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Milosevic is a throwback to the kind of violent nationalism that regularly rearranged Europe's borders in centuries past. But he is also a harbinger of what may happen elsewhere as the constraints of communism give way to long- suppressed emotions. His animating passion seems to be power, first and foremost, with national pride as a useful adjunct. Though a proven master of the art of communist careermaking, Milosevic has never been a slave to ideology. "All this talk of his Bolshevism is rubbish," says Slavoljub Djukic, author of a critical biography of Milosevic titled How the Leader Happened, which was published in Belgrade last month. "He is simply a man who loves power." Even his adoption of Serbian nationalism came only after he recognized its potential for personal advancement. Says Milos Vasic, a journalist for the Belgrade weekly Vreme: "If tomorrow he found it fit to be a Freemason, he'd be the grand master of the first Serbian lodge."
Until five years ago, his life read like a Bolshevik parable, though shadowed by personal tragedy. He was born in 1941 in the town of Pozarevac, near Belgrade, where he still keeps a modest weekend home. His father was a seminary-trained teacher of religion from Montenegro and his mother a fervent communist; the two quarreled incessantly over ideological issues. Early on, his father abandoned the family, went back to Montenegro and later committed suicide. An uncle, a general in the army, died by his own hand as well. When Slobodan's mother killed herself in 1974, she reportedly left her devoted son distraught.
While still in high school, Milosevic met his wife, the ambitious and intense Mirjana Markovic, whose family ranked among the most prominent communists in Serbia. When she was only a year old, her mother was killed by Tito's partisans after revealing information about underground communists to Nazi-backed police in Belgrade. Today Mirjana remains a powerful member of the hard-line League of Communists-Movement for Yugoslavia, which enjoys strong support within the army. She wields considerable influence over her husband. She zealously safeguards him by watching for any signs of disloyalty, real or imagined.
The cleverest move Milosevic made in his years as an ambitious apparatchik was to hitch his star to Ivan Stambolic, a nephew of one of the most powerful Serbian communist leaders. For more than 20 years, Milosevic moved up the communist hierarchy in Stambolic's wake, succeeding him as director of the state-owned industrial gas conglomerate Tehnogas, as Belgrade chief of the Communist Party and eventually as boss of the Serbian Communist Party. When the time came to slough off his mentor in late 1987, he did so with ruthless precision. By 1989 he was the unchallenged president of Serbia and today presides over what is left of Yugoslavia: Serbia, Montenegro and the two provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina.