Milosevic (4 page)

Yugoslavia's diverse cultures spanned European history, boasting a complex heritage of long–vanished empires. Here were the coastal towns of the Roman and Venetian empires, seaside cities such as Trogir and Split, and Dubrovnik, the medieval walled city that was the jewel of the Adriatic. Roman legions had marched through here; as had their successors the janissaries of Suleyman the Magnificent, and Napoleon's rowdy armies. The Romans had built Diocletian's palace at Split, the Ottomans the beautiful mosques of Sarajevo and Travnik with their needle–sharp minarets pointing skyward to Allah.

The French soldiers had bequeathed a love of wine and liberty. Like many foreign visitors they, too, were entranced by the fiery temperaments and almost oriental cheekbones of the country's women, whom they christened ‘petit–chat', now shortened to the slang word
picka
, an altogether less gallant term. Rome, Istanbul, and Paris all left their legacy, and Vienna too, which once ruled Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia. The Habsburg spirit of civic pride lived on in the spacious squares and ornate apartment buildings of cities such as Zagreb and Novi Sad, in the former Habsburg territory of Voivodina, and stolid municipal buildings painted the characteristic Habsburg ochre stood as far south as Bosnia.

Tito had created eastern Europe's own mini–Soviet Union, a diverse ethnic mix held together under the Marxist mantra of ‘Brotherhood and Unity'. The idea behind Brotherhood and Unity was admirable, if optimistic. The memories of the ghastly atrocities committed by the Chetniks, Ustasha and partisans were to be buried, and a new Yugoslav identity formed. Tito believed, probably correctly, that any genuine examination of wartime activity would pull his nascent country apart in bloody recriminations. But fifty years later, the price of his failure to come to terms with Yugoslavia's past would be high indeed. Wartime memories, and victims, of massacre and murder did not fade away. Instead, like ice–age mammoths, they were perfectly preserved under Communism's permafrost, ready to be dug up – sometimes literally – and
displayed as proud symbols of victimhood when Yugoslavia began to collapse.

Tito's six federal republics enjoyed considerable autonomy, and were run by their own Communist parties. But this autonomy existed only within the overarching state framework of the Federal Republic, which was responsible for national matters such as defence and national economic and foreign policy, conducted – in theory at least – in the spirit of brotherhood and unity. This was a delicate balancing act. Unlike France or Germany, Yugoslavia was not a nation–state. It was a state of six nations. The existence of, for example, the Serbian Communist Party, in the Serbian republic, allowed nationalist–minded comrades to assert some control over the destiny of their homeland. But at the same time, the fact that nation–based political structures existed at all gave nationalists a framework in which to operate.

Alone among eastern European Communist leaders Tito had broken with Stalin and survived. After the war Stalin had determined to Sovietise the country and install a pro–Moscow regime. Alex Bebler, later Yugoslav ambassador at the United Nations, recalled: ‘Russian [army] officers started behaving as if they were the masters and wanted to command our unit. Our officers did not like it and began to protest. Our officers were all partisans who fought in the war, and naturally objected to being deprived of their commands.'
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Stalin soon discovered that when he pushed in Belgrade, unlike in Warsaw or Budapest, the local Communists pushed back. Angry at resistance to his plans, he expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform (the international Communist organisation) in March 1948. At first, many Yugoslav Communists simply could not comprehend what had happened. There was fear, confusion, even suicides. Others proved more ideologically nimble. Draza Markovic observed: ‘We had looked to Moscow absolutely. Without any question, Moscow was the centre. But the Russians told so many lies about us, that we were revisionists, traitors, agents of the West and liars, so eventually it was not so hard to take that step.' Fearful of Soviet armed intervention – for which preparations were indeed made – Tito launched a terror campaign. An Orwellian shift in propaganda announced the new party line, that yesterday's black was now today's white, and Moscow was no longer the benevolent uncle but a deadly enemy. Those Yugoslavs who were already suspect, or who switched allegiance from Moscow to Belgrade
too slowly, were sent to a concentration camp on Goli Otok, an island in the Adriatic.

