Bauer or Luxemburg? Understanding the Yugoslav Communist ‘Right Faction’ in the 1920s

This article is a reassessment of the ‘right faction’ in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ( KPJ ) in the 1920s. This group confronted the party leadership and the Comintern over the applicability in Yugoslavia of Leninist self-determination until secession. As such, they had been variously described as either Austro-Marxists or Serbian nationalists. However, the right faction’s common thread was scepticism regarding the revolutionary potential of nationalism. This places them in the Luxemburgist camp, meaning their critique of Leninism on the national question came from the left, not the right. While questioning the general applicability of the left–right distinction regarding the Yugoslav communist movement, the article will pay particular attention to the figure of Sima Marković, the faction’s unofficial leader. His arguments were fundamentally Luxemburgist, although he vehemently denied that in discussions with the Comintern. The article will conclude with a reflection on how and why Marković’s eclectic and oftentimes contradictory views came to be considered Austro-Marxist rather than Luxemburgist, and how these accusations were instrumentalised in the process that the Comintern called ‘Bolshevisation