Milosevic by Adam LeBor Read Free Book Online

background. That was my impression from the beginning, although I don’t deny they developed a special relationship. He relied on his mother and Mira, and I think she is the only person he trusts.’ Even as teenagers Slobodan and Mira courted those with power. In Pozarevac, as in other Balkan and Mediterranean towns, the main evening entertainment was the
corso
, or the nightly promenade. This was a chance to socialise, catch up on the gossip, see and be seen. The
corso
had its own rules, but Slobodan and Mira broke them. While their classmates walked together on the road, the young couple took care to stroll on the pavement, in the company of their teachers, and the older students.
    Milosevic’s diligence at school, and loyal espousal of the party line had been well noticed by the party grandees in Pozarevac. The Markovic connection certainly helped. In post–war Yugoslavia the partisan generation were both kings and king–makers. Milosevic became a full Communist Party member in January 1959, at the comparatively early age of seventeen. This was unusual and an honour, granted only to the most promising school students. This was the party’s method of perpetuating itself, by picking future leaders at an early age who would then be encouraged to follow a political career. Acceptance demanded a high level of self–belief and confidence.
    There was no shame in not being a full party member. Some students of Milosevic’s age felt that they were not ready for party membership, as they were not yet sufficiently versed in the principles of Marxism, or ideologically pure enough for such an honour. The young Milosevic had no such doubts about joining the party. Nor did Mira. Although she has always been hugely ambitious, possessed of a nervous, febrile personality, Mira has never liked public appearances or glad–handing. She understood that she would never be a successful politician in Communist Yugoslavia, which was also a highly sexist society. But in the friendless, highly ambitious schoolboy, cosseted by his over–protective mother and abandoned by his father, she saw the raw material that she could shapeinto a future leader. Mira’s literary leitmotif was less Greek tragedy than Pygmalion.
    â€˜The relationship between Slobodan and Mira is very strong and quite pathological. Milosevic was intelligent enough, but Mira gave him the love for power, and the ambition. She made him what he is,’ said Dusan Mitevic. An ebullient Serb from Kosovo, and one–time head of Belgrade Television, Mitevic was one of Milosevic’s key behind–the–scenes political advisers, and a friend of both Milosevic and Mira, until the two men broke in the early 1990s. ‘But to understand their relationship you must understand its start. She was from one of the most Communist families in Serbia. His father was religious. These are Serbia’s two ideological opposites. When they came together she poured all her left–wing ideology into him, and he accepted it.’ 5
    After graduating from high school at Pozarevac, Milosevic went to Belgrade University to study law. There he took a room in a student hostel among the concrete wastelands of New Belgrade, built to cope with the post–war housing shortage in the capital. Most students shared three or four to a room. As a full party member, Milosevic used his connections to obtain a single room. This was a considerable privilege. The first stirrings of a generational change were taking place in Yugoslavia when Milosevic arrived at university during the early 1960s. Those born in the war years enjoyed a full education, unbroken by wars or invasions. There were 65,000 students enrolled at Belgrade University. Milosevic was one of many ambitious young party members to arrive in the big city and consider possible future career paths in politics, or running a state–owned enterprise.
    The Communist grandees had clearly laid out the