Truth That Hurts

Milovan Djilas has been rebellious all his life, but he carried things too far when he loudly demanded that his friend and leader, Yugoslav Boss Marshal Tito, liberalize his Communist regime. Tito did not agree with his Vice President and wartime partisan comrade, but nonetheless told him: "Go on writing." It was cruel advice. For his efforts, Djilas was twice arrested, sentenced to nine years in solitary confinement for writing The New Class, the most devastating analysis of Communism yet published. Last year, after serving 3 1/2 years of his term, the fiery Montenegrin was released on condition that he write nothing further about politics. Friends sadly predicted that he would not long remain on parole, for, as one Yugoslav exile put it, "his life is politics. You might as well ask him to stop breathing." Last week, incorrigibly still breathing politics, Djilas, 51, was arrested for the fourth time in seven years. In bed when policemen knocked, Djilas shaved and dressed while three plainclothesmen and an investigating judge ransacked his apartment, seized some papers and manuscripts. Then Tito's onetime possible successor was whisked off to jail. The likely charge (under a new law specifically designed for people like Djilas and rushed through last month): publishing memoirs containing information damaging to the state.

Djilas' latest book, Conversations with Stalin, is painfully embarrassing to Tito. Any revelation of intimate Kremlin secrets might upset delicate Soviet-Yugoslav relations. The book discloses details of Tito's plan to move two army divisions into neighboring Albania and take over the Communist satellite. In January 1948, Djilas reports, Stalin enthusiastically supported the scheme, told the author: "You ought to swallow up Albania, the sooner the better."* But a few days later, the Soviet dictator changed his mind, fearing Tito's increased influence in the Balkans. Hastily, Stalin sent a telegram to Belgrade warning that he would expose Tito's invasion plans if they were not called off. Five months later Tito made his break with Stalin.

Originally scheduled to appear in the U.S. in May, Conversations with Stalin was "indefinitely postponed" last week by the U.S. publisher (Harcourt, Brace) in the hope of sparing Djilas some danger.

Djilas himself, a toughly honest man, seemed less worried about his safety. As he wrote in the book: "The truth is breaking through, even if those who are fighting for it may disappear in the process."

* Though hardly embarrassing to Tito, other fascinating snatches of Stalin's conversation with Djilas: "Churchill is the kind who, if you don't watch him, will slip a kopeck out of your pocket. And Roosevelt? He dips in his hand only for bigger coins." "The West will make Western Germany their own, and we shall turn Eastern Germany into our state . . . We shall recover in 15 or 20 years and then we'll have another go at it."

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