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Dragomir Bondžić, PhD
Institute for Contemporary History, Belgrade, Republic of Serbia

 

Prof. Martin Previšić, PhD
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

 

STEVAN DEDIJER IN THE DOCUMENTS OF THE STATE SECURITY SERVICE FROM MID-1950s TO MID-1980s

Vol. XLIII, 2/2025, pp. 439–464
https://doi.org/10.29362/ist20veka.2025.2.bon.439-464

 

ABSTRACT/RESUME:

Stevan Dedijer was born in 1911 in Sarajevo. His father was Jevto, a geographer, and his brother Vladimir, a historian and journalist. He was educated in prominent international schools in Rome and the USA, and from 1930 to 1934 he studied theoretical physics at Princeton University. He joined the Communist Party in the USA in 1936. During the Second World War, as a volunteer of the American army, he participated in the battles in the Netherlands and Belgium at the end of 1944. At the beginning of 1945, he came to Yugoslavia and engaged in journalistic, translation and intelligence work. From 1950 to 1954, he worked at the Institute in Vinča near Belgrade on the Yugoslav leadership’s attempt to master the technology of nuclear bomb production. When Milovan Đilas fell from power in January 1955 due to attempts to democratize and liberalize the Yugoslav system, his views were supported by Stevan and his brother Vladimir, a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia Central Committee. In 1954, Stevan Dedijer was dismissed from the position of director of the Institute in Vinča, and in 1956 he was fired and moved to the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. He was also fired in Zagreb in 1957. Since then, he translated, wrote articles and tried to go abroad, which he succeeded only in 1961. Since then, he lived in Sweden, as a professor at the University of Lund, a consultant to the Swedish and other governments and a lecturer at several universities. He was engaged in intelligence research for the needs of science and technology development. From time to time, he came to Yugoslavia for vacations, and during the 1980s he came more and more often and eventually settled as a pensioner in Dubrovnik, where he lived until his death in 2004. Since 1954, Dedijer was monitored by State Security Service (UDB) in Belgrade, and in 1956, the monitoring continued by the UDB in Zagreb. He was monitored as a “đilasovac” (Milovan Đilas follower), and then as an associate of the American and British intelligence services. After going abroad in 1961, he was monitored occasionally when he arrived in the country and during 1980s the surveillance was renewed. The reports and submissions of UDB associates contain detailed information about his movements, contacts with people, conversations and views on internal and external issues of socialist Yugoslavia, Marxist theory and the views of Milovan Đilas. The documentation is consolidated in his file, which is kept in the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb.

 

KEYWORDS: Stevan Dedijer, Milovan Đilas, Vladimir Dedijer, State Security Service, espionage, nuclear politics, Vinča Institute, Ruđer Bošković Institute

 

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