МИЛОВАН ЂИЛАС И СРПСКА ПОЛИТИЧКА ЕМИГРАЦИЈА (1954–1995)
Milovan Đilas and the Serbian Political Emigration (1954–1995)

Summary/Abstract: Milovan Đilas’ political contacts with the members of the union „Liberation“ can be followed from the pre-war students’ movement at the Belgrade University, over staunch ideologically irreconcilable wartime and post-war confl icts to the period of cooperation after the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in January 1954 where he parted ways with his party comrades and until recently ideological friends. Democratically inclined and pro-Yugoslav, distanced from all extremist emigrant organizations which spent their forces in futile discussions about the destruction of the political system in Yugoslavia, the Union supported the struggle of Milovan Đilas against political dogmatism and for democratic evolution. Respecting the magnitude of his sacrifi ce for the idea of democratic reforms, and believing he had, with his ten-years prison sentence and even longer subsequent political isolation within his homeland which he refused to leave, „atoned“ for all his transgressions against democracy between 1941 and 1954, the members of the Union became his defenders and propagandists abroad and in Yugoslavia, above all before the readers of their mouthpiece Naša reč (Our Word). On the pages of this, according to many, the best émigré journal which gradually became almost the „offi cial journal“ of Yugoslav dissidents, political opposition and democratic emigration, Milovan Đilas published several of his political articles and literary stories. At the same time Naša reč regularly reported his statements in many European newspapers and magazines and it also featured several times as the publisher of his books. One of them, Meetings With Stalin appeared in the journal itself in installments. The members of the Union and contributors to Naša reč respected Milovan Đilas as one of the most important dissidents in Eastern Europe, believing that his changed political views and his whole political life made him one of the great historical fi gures of 20th century. On the other hand, by scrutinizing their relation toward Milovan Đilas, although that research is only beginning, we can much more clearly observe the Yugoslav political emigration as a whole.

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