Aca Singer, later head of Yugoslavia's Jewish community, and a prominent Belgrade banker in the 1970s and 1980s, was a prisoner at Goli Otok, sent there in 1951. Singer was no Stalinist, but his criticism of the government and his Jewish origins made him suspect. On Goli Otok the camp bosses demanded ever more fervent pledges of allegiance to Tito. This was a macabre new twist for Singer, a survivor of several Nazi camps including Auschwitz. ‘On Goli Otok you had to prove that you were pro–Tito, not pro–Soviet. The Germans did not ask me in Auschwitz to say Heil Hitler, but there I had to praise Tito, and shout “Long live Tito”.'
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In the West, Tito's break with Stalin was greeted with euphoria. A Communist country that had leapt free of Moscow was a dream come true for Cold War policymakers. Material, military, and most of all, lavish economic aid poured into the renegade Marxist state. Washington supported the start of the series of loans from the IMF and World Bank that would prop up the Yugoslav economy for the next three decades. Yugoslavia's geographical position in the heart of Europe, between Vienna and Istanbul, and its long Adriatic coastline gave it vital strategic importance for the United States and western Europe. Western tax–payers' dollars for many years paid Yugoslav wages, viewed by European and American policymakers as a price well worth paying.

The break with Stalin signalled not only a massive influx of western aid, but also the start of a liberalisation unmatched in the rest of the Communist world. As Tito positioned himself as a buffer between the capitalist and Communist blocs, and billions of dollars poured in, the repression eased. Pozarevac transformed from a sleepy provincial settlement into a bustling regional centre. Pavements were laid, roads were asphalted and buildings went up. More shops opened, and eventually, a department store.

The town's cinemas reflected Yugoslavia's position perched between east and west. Cinema–goers could watch
Dial M for Murder
, westerns with Doris Day or admire Marilyn Monroe, as well the best of the 1950s Soviet film industry. ‘From the early 1950s we felt that we were back in Europe. We listened to Radio Luxembourg, especially at night. We knew about the latest new films, American, British and French new wave. We talked about films and music like young people in the west,'
remembers Seska Stanojlovic, a childhood friend of Slobodan Milosevic, and now a journalist with the Belgrade liberal news weekly
Vreme
. The two first met at the age of five, on a school holiday to the eastern Serbian mountains. Like all Yugoslav children they played not cowboys and Indians but partisans and Germans. Plenty of women had fought with the partisans, but Stanojlovic, like every girl, was forced to play a nurse. Slobodan was almost certainly a partisan.

In many ways Titoist Yugoslavia in the 1950s resembled austere post–war Britain. The state always provided just about enough, but luxuries were rare and there was little choice. Clothes and shops were drab. As Stanojlovic noted, everyone had but one of everything. But nobody froze or starved, even if supper was often bread covered with dripping or home–made jam. There was no television or central heating. Boilers were fired up with wood and coal, to warm enough water for a bath. Yet there was a feeling of optimism in the air, that fundamentally Tito was steering a good course, and life was getting better.

Although Stanojlovic's family were members of the haute bourgeoisie, who had once owned considerable property, as a schoolgirl she was a loyal Communist. ‘My mother and my grandmother were quite rich. We had a big house and some land, but it was nationalised. My grandmother was angry, but I was a small child, and I just accepted that we were growing up in this kind of society. We accepted this idea of a new society, that we were all equal, as something normal, that this is how we have to grow up.'

Slobodan's doting mother attempted to fill the vacuum left at home by the departure of her husband. Stanislava Milosevic became the centre of her son's childhood universe. Stanislava was an ambitious woman for her children as well as herself. Other mothers made do with whatever clothes were to hand when they dressed their children for school. But Stanislava took care every day to send Slobodan out in a fresh white shirt, like a junior version of the Communist official she hoped he would be. The serious young boy made few friends at school and avoided sports. ‘Stanislava was a protective and dominant mother. Slobodan did not even go to the gym in case he sweated and caught a cold,' says Milica Kovac. Milosevic gained the nickname ‘silky'. He never got into a fight, or raided the orchards in the lush farmland around Pozarevac. Friendless and fatherless, mocked for his weediness and unwillingness to join the rough and tumble of the playground, the young schoolboy instead took refuge in his studies. Milosevic spent his
spare time writing for the school magazine and working for the pupils' Communist youth organisation. And still, there was something different about the young Slobodan. Not exactly a star quality, but an aura of, at the very least, unusual determination. ‘Slobodan was his own person,' said Seska Stanojlovic. ‘He was an excellent student. Even at that time it was clear to me that he was absolutely devoted to his personal ambitions.'

