Ivica Račan (pronounced [îʋitsa râtʃan]; 24 February 1944 – 29 April 2007) was a Croatian career politician, leader of the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH) and later Social Democratic Party (SDP) from 1989 to 2007. He also served as Prime Minister of Croatia from 2000 to 2003, during which he headed two centre-left coalition governments.

Račan was born on 24 February 1944 in Ebersbach, Germany, where his mother was interned in a labour camp during World War II. He and his mother survived the Allied bombing of Dresden and were buried for days in the basement of a collapsed building. After the war, Račan returned to Croatia and spent his childhood and adolescence in Slavonski Brod, before moving to Zagreb and enrolling at the University of Zagreb. In 1970 he graduated from the Zagreb Faculty of Law.

Račan entered politics in the Socialist Republic of Croatia in 1972 as a member of the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH), the Croatian branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ). In the 1970s he rose through the party ranks, following the removal of reformists from party's leading positions after the collapse of the Croatian Spring movement. By the end of the 1980s he emerged as one of the party's most prominent members and in December 1989 became its leader.

Franjo Tuđman (Croatian: [fraːɲo tudʑmaːn] ( listen); 14 May 1922 – 10 December 1999) was a Croatian politician. Following the country's independence from Yugoslavia he became the first President of Croatia.

In his youth he fought during World War II as a member of the Yugoslav partisans, becoming later the youngest general in the Yugoslav army. After his military career, he worked as a historian until coming into conflict with the regime. He lived relatively anonymously in the following years until the end of communism, whereupon he began his political career by founding the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in 1989.

He became President in 1990, as the HDZ won the first post-communist multi-party elections, and a year later he proclaimed Croatian independence. He was re-elected twice and remained in power until his death in 1999.

Franjo Tuđman was born on 14 May 1922 in Veliko Trgovišće, a village in the northern Croatian region of Hrvatsko Zagorje, at the time part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. His father Stjepan ran a local tavern and was a politically active member of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS). He had been president of the HSS committee in Veliko Trgovišće for 16 years (1925–1941 and had been elected as mayor of Veliko Trgovišće in 1936 and 1938.) Mato, Andraš and Juraj, brothers of Stjepan Tuđman, emigrated to America. Another brother Valentin also tried to emigrate but a travelling accident prevented him and kept him in Veliko Trgovišće, where he worked as an (uneducated) veterinarian.