Spirit cooking

 

A rather naïve defense of Marina Abramovic. "She is not a Satanist", says the author, since according to Massimo Introvigne (!) you have to actually "worship Satan" to be "defined" as a Satanist.

Oh.

By the same logic, Adolf Hitler wasn´t a fascist. After all, he didn´t use the fasces, nor did he worship Mussolini. Perhaps Introvigne could be defined as a fascist according to these criteria, though!

The article confirms that Abramovic is indeed an occultist, and has no connections whatsoever to the Serbian Orthodox Church (as sometimes claimed). Her occultism has many sources: Steiner, Jung, Gurdjieff, Blavatsky, you name it, she´s probably studied it. Many of her peculiar "artistic" pursuits are really intended as occult techniques or magical rituals.  

However, there is certainly a dark streak in Abramovic´s work, inspired by Voodoo and certain forms of ritual magic. Note all the usual Satanic-symbols-which-aren´t-really-Satanic and yet somehow always ends up being used by the Left Hand path people...

Sure wonder what kind of spirits she´s cooking. Or cooking up.  

Marina Abramovic 

The ghost phone

 

Whoa, is this even true?! A genuine "Nikola Tesla conspiracy", with Edison thrown in for good measure. It seems both men experimented with devices to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Edison´s version was called "the ghost phone" (or the "spirit phone"). How´s that for a long-distance call? Can I call back collect? Tesla´s device is apparently still used (kind of) by latter-day ghost-hunters. 

I admit I had no idea.  

Några hübinetter

Kan inte låta bli att länka till den här snubbens märkliga tankeprodukter. 

Är kanske lite fascinerad över hans dubbelhet i förhållande till adeln. Eller ska vi säga hatkärlek? Å ena sidan anarkist, å andra sidan...ja, vad? Hemlig beundrare? I blogginlägget om den svenska adeln berättar Hübinette att han vid ett tillfälle försökte bli Riddarhusets genealog?! 

Jag har väl också en del lite paradoxala åsikter om olika saker, men det här torde nog överträffa t.o.m. mig under mina mest eklektiska odyséer!  

Reflektioner kring franskhetens och svenskhetens gränser

Kriget i Ukraina är Europas blodigaste sedan 1945

Om den svenska adeln

Whoa!

 

You´ll never guess what this is...

Note the ouroboros encircling the Big Dipper. 

Twitter: Fascist agents of Trotskyist Titoism?

 

So much good content on Twitter these days, I should have joined sooner! 

Aura Rhanes has a competitor

It seems Aura Rhanes has a competitor. Some esoteric Nazis, and apparently some esoteric anti-Nazis too, believe in the existence of a gorgeously well-endowed blonde female named Maria Orsic (sometimes spelled Maria Orsitsch). In contrast to Aura, Orsic isn´t an alien but an actual human female of Aryan racial stock, an Austrian-Croatian to be exact. OK, the Croatians are Slavs, but according to the fascist Ustasha movement which controlled Croatia during World War II, Croats are “really” Aryans, so there you go. This blonde bombshell has apparently never existed, but was invented by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in their classical book “The Morning of the Magicians”. They also invented the secret society to which Orsic supposedly belonged, the Vril Society in Third Reich Berlin.

According to the occult urban legend, Orsic channeled space aliens from Aldebaran, and these gave the Nazis incredibly detailed information about how to build interstellar spaceships. That is, UFOs. Small wonder, since the Aryans in this scenario are descendants of the Aldebaran aliens! Orsic herself disappeared mysteriously in 1945 and is believed to have left with the aliens to Aldebaran. Or maybe somewhere else, since – if I understand the legend correctly – the planets orbiting Aldebaran have been destroyed by a cosmic cataclysm.

The video clip above contains “information” about Orsic, the Vril Society and Aryan Aldebaran. The clip is amateurish, at one point calling trilobites “fish” and making various mistakes of pronunciation. It´s almost as if the clip was narrated by an alien robot! I first heard of Orsic when watching another YouTube clip, “David Wilcock on Inner Earth Beings”. Since I assume Wilcock and his associates, while raving mad, aren´t Nazis, Orsic must play a negative role in their scenario. But sure, I haven´t looked into this particular little fantasy *that* deeply. I wonder whether Orsic is supposed to have had any connection to Nikola Tesla, who was born in Croatia (albeit of Serb ethnicity).

