Fall of the new class

by Milovan Đilas

He was a true believer in communism who became disillusioned with the totalitarianism and corruption of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. A wartime partisan leader in Yugoslavia and later the number three man in the politburo, he broke with Marshal Tito in 1954 and spent most of the next decade in prison, where he began to write about the inner workings of the Communist system. Here, Milovan Djilas - who died in 1995 - discusses why communism failed in Europe, what its failure means for the future of the continent, and how he transformed himself from ideologue into humanist.