DZILAS AND THE YUGOSLAV PRESS
Lazitch, Branko
THE PUBLICATION of Djilas's book, on August 11, 1957, was greeted by the international press with comments generally favorable to his views. None of these comments was, of course, printed in...
...The warning rang clearly in the ears of the Yugoslav leaders...
...In 1954 the review Nova Misao ("New Thought") had published Anatomy of a Morality, Djilas's first attack on the governing class, and readers had flung themselves on it...
...while the former consideration pleased all opponents of the system, the latter gave rise to thought among the communists themselves...
...So much mail from foreign countries is received in Yugoslavia that it was impossible to intercept all the papers in which Djilas was quoted...
...it was possible to distinguish at least two of the ideas put forward by Djilas: that the Communists were a new governing class, with a monopoly of power, ownership and ideology...
...In the course of a single week three anti-Djilas articles were published at Belgrade— the sign that a fresh campaign had been launched against the former communist leader...
...There could never, of course, have been any question of publishing the book in Belgrade...
...None of these comments was, of course, printed in the Yugoslav press...
...reprinted from Saturn] 197...
...Then came a sudden silence: not only did the Belgrade papers drop the Djilas affair completely, but the provincial papers had not even time to open the campaign they were planing...
...ONCE INTEREST in Djilas's book had been aroused, everyone wanted to read it...
...Once again the authorities resorted to a straightforward administrative measure: on September 6 the Ministry of the Interior decided to prohibit the admission and circulation of any foreign newspapers or reviews which were reprinting the book or giving quotations from it...
...So there was only one explanation for this headlong rush: people were hoping to read, between the lines, what Djilas had said against the new leading class...
...As a matter of fact, the readers who flung themselves avidly on the articles in which Borba, Communist and Politika attacked Djilas's book had their money's worth...
...On that occasion the Government retorted by banning the review—the issue carrying the Djilas article had been its first...
...Despite the traditional Stalinist insults (disciple of Goebbels, renegade, traitor, enemy of the working class, tool of world reaction, calumniator, etc...
...As for sales, they are practically nil...
...In January 1954, when Djilas put forward his first and much milder criticisms of the new class, Tito, who knew what he was talking about, admitted to the Plenum of the Central Committee, "If we had allowed [those criticisms] to be published, things as we see them would not have survived for a year...
...THE EXPLANATION is simple: the three articles had a boomerang effect, especialy the one published on August 11 by Borba, the central journal of the Yugoslav Communist party...
...That issue of the paper was sold out by 10 a.m., and in some provincial towns people lined up at the newspaper stalls to get hold of a copy...
...And from the beginning of August onwards, it was packed with information about Djilas's book...
...But though Borba is automatically distributed to all the organizations of the Yugoslav CP and to every member of the party, everyone knows that not even the party members read it...
...Extracts had been translated into French, English and German among other languages, and either printed in magazines or newspapers or broadcast in foreign programs intended for Yugoslavia...
...but there is in that country a publication entitled the Tan jug Bulletin, which circulates among the leaders of the system and presents translations of the most important foreign articles and communiques...
...This bulletin serves as a barometer to show how Titoism stands with the international press...
...and that Communism was on the wane...
Vol. 5 • April 1958 • No. 2
