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Article: Milovan Djilas: Of New Classes and Old Truths
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- April 21, 1995
- Author:
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Milovan Djilas, one of the communist world's oldest and most
prominent dissidents, died yesterday in Belgrade at the age of 83.
But the subject of his best-known contribution to 20th century
political thought -- the communist "New Class" -- is alive and
flourishing despite the collapse of communism itself.
Nowhere is this more true than in the former Yugoslavia, where one-
time communists have succeeded in maintaining their positions of
power and wealth by reinventing themselves as nationalists.
A close associate of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Djilas had the
courage and intellectual honesty to recognize that most revolutions -
- even revolutions in the name of an egalitarian society -- never ...