Partisan Ruptures

Gal Kirn, Borut Praper

Description

Yugoslavia's twentieth-century bore witness to civil war, sharp ideological struggles and a series of 'partisan ruptures'; revolutionary events that changed the face of Yugoslavian society, politics and culture, which were felt on a global level.



This book is a comprehensive historical and political analysis of the three major ruptures; the People's Liberation Struggle during World War Two, the self-management model and the Non-Aligned Movement. In order to understand what provoked and what came out of these revolutionary ruptures, Gal Kirn examines the implications of communism and socialism's productive relationship, the Yugoslavian 'experiment' of market socialism that marked the political and economic shift towards 'post-socialism' already in the 1960s, which crystallised new class coalitions that will later on - together with austerity politics - lead the way towards des-integration of Yugoslavia.



Filling a much-needed gap in English language literature, this book's interrogation of the Yugoslav socialist experiment offers insights for left projects and democratic socialist discussions today, as well as historians of Yugoslavia and revolutionary movements.

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction: Beyond the Spectrum of Partisan and Socialist Yugoslavia

1. On Partisan Rupture as a Revolutionary Process: Tito Versus Schmitt

2. A Brief Outline of the End of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Partisan Beginnings of World War II

3. Partisan Rupture I: The People’s Liberation Struggle

4. Split with Stalin: A New Road to Socialism?

5. Partisan Rupture II: The Road to the Non-Aligned Movement

6. Partisan Rupture III: Yugoslav Road to Self-Management Socialism

7. A Short Introduction to the Recent Studies of Socialist Yugoslavia

8. The Main Characteristics of Early Yugoslav Socialism

9. The 1965 Market Reform: From Decentralised Planning to the Logic of Capital

10. Separation I: Split within Companies, or Class Struggles from Below

11. Separation II: Competition between Companies and Financialisation, or Class Struggles from Above

12. Socialist Reproduction and Self-Management Ideology in Yugoslavia in 1968 and Beyond

13. The Contradictory Movement of Socialist Civil Society in Slovenia during the 1980s: The Beginning of the End of Yugoslavia

Conclusion: After the 1991 Yugoslav Deluge, the Rise of the New Europe

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• 1939-1945
• Political Ideologies
• 20th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Revolutions
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Military history
• Communism
• Revolutionary
• Yugoslav Partisans
• Modern history
• Chetniks
• Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
• Croatian Spring
• General officer
• Military
• Yugoslavia
• World War II
• Revolution
• Red Army
• History of Europe
• Civil war
• Armée yougoslave de la patrie
• General
• Yougoslavie
• Communisme
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Josip Broz Tito
• Seconde Guerre mondiale
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786805362
• Langue: Slovenian

Extrait

Partisan Ruptures
Partisan Ruptures
Self-Management, Market Reform and the Spectre of Socialist Yugoslavia
Gal Kirn
Translated by Borut Praper and Gal Kirn
First published by Zalo ba Sophia, Ljubljana 2014 as Partizanski prelomi in protislovja tr nega socializma v Jugoslaviji
First English language edition published 2019 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Gal Kirn 2014, 2019; English translation Borut Praper and Gal Kirn 2019
Translation partially financed by JAK (Slovenian Book Agency)
The right of Gal Kirn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3896 5 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3894 1 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0535 5 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0537 9 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0536 2 EPUB eBook



