Dimitar Anakiev
THE BEACON IN A SEA OF
CONFORMISM
(Departure of a
Trotskyist, Comrade Pavluško Imširović)
On August, 16, 2014,
died Pavluško Imširović, founder of the Yugoslav section of the
Fourth International, an active participant in the student protests
of 1968 that left him a well-experienced Trotskyist after serving a
two-year prison sentence for his political activities. As many others
of the former student activists, he was in a constant conflict with
the Stalinist regime but also one of the rare ones who embraced
Marxism as the base of his opposition undertakings. Belonging to the
„left opposition“, he built a monolithic political attitude as
the only one befitting a Trotskyist. This monolithic posture made him
stand out among others just as it isolated him from the provincial
milieu; yet, at the same time, he set up an ideological bridge to his
great precursor Krastyo Georgiev Stanchev
(aka Christian Rakovsky)1
who Pavluško regarded as the greatest Balkan Marxist and his
compatriot Dimitar Mihailov Gachev (1897-1990). The three of them,
Rakovsky, Gachev and Imširović, are the founding rocks of the
Balkan Trotskyism, distributed sequentially, one by one, in time.
Rakovsky was shot by Stalin, Gachev spent fifteen years in Dimitrov’s
prison2
while Pavluško served his two-years sentence in Tito’s.
Pavluško acted at
a time when the power of Stalinism had begun to wane and when in
Yugoslavia of his days a host of bourgeois and ideological options,
lavishly supported and credited by the West, were offered as
alternatives; nationalism, social democracy and anarchism were
fashionable “alternatives” to Tito’s state “self-management.”
Pavluško did not let himself be deluded; he always remained a
consistent Marxist. In the seventies of the twentieth century, at the
time when Pavluško was trialed for Trotskyism, Leon Trotsky’s
complete writings were published in Rijeka in six volumes as an
enterprise which involved the engagement of some of the well-known
intellectuals. Fifteen years later the Yugoslav army publisher VINC
also printed Leon Trotsky’s military writings and this was followed
by Trotsky’s biography that came out in Niš. However, instead of
Marxism, the Yugoslav space was eventually fully pervaded with
nationalism that would substitute Stalinism as a ruling ideology.
What can, then, an isolated individual do against the mainstream of
his time? Pavluško acted as a propagator, agitator and organizer;
yet, of this last activity, in his own opinion, the least or nothing
was left. He translated into Serbo-Croat Jean-Jacques Marie’s book
Le trotskysme et les trotskystes
(Polinom, Belgrade, 2011) as well as
some important texts by Leon Trotsky such as „In Defense of
October“ (1932), „How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition “ (1935)
or „Stalinism and Bolshevism“ (1937). Pavluško is also author of
numerous papers from the domain of Marxism, Trotskyism, social
analyses and polemics. These texts can be found, at present, only on
his blog (Pavlusko's blog) and represent an important theoretical
base of Yugoslav Trockyism.
The departure of the
Trotskyist puts before his descendents a certain task; it seems that,
at this moment, in the Balkans and on the former Yugoslav territory,
there are many more organizational challenges than theoretical
dilemmas. In the Balkans the departing Stalinism has coupled with
imperialism and contributed to its global super government while
bringing to us horrible devastation, fratricide wars and colonial
slavery. The Balkan region is part of the world with a significant
revolutionary tradition and in this spirit is also Trotskyism to whom
Pavluško, man of a big heart, has devoted his life. „Forward to
New Revolutions!“ was one of his last messages in which Pavluško
made a pledge3:
„Imperialism should be expelled from the Balkans!“
2
Georgi Dimitrov
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