Origins & Early Life

Alija Sirotanović (14 August 1914 – 16 May 1990) was a Yugoslav miner, Hero of Socialist Labour and perhaps the most famous of all Yugoslav udarniks. He was held up by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to be a model of a hard-worker in the former Yugoslavia. Alija Sirotanović, a Bosniak, was born in Orahovo, a village in central Bosnia near the town of Breza, and grew up in Trtorići, another nearby village. He was born in 1914, while Bosnia and Herzegovina was a part of Austria-Hungary.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

He had six brothers and two sisters, all of whom were miners. One of his brothers, Ahmed, died in a mining disaster in 1970. Sirotanović worked in the coal mine in Breza. In 1947 Sirotanović set a record in coal extracting. On 24 July 1949, Sirotanović participated in an inter-mine competition at the mine at Kreka.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

He and his eight-man crew mined 128 carloads of brown coal, which is 152 tons of coal, in a single 8-hour shift, some 40 tonnes more than the first record of Soviet 'hero of labour' Alexey Stakhanov, although this is in dispute. The achievements of the Yugoslav miners were published on news front pages for weeks. In September 1949, the...

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