A thinker who doubted the dogma

(Review of Veselin Pavlićević's book "War comrades of Milovan Đilas", BON, Podgorica, 2021, p. 370; continued from the previous issue)

Pavlićević analyzed relationships Milovan Đilas with the three leading communists in Yugoslavia, especially in Montenegro. There are important contributions to the biography of Milovan Đilas, comrade and collaborator Josip Broz Tito. The first part of Pavlićević's book talks about people from Milovan Đilas' close and distant environment: Edvard Kardelj, Boris Kidrič, Aleksandar Ranković, Moša Pijade, Ivan Milutinović, Vladimir Dedijer, Svetozar Vukmanović Tempo, Peko Dapčević, Blažo Jovanović, Sava Kovačević, Konstantin Koča Popović. Relations with some were terminated after 1953 once and for all, while with others they were renewed after the death of Josip Broz Tito.

In Djilas' description of people (War and revolution) two portraits stand out: Ivan Milutinović and Sava Kovačević. Đilas saw both of them as ethical people. Ivan Milutinović is "totally ethical in both his personal and political life." How - in the war for survival and in the revolution that radically changes everything that exists: the state, the church, the family, man, with the aim of building a new man - to avoid extremes? According to Milovan Đilas, "people and events fell out of Ivan Milutinović's hands". However, he cannot be attributed responsibility for terror in Montenegro. "Terror took place mainly from the arbitrariness of local officials and from schematized reactions".

The ethics of Sava Kovačević is concrete. It was not imposed from the outside, it emanated from his personality. "He was among those insurgents who grew and forged themselves into leaders and symbols beyond the party. I guess that's why the legend about him lives on beyond the official and apologetic eulogies - in that popular memory that rebels don't forget and dream about."

Jože Pirjevec indicates that Tito's relationship with Milovan Đilas was not permanently friendly and that therefore Milovan Đilas is not innocent either. The shadow of Milovan Đilas was long and Tito was always ready to keep Đilas under special control, even after two prison terms. At the session of the Presidency of the SFRY and the Presidency of the Central Committee of the SKJ in Herceg Novi (March 20, 1979), just one year before his death, as Pavlićević states, Tito said: "According to the Constitution, he is long overdue for prison." He has been mature for a long time and because of the statements he made when we released him from prison (he promised) that he would not do anything against our country, and he still does it today. And not only that he becomes one of the initiators of the association of all the enemies of Yugoslavia, nationalists, liberals and everyone else. And the Ustasha, he went to Zagreb. He had a meeting there with all those people... If things are going to lead even further towards the crisis, all those elements will have to be disabled, they will have to be taken care of, that's known. But it will be necessary to prevent them from becoming a fifth column in some difficult battles that may occur".

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Even after the death of Josip Broz Tito, the regime did not change its attitude towards Milovan Đilas. In everything, even in this, he kept his orientation And after Tito - Tito.

The informal opposition that was created in Serbia after the removal of Aleksandar Ranković was, in particular, a writer Dobrica Cosic as a key figure in it, interested in Milovan Đilas, but only to the extent that she could use him politically. But even after 1989, after the collapse of state socialism as a practice and the end of the Cold War, there was no change in the regime's attitude towards Milovan Đilas. On the contrary. Pavlićević also sees three currents in the dissident movement: liberal dissidents, semi-dissidents, ethno-dissidents. Apart from the liberal dissidents, none of these currents saw an alternative man in Milovan Đilas. From the circle of ethno-nationalists came attacks on Milovan Đilas as a traitor. The focus was on accusations of left turns in Montenegro, negotiations with the Wehrmacht and republican borders which, according to ethno-nationalists, damaged the national interests of the Serbian people.

