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Concept
Milovan Djilas
Summary
Milovan Djilas (ˈdʒɪlɒs; Милован Ђилас, mîlɔʋan dʑîlaːs; 12 June 1911 – 20 April 1995) was a Yugoslav communist politician, theorist and author. He was a key figure in the Partisan movement during World War II, as well as in the post-war government. A self-identified democratic socialist, Djilas became one of the best-known and most prominent dissidents in Yugoslavia and all of Eastern Europe. During an era of several decades, he critiqued communism from the viewpoint of trying to improve it from within; after the revolutions of 1989 and the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, he critiqued it from an anti-communist viewpoint of someone whose youthful dreams had been disillusioned.
Milovan Djilas was born in Podbišće near Mojkovac, Kingdom of Montenegro, on 12 June 1911 into a Montenegrin Serb peasant family. He was the fourth of nine children. His father Nikola, a recipient of the Obilić Medal for bravery, served in the Montenegrin Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, then World War I, after which he was awarded the Albanian Commemorative Medal. After that war he commanded the gendarmerie in Kolašin, and opposed the incorporation of Montenegro into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His paternal grandfather, Aleksa, was an anti-Ottoman bandit leader, known as a hajduk, who was apparently assassinated at the direction of the Montenegrin king's father-in-law. Djilas' mother, Novka, was from Siberia in the Russian Empire. During World War II, Djilas's sister Dobrinka was murdered by the Chetniks and his father was killed during a battle with the Balli Kombëtar in Kosovo.
Djilas was educated in Podbišće, Kolašin and Berane. He was exposed to literature during his schooling, and also to the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. He commenced studying literature at the University of Belgrade in 1929, by which time he was already a committed communist. In 1929, the name of the country changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Djilas was a radical student activist and opposed the dictatorship of King Alexander I.
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