This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Beyond the Spectrum of Partisan and Socialist Yugoslavia
1. On Partisan Rupture as a Revolutionary Process: Tito Versus Schmitt
2. A Brief Outline of the End of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Partisan Beginnings of World War II
3. Partisan Rupture I: The People s Liberation Struggle
4. Split with Stalin: A New Road to Socialism?
5. Partisan Rupture II: The Road to the Non-Aligned Movement
6. Partisan Rupture III: Yugoslav Road to Self-Management Socialism
7. A Short Introduction to the Recent Studies of Socialist Yugoslavia
8. The Main Characteristics of Early Yugoslav Socialism
9. The 1965 Market Reform: From Decentralised Planning to the Logic of Capital
10. Separation I: Split within Companies, or Class Struggles from Below
11. Separation II: Competition between Companies and Financialisation, or Class Struggles from Above
12. Socialist Reproduction and Self-Management Ideology in Yugoslavia in 1968 and Beyond
13. The Contradictory Movement of Socialist Civil Society in Slovenia during the 1980s: The Beginning of the End of Yugoslavia
Conclusion: After the 1991 Yugoslav Deluge, the Rise of the New Europe
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Tables
6.1 The early socialist social contract in Yugoslavia
6.2 Transition to self-management
8.1 Socio-economic indicators, 1950-70
8.2 Multiple self-managed levels - established system in the 1970s
9.1 Political struggles in socialist Yugoslavia
Figures
10.1 Capitalist relations of production
10.2 New economic domination in market socialism
10.3 Self-management social contract in market socialism
Preface
This book is a result of long-lasting research that I undertook at the end of my dissertation thesis, and which I expanded into my first monograph in Slovenian, entitled Partizanski prelomi in protislovja tr nega socializma ( Partisan Ruptures and the Contradictions of Market Socialism , 2014). The English edition that you are holding in your hands is an updated and reviewed version that I translated with tremendous help from Borut Praper. In this edition I have added several sections with less locally-specific discussions that will guide readers through Yugoslav self-management, while also highlighting the radicality and experimental nature of Yugoslavia as an unfinished project that continues to exert political influence despite its physical death in the 1990s. For this edition I wrote a new introduction and also Chapter 13 on socialist civil society is a result of new research. Regardless of the dominant narratives that have repeatedly demonised any return to revolution, socialism, and Yugoslavia as nostalgic at best and totalitarian at worst, I believe that the time has come when the Yugoslav project can once again shed some light on the crisis of the European project as well as becoming a vehicle for retrieving revolutionary resources for current struggles. This book does not view history as a closed process, but as a complex mixture of relations and determinations that can help prevent us from repeating certain mistakes, or, to paraphrase Beckett, help us to repeat them better. Despite numerous contradictions and internal tensions, Yugoslavia was one of the experiences on the left that can be identified as a victory of the oppressed . Instead of nurturing the culture of defeat and permanent crisis - the leftist melancholia - it is high time for us to turn to consider the lasting ruptures and contributions to the global emancipatory movement. It is noteworthy that these victories were achieved despite major objective and subjective obstacles. Consider for a moment World War II in the heart of occupied Europe, with strong local collaborationist forces. How could one even consider and risk a partisan uprising in 1941 that would rely solely on its own forces, without any help from the Allies, who continued to support the Chetniks for a long period? Or, consider the isolation of Yugoslavia from the entire Eastern bloc in 1948? What is to be done? These events presented deep challenges to the mere existence of emancipatory movements and communist leadership. Despite all the odds, however, the oppressed were not only able to survive, but even to dream and realise another world. Another world was possible. And it still is today. And it will be possible to change the world in the future. Resisting the status quo takes tremendous powers of imagination and organisation. This is one of the important reasons why we should revisit Yugoslavia today: to insist - despite all odds and the obscurantism that surrounds us - on our alternative trajectories, to imagine and organise without succumbing to cynicism and individual micropolitics.
Let me express my deepest thanks to the individuals, collectives, and institutions that helped me develop my thoughts on this journey. First of all, the project started within the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and at the University of Nova Gorica, where I finished my dissertation under the supervision of prof. Rado Riha. At the time, I also participated in numerous reading seminars at the Workers and Punks University and benefited from the theoretical exchange with Ozren Pupovac, Slobodan Karamani , Lev Centrih, Marko Kr an, Jernej Habjan, Stipe urkovi , Ankica akardi , Chiara Bonfiglioli, Mirt Komel, and Domagoj Mihajlevi . During my scholarship at the Jan van Eyck Academie I held heated discussions with Panagiotis Sotiris, Peter Thomas, Nathaniel Boyd, Samo Tom i , Sara Farris, Alberto Toscano, Katja Diefenbach, Dubravka Sekuli , Ernst van den Hemel, Pietro Bianchi, and many others. My deepest theoretical debt in the return to socialist Yugoslavia goes to Darko Suvin, Catherine Samary, Rastko Mo nik, and Boris Buden, whose works left a deep impression that can be felt in parts of the book. Furthermore, I would like to mention Michael Lebowitz, who commented on the specific chapters in the book and provided strategic feedback that improved the manuscript. I have also had a few fascinating debates on the comparison between early Chavez s Venezuela and early Yugoslavia with Nestor Lopez and Carlos Gonzalos Villa. I am also grateful to Tanja Velagi from the publishing house Sophia, who helped me improve the Slovenian version of the book. I would also like to thank the previously mentioned translator Borut Praper, for whose tremendous work and comments I am extremely grateful, while for the language editing, I would like to thank Sun an Stone, Monika Fritz, and George MacBeth. I am also grateful for the opportunity to edit and work on the translation during my Open Topic fellowship at TU Dresden, where I was hosted by prof. Christian Prunitsch (Slavonic Studies). Last but not least, I would like to thank JAK (Slovenian Book Agency) for financially supporting the translation of my book and I would like to thank Pluto Press, especially David Shulman and Neda Tehrani for their assistance and feedback during the process. Finally, I would like to thank my parents Sre o and Nada, my brother Bor, and my partner Niloufar Tajeri for their affective and theoretical support, without which my work would never have seen the light of day.
Introduction: Beyond the Spectrum of Partisan and Socialist Yugoslavia

after having overthrown totalitarian rule the societies of former Eastern Europe don t enter directly into the world of developed capitalism and Western democracy, but rather must undergo first the process of transition to this final condition, which poses as normality, that is as the universal norm of historical development in general. The process of transition is accordingly understood as the process of normalization. So everything that happens during this process automatically gains the teleological meaning intrinsically tied to the transitional narrative. This also includes the logic that before things get better - normal, capitalist, democratic, etc - they must first get worse in comparison to the former situation, concretely to the state of actual socialism. But the problem is that the transition process can turn into a real disaster. This is precisely what happened in former Yugoslavia: the collapse of the state, civil wars with horrible destruction, ethnic cleansing, atrocities, human losses, economic breakdown, political chaos.
Boris Buden, The Post-Yugoslavian Condition of Institutional Critique (2007)
To look back at Yugoslavia, socialism, and the People s Liberation Struggle during World War II in the mid-2000s, and to see in these experience