The speech by Νikola Simovic from Revolutionary People’s Party–Front – Serbia (RNP-F – Serbia) at the 20th AIF’s Symposium held in Athens in October, 2022.
Hello comrades,
As you all know, Serbia has been a victim of imperialist aggression. Thanks to that, people have developed anti-imperialist mentality. From then on, all of the governments were pro-western and all of their reforms led to the situation being worse when it comes to living standards.
Meanwhile, the aim of the West was further humiliation of Serbia’s culture, state etc. Those actions strengthened antiimperialist sentiment among our people. The issue is, there is no objective force to articulate those sentiments apart from us.
Serbia’s ruling party practices conservative rhetoric, while maintaining liberal economy. Using the populist method, they’re trying to show themselves to the people as independent to both East and West, while de facto being pro-western and pushing western policies. Majority of the people’s hearts are pointing towards East, so they cannot afford to lose a large voting body, hence the rherotic.
West is constantly trying to diminish Russian and Chinese influence in Serbia through various ways, whether through the ruling party, opposition, or Non-Government Organisations. They’ve been unsuccessful in changing people’s minds for twenty years and let’s hope it stays that way.
Also, the United States are using China and Russia as a weapon to isolate Europe and thus strengthen their own influence on the continent. They are using ecological standpoints to target Chinese business in Serbia, with the help of local NGO compradors who claim to be independent, while being paid by the West. They say that they are against both the East’s and the West’s businesses that don’t meet ecological standards, but that doesn’t stop them from turning a blind eye on Western companies while waiting for the slightest mistake from the Chinese to install chaos and hysteria on the “opposition” media. The media that is of course, sponsored and created by the West, mainly by the United States.
Opposition, from a communist point of view practically does not exist, given that all relevant political parties in Serbia do not nurture any sort of ideology that offers resistance, they even push for further subordination. They are, of course, mainly sponsored by the imperialists so they have absolutely no interests in opposing it. It is practically a battle for steering the colonized economy and hoping for some crumbs of the imperialist table.
The left scene as we call it, is very small in numbers, with no actual political power. Consisting of groups and irrelevant parties whose theory is mostly stuck in Lenin’s era which fails to address imperialism in its modern form. By failing to oppose imperialism due to lack of theory, they often side with the imperialists by trying to present secondary contradictions in the conflicts as primary. Not realising that we must defend any movement or any country that’s under the pressure of imperialism, thus weakening it, rather than strengthening it.
Our party sees the necessity for a multipolar world. Because in those conditions we see much more space for local and global progress towards socialism. Russia and China, being objective global forces that could provide an alternative to the West, must be supported. We strongly support the South-South cooperation and see it as a must in order to oppose the West’s domination. Only when a nation has a sovereign economy can we say that it’s truly independent. Everything besides that and political power is an illusion.
We believe that there are individuals or groups in the West, although without political power, whose ideas are similar to ours. But, we think that our strength lies in the masses of the people whose material conditions force them to have an interest in antisystem action. Mainly the Third World. We see the necessity in giving full support to those movements and nations, who oppose imperialism and have potential to come to power. As small as may be, it teaches our compatriots in which directions to look for cooperation.
We introduced World-system analysis by Donald Klilend to Serbian communists and we enjoy seeing more and more people aligning with it as the time goes by. We may not have the numbers, but we are armed with theory and a hard-working strong core of the party. Masses will come pushed by material conditions. Our goal is to have the capable people who can lead them when that time comes.
Right now, given that we are under occupation, our economy is being exploited by the West, mainly the European Union. Like everywhere else, their goal is to extract as much profit as they can while giving the bare minimum to our people. We should strive towards changing that and turning the economy around and putting focus on our people’s needs.
Our goal should be sovereignty in food and energy. Serbia as a nation isn’t self-sustainable, that’s why we must look towards East for sincere cooperation that will benefit both sides. Cooperation based on mutual respect. West will never give us that, as much as they claim to be our friends and partners. They are doing everything in their power to completely cut off Serbia’s ties with the free world. We won’t have it.
