454
MIL 0 VAND J ILAS
INT: When did you come to realize this about Stalin, the way he
was?
I mean, like the portrait you give of him in your book.
D JILAS:
Oh, after the conflict with him. But at the same time now
I think he was one of the great historical men. Very cruel
and
very dark, like Peter the First or Ivan the Terrible.
INT: But morally speaking....
DJILAS:
No, you can't consider him within moral measures. To lie
in politics, this is normal.
INT: Is it?
DJILAS:
It is.
(Laughter)
I think. It comes as a consequence. Because
if the others try to cheat you, you must cheat them. Stalin is the
only politician who made the principle from the lie.
INT: Aren't there also many others?
DJILAS:
You cannot find such a man in history. For example, he said
once to some movie director that Peter the Great made a mistake.
Which one? And Stalin said: "Petrushka did not kill enough."
(Laughs violently)
He was good, he said, but he made a big
mistake: he did not kill enough. You cannot find such a man in
history.
INT: Have you written anything fictional on this subject? I mean, do
you think you will some day?
D
]ILAS:
Probably not. Not more than I did in those
Conversations.
Now I wrote some essays on Stalin, about some problems related
to Stalin. For example, what were Stalin's ideas. What he thought
about Marx and Engels. And about Lenin's testament. Because the
discussion in the East and in the West about Lenin's testament is
completely confused. Everybody thinks that Lenin's testament is some–
thing great, but Stalin - how to say - Stalin avoided. . ..
INT: Talking about it.
D JILAS:
Talking about it and putting it in practice. You see, in his
testament Lenin really meant that Stalin was his nearest successor,
and nobody else. Because he spoke only about Stalin's personal
mistakes, that he was not polite, or something like that. But speaking
about the other Bolshevik leaders, he spoke about their political mis–
takes. That does not mean that Lenin said that Stalin should have
been his successor. I think that Lenin was also confused in writing
the testament. Because, you see, nobody thought about the moment
he wrote it; he had had a strong attack during the night, and the
next day he wrote the testament. How after such attacks could he....
INT: What attacks were they?
D
]ILAS :
In the brain. That was arteriosclerosis. He died of arterio–
sclerosis.
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