The Rest Is Silence

When a man is Vice President in Tito's Yugoslavia, a maxim for staying on good terms with the boss is: never, never poll more votes than the President. In the election last November, Milovan Djilas, No. 3 man in the Yugoslav hierarchy and one of its four Vice Presidents, broke the rule.

Apparently it affected his judgment. For he sprang into print with a series in Borba, the party newspaper. Djilas gave it as his personal opinion that the Yugoslav Communist Party's methods were outmoded. Compulsory "cell" meetings through which leaders exercised guidance over lesser comrades were "sterile." The "churchlike" insistence on dogma had become unnecessary.

Djilas also saw fit to lecture his colleagues on their manners and morals. In top Tito circles, it is de rigueur to marry a girl who had a good battle record as a partisan. In a magazine article, Djilas roundly reproved the "inner circle" of the administration and their wives for snubbing the pretty young actress-bride of Yugoslavia's chief of staff just because she had not fought in World War II. Snorted Djilas: the girl was only 13 years old when the war ended. Besides, who were these wives to point a finger of scorn? asked Djilas--and proceeded to describe in unmistakable detail and almost unprintable terms the premarital practices of some of these lady war veterans. (Tito himself married a 28-year-old army major and partisan fighter.)

Suddenly last week, Djilas was pounced on by the party's full executive committee. It denounced him for views "basically contrary" to the party, demanded that he write no more.

At last report, Djilas was still Vice President, but a silent one.

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