Milovan Djilas

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the writings of Milovan Djilas as an ideal way to a greater understanding of the motivating forces and factional alliances of Yugoslavia during the middle decades of this century. It specifically presents in-depth detail of the communist party of Yugoslavia's relationship with Russia after World War II.

From the Paper:

"Of all the troubled places on the face of the earth during the last century, Yugoslavia must be counted as among the most beleaguered, the most ill favored by fortune and history and by political leadership. So riddled is it with intrigue, with political brinkmanship, with unreasoning levels of partisanship, with hatred and idealism and a seeming inability to break free from its own enmeshing, tentacular past, that it seems almost impossible from the outside to understand the nature of the forces that drive this country. Thus we must turn to an insider if we are to gain anything like a full understanding of the political life of this nation during its most turbulent 20th century.
"Milovan Djilas is just such an outsider, and his writings on his country and his government are an ideal way to come to a greater understanding of the motivating forces and factional alliances of Yugoslavia during the middle decades of this century. Especially helpful among his writings is his Conversations With Stalin. The book did in fact result from a series of conversations between the two men when Djilas was one of four senior members of the Yugoslavian Communist government after World War II until his expulsion from the Yugoslav Communist party in 1954 and eventual imprisonment on political charges."

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