Currents of History 2/2019

Venceslav Glišić

Meetings and Discussions with Nikola Ljubičić

Abstract: The text describes the recollections of General Nikola Ljubicic about his contemporaries and the events in which he had taken part, in the course of several meetings with historian Dr. Venceslav Glišić. It is a significant historical source about Serbian and Yugoslav history from the 1960s to the first half of the 1990s.

Key words: Nikola Ljubičić, Josip Broz, Petar Stambolić, Slobodan Milošević, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Communists

From 1987 to 1994, historian Dr. Venceslav Glišić met on several occasions with General Nikola Ljubičić, former federal secretary for national defense and president of the Serbian Presidency. On that occasion Gen. Ljubičić shared his recollections and views regarding some significant historical events and public figures from the second half of the 1960s to the early 1990s. His account of the fall of Aleksandar Ranković in 1966, the persona of Josip Broz, the relationship between Josip Broz and his wife Jovanka, the downfall of the Serbian leadership in 1972, the rise of Slobodan Milošević to power in Serbia, relations in the Yugoslav federal state and among the Serbian politicians, the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and others, are a useful source for researchers of this period of Yugoslav and Serbian history.