A Stalin supporter at the heart of Tito’s party
At the April 1948 Central Committee meeting, he opposed Tito’s reply to Moscow.
Sreten Žujović was a Serb Yugoslav communist and labour organiser who passed through the First World War and the Yugoslav Partisan struggle. He helped organise the wartime uprising, served with the Supreme Headquarters, and became finance minister after liberation. In the 1948 conflict between Tito and Stalin, he defended the Soviet line as the sole dissenter at the decisive Central Committee meeting, and was removed from the party and office and imprisoned. Released after a public self-criticism in 1950 and later readmitted, he embodied the fracture between revolutionary internationalism and Yugoslav autonomy.
Career timeline
- 1918–1924Labour movement and trade-union organiser after the war
- 1924–1933Joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and worked as a party organiser
- 1938–1940Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
- 1941–1944Partisan command and Supreme Headquarters work in Serbia and Yugoslavia
- 1945–1947Federal Minister of Finance of Yugoslavia
- 1948Supported the Cominform line during the Tito–Stalin split
- 1948–1950House arrest and imprisonment, released after self-criticism
- 1950–1971Readmitted to the party; executive at Borba and an economic institute
Yugoslav partisan-diplomat whom Stalin named a British spy to break off correspondence
Stalin wrote in his March 27, 1948 letter: 'We do not understand why the British spy Velebit continues to remain in the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the First Deputy Minister.'
A Yugoslav lawyer turned Partisan general and diplomat who served as the Partisans' liaison to Allied military missions during the war and as First Deputy Foreign Minister afterward, negotiating with the Western powers. In his March 27, 1948 letter Stalin singled out Velebit as a 'British spy' and used his continued presence in the foreign ministry as justification for breaking off frank diplomatic correspondence, making the accusation one of the triggers of the Tito-Stalin split. Forced to resign, he was later rehabilitated, serving as ambassador to Rome and London and as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, embodying Yugoslavia's independent course through the Cold War.
Career timeline
- 1933PhD in law, University of Zagreb
- 1939Met Tito in Istanbul, joined the KPJ
- 1942–1943Liaison to Allied military missions, Partisan Supreme Command
- 1945–1948First Deputy Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia
- 1951–1952Yugoslav Ambassador to Italy
- 1952–1956Yugoslav Ambassador to the United Kingdom
- 1960–1967Executive Secretary, UN Economic Commission for Europe
Tito's third man, who directed the Cominform purges
Interior minister Ranković wrote after the 1948 split that 'it was impossible to know whom to trust and that one's closest comrades may now be the enemy.'
A Yugoslav communist leader regarded as the third most powerful figure after Tito and Kardelj. In May 1944 he created OZNA, the Partisan security agency; after the war he headed the interior ministry and the State Security Administration (UDBA) and oversaw the anti-Stalinist purges that followed the 1948 Soviet–Yugoslav split, building special camps for Cominformists on Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur in 1949. In Kosovo, the period 1947–1966 is colloquially called 'the Ranković era' for a police-state repression of Albanians; lesser campaigns targeted Hungarians in Vojvodina and Muslims in Sandžak. He opposed federal decentralization and defended centralism, and in 1966 the Brioni plenum removed him from all posts and expelled him from the party. He died in Dubrovnik in 1983.
Career timeline
- 1928Joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia
- 1929–1935Arrested and imprisoned for communist activity
- 1941–1945Served on Partisan Supreme Staff; founded OZNA (1944)
- 1946–1953Minister of Interior of Yugoslavia and head of UDBA
- 1948–1955Directed anti-Cominform purges; built the Goli Otok camp
- 1963–1966Vice President of Yugoslavia
- 1966Dismissed from all posts at the Brioni plenum; expelled from the party
Yugoslav dissident who attacked Western communist parties at the Cominform and later dissected the communist system in The New Class
I traveled the entire road of communism: from a youthful revolutionary, to a zealous Stalinist, to complete disillusionment.
A Montenegrin-born Yugoslav communist leader and one of Tito's closest comrades in the Partisan struggle and postwar state-building. At the founding conference of the Cominform in 1947, he joined Edvard Kardelj in delivering the sharpest criticism of the French and Italian Communist Parties for their 'parliamentary opportunism,' and his memoirs remain a key source on the conference's internal dynamics. After raising demands for democratization within the party and denouncing bureaucratic privilege, he was stripped of all positions in 1954; his book The New Class, smuggled out of prison, argued that communist party officials had become a new exploitative ruling class, sparking an international sensation. He spent over three decades in prison and under surveillance, becoming the first prominent dissident in communist Eastern Europe.
Career timeline
- 1932–1936KPJ activist, arrested and imprisoned
- 1937–1939Member of KPJ Central Committee and Politburo
- 1941–1945Led Partisan uprising in Montenegro, headed propaganda for Supreme Staff
- 1945–1953Vice President of Yugoslavia, President of the Federal Assembly
- 1953–1954Published critiques of one-party rule in Borba, expelled from the party
- 1956–1966Imprisoned twice for dissident writings; published The New Class and Conversations with Stalin abroad
- 1966–1995Lived under surveillance in Belgrade, continued writing until his death
