Workers World, Vol. 10, No. 13, June 20, 1968
The rebellions of the Yugoslav students which resulted in the takeover of the University of Belgrade and the movement of students in other cities such as Sarajevo, Ljubljana, Skoplje, Mostar, Rijeka and Prilep, show that there is now a different trend in revisionist Yugoslavia – a genuine leftist, truly progressive trend, a trend which until now appeared to be all but non-existent.
It wouldn’t be right to exaggerate this trend or say that it’s the dominant one. But it is very necessary to emphasize that it does exist – especially since the bourgeois press has gone to great lengths to convey the impression that the massive student uprising this month was in all respects similar to those earlier ones in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary. This is a deliberate attempt to gloss over what is really different about the Yugoslav development. There are unmistakable signs that the protest movement in Yugoslavia has a new, special characteristic which differentiates it from the reactionary developments in other Eastern European countries.
True, these signs are not yet numerous. The evidence is still sketchy. Nevertheless, one can say with a real degree of certainty that many of the students have taken a remarkable surge forward in the struggle against the Tito leadership, this time from the Left and not from the Right. This section of the students seeks to revive and put on a new revolutionary footing the basic tenets of the Marxist and Leninist conception of socialism and reconstruct Yugoslav life along these lines. This is what is really new and significant.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the student movement has as yet achieved a very definite, specific program or that they are united in a single organization, which, incidentally, would be illegal. The condition of illegality is not an inconsiderable element in the struggle against the regime of Tito & Co. The Western imperialist press has always championed the right of freedom of speech, press, and assembly for the Djilases, the Mihajloviches, and the Stepanoviches – spokesmen for the outright bourgeois restoration, and no doubt their rights have become enlarged. It is something else again when it comes to the rights of students and workers, who are striking out in a revolutionary direction. For them strict illegality is still the rule and any form of protest must still be in the framework of accepted norms.
While the students have been bold in their actions, such as in the case of the seizure of the Belgrade University, they have understandably been more cautious in their approach to political slogans. It is well understood that raising a really revolutionary slogan would court a far more dangerous confrontation with the revisionist authorities than would even the seizure of a university. It would in effect constitute an open challenge to the very existence of the revisionist regime.
When the students renamed the University of Belgrade, Karl Marx Red University, it was not only a bold act but a revolutionary proclamation. It carried a clear and unambiguous denunciation of the revisionists as falsifiers of Marx. It declared their intentions of reviving his revolutionary teachings. The bourgeois press could not hide the renaming of the University. This act terrified the Titoist authorities. This seemingly insignificant act of the students had more to do with Tito himself taking matters into his own hands and personally appealing to them than anything else.
Among the slogans and signs at the various demonstrations were many with pointedly hit at “bourgeois authorities,” “the bourgeoisie,” and “the bourgeoisie which calls itself red.” Unquestionably, the students were striking at the very vitals of the regime, which in the eyes of the students is either sustain, encouraging or itself composed of bourgeois elements. Whatever else may be said about the student uprisings in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and in Hungary earlier, they were not denouncing the bourgeoisie in any shape, form, or manner. To forget this is to forget one of the most important differences. Equally significant are such concrete demands made upon the government by the Yugoslav students as the one which relates to not merely the granting of a minimum wage but also to setting a maximum or ceiling on the earnings of officials.
No such demands were made in any of the other Eastern European countries by the student movement. This kind of demand is calculated to strike down the privileged caste with its enormous salaries, inordinate privileges, and hidden social and economic advantages derived from holding government positions or high posts in industry.
All this is not meant to say that the entire student protest movement in Yugoslavia is characterized by a revolutionary fervor for the revival of Marxism and Leninism and against revisionism. No, that many not yet be the dominant trend. However, the fact of its existence is what gives it a special and even historic significance. For until now, it seemed that what was developing as a result of the triumph of Titoist revisionism was an even further shift to the right in all sections of the population. But the student revolutionary trend not only in Belgrade but in the other cities shows that the thrust of the protest movement is directed towards revolutionary working class ends.
Even Djilas, now out of jail, a rabid exponent of bourgeois restoration, admits the existence in the student protest movement of so-called “leftist sects” who use “revolutionary phraseology.” (Washington Post, June 10, 1968) These “leftist sects,” according to Djilas, are to be distinguished from what he calls the “democratic” – actually bourgeois – trend in the movement.
