“The Doors of Serbia” are open to the future

Conversation with Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Department of Euro-Atlantic Studies at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies

Nikita Viktorovich, you certainly know that on May 25, the day of the 120th anniversary of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, thousands of people from the republics that became sovereign states after the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia came to his mausoleum in Belgrade with flowers in their hands. In general, over the past few years, Tito’s birthday has been celebrated more and more widely. How can one explain the clearly growing interest of the people in a man whose name was almost completely forgotten in the 1990s?

- Tito's contemporaries and supporters say, not unreasonably, that his time was marked by high levels of prosperity, stability and security that are now unattainable. People remember with sadness, even nostalgia, the times when they lived well. They like to remember that Tito really was big man, no match for today's political dwarfs. However, this is not projected into politics in any way. Political parties that proclaim themselves Tito's heirs collect meager hundredths of a percent in elections. Politically, Tito's legacy is now unclaimed. In everyday, cultural terms - yes.

Slovenia has already been admitted to the European Union, Croatia will join in the near future, but Serbia will never be admitted to the European Union - no one needs a second Greece, and the Serbian economy, if it joins the EU, is capable of collapsing everything even more than the Greek one. Moreover, the unification of all former Yugoslav republics within the European Union is impossible, and in the 90s economic ties have been largely lost, the need for some kind of common organizational structure is felt, and the idea of ​​an economic union is being discussed. Thoughts are being actively expressed about creating something that is conventionally called the “Yugosphere”.

In fact, after Tito died in 1980, the state also died. Like the empire of Charlemagne: the emperor died and the empire collapsed. Tito created Yugoslavia and ruled it continuously for 35 years.

Yes, with the death of the leader, the core disappeared. But don't fall apart Soviet Union, Yugoslavia could agonize for a very long time. And this was exactly agony. Potentially, it could continue for another 10, 15 years...

- Who was interested in this collapse - the West, Russia?

Russia, of course, was not at all interested in this. But the West, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had no need to maintain this buffer state.

Yugoslavia - and suddenly a buffer state! Frankly, I have never heard such an assessment of the role and importance of the state, which for all the so-called socialist camp was an example of prosperity and prosperity. The geostrategic position of Yugoslavia is clear, but the buffer is between what and what?

As long as there was a strong Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact, as long as there was a strong Soviet Union, a buffer state like Yugoslavia, with a buffer political leader like Tito, was objectively beneficial to everyone. A buffer state between East and West could serve as a mediator in resolving complex issues.

In other words, two military blocs, two different systems and held this state on both sides? But I remember how we went to Yugoslavia for shopping, how highly the Yugoslav dinar was valued. And suddenly everything collapsed at once, the country fell into poverty, and no one could really understand anything...

- By that time, Yugoslavia was mired in debt. Paradoxically, a good life began again in 1989-1991. Everything seemed to return to how it was under Tito: money appeared, goods appeared, everything became good and beautiful. But this was a kind of calm before the storm, a moment when, apparently, it was necessary to divert the attention of the broad masses from the destructive processes that were taking place in the state. By and large, all of Tito's Yugoslavia was one large zone of frozen conflict. The leader left, and in the 10 years after his death, everything that was frozen was unfrozen... Because the roots of that contradiction, the confrontation, say, between the Serbs and Croats, which manifested itself so clearly during the Second World War, were not eliminated.

Tito did not want to join either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. He did not want to be in either the socialist or capitalist camp, he wanted to be on his own. What then was he building?

- And how did this scheme work?

I note that Tito constantly tried to improve relations with the West, primarily with America. At first they did not believe Tito. Only around 1952 they began to slowly trust him, and after Stalin’s death, in general, it went: peace - friendship - chewing gum. And the scheme was as follows. In the West, a loan is taken out, with which industrial production is created in Yugoslavia, which, by the way, ensures employment of people. Production is created on the basis of some kind of Western industrial equipment, as a rule, but obsolete, the products manufactured on which could not be competitive in the West. But it was more than in demand in the Soviet Union and in the people's democracies, where it was exported.

The Soviet Union, which did not have any extra currency, paid with oil and gas. Part of these raw materials was used for domestic consumption, part for re-export for foreign currency, and the proceeds were used to service the debt taken out in America. This rather complex, but very effective system gradually began to fall into disrepair, primarily due to the fact that people became more and more greedy and did not want to service foreign debt through this scheme. And to pay interest, another debt was simply taken out. This is the main source of the Yugoslav economic miracle. Another source of this miracle is the sale to third world countries, which were later united by the Non-Aligned Movement, weapons and military equipment. This was partly the re-export of Soviet and Eastern European military products, partly its own - the military industry in Yugoslavia was quite developed.

- Okay, what did the Soviet Union gain from this re-export?

The policy of the Soviet Union is quite clear: arms were exported to some points where it was better not to publicize, they say, everything goes through Yugoslavia. Thus, by arming third countries included in the Non-Aligned Movement, the USSR created a force that could resist any expansion, primarily of the West. And for Yugoslavia, the arms trade was a very profitable business.

- What role did Yugoslavia play in this Movement, carrying out its activities along the “south-south” line?

The Non-Aligned Movement was officially created by 25 states at the Belgrade Conference in September 1961. India and Yugoslavia became its informal leaders. Egypt, Indonesia, Ghana, Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar) and many other countries actively participated in this movement. The creation of the Movement was preceded by the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the tripartite consultations between Josip Broz Tito, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru in 1956.

Yugoslavia was less concerned about the struggle against neocolonialism than the Afro-Asian countries. But Yugoslavia paid a lot of attention to defending the equidistance of the Movement from the great powers and to gently neutralize the attempts of the Soviet Union to declare the Movement a “natural ally” of the socialist camp. Yugoslavia was not only the first European, but also the only socialist country to officially declare itself non-aligned. And to a large extent, it was Yugoslavia that performed representative functions for the entire Non-Aligned Movement, although legally Tito was never the sole leader.

With all this, I don’t understand why, say, Western leaders favored Tito. He met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, British Queen Elizabeth II, and US President Richard Nixon... In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev traveled to Belgrade, and the following year Tito visited the USSR. It seems to me that Tito was not without vanity.

Not that he is not deprived, but this is his main feature - always, throughout his life - the desire to be in the center of attention, the desire to bask in the rays of glory. But Western leaders, and then Khrushchev, welcomed Tito not at all in order to stroke his pride. The Balkans have always been a focus of geostrategic and geopolitical interests. During the war, Churchill's son, Randolph, an intelligence officer, was sent on a special mission to Tito - to make an unbiased judgment about who this man really was. And he was imbued with incredible respect for Tito, in enthusiastic tones he told his father what a wonderful person Tito was.

- Tito's partisan army received serious help from England.

The British, having initially started by supporting the Chetniks, that is, monarchist partisans, at some point became disillusioned with them and relied on Tito’s partisans. True, they did not stop helping the Chetniks, they began to support both. During the war, Tito, in general, maintained relations with everyone who was ready to provide some kind of help and support to the partisan movement, then Stalin turned a blind eye to this. But when the war ended, discontent began to arise in Moscow.

This fact amazes me. Already in August 1941, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia Josip Tito reported to Moscow that the flames of partisan warfare were burning throughout Serbia. The number of the People's Liberation Army and partisan detachments of Yugoslavia by the end of 1941 amounted to 80 thousand people, and in 1944 - more than 400 thousand. During the war, Tito's supporters pinned down between 30 and 55 enemy divisions. This was the most powerful Resistance movement in Europe, and all victories over the fascists in Yugoslavia were always associated with the name of Tito.

I don’t want to downplay the scale or significance of the partisan actions, but one can hardly speak of Tito’s talent as a commander. According to military experts, Tito’s partisans made a number of completely stupid mistakes during the Second World War, which were inexplicable. I am not a specialist in military history and would not like to go into this topic. But what was delivered incredibly well was everything that had to do with agitation, propaganda, connections with the Soviet Union and Western allies, and illegal work. Communication with outside world It was set up simply perfectly, the propaganda machine worked like clockwork. Here Tito really showed genuine organizational talent.

Tito's personality is as bright as it is mysterious. In order to understand at least a little the motives of his actions, one should, apparently, turn to the principles that later defined him as a major historical figure. Of course, it is impossible to retell his entire biography; I propose to dwell on a few of the most significant, from your point of view, moments.

- I absolutely deny everything that is written in official biographies, which aim to prove that in his early youth, even before the First World War, he accepted socialist ideology. I can’t find confirmation of this anywhere... He joined some socialist trade unions, but this, in fact, only means that he had certain socialist sympathies. However, when the First World War begins, despite calls from the leaders of the world socialist movement not to participate in it, he immediately goes to the Austro-Hungarian army, ends up in intelligence school and comes out as a non-commissioned officer and intelligence officer. While studying at this school, he takes part in an all-empire fencing tournament, takes second place in his rank and receives a silver medal. And this is already a certain status, that is, he immediately falls into the pool of promising personnel. Then he ends up in Galicia, goes on reconnaissance missions.

There was a case when, on Orthodox Easter, he made his way with his team to the Russian rear, tied up 20 slightly drunk Russian Cossacks and brought them. He was proud of this and other military episodes when he became the leader of socialist Yugoslavia. How can this be reconciled with the thesis that he was already a socialist?

Then he was wounded. According to the official version, a Circassian spear pierces his lung, he falls into Russian captivity, there he becomes infected with typhus, and is taken to a hospital for seriously ill patients near Kazan. He has been in very serious condition for almost a year, but he is being nursed to health. Tito never hid this story either. Obviously, in the hospital he learned Russian and began reading Russian classics. He got married in Russia.

As a prisoner of war, he worked on the railway in the Volga region and the Urals. The mutiny of the Czechoslovak corps finds him in the vicinity of Krasnoyarsk, then he finds himself in the Omsk region. Russia is shaking in revolutionary convulsions. He waits out this storm in a Kyrgyz village with some local rich man in Northern Kazakhstan. The owner bought a steam thresher shortly before the revolution; he needed a specialist. Tito's first specialty is mechanics. Before the war began, he worked in small factories in Croatia and Slovenia, then he traveled around Europe - Vienna, Munich, and was a test driver. That's where his love for expensive cars comes from. But he loved not so much to ride them as to dig into them. He was a good technician; at one time he studied for three years in a mechanical workshop.

In general, he waited quietly for most of the stormy time. And the most unconvincing, one might even say, the written part of his history, his legends, is everything that concerns his entry into the Red Army and the party during that period.

Why do you think he finally came to communist ideas, communist beliefs, and did he have these beliefs?

