YUGOSLAV REPORT
THREE GENERATIONS
There is no shortage of brave men
in
Yugoslavia.
But the
quality of courage that inspired Djilas'
mea culpa,
offered
up
at a time
when he was still heir-apparent at the height of his p.ower, quite deliber–
ately damning his own future along with all the other fruits of hard-won
victory, was of an order rare even among Montenegrins. There lingers
about it, faint but unmistakable, the odor of incense and of self-immola–
tion - a faith victorious, and of the victor calmly proceeding to disem–
bowel himself for the sake of truth. The fact that Djilas can by no
stretch of the imagination be regarded as a saint detracts neither from
his deed nor from his image.
His release on parole - a move tactical rather than legal and like the
earlier trials, convictions and pardons, dictated exclusively by political con–
siderations - is unlikely to detract from that image. Djilas remains the
no-sayer, the radical par excellence, and as such his presence is more
pervasive today than it was in the thirties when, poet turned commissar,
an inflexible fanatic in a dirty raincoat, he rose from student leader
to Partisan general and Vice-President of the Federal Republic.
For years his very name in Yugoslavia was an awkward silence
be–
tween quotes, the more awkward for being in strange contrast to the
open and unrestrained criticism that generally prevails. People air their
feelings in public, without restraint and at the top of their lungs.
Students rip into the inanities and injustices of an educational system
still hobbled by politics and petty intrigue - dogmatic professors, ir–
relevant courses, cost-of-living stipends (tuition itself is free) allotted on
the basis of pull rather than ability. "Partisan hero?" sneered the one
efficient salesgirl I encountered. "That's not a title; that's an excuse. For
being incompetent." The atmosphere is relaxed and quite boisterously
unsubdued; and most of the outward trappings of police-state terror,
which were conspicuous as far back as 1928, when King Alexander first
dissolved parliament and proclaimed a military dictatorship, are no
longer apparent except for the gargoyle faces of the uniformed cops, an