Đilas worked in Montenegro to organize the uprising. But he did not inform Tito or the Supreme Staff about this. That is why some comrades (Moša Pijade, Mitar Bakic) created suspicion that he wanted to become independent - kneel down. His wife at the time also warned Đilas about this Mitra Mitrović, after his withdrawal from Montenegro to the Supreme Headquarters. Other participants in the negotiations also wrote about the negotiations with the Wehrmacht - Vladimir Velebit and Koča Popović. Pavlićević's research confirmed their assessment of the negotiations. Those negotiations meant a break for both sides, with the fact that by participating in them the partisan side gained the legitimacy of a military formation, not a bandit. And as for the decisive role of Milovan Đilas in determining the borders, Pavlićević pointed to the work of the commission created for that, which gave each of the nations a republic as a national state, and Yugoslavia as a possibility for each of the nations to live in one state.

Pavlićević thoroughly explained the influence of the West on the evolution of Milovan Đilas in the early 50s.

In a special part of the book Military comrades of Milovan Đilas (Part II), Veselin Pavlićević reconstructs the qualifications that went with the name of Milovan Đilas after 1953, in order to conclude "neither an ascetic, nor a genius, nor a villain". Basically, Pavlićević saw Milovan Đilas as a thinker who doubted the dogma. Defined and perceived as happy, this dogma was realized with violence, at a high price for freedom. The real question is what is original with Milovan Đilas, and what is the result of influence. Hence, in the center of this part of the book, as well as the entire book, Đilas' relations with the West are. The starting point is 1948. Conflict with Stalin In 1948, he caused a Copernican revolution among Đilas and Yugoslav communists, a change that requires a more pragmatic relationship with the West. Đilas was discovering the "West". He was a member of the Yugoslav delegation at the United Nations General Assembly in 1949 in New York and then in Paris. At the end of 1951, he traveled to Great Britain, with the aim of persuading it to help Yugoslavia. Then he met with the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, with the leader of the conservative opposition Winston Churchill, and the leader of the left wing of the Labor Party Anajrina Bevan and his wife Jenny Lee. He establishes friendly relations with the Bevans. They (1952) come to Yugoslavia. Milovan Đilas is their host. He is the representative of the Yugoslav government at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth (1953). According to Pavlićević, his connections with the British Labor Party were abused in the sense that "if it wasn't for Bevan, there wouldn't be Đilas's dissidence either." Pavlićević's research, which coincides with the research of a younger Serbian historian Aleksandar V. Miletić, show that Đilas, in his foreign relations, is looking for support for changes in Yugoslavia, the necessity of which he became aware of after Stalin's death. No matter how profound, this need itself leads to disagreements and conflicts in the leadership of the KPJ SKJ.

At the time of the conflict with Stalin in 1948, the Yugoslav party leadership - the "historical four" - was firmly united in the face of a common danger. Tito's victory over Stalin, along with the charisma he gained in the Party after becoming its leader, and then in the National Liberation War, strengthened his position in Serbia, which had lively divisions created during the civil war. Philosopher and leading figure of the Belgrade praxis group Mihajlo Marković, in his memoirs You rush to the sky (Belgrade, 2008-9), writes that Tito's greatest victory in 1948 was, in fact, the consent of the Serbian people to, if necessary, war with the Soviet Union for the country's independence. Josip Broz Tito's strengthened position in the party leadership enabled him not to consider others as necessary. He was sure that he was able to overcome any internal division.

In the book Hanging out with Tito (London, 1981), written with the deepest knowledge of Tito's personality, Milovan Đilas says: "Yugoslav leaders, and especially Tito, sensed and hoped that with Stalin's death, a struggle for power would arise in the Soviet leadership, which would also collapse unlimited pressure on Yugoslavia. That's what happened. Tito understood the possibility presented to him by this - to stop democratization in the sphere of ideas, and therefore to completely subjugate the Central Committee and the party to his personal rule, that is, to limit the role of ideological oligarchs in particular, as originators and bearers of heresy. The decisive moment was at the Second Plenum in the summer of 1950, where Tito stopped the fight against bureaucracy, i.e. for democratic changes... because until then - from the end of 1949 to the summer of 1953 - the Yugoslav party, or rather its leadership, was in a state of ecstasy. of spiritual liberation from Soviet models and teachings. The majority of party theoreticians - Kardelj, Bakaric, Pijade i ja - she not only criticized the Soviet system, but also looked critically at the Yugoslav reality. It is, without a doubt, a period of intellectual boldness and spiritual freedom that Yugoslavia - more precisely, the Yugoslav communist movement - will never reach again". In other words, an ideological limit has been set that changes will not be allowed to cross until the end of Josip Broz Tito's life and the Yugoslav state as his part of life.