When Tito returns to Yugoslavia with his first wife Pelageya Belousova in 1020, simply by the fact that he returned from the Soviet Union, has a Russian wife and knows Russian, Tito finds himself drawn into some kind of local trade union communist activity . Quite reliable archival evidence has been preserved that local communists recruited him for their agitation and propaganda, and he spoke a couple of times before socialist trade unions.

-Did Tito ever officially join the Communist Party?

According to official biographies, he seemed to have been accepted into the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) when he was in captivity, into the Austro-Hungarian section of the Bolshevik Party. But this version does not find any confirmation. While Yugoslavia had a parliamentary monarchy, he was actively used as a person who had returned from Russia. He likes it, he gives lectures to the workers about what is happening in Russia. Then a constitutional coup takes place, the Communist Party is banned, and as during the civil war in Russia, he flees to some rich village where no one knew him, finds work as a mechanic, also at a mill, lives there with Pelageya and knows no grief. And he absolutely does not participate and does not want to participate in any political struggle. But after the death of his owner, Tito lost his good job. His wife was from a fairly wealthy family, from a large, rich Siberian village, but in Yugoslavia she found herself in poverty, and Tito’s family life began to crack. The more Pelageya moved away from him, the more he was drawn into some kind of political struggle. In 1928, when Tito was imprisoned, she and her son returned to Russia. Before that, their two small children died... He was released from prison in 1934.

- For what actions did he get there?

He sat twice. At first he was given a relatively short sentence, for a minor offense. The second time, the police planted bombs on him, which he allegedly prepared. A purely falsified process like Dimitrov’s arson of the Reichstag. Actually, after this Tito fell into the circle of “professional” communists. As in pre-revolutionary Russia, the prison in Yugoslavia was the main political university. Here he became a communist. He communicated with prominent minds of the Yugoslav Communist Party, first of all, with such an experienced communist figure as Moshe Piyade, who spent a total of 25 years in prison. And, by the way, he was able to be released only after Tito came to power.

This man was simply a walking encyclopedia of communist thought, and Tito learned everything from him. Under his influence, Tito was forged as an ideological communist, and not him alone. Many of those who were in prison at that time later entered the leadership of Yugoslavia. After his liberation in 1934, Tito fled Yugoslavia to Vienna, where the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was located at that time. On the recommendation of Moshe Piyade and several other old communists, he was introduced to the Politburo from the Zagreb party organization. And literally a couple of months later he was sent to study in the Soviet Union. Illegally, of course.

- So we say “Tito”, and he went down in history as Josip Broz Tito, although in reality he was Josip Broz. Why Tito?

There are very different versions about this. Yes, at birth he was named Josip Broz, but he never gave a clear explanation of where the name Tito came from. There is a version of this conspiracy theory: he always loved weapons and in the Comintern his pseudonym was Walter (the name of a German pistol). And Tito is supposedly a derivative of the TT pistol. But I found another explanation.

When Tito was first sent to the Central Committee of the party, which was in exile, the people who sent him did not trust the Central Committee, and gave him the following instructions: if everything is fine in Vienna, send us a telegram of any content and sign “Tito” - sort of tip-top or - “everything is OK.” And if something goes wrong, you also send a telegram of any content, but signed by a different name. And in a telegram from Vienna he uses the pseudonym Tito for the first time. Such an interesting “squiggle”...

- How did Tito suddenly appear in the Comintern?

This is also a story that is not fully understood. He was sent to Moscow to study at the Communist University of National Minorities of the West under the Comintern, but he did not study for a day. Arriving in Moscow, he immediately began work as an official of the Balkan Secretariat of the Comintern. Let us finally say in plain text: from the first days of its existence, the Comintern was terrorist organization. Tito and all those people who were next to him during the war, and then in the leadership of Yugoslavia, were trained in the military-political courses of the Comintern.

Their official name changed several times: Political Courses, Military-Political School... This school existed from the first days of the Comintern, since the times of War Communism. Unofficially, the courses were called the Comintern Partisan Academy. There they trained foreign communists for partisan warfare and sabotage activities. The lists of students and teachers of these courses are still classified, but the curriculum has been published. For example, 20 training hours were allocated for combined arms tactics, and 30 hours for guerrilla tactics, which were called “partisans”. It is known that at the railway training ground in Shcherbinka they learned how to derail trains.

Documents have been published that leave no doubt that the Comintern was training saboteurs. Actually, this fact is not in dispute now. And I have evidence, albeit indirect, that Tito also took part in these military courses. Specialists on the Balkans were trained mainly in Odessa, where there were no archives left. There were central courses in Moscow. Apparently, due to past intelligence experience, Tito was trained there, who thus ended up in the central “clip.”

My book “Tito’s Moscow Years” will be published soon, where I write about all this, but now I’ll answer the question of why it was possible to organize a powerful partisan movement in Yugoslavia so quickly. Quite a few people passed through partisan universities during the Spanish Civil War. Others received appropriate training in the Soviet Union. In general, mid-level military-political personnel were trained, plus several tens of thousands of communists who returned to Yugoslavia after the civil war in Russia - it was they who raised the masses to fight fascism.

- The Chetniks also fought with the Germans there.

This is the tragic story of the Chetniks. In Yugoslavia, simultaneously with the Second World War, there was a civil war between Tito's partisans and the Chetniks, who were guided by the royal government in exile and consisted mainly of Serbs. It should be noted that until the beginning of November 1941, neutrality was concluded between the NOLA and the Chetniks of Draza Mihailovich, negotiations took place between Tito and the leader of the Chetnik detachments on possible joint actions against the occupiers. However, these negotiations did not bring results and the relationship between the partisans and the Chetniks moved into the sphere of armed struggle.

The Red Army and the Soviet leadership behaved strangely in this situation. Initially there was no anti-Chetnic sentiment. The Chetniks scattered leaflets throughout the cities: “Long live King Peter! Long live Generalissimo Stalin! Long live the Soviet Union! There were even joint military operations; they even took several cities together. Then Tito abruptly wedges himself into this relationship with his partisans and says: they are monarchists, accomplices of the fascists, they hanged the partisans, that is, Tito did everything to drive a wedge, to remove political competitors. And he succeeded.

- Was there a struggle for power?

Tito wanted to rule alone. Moreover, as was the case throughout Eastern Europe, after liberation, the first government of people's trust included a minister from the royal emigrant government, several old socialists from pre-war times... Compromise figures. Then elections took place, which Tito triumphantly won, and, naturally, all these royal ministers and old socialists were pushed far away. A purely communist government was formed. In general, events developed according to the same pattern as in Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc.

- Tito became a marshal in 1943, I think, not without the consent of Moscow?

Tito resolved quite a lot of issues himself, not global ones, of course. But, so to speak, in small things, from the very beginning he allowed himself to make decisions on his own, without looking at Stalin. Although there was a permanent radio point in Zagreb, through which very good communication was maintained with Moscow. And the conferment of the title of marshal was presented as follows: the masses asked Tito to become a marshal - this, they say, is the will of the people, and Tito agreed. This is practically what happened in reality.

In April 1945, a month before the victory, Josip Broz Tito paid an official visit to Moscow. It is worth noting that the Marshal of Yugoslavia was given the same honors as Charles de Gaulle and Edward Benes during their visits to the USSR. On September 9 of the same year, Tito was the first foreigner to be awarded the highest Soviet military order, Victory. By the way, Secretary General Tito became the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia with the consent of Moscow. During Stalin's lifetime, the leader of the Yugoslav communists visited Moscow two more times...

And then there was a quarrel between Tito and Stalin, which marked the beginning of a cooling of Soviet-Yugoslav relations, and subsequently to their almost complete rupture... After the end of the conflict, Tito pursued an independent course in foreign policy and built “self-governing socialism.” He tried to maintain a balance in national representation in government bodies, rightly believing that the Serbian group would be the strongest. Croats and Slovenes predominated in various leadership positions. However, in 1963, unrest occurred in Kosovo, caused by the desire of Albanians to change the legislation on national minorities.

Well, some conflicts regularly arose there. From the very beginning, Tito wanted to turn Kosovo into a showcase facing Albania, which would show how well everything was in Yugoslavia. Huge amounts of money were invested in Kosovo for this purpose, but there was indeed little unrest there among the nationalist-minded university intelligentsia. This was sorted out quite quickly, but it was from there that Ibrahim Rugova, who later became such a famous ideologist of Kosovo independence, originated. And at that time he was a nationally oriented “leftist”, a Marxist. As they say, it gradually transformed. His ideology was very strange: a wild mixture of Gandhism (a follower of Mahatma Gandhi), pacifism and Albanian nationalism.

- What can you say about the events of 1971, known as the Croatian Spring?

Let's start with the fact that the so-called Prague Spring occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1968. That same year, student unrest began in the capital of Yugoslavia. Students had taken over an entire city district known as New Belgrade, and no one really knew what to do about it. The students were aggressively leftist - Trotskyists, anarchists, Marxists, but in general they seemed to be anti-Stalinists. Their main demand is to put an end to the red bourgeoisie. After three or four days of unrest, Tito suddenly said: the students are right, we really have too much bureaucracy, we need to deal with the bureaucracy. I came to the students and said: you guys are great.

The students immediately changed their slogans. Just a couple of days before, they were absolutely anti-Tito, and after talking with him, along with portraits of Che Guevara, they carried portraits of Tito. But in this whole story, the main thing is that the left-wing Serbian students, among whom there were a number of people who were both socialist and nationalist, received a kind of carte blanche from Tito, and until 1972, a regime was established that favored this kind of revisionism emanating from leftist students. It was one of the most fruitful moments in Yugoslav culture. Some unrestrained experimental films began to be shot there, some books that were completely unacceptable before were published... So, returning to the “Croatian Spring”, I will say: the Croats were very jealous that the Serbs had their Belgrade summer 68 Year, deceptive summer, I note, and the Croats really wanted to have something like that.

Prague Spring, Belgrade Summer, Croatian Spring... Arab Spring, finally. An amazing historical series is being built!

The Croats decided: if the Serbs succeeded, then why don’t we try? The composition of the participants was approximately the same: everything also revolved around universities, around professors, students, some, so to speak, left-wing intellectuals, but nothing came of it. First of all, because during this time Tito had already been pushed a little out of power, and, in principle, it was impossible to enter the same river twice. And the main thing in all these events: the Croats went further in their demands than the Serbs. There were nationally colored slogans, with “leftists” and nationalists in the foreground. The Croats had a nationalistic moment in this whole, as they called it, mass movement.

- Did the Croats want secession?

