After moving to Vienna in 1925 as the local representative of the KPJ, he settled in the Soviet Union, where he lived from October 1926 to December 1935. His first three years in the USSR were spent in Moscow, where he worked as a teacher at the party school for émigré Yugoslav Communists. He was a sympathizer of the Left Opposition. He wrote that one possible reason for the rise of Joseph Stalin was that many Soviet politicians, even committed communists, believed that the Soviet Union consists of backward, Asiatic peoples who need a dictatorship.
In 1930, he taught at the Communist University of Leningrad. Arrested by the GPU because of his opposition to the policies of the Soviet government, he was deported to a concentration camp in Siberia.
For the rest of his life, Ciliga lived in France and Italy. Already expelled from the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1929, he later resigned from his position.
Few of Ciliga's extensive writings have appeared in English translation. His pamphlet The Kronstadt Revolt was published by Freedom Press in 1942. The first part of his account of his time in the Soviet Union, The Russian Enigma, was distributed by the Labour Book Service in 1940, and the complete text was published under the same title by Ink Links in 1979.
He later abandoned communist politics, becoming an "ardent nationalist."
After moving to Vienna in 1925 as the local representative of the KPJ, he settled in the Soviet Union, where he lived from October 1926 to December 1935. His first three years in the USSR were spent in Moscow, where he worked as a teacher at the party school for émigré Yugoslav Communists. He was a sympathizer of the Left Opposition. He wrote that one possible reason for the rise of Joseph Stalin was that many Soviet politicians, even committed communists, believed that the Soviet Union consists of backward, Asiatic peoples who need a dictatorship.
In 1930, he taught at the Communist University of Leningrad. Arrested by the GPU because of his opposition to the policies of the Soviet government, he was deported to a concentration camp in Siberia.
For the rest of his life, Ciliga lived in France and Italy. Already expelled from the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1929, he later resigned from his position.
Few of Ciliga's extensive writings have appeared in English translation. His pamphlet The Kronstadt Revolt was published by Freedom Press in 1942. The first part of his account of his time in the Soviet Union, The Russian Enigma, was distributed by the Labour Book Service in 1940, and the complete text was published under the same title by Ink Links in 1979.
He later abandoned communist politics, becoming an "ardent nationalist."
After moving to Vienna in 1925 as the local representative of the KPJ, he settled in the Soviet Union, where he lived from October 1926 to December 1935. His first three years in the USSR were spent in Moscow, where he worked as a teacher at the party school for émigré Yugoslav Communists. He was a sympathizer of the Left Opposition. He wrote that one possible reason for the rise of Joseph Stalin was that many Soviet politicians, even committed communists, believed that the Soviet Union consists of backward, Asiatic peoples who need a dictatorship.
In 1930, he taught at the Communist University of Leningrad. Arrested by the GPU because of his opposition to the policies of the Soviet government, he was deported to a concentration camp in Siberia.
For the rest of his life, Ciliga lived in France and Italy. Already expelled from the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1929, he later resigned from his position.
Few of Ciliga's extensive writings have appeared in English translation. His pamphlet The Kronstadt Revolt was published by Freedom Press in 1942. The first part of his account of his time in the Soviet Union, The Russian Enigma, was distributed by the Labour Book Service in 1940, and the complete text was published under the same title by Ink Links in 1979.
He later abandoned communist politics, becoming an "ardent nationalist."
[Yale Russian and East European Publications 13] Ivo Banac, Katherine Verdery - National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (1995, Yale Center for International and Area Studies)