FROM A PRISON DIARY
Djilas, Milovan
No one is as stupid as a democrat turned imperialist or a revolutionary turned reactionary. When that happens the concepts get all mixed up. Just as it happens to each individual when his ideas...
...I took much pleasure in the green leaves of the young scallions...
...3:30— an hour's walk...
...It is beginning to get cold—another winter in an unheated cell...
...Nagy died an honest death...
...Still, this made me a little angry— and throws me off in my spiritual life and my work...
...A bittersweet day...
...Finally let me end this discourse about myths...
...These two elements—force and consensus (the latter as inevitable as life within the community) go hand in hand...
...During the day, I lie dressed underneath three blankets and read with gloves on my hands...
...Therefore, one should honor it, and not interfere in it...
...March 24, 1959 Last night I dreamed a sentence word by word: "Evil is when someone is the chief cook in his country but is not also the chief taster of what he cooks...
...But one's good mood often is the result of reasons other than weather...
...F...I December 28, 1959 I am conscious that in a specific way I am reenacting from the beginning the same drama that was experienced by all Commt,pist heretics, especially under Stalin...
...Men should be united by realizable, accessible ideals, and not by some abstract formula of impossible ideals...
...But outside I do not step upon anything, except unintentionally...
...That is so precious to me that nothing else enters my mind...
...What kind of person will I be after three, or five, or seven years...
...Only the spider is permitted to roam at will...
...Because the spiritual world still goes on...
...272 MILOVAN DJILAS August 21, 1958 The beauty of life is in its variety, that is, in continual happening...
...I have grown accustomed to cold...
...I have never known a man who was totally free of ambition...
...And now it is the same, but in less measure, for I am not alone...
...I December 2, 1963 A thought: each theory that tends toward the absolute inevitably acquires the form of religion...
...I cannot see why we don't recognize that they are sick people, just like other kinds of patients...
...It's a nice day—scrubbing time...
...The past lasts through myths, within them...
...I believe that he will remain a great man in the history of Hungary, although he was not able to accomplish much of anything...
...I always felt that he and I were alike in many respects...
...The modern state is characterized by force, which is its typical and perhaps its basic characteristic...
...It would have been better if some things had been clearer to him...
...February 14, 1958 I add the following to the above: coercion and evil generally win over humanism and good, but the latter always regenerate themselves and are born anew...
...One must not nurture illusions about the things people fight over, since ideas are mostly banners, around which rally interests and drives...
...Faith makes up for the lack of change, that is, for the absence of possibilities for concrete living...
...Each future society will be a class one...
...In my room I gather them onto a piece of tin and empty them into the wastebasket...
...A little war of nerves...
...I bought scallions and radishes...
...Religions go deeper into these questions, and one should draw some lessons from religions...
...I see, after all, that isolation has already made me painfully sensitive...
...I seldom take supper, and sometimes not even breakfast (chicory coffee...
...It is thawing fast...
...Even people who are not good can become so in marriage...
...It leads only to shallow and uncertain results...
...In fact, there come terrible moments of intoxication with some kinds of crime...
...They contain within themselves at first something real and rational (as an attempt to explain something...
...His cause: Hungary and freedom...
...Striving for the good in the battle against evil, man does not dare renounce evil methods...
...Choosing between Erasmus and Luther, I would always choose Luther, but wish to be like Erasmus...
...To establish the goal of a classless society was to make a logical mistake: to take for a hypothesis something that should be proven only by experience (partitio principii...
...Most believe— and for them it is a very important belief— that their sentences are too stiff...
...Not even the sun, which breaks through and clears up the fog during the day, succeeds in melting the snow on the paths and the hoarfrost...
...In primary school I was poorly dressed...
...At least this winter I will not have trouble about it—after so many years...
...He proved that in Communism there are democratic and socialist men, although they are mostly utopians, who end up like us...
...This anger and excitement because of insults FROM A PRISON DIARY 271 against me [at the party Congress] diminished yesterday...
...December 17, 1960 (morning) When I went to bed last night I was seized by terrible nerve attacks...
...10:30—walk (an hour and a half...
...they remain almost invisible to those who struggle for their fulfillment...
...But this is not important...