No. It was about transforming a federation into a confederation. About the softer subordination of the national republics to Belgrade, first of all, in culture and economics. On your own foreign policy they didn't even apply. The national intelligentsia wanted greater autonomy, the party and economic activists wanted the opportunity to manipulate money more freely. It didn't work out for them.

By the way, as a result of the events that took place in 1974, a new Constitution of the SFRY was approved, which formalized the foundations of Yugoslav federalism. But, as the events of our day have clearly shown, the separatist-nationalist centrifugal tendencies were not destroyed, but only frozen.

The origins of Croatian nationalism and everything that destroyed Yugoslavia in the 1990s are rooted in how the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created. “The ugly child of the Versailles peace,” Molotov said about Poland. This also applies to the same extent to the Kingdom, created in 1918 at the will of the great powers from the fragments of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They themselves hoped that perhaps they would become three independent states or one state consisting of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. Maybe they will unite with Serbia in the form of a soft confederation - this option seemed to them the most acceptable. And suddenly they are all simply taken and assigned to the Kingdom of Serbia, subordinated to the Serbian royal dynasty. The origins of the dissatisfaction of Croats and Slovenes with the Yugoslav state originate precisely at this moment, the moment of the creation of the state.

- Interesting idea. This is almost never mentioned...

I think this is where we should begin to explain what happened in the 1990s. The reasons are usually seen in Tito's creation of socialist Yugoslavia. In fact, the roots are in the past. There has always been underlying nationalism, since the creation of the Kingdom. It manifested itself very clearly during the Second World War. Further, this latent nationalism clashed with purely economic problems. An opinion has emerged that we will live poorly as part of Yugoslavia, because we owe everyone, but we can leave Yugoslavia and not owe anyone. And the debtors remain those who are the legal successors of Yugoslavia, that is, Serbia and Montenegro.

No one had any doubts that the Serbs would not allow Yugoslavia to fall apart completely, but would preserve the state at least in the form of a union between Serbia and Montenegro, as it happened. However, things didn't work out that way. The debt remained with independent Slovenia and independent Croatia, but, of course, it was completely incomparable with the money that they would have owed as republics within Yugoslavia.

- And the debt is mainly to the West?

Certainly. At the time of the collapse of Yugoslavia, there was no structure at all that they did not owe. Debts continued to be collected even when Serbia was under economic sanctions in the 1990s. Economic sanctions did not affect the servicing of the debt remaining from socialist Yugoslavia.

- What was Tito's religion?

According to the official version, his father is Croatian, his mother is Slovenian. Both Croats and Slovenes are Catholics. And there is a version that I now often see in the works of Croatian and Slovenian journalists, historians and church historians, that in recent months of his life he returned to the fold catholic church. He was ill for a long time, realized that he was dying, and, allegedly, a priest was brought from the residence of the Ljubljana bishop in a car with tinted windows so that Tito could receive unction before his death. This is not confirmed by any facts, but now this thesis is persistently being propagated in Croatia.

- Remember Voltaire, who, dying, asked to be brought the Bible...

Yes, such a parallel can be drawn. And another parallel arises. Tito became a kind of counterbalance to the USSR's policy in Eastern Europe; Yugoslavia was an alternative socialist entity. The policy of “brotherhood-unity”, a united Yugoslavia, is identified with the iron will and magnitude of Tito as a political leader. It is very symptomatic that in the future there was no statesman of this level in the SFRY.

The conversation was conducted by Valery Panov

Why is the new Serbian youth political movement so important for Russia?

One of the fundamentally important participants in the political process in the Republic of Serbia for Russia is the Orthodox youth movement “Doors of Serbia”. Despite the fact that the Doors failed to overcome the five percent barrier in the last parliamentary elections, it is with this movement that many analysts, including liberal ones, associate the future of pochvennik, conservative ideology in Serbia.

Patriotic forces in the country today are in the deepest crisis. The largest of the right-wing, nationally oriented parties, the DSS of former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, is unlikely to receive more than eight percent of the votes in the upcoming early parliamentary elections on March 16. Other consistently patriotic parties and movements - the SRS chaired by the “Hague prisoner” Vojislav Seselj, the radical nationalist movement “Obraz”, as well as “Doors” - are teetering on the brink of the five percent barrier. This situation is due to the fact that, on the one hand, Serbian voters no longer trust political veterans like Kostunica. On the other hand, young people, both in terms of political experience and the composition of party and movement participants, such as “Doors,” are deliberately cut off by the ruling cabinet from access to the media.

At the moment, “Dveri” is suing the state television channel RTS, which refuses to provide this movement with the time required by law for campaigning live.

Why is a small non-parliamentary youth political movement so important for us? “The Doors of Serbia” is generally a unique phenomenon for the Balkans. The backbone of this political movement is people who have known each other since early youth, since they all studied at the philological and law faculties of the University of Belgrade and grouped around the Orthodox student magazine, also called “The Doors of Serbia.” This leads to the first distinctive feature of Dveri: it is not a leadership-type party, like all the “old” political movements in Serbia; “Doors” is directed by a close-knit group of like-minded people, none of whom dreams of becoming “the second Kostunica” or “the second Seselj”. The absence of a clear party leader created a certain problem for Dveri, since party activity in Serbia is thoroughly imbued with the ideas of leaderism and political machismo. We must state that, in general, “Dveri” managed to overcome the leadership tendencies of Serbian political life - there are no instantly recognizable faces in this movement, but there is a style of agitation and propaganda unique to Serbia, which provides “Dveri” with an ever-growing electorate.

The second distinctive quality of the Doors movement is the amazing homogeneity, consistency and purity of their ideology. Modern Serbia exists to a large extent in the coordinate system established back in the days of Slobodan Milosevic, when the Socialist Party (SPS) declared itself the main defender of conservative values ​​and the traditional way of life. For a significant part of the Serbian population, especially in the provinces, socialists until recently were the main exponents of the conservative worldview, and only the negotiations on Kosovo in Brussels, at which Serbia was represented by SPS leader Ivica Dacic, thoroughly undermined this stereotype. The ideology of the ruling Progressive Party (SNS) is no less syncretic - having spun off from Seselj’s radical party, the Progressives simultaneously advocate friendship with Russia and accession to the EU, a strong army and membership in NATO, Greater Serbia and recognition of an independent Kosovo. “Doors” designate their ideological principles as “sacredness,” that is, following the precepts of St. Savva of Serbia, spiritual educator and religious teacher, revered by the Russian Orthodox Church. Moreover, Orthodoxy for “Doors” is not an external paraphernalia, as for the same “Obraz”, whose activists walk around hung with crosses, even with tattoos on their foreheads. This is the organizing principle of both their political program and their personal life - all members of the “Doors” are church people, members of the political council of the movement are elders in church communities. These are modest, non-aggressive people, but unshakably confident in their rightness.

The third feature of “Dveri”: it is actually the first “network” party in Serbia, placing its main stake in the political struggle not on traditional media, but on social networks and the Internet. This strategy was partly forced, but turned out to be extremely effective.

The main broadcast channel of “Dveri” is Internet radio, and their radio channel is by far the most listened to Internet radio in Serbia, including purely entertainment ones. Internet television is under development. “Doors” are actively present in all social networks, successfully using for their purposes such means of Western sociocultural engineering as Livejournal, Facebook and Twitter. As a result, “Doors” managed to interest and attract a significant part of the city’s “advanced” youth, who do not watch TV or read newspapers at all, preferring to learn all the news from the Internet. To the surprise of the liberal public, among system administrators, web designers and all those who are collectively called “bloggers” in Russia, who traditionally feed leftists and libertarians with their voices, there were a large number of Serbian patriots.

The fourth unique feature of “Doors” is their organic, indisputable focus on Russia. “There are quite a lot of people in Serbia who behave like this: they come to the Russian embassy and say - I’m a Russophile, I love Russia, I love Russians, please give me money for this, and the more the better. Some even register political parties in the hope of extracting money from “rich Russians.” It’s hard in this situation to prove that you don’t need anything from Russia; on the contrary, we ourselves would like to do something for Russia to the best of our ability,” Srdjan Nogo, a member of the Political Council of “Dveri”, shares his sore point. His idea is developed by another member of the Political Council, Zoran Radojicic: “The “Doors” connect their lives and their political struggle not with Yeltsin’s Russia or Putin’s Russia, but with the Russia of Seraphim of Sarov and John of Kronstadt, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Berdyaev and Ivan Ilyin. Although, of course, you were lucky with Putin, there is no other politician like him in the world...”

Bondarev Nikita Viktorovich - senior researcher at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Candidate of Historical Sciences

A series of openly unfriendly and provocative actions by the authorities of the Republic of Moldova against employees of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies continues. On Wednesday, November 25, 2015, at the Chisinau airport, while going through passport control, Nikita Viktorovich Bondarev, the head of the Balkan research group at RISS, Candidate of Historical Sciences, who arrived from Moscow to participate in an international scientific conference, was detained.

The head of the Balkan research group at RISI Bondarev arrived in Moldova to participate in the international scientific conference “The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and the Republic of Serbia: protecting sovereignty in conditions of international turbulence,” held by the Pridnestrovian State University in Tiraspol.

Representatives of the Moldovan authorities told N.V. Bondarev that he was denied entry into the territory of the Republic of Moldova, after which the RISI employee had to return from Chisinau to Moscow on the next flight.

Let us recall that earlier, on October 12, 2014, the Moldovan authorities similarly did not allow the deputy director-head of scientific programs of the Dniester-Prut Information and Analytical Center (DPIAC) RISI V.B. into the territory of the republic. Kashirin, and then on May 22, 2015, a similar measure was applied against the director of the DPIAC S.A. Mokshantsev, a native of Bendery. According to official statements by the Moldovan authorities, these individuals pose “a threat to national security and territorial integrity» Republic of Moldova. November 18, 2015 at the Chisinau airport to the senior researcher RISI A.M. Shevchenko, a representative of the Moldovan border authorities, pointed out the categorical undesirability of his presence on the territory of Transnistria with the threat of subsequent deprivation of the right to enter the Republic of Moldova. In addition, over the past year, dozens of Russian journalists, scientists, military personnel of the Operational Group of Russian Forces (OGRF) and political figures have been denied entry into Moldova.

Assessing the meaning and significance of these actions of official Chisinau, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies is forced to state that the current authorities of Moldova, having found themselves unable to conduct and maintain a normal level of political, economic, scientific and humanitarian dialogue with Transnistria, have instead relied on the artificial isolation of the PMR and obstruction any contacts between residents of the left bank of the Dniester and the outside world.

