Milovan DjilasRezensionen

1/20/23

Este es un libro sobre el comunismo, escrito por un hombre que hasta hace muy poco tiempo era uno de sus héroes. Ejemplifica y expresa la angustiada desilusión de los intelectuales de la órbita soviética, que sostienen la necesidad de una urgente y amplia democratización.

O-7

Milovan Djilas was president of Yugoslavia and had some exchanges with the Head of the USSR. These were edgy chats, and offered a paradigm of how to deal with and sometimes inform a major tyrant.
A survivor of the Partisan Movement in WWII, Djilas, a Montenegrin oved towards more democratic sociaism in his postwar career, and was jailed for a good part of it by the Communists under Tito. This book of essays contrasts forms of democratic socialism with the strict Communist system. A Good book for the inquiring social scientists.

I felt I didn't get as much out of this as I could have done given my ignorance of many of the events the author talks about. Many of the individuals involved were likewise unknown to me, and the few details he sketches of certain prominent characters (Beria, Molotov, etc) didn't really add much to what I already knew. Regarding the man himself, Djilas probably gives as accurate a representation as he can, but they are by nature only one man's experience of a complex and multifaceted personality, and therefore a bit one-dimensional.

But this isn't a bio, so much as a study in disillusionment. Split into three largish chapters -- Raptures, Doubts and Disappointments -- the author charts his gradual realization that a system that he held to be the pinnacle of human achievement was in fact nothing of the sort. The turnaround isn't quite so dramatic as it could have been, partly due to Djilas's rather low-key style that never really convinces us of his emotional states at any particular time, and partly because he never hides the fact that he's writing the work from a position of condemnation.

I'll probably come back to this at a later time, when I'm a bit more familiar with the events and context.

I felt I didn't get as much out of this as I could have done given my ignorance of many of the events the author talks about. Many of the individuals involved were likewise unknown to me, and the few details he sketches of certain prominent characters (Beria, Molotov, etc) didn't really add much to what I already knew. Regarding the man himself, Djilas probably gives as accurate a representation as he can, but they are by nature only one man's experience of a complex and multifaceted personality, and therefore a bit one-dimensional.

But this isn't a bio, so much as a study in disillusionment. Split into three largish chapters -- Raptures, Doubts and Disappointments -- the author charts his gradual realization that a system that he held to be the pinnacle of human achievement was in fact nothing of the sort. The turnaround isn't quite so dramatic as it could have been, partly due to Djilas's rather low-key style that never really convinces us of his emotional states at any particular time, and partly because he never hides the fact that he's writing the work from a position of condemnation.

I'll probably come back to this at a later time, when I'm a bit more familiar with the events and context.

Questo libro non costituisce soltanto un documento storico, ma rappresenta anche un caso personale: il dramma di Milovan Gilas, l'uomo politico che si è posto nei confronti del suo, del nostro tempo, come protagonista e come testimone, nel senso vero del termine.

A fascinating little book for anyone interested in the period - Djilas was Yugoslav deputy prime minister and visited Moscow during and after WW2 (prior to the split between Tito and Stalin), meeting Stalin on several occasions. The book describes Djilas' growing disillusionment with communism through those meetings, but for those who've read that type of story a hundred times, the portraits of Stalin and his inner circle are well worth picking this one up for. Unlike anything else I have read on the period.

A little monograph which chronicles the descent from dewy-eyed socialist idealism into disillusionment and fear. Describes a glimpse of how Stalin ran his empire and belittled his courtiers.

Also useful for an insight into the Yugoslav guerilla movement, one of the few successful cases of a socialist insurgency taking over a country in this era with relatively limited Soviet aid - Stalin promised support, but the Western allies were able to airlift most of their stuff in. Stalin was already preparing to carve up the future Warsaw Pact into little obedient fiefdoms.

A good primary source for a brief analysis of both these fields.

Page numbers refer to the 1st edition, London 1962.

Milovan Djilas met Stalin three times on official visits to Moscow: in March 1944 as a Partisan General heading a Yugoslav Military Mission, in April 1947 as member of a state delegation led by Tito to sign a treaty of mutual assistance (p. 90), and again in January 1948 when he headed a Yugoslav delegation to resolve disagreements over Albania and to “stave off the break between the two Communist states that occurred later in the same year.” (174) The book was written in 1961 during a brief period when he was free. “On 7 April 1962 [he] was rearrested by the Yugoslav authorities, presumably in connection with the then forthcoming publication of Conversations with Stalin.” (175) It is a personal account of these 3 meetings.
Editing is exemplary, biographical notes on the chief characters and an index are provided.
Djilas dedicates the book to the memory of Aneurin Bevin.

The book is divided into 3 sections; their headings - Raptures / Doubts / Disappointments - reflect Djilas’ progressively changing view of Stalin.

Some notes:
(13) on account of negotiations, in March 1943, with the Germans for the exchange of the wounded, Tito states openly for the first time that Yugoslav interests may be different from Moscow’s;
(15/16) on idolatry of Stalin, his own included;
(32-39) his meetings with Georgi Dimitrov; Dimitrov’s attitude towards Stalin (38)
(44) on his experience, in 1943, of having his articles, commissioned by Pravda and Novoe Vremia censored.
(49/50) on future wars when Communisms triumphed: wars would then take on a final bitterness :- the conclusion of a Red Army commander which he had not forgotten;
(55) he states: “[his own] bias identified the patriotism of the Russian people with the Soviet system.”
(56) Stalin the legend: incarnation of an idea;
(57) His thoughts then (1944) and now (1962) on the Stalinist purges: looking back, he “might well have continued to be a Communist – with faith in a Communism that was more ideal than the one that existed."
(57) What Communism means to him: “with Communism as an idea the essential thing is not what is being done but why” ; “the most rational and intoxicating ideology” that gives hope for the future.
(67/68) Stalin – Molotov relationship
(73) on all-night dinners where” a significant part of Soviet policy was shaped”;
(79) summing up of his first Moscow trip in reporting to Tito: The Comintern ceased to exist, the Yugoslav Communists had to depend primarily on their own forces.
(84/85) on the “indifferent, not to say benign, attitude of Soviet leaders” towards crimes perpetrated by the Red Army on the Yugoslav population, D’s attempt to discuss this is used against him and the Yugoslav leadership; in a meeting with a Yugoslav Government delegation that included Djilas wife Stalin sheds “tears over Djilas “ingratitude” toward the Red Army” in a “scene such as might be found only in Shakespeare’s plays” (88);
(98) personality-cult of Stalin, his ‘deification’;
(100) his impressions of Beria, Malenkov
(111-114) his impression of Khrushchev: K.’s ‘hands-on’ approach, his practical sense, his attention to detail;
(120) on Stalin’s attitude concerning foreign affairs: “He became himself the slave of the despotism, the bureaucracy, the narrowness, and the servility that he imposed on his country.”
(pp. 120) Dec. 1947: Stalin demands a meeting over policies towards Albania;
(126) the arrogant attitude of Soviet representatives towards Rumanians contrasting with respectful attitude to Yugoslavia;
(pp.137) further on dinners with Stalin, their vacuity / senselessness / tension, “at which everything had been discussed except the reason why the dinner had been held” (146);
(148/149) the 1948 Moscow reality;
(151/152) contrasting Leningrad visit;
(156-166) joint Yugoslav – Bulgarian meeting in Stalin’s office;
(158) “the point of the meeting [..] though no one expressed it became clear, namely that no relations between the “people’s democracies” were permissible that were not in the interests and had not the approval of the Soviet Government.” : “great-power mentality”;
(159) Stalin humiliates the Bulgarian Communist leader, Dimitrov, (“The lion of the Leipzig Trials, who had defied Goering and fascism from the dock at the time of their greatest power.”)
(167) the January 1948 meeting a prelude to the open division between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia later that year (June 1948).

The book is a unique document. (II-12) *****

Marvellously vivid description of Monenegro around 1900, when the traditional lifestyle was still largely that recorded in the famous Serbian traditional ballads, heroic bloodfeuds and all. While it was not, in some ways, a nice place for real people to live at the time, it makes for splendid reading.

Mentioned in the book Balkan Ghosts