a 1932 discussion by Leon Trotsky with Greek communists on the Macedonian national question, a 1920 resolution by the Balkan Communist Federation, and a 1939 article by Greek communist leader Pantelis Pouliopoulos on the coming second world imperialist war and the national question in the Balkans.

In his discussion with Greek communists, Trotsky said that “if the Macedonians are oppressed by the bourgeois government [in Greece], or feel that they are oppressed, we must give them support.” Trotsky further explained, “What disturbs me is not so much the question of the Macedonian peasants, but rather whether there isn’t a touch of chauvinist poison in Greek workers.”

As the introductory note to the new book explains, “This book is not simply a chronicle of the breakup of a country. It is about today and tomorrow of the Balkans.” Working people in Serbia overthrew the hated Stalinist police regime of Slobodan Milosevic and Albanians in Kosova got Serbian domination off their backs.

The working classes in all republics of the former Yugoslavia are now confronting expanding possibilities to develop their independent organization and fight for their rights and betterment of their living standards, as the ruling castes try to integrate these republics further into a world capitalist market that is in the beginning stages of a depression.  
 
 
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