Background
Smiljanić was born in Tresonče to an old and distinguished family, the Bradinovci, who took its name after his great-grandfather Sardžo Karadža Bradina, village leader at the beginning of the 19th century.
Smiljanić was born in Tresonče to an old and distinguished family, the Bradinovci, who took its name after his great-grandfather Sardžo Karadža Bradina, village leader at the beginning of the 19th century.
He finished primary school in his native village and then went of to study at the Serb grammar school in Thessaloniki where he graduated in 1906.
In the next five years he was a teacher in Serb schools in Tresonče, Dolno Melničani and Galičnik. As a holder of a scholarship from the Saint Sava Society in 1911 he started his studies at the Philosophical Faculty in Belgrade. At the start of the First Balkans War, Smiljanić left the faculty to join the volunteer unit of Vojvoda Vuk in which he remained for the next four years, fighting with distinction in several battles.
After the retreat of the Serbian army to Corfu as a promising student he was sent of to Clermont-Ferrand, France where he studied and graduated geography and history.
He fought in April War of 1941 and spent the rest of the occupation as a teacher in Aleksinac.