Sounds like Hollywood have some material to work on here…

Lechínist, not Leninist

“Revolutionary History” is an ecumenical Trotskyist journal published in Britain. This is the Summer 1992 issue (Vol 4, No 3). It carries the slightly menacing motto “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. The journal is very uneven and I can't really recommend it, unless you are extremely interested in the Trotskyist movement and already possess a working knowledge of its many splits and branches. That being said, “Revolutionary History” is interesting in the sense that it's one of the few projects uniting Trotskyists from many different organizations. Usually, these groups fight each other! For a while, even the super-sectarian Spartacist League was involved, but the Sparts left (with their money) after various conflicts. In terms of magazine content, the loss wasn't terrible.

About half of the Summer 1992 issue is devoted to the role played by the Trotskyist party POR in the Bolivian revolution of 1952. To most “Westerners” this event is probably completely unknown, but it's an important landmark in Bolivian history. It was also important for the Trotskyist movement. At the time, the Fourth International supported the POR and its leader Guillermo Lora. Later, some Trotskyist groups got second thoughts and began to accuse the POR of having derailed or even betrayed the revolution. Unfortunately, most articles (or rather lengthy excerpts from such) published in “Revolutionary History” don't really clarify the issue, and the whole thing feels like an exercise in extended bibliography (I admit that a scholarly researcher might find the bibliographical section useful). The one exception is José Villa's article, which proves that Lora's POR supported the nationalist and Peronist-inspired MNR, especially its left wing around Juan Lechín. Villa semi-humorously calls the POR “Lechínist” (rather than Leninist).

I suppose you could say that the MNR “derailed” the 1952 revolution. The problem with Villa is that his political alternative to POR's more pragmatic line is a completely sectarian one: Trotskyists should simply “denounce the bourgeois nationalists”, call on the workers to turn the labor unions into soviets, and that's that. Of course, a small sectarian group will never “derail” a revolution, since it doesn't have any influence over it to begin with!

The most peculiar excerpts translated and reprinted by “Revolutionary History” come from the pen of Guillermo Lora himself. Lora admits that the POR suffered from a nationalist deviation, but blames everything on his fellow party members and on Fourth International leader Michel Pablo, who supposedly kept Lora busy with trivial matters in Paris so he couldn't return to Bolivia in time to take charge of things. Lora also blames his own character – apparently, the man is such a genius that he didn't took his opponents within the POR seriously enough to challenge them?!

Yeah, that's what happened. Sure. The old fox would be more honest simply stating that he really does support Bolivian nationalism…

The other half of “Revolutionary History” is a smorgasbord of book reviews, reviews which often express a distinct political line. The journal's contributors are strongly anti-Stalinist, but occasionally say things which challenge my credulity. Walter Kendall (admittedly no Trotskyist but a pro-EEC broad leftist) seems to imply that Draza Mihailovic, the right-wing Chetnik leader in Serbia during World War II, wasn't a Nazi collaborator, that Churchill was tricked by Stalin's operatives into supporting the Yugoslav Communists, and that perhaps support for “General” Mihailovic would have been preferable. Regardless of what you think of Kendall's article, why was this published in a far left journal? Perhaps I've simply misunderstood a remarkably objective reviewer…

Some intramural Trotskyist polemics have been sneaked in, despite the ecumenical character of the journal, such as ex-Spartacist Fred Purdy's attack on anti-Spartacist Michel Varga. Kendall (again!) contributes an item on the mysterious Bruno Rizzi, whom he apparently knew personally. In an unexpected move, Al Richardson (the editor) accuses US Mandelite Paul LeBlanc of being a dogmatic Lenin-hugger and Cannonite. Usually, Ernest Mandel's supporters (i.e. the dominant tendency within the Fourth International) are accused of being too soft!

Ironically, the potpourri in the second half of “Revolutionary History, Summer 1992” was more interesting than the material on Bolivia, the main staple of this issue…

Fake news

I actually managed to post this on Amazon, despite the hysteria around Pizzagate! Yes, it was a faux review of a book by Abramovic... 

Since you wonder, I don't believe in the “Spirit Cooking” conspiracy theory. I *do* believe that Marina Abramovic and her devotees have an incredibly bad taste in art, so bad in fact, that it's almost a “lesser evil” argument to vote for pro-wrestler champion Donald Trump, who at least knows how to decorate a hotel!

