The writer Dobrica Ćosić, also known as the "father of the Serbian nation", wrote a book about Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who was praised in socialist Yugoslavia as "the greatest son of our people". As for their mutual relationship, certainly Tito was Dobrica's "father", and rebellions of sons against fathers are not rare.
In the preface Books about Titus the author explains that he wrote that book "...because of doubt about the questionable arc of my ideological and political evolution: why I became a Titoist became an anti-Titoist; why mutual trust was turned into political enmity". It means that it is not only about contributions to the biography of Josip Broz.
I knew both of them. I was introduced to Dobrica in 1947 when he was the head of Agitprop, and I was a young poet from Vojvodina. I never belonged to the circle of his close friends, but he helped me several times and had a positive influence on my life. I often disagreed with him, but we saw each other occasionally until before his death. I worked for Tito from 1965 until his death in 1980 as a German translator.
Already because of my personal acquaintance with both of them, I was excited and curious to read a new book about Titus from the pen of a person who knew him well personally, discussed with him face to face, and almost in a testament left a kind of confession of how she went from being an ardent supporter to a bitter opponent of her war commander.
BORN TO BE PRESIDENT AND MARSHAL
Already at first glance, the book is full of contradictions, the short sections were obviously written according to the current mood of the author. Perhaps the most valuable thing would have been lost - passion, a certain nervousness, honest self-examination - if it had been edited thematically more logically, with a cool head. I think it's good that she appeared before us as she is.
There are some of Cosic's claims that are shockingly inaccurate. He says of Tito that his education is "based mainly on Comintern courses", claims that he "doesn't know a single language, not even his mother tongue". I can testify that Tito spoke German and Russian excellently, French and Hungarian decently, he used English, I listened to him at international meetings. He even liked to show how in a larger company with various partners he speaks directly in their languages even though translators were standing behind him in case of need.
He read Marx, Engels, Lenin in the original, I was present when he discussed in German with the then German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt about August Bebel, one of the founders of German social democracy. I once asked him what he thought about the conflict between Marx and Engels on the one hand and Ferdinand Lassalle on the other, he was perfectly familiar with that problem. During the Hungarian Revolution, Dobrica Ćosić had problems because he only knew Russian, and it was then dangerous to even speak that language quietly with a companion on the street. In this book, he likes to quote Camus, Nietzsche and others, but only if the books he quotes from were translated into Serbian, I checked that.
Sometimes he writes about Titus with great respect. "He does not play the commander of the army and the president of the state; he is it; he does not show that he is performing his duty, and he performs it by his very existence and behavior. That man seems to have been born to be president and marshal." (When quoting, I keep the punctuation from the book.) In my opinion, those words perfectly described the historical figure of Josip Broz, better known by his pseudonym Tito.
A little further on, he says that sometimes "a threat flashes in the greenish eyes... I have never seen such eyes on any man... Blagoje Nešković told me that Tito has the eyes of a lynx". I confirm that when he got angry, Tito's look could turn into a dangerous threat in an instant, I wrote somewhere that it was the "eyes of a lion".
TIGER'S DISEASE AND STALIN'S DEATH
It is known that Dobrica Ćosić was invited to accompany Tito on a grand tour of Africa in 1960. He credibly writes that he then had the opportunity to talk with him a lot and have sex with Jovanka, but also in private, that the marshal was "open to all topics, even though politics is his being and his passion." The description of those conversations is a valuable part of the book. It did not surprise me that Tito allegedly said: "I often doubt: is there a point in all that I am doing? The results are very small. Sometimes none.”
Sitting next to him as a translator, I noticed that in front of television and journalists he always showed energy, determination, firmness, but when the spotlights went off, that expression would disappear as if he had taken off his mask.
Ćosić notes that Tito "does not give up any pleasure." He is not an ascetic in anything." I agree, but I remind you that ascetics are often very dangerous; Hitler, for example, did not smoke, did not drink alcohol, ate very simple food, mostly vegetarian, politely knew how to kiss ladies' hands, pet children and dogs, and is the worst murderer in history.
Dobrica asked Tito how he experienced the news of Stalin's death. He answered without emotion: "I received the news about Stalin's death together with a dispatch that my dog Tigar was seriously ill." I felt terribly sorry for Tiger. It was a wonderful dog."
The travel descriptions of the African countries he visited are worthy of the important writer Dobrica Ćosić.
CONFLICT WITH THE CLOSEST ASSOCIATES
Very interesting is the description of Tito's conflict with his closest collaborators, which Ćosić happened to silently attend, and which proves how freely he spoke with the marshal. Tito had promised Nasser that Yugoslavia would pay a much higher price for rice than the stock market price. When they returned to the residence, Veljko Mićunoć, in his capacity as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, attacked Tito:
"Who authorized you, Comrade Marshal, to pay Egypt seventy-three million dollars above the world price of rice? I am a member of the federal government and I answer to the government for your gallant honoring of Nasser".
