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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 1, 2 January 1950, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
PARIS, Dec. 19 – Kostov is dead, but before dying this tough Stalinist bureaucrat gave his former bosses a headache from which they will not quickly recover. Kostov was known not only in his native Bulgaria but throughout the East European satellite countries as one of the toughest opponents of Tito’s Yugoslavia. Yet his refusal to “confess” at the recent mock trial in Sofia will undoubtedly strengthen the spines of all those elements in the Stalinist world who look toward Belgrade.
The attitude of the Yugoslavs toward Kostov has been extremely unfriendly since long before the trial. This can be explained only when one is acquainted with the situation inside the top leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The present 100 per cent Muscovite leadership of Kolarov was only one of the three factions, and not the strongest of them, that disputed the mantle of the aging Dimitrov a year and a half ago.
The elements closest to Dimitrov were extremely friendly to Tito. It is now impossible to check the truth of the Titoist statements as to how far the late Dimitrov himself expressed his agreement with his rebellious neighbors. It is a fact, however, that he refused to revile Tito in the standard Cominform fashion.
Kostov, on the other hand, while unfriendly to the present Kolarov leadership, which was ready to see Bulgaria treated in a completely colonial fashion by the Russians, refused to allow his faction to collaborate with Tito. This enraged both the Yugoslavs and their friends in the Dimitrov groups.
They found Kostov’s particular brand of opposition to Russian exploitation-based on a Bulgarian particularism which embraced the desire to take over Yugoslav Macedonia and opposed the idea of a projected South Slav Federation in which Bulgaria would at best be on an equal footing with each of the different peoples of Yugoslavia – a barrier to the formation of a solid front against the Russians. Therefore the Titoists and Kostov constantly reviled each other in a thorough Stalinist fashion. Kostov’s courageous stand at his trial, however, may cause the Yugoslavs to speak less harshly of him now.
Tito’s emissaries in the various satellite countries will undoubtedly cite Kostov’s courage in order to hearten the dissident elements, but they will also be able to cite his fate to those dissident elements which are now spending a good part of their time fighting each other.
The series of breaks and cracks in the Stalinist apparatus has shaken the faith of a good many Stalinist fellow travelers in Western Europe. After the French writer Jean Cassou returned from an admiring trip to Yugoslavia the Stalinists put all the pressure they could on him to get back into line and admit his mistake in supporting Tito before it was too late. Cassou refused and is now getting a vigorous dose of the “traitor treatment” from the Stalinist paper L’Humanité.
Now the resistance poet Vercors, author of the well-known Silences de la Mer, has come out with a hesitant statement refusing to accept the lies involved in the Cominform attacks against Tito and Rajk. Vercors’ statement, published in the latest issue of the left Catholic magazine Esprit, which has had quite a weakness for the Stalinists and their fellow travelers, was very carefully filled with expressions of loyalty to the “Communist Party... [which] I love ... If ever it is attacked, I will fight in its ranks,” etc.
An article in L’Humanité of December 15 seemed to justify Vercors’ tactfulness by roundly denouncing Cassou’s article in the same issue of Esprit, while sliding by Vercors. The following day, however, the party watchdog over its intellectuals, the stupendously unintellectual and conceited Laurent Casanova, saw a chance to prove further to Moscow that he is more loyal to the Kremlin than anyone else and pounded Vercors to jelly. All that tact gone to
A note of comic relief: the group which still calls itself the Fourth International has been wearing out its knees trying to crawl into Tito’s house by any possible door. One of the chief speakers at the Belgrade November 29 Yugoslav Revolution celebration threw in a sentence in which he made it clear that the Titoists want no part of “the suspicious characters of a certain Fourth International.”
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