Dear Steve,

When referring to "Yugoslavia," I have actual Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in mind, not former socialist Yugoslavia (SFRY). So when I said that independence would lead to break up, I meant break up of FRY. I am aware now that I should clarify terms I used, and I apologize for misunderstandings.

The solution for most of the problems in the Balkans would be some kind of new SFRY and Balkan Union of socialist states, but, unfortunately, it is pure utopia. I will focus my mind on FRY in this letter.

Right of self-determination (and independence) must be respected, but concrete objective historical circumstances must be respected too. And these circumstances just don't allow secession. Let's not fool ourselves - socialist revolutions would be nice, but, right now, they're not possible in this part of the world. It is more likely that we are going to have bourgeois revolutions first.

The proletariat (both Serbian and Albanian) is proletariat-in-itself, not proletariat-for-itself [i.e., not class-conscious - editor]. Therefore the task of our intelligentsia is not to conduct the revolution, but to create revolutionary avant-garde which will be able to educate and lead the masses, to put itself on the top of the proletariat.

If the right of independence was given, Kosovars would use it. There would be a new state, and it wouldn't be democratic, even less socialist.

Like I said, proletariat is not (yet) self-conscious (for-itself) -- but deceptive Kosovar Albanians leaders are mostly imperialistic agents (for example - Hasim Thaqui, head of the KLA). It would be just another marionette state in service of imperialism.

No doubt that NATO would fulfill its aim - deploying several thousands of soldiers invited by 'independent' Kosovo government. The best example for this is former SFRY republic - Macedonia. They used their right of self-determination, but their leaders were just imperialists' puppets. And now, they have about 20,000 NATO soldiers in their country. p> The next on the imperialist agenda would be northern FRY province Vojvodina (Hungarian ethnic minority) or Sandzak (Moslems).

In order to transform proletariat to self-conscious, the outside intervention must be stopped first. Only proletariat-for-itself is able to overthrow Milosevic. Gaining self-consciousness is not instant change - it's a long process which might include bourgeois revolution first. (We almost had one two years ago, but it failed). The bourgeois revolution means step ahead for FRY (as well as for other former SFRY republics) - sad, but true.

Well, that's all for now --

regards from Belgrade,
Dragan

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