Personally, I think the decadent gay art of the 18th century aristocracy, the so-called Rococo, was about 100 times more artistically pleasing than Marina's happenings. I have a reproduction of a Rococo painting on my living room wall. In fact, I think The Donald should commission a nativity scene in Rococo style and put in on the White House lawn, just to show the Dadaistic “elite” that there's a new art czar in town.

And no, I don't necessarily oppose Yugoslav avant-garde. I'm old enough to remember Laibach. I admit that their irreverent attacks on Martin Luther King, the Rolling Stones and Austrian pop band Opus were great fun, LOL. Perhaps Laibach can perform that Rococo nativity scene…?

Complete confusion

A review of a flag sold by Amazon. 

I've never seen this peculiar flag before. Apparently, it was used by the Czech-nationality Jan Zizka Brigade of the Yugoslav Partisan resistance movement against the Nazis during World War II. Zizka was a 15th century Hussite and Taborite commander, regarded as a national hero by the Czechs.

Later, this flag (really the Czechoslovak flag with a Communist Yugoslav star superimposed) apparently became the symbol of the small Czech minority living in Vojvodina and Croatia, then parts of Tito's Yugoslavia. Since many people “back in the days” confused Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, this flag (had it been more widely known) would simply have added to the confusion…

My source is the website Flags of the World, which references an obscure Yugoslav publication, “Cehoslovacka brigada Jan Ziska”, published in the small Croatian town of Daruvar in 1988.

Amazing. You learn something new every day.

Ukrainian agents of Marshal Tito

A review of a flag sold by Amazon. 

This is the flag of the Ukrainian and Ruthenian national minorities in Vojvodina, as it looked like during the Communist period, when Vojvodina was part of Yugoslavia. It's essentially the Ukrainian flag with a Communist star, the same star as in the Yugoslav national flag. I've never seen this banner before, so my source is the website Flags of the World, which references an obscure Yugoslav textbook for school kids (sic),"Svijet oko nas - enciklopedija za djecu i omladinu II", IX. issue, Skolska knjiga, Zagreb (1985). Well, it's good to know that at least some Ukrainians were actually Titoist agents!

We have Kim, Kim has us. Kim, Kim, Kim!

A review of Kim Il Sung´s classic "Answers to questions put by the chief editor of the Yugoslav Newspaper Vecernje Novosti, February 22, 1974" 

I believe it was very magnanimous of the Great Leader to answer the questions put to him by the Titoist revisionists of Vecernje novosti, given the fact that the Tito clique supported *South* Korea during the Korean War. I haven't read the Leader's responses, but I'm sure they were sagely, gnomic, wise. We have Kim. Kim has us. Kim, Kim, Kim! We also have unicorns.

The mysteries of orgone

I admit that I haven't bothered watching the whole film. Surrealist films aren't my thing. As for Yugoslavia, I always considered TV programs from that nation to be surprisingly lewd and over-sexed. And I grew up in Sweden! Funny anecdote: Poul Fersling, who wrote an encyclopaedia of the occult popular in Scandinavia, erroneously refers to “The Mysteries of the Organism” as “The Mysteries of Orgasm”. Since Wilhelm Reich was a psychoanalyst, I suppose we could call this “a Freudian slip”, lol. And then, maybe not. I *have* seen selected footage from this movie. Yes, it features Nazis, Communists and…well…liberated Yugoslav girls. Probably not your Adriatic port of call if you're seriously interested in the mysteries of orgone. Two stars.

Gather thistles, expect prickles

“King Ottokar's Sceptre” is one of the best Tintin adventures. It's obviously political, and was originally serialized in 1938-39, when Adolf Hitler's Germany had embarked on its policy of aggressive expansion. The message of the story is anti-Nazi. Unfortunately, Hergé decided to collaborate with the Nazis after the German occupation of Belgium in 1940, thereby soiling his post-war reputation.

The plot revolves around two fictitious nations in the Balkans, the peaceful monarchy Syldavia and the aggressive fascist dictatorship Borduria. While Syldavia is mostly based on interwar Yugoslavia (complete with Muslim mosques!), the story contains allusions to Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hergé's native Belgium, making it clear that it's not really about the Balkans at all.

The Syldav language is freely based on a working-class sociolect spoken in Brussels, the king's name Ottokar is identical to that of two Bohemian rulers, and the entire scenario of Borduria wanting to annex Syldavia is similar to Hitler's Anschluss of Austria. Borduria is obviously a stand-in for Nazi Germany (the name of its dictator Müsstler being a combination of Mussolini and Hitler). During the Cold War, Hergé's new allegiances made him subtly change Borduria into a stand-in for the Soviet Union instead!

