Who Was Mira Marković

Mira Marković (real name Mirjana Marković; Požarevac, 10 July 1942 – Moscow, 14 April 2019) was a Serbian sociologist, university professor and politician. She is best known as the wife of Slobodan Milošević and as the founder and first president of the Yugoslav Left (JUL), a party that from 1994 formed part of the ruling coalition in Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Contemporaries described her as one of the most influential women in Serbia in the 1990s. Her opponents accused her of exerting too much influence on the regime’s policies, and the media in Serbia and abroad called her the “Lady Macbeth of the Balkans.” After the change of government in 2000 and her husband’s arrest, she left the country in 2003 and lived in Russia until her death.

The biography of Mira Marković is therefore at once a story of a family tragedy during the Second World War, of an academic career, of a rise to the top of political life and of numerous controversies. This text follows only facts confirmed by several sources and presents them neutrally.

Origins and Childhood

Mirjana, whom people called Baca in her youth, was born on 10 July 1942 in Požarevac, in the middle of the Second World War. Her parents, Moma Marković and Vera Miletić, were at the time fighters in the Partisan movement.

Moma Marković was a political commissar of the Main Staff of the People’s Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Serbia. Immediately after the war he counted among the most powerful men in Serbia, as a member of the Central Committee and other top party bodies. Vera Miletić, born in 1920 in Petrovac na Mlavi, was a student and a fighter. Together with her sisters Olga and Branka and her cousin Davorjanka Paunović, she belonged to a group of revolutionary youth that the people of Požarevac called the “red girls.”

Vera Miletić was arrested in 1943, when Mirjana was about a year old. After being tortured, she was shot, and Mirjana was left without a mother. The circumstances of her arrest and death were later presented in different versions in the media, so they are not stated here as confirmed. According to some sources, the girl was raised by her maternal grandparents, while she saw her father mostly during the summer school holidays.

Davorjanka Paunović, known as Zdenka, was a cousin of Vera Miletić, and some sources describe her as Mira’s aunt. She worked as a courier and personal secretary of Josip Broz Tito and is considered one of his great loves. She died in 1946 at the age of 25. This family legacy followed Mira Marković throughout her life.

Education

She attended secondary school in her hometown of Požarevac, where she met her future husband, Slobodan Milošević. After finishing school, she enrolled in sociology at the University of Belgrade.

She earned her doctorate at the same university. Her education later allowed her to work as a university professor, and in her youth, it is reported, she shared a love of left-wing ideas with her future husband, who studied law.

University Career

Mira Marković taught sociology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics of the University of Belgrade. Some sources say she also taught Marxism. As a full professor of sociology she also worked at the American-French University of Management and at the Faculty of International Management in Belgrade.

Her academic status was the subject of public debate. Critics reproached her for rarely appearing at the faculty during the 1990s because of her political duties, and for a university that under her influence favored the authorities. According to a 1997 report by the weekly Vreme, she withdrew from the University Council at that time, and part of her teaching was taken over by an assistant. A group of students demanded her removal from the faculty, but the university authorities did not accept the demand.

After moving to Russia, she continued her academic work. According to media reports, she became a full member of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences, a visiting professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University and an honorary professor there.

Meeting Slobodan Milošević and Marriage

Mira Marković met Slobodan Milošević at the secondary school in Požarevac, in the communist youth organization. Many sources note that it was she who influenced his early path through the party structures. Because of their closeness, their circle called the two young people “Romeo and Juliet II.”

They married in 1965 and had two children, a son, Marko, and a daughter, Marija. The marriage lasted until Milošević’s death in 2006. Throughout their lives they remained political and personal allies.

In the late 1980s Milošević became the dominant figure in Serbian politics, and Mira Marković was one of his closest associates and advisers. In an interview recorded in the mid-1990s and kept in the archive of King’s College London, she spoke about discussions among university colleagues on reforms, about the Eighth Session of the party in 1987, about events in Slovenia and about the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Political Rise and the Yugoslav Left (JUL)

According to encyclopedic data, she was First Lady of Serbia from 1989 to 1990. In party terms, she was a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia until 1990, then of the League of Communists – Movement for Yugoslavia (SK–PJ) until 1994, and afterwards of the Yugoslav Left.

The Yugoslav Left was founded in 1994, and Mira Marković was one of its founders and its first president. Some sources say she led the party’s Directorate. From the start the party was a coalition partner of Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and held ministerial and official posts at the federal and republican levels.

