IS TITO COMMUNISM'S LUTHER?

THE Cominform's denunciation of Tito on June 28, 1948, was a historic event signifying the first breach in the monolithic unity of world communism. The dimensions and importance of this breach cannot yet be measured and evaluated. It may, however, be possible to find parallels in the past as guides to a broader understanding of what is happening today. Such a parallel might be the "rending of the seamless garment of the church" in the 16th century by Martin Luther and his followers.

It is obvious that analogies in history can never be exact. Yet if we are careful to define our terms and to analyze our comparisons critically, a historic analogy may at least be a useful tool for measuring a present situation against the known dimensions of the past, enabling us to see it with more perspective and understanding.

Before we can attempt to answer the question, "Is Tito Communism's Luther?" it will be necessary to define what is to be understood by the name Luther. The name as used here this morning is intended to denote certain general aspects of the 16th century phenomenon known as the Reformation.

Before the Reformation there prevailed in Europe a single, uniform and all-embracing faith: western Christianity. Its core was a body of doctrine regarded as supernatural in origin, infallible, inflexible, and universally applicable. This doctrine had evolved gradually over a period of centuries, glowing ever more complex. It was eclectic by nature. Some of its central tenets and its two greatest festivals had been, for example, borrowed from rival oriental faiths. Doctrinal divergencies during this period of evolution had been many. Conformity was sometimes obtained by congresses of church officials who established a majority viewpoint and exiled or exterminated minority dissenters. Such, for example, was the famous Council of Nicaea in 325, where the views of Arius and his followers as to the nature of the Trinity were anathematized.

This faith was inherently intolerant, for it proclaimed itself the only true faith. All else, consequently, was error, to be persecuted in this world and to be punished in the hereafter. Heretics and schismatics were pitilessly extirpated on principle as long as the faith had the temporal power to do so. As late as 1895, a prelate of the Papal household wrote the following in the Annales Ecclesiastici:

"Some sons of darkness nowadays with dilated nostrils and wild eyes inveigh against the intolerance of the Middle Ages. Oh, blessed flames of those pyres by which a very few crafty and insignificant persons were taken away that hundreds and hundreds of phalanxes of souls should be saved from the jaws of error and eternal damnation. Oh, noble and venerable memory of Torquemada."

Only a year ago another official publication declared that when this faith is in the minority it must preach religious liberty and toleration. But when it secures state power all other faiths, being false, must be suppressed.

All secular knowledge was held to be naturally inferior to divinely revealed truth. Scientific views seemingly at variance with revelation were forbidden. In 1616 the heliocentric theory of the universe, represented by Galileo, was condemned by the Inquisition as "absurd in philosophy and formally heretical because expressly contrary to holy scripture." This ban was not lifted until 1822.

As a result of an evolutionary process, attended by prolonged conflict, the supreme head of this faith had come to be the Bishop of Rome. Under his authority affairs of the faith were administered by a privileged elite, a bureaucracy of church officials, resident in many lands but owing direct loyalty to him alone. The Pontiff claimed to be superior to all temporal rulers as the sun is brighter than the moon. He recognized no separatism and no nationalism; no right of individual countries to control either the doctrine or the management of the church within their national borders. On the contrary, he claimed the right to depose a king or an emperor and to release a ruler's subjects from their oath of allegiance. He might declare null and void a law of any state. He levied taxes upon the citizens of all states. Thus, then, before Luther there was a single doctrine, evolutionary in development yet proclaimed infallible, inflexible. It was in the hands of a special elite under the authority of a supreme ruler demanding universal obedience.

Now the rise of nation states such as England and France inevitably by their very nature challenged the claim of the Vatican to supra-national domination. Martin Luther himself incarnated a successful challenge to the universal church on doctrinal and national grounds. By his 95 theses posted on the church door at Wittenburg in 1517 he attacked a basic church doctrine, that of salvation by good works as well as by faith. Later he attacked the whole sacramental system of the church. In a debate in 1519 with the theologian, Johannes Eck, he admitted that some of his views agreed with those for which John Huss had been burned as a heretic, views which had been pronounced heretical both by the Pope and by church councils, thereby denying the authority of both Pope and Council and in effect denying the divine authority of the church.

