Okay, I pulled Djilas' Conversations with Stalin and here are two rather random quotes to lure the readers:
1. "Until my visit to Leningrad I would not have believed that anything could outdo the efforts of the natives of rebel regions and the Partisans of Yugoslavia in sacrifice and heroism. But Leningrad surpassed the reality of the Yugoslav revolution, if not in heroism then certainly in collective sacrifice. In that city of millions, cut off from the rear, without fuel or food, under the constant pounding of heavy artillery and planes, about three hundred thousand people died of hunger and cold during the winter of 1941-1942. Men were reduced to cannibalism, but there was no idea of surrendering. Yet that is only the general picture. Only after we came into contact with the realities -- with concrete cases of sacrifice and heroism and with the living men who were involved or were their witness -- did we feel the grandeur of the epic of Leningrad and the strength of what human beings -- the Russian people -- are capable of when the foundations of their spiritual, political, and general existence are endangered." 2. "Stalin went on, without paying attention to Kardelj's opinion: 'If, if! No, they have no prospect of success at all. What do you think, that Great Britain and the United States -- the United States, the most powerful state in the world -- will permit you to break their line of communication in the Mediterranean Sea! Nonsense. And we have no navy. The uprising in Greece must be stopped, and as quickly as possible. "Someone mentioned the recent successes of the Chinese Communists. But Stalin remained adamant: 'Yes, the Chinese comrades have succeeded, but in Greece there is an entirely different situation. The United States is directly engaged there -- the strongest state in the world. China is a different case, relations in the Far East are different. True, we, too, can make a mistake! Here, when the war with Japan ended, we invited the Chinese comrades to reach an agreement as to how a modus vivendi with Chiang Kai-shek might be found. They agreed with us in word, but in deed they did it their own way when they got home: they mustered their forces and struck. It has been shown that they were right, and not we. But Greece is a different case -- we should not hesitate, but let us put an end to the Greek uprising.' "Not even today am I clear on the motives that caused Stalin to be against the uprising in Greece. Perhaps he reasoned that the creation in the Balkans of still another Communist state -- Greece -- in circumstances when not even the others were reliable and subservient, could hardly have been in his interest, not to speak of possible international complications, which were assuming an increasingly threatening shape and could, if not drag him into war, then endanger his already-won positions. "As far as the pacification of the Chinese revolution was concerned, here he was undoubtedly led by opportunism in his foreign policy, nor can it be excluded that he anticipated future danger to his own work and to his own empire from the new Communist great power, especially since there were no prospects of subordinating it internally. At any rate, he knew that every revolution, simply by virtue of being new, also becomes a separate epicenter and shapes its own government and state, and this was what he feared in the Chinese case, all the more since the phenomenon was involved that was as significant and as momentous as the October revolution." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
