Milovan Đilas was imprisoned in two countries for a total of 12 years. He spent three years in prison in the state he was destroying, while in the state he was building, he was imprisoned for nine years. Interesting ratio.
Probably, there is no person who, in such a broad scope, witnesses with his own existence all the possible ups and downs, roads and pitfalls of the XNUMXth century Montenegro. Contested and glorified, spat upon and deified, but always so Montenegrin. Without limits and regardless. As if any controversy should be a reason to lightly dismiss a monumental life and intellectual adventure.
There is one interesting "catch" with Đilas: there is hardly a person who unites such different positions of disputants as is the case with the most famous heretic of Montenegrin modern history.
He will be spat out completely hysterically, without any need to listen to any attempt at argument, by a Greater Serb, accusing him of the alleged creation of the Montenegrin nation, the drawing of the republic's borders allegedly to the detriment of Serbia, and similar, as well as the Montenegrin nationalist who sees in Đilas the embodiment of the Greater Serbian intellectual paradigm .
If nothing else, such a position testifies that the essence of Đilas is clearly beyond such and such consideration. Đilas, the communist propagandist or Đilas, the cruel war commander, inclined, even according to Dedijer's famous second volume of the Appendix to the biography of Josip Broz, but also according to many other testimonies, unnecessary executions in the Balkan ravines - are the least controversial.
That is, it is certainly Đilas that today (only) historians would deal with, counting the dead or, to use the creepy communist euphemism – mistakes. Or "turns". The left, of course. That Đilas simply wouldn't have anything to say to us today. There were such commanders and propagandists - quite a few, and from every hand. Montenegrin history is full of cruel and orthodox.
However, there are also two other Đilas who still have something to say to us today and should definitely be heard. Đilas – writer. One of the truest and cruelest books about Montenegro. His Fateless Land. For all times. A powerful generation of Montenegrin writers (Lalić, Zogović, Sijarić...) will act even more powerfully with Đilas' work and name. The picture of an epoch will be more complete. Nevertheless, his literature is an unusual mix of true prose flashes and a certain impression of incompleteness, or incompleteness. Basically, he was similar in political thought. But those flashes are infinitely important.
And, the most important one, Đilas – the heretic. From whom, in principle, Montenegrins least want to learn. Perhaps one detail is significant - Đilas did not enter all that, his golgotha, when he lost the levers of power - you have as many as you want - unwilling apostates who "come to their senses" only when they fall out of favor with the Power - he enters the heresy from the position of the greatest possible power , as a favorite of the Supreme. The age-old story of the beloved angel and the first rebel. Another tribute to Lucifer, the first anarchist and political dissident...
The great Croatian playwright Slobodan Šnajder, in his play about Tito, places his dramatic hero between two key figures: his symbolic father (Stalin) and his symbolic son (Đilas), showing these two "breaks" as crucial moments of Tito's political existence.
In one of the texts from Borba Đilas says, writing about the current situation in Yugoslavia, that a progressive and productive society is impossible without freedom. General place. But if you say that in a country whose government has been claiming for eight years to have created the freest and fairest society in the world, then that statement, no matter how cliché, becomes dangerous. The context makes it so. That's why at the end of 1953, several hundred citizens gathered in front of the Borba printing house to get hold of a copy of tomorrow's Borba and see what "comrade Đido" wrote about.
In the second text, he clearly (it will turn out to be quite correct) warned - we will become gendarmes and priests of the revolution if we do not change. His friend, the already mentioned Vladimir Dedier, described Djilas like this: "He was a man who was tired of stagnation. He was always striving for something new. He had imaginations.” Perfect wording. Haiku about Djilas.
I believe that this very imagination is the saving substance. Great ideas and glorious revolutions indeed eventually eat their own Sjutra. Which masters - gendarmes and priests. Orthodoxy is a poison that kills every drop of imagination. That's why imagination is important. He who preserves that "great and holy" human power will preserve the right to boldness. That is why this definition of Djilas by Dedier is not only charming, but also profoundly accurate.
Bonus video:
