Tito, Josip Broz, 1892-1980

Josip Broz (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Јосип Броз, pronounced [jǒsip brôːz] ⓘ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (/ˈtiːtoʊ/;[1] Тито, pronounced [tîto]), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 until his death in 1980.[2] During World War II, he led the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.[3][4] Following the establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, he served as its prime minister from 2 November 1944 to 29 June 1963 and president from 14 January 1953 until his death. His political ideology and policies are known as Titoism.

Tito was born to a Croat father and a Slovene mother in Kumrovec in what was then Austria-Hungary. Drafted into military service, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army of that time. After being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians during World War I, he was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains. Tito participated in some events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War. Upon his return to the Balkans in 1920, he entered the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Having assumed de facto control over the party by 1937, Tito was formally elected its general secretary in 1939 and later its president, the title he held until his death. During World War II, after the Nazi invasion of the area, he led the Yugoslav guerrilla movement, the Partisans (1941–1945).[5] By the end of the war, the Partisans, with the Allies' backing since mid-1943, took power in Yugoslavia.

After the war, Tito became the chief architect of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), serving as prime minister (1944–1963), president (1953–1980; from 1974 president for life), and marshal of Yugoslavia, the highest rank of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). Despite being one of the founders of the Cominform, he became the first Cominform member and the only leader in Joseph Stalin's lifetime to defy Soviet hegemony in the Eastern Bloc, leading to Yugoslavia's expulsion from the organisation in 1948 in what was known as the Tito–Stalin split. In the following years, alongside other political leaders and Marxist theorists such as Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Đilas, he initiated the idiosyncratic model of socialist self-management in which firms were managed by workers' councils and all workers were entitled to workplace democracy and equal share of profits. Tito wavered between supporting a centralised or more decentralised federation and ended up favouring the latter to keep ethnic tensions under control; thus, the constitution was gradually developed to delegate as much power as possible to each republic in keeping with the Marxist theory of withering away of the state. He envisaged the SFR of Yugoslavia as a "federal republic of equal nations and nationalities, freely united on the principle of brotherhood and unity in achieving specific and common interest." A very powerful cult of personality arose around him, which the League of Communists of Yugoslavia maintained even after his death. After Tito's death, Yugoslavia's leadership was transformed into an annually rotating presidency to give representation to all of its nationalities and prevent the emergence of an authoritarian leader. Twelve years later, as communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and ethnic tensions escalated, Yugoslavia dissolved and descended into a series of interethnic wars.

Historians critical of Tito view his presidency as authoritarian[6][7] and see him as a dictator,[8][9] while others characterise him as a benevolent dictator.[10] He was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad,[11][12] and remains popular in the former countries of Yugoslavia.[13] Tito was viewed as a unifying symbol,[14] with his internal policies maintaining the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained further international attention as the founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, alongside Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia.[15] With a highly favourable reputation abroad in both Cold War blocs, he received a total of 98 foreign decorations, including the Legion of Honour and the Order of the Bath.
Tito's birthplace in the village of Kumrovec, Croatia
Josip Broz was born on 7 May 1892[a] in Kumrovec, a village in the northern Croatian region of Zagorje. At the time it was part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[b] He was the seventh or eighth child of Franjo Broz (1860–1936) and Marija née Javeršek (1864–1918). During his apprenticeship, Broz was encouraged to mark May Day in 1909, and he read and sold Slobodna Reč (lit. 'Free Word'), a socialist newspaper. After completing his apprenticeship in September 1910, Broz used his contacts to gain employment in Zagreb. At age 18, he joined the Metal Workers' Union and participated in his first labour protest.[29] He also joined the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia.[30]

He returned home in December 1910.[31] In early 1911, he began a series of moves in search of work, first in Ljubljana, then Trieste, Kumrovec and Zagreb, where he worked repairing bicycles. He joined his first strike action on May Day 1911.[29] After a brief period of work in Ljubljana,[31] between May 1911 and May 1912, he worked in a factory in Kamnik in the Kamnik–Savinja Alps. After it closed, he was offered redeployment to Čenkov in Bohemia. On arriving at his new workplace, he discovered that the employer was trying to bring in cheaper labour to replace the local Czech workers, and he and others joined successful strike action to force the employer to back down.[c]

Driven by curiosity, Broz moved to Plzeň, where he was briefly employed at the Škoda Works. He next travelled to Munich in Bavaria. He also worked at the Benz car factory in Mannheim and visited the Ruhr industrial region. By October 1912, he had reached Vienna. He stayed with his older brother Martin and his family and worked at the Griedl Works before getting a job at Wiener Neustadt. There he worked for Austro-Daimler and was often asked to drive and test the cars.[33] During this time, he spent considerable time fencing and dancing,[34][35] and during his training and early work life, he also learned German and passable Czech.[36][d] In May 1913,[36] Broz was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army[38][e] for his compulsory two years of service. Soon after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment marched toward the Serbian border. Broz was arrested for sedition and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress in present-day Novi Sad.[43 Less than a month after Broz arrived in Petrograd, the July Days demonstrations broke out, and Broz joined in, coming under fire from government troops.[56][57] In the aftermath, he tried to flee to Finland in order to make his way to the United States but was stopped at the border.[58] He was arrested along with other suspected Bolsheviks during the subsequent crackdown by the Russian Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky. He was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for three weeks, during which he claimed to be an innocent citizen of Perm. When he finally admitted to being an escaped POW, he was to be returned by train to Kungur, but escaped at Yekaterinburg, then caught another train that reached Omsk in Siberia on 8