These attempts are an integral part of the course that in recent years has led Moldova to a protracted internal political crisis, a significant deterioration in the socio-economic situation and a sharp decline in public confidence in the main institutions of the state. We are convinced that the observed dynamics of processes in the region makes it almost inevitable that there will be a quick change in political conditions in which the implementation of such a short-sighted, irresponsible and destructive policy of official Chisinau is possible, after which the process of restoring normal scientific and expert communication and interaction will inevitably begin, including with the participation of representatives RISI.

2009-08-31

Bondarev Nikita Viktorovich

The Moscow period in the biography of Josip Broz Tito: through the Comintern structures to the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (1935-1936)

Abstract of the dissertation for the competition scientific degree candidate of historical sciences

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STUDY

Formulation of the problem

The topic of the study is related to the activities of a major historical figure of the twentieth century, the long-term leader of Yugoslavia, the extraordinary political and ideological leader of the Yugoslav peoples, Josip Broz Tito. Of course, he was one of those personalities who influenced the course of history in the 20th century, and even today the legacy of I. Broz Tito continues to influence political processes and human destinies, primarily in the Balkans, partly in the countries of the “third world” that preserve loyalty to the non-aligned movement. From the point of view of developing a worldview and a system of political beliefs, developing practical skills in party and ideological work of the future leader of the Yugoslav communists and one of the builders of socialist Yugoslavia, the study of the so-called Moscow period in the biography of Josip Broz Tito is of significant importance. Despite the fact that the years spent in Moscow (1935-1936) largely influenced the formation of the party and political line implemented by the Yugoslav communists during the Second World War and during the first years of building an independent socialist state, the Moscow period is one of the least studied stages in the biography of J. Broz Tito. This applies to Yugoslav and, to an even greater extent, to domestic historical science. As a rule, researchers limit themselves to stating two facts: that, firstly, I. Broz Tito was a referent first of the Balkan Secretariat of the Comintern, and then of the Yugoslav Party Representative Office; and secondly, he participated in the VII Congress of the Comintern and became a member of the Executive Committee of the CI.

Meanwhile, it is necessary to keep in mind that, having arrived in the Soviet Union in fact as an ordinary party member (although before leaving he was nominally included in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia), I. Broz Tito returned to his homeland as a member of the narrow party leadership, endowed with special powers, and who, according to some researchers, became the second person in the party after the secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia Milan Gorkic. Familiarity with the management practice of the Soviet system and immersion in the party apparatus environment gave him not only practical guidelines for leadership work, but also formed the “attraction-repulsion” complex that characterizes the phenomenon of the conflict between Tito and Stalin. Much is not only in the personal relations of the two leaders - Stalin and Tito, but in the relations of two parties and two states in the 40-50s. XX century, was largely determined by the circumstances of Josip Bros Tito’s life in the Soviet Union during the period under review and the nature of his work and contacts in the Executive Committee of the Comintern, his environment, established connections and ideological stereotypes adopted during these years.

Conducting, on the basis of documentary sources, a detailed reconstruction of various aspects of the life of Josip Broz Tito in the USSR in 1935-36. opens up the opportunity to establish the reasons and more deeply analyze the circumstances that brought him to the forefront of the communist movement in the Balkans, as well as his activities as head of the party and state in the future.

The relevance of research

The scientific relevance of the work is due to the fact that, for objective reasons, this topic remained out of sight of Yugoslav and Russian historical science for many years. During the life of I. Broz Tito, any research that in one way or another affected his biography was possible only with the permission of the country's leadership and had to be correlated with the current political course; in fact, there was a “canonized” version of his life story. The death of I. Broz Tito in 1980 and the crisis of the state system he created led to the appearance of a large number of publications about his life and work, but the works of professional historians in these years were overshadowed by the revelations of journalists, publicists and others unrelated to the claims of sensationalism. to science, individuals, even mediums and astrologers. The subsequent collapse of Yugoslavia and armed conflicts in the former Soviet republics moved the biography of Josip Broz Tito into the area of ​​interest of supporters of “conspiracy theories,” who saw Josip Broz Tito as one of the main characters in the “behind-the-scenes” history of the 20th century. The deplorable situation in which Yugoslav academic science found itself in those years deprived serious researchers of the opportunity to do anything to oppose such publications. In recent years, there has been a revival of attention from the scientific community to the personality of I. Broz Tito. This is due to several circumstances. Firstly, the collapse of the federation, the political and economic instability of the post-Yugoslav space led to interest in the long-term leader, in the “steady hand” that kept the multinational country in balance for forty years. Secondly, once closed archival funds have become accessible. Thus, in October 2006, an exhibition of archival documents and an international conference “Stalin - Tito” was held in the Belgrade Archives of Serbia and Montenegro. Both in Serbia and in Russia, however, no monographic studies have yet been created on the topic under consideration that would correspond to the scientific tasks of mastering and understanding the entire extensive documentary fund that has opened up in our country and in other countries. former Yugoslavia For research work.

An objective study of the Moscow period based on a thorough and systematic study of archival materials, primarily the Comintern fund, the personal funds of Josip Broz Tito’s comrades, a new reading and rethinking of his works of this period, are necessary for studying the activities of the Yugoslav leader and the history of the socialist movement in the Balkans. These circumstances determine the relevance and relevance of the work on the Moscow period in the life of Josip Broz Tito.

Main goals and objectives of the study

The purpose of the study is a comprehensive study of the period of Josip Broz Tito’s stay in Moscow in 1935-1936. To achieve the goal of the study, the following tasks were set:

Conduct a comparative analysis of official biographies of I. Broz Tito, primarily in terms of coverage of the Moscow period;

Explore the influence that Soviet realities, and primarily the situation that developed in the Comintern, had on the formation of I. Broz Tito as a party functionary and politician;

Explore controversial points in the coverage of the Moscow period in the biography of Josip Broz Tito, including those characterizing his cooperation with Soviet state security agencies;

Identify inaccuracies, omissions and falsifications in the historiography of the problem under study;

Introduce new sources on the research topic into scientific circulation.

Research methodology

The goals and objectives of the study determined the theoretical and methodological approaches used, the tools with which the identified topic is revealed. The dissertation was written in accordance with the basic principles of historical research - historicism, scientific objectivity, development (the study of reality as changing and developing) and systematicity (the study of a historical phenomenon as a system with its own internal structure, typology and dynamics). The use of general scientific and specific research methods (analysis, synthesis, comparativism) is combined with the universal principles of research ethics (integrity and impartiality). When studying the fate of an individual or a generation, the biographical method is important. Therefore, in the work in relation to the life path of I. Broz Tito and his associates, techniques corresponding to this method were used: chronological reconstruction, psychological portrait, parallel study of biographies, etc.

Chronological framework of the study

The dissertation covers the period from February 1935 to September 1936. In February 1935, Josip Broz Tito arrived in the USSR, according to the official version - to fulfill the duties of a referent in the Balkan Lender Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. From October of the same year to August 1936, Josip Broz was officially listed as a referent of the Yugoslav Party Representation and assigned to the secretariat of Wilhelm Pieck. At the end of September 1936, Josip Broz Tito left the Soviet Union. Since Tito visited the USSR again in the thirties, at the end of 1938 - beginning of 1939, many researchers combine these two visits and consider them within the framework of a single, “Soviet” paradigm. This approach is by no means flawless, since during these two periods Josip Broz was in our country in completely different capacities. On his first visit he was a career employee of the CI, on the second he was the object of an investigation into the mistakes of the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, a factionalist, a schismatic, a potential enemy of the Comintern and the Soviet state.

It is also necessary to take into account the fundamental importance for Tito’s biography of a fairly independent one and a half year period between his two visits to the USSR, when he participated in attempts to create the Operational Leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, carried out illegal work on the territory of Yugoslavia, and participated in the relocation of the party’s Central Committee to France. In Paris, Tito ensures the transportation of volunteers to Spain, being, apparently, at the disposal of the European station of the OGPU; perhaps he himself goes to the theater of hostilities several times. This is happening against the backdrop of the intensifying confrontation between Tito and Gorkich, the steady degradation of the party leadership, isolated from the country, and factional conflicts within the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. All these events deserve a separate detailed study. In this regard, 1935-1936. appear as a completely completed time period that deserves to become an object of independent study.

Degree of scientific development of the problem

In working on his dissertation, the author relied on the existing historiographical base, which consists of the works of Yugoslav and domestic scientists. The research base is quite limited, which is not explained by the complex nature of the problem chosen as a research topic and the historical specifics of its study. The number of works dedicated to I. Broz Tito cannot be accurately calculated. Yugoslav researcher P. Simic, for example, talks about 950 books, and this is by no means the largest number mentioned. But the amount of biographical and research literature is significantly reduced if we are talking about works written at a serious scientific level.

Several periods can be distinguished in the study of the biography of I. Broz Tito: lifetime research - 1953-1980; first attempts at revision - 1981-1985; a decrease in research interest, initially caused by the crisis of the political system and the decline in the economy, then aggravated by the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the subsequent armed conflicts - 1986-2001; a new wave of interest among researchers, due to both political changes in the Balkans and the emergence of new documentary materials previously unavailable to scientists - from 2002 to the present.

The study of the “Moscow” period of Tito’s biography is associated primarily with the names of the Yugoslav authors V. Dedier and P. Damjanovich. The first biography of Josip Broz is considered to be the book by V. Dedier “Materials for the biography of Comrade Tito”, published in 1953. When writing it, there were practically no closed topics for Dedier; all the information and special services of Yugoslavia worked for him, and any archival funds were available to him. V. Dedier had opportunities that any other biographer could only dream of. The result was a work whose significance can hardly be overestimated and which was actively cited by other biographers. In 1980, V. Dedier published a revised and expanded version of the book, entitled “New materials for the biography of Josip Broz Tito.” A year later, the second volume of New Materials was published, which caused a huge public outcry. This publication consisted entirely of materials collected by V. Dedier and his volunteer assistants over the thirty years that had passed since the publication of his first work. The book contained, in particular, a number of unique materials related to Tito’s stay in the USSR. V. Dedier laid down the ideological parameters of coverage life path Tito practically introduced into scientific circulation the main factual and documentary array, which later researchers could little supplement - both due to the closed nature of a number of funds, and due to the breadth of the problems presented in the work. It was after the fundamental works of Dedier that it became possible to talk about “Tito studies” as a special direction in the history of modern Yugoslavia, which focuses on the personality and life of Josip Broz Tito, considered in the context of the era and environment, based on the study of documents and historical circumstances. With all the merits of this scientist’s publications, one cannot fail to note some weak sides monographs. First of all, this is the undoubted internal censorship of the researcher and publisher, political correctness within the framework of the dominant ideology.

