Aleksandar Rankovi: BeriaTitoist yugoslavia
Aleksandar Rankovi: BiographyFrom Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Aleksandar Rankovi Leka
Minister of the Internal Affairs of Yugoslavia
In officeJanuary 1946 July 1966
PresidentJosip Broz Tito
Preceded byOffice established
Chief of OZNA
In office13 May 1944 March 1946
Vice President of the People's Assembly of the PR Serbia
In officeNovember 1944 January 1946
Personal details
Born(1909-11-28)28 November 1909Draevac, Kingdom of Serbia
Died20 August 1983(1983-08-20) (aged73)Dubrovnik, SR Croatia,
SFR Yugoslavia
Resting placeBelgrade, Serbia
NationalitySerb
Political partyCommunist Party of Yugoslavia
Spouse(s)Ana Rankovi
OccupationPolitician, soldier, worker
Military service
Nickname(s)Marko, Leka
AllegianceYugoslavia
Service/branchYugoslav Partisans
Years of service19411945
RankColonel general
Battles/warsWorld War II
Yugoslav Front
AwardsOrder of the People's HeroOrder of the Hero of Socialist
LabourOrder of National Liberation
Aleksandar Rankovi "Leka" (Serbian Cyrillic: ; 19091983) was a
Yugoslav communist of Serbian origin considered to be the third
most powerful man in Yugoslavia after Josip Broz Tito and Edvard
Kardelj.[1] Rankovi was a proponent of a centralized Yugoslavia and
opposed efforts that promoted decentralization that he deemed to be
against the interests of Serb unity;[2] he ran Kosovo as a police
state[3] and made Serbs dominant in Kosovo's nomenklatura.[2]
Rankovi supported a hardline approach against Albanians in Kosovo
who were commonly suspected of pursuing seditious
activities.[4]
HYPERLINK
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandar_Rankovi%C4%87" \l
"cite_note-5#cite_note-5" [5]The popularity of Rankovi's
nationalistic policies in Serbia became apparent at Rankovi's
funeral in Serbia in 1983 where large numbers of people attended
the funeral and many considered Rankovi a Serbian "national"
leader.[6] Rankovi's policies have been perceived as the basis of
the Serbian nationalist agenda of Slobodan Miloevi.[6]Contents
1 Early life 2 Pre-war activity 3 Later career 4 See also 5
ReferencesEarly lifeRankovi was born in the village of Draevac near
Obrenovac in the Kingdom of Serbia. Born into a poor family,
Rankovi lost his father at a young age. He attended high school in
his hometown. As with many poor children, he went to Belgrade to
work. Hard living conditions influenced him to join the workers'
movement. He was also influenced by his colleagues who, at the time
when the Communist Party was banned, brought communist magazines
and literature with them, which were read by Rankovi. At age 15 he
joined the union.[clarification needed] In 1927 he met his future
wife Ana, and year later he joined the Communist Party of
Yugoslavia. Soon he was named Secretary-General of the League of
Communists of Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) in Belgrade.
Pre-war activityIn 1928 when he become member of the Communist
Party, Rankovi was named Secretary of the Regional Committee of the
SKOJ of Serbia. The January 6th Dictatorship didn't influence his
political activity. As leader of the Regional Committee of SKOJ he
published a flyer which was distributed in Belgrade and Zemun.
During the time when flyers were being printed, one of his
associates was arrested and soon Rankovi was discovered by the
police. He was captured in Belgrade in an illegal apartment.
Rankovi's trial was one of the first trials after the
declaration of King Alexander's dictatorship. He was sentenced for
6 years and he spent his punishment in prisons in Sremska Mitrovica
and Lepoglava. During his imprisonment he spread communist agenda
among younger prisoners. In prison, he organized attacks on the
police by political prisoners.
He was released at the beginning of 1935 and after the release
he was enlisted to the army. After the military service he worked
for the workers' movement in Belgrade. Through the unions he
revived activity of the Communist Party. In 1936 he become member
of the Regional Committee of Serbia and in 1937 member of the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In
January 1939 he started to act illegally under codename "Marko". In
May 1939 Rankovi participated in the consultations of communists of
Yugoslavia in Drava Banovina in marna Gora, and later he
participated on the 5th Conference of KPJ held in Zagreb.
Later careerRankovi was a member of the Politburo from 1940.
Rankovi was captured and tortured by the German Gestapo in 1941 but
was later rescued in a daring raid by Yugoslav Partisans.[7] His
wife and mother were killed by the Gestapo during the war.[8]
Rankovi served on the Supreme Staff throughout the war. He was
named a "People's Hero" for his services during World War II.
After the war, Rankovi became minister of the interior and chief
the military intelligence agency OZNA. He fell from power in 1966,
ostensibly for abusing his authority by bugging the sleeping
quarters of President Josip Broz Tito. He was expelled from the SKJ
the same year.[7]His fall from power marked the beginning of the
end of a centralized power structure of the League of Communists of
Yugoslavia over the country and the social and political separatist
and autonomist movements that would culminate in the Croatian
Spring and the newly de-centralized Yugoslavia that emerged from
the 1971 constitutional reforms and later the 1974
Constitution.[9]
Rankovi's grave in Belgrade
Rankovi spent his remaining years in a political exile of sorts
in Dubrovnik until his death in 1983. He was buried in Belgrade
with some 30,000 Serbs spontaneously showing up for his funeral at
the Belgrade's New Cemetery despite the event being ignored by the
tightly-controlled media in the country. By the time of his death
Rankovi had come to symbolize Serbian political and national
interests as well as to embody what many Serbs at the time saw to
be their republic's weakened position within communist
Yugoslavia.
ReferencesNotes
1. Jump up ^ Aleksandar Rankovic - Political Profile of A
Yugoslav "Stalinist"2. ^ Jump up to: a b Melissa Katherine Bokovoy,
Jill A. Irvine, Carol S. Lilly. State-society relations in
Yugoslavia, 19451992. Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA: Palgrave
Macmillan, 1997. Pp. 295.3. Jump up ^ Judah. The Serbs. Yale
University Press. ISBN978-0-300-15826-7.4. Jump up ^ Independent
International Commission on Kosovo. The Kosovo report: conflict,
international response, lessons learned. New York, New York, USA:
Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. 35.5. Jump up ^ Judah, Tim
(2008). Kosovo: what everyone needs to know. New York: Oxford
University Press. pp.5152. ISBN978-0-19-537345-5.6. ^ Jump up to: a
b Lenard J. Cohen. Serpent in the bosom: the rise and fall of
Slobodan Miloevi. Boulder, Colorado, USA: Westview Press, 2002. Pp.
98.7. ^ Jump up to: a b "Aleksandar Rankovi. Narodni heroj ili
domaci izdajnik." (in Serbian). Yugoslavia Times. 1 October 2012.
Retrieved 8 December 2013.8. Jump up ^ Gunther, John (1961). Inside
Europe Today. New Today. New York: Harper & Brothers. p.350.
LCCN61-9706