Word: mihajlov
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President Tito in a mellow mood once claimed that anybody seeking a fuller measure of democracy from him was "pushing on an open door." Then along came a young unemployed university teacher to try the door, daring to challenge Tito publicly. It slammed behind him, and last week Mihajlo Mihajlov, 32, was in jail in Zadar, an Adriatic seaside resort...
...Mihajlov is the rebellious writer who barely escaped a nine-month jail sentence last year for a series of articles he wrote on Russia. This time his crime was to proclaim that he and half a dozen friends planned to publish a magazine with the frank intent of opposing the government. Its name would be Slobodni Glas (Free Voice) and it would seek to replace one-party rule with a brand of democratic socialism first bruited by Partisan Hero Milovan Djilas, once Yugoslavia's top Communist theoretician but currently a prisoner for his corrosive anti-Marxist critiques...
...youth feel a sense of utter pessimism, a rejection of any kind of political commitment," complains one Communist elder. "They doubt the meaning of positive effort. Their only real interest is sex." Youthful Yugoslav Author Mihajlo Mihajlov recently wrote President Tito that any fears that reading Western literature could "infect" Mihajlov with a "foreign ideology" are unfounded. His proof: "I have been reading Communist literature since childhood, and I still fail to find any sympathy for Communism...
...witness stand, Mihajlov was just as defiant as he had been in a bitter letter he sent newspaper editors defending himself. He insisted that his article had only mentioned historical facts about Stalin's purges and labor camps. When he offered to present proof, the court refused to hear his evidence on the grounds that "no fresh slanders against the Soviet Union will be permitted." In his final statement, Mihajlov said he would not recant what he had written and added that if the court condemned his writings, "then it means that it condemns history and would define what...
Predictably, the court found Mihajlov guilty but, in place of the maximum sentence of three years, sentenced him to ten months in prison, less the one month he had already spent in pre-trial custody. It was a much milder penalty than that meted out to Milovan Djilas (The New Class), who is still serving a nine-year term for criticizing Yugoslav Communism. To cynics, that was just the point: a Yugoslav gets only months for criticizing Stalin but gets years for criticizing Tito...