Tito saw an allusion to the top management in Ćopić’s story and said that he personally would not allow such writing.
Desanka Maksimović and Branko Ćopić / Archive “Novosti” and “Borbe”
TPP back in 1950, it was a steamy summer, as it has been in Belgrade in recent years. Yugoslavia was recovering from the bloody war and the first consequences of the devastating Informbiro resolution and the broken embrace with Moscow. The country was slowly recovering, but with the recovery, the numerous privileges of those who settled to rule in the name of the people also grew slowly.
Dusko Kostic, the editor-in-chief of “Književni novini”, concluded the August issue and headed for his native Ivangrad, not thinking that Branko Ćopić’s latest satirical record “Heretical Story” would shake the very top of the new state. Comrades from the Committee met him at the bus station and announced that he would return to Belgrade by the first bus and that he would be in the newsroom tomorrow at seven o’clock. And nothing more. He somehow managed to arrive on time. When there Ćopić. They took him to the newsroom. He doesn’t even know who gathered them and why.
ABOUT nine, two others in leather coats came in and stuffed them into a red “buick” with tinted windows. What symbolism of them, the communist, red color and the car symbol of capitalism. “Naked Island,” went through their heads. Someone galvanized them if they inadvertently said something nice about Stalin.
But, instead of in Udba, they found themselves in front of Milovan Djilas.
– And you, Ćopić! Your satire and “Heretical story”! Food for the petty bourgeoisie, you indulge the petty bourgeoisie and the bazaar … And your literature, all the peasants themselves, Jovandeke and other peasant brothers, and where your Party is, you don’t have it … – Jido criticizes, warns, makes it soft, unobtrusively, not sternly and rudely, as more friendly.
You learned, he says, that the Party was preparing an action against the privileges, so, to be brave, you were the first to fire. Like that fighter in the war who, without waiting for command, fires first and thus discovers the position … – and all in that tone.
Branko pushed himself up, nodded his head, leaned forward, squeezed his mouth contritely:
– Oh, what are you talking about, comrade Jido? How well you noticed all that. And this stupid Bosnian head of mine can’t discern all that … how do you see it well … – Branko bends and shouts, like Kočić’s David Štrpce.
At the end of the conversation, Djilas opened a large cash register, took the strong material that was standing in front of him and put it in it.
“Now think that this is all over,” he told Ćopić.
They came out dazed. In the hallway, Dushko whispered: – We passed cheaply!
MANY years later, in Herceg Novi, after all Djilas’ sufferings and imprisonment, somewhere after the Brioni plenum, the former ideologue of the party and former editor-in-chief of “Književni novini” will meet for the first time since that August episode.
– No one in my life fucked me like Branko that night in my office on the occasion of the “Heretical story” – will be the first words that Jido said while they extended their hand to each other.
However, not everything ended as promised by Djilas.
First, he and Moša Pijade will dedicate two full pages of “Borba” to the defense against the plague called Branko Ćopić. Imagine, he dared to write a story about a minister and his assistant spending the summer in a luxury villa in Dubrovnik with their families and approaching swastikas and other staff, and mentioning a general and a striker along the way. But even that was not enough for them. An important functionary of that time, Dušan Popović, will join that condemnation, as well as well-known writers and critics, Skender Kulenović, Mihailo Lalić, Velibor Gligorić, Oto Bihalji-Merin and Milorad Panić Surep.
But even that was not enough. At the AFŽ Congress in Zagreb, it is announced that none other than the eldest son of our peoples and nationalities, Josip Broz himself. Not innocent at all, not naive at all.
In Ćopić’s “Heretical Story”, TITO saw an allusion to “our highest leadership”. He clearly said that he personally would not allow such satire, but that the writer would not be arrested.
Ironically, old Soja from Lika, Branko’s mother, was sitting in the front rows. Legend has it that the brave old woman approached the marshal and told him that her Branko was not a traitor. Of course, there is no word about that in the party archival documents.
“He scared my mother,” Branko will say later, shaking his head reproachfully.