Above all, “King Ottokar's Sceptre” is a good and entertaining story. The stupidities of the Thompson Twins are kept down at a minimum, and Captain Haddock isn't included at all. He hadn't been invented yet! I know that most Tintin fans love Haddock's blistering barnacles and the bad detectives Thomson and Thompson-with-a-P, but I never liked them. Besides, I fancied the political angle.

Tito, come back, all is forgiven

Yugoslavia is one of the few socialist nations I actually miss. I never been there, but I always had some kind of sympathy for them. Already in elementary school, I somewhat precociously decided that Yugoslavia was better than the Soviet Union. (My Yugoslav class mates considered me barking mad for caring about such stuff.)

Proverbially, Yugoslavia had six republics, five nationalities, four religions, three languages, two alphabets and one Tito.

We had Tito. Tito had us. Now, we just have the six republics, five nationalities, four religions, three languages and two alphabets...and one Thomas Hobbes.

Today, I think my grown-up Yugoslav class mates would agree with me when I say: "Tito, come back. All is forgiven!"

Anarchism for teenagers

At least in Sweden, Daniel Guérin's book "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice" is *the* book everyone interested in anarchism reads. I know from personal experience than all teenagers who consider themselves anarchists read it, or at least used to read it when I was in high school. I also read it and found it interesting and well-written. I think it was the first political book I ever read!

Guérin was a French left-wing intellectual, and wrote several books that are relatively well-known in leftist circles, including "Fascism and Big Business" and "Negroes on the march". He belonged to the PSOP, a rather small socialist party in France, roughly similar to the Spanish POUM and the British ILP. Later, he became an anarchist of the "platformist" current, which emphasizes class struggle rather than alternative lifestyles, and calls for a centralized revolutionary organization, something many other anarchists consider anathema. (The founders of platformism were Peter Arshinov, Nestor Makhno and Ida Mett. See my review of Arshinov's book on the Makhnovists for a background.)

"Anarchism: From Theory to Practice" was first published in 1965. However, the anarchist political myths are still the same, and the book can therefore still be read by students of intellectual history (or budding anarchists, perhaps). Guérin describes the main anarchist thinkers of the 19th century: Proudhon, Bakunin, Stirner and Krapotkin. He attempts a kind of synthesis of their rather disparate ideas. Other anarchists mentioned include Malatesta and the perhaps lesser known Diego Abad de Santillan. The section on the history of anarchism concentrates on those anarchists that were active in the labour movement and called for class struggle, rather than on hippies, religious communes or terrorists. All the usual anarchist stories are included: the French CGT, the Spanish CNT and the Spanish revolution, Makhno, Kronstadt... There is also a chapter criticizing "workers self-management" in Algeria and Yugoslavia. Today, this part of the book looks curious, but back in 1965, many left-wingers probably saw these nations as some kind of libertarian alternatives to Soviet Communism. In Sweden, the more moderate wing of anarcho-syndicalism was certainly positive towards Tito's Yugoslavia.

While Guérin isn't entirely uncritical of the anarchist tradition, "Anarchism" is nevertheless a work of propaganda, and should be read with that in mind. I find it interesting for the reason I mentioned earlier: many people got their first positive exposure to anarchism from this book.

PS. Perhaps I must point out, that I'm not an anarchist...

Countryside Communism?

Stjepan Radic

"Comintern and Peasant in East Europe 1919-1930" is a study of how the Communist parties in East Europe attempted to win the support of the local peasantry.

Unfortunately, the book isn't very well written, and the source material is also somewhat problematic. The author uses secondary sources in English, French and Russian (!) to describe the situation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. He is (of course) hostile to Communism, but also to the agrarian parties with which the Communists competed. The author dislikes the Bulgarian agrarian leader Stamboliiski in particular, perhaps because he was so successful?

Since the Communists were largely based in the cities and called for the abolition of private property, the task of winning over the peasantry wasn't an easy one. To a large extent it failed. Jackson describes the failure of the Red Peasant International (Krestintern) to win mass support. The Krestintern did recruit the Croatian "peasant" leader Radic to its ranks, but Radic's party wasn't particularly radical, and seems to have joined the Krestintern mostly as a tactic. Soon enough, Radic joined a "bourgeois" Yugoslav government, putting an end to the rather unnatural alliance with the Communists.

