The Man in the Dock

The outspoken man who brought down the personal ire of Joseph Stalin on to the heads of Yugoslav Communists was a slim, sensitive-looking Communist intellectual named Milovan Djilas. He wrote the sharp anti-Soviet newspaper articles which preceded Marshal Tito's dramatic break from the Cominform in 1948. When Djilas' heretical words first broke into print, the Red world gasped. But Marshal Tito stood firmly behind Milovan Djilas. "Old Comrade," said Tito, "we'll stick together."

Promptly at 3 o'clock one afternoon last week, amid the marble columns and bronze grillwork of a onetime bank, the 108 members of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party gathered to arraign one of their distinguished members on charges of heresy. Tito himself was in charge. The man in the dock: Comrade Djilas.

More Democracy. No one save Tito was more popular in Yugoslavia than Vice President Djilas (pronounced jee-las). In actual rank he stood No. 3, if not No. 2, behind the dictator. A bright, tough product of the classic Yugoslav Red school (law studies, school riots, strikes, underground, jail, partisan warfare), he fought bravely with Tito in World War II. His father, two brothers and two sisters were killed by Axis troops. Only last month he was elected President of the Parliament. He was one of the few authorized to speak out on matters of party policy and dialectic; he did so, often and at length. But for once, Milovan Djilas had apparently spoken too loudly.

Most sensational of the fires Djilas built was a bitter, spicy article attacking wives of big shots in the Communist hierarchy for their snobbery and rudeness toward a pretty young actress named Milena Vranjak, who recently married Djilas' friend and fellow Montenegrin, Colonel General Peko Dapcevic (TIME, Jan. 18). But more basic was a series of articles he published in Borba, the official party daily, criticizing the theories and techniques of the Yugoslav party. He attacked bureaucracy, implied that it was "enslaving" the country's productive forces, poked fun at cell meetings and urged that they be opened to non-Communists as well as Communists. "When a revolution has been successful," wrote Djilas, "the next logical step is a turn toward democracy . . . There is and can be no other way out but more democracy, more free discussion, freer elections of social, government and economic organs, more adherence to law."

Djilas' attack came at a moment when Yugoslavia was astir with cold cross winds. Since Stalin's death, there has been a guarded renewal of relations between Belgrade and some Cominform capitals. Yugoslavia has renewed full diplomatic relations with Russia. Might Tito, the black-sheep Communist, return to the fold now that there was a change of shepherds? The State Department does not think he dares go back; the British only last week showed their belief in his continuing an tipathy for Moscow by granting Tito's regime another $8,400,000 in aid. It is a fact, however, that Tito's ranks are heavily populated with rugged, old-line Communists who, while not favoring a return to the boa-constrictor embrace of the Kremlin, resent any straying from the steely dialectics of true Communism, and distrust anything but opportunistic relations with the West.

By Car, by Foot. This old-school element had little stomach for 42-year-old Milovan Djilas' confident heresies, and it watched with uneasiness his growing support among younger Communists. The old Communists did not like his going to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II or his friendship with such British Socialists as Nye Bevan, Morgan Phillips and Clement Attiee. When Djilas' wordy barbs in Borba got to the old-school Communists, they demanded a showdown, and Tito gave the order.

Most of the committeemen, Tito included, arrived for the trial by car; Defendant Djilas, pale and haggard, came on foot. Through two long, private meetings, the comrades poured out their ire at Djilas' deviations and criticisms. Only one top Communist, Tito's official biographer, Vladimir Dedijer, had a good word for Djilas. Djilas himself confessed that "my attitude was wrong." He added that perhaps he had put his criticisms too strongly and unclearly, and that he had been "frightened" that the Communist bureaucracy might become like Russia's. He was, he insisted, still a "true Marxist." In striking contrast to the Soviet style, the trial was widely publicized in advance and the debate was carried over the government radio, with Defendant Djilas allowed as much air time as his attackers.

But the outcome really hinged on the decision of one man--Josip Broz Tito.

He had interrupted a "sick leave" and hurried back to Belgrade just for the trial, said Tito--and an occasional hacking cough showed that the dictator, 61, was still unwell. For his old comrade he used a friendly nickname, Djido. But that was all the comfort he gave the defendant.

At last, Tito spoke.

". . . When I read those articles," said he, "I saw that Djilas had gone too far . . . Yugoslavia did approach the West, but not in domestic matters, only in the foreign policy field. [He put] back the clock of revolutionary history, instead of making it go forward . . . This is revisionism of the worst type--reformist opportunism and not revolutionary dynamism, as he would like it to seem . . .

What was involved here was liquidation of the League of Communists, the shattering of discipline." That was it. The Central Committee voted to strip Comrade Djilas of all his party rank, and he obediently resigned the presidency of the Parliament. But contrite Milovan Djilas was not cast into the outer darkness: he remains--though probably not for long--one of Yugoslavia's four Vice Presidents. While he may participate in no party councils, he still holds his Communist Party card. That much Tito thought "Djido" deserved--presumably because of the pure quality of his repentance.

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