Milan Gorkić (), born as Josef Čižinský (; 19 February 1904 – 1 November 1937), was a high-ranking and prominent Yugoslav communist politician and activist. He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) in exile from 1932 until 1937 and also a prominent member of the Comintern. Gorkić was executed by the NKVD in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge. Early life Family Gorkić was born Josef Čižinský in 1904 into a Czech family from Austria-Hungary that had settled in Sarajevo five years earlier in 1899. At the time, Bosnia-Herzegovina was still officially a vilayet within the Ottoman Empire though in actuality it was run as an occupational zone and a de facto part of Austria-Hungary. His father, Václav Čižinský was an upholster who earlier held membership in the Social Democratic Party of Czechoslovakia. After a short holiday in his hometown, he brought his wife, Gorkić's mother, Antonija Mimerova to Bosnia and Herzegovina. She worked as a seamstress. In Bosnia and Herzegovina his father worked for the Austrian-Hungarian administration. Gorkić was born in Sarajevo in 1904; his older brother Ladislav (1901) was a machinist and younger brother Bohumil was an architect who lived in Czechoslovakia until 1986. In 1921, Gorkić's family was deported back to Czechoslovakia, after his father was involved in a strike and accusations of being a communist and a serbophobe. Gorkić was also previously arrested for communist activity, which contributed to his family's deportation. Education Gorkić entered elementary school in Bosanski Brod in 1910. As a good student, he continued high school education in Derventa, but soon left the school because of the World War. In order to avoid losing an academic year, he tried to enter high school in Slavonski Brod, but this school was also closed, so he studied grade five privately. In 1915, Gorkić succeeded in starting grade six in High People's Students' School, a lower high school, entering its second grade. In 1918 he returned to Sarajevo and took entrance exam in order to enroll in the Sarajevo Commerce Academy. Early activity During a time spent in Commercial Academy, Gorkić joined the Organization of Intellectual Workers as a fifteen-year-old. Gorkić and other members of the organisation had meetings in Workers' Home, where they read works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as Miroslav Krleža's revolutionary magazine "Plamen". On 1 May 1919 he was arrested along with