Milovan Djilas was born
in Montenegro, Yugoslavia,
in 1911. He became a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party while
studying at Belgrade University in 1932 and was imprisoned for his
political activities (1933-36). In 1938 Djilas was elected to the
Central Committee of the Party and two years later a member of its
Politburo.
The
Yugoslavian government headed by Prince-Regent Paul allied itself
with the fascist dictatorships of Germany
and Italy. However, on 27th March 1941,
a military coup established a government more sympathetic to the Allies.
Ten days later the Luftwaffe
bombed
Yugoslavia and virtually destroyed
Belgrade. The German Army invaded
and the government was forced into exile.
Djilas
joined his friend Josip Tito to help establish
the partisan resistance fighters. Djilas was commander of the resistance
forces in Montenegro and Bosnia during the war. In 1944 Tito sent
Djilas to the Soviet Union where he had meetings
with Joseph Stalin.
Initially
the Allies provided military aid to the Chetniks led by Drazha
Mihailovic. Information reached Winston
Churchill that the Chetniks had began to collaborate with the
Germans and Italians and at Teheran the
decision was taken to switch this aid to Tito and the partisans.
In
May 1944 a new government of Yugoslavia was established under Ivan
Subasic. Tito was made War Minister in the new government. Djilas
and his partisans continued their fight against the German
Army and in October 1944 helped to liberate Belgrade.
In
March 1945 Josip Tito became premier of
Yugoslavia. Over the next few years he created a federation of socialist
republics (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina
and Macedonia). Djilas was vice president in Tito's government.
Tito
had several disagreements with Joseph Stalin
and in 1948 he sent Djilas as head of a Yugoslav delegation to meet
Stalin in Moscow. Negotiations failed and later that year Tito
took Yugoslavia out of the Comintern
and pursued a policy of "positive neutralism". Influenced
by the ideas of Djilas, Tito attempted to create a unique form of
socialism that included profit sharing workers' councils that managed
industrial enterprises.
Despite
these reforms Djilas remained critical of how communism was developing
in Yugoslavia and wrote about these issues in the Belgrade newspaper
Borba and the political review,
Nova Misao. In 1954 he was expelled
from the party and lost all his government posts.
In
1955 Djilas published The New Class: An Analysis
of the Communist System. In his book Djilas argued that
communism in Eastern Europe was not an egalitarian society that it
claimed to be. Instead, he argued, the party had established privileges
enjoyed by a small group of party members (the New Class). Djilas
was arrested in November 1956 and charged with "slandering and
writing opinions hostile to the people and the state of Yugoslavia."
Djilas was eventually sentenced to nine years in prison.
Soon
after his release in 1961 he published Conversations
with Stalin. This was based on his meetings with Joseph
Stalin during the Second World War. This
book led to a
further period in prison (1962-66).
Djilas
remained a committed socialist but argued that the dictatorship of
the New Class inevitably carried within it the seeds of its own destruction.
These views were expressed in books such as Under
the Colours (1971), Land Without
Justice (1972), Unperfect Society:
Beyond the New Class (1972), Memoir
of a Revolutionary (1973), Parts
of a Lifetime (1975), Wartime:
With Tito and the Partisans (1980), Tito:
the Story from Inside (1981), Of
Prisons and Ideas (1986) and Rise
and Fall (1986).
After
the death of Josip Tito in 1981 Djilas strongly
opposed the break-up of Yugoslavia
and the nationalist warfare that followed. Milovan
Djilas died in 1997.
(1)
Milovan
Djilas,
Conversations With Stalin (1962)
He (Stalin) was of very
small stature and ungainly build. His torso was short and narrow,
while his legs and arms were too long. His left arm and shoulder seemed
rather stiff. He had quite a large paunch, and his hair was sparse,
though his scalp was not completely bald. His face was white, with
ruddy cheeks. Later I learned that this coloration, so characteristic
of those who sit long in offices, was known as the 'Kremlin complexion'
in high Soviet circles. His teeth were black and irregular, turned
inward. Not even his moustache was thick or firm. Still the head was
not a bad one; it had something of the common people, the peasants,
the father of a great family about it-with those yellow eyes and a
mixture of sternness and mischief.
I was also surprised at
his accent. One could tell that he was not a Russian. But his Russian
vocabulary was rich, and his
manner of expression very vivid and flexible, and full of Russian
proverbs and sayings. As I realized later, Stalin was
well acquainted with Russian literature - though only Russian - but
the only real knowledge he had outside Russian limits was his knowledge
of political history.
