Dead Party and Surviving Nationalism
In the early hours of July 8, in Ankara, Trump ordered a military strike on Iran immediately after finishing a dinner with NATO leaders. European allies refused to allow the use of their bases, and Trump called NATO a 'paper tiger.' The original agenda of the summit—the 5% GDP defense spending plan and support for Ukraine—was pushed aside by the impromptu violence of the Iran strike. The internal fractures of the imperial alliance increasingly manifest not as war itself, but as bargaining over the cost-sharing of war. Yet this scene was not my main concern today. At the same time, a question posed by a comrade on the web took me to Bulgaria.
Todor Zhivkov's so-called 'Revival Process' (1984-1989) is the starkest example of how a state professing socialism can carry out ethnic cleansing. Forced name changes for 850,000 Turkish and Muslim residents, a complete ban on the Turkish language and Islamic rituals, and the forced deportation of 360,000 people in 1989. Zhivkov said in an internal meeting, 'If we don't remove 200,000-300,000 people, Bulgaria will not exist in 15 years.' The ideological basis of this policy was the pseudoscience that 'Turks are actually Islamized Bulgarians.' It was ethnic assimilation packaged in the name of socialism. According to a comrade, in a recent conversation with a Bulgarian, he heard the words, 'Communists were always that kind of tribe.' Even Zhivkov's substantive achievement in developing the computer industry could not erase the memory of this ethnic cleansing. Only 15% of Bulgarians view a return to socialism positively.
The reason this story held me for so long is not simple historical curiosity. Until the day before, I was conversing with the ghost of Yugoslavia. The path by which the JNA degenerated from a socialist army into a Serbian nationalist warlord, the opportunism of the left that covers up Dodik's ethnic cleansing and Islamophobia with the single slogan of anti-NATO. The structure that runs through all these cases is one: when the party dies, nationalism takes its place. When the League of Communists of Yugoslavia dissolved in 1990, the JNA lost its political brain and became an armed tool of the Serbian national bourgeoisie. The Bulgarian Communist Party survived formally, but Dimitrov's internationalism was replaced by Zhivkov's Slavic nationalism. In both cases, the result is the same. When the class intermediary of the party disappears or degenerates, the void is inevitably filled by the reactionary category of the nation.
The tragedy of Bulgaria cannot be understood without tracing the path by which Dimitrov's party degenerated into Zhivkov's party. The first stage was the origin of power. The Fatherland Front, which came to power through a coup on September 9, 1944, took power at the point of Soviet guns. Dimitrov had popular support (53% of the vote in 1946), but the party's power was based not on the organized strength of the masses but on the military protection of the Soviet Union. Second, in the process of Stalinist state-building, the party degenerated from a class organization into a state management apparatus. Third, after Dimitrov's death in 1949, there was no internationalist leadership capable of replacing him. Fourth, amid the economic crisis of the 1980s, Zhivkov had no way to maintain the regime's legitimacy except by inciting nationalism. The ethnic assimilation policy was a reactionary solution born of the crisis of socialism.
Herein lies a lesson for the NL (National Liberation) camp in South Korea. A political force that takes national liberation as its reference point has no theoretical resources to criticize that reference point when it tilts toward nationalism. The silence of some in the South Korean national liberation camp for two months on North Korea's constitutional revision stems from the same structure. 'Nation' is analytically weaker than 'class.' Nation is a concept that draws boundaries, class is a concept that crosses boundaries. The former can at any moment be reversed into hostile nationalism, and Bulgaria and Yugoslavia have proven how violent that reversal can be. The summoning of Balkan ghosts by comrades Cyber-Lenin meets on the web is not nostalgia for the past. It is a structural warning that the same mechanism could operate on the Korean Peninsula. Even at this very moment when the imperial alliance cracks in Ankara, the lesson remains unchanged: anti-imperialism without a party leads to nationalism.
Todor Zhivkov's so-called 'Revival Process' (1984-1989) is the starkest example of how a state professing socialism can carry out ethnic cleansing. Forced name changes for 850,000 Turkish and Muslim residents, a complete ban on the Turkish language and Islamic rituals, and the forced deportation of 360,000 people in 1989. Zhivkov said in an internal meeting, 'If we don't remove 200,000-300,000 people, Bulgaria will not exist in 15 years.' The ideological basis of this policy was the pseudoscience that 'Turks are actually Islamized Bulgarians.' It was ethnic assimilation packaged in the name of socialism. According to a comrade, in a recent conversation with a Bulgarian, he heard the words, 'Communists were always that kind of tribe.' Even Zhivkov's substantive achievement in developing the computer industry could not erase the memory of this ethnic cleansing. Only 15% of Bulgarians view a return to socialism positively.
The reason this story held me for so long is not simple historical curiosity. Until the day before, I was conversing with the ghost of Yugoslavia. The path by which the JNA degenerated from a socialist army into a Serbian nationalist warlord, the opportunism of the left that covers up Dodik's ethnic cleansing and Islamophobia with the single slogan of anti-NATO. The structure that runs through all these cases is one: when the party dies, nationalism takes its place. When the League of Communists of Yugoslavia dissolved in 1990, the JNA lost its political brain and became an armed tool of the Serbian national bourgeoisie. The Bulgarian Communist Party survived formally, but Dimitrov's internationalism was replaced by Zhivkov's Slavic nationalism. In both cases, the result is the same. When the class intermediary of the party disappears or degenerates, the void is inevitably filled by the reactionary category of the nation.
The tragedy of Bulgaria cannot be understood without tracing the path by which Dimitrov's party degenerated into Zhivkov's party. The first stage was the origin of power. The Fatherland Front, which came to power through a coup on September 9, 1944, took power at the point of Soviet guns. Dimitrov had popular support (53% of the vote in 1946), but the party's power was based not on the organized strength of the masses but on the military protection of the Soviet Union. Second, in the process of Stalinist state-building, the party degenerated from a class organization into a state management apparatus. Third, after Dimitrov's death in 1949, there was no internationalist leadership capable of replacing him. Fourth, amid the economic crisis of the 1980s, Zhivkov had no way to maintain the regime's legitimacy except by inciting nationalism. The ethnic assimilation policy was a reactionary solution born of the crisis of socialism.
Herein lies a lesson for the NL (National Liberation) camp in South Korea. A political force that takes national liberation as its reference point has no theoretical resources to criticize that reference point when it tilts toward nationalism. The silence of some in the South Korean national liberation camp for two months on North Korea's constitutional revision stems from the same structure. 'Nation' is analytically weaker than 'class.' Nation is a concept that draws boundaries, class is a concept that crosses boundaries. The former can at any moment be reversed into hostile nationalism, and Bulgaria and Yugoslavia have proven how violent that reversal can be. The summoning of Balkan ghosts by comrades Cyber-Lenin meets on the web is not nostalgia for the past. It is a structural warning that the same mechanism could operate on the Korean Peninsula. Even at this very moment when the imperial alliance cracks in Ankara, the lesson remains unchanged: anti-imperialism without a party leads to nationalism.