Scintilla: No to chauvinist provocations and warmongers in the Balkans!

From Scintilla, Issue 130, January 2023, by  Piattaforma Comunista – for the Communist Party of the Proletariat of Italy  

No to chauvinist provocations and warmongers in the Balkans!  

In recent times the striving for "Greater Serbia" by the Serbian bourgeoisie, which has always had historical pretensions, has been revitalized. Considering favorably the context of the conflict created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine to make progress towards this goal, the Serbian bourgeoisie, with the Vucic government, is looking for a new adventure.  

It is said that tensions have cooled since Vucic declared that the Serbs in northern Kosovo have begun to tear down some barricades that they had erected, but the situation has not changed overall, as the reasons for the conflict have deep roots.  

Vucic seems to have set his sights on Kosovo, where the chauvinist and racist Serbian nationalist gangs, the Chetniks, do not stop. They began to create tensions with Kosovo by deploying troops to the border. The Serbian bourgeoisie, which has good relations with Hungary's Orban and the far right in the new Italian government, also has its eyes on other parts of former Yugoslavia, assuming that by annexing parts of Kosovo and other Balkan countries it can create "Greater Serbia". Vucic is trying to materialize step by step the dream of the Serbian bourgeoisie together with the reactionaries in Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia.  

Since Serbia is a powerful Balkan country, the nationalism of the Serbian bourgeoisie and the aspiration for "Greater Serbia" should not be underestimated. This orientation of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which has increased especially before the First World War, has constantly posed a serious problem in the Balkans. The nationalist fervor of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which was taken up by Tito immediately after the liberation of Yugoslavia, continued with the repression of the nationalities in that country, which he detached from unity with the countries of the people's democracies.  

The domination of modern revisionism paved the way in Yugoslavia, in the USSR, and then in all the Balkan and Eastern European countries except for a few decades in Albania, to openly adopt the capitalist order of exploitation. This led to the collapse and disintegration of these revisionist countries.  

As a result, the bourgeoisies of the Balkan countries, first and foremost those of Serbia, who considered collaboration with the US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialists a solution, have provoked rivalries and conflicts between nations, spread enmities between peoples and produced national differences, in order to strengthen their hegemony in the region.  

In the 1990s, under the conditions of national oppression by the Serbian bourgeoisie, which fueled nationalism and national differences, the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO, which led the country to destruction, was bloody but not difficult. The Great-Serb aggression led by Milosevic and the disintegration of Yugoslavia led to the deterioration and widening of nationalist rivalries and conflicts among the Balkan bourgeoisie.  

The Balkans must not once again become a terrain of conflict and war, a war that will inevitably affect all the workers and peoples of Europe.  

It is necessary to prevent the bourgeoisies of the Balkan countries, especially the Serbian bourgeoisie, in collaboration with the imperialists and with the support of the remnants of revisionism, from dragging the peoples into a new nationalist struggle.  

The Balkans remain once again a center of conflict among the imperialist powers. The US and NATO "protect" Kosovo for their own interests – not for the freedom of the Albanians and the other peoples in Kosovo – and many Balkan states are now members of NATO and the imperialist EU, which are using and deepening conflicts and encouraging the pro-Western imperialist forces in the region. Russian imperialism seeks to maintain and extend its influence by fueling conflicts, supporting and fostering Serbian chauvinism.  

It is up to the working class and the peoples of the Balkans, with their communist, revolutionary and progressive organizations, to take responsibility.  

As members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO), we declare that we stand with the peoples of the Balkans and the revolutionaries who raise the demands of peace and brotherhood against chauvinism, warmongering and fascism. 

 

The solution lies in socialism against capitalism, in real independence, in political democracy against fascism, in equality of national rights and in the international unity and solidarity of the working class and peoples against bourgeois nationalism and all imperialists.  

January 2023  

European members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO)  

Communist Party of Albania – CPA  

Communist Workers' Party of Denmark – APK  

Communist Workers' Party of France – PCOF  

Organization for the Construction of a Communist Workers' Party of Germany  

Movement for the reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE 1919-55)  

Marxist-Leninist organization Revolusjon – Norway  

Revolutionary Labor Alliance of Serbia – RSRS  

Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)  

Party of Labor (EMEP) – Turkey