Slavko Degoricija

Slavko Degoricija was born in 1931 in the village of Kompolje, in Lika. After graduating from a teaching college, he worked as a teacher in various places in Croatia. In 1953 he moved to Kutina where he remained for 23 years. In the Kutina District Committee he was the Secretary of the Commission for the History of the Worker's Movement and in 1960 he was named director of the Museum and Archive of the People's Revolution in Kutina, which in 1963 was renamed the Museum of Moslavina. In 1970 he completed a history degree in Zagreb. Due to his participation in the Croatian Spring movement in 1971, he was politically persecuted and was out of work for a year. He is one of the founders of HDZ [Croatian Democratic Union]. He was twice elected to the Hrvatski sabor [Croatian Parliament]. In the second government of the Republic of Croatia he was named Deputy Minister of the Interior. He was a member and the leader of the Delegation of the Republic of Croatia in the negotiations with the local Serbs before the start of the war and later during the war. Due to political disagreements with Franjo Tuđman, in 1994 he left HDZ and he was involved in founding the Croatian Independent Democrats party. Dissatisfied with the subsequent political activities of the party, he left politics. He is the author of the book “Nije bilo uzalud” [It was not in vain], published in 2008.