The Case of Comrade Dzilas
P., S.
When news of the Djilas affair reached this country, the press played dreary variations on the theme, when thieves fall out, and The New York Times, conscious of more sophisticated...
...What is remarkable about Djilas is not that he deviated, but the extent to which he deviated, the public character which the Tito government allowed the incident to assume, and the fact that, thus far, he remains among the living...
...120 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 WHAT THE OUTCOME OF THE DJILAS AFFAIR WILL BE, we cannot say...
...As soon as a genuine, or potentially genuine, democratic opposition appeared, Tito beat it down...
...Were Yugoslavia merely another Stalinist state, he would never have been able to print these articles in Borba, for they go much further than any maneuvers of bureaucratic "self-criticism" can possibly go...
...he established an official `truth' and `unity'—the worst dictatorship in history...
...and finally, of betraying the country and socialism...
...Djilas rebelled against this concept of the Party-State...
...Toward what other tradition could the more idealistic strata of Yugoslav intellectuals and socialists turn, once they had rejected Stalinism...
...Yet some highly limited similarities enforce themselves...
...He refers suggestively to the burning of Giordano Bruno...
...This means in practice: to fight for freedom of discussion everywhere and every place...
...For the ideas that seem to have influenced Djilas are those of the left wing of the British Labor Party, the much maligned Bevanites, that is, precisely the part of the "West" that the Times can least abide...
...If Djilas wrote as he did in Borba, it seems plausible to suppose that many young people who took Tito's propaganda seriously are now vaguely looking toward Western socialism...
...given the increasing if constantly skittish employment of "democratic" terminology—was it not to be expected that some elements in the Yugoslav Communist League would take all this at face value and think in terms of a truly fundamental break from the one-party dictatorship...
...But if you think that such language might be used during certain "self-criticism" exercises by the bureaucratic state itself, read further...
...This theory and practice must separate Communists from the masses and trans form them into priests and policemen of socialism...
...Most important of all, the Yugoslays made an effort to establish ideological ties with the socialist and labor movements of Western Europe...
...He speaks of the millions "decaying in Siberia" because they do not believe in "the orthodoxy of Stalin's doctrines...
...Our emphasis—S.P...
...Djilas singles out the "Old Guard" of Partisans for his most pointed remarks, accusing them of having become a "caste of snobs"—and in the context he makes clear enough that he is speaking of social relations rather than table manners...
...Were Yugoslavia a socialist or democratic society, Djilas would still be its Vice President...
...The power of the socialist idea has been felt in Yugoslavia...
...Since the break from Russia six years ago, this comparatively small and backward country has followed a tortured path...
...The first task of a socialist and true democrat is to make possible the presentation of ideas, to make sure that nobody will be persecuted for his ideas...
...It is true that he won temporarily, but he thus destroyed socialist relations in embryo...
...Warmer still is his attack on the concept of the "vanguard party," in the version Tito learned from Stalin...
...That, more than anything else, must have alarmed the inner core of the regime...
...and every impulse of the bureaucratic caste circling Tito was to cry out, No...
...and the Djilas incident is part of the price it has paid for that unavoidable effort...
...And most striking of all: he seems clearly to be tempted by the idea of a multi-party system, yet for reasons both of caution and his upbringing in the Stalin-Tito tradition, he hesitates to speak for it bluntly...
...On the other hand, those socialists who saw in Titoism nothing but "national-Stalinism," a mere copy of the Russian system, may also have cause for reconsideration...
...Our bureaucratism also, because it is `socialist,' cannot avoid being a little Stalinist, to a certain extent Yugoslav-Stalinism...
...The treatment of Djilas, brutal as it was, cannot really be said to be of the kind one associates with a totalitarian society...
...The Djilas case is obviously of the first importance, another sign of that molecular disintegration at work in eastern Europe and a further proof, if any be needed, that the hope for political stability on the continent is sheer chimera...