One thing did not surprise
me: Stalin had a sense of humour - a rough humour, self-assured, but
not entirely without subtlety and depth. His reactions, were quick
and acute - and conclusive, which did not mean that he did not hear
the speaker out, but it was evident that he was no friend of long
explanations. Also remarkable was his relation to Molotov.
He obviously regarded him as a very close associate, as I later confirmed.
Molotov was the only member of the Politburo whom Stalin addressed
with the familiar pronoun ty, which is in itself significant
when one remembers that Russians normally use the polite form vy
even among very close friends.
Stalin ate food in quantities
that would have been enormous even for a much larger man. He usually
chose meat, which was a sign of his mountain origins. He also liked
all kinds of local specialities in which this land of various climes
and civilizations abounded, but I did not notice that any one dish
was his particular favourite. He drank moderately, usually mixing
red wine and vodka in little glasses. I never noticed any signs of
drunkenness in him, whereas I could not say the same for Molotov,
let alone for Beria, who was practically a drunkard.
(2)
Milovan
Djilas
met Joseph Stalin for the second time in 1945. In his book Rise
and Fall he described the changes that had taken place in the
man (1985)
In the three years since
I had last seen him, in March 1945, Stalin had grown flabby and old.
He had always eaten a lot, but now he was positively gluttonous, as
if afraid someone might snatch the food from under his nose. He drank
less, though, and with more caution. It was as if his energy and power
were of use to no one now that the war had ended. In one thing, though,
he was still the Stalin of old: he was crude and suspicious whenever
anyone disagreed with him.
(3)
Milovan
Djilas, speech
(1st May, 1951)
The further consolidation
and extension of the personal rights of citizens, the further involvement
of the broad masses in administering the state and the economy, the
further development of brotherhood and unity among all our peoples,
the further struggle against bureaucratic tendencies and all instances
of the violation of our socialist legality - these are the tasks that
confront our national groups our party, the People's Front, and social
organizations.
And so our country raises
high the banner of democracy and of socialism - a banner that today's
rulers of the Soviet Union have trampled upon after depriving the
working masses of all rights and freedoms, and adopting a policy of
spheres of interest, of wars of conquest, of subjugating other peoples.
All this they do to feed the
exploitative, insatiable appetites of a bureaucratic caste that assumes
the right - allegedly in the name of the struggle against capitalism
- to plunder and squander the work of laborers in its "own"
country and the countries of others.
(4)
Milovan
Djilas,
speech on the decision to bring an end to compulsory physical labour
for young people (March, 1953)
Mass youth labor action
was necessary and heroic, but it can no longer be justified economically
or politically. As we continue to strive for socialist education,
let me point out that we should beware of dogmatism and fixed forms.
... In a country where socialism has triumphed ... a socialist education
is not just the study of pure socialist theory, pure socialist principles;
it is cultural achievement, it is raising the level of general education,
it is attainment of literacy. Our country, our peoples, and especially
our young are in a position where everything that moves man ahead
and in any way lifts his cultural level constitutes socialist education.
(5)
Milovan
Djilas,
Anti-Semitism (December, 1952)
Anti-Semitism besmirches
and consumes all that is human in man and all that is democratic in
a people. The historic stigma of shame that it imprints can never
be wiped out. The violence of anti-Semitism is the measure by which
a reactionary regime succeeds in enslaving its own people. But by
the same token anti-Semitism marks the beginning of the end for those
who make use of it, even if their powers are still on the rise.
(6)
Josip
Tito, speech on the articles by Milovan
Djilas (29th November, 1951)
Regardless of whether
or not such articles are basically accurate, none of us can always
give a one-hundred-percent correct assessment and analysis before
grasping the causes of certain phenomena, and before those causes
have had a chance to filter down into the consciousness of the majority.
Theoretical articles should not be discussed at party cell meetings
as something prescribed and definitive; accordingly, party members
should feel free to talk them over - not as the party line, not as
something given and axiomatic, but as material that must make its
impact on the mass development of theoretical thought... Accordingly,
it is a mistake to confuse free discussion about questions of theory
within a party organization with decisions already adopted on individual
issues... In such discussions we dare not, we cannot judge people
or make hasty decisions. Therefore, before bringing in a definitive
judgment, it is quite correct to have discussions along democratic
lines. Disciplined acceptance of a position taken by the majority
on individual issues can come later.
