834707225

others’ benefit, became in only twelve days an all-too-easy prey for the occupier; indeed, it became one vast slaughterhouse. Brother killed brother; like lunatics we murdered each other barbarously, treacher-ously. Forces of unreason danced a bloody dance. Menaced by geno-cide, a terrified populace fled to the forests and other hideouts. The instinct for self-preservation, the desire to keep one’s head on one’s shoulders at any price, became the only guide in that flight from the slaughter.

The Communist Party’s role in this moment of our history was great and unquestionable. Two decades experience of persecution while engaged in illegal work enabled the Party in those moments of tra-gedy for all our peoples to channel people’s anger and thirst for re-venge into battle against the occupiers and the quislings and to offer a programme of struggle for freedom and against every form of slaughter and oppression. The logie of the mind tipped the scales against the logie of the knife and against that which is irrational and animal in men. The peasantry en masse rallied to the red flag that the com-munists unfurled. But the uprising also suffered reversals, not only in those regions which were strongholds of the quislings, but also there where sectarianism of the Stalinist type was expressed in suspicion of the peasantry and in the attitude that the revolution must immediately be transformed into a proletarian revolution, overshadowing the generał and patriotic national fight for freedom. The occurence of Red Terror in Montenegro and some parts of east Bośnia during 1942 clearly demonstrated this. A not inconsiderable number of peasants, failing to comprehend this sectarian logie, found themselves before the guns of the very squads they had commanded, thus sharing the fate of Gvozden, hero of Dobrica Ćosić’s the novel Tlie Sun is Far Away. All in all, there is a need to consider carefully what was socia-listic in our revolution.

So, the Yugoslav national liberation struggle, almost against the wishes of those who led it, and according to the social structure of its participants, took on the character of a peasant revolution. Naturally this does not mean that workers, intellectuals, and patriotically orient -ated members of the other section of population, did not take an active part in the struggle. But the fundamental mass of the national liberation army consisted of peasants. Could it have been otherwise in a country of peasants? It is self-evident that it could not. Even the Party-membership was predominantly peasant; on in 1946 258,000 Party-members, 130,000 or 50% were peasants.

The revolution arrived in this country neither with Anglo-Americ-an parachutes nor on Russian tanks. Hence a government constructed in the course of the national liberation struggle could be not other than a people’s government which the Party apparatus had patiently and persistently built in the difficult years of war. From the ashes that remained after the war one Absolute Winner survived - the Communist Party. The eyes of all our peoples were focussed on that Winner. Regardless of the plans of the Great Powers which behind the partisan leaders’ back were discussing the destiny of Yugoslavia, the people demonstrated by force of arms their preference for Com-

440