In 1520 the Church militant pronounced his ideas heretical in the bull Exsurge Domine and summoned him to recant within 60 days. Upon his refusal, a bull of excommunication followed. He burned what he called in his own unmeasured language, "the execrable bull of antiChrist," and was thereupon formally outlawed. But instead of going to feed the fire, he was protected by the nationalists of Germany who desired to break the supra-national control of the universal church in favor of a national church, a national ideology in a national state. Thus, protected and furthered by the nationalists, his doctrines spread, altering as they did until, as you know, we have up to 100 sects in America alone. They spread through Germany, Scandinavia, England, parts of Switzerland and Holland, wherever rulers and peoples desired to be*supreme within their own frontiers. And, after a generation of war, this led to the enunciation of a new principle at Augsburg in 1555: cuius regio eiusreligio, he who holds the region, his religion shall prevail.

The historical significance of Luther, for our purposes, may thus be summarized as follows: 1. He challenged basic doctrines of the prevailing faith; 2. His supporters utilized his heresy and schism to promote national deviations, breaking away from universalism to establish what we may call area allegiances, national states with a national interpretation of the faith.

We now approach the problem of possible analogies between the Reformation and contemporary events. The problem may be stated, I think, in two questions: does communism partake of the nature of a faith, infallible and inflexible? If so, does Tito in communist history resemble Luther in church history?

To me personally it seems quite clear that for all practical purposes communism is treated by its own devotees as though it were a faith, and that, whatever they may say, in practice it has many of the aspects of a religion. It has infallible scripture, the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. It is suggestive, as one reads communist books, that whenever these prophets are quoted, chapter and verse are always given, as is our habit when quoting from the Bible. Communism has its own authoritative history, the Short Course of the History of theAll-Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks. This is likewise infallible according to the official statement in the Soviet Political Dictionary of 1940, which describes the Short Course as follows: "the sole guide to the history of the Party; a guide which represents the official interpretation of the basic questions of the history of the Communist Party and of Marxism-Leninism, and which permits of no arbitrary interpretation."

Communism has had many doctrinal divergencies, and conformity has often been attained by a congress of Party members at which an infallible Party line is laid down by the majority after which dissenters are suppressed. Communism is inherently intolerant as being in its own eyes the sole possessor of truth. The Party may expel a member for heresy by tearing up his Party card and he may then be outlawed. It may anathematize as heretical a whole section of Communists as it did the Yugoslav Communist Party last November. It extirpates heresy and schism with prisons, exile and mass execution. If the watchword of Islam was supposed to be, "Speak: the Koran or the sword," we may paraphrase the Communist watchword as, "Speak: Das Kapital or the salt mines!"

When Communists are in the minority they demand freedom of speech and civil liberties. When Communism assumes power, it ruthlessly suppresses all other viewpoints. Under Communism, secular knowledge is deemed inferior to the infallible doctrines of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. Scientific views at variance with the faith are suppressed. I need here only mention their official sponsorship of Lysenko's genetics and the contempt which they express for what they call bourgeois science.

As a result of an evolutionary process attended by conflict, the supreme authority of Communism today is Josef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili Stalin. Stalin is infallible, of course, in matters of doctrine. But Stalin is also infallible in all spheres of human thought and is stated expressly so to be. In fact, Stalin has taken on of late many traits of divinity. This may seem an extreme statement. My sources here are the numbers of Pravda, the official Party paper, for the period from December 20 to December 23 last year on the occasion of Uncle Joe's 70th birthday. It is highly significant, I think, that they find it necessary to state explicitly in Pravda that Stalin is not a god, that Stalin is a man. It states in one number that peoples in the East who have not yet broken with religion have said, " 'Such men as Stalin astounded the ancient world and became gods.' To which we reply, 'He is not a god. He is a Man.' " (with a capital M) " 'He is our Stalin.' " Other items, however, in the same newspaper will, I think, support the contention that he is in the process of becoming superhuman. Again an extreme statement, but let me quote from Pravda of December 20:

