ABSTRACT
Early Life Milovan Djilas was born the fourth of nine children to peasant parents on June 12, 1911, on the Podovo Plateau, overlooking the village of Podbisce, Montenegro. His paternal grandfather, Aleksa, was a hajduk, an anti-Ottoman bandit leader, reportedly assassinated on orders from the then king of Montenegro's father-in-law. Djilas' father, Nikola, served in the Montenegrin army during World War I and, as a police commandant in Kolasin afterward, resisted the incorporation of the old Kingdom of Montenegro into the new Yugoslavia. Djilas' mother, Novka, came from Siberia from a slightly better background than his father. Djilas' childhood was nevertheless one of a peasant growing up on a battlefield.
