Milosevic (2 page)

Any reader of a biography is entitled to know the relationship between author and subject. This is not an authorised work; I have neither sought, nor received Slobodan Milosevic's consent. Nor has he seen the manuscript before publication. However, I thought it right that he know about my project. The former Serbian leader is forbidden from speaking to journalists and writers but he authorised his wife Mira Markovic to grant me a lengthy interview in Belgrade, for which I am grateful. So to some extent, Milosevic's voice, or at least his opinions, may be heard throughout the book in his wife's words.

The Milosevic era was a time of great destruction; many lives were lost and others damaged for ever. The fate of the former Yugoslavia, understandably, can arouse furious passions. I offer here some ground rules for readers. The reference to any named person, or the inclusion of their words, does not imply their agreement with the book's overall contents. (Neither, of course, does it exclude that possibility.) Regarding spellings and terminology: I have used anglicised versions of place names, such as Belgrade rather than Beograd. I have also used terms commonly accepted in the West to describe disputed places and regions. There is no political sub-text here of approval for one or another nation's competing claims. To write of
Krajina
for example, is not to belittle Croatian sovereignty, just as using the word
Kosovo
, rather than the Albanian term
Kosova
, brings with it no judgement. Referring to Bosnia, rather than Bosnia-Herzegovina, is merely a convenience.

I have also adopted a political shorthand, reducing such titles as ‘Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia' to ‘head of the Serbian Communist Party'. I refer to the Serbian or Yugoslav ‘Communist Party', rather than its actual title of the ‘League of Communists'. My only aim is to ease the comprehension of the reader, many of whom will not be Balkan experts.

On a different note, I was fortunate to find in the library of my great friend Erwin Tuil an enthralling book called
The Balkans from Within
, written at the turn of the century by Reginald Wyon, a British foreign
correspondent. Like all of us who reported on that captivating and infuriating region, he was dazzled by its physical beauty, rich cultural heritage and boundless hospitality of its peoples. Puzzled too, at the concurrent ease with which they could set about each other with weapons. Reading
The Balkans from Within
, it sometimes seemed only dates and names change. (Which is not to support the weary claim that the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were the inevitable result of ‘ancient ethnic hatreds'. They were not, as this book attempts to make clear.)

Wyon gives several accounts of meetings with a man called Hilmi Pacha. Pacha was a sly and wily Ottoman functionary in today's Macedonia, charged with implementing reforms, a task he carried out with only enough enthusiasm to maintain his own grip on power. As I researched the life of Slobodan Milosevic, Hilmi Pacha became an ever more familiar figure. Wyon's timeless observations on Balkan power play, I hope, add an extra layer.

In a sense this is a work in progress. The Milosevic trial continues as this book goes to press, and could do so until some time in 2004. As events at The Hague unfold, and more witnesses appear, many episodes here are likely to be further clarified and illuminated. I hope in future editions to make use of such material. The life and times of Slobodan Milosevic make a lengthy and complicated story. I have striven for accuracy, but any mistakes are mine.

From the beginning we were all equal. We each had one coat, one shirt and one dress. Everybody looked almost identical, we shared the same ideological views and we believed in Socialism and Communism.

Seska Stanojlovic, schoolmate of Slobodan Milosevic.
¹

Slobodan Milosevic arrived in Serbia just over four months after the Wehrmacht, on 20 August 1941. He was born in the eastern town of Pozarevac, about an hour's drive from the capital Belgrade, not far from the Romanian border. Slobodan was a ruddy-faced child, and in later years relatives nicknamed him ‘rumenko', meaning red–cheeked. His parents were teachers from the southern province of Montenegro. Svetozar was six foot tall with blue eyes, brown hair and a luxurious moustache. A spiritual man, he was talented at intoning the Serbian orthodox liturgy. He sang beautifully and loved to play the
gusle
, a traditional one–stringed bowed instrument. If he did not have his
gusle
in his hand, he carried a book of philosophy, or perhaps some of his own poems. Stanislava was a classical Montenegrin beauty, slim and stately, with flashing black–brown eyes and high Slavic cheekbones above a strong chin.

Svetozar and Stanislava had married in 1935 and their first son, Borislav, had been born a year later. Svetozar had studied Russian and theology at Belgrade University, while his wife was a primary school teacher. Svetozar had not wanted to leave Montenegro, but as an employee of the Yugoslav education ministry, he had no choice. Stanislava made the best of it, but Svetozar hated Pozarevac. It was a drab provincial city of one main street, surrounded by farmland. Its main claim to fame was a nearby large prison where many revolutionaries had been
locked away, and for giving its name to a treaty signed in 1718 between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, confirming Habsburg conquests of former Ottoman lands south from Austria–Hungary to Belgrade.

Their homeland of Montenegro, in contrast, was part of the Mediterranean, a place of wine and sunshine, passion and vendettas, somewhere where life was more colourful and intense. It was a land of mountains and magic, with a proud and stubborn population, ready to spill blood for loyalty or vengeance. Montenegrins were divided into clans, and life was governed by a complicated set of rules defining codes of loyalty, and the punishment meted out to those who broke them.