Veseli Krajisnik was all too ill and scared to death. He kept repeating the sentence: What a heavy artillery on a sparrow!
But Branko would not be Branko if he did not turn such situations into sheretluk but also into the superiority of the popular “Kočić spirit” that he nurtured. The text of Tito’s speech from Zagreb, in which he says that he will not be arrested, was cut out of the newspaper and pasted on the door of the apartment. Kanda, to remind forgetful friends, especially those in leather coats, what their leader and teacher said.
LETTERS to the committees about Branko’s undesirability followed … In his Bosnia, but not only in Bosnia, they started to expel him from school textbooks. An empty space spread slowly around him. Even his best friends began to avoid him. Just in case. But some other people started hanging around him. And his file was getting thicker. And the party, in the City Committee, and the police in Udba. They filled it for exactly seventeen years.
And in those days, he sat alone in the “Writers’ Club” one night … No one to greet him, let alone sit down. When at some point Andrić comes right to his table. He tells something about Goethe and peels an apple. Branko looks at him in amazement and thinks that he doesn’t know what is happening to him and that is why he sat down. When at one point, a future Nobel laureate, says:
– Fuck such jokes, write novels, nobody reads them anyway – said Andrić.
No one before, and they say, no one has heard Andrić swear even after.
And he started writing novels. But, alas, when he published the novel “Deaf Gunpowder” in 1957, he went through the same party “hot rabbit” as at the time of “Heretical Story”.
Ratko Peković writes in the book “Sudanije to Branko Ćopić”: “A special file of Branko Ćopić was formed in the City Committee, which will be supplemented until 1960, when this writer was expelled from the Party. about Ćopić’s lecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, manuscript of the story “Search for a simple citizen”, writer’s statement in the City Committee, note about a conversation with him, Udbina’s recordings of secret wiretapping of two Ćopić’s telephone conversations, article published in the German magazine “Rajniše merkur” gunpowder “, an interview that Ćopić gave to the” Literary Gazette “in 1960 and other materials.”
From the file in the then Udba, which was opened immediately after the publication of “Heretical Story”, it can be seen that he was under the watchful eye of “ubdovčić”, as Branko called them. They followed his every move and tapped his phone conversations. In one of the reports on Branko Ćopić’s movement, he writes: “On the day when the announcement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia regarding Đilas ‘articles was published in’ Borba ‘, Ćopić asked everyone in the evening at the Writers’ Club whether he was in favor of Đilas or not. , in front of certain people he said unequivocally but also quite clearly: “This Belgrade skating rink is disgusting. At that time, they almost didn’t go down.” He withdrew his time … In those days, Ćopić, if someone asked him if he was for Đilas or not, usually answered: ‘I am for Đido … but Veselinović’s.’ “
Branko Ćopić / Archive “Novosti” and “Borbe”
In mid-December 1955, a conversation was organized on “Satire and Social Reality.” Ironically, the introductory speaker was Branko Ćopić, the most attacked and disputed writer of this literary genre. A dozen writers spoke at this gathering, but not the devil, most of them dealt with the evaluations of the clerk’s styric inscriptions.
The chronicler and researcher of this time, Ratko Peković, notes: “In the opinion of Mladen Oljača, although he writes satire as a good writer, Ćopić ‘as a politician is not the strongest’ and he advises him to ‘postpone’ some topics. Ćopić’s example reflects the position of the satirist ‘who does not see well, but criticizes things’, and in the story ‘The Choice of Comrade Socrates’ he makes a ‘frontal attack on the system’. Ćopić “unknowingly slipped into the positions of the Grolovina that he did not even feel, because if he had felt them he would not have signed it”. Dobrica Ćosić also believes that Ćopić’s satire “often appears from a conservative position”. “
The writer’s answer to all these remarks can be found in one of Udbina’s reports “… Lately, Ćopić often points out that he is a free writer and that he writes according to his free conscience, adding that he will write like that until he is arrested. he calls those people who do not agree with his satires’ orthodox bureaucrats and provocateurs … “.
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