"Our father, that is what all the Soviet people, small and large, call Stalin. Like a father, loving and sensitive, like a wise mentor and teacher, Stalin is carefully raising generations of new people, builders of Communism. The many-branched, all-embracing genius of Stalin!" "There is not a single field of creative work of the Soviet people which he has not illuminated with the rays of his thought, in which he has not showed the way to new, daring achievements. The flowering growths of everything new, progressive, beautiful and elevated in our life stretch up toward Stalin, as toward the sun. Stalin inspires and gives wings to our people. Stalin's words, Stalin's , tenderness, Stalin's care bring their life-creating force to millions." (Nauseous, isn't it?) "Stalin feels and know all that distresses the Soviet people. He knows the thoughts and hopes of the nation. With the insight of genius, Stalin directs the energy, will and mind of the Soviet people toward perfection. He grows new Sovet science, culture and art."

Let me quote a few of the many titles drawn at random from headlines and articles in these four numbers of Pravda. "Beloved leader, father and teacher of nations"; "beloved father and great teacher"; "great commander and organizer of victory"; "great summit of science"; "great architect of Communism"; "father of the workers of the world."

If this be dismissed as sheer Byzantinism, I would remind you that both the Byzantine emperor of what the Russians call the "Second Rome" and the Tsar of the so-called "Third Rome" were spiritual as well as temporal rulers.

Now it may be objected that a dogmatic faith of any kind is necessarily inflexible, whereas the Commies are opportunism itself. To this the answer is twofold, I think. For any world-conquering faith, believing that it is the sole repository of truth, the end will justify the means. The goal remains constant, the methods necessarily change. Next, any static doctrine requires interpretation in actual existence. It must be interpreted in order to apply to the changing world. Now doctrinal pronouncements may be so vague as to leave the door wide open for interpretation in the light of expediency. On the other hand, a doctrinal pronouncement may be so painfully specific as to need interpretation in practice. For example, Christ's condemnation of wealth has had to be interpreted for the past 1700 years. There may be no pronouncement covering some eventuality, in which case the leaders of the faith will interpret their doctrine according to general axioms or they may get a new revelation from an infallible leader. Thus inflexible doctrine can be reconciled with the sheerest opportunism by a mental process which Orwell in his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four calls "doublethink." Then one is in the blissful position of never being wrong and never being inconsistent. To most western minds when this point is reached mania has set in and the road is open either to the stake or the cellars of the NKVD. In my opinion, Communism has long since reached this point.

If we are justified in concluding that Communism behaves in practice like a militant and universalist faith, we are ready to inquire as to Tito's crime against that faith.

As a result of the Teheran Conference of November ag to December 1, 1943, the plan of a second front in the Balkans was abandoned. Mr. Winston Churchill's theory of the "soft underbelly" was turned down. At the same time, for reasons which are not yet wholly apparent, the western allies shifted their support from Drazha Mihailovitch to Tito. The accusations subsequently made against Mihailovitch would not, I think stand up in any western court, and even on the record of the stenographic accounts of his trial put out in English in Belgrade it is obvious that what was being staged there was an exhibition trial. I do not say that Mihailovitch was not executed for incarnating certain principles which Tito was determined to destroy. Those principles were, of course, Mihailovitch's opposition to Communism, his loyalty to the Karageorgevitch dynasty, his support of a Serbian solution to the Yugoslav problem, and his support of the Yugoslav middle class. For these reasons he had to die.

With the help of the Red Army the Communist leader Josip Broz Tito was installed in Belgrade. His mission was to effect a Communist solution to the Yugoslav problem. That problem, for our purposes this morning, may be reduced to three main components.

