Milovan Djilas
Milovan Đilas Милован Ђилас
Djilas in 1950
President of the Federal People's Assembly of Yugoslavia
In office 25 December 1953 – 16 January 1954
Preceded by	Vladimir Simić
Succeeded by	Moša Pijade
Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
In office 14 January 1953 – 17 January 1954
Prime Minister	Josip Broz Tito
Preceded by	Blagoje Nešković
Succeeded by	Svetozar Vukmanović
Minister without portfolio of Yugoslavia
In office 2 February 1946 – 14 January 1953
Prime Minister	Josip Broz Tito
Minister for Montenegro in the Government of Yugoslavia
In office 7 March 1945 – 17 April 1945
Prime Minister	Josip Broz Tito
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Blažo Jovanović (as Prime Minister of Montenegro)
Personal details
Born	(1911-06-12)12 June 1911 Podbišće, Montenegro
Died	20 April 1995(1995-04-20) (aged 83) Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia
Resting place	Podbišće, Montenegro
Political party	League of Communists of Yugoslavia (1932–1954)
Spouses	Mitra Mitrović ​ ​ (m. 1936; div. 1952)​ Stefanija Barić ​ ​ (m. 1952; died 1993)​
Children	Vukica Aleksa
Alma mater	University of Belgrade
Occupation	Politician theorist writer
Military service
Allegiance	Yugoslavia
Branch/service	Yugoslav Partisans Yugoslav People's Army
Years of service	1941–1957
Rank	Colonel general
Battles/wars	World War II in Yugoslavia
Awards	Order of National Liberation (1945) Order of the People's Hero (1953)
Philosophy career
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy Yugoslav philosophy
School	Marxism Djilasism
Main interests	Political philosophy
Notable ideas	New class

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Variants Titoism Đilasism Rankovićism
People Josip Broz Tito Moša Pijade Milovan Djilas Edvard Kardelj Aleksandar Ranković
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Milovan Djilas (English: /ˈdʒɪlɒs/; Serbian: Милован Ђилас, Milovan Đilas, pronounced [mîlɔʋan dʑîlaːs]; 12 June 1911 – 20 April 1995) was a Yugoslav communist politician, theorist and author. He was a key figure in the Partisan movement during World War II, as well as in the post-war government. A self-identified democratic socialist,^[1] Djilas became one of the best-known and most prominent dissidents in Yugoslavia and all of Eastern Europe.^[2][3] During an era of several decades, he critiqued communism from the viewpoint of trying to improve it from within; after the revolutions of 1989 and the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, he critiqued it from an anti-communist viewpoint of someone whose youthful dreams had been disillusioned.

Early life and revolutionary activities

Milovan Djilas was born in Podbišće near Mojkovac in the Kingdom of Montenegro on 12 June 1911, into a peasant family.^[4] He was the fourth of nine children.^[5] His father Nikola, a recipient of the Obilić Medal for bravery,^[6] served in the Montenegrin Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913,^[7] then World War I, after which he was awarded the Albanian Commemorative Medal.^[6] After that war he commanded the gendarmerie in Kolašin, and opposed the incorporation of Montenegro into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His paternal grandfather, Aleksa, was an anti-Ottoman bandit leader, known as a hajduk, who was apparently assassinated at the direction of the Montenegrin king's father-in-law. Djilas's mother, Novka, was from Siberia in the Russian Empire.^[5] During World War II, Djilas's sister Dobrinka was murdered by the Chetniks^[8] and his father was killed during a battle with the Balli Kombëtar in Kosovo.^[9]

Djilas was educated in Podbišće, Kolašin and Berane. He was exposed to literature during his schooling, and also to the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. He commenced studying literature at the University of Belgrade in 1929, by which time he was already a committed communist. In 1929, the name of the country changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Djilas was a radical student activist and opposed the dictatorship of King Alexander I.^[5] This brought him to the attention of the police; in March 1932 he was arrested for taking part in an anti-government demonstration and was jailed for eight days as a warning. Eleven months later, having not changed his ways, Djilas was again arrested, but this time he was tortured then sentenced to three years imprisonment in the Sremska Mitrovica Prison. While in jail he met several senior members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Komunistička partija Jugoslavije, KPJ), including Moša Pijade and Aleksandar Ranković. He was further radicalised while in jail, becoming a committed Stalinist.^[10][7]

After his release from prison in 1936,^[11] Djilas decided to give up his study of literature and concentrate on revolutionary activities with the KPJ. When the leader of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, tried to gain greater control of the KPJ, Djilas aligned himself with the general secretary of the KPJ, Josip Broz Tito. Djilas also helped recruit about 1,500 Yugoslav volunteers to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, but Tito would not permit him to travel to Spain to take part in the war as he needed him in Yugoslavia. In 1938, Tito appointed him to the Central Committee of the KPJ, and to its politburo the following year.^[5][11]

