O nacionalnoj istoriji kao vaspitnom predmetu

The work was first published as an article in the party magazine Komunist (No. 1, 1949, pp. 57–82), and soon after as an independent brochure. It was created in the context of Informbiro and V. Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, when the Yugoslav leadership emphasized its own path to socialism and the need for a new approach to history that would serve to educate new generations in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, but adapted to Yugoslav circumstances.

Đilas writes the text as an official party instruction to every writer and lecturer of national history. The key theses are:

• History must be written and taught strictly on the basis of dialectical and historical materialism — the ideology of the working class and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
• National history must be simultaneously the history of all the peoples of Yugoslavia, without neglecting or exaggerating any one people (against "national nihilism", but also against bourgeois chauvinism).
• Emphasis on progressive forces, revolutionary movements, great personalities and masses as bearers of history, with a critical exposure of reactionary forces and class contradictions.
• Criticism of previous textbooks (e.g. harsh criticism of Ante Babić for schematism and “national nihilism”, milder towards Jagoš Jovanović).

The text is typical of the early post-war period: it combines the demand for scientificity (concrete analysis, archival work) with a clear ideological function — history as a weapon in the construction of socialism and Yugoslav brotherhood and unity. Đilas emphasizes that history “lives in the consciousness of people” and is therefore extremely important for the education of young people.