Kiro Gligorov

Kiro Gligorov, born in 1917, president of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (1991-1999). He was elected when the republic was part of Yugoslavia and led the republic to independence in 1991.

Gligorov was born in Štip. He studied law at the University of Belgrade in Serbia, where he was arrested in 1937 as a political activist by the royal Yugoslav government. In 1941 he joined the Communist-led Partisans, resistance fighters to the occupation of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers during part of World War II (1939-1945). The group's founding leader, Josip Broz Tito, became the ruler of Yugoslavia at the end of the war.

Gligorov joined the Communist Party in 1944. A year later he moved to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia (a Communist-ruled federation comprising six republics beginning in 1946). He worked in state politics and Communist Party organizations, earning a reputation as a “reform-Communist” and an expert in finance and economics. As the federal minister of finance from 1962 to 1967, vice president of the federal government from 1967 to 1969, and a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee from 1964, Gligorov was one of the principal architects of Yugoslavia's liberal, pro-market economic reforms of that period. When Yugoslavia plunged into economic crisis in the 1980s, Gligorov headed a high-level commission that drafted market reforms, but these reforms were never implemented. Economic problems and the demise of the Communist Party in 1990 led to an unraveling of the federation. As several of the republics moved toward declaring their independence from Yugoslavia, Gligorov was elected president of Yugoslav Macedonia by its first freely elected parliament in January 1991. Unable to gain other republics' acceptance of compromises that might have kept Yugoslavia together, Gligorov guided the republic to independence in November.

In 1991 Gligorov's government became involved in a dispute with the government of Greece over the republic's use of the name Macedonia, a symbol on its new flag (the Star of Vergina) associated with Alexander the Great, and articles of its constitution that Greece believed implied territorial claims to the adjacent Greek region of Macedonia. On April 8, 1993, the republic was admitted to the United Nations (UN) and gained international recognition as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), until a further settlement could be reached with Greece regarding the republic's name.

Gligorov was also faced with domestic unrest, as the republic's large Albanian minority began pressing for greater cultural and political autonomy. The FYROM's economy declined in the first half of the 1990s as a result of the conflicts in the Balkans (see Yugoslav Succession, Wars of) and a blockade by Greece; however, Gligorov continued to push for economic reforms, including a program to privatize numerous state-owned enterprises. His efforts to reform the economy and maintain stable, democratic government in the FYROM won Gligorov support from much of the international community. In 1994 he was reelected president amid rumors of dishonest voting practices.

In September 1995 Gligorov's government signed an interim accord on mutual relations with Greece. The FYROM agreed to remove the controversial Star of Vergina from its flag and to revise some articles of the constitution that Greece found objectionable. Negotiations were to continue regarding the issue of the republic's name.

On October 3, the day that talks were scheduled to begin on implementing the agreement, Gligorov was seriously injured in a car-bomb attack in Skopje. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, and its perpetrators and their motives were not identified. Gligorov was hospitalized, and the government named Stojan Andov, the speaker of the parliament, as acting president. Gligorov, who had lost an eye in the assassination attempt, returned to office in January 1996.

Gligorov's party, the Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia, lost its parliamentary majority in October 1998 to a coalition led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (IMRO-DPMNU). Gligorov did not stand for reelection in November 1999. He was succeeded by Boris Trajkovski, a member of the IMRO-DPMNU.