Gajo Petrović[a] (12 March 1927 – 13 June 1993) was one of the main theorists in the Marxist humanist Praxis School in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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.
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 University of Zagreb in 1956 with a dissertation concerning the philosophical views of Georgi Plekhanov.
However, his continuous radical criticism of the dogmatic ideology of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia led to an open conflict.