Đuro Pucar

Đuro "Stari" Pucar

Đuro (Đurađ) "Stari" Pucar (born December 13, 1899 in Kesići, Bosansko Grahovo , Austria-Hungary , today: Bosnia and Herzegovina ; † April 12, 1979 in Belgrade ) was a Yugoslav partisan , Colonel General of the People's Liberation Army (NOV) and Politician of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia (BdKJ).

Life

Beginning of political engagement and partisan war

Đuro Pucar, who belonged to the ethnic group of Serbs , worked after school as a blacksmith in Pécs in the Hungarian county of Baranya and joined the Union of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia in 1920 and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPJ) as a member in 1922 . In the following years he was particularly involved in trade union work in Subotica and was sentenced to ten years in prison for his activities in 1929, which he served in the Croatian prison Lepoglava and in the Serbian prison camp Sremska Mitrovica . After his release from prison he lived illegally in Sarajevo , where he continued his activities in the communist labor movement . In November 1940 he took part in the National Conference of the CPJ in Zagreb and after the occupation of Yugoslavia by the German Wehrmacht in April 1941 he joined the partisan movement of Josip Broz Tito . He took part in combat missions in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina and from Banja Luka organized actions in the Bosanska Krajina region , where he was also secretary of the regional committee of the CPY. As Colonel General of the People's Liberation Army (NOV) he took part in the operations in western Bosnia called the Kozara Offensive (June to August 1942) and in the Battle of Grmeč .

In March 1943, Pucar, who was also nicknamed "Stari" ("the old man"), became secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from which the Union of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged in 1952 , and held this position as Bosnian party leader until his replacement by Cvijetin Mijatović in December 1965. He was also active as Vice President of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH) and a member of the Presidium of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ).

Functions and offices in the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia

After the founding of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia on March 7, 1945, he replaced Vojislav Kecmanović as President of the Presidium of the People's Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina in November 1946 and held this position as President of the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina until his replacement by Vlado Šegrt in September 1948. Between 1946 and 1953 he was also Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Assembly of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia and thus one of the Vice-Presidents of Yugoslavia. In his role as President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he negotiated the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro and the border between Croatia and Montenegro in 1947 together with the Montenegrin Blažo Janković . The then republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina exchanged a short stretch of coast near Sutorina in the Bay of Kotor with the neighboring republic of Montenegro for an area in the mountains. This made Neum the only Bosnian-Herzegovinian access to the sea. At the V Party Congress (July 21-28, 1948) he became a candidate for the Politburo of the CPJ Central Committee .

Bust of Đuro "Stari" Pucar in Subotica

In September 1948, Pucar took over as the successor to Rodoljub Čolaković as Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina and held this position as Prime Minister from March 1953 with the title of President of the Executive Council until his replacement by Avdo Humo in December 1953. The current city of Novi Travnik became founded in his honor in 1949 as Pucarevo. On the VI. Party congress (November 2nd - 7th, 1952) of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (BdKJ), which emerged from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia , he was elected a member of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee and was part of the 7th Party Congress (April 22nd - 26th, 1958) Function re-selected. In December 1953 he became President of the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina again with the title of President of the People's Assembly and remained in this position until he was replaced by Ratomir Dugonjić in June 1963. After the resignation of the Serb Đuro Pucar as party chairman and president, Belgrade came to the Muslim Bosniaks and the other non-Serbian ethnic groups with regard to their autonomy needs. Two further factors were decisive for the efforts to recognize Muslims as an independent ethnic group: the effort to strengthen the identities of the sub-states towards “integral Yugoslavism” and the rise of a small elite of Muslim communists within the party. An important proponent of this new nationality policy, which did not intend to make Bosnia-Herzegovina a purely Islamic republic, but instead developed a secularized understanding of the nation, was Džemal Bijedić .

After resigning from his functions as party secretary and state president, Pucar succeeded Aleksandar Ranković as president of the Federation of Veterans' Organizations of the People's Liberation Wars in Yugoslavia SUBNOR (Savez udruženja boraca narodnooslobodilačkog rata anodnooslobodilačkog rata Jugoslavatije) in 1963 , whereupon he succeeded Čedo until 1969 . At the 8th Party Congress (December 1964) he was re-elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the BdKJ and at the plenum of the Central Committee on October 4, 1966 as a member of the now 35-member Presidium of the BdKJ. For his services, Pucar was awarded the Order of the People's Hero , the Order of Hero of Socialist Labor (1955, posthumously 1979) and the Order of the Yugoslav Star. He died in the hospital of the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade and was buried in the Novo Groblje cemetery in Sarajevo. The University of Djuro Pucar-Stari in Banja Luka was named in his honor.

Publications

• Politički izvještaj pokrajinskog komiteta KPJ za Bosnu i Hercegovinu: referat održan na osnivačkom kongresu Komunističke partije Bosne i Hercegovine , 1948
• Sjećanja , 1980

Web links

• Ivo Banac: With Stalin Against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism , Cornell University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8014-2186-1
• Marko Attila Hoare: The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War , Oxford University Press, 2014, ISBN 0-1993-6531-8
• Xavier Bougarel: Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires , Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017, ISBN 1-3500-0361-1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bosnia and Herzegovina: Secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (from 1952), League of Communists (rulers.org)
2. ↑ Ernest Plivac: Complexity, Dynamics and Consequences of a Multi-Layered War: Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Second World War 1941-1945 , p. 130 f., Disserta Verlag, 2015, ISBN 3-9593-5042-2
3. ↑ Bosnia and Herzegovina: Presidents of the Presidium of the People's Assembly (rulers.org)
4. ↑ 5th Party Congress 21.-28. July 1948: KPJ Politburo
5. ↑ Bosnia and Herzegovina: Primeministers / Chairmen of the Executive Council (rulers.org)
6. ↑ 6th Party Congress 2.-7. April 1952: SKJ Executive Committee
7. ↑ 7th Party Congress 22.-26. April 1958: SKJ Executive Committee
8. ↑ Bosnia and Herzegovina: Presidents of the People's Assembly (rulers.org)
9. ↑ 8th Party Congress December 1964: SKJ Executive Committee
10. ^ Central Committee October 4, 1966: SKJ Presidium Member