original article should be like this franjo tu man may december was the first president of croatia in the s tu man's political party hdz hrvatska demokratska zajednica croatian democratic union won the first post communist multi party elections in and he became the president of the country a year later he proclaimed the croatian declaration of independence he was reelected twice and remained in power until his death in late in english his surname is spelled tudjman the communist franjo tu man was born in veliko trgovi e a village in the hrvatsko zagorje region of northern croatia during wwii tu man fought on the side of tito's partisans where he also met his future wife ankica he became one of the youngest generals in the yugoslav people's army in the s a fact which some observers linked to the fact that he sprung from zagorje a region that gave few communist partisans others have observed that tu man was probably the most educated of tito's generals as regards military history strategy and the interplay of politics and warfare this claim is supported by the fact that generations of future yugoslav generals based their general exam theses on his voluminous book on guerilla warfare throughout history rat protiv rata war against war which covers topics as diverse as hannibal's drive across the alps the spanish war against napoleon and yugoslav partisan warfare tu man left active army service in to found the institut za historiju radni koga pokreta hrvatske institute for the history of croatia's workers' movement and remained its director until the dissident apart from the book on guerilla warfare tu man wrote a series of articles attacking the yugoslav communist establishment and was subsequently expelled from the party his most important book from that period was velike ideje i mali narodi great ideas and small peoples a monograph on political history that collided with central dogmas of yugoslav communist elite with regard to the interconnectedness of the national and social elements in the yugoslav revolutionary war during world war ii wwii in he was sentenced to two years of prison for alleged subversive activities during the so called croatian spring the croatian spring was a reformist movement that was actually set in motion by tito and croatian party chief bakari in the climate of growing liberalism in the late s it was initially a tepid and ideologically controlled party liberalism but it soon grew into mass manifestation of dissatisfaction with the position of the croatian people in yugoslavia and it began to threaten the party's political monopoly the result was a brutal suppression by tito who used the military and the police to crush what he saw as the threat to his undivided power bakari quickly distanced himself from the croatian communist leadership that he himself helped gain power earlier and sided with the yugoslav ruler during the turbulent tu man's role was that of the dissident who questioned the central myth of modern serbian nationalism the number of victims of the jasenovac concentration camp as well as the role of centralism in yugoslav and the continuation of ideology of unitary yugoslavism tu man felt that this originally croatian romantic pan slavic idea from the th century had been mutated in harsh realities in both yugoslav states into the front for a pan serbian drive for domination over non serb peoples from economy and a