Pitanje autentičnosti pisma Josipa Broza Tita i Aleksandra Rankovića Marka Pokrajinskom komitetu KPJ za Srbiju 14. prosinca 1941. godine
THE QUESTION OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE TEXT BY J. BROZ TITO AND A. RANKOVIĆ MARKO TO THE PROVINCIAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the question of the authenticity of the published document which, according to the official version of the Yugoslav historiography, Josip Broz Tito and Aleksandar Ranković Marko sent to the Provincial Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party for Serbia on December the 14th 1941. Because of its presence in the most known Yugoslav publications, this document is the most cited document in the official historiography of the socialist Yugoslavia. Its authenticity was tested by using the other published documents. The document was published in four different forms, and is debatable with regard to the content and style. The manner of its origin and the circumstances, in which it had been preserved in difficult conditions of partisan warfare, are also questionable. On this basis, one can conclude that it is not authentic, but was subsequently written for the needs of government. At the time when it was first published, in 1952, the Yugoslav Communist Party had changed its name to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia to symbolically show the distancing from the Soviet Union and the return to “the original Marxism”. In the same year the biography of Josip Broz Tito appeared in Life magazine, and the next year, in 1953, he visited Great Britain for the first time. Then his biography was published in Yugoslavia, where the said document had an important place.

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