World War II

Dissident

Djilas was widely regarded as Tito's possible successor and in 1953 he was about to be chosen as President of Yugoslavia. He became President of the Federal People's Assembly of Yugoslavia, but he only held office from 25 December 1953 to 16 January 1954. Between October 1953 and January 1954, he wrote 19 articles (only 18 were published) for Borba, the official newspaper of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, wherein, encouraged by Tito, he developed the Yugoslav critique of over-bureaucratic Stalinism in the Soviet Union, in favour of a shift away from central planning towards more economic autonomy.^[20]

His advocacy of greater democratic input into decision-making led him eventually to argue against the one-party state itself, suggesting a relaxation of party discipline, and the retirement of the state officials he saw as profiteering from their position and blocking the road to further reform.^[21] At that point, Tito and other leading Yugoslav communists saw Djilas's arguments as a threat to their leadership.^[22] In January 1954. Djilas was expelled from the Central Committee of the party, of which he had been a member since 1937, and dismissed from all political functions for his criticism. He resigned from the League of Communists soon afterwards, in March 1954. On 25 December 1954, he gave an interview to The New York Times in which he characterized the situation in Yugoslavia as "totalitarian", adding that his country was ruled by "undemocratic forces" and "reactionary elements". He also appealed for the formation of "a new democratic Socialist party", and thus for a two-party system. For this "hostile propaganda" he was brought to trial and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence.^[22]

On 19 November 1956, Djilas was arrested following his statement to Agence France Presse opposing the Yugoslav abstention in the United Nations vote condemning Soviet intervention in Hungary and his article to The New Leader magazine^[23] supporting the Hungarian Revolution. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment.^[24] In 1957, Djilas published abroad The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, which he had already sent to the American publisher Praeger before he was jailed. In the book he argued that communism in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was not egalitarian, and that it was establishing a new class of privileged party bureaucracy, who enjoyed material benefits from their positions. The book was a great success and was translated into more than 40 languages. For The New Class, Djilas was sentenced in 1957 to another seven years imprisonment, or ten in all, taking into account his previous term.^[24]

In prison, Djilas completed a massive scholarly biography of the great Montenegrin prince-poet-priest Njegoš as well as fictional novels (Montenegro) and short stories. In 1958, he published abroad the first volume of his memoirs, about his youth in Montenegro, entitled Land Without Justice, which he had finished in 1954, but was rejected by Yugoslav publishers. In this book, Djilas described the Šahovići massacre, a massacre of the Muslim population of the Yugoslav village of Šahovići (modern-day Tomaševo in Montenegro) and its neighboring area on 9–10 November 1924 by a mob of 2,000 Orthodox Christian men from Kolašin and Bijelo Polje who sought revenge for the earlier murder of Boško Bošković. The description was based on the testimony of his father Nikola, who participated in the massacre.^[25]

Djilas was conditionally released on 20 January 1961, after completing four years and two months in prison.^[26] During 1961, Djilas was repeatedly threatened by the Yugoslav government of being sent back to jail for his contacts with foreign journalists and scholars. The Italian magazine Tempo Presente which featured one of his short stories entitled The War was banned in the country.^[26] He would be imprisoned again in April 1962 for publishing abroad Conversations with Stalin, which became another international success and which Djilas personally considered his greatest work (see Rise and Fall). Conversations with Stalin was written in 1961 after his release, although it had long been on his mind before (Rise and Fall, p. 396). The manuscript was not smuggled out of prison, as it has been stated, including by David Pryce-Jones in "Remembering Milovan Djilas".^[27] For Conversations with Stalin, Djilas was sentenced in August 1962 to another five years – or fifteen, added to the earlier punishments – allegedly for having "revealed state secrets", which he denied. The book's references to Albania and its possible union with Yugoslavia were considered embarrassing by Yugoslav communist leaders. During his internment, Djilas also translated John Milton's Paradise Lost into Serbo-Croatian by utilizing toilet paper.^[28] On 31 December 1966, Djilas was granted amnesty and freed unconditionally after four years in jail. He was never to be imprisoned again. He continued as a dissident, living in Belgrade until his death on 20 April 1995.^[22]

Views on the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union

Djilas opposed the breakup of Yugoslavia and the descent into nationalist conflict in the 1980s and 1990s, but predicted in the 1980s that a breakup would happen. In 1981, he predicted that this would happen on ethnic and bureaucratic nationalist lines due to the loss of Tito:

"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."^[29]

He was critical of Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in the late 1980s and predicted that his actions would arouse separation of other republics, ethnic war, and the demise of Yugoslavia:

