Three students from Belgrade University have been arrested and charged with 'counterrevolutionary activity. They have now been held for six months in solitary confinement without even a date for their trial being announced. It is claimed that police are still looking for other members of the conspiratorial group'. A government-controlled weekly. Svet, has accused these students Nikolic, Isimirovic and Klaic of forming an albance with extreme right wing nationalists and of having *a common hatred of the Yugoslav democratic system based on the principle of self management", In fact, however, these students are merely "guilty" of putting forward the very same socialist ideas on which the Yugoslav government of Tito claims to be founded. It is in the interests of every socialist, and particularly every member of the Communist Parties of the world, to defend these students.
WHAT CRIMES Firstly we have to get clear the attitude of revolutionaries to the question of real right wingers in Eastern Europe. Are we in principle opposed to the trying and imprisoning of fascists, and pro-capitalist counter-revolutionaries in Eastern Europe? Not at all. Even the government of the most democratic workers state could not give up the right to use the power of the state against counter-revolutionaries and fascists. However, although we give no support whatever to any genuinely right wing organisations which exist in Eastern Europe, nevertheless it has to be pointed out that the particular way in which the bureaucracy represses these movements can only strengthen their political influence and not weaken them, At a time when such organisations are not so strong as to represent a genuine counterrevolutionary threat the real way a workers party would deal with them would be to allow them to express their views in free debate so that it could be shown that the policies they suggested offered no real way forward for the working class, lestead bowever, at present the at is suppresing the viewpoint of all The effect of driving certain the working class into the hands of rg forces and depoliticising the mass of rorkers, it in a sign of how far such a government must feelitself being cut off from the working class that it does not feel it can defeat any right wing forces in an open debate in front of the working class. However, in any case all the evidence shows that there is not the slightest basis for believing that the arrested The reason why the imprisoned Yugoslav socialists have not been brought to trial already is almost certainly because the government wants the term at Belgrade University to finish before starting the prosecution. They fear that the trials would provoke the militant Belgrade students into demonstrations which would threaten the government's actions. This fear represents the increasing anxiety at the discontent rising inside Yugoslavia both from the workers and from students and other groups.
The particular manoeuvre in Yugoslavia by which the bureaucracy tried to huy off the workersdefence of the prisoners. Solidarity action and was the so called system of self-management". Here the workers in individual plants were given paper control of some aspects of the work of he tactories. However these concessions were almost worthless because all the central, and therefore important, economic decisions were taken by a bureaucracy outside the control of the workers. Nevertheless, because to some extent the workers gain from the self management system as compared to a simple system of bureaucratic centralism, the government tries to claim that any revolutionary opposition is "anti-self management". It has had some success by these means in keeping under control and localising the discontent in the working class. Nevertheless discontent continues to rise In the last 10 years there have been over 2000 strikes in Yugoslavia. Penthouse magazine's new luxury resort opened as revolutionary students were being arrested. students are right-wingers. They are accused of having had contact with "Enrik" Mandel and with the "International Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International". In addition they are chiefly accused of having formed an 'initiative group" for building a revolutionary workers party aimed at the unconstitutional overthrow of people's democratic institutions" and abo threatening the "national unity of the Yugoslav people". First we should note that not a single shred of evidence of a "subversive Trotskyist network" has been produced. Furthermore, with regard to the accusations of plotting with right wingers Nikolic in fact wrote an article in the student journal Praxis which strongly condemned nationalism for dividing the Yugoslav The second source of danger for the bureaucrats comes from the students, artists, writers and so on. A series of left wing magazines such as Praxis, Tribuna, Studentski List, Student, Index have all been established in the last few years. Now the government is trying to stamp these out by a tighter control of the public information system. They are trying to add bureaucrats from the local administration and the party to the Editorial Boards of these papers. Also the government paper Svet is also calling for tough police action to be taken. However real measures can be taken in the mobilisation of socialist workers and writers did undoubtedly help to reduce the sentences passed on the Czech oppositionists tried last year. The present charges brought in Yugoslavia carry maximum sentences of five years but the Yugoslav regime is, if anything, even more anxious to preserve a respectable face in the capitalist west than was the Czech party in avoiding the re-opening of the wounds in the world 'communist" movement caused by the Russian invasion. For this reason giving maximum publicity to the imprisonments, particularly inside the Communist and Labour parties, is a measure of immediate practical, as well as political support to the prisoners. We ask every member of the Communist and Labour Parties to demand the full facts about these arrests and to demand the release of the prisoners. of contact with the Fourth International were in fact true, what is the real position of Enrik' Mandel and other Trotskyists on Yugoslavia. In the first place they give unconditional support to Yugoslavia against any attempts by capitalism to overthrow its present economic system. They consider that the overthrow of the Yugoslav bourgeoisie was a great step forward for the Yugoslav workers. Trotskyists certainly have fundamental disagreements with the Tito government but they would completely fight alongside them against any fascist or nanonaust autompica coute-revomanon. As far as the removal of the Tito government is concerned the position of the Fourth International is clear. One of the greatest enemies to socialism in Yugoslavia is precisely the type of persecution and trials taking place at the present time. The Fourth International holds to the principles of the right of all parties which accept the socialist system to freely express their point of view in Eastern Europe. It calls for democratic decisions of the workers over all the aspects of the economic plan. It calls for the cutting back of the privileges of administration and technical experts and the narrowing of wage differentials within the working class. In all this it merely follows the views of Marx and Lenin, and the actions of the Bolshevik Party in the early years of the revolution. It says that these measures are the way to solve the problems of low wages, 20 per cent illiteracy and the situation whereby there are a million workers forced to work outside Yugoslavia and unemployment is soaring at home.
