Prime Minister of Yugoslavia


The Prime Minister of Yugoslavia was the head of government of the Yugoslav state, from the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 until the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992.

History

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created by the unification of the Kingdom of Serbia and the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs on 1 December 1918.
Until 6 January 1929, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was a parliamentary monarchy. On that day, King Alexander I abolished the Vidovdan Constitution, prorogued the National Assembly and introduced a personal dictatorship. He renamed the country Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929, and although introduced the 1931 Constitution, he continued to rule as a de facto absolute monarch until his assassination on 9 October 1934, during a state visit to France. After his assassination, parliamentary monarchy was put back in place.
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was defeated and occupied after the German invasion on 17 April 1941. The monarchy was formally abolished on 29 November 1945.
In 1945 there were ten living former prime ministers. Out of these, Nikola Uzunović, Dušan Simović, Miloš Trifunović and Ivan Šubašić lived in the Democratic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia while Petar Živković, Bogoljub Jevtić, Milan Stojadinović, Dragiša Cvetković, Slobodan Jovanović and Božidar Purić remained in exile.

SFR Yugoslavia

After the German invasion and fragmentation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Partisan resistance in occupied Yugoslavia formed a deliberative council, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia in 1942. On 29 November 1943 the AVNOJ proclaimed the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, and appointed the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia, led by Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito, as its government. Josip Broz Tito was quickly recognized by the Allies at the Tehran Conference, and the royalist government-in-exile in London was pressured into agreeing on a merge with the NKOJ. In order to facilitate this, Ivan Šubašić was appointed by the King to head the London government.
For a period, Yugoslavia had two recognized prime ministers and governments : Josip Broz Tito leading the NKOJ in occupied Yugoslavia, and Ivan Šubašić leading the King's government-in-exile in London. With the Tito-Šubašić Agreement in 1944, the two prime ministers agreed that the new joint government would be led by Tito. After the liberation of Yugoslavia's capital Belgrade in October 1944, the joint government was officially formed on 2 November 1944, with Josip Broz Tito as the prime minister.
After the war, elections were held ending in an overwhelming victory for Tito's People's Front. The new parliament deposed King Peter II on 29 November 1945, and declared a Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The government was first headed by a prime minister up to 14 January 1953, when major decentralization reforms reorganized the government into the Federal Executive Council chaired by a President, who was still usually called "Prime Minister" in non-Yugoslav sources. Josip Broz Tito held the post from 1944 to 1963; from 1953 onward, he was also President of the Republic.
Five out of nine heads of government of Yugoslavia in this period were of Croatian ethnicity. Three were from Croatia itself, while two were Bosnian Croats. Ante Marković however, though a Croat from Bosnia and Herzegovina by birth, was a politician of Croatia like Špiljak and Planinc, serving as both prime minister and president of the presidency of that federal unit.

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