Still, there were exceptions to the rule. In the eastern parts of Poland and in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia (controlled by Czechoslovakia), the Communists did manage to command the support of the local peasants. In the "backward" and "primitive" Ruthenia, the Communists actually became the single largest party! In Poland, the Communists formed a parliamentary faction together with a number of peasant parties (although some of these may have been Communist fronts). Jackson believes that the main reason for the success was the national question. Many peasants in the eastern parts of interwar Poland were Ukrainians and Byelorussians. In similar manner, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was inhabited by Ukrainians and Hungarians, who resented Czech control of the area. The Communists simply exploited the hostility of the national minorities against the central governments. It's also interesting to note that Radic represented a virtual minority nationality within Yugoslavia (the Croats).

"Comintern and Peasant" also gives a brief overview of the agrarian parties in East Europe. Of these, the Bulgarian Agrarian Union of Stamboliiski was the strongest, most successful and most authentically agrarian. The Croatian Peasant's Party of Radic was less agrarian in practice, being dominated by urban intellectuals and acting more like a regular political party of Croatian nationalism. The Romanian "agrarians" seem to have been a market liberal, right-wing party bent on industrialization! The Czechoslovak Republican Party was the strongest agrarian party in East Europe and hosted the Green International, an international organization of agrarian parties. However, the Republicans were strictly constitutionalist and oriented to compromise and coalition-building with other parties, both right-wing and reform socialist. They eventually became a party of the wealthy middle class and rich farmers.

The book cuts off the story in 1930, probably because the "ultra-left" turn of the Comintern in 1928-29 made it less interested in winning over the peasantry in the European nations. Curiously, the moribund Krestintern wasn't dissolved until 1937. (In fact, even the Soviet sources are unclear on when the Red Peasant International was actually dissolved. One Soviet source suggests 1939! It's not clear why the Krestintern wasn't resurrected during the popular frontist phase of Communism.)

I didn't really like Jackson's book, but since there are few sources on this subject matter in English, I give it three stars.

Surprising reflections

"Reflections on the Middle East" is a book containing short reflections on various Mideast topics penned by the leader of socialist Albania, Enver Hoxha. The book covers the entire period from 1958 to 1983. Hoxha comments on the Algerian war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, developments in Egypt, the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There is also an extended article in which Hoxha expresses his great admiration for Arab and Persian culture.

Enver Hoxha's Communist regime in Albania broke with the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and instead allied itself with China. After the death of Mao Zedong, Albania fell out with China as well, and became relatively isolated on the international arena. Hoxha's hostility to both the United States, the Soviet Union and China explains his political positions, which are sometimes rather surprising.

Thus, he expresses support for both the PLO, Khomeini's Iran and the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union. In the reflections, Hoxha becomes progressively more dissatisfied with Nasser, and strongly supports Sadat's move to expell all Soviet advisors from Egypt. Of course, Sadat's subsequent peace settlement with Israel came as something of a cold shower. The reflections on Iran are initially critical of Khomeini and supportive of the pro-Albanian group "Toufan", but eventually becomes pro-Khomeini, even supporting Iran against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. (Pro-Albanian Communist groups around the world were split on Iran. Some disagreed with Hoxha's change of line and supported Iraq instead!) Khomeini's stand against both the United States and the Soviet Union may have been what commended him to Hoxha.

More surprising still is Hoxha's (muted) support for a two-state settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although it's possible that he later changed his mind and started to support "democratic secular Palestine". This is never clearly spelled out in the reflections, however.

Less surprising, perhaps, is Hoxha's almost hysterical condemnation of Ahmed Ben Bella and his strong approval of Boumedienne's coup. Ben Bella had close relations with both Tito and Khrushchev, and attempted to mimic the Yugoslav experiment with "socialist self-management". Hoxha virtually salivates over Ben Bella's downfall, although it's less clear what he subsequently thought of Boumedienne. Another outburst is reserved for Hua Guofeng, presumably because of his break with Albania and warm embrace of Tito (who else?).

On a lesser note, "Reflections on the Middle East" shows that Albania didn't want to completely isolate itself. The Communist regime had a merchant fleet which used the Suez Canal and sent trade delegations to both Turkey and Iraq. The book also shows that Hoxha was perennially worried about a possible Soviet attack on Albania.

Frankly, "Reflections on the Middle East" is a terribly boring book, unless you know what to look for and have a strong interest in the rather narrow subject of Albanian foreign policy.

