We investigate the existence of affine structures on nilmanifolds Γ\G in the case where the Lie algebra g of the Lie group G is filiform nilpotent of dimension less or equal to 11. Here we obtain examples of nilmanifolds without any affine structure in dimensions 10, 11. These are new counterexamples to the Milnor conjecture. So far examples in dimension 11 were known where the proof is complicated, see [5] and [4]. Using certain 2-cocycles we realize the filiform Lie algebras as deformation algebras from a standard graded filiform algebra. Thus we study the affine algebraic variety of complex filiform nilpotent Lie algebra structures of a given dimension ≤11. This approach simplifies the calculations, and the counterexamples in dimension 10 are less complicated than the known ones. We also obtain results for the minimal dimension µ(g) of a faithful g-module for these filiform Lie algebras g.
