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Burden - that is stalinism, or in the Yugoslav case, remnants of

stalinism.^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7}    .    ,    .

Stalinism is the nightmare that has been hauntmg contemporary

socialism: it is the root of the crisis of socialism, and lt is the cause of the so evident hangover of present day socialism after the occupation

of socialist Czechoslovakia.    .

Stalinism is not only the period of Stalin s rule of the boviet State and his strong influence on the trends in the international socialism. Stalinism means the establishment of social power of the political bureaucracy. From social and political standpoint, stalinism is a com-pleted process in the course of which the former representatives and bureaucrats of the revolution turned from people’s servants into people’s masters. That very separation of the representatives and bureaucrats from the people, that trans for mation from »servants« into masters make stalinism a negation of the first socialist revolution - the Paris Commune.

It may sound excessive to regard stalinism as a nightmare that haunts present day socialism. after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party óf the USSR. Such a figurę of Stalin has already faded away from the political scene. But the point here is not on the »personality cult«, or the personality in generał but on the system, on the power of political bureaucracy.

The strength and efficacy of bureaucratic resistance toward reform-ing attempts in socialism, known under a generał term economic re-forms, reveal possibly how great is the power of the political bureau-cracv in the socialist countries today.

The need for economic reforms in these countries has been based on the awareness of the inefficacy of the bureaucratic voluntariness in socialist economic systems. Therefore, the suggested reforms, in spite of some content differences which characterized them in each country, have one common feature: they are essentially a critique of the bureaucratic voluntariness. Their positive programme is the introduction of a greater dynamism in socialist economic systems, the restriction

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has been undergoing a crisis, although he does not seem sceptical about its futurę. V. Cyjeiićanin thinks, however, that the theory of the Workers’ Movement, togethcr with its organizations, have been experiencing a crisis today.

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In my opinion, one should not pay too much attention to these differences. They seem to reflect, from different viewpoints, the same phenomcnon: socialism is an

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integral entity of theory and practice. Therefore, the crisis of any »portion« of it substantially affects the movement as a whole. From the standpoint of the futurę of the movement, I am afraid that any insisting on differences might lead us to dogmatism and might render our arguments fruitless. If the crisis is indeed an

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»old term for a burden*, according to E. Bloch, it is not hard to see that therc havc

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been burdens everywhcre: both in theory and practice and among organizational

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models, too.

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At sight, it may seem strange to talk of the »remnants of stalinism* in Yugo-slavia; as late as 1948 Yugoslavia was confronted with Stalin, and later on, in 1950, when workers’ self-management was introduced, it faceci stalinism. If stalinism is, however, only a term for social relations under which the political burcau-cracy has a prcvailing power in society, one can then talk about the extremely strong impact of stalinistic remnants in the Yugoslav society. The resistance of the substantial part of political bureaucracy toward the economic reform, nationalistic tendencies, among which the brueaucracy plays an important role, substantiate doubtless our statement.