Leftist errors
Leftist errors (Serbo-Croatian: leva/lijeva skretanja, лева/лијева скретања) was a term used by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) to describe radical policies and strategies – described as the Red Terror (Crveni Teror) by others – pursued by self-described left-wing elements among the party and partisan units during World War II, mostly in Montenegro, Herzegovina, and Serbia, as well as to a lesser extent in Croatia and Slovenia.
[12][13][14] In July 1941, after the German attack on the Soviet Union, the Communist Politburo adopted a strategy insisting that the Partisans should aim to create "liberated territories", cleared of enemies.
They ignored instructions from Moscow to find a modus vivendi with the other resistance movement, Mihailović's Chetniks, because they thought doing so could put communist revolutionary action in danger.
[17] In June 1941, the Regional Committee of the CPY for Montenegro, Boka and Sandžak issued a proclamation inviting people to join the "final liquidation of the capitalist system".
[24] In mid-August 1941, Đilas wrote a letter to the Regional Committee of Yugoslav Communist Party for Montenegro, Boka and Sandžak and recommended an isolation and destruction of the fifth column.
In another directive issued in October the Regional Committee repeated similar instructions insisting on the destruction of those who disturb the mobilization of insurgents even by saying "wait, it's not the right moment yet".
Since October 1941, the headquarters of Partisan forces in Montenegro, Boka and Sandžak published lists of executed "enemies of the people, including spies and traitors" with a note - "to be continued...".
[28] According to professor Jozo Tomasevich, during the period of "leftist deviation" from circa December 1941 through May 1942, the Partisans, especially in Herzegovina and Montenegro, used terror against people who were not collaborating, but were potential class enemies.
[29] The Partisans occupied Kolašin in January and February 1942, and turned against all real and potential opposition, killing about 300 people and throwing their mangled corpses into pits they called the dog cemetery.
[4] Leftist deviation gave a real meaningful sense to the policy of those nationalists who found a way out of the difficult situation in collaboration with occupying and quisling forces.
[48] As a result of the communist actions, villagers from Eastern Herzegovina and Montenegro, who were far from being collaborators or kulaks, joined Chetnik forces en masse.
[49] In February 2018 a pit called Jama Kotor with allegedly about 300 corpses of victims of red terror was examined in Gornje Polje village near Nikšić.
The verse of one of them was: "Partisans, prepare machine guns, to greet the king and Englishmen"(Serbo-Croatian: Партизани, спремите митраљезе да чекамо краља и Енглезе / Partizani, spremite mitraljeze da čekamo kralja i Engleze).
[53] On 22 October,[54] or in November 1941,[55] Tito dismissed Milovan Đilas from the command of Partisan forces in Montenegro because of his mistakes during the uprising, including his "Leftist Errors".
[59] Svetozar Vukmanović who was a member of Partisan Supreme Headquarters in his 1998 work explained that murders of class enemies by communists in Crmnica reached massive proportions at the beginning of 1942, a day after the Orthodox Christmas.
[61] Yugoslav writer Mirko Kovač published in 2008 a literature work Pisanje ili nostalgija in which he ridiculed some texts about leftist errors stating that every Montenegrin personally saw when Milovan Đilas killed his political enemies.
