Priština, 1952

Marshal Josip Broz Tito, accompanied by Minister of the Interior Vladmir Zecevic was in Priština inspecting reconstruction when a transcript of Comrade Stalin’s speech on bureaucracy was delivered to him. Long had the Marshal hoped to address the bureaucratic issues that had plagued many countries on the path to developing socialism, and what better place to address these than in the battleground where so many struggles had been waged against Great Serb Chauvinism, where the chauvinists had attempted to kill the great Popović. The following is a transcript of Marshal Tito’s speech that was broadcast in Priština before a crowd of some 20,000.

Brave comrades of the Kosovar plain! Where so much blood has been spilt in the name of freedom for all working peoples! Brave comrades of the proletarian brigades, comrades of the Youth Brigades, I congratulate you on your efforts in the revolution, in your struggles against chauvinism, and in the great revolutionary struggle for the red future. Already, our labors have born fruits. The fascist so-called Crusaders that plagued the countryside in Bosnia and Croatia have been snuffed out, their wretched ideals resigned to the dustbin of history. The youth brigades of our country have done much in reconstruction and demonstrated to the working youths of the world the power of socialist internationalism.

But now it is time to turn our minds inwards and identify the threat that is potentially more insidious than that of the fascists we can identify by their armbands and slogans. Now, we must carry out the great struggle against bureaucracy and capitalist wreckers! Just as in the Bolshevik revolution, holdovers from the autocracy of the monarchy attempt to undermine our struggle. Bureaucracy is the single greatest threat to socialism in this time in the wake of the war! I am hereby calling on all comrades, in Kosovo and in Yugoslavia as a whole, to initiate the struggle against bureaucracy! To identify bureaucratic practices in their workplaces, to self-criticise if they catch themselves perpetuating bureaucratic practices. The great Karl Marx has told us that the state seeks bureaucracy and a bureaucratic state’s workers work for themselves within that bureaucracy. Our workers must work for socialism! Bureaucracy is the birth-house of inefficiency and capitalism!

I also call on our socialist brothers to address bureaucracy! In Albania, our closest comrades, where many of you have roots and kinship ties, bureaucracy has been left to fester unopposed! I call on our Albanian comrades that fight for socialism to take the fight against bureaucracy to the highest ranks of Albanian leadership and ensure that it does not spread like a cancer from the top down! I call on Albanian comrades to look to Kosovo and our struggle against bureaucracy as a model! I call for a struggle against despotism, a struggle against corruption, and a struggle against the bureaucratic institutions that have been developed by erratic Albanian leadership, that which has damaged not only the revolution in Albania, but the revolution in Yugoslavia as well. To our Albanian comrades who are interested in constructing socialism and fighting against bureaucracy, we can assure you that the Yugoslav people will always be a brother people! And we will stand by your struggle against wreckers!

I call upon our Romanian comrades to address bureaucracy! Do not let this Balkan Economic Community fall victim to bureaucratic practices and an expanding apparatus of aides and aides of aides! I call upon the Romanian leadership to refocus their efforts and ensure that the BEC develops without bureaucracy and that its glorious roads and railroads are not an avenue for the spread of bureaucracy to the region!

Long live the socialist revolution! Long live Comrade Stalin! Long live Yugoslavia! Smrt fašizmu! Sloboda narodu!