(7)
Milovan
Djilas,
Rise and Fall (1985)
After two or three days
I was asked to come to the White Palace where I found Kardelj and
Rankovic waiting with Tito. As I sat down, I asked for coffee, complaining
of lack of sleep. As Tito got up to order it, he snapped at me. We
aren t sleeping either." At one point I said to him "You
I can understand. You've accomplished a lot and so you're protecting
it. I've begun something and am defending it. But I wonder at these
two (I meant Kardelj and Rankovic). Why are they
so stubborn?"
Tito remarked that there
seemed to be no movement organized around me, as indeed there was
not. My only intention, I said was to develop socialism further. Tito's
rebuttal consisted of trying
to point out that the "reaction' - the bourgeoisie-was very strong
still in our country and that all sorts of critics could hardly wait
to attack us. As an example he cited Socrates, a satire, Just published,
by Branko Copic, in which voters elect a dog by the name of Socrates,
quite unconcerned with the object of their choice because they are
convinced that this has been mandated "from on high." I
maintained that topic's satire was an innocent joke, but no one agreed.
Kardelj added that a few days earlier the funeral of a politician
from the old regime - I forget who - had been attended by several
hundred citizens! Rankovic sat the whole time in somber silence. His
only comment, when my resignation as president of the National Assembly
came up, was
that I ought to see to that myself, so that it wouldn't look as if
it had been extracted under pressure or by administrative
methods. Finally Tito asked me to submit my resignation, adding decisively,
"What must be, must be." As we said good-by he held out
his hand, but with a look of hatred and vindictiveness.
As soon as I returned
home, I wrote out my resignation, in bitterness. At the same time
I asked my driver, Tomo, to deliver my cars to the White Palace. I
had two - a Mercedes and a Jeep, which I used in isolated areas. Two
days later Luka Leskosek, my escort, came looking for the suitcases
that belonged to the Mercedes. In my haste I had forgotten them, and
now I felt awkward because my initials had been engraved on them.
In the course of our conversation,
Tito had remarked that my "case" was having the greatest
world repercussion since our confrontation with the Soviet Union.
I had replied that I didn't read the reports from Tanjug any more;
they were no longer sent to me. "Get hold of them and see for
yourself," Tito had said. That same day I went to Tanjug to look
over the foreign press reports regarding my case. Reluctantly the
news agency people obliged me. The volume and variety of reports had
a twofold effect: I was impressed and encouraged but at the same time
embarrassed and bothered that Western "capitalist" propaganda
was so obviously biased in my favor.
(8)
Milovan
Djilas,
Rise and Fall (1985)
Even the most fearful
dream gets forgotten, but this was no dream. The Third Plenum was
reality, a vain and shameful reality for all who took part. My main
accusers, Tito and Kardelj, though seemingly concerned for party unity,
were in fact concerned for their own prestige and power. To innate
the peril, they fabricated guilt. After they had had their say, it
was the turn of the tough, sharp-sighted powermongers - among them
Minic and Stambolic, Pucar and Mannko, Blazo Jovanovic and Maslaric;
then came the party weaklings, like Colakovic, and the hysterically
penitent "self-critics," like Vukmanovic, Dapcevic, Vlahovic,
Crvenkovski, and even Pijade - yes, Pijade, too, who until the day
the plenum was scheduled had been sweetly smacking his lips over my
articles. It could all have been foreseen. I had foreseen it. But
reality is always different, either better or worse. This reality
was more horrible, more shameless.
I was more prepared intellectually
than emotionally for that plenum and its verdict, sure that I was
in the right, yet sentimentally tied to my comrades. But that, too,
is an oversimplification; the inner reality was more complex. My aloofness,
my indifference to functions and honors - to power itself - helped
account for my intellectual readiness, the ripeness of my understanding.
What is more, having often in the previous months felt altogether
sick of power, I had been relinquishing functions and plunging into
reading and writing.
I knew at the time the
importance of power, especially for carrying out political ideas,
and know it even more clearly today. But at the time, I was repelled
by that power, which was more an end in itself than the means to an
end, and my disgust grew in proportion as I gazed into its "unsocialist,"
undemocratic nature. I couldn't say which came first, disgust or insight;
they seemed mutually complementary and interchangeable. Even before
the plenum was scheduled, I wanted to be "an ordinary person,"
I wanted to withdraw from power into intellectual and moral independence.
Obviously I was deluding myself. This was only in part because the
top leadership of a totalitarian party is incapable of releasing a
member from its ranks except for "betrayal." My delusion
owed just as much to my own intransigence, to my perceptions,
which continued to mature, and to my sense of moral obligation
to make them known.
