6th Plenum of the International Executive Committee (IEC), 9-12 October 1948
1. The conflict that has broken out between Belgrade and Moscow is an expression of the crisis of Stalinism, as it develops under the new conditions created by the rise of Communist parties to power in the countries of Europe incorporated into the Soviet zone of influence.
2. Relations between the Kremlin and the Communist parties are governed by the direct and absolute control it exercises over these parties so as to use them exclusively as agents of its policy of defending the strict interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
3. These relations are being modified by Soviet expansion in Europe and by the new role of the Communist parties in these countries. These parties now have their own state apparatus at their disposal, control the economy, and are responsible for the general policy of the entire country. As a result, they are subject to a set of influences and reactions which may not always take into account the strict interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.
To the extent that social and political relations of forces are established in which the power of these parties no longer depends directly on their support by the Kremlin, conditions are being created for the first time in the history of Stalinism which permit resistance by the Communist parties against the Kremlin's ukases.
To combat this danger of seeing the Communist parties become organs of transmission — even partial and distorted ones — of interests other than the strict interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, the Kremlin has only one means: to impose its direct agents on the leadership of these parties, eliminating through successive purges all elements that escape its absolute control or that potentially harbour similar tendencies.
4. This attitude is the source of a chronic crisis that can only worsen, since Kremlin policy runs counter to the proper interests of the masses of these countries, and even to the interests of the bureaucratic apparatuses of these parties themselves.
The Soviet bureaucracy pursues, in all the countries under its control, not a policy of "socialisation" allowing the free development of their productive forces in a socialist direction, but a policy of economic and political exploitation in keeping with the economic and strategic interests of its regime in the USSR.
Moreover, these countries will increasingly need to rid themselves of all the burdens and constraints that Kremlin tutelage imposes on them (reparations, Soviet enterprises, trade treaties favourable to the USSR, etc.), to trade freely among themselves and with other countries, and to unify their economies.
The difficulties these countries encounter in their development, given their present state of national isolation, owing to the USSR's inability to provide them with the necessary industrial assistance (tools, raw materials and capital) and to the survival of a still-predominant capitalist sector of the economy (peasants, artisans, trade) which constantly hampers plans for industrialisation and economic planning and sharpens the class struggle, are another source of discontent and friction.
All these tendencies are necessarily reflected in the relations within each Communist party, as well as in the relations of these parties with the Kremlin.
5. The outbreak of the affair, as well as the resistance that has so far proved effective against the Kremlin's assaults, were favoured by the particular features of the development of the situation in Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav Communist Party, thanks to the role it played during the war, when it took the lead of a vast movement of the peasant and worker masses of Yugoslavia against the imperialist occupiers and against the national bourgeoisie, had its social composition renewed and even strengthened by the influx of partisans, and was able to preserve a more autonomous and independent character than the other Communist parties.
The Red Army had in fact kept its distance from any direct intervention in Yugoslavia, and the Tito government had come to power relying on the plebeian movement of the working and peasant masses.
The profound reforms undertaken in Yugoslavia immediately after "liberation" reflect the particular conditions of the development of the class struggle in that country during the years of occupation, and the instinctive revolutionary drive of the masses on which Tito relied.
These particular features of the Yugoslav situation all worked in the direction of resistance to the direct and absolute control of the Kremlin and its policy.
Although Tito and the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party had not, prior to the conflict, developed a coherent and firm opposition to Kremlin policy (of which they still today strive to declare themselves the faithful disciples), the autonomous character of their party and their movement, left to its own development, genuinely risked giving rise to serious divergences with the Kremlin's point of view.
In the long run, these divergences would be those between the requirements of "socialist reconstruction" as envisaged by Tito's bureaucracy, on the one hand, and the specific interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, on the other. These divergences would themselves be only a distorted expression of the contradictions between the interests and aspirations of the Yugoslav masses and Kremlin policy.
To avert such a development, the Kremlin had undertaken the elimination of Tito and his replacement by a team of its direct agents.
