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mikro in makro: pr istopi in pr ispevki k humanističnim vedam ob dvajsetletnici up fhš
Summary
“He was not such a creative personality.”
Kardelj’s memoirs of the Yugoslav communists
– the victims of the Stalinist political repression
The Yugoslav communist movement experienced its key formative period in
the 1930s, during the global economic crisis, the rise of fascism, the Spanish
Civil War, the development of the Soviet Union, and the severe political
repression that took place there. Following the dispute with Cominform
(1948), the Yugoslav communists gradually began to evaluate the past peri-
od, and part of this project was the revival of the memory of their members
who ended up as victims of the Stalinist purges disappearing in the Soviet
Union or left the movement because of their disappointment. Some of the
most prominent politicians and revolutionaries, including Edvard Kardelj,
played an important role in compiling lists and short biographies of com-
munist activists of the 1930s. His comments and observations, recorded
in the 1960s, convey the traumatic legacy of the Comintern, the factional
struggles, and describe the Soviet Union in general. The Yugoslav commu-
nists considered themselves the heirs to the October Revolution, but at the
same time sought to distance themselves from Lenin's and Stalin's politi-
cal practices, which was no easy task, since the most important episodes in
their history belonged to the Stalin period. In this article, I highlight the di-
fference between the Yugoslav critique of Stalinism and the Soviet critique
of the "personality cult ". The article hypothesises that the Yugoslav critique
of Stalinism was based on the critique of the single-party political system.
However, because Kardelj simultaneously acknowledged that for objective
reasons the League of Communists of Yugoslavia could not completely and
immediately abolish such a system, the Yugoslav critique of Stalinism was
also to some extent a self-criticism.
292
Summary
“He was not such a creative personality.”
Kardelj’s memoirs of the Yugoslav communists
– the victims of the Stalinist political repression
The Yugoslav communist movement experienced its key formative period in
the 1930s, during the global economic crisis, the rise of fascism, the Spanish
Civil War, the development of the Soviet Union, and the severe political
repression that took place there. Following the dispute with Cominform
(1948), the Yugoslav communists gradually began to evaluate the past peri-
od, and part of this project was the revival of the memory of their members
who ended up as victims of the Stalinist purges disappearing in the Soviet
Union or left the movement because of their disappointment. Some of the
most prominent politicians and revolutionaries, including Edvard Kardelj,
played an important role in compiling lists and short biographies of com-
munist activists of the 1930s. His comments and observations, recorded
in the 1960s, convey the traumatic legacy of the Comintern, the factional
struggles, and describe the Soviet Union in general. The Yugoslav commu-
nists considered themselves the heirs to the October Revolution, but at the
same time sought to distance themselves from Lenin's and Stalin's politi-
cal practices, which was no easy task, since the most important episodes in
their history belonged to the Stalin period. In this article, I highlight the di-
fference between the Yugoslav critique of Stalinism and the Soviet critique
of the "personality cult ". The article hypothesises that the Yugoslav critique
of Stalinism was based on the critique of the single-party political system.
However, because Kardelj simultaneously acknowledged that for objective
reasons the League of Communists of Yugoslavia could not completely and
immediately abolish such a system, the Yugoslav critique of Stalinism was
also to some extent a self-criticism.
292
