Gajo Petrović

Who was Gajo Petrović?

Gajo Petrović was one of the main theorists in the Marxist humanist Praxis School in the SFR Yugoslavia. He was the only one among the editors of the Praxis journal to stay in this position throughout the journal's publication. He is credited by Milan Kangrga to be the mastermind behind the Korčula Summer School, which was a meeting place for Marxists and other philosophers from the East and the West in the 1960s and 1970s.

Petrović was born in Karlovac, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He has started learning philosophy at the Zagreb University. From 1946 to 1948 he was in the Soviet Union as an exchange student, where he recognized the repression of philosophical thought under Joseph Stalin. After that, he came back to Yugoslavia, completing his studies and earned his PhD at the Zagreb University in 1956 with a dissertation concerning the philosophical views of Georgi Plekhanov. Upon graduating, from 1950 he taught logic and theory of philosophy at this university until his retirement. He presided over the Croat Philosophical Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1964 he was elected for president of the Yugoslav Philosophical Society.