Miha Krek

Miha Krek
Miha Krek in the 1930s
Minister of Education
In office 26 August 1939 – 27 March 1941
Prime Minister	Dragiša Cvetković
Preceded by	Stevan Ćirić
Succeeded by	Miloš Trifunović
Personal details
Born	28 September 1897
Died	18 November 1969(1969-11-18) (aged 72)
Political party	Slovene People's Party
Religion	Roman Catholic

Miha Krek (28 September 1897 – 18 November 1969) was a Slovenian lawyer and conservative politician. Between 1941 and 1969, he was the informal leader of the Slovenian anti-Communist emigration.

Born in the Upper Carniolan village of Leskovica, he studied at the St. Stanislaus Institute in Šentvid near Ljubljana. During World War I, he was drafted in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After the war, he studied law at the universities of Zagreb and Ljubljana, where he obtained his PhD in 1930. Until 1935, he had a law firm in Ljubljana.

Krek joined the conservative Catholic Slovene People's Party in 1921. Initially, he served in the Party's auxiliary cultural associations. He also served as the president of the Slovenian section of the Catholic Action, and chief editor of the main conservative newspaper Slovenec. During the royal dictatorship of king Alexander I of Yugoslavia, he served as vice-president of the party.

In 1936, he became minister without portfolio in the cabinet of Milan Stojadinović. In 1938, he was elected Member of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on the list of the Yugoslav Radical Community, of which the Slovene People's Party was part between 1935 and 1941. In December of the same year, he became Minister of Constructions. He maintained the ministry in the government of Dragiša Cvetković, formed after Stojadinović's downfall in February 1939. In 1940, he was named Minister of Education in the Cvetković-Maček coalition government. After the death of Anton Korošec, Krek became General Secretary of the Yugoslav Radical Community in the Drava Banovina, and thus the second most influential politician in the Slovene People's Party after Fran Kulovec.