The first of these I shall call the political-cultural component. It is the problem of effecting a synthesis in a small country of 96,000 square miles with a population of perhaps 14 million, a synthesis between the three branches of the Yugoslav people: the Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenes; all of them South-Slavic, all of them brothers, differing in dialect, alphabet and religion; differing also in their cultural heritage. The Serbs spent hundreds of years under Turkish domination before winning their liberty virtually unaided in 1804 and in 1815, maintaining an independent state, challenging the might of Austria in 1914, and fighting victoriously through World War I; and standing up alone to defy the Nazi juggernaut in 1941. Opposed to them were the more Europeanized Croats and Slovenes, people with a gift for being perennially in the opposition, people who languished under Austro-Hungarian domination for hundreds of years, until they were freed by no exercise of their own power, and went at once into opposition to the Serbian predominance in Yugoslavia: "western" Zagreb versus what the Croats would call "oriental" Belgrade. The problem, then, at the political-cultural level was to adjust the relations between these peoples in a manner satisfactory to all.

At the economic level the problem was very clear-cut and called for a drastic solution. You have a primitive agricultural economy. In Macedonia, for example, one peasant out of three had no plow at all and I have myself seen a wooden plow being dragged through the earth by a team of women hitched to it. There was little or no industry, although the country has considerable natural resources, and a result of this was a record of exploitation by foreign interests.

In the domain of international relations the pivotal position of Yugoslavia is due primarily to its geographic location. The country straddles the important land routes between Europe and the east and borders on no less than seven countries.

These, then, in brief were the components of the problem which Tito was called upon to solve. His solution in my opinion was and is a completely orthodox Communist solution. His solution of the political-cultural problem was a form of government which is a patent and almost exact imitation of the Soviet, structure. Its federal form ended Serbian predominance, although this is a solution which can hardly be pleasing to the Serbian plurality in Yugoslavia. His economic policy also, I would say, is orthodox Communist: nationalization of industry; collectivization of agriculture; and the standard Communist five year plan. His regime meets every Communist standard for a brutal and totalitarian police state. The sharp-faced Rankovitch's UDB can be considered an exact working model of Beria's MVD. The foreign policy which he undertook was a standard Communist foreign policy, and he mouthed the stereotyped denunciation of England and the United States as imperialist incendiaries of war. And we should not forget that he shot down our airplanes only a few years ago.

What, then, was Tito's heresy? I am quite sure that the real heresy was Tito's refusal to let himself be completely dominated by Moscow, or, to use our ideological terms, his refusal to submit to Communist imperialism. But the point here is not what the hidden and unavowed cause may be so much as what the official accusations of the Cominform are, because they represent what the Kremlin regards as being heresies.

Of those which have been voiced by the Cominform one is, for example, his delay in collectivizing agriculture. He is said to be pampering the "kulaks." They use the Russian term, although the peasant situation in Yugoslavia bore no relation to the situation in Russia, since 90% of the land was in the hands of 70% of the peasants. Nevertheless, they have hammered at this theme. There is a Russian Communist paper in New York which had frequent articles on that "deviation" last summer. Again, he was charged with interfering with and exercising surveillance over Soviet officials in Yugoslavia. In foreign policy he was denounced even before the break for his project of a Balkan federation. Now the motto of the Balkans has always been "The Balkans for the Balkan peoples." They recognize very well that divided they must ever be a prey to foreign imperialism, whereas united they constitute a power of some 45 million people with great natural resources and military potential. But when Tito bruited this project of Balkan federation Pravda sharply denounced it as heretical. Regional agreements were heretical, and Russia thereupon very quickly allied herself separately with the Balkan countries.