...Perhaps he would have done the same, had he had the chance, although he was not a writer...
...Such a total change is impossible...
...I felt quite pleasant, despite the cold and rainy weather...
...And a symptom of the international sharpening of tensions...
...In short, an unperfect or, better yet, a normal society...
...Reprinted from the book Parts of a Lifetime, by Milovan Djilas, edited by Michael and Deborah Milenkovitch, with the kind permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...Or is it something changing in me...
...Good...
...And the moment something is inevitable it receives a higher meaning in the eyes of men, especially if it is supported by power...
...What the term Marxism means today has no more connection with the real Marx and his theory than does the contemporary church with the Bible...
...We were thrown out of the villa into the cold again—at Palmoticeva 8. The heat was not strong enough to allow one to sit for a long time, and we had a fire only in the afternoon...
...leave everything else to itself...
...Of course, a primitive tribe has no governmental power in the form of police or courts, but it has spiritual power administered by priests...
...There is so little to which one can react, so that when something is observed— something unusual, out of the ordinary—it stands out sharply and appears as if one's senses are especially acute...
...How far will this sensitiveness go...
...Because, because, because...
...It was a gradual and mild dying...
...That is the form their social resistance takes...
...There in Podbisce scallions grew in the summer...
...Yesterday Politika announced the shooting of Imre Nagy and other comrades...
...Not a single convict whom I have come into contact with gave me the impression that I was talking to an abnormal, disturbed person, but only to a man who was in some way unwilling to give up some sin...
...March 3, 1959 (in the afternoon) This morning while looking at the draft of "The Legend of Czar Dukljan" and reading Ann Vickers by Sinclair Lewis, I formed an opinion of how one should set up jails...
...They are what is noble in man, trampled and tragic, but indestructible, pure, and brilliant...
...They kept the review of Land Without Justice from the New York Times...
...In any case, the present system is not good...
...It progresses poorly...
...During the winter after the war we did not heat our first villa...
...Those who did this to me probably believed that they were humane—they made some fine distinction between execution and a sentence of nine years in jail, not to mention their humiliating me and slandering me in the dirtiest way without any chance for me to defend myself...
...Is that the human power of adaptation...
...But the moment they separate themselves from that need, the moment they perfect themselves as a form, the moment men forget their origins—the myths disappear...
...But let's drop this musing about myself...
...They should come under the care of psychologists and psychiatrists, and not under the care of jailers and political supervisors...
...It exists within all men, or within almost all men, no matter how educated and intelligent they are...
...6:30—emptying the chamberpot...
...The worship of power is only one expression, a distorted one at that, of the inevitability of power within human communities and human life...
...The effect is similar to that of narcotics, but deeper, because it embraces the entire person and makes the criminal submit to it...
...Yes, changes in the weather affect one's disposition—any steady weather pattern maintains also my steady disposition, as a rule...
...Criminals [...] are people who are ethically sick...
...But I often think that if I save myself from jail and ever have some money, I will spend the rest of my life being warm...
...One thought: dogmatists are the greatest tragedy of humanity, but unfortunately they most freauently move humanity also...
...It seems to me that one should create better conditions for improvement, hold ethical lectures and similar activities...
...I am very sorry for him...
...When among wolves, one must have sharper and stronger teeth...
...More precisely, one should ask which condition is worse...
...But the psychic fears were not so great—perhaps because of my recognition from experience that this condition will pass...
...That is not because of any philosophy...
...When reality is masked behind a revolutionary past and an ultimate goal, every policy that fails to take into account its weaknesses vis-a-vis the past and its illusions about the future must express itself as tyranny over society...
...The more dogmatism—the less freedom...
...That includes myself, although I controlled myself with skill and with determination...
...Even if "Marxism" is a logical extension of Marxian thought, it should be rejected as reactionary since by its ideological monopolism it stifles the freedom of the human spirit...
...From here, upon hearing the news of his death, I pay him my respects, which any honest man owes to martyrs...
...Because marriage is—regardless of its different forms through history—one of those enduring and eternal characteristics of human life...
...They change history...
...It seems to me that those who decide about my fate are not conscious of that, and in order to "work me over" and "break me down" they in fact go from mistake to mistake...
...1:30—dinner...
