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Boris Ziherl

Communism and Fatherland

I.

In the great war of liberation against the invading and enslaving Hitlerite coalition, the communistsproved by deeds that they were the truest sons of their fatherland and their people. In the countriesconquered by the fascists, or whose independence was menaced by them, the communists were notonly in the first ranks of thepeople's resistance against foreign invaders and their local henchmen, butwere also almost everywhere the inspirers, organizers and leaders of the resistance.

By their self-sacrificing struggle for their country, for its national independence, as one of the basicconditions for its progressive development, the communists shattered completely, in the course of theWorld War II. the slanders of the reactionary bourgeoisie which had for a whole century been trying toportray the communists as indifferent and hostile towards the vital interests of their country and people.

But this is not all. The slanderers of the communists, the reactionary bourgeoisie themselves, wereunmasked in the conquered countries of Europe, as the anational and anti-national lackeys of foreigninvaders, as traitors to their fatherland, whose interests were so opposed to the interests of their "own"people, that they could be defended only with foreign help, only through the intervention of foreignimperialists, only through collaboration with foreign imperialist aggressors, only under the auspices ofthe representatives of the superior race

In the years of the great war against the Hitlerite coalition the inseparable interconnection of thestruggle for national independence of the country with the struggle for the overthrow of thetreacherous, anational bourgeoisie in every country became obvious. The inseparable interconnectionbetween the national liberation struggle and thepeople's liberation struggle, and the anti-imperialist,anti-capitalist struggle (i. e. socialist revolution) became apparent. The concept of communism became

inseparably linked with the concept of the most ardent patriotism. In occupied Europe this fact was bestillustrated by the liberation struggle in Yugoslavia from 1941-1945, which was led from the verybeginning by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

After the World War II, the inseparable interdependence of true patriotism and the struggle against thetreacherous bourgeoisie is reflected in the resistance that the masses of the people of the capitalistcountries are offering, under the leadership of the communist parties, to the economic and politicalenslavement of their respective countries by the American imperialists. All sorts of theories purportingto prove the obsoleteness of nations, the, necessity to liquidate their independence and sovereignty andthe necessity to create a single world state are but a spiritual preparation for such subjugation.Renegade, decadent artists are "creating" various sorts of anational and super-national cultures,trampling upon the cultural heritage of their people, endeavouring to efface their individuality and to

paralyse them spiritually. Right-wing socialists of the Blum brand are among the most zealous prophetsof all sorts of reactionary cosmopolitan theories. They are even trying to represent the theoreticaldefense of American expansionism as the height of Marxist internationalism, not refraining from themost impudent distortions and falsifications of the teachings of Marx and Engels.

While the communists in the capitalist world are fighting against the political, economic and culturaleffacement of their peoples, for their national individuality, freedom and independence, the masses ofthe people under the leadership of the communists are building their socialist fatherlands in a series ofliberated countries in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

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A creation of the Great October Revolution, the Soviet Union, which even today almost exclusivelyunites the peoples of the former Russian Empire, was until 'World War II the only country wheresocialism was being, and was, built.

After World War II, peoples who had been developing for centuries politically, economically andculturally within the framework of states other than those of the peoples of the Soviet Union, undertookthe task of socialist reconstruction. The political, economic and cultural achievements of their former

historic development, to which the process of the building of socialism in those countries isunavoidably linked, are very different both in the said countries and in the Soviet Union. In short, inaddition to the Soviet Union, there is today a series of states whose working populations also quiterightfully consider them as their socialist fatherland, take pride in the fruit of their struggle and labourand are imbued with the noble patriotic desire to strengthen the common anti-imperialist camp ofsocialism as much as possible by building up their country.

The success of the struggle against the aggressive plans of the American imperialists which is beingwaged in the capitalist countries now, by the masses of the people under the leadership of thecommunists depends to a large extent on whether the relations which are now being establishedbetween the socialist countries will really be a materialisation of the principle of equality and brotherlycooperation between peoples, whether they will be the expression of the unity of patriotism andinternationalism, under whose banner the communists of all countries are fighting against thenationalism and cosmopolitanism of present-day bourgeois reaction. Contrary to the relations existingbetween contemporary capitalist countries built on inequality, American hegemony and mutual distrust,socialist countries must base their relations on equality and mutual trust and the peoples of the capitalistworld should with joy and faith, see in them their own national future.

In this, apart from other things. lies the principled and practical-political significance of the strugglethat our Party is waging for correct relations among socialist countries.

Using as a point of departure the fact that now after the World War II, there are several "socialistfatherlands", several countries in which the masses are building socialism, the concepts regarding therelationship of communism to the fatherland dating from the days when the Soviet Union stood alone

in front of the whole world of capitalism should be discarded as obsolete, useless and harmfulstereotypes. Taking into account this post-war reality we must discard the concept according to whichthe world still consists of the following two parts: the USSR and that which is "on the other side" of theSoviet border.

The clarification of these concepts can only contribute to the elimination of disagreement and to theestablishment of relations among the socialist countries which correspond to their social-economic andpolitical character.