6. Tito and the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party represent, up to now, the bureaucratic deformation of a plebeian, anti-capitalist, revolutionary current.
But if the Yugoslav masses do not find the strength to impose a revolutionary outcome to the conflict with Moscow, the Yugoslav leadership will in the long run have no alternative but to be eliminated by the Kremlin's direct agents or to capitulate to imperialism.
The whole of the Kremlin apparatus, directed by Stalin, has been set in motion to crush the "renegades" of Belgrade, whose example could become dangerously contagious.
In Yugoslavia itself, and in all the countries under Soviet control, Stalin's direct agents are feverishly orchestrating the political and economic campaign designed to prepare Tito's fall and that of his "band," and are adjusting the appropriate police methods to bring about this fall.
By avoiding a break with the Kremlin and a public denunciation of Stalinism — the only means of ideologically arming the party's rank and file and the Yugoslav masses against the Kremlin's assault — the leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party have placed themselves in an untenable position. Isolated within the "buffer zone" and increasingly isolated, too, from the conscious support of the masses, they will be forced to accentuate more and more the Bonapartist character of the regime, which may thus become in future, if it is not first overthrown by the Kremlin's direct agents, the instrument of class interests other than those it currently represents.
Indeed, under conditions of isolation, of inevitable internal difficulties and of intensifying imperialist pressure, this Bonapartist apparatus may become the mouthpiece of reactionary forces through a series of stages.
Against these prospects of elimination by the Kremlin's direct agents or of capitulation to imperialism, there is only one solution: the direct intervention of the Yugoslav Communist Party rank and file and of the Yugoslav masses to sweep aside all bureaucratic resistance that prevents placing trust in the Yugoslav and world masses, to rely entirely on them, to establish genuine proletarian democracy within the party and the country, to break with Stalinism and denounce it, and to call for a genuine socialist revolution by the masses and for the masses, in Yugoslavia itself and in all the countries of the "buffer zone," of Europe and of the world.
7. The policy of the Fourth International in the Yugoslav affair, as in the whole situation now developing in the buffer zone, must be guided by the concern to deepen the ideological break between the Communists of these countries and the Kremlin, and to orient them towards the true programme of the socialist revolution.
The Fourth International can fulfil this role only by patiently and pedagogically explaining, without sectarianism or presumption, in language accessible to the rank-and-file elements of the Communist parties and of the mass movement they influence in these countries, the deep-seated causes of their conflict with the Kremlin, the nature of Stalinism, and the path to be followed.
From this point of view, it is necessary that all sections and all militants of the Fourth International understand that from the moment there is conflict and rupture between a Communist party and the Kremlin, that party ceases to be a Stalinist party like the others, and that all possibilities of differentiation within it are henceforth open.
It is up to the action of the International to find a growing echo within the ranks of these parties and to accelerate their detachment from Stalinism, to the benefit of the programme and the organisation of the world socialist revolution.
8. The Yugoslav affair is, in reality, only the first manifestation, favoured by particular conditions, of a more general state of affairs that exists throughout the entire "buffer zone."
This is already demonstrated by the crisis that has spread to the Polish Workers' Party and by the extensive purge currently raging, more or less everywhere, in all the Communist parties of the countries under Soviet control.
These events demonstrate that all the "theories" concerning the stability of the Soviet bureaucracy and of Stalinism, or the possibility of extending, for a historical period, the regime of "bureaucratic collectivism" or of "state capitalism" beyond the USSR, are mistaken through a theoretical failure to understand the nature of Stalinism and its contradictions, which are incompatible with a process of world expansion of this extremely rigid bureaucratic and police-state system.
In reality, the expansion of Stalinism into the "buffer zone" proved to be a decisive factor of imbalance for this system, introducing into it centrifugal forces and new ferments which, by sharpening all its contradictions, accelerate and precipitate the crisis.
From this point of view, the Yugoslav affair is only the first sign of the process of convulsive disintegration into which Stalinism has entered.