...Jail Diary" (unpublished) FROM A PRISON DIARY 275...
...I can't say what is better, because isolation, in some ways, has advantages...
...Even the ladybug in its own way "thinks" and struggles in the world and lasts as long as it is allowed to...
...The sun will shine further, and, as always, time will put everything in perspective...
...But he does, and he chose Hungary at the decisive moment...
...most innocent and most justified ambition— warps one's understanding of men and of relations among men...
...Life is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither happy nor sad...
...Because of that suspension of events, isolation did not seem so long to me...
...After long agonizing and pondering, I finally took some meprobamate and gradually calmed down...
...I didn't use it...
...I am writing a protest—like Yugoslavia protesting to the U.S.S.R...
...And I lived far from the school...
...The essential thing is to understand properly the problem of offenders and their crimes, and to introduce a greater degree of democracy than exists in any country, especially in relation to political offenders, who are, in fact, not offenders but opponents of the ruling ideas and system...
...This would, of course, cause a change in the judiciary and in the judges, since, during the trial and the interrogation, psychologists would participate...
...My day looks like this: 5:30—rising (in the summer, an hour later...
...February 9, 1958 I have grown quite accustomed to life in a cell, and sometimes I even feel good...
...And power—both its specific form and the institutions that exercise it—acquires even sooner the mythological form...
...Jails should be totally abolished, that is, such as they are at present, since criminals are people spiritually disturbed in a specific manner...
...I just feel respect toward life, toward every living thing, as if each form were one of the stages culminating in human life and from which the latter has sprung up...
...Marriage is a very great sacrament and can represent for many people one of the greatest moral bonds and obligations...
...August 8, 1964 Today half of my sentence (six and a half years) has been completed...
...When it was over, I was still cold...
...Except that I wrote...
...The state should secure marriage as much as possible by noninterference...
...Without exception criminals endure jail with difficulty...
...In his wonderfully innocent world there is already a grain of evil—father is in jail—there are struggles to free him...
...When I returned to the villa, there was electric heat, but it was expensive...
...Truth about human destiny can only be complex like that destiny itself...
...Perhaps he would not have been caught...
...I now go to bed around suppertime because I am cold...
...But we Communists hid and learned better to suffer...
...Men therefore fight not only for material 274 MILOVAN DJILAS interests—money or position—but for other August 30, 1963 things that make the essence of their life...
...Everything was throbbing— chest, head, stomach, and with such a force that it seemed to me that the back part of my skull would explode...
...I observed one characteristic within myself which has developed spontaneously: I am careful not to step on any insect or worm I find along my path...
...But I will not go crazy or kill myself, or die...
...From this I draw two conclusions: the entire system of re-education (not necessarily measured by political results) that tries to make convicts over into "socialist citizens" is wrong, because it does not lead toward real understanding of mistakes, but toward giving up under pressure...
...7:00—p.m.—supper...
...In imagination he has probably accomplished that already...
...March 17, 1958 My son, Aleksa, Stefica told me, is always dreaming up ways to set me free...
...But I spent the winters of '50 and '51 in the city and it was cold there again...
...It is essential to understand that no single idea in a system is absolutely good and should have absolute sway...
...Up to now I have been number 6880...
...Much worse than the Communists before the war...
...It is nothing else but petty politics and politicking, which defends naked power and authoritarianism, covering itself clumsily with ideas and ideals, some of which could even be real...
...marriage can be the strength that bends their characters toward the good...
...His death is also the symptom of the resistance to change in the East...
...it doesn't bother me any more...
...For what purpose...
...In bureaucracy and in state capitalism, since all categories of conduct are overturned (that is, all categories of the normal, inherited morality of common man), friendship is meaningless...
...And the chief theme of that struggle centers on the way of life already existing, or, for others, on that which should be achieved and which seems possible...
...That was a small mistake in comparison with impressive visions and wise proofs predicting the collapse of capitalism and the bourgeoisie...
...up to now the walk has usually been at 8:30 and lasted only an hour...
...I cannot explain this to myself...
...In some manner society must protect itself from criminals...
...But it has another characteristic: the expression of the consensus of the community...
