MIM Notes 186 May 15 1999

History keeps proving Stalin right

Stalin died in 1953, but his second or third in command V. M. 
Molotov--after whom the Molotov cocktail is named--lived on until 
1986.

Here is what Molotov had to say about Yugoslavia three times in 
the 1970s: "In 1953-1954 I spoke out [against reconciliation with 
Tito's] Yugoslavia at the Politburo. No one supported me, neither 
Malenkov nor even Kaganovich, though he was a Stalinist! Khruschev 
was not alone. There were hundreds and thousands like him, 
otherwise on his own he would not have gotten very far. He simply 
pandered to the state of mind of the people. But where did that 
lead? Even now there are lots of Khruschevs. . . 

"Tito is now [1970s at three different talks--ed.] in a difficult 
situation. His republic is going under, and he will have to grab 
onto the USSR for dear life. Then we shall be able to deal with 
him more firmly.

"There are many people worse than Tito.

"Nationalism is causing him to howl in pain, yet he himself is a 
nationalist, and that is his main defect as a communist. He is a 
nationalist, that is, he is infected with the bourgeois spirit. He 
is now cursing and criticizing his own people for nationalism. 
This means that the Yugoslav multinational state is breaking up 
along national lines. It is composed of Serbs, Croatians, 
Slovenes, and so forth.

"When Tito visited us for the first time, I liked his appearance. 
We didn't know everything about him at the time. . . .

"Tito is not an imperialist, he is a petty-bourgeois, an opponent 
of socialism. Imperialism is something else again."

Tito ended up dying in 1980 before a correct communist movement 
could properly set him straight.

Note: Albert Resis intro. & ed., Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin 
Politics, Conversations with Felix Chuev (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 
1993), pp. 83-4.