Since the late 80s. XX century interest in the personality of Josip Broz Tito waned, and the death of V. Dedier in the early 90s. made it impossible for him to continue his project. The weakening interest in studying the history of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the personality of its leader in the last decade of the last century is associated with general political processes in the country - the transition to a multi-party system, the collapse of the federation, interethnic clashes and foreign intervention in events in the Balkans.

In the works of the prominent scientist P. Damjanovic, politics and science are just as closely intertwined. Professor Damjanovic is the chief and responsible editor of the Collected Works of Tito, the author of several monographs about him. P. Damjanovic brilliantly managed to combine praise of the “great leader of the peoples of Yugoslavia” with scrupulous scientific research, the strongest aspect of which was his work with the texts of Josip Broz Tito, an excellent knowledge of the literature and periodicals of this period. Such qualities were required from the editor-in-chief of the Collected Works of Tito, so the appearance of P. Damjanovic in this responsible post is quite natural. Damjanovic, unlike V. Dedier, whose priorities were in the field of scientific representation of materials, created a generally accepted and publicly accessible version of the biography of the Yugoslav leader. The death of I. Broz Tito in 1980 marked the end of the period in Tito studies, designated in the dissertation as “lifetime.” During the years of Josip Broz Tito's leadership in Yugoslavia, ideological vectors repeatedly changed, the economic system and the system of power as a whole underwent certain changes, the attitude towards the USSR and the Soviet leadership changed, and the interpretation of the events of the Moscow period in Josip Broz Tito's biography also changed. However, the source base, which was the basis of all publications, one way or another related to Josip Broz Tito’s stay in the USSR, remained virtually unchanged from 1953 to 1980 and was based on the work of V. Dedier and P. Damjanovich. The documentary base for research of this period consisted, first of all, of the works of I. Broz Tito and his comrades in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, materials of a general nature on the history of the labor and socialist movement in the Kingdom of the CXC, and then the FPRY and SFRY, party documents and resolutions, materials on the role of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Second World War, etc. There were very few specific documentary materials and evidence relating to the Moscow period of Tito’s biography. We had to rely on the retelling or statements of V. Dedier and P. Damjanovich.

After the death of I. Broz Tito, a new period in Tito studies began, which lasted until the mid-80s. XX century This period is characterized in the dissertation as “revisionist.” Over the years of forced silence, many Yugoslav scientists and publicists have accumulated assumptions, hypotheses and specific facts that simply could not be published during Josip Broz Tito’s lifetime. The most significant works of this period belong to the Slovenian scientist M. Britovšek, the Croatian researcher I. Očak, the Serbian scientists B. Gligoriević, U. Vuešević, M. Jovanovic. Among journalistic publications, it is worth noting the book by journalist V. Cencic “The Kopinich Mystery”, in which for the first time an attempt was made to rethink many facts of Tito’s biography in the light of the evidence of his comrade-in-arms and, possibly, rival, I. Kopinich. In these works, specific facts of Yugoslav history received new coverage, the role of individuals was overestimated, the historical context of Tito’s activities in the 20-30s of the twentieth century was examined from new ideological positions, new archival materials about the activities of the OGPU and the NKVD were introduced into scientific circulation both in the USSR and in the Balkans, about the circumstances of the repressions against Serbian communists in the 30s.

In the 90s 20th century, after the collapse of Yugoslavia and the final collapse communist ideology, the works of such authors as M. Jokic and N. Stojanovic come to the fore - astrologers, conspiracy theorists, advocates of “alternative history”, the mention of which is due only to the fact that they enjoyed wide popularity. Even today, serious specialists are forced to refute their “conjectures.”

Academic science in Yugoslavia at this time is experiencing a deep crisis and is not able to oppose anything to these authors. Against the background of the general, very low level biographical publications about Tito in the 90s, the works of journalist P. Simic stand out, among which the most significant are “Tito, Agent of the Comintern” (1990) and “The Saint and the Darkness” (2001). Not being a professional historian, P. Simic, however, had the opportunity to work in many archives, including in Russia, but the conclusions he offers are often very controversial due to the lack of historical training and an uncritical approach to sources. Weak side of this author are. and ideological bias towards Josip Broz Tito.

In the Soviet Union and Russia, a special biographical study about Tito has never been published. The fact that in Soviet times historians practically did not study Tito’s life path is associated both with the specific features of his biography and with the state of relations between both countries. Interest in Tito's personality after the end of World War II was enormous, but no works dedicated to him personally were published in the USSR before the Soviet-Yugoslav conflict in 1948. After 1948, people began to talk and write about Josip Broz Tito, perhaps even more, but the tone of the publications was determined by the political factor. Common epithets in the press of those years: “Tito is the chain dog of capitalism”, “turncoat and traitor”, “executioner of the Yugoslav peoples”, “Tito showed a bestial grin”, etc. This attitude towards the Yugoslav leader continued to remain dominant until the very end 50s, despite the death of I. Stalin in March 1953 and the restoration of contacts with Yugoslavia along the party and state lines (N.S. Khrushchev’s visit to Belgrade in 1955). An illustrative example of anti-Titov and anti-Yugoslav rhetoric is the 1958 collection “Against Modern Revisionism.” Although works on the history of Yugoslavia were allowed and in demand by society, researchers still had to resort to all sorts of tricks in order not to mention Josip Broz Tito positively, even where it was very difficult not to talk about him. This tactic can be clearly seen, for example, in the popular scientific work of V.G. Karasev "Historical connections of the peoples of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia", published in 1957. In it, minimal attention is paid to the period of the 30s and the narrative does not go beyond standard textbook texts.

After repeated ebbs and flows, a certain stabilization in relations between Moscow and Belgrade occurred in 1962. The two-volume History of Yugoslavia, edited by V.G., was approved by the “Instances” and hastily published. Karaseva, S.A. Nikitina, Yu.V. Bromley, I.S. Dostyan. However, the presentation of events in this fundamental work was completed only until 1945, all conflicts of the 40-50s. were prudently left out of brackets. Also, the work made no mention of Josip Broz Tito’s work in the Comintern in 1935-1936. However, the turning point that was emerging in Soviet Tito studies was prevented by the events associated with the “Prague Spring” of 1968. For several years, all publications related to Yugoslav topics were suspended.

The years of stagnation in our country became the years of flourishing of Soviet-Yugoslav relations, both in the economy and in culture and science. In this regard, the title of the book by Yu.S. seems quite appropriate. Girenko, published in 1975 - “The Soviet Union - Yugoslavia: traditional friendship, comprehensive cooperation”. Dozens of works are published on the modern history of Yugoslavia, Soviet-Yugoslav relations, and the history of the communist movement in Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, among the huge number of works and publications, there is still no research on the topic of interest to us.

The death of Josip Broz Tito in 1980 became a turning point not only in Yugoslav but also in Soviet historiography. Almost one after another, works by M.M. appear. Sumarokova, D.A. Sevyan and Yu.S. Girenko, chronologically related to the topic of our research. But, unfortunately, for none of these authors the Moscow period of I. Broz Tito did not become a priority topic, but was considered only as one of many special cases of the presence of Yugoslav communists in the Soviet Union. During the years of Soviet perestroika, the personality of Josip Broz Tito interested domestic scientists and journalists primarily in the context of the “de-Stalinization” of the USSR: a lot was said and written about Tito, but the authors were primarily interested in the conflict between Tito and Stalin in 1948 and its consequences. At the peak of this interest, the work of Yu.S. was published. Girenko "Stalin - Tito", the most detailed and detailed study of Josip Broz ever published in Russian. The author managed not only to systematize data on the causes and consequences of the break between Tito and Stalin, but first of all to look at the Yugoslav leader through the prism of Russian-Yugoslav relations. Although the work uses a large amount of materials from domestic and Yugoslav archives, the chapters devoted to the period of interest to us are written mainly based on materials from publications of Yugoslav authors.

1990s in domestic Tito studies have not been noted by new serious studies. This is due to the fact that during this period the slow declassification of archival materials was just beginning, and a new source base was being formed. Very few works were published on the Balkan direction of the Comintern’s activities and the activities of Josip Broz Tito. One of the few exceptions is the work of A.A. Ulunyan, however, his area of ​​interest is the ideology of CI and the implementation of CI programs in the Balkans, primarily in Bulgaria and Greece.

The start of the new millennium looks more hopeful. In particular, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a monograph by A.S. Anikeev "How Tito left Stalin." A.S. Anikeev seriously analyzes the consequences of the conflict between Tito and Stalin.

Thus, the study of the historiography of the issue shows that the topic of the dissertation research before today was not the subject of special research either in Yugoslavia or in the Soviet Union and Russia.

Source base of the study

The sources for writing the dissertation research were materials of various nature: archival documents in Russian, Serbo-Croatian and German languages from the funds of a number of Russian and foreign archives, published collections of documents and materials on the history of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and the international communist movement; collections of works by J. Broz Tito and other figures of the international and Yugoslav labor and communist movement; published memoirs and epistolary materials; periodicals of the USSR and Yugoslavia of the 30s. XX century

When writing the work, the main source base was the materials of the Russian state archive social and political history (RGASPI) and the Archive of Serbia and Montenegro (ASCH). In RGASPI, the author reviewed the funds of the Balkan Lender Secretariat (BLS) of the EC CI and the Yugoslav Party Representative Office at the EC, in particular, work plans, minutes of meetings, correspondence with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Also studied were the funds of the leaders of the BLS V. Pick and G. Walecki, the personal files of the Yugoslav communists M. Gorkić, V. Čopić, I. Grzhetić, E. Kardelj, K. Horvatin, R. Colakovich, F. Filipović and Josip Broz himself. Unfortunately, most of the materials from these personal files have not yet been declassified. The author also studied a large corpus of documents related to the VII Congress of the Comintern, primarily materials of an organizational nature (lists of those who received passes of various levels of secrecy, minutes of meetings of the credentials committees, etc.).

In the ASCH, the author studied the funds of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, in particular, the minutes of Politburo meetings, the correspondence of the Central Committee with the representative office in Moscow and the grassroots cells of the party in Yugoslavia. Also in Belgrade are the minutes of the meetings of the Yugoslav delegation at the VII Congress of the Comintern. The work used the personal funds of Yugoslav communists who were in the USSR in 1935-1936. - B. Maslaric, K. Mrazovich, V. Begovic, I. Maric, M. Radovanovic. The memoirs of these figures of the international labor movement are a unique source that gives insight into the daily life and work of foreign communists in the Soviet Union, contacts of various Soviet institutions with political emigrants, etc.

