There is a great deal of destruction. It has become a war of all against all, which makes it so horrific. * 8. The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences groups together many of the so-called "Fathers of the Nation". In 1986 it drafted its "memorandum", which was the first systematic revision of the terms of the post-war inter-national settlement in Yugoslavia, and opened the way to the Great Serbian expansion of 1987-91. 9. A Belgrade neighborhood.
International Viewpoint #215 • October 28, 1991
Socialist position on Yugoslav crisis WE publish below the resolution on the Yugoslav crisis adopted by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the worldwide Trotskyist organization, at its meeting in October 1991. DOCUMENT
HE Fourth International: • Denounces the aggressive war against Croatian sovereignty and the hypocrisy of the arms blockade imposed by the European Community and others, which makes no distinction between the aggressor and the victim, and fails to highlight the inequality of the armed forces involved.
• Supports a confederation of national states. Such a confederation cannot be imposed by force, and is impossible so long as a Great Serb policy is dominant in Serbia. There is a distinction to be made between Serb nationalism and that of the other republics, because of the transformation of the Yugoslav army into a Serbian one.
• Supports the right to self-determination — that is to say of independence — against the army intervention, without any preconditions about the social character of the regime created by self-determination. But this right should be generalized and never imposed against national minorities within republics. In ethnically mixed territories like Bosnia-Herzegovina the attempt to impose "ethnically pure" states is profoundly reactionary.
The real solution to avoid permanent wars is the withering away of frontiers, increasing the rights of minorities scattered in the different republics, and building Balkan and Europe-wide links.
Sovereignty means full national rights - it should be opposed to chauvinism or a social and economic system imposed by the IMF.
• Opposes armed intervention in the conflict by foreign powers supporting one or another side. A solution to the conflict can only be found by the peoples directly concerned. The sending of foreign armed forces would only consolidate the Great Serbian front. Such a force would not be restricted to a "peace-keeping role"; it
"We will be the winners from the events in the
East"
Interylew with Tomas Borge
COMMANDER Tomas Borge is the
Despite committing very serious mistakes, we have been able to sole survivor of the founders of the maintain a coherent and strong
Nicaraguan Sandinista Liberation organization with a very wide
Front (FSLN) and a member of its social influence.
current national leadership. He
• As we know, the FSLN is the was the country's interior minister strongest party in Nicaragua.
between 1979 anc 1990
This leads to a strange situa-
The following interview for the tion; while the FSLN has the
French Trotskyist weekly Rouge necessary social support, it cannot allow itself to take powwas given to cecilia carmendia in
YUGOSLAVIA / NICARAGUA would change the geo-political situation in Central America, and I believe that we did indeed change it. In the 1980s the revolutionary movement in El Salvador developed broadly, and the revolutionary movement in Guatemala was also a significant force at that time.
Furthermore, the Nicaraguan revolution had an influence on revolutionaries throughout the world, and above all in Latin America.
It was impossible to repeat our victory
Paris on October 11, 1991.