The denunciation for heresy came, as we said, on June 28, 1948. He was not given 60 days in which to recant, as Luther was, but it was obvious that an abject acknowledgement of guilt and a beating of the breast should have set in. But Tito, like Luther, has not recanted. Unlike Luther, he has refused to admit that he is heretical. He has refused to admit that he has transgressed any principle of Communist doctrine. Subsequently the Communist countries, as we know, withdrew all financial and material assistance to him. Hence, in desperation, he has turned increasingly to the West. But Tito himself utterly denies that he will ever join the West, that he will ever permit Yugoslavia to swing definitively into the Western orbit. Last April 9 in addressing the Party he said: "We will never depart from the road of socialism. Hysterical cries that we cannot hang in midair but that we must soon join the Western capitalist bloc will remain a voice in the wilderness." It is interesting to note that in the course of this speech he summarized a great deal of Communist criticism of himself and of Yugoslavia. He appeared himself at this time to be thinking in theological terms. He stated that he and his regime were regarded by the Communists as heretical and that it was expected that he would recant. And in denying that he ever would recant and in insisting that he was correct, he even used the same words which Galileo used before the Inquisition: "eppur si rnuove," "but it does move."

Today all the individual charges against Tito are lumped together under one heading: "nationalist deviation," and the phrase has become a stereotype for all Communist Parties. National deviation is at present a supreme sin. We must, therefore, inquire into what is meant by "national" as interpreted by the theologians of the Cominform.

According to the Kremlin there is a true nationalism. This is "proletarian nationalism." When you have gotten through the fog of stereotyped phrases, you find that proletarian nationalism means that all Russians should love Russia. All other nationalism, such as American nationalism or Tito's nationalism, is reactionary, bourgeois and fascist. According to the Kremlin, there is a true internationalism. This is "proletarian internationalism," and it means that all workers everywhere should love Russia more than their own country. All other internationalism is reactionary, bourgeois, fascist and "rootless cosmopolitanism."

To this the Yugoslavs reply as follows, at the doctrinal level, and my sources are speeches by Tito and Kardelj, and a pamphlet by a Yugoslav official publicist. They maintain first and foremost that they are Communists, that there is no breach of faith, there is no schism, there is no heresy. They are pure Communists. As Communists, they do love Russia. They are turning the other cheek to Russia. They bless the hand that strikes them. But, they say, the situation in Communism has changed basically since the conclusion of the Second World War. Before World War II Russia was the only socialist state. As such, she was the only true socialist homeland for all workers and peasants. Therefore, before World War 11, true nationalism everywhere among the workers meant devotion to Russia. But now there are many people's democracies, so-called. They are all socialist. Hence, say the Yugoslavs, each people in its federated people's republic should love its own socialist homeland. And what is more, the Soviet people ought to love the other socialist homelands just as the people of Yugoslavia love Russia. That is the Yugoslav point of view: we no longer have to love Russia more than our own land because Russia is the only socialist country. We now have the blessings of socialism in Yugoslavia and, while continuing to love Russia as the original socialist homeland, it is proper and Communistic for us to love our own country. Finally, the Yugoslavs point out that there is absolutely nothing in the sacred writings of Communism to prescribe that the building of socialism in Yugoslavia must follow the exact course and the exact tempo taken by Russia.

Tito, then, maintaining that he has never broken from Communist doctrine, has failed to recant. Instead, he has appealed for material help to the infidel West, but there, again, he has good historic tradition behind him, for the Christian kings of Europe used to ally with the Mohammedan Turks against each other in time of need. The Kremlin, through the Cominform, therefore pronounced final excommunication upon him last November, anathematized the entire Yugoslav Communist Party, released his subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and called upon the people to overthrow him. Perhaps some samples of Communist anathema may be instructive.

