Boris Ziherl
In the great war of liberation against the invading and enslaving Hitlerite coalition, the communists proved by deeds that they were the truest sons of their fatherland and their people. In the countries conquered by the fascists, or whose independence was menaced by them, the communists were not only in the first ranks of the people's resistance against foreign invaders and their local henchmen, but were also almost everywhere the inspirers, organizers and leaders of the resistance.
By their self-sacrificing struggle for their country, for its national independence, as one of the basic conditions for its progressive development, the communists shattered completely, in the course of the World War II. the slanders of the reactionary bourgeoisie which had for a whole century been trying to portray the communists as indifferent and hostile towards the vital interests of their country and people. But this is not all. The slanderers of the communists, the reactionary bourgeoisie themselves, were unmasked in the conquered countries of Europe, as the anational and anti-national lackeys of foreign invaders, as traitors to their fatherland, whose interests were so opposed to the interests of their "own" people, that they could be defended only with foreign help, only through the intervention of foreign imperialists, only through collaboration with foreign imperialist aggressors, only under the auspices of the representatives of the superior race
In the years of the great war against the Hitlerite coalition the inseparable interconnection of the struggle for national independence of the country with the struggle for the overthrow of the treacherous, anational bourgeoisie in every country became obvious. The inseparable interconnection between the national liberation struggle and the people's liberation struggle, and the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggle (i. e. socialist revolution) became apparent. The concept of communism became inseparably linked with the concept of the most ardent patriotism. In occupied Europe this fact was best illustrated by the liberation struggle in Yugoslavia from 1941-1945, which was led from the very beginning by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
After the World War II, the inseparable interdependence of true patriotism and the struggle against the treacherous bourgeoisie is reflected in the resistance that the masses of the people of the capitalist countries are offering, under the leadership of the communist parties, to the economic and political enslavement of their respective countries by the American imperialists. All sorts of theories purporting to prove the obsoleteness of nations, the, necessity to liquidate their independence and sovereignty and the necessity to create a single world state are but a spiritual preparation for such subjugation. Renegade, decadent artists are "creating" various sorts of anational and super-national cultures, trampling upon the cultural heritage of their people, endeavouring to efface their individuality and to paralyse them spiritually. Right-wing socialists of the Blum brand are among the most zealous prophets of all sorts of reactionary cosmopolitan theories. They are even trying to represent the theoretical defense of American expansionism as the height of Marxist internationalism, not refraining from the most impudent distortions and falsifications of the teachings of Marx and Engels.
While the communists in the capitalist world are fighting against the political, economic and cultural effacement of their peoples, for their national individuality, freedom and independence, the masses of the people under the leadership of the communists are building their socialist fatherlands in a series of liberated countries in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.
A creation of the Great October Revolution, the Soviet Union, which even today almost exclusively unites the peoples of the former Russian Empire, was until 'World War II the only country where socialism was being, and was, built.
After World War II, peoples who had been developing for centuries politically, economically and culturally within the framework of states other than those of the peoples of the Soviet Union, undertook the task of socialist reconstruction. The political, economic and cultural achievements of their former historic development, to which the process of the building of socialism in those countries is unavoidably linked, are very different both in the said countries and in the Soviet Union. In short, in addition to the Soviet Union, there is today a series of states whose working populations also quite rightfully consider them as their socialist fatherland, take pride in the fruit of their struggle and labour and are imbued with the noble patriotic desire to strengthen the common anti-imperialist camp of socialism as much as possible by building up their country.
The success of the struggle against the aggressive plans of the American imperialists which is being waged in the capitalist countries now, by the masses of the people under the leadership of the communists depends to a large extent on whether the relations which are now being established between the socialist countries will really be a materialisation of the principle of equality and brotherly cooperation between peoples, whether they will be the expression of the unity of patriotism and internationalism, under whose banner the communists of all countries are fighting against the nationalism and cosmopolitanism of present-day bourgeois reaction. Contrary to the relations existing between contemporary capitalist countries built on inequality, American hegemony and mutual distrust, socialist countries must base their relations on equality and mutual trust and the peoples of the capitalist world should with joy and faith, see in them their own national future.
In this, apart from other things. lies the principled and practical-political significance of the struggle that our Party is waging for correct relations among socialist countries.
Using as a point of departure the fact that now after the World War II, there are several "socialist fatherlands", several countries in which the masses are building socialism, the concepts regarding the relationship of communism to the fatherland dating from the days when the Soviet Union stood alone in front of the whole world of capitalism should be discarded as obsolete, useless and harmful stereotypes. Taking into account this post-war reality we must discard the concept according to which the world still consists of the following two parts: the USSR and that which is "on the other side" of the Soviet border.
The clarification of these concepts can only contribute to the elimination of disagreement and to the establishment of relations among the socialist countries which correspond to their social-economic and political character.