Of Prisons and Ideas
Reviewed by John C. Campbell
Yugoslavia's noted dissident, after four volumes of memoirs and numerous other works, still has a message for the world in the form of these reflections on his experience in prisons under both royalist and communist governments and its relevance to the development of his ideas and spiritual life. He discourses on the power of ideas and the emptiness of ideology, on science and religion and politics, on human values and aspirations. One can read Djilas with an eye to his battle over the years with the Yugoslavian forms of Marxist orthodoxy-he is not sparing in his strictures on one-party rule or the sham of "socialist self-management"-and one can also read him as a man who has searched for deeper truths.
Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.