248 The Postwar Period
the incident took place. He rang the bell and the door was opened by thirteen-
year-old Jernej, one of Vilfan’s sons. “Give your mom this,” Djido said, and
handed him his party card.^492
The Victory of the RightOn 22 December 1954, the London Times’s Belgrade correspondent published
an interview with Dedijer in which he mentioned the pressures he had been
subjected to because of his loyalty to Djilas.^493 In the same period, shortly
before Tito’s trip to India and Burma, Djilas gave an interview to the corre-
spondent from the New York Times in which he criticized domestic and foreign
Yugoslav policy, stressing that it was led by reactionaries and demanding free-
dom of speech and the introduction of a two-party system. Consequently,
Kardelj attacked the two at the Congress of the LC of Bosnia-Herzegovina
in his capacity as a substitute for Tito during his absence. According to him,
they were failed politicians and tools of enemy forces who were hoping to
return to power. Dedijer tried to react, calling foreign correspondents to a press
conference at his home, but when they came UDBA agents prevented them
from entering the building. Only days later, on 24 December, he was indicted,
together with Djilas. Both hired lawyer Ivo Politeo, who had defended Broz in
1928, Archbishop Stepinac, and various Ustaša chiefs after the war. After a final
hearing, partially behind closed doors, though described as fair by Politeo, they
were condemned to rather light punishments: Djilas to a year and a half in
prison, Dedijer to six months, both with commuted sentences. If they did not
do anything illicit, Djilas within three years and the Dedijer within two, they
would not be jailed. It was clear that the authorities did not want to give much
weight to the affair, as Belgrade diplomatic circles observed, not without relief,
in order not to provoke unpleasant polemics in the West.^494
Djilas remarked with enthusiasm on the outcome of the trial. “This sentence
is marvelous,” he said to friends (and of course also to the UDBA). “This was
Tito’s decision, which increases his prestige in the country and abroad. I am
nicely surprised by our democratic system... I expected at least one or two years
of rigorous imprisonment.” He also affirmed that he would respect the verdict
and would no longer meddle in politics.^495 But his rebel temper, which inclined
towards martyrdom, did not allow him to make good on those promises. He
continued to provoke and to give explosive interviews, and also to write articles
and heretical books. His pamphlet, The New Class (1957), was highly successful
and was translated into different languages and distributed, with the help of
the CIA, in numerous countries. With this and with the following Conversa-
tions with Stalin (1962), he earned quite a bit of money, but paid a high price,
since between December 1956 and the end of 1966 he was condemned to nine