Searchable PDF Format
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Milovan Djilas was born in 1911 in Montenegro, which he describes in his autobiography, Land without Justice. He was already known for his poetry and his revolutionary views at Belgrade University and joined the illegal Communist Party in 1932. Although arrested, tortured, and imprisoned for three years, he joined the party’s Central Committee in 1938 and became a member of its Politburo in 1940. When Germany occupied Yugoslavia in 1941 he joined the Partisans and in 1944 headed a military mission to Moscow, which he visited again the next year. In 1947 he helped to establish the Comin- form in Belgrade and in 1948 headed his last mission to Moscow, a few months before the break between Tito and Stalin. As a result of growing disagreements, on account of critical articles written by Djilas, he was expelled from the Central Committee in 1954 and thereupon wrote The New Class, his famous exposure of bureaucracy and the Communist oligarchy. His life was now a procession of trials. Sentenced to a sus pended sentence of three years for an interview he gave to the New York Times, he was later tried for criticizing the Yugo slavian inaction against Russian brutality in Hungary and imprisoned for three years. For The New Class a further seven years was added at a third trial, but he was conditionally released in 1961. In prison Djilas had been writing consistently, mainly about Montenegro, and Conversations with Stalin was written after his release. In April 1962 he was re-arrested and imprisoned for nine years for the publication of this book. Cover design by Germano Facetti For a complete list of books available please write to Penguin Books whose address can be found on the back of the title page PENGUIN BOOKS 1 9 6 7 CONVERSATIONS WITH STALIN MILOVAN DJILAS MILOVAN DJILAS CONVERSATIONS WITH STALIN Translated from the Serbo-Croat by Michael B. Petrovich PENGUIN BOOKS Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex AUSTRALIA: Penguin Books Pty Ltd, 76a Whitehorse Road, Mitcham, Victoria First published in the U.S.A. 1963 Published in Great .Britain by Rupert Hart-Davis 1962 Published in Penguin Books 1963 Copyright © Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962 Made and printed in Great Britain by Hazell W atson & Viney L td Aylesbury and Slough Set in Monotype Imprint This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher’s consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published To the memory of ANEURIN BEVAN Contents FOREWORD 9 1 Raptures n 2 Doubts 70 3 Disappointments 99 Conclusion 145 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 149 INDEX 165 Note on the Spelling and Pronunciation of Serbo-Croat Words and Names s = s as in sink s = sh as in shift c = ts as in mats c = ch as in charge 6 = similar to, but lighter than, c - as in arch z = j as in French jour z = z as in zodiac j = y as in yell nj = n as in neutral g = g as in go dj = g as in George lj = li as in million Foreword It is in the nature of the human memory to rid itself of the superfluous, to retain only what has proved to be most im portant in the light of later events. Yet that is also its weak side. Being biased it cannot help adjusting past reality to fit present needs and future hopes. Aware of this, I have endeavoured to present the facts as exactly as possible. If this book is still not free from my views of today, this should be attributed neither to malice nor to the bias of one who took part in those events, but rather to the nature of memory itself and to my effort to elucidate past en counters and events in the light of what I know now. There is not much in this book that the well-versed reader will not already know from published memoirs and other literature. However, since an event becomes more compre hensible and tangible if explained in greater detail and from several vantage points, it may be useful if I, too, have my say. I hold that humans and human relationships are more im portant than dry facts, and so I have paid greater attention to them. And if the book contains anything that might be called literary, this too should be ascribed less to my style of expres sion than to my desire to make the subject as interesting, clear, and true as I can. In 1955 or 1956, when I was working on my autobiography, the idea occurred to me to set apart my meetings with Stalin in a separate book which could be published first. However, I landed in jail, and while I was imprisoned I could not very well write a book of this kind, even though it would deal with the past, for it could not but touch on current political relations. Only upon my release from prison, in January of 1961, did I return to my old idea. To be sure, this time, in view of changed conditions and the evolution of my own views, I had to approach this subject rather differently. For one thing, I now devoted greater attention to the psychological, the human 1 0 FOREWORD aspects of these historical events. Moreover, accounts of Stalin are still so contradictory, and his image is still so vivid, that I have also felt it necessary to present at the end, on the basis of personal knowledge and experience, my own conclusions about this truly enigmatic personality. Above all else, I am driven by an inner compulsion to leave nothing unsaid that might be of significance to those who write history, and especially to those who strive for a freer human existence. In any case, both the reader and I should be satisfied if the truth is left unscathed, even if it is enveloped in my own emotions and judgements. For we must realize that the truth, however complete, about people and human relations can never be anything but the truth about particular persons, persons in a given time. Belgrade November ig 6i 1 Raptures i The first foreign military mission to come to the Supreme Command of the Army of People’s Liberation and Partisan Units of Yugoslavia was the British. It parachuted in during May 1943. The Soviet Mission arrived nine months later - in February 1944. Soon after the arrival of the Soviet Mission the question arose of sending a Yugoslav military mission to Moscow, especially since a mission of this kind had already been assigned to the corresponding British Command. In the Supreme Command, that is, among the members of the Central Com mittee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia who were work ing at headquarters at the time, there developed a fervent desire to send a mission to Moscow. I believe that Tito spoke about it to the Chief of the Soviet Mission, General Korneyev; however, it is quite certain that the matter was settled by a telegram from the Soviet Government. The sending of a mis sion to Moscow was of manifold significance to the Yugoslavs, and the mission itself was of a different character and had quite a different purpose from the one assigned to the British Command. As is well known, it was the Communist Party of Yugoslavia that organized the Partisan and insurgent movement against the German and Italian forces of occupation in Yugoslavia and their domestic collaborators. While solving its national prob lems through the most ruthless kind of warfare, it continued to regard itself as a member of the world Communist movement, as something inseparable from the Soviet Union - ‘the home land of socialism’. Throughout the entire war the innermost agency of the Party, the Political Bureau, more popularly known by the abbreviated name Politburo, managed to keep 12 CONVERSATIONS WITH STALIN a connexion with Moscow by radio. Strictly speaking this con nexion was with the Communist International - the Comin tern - but at the same time it meant a connexion with the Soviet Government as well. The special conditions brought on by war and the revolu tionary movement’s struggle for survival had already, on several occasions, led to misunderstandings with Moscow. Among the most significant I would mention the following. Moscow could never quite understand the realities of the revolution in Yugoslavia, that is, the fact that in Yugoslavia simultaneously with the resistance to the forces of occupation a domestic revolution was also going on. The basis for this misconception was the Soviet Government’s fear that the Western Allies, primarily Great Britain, might resent its taking advantage of the misfortunes of war in the occupied countries to spread revolution and its Communist influence. Like many other new phenomena, the struggle of the Yugoslav Com munists was not in line with the settled views and indisputable interests of the Soviet Government and state. Nor did Moscow understand the peculiarities of warfare in Yugoslavia. No matter how much the struggle of the Yugo slavs encouraged not only the military - who were fighting to preserve the Russian nation from the Nazi German invasion - but official Soviet circles as well, the latter nevertheless under rated it, if only because they compared it with their own Partisans and their own methods of warfare. The Partisans in the Soviet Union were an auxiliary, quite incidental force of the Red Army, and they never grew into a regular army. Because of their own experience, the Soviet leaders could not realize that the Yugoslav Partisans were capable of turning into an army and a government, and that in time they would develop an identity and interests which differed from the Soviet - in short, their own pattern of life.