...The accused would be classified according to the required type of treatment, and the essential task would be not to determine how long they must spend in isolation (not our present form of isolation), but to ask when they are going to be cured...
...it is "inherent" that no human community can survive without power such as corresponds to the external or internal circumstances and to the nature of the community itself...
...In order to begin the introduction of such a system it is not necessary to change the entire society...
...I planted an apricot, and it has sprouted...
...I wrote immediately in angry protest...
...I myself do not know what should be done, but it is clear to me that one cannot become a good person until he tames something within himself—and is it even possible?—to tame the evil part of one's own being...
...The latter punish only those violations against blood relatives or against the tribe as a whole...
...For dogmatic—and not only dogmatic—reasons, we Communists proclaimed that the normal human concepts and ethical values are petty bourgeois...
...Marx's mistake was that he equated the collapse of capitalism with the collapse of classes...
...Today the Assistant Superintendent called me to his office and gave his permission to install an electric heater...
...And evil is all that which is used by others to strengthen their might and mastery...
...Instead, we made a fire only in the bedroom...
...And now, this place...
...The goal of socialism— of course, a democratic one—can be only a society of mixed economy (governmental, co-operative and private), of nonviolent struggle between free classes, if we are already talking in "class" language...
...Because of that, jails are boring to people—prison takes away that concreteness, that experience of change...
...Apparently, conscience is the chief reason why some bear up with greater difficulty than others...
...His cause, however, did not suffer from his death...
...I was sent to cut their leaves...
...bedtime, by regulation, is at 9:00 (the bell rings 15 minutes before that...
...and again it was cold...
...Of course, no society is completely harmonious, since each specific way of life represents and is guided by some class, authority, or group of classes...
...February 13, 1958 In everyday political reality humanism shows itself to be unrealistic and unreal...
...The way of life is not only material, but also spiritual, psychological, etc.—in short, life in all its complex puzzlement...
...I didn't have anything to celebrate it with save that I divided a piece of chocolate with my cellmate...
...without any changes, he is dead...
...And that means a lot...
...The arbor vitae and the pepper are not sprouting...
...His views remained unknown, but his practice did not, and it guided him...
...But it seems to me that there is a special and deeper reason: human communities cannot thrive without power...
...February 4, 1959 It is cold but I am working normally in the morning—happy to see that I have ideas to write about, particularly in this place, in fact, quite a few ideas...
...When I answered him, he said, "You know I have tanks, and I could liberate you...
...His cause does not exist, because it was not formulated...
...A product of his time, a great scientist, he was also a great utopian...
...Because of that recurring wish, I make a note of this...
...I should remark that in each of them there is some resistance, something that prevents them from seeing their crimes and violations as their own humiliation...
...I don't think the pain was more intense than in the attacks I had in November of last year...
...Hoarfrost on the arbor vitae makes them even more beautiful...
...It only seems so to a condemned man, and also to myself...
...Often I stayed up working until two or three in the morning...
...The worst of all is that ambition—even the From "Jail Diary," by Milovan Djilas...
...Man without happening is crippled...
...And maybe I did not...
...If this proposition is correct—and it is—then FROM A PRISON DIARY 273 jails that do not rehabilitate anybody are an absurdity, as irrational as beatings during interrogations...
...I often thought that a similar fate awaited me...
...Copyright 1975, by Milovan Djilas...
...They are today, in essence, revengeful, and even those who would want to be the least cruel are bad...
...Every evening around six they turn on the heat for about fifteen minutes...
...Just as it happens to each individual when his ideas come into conflict with the real trends of development, so also it happens to each movement...
...They kept me in solitary confinement for 20 months...
...In order to destroy one world, Marx had for sure to promise an ideal, utopian vision...
...Even more than if he had remained alive...
...They reminded me of my birthplace...
...Desires, traditions and ideas either give in to developments or they are crushed by them...
...June 4, 1958 They confiscated the letter from Milka [his sister...
...Not much help in that, except one can go to bed a little more comfortably...
...March 14, 1967 Aleksa's birthday—at last I am celebrating it at my home...
...I must say that I do not believe in classless society, even though capitalism has heard the last bell toll for itself...
...This applies to both individuals and the state...
...Therefore, those in power cannot treat their opponents as absolutely evil...