What is the programme of the Tito government? It imports foreign capital and allows Penthouse magazine to set up a luxury resort!!! The Fourth International is perfectly prepared to let the Yugoslav worker judge which of these two solutions is socialist and which counterrevolutionary! If the imprisoned Yugoslav students have had any contact with the Fourth International, and the Yugoslav police have not produced one piece of evidence for this, then it is socialism and not counter-revolution they will have been putting forward in Yugoslavia.
LONG LIVE THE WORKERS STATE OF YUGOSLAVIA!
FOR EVERY MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST AND LABOUR PARTIES TO DEMAND THE FACTS ON THE YUGOSLAV TRIALS! FREE NIKOLIC, ISMIROVIC AND KLAIC! J.Burns Before the revolution: Yugoslav partisans (Tito right) in 1944 Reading on the crisis in Eastern Europe The June 1972 issue of International Socialist Review, published by the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, is entirely devoted to analysis of Eastern Europe. It includes articles on The Soviet Economy Today' by Ernest Mandel, Bureaucratic Reformism' and on Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It is Despite its small size, Yugoslavia has been in the last thirty years politically one of the key countries in Europe. The Yugoslav Communist Party led a victorious struggle against the Nazi occupation. Under the leadership of Tito it then became the first Communist Party in the world to break with Moscow. This split opened up the first big divisions within the world communist movement and prepared the way for the bigger splits over the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, the Russian-Chinese split of the 1960s and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Yugoslavia however also showed first the types of crises that now affect all the countries of Eastern Europe. On the one hand in order to gain the popular support necessary to get any independence at all from Moscow, the local party bureaucrats are forced to give some small concessions to the workers. However the small improvements in conditions only whet the appetite of the workers who all the time can see the higher standard of living and privileges of the bureaucrats. A movement of unrest develops and in many cases some political issue of repression or national oppression provides a spark for the discontent. The Party leadership then turns to repression. This however runs the risk of leading to the launching of an uprising by the workers against the rule of the party. But these risings are spontaneous and uncoordinated and are either crushed or not pushed home. If however the repression is successful it only produces new problems for the bureaucracy as the workers become totally disinterested in production and labour productivity falls.
In recent years however a new element has appeared in the situation. This is the existence of small groups of revolutionary socialists who are able to draw the lessons of the struggle and explain its significance to the workers. In Poland two young communists, Kuron and Modzelewski produced a long analysis in the form of an open letter to the party. In Czechoslovakia militants produced a "Manifesto of the Revolutionary Socialist Party". In Yugoslavia, too, groups of revolutionary socialists have been formed and an important analysis of Yugoslav society has been produced. Inside the USSR it also now appears that clearly revolutionary ideas are being clearly worked out and many socialist manifestos are beginning to circulate The impact of even these small groups of revolutionaries can be enormous in countries in which the entire working class is taught, even in a completely distorted form, the foundations of socialism. It is therefore on these revolutionaries that the repression of the bureaucrats falls. In Poland Kuron and Modzelewski were imprisoned, In Czechoslovakia also the socialist militants were put on trial and imprisoned. Now the same is happening in Yugoslavia. In Russia Vladimir Bukovsky was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and five years in exile for protesting against the sending of oppositionists to lunatic asylums. available price 20p from Red Books, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.l. Also the recent issues of Intercontinental Press have been carrying the full transcript of the trial of the Russian oppositionist Vladimir Bukovsky. These are also available from Red Books price 15p.
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Self Management and Repression
The New Opposition in Eastern Europe