The Milosevic family, many of whom still live in Montenegro, was well respected as educated and cultured. Svetozar's father, Simeun Milosevic, had been a farmer, he had died before the Nazis invaded. Stanislava's father, Djuro Koljensic, had been an officer in the Montenegrin army, and was killed in 1913 in the Balkan Wars. History, tradition, due respect, these were the building blocks of Montenegrin society. It was also deeply conservative. Although she was born in 1911, Stanislava's papers registered her birthdate as 1914, so that her brother Milislav would be the eldest of the family.

When the German tanks rolled across the borders, Svetozar, Borislav and Stanislava, who was now five months pregnant, had quickly headed south to Montenegro. Svetozar wanted to see his mother, Jokna, and sister Darinka. In the baking heat of a Balkan summer, travel was hazardous, and there was little food. Roads were cut by battles between German and Italian troops, the partisans, and Albanian guerrillas loyal only to themselves. Eventually, the family reached Kosovska Mitrovica, in the province of Kosovo, where intense fighting prevented Stanislava and Borislav going any further. Svetozar pressed on through the mountains on foot, promising to return soon.

Borislav Milosevic now lives in Moscow, where he served as Yugoslav ambassador for his brother's regime. He remembers a childhood of extreme privation. ‘My father eventually found his mother and his sister and, three months later, we all returned to Pozarevac and German occupation. Slobodan was born in August, and we spent the war and all our childhood in Pozarevac. They were very miserable times. We were always hungry. It was very hard to find something to eat, and my mother had to sell everything to survive. She sold all her shoes, her dresses and finally even her wedding ring.'
²

* * *

For a country that prided itself on its warrior tradition, Serbia's collapse was swift and ignominious. At the end of March 1941, under increasing pressure from Hitler, and lacking any real promise of aid from the Western Allies, Yugoslavia's ministers had reluctantly signed up to the Axis. But Yugoslavia's membership lasted less than two days. With the assistance of British secret agents, on the night of March 26, pro–Allied Yugoslav generals had launched a military coup, triggering nationwide celebrations. In Belgrade tens of thousands of demonstrators poured on to the streets, ‘
Bolje rat nego pakt, bolje grob nego rob
,' (Better war than pact, better graves than slaves) the demonstrators roared.

In Berlin an enraged Hitler ordered that the onslaught on Yugoslavia ‘be carried out with inexorable severity and that the military destruction be carried out in a lightning–like operation.' On 6 April hordes of Nazi bombers levelled much of Belgrade. The stubborn chants of the demonstrators were no longer expressions of defiance, but a ghastly prediction.
Bolje rat nego pakt, bolje grob nego rob
. War came to all, and graves or slave labour awaited many.

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – as Yugoslavia was first known – was a weak and uncertain construct, established only in 1918. Yugoslavia roughly translates as ‘country of the south Slavic peoples'. But the south Slavs had never before lived together in one state. Yugoslavia had been divided between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Istanbul's territories included most of present day Serbia, Bosnia–Herzegovina and Macedonia. Vienna ruled Croatia, Slovenia and the northern Serbian province of Voivodina.

Although Yugoslavs spoke the same language – Serbo–Croat, as it was known – they were divided by culture, religion and ethnic identity. Istanbul's Balkan possessions were known – and viewed in the west – as Turkey–in–Europe. For much of the nineteenth century the Serbian capital Belgrade was the northernmost point of Turkey–in–Europe. The main division was between the eastern and western Christian churches dating from the schism of 1054, when the eastern (Orthodox) church was based in Byzantium and the western (Catholic) church in Rome. This division, which cut across the Yugoslav lands, was broadly reflected in the frontier between the Ottoman Empire in the east and the Habsburg Empire in the west. From the sixteenth century until 1878, the western frontier of the Ottoman Empire was roughly the present border between Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina.

Yugoslavia was a constitutional monarchy, but not a very solid one.
In an attempt to forge a centralised state in 1929 King Aleksandar Karadjordjevic abolished parliament and seized power. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (also known as Royal Yugoslavia). It was not enough to guarantee the state's or his survival. Five years later King Aleksandar was assassinated in Marseilles by a Macedonian linked to an extreme Croat nationalist party, known as the Ustasha.

After its collapse in 1941 Yugoslavia's irredentist neighbours greedily helped themselves to its territories. Hungary immediately annexed Voivodina. Bulgaria took Macedonia and parts of southern Serbia. Slovenia was divided between Italy and Germany. Italy also took much of the Croatian coast and its islands in the Adriatic. The Nazis placed Serbia under direct military rule, implemented with customary brutality. The German High Command ordered Wehrmacht units to execute one hundred prisoners for every soldier killed, and fifty for each one wounded. With Italian and German help the Ustasha set up their Independent State of Croatia (NDH) under the leadership of Ante Pavelic, with the support of the Catholic church. The NDH encompassed Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina. The NDH's strategy for dealing with over two million Serbs on its territory was simple: ‘Kill a third, expel a third and convert a third.'