Milka Planinc
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Milka Planinc (born November 21, 1924 at Drniš in Croatia) was a Socialist Federal Prime Minister of Yugoslavia from 1982 to 1986. She was the only female head of government in the history of real socialism until 2008 when Zinaida Greceanîi became Prime Minister of Moldova. (Other women such as Chairman Khertek Anchimaa-Toka of Tannu Tuva and Chairman and Honorary President of the People's Republic of China Soong Ching-ling were heads of state.) She currently resides in Zagreb, Croatia. These are the political roles she held during her career:
Her mandate as prime minister was remembered as the times when the government finally decided to regulate external debt of SFR Yugoslavia and to start to pay it back. In order to achieve necessary means, her cabinet implemented restrictive economic measures for a few years.
- Secretary of the People’s Assembly of Trešnjevka 1957;
- Secretary of Cultural Affairs of the City of Zagreb 1961-1963;
- Secretary of Education 1963-1965;
- President of the Assembly 1967-1971;
- Leader of the Communist Party in Croatia 1971-1982;
- President of the Federal Executive Council (Prime Minister) of SFR Yugoslavia 1982-1986.
[edit] Biography
Milka was born in the rugged Dalmatian hinterland of Croatia to her parents who lived in a patchwork kingdom[1]. Her kingdom was created in 1918, and it included Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and part of Macedonia[2].When Milka was five, King Alexander I changed the name The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians to Yugoslavia, land of the south slavs[3].
Milka attended school, but with the onset of World War II her schooling was interrupted[4]. She joined the Communist Youth League in 1941.[5]. This was a pivotal year in Milka’s life and for her country. Adolf Hitler invaded Yugoslavia and divided the country among German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian occupying authorities.[6] Soon enough a resistance group known as the Partisans was formed, led by a locksmith named Josip Broz who called himself Tito.[7] Milka waited impatiently for the day when she would be old enough to join this Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia.[8]
At the age of 19, Milka joined the Partisans and became extremely devoted to Tito[9]. The next year Milka joined the Communist party; this was 1944.[10] She became county commissar of the 11th Dalmatian Shock Brigade,and their her job was to teach party principles and policies, and ensure party loyalty.[11] Milka spent years working for the Partisans and the Communist party, and when they gained control of the entire region she enrolled in the Higher School of Administration in Zagreb to continue her education.[12]
Milka married an engineer named Planinc, and was the mother of a son and a daughter.[13]
[edit] Political Career
She began to pursue a full-time career within the League of Communists of Croatia.[14] She specialized in education, agitation, and propaganda and in 1959 Milka was elected into the Croatian Central Committee, the executive body.[15] Though Planinc served in a variety of posts in Zagreb: an official in the Secretariat for Education and Culture of the Zagreb City Assembly, secretary of the Zagreb City League of Communists Committee, and as republican secretary for education, greater party acknowledgment did not come until 1966 when Milka was elected into the Presidium of the LCC, and then to the executive committee of the LCC in 1968.[16]
After the events of Croatian spring, the leadership of LCC was removed, and Milka Planinc became president of its Central Committee.[17] When Tito died in 1980, he left a plan for a cyclical reign of 8 leaders, one from each of the nationalities in the region, to cycle through leadership.[18] This went smoothly, and on April 29, 1982 the Federal Conference of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia approved a list of ministers submitted by Planinc, and on May 15 a joint session of the National Assembly’s two houses named her head of the Federal Executive Council; thus she became prime minister.[19] She became the first woman to occupy such a high post in the country's 64 year history [20]
Milka Planinc had a new governmental body, The Federal Executive Committee, and it consisted of 29 members [21]. All of the members of this committee were new, except for 5 that were members of the old committee [22].
She recognized that a lot of changes needed to be made to restore economic strength, but the 1974 constitution had left the central government with very little authority, as the power was divided into the separate republics.[23] Milka tried to re-focus the central government and gain international alliances with visits to Britain, the United States, and Moscow. Though her visits to Washington gave her promises of economic support, her visit to Moscow was said to be with “nothing lost, and nothing gained.”[24]
Her term ended in May 1986, and before long she became a member of the LCY Central Committee.[25] The former prime minister spent the rest of her time living through bitter days of war with the disestablishment of Communism, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the fighting between Croatians and Serbians. [26]
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[edit] Notes
- ^ Stankovic, Slobodan. Open Society Archives. 6 May 1982. 15 April 2008 <http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/86-1-324.shtml>.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 112 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 112 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 112 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 112 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 113 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 113 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 113 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 113 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 114 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 113 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 116 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 116 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 117 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 117 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 117 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 117 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 117 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Stankovic, Slobodan. Open Society Archives. 6 May 1982. 15 April 2008 <http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/86-1-324.shtml>.
- ^ Stankovic, Slobodan. Open Society Archives. 6 May 1982. 15 April 2008 <http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/86-1-324.shtml>.
- ^ Stankovic, Slobodan. Open Society Archives. 6 May 1982. 15 April 2008 <http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/86-1-324.shtml>.
- ^ Stankovic, Slobodan. Open Society Archives. 6 May 1982. 15 April 2008 <http://www.osa.ceu.hu/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/86-1-324.shtml>.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 118 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 119 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 120 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
- ^ Opfell, Olga S. Women Prime Ministers and Presidents. Pg 120 Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1993.
