Milan Kucan
Milan Kucan led the Slovenian communist party out of the Yugoslav one and then led Slovenia out of Yugoslavia, in a war that lasted ten days. He had run the Slovenian league of communists from 1986, at the point when Slobodan Milosevic was consolidating Serbia and stripping the autonomy of its provinces. Slovenia's response was to democratise instead: it legalised opposition parties, and at the federal party congress in January 1990 the Slovenian delegation walked out when its proposals for a looser federation were voted down, which is where the Yugoslav communist party ceased to exist. Slovenia declared independence in June 1991 after a referendum that carried on almost ninety per cent. The Yugoslav army moved to secure the border posts and was fought to a standstill in ten days by a territorial defence force that had been quietly armed and organised in advance. Fewer than seventy people were killed, and the army withdrew. The preparation mattered as much as the fighting. Slovenia had spent a year buying weapons abroad in defiance of a federal embargo and moving its territorial defence stocks out of army depots, so when the columns came there were anti-tank teams on the roads and the border crossings had been taken first. Conscripts from other republics deserted in numbers rather than fight. That Slovenia got out so cheaply and Croatia and Bosnia did not is largely a matter of demography and geography: it had almost no Serb minority for Belgrade to protect and no territory Belgrade wanted enough. He was elected president twice and served ten years, presiding over an economy that converted to the market gradually rather than by shock, kept unemployment lower than most of the region, and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004. He remains an unusual figure in post-communist Europe: a party leader who was returned to office repeatedly by free elections in the country he had run before them.
- Lived: 1941 CE – ?
- Nationality: Slovenian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
