Milosevic Read Online Free

millenarian dream of a classless society, but also on a ‘national liberation struggle’. First the Germans had to be killed or expelled, and the Yugoslav nations freed from the Nazi terror. Once this was achieved, the partisans would set up a ‘liberation committee’ to run their new territories.
    Momcilo (Moma) Markovic, future father–in–law of Slobodan, joined the partisans with his brothers Draza and Brana. (Brana was killed in 1942, but Moma and Draza later became senior politicians in Tito’s Yugoslavia.) Now in his eighties, Draza Markovic lives in Belgrade and vividly recalls his wartime years. ‘My duties as political commissarincluded moral and political education, explaining the movement and the war itself. We were fighting against the enemy occupiers and also struggling for a new society. But the fight against the enemy came first. That’s why we had wide support, especially from the peasants who faced inconceivable violence and terror.’ 4
    Caught between the Chetniks, the partisans and the Ustasha were Bosnia’s Muslims. Bosnia was part of the NDH, and its leadership courted Bosnia’s Muslims, declaring them to be ‘the flower of the Croatian nation’. This apparent contradiction was resolved by the Ustasha claim that Bosnian Muslims were not really Muslims, but rather were Croats who had converted to Islam under the rule of the Ottoman empire. As such they should be welcomed back into the national fold. (They were also claimed by Serb nationalists.)
    Through all these complications one simple truth is evident. Wartime Yugoslavia was a charnel house. Over one million Yugoslavs were killed in the years between 1941 and 1945, but many died at the hands of their compatriots in the civil war. About half of those killed were Serbs. 5 Almost a third of all casualties, 328,000, were killed in Bosnia.
    In October 1944, when Slobodan was three years old, Tito and the partisans liberated the capital, Belgrade, and then Pozarevac too. The swastika was replaced by the red flag. Across Yugoslavia a new, Communist regime was established. Although Svetozar was not a party member, as a teacher, and a respected pillar of the local community, he was appointed vice president of the regional Popular Front. Like many, Svetozar was duped. The Popular Front was a deception, widely used in eastern Europe as the Communists took over. The idea was to have a political structure controlled by Communists behind the scenes, but with non–Communist figureheads, to disguise its true orientation.
    Stanislava had welcomed Tito’s victory. This was the Marxist dream in which she believed. Svetozar had increasing doubts. In Yugoslavia, and across eastern Europe, the educated, the middle class, those who owned property, were seen as the class enemy, and ground down. Bourgeois manners such as Svetozar exhibited – an educated way of speaking, soft hands – were now a sign of shame. Even his beloved Orthodox liturgy was considered suspect. The works of Marx and Lenin were the compulsory new gospel, to be ‘discussed’ at political meetings, discussion being a euphemism for parroting the party line. Conversations with friends and acquaintances were guarded, short, for who could be trusted? Evenings were spent at home, listening to the radio, or reading more party texts.
    Yet many accepted all this as the price for building the new Jerusalem. As a loyal party member Stanislava did not question the decisions of the country’s male leaders. Milica Kovac, a widow in her sixties, was a member of the same local Communist Party branch in Pozarevac. ‘Stanislava was as straight as an arrow, and always held her chin high. She was a woman of great energy, with a strong voice that told you about her strength of character. She was a true believer in the idea of communism, and of equality.’ 6 She was a woman of upright bearing, boundless energy and social conscience, a