"Although Serbia and Montenegro were overrun by the Austro-Hungarian

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resistance to one of Europe's great powers and ended up SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 1992 f: that led to rise of the Austrian empire. The ruling classes became entirely Germanspeaking. Only the peasantry continued to speak the Slavic language. The origins of the Slovenian literary language were laid by Protestant religious propagandists.

The Croats came under the impact of the declining Byzantine empire and Venetian republic, as well as Austria and Hungary. Their lands came to include the old RomanByzantine cities of the Adriatic coast, which came under strong Venetian influence. The city-state of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), a satellite of Venice, retained its independence through the Middle Ages. Croatian literature goes back to 16th and 17th century authors who wrote in the Italian Renaissance style. Medieval Croatia was thoroughly feudalized and Catholicized.

In the face of the Ottoman onslaught, the Croatian nobles accepted the overlordship of the Austrian empire. But they survived as a class and retained a certain autonomy. That provided a basis for a socially conservative Croatian nationalism, represented, for example, by General Jelacic, who commanded the counterrevolutionary reconquest of Vienna in 1848. But a radical democratic nationalism developed later based on the peasant movement, while the frightened Croat landlords sought rescue from the Serbian monarchy.

The Serbian feudal class, which developed in the context of Byzantine, Eastern Orthrodox civilization, was smashed by the Ottomans. But in the 19th century, a rising rural bourgeoisie took the leadership of Serbian peasant rebellions. The two dynasties-the Karadjordjevici and the Obrenovici-that competed for control of the Serbian monarchy brought into being by these rebellions were founded by successful pig farmers who developed trading operations. The emerging Serbian state, which was involved in constant wars, also developed a strong military caste.

Role of language

Montenegro had served as a sort of Serbian redoubt under the Ottomans. The population of this rugged mountain area have an Eastern Orthodox tradition and identify as Serbs. But their national consciousness has been given a somewhat different shape, among other things, by a stronger survival of patriarchal and semiGreat powers and ended Illyrians, a pre-historic people believed to be the ancestors of all the Yugoslav peoples.

Later, the idea of Yugoslav unity was pressed by an ambitious Serbian ruling class which had a state of its own. Conversely, the question became more complex for the "brother peoples." Their hesitations were fostered by the Austro-Hungarian rulers. On the other hand, among others, revolutionary youth were attracted to the idea of a Yugoslav state that could be fully independent of Austria-Hungary and could build a modern society.

The revolutionist who assassinated the Austrian archduke in 1914 in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, giving the Austrians and their German allies the pretext to launch World War I, belonged to a Yugoslavist revolutionary group.

Although Serbia and Montenegro were overrun by the Austro-Hungarian armies, they put up a credible resistance to one of Europe's great powers and ended up on the winning side. In the collapse of the Hapsburg empire, the popularity of south Slavic unity increased.

However, there were different concepts of unity. The Serbian state leaders saw it simply as an expansion of Serbia. Progressive Serbs, as well as Croats and Slovenes, were repelled by that notion, looking instead to some sort of democratic federation. On the other hand, the rise of social unrest that followed the collapse of Austro Hungarian rule helped to convince the conservatives and middle classes that a strong Yugoslav state, even if Serbian dominated, was the only hope of order.

The Serbian monarchy While the authority of the old regime remained more or less intact in Serbia, on the winning side."

merchants, since all the landed estates have already been destroyed. Private fortunes are destroyed. The Serbian army is the only salvation."

The insurgent Croatian peasants were calling for a republic. Three peasant republics were actually proclaimed for a short time. Demands were raised for socialization of the land and for a constituent assembly. The chief of the Croatian peasant party, Stjepan Radic, took the leadership of the opposition to the establishment of a unitary state under the Serbian monarchy. In the National Council he called for a confederate solution. He was the only member of the body to vote against unification, which in fact was imposed by the advances of the Serbian army.

Established in such conditions, the new Yugoslav state could not but be an instrument of Great Serbian national oppression. Radic led the Croatian opposition to it until 1928, when he was assassinated in parliament by a Serbian reactionary. In the crisis created by his murder, King Alexander abolished constitutional govemment.

Tribes or nations?

In the first period of the Yugoslav state, the Communist Party (CP) took a unitarist view of the national question, inadvertently putting themselves in the same camp as the Serbian monarchy and the Croat and Slovene conservatives who looked to it as a guarantor of order. The CP accepted the theory that the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were three "tribes," but one nation.

Subsequently, the Stalinized CP zigzagged on the national question. In the mid 1930s, it came out for a federal Yugoslavia. Regardless of the motivation for the shifts, the abandonment of the CP's line on the national question. "In reality, this [position] meant following the bourgeoisie's politicians, because the Serbian and Slovenian bourgeoisies were quick to indulge in verbiage about a false Yugoslav nationalism; the Serbian bourgeoisie, because this facilitated imposing its dominance, the Slovenian, because this was an easy way to conceal its deals with the Serbian bourgeoisie aimed at crushing the revolutionary democratic movement of the Slovenian workers and peasants."

Because of the lack of a real national Slovenian bourgeoisie, Kardelj concluded, only a socialist revolution could achieve the national aspirations of the Slovenian masses. On this question, his position corresponded to Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Thus, he wrote that after the failure of the 1848 revolutions, the bourgeoisie in general could not solve the national question and that it therefore "became an integral part of the proletarian revolution."

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the national question became decisive for the CP. The oppressed Albanians, in particular, welcomed the fascist invaders as liberators. A tiny Croat nationalist faction-turned fascist-returned in the baggage of the Italian armies and took charge of a so-called Independent Croatian State. All of the bourgeois armed groups that competed with Tito's partisans were based on nation alone, hostile to the other nationalities, and complicit to one degree or another with the occupiers.

Only the CP was able to achieve the necessary unity against the German and Italian occupiers. And in order to accomplish this, it had to offer a perspective to the various nationalities of achieving their aspirations within a union in which they would have a large measure of autonomy. This policy was a keystone of Tito's victory over the occupiers and the local bourgeois forces; significantly, the only partisan movement that successfully drove out—on its own the fascist occupiers during a bloody four-year war.

However, the Stalinist regime set up by the CP began almost immediately to retreat from its promises to the oppressed peoples. That betrayal is what set the stage for the present conflict, as I will explain in my article in next month's Socialist Action.

(To be continued)