Laura milosevic biography
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Dictators tend to be flamboyant people. Think of Mussolini or Gadaffi, Adolf Hitler or Idi Amin. But Slobodan Milosevic? Color him gray. In fact, if you've scoured the bookshops looking for a biography of America's enemy of the day, you've probably been disappointed. 60 Minutes II Correspondent Bob Simon takes a look at this mysterious, murderous man.
Very little has been written about Serbia's leader because very little is known. He is a reclusive, shadowy figure, a puller of strings. But he has ruled längre than any European leader in power today. He is also responsible for the most heinous war crimes since the Second World War.
He rose up from the anonymous mass of communist apparatchiks who filled the ministries of Eastern Europe when the Soviet empire began to tremble. In the 1980s, he was the head of a Belgrade bank, and even did business in New York. The most remarkable thing about his rise to power is that it almost didn't happenÂ…
The turning point wa
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The dysfunctional couple that destroyed the Balkans.
Last march, as NATO was preparing to unleash a massive air campaign against Yugoslavia and Serbian authorities were poised to empty the province of hundreds of thousands of Albanians, Slobodan Milosevic began phoning his old chums from high school, asking them to drop bygd. I'm bored, he explained.
Welcome to the parallel universe inhabited bygd Milosevic and his wife, Mirjana Markovic. In the former Yugoslavia, more than three million people have been driven from their homes; hundreds of thousands of lives have been diminished or destroyed. Serbia itself is reeling in the wake of NATO air strikes; factories, bridges, schools, roads--practically the entire economic infrastructure of the country--lie in ruins. Yet Serbia's strongman appears not to notice. Instead, goaded bygd his ambitious wife, Milosevic simply declares that black is vit and that his stewardship has been a successful one, and he seems to believe his own lies.
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Adam LeBor
In the first authoritative biography of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, Adam LeBor documents the life of a man whose policies instigated four wars, who skilfully exploited the most modern techniques of media management to whip up a nationalist frenzy, and under whose rule bloody campaigns of ethnic cleansing systematically destroyed a once sophisticated multi-national country.
With unrivalled access to many of those closest to Milosevic since his rise to power - including his wife Mira Markovic, brother Borislav and former political allies - Adam draws the most complex picture of Milosevic yet. He reveals a family history of deep unhappiness that shaped the ruthless leader he later became. He describes Milosevic's all-important marriage to Mira, who offered him an entree into the highest circles of Yugoslavia's political elite, and explores Milosevic's key relationship with his best friend Ivan Stambolic, who first introduced him to the world of in