Among the published documents highest value for our study has the Complete Works (PSS) of Josip Broz Tito. The author studied, first of all, the third volume of the PSS, covering the period from March 1935 to November 1937. The work also used collections of documents on the history of the Comintern, primarily “The Comintern and the Idea of ​​World Revolution” and “The Politburo and the Comintern (1919-1943)”. The materials in the collections introduce the work of military courses at the IKKI, with measures against the penetration of spies and saboteurs into the USSR through the apparatus of the Comintern, etc. The reference book " Organizational structure Comintern (1919-1943)", in particular, it was from there that most of the information about the true nature of the activities of the Comintern Personnel Department was gleaned.

When writing the dissertation, memoirs were used: the memoirs of M. Buber-Neumann “The World Revolution and the Stalinist Regime”, A. Kuusinen “The Lord Casts Down His Angels”, as well as the book by V.I. Pyatnitsky "Osip Pyatnitsky and the Comintern on the scales of history".

The source base available to the dissertation author allows us to significantly expand the documentary basis of our understanding of the era of the 30s, about the practice of work of the administrative structures of the Comintern and, in particular, the Balkan secretariat, allows us to clarify the degree of personal participation of I. Broz Tito in the work of the Comintern and Yugoslav party structures, to create a reliable idea of ​​Tito's stay in 1935-1936. in Moscow and other regions of the USSR. However, a number of questions remain, which are not possible to illuminate using the range of sources available today. For complete clarity, access to the funds of the Russian intelligence services (FSB, GRU) and the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation is necessary. However, in general, the documents and materials we have attracted constitute a sufficient source base that allows us to solve our research problems.

MAIN CONTENT OF THE WORK

The structure of the dissertation is determined by the stated goal and objectives. The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

The introduction substantiates the statement of the problem, the relevance of the topic, the chronological framework of the work, characterizes the methodology of the work, and also provides an overview of the state of scientific development of the topic, the source base of the research, the scientific novelty and practical significance of the topic.

The first chapter, “Main milestones in the party biography of Josip Broz Tito,” gives short essay his biography and examines the situation that developed in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia by the mid-30s. XX century The first paragraph analyzes the questionnaire of the delegate of the VII Congress of the CI of the future leader of Yugoslavia. This allows us to bring the biographical sketch closer to the context of J. Broz Tito’s activities in the Comintern, to focus on the most fundamental points in his biography - national and social origin, party and work experience, stay in Russia in 1915-1920, to trace how the career of a party leader developed functionary, including prosecution under the law for socialist propaganda, prison sentences. The author compares the early period of Josip Broz's biography with the destinies of other Yugoslav communists, identifying common features and characteristics.

In the second paragraph, the author shows the influence of socio-political processes in the Balkans in the 20-30s. XX century on the life and party career of Josip Broz Tito. If later I. Broz Tito himself largely determined the face of his contemporary era, then in the period we are studying he was one of hundreds of political dissidents persecuted by the regime, defined in Soviet literature as a “monarcho-fascist dictatorship.” This chapter is primarily informative in nature, being a kind of factual outline on which the actual research part of the work is based.

Chapter two: “The participation of Josip Broz Tito in the work of the Comintern apparatus in 1935.” is dedicated to his activities after his arrival in Moscow in January 1935, his functions, activities, and employment.

The first paragraph, “Referent of the Balkan Lender Secretariat (January - June 1935),” examines the first six months of Josip Broz Tito’s activities in the Comintern, when, according to official Tito studies, he began working as a political referent on Yugoslavia. However, archival materials discovered by the author of the dissertation indicate that Josip Broz went to Moscow without being appointed to the position, that at that time it was not clear not only about the identity of the referee from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, but even about the list of possible applicants for this position.

The study shows that the conclusion contained in the literature about the appointment of I. Broz to the position of BLS referent at the proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is not confirmed by archival materials. The author also makes adjustments to the generally accepted dating of Tito’s stay and activities in Moscow during the period under review. We can talk about the beginning of Josip Broz’s full-time work as a referent of the Balkan Lender Secretariat only in June 1935. However, as revealed documents show, in July and August he was occupied not so much with issues within the competence of the referent (organization of the work of the BLS), but problems associated with the preparation of the VII Congress of the Comintern. In general, in the first six months of Josip Broz Tito’s stay in the USSR, he was on the periphery of party life, in the shadow of other Yugoslav leaders.

The general context of the documents of this period is quite consistent with the author’s thesis about Tito’s close connection with the Comintern special services, primarily with the Personnel Department, which, after the resignation of I. Pyatnitsky, was in charge of most of the issues related to illegal work, special operations, party building (previously supervised, respectively, by the International Communications Department, the Party Building Department and other departments). Based on documentary evidence, the author shows that Josip Broz Tito came to the attention of Soviet intelligence back in the twenties, and its “development” continued after arriving in the Soviet Union. It is characteristic that the direct and obvious connection between I. Broz Tito and the OGPU is not documented. But Josip Broz, of course, was connected with the Soviet intelligence services: he gives characteristics of his party comrades, not only to employees of the Personnel Department, but also to identified employees of intelligence agencies; he was included in the Yugoslav delegation at the VII Congress of the Comintern against the will of the party leadership - such a decision could not but be sanctioned by the Soviet services that “looked after” the political emigrants. But in most cases identified by the author we're talking about about the Personnel Department of the IKKI, and not about organizations of a national nature (OGPU, Intelligence Department of the Red Army). Confirmation in the work of the true nature of the activities of the Personnel Department of the Comintern can be considered extremely important. Although the true functions of this structure have been revealed in a number of publications in recent years, of which the most significant is the monograph “Organizational Structure of the Comintern,” as well as in works of a memoir nature, Yugoslav scientists dealing with the issues of the presence of Yugoslav communists in the Soviet Union continue to consider this most important department of the Comintern as a purely production-bureaucratic authority.

The second paragraph is devoted to the work of the Yugoslav delegation at the VII Congress of the Comintern (July-September 1935) and Josip Broz Tito’s participation in it. At first glance, these events are quite well worked out in the literature. A more detailed study, however, revealed the presence of white spots, which researchers, for the most part, ignore.

The materials studied (the files of the credentials commissions related to the composition of the Yugoslav delegation, minutes of the meetings of the Yugoslav delegation and the memoirs of some participants in the VII Congress (I. Marić and M. Radovanovic), dedicated to the Congress itself, etc.) refute the conclusion of most Yugoslav historians about the special leading role of I. Broz Tito in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia since the mid-30s, about his rapid career growth, about the high assessment of his abilities by the leadership of the Comintern. Statements by Yugoslav historians of Josip Broz Tito’s active participation in the preparations for the Congress and his vigorous activity as secretary of the delegation, as well as the conclusion that by the summer of 1935 he became the second person in the party after M. Gorkić in terms of powers and authority, also are not supported by documents.

The analysis of sources carried out in the dissertation shows: Josip Broz was not initially going to be included in the Yugoslav delegation; his party comrades did this after the start of the Congress. Moreover, M. Gorkić and V. Čopić, in principle, did not consider it necessary for I. Broz Tito to attend the VII Congress, even as a guest, preferring R. Čolaković, one of the ordinary employees of the BLS, to him. However, I. Broz Tito, judging by a number of archival documents and eyewitness accounts, had patrons in the Personnel Department, who ensured his presence at the Congress and membership in the delegation. Obviously, this initiative had to be coordinated with the INO OGPU, which oversaw all foreign participants Congress.

The delegation of Josip Broz Tito's candidacy to the Presidium of the EC CI as a full member is also in question. Most likely, his nomination was the result of the policy of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, aimed at discrediting the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and preceding the start of purges in the ranks of the Comintern. Identified documents show that the “tops” of the Comintern, controlled by the representative of the CPSU (b) D.Z. Manuilsky, already at that time set a course towards eliminating the entire middle level of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as “factionalists” and “sectarians”. Only the party leader M. Gorkich and young party members - yesterday's Komsomol members - enjoyed the trust of D. Manuilsky and G. Dimitrov. The thesis of Yugoslav biographers Josip Broz Tito that after the end of the congress he led the Yugoslav delegation for a study tour of the USSR is also not confirmed.

By all indications, in July - September 1935, Josip Broz was an ordinary Comintern official of Yugoslav origin. If there is anything that makes Josip Broz’s position special, it is his increasingly stronger connections with “the underwater part of the Comintern iceberg,” as V.I. Pyatnitsky, in other words, with units responsible for personnel policy, illegal operations, communications with the OGPU and the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army. The third chapter of this work is dedicated to the unofficial, hitherto unknown part of the biography of I. Broz Tito.

In the third chapter, entitled “In the Moscow Underground,” the author seeks an answer to the question: could I. Broz Tito have been trained in any special educational institutions of the Comintern, in particular, in military-political courses, also known as “Partisan academy"? The author comes to the conclusion that this is possible: on the one hand, we have documents at our disposal confirming the presence of Yugoslav students at the Partisan Academy, although the personal files of the cadets are still classified. On the other hand, in October 1935, the name of I. Broz Tito practically disappeared from the Comintern office work; he returned to active work only after 9 months. Namely, this is how long the short course of “partisan warfare” lasted at the military-political courses. The Comintern workers, who were involved in selecting students for the military-political school, were interested precisely in people like Josip Broz: relatively young, but with life experience, including military experience; not involved in various kinds of intra-party factional activities; not noticed in the “deviations”, both left and right; having the ability to speak languages; able to handle equipment and weapons; not burdened with family. And, which is not stated in any document, but is implied by the very nature of the upcoming activity, they have an adventurous streak. I. Broz Tito fits these parameters perfectly. The only thing that does not fit into this scheme is his wife and son. However, he divorced his wife in the fall of 1935, and his son Zharko was at that time in an orphanage for the children of Comintern employees in Ivanovo.

