Franjo Tudjman

Franjo Tudjman (1922-1999), president of Croatia (1990-1999) and leader of Croatia's war of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

Tudjman was born in Veliko Trgovišče in the Zagorje region of Croatia. In 1941 he joined the Communist-led Partisans, a group of resistance fighters opposed to Axis occupation of Yugoslavia during part of World War II (1939-1945). After the war, Tudjman studied at the Higher Military Academy in Belgrade, Serbia. He held staff positions in the Yugoslav People's Army and in 1960 attained the rank of general. The following year Tudjman left active service to pursue his interest in military and political history. In 1963 he became a professor of history at the University of Zagreb, where he received his doctorate two years later.

Tudjman was expelled from the ruling Communist Party in 1967 because of his controversial writings, which were condemned as being anti-Marxist and supportive of Croatian nationalism. In 1972 Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito suppressed the Croatian national movement, and Tudjman was among those arrested. Tudjman served nine months of a two-year sentence. He was tried again in 1981 for nationalist activities and given a three-year sentence.

In 1989 Communist control began to disintegrate in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia moved toward multiparty elections. The following year Tudjman founded and became president of the Croatian Democratic Union (CDU). The party won a plurality of votes and a solid parliamentary majority in Croatia's first multiparty elections in the spring of 1990, and the new parliament elected Tudjman president. Under his leadership, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991. Serbs in both Croatia and neighboring Serbia objected to Croatia's secession, and war broke out. Croatia lost more than one-fourth of its territory to the Serbs. In January 1992 Croatia won international recognition of its independence. In elections held in August 1992 under Croatia's new constitution, Tudjman was reelected president.

As the conflict continued between Croats and ethnic Serbs in Croatia, Tudjman also became involved in backing ethnic Croats fighting for territory in the neighboring republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He came under increasing criticism by his opponents and members of the international community, who accused him of imposing an authoritarian regime by placing restrictions on the mass media and giving his party, the CDU, a dominant position in all major political, economic, social, and cultural institutions. Tudjman and other Croatian leaders argued that such measures were necessary under wartime conditions in order to protect the state.

In August and September of 1995, lightning offensives by the Croatian army restored Croatian control to all of the territories that had been under Croatian Serb military control since 1991, except for eastern Slavonia and Baranja (which reverted to Croatia in January 1998). In December Tudjman, along with Serbian president Slobodan Milošević and Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović, signed a comprehensive peace accord to end the war in Bosnia (see Dayton Peace Accord). In June 1997 Tudjman won election to another five-year term as president with more than 61 percent of the vote. Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) criticized the elections and the campaign leading up to them, citing strong favoritism toward Tudjman within the state-run media and the denial of voting rights to minority Serbs in Croatia.

Tudjman had been ill with cancer for quite some time, and in November 1999 he was hospitalized. Late in November, Croatia’s Constitutional Court declared him temporarily incapacitated and transferred his powers to the speaker of parliament. Tudjman died the following month.