League of Communists of Yugoslavia - Reconstruction of The Party

Reconstruction of The Party

The experience of the failed revolt helped the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to gradually liberate itself from ideological concepts, sectarianism and the dictate of the Comintern. After 1932, the party began reconstructing its cadres, who could work independently from their superiors in exile. The parliamentary crisis also led to numerous intellectuals joining the Marxist movement. Membership increased from 300 in January 1932 to almost three thousand in December 1934, when the Central Committee finally reestablished contact with the organization inside the country.

At the 4th state conference, held at Ljubljana, in December 1934, the party still clung to the concept of breaking up Yugoslavia and demanded the liberation of Montenegro from Serbian occupation - despite the opposition of Montenegrin Communists against such a declaration. However, the year 1935 saw the reversal of that position: In June, the Central Committee no longer insisted on a division of Yugoslavia but emphasized each nation's right to self-determination, which could be implemented within the framework of a federative Yugoslavia. In August, the party (in conjunction with the Comintern) adopted a plan for a preservation of reconstructed and federalized Yugoslavia under the slogan "Weak Serbia - Strong Yugoslavia".

In the same year, Yugoslavia's Communists also followed the Comintern, when it abandoned the theory of social fascism in favor of a popular front in cooperation with Social Democrats.

Under the conditions of Yugoslavia, such a cooperation helped to break the limitations of illegality and sped up the organizational reconstruction of the party, but also made differences between the leadership in exile and the party in the country more visible. The Central Committee therefore decided in mid-1935 to create a National Bureau (Zemaljski biro) to lead the Party from within the country. Some voices demanded a return of the Central Committee but the large numbers of party members living as political emigrants and the difficulties in running such a stretched party prevented this.

The party's increased activity provoked the authorities to sharp measures and during 1936 about two thousand members were arrested, including most of the members of the National Bureau and many regional leaders and some members of the Central Committee. The Comintern, during consultations in Moscow in August, severely criticized the Yugoslavian leadership and decided to nominate a new leadership and transfer the Central Committee's seat back inside the country.

In November, the leadership was installed with Milan Gorkić as general secretary and Josip Broz as organizational secretary, and in December Broz and other leaders returned to Yugoslavia, where they pursued an anti-fascist policy and initiated a campaign for solidarity with Spanish republicans, which channeled help through the Paris branch of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

Those leaders remaining in Moscow were hit by the Stalin's Great Purge, in which many party members were arrested and shot, including the most prominent former leaders of Yugoslavia's Communists: Filip Filipović, Sima Marković, Jovan Mališić, as well as the current general secretary Milan Gorkić, who was deposed and shot in 1937.