League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia Serbo-Croatian: Savez komunističke omladine Jugoslavije, SKOJ Macedonian: Сојуз на комунистичката младина на Југославија, СКМЈ Slovene: Zveza komunistične mladine Jugoslavije, ZKMJ | |
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Founded | 1919 |
Dissolved | 1948 |
Succeeded by | League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia |
Headquarters | Belgrade |
Ideology | Communism Marxism–Leninism |
Mother party | Communist Party of Yugoslavia |
International affiliation | World Federation of Democratic Youth |
League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, [1] commonly known in English as the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia, or simply Communist Youth, was the youth wing of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from 1919 to 1948. Although it was banned just two years after its establishment and at times ruthlessly prosecuted, it continued to work clandestinely and was an influential organization among revolutionary youth in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and consequently became a major organizer of Partisan resistance to Axis occupation and local Quisling forces. After World War II, SKOJ became a part of a wider organization of Yugoslav youth, the People's Youth of Yugoslavia, which later became the League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia .
SKOJ was founded in Zagreb on October 10, 1919 as a political organization of revolutionary youth the youth which followed the policy of the communist Socialist Workers' Party of Yugoslavia. [2]
Regional committees were originally established but they were abolished in 1920. In 1921, the organization was banned together with the party, which had in the meantime been renamed Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Two congresses were held clandestinely during the 1920s, the Second Congress in June 1923, and the Third Congress in June 1926. SKOJ was affiliated to the Young Communist International. Regional committees were reestablished in 1939.
Seven Secretaries of SKOJ, also known as Seven Courageous, were seven leading figures of the organization, between 1924 and 1931, who died at the hand of the government, in direct confrontation with the gendarmerie, suicide, or indirectly as a consequence of being subjugated to extremely poor conditions during imprisonment and/or torture, which lead to their death from extreme weakening and illness. The Seven were, in sequence of taking the role of a secretary of the organization: [3] [4] [5]
After Axis powers occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, SKOJ organized a united youth front with the program of struggle against fascism and war, Anti-Fascist Youth Committees which at the Congress of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia in Bihać in 1942 united into the Unified League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia (Ujedinjeni savez antifašističke omladine Jugoslavije - USAOJ). SKOJ became a part of the umbrella organization, but continued to act autonomously within it.
In May 1946, USAOJ was renamed People's Youth of Yugoslavia (Narodna omladina Jugoslavije - NOJ), and in 1948 SKOJ and NOJ were united into a single organization, which continued to use the name People's Youth of Yugoslavia, and the use of the name SKOJ was discontinued.
NOJ was later renamed League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia (Savez Socijalističke Omladine Jugoslavije - SSOJ). This disintegrated together with Yugoslavia in early 1990s.
The Slovenian branch was transformed into the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, one of the major Slovenian parties.
After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia founded a youth wing with the same name in 1992.
League of Communists of Croatia was the Croatian branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ). It came into power in 1945. Until 1952, it was known as Communist Party of Croatia. In the early 1990s, it underwent several renames and lost power.
The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of SFR Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and after its initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed. It remained an illegal underground group until World War II when, after the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the military arm of the party, the Yugoslav Partisans, became embroiled in a bloody civil war and defeated the Axis powers and their local auxiliaries. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party state, which existed in that form of government until 1990, two years prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
The Football Association of Yugoslavia (FSJ) was the governing body of football in Yugoslavia, based in Belgrade, with a major administrative branch in Zagreb.
The New Communist Party of Yugoslavia is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in Serbia. Its goal is the reunification of Yugoslavia as a communist state according to Marxism–Leninism.
Ivan Ribar, known as Ivo Lola or Ivo Lolo, was a Yugoslav communist politician and military leader of Croatian descent. In the 1930s, he became one of the closest associates of Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Yugoslav Communist Party. In 1936, Ribar became secretary of the Central Committee of SKOJ. During World War II in Yugoslavia, Ribar was among the main leaders of the Yugoslav Partisans and was a member of the Partisan Supreme Headquarters. During the war, he founded and ran several leftist youth magazines. In 1942, Ribar was among the founders of the Unified League of Anti-Fascist Youth of Yugoslavia (USAOJ). He was killed by a German bomb in 1943 near Glamoč while boarding an airplane for Cairo, where he was to become the first representative of Communist Yugoslavia to the Middle East Command.
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The Socialist Youth League of Yugoslavia was a youth organization in Yugoslavia, the youth wing of the Socialist Party of Yugoslavia. It was founded by the students circle in Zagreb in 1921. As of the late 1920s, the claimed to have around 1,500 members.
Maja Bošković-Stulli was a Croatian slavicist and folklorist, literary historian, writer, publisher and an academic, noted for her extensive research of Croatian oral literature.
Pavle "Paja" Marganović was a Serbian communist activist and one of the Seven secretaries of SKOJ.
The Tomb of the People's Heroes is located in Zagreb's central graveyard, Mirogoj. It was designed by the Croatian sculptor Đuro Kavurić and built in 1968. Buried in the tomb are not only the recipients of the Order of the People's Hero, but also some of the most notable workers' movement activists of Croatia and Yugoslavia.
Vladimir Majder (1911–1943) was a Croatian Partisan who fought in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
Aleksandar Savić was a Croatian communist activist and member of the partisan resistance movement in Croatia, murdered during the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia.
Viktor Rosenzweig (1914–1941) was a Croatian-Jewish communist, poet and writer.
The League of Socialist Youth of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a youth organization in the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. SSOBiH traced its roots to the youth resistance movements during World War II, and became the main youth organization in the republic during the Tito era. During the 1980s, SSOBiH became increasingly autonomous from the party line and eventually became a political party of its own. It was succeeded by the Liberal Democratic Party.
The 1st Split Partisan Detachment or the 1st Split Detachment was a short-lived unit of the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II. It was composed of volunteers from the city of Split and was created in August 1941, just four months after the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, and the annexation of Split and most of Dalmatia by the Kingdom of Italy. The unit, composed mostly of young men with little or no fighting experience, planned to relocate to the Dinara mountains to join other Partisan units in fighting the Axis powers.
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