Aleksandar Ranković (politician)

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Aleksandar Ranković (1966)

Aleksandar Ranković ( Serbian - Cyrillic Александар Ранковић ; born November 28, 1909 in Draževac near Obrenovac , Kingdom of Serbia ; † August 20, 1983 in Dubrovnik , Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ) was a leading functionary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and from 1946 to 1953 the Interior Minister Yugoslavia . In 1963, Tito appointed him Yugoslav Vice President , making him his potential successor.

Ranković was head of the Yugoslav civil and military secret police Odjeljenje za zaštitu naroda (OZN) and their successor organizations Uprava državne bezbednosti (UDB) and Kontraobaveštajna služba (KOS) since 1944 . As such, from 1945 Ranković was directly responsible for the imprisonment , torture and killing of thousands of political prisoners , alleged and actual opponents of the regime , as well as collaborators, fascists and royalists from World War II at home and abroad.

Because of the repeated abuse of power accused of him, Ranković was removed from all his offices in 1966 and expelled from the party. The changes in the party structure after his removal suggest that the increasing control of the party by the secret service was decisive for Ranković's fall. As a representative of the National Serbian wing within the CPY, Ranković stood for a Yugoslav unitarianism with Greater Serbian signs. His disempowerment was a victory of the reformist over the conservative CPY party wing and enabled the subsequent decentralization and strengthening of the individual competencies of the Yugoslav republics and made the national life of the Kosovar Albanians easier .

Life

Police photo of Ranković from his royal Yugoslav imprisonment in the Sremska Mitrovica prison (1929)

Ranković became a member of the then still small Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPJ) in 1928 . In 1929 the Yugoslav King Aleksander I established his royal dictatorship , as a result of which all political parties were dissolved. In the same year Ranković was arrested for illegal communist activity and allegedly tortured in Glavnjača prison . He was sentenced to six years in prison, which he spent in the prisons of Sremska Mitrovica and Lepoglava . In 1935 he was released and did his military service in the Royal Yugoslav Army. In 1937 he became a member of the Central Committee of the CPJ and in 1940 of the Politburo of the Central Committee.

After the Balkan campaign (1941) of the German Wehrmacht during World War II , he was part of the communist resistance in Yugoslavia. His alias within the party since January 1939 was Marko ; his battle name Leka (Лека). As a close associate of Tito Ranković was on July 29, 1941 Day in the heart of Belgrade in a sensational coup from a police hospital free, in which he carried the after his imprisonment and torture Gestapo had been brought. Ranković was a member of the General Staff of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army and from 1944 was head of the Yugoslav civil and military secret police Odjeljenje za zaštitu naroda (OZN) and from 1946 head of the successor organizations Uprava državne bezbednosti (UDB) and Kontraobaveštajna (KOS. On July 4, 1945 he was declared a Yugoslav folk hero .

After the war, Ranković held the post of interior minister of the newly founded state of Yugoslavia from 1946 to 1953 . Tito appointed him Yugoslav Vice President in 1963 , making Ranković “Person No. 2” of Yugoslavia and his potential successor.

Ranković (right) with the Soviet head of state Leonid Brezhnev during his state visit ( Velenje , 1962)

In the 1960s Ranković opposed the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia (BdKJ) against the restructuring of the political structures of Yugoslavia, which strengthened the federal elements. In particular, he prevented the expansion of the autonomy rights already existing in the Yugoslav constitution of 1946 for the two Serbian provinces of Kosovo and Metochien and Vojvodina and had Kosovar Albanians prosecuted as possible enemies of the state by the secret police UDB and SDB and liquidated them on mere suspicion.

Reformers within the Communist Party achieved the dismissal of Ranković from his political offices in July 1966. He was accused of having expanded the UDB into a state within a state that even monitored Tito with wiretapping systems. He only reacted when wiretapping systems were discovered in his own bedroom. On June 16, 1966, a commission of inquiry was set up, whose investigations confirmed the allegations against Ranković. On July 1, 1966, Ranković was dismissed from all offices at the fourth plenary session of the BdKJ's central committee , but was not punished any further on Tito's instructions.

A subsequent special commission of the Yugoslav government drew Kosovo numerous cases of abuse of power, arrests, torture and killings of about 70 Kosovo Albanians found that had been committed by Rankovic police units.

Ranković's tomb in the "Aleja velikana" (Avenue of the Great) in the central cemetery " Novo Groblje " of the Serbian capital Belgrade (2008)

Ranković spent the rest of his life in Dubrovnik (now the Republic of Croatia ), where he died in 1983 at the age of 74. Presumably because of his iron policy towards the Kosovar Albanians, many Serbs considered him the protector of Serbian interests. His funeral in Belgrade in August 1983 with around 100,000 participants turned out to be one of the first Serbian nationalist gatherings just a few years before the breakup of Yugoslavia .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. a b Srećko M. Džaja : The Political Reality of Yugoslavism (1918–1991): With special consideration of Bosnia-Herzegovina (=  studies on contemporary studies of Southeast Europe . Volume  37 ). Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, p. 133 .
  2. Miko Tripalo : Hrvatsko proljeće . Zagreb 1990, p. 71-72 .
  3. Ludwig Steindorff: Between Awakening and Repression: Yugoslavia 1945–1966 . In: Dunja Melčić (Ed.): The Yugoslavia War: Handbook on Prehistory, Course and Consequences . 2nd updated and expanded edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , p. 196 .
  4. Milovan Djilas : Years of Power: Play of forces behind the Iron Curtain: Memoirs 1945–1966 . Molden, 1983, ISBN 3-88919-008-1 , pp. 275 .
  5. Ladislaus Hory, Martin Broszat: The Croatian Ustascha State 1941-1945 . Walter de Gruyter, 1964, ISBN 978-3-486-70375-7 , p. 107 .
  6. Holm Sundhaussen : Experiment Yugoslavia: From the founding of the state to the collapse of the state (=  Meyers Forum . Volume 10 ). Mannheim et al. 1993, ISBN 3-411-10241-1 , pp. 117 .
  7. ^ "Poisoned Wells" , Der Spiegel , June 30, 1986.
  8. ^ Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo : Revolucija koja teče: Memoari . tape 1 . Komunist, Belgrade 1971, p. 489-494 .
  9. Shkëlzen Maliqi: The political history of Kosovo . In: Dunja Melčić (Ed.): The Yugoslavia War: Handbook on Prehistory, Course and Consequences . 2nd updated and expanded edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , p. 127 .
  10. Walter Lukan u. a .: Serbia and Montenegro: space and population, history, language and literature, culture, politics, society, economy, law . Ed .: Austrian Institute for East and Southeast Europe, Working Group East. tape 47 . Lit, 2005, p. 307 .
  11. Erich Rathfelder: Kosovo: History of a conflict . Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-79620-7 .