Milan Kucan
| Milan Kučan | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 1st President of Slovenia | |
|
In office 8 October 1991 – 22 December 2002 |
|
| Prime Minister |
Lojze Peterle Janez Drnovšek Andrej Bajuk Janez Drnovšek Anton Rop |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Janez Drnovšek |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
14 January 1941 Križevci, Drava Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia |
| Spouse(s) | Štefka Kučan |
| Religion | Lutheran |
Milan Kučan (pronounced [ˈmíːlaŋ ˈkúːt͡ʃan]; born 14 January 1941) is a Slovenian politician and statesman who was the first President of Slovenia from 1991 to 2002.
Milan Kučan, one of five children, was born in a Lutheran teachers' family. He was raised in the village of Križevci, located in the largely agrarian border region of Prekmurje in the Drava Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (present-day Slovenia). His father Koloman died during World War II. Kučan's family spent World War II in occupied Serbia, where over 58,000 other Slovenes were resettled from Slovenia by the Nazis.
Milan Kučan later studied law at the University of Ljubljana and soon became involved in the Communist political organizations of the time. In 1968, he became the president of the Slovene Youth Association, then secretary of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Slovenia (a central organization, created to unite all civil society associations under one roof) between 1974 and 1978. He rose to speaker of the National Assembly in 1978, and in 1982 he became representative for the Slovene Communists in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia's Central Committee in Belgrade.
In 1986, he became the leader of the League of Communists of Slovenia. At that time, liberal and democratic sentiment started to grow in Slovenia, as opposed to the political atmosphere of Belgrade and Serbia under Slobodan Milošević. Advocating in favour of human rights and European democratic values and principles, Kučan, his party and Slovenia faced increasingly severe political confrontations with Belgrade and Serbia. On 23 January 1990, Kučan and the Slovene delegation left the Party Congress. This led to the collapse of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, one of the pillars of the political system of the Socialist Yugoslavia.
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