December 11, 1999 (IKA) – Croatian President Franjo Tudjman (77) has died last night. Dr. Franjo Tuđman Historian and Statesman Croatian historian and President of the Republic of Croatia, Dr. Franjo Tuđman, was born in Veliko Trgovišće, a village in the Croatian Zagorje, on May 14, 1922. Tuđman attended elementary school in his home town (1929-1933) and high school in Zagreb (1934-1941), from 1941 on, he participated in the antifascist partisan movement and the social revolution in northwest Croatia. From 1945, he worked in the Headquarters of the Personnel Office of the Ministry of National Defense, in the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Yugoslav National Army, and on the editorial board of the “Military Encyclopedia”. In Belgrade, he completed his studies in the Higher Military Academy (1955-1957). In late 1960 promoted to general, in 1961, he left active military service at his own request, in order to devote himself entirely to academics and written work.
In 1961 in Zagreb, he founded the Institute of the History of the Worker#!s Movement and remained its Director until 1967. In 1963 he was given tenure as professor of political science at the University of Zagreb, where he taught Socialist Revolution and Contemporary National History. He was awarded a Doctorate of Political Science in 1965 from the University of Zagreb, after defending his dissertation entitled “Causes of the Crisis in Monarchist Yugoslavia from the Time of its Unification in 1918 until its Disintegration in 1941.”
Early on, in the first half of the 1950s, Tuđman began his academic work. He published a large number of essays and articles (more than 150) on history, military theory and contemporary national history, as well as philosophy of history and international relations. He participated in many academic symposia, both in his homeland and in foreign countries, and delivered speeches at universities in Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany, Austria, Canada and the United States. He was a member of the editorial board of the military-theoretical magazine, “Military Action”, editor and assistant to the editor in chief of the “Military Encyclopedia”, collaborator on and editor of the Encyclopedia of the Lexicographic Institute Miroslav Krleža, editor in chief of the magazine “Paths to Revolution”, member of the publishing board of the magazine “Forum” of the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Science (JAZU), member of the publishing board of “Hrvatski tjednik” (“Croatian Week”) and member of the editorial board of “Glasnik Hrvatske demokratske zajednice” (“Voice of the Croatian Democratic Association”).
From 1962 until 1967, Tuđman was the President of the Commission for International Relations and member of the Secretariat of the Head Commission of the Socialist Alliance of Croatia. He has been a member of the Society of Croatian Writers since 1970 and of the Croatian chapter of PEN since 1987.
Tuđman#!s views, chiefly his opposition to attempts to impose collective guilt upon the entire Croatian nation because of events in the Independent State of Croatia in the Second World War, and especially because of his documentation of the exaggerations regarding the number of Jasenovac victims) exposed him to political as well as legal attacks. In 1967, he was expelled from the Communist Party. When he was only 45 years old, he was forced to leave the Institute and was removed from the University and retired in order to prevent him from engaging in public activities. When the repression of Croatian dissidents began in 1972, he was jailed, and subsequently became the main defendant in allegations concerning suspicious ties with emigration Croatian organizations. Due to the intervention of Miroslav Krleža with Marshal Josip Broz Tito, he avoided the long-term incarceration that he had received, but was nonetheless sentenced to two years#! prison (later reduced to nine months). In the first political trial following Tito#!s departure from the historical scene, in February of 1981, he was sentenced to three years#! prison and prohibited from any type of public activity for a further five years as a result of having given interviews to Swedish and German TV and French radio, during which he spoke of his historical judgements and in favor of pluralistic democracy. From January 1982 until February 1983, he was imprisoned at Lepoglava, but was released to undergo medical treatment. In May 1984 he was returned to prison to complete his term, but was conditionally released in September of the same year due to the deterioration of his health.
When his passport was returned to him in 1987, after it had been confiscated for seventeen years, he traveled outside the country first to Canada and the United States, and thereafter within Europe where his lectures raised the consciousness of the Croatian communities and led to the creation of a Croatian national democratic movement among Croatian emigrants. In 1989, he founded the Croatian Democratic Union and became its President. After the victory of his party in the first democratic elections held in Croatia in the last fifty years, he was elected President of the Presidency on May 30, 1990 in the Croatian Parliament, when the Socialist Republic of Croatia was still in existence.
After implementation of the new democratic Constitution of the Republic of Croatia (December 22, 1990) he was then re-elected, in direct Presidential elections held in November 1992, to the Presidency of the state of Croatia. At the second general convention of the Croatian Democratic Union of October 15-16, 1993 he was again chosen as President of the largest political party in recent Croatian history.
He was a regular member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Science (HAZU) and the recipient of international awards and recognition: “Catarina de Medici”, November 1990; award from the Centre for Ethnic Minorities, 1991; honourable doctorate from La Jolla University, November 1990; and he is the recipient of numerous Croatian awards.