He was born Milivoy Stoyan Stanoyevich in a small village called Koprivnica in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 14 February 1881,[1] the second of four sons (Milan, Vidoje, and Miloš).
He might have lived happily as a college professor had he not written a pamphlet entitled "Youth and Socialism", which enraged the Serbian government at a time when communism was threatening the status quo of every Slavic country.
After much deliberation with his father Stoyan, Milivoy left Serbia to study in Vienna and Geneva and then crossed the Atlantic to America, never to return.
In 1915 he became a lecturer in Slavonic literature at his alma mater and in 1916 he was appointed political adviser on Slavic Affairs in the office of the Imperial Russian consul-general in San Francisco.
After two years of graduate work and employment at the consulate, he received his Ph.D., and in 1917 married Beatrice Louise Stevenson, who grew up on Fifth Avenue in New York.