Stalin's death was received differently in the Yugoslav party leadership. While Milovan Đilas saw it as an opportunity for accelerated internal changes, Tito saw in it the end of an immediate danger to the consolidation of personal power. However, time has shown that the efforts of the Soviet Union to include Yugoslavia in the socialist camp never really stopped.

After the events in Hungary in 1956, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 and Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty, it was clear that Soviet socialism was a formula that concealed its imperial policy. Hence, fluctuations in Yugoslavia's foreign policy were always a reflex of fluctuations in internal policy. Josip Broz Tito played a key role in these fluctuations. Koča Popović died in Records from the late past (Belgrade, 1991) called that position Peten's: "from the leader of the liberation struggle to capitulation, which cannot be explained in any other way than sclerosis and an insatiable desire for power".

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In the book Military comrades of Milovan Đilas, Veselin Pavlićević returned to the period 1949-1953. The significance of his research can only be seen in the historical context.

The small number of Serbian intelligentsia was divided since the acquisition of state independence (1878) over the orientation of the young state in internal and foreign policy - between East and West. In that division, advocates of liberal orientation (private property, capitalism, social and political pluralism, representative democracy) represented a minority. The majority stream was against them (collective property, social and national unity, direct democracy through popular self-government). Liberal-minded politicians were persecuted and eliminated in political confrontations - eradication (1886-1887). The change did not occur even after the establishment of a new form of government (a republic instead of a monarchy) and a new political and social arrangement (collective property, social and national unity, direct democracy through popular self-government). This did not change even after 1945, although fissures were created in the relations between the KPJ and SKP(b). In any case, from 1945 to 1948, Yugoslavia did not differ from other countries of the socialist camp. Even after the conflict in 1948, the Yugoslav party leadership proved its loyalty to the Soviet model of socialism in its internal politics. Regardless of the fact that it was aware that conflict could prepare for war, it remained in the orbit of Stalinism. Real differences in the Yugoslav party leadership arose over the question of whether independence can be preserved with the same policy as in the Soviet Union. Doubts about the dogma and the search for new allies in the west begin. As Milovan Đilas says in the book Hanging out with Tito, it was a time of enthusiasm, spiritual liberation and inventions in all areas of life. KPJ strengthened its legitimacy in society. Serbian literary Radomir Konstantinović writes that for him only the conflict with Stalin meant true liberation.

The Sixth Congress of the KPJ in 1952, with the change of the party's name (KPJ to SKJ), was supposed to symbolize the party's changed role in society - from leadership to leadership. That process was blocked by Josip Broz Tito at the Second Plenum of the Central Committee in Brioni in 1952. Party theoreticians retreated. Milovan Đilas was left alone.

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Veselin Pavlićević reconstructs two phases in the ideological evolution of Milovan Đilas as a theoretician of the country's democratic development. "In this first period - says Pavlićević - Milovan Đilas publishes a number of non-dogmatic articles, criticizes primarily the Leninist-Stalinist 'code' as a scientific and omniscient model for solving the country's future political problems". Among those articles and essays, Pavlićević includes "The problem of education in the struggle for socialism in our country" (1950), "Contemporary topics" (1950), "Reflections on various issues" (1951). In the essay "The Beginning of the End and the Beginning", which he wrote on the occasion of Stalin's death (March 1953), Milovan Đilas shows that this event marked the end of the danger of military intervention by the Soviet Union in Yugoslavia, which meant the possibility of gradual democratization of the country. Josip Broz Tito also saw in the death of Stalin the beginning of the end of the danger of a new possible military intervention by the Soviet Union, but also the possibility of further consolidation of personal power. These differences in the perception of 1948 will remain characteristic of the Yugoslav state until the end of the 20th century.

