Vuk Drašković (,šković ; born 29 November 1946) is a Serbian writer and politician. He is the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, and served as the war-time Deputy Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 during the rule of Slobodan Milošević and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of both Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia from 2004 to 2007.
He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1968. From 1969 to 1980, he worked as a journalist in the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug. He was a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and worked as the chief of staff of the Yugoslav President Mika Špiljak.
Early life and career
Drašković was born in the small village of Medja in the Banat region to a family of settlers from Herzegovina. He was three months old when his mother, Stoja Nikitović, died.
His father, Vidak, remarried and had two more sons - Rodoljub and Dragan; and three daughters - Radmila, Tanja and Ljiljana with Dara Drašković, meaning that young Vuk grew up with five half-siblings.
Shortly after Vuk's birth, the entire family went back to Herzegovina where he finished primary school in the village of Slivlje. He graduated high school in Gacko.
At his father's insistence, Drašković considered studying medicine in Sarajevo; however, the city was too "uptight and cramped" for his liking, so he went to study law in Belgrade instead.
In 1968, Drašković participated in anti-bureaucratic student revolts in Yugoslavia. After Josip Broz Tito promised reforms, Drašković initiated people to dance the Kozaračko kolo at the Faculty of Law. Drašković was a member of the Communist Youth Organization and later joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.
Between 1969-78, he was involved with journalism. He first worked for the state news agency Tanjug as its African correspondent stationed in Lusaka, Zambia. He was discharged from his post after publishing misleading information regarding the Rhodesian Bush War, creating a diplomatic incident.
He then took a job as press adviser to the Yugoslav Union of Trade Unions (Savez Sindikata Jugoslavije) and then became editor-in-chief of Rad, a trade union paper. During his time as press adviser, Drašković spent some time as the personal secretary to the organisation's president Mika Špiljak.
In 1981, Drašković published his first novel Sudije (Judges) which described a judge resisting political pressure.
In 1982, Drašković was expelled from the Communist party after he published his second novel Nož (Knife). The novel tells the story of a man who is raised as a Bosnian Muslim who comes to believe that Serbs killed his family, only to later learn that his ethnic heritage is Serbian and that his adoptive family was guilty of murdering his birth-family. The book caused controversy as it reignited divisive ethno-nationalist issues which Tito and the Communist Party tried to suppress. The party condemned and subsequently banned the book, which was also published in English. The book was made into a movie in 1999 entitled The Dagger or The Knife in English.
His novels Molitva 1–2 (Prayer 1–2, 1985) and Ruski konsul (Russian consul, 1988) also explored the suffering of Serbs during World War II, while Noć generala (The General's Nights) published in 1994 dealt with Draža Mihailović's last days.
Political career
In March 1989, Drašković along with Mirko Jović and Vojislav Šešelj founded the Sava Association. The group dedicated itself to the protection of the Serbian language and the defense of Kosovo and Metohija. In the late 1980s, Drašković was in agreement with Šešelj's sentiments about deporting Albanians from Kosovo and suggested that "a special fund" was needed "to finance the repopulation of Kosovo by Serbs". However, Jović, Šešelj and Drašković soon found themselves at political crossroads and their party disintegrated in three pieces. The Sava Association turned into the Serbian National Renewal Party under the leadership of Jović in January 1990. Meanwhile, Drašković founded the Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski Pokret Obnove, SPO), a democratic nationalist party in March and Šešelj created his Serbian Radical Party in February 1991.