Yugoslav dissident who attacked Western communist parties at the Cominform and later dissected the communist system in The New Class
I traveled the entire road of communism: from a youthful revolutionary, to a zealous Stalinist, to complete disillusionment.
A Montenegrin-born Yugoslav communist leader and one of Tito's closest comrades in the Partisan struggle and postwar state-building. At the founding conference of the Cominform in 1947, he joined Edvard Kardelj in delivering the sharpest criticism of the French and Italian Communist Parties for their 'parliamentary opportunism,' and his memoirs remain a key source on the conference's internal dynamics. After raising demands for democratization within the party and denouncing bureaucratic privilege, he was stripped of all positions in 1954; his book The New Class, smuggled out of prison, argued that communist party officials had become a new exploitative ruling class, sparking an international sensation. He spent over three decades in prison and under surveillance, becoming the first prominent dissident in communist Eastern Europe.
Career Timeline
- 1932–1936KPJ activist, arrested and imprisoned
- 1937–1939Member of KPJ Central Committee and Politburo
- 1941–1945Led Partisan uprising in Montenegro, headed propaganda for Supreme Staff
- 1945–1953Vice President of Yugoslavia, President of the Federal Assembly
- 1953–1954Published critiques of one-party rule in Borba, expelled from the party
- 1956–1966Imprisoned twice for dissident writings; published The New Class and Conversations with Stalin abroad
- 1966–1995Lived under surveillance in Belgrade, continued writing until his death