Savka Dabčević-Kučar

Savka Dabčević-Kučar (6 December 1923 – 6 August 2009) was a Croatian politician. She was one of the most influential Croatian female politicians during the communist period, especially during the Croatian Spring when she was deposed. She returned to politics during the early days of Croatian independence as the leader of the Coalition of People's Accord and the Croatian People's Party. From 1967 to 1969 she served as the Chairman of the 5th Executive Council (Prime Minister) of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, one of eight constituent republics and autonomous provinces of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. She was the first woman in Europe to be appointed head of government of a political entity and the first female in the post-World War II Croatia to hold an office equivalent to a head of government.

Early life

Savka Dabčević-Kučar (née Dabčević) was born on 6 December 1923 in Korčula, then in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, today in Croatia. During the World War II, she joined Yugoslav Partisans, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) and the Communist Party of Croatia (KPH) in 1943. In 1944, she was transferred to the El Shatt refugee camp. In 1946 she enrolled in the study of economics at the University of Zagreb and two years later transferred to the Leningrad University – returning to complete her study in Zagreb in 1949 following the Tito–Stalin split. She married Ante Kučar in 1951.

Dabčević-Kučar received PhD in economics from the University of Zagreb in 1955. She became a member of the central committee of the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH - previously known as the KPH) in 1959. Two years later, she received a grant from the Ford Foundation and studied economic development and regional planning in the United States and France. In 1963, she was appointed a member of the SKH's task group formed to develop a proposal for economic reforms. In 1965 she became a professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Zagreb.