The Postwar Period 233
the danger of this concept: “In a multiethnic state, the theory of the ‘leading
nation’ means, in reality, subjugation, national oppression and economic exploi-
tation of lesser peoples.... It is understandable that the non-Russians were
opposed to such a theory and practice, and are still against it.”^417
On the basis of these discoveries, the Yugoslavs returned to Marx and
Engels: they not only changed the name of the party to the “League of Com-
munists,” recalling their 1848 “Manifesto,” but announced that they would
decentralize state administration and transfer its duties to municipalities,
which would be local administrative bodies on the model of the Paris Com-
mune of 1871 (the first Communist experiment, albeit ephemeral, in history). In
accordance with Lenin, they proclaimed the need for a progressive withering
away of the state, asserting that, in regard to this, there were two doctrines. The
first was a “theistic” one that betrayed the values of Marxist classics in trying to
suffocate the personality of each citizen, and the liberty of the working class.^418
By contrast, the Yugoslav Communists declared themselves followers of an
“atheist” doctrine, taking as a model Lenin’s New Economic Policy, stressing
the need to replace the highly centralized planned economy, as practiced in
Stalin’s Soviet Union, with a market economy. According to Boris Kidrič,
one of the most influent economic theoreticians, in this way the producers
could have all social property at their disposal and freely sell their products.
In industry, commerce, and agriculture, self-managed committees would take
on the role of free entrepreneurs. “A society that tries to suffocate the law of
value,” affirmed Kidrič, “goes directly toward Stalinism.”^419
Tito announced in his conversation with the Indian and Indonesian social-
ists that the LCY (League of Communists of Yugoslavia), as it would now be
known, would be completely different from the old CPY. The power that had
until then been exercised by the CPY would pass to the Socialist Alliance of
Working People, as the leading organization of trade unions and other collec-
tives, including the LCY itself, veteran’s associations, youth associations, and
others. The LCY should be an ideological center charged with influencing eco-
nomic, political, and social life with reasoning and not with orders. This predic-
tion did not become a reality: although the LCY was more liberal than any of
the other Communist parties in power, it never did allow the Socialist Alliance
to become a truly independent body, using it rather as the classic Leninist
“transmission belt,” for conveying the party line to society at large.^420
The radical innovations of the Sixth Congress produced a lot of confusion in
the party, since to many it was unclear what its future role should be. By con-
trast, these innovations reverberated internationally, especially in the East, where
the Cominform newspaper quoted them as proof that “the Yugoslav Commu-
nists continued to sink into the quagmire of their revisionism.”^421 Despite this,