Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević is portrayed as both a principal antagonist in the wars of the former Yugoslavia and a calculating political operator, willing to rearrange alliances and abandon a hard-line ally when negotiations make that useful. His significance in the book lies less in a sustained personal portrait than in the consequences of his decisions: they influence how the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is understood and place Eduard Limonov in the shifting politics of the Serbian Krajina.

Public Image and the War in Bosnia

When the fighting between Serbs and Croats shifted to Bosnia in the spring of 1992, the narrator recalls that his own circles regarded Milošević as the ghastly Serbian president and the Serbs as the clear villains. Radovan Karadžić, described as shifty, represented them on the battlefield; Alija Izetbegović, by contrast, was seen as the elderly, humanist-looking leader of a population suffering aggression that public discussion increasingly called genocide. In this early framing, Milošević’s role is unmistakably culpable, although it comes through the political judgments circulating among the narrator’s acquaintances rather than through a scene with Milošević himself.

The narrator also records how that certainty was unsettled. Some commentators argued that Izetbegović was a fundamentalist seeking an Islamic republic and that the Serbs were being made scapegoats; the narrator admits listening to these arguments and wavering. Bernard-Henri Lévy rejected the appeal to complexity when it served to excuse resignation or diplomatic cowardice, insisting that the ethnic cleansing conducted by Milošević and his associates was tragically simple. The juxtaposition makes Milošević a point around which the book examines not only responsibility for violence but also the ease with which political ambiguity can become a rationale for inaction.

Maneuvering over the Serbian Krajina

A later episode places Milošević at the center of a strategic realignment. During Limonov’s journey toward the front with Arkan’s militiamen, the radio reports a coup in the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the imprisonment of the defense minister to whom Arkan had recommended Limonov. Posters soon appear showing Arkan with a price on his head. The sudden reversals suggest that the armed men traveling with Limonov may be entering a trap, though the book stresses that the confused flow of events does not resolve in that straightforward way.

The narrator interprets the upheaval as part of Milošević’s preparations for negotiations. In this account, Milošević is colluding with his adversary Franjo Tuđman to relinquish the Krajina to Croatia in exchange for Serbian territories in Bosnia and an end to the embargo. Arkan, a committed hard-liner, has become an obstacle to this new arrangement and must be removed from the political game. The plan exposes the gap between the language of ethnic and national allegiance and the negotiable territorial interests behind it: an ally who had mattered in one phase could become a liability in the next.

Narrative Role and Political Meaning

Milošević appears in sharply different scales of narration: first as the name attached to a broad moral judgment about the war, then as the calculating force behind a specific diplomatic maneuver. The book does not offer a comprehensive biography or direct access to his private motives. Instead, it shows his power through what others believe, argue, and experience: the narrator’s changing understanding of the Bosnian conflict, Arkan’s growing vulnerability, and Limonov’s uncertain passage through a region where fronts and loyalties are shifting.

That limited, consequential presence makes Milošević a figure of political pragmatism in a narrative crowded with ideological commitments. The Krajina episode gives this pragmatism its clearest form: while soldiers and civilians encounter a landscape divided by changing front lines, languages, religions, and national allegiances, Milošević is depicted negotiating which territory can be surrendered for advantage elsewhere. His significance rests in that contrast between the lived disorder of war and the strategic rearrangement of power conducted above it.