It sounds authentic. Dobrica says that Tito was "shaking humiliated in front of us who witnessed Mićunović's insolence". After dinner, Mićunović, he writes, told Ćosić: "I will be arrested when we return to Belgrade." In Ćosić's book, there is no information about what actually happened afterwards, so I conclude that Mićunović was transferred to the very responsible position of ambassador to the USSR. How much trust Tito still had in him is proven by the fact that he was present and wrote the minutes of the dramatic meeting between Tito, Kardelj and Ranković with the Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Maljenko, who had secretly flown to Pula on the occasion of the Hungarian Revolution.
Dobriča's note about Tito calling him on the evening of November 19, 1961 and saying:
"Kardelj and Ranković founded factions to break the Party. Kardelj is the leader of the left faction, Ranković of the right. They are nationalists. I won't let them do that. I will deal with factionalists. I will not let them break my Party. I will lead a new policy. On the twenty-first of December, on Army Day, I will announce to the people what Ranković and Kardelj are up to. They want to break self-governing Yugoslavia and its self-governing socialism. You will be elected Party Secretary and President of Serbia".
I can't imagine that being true. Ranković fell much later, there were indeed discussions and disagreements between Tito and Kardelj, once Kardelj got angry and drove to England furious, desperate, but I think their mutual relationship was similar to the relationship between Marx and Engels. I also knew Kardelj, translated for him, and once I claimed that the translator intellectually sees his clients in their underwear. Dobrica writes that he refused Tito's offer, that he told him that he only wanted to remain a writer, that he got up at dawn on Army Day and bought "Borba", and continues: "Fortunately for me, there was no word about Tito's dismissal of Kardelj and Ranković".
Dobrica Ćosić puts herself on the same level with Ranković and Kardelje. In this regard, I would say: kudos, but that's something. I remind you that about thirty years later, Slobodan Milošević appointed Dobrica Ćosić as the first president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro, because the other republics had already left the common state). He held that position from June 15, 1992 to July 1, 1993. when, after the conflict with Milosevic, he was replaced by a secret vote in both chambers of the federal parliament.
photo: TanjugTHEY WONDERED: A. Ranković, M. PIjade and JB Tito
THE RANKOVIĆ CASE
We are going back to the time of the sixties of the last century. Dobrica became close to Ranković. He writes that Ranković and he wholeheartedly supported Yugoslavia, and that Tito was breaking it up. My view is that Ranković really sincerely wanted a unified Yugoslavia, of course with the appropriate influence of the most numerous people, and at the head with a firm hand. This was in contrast to the significant rights of the six republics based on the new Constitution of 1968, which brought Yugoslavia closer to a kind of confederal status, but with the unifying role of the army and above all of Tito himself.
Dobrica Ćosić: "The political liquidation of Ranković represents the end of my relations with President Tito." That is correct. We are talking about the plenum of the SKJ leadership in Brioni on July 1, 1966, when, after thunderous criticism allegedly due to the listening devices that the Udba installed in Tito's private premises, Ranković was removed from all positions. Dobrica writes that he found out in advance what would happen at the meeting of about thirty of them at Milojko Drulović's place (my good, dear friend, admittedly, we never discussed the "Ranković case", not even when he took me around Serbia and when I drank unforgettable old plum wine that before it was opened in his honor, it aged for fifty years in an oak barrel.) Dobrica says that on June 28 he wrote a long letter to Tito in which he defends Ranković, in which he pleads Tita should never replace him. In Dobriča's book, the letter is printed in its entirety. Tito did not answer him, he never made contact with Dobrica again.
"The Serbian nation was humiliated and disgraced," states Ćosić in his book about Tito.
Nevertheless, he remains a member of the Central Committee of the SK of Serbia. Two years later, on May 29, 1968, he talks about the difficult situation in Serbia, primarily the persecution of Serbs in Kosovo, but the next day there is a discussion and he is called a nationalist, an oppositionist, a liar, defeated by bureaucratic power, a perfidious guy, "...all in that Stalinist-bureaucratic style", he comments in his book. In the following pages, he will often say that the "boycott" he was subjected to was "Stalinist". I call the processes in the USSR Stalinist, where party leaders until recently were portrayed as spies, forced to "confess" by torture and killed. Dobrica was not excluded from the Party, and his books were published in huge circulations. Only the book of essays was banned Power and anxiety, and Dobrica claims that it was according to the order that came from the office of the President of the Republic. It was a volume of 144 pages printed in a circulation of 6000 copies.
In connection with the student rebellion in 1968, he states about Tito's speech on television: "How skillfully and convincingly he supported and affirmed the student movement - it is for an anthology of political tactics and cunning." I agree. Fortunately, Dobrica did not know what Duško Mitevic told me about the origin of that interview.
photo: Draško gagovićPOLITICAL CAREER AFTER TITA: D. Ćosić and S. Milošević;...
PARANOIA
On June 27, Ćosić's wife Božica found listening devices in the study. He writes that in the night after that, he stood guard with a hunting rifle, and in the neighboring house his friend Srba Savić also stood guard with a hunting rifle. He expects "the police to stage a raid on the house in order to get hold of their device and destroy what, I guess, in criminal law is called corpus delicti".
