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fine role model for her pupils at the Petar Petrovics–Njegos primary school where she taught, remembers Kovac. ‘She believed that the party had set the right course. That was beyond question. She was a hard–liner. But she did not elaborate about these things. Her energy was dedicated to humanitarian work.’
    In 1947, perhaps inevitably, Svetozar Milosevic returned to his beloved Montenegro. A deeply spiritual man, he could not settle in Pozarevac. ‘My father was not unhappy because of political differences with my mother,’ says Borislav. ‘It was much more the ambience in Pozarevac. He could not live in such an atmosphere. It was very provincial, it was a small city, and he was a man of the mountains.’ But Svetozar kept in touch with his family. He wrote and, when he could, he sent money.
    Stanislava covered up her sadness at the break–up of her marriage by throwing herself into her work as a teacher and dedicated party member. Certainly everyone knew there was no point trying to hide a single dinar when Comrade Milosevic organised collections for the disadvantaged. Scrupulously honest, she ensured every coin was accounted for. Milica Kovac remembers her as ‘a real party activist, full of enthusiasm for humanitarian and volunteer work. She always insisted on collecting and distributing aid to poor families, especially the Gypsies. She was extremely strict about that. But she liked her word to be the last one. If she put forward an idea, she insisted it was accepted, and followed.’
    In Pozarevac the town gossips clucked disapprovingly at Svetozar’s departure. The small town was still a deeply conservative society. Yet nobody could fault Stanislava’s dedication to her sons, or to the cause of Communism. Even nowadays, in a western European welfare state, it is difficult enough for a single parent to bring up children alone. In provincial Serbia during the 1950s this was a feat of Stakhanovite dimensions. The country was still recovering from the ravages of the war. Stanislava’s modest salary was enough to feed and clothe herself and her sons, but only just. The three of them lived in two roomsand a kitchen in a pre–war one–storey house, just off the main street. ‘She dressed modestly, because those were modest times,’ says Milica Kovac. ‘Nobody had money to be elegant or eccentric, especially not provincial teachers. She wore flat shoes, because of her height, and clothes in the usual colours of middle–aged women in those times, brown, black and grey.’
    Beneath the modernist veneer of Communism, the country where Slobodan Milosevic grew up was profoundly traumatised. Tito’s Yugoslavia 7 was made up of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro. But whether in 1920, 1950 or 1990, Yugoslavia suffered from the same two fundamental weaknesses. The first can be described as philosophical. ‘Yugoslavism’, the doctrine of uniting the diverse south Slav peoples in one land, was an idea. For Yugoslavia’s educated, urban population it had great appeal, but high up in the mountains and down in the rural heartlands Yugoslavism took shallow roots. The call of the nation was far more powerful. Especially when in living memory former family friends had slaughtered each other because they had a different nationality.
    The second weakness was constitutional. Serbia was the biggest and most powerful of the Yugoslav nations, as they were defined under the constitution. Serbs saw Yugoslavia as a means of ensuring that all Serbs lived in one country, including the Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia, even if that country was called Yugoslavia rather than Serbia. So either Yugoslavia would be dominated by Serbia, or it would have to be constructed in such a way that Serbia would be constitutionally constrained. A Yugoslavia dominated by Serbia – dubbed