In this more cynical age it might seem hard to believe, but Yugoslavia's first post–war generation really believed it was constructing a new society. For a few years at least, the rosy faces of the Young Communists and Young Pioneers that shone from Communist–era posters were modelled on real life. Communist states expended much energy on their young generation, regarding them as untainted by capitalist society. Pressed into the correct Marxist mould, they would be the building blocks of the new classless Yugoslavia.

Even now, many adults in eastern Europe recall their Communist childhoods with nostalgia. As recently as the late 1990s, one of the best–selling CDs in neighbouring Hungary was
The Best of Communism
, featuring youthful choirs singing homages to Lenin, Stalin and various Marxist worthies. ‘After the war, when I was a young man, our generation was full of hope, even though the country was ruined,' said Hungarian film director Peter Bacso. ‘We believed in a new world based on justice. I was so enthusiastic that when I was a young poet, I even wrote lyrics for the songs we sang in the summer camps.'
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Bacso later found fame exposing the absurdity of the one party system in his film
The Witness
, in which Communist Party officials claim that a lemon is the first Hungarian orange.

At that time, in the 1950s and 1960s, Yugoslav young people were frequently drafted into labour brigades to build roads or railways. The working holidays were arduous, but enjoyable, bringing together idealistic youth of the different Yugoslav republics and foreign volunteers as well. Like the founders of the first kibbutzim, the young Communists believed that physical prowess was part of the process of building the new, socialist, man and woman. Roads and railways were more than a means of efficient transport, they bound the diverse nations of Yugoslavia together, linking republic capitals such as Belgrade in Serbia and Zagreb in Croatia, Ljubljana in Slovenia, and Skopje in Macedonia. The road linking Belgrade and Zagreb was even known as the ‘Highway of Brotherhood and Unity'. Under Tito such projects were also a symbol
of modernity. Even now Yugoslavia's network of motorways is far more efficient than those in Poland or Hungary.

So it was perfectly natural that the school students of Pozarevac would also be called to do their socialist duty. Together with her schoolmates, Seska Stanojlovic went to Slovenia to help build a motorway there. Slobodan helped organise the trip. But while the workers' state of course had to be constructed that did not mean he personally had to wield a pickaxe, and he stayed at home. ‘Slobodan did not participate. He did not like to work, only to be a leader,' she said. Years later Stanojlovic asked a local photographer if he had a picture of Slobodan in the youth work brigade at home in Pozarevac. He had such a picture, he informed her. It showed all the young people working, and Milosevic standing at the side.

He is an extremely handsome man, a superior man with fine human qualities. He has strong feelings for other people, for their problems and needs. He is a good speaker, and he has a strong and natural inner stability.

Mira Markovic, on her husband.
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Slobodan Milosevic was a loner, but his schoolmate Mira Markovic certainly liked the way he looked. She noticed that he always wore neat and clean clothes. He behaved properly and had good manners. He was well regarded by the school teachers, who even trusted him enough to fetch the disabled weapons used in military training classes.

And Milosevic certainly knew all about Mira Markovic, a young woman with a powerful name. With her thick dark hair and luminous black eyes, she had a certain appeal, although she was not the most beautiful girl in school. She was a daughter of the most famous revolutionary family in Pozarevac. She lived in one of the grandest houses in the city, a fine mansion once owned by a Serbian duke, whose walls included Roman ruins. Both her parents, Vera Miletic and Moma Markovic, had been partisans, and Moma was now a government minister, one of the most important politicians in Yugoslavia. So when Slobo bumped into Mira outside the library, and saw that she was upset after getting a bad grade, he was happy to offer comfort.