Miladin Popović

Miladin Popović (Serbian Cyrillic: Миладин Поповић; 23 May 1910 – 13 March 1945) was a Yugoslav Partisan and secretary of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (OK KPJ) of Kosmet (Kosovo). He was one of the organizers of the partisan fighting in Kosovo. He was posthumously given the Hero of Yugoslavia award.

Yugoslav postage stamp, 1985.

Life
Miladin Popović, standing to the left, and Dušan Mugoša, sitting to the left, with Enver Hoxha sitting to the right, in Albania in 1942–43.

An active communist in Kosovo, he was arrested on 18 July 1941 near Rožaje, and sent to a concentration camp near Peqin in Albania. He managed to escape with the support of the Albanian communists a few months later.[1]

He and Dušan Mugoša were the Yugoslav delegates that in 1941 helped the Albanian communist groups unite and create the Communist Party of Albania.[2] The two had been sent to Albania on the directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CK KPJ), chosen for their revolutionary experience and political knowledge, to be available to the Albanian communists; they were the most active regarding Yugoslav–Albanian alliance.[3] Mugoša and Popović were members of the Regional Committee KPJ (OK KPJ) of Kosmet (Kosovo).[4]

Popović left Albania in September 1944.[1] He was killed on 13 March 1945[5] in Pristina by two Kosovar Albanians, Haki Taha and Qazim Vula, both members of the anticommunist Albanian National Democratic Movement. Taha killed himself right after murdering Popović,[6] whereas Vula was arrested and given a life sentence, but managed to escape from the prison of Niš, and fled to Albania, where he was again arrested. Vula died in 1987.[7] Sources disagree about the motives of Taha and Vula: while the Yugoslavian regime said that the two killers were motivated by anti-Serbian sentiments, communist Albania's version was that they were used as kamikaze by the Yugoslav secret police (UDBA), who wanted to eliminate Popović for his pro-Albanian sentiments.[6]

Inside the CPA and the CPY relationship, Popović always took a pro-Internationalism and pro-Albanian stance.[1] In a party meeting of 1946 in Mitrovica, Kosovo, as a delegate of the Central Committee, he stated: "Albanians during the old Yugoslavia were oppressed, robbed economically, spiritually negated or even physically exterminated, and [you] don't need to wonder why they had eagerly welcomed the Germans, as they were for them the liberators from the former government".[8] The Albanian side vaguely supported the Yugoslav version at the time regarding his assassination, but after the Yugoslav-Albanian split in 1948 they accused the OZNA of having set it all up.

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References
  1. Instituti i Studimeve Marksiste-Leniniste (1981), "9", Historia e Partisë së Punës të Shqipërisë (PDF), Tirana: Instituti i Studimeve Marksiste-Leniniste, p. 166, OCLC 13580943
  2. Komunist: organ Centralnog komiteta KPJ. Borba. 1949. Дугим радом и убеђивањем на састанцима с појединцима и с по двојицом-тројицом, другови Миладин Поповић и Душан Мугоша сломили су групашки отпор код већине албанских другова. Они су успели да их убеде како је Партија неопходна радпим масама у њи- ховој борби за ослобођење од капиталистичке експлоатације и импе- ријалистичког поробљавања. Тај рад довео је до састанка 8 новем- бра 1941 године, на коме је било присутно преко двадесет ...
  3. Dokumenti današnjice. 5. Sedma sila. 1962. повић и Душан Мугоша најактивније учествовали (они су дошли у Албанију по директиви ЦК КПЈ да своје револуционарно искуство и политичко знање ставе на располагање албанским комунистима), на састанку који је одржан у ...
  4. Đaković 1986, p. 79.
  5. Piljević, Đorđe (1982). Narodni heroji Jugoslavije. 2. Belgrade, Titograd: Partizanska knjiga, Narodna knjiga, Pobjeda. p. 115.
  6. Llazani, Artes. "Historia e Haki Tahës, njeriut që vrau Milladin Popoviqin". Telegrafi. Retrieved 28 November 2015.
  7. Ben Fowkes; Bulent Gokay (2 January 2014). Muslims and Communists in Post-Transition States. Taylor & Francis. pp. 81–. ISBN 978-1-317-99539-5.
  8. Strijeljanje Bošnjaka na Hadžetu [The shooting of Bosniaks on Hadžet] (in Bosnian), Sandžak Press, 2015-01-22, Miladin Popović, delegat Centralnog komiteta za Kosmet, obraćajući se 1946. godine na jednom „partijskom skupu“ u Kosovskoj Mitrovici je kazao: Albanci su za vrijeme stare Jugoslavije bili ugnjetavani, ekonomski pljačkani, duhovno negirani, pa čak i fizički istrjebljivani, i nemojte da se čudite što su oni rado dočekali Nijemce, jer su za njih bili kao oslobodioci, od one bivše vlasti.

Sources
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