Milovan Djilas was one of the leaders of the World War II Yugoslav Partisan struggle and Communist revolution. Between 1945 and 1954 he was at various times a member of Tito's Cabinet, vice-president ...of Yugoslavia, and president of the federal assembly. In 1954 he was stripped of his offices because of his advocacy of democratic reforms. He was imprisoned for a total of nine years by Tito, but his writings, published in the United States and smuggled back into Eastern Europe, were a source of inspiration to the next generation of dissidents. His best-known book, The New Class, published in 1957, was widely acclaimed in the West as a pioneering critical analysis of the Communist system by a former insider. Mr. Djilas, who lives in 1990, Belgrade, spoke with Margaret Smith of The Fletcher Forum on May 19, in New York City. He authorized and updated the interview in October 1990.
Democracy without reality, or a democracy of pure doctrine inevitably loses when pitted against undemocratic forces, for undemocratic forces are more adaptable since they are more inconsiderate. The ...relationship between national identity and individual integrity is also discussed.
Djilas's argument is that the revolutions in Eastern Europe are vital for Western Europe in order to release the energies and creative powers of Europe as a whole.Consequently it is in the interests ...of the West to support these revolutions unconditionally, albeit they are taking place because the existing system of power is bankrupt. The revolution in Eastern Europe, by organizing itself around democracy, will put an end to the sterile controversy between the significance of capitalism and communism. The Soviet Union too is undergoing a democratic revolution:democratic freedom in Russia will only be possible with the independence of the non-Russian nations.
The possibility that the world will awake with surprise one morning to a radical change--whether hoped for or feared--in the Soviet system of government is so remote that we can only wonder that the ...prospect continues to tantalize us, provoking a recurrent international concern. Perhaps it is because we are all too aware of the vulnerability of our analyses and hypotheses as they apply to even the most "open" and flexible of political systems that we do not cease to marvel at the opaque intransigence of the "closed," rigid, "perfect" system of the Soviet Union, and its indisputable reality in our time.
The idea of democracy Djilas, Milovan; Kolakowski, Leszek; Revel, Jean-François
Society (New Brunswick),
05/1990, Letnik:
27, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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