Relations with the SPS were not always harmonious. Some Socialist officials, such as Milutin Mrkonjić, were critical of JUL. JUL also included politicians who later continued their careers in other parties, among them Aleksandar Vulin. Professor Vladimir Štambuk, a former member of the party, compared it to Joan of Arc and expressed faith that a new left would one day rise from its ashes.

Political opponents held that JUL bore responsibility for the regime’s policies. Žarko Korać, deputy prime minister in Zoran Đinđić’s government, claimed that party members held important positions and therefore share responsibility for the plunder and wars of the 1990s. In an interview with Vreme after the change of government, Mira Marković defended her husband and his role in the Dayton Agreement, claiming that during the bombing she met daily with members of the party’s directorate.

Columns and Books

Besides politics, Mira Marković wrote. In the 1990s she published a column and a diary in the weekly Duga, in which she wrote about political events as well as private subjects. Her last column in Duga appeared in February 1997.

Her book “Noć i dan” (Night and Day), a diary covering the period from December 1992 to July 1994, was translated into Greek. According to media reports, her books were translated and sold in Russia, China, India and Canada.

After moving to Russia she published several titles. They include the collection “Pre i posle” (Before and After), which contains interviews, letters and speeches from the period 1985 to 2007, the three-volume “Destierrada e imperdida” (Banished and Not Lost), and also “Danger,” “Sačuvajte ovu knjigu” (Keep This Book) and “Bilo je to ovako” (It Was Like This). She also wrote columns for the newspaper Pravda from 2007 to 2008 and for the portal Sloboda from 2010 to 2011. In Moscow she also wrote an autobiographical book in which she defended her husband and revealed details of their marriage.

Critics judged her literary style in different ways. The literary critic Teofil Pančić considered that her writing corresponded poorly with the world in which everyone else lived. In reviewing “Bilo je to ovako,” the weekly Vreme spoke of the author’s “parallel universe.” Her admirers, by contrast, valued her texts as testimony about events in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

The Fall of the Regime and the Move to Russia

Milošević’s rule ended on 5 October 2000. Slobodan Milošević was arrested in 2001 and transferred to The Hague, where he was tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Mira Marković left Serbia in 2003 and went to Russia, where her son Marko was already living. Most sources give 2003, while some mention 2000 or 2001, so the sources differ. She has not been seen in public since.

In 2005 Serbia issued an international arrest warrant for her, and Moscow rejected the extradition request, stating that she had been granted political asylum. The sources differ on the year the asylum was granted, with a period from 2006 to 2010 being cited. She and her son received refugee status from the Russian authorities.

She did not attend her husband’s funeral in Požarevac in 2006 because, according to reports, she feared arrest. According to media reports, she believed that The Hague tribunal had contributed to her husband’s death.

Court Proceedings and Accusations

The State Apartments Affair

In 2005 an indictment for abuse of office was filed against Mira Marković. Prosecutors charged her with inciting Živka Knežević, then the general secretary of the Serbian government and a member of the government’s housing commission, to allocate an apartment to Ilona Pešić, her grandson’s nanny, although she did not meet the legal requirements.

The trial was conducted in her absence, since she was unavailable to the Serbian judiciary. In June 2018 a first-instance court sentenced her to one year in prison. The Court of Appeals in Belgrade overturned that verdict in March 2019, a few weeks before her death, and the trial was sent back to the beginning.

In addition, according to BBC News in Serbian, she was also included in an indictment for cigarette smuggling, but the trial against her was suspended while a verdict was delivered for the other defendants.

Mentions in Murder Investigations

In the media and during investigations, Mira Marković was repeatedly mentioned as a possible orderer of the murders of the journalist Slavko Ćuruvija and former Serbian president Ivan Stambolić. She was never questioned in those proceedings, and no verdict was passed against her in connection with them.

In the final verdict in the Stambolić case it was established that the murder was ordered by Slobodan Milošević. NIN journalist Vuk Cvijić assessed that the verdict in the apartments affair was symbolic and that the Serbian judiciary would find cases such as the Ćuruvija murder more important.

Final Years and Death

In Russia, according to her own words in her last interview with Serbian media, she lived modestly and had no intention of returning to Serbia. In the last weeks of her life she was treated in a hospital in Moscow, where she spent almost a month.

She died on 14 April 2019, a Sunday, at around 1 p.m., in her 77th year according to some media, or at age 76 according to her date of birth. Most sources say this happened in Moscow, while IMDb and some media mention Sochi. According to Telegraf, the cause of death was complications of pneumonia after two operations, and some sources also cite complications after a fall in her apartment.

