Miladin Zivotic was born on 14. August 1930 in Belgrade. He graduated at the Department of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, in 1953. After graduating, he taught in high schools in Belgrade and Prizren. He started working at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in 1957. He was a tutor in the History of Philosophy from 1958 until 1963.

Miladin Zivotic got his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Belgrade Department of Philosophy in 1962, with the topic "Theory of Knowledge in the Philosophy of Pragmatism". He became an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy in 1963, teaching Contemporary Philosophy and Axiology. He became an Associate Professor in 1969. He was also supervising both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Because of his support for the students' protest in 1968, he was expelled from the University in 1975. He worked for a time at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. Zivotic was reinstituted at the Belgrade University in 1987 and appointed a Professor of Contemporary Philosophy. He retired in 1994.

Professor Zivotic spent the 1960/1961 (as a recipient of the Ford Foundation stipend) and 1970/1971 academic years in the USA, inside the program "American Council of Learned Societies". He had participated in more than one hundred of scientific and scholarly meetings in Yugoslavia and abroad. He was elected twice as the President of the Philosophical Society of Serbia. He was the founder and the Director of the School of Philosophy and Literature in Krusevac for six years. He resigned to protest the rise of nationalism in Serbia.

Professor Zivotic was the editor of the journal Philosophy - the official journal of the Philosophical Society of Serbia. Apart from numerous scholarly articles, papers, and essays, Miladin Zivotic wrote the following books: Pragmatism and Contemporary Philosophy, Nolit, Beograd, 1966; Man and Values, Prosveta, Beograd, 1969; Existence, Reality and Freedom, Mladost, Beograd, 1973; Revolution and Culture, Filozofske studije, Beograd, 1982; Axiology, Naprijed, Zagreb, 1986; Morality, Legality and Legitimacy, Filozofske studije, Beograd, 1989; Contra Bellum, Beogradski krug, Beograd (forthcoming).

Since 1991, Miladin Zivotic headed the Civic Action for Peace. From 1992, he was one of the founders and the head of the Belgrade Circle NGO, an association of the independent intellectuals that opposed the nationalistic frenzy, war and destruction that enveloped Serbia. The Belgrade Circle also gave full moral and political support to the victims of the war, especially in Sarajevo, Mostar, Tuzla, and other cities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In collaboration with the Civic Forum of Tuzla and the Anti-war Campaign of Croatia, the Belgrade Circle organized the "Civic Dialogue Bosnia and Herzegovina". Professor Zivotic has dedicated last years of his life to the political concept of the building of Another, New, Different Serbia. A specific tone of Miladin Zivotic can be recognized in the idea of an alternative Serbia, in the concept of an open, democratic, and pluralist society. He was one of the few intellectuals in Serbia who never betrayed the ideas of responsibility and solidarity.

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Dear friends,

It is a shock to hear that Professor Zivotic has died yesterday. A man of great importance for civil society in (former) Yugoslavia has left us. Through our activities in former Yugoslavia, we got to know Professor Zivotic as an inspiring, charismatic person, who invested all his energy in a more open, humane and democratic society.

We would like to express our sympathy with those who, together with Professr Zivotic, struggled against ethnic nacionalism, xenophobia and extremism in the Balkans. We hope that you will find the strength to continue this struggle, inspired by Professor Zivotic's example. We will certanly fight this struggle with you, and support you wherever we can.

Kaldor Mary
University of Sussex
Sussex European Institute

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Dear Colleague Savic,

I am writing to offer you our deep condolences on the death of Professor Miladin Zivotic.

We were in touch with Professor Zivotic throughout the difficult years of the war, and greatly admired his work with the anti-war movement here in Serbia. We were well aware how much he and such organizations as the Belgrade Circle helped to maintain civilizational values here during the "dark years".

In a sense, the recent upsurge of democratic energy in Serbia could be seen as a most fitting concomitant to his life's work. It is a great loss to the democratic movement that he will not be here to contribute to further developments, particularly in the field of inter-ethnic dialogue.

At the same time, you in the Belgrade Circle can take pride in and inspiration from your association with Professor Zivotic. Please pass on our deepest condolences to his family and colleagues.

Yours sincerely,
Graham Michal

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Miladin Zivotic, 66, Serb Foe of Nationalism

Miladin Zivotic, a leading dissident during the Communist era in Yugoslavia and one of the most prominent domestic critics of Serbian involvement in the Balkan wars, died at his home in Belgrade on Feb. 26. He was 66.

The cause of the death was a heart attack, his family said.

Mr. Zivotic was the leader of the Belgrade Circle, a small group of intellectuals and artists who condemned the Serbian role in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The group, which he helped found in 1992 and which included Yugoslavia's best-known dissident Milovan Djilas, tried to reach out to Muslims and Croats to create a common front against nationalist movements in the Balkans. It was often denounced by the authorities as being a tool of Serbia's enemies.

To register his disapproval of the siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs, Mr. Zivotic visited the city in 1993, slipping through Bosnian Serb lines.

He was also an outspoken critic of Serbia's treatment of non-Serbs within its borders, especially some two million Albanians in the Kosovo region. And when nationalists began to threaten Muslims in the Sanjak region of Serbia early in the Bosnia war he went to live with Muslim families.

"This is not just a death of an individual, but the death of the intellectual tradition", said Obrad Savic, the editor of the Belgrade Circle Journal. "He was rejected all his life. He lived on the margins. But he never gave up his engagement in the world. He believed passionately in the common humanity of all people and endured great hardship and loneliness in his battle for human decency".

Despite his stature he was ignored by the Serbian press, even the opposition press, and was never invited to speak at the anti-Government protests that gripped Belgrade for the last three months.

The decision by student and opposition leaders to keep him away came because of his firm belief that Serbian society could only renew itself by accepting the blame for the Balkan wars and ridding itself of Serbian nationalist of Serbian national invective that he denounced as racist.

"The first act any new president this country must do is travel to Sarajevo and beg for forgiveness, just as Willy Brandt did when he traveled to Warsaw, "he said in an interview shortly before his death, referring to the West German Chancellor who pursued a policy of reconciliation with the enemies of German Nazism. "This is the only way begin to heal ourselves".

Such language still angers many Serbs who insist that they are the victims in the war and attack the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, not for starting the war but for withdrawing Belgrade's support for the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia.

Mr. Zivotic first came to prominence in 1968, when Yugoslav university students staged anti-Communist protests at the time of the Soviet-fed invasion of Czheckoslovakia. For their support of the students he and seven other philosophy professors were dismissed. He started the Free Belgrade University, which met secretly in houses and whose classes were often broken up by the police.

Mr. Zivotic did not return to his University of Belgrade post until 1987, seven years after the death of Tito.

Soon after he regained his old position, he found himself ostracized again because of his condemnation of growing Serbian nationalism. As the wawe of nationalism swept through the educational system he was denounced by students and professors as a traitor to the Serbian cause and he retired in 1994.

Although a searing critic of his own society, Mr. Zivotic was reluctant to criticize Serbia's opponents. After a lengthy critique of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which he condemned as "the craddle of the Serb nationalism and enemy of modernity", he was asked to assess the role of the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant religion in Croatia, in the conflict between Serbia and Croatia.

"My role is to examine and criticize myself and my society", he said...

Hedges Chris
The New York Times,
Thursday, March 6, 1997

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Dear friends,

I was shocked and sadden to learn of the death of Professor Zivotic. I knew him only slightly but I greatly admired his courage, lucidity, and wit. Please accept my sincere condolences. I look forward to collaborating with you in the struggle to realise Professor Zivotic's ideals. With respect and best wishes,

Hunt William
Professor and Chair, Department of History
St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, USA.

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A just Serb in the dark time

When the real account is written of the times through which Serbia is passing, the name of Miladin Zivotic, philosopher and humanist, who has died aged 66, will have an honourable place. In Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt writes of people who redeem the principles of humanity, when these are most endangered, by force of their conviction and moral stand. Zivotic was such a redeemer.

