A book of memoirs was recently published in Belgrade Milovan Đilas Ideal and profession - memories of a revolutionary (Vukotic Media, 2024. p. 627; arranged Dr. Aleksa Đilas). The book includes Milovan Đilas's memories of his life and revolutionary work from 1929 to the very beginning of World War II.
A book Ideal and profession Milovan Đilas wrote in 1955-56. in parallel with A barren country i A new class.
More life
The book is interesting and significant for several reasons. Because Milovan Đilas (1911-1985) lived many lives in his 84 years. Each of these lives is a picture of the time in which he lived, on the one hand. But on the other hand, he also "drawn" himself and left his mark in that time.
Let us note that the time of Milovan Đilas's life was not a historically boring time. On the contrary. We are talking about razor-dangerous weather. It was a time of conflict between two irreconcilable and opposing ideologies and their practices: fascism and communism.
So, big time and the challenges it brings with it, "look for" great personalities. But at the same time he creates them, "hells". Milovan Đilas is among such personalities who were on both sides of history (personal and collective).
Lest someone accuse me of divinism according to Milovan Đilas, this phenomenon of the meeting of personality and history was noticed long ago by MĐ Andre Malraux. (And not only him.) A brave intellectual with a French spirit and charm noticed that Milovan Đilas "fate happened".
This observation of Malraux is only superficially and thinly correct. Because that hit of "fate" right in the heart of Đilas was not accidental. Nor could it be. It is obvious that Malraux did not have a deeper knowledge of Montenegro, its people, ethics, customs, traditions, Montenegrin family and values.sediment Montenegrin man" (Mr. Gezeman). Because Đilas developed ethically and intellectually in the tribal tradition of Montenegro in such a way that he was hit by the "arrow of fate". Communist, of course.
With this, Đilas "measured" his personality against the matrix of global modern history. But he also "measured" that mother against himself and the Montenegrin society from which he came.
The book is a picture of Đilas's third (!) life, i.e. life from 1929 to before the Second World War.
That life - which is hard to understand today - Milovan Đilas started very early. Already at the age of 21 as a student in Belgrade. Even a few years earlier, during my high school days in Montenegro (Berane). This early maturation of Milovan Đilas and his "need" to mature quickly is a picture of the circumstances and the struggle for survival in a stormy time. (He was like that too Marko Miljanov, for example. He "politically" matured even earlier than Milovan Đilas. He was great dissident during of King Nikola.)
Thus, the memoirs reveal that Đilas rapidly matured politically.
Time of ideological rapture
Book Ideal and profession reveals the genesis of Đilas's intellectual development and ideological enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was easily "grafted" onto his personality and the side of its Montenegrin historicity. Normally, Đilas was not the only man carried away by the modernity and "science" of the time, which finally reveals man's possibility of achieving de-alienation, general freedom and happiness, a conflict-free society, but only on Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist foundations.
Let's move away from the book for a moment, so that we can see it more clearly from today's point of view, the then ideal of ecstasy a new man (Lenin).
Today, a huge number of former communists are ashamed of the enthusiasm of the "red arrows" at that time. They mock her. And even the indescribable simplicity - pardon the expression - makes her tongue crawl. They forget that if there had not been such and such an "arrow", and such people before the Second World War and during the war itself, the big question is what would have become of us today. And with humanity in general. Because the German fascists were serious the civilization of death which spread its breath to all non-Aryan peoples around the planet who did not have a racial "blue root".
Those who were never communists and who hygienically distanced themselves from that system - like the author of this text, for example - today look with an astonishing smile at the enthusiasm of the communists, their courage, faith, the oppression of those people, Prometheus and what-not. There are no such people today. Today we are in deficit with this type of man. There are no such people even in sight.
Normally, divinism for that type of person lasts only until the communists won power in 1945/46. year. Not later.
The book is significant from many angles. But let's single out just a few. More in the form of dashes.
First of all, it is Đilas's (pre)prison association with numerous Montenegrin and other communists and leftists, his ideological maturation in the direction of Bolshevization and Stalinization, resistance to torture that he endured primarily in the prison in Glavnjača (Belgrade), etc. Let us remind you that Milovan Đilas was in prison from 1933 to 1936 and then he was imprisoned as a communist.
The book reveals a multitude of Montenegrin students, ringleaders and left-wing bungies that Montenegro produced in hot form. (Perhaps the production of these people was too much.) In this sense, the memoir reveals how much Montenegrin agon similar and close to Jewish.
The memoirs are mostly about students-bunjis at the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade. This is how this faculty became the epicenter of the most militant political events in Belgrade and beyond. In this way, the students gave the left movement an intellectual and elevated character.
From the memoirs, we learn that the communist movement "suffered" from numerous burglaries, betrayals, and the cowardly behavior of the arrested.at the police", subterfuge, personal glorification, petty tyranny, etc. All of this is more or less known and typical of any insurgency in the making.
All together, the memoirs are good as a script for an exciting and true movie.
A look at Stalin
In his memoirs, Đilas describes the names of hundreds of party members and leftists he knew and worked with. These are more or less all important and leading communist figures throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Đilas sees them as people composed of both faults and virtues. Normally, it is imperative to create communist virtue and solidity, to which Đilas gives a first-class value "filter".
Đilas even describes these people individually in a painterly manner.
Đilas sees this group of people - under the influence of Lenin - as revolutionary professional, and will call them later new class.
The memoirs reveal the multi-year process of "building" individual and collective psychology in the champion of Bolshevization and Stalinization of Party members. Their view ("normal") is directed towards the USSR and Stalin.
The government's intention of "ideological re-education" of communists was completely defeated by the passion for collective life. But also by an extremely conceited view of themselves as an exclusive, chosen group of people. They thought that only Marxists-Leninists-Stalinists knew the laws of nature and the human race. In Lenin's words, they felt themselves to be people of a new beginning and special forge.
Such closed and dogmatized consciousness of communist prisoners was created only in prison. Because the prisoners were directed at each other and at their "scientific ideology". By doing so, they created a passion for their truth and for the future no less than - world revolution.
Đilas states somewhere in his memoirs that collectivization (Bolshevization + Stalinization) was far ahead of the "left" and "right" factions in the Party. He states that the factions were mortally dangerous for the collective consciousness imposed by a higher instance: the Central Committee, and above all the Comintern.
(Let's note here that "line of the Comintern” was actually a victory of one faction over the party. For example, the victory of Stalin's faction, over the faction Trotsky or Tito's nad Gorkić. So, the factional struggle is a struggle for power in the Party and thus over society.)
And finally, about the title of the book itself.
The title is inspiring, even if it is based on Đilas' original title (Ideal and profession) added - for clarity - memories of revolutionaries.
The title of Đilas's memoir points the reader in the direction of political thinking, how: a goal, a thought, an idea and faith in an ideal make a revolution or how "nothing" is made into "something".
Looking a bit deeper, the title of the book also refers to how a society is started from the dead.
In this sense, we conclude: Ivo Andric, Meša Selimović and many other writers who researched the spirit of a closed society, its dungeons and the fate of man in a broader sense, are united in their attitude: that if you want to see what the state (government) is like, first look at who is in prison.
After reading the memoir - let's conclude in one "point" - that thought, belief in that thought, human oppression and man's rebellion for freedom is impossible to arrest and kill. Perhaps this is one of the secret messages of this book.
Bonus video:
