Pero Simić
Petar "Pero" Simić (born 2 July 1946) is a Bosnian Serb journalist and historian. He is most notable for authoring the first complete political biography of Josip Broz Tito.
Biography
Born in SkoÄić village near Zvornik, PR Bosnia-Herzegovina, FPR Yugoslavia. He finished primary school in SkoÄić and Kozluk near Zvornik, then went to high school in Zvornik, Lukavac and Loznica. He moved to Belgrade for post-secondary education, graduating from the University of Belgrade's School of Economics.
Politics
He was a president of Youth Organization of Serbia from 1971 till 1973. In those years, in his public speeches he was saying that "dissatisfaction of the youth should not be suppressed", that "one does not inherit future, but builds it" that "there is no taboo for us", that "our task to critically think", that "nothing can be achieved with bludgeon", that "Yugoslavia has an unrealistic picture of itself ", that "nationalism is a real force in society." And that "freedom can not exist without democracy" in Yugoslav society, that "closure leads to primitivism", that "a country can not prosper if the power is in the hands of one man."
In October 1972, during several days of Tito's conversation with the Serbian leadership, he did not support politics of the Yugoslav president, but the politics of Serbian liberals leader Marko Nikezić.
One month after this meeting, he said to two local youth officials that "no one is sinless, not even comrade Tito." Simic’s companions reported that to the Minister of the Municipal Committee of League of Communists, secretary of the Committee to the new leadership of the League of Communists of Serbia. In February 1972, secretariat of Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia formed on the occasion of this statement a party committee which a month later forced Simic to resign from all political positions.
In the spring of 1976, under charge of "undermining our system and the unity of state and political leadership of Serbia and Yugoslavia," he was brought to the interrogation for several days to the central Serbian State Security Service in Kneza Milosa 30, in Belgrade, without written decision.
Journalism
Because of his political ineptitude, he was working in Vecernje Novosti from May 1973 till the end of 1979 in the editorial office and was writing short newspaper articles on environmental protection, which were mainly signed with initials.
At the end of the 1979 editorial staff gave him the opportunity to report from the traditional meeting of economists of Yugoslavia from Opatija . In his reports from the meeting he wrote that Yugoslavia is in the "biggest balance of payments crisis" in its history, that in the first eight months of the year "negative balance of trade with foreign countries was greater than in the whole previous year," that the participation of Yugoslavia in world exports in the last eight years has fallen from 0.54 to 0.45 percent, while its share in world imports "has fallen from 0.93 to 0.79 percent," that "current account deficit of the country in 1979 will reach unprecedented amount of three billion dollars,"that the state’s stimulations of exports have been increased by 40 percent and that the Yugoslav exports declined and "covers only 47 percent of imports."
By order of the Federal Secretary for Information Ismail Bajra, because of these texts he was prohibited from writing about economic and political issues and was returned to the editorial jobs in editorial office.
Six years later, in 1985, he was allowed to write economic and political articles and comments. Among his texts published in Vecernje Novosti until 1991, there were: "We’re getting out of a crisis in which we’ve never been", "A trustworthy intelligencer 03 leads the United Nations" (scandal of Nazi wartime past of Kurt Waldheim), "New Illusions," "Economy the hostage of politics", "Chameleon ahead of column", "Farce of the top of Yugoslavia", "Dogma overtaking another dogma","Enhancing of the lifelong leader of Yugoslavia"(a series of subsequent amending and improving the articles published in Tito’s collected works)", "Delusions of the League of Communists leaders", "Over the edge of a precipice","Dog tired by experiments","Tactical shift","Happy New Year 1948","Rescue lies in hopelessness","Bugbear of betrayal", "Raping History", "Apocalypse has already begun."
With a series of articles "Rehabilitation longer than life" in 1986, he was the first among Yugoslav journalists who drew attention to the forgotten Tito's predecessor at the head of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia Milan Gorkic (Josip Cizinski). Gorkic was shot in Moscow in November 1937, the Soviet government rehabilitated him after Stalin's death, and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which posthumously expelled him from its ranks upon Tito's request in March 1939, failed to rehabilitate him even 30 years after Gorkic’s judicial and party rehabilitation in Moscow. Four years later, in 1990, in the archives of the Comintern in Moscow, he began a research – which lasted for several years - of Soviet secret documents about when and how Stalin brought Tito to the head of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and under what circumstances hundreds of innocent Yugoslav communists in the Soviet Union were liquidated.
He has published over 300 articles dealing with controversial pages of the recent history of Serbia and Yugoslavia.
Besides "Vecernje Novosti", his texts were published in "Mladost", "Rad", "Borba", "Duga", "Intervju," NIN, "Danas", on the second program of Radio Belgrade, "Evening Moscow" and Vienna's "Forum". From November 1998 to March 2000, he was the chief editor of "Vecernje Novosti" and general manager of the company "Novosti" ad. He was superseded by a decision of the Federal Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, by which a joint stock company "Novosti" became nationalised on March 2, 2000, so that the editorial policy of "Vecernje Novosti" would adjust to the wishes of the government at that time. From October 5, 2000, to January 1, 2008, he worked as a journalist-associate of "Vecernje Novosti".
Affairs
He has published 16 publicist and historiographic books:
- Uncertain Past (fascism, nationalsocialism, stalinism), 1986.[1]
- Chains of dogma, 1988.
- When Tito, How Tito, Why Tito, 1989.
- Tito agent of the Comintern, 1990.
- Forgiveness with no mercy (Leka Aleksandar Rankovic), co-author with Jovan Kesar, 1990.
- Inside the bloody circle - Tito and the breakup of Yugoslavia, 1993. (Second revised edition of "The collapse of Tito's Empire", 1999).
- Leader gone (fall of Slobodan Milosevic), 2001.
- Fires and flood - in the whirl of family Serboland (co-author with Dejan Lukic), 2001.
- Serbia unexplainable country, 2003.
- Saint and Fog, 2005.
- Crucified Kosovo, 2006.
- Temptations of the Serbian elite - Documents on the work of the Serbian Cultural Club, 2006.
- Tito, secret of the century, 2009.
- Tito's Diary", 2009.
- Tito, strictly confidential – archive documents, (co-author with Zvonimir Despot), 2010.
- Period of a youth (co-author with Djoko Stojicic and Miroslav Markovic), 2010.
Pero Simic is the author of the first complete political biography of Josip Broz Tito, which has been published in all languages of the former Yugoslavia, in seven editions with a circulation of 58,500 copies, under the titles „Tito, secret of the century“ and „Tito the phenomenon of the century“.
The book has been translated into Polish and German and will soon be published in Bulgarian and other world languages.
Croatian and Slovenian historians and journalists have declared Simic "the best connoisseur of Tito in the world" [2] and "the world's greatest titologist" (Silvin Ejlec at the round table "After Tito, Tito - 30 years later", Ljubljana, May 4, 2010.)