Brotherhood, unity and boredom

Milovan Djilas' critical biography about Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito is surprisingly uninteresting, especially so since Djilas was one of his closest collaborators for decades.

There is some gossip about Tito's hunting parties, women and inability to speak fluent Serbian (Tito was a Croat). We get to know that Tito was the de facto dictator of Yugoslavia (no surprise there), but also that the Titoist regime was periodically more liberal than the Soviet Union (also old hat). Some episodes from the partisan war against the Nazis are retold, etc.

With the exception of Tito's bad treatment of his last wife Jovanka, however, there is little of exceptional interest in this book. Indeed, Djilas even claims that Tito wasn't involved in the Stalinist purges in Moscow during the 1930's which destroyed the old leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party, making Tito the new leader. Somehow, I found that very hard to believe. Tito was in Moscow at the time. He was obviously Stalin's choice. Is Djilas hiding something? If so, one wonders why, since he later had a fall out with Tito. (Just a thought. I'm not an expert on Tito's biography.)

On a more humorous note, I noticed that Djilas claimed that Tito wasn't a heavy drinker. This is interesting, since former Algerian leader Ahmed Ben Bella claims in a French book that Tito was an alcoholic, leading his doctor to exclaim: "I wish Ben Bella would visit us more often, since that's the only thing that keeps Tito from getting drunk" (or words to that effect). As a good Muslim, Ben Bella didn't drink alcohol, so on his frequent visits to Belgrade, the marshal of Yugoslavia was forced to play the absolutist! Who is right, Djilas or Ben Bella? No idea, but I almost suspect it might be Djilas, since Ben Bella spins some obvious tall tales about Khruschev's and Stalin's drinking habits in his book, as well (not available in English, by the way).

The Swedish edition of "Tito: The inside story" also contain interesting photos of Tito in various contexts, taken from the German edition. I'm not sure whether they are included in this English edition. Probably not. But then, who cares?

The inside story courtesy of Djilas is a boring one anyway.

We have Tito. Tito have us. Boredom-boredom-boredom.

Drinking bouts with Stalin

Milovan Djilas was a leading member of the Yugoslav Communist Party until he had a fall out with Tito and became a dissident. This book, however, is about earlier events.

As a high ranking Communist, Djilas visited the Soviet Union several times, conversing with Stalin in person. Their relations went from amicable to strained, due in large part to the deteriorating relations between Moscow and Yugoslavia. In 1948, Yugoslavia became the first Communist nation to break all ties with the Soviet Union.

Djilas book is titled "Conversations with Stalin", and does indeed concentrate on the actual meetings he and other Yugoslav leaders had with Stalin. Other Soviet leaders are also mentioned: Molotov, Malenkov, Khrushchev and the despicable Beria. The Bulgarian Communist leader Dimitrov plays a supporting role.

While the book does contain political reflections, its primary interest lies in the author's impressions of Stalin as a person. Somewhat surprisingly, Djilas reveals relatively little sensational information. The only time Stalin shows his true colours is when he defends Soviet soldiers who rape women and plunder civilians. Otherwise Stalin comes across as an energetic, domineering and realistic politician, with a somewhat cynical sense of humour. Of course, he expects the East European satellites to tow the Soviet line, refers to the Soviet Union as "Russia" and has a big problem with Jews. Interestingly, Stalin often took positions to the "right" of the Yugoslav Communists, fearing that they were introducing socialism too quickly in the liberated areas, and insisting on a compromise with the monarchists.

A large part of the book consists of descriptions of Stalin's dinners with the Soviet top brass, dinners that would last all night and usually degenerate into drinking bouts. Interestingly, Stalin drank relatively little. (According to some sources, Khrushchev would later claim that Stalin had been an alcoholic, but apparently that's not true.) The same cannot be said of his colleagues in the party leadership. Djilas depicts himself and the other Yugoslavs as strict puritans, who avoided heavy drinking for moral reasons, and warned each other about prostitutes. Djilas claims that the Soviet secret service at one point tried to "honey trap" him. Apparently, the NKVD regularly carried out interrogation-like conversations with foreign Communists in order to get them to inform on each other. When that didn't help, using prostitutes as bait became an alternative way to incriminate foreign visitors.

