Milovan Đilas

Milovan Đilas (pronounced [mîlɔʋan dʑîlaːs]) (Serbian/Montenegrin Cyrillic: Милован Ђилас), usually spelled Djilas in English (4 June or 12 June 1911 – 20 April 1995), was a Communist Party of Yugoslavia 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,

Đilas became one of the best-known and most prominent dissidents in Yugoslavia and the whole of the Eastern Bloc.

Revolutionary

Born in Podbišće village near Mojkovac in the Kingdom of Montenegro, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as a University of Belgrade student in 1932. He was a political prisoner from 1933-36. In 1938 he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and became a member of its Politburo in 1940.

In April 1941, as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and their allies defeated the Royal Yugoslav Army and dismembered the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Đilas helped Josip Broz Tito establish the Yugoslav Partisan resistance, and was a guerrilla commander during the war. Following Germany's attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June (Operation Barbarossa), the Communist Party of Yugoslavia's (KPJ) Central Committee decided that conditions had been created for armed struggle, and, on 4 July, passed the resolution to begin the uprising.