At the start of the First World War, he was in Belgrade, but he did not join the Serbian army, but the French Foreign Legion, after which he was sent to the Western Front, where he fought against the German troops.

[citation needed] In 1933 Žujević left the Kingdom of Yugoslavia for the USSR where he became a recipient of a Communist scholarship in the Comintern school.

Gorkić, the KPJ's general secretary, was summoned to Moscow in 1936 from Paris and upon his arrival was deposed and jailed in Lubyanka, only to be executed the following year, in 1937.

[citation needed] Žujović was a member of Yugoslav delegation at a United Nations Conference on International Organization.

Minister of Finance in the postwar government, he lost his party membership and high office when he sided with Joseph Stalin against Josip Broz Tito in 1948 during the Informbiro period.