Lazar Koliševski

Lazar Koliševski ( ; 12 February 1914 – 6 July 2000) was a Macedonian Yugoslav communist political leader in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia and briefly in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He was closely allied with Josip Broz Tito.

Early years Koliševski was born on 12 February 1914 in Sveti Nikole, Kingdom of Serbia (now North Macedonia), into a poor family. His mother was an Aromanian, while his father was Slavic. According to Kosta Tsarnushanov, a MMTRO member and historian, his father was a Serboman. In 1915, during the First World War, the region of Macedonia was occupied by the Kingdom of Bulgaria. His father was mobilized on the Salonica front, and during the war, both of Koliševski's parents died. In 1935, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). He went to study at the University of Belgrade and worked as party secretary in Kragujevac and Smederevo Palanka before World War II. Koliševski was sent by CPY to Macedonia to replace the leadership of the Regional Committee, as well as challenge the influence of BCP. who was pro-Serbian. After the communist attack on the Bulgarian police station in Prilep on 11 October, he was arrested a month later in Ohrid and sentenced to death by a Bulgarian military court. He wrote two appeals for clemency to the Bulgarian tsar and to the defense minister. These documents are stored in the Bulgarian military archive in Veliko Tarnovo. Later, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and Koliševski was sent to a prison in Pleven, Bulgaria. However, after the fall of communism, when these documents became widely known, Koliševski denied making any appeals for clemency or admission of guilt personally. He claimed that his plea for mercy was written by his lawyer, but in relation to the death sentence of the then Bulgarian military courts, existed only the opportunity to submit personally signed "appeal for clemency". According to the Yugoslav politician Antun Kolendić, Koliševski vainly denied these facts, while he became familiar with these documents in 1946. Koliševski giving a speech in Skopje after the liberation in 1945 during World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia.

In 1943, he was elected in absentia as a delegate of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Macedonia (later League of Communists of Macedonia/LCM), and in 1944 as a delegate in the first session of the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM). He was released from prison in 9 September 1944 when the Fatherland Front took over in Bulgaria. Under his leadership, hundreds of Macedonian Bulgarians were killed as collaborationists in January 1945. After Metodija Andonov-Čento's incarceration in November 1946, he also initiated the purging of real or alleged Čentovites and Cominformists from the party and government. From 1979 to 1980, Koliševski served as the vice president of the Presidency of Yugoslavia. On 4 May 1980, Koliševski succeeded Tito after his death and held the office of head of the presidency of Yugoslavia for ten days, when the office passed on to the former President of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina Cvijetin Mijatović. Nationalists in Ohrid demanded that he be hanged. In 2002 a monument of Koliševski was erected in his birthplace by the left-wing local government. Krste Crvenkovski and Slavko Milosavlevski challenged the belief that he had a significant role in the communist resistance during World War II.