From stalinism to “heresy”. The evolution of the political thought of Milovan Ðjilas, 1941-1949

Abstrakt

Knowledge of communism, so carefully presented in the best and the most famous work of Milovan Ðilas entitled The New Class. An Analysis of the Communist System, New York, 1957, undoubtedly resulted from his previous political practice and theoretical reflections. In the years 1941-1949, Ðilas was both a politician and one of the main ideologists and propagandists of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. In his later writings, books and speeches, he pointed out that even in time of the war he began to express doubts whether the communistic idea, as he understood at that time, indeed could be fully realized. The above mentioned doubts should be treated hypothetically, we should approach to them with caution. Mostly because they are expressed later after World War II. We do not have a possibility to confirm its veracity on the basis of other sources, documents and messages than those presented in the article. However, the analysis of Ðilas intellectual attitude after the outbreak of the conflict between the Soviet and Yugoslav Communists in 1948, leaves no doubts that slowly and gradually, but irreversibly, Ðilas began to undermine the meaning and the possibility of building „socialism” in line with Stalinist principles. Ðilas propaganda initial admiration of Soviet reality gave way to criticism. Of course, in 1949, so at the end of the period, Ðilas was still a communist. Nevertheless, he inclined to the conviction that Stalinist model becomes a clear deviation from the „true” Marxism. It would be difficult to determine to which extent the conviction was authentic and to which extent - primarily the political consequence, arising from the fact that after the Cominform resolution of June 1948, the Yugoslav Communists, if they did not want to give up the dictatorship of Stalin, had to develop their own ideology and a line of conduct. Anyway, like other leaders of the CPY, Ðilas became a „heretic” rejecting Stalinist orthodoxy. Such „heresy” was the beginning of an attempt to build Yugoslav ideology, orthodoxy. Until the turn of the years 1953/1954 Ðilas would be one of its creators.