Cremation and Funeral

The cremation took place in Moscow on 18 April, in the presence of her son Marko, his daughter Marija, close friends and Serbian embassy staff. The urn was brought to Serbia by Slobodan Bulatović, a family friend.

She was buried on 20 April 2019 in the yard of the family house in Požarevac, next to her husband, under a linden tree, with a service conducted by clergy of the Eparchy of Braničevo. Several dozen people attended, among them Milovan Bojić, a former minister from the Milošević era. Her son Marko and daughter Marija did not attend, and Bulatović read a letter from her daughter Marija.

Ivica Dačić, president of the SPS, said that in recent years he had not been on good terms with Mira Marković, but on behalf of the party he offered condolences to the family.

Private Life

Mira Marković was married to Slobodan Milošević from 1965 until his death in 2006. They had a son, Marko, and a daughter, Marija. In 1998 Marija founded the television station Košava and owned it until the change of government in 2000.

In Russia she lived with her son Marko, who was also granted refugee status. Marko had a daughter, Marija, who attended her grandmother’s cremation.

According to Times Higher Education, in public she liked the color pink and often wore a flower in her hair. After her death, the urn with her remains was placed in the family yard in Požarevac, where her husband also lies.

Interesting Facts

Several facts from the life of Mira Marković drew particular attention from the public.

• In her youth she was called Baca, and in Western media she was given the nickname “Lady Macbeth of the Balkans.”
• Among their peers, she and Slobodan Milošević were called “Romeo and Juliet II.”
• She died on 14 April, the anniversary of the 2000 rally “Stop Terror – For Democratic Elections,” which is considered the start of Milošević’s downfall.
• She appeared as a guest in the documentary “The Power Behind the Throne?” (according to IMDb).
• Her 1994–1995 interview, tied to a documentary series on the breakup of Yugoslavia, is kept in the archive of King’s College London.

Awards and Recognition

There is no reliable information about significant state or international awards received by Mira Marković.

Academic recognition in Russia is known, where she was a member of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences, a visiting professor and an honorary professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Legacy and Influence

Assessments of the role of Mira Marković remain deeply divided. Her admirers, such as Milovan Bojić, said that history would clear her name and that she remained faithful to the ideas of the left. Critics regarded her as one of the key figures of the regime that ruled during the wars of the 1990s.

The political influence of JUL is limited today, but some of its former members continued their careers in other parties. Biographers and journalists point out that Mira Marković was one of the few women in Serbian history to wield such political influence, but also that she remained a controversial figure.

Her fate, from a family tragedy in wartime to a life in exile, remains a subject of newspaper articles, books and television series. A final verdict on her activities was never delivered, so assessments of her are largely based on political views and testimonies.

Biography – Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Mira Marković?

Mira Marković was a Serbian sociologist, university professor and politician, founder of the Yugoslav Left and wife of Slobodan Milošević.

When and where was Mira Marković born?

She was born on 10 July 1942 in Požarevac, Serbia.

What did Mira Marković do for a living?

She worked in sociology as a university professor, in politics as president of JUL, and as a writer of columns and books.

What was the Yugoslav Left (JUL)?

JUL was a left-wing political party founded in 1994, which was a coalition partner of the Socialist Party of Serbia in government.

Why did Mira Marković move to Russia?

She left in 2003, after the fall of Milošević’s rule and his arrest, when proceedings for abuse of office were being conducted against her. Russia granted her asylum.

Was Mira Marković convicted?

In June 2018 she was sentenced in absentia to one year in prison in the state apartments affair, but the Court of Appeals overturned that verdict in March 2019 and ordered a retrial.

When and where did Mira Marković die?

She died on 14 April 2019 in Moscow, although some sources mention Sochi.

Where is Mira Marković buried?

She was buried on 20 April 2019 in the yard of the family house in Požarevac, next to her husband Slobodan Milošević.

How many children did Mira Marković have?

She had two children, a son, Marko, and a daughter, Marija.

Which books did Mira Marković write?

Her books include “Noć i dan,” “Pre i posle,” “Destierrada e imperdida,” “Danger,” “Sačuvajte ovu knjigu” and “Bilo je to ovako.”

Conclusion

Mira Marković was a sociologist, professor and politician whose life was marked by a family tragedy, a rise alongside Slobodan Milošević and the leadership of the Yugoslav Left. While supporters saw her as a loyal figure of the left, critics regarded her as a key figure of the government of the 1990s.

Her biography shows how hard it is to separate facts from political judgments. After moving to Russia in 2003 she lived in exile until her death on 14 April 2019, and she was buried in Požarevac.