Antifascist National-Liberation Council of Yugoslavia

formed in 1942 as the supreme representative political organ, uniting all the patriotic forces of Yugoslavia on a common platform of struggle against the fascist occupiers and their accomplices.

The first session of the council (Nov. 26–27, 1942, in Bihać, Bosnia) elected an executive committee that assumed leadership of the organs of incipient popular power, the national liberation committees. The second session (Nov. 29–30, 1943, in Jajce, Bosnia) transformed the council into the country’s supreme legislative representative organ, elected a presidium for the council, and established and transferred its own executive functions to the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia—a provisional revolutionary government led by J. Broz Tito. The session adopted a resolution that prohibited King Peter II Karadjordjević from returning to the country and deprived the government in exile in London of all legal rights as the government of Yugoslavia; it also resolved to restructure Yugoslavia on federal lines. The third session (Aug. 7–10, 1945, in Belgrade) renamed the council the Provisional Popular Assembly of the Democratic Federation of Yugoslavia; it operated until the elections for the Constituent Assembly (November 1945).