Balcanica 2012 Issue 43, Pages: 273-323
https://doi.org/10.2298/BALC1243273M
Full text ( 849 KB)
Dr. Đura Đurović a lifelong opponent of Yugoslav communist totalitarianism
Markovich Slobodan G. (School of Political Sciences, Belgrade)
The paper deals with the life story of Dr. Đura Đurović (1900-1983), one of
key targets of Yugoslav communist totalitarianism. He was a Belgrade lawyer
who worked in the Administration of the City of Belgrade before WWII. In 1943
he joined the Yugoslav Home Army (YHA) of General Mihailović, and held high
positions in the YHA press and propaganda departments. His duties included
running the Radio-telegraphic agency Democratic Yugoslavia. He accompanied
General Mihailović on his meetings with OSS Colonel McDowell, and with
Captain Raković he established successful cooperation with Red Army units in
October 1944. He was arrested by Tito’s partisans in 1945, given a show-trial
and sentenced to twenty years in prison. In his writings he described
horrible conditions, sufferings and various types of torture used against
political prisoners in Yugoslav communist prisons. He himself spent more than
two years in solitary confinement, and on several occasions nearly died in
prison. He was released in 1962, and was able to establish a circle of former
political convicts from the ranks of the YHA and other anticommunists in
Belgrade and Serbia. He maintained this network, advocated pro-American
policies and hoped that at some point the United States might intervene
against communism in Yugoslavia. Gradually he came to the conclusion that
Tito was an American ally, and was satisfied to maintain his network of
likeminded anticommunists and prepare reports on the situation in Yugoslavia.
As a pre-war freemason, he sent one such report to Luther Smith, Grand
Commander of AAFM of Southern Jurisdiction of American masons, describing the
ghastly conditions in Yugoslav communist prisons. He was rearrested in 1973
on account of his relations with a Serbian émigré in Paris, Andra Lončarić,
and spent another four years in prison. Thus, the almost twenty-one years he
spent in communist prisons qualify him for the top of the list of political
prisoners in Yugoslav communism. In 1962-1973 he was spied on by a network of
informers and operatives of the Yugoslav secret service. The paper is based
on Đurović’s personal files preserved in the penitentiaries in Sremska
Mitrovica and Zabela, and his personal file from the archive of the Yugoslav
secret service (UDBA/SDB). This is the first paper based on personal files of
“political enemies” compiled by the Yugoslav communist secret service,
disclosing the latter’s activities and methods against anticommunist circles
in Belgrade.
Keywords: Đura Đurović, Yugoslav communist prisons, Yugoslav totalitarianism, Yugoslav communist courts
Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177011:
History of political ideas and institutions in the Balkans in the 19th and
20th centuries