Djilas' Yugoslav nationalism shines through on several points in the narrative. He constantly depicts the Yugoslav leaders as puritans with a high revolutionary morality. In a later book on Tito, he paints a somewhat different picture! Djilas plays down the fact that the Soviet Army liberated Belgrade from the Nazis, this too in line with Yugoslav propaganda. He also supports the idea of a Yugoslav-Albanian federation, portraying it as voluntary from the Albanian side. Ironically, Djilas then reports a conversation with Stalin at which the latter cynically said: "So, you want to swallow Albania?" Khrushchev and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev are depicted in a positive light.

Occasionally, the book reveals humorous information. The first time Djilas visted Stalin he offered him some gifts from Yugoslavia, including a cheap pair of sandals and a home-made rifle. The Russian leader took no offense. The author describes the bizarre antics of the Panslavic Committee, a useless propaganda organ holding meetings in a Baroque palace somewhere in Moscow. There is also a description of a formal reception in the Ukraine, at which Communist officials had to tolerate the presence of an Orthodox bishop, this because Stalin had rehabilitated the Orthodox Church. Djilas also reveals that Stalin's book against Trotsky and Bukharin, "On the opposition", had been withdrawn from public circulation, since it contained too many quotes from his defeated opponents!

"Conversations with Stalin" isn't the most interesting book around, but if you are obsessed about peeping into the private life of a dictator, I suppose you might find this exposé of Old Joe throwing a party of some interest.

Federal troops to Bosnia?

"The Truth About Yugoslavia" is a book published in 1993 by Pathfinder Press, the publishing arm of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. The book argues against US/UN/NATO intervention in the Balkan Wars. However, its position on other issues is far from clear. Sometimes, the book seems to be suggesting that Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia were equally bad. However, they never mention Bosnia explicitly, simply talking about "other republics". Serbia and Croatia *are* mentioned explicitly as nations ruled by rival gangs of would-be capitalists. At other times, the SWP seems to support Bosnia against Serbia and Croatia. The book argues for ending the arms embargo against Bosnia, so the "people of Sarajevo" can get guns to defend their city against the Serb right-wing thugs. Since Sarajevo was the seat of the Bosnian government, this can only mean that the SWP wants to supply the Bosnian army with weapons. However, their main goal is to stop Western, military intervention. Now, it can hardly be denied that the really existing U.S. intervention in 1995 left much to be asked for. It wasn't really pro-Bosnian but pro-Croatian, forced the Bosnian Muslims to enter a "federation" with the Bosnian Croats and a "confederation" with Croatia, and didn't really stop the partition of Bosnia, since the Serbs were allowed to retain many of their conquests. Also, the U.S. looked the other way when Croatia carried out Operation Storm, the largest single ethnic cleansing operation during the entire Balkan Wars (it was directed at Serbs). Despite all this, however, the NATO intervention *did* put an end to the genocide in Bosnia, and forced the Serb rightist forces to lift their murderous siege of Sarajevo, a supposed goal of the SWP itself. It's therefore unclear why the SWP are opposed to all "imperialist" interventions in the Balkans. Besides, their demand to lift the arms embargo would, in practice, give "the people of Sarajevo" the chance to buy large amounts of arms, either from the Muslim world, or directly from the Western powers. Turkey and Pakistan, both with pro-Western governments, had expressed support for Bosnia. While having control of the guns yourself is better than being dependent on NATO warplanes, in both cases the guns come from "imperialists" or their allies. Frankly, who else would be interested in selling arms to Bosnia? Burundi? The SWP doesn't answer the obvious follow-up question: If "working people" should oppose intervention, does this mean that working people in the Balkans should support the *Serbs* if and when they are attacked by NATO? After all, many left-wing groups believe that it's both imperative and mandatory to side with those who are in conflict with "imperialism". In 1995, that would have been the rightist forces in Republika Srpska. The good people of Sarajevo had joined, perhaps involuntarily, the federation-confederation with the Croats, who were backed by Bill Clinton. Hence, they were on the side of the intervention "working people" should oppose! I don't think it's a co-incidence that the SWP skips around this question. Their position is really a sectarian muddle. I suspect they were torn both ways: in a pro-Bosnian direction by their hatred for the Serb forces, which they correctly saw as right-wing gangsters, and in a quite different direction by their complete opposition to any U.S. interventions, anywhere, at any time. (Including World War II?) In the end, the SWP have little real advice to give the people of Bosnia, except to learn from the experience of Cuba and post-apartheid South Africa (the SWP's favourite regimes at the time). The SWP were for federal troops to Boston. But, apparently not, to Bosnia.