In 17 articles - short essays in the newspaper Borba (October 1953 - July 1954) - "Milovan Đilas develops a series of ideas about the democratic development of the Yugoslav state. He criticizes the party bureaucracy, points to its privileges and monopoly over economic and political life. He warns of the danger of putting the party above and outside society. In these articles, Đilas stands for the reform party as the main goal in the development of socialism and in the struggle for democracy. Then comes the criticism of the social structure of the "new class" in the extensive article "Anatomy of a Morality". The article was published in the journal A new thought, which was conceived as an organ of dialogue. The convening of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the SKJ, with a single item on the agenda, "The case of Milovan Đilas", was widely supported by the ruling social structure. In the name of party unity, she supported the removal of Milovan Đilas from the party leadership and, at the same time, from public life.

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According to Veselin Pavlićević's research, in the second (liberal) phase there is a further evolution of Đilas's ideas. He "distances himself from the communist ideology of consciousness, and with it he renounces the narrowness of the party and the greed of the 'new class'... He points to the Marxist-Leninist consciousness as a utopian consciousness. He left the knowledge of the necessity of materialistic 'historical laws' behind him". He saw communism as a historical phenomenon. He said that he was neither a communist nor an anti-communist. In the book An imperfect society he wrote: "There is no key to history, since that enigmatic lock, like any other, should always be opened in a new way, with new knowledge and sacrifice... It is impossible to create the world and modern societies exclusively by means of one, even Marksov of teleology, without society falling into the danger of the dirtiest demagogy of the rulers and the sophistry of paid scribes and 'ideologues'". Veselin Pavlićević's research shows that questioning and asking questions that required new answers began early.

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The title of the book by two journalists Liberalism from Djilas to today (1978) covers the history of liberal orientation in the Yugoslav communist movement from 1949 to 1953 and from 1968 to 1972. Both of these phases of liberalism show that liberalism was considered a hostile ideology. After all, not only in the Yugoslav communist movement. This determined the political and personal fate of its bearers, as well as their interpretation in historiography. And that hasn't changed even in post-communism. After all, liberalism has not become an alternative in any country of the Eastern camp, not even in Yugoslavia.

The dissident movement from which the largest number of opposition parties were recruited was politically and ideologically heterogeneous (liberal dissidents, semi-dissidents, ethno-dissidents). Liberal dissidents, who were the fewest - Milovan Đilas and Serbian liberals - did not become politically active. They remained on the point of view of the necessity of economic and political reforms outside the social context of the Serbian large-state program. In the interpretation of communism exclusively as totalitarianism, the results in the country's development after 1945 were ignored. Bearers of liberal orientation in the Yugoslav communist movement were called pseudo-liberals. They were even considered Stalinists. And for Milovan Đilas, only left-wing mistakes in Montenegro, negotiations with the Wehrmacht, republican borders that damaged the national interests of the Serbian people remained. And for Serbian liberals: repression, bans, persecution of professors at the Faculty of Philosophy and Law at the University of Belgrade. Semi-dissidents, especially ethno-dissidents, played a key role in these interpretations of liberal orientations in the communist movement of Yugoslavia. Through the literary narrative, a past that never existed was inaugurated. The future was imagined as a restored past. Emotions were stimulated and based on them, a broad mobilization was carried out. Ignorance of the world, including one's own history, led to a conflict with reality. This paved the way for the disaster at the end of the 20th century. In order to understand this, it was necessary to research the liberal orientation in the Yugoslav communist movement. Veselin Pavlićević's book about Milovan Đilas represents a significant contribution to that understanding.

(Peščanik.net, 13.08.2022)