...In the final analysis, those above me could only take revenge, while I will emerge from this experience strengthened and purer than I was...
...The more talk about the ultimate ideal—the less freedom...
...Then came the war...
...If someone does not pull it out, I hope to nurse it and make it grow...
...When we are no longer among the living, it will be all the same how we lived, but—a lesson for the living...
...I lost all interest in ants, bees and bugs...
...I have neglected my room during the winter...
...June 15, 1958 In order to prevent me from sunning myself they changed my walk back to 7:30 in the morning instead of 9:30...
...April 24, 1958 Contemporary men admire power...
...That is conscience, and yet it is not—if by conscience one means to understand the sum of knowledge or the totality of particular national formulations, of human, class, and individual roles...
...December 3, 1958 Although it cannot be considered a thankful task, whenever I talk with some of the convicts I try to persuade them not to steal or kill in the future...
...I must admit now that spying and provocation by the convicts has ceased...
...At the University—not a single winter did I live in a room with heat (except for the last winter, when I slept on the cement floor in a steam-heated kitchen...
...It is more correct to speak of faith...
...Friendship is relative...
...I had just finished The New Class when the Hungarian Revolution took place...
...During my walks, I stroll a little and then lie down to sun myself if there is sun, and then I think about what I am writing...
...Such reasons as fear, material dependence, flattery and blind worship are insufficient...
...Monolithic ideology brings with it centralism and the rule of one small group of doctrinaire men...
...All these and similar reasonings led me only more fully to become conscious of how deep an injustice was done to me when I was thrown into jail simply because I could not prevent myself from stating my views...
...Must not react...
...February 17, 1958 One should always be opposed to any monolithic party ideology in socialist parties...
...And in that connection he asked me yesterday, "Which is stronger, tanks or airplanes...
...It sometimes seems to me that the differences between myself and the benevolent ladybug whom I meet along the path are really minimal...
...In this way we are creating two mutually irreconcilable worlds...
...Man's life is full of myths and men are barely aware of them...
...In my first jail term, I was cold...
...Diary of Thoughts, 1953-1954 (unpublished) January 30, 1958 The cold weather continues...
...I do not know how much or in what way this admiration is expressed in the West, since I do not know the philosophies of those men, but I believe that it exists in some form there also...
...May 22, 1958 I was told that all foreign books are forbidden to me...
...It seems to me that it was part of my fate to suffer—in order to affirm myself...
...In that "Marxism" there is nothing new, nor is it capable of creating anything new...
...Obviously some pettiness—a "tightening" up...
...270 MILOVAN DJILAS March 23, 1958 As I think back—I have been cold all my life...
...I will suffer: that is correct...
...Of course, for those reasons power is admired by many persons...
...That means that people susceptible to crime must be separated—but in such a way as not to be denied a single human right...
...Not only conscience, but also belief in some ideal not exclusively one's own...
...Moreover, a bureaucrat is even commended and thanked if he manages to rid himself with ease of a past friendship, naturally with the good excuse that it is all for the sake of the "revolution...
...Sometimes I feel freer than ever before in my life—my thought is free, my conscience at peace...
...But it is a reality of the greatest spirits—an irresistible and unquenchable yearning of man for ever greater humaneness...
...otherwise, he would not believe himself, and, even less, would others believe him...
...In high school, the same...
...They are creators of the great and the beautiful, even when defeated...
...I can bear more pain than they can impose on me...
...This morning I got up drowsy, but also quite calm—it is always so after a dream...
...Many handfuls were put on the table and we all grabbed at them...
...Among most of them, resolution to avoid crime increases with the fear of punishment, that is, with disgust at prison life, which is void of any pleasures and family responsibilities...
...March 1, 1958 It is absolutely untrue that in jail, and especially in a cell, one's senses become sharper...
...In the second villa (Nincic), it was warm...
...April29, 1958 Yesterday they gave me my new prison number: 1732...
...Disgusting...
...November 23, 1966 Two days ago I sent to the authorities a petition to give me some way of heating my cell...
...the contemporary world—at least in the world in which I live—as a rule, ambition governs men...
...Their roots are to be found in some need—material, social, or spiritual...
Vol. 22 • July 1975 • No. 3
