238 The Postwar Period
write more about the bourgeoisie, which is strong and self-conscious. And you
should write for the young—the young are the most important. At this point,
the time for democracy is not ripe. The dictatorship is still necessary!”^442 Djilas,
long convinced that the weak and modest Yugoslav bourgeoisie was innocuous,
was bewildered. He had the impression that Tito was not yet free from his old
mental framework and that he needed to hear about other dangers and prob-
lems: about Leninism-Stalinism in a Yugoslav disguise, about the party and its
reform. Djilas did not reply immediately but later he entered the fray with the
passion of someone who is sure that nothing unpleasant could happen to him.
In those days, did Tito not come to dinner at his home with his new wife,
Jovanka, and was she not friends with Djilas’s own wife? And had he not been
charged to write the speech that Tito would deliver on the Yugoslav national
holiday, 29 November, the tenth anniversary of AVNOJ? Did he not sit on
Tito’s right side at that solemn occasion?^443
Djilas laid out his thoughts in eighteen articles overall. The first appeared
on 11 October in Borba, the official publication of the LCY, and was entitled
“The New Contents.” In a discussion with Dedijer at the beginning of the
month he affirmed that compromises were necessary in political life, saying:
“The most important thing is that our development continues. We should not
surpass the consciousness of the masses.”^444 Some days after this somber reflec-
tion that it was important to consider the maturity of the people in forming
one’s political line, he sketched out a completely different discourse. In the
Borba article, he covertly polemicized with Tito, arguing that the enemy of
socialism was not only the bourgeoisie but also the bureaucracy, particularly
the party bureaucracy, which continuously violated and took advantage of the
laws while trying to rule under the cloak of ideology. To justify its existence
and be faithful to its dogmas, the bureaucracy fabricated new enemies.^445
Invited by a “comrade” to indicate possible solutions, on 29 November Djilas
listed the measures needed to fight the bureaucratic apparatus, stressing, how-
ever, that these were his personal opinions and were not supported by any
“forum.” In his opinion, the roots of “bureaucracy” were to be found in the fact
that the party was waging a war against the bourgeoisie on an ideological basis,
and not on a legal one. The fight against the “class enemy” should instead
develop through legal measures. The task of state organs of repression and
vigilance (the courts, the UDBA, the police) was not to exacerbate the class
struggle but to apply the law. These organs should be free from all party inter-
ference, because otherwise they could not avoid becoming instruments of anti-
democratic repression.^446
Djilas developed his thoughts even more explicitly in the article entitled
“Subjective Forces,” published in Borba on 27 December 1953. According to