Part of a larger article by O. W. Kuusinen titled “Oletteko Neuvostoliiton puolella vai sitä vastaan?” [“Are you on the Soviet side or against it?”] published in 1948. Translated by ML-theory:
“At present, in the countries of People’s Democracy, only a few desperate and bankrupt agents of foreign imperialism make hateful remarks against the Soviet Union. All the parties, groups and leaders who seriously base their calculations on popular support defend cooperation and friendship with the Soviet Union. This is an extremely important fact which, in most cases, reflects a sincere political endeavor. And in the countries of People’s Democracy there is no reason, except in the case of Yugoslavia, to doubt the sincerity of friendly statements from responsible political leaders towards the Soviet Union.
In Yugoslavia, as was stated in the June meeting of the Information Bureau of Communist Parties, the leadership of the Communist Party has abandoned the party’s international traditions and has gone on the path of nationalism.
The leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia have departed from the Marxist-Leninist path to a profoundly opportunistic line under the conditions of People’s Democracy. We must not forget that People’s Democracy is a transition step from the bourgeois state to the socialist state, from capitalism to socialism. No country can stay there for an extended period of time without moving forward or backward. If it does not follow the path to socialism, then development will go backwards, to capitalism. But the evolution to socialism does not go by itself, spontaneously. Whether or not the country will really move forward to socialism depends on the continued development of the proletariat’s class struggle and the right direction of state policy under the determined leadership of the Communist Party.
The Yugoslav leaders, on the other hand, focused on suppressing the class struggle. They began to spread the notion that class contradictions in Yugoslavia were no longer serious. Especially in rural areas, they did not take into account the different class strata and the vitality of the deep roots of capitalism in the private peasant economy. Like the old ideologues of “Christian Socialism,” they apparently believed that the roots of capitalism could easily be eradicated if the “whole peasantry”, with the big exploiter landowners at the head, were called for that purpose, and a decree was made to that effect. Lenin’s teaching regarding proletarian hegemony turned out to be a burden for the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which they quietly freed themselves of.
From the standpoint of suppressing the class struggle, they also led to a mediation tactic within the Yugoslav Popular Front, which includes not only workers and working peasants, but also large-scale, merchants, small manufacturers and bourgeois intelligentsia, and various political groups, including some bourgeois parties. In this varied company, leaders try to avoid, at any cost, the causes of disagreement: to prevent the development of the workers’ class struggle, because some of the members of a large alliance opposed it; to give up the Communist Party’s leading role, even to hide its face, so that none of the non-Communist participants in the alliance could feel offended; to restrict and reduce cooperation with the Soviet Union, because one or the other of the bourgeois participants of the alliance are reluctant to cooperate with it. . .
When the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia let loose such a current, a dangerous shift emerged in the political line: instead of leading the cause of the workers by basing themselves in the majority of the Popular Front, the alliance of the working class with the poor and the middle peasantry, they considered it better to orient themselves towards the politically more backward petit-bourgeois elements of the Popular Front. In other words, a bloc policy based on bourgeois nationalism was born.
He who has surrendered to bourgeois nationalism, of course, he is bothered by the voluntary cooperation of his country with a socialist state, no matter how much the country benefits from such cooperation. Of course, such a person can, when the opportunity arises, make public statements about the desirability of the closest ties between Soviet citizens and citizens of his own country, but in practice he strives to minimize those ties. Thus, he is also persuaded by imperialist states, who, for their own purposes, are constantly intimidating small sovereign nations with blackmailing threats. In an effort to relieve this pressure through an opportunistic maneuver, the petty bourgeois nationalist makes concessions to imperialist governments to win their favor. The first concession imperialists demand from the leaders of People’s Democracy is that they must not behave better towards the Soviet Union than they do towards the bourgeois states.
The leaders of Yugoslavia began to act in accordance with that. They adopted a policy that was unfriendly to the Soviet Union: the defamation of Soviet military experts and the humiliation of the Soviet army, a special system of oversight and shadowing of Soviet civilian experts and several Soviet officials in Yugoslavia. In public, Yugoslav leaders make declarations of their special friendship with the Soviet Union, while at the same time their real attitude towards the Soviet state, which defends the independence and security of the People’s Democracy, is the same as towards the imperialist states that threaten their independence and security.
This anti-Soviet attitude of the Tito group represents a very great concession to the imperialist states. And when one remembers the old proverb that he who gives the devil his little finger will lose his whole hand, it is difficult to assess the dangerous consequences that Yugoslavia faces because of its leaders’ current policies. But it is also difficult to assume that such a detrimental policy could continue for a long time without arousing serious opposition from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the workers.
After all, Yugoslav workers know from their own experience that fraternal help from the Soviet people is indispensable and essential for their well-being, for freedom, democracy and socialism, for the rapid and diversified development of their nation’s economy, culture and defense. Therefore, it is not difficult for them, the working masses, to understand that any measure that weakens or restricts cooperation with the Soviet Union, regardless of its more or less right-wing justification, is in fact aimed at undermining the very foundations of People’s Democracy. To whom it would not be clear that only by belonging to a united democratic anti-imperialist camp led by the mighty land of socialism, the democracies can secure their independence and security, their entire future, against the pressures and aspirations of the imperialists.
Thus, for those who work in these countries, solidarity with the Soviet Union is not a matter of debate but a deep conviction. As a result, every anti-Soviet politician is doomed to failure when workers – if not today, tomorrow – ask him: – Are you on the Soviet side or against it? It is inconceivable that the working masses who hold loyalty to friendship with the Soviet people as a rule of life would be content with a response that would only contain empty words contrary to fact.” ~O. W. Kuusinen
ML-Theory 
Pingback: Marxist-Leninist Theory | ML-Theory