This is a book en Communism by a man who until recently was one of its heroes. It is a book which exemplifies and expresses the deep agonies, the desperate yearning of the Soviet orbit's disillusioned intelligentsia for intellectual freedom, for personal dignity, for true social and economic progress; for a way out of the morass of false theories, bureaucratic ties and cruel exploitation. One of the great political documents of our time-perhaps the most important in its force and effectiveness this explosive indictment may be regarded as political dynamite in any Communist area or any country where Communism poses a threat to society and genuine progress. Its impact far outweighs that of the ordinary anti-Communist expos6. It does not concentrate on dry facts, which mean nothing to doctrinaire Communists, and it does not try to prove something the Communists do not wish to have proven. It is a political theorist's manifesto-the Anti-Communist Manifesto-revealing a fruitless succession of causes and effects. Often using the dialectical method so much a part of Communist thinking, Djilas presents his irrefutable argument proving why Communism developed the way it did, and why it cannot, under any circumstances, reach any of its socialist goals; why, on the contrary, it cannot escape its own contradictions between utopian theory and cruel reality, between a theoretical workers' paradise and an actual slave state-where the ruling class devours itself while holding down the masses in abject material and intellectual poverty.