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The author follows the activity of A. Ciliga, one of the most prominent Croatian communists in the period between the two wars, in the international movement of the left. The article presents Ciliga's theoretical and political views in the thirties when he belonged to the Trocki circle and criticised Stalin's regime. The author concludes that Ciliga was the first to elaborate on the concept of antisovietism. (SOI : CSP: S. 449)

The Moscow Trials forced the international anti-Stalinist Left to reconsider its most fundamental truths. The old, rigid categories of capitalism and socialism were no longer certain; a new urgency accompanied the question of where the revolution had gone astray. Many of the most outspoken anti-Stalinists searching for new answers had been either adherents or sympathizers of Trotskii. For many of these former staunch supporters, Trotskii's theoretical middle ground—at the same time hostile to the Stalinist bureaucracy but defensive of the land of socialized production— was no longer tenable. One after another, they broke with Trotskii. Yet this entire movement of reevaluation in Trotskii's intellectual entourage either has not been fully explored in discussions centering on Trotskii's views or, in a certain Trotskyist tradition, has been dismissed as a simple move to the Right. One of the best ways to understand both the roots and the context of such an intellectual upheaval is to focus on the key individuals.