Education
Studied philosophy and law at Belgrade University
Studied philosophy and law at Belgrade University
Djilas joined the Communist Party in 1932 and was jailed the following year for organizing demonstrations. He met Tito in 1937 and was one of his lieutenants during World War II. After the war Djilas was a member of the ruling quadrumvirate with Tito, Edvard Kardelj, and Alexander Rankovi].Rankovic. When Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union in 1948, Djilas had the task, as chief of propaganda, of proving that Tito's and not Stalin's was the true communism.
Djilas' analysis of the Yugoslav regime led him to criticize the corruption and social snobbery in the party leadership. In 1954 he was arrested and expelled from the central committee of the party and from the government, of which he had just been made vice-president. He was given a suspended sentence. In December 1956 Djilas was jailed for condemning the suppression of the Hungarian revolt. The New Class, which Djilas wrote in prison, was smuggled out of Yugoslavia in manuscript form and published in New York in 1957. In it he attacked the bases of Communist theory and denounced Lenin and Marx for founding a system that produced an elite class. Djilas was released from prison in January 1961. Publication of excerpts from his next book, Conversations with Stalin, led to another arrest, trial, and imprisonment, in May 1962. He was amnestied in 1966 and given a government pension as an old partisan leader, but was forbidden to publish anything within Yugoslavia or to say anything in the press or on the radio for a five-year period. However, he immediately resumed writing.