In an early study of existentialism, Zivotic wrote that people can respond to dilemmas posed by their nature and the world around them only by a personal engagement. He never gave up that view. Always a participant and never a mere observer, he showed very early on that the right to hold opinions meant taking responsibility for them. He was thrown out of Belgrade University in 1975, with seven other colleagues, because he resisted monolithism. At the end of the 1980s, when a new - this time national - monolithism took power in Serbia, he again resisted and paid a high price. There were frequent death threats to himself and his family, and a break with many of his closest friends, notably some of those who had, with him, been associated with the Zagreb-based leftwing philosophy journal Praxis, but who now rallied to nationalism.

He never wavered. In 1991, he set up Civic Action for Peace in protest against the war in Croatia, and in 1992, when aggression spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina, he founded and led the Belgrade Circle. Its Saturday meetings became a rare oasis of normality in Belgrade, anyone could attend and sharp criticism could be made of the state propaganda co-ordinated by nationalist intellectuals. The Other Serbia was born at such meetings, though unfortunately it was too weak to prevent destruction and genocide

Zivotic came to dedicate his being to helping Bosnia and its people. He believed it was his highest duty to denounce publicly the instigators and executors of the country's partition and the "humane transfer" of "wrong" nationalities.

"If living together is impossible", he repeated, "then life itself is impossible as well". He fought for life's basic need, and that is why he was so passionate and personal in his polemics. During the war he travelled to Bosnia, sometimes at great risk to himself, convinced that fundamental values were at stake there, which had to be defended at all costs. He died just two days before the Forum of Tuzla Citizens was to honour him for this endeavour: one for which he found little support amlong his co-citizens in Belgrade.

He graduated in philosophy from Belgrade University in 1953 and after teaching at secondary schools, he taught at the university from 1957 until his 1975 expulsion. He was reinstated in 1987 as professor of contemporary philosophy, retiring in 1994. He was elected president of the Philosophical Society of Serbia three times and published a host of philosophical works, of which the last, in 1996, was Contra Bellum (Against War).

Zivotic travelled, spoke, wrote and organised. His last journey abroad, less than two weeks before his death, was to Britain at the invitation of the Alliance to Defend Bosnia-Herzegovina. He spoke in London, Cambridge and Oxford about the hopes being raised by the mass demonstrations against the Milosevic regime then taking place in Serbia, but also about his concern at the Serbian opposition's failure to provide an anti-nationalist alternative. His message was that Serbia needed someone of Willy Brandt's stature to go to Sarajevo and ask for forgiveness. In Zivotic, the Other Serbia found its own Brandt.

He was physically destroyed by the time and the evil amidst which he lived. Always on the side of good against evil, his anger was directed only against the immoral instigators of crime wrapped in patriotic colours and against war profiteers. Others knew a different man, a lonely and gentle person who absorbed the evil of the world to cleanse it. Modest, he never soughf advantages for himself. His searching eyes saw much more than he wished to show, but the pain this brought to him he almost never shared with others. That was the price he was willing to pay for the life he chose to live.

He will be missed by family - his former wife, a son, a daughter and two grandchildren - friends and students. And by those whom he tried to defend - the deportees, the victims of chauvinist madness, by all those who suffered in the darkness that has enveloped his country and its victims. A man cannot die until he is forgotten. He will not be.

Miladin Zivotic, philosopher, born August 14,1930; died February 27,1997

Branka Magas and Zarko Korac
The Guardian
Monday, March 10,. 1997

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Dear friends,

We have been reached by the tragic news of Professor Miladin Zivotic's passing away.

On behalf of the Swedish Helsinki Committee please allow me to express my deepest sympathy and sincere condolences for your loss.

In our thoughts he will remain, with a profound admiration for his devoted work and appeal to the humane streak of all persons.

Gerald Nagler
Chairman - Swedish Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights

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