"Milošević still has possibilities.... The liberalization you see has a bad cause. It is the consequence of national competition between Serbia and the other republics. Eventually Yugoslavia might be like the British Commonwealth, a loose confederation of trading nations. But first, I am afraid, there will be national wars and rebellions. There is such strong hate here."^[29]

"Milošević'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 further along than the Soviets."^[29]

In 1987, Djilas was interviewed by the neoconservative magazine Encounter on the subject of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic and political reforms in the Soviet Union. Djilas described Gorbachev's actions as a "strict necessity. They have come to realize what other Communists in Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and China realised much earlier—namely that Communism doesn't work. It works neither at the economic level nor at the level of satisfying essential human needs and liberties... Communism is a 19th-century relic and a prescription for disaster."^[30]

Views on Montenegrin nationhood

Djilas was dubbed by Serbian nationalists as the "creator of the separate Montenegrin ethnicity" (as opposed to Serb). In an interview with the Borba Daily on 1 May 1945, Djilas stated that "Montenegrins are of Serb origin", but had over time evolved into a separate nation and ethnic group. Djilas made great contributions to Montenegrin literature and historiography with his works. Later in life, from the mid-1980s, Djilas referred to himself as "Serb" (as does his Belgrade-born son Aleksa, a Harvard-graduate sociologist). After he left the party, Djilas denied there existed a separate Montenegrin ethnicity and national identity, especially in his books Njegoš: Poet-Prince-Bishop and Rise and Fall.

Cultural references

Djilas was a contributor for the 1992 Radio Television of Serbia documentary series entitled Yugoslavia in War 1941–1945. Djilas is mentioned in Saul Bellow's fiction Humboldt's Gift, where he writes about Joseph Stalin's "twelve-course all-night banquets" and the theme of boredom.^[31]

Works

• The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1957.
• Land without Justice, 1958.
• Conversations with Stalin, London: Rupert Hart-Davis 1962.
• Montenegro, 1963.
• The Leper and Other Stories, 1964.
• Njegoš: Poet-Prince-Bishop, 1966.
• The Unperfect Society: Beyond the New Class, 1969.
• Lost Battles, 1970.
• Under the Colors, 1971.
• The Stone and the Violets, 1972.
• Memoir of a Revolutionary, 1973.
• Parts of a Lifetime, 1975.
• Wartime, 1977.
• Tito: The Story from Inside, 1980.
• Rise and Fall, 1985.
• Of Prisons and Ideas, 1986.

See also

• Đilasism

Footnotes

References

• Bellow, Saul (1975). Humboldt's Gift. London: Secker and Warburg. OCLC 466776580.
• Djilas, Milovan (1962). Conversations with Stalin. Translated by Petrovich, Michael B. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. OCLC 895030638.
• Fleming, Thomas (2002). Montenegro: The Divided Land. Rockford, Illinois: Chronicles Press. ISBN 978-0-9619364-9-5.
• Hall, Richard C. (2014). War in the Balkans: An Encyclopedic History from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-61069-031-7.
• Haug, Hilde Katrine (2012). Creating a Socialist Yugoslavia: Tito, Communist Leadership and the National Question. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85772-121-1.
• Irvine, Jill A. (1993). The Croat Question: Partisan Politics in the Formation of the Yugoslav Socialist State. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-8542-6.
• Magill, Frank N. (2013). The 20th Century A-GI: Dictionary of World Biography. Vol. 7. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-59334-5.
• Müller, Jan-Werner (2013). Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-19412-8.
• Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (2007). Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-1-85065-895-5.
• Ramet, Sabrina P. (2006). The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34656-8.
• Roszkowski, Wojciech; Kofman, Jan (2016). Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Armonk, New York: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-47593-4.
• Shepherd, Ben H. (2013). European Resistance in the Second World War. Havertown, Pennsylvania: Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-4738-3162-9.
• Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
• West, Richard (November 15, 2012). Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia. Faber & Faber. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-571-28110-7.
• Djilas, Milovan (1990). Revolucionarni rat. Književne novine. ISBN 9788639101060.

Further reading

• Meaney, Thomas, "Little Old Grandfather," The London Review of Books, May 19, 2016.
• Lalić, Boris, Milovan Djilas, Belgrade: Novosti, 2011.
• Reinhartz, Dennis, Milovan Djilas: A Revolutionary as a Writer, New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
• Partsvaniya, Vakhtang, "Milovan Djilas: Alienation in Power" // Economic Journal. 2012. No 4. PP. 129–139.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Milovan Đilas.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Milovan Djilas.

• Milovan Djilas writings at the Hoover Institution Archives
• Texts on the Djilas Case at marxists.org
• Milovan Djilas and Serbian political emigration at Istorijska biblioteka website (in Serbian)
• Nije bio ideološki pisac by Matija Bećković, NIN, 30 March 2006