Land Without Justice

Tonight I finished Land Without Justice by Milovan Djilas. It's the first of a two-book autobiography detailing his childhood in Kolasin and Berane, Montenegro, as Montenegro loses its independence for the first time to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and ends with how he came to be a communist.

For me, some of the most interesting parts were the ethnographic details, as I tried to imagine the country my great-grandfather grew up in (my grandfather can't remember the excitement, having been born in 1944). To think of the hamlets that turned into cities, the peasantry that turned into bourgoisie, and the practices that have left remnants of an honor-obsessed, clan culture that still attempts to exist today.

I also liked reading about the interactions between Montenegrins and Albanians at the time, and reading Djilas' musings on Albanians. Obviously, his point of view was a bit tainted by his allegiance to and fall from the Party, but it was interesting nonetheless.

In one regard, Djilas showed the contempt that some showed Albanians. He describes how his father would taunt his mother by accusing her of being an Albanian (she was of the Radenovic clan from the village of Meteh in Plav). The mother would deny this, and Djilas says "the Radenovici were Serbs from time immemorial." I suppose in these untamed mountains, especially in Plav-Guci, cultural identity is fluid, Djilas was known to say "The hardest thing about being a communist is trying to predict the past."

Interestingly enough, though, Djilas also mentions his father's run-in with Albanian leader Isa Boletini (who famously said, "Unë jam mirë kur asht' mirë Shqipnia"):

"The battle with Iso's irregulars did not last long, despite the Albanians' wild heroism. The blow struck down both the leader and his most devoted followers. Iso's immediate entourage was wiped out to a man, and the rest scattered. Iso Boljetini himself was killed. But he had fought fiercely and long when he was left alone on the open road. Wounded, he rose to his knees and, though too weak to hold a rifle, he fired a pistol, at least to take a life in exchange for his own. Father hurried toward him, and the wild Albanian leaned his pistol on his left arm. He did not have time to fire, however. A soldier had him in his sights and--he fell. Father ran up, and Iso glanced at him with big bloody eyes, said something in his own language, which Father did not understand, and breathed his last. Father took his large Mauser, with its silver-mounted handle, and kept it as his most prized souvenir.

It was little wonder that we children mourned for Iso Boljetini. Father mourned him too, though he was proud that his group had felled him. It was a special kind of sorrow, rather than admiration, for a fearless hero of wild Albania who had fought to the end on a bare field and empty road, neither begging nor forgiving, upright and without protection. There was this admiration in our sorrow, too. If one has to die, it would be good to fall like Iso Boljetini. Let it be remembered, at least by those who have seen and heard it."

The description is intense and the glimpse at the heroism of the day is invigorating. Many crimes were committed in the past few decades supposedly in the same spirit, but I don't think it is so. These kinds of deaths were different. I know the "old lie," "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm not glorifying violence, but the honor in the violence that these men were forced to commit for the sake of their emerging homelands. You can disagree with me, but I think the children and father's mourning for Isa Boletini shows a great respect for conviction.

In the end, Djilas mentions his family's move to the mostly-Muslim town of Bijelo Polje before he went to university in Belgrade, and the adversity that the former land-owners (Muslims) expressed in their songs and dirges. "But this did not concern me then," Djilas says. "I was preparing myself for a new world, with my eyes already open to comprehend it and with a troubled soul, fearful of becoming lost in it."

In the next and final volume, Memoir of a Revolutionary, Djilas describes his rise and fall in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as his "poetic passion was in conflict with his revolutionary discipline." Stay tuned.