During World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia, he worked as a lawyer and participated in the partisan resistance.

Gligorov later played a pivotal role in Macedonia's peaceful secession from Yugoslavia and its international recognition.

[3][4][5] Kiro Gligorov[b] was born in Štip on 3 May 1917,[9][10] in the Bulgarian occupation zone of Serbia (now North Macedonia) during World War I,[11] where he received his initial education.

[10] When he was twenty, he was arrested by the Royal Yugoslav authorities for his political opposition to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but was released afterwards.

[14] After the defeat of Yugoslavia by Axis forces in 1941, Gligorov returned to Skopje (then annexed by Bulgaria), where he worked as a lawyer until 1943.

[14] Between 1945 and 1947, he held the office of Assistant Secretary General of the Presidency of the Government of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.

Managers and banks, rather than the state, would ensure budgetary discipline, even if this might bring the former into conflict with the workers they were supposed to represent.

[23] Under his predecessor's administration, companies had found themselves starved for capital, and misappropriated social insurance funds to purchase necessary improvements.

Gligorov hoped that the shift to a market system would temporarily reduce consumption of wage goods to a sustainable level, while also stimulating investment into their production.

Cuts in public expenditures attempted to release working capital to manufacturers, and a devalued Yugoslav dinar should improve their export competitiveness.

In 1965, he was the co-creator of a marketisation program which was never implemented,[3] because the plan was considered too liberal by Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito.

[31] He and his son Vladimir Gligorov in the 1970s published articles in the newspaper Ekonomska politika along with other reform-oriented economists, journalists, managers, and politicians such as Dragiša Bošković, Ljubomir Madžar [sr], Ante Marković, Jože Mencinger, Stjepan Mesić, Milutin Mitrović, Marko Nikezić, Latinka Perović, Žarko Puhovski, Dragan Veselinov, and Veselin Vukotić, most of whom influenced Yugoslav economic and political thinking.

He opined that the difficulties stemmed from "suppressing market laws and operating in a subjectivist way in which social and economic goals and plans were formulated not on the basis of our realistic possibilities, but rather on what our Socialist society would like to achieve.

Following the promulgation of the Declaration of Sovereignty of the State on 25 January 1991 and an initiative by a group of prominent liberal politicians and intellectuals called the "Young Lions",[38] Gligorov was elected as the president of SR Macedonia by a large majority in the Macedonian Assembly on 27 January, succeeding Vladimir Mitkov.

[1] Gligorov dedicated himself to the realisation of a three-point plan: Yugoslavia's preservation through a peaceful resolution of the crisis; the creation of a parliamentary democracy with the adoption of a new constitution and the promotion of national minorities' rights.

[42] In the same year, Gligorov along with Alija Izetbegović put forward the idea of a "Yugoslav confederation" (which was strongly supported by the international community),[43] but it was rejected by the other states of Yugoslavia.

Many citizens ended up opting for independence, although the referendum was also boycotted by many members of the ethnic Serb and Albanian communities in the country.

[51] Gligorov was of the opinion that Albanians, a substantial ethnic group in the country, would always have a share in the governing of Macedonia and he firmly supported power-sharing with them.

[8] Due to concerns of the Yugoslav Wars spilling over into Macedonia, he requested the presence of UN peacekeepers, which were deployed later.

[54] On 12 September 1995, he signed the Interim Accord for the normalisation of relations with Greece at the United Nations Headquarters.

Disobeying instructions from his security advisers to sit in the back seat of his presidential car, he sat next to his driver.

Shortly after the bombing, the Minister of Internal Affairs Ljubomir Frčkovski publicly claimed that "a powerful multinational company from a neighbouring country" was behind the assassination attempt,[62] with the Macedonian media pointing at the Bulgarian Multigroup and the Serbian Secret Service as possible suspects.

[8] After his retirement from politics, he authored several memoirs and founded the Kiro Gligorov Foundation to publish his works, maintain his archives and serve as a think tank with an interest in studying the development of multi-ethnic societies.

"[75][38] Among his associates and international researchers, he earned the nickname "the Fox" due to his political acumen and diplomatic skill.

[82] Some high-ranking officials and academics, such as then Macedonian president Gjorge Ivanov and Chief of General Staff Gorančo Koteski, came to pay their respects beforehand.