Josip Vrhovec

Josip Vrhovec (9 February 1926 – 14 February 2006) was a Yugoslav and Croatian communist official, best known for serving as Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1978 and 1982, and the Chairman of the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH) from 1982 to 1984.

Biography Born in Zagreb on 9 February 1926, Vrhovec first became politically engaged during World War II, during which he became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Partisans (1941–1945).

Between 1972 and 1974 he was a member of the SKH Central Committee, and from 1974 to 1978 served as member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ).

After serving a full four-year term, Vrhovec was appointed to the post of chairman of SKH, and from May 1984 to May 1989 he represented SR Croatia in the nine-member Presidency of Yugoslavia, a collective body functioning as the head of state. In the latter half of the 1980s Vrhovec was one of the first Yugoslav politicians openly opposing Slobodan Milošević's nationalist policies, at the time when Milošević's rise to power in Serbia began.

Vrhovec is also credited as one of the key people involved in the organisation of the 1987 Summer Universiade, the biggest sporting event ever hosted in the city of Zagreb. Vrhovec died at the Sisters of Charity Hospital in Zagreb on 15 February 2006 and was buried at Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb six days later.