The whole life of I. Broz Tito shows that he strove for a special status and a special job. Josip Broz tried to stand out from total mass, whenever possible, lead and make decisions independently. In 1914, this life position led him to the Austro-Hungarian military intelligence. Based on the personal qualities and inclinations of I. Broz, we believe that in 1935-1936. he should have been interested in the opportunity to improve his “military-political,” i.e., sabotage skills. A significant argument in favor of our assumption is the military activity of Josip Broz Tito during the Second World War. In modern Yugoslav literature, it is customary to belittle the merits of Josip Broz Tito as a military leader, which seems to us not entirely justified. The course of hostilities in 1941-1945. shows that, although I. Broz Tito, indeed, lacked the breadth of strategic thinking, intelligence and sabotage activities, as well as agitation and propaganda among the Tito partisans were at the highest level. This is what ultimately predetermined the victory of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia not only over the occupiers, but also over the monarchist partisans ("Chetniks") of D. Mikhailovich. Moreover, there is a clear similarity between the Comintern recommendations on the conduct of guerrilla warfare, sent, for example, to Poland and China in the late 20s and early 30s, and the resolutions of the Anti-Fascist Council of the Peoples of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), chaired by Josip Broz Tito. I. Broz Tito himself, in his autobiographical materials, naturally does not directly say that he was trained in any military courses, but writes, for example, that in 1935-1936. had to "study the works of Frunze and Clausewitz." We also find confirmation of our hypothesis in memoirs, for example in the above-mentioned book by V.I. Pyatnitsky, as well as in the memoirs of other Yugoslav communists that we found in the ASC: V. Begovic and K. Mrazovich.

The final paragraph, “The question of the new leadership of the SKY and the departure from the USSR (August - October 1936),” examines the circumstances surrounding Josip Bros. Tito’s departure from the Soviet Union. The author proves that the thesis of official Titoism (V. Dedier, P. Damjanovic, etc.) about Josip Broz Tito receiving “special powers to lead the party in the country” finds absolutely no documentary evidence. Rather, we are talking about a separate, one-time, albeit very important task, which could pass from person to person and was not Tito’s personal prerogative. This does not mean “leading the party,” but only “creating conditions” for the operational leadership (Operativleitung) to move to the country. The new governing body of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was formed in such a way that even the party secretary M. Gorkich could not lead alone. None of the four members of the operational leadership present in the country had any advantage over the others. In general, the whole idea of ​​collegial leadership of the party, which was a complex system of checks and balances, was artificially imposed on the Communist Party of Yugoslavia by the leadership of the Comintern and was unfeasible in practice. In particular, the party leadership, sufficient to make general decisions, was not in the country for a single day due to the fierce persecution of communists. Be that as it may, I. Broz Tito was not involved in “creating conditions” or “material support for operational leadership” upon his arrival in the country.

Refuting the thesis about the high party position of I. Broz Tito, the author puts forward his own hypothesis about the special mission he received from the leadership of the Personnel Department of the IKKI and related to the activities of the Soviet intelligence services. This is confirmed by the fact that after leaving the USSR I. Broz Tito communicated most closely with S. Lilich, who was responsible for technical support illegal activities and a representative of Soviet intelligence structures in the ranks of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Returning to his homeland, J. Broz Tito activates old connections among the Croatian national intelligentsia (M. Krleža, S. Galogaža) and tries to introduce alternative schemes of influence on the regional party leadership and trade union leaders. I. Broz Tito does not coordinate these actions with M. Gorkic, which several times puts him on the brink of failure. The author believes that these actions of I. Broz Tito were aimed at restoring the Soviet residency, which suffered as a result of failures and mass arrests. It was supervised by I. Broz Tito S. Lilic.

Also among the priority actions of Josip Broz Tito, which had nothing to do with the leadership moving to the country, was the selection of young communists for training in the Soviet Union. M. Gorkich specifically noted in 1937 that he could not make this decision without Josip Broz Tito. It was I. Broz Tito who was entrusted with writing characteristics for his party comrades who were in the country, and both of these assignments were within the sphere of interests of the KI Personnel Department. The author comes to the conclusion that it was the work through the Personnel Department (or rather, the intelligence services of the USSR and the Comintern) that was the true purpose of sending Josip Broz Tito to Yugoslavia.

The Conclusion summarizes the results and formulates the following conclusions:

1. Josip Broz was not sent to the USSR as a referent of the Balkan Lender Secretariat; there was no clarity regarding the candidacy for this position in the leadership of the BLS either at the time Tito was sent to Moscow or after his arrival. In total, Tito was a BLS referent for a month and a half. Moreover, he was appointed to this job at a time when the liquidation of secretariats was being prepared, and, consequently, the position of assistant inevitably lost its former practical significance.

2. Tito’s active participation in the preparation and conduct of the VII Congress of the Comintern turns out to be a myth of official Titoism. Josip Broz Tito did not participate in the preparation of the Congress; he also should not have been part of the Yugoslav delegation. He was included in the number of delegates after the fact, after the start of the Congress, and, although officially I. Broz Tito was listed as the secretary of the delegation, in practice other people performed secretarial functions. I. Broz Tito did not receive any significant assignments from the leadership of the Yugoslav delegation, so there can be no talk of his “active participation” in the VII Congress.

3. The thesis of official biographers is not confirmed either, according to which in August 1936 I. Broz Tito was elected organizational secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, that is, he became the second person in the party after M. Gorkich. This is impossible, if only because the position of “organizational secretary” in the CPY at that time did not exist in principle. I. Broz Tito became only one of four members of the Politburo, which was a great personal achievement and a good platform for subsequent party growth, but he certainly was not the second person in the party. It is generally accepted that Josip Broz Tito returned to Yugoslavia as the head of the so-called Zembil, or the Organizational Bureau of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which was not supposed to be in exile, unlike the apparatus of the Central Committee, but directly in the country. This thesis also does not find documentary evidence.

4. The work of I. Broz Tito in the Comintern and the powers that were given to him upon leaving the USSR are associated not so much with the official political course of the CI, but with the activity of the Comintern intelligence services, whose activities by 1935 were controlled by the Personnel Department. The origins of I. Broz Tito's subsequent career rise lie in illegal activities through the CI. Perhaps it was precisely the connections (I. Karaivanov) acquired by I. Broz Tito in the Personnel Department during his work at CI during the Moscow period that helped him, the only one from the Yugoslav party leadership, to avoid repression in 1937-1938.

5. Josip Broz could have been trained in one of the Comintern special schools, most likely in the so-called Partisan Academy (military-political courses). The author did not find direct indications of this during the research work, however, it is quite difficult to refute this hypothesis, since the fact of training in this educational institution Yugoslav communists are confirmed by archival sources, and the foundations of the curriculum of the Military-Political School are fully consistent with the actions of the Yugoslav partisans led by Josip Broz Tito during the Second World War.

6. It was the years spent by Josip Broz Tito in the USSR (1935-1936) that shaped his political personality and predetermined his party career and military successes, although Josip Broz Tito’s rise was not rapid and immediate, as some Yugoslav researchers see it , and his entry into the party elite was fraught with significant difficulties. Be that as it may, the starting point in I. Broz Tito’s ascent to the leadership of the party, and then the state, should be considered the Moscow period of his biography, when he became a member of the narrow leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and had the opportunity to influence the personnel and operational-tactical policies of the party, as well as the influence on the nature of interaction between Yugoslav party structures and state and party bodies of the Soviet Union.

Scientific novelty of the research

Based on materials from Russian and Serbian archives, some of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the dissertation is the first to attempt a detailed reconstruction of events from the life of Josip Broz Tito in the Soviet Union in 1935-1936. in their chronological order. Considerable attention is paid to such problems as the specifics of the functioning of the administrative apparatus of the Comintern, the intra-Comintern hierarchy, connections between the CI and the Soviet intelligence services (Foreign Department of the OGPU, the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army), the peculiarities of the functioning of the illegal part of the CI, in particular, military-political courses, also known as “Partisan academy". Although these problems are being developed within the framework of recent studies on the history of the Comintern, many of their aspects are still poorly understood. The formulation of these problems in the context of a study devoted to the activities of I. Broz Tito and the history of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia is an absolute research innovation today.

Practical significance of the study.

The materials and conclusions of the study can be used in scientific research and teaching activities, both directly on the topic of the work, and on a whole range of related topics: Soviet-Yugoslav relations, the history of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the history of the Comintern, the activities of the Soviet intelligence services, etc.

Approbation of work:

The main content of the work and the conclusions obtained by the author are reflected in the author’s publications on the research topic, reports and communications at various Russian and international scientific forums - at scientific readings dedicated to the 80th anniversary of V.G. Karasev (Moscow, 2002), where the author made a presentation “New trends in the study of the life and work of Josip Broz Tito”; at the international scientific conference "Stalin-Tito" (Belgrade, 2006) - presentation with the message "New data on the work of J. Broz Tito in the Comintern (1935-1936)"; at the international round table "Russia and Serbia in new historical conditions" - speech with the message "Comintern in the Balkans, Yugoslav communists in the Comintern" (Belgrade, 2007). The author also participated, as the main consultant and co-author of the script, in the preparation of the television film “The Mystery of Josip Broz Tito” (TV Company “Top Secret”, directed by E. Ilyasova, 2003), and as a consultant in the preparation of the television film “Yugoslavia” : period of decay" (VGTRK, dir. A. Mamontov, 2000).

The applicant's work on the topic of the dissertation:

I. Publications in publications on the list of the Higher Attestation Commission:
1. Bondarev N.V. Latest interview with Milovan Djilas // Historical archive. M., 2003. No. 6. P. 3-12.

II. Publications in other publications.
2. Bondarev N.V. New trends in the study of the life and work of Josip Broz Tito // Yugoslav history in modern and contemporary times: Materials of scientific readings dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the birth of Professor V.G. Karaseva. M.: Publishing house of the Moscow City Association of Archives, 2002. P. 234-240.
3. Bondarev N.V. New data about the work of Josip Broz Tito in the Comintern // Historical archive. M., 2006. (accepted for publication).
4. Bondarev N.V. Josip Broz Tito in the service of the Comintern 1935-1936. // Homeland. M., 2007 (accepted for publication).

1. Simic P. Tito agent Kominterne. Beograd: ABC-product, 1990. S. 5.

2. Dedijer V. Josip Bros Tito. Attached to my biography. Beograd: Nolit, 1953.

3. Dedijer V. Novi prilozi za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita. Knj. 1. Zagreb: Mladost, 1980.

4. Dedijer V. Novi prilozi za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita. Knj. 2. Rijeka: Liburnija, 1981.

5. Damjanovic P. Tito na celu Partije. Beograd: Kultura, 1968; Damjanovic P. Tito pred temama istorije. Beograd: Insitut za savremenu istoriju, 1972.

6. Ocak I. Gorkic: zivot, rad i pogibija (prilog biografiji). Zagreb: Mladost, 1988; Gligorijevic B. Kominterna: Jugoslovensko i srpsko pitanje. Beograd: ISI, 1992; Jovanovic M. Bolsevicka agentura na Balkanu. 1923. Beograd: Filizofski fakultet beogradskog universiteta, 1995.

