In recent period, the “Greater Serbia” aspiration of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which has always had historical pretensions, has been revived. Considering the conflict environment created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as favorable for taking steps towards that goal, the Serbian bourgeoisie, with the Vucic government, seeks a new adventure.
It is reported that tensions cooling with Vucic declaring that Serbs in northern Kosovo have begun to take down some barricades they had set, but the situation has not changed wholly, as the reasons of the conflict have strong roots.
Vucic seems to have set his sights on Kosovo, where the racist chauvinist Serbian nationalist gangs, Chetniks are not resting. He started to create tensions with Kosovo by deploying troops on the border. The Serbian bourgeoisie, which has good relations with Hungary’s Orban and the extreme right-wing in Italy’s new government – that also have their eyes on parts of the former Yugoslavia, assumes that by annexing parts of Kosovo and other countries in Balkans it can create “Greater Serbia”. Vucic is trying to materialize the dream of the Serbian bourgeoisie step by step along with the reactionaries in Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia.
As much as Serbia is a powerful country of the Balkans, the nationalism of the Serbian bourgeoisie and the aspiration of “Greater Serbia” is not to be underestimated. This orientation of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which ascended especially before the Great War, has constantly posed a serious problem in the Balkans. The nationalist fervor of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which was re-initiated by Tito immediately after the liberation of Yugoslavia, continued with the repression of the nations united in that country, which he broke away from the unity with the countries known as people’s democracies. The domination of modern revisionism opened the path for USSR, Yugoslavia, followed by all the Balkan and eastern European countries, except for some decades Albania, to overtly adopt the capitalist order of exploitation; this led to the collapse and disintegration of these revisionist countries. While the bourgeoisies of the Balkan countries, primarily the Serbian bourgeoisie, which considered collaboration with the US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialists as a solution, provoked rivalries and conflicts among the nations, spread enmity among the peoples by provoking national differences in order to strengthen their hegemony in the region.
In the 1990s, under the conditions of national oppression by the Serbian bourgeoisie, stoking nationalism and fueling national differences, NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, which led the country into destruction, was easy but bloody. Greater-Serbian aggression led by Milosevic and disintegration of Yugoslavia led to the deterioration and widening of the rivalries and nationalist conflicts of the Balkan bourgeoisies.
The Balkans must not turn into a field of conflict and war again. A war that will affect inevitably all European workers and peoples.
The bourgeoisies of the Balkan countries, especially the Serbian bourgeoisie, in collaboration with the imperialists and with the support of the remnants of revisionism, must be prevented from dragging the peoples into a new nationalist strife. The Balkans once again remains a center of conflict among the imperialist powers. US/NATO “protecting” Kosovo for their own interests – not the freedom of Albanian and other peoples in Kosovo – and many Balkan states are today members of NATO and imperialist EU, which are using and deepening conflicts and fostering pro-western imperialist forces in the region. Russian imperialism seeks to maintain and extend its influence by fueling conflicts, and supporting and fostering Serbian chauvinism.
The responsibility lies with the working class and the peoples of Balkan, with their communist, revolutionary, and progressive organizations.
As the European parties of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organization’s (CIPOML), we affirm that we stand with the Balkan peoples and revolutionaries who will raise the demand for peace and fraternity against chauvinism, warmongering and fascism. The solution lies in socialism against capitalism, real independence political democracy against fascism, and equality of national rights and international unity and solidarity of the working class and peoples against bourgeois nationalism and all imperialism.
CIPOML European Parties and Organisations
– Organization for the Construction of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (Arbeit Zukunft)
– Communist Party of Albania
– Workers’ Communist Party – Denmark
– Workers’ Communist Party of France
– Communist Platform of Italy
– Revolutionary Labor Alliance of Serbia – RSRS
– Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)
– The Labour Party (EMEP), Turkey,
– The Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Group, Norway
– Movement for the Reorganisation of the Communist Party of Greece 1918-1955 (Anasintaxi)