Rudi Supek

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Rudi Supek (Zagreb, 8 April 1913 - Zagreb, 2 January 1993) was a Croatian Marxist sociologist, member of the Praxis School.

Supek graduated philosophy in Zagreb. He went to study clinical psychology in Paris, where he was when World War II erupted. He joined the resistance movement, but soon was captured and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp by the Nazis. After the liberation, Supek went back to Paris to continue living and studying there. In 1948, after the Informbiro Resolution against Tito’s Yugoslavia, the leader of the French Communists Maurice Thorez asked Supek, who was member of the French Communist Party, to attack Titoism. Supek refuses to comply and returns to Yugoslavia. However, he did not become a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

Supek earned his PhD from Sorbonne in 1952 and started to work as a Professor at the Department of Psychology of the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy and at the Institute of Social Researches in Zagreb. He has founded the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy in 1963. Supek became the first president of the Yugoslav Society of Psychologists and for a period he was president of the Yugoslav Society of Sociologists.

Supek was chief editor of the journal Pogledi (Viewpoints) which was published from 1952 to 1954. In 1964 Supek with several colleagues from the Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy founded the Praxis journal and was co-editor of the journal from 1967 to 1973. He has initiated and became president of the Management Board of the Korčula Summer School.

In his honour in 2004 the Croatian Sociological Association has established the annual Rudi Supek Award for achievements in sociology.