Prisoner 6880

Gratified by the exemplary behavior of the Serbs of Mitrovica, a visiting archduke offered to build the community a town hall. No, thank you, said the citizens, what we want is a big jail. A jail! exclaimed the archduke. In heaven's name, why? Because, said the citizens, if we have a big main jail we will not have to travel so far to visit our loved ones.

So the big jail at Mitrovica, 40 miles northwest of Belgrade, was built (the story goes), and many people came to visit its inmates--who included, between World Wars I and II, such distinguished members of the subsequent Communist government of Yugoslavia as President Jbsip Broz Tito, successive Vice Presidents Milovan Djilas and Alexander Ran-kovic, and late Assembly President Mosha Pijade. The Communists had such an easy time of it in Mitrovica jail (Tito swotted up on Stalinism, Pijade , translated Das Kapital and smuggled it out to a printer) that when they took over, they made certain that their own victims had no such advantages. Visits to Mitrovica prison are few and far between today, guards are tougher, cells are no longer heated in winter. Kept in solitary is the jail's most dangerous prisoner: ex-Vice President Djilas.

Djilas became a two-timer at Mitrovica after a secret trial last January on a charge of treasonable activity. His treason: an article in New York's Socialist New Leader calling the revolution in Hungary "the beginning of the end of Communism generally" (TIME, Dec. 24). Sentenced to three years' hard labor, Djilas, 46 and in good health, had every prospect of surviving his sentence, re-entering Yugoslav politics and even in time becoming one of the challengers for the mantle of the 64-year-old Tito. Since his arrest Djilas' following has grown. Yugoslav peasants, confronted with rising prices, have been heard saying: "Djilas was right." But last week it was learned that the hands of Prisoner 6880 (Djilas) in Mitrovica's Block 2 were turning black and his knee joints stiffening as a result of cold and close confinement.

Foreign friends, fearing rheumatoid arthritis, began to organize a petition to Tito (sunbathing by the Adriatic) for an easing of Djilas' sentence. Yet such are the political advantages of being in Mitrovica, by this time a tradition in Yugoslav government, that Djilas himself, a firm believer in the historical process, was reported quite cheerful about his miserable condition, saying: "It proves to the Yugoslav people that I am not a Communist."

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