Đoko Pavićević

Pavićević was born on 6 May 1872 in Do Pješivački, near Danilovgrad[1] and came from an old Montenegrin military family.[2] He became literate late, so it was not until 1906 that he enrolled in military school.[3] As an officer and supporter of Janko Vukotić, he came into conflict with the Minister of War, Mitar Martinović, which is why he spent almost a year in prison under accusation that he was the opponent of King Nicholas.[4] After the Balkan Wars, he though about joining the Royal Serbian Army, however, he named commander of the border company in Đakovica.[5] During World War I, as part of the Sandžak Army, during 1914 and 1915, he participated in the Serbian-Montenegrin offensive in Bosnia.[6] During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Montenegro, he was interned in Hungary, where he remained in a prison camp until the end of the war.[7]

As a supporter of the Serbian-Montenegrin unionism, he joined the new Royal Yugoslav Army, but in 1923 he retired at his own request. Until the beginning of the World War II, he lived in the village of Mokri Do, near Nikšić.[8]

During the Uprising in Montenegro against the Italian occupation, together with four children - two sons and two daughters, at the age of 69, he entered the fight. He stood out as an old warrior in the fall of 1941, when, after the uprising subsided, he joined the Yugoslav Partisans along with his two sons.[9] From the end of 1942, he was an advisor to the commander of the Third Strike Division, as well as a councilor at the First Session of AVNOJ and a member of ZAVNO of Montenegro and Boka. He was admitted to the membership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in September 1943. The writer Vladimir Nazor called him the oldest Yugoslav Partisan.[10]

After the end of the war, he was demobilized as a colonel, and for some time he was the president of the District Board of the Unitary National Liberation Front (NOF) in Nikšić and a member of the Main Board of the NOF of Montenegro. He was elected a Member of the National Assembly of Montenegro.[11] His older son Vojislav died in the war, and the younger Branko was the first president of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was the holder of the Commemorative Medal of the Partisans of 1941, and was awarded the Order of the People's Hero on 27 November 1953, at the age of 81, as the oldest holder of this decoration.[12]

Pavićević died on 4 June 1970 at the age of 98.[13]