7. Censic V. Enigma Kopinic. Zagreb: Mladost, 1983.

8. Against modern revisionism. Moscow: Pravda, 1958.

9. Karasev V.G. Historical connections between the peoples of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Moscow: Progress, 1957.

10. History of Yugoslavia. Moscow: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences. T. 1-2. 1963.

11. Girenko Yu.S. Soviet Union - Yugoslavia: traditional friendship, comprehensive cooperation. Moscow: Nauka, 1975.

12. Sumarokova M.M. Democratic forces of Yugoslavia in the fight against reaction and the threat of war (1929-1939). Moscow: Nauka, 1980; Sevyan D.A. From the history of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (1919-1945). Moscow: Mysl, 1982; Girenko Yu.S. Soviet-Yugoslav relations. Moscow: International Relations, 1983.

13. Girenko Yu.S. Stalin - Tito. Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1991.

14. Ulunyan Ar.A. Comintern and geopolitics: the Balkan frontier (1919-1938). Moscow: Institute of General History, 1997.

15. Anikeev A.S. How Tito left Stalin: Yugoslavia, the USSR and the USA in the initial period of the Cold War (1945-1957). Moscow: Institute of Slavic Studies RAS, 2002.

16. Comintern and the idea of ​​world revolution. Moscow: Nauka, 1998.

17. Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) - the CPSU (b) and the Comintern (1919-1943). Moscow: Rosspan, 2004.

18. Adibekov G.M., Shakhnazarov E.N., Shirinya K.K. Organizational structure of the Comintern. Moscow: Rosspan, 1997.

19. Buber-Neumann M. World revolution and the Stalinist regime. Notes from an eyewitness about the activities of the Comintern in the 1920s-1930s. Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1995. 322 p. Kuusinen A. The Lord casts down his angels. Memoirs 1919-1965. Petrozavodsk: Karelia, 1991. 240 p. Pyatnitsky V.I. Osip Pyatnitsky and the Comintern on the scales of history. Minsk: Harvest, 2004.

20. Broz Tito J. Sabrana djela. T. 3. Beograd: Komunist Zagreb: Naprijed, 1983. S. 268.

The country is waiting for early parliamentary elections scheduled for March 16
Let us remind you that today the country is in power with a cabinet formed by the two largest political parties in Serbia - the progressives (SNS) and the socialists (SPS), as well as a dozen dwarf parties and movements, mainly satellites of the progressives. The prime minister of the country is the leader of the socialists Ivica Dacic, the first deputy prime minister is the leader of the progressives Aleksandar Vucic. The country's president, Tomislav Nikolic, is also a former progressive; in fact, he is the founder of this party, but shortly before officially taking office, Nikolic defiantly left the SNS in order, in his words, “to be above the political struggle.”

The Dačić-Vučić cabinet has proven itself to be quite capable, despite its political heterogeneity. At the negotiations in Brussels, the Serbian Prime Minister for the first time since 2008 came close to formally recognizing Kosovo’s independence, which the West certainly counts Dacic as a “plus”. Consultations are actively underway regarding Serbia's accession to the EU and NATO. On the other hand, the Serbian authorities maintain close contacts with Moscow, in particular, last year the construction of the first section of the South Stream gas pipeline was officially launched in Serbia. A serious anti-corruption campaign is underway in the country; one of the largest oligarchs(part-time crime boss). In general, everyone seems to be happy with Serbia in its current form. Western “friends” note the Serbs’ readiness to surrender Kosovo and join international organizations. In turn, Russia has the strongest position in the local energy market (Gazprom owns the Oil Industry Serbia-NIS company) and a predominant share of shares in the Serbian section of South Stream (51% of shares in Russia versus 49% in Serbia).

Of course, the local liberal community does not like such an active Russian presence in Serbia, and patriotic Serbs cannot help but be outraged by the prospect of losing Kosovo.

However, in a situation where all electronic media in the country are actually controlled by the state, protest sentiments have no outlets.

So why then are there early elections? - Russian journalists writing about the Balkans ask themselves. The problem is that the coalition government of progressives and socialists has practically exhausted its resources. This is especially clearly seen in the negotiations on Kosovo, which were conducted in Brussels by Prime Minister Dacic. During the year that active negotiations continued, Dacic managed to make more concessions to the Kosovo Albanians than the former head of Serbia, Boris Tadic, during his entire presidency. It would not be an exaggeration to say that today the Serbian regions of Kosovo, including the homogeneously Serbian north of the region (the so-called Ibar Kolasin) have generally lost any connection with Belgrade. And Kosovo Serbs have fewer and fewer rights and freedoms every day.

At the same time, Serbia’s formal recognition of Kosovo’s independence will require a revision of the country’s constitution, which names the region of Kosovo and Metohija as an integral part of the Republic of Serbia. Prime Minister Dacic is not ready to take this step, which means the final and irrevocable loss of Kosovo, realizing that in this way he would forever ruin his political career. The same can be said about the President and Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia - given the current balance of power in the Serbian government and parliament, they clearly do not want to cross this last line. Actually, this is why the socialist Dacic was appointed responsible for the negotiations in Brussels. The situation will change if progressives are given the opportunity to form a cabinet on their own, without sharing portfolios with other major political parties. On the one hand, there will be no one else to shift responsibility to; Kosovo’s independence will have to be recognized; on the other hand, within the framework of a one-party system it is certainly easier to minimize political losses from a “final” solution to the Kosovo issue.

We are now witnessing two parallel and closely interconnected processes - the clearing of the political landscape in Serbia by progressives and the growing pressure of Albanians in Kosovo on Serbian communities. Preparations for the establishment of SNA hegemony in Serbia are developing at an accelerated pace. A split has been initiated in the two most influential political parties - the Socialists (SPS) and the Democrats (DS). The former ruling DS party was actually divided into two democratic parties, one of which was headed by former President Tadic, and the other by the former mayor of Belgrade Dragan Djilas. There is also turmoil in the ranks of the socialists, the authority of the prime minister and party leader Dacic is being challenged by his deputies and members of the political council, and the prime minister’s chief of staff, also a prominent member of the Union of Right Forces, is currently under investigation on charges of connections with the drug mafia.

The patriotic spectrum in the upcoming elections will be represented by: the DSS party of former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, the radical party (SRS), the leader of which is formally Vojislav Seselj, who is under investigation in The Hague, and the Orthodox youth movement “Dveri”.

Popular support for Kostunica's party today is lower than ever, although the DSS will certainly overcome the five percent barrier and enter parliament, it is unlikely to be able to play any serious role there. Seselj's radicals, trying to expand their electoral base, entered into an agreement on joint actions with the youth association "Obraz", staffed largely by football hooligans and fascist characters. Needless to say, in practice, this dubious alliance will not add points to either the radicals or Obraz; rather, on the contrary, it will scare away Seselj’s old supporters. The Door movement, which seems to us to be the only consistently patriotic force in modern Serbia, will most likely not be allowed to enter parliament. In the last elections, this is exactly what they did - they took away one and a half percent of the votes and attributed them to the party of ethnic Hungarians (Doors filed a lawsuit against the Serbian Electoral Commission on this issue, the proceedings are still ongoing). Thus, the Progressive Party confidently receives forty percent or more of the votes; in order to fully control the Assembly of Serbia, they only have to win ten percent of the parliamentary “swamp” to their side. There is no doubt that they will succeed, which means that the ruling cabinet will be formed by the party of Aleksandar Vucic.

At the same time, the Albanian authorities of Kosovo are consistently clearing the region of any signs of nationally oriented Serbian political activity. At the beginning of the year, a Serbian was arrested in Kosovo Mitrovica under a false pretext. political figure Oliver Ivanovich. Ivanovich was considered a liberal politician, inclined to negotiate with the Albanians rather than pedal conflict situations. Ivanovic says that the only way for Kosovo Serbs to avoid becoming bargaining chips in the games between Belgrade and Pristina is to maintain an equal distance from the Serbian and Albanian authorities. We state: even such an extremely cautious position, far from the textbook “Great Serbian chauvinism,” did not save Ivanovich from repression by the Albanians. Ivanovich has been in the pre-trial detention center for three months now and will definitely remain there at least until the March elections.

Thus, there is a situation where there will simply be no one to stand up for Kosovo. In Serbia, patriotic politicians are marginalized and/or eliminated from the political arena; in the Serbian regions of Kosovo, they are arrested, terrorized, and often simply destroyed.

Belgrade’s official recognition of Kosovo’s independence will be possible literally the next day after the March elections... However, it is most likely that the act of surrendering the “cradle of Serbia” will occur at the end of the summer of 2014, during the traditional holiday season.

A separate question, not related to Kosovo as such, is what the monopoly on power of the Progressive Party is fraught with for Russia. The Serbian authorities, in general, do not hide the fact that big changes are coming in Russian-Serbian relations. For example, the head of the Serbian delegation at the negotiations with the EU, Tanja Miscevic, said the other day that economic relations with Russia would soon “be modified.” What does this mean in practice? A highly credible source from circles close to the management of the Srbijagaz company, who wished, for obvious reasons, to remain anonymous, told us that after March 16, a review of all agreements on cooperation in the field of energy between Serbia and Russia is coming. Gazpromneft is planned to be taxed and, in the future, to seize the Oil Industry of Serbia from Gazprom. Srbijagaz will be suspended from work on South Stream in March, and by the summer the gas pipeline project itself will be gradually frozen. The most anti-Russian minister in the current government, the well-known Zorana Mihailovic, who almost disrupted the negotiations between Putin and Nikolic in the fall of 2012, according to our source, will be promoted to first deputy prime minister. Such a scenario does not look fantastic at all if we remember, for example, the fate of the Podgorica Iron and Steel Works in neighboring Montenegro, which was first sold to the Russian company Basic Element, and then went bankrupt and taken away from it. Let us note that an equally negative assessment of future Russian-Serbian economic cooperation in the event of a victory for the progressives is given by a prominent expert in this field Sergey Pravosudov, Chief Editor Gazprom magazine, director of the Institute of National Energy.

Russia in no way considers it possible for itself to interfere in the internal affairs of Serbia. We have only one recommendation for the leadership of the Progressive Party - listen carefully to the aspirations of your own people. According to opinion polls, more than 70% of Serbs are against recognition of Kosovo’s independence, 80% believe that economic ties with Russia should be strengthened, less than half of the Serbian population supports the country’s accession to the EU. Are Messrs. Nikolic and Vucic so impatient to become an “anti-people” government?