The writ of excommunication appeared in Pravda last November 29 under the heading: "The Yugoslav Communist Party in the Power of Murderers and Spies." It opens: "On the basis of irrefutable facts, proving the shift of the Tito clique to fascism and its desertion to the camp of international imperialism, the Information Bureau of Communist and Labor Parties considers that: 1. The spy group, Tito, Rankovitch, Kardelj, Djilas, etc., is an enemy of the working class and peasants, an enemy of the Yugoslav peoples. 2. This spy group does not reflect the will of the Yugoslav people but the will of the Anglo-American imperialists in view of which it has betrayed the interests of the country and liquidated the political and economic independence of Yugoslavia. 3. The 'Communist Party' of Yugoslavia in its present form, having fallen into the hands of enemies of the people, murderers and spies, has lost the right to call itself a Communist Party and is only an apparatus fulfilling the spy operations of the Tito, Kardelj, Rankovitch, Djilas clique. The Information Bureau of Communist and Labor Parties therefore considers that struggle against the Tito clique—hired spies and murderers—is the international duty of all Communist and Labor Parties. It is the obligation of Communist and Labor Parties to help the Yugoslav working class and the toiling peasantry who are fighting for the return of Yugoslavia to the camp of democracy and socialism." All that seems lacking here is the statement: "And we commit him into eternal fire."

Tito, at present, then, would seem to be cut off from the body of Communism and we may now in conclusion compare him with Luther.

On the record, Tito is a devout and orthodox Communist. He has not questioned a single tenet of established doctrine as did Luther; not dialectical materialism, nor class struggle, nor the principle of revolutionary change, nor the law of the Party, nor economic determinism. All that he has done has been to follow a slightly different method in making Yugoslavia a totalitarian, socialist dictatorship. And he has claimed supreme authority within his state, denying the overlordship of the Kremlin. Thus, he cannot be said to resemble Luther in the field of doctrine. He does resemble Luther in that Titoism, like Lutheranism, promoted and furthered nationalist deviation from the overall authority of a universal faith.

At present, therefore, his historic significance is not completely similar to that of Luther. It more closely resembles the position adopted by a great contemporary of Luther. I refer to Henry VIII. Henry denied no doctrine of western Christianity. Indeed, with his skillful pamphleteering he won from a grateful Pope the title "Defender of the Faith." But Henry proclaimed himself the head of the holy Church in England. Thus, in Henry's England anyone who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation could be burned as a heretic. But anyone who denied that Henry was the head of the Church in England could be beheaded for treason. So, in Yugoslavia today, anyone challenging either Communist doctrine or Tito's supremacy would, I think, be handed over to Rankovitch.

In the long run the decisive factor of comparison will be this: whether Titoism, like Lutheranism, will spread. Will Communists who are also nationalists try to establish what we may call national-socialistic states independent of Moscow? That the Kremlin greatly fears this is evident today. It is shown by the furious denunciation of Tito's heresy, by the purges which have already taken place, as you know, in Bulgaria and in Hungary, by rumors of more drastic purges to come in those and in other countries, by rumors also of the spread of Titoism in many European Communist Parties, rumors of Titoism and purges as far away even as Japan.

The results of the Protestant Reformation have proved that the Kremlin has reason indeed to be both angry and frightened. If Titoism does survive and spread, a new phase in the history of Communism will have opened. And if, as in the case of Protestantism, that spread should be accompanied by increasing variations on, and divergencies from, the original, universal ideology, then the role of Josip Broz Tito in the history of Communism may show a real analogy with that of Martin Luther in the history of Christianity.

IN A DISCUSSION IN THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS LABORATORY before his Great Issues talk, Owen Lattimore (seated, center) goes over some aspects of his topic, "The Far East: New Source of Conflict," which he discussed before the seniors February 27. With him are (I to r), Francis L. Lion '50, Prof. Arthur Jensen, Great Issues director, and Herb Carey '50, football captain last fall.

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY

We present here the Great Issues lecture delivered by Professor Adams during the section of the course devoted to"Peace for the Free Society." It followeda lecture by Prof. George S. Counts ofColumbia University on the objectivesand tactics of international Communism and served as a bridge to the discussion of the objectives of Soviet foreign policies by Vera Micheles Dean ofthe Foreign Policy Association. Withonly minor editing, it appears just as itwas recorded in lecture form.