When was slobodan milosevic in power

Milosevic's modern political career spanned 13 years, a period bracketed by events in Kosovo in and In April , then an ambitious young communist apparatchik, he was dispatched to the region for a spot of local problem-solving by Ivan Stambolic, the Serbian president who was Milosevic's key mentor and once closest friend.

In , Stambolic, long retired but staging a political comeback, was abducted on the streets of Belgrade while out jogging, and murdered, allegedly on the orders of Milosevic's secret police. It was during those early visits - two in the same week - that Milosevic rocketed to national prominence in a communist federal Yugoslavia buckling under nationalist tensions.

He mesmerised the mob by assuring the minority Serbs in the ethnic Albanian province that no one would ever "beat them" again.

Milosevic had already installed key aides in control of Serbian national television, and the footage of his speeches electrified Serbia. Milosevic himself, until then a dour and orthodox communist, appeared to realise his gift for rhetoric and the power of nationalism.

He never looked back. Over the next few years he deployed his keen knowledge of the communist security and media apparatus to purge the Serbian Communist party, and ingratiate himself with the Yugoslav army and secret police to abolish Albanian autonomy in Kosovo. He also took control of the Vojvodina province of Serbia, put his loyalists in charge in Montenegro, before, at the beginning of the s, start to foment ethnic Serb rebellions in Croatia and Bosnia.

The Serbs hailed him, initially, as a modern messiah. Quite why Milosevic should have become such a potent tumour in the European body politic was not immediately apparent when he emerged from the dull world of Yugoslav apparatchiks in the mids.

The second son of a Montenegrin Orthodox religious preacher and a Serbian communist schoolmistress, he was born in the small town of Pozarevac, south-east of Belgrade, as Yugoslavia collapsed into civil war under the impact of the Nazi occupation and partition.

After the war his parents separated: his father, Svetozar, returned to his native Montenegro and committed suicide in ; his mother, Stanislava, killed herself in Another of Milosevic's favourite uncles also killed himself.

Milosevic was a conservative child and his mother's favourite. A bit of a school swot, he came across to contemporaries as dour and older than his years. He was always smartly dressed, and was said to prefer the company of older children.

His teenage sweetheart, lifelong partner and most baleful influence, Mirjana Markovic, whose partisan mother had been tortured to death during the war, was also from Pozarevac. By their teens, the couple were inseparable. Her father, who disowned Mirjana she was raised by her grandparents , and uncle were leading lights in Tito's wartime partisans and prominent in the postwar communist regime.

Her aunt was Tito's secretary, said to be the leader's lover. Mirjana regularly received presents from the dictator. By the late s, the Milosevic couple had moved to Belgrade to study at the university; he read law and she sociology. His ambition, coupled with her party connections, brought him to the notice of the capital's party establishment. It was at this time that Milosevic forged a close friendship with Stambolic, scion of an elite communist family. Milosevic progressed through the Belgrade communist machine, and, by , he was party chief in the capital, shadowing Stambolic all the while.

Stambolic, five years older than Milosevic, managed Tehnogas, a major Serbian gas extraction company; Milosevic succeeded him as head. Stambolic went to work for Beobanka, Belgrade's biggest bank; Milosevic succeeded him. When Milosevic took over the Belgrade Communist party in , he was replacing Stambolic, who became Serbian party chief.

Two years later, Milosevic again stepped into his mentor's shoes as Serbian party chief, before rudely turning on his patron. In September Milosevic, having secured the backing of the mighty Yugoslav army and the old Yugoslav party apparatus, ruthlessly purged the Serbian party of all Stambolic supporters and installed his own men.

The army, like the old guard, was persuaded that Milosevic was their man. Stambolic was crushed. He retired from political life three months later, yielding the Serbian presidency to a Milosevic crony. Milosevic later took the Serbian presidency himself, occupying the office from to , when he became Yugoslav president, the office he held when overthrown in October As early as the mids, Milosevic was keenly aware of the value of propaganda, and he quickly took control of Belgrade television and of the respected old Belgrade newspaper, Politika.

Television was subsequently central to his rule. Analysing the moves he made during his year-old reign, it is clear that Milosevic was motivated by his ambition to rule. First to take control of Yugoslavia and become the new Tito. And after the failure of that mission he turned to nationalism as a solution to grasp and maintain his grip on power. Hundreds of thousands of people who were killed and millions who were forced to leave their homes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo became bare victims of his fixated ambitions only, as is widely believed.

The Butcher of the Balkans, as some call him, has also pitted his fellow Serbs against the entire world. He had been preserving the created atmosphere by exercising severe media censorship and introducing restrictions on free speech to prevent any criticism.

April 6, - War breaks out between the Muslim-led Bosnian government and local Serbs, who start the siege of capital Sarajevo that lasts until July 15, - Milosevic is elected Yugoslav president by the federal parliament and steps down as Serbian president after serving the maximum two terms. September 24, - Milosevic refuses to step down after losing controversial elections for president of Yugoslavia. Vojislav Kostunica, backed by the DOS alliance of 18 parties, claims victory.

October 5 - Tens of thousands of people storm the Belgrade parliament after days of strikes. A day later, Milosevic concedes defeat and Kostunica is sworn in as Yugoslav president. November 1 - Yugoslavia is accepted back into the United Nations, and says it wants to join the European Union.