The Third Plenum was held
in the Central Committee building,
which gave it an all-party character. (All plenary sessions of the
Central Committee had previously been held at Tito's, in the White
Palace.) The proceedings were also carried by radio, to give
them a public and national character. I walked there with Stefica
by my side; Dedijer accompanied us part of the way.
I arrived feeling numb,
bodiless. A heretic, beyond doubt. One who was to be burned at the
stake by yesterday's closest comrades,veterans who had fought decisive,
momentous battles together. In the conference hall no one showed me
to a seat, so I found a place for myself off at one corner of a square
table. Nor did anyone exchange so much as a word with me, except when
officially required to do so. To pass the time and record the facts,
I took notes of the speeches. These I burned once the verbatim notes
from the plenum were published.
Though I knew that the
verdict had already been reached, I had no way of knowing the nature
or severity of my punishment. Secretly,
I hoped that, even while repudiating and dissociating itself from
my opinions, the Central Committee would not expel me from the party,
perhaps not even from the plenum. But all my democratic and comradely
hopes were dashed once the contest was joined. Tito's speech was a
piece of bitingly intolerant demogoguery. The reckoning it defined
and articulated was not with an adversary who had simply gone astray
or been disloyal in their eyes, but with one who had betrayed principle
itself.
As Tito was speaking,
the respect and fondness I had once felt for him turned to alienation
and repulsion. That corpulent, carefully uniformed body with its pudgy,
shaven neck filled me with disgust. I saw Kardelj as a petty and inconsistent
man who disparaged ideas that till yesterday had been his as well,
who employed antirevisionist tirades dating from the turn of the century,
and who quoted alleged anti-Tito and anti-party remarks of mine from
private conversations and out of context.
But I hated no one, not
even these two, whose ideological and political rationalizations were
so resolute, so bigoted, that the rest of my self-styled critics took
their cue to be rabidly abusive - the Titoists aggressively and the
penitents hysterically. Instead of requiting them with hatred and
fury of my own, I withdrew into empty desolation behind my moral defenses.
The longer the plenum
went on with its monotonous drumbeat of dogma, hatred, and resentment,
the more conscious I became of the utter lack of open-minded, principled
argument. It was a Stalinist show trial pure and simple. Bloodless
it may have been, but no less Stalinist in every other dimension -
intellectual, moral, and political.
(9)
Milovan
Djilas, Conversations
With Stalin (1962)
Today I have come to the
opinion that the deification of Stalin, or the 'cult of the personality',
as it is now called, was at least as much the work of Stalin's circle
and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own
doing. Of course, the relationship changed. Turned into a deity, Stalin
became so powerful that in time he ceased to pay attention to the
changing needs and desires of those who exalted him.
An ungainly dwarf of a
man passed through gilded and marbled imperial halls, and a path opened
before him; radiant, admiring glances followed him, while the ears
of courtiers strained to catch his every word. And he, sure of himself
and his works, obviously paid no attention to all this. His country
was in ruins, hungry, exhausted. But his armies and marshals, heavy
with fat and medals and drunk with vodka and victory, had already
trampled half of Europe under foot, and he was convinced they would
trample over the other half in the next round. He knew that he was
one of the cruellest, most despotic figures in human history. But
this did not worry him a bit, for he was convinced that he was carrying
out the will of history.
His conscience was troubled
by nothing, despite the millions who had been destroyed in his name
and by his order, despite the thousands of his closest collaborators
whom he had murdered as traitors because they doubted that he was
leading the country and people into happiness, equality, and liberty.
The struggle had been dangerous, long, and all the more under-handed
because the opponents were few in number and weak.
(10)
Milovan
Djilas,
Conversations With Stalin (1962)
Until I visited Leningrad
I could not have believed that anyone could have shown more heroism
and sacrifice than the Partisans in Yugoslavia and the people, who
lived in their territory. But Leningrad surpassed the Yugoslav revolution,
if not in heroism then certainly in collective sacrifice. In that
city of millions, cut off from the rear, without fuel or food, under
the constant pounding of heavy artillery and bombs, about three hundred
thousand people died of hunger and cold during the winter of 1941-2.
Men were reduced to cannibalism, but there was no thought of surrender.
Yet that is only the general picture. Not until we came into contact
with the realities - with particular cases of sacrifice and heroism
and with the living men who had been involved or had witnessed them
- did we feel the grandeur of the epic of Leningrad and the strength
that human beings-the Russian people-are capable of when the foundations
of their spiritual and political existence and their way of life are
threatened.
