For years, Mirjana Markovic, wife of beleaguered Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, has been the acknowledged power behind the throne–the “Red Witch,” as opponents call her.
She guided her husband as he unleashed Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II and afterwards helped to remodel his image into that of peacemaker.
Now, after the November elections in rump Yugoslavia–consisting of Serbia and Montenegro–Markovic, 54, is set to come out of her husband’s shadow.
The far-Left party led by Markovic joined forces with her husband’s socialists in a victorious left-wing coalition, and the payback for that favor will be a share of political power in her own right.
The alliance between Markovic and Milosevic has been unswerving since they were teenage sweethearts in their drab hometown of Pozarevac, 43 miles south of Belgrade, when they were students at secondary school.
It also proved a boon for the ambitious Milosevic, for Markovic was something of a communist princess at Tito’s court at the time when he was regarded as a demigod.
Markovic’s aunt, Davorjanka Paunovic, had been Tito’s secretary during World War II when the partisan leader fought against the Nazis. She was also reputedly his lover.
Markovic’s mother, a communist partisan, was killed in 1943, a year after giving birth to her daughter. Some say she was captured by the Germans, tortured and then executed; others say she was executed by the partisans after having been accused of collaboration.
The mother she never knew became a powerful influence in Markovic’s life. She often wears a gardenia in her hair because that was the flower her mother wore in the only picture of her to survive.
Markovic styles herself “Mira” after her mother’s wartime guerrilla name.
It was devotion to her mother that led Markovic to join the Communist Party when she was 16, and she remains a true believer.
She built her career as a Marxist academic, gaining a doctorate in Marxist sociology. She still gives lectures on Marxism at Belgrade University.
Many believe that Markovic drew up her husband’s strategy for his rise to power through the exploitation of Serb nationalism.
Although the chauvinism and plans for a Greater Serbia that Milosevic expounded and that led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia were decidedly anti-Marxist, Markovic never criticized her husband.
During the recent years of conflict, Markovic, who unsmilingly describes herself as an intellectual, demonstrated her talents as a journalist.
A bimonthly column in Serbia’s most popular magazine, Duga, became mandatory reading for everyone who wanted an insight into what Milosevic might do next.
Coded and not-so-delicate hints in a bizarre column that covers everything from the virtues of gardening to political analyses and attacks on political figures signaled who was in and who was out of favor.
The column, dubbed “the horoscope” by Serbs, became an oracle that unerringly predicted the twists and turns of Milosevic’s policy that led him to abandon his dream of creating a Greater Serbia and to agree to the American-dictated peace terms that ended the fighting in Bosnia last year.
A criticism of a politician in “the horoscope” usually preceded his downfall.
The column convinced many that Markovic was the Serb leader’s most influential adviser. The former senior peace negotiator of the European Union, British politician Lord Owen, believed that Markovic played a vital role in Milosevic’s most important decisions.
The column caused an even greater stir than usual in 1995 when Markovic, a brunet who wears little makeup and speaks with a lisp, railed against a long-legged young woman who seemed to be wielding unwelcome influence over the Serb president.
There was delicious speculation that Milosevic was having an affair, but then the attacks stopped just as mysteriously as they had begun.
There is no evidence that Milosevic has ever been unfaithful. Markovic seems to be his only confidante, and he makes a point of spending most Sundays at home with her in their relatively modest house in a well-to-do Belgrade suburb. They still have a weekend cottage in Pozarevac and often go there for walks in the countryside.
They are often referred to as soulmates, but their public gestures to one another are rarely effusive or affectionate. Both normally reveal unsmiling faces that betray little humor.
But they have been welded together by their undoubted passion for politics. Opposition politicians mockingly call Milosevic and his wife “a single-bed party” or “the Red Witch and Red Baron Company.”
While the couple seem untainted by personal scandal, their two children, son Marko, 22, and daughter Marija, 30, have caused embarrassment.
Marko, whose hobby is car racing, drives the latest Audi model. He also owns a large duty-free shop and a nightclub.
Marija runs a local Belgrade radio station, and her allegedly frequent love affairs often fill the pages of Belgrade tabloids.
The children’s flamboyant lifestyles contrast sharply with the deep economic troubles of ordinary Serbs in a country where annual inflation is 100 percent and unemployment 50 percent.
As her husband’s ambitions for the creation of a Greater Serbia in ethnically cleansed territory fell apart and, with the blessing of Western powers, he assumed the mantle of peacemaker, Markovic created a new political party, the Yugoslav Left Union, in 1994 from the remnants of the former Yugoslav Communist Party.
The party differentiates between patriotism, which it supports, and “nationalism and chauvinism” and the “glorification of the past,” which it does not.
With elections looming for the Yugoslav federal parliament, the party agreed to join a leftist coalition with Milosevic’s Socialist Party. Amid opposition accusations of unfair campaigning and ballot-rigging, the coalition won a resounding victory.
Milosevic was not standing in the elections but needed his supporters to win a majority in parliament to elect him Yugoslav president.
Markovic threw herself into campaigning in such an abrasive way that she reinforced her “Red Witch” nickname, branding her political enemies “semi-savages” and waging a fierce war on them through her magazine column.
The elections revealed that Markovic is a ruthless and masterful politician. She has made clear that she believes Yugoslavia’s destiny and her own are ultimately linked.