There are undoubtedly a variety of political trends in the student movement which is groping for its way out of the mire of the present situation which has brought the early socialist developments in the country to utter collapse and seen the revival of bourgeois elements on a frightening level. It is almost 20 years since Tito took a so-called new road to socialism which turned out to be an accommodation with imperialist and dismantling of major socialist achievements won by the Yugoslav people as a result of the revolution.
Out of a population of only 20 million people, more than four hundred thousand have had to seek employment in the West precisely because Tito’s road to socialism has led to impoverishment of the workers and unemployment.
In a country where more than 60 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, the Titoist road to socialism led to the decollectivization of farms, most of which are now in the hands of private farmers, with the larger ones growing richer and the poor driven off the land, and daily joining the unemployed list in the large cities.
By abandoning the socialist monopoly on foreign trade, Tito opened up the country to the penetration of imperialist capital with the result that the country is suffering from a chronic deficit in the balance of payments, which the Tito government tries to remedy by indirectly taxing the workers and the rural poor.
Having made an accommodation with the imperialist powers, especially the U.S., and having become indebted to them as a result of massive foreign aid from the U.S., the bulk of Yugoslav economy is so geared to Western imperialist markets that it is almost impossible for the present government to do anything but continue on the same beaten road of opening-up the country to further capital investments by the imperialist powers. In truth, the country is in increasing danger of degenerating into a neo-colonialist outpost of Western finance capital.
In his interview with C.L. Sulzberger in the June 9 issue of the New York Times Magazine, Milovan Djilas said: “I am pro-Europe. Yugoslavia’s future is in Europe. But Europe alone cannot be a separate force; it must be tied in with America.” Since he further stated: “The United States is infinitely the greatest economic power; and the second greatest power is the U.S.A.-in-Europe,” it follows naturally that Yugoslavia must be a satellite of U.S. imperialism.
The difference between Tito’s policy and that of Djilas is that Tito lags just a little behind Djilas.
The so-called liberal economic reform of 1966 was the most drastic attempt to undermine what was left in Yugoslav socialist economic planning. Tito is the one who introduced it. Djilas applauded it. But he said it should have been done earlier and should have gone further.
There was a sharp rise in the cost of living during the fall of 1966 as a result of the “reform.” It was so great that many of the work stoppages that occurred at that time were clearly the result of the phony liberal economic reform. Unemployment, which should be a rarity in a planned economy, took on truly alarming proportions, so that as late as last year, the spring of 1967 and early 1968, there were several hundred thousand unemployed. No wonder the phony liberal economists encouraged migration of Yugoslav workers to Western capitalist countries.
The student uprisings cannot be divorced from the deteriorating economic situation, the growth of unemployment, the high cost of living, and the ravages of inflation. The student movement in Yugoslavia, as everywhere, in the final analysis reflects the conditions of society as a whole.
The mass of the workers have had many long years to take a look at what was promised to them in the form of so-called workers councils and individual material incentives. In two decades of experimentation with bourgeois economic theories under the mask of a “creative, independent, democratic” approach, the economy of Yugoslavia has reflected all the ills of a bankrupt political regime heading for collapse.
The student uprisings are both a symptom and harbinger of things to come. Political differentiations from the Titoist regime are developing. There are now several distinct political tendencies in the Yugoslav spectrum.
The dominant one, of course, is still the Titoist grouping which controls the state and whose ideology is that of unvarnished revisionism. Still further to the right is that of Milovan Djilas. While he proclaims his official doctrine to be merely to “reform” communism and make it “democratic,” he openly says he is “for small businesses remaining private and the larger ones must be publicly owned (but) the latter must remain free to make their own and competitive deals with other countries and other firms as they wish. ... The present system of public ownership is old-fashioned.” Since most of the “deals,” as Djilas calls them, are really ties to the U.S., it is plain to see why Djilas’ economics find such a ready welcome in Wall Street.
What then is the lesson of the Yugoslav student rebellion? It indicates the beginning of a reversal in historical trends in Eastern Europe, away from the bourgeois degeneration and a revival of the revolutionary, that is, proletarian regeneration for the ideals for which the revolution was made.
That does not at all mean back to the ill-conceived practices and mistakes of Stalin’s policy, but back to the principles of Lenin, back to his revolutionary policy against social and economic privileges and for equality, back to a Paris Commune type of state, which is the only way to go forward to a proletarian democracy and to communism which means freedom for all.
Last updated: 11 May 2026