(11)
Milovan
Djilas, interview
with Robert Kaplan (1981)
Our system was built only
for Tito to manage. Now that Tito is gone and our economic situation
becomes critical, there will be a natural tendency for greater centralization
of power. But this centralization will not succeed because it will
run up against the ethnic-political power bases in the republics.
This is not classical nationalism but a more dangerous, bureaucratic
nationalism built on economic self-interest. This is how the Yugoslav
system will begin to collapse.
(12)
Milovan
Djilas, New Leader (19th
November, 1956)
The experience of Yugoslavia
appears to testify that national Communism is incapable of transcending
the boundaries of Communism as such, that is, to institute the kind
of reforms that would gradually transform and lead Communism to freedom.
That experience seems to indicate that national Communism can merely
break from Moscow and, in its own national tempo and way, construct
essentially the identical Communist system. Nothing would be more
erroneous, however, than to consider these experiences of Yugoslavia
applicable to all countries of Eastern Europe.
The resistance of the
leaders encouraged and stimulated the resistance of the masses. In
Yugoslavia, therefore, the entire process was led and carefully controlled
from above, and tendencies to go farther - to democracy - were relatively
weak. If its revolutionary past was an asset to Yugoslavia while she
was fighting for independence from Moscow, it became an obstacle as
soon as it became necessary to move forward - to political freedom.
Yugoslavia supported this
discontent as long as it was conducted by the Communist leaders, but
turned against it - as in Hungary - as soon as it went further. Therefore,
Yugoslavia abstained in the United Nations Security Council on the
question of Soviet intervention in Hungary. This revealed that Yugoslav
national Communism was unable in
its foreign policy to depart from its narrow ideological and bureaucratic
class interests, and that, furthermore, it was ready to yield even
those principles of equality and non-interference in internal affairs
on which all its successes in the struggle with Moscow had been based.
The Communist regimes
of the East European countries must either begin to break away from
Moscow, or else they will become even more dependent. None of the
countries - not even Yugoslavia - will be able to avert this choice.
In no case can the mass movement be halted, whether if follows the
Yugoslav-Polish pattern, that of Hungary, or some new pattern which
combines the two.
Despite the Soviet repression
in Hungary, Moscow can only slow down the processes of change; it
cannot stop them in the long run. The crisis is not only between the
USSR and ifs neighbors, but within the Communist.
(13)
David Pryce-Jones, Remembering
Milovan Djilas (1999)
Still in prison, implacably
defiant, Djilas smuggled out the manuscript of his next book, Conversations
With Stalin, an account of his wartime missions to the Kremlin.
Published in 1962, this made even more of a sensation. Such famous
men as Churchill had penned memorable portraits of Stalin, but they
were adversaries, even if reluctant admiration crept in. Djilas, in
contrast, had been a true believer in Stalin, awed and excited to
go on pilgrimage to someone he had visualized more as a deity than
as a man. The observations have the immediacy of a thriller, acknowledging
Stalin’s intelligence, his directness and rough humor, the underlying
passion and irrationality. Those yellow eyes of his were like a tiger’s,
pinpointing every minute shift of expression in others. But the vulgarity
and blatancy of the man in private encounters, and especially at mealtimes
among his henchmen, generated a terror all the more terrifying because
so much remained unspoken. Here was eyewitness testimony which has
certainly molded the portrait of Stalin for posterity.
(14)
Robert Kaplan, Balkan
Ghosts (1993)
By 1985, that reformer
had emerged: Gorbachev. But Djilas was, by then, no longer impressed.
"You will see that Gorbachev is also a figure of transition.
He will make important reforms and introduce some degree of a market
economy, but then the real crisis in the system will become apparent
and the alienation in Eastern Europe will get much worse."
"What about Yugoslavia?"
I asked.
He smiled viciously: "Like
Lebanon. Wait and see."
In early 1989, Europe,
if not America, was finally beginning to worry about Yugoslavia, and
particularly about the new hard-liner in Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic.
But the worry was only slight. There was still several months before
the first East German refugees began streaming into Hungary on their
way to the West, which eventually ignited a chain of events resulting
in the collapse of Communist regimes across Eastern Europe. Eastern
Europe was then enjoying its final months of anonymity in the world
media.
But Djilas' mind was already
in the 1990s:
"Milosevic's authoritarianism
in Serbia is provoking real separation. Remember what Hegel said,
that history repeats itself as tragedy and farce. What I mean to say
is that when Yugoslavia disintegrates this time around, the outside
world will not intervene as it did in 1914... Yugoslavia is the laboratory
of all Communism. Its disintegration will foretell the disintegration
in the Soviet Union. We are farther along than the Soviets."
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