Mihajlo Mihajlov, one of the most prominent dissidents of former Yugoslavia who was jailed for seven years during the Cold War era, died in Belgrade yesterday, Beta news agency reported.

Born in a family of Russian emigrants in 1934, Mr Mihajlov was a professor of Russian literature at the University of the coastal town of Zadar, now in Croatia, in the early 1960s.

He was sentenced by the regime of late communist leader Josip Broz Tito to three and a half years' imprisonment in 1966 for "damaging the reputation of a foreign state" after publishing an essay on camps for dissidents in the Soviet Union after the 1917 October revolution.

He was also banned from public appearances. In 1975 he was tried again for "disseminating hostile propaganda" about Tito's regime in essays and articles published in the Yugoslav and Western press, and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Mr Mihajlov was released early in 1978 and allowed to leave the country.

Since then, he resided in the US and until 1985 taught Russian literature and philosophy courses at Yale and several other US universities, as well as in Western Europe.

Mr Mihajlov also worked as an analyst at the US-funded Radio Free Europe before returning to Serbia in 2001, following the ouster of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic's regime.

A number of his books were translated worldwide, notably Russian Themes, Underground Notes, The Homeland Is Freedom and Moscow Summer.

In 1978, he received an annual award from the International League for Human Rights.