CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Ivesic, Tomaz |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Critic and Dissent: The Transnational Entanglement of the Fall of Milovan Djilas |
| Summary | In this thesis the author analyzed the downfall of the Yugoslav Communist politician Milovan Djilas, focusing on its causes and effects within the context of Yugoslavia’s “new path to socialism” after the Tito-Stalin split. Special emphasis is given on the nature of Djilas’s critique and its relation to Yugoslavia’s changing diplomatic relations with the West, especially with the European Socialists. The author emphasizes that Djilas was still a communist by conviction in the first months following his downfall, and traces the evolution of his ideas during his transformation from a local dissenter to a world known “heretic”. Through archival research, secondary literature, in depth reading of Djilas’s texts and their intersection with important international events, the author emphasizes the different and shifting roles assumed by Djilas’s ideas in the West and the East. Focusing on Djilas’s most known work “The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System”, the author traces out the reception of the work in the Soviet Bloc, mostly by identifying the temporality of its translations, print and distribution in Eastern Europe and among émigré communities in the West. Identifying the most important cases of reception of Djilas’s ideas in Communist Europe, the author focuses on two paramount cases: Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski’s “Open letter to the Party” in Poland, and the book “Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power” by the Hungarian authors George Konrád and Iván Szelényi. |
| Supervisor | Trencsényi, Balázs; Petrovic, Vladimir |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/ivesic_tomaz.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University