The Fall of Djilas
WOLFE, BERTRAM D.
The Fall of Djilas Tito's condemnation of a dissenting lieutenant was inevitable under a one-party dictatorship By Bertram D. Wolfe No political party can develop real democracy in its own ranks...
...It is converted from a living organism into what Stalin himself called a "monolith...
...And the obstacle they have now stumbled over is the same one which led to a progressive stifling of party discussion in the Russian Communist party under Lenin himself: the limits set by the single-party system and its dictatorship...
...Curiously, Tito and his associates have claimed that they were returning to earlier, pre-Stalinist or "Leninist," Communist party procedures...
...Discussion died away in the party, as it had died away previously in the country...
...Now the Yugoslav Communists have been reversing, or trying to reverse, this process...
...The inexorable logic of the one-party system began to make itself felt...
...There were debates in which Lenin was in a minority, and debates in which he was reversed and defeated...
...It has valiantly defended its independence against Kremlin coercion and bullying...
...Thus, there is one clear lesson that we can draw from the present Yugoslav controversy, without going into its merits or pretending to a knowledge of its details...
...Bertram D. Wolfe is author of Three Who Made a Revolution, a study of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin...
...They have been moving back toward freer discussion within the party, back to early post-1917 Leninism...
...Lenin took advantage of this to charge his opponents in the party with being the voice of nonparty elements...
...Suppression begets more suppression...
...Aware of this, the party factions became uncomfortable in their internal party discussions, fearful lest the voiceless people rally behind one or another of them and the one-party system be broken...
...They may now go on to further freedom within the party, leading to open discussion, to currents of sympathy in the general public, and ultimately to a multi-party system...
...Yugoslavia has broken with the Soviet Empire...
...In 1921, Lenin managed to pass a party resolution forbidding the formation of factions...
...They have made some real progress in the direction of greater democratization...
...Though its interests and fate were at stake, the people were silenced and could only give silent sympathy to one faction or another...
...Each faction published its own position and often set up its own organ...
...And it inevitably leads to purges, bloody and otherwise...
...It leads to the suppression of viewpoints by administrative methods...
...But all this discussion suffered from one fundamental defect: There was only one party...
...The Fall of Djilas Tito's condemnation of a dissenting lieutenant was inevitable under a one-party dictatorship By Bertram D. Wolfe No political party can develop real democracy in its own ranks as long as it is a single monopoly party in a one-party state...
...But at this point they have reached their first great obstacle, Lenin's own one-party system...
...Now, suddenly, this whole process of loosening the bonds and cautiously extending the limits of free discussion has brought on a crisis in Yugoslav party affairs...
...Error, as well as truth, has its logic...
...And they have been permitting, perhaps even "staging," a certain amount of free discussion of the political practices of Stalinism...
...They have come to a dividing of the ways...
...Freedom begets more freedom...
...The one-party system leads, as Lenin himself discovered, inevitably and inexorably to the monolithic party structure, in which there is no real possibility of free discussion...
...But the limits of this freedom of discussion have, until now, been set within the framework of a one-party system and a monopolistic Government press...
...Differences among the Communists were debated openly...
...Or they will begin suppressing opinions, removing or purging their spokesmen, and reconverting their party into a monolith...
...Tito and his associates are learning this today, just as Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks learned it in the years 1917 to 1921...
...The great mass of the Russian people had no voice, no press, no way of expressing itself...
...They have done without the sinister Soviet system of blood purges...
...This led in the end to a one-man dictatorship and the purges...
...It is this: No political party can really develop democracy in its own ranks, or any genuine freedom of internal discussion, as long as it remains a single monopoly party in a one-party state...
...Now that Tito and his associates have met their first major obstacle in their cautious re-examination of Stalinist procedures and dogmas, the world is watching with interest to see whether they will resume their search for increased democracy...
...Having broken with Stalinism, the Yugoslav Communists have been reexamining the Stalinist dogmas and trying to return to what Tito, Pijade and Djilas have called "original Leninist party democracy...
...And a monolith is but another word for a tombstone—a tombstone on political life and intra-party life...
...When you abolish other parties, in the end you strangle the life of the one remaining party...
...It is perfectly true, as Tito and his comrades claim, that there was much freedom of intra-party discussion in Russia in the early days after Lenin took power...
Vol. 37 • February 1954 • No. 5