...And most explicit of all: "If the greatest emphasis is put on the fact that the reaction has been exploiting my articles, that itself reveals the unprincipled, if not Stalinist, bureaucratic character of such `criticism' .. . Stalin in the beginning falsely accused the socialist opposition in the USSR of helping reaction...
...That the accusations against Djilas, as well as his attacks on the regime, were aired in public, indicates an important evolution in the Yugoslav state system...
...The New York Times boasts that Western ideas have now penetrated the "East" for the first time, but this is a boast that might well turn bitter in its mouth...
...From these translations of Djilas' articles we learn that his public attack on the Titoist "Old Guard" was almost as thorough as that launched by Trotsky against the Bolshevik "Old Guard" in 1923...
...In a strictly Stalinist state he would have been shot as a "mad dog fascist...
...Facile comparisons are not intended: Djilas is no Trotsky, either as to character or mind, and the situation in Yugoslavia is not really akin to that of Russia in the post-revolution years...
...In truth, there is no adequate, and perhaps at the moment no necessary, term for labeling the Yugoslav state: it is a dictatorship but hardly totalitarian, it is neither capitalist nor socialist, and what is more, none of these descriptions exhaust the possibilities of its inner development...
...Such a theory, writes Djilas, conceals the "tendency toward a special privileged position in society...
...History is endlessly various...
...USE OF THE WORD SOCIALISM—We have received contributions to a symposium initiated by M. Rubel's letter in the last issue of DISSENT from Travers Clement, Norman Thomas and Sebastian Frank...
...BUT LET US RETURN TO DJILAS...
...In short, legality and the struggle of opinion and, again and again, democracy...
...When news of the Djilas affair reached this country, the press played dreary variations on the theme, when thieves fall out, and The New York Times, conscious of more sophisticated responsibilities, pointed to "Western influences" behind Djilas' dissent from Titoism, an observation which caution might have taught the Times to forgo...
...Even in eras of defeat, signs of hope and revival appear...
...Therefore it stinks with the same ideological smell, and it uses the same `civilized' and `peace-loving' methods...
...A price in that Djilas has challenged a basic assumption of Titoism: the idea of the all-consuming party, the party which becomes interwoven with all the institutions of the state so that state and party become inseparable...
...Djilas speaking for democracy under the influence of the English left socialists—surely, that is cause for some gratification...
...None of the major American publications had the perspicacity to translate from his numerous articles in Borba, the cen 118 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 tral Titoist paper, and hence we find ourselves indebted to Labor Action, a socialist weekly, for providing such translations...
...The Yugoslav state cannot remain static: it must either relapse into a rigid Stalinism or suffer all sorts of internal crises, which open the possibility for democratic and perhaps socialist tendencies from below...
...In the same article Djilas attacks "every restriction on thought, even on behalf Spring 1954 • DISSENT • 119 of the most beautiful ideals...
...But a few tentative conclusions are possible: • Those socialists, especially in France, who gave themselves uncritically to Titoism, may now have occasion to reconsider their folly...
...Such a development was inevitable...
...Economically it has refused to play milch cow to Russia and has rejected the Stalinist policy of forced collectivization...
...Given the Titoist break from the Cominform...
...politically a series of skirmishes—limited and dominated from above—were made toward loosening up the dictatorship without fundamentally abolishing it...
...There is no other way out but more democracy," he writes in Borba, "more free discussions, more free elections of social, state and economic organs, more strict sticking to the law...
...given the consequent need to develop some sort of "independent" ideology with which to oppose both East and West while simultaneously—and this is the heart of the Titoist dilemma—maintaining its dictatorial power...
...This is getting warm...
...These will appear, with others that are expected, in our next issue...
...Tito's charges against him, however, clearly indicate that in private conversation Djilas did declare for "another" party—and that a number of secondary leaders listened with some sympathy...
...Djilas' greatest support seems to come from among the intellectuals and the youth, as well as certain national minorities within the multi-national Yugoslav state...
Vol. 1 • April 1954 • No. 2
