Croatian general who as Ban from 1848 proclaimed separation from Hungary, invaded it and helped crush the Vienna October Uprising
Born in 1801 at Petrovaradin on the Slavonian Military Frontier, the son of a Croatian baron, he was educated at the Theresian Military Academy in Vienna and commissioned a lieutenant in the Austrian army in 1819. A supporter of the Illyrian movement, he was promoted to major-general on 22 March 1848 and elected Ban by the Croatian Sabor the same day. On 19 April he proclaimed the union of the Croatian lands and their separation from the Kingdom of Hungary; on 11 September he invaded Hungary and took Székesfehérvár on 26 September, but after the battle of Pákozd he asked for a truce and withdrew. In October he bombarded Vienna with Windischgrätz and crushed the October Uprising, and in 1849 he fought in southern Hungary. He is also remembered for abolishing serfdom in Croatia. He left the office of Ban in 1859 and died the same year.
Career timeline
- 1819Commissioned a lieutenant in the Austrian army
- 1848–1859Ban of Croatia
- 1848Invaded Hungary; Pákozd; took Vienna
A parliamentarian who carried constitutional politics into the Liberation Movement
He presided over the Second Session of AVNOJ in 1943, where the decision to form New Yugoslavia was taken.
Ivan Ribar was a Croatian lawyer and Yugoslavist whose career connected parliamentary politics in the kingdom with the anti-fascist Liberation Movement. As president of the Constituent Assembly in 1920 and an advocate for communist defendants under dictatorship, he carried a constitutional and oppositional tradition into wartime politics. As chair of AVNOJ and later head of Yugoslavia’s collective state presidency, he gave the new order an institutional face while its political foundations were being remade. The loss of both sons in the war marked the personal cost of that passage between political traditions.
Career timeline
- 1906Co-founded the Croatian Progressive Democratic Party; began legal practice
- 1918Member of the central committee of the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs
- 1919Vice-president of the Provisional People’s Presidency of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
- 1920–1922President of the Constituent Assembly and National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
- 1942–1945Chair of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ)
- 1945–1953President of the Presidium of Yugoslavia’s National Assembly, the collective head of state
- 1960Retired from political life
Founder of the Ustaše and Poglavnik of the Independent State of Croatia who led the genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma
Born in Bradina in Herzegovina, he became a lawyer and a Croatian Party of Rights politician in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia demanding an independent Croatia. Exiled after the royal dictatorship of 1929, he founded in Fascist Italy the Ustaše, which made terror part of its programme, and with the IMRO organised the assassination of King Alexander in 1934. In 1941 he became Poglavnik of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state created by Germany and Italy, and presided over the mass killing of Serbs, Jews and Roma in camps and the forced conversion of Orthodox Christians. He fled to Argentina after the war and died in Madrid in 1959 from complications of wounds suffered in a 1957 assassination attempt.
A conciliator between the monarchy and the national liberation movement
In the November 1944 Belgrade talks, he accepted a coalition government and regency while leaving the monarchy for a postwar decision.
Ivan Šubašić was a Croat Yugoslav politician and lawyer who became the first head of the autonomous Banovina of Croatia before the war. As the balance shifted between the royal government-in-exile and Tito’s national liberation movement, he became the principal non-Communist intermediary between them. In 1944 he negotiated with Tito, accepted the authority of AVNOJ, and helped design a coalition government and regency while leaving the monarchy’s fate to a postwar decision.
Career timeline
- 1918–1921Served with Yugoslav volunteers, then studied law
- 1920sOpened a law practice in Vrbovsko
- 1938Elected to the Yugoslav National Assembly for the Croatian Peasant Party
- 1939–1941First Ban of the Banovina of Croatia
- 1944.06–11Prime Minister of the royal Yugoslav government-in-exile
- 1944.06Negotiated the Vis Agreement with Tito
- 1944.11Initialled the Belgrade Agreement, outlining a coalition government and regency
- 1945Foreign Minister in Tito’s government