For me, it's already paranoia. At that time, Dobrica was still a member of the Central Committee of Serbia. I don't believe that as the head of Agitprop immediately after the war, he didn't know that the secret service was eavesdropping on citizens, maybe he was receiving reports, maybe by listening in on me, they knew they could trust me, promote me as a kid to an editor, then to Tito's translator. Yes, it was bugged. The sayings were "Ozna sve dozna" and "Udba is our destiny". The practice then was to hold confidential conversations in the open.
By the way, Dobrica Ćosić remained a member of the League of Communists until he personally resigned from it on May 1, 1971. He was officially told to sue the "unofficial person" who planted the listening device in court. Well, that "government" was "spiritual".
photo: Draško gagović...as president of the FR Yugoslavia;...
ABOUT KRLEZINA "HABSBURGIANS"
The writer Dobrica Ćosić obviously did not like the writer Miroslav Krleža. "Krleža is an adequate ideological and poetic expression of Titoism in the Habsburg variant". Of course, Krlež can be criticized from various sides, but when Ćosić points his index finger at Krlež in this way because of "Habsburgism", he points to himself with the other four fingers. He attacked politically, not literary, his former friends Marko Ristic and Oskar Davic because they did not agree with his views.
Dobrica will realize that he exaggerated by calling Tito's rule Stalinist, so he claims: "As soon as he consolidated his autocracy, he stopped killing and sending his enemies to prison, but he politically devalued them by condemning them to high pensions and empty titles."
In connection with the dismissal of Marko Nikezić, he states with some astonishment: "The purge of liberals was carried out without the traditional, Stalinist-Tito sharpness. They were not declared traitors". On the other hand, he is also surprised that "...many Serbs still worship Tito, the Catholic, the Austro-Hungarian sergeant..."
I am amazed at Dobriča's vocabulary; when he criticizes Tito, it occurs to him to reproach him for being baptized as a Catholic.
photo: peđa mitić...with the Prime Minister of the FRY M. Panić
ĆOSIĆ'S HESITATION
Dobrica Ćosić likes to quote everything he can get his hands on, he would like to act like a European intellectual, he is lucky that in our country a lot of things could really be read solidly translated into our language, so he finds relying on Malraux: "Tito past victories". Did Ćosić know that Malraux claimed for himself that as an agent of the Comintern he worked in favor of the Chinese communists in the 1920s - there are, admittedly, voices that claim that this is not true, his heroism only happens in his novels. Malraux was undoubtedly a communist, he went to the USSR, participated in the Spanish Civil War, then in the French resistance movement, he was certainly a hero of the anti-fascist struggle, but he switched from the left to the right and became De Gaulle's minister.
Ćosićeva The book about Titus especially at the end, he is full of negative evaluations of the man whom he admired so much in his youth, he was, he says, "the world's cheater", "he had a card that carried something for every coupon. He is a lucky man in politics".
Notes from the late 1970s prove that he was almost hysterically, paranoidly afraid that he would be arrested, and it seems that he actually wished for it in order to really become a victim of his ideas, "... there are other possibilities for Udba to fix me". He claims that Kardelj saved him from arrest, because that would "make a new Solzhenitsyn" out of him. He writes about Tito's breakup with Jovanka: "...Serbs say, she quarreled with Josip Broz because of the persecution of Serbs in Croatia and the Army". Didn't Dobrica know more about that "case"?
April 1979: "Tito is an old man who no longer manages to hide senility and incurable diseases", but admits that he was "undoubtedly a brave and talented ruler". Since Tito's leg was amputated, Dobrica was still torn and notes: "He was a war commander and a leader in whom I believed." He conditioned the fate of my generation"; "I remember that strong, strict and beautiful man from his best days"; "he did not inherit power and glory. He acquired them. Exceptional will, courage, intelligence and cunning. He was a gifted and capable politician".
Towards the end of the book, Dobrica Ćosić admits: "Writing down all my thoughts about Tito's death and funeral, I stop, swayed by my negative assessments of Tito's personality. It was as if I was overcome by anger…”; "Well, that man has a fascinating political career! In the second half of the 20th century, there is no politician from a small country who achieved greater global success. And that's no accident!"
The book about Titus Dobrica Ćosić is a contribution to the knowledge and understanding of Serbs and Serbia, very important regardless of whether one agrees with the author or rejects his views and attitudes. I remind you that the saga of Katići - Roots, Divisions, Time of evil, Varnish - a literary masterpiece insufficiently known in the world, and for Serbia, the fact that it is Golsvordi's The Forsyth Saga for England, the epic about the Buddenbrokes by Thomas Mann, for Germany, for Russia the least known, and in my opinion by far the best, novel by Maxim Gorky The work of the Artamons.
We will remember Dobrica Ćosić first of all as a great novelist, and only incidentally as an angry author Books about Titus.
