Word: montenegrins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...other leaders were careful to stress that they had no intention of returning to the harsh old police-state technique that prevailed in Yugoslavia before the ouster of former Secret Police Chief Aleksandar Rankovic in 1966. "We have experienced state socialism [the Yugoslav euphemism for Stalinism]" said Montenegrin Party Leader Veselin Djuranović, "and we never want to experience it again." Even so, tighter party rule will almost inevitably mean greater political controls, and perhaps even an increased role for the secret police, as has already happened in Croatia. In their efforts to combat nationalism, Tito and his colleagues...
...shadows and sly glances, the insistent murmur of garden streams in the background: hearty Serbs bathed in the rich sunlight that pours copiously on gleaming mountains. But the book's cumulative power lies in appalling battle details. Heads sail briskly from necks and are hoisted on pikes. A Montenegrin grabs a Turk's horse and tries frantically to kick a severed leg out of the stirrup. During a lunch break between bashing feet and smashing kidneys, an unforgettable father-son torture team laments the passing of the good old days when they did not have to worry about...
Djilas is too flinty a Montenegrin to offer much in the way of redemption for such suffering. Men die bravely for a cause that is elusive, not to say parochial. Still, they manage to wrest from the din of battle a selflessness that frees them, if only for moments, from their world of pain...