Aleksandar Ranković

Aleksandar " Leka " Ranković ( Serbian Cyrillic Александар Лека Ранковић; born November 28, 1909 in Draževac at Obrenovac, Kingdom of Serbia, † August 20, 1983 in Dubrovnik, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now Croatia ) was a leading member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav Minister of the Interior and until he was deposed in 1966 head of the Yugoslav secret service.

Ranković was since 1940 a member of the Communist Party and during the Second World War, part of the communist resistance. His code name within the party was Marko.

After the war, Ranković held the office of Minister of the Interior of the newly formed state of Yugoslavia. He was also Chief of the Yugoslav secret OZNA and commander in chief of the political police Udba.

In the 1960s, Ranković was opposed in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia ( LCY ) to the reconstruction of the political structures of Yugoslavia, which strengthened the federal elements. He prevented in particular the extension of the existing already in the Yugoslav constitution of 1946 autonomy for the two Serbian provinces of Kosovo - Metohija and Vojvodina, and let pursue the Udba Kosovo Albanians as potential enemies of the state and liqudieren on mere suspicion.

Reformers within the Communist Party reached in July 1966, the dismissal of Rankovic from his political posts. He was accused of the Udba to have expanded into a state within a state, which have even monitored Tito with listening devices.