Prime Ministers of Yugoslavia - Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

After the German invasion and fragmentation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Partisan resistance in occupied Yugoslavia formed a deliberative council, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) in 1942. On 29 November 1943 the AVNOJ proclaimed the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, and appointed the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia (NKOJ), led by Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito, as its government. Josip Broz Tito was quickly recognized by the Allies at the Tehran Conference, and the royalist government-in-exile in London was pressured into agreeing on a merge with the NKOJ. In order to facilitate this, Ivan Šubašić was appointed by the King to head the London government.

For a period, Yugoslavia had two recognized prime ministers and governments (which both agreed to formally merge as soon as possible): Josip Broz Tito leading the NKOJ in occupied Yugoslavia, and Ivan Šubašić leading the King's government-in-exile in London. With the Tito-Šubašić Agreement in 1944, the two prime ministers agreed that the new joint government would be led by Tito. With the liberation of Yugoslavia's capital Belgrade in November 1944, the joint government was officially formed, with Josip Broz Tito as the Prime Minister.

After the war, elections were held ending in an overwhelming victory for Tito's People's Front. The new parliament deposed King Peter II on 29 November 1945, and declared a Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (in 1963, the state was renamed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). The government was first headed by a Prime Minister up to 14 January 1953, when major decentralization reforms reorganized the government into the Federal Executive Council chaired by a President. Josip Broz Tito held the post from 1943 to 1963.

Five out of nine heads of government of Yugoslavia in this period were of Croatian ethnicity. Three were from Croatia itself (Josip Broz Tito, Mika Špiljak, and Milka Planinc), while two were Bosnian Croats (Branko Mikulić and Ante Marković). Ante Marković however, though a Croat from Bosnia and Herzegovina by birth, was a politician of Croatia like Špiljak and Planinc, serving (at different times) as both prime minister and president of the presidency of that federal unit.

League of Communists of Yugoslavia Socialist Party of Serbia Union of Reform Forces