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By Car, by Foot. This old-school element had little stomach for 42-year-old Milovan Djilas' confident heresies, and it watched with uneasiness his growing support among younger Communists. The old Communists did not like his going to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II or his friendship with such British Socialists as Nye Bevan, Morgan Phillips and Clement Attiee. When Djilas' wordy barbs in Borba got to the old-school Communists, they demanded a showdown, and Tito gave the order.
Most of the committeemen, Tito included, arrived for the trial by car; Defendant Djilas, pale and haggard, came on foot. Through two long, private meetings, the comrades poured out their ire at Djilas' deviations and criticisms. Only one top Communist, Tito's official biographer, Vladimir Dedijer, had a good word for Djilas. Djilas himself confessed that "my attitude was wrong." He added that perhaps he had put his criticisms too strongly and unclearly, and that he had been "frightened" that the Communist bureaucracy might become like Russia's. He was, he insisted, still a "true Marxist." In striking contrast to the Soviet style, the trial was widely publicized in advance and the debate was carried over the government radio, with Defendant Djilas allowed as much air time as his attackers.
But the outcome really hinged on the decision of one man—Josip Broz Tito.
He had interrupted a "sick leave" and hurried back to Belgrade just for the trial, said Tito—and an occasional hacking cough showed that the dictator, 61, was still unwell. For his old comrade he used a friendly nickname, Djido. But that was all the comfort he gave the defendant.
At last, Tito spoke.
". . . When I read those articles," said he, "I saw that Djilas had gone too far . . . Yugoslavia did approach the West, but not in domestic matters, only in the foreign policy field. [He put] back the clock of revolutionary history, instead of making it go forward . . . This is revisionism of the worst type—reformist opportunism and not revolutionary dynamism, as he would like it to seem . . .
What was involved here was liquidation of the League of Communists, the shattering of discipline." That was it. The Central Committee voted to strip Comrade Djilas of all his party rank, and he obediently resigned the presidency of the Parliament. But contrite Milovan Djilas was not cast into the outer darkness: he remains—though probably not for long—one of Yugoslavia's four Vice Presidents. While he may participate in no party councils, he still holds his Communist Party card. That much Tito thought "Djido" deserved—presumably because of the pure quality of his repentance.