Lazar Koliševski | |
|---|---|
| Лазар Колишевски | |
 | |
| 1stPresident of the Presidency of Yugoslavia | |
| In office 4 May 1980 – 15 May 1980 | |
| Prime Minister | Veselin Đuranović |
| Preceded by | Josip Broz Tito (as "President of the Republic") |
| Succeeded by | Cvijetin Mijatović |
| 6thPresident of the People's Assembly of PR Macedonia | |
| In office 19 December 1953 – 26 June 1962 | |
| Prime Minister | Ljupčo Arsov Aleksandar Grlickov |
| Preceded by | Dimce Stojanov |
| Succeeded by | Ljupčo Arsov |
| 1stPresident of the Executive Council of PR Macedonia | |
| In office 16 April 1945 – 19 December 1953 | |
| President | Metodija Andonov - Čento Dimitar Vlahov |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Ljupčo Arsov |
| 1stSecretary of the League of Communists of Macedonia | |
| In office 19 March 1943 – July 1963 | |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Krste Crvenkovski |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1914-02-12)12 February 1914 |
| Died | 6 July 2000(2000-07-06) (aged 86) |
| Nationality | Yugoslav/Macedonian |
| Political party | League of Communists of Yugoslavia League of Communists of Macedonia |
| Awards | Order of the People's Hero Order of People's Liberation Order of the Hero of Socialist Labour |
Lazar Koliševski (Macedonian:Лазар Колишевски[ˈlazarkɔˈliʃɛfski]ⓘ; 12 February 1914 – 6 July 2000) was aMacedonianYugoslavcommunist political leader in theSocialist Republic of Macedonia and briefly in theSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He was closely allied withJosip Broz Tito.
Koliševski was born on 12 February 1914 inSveti Nikole,Kingdom of Serbia (nowNorth Macedonia), into a poor family.[1][2] His mother was anAromanian, while his father wasSlavic.[3] According to Kosta Tsarnushanov, aMMTRO member and historian, his father was aSerboman.[4] In 1915, during theFirst World War, theregion of Macedonia was occupied by the Kingdom of Bulgaria. His father was mobilized on theSalonica front,[5] and during the war, both of Koliševski's parents died.[3] Once left an orphan, he was taken by his aunts and sent to an orphanage.[3][1] In 1928, he enrolled into a technical school inKragujevac, where left-wing activism flourished. Here, he befriended future Yugoslav politiciansAleksandar Ranković and Boris Mijoski.[3] Koliševski became influenced bycommunism.[2] He graduated from a trade school in Kragujevac in 1932 and worked as ametalworker, while also joining theLeague of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia.[1][6] In 1935, he joined theCommunist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY).[3][7] He went to study at theUniversity of Belgrade and worked as party secretary in Kragujevac and Smederevo Palanka before World War II.[1]
AsNazi forces enteredBelgrade in April 1941,Bulgaria, a German ally, took control of a part ofVardar Macedonia, with the western towns ofTetovo,Gostivar andDebar became part of the Italian zone inAlbania. After the Bulgarians had taken control of the eastern part of the former Vardar Banovina, the leader of the local faction ofCommunist Party of Yugoslavia,Metodi Shatorov had defected to theBulgarian Communist Party (BCP).[8] Koliševski was sent by CPY to Macedonia to replace the leadership of the Regional Committee,[9] as well as challenge the influence of BCP.[1] Koliševski conducted the policy of CPY in Macedonia. After theattack on theSoviet Union by Germany and the intervention of theComintern, the Macedonian communist movement fell into the hands of the Yugoslav Macedonians led by him,[10] who was pro-Serbian.[2] He also had the task of organizing an armed resistance.[3]
In September 1941, Koliševski became the Secretary of theRegional Committee of the Communists in Macedonia.[3][6] He created the first partisan detachments in Vardar Macedonia, however they were poorly trained and organized, and were easily defeated by the Bulgarian army.[11] After the communist attack on the Bulgarian police station inPrilep on 11 October, he was arrested a month later inOhrid and sentenced to death by a Bulgarian military court.[3][6] Koliševski's personal Bulgarian prison card in 1941 listed his nationality as Bulgarian.[12] He wrote two appeals for clemency to the Bulgarian tsar and to the defense minister.[8] In the appeals, he wrote that he had a Bulgarian origin.[13][14] These documents are stored in the Bulgarian military archive inVeliko Tarnovo.[15] Later, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and Koliševski was sent to a prison inPleven, Bulgaria.[16] However, after thefall of communism, when these documents became widely known, Koliševski denied making any appeals for clemency or admission of guilt personally.[17] He claimed that his plea for mercy was written by his lawyer,[18] but in relation to the death sentence of the then Bulgarian military courts, existed only the opportunity to submit personally signed "appeal for clemency".[19] According to the Yugoslav politician Antun Kolendić, Koliševski vainly denied these facts, while he became familiar with these documents in 1946.[20]
In 1943, he was elected in absentia as a delegate of theAnti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia, secretary of the Central Committee of theCommunist Party of Macedonia (later League of Communists of Macedonia/LCM), and in 1944 as a delegate in the first session of theAnti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM).[3][21] He was released from prison in 9 September 1944 when theFatherland Fronttook over in Bulgaria.[3][2] In the second session of ASNOM, he was elected as the vice president of its presidium.[11] He soon became the president of the Communist Party of Macedonia, a branch of theCommunist Party of Yugoslavia. In mid-April 1945, Koliševski became thePrime Minister of the Federal State of Macedonia, a federal unit of theDemocratic Federal Yugoslavia (DFY).[2] Koliševski was awarded with theOrder of the People's Hero,Order of People's Liberation andOrder of the Hero of Socialist Labour.[6]
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In mid-September 1944, Yugoslav leaderJosip Broz Tito sentSvetozar Vukmanović and him to Sofia to meet with the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party to discuss the Macedonian Question. They blamed the Bulgarian communists for their actions during the war in Macedonia and demanded a union ofPirin Macedonia with the new Yugoslav Macedonia.[8] On 16 April 1945, he became the first President of the Executive Council of the People's Republic of Macedonia.[22] Under his leadership,[23] hundreds ofMacedonian Bulgarians were killed as collaborationistsin January 1945.[22] Thousands of others, who retained their pro-Bulgarian sympathies, suffered severe repression as a result.[24] AfterMetodija Andonov-Čento's incarceration in November 1946, he also initiated the purging of real or alleged Čentovites andCominformists from the party and government.[2] During his leadership, LCM was also committed to Yugoslav centralism.[3] The communist Macedonian leaders were declared atheists but they still saw the importance of religion and church in the construction of a nation.[2] During efforts by the Yugoslav Macedonian government to keep Serbs out of the administration, Koliševski stated that it was not necessary for Serbs to be in the civil services as there were enough Macedonians, while also claiming that Serbian officials were corrupt and incompetent, and that they would be incapable of running the administration due to their inability to use theMacedonian language, which was necessary for official communication.[11]
In 1946, he was a member of the Presidium of the National Constituent Assembly.[6] He became a candidate member of thePolitburo of the LCY in 1948 at the Fifth Party Congress. He was elected a member of the LCY CC's Executive Committee and a member of the presidency at the Sixth and Seventh Congresses. In 1953, he became the president of the Assembly of the People's Republic of Macedonia. He set the stage for Macedonia's negationist history and in his 1962 workAspects of the Macedonian Question (Macedonian:Аспекти на македонското прашање), he minimized Bulgarian influence and maximized Serbian influence on Macedonian history.[1] In the 1960s, he went with Tito to eight North African countries as part of a delegation on a diplomatic mission.[25] From 1979 to 1980, Koliševski served as thevice president of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. On 4 May 1980, Koliševski succeeded Tito after his death and held the office of head of the presidency of Yugoslavia for ten days, when the office passed on to the former President of the League of Communists of Bosnia and HerzegovinaCvijetin Mijatović.[7]
After thebreakup of Yugoslavia, Koliševski lived inSkopje, the capital of the newly-proclaimedRepublic of Macedonia, and opposed the anti-Serbian and pro-Bulgarian policy of the ruling right-wing party,VMRO-DPMNE, in the late 1990s.[26] Nationalists inOhrid demanded that he be hanged.[23] He died on 6 July 2000.[6] Shortly after, his personal archive of 300,000 documents was given to theMacedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences.[27] In 2002 a monument of Koliševski was erected in his birthplace by the left-wing local government.[28]Krste Crvenkovski andSlavko Milosavlevski challenged the belief that he had a significant role in the communist resistance during World War II.[8]
Дали потоа поднесовте молба за помилување? – го прашав / Не, не поднесов. Ако го напривев тоа, ќе значеше дека ја признавам вината." ("Did you then apply for clemency? – I asked / No, I did not. If I did, it would mean I was admitting guilt.
На почетокот на 1946 година бев по специјални задачи во Бугарија. Тогаш ми е јавено од ЦК КПЈ, односно од А. Ранковиќ - преку сојузната УДБА - од Бугарите да ги преземам сите строго доверливи архиварии во врска со Југославија. Од министерот за правосудство Нејчев добив фотокопии или заверени преписи со сите политички судски процеси на Југословените во текот на окупацијата, а помеѓу нив и досието на Лазар Колишевски, всушност на Лазар Панев Колишев. (At the beginning of 1946 I was on special assignments in Bulgaria. At that time I was informed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, that is, by A. Ranković - through the federal UDBA - that I was to take over from the Bulgarians all the strictly confidential archives related to Yugoslavia. From the Minister of Justice Nejčev I received photocopies or certified copies of all the political trials of the Yugoslavs during the occupation, and among them the file of Lazar Kolishevski, actually of Lazar Panev Kolishev.)
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