Djilas, Milovan (mē`ləvän jē`läs), 1911–95, Yugoslav political leader and writer, b. Montenegro. A Communist party member from 1932, he helped Josip Broz Tito Tito, Josip Broz (yô`sĭp brôz tē`tō), 1892–1980, Yugoslav Communist leader, marshal of Yugoslavia.
..... Click the link for more information. organize volunteers to fight in the Spanish civil war Spanish civil war, 1936–39, conflict in which the conservative and traditionalist forces in Spain rose against and finally overthrew the second Spanish republic.
..... Click the link for more information. . He was active in the Yugoslav resistance in World War II and after the war rose to high posts in party and government. As a top political adviser to Tito and an outspoken critic of Russian attempts to bring Yugoslavia into the Soviet orbit, he was widely regarded as a possible successor to Tito. He was about to assume the presidency when, in 1954, he was abruptly dismissed from government service. His support of the Hungarian revolution (1956) brought him a prison term, extended in 1957 when his influential book criticizing the Communist oligarchy, The New Class, was published in the West. Released in 1961, he was jailed again in 1962–66. He also wrote Land Without Justice (1958, repr. 1972), Conversations with Stalin (tr. 1962), The Unperfect Society (tr. 1969), Tito (1980), Fall of the New Class (posthumous, 1998), and a novel, Under the Colors (tr. 1971). Although Djilas welcomed the end of Communist rule in Yugoslavia, he was critical of both Croat and Serb nationalism.

Bibliography

See his Memoir of a Revolutionary (tr. 1973).

Djilas, Milovan

(born June 12, 1911, Podbišce, Montenegro—died April 20, 1995, Belgrade, Serbia) Yugoslav politician and political writer. His opposition to Yugoslavia's royalist dictatorship led to a prison term (1933–36). He joined the Yugoslav Communist Party's central committee in 1938 and its politburo in 1940. In World War II he played a major role in the partisan resistance to the Germans. In 1953 he became president of the Federal People's Assembly, but his criticism of the party and calls for liberalization soon led to his ouster from all political posts by Tito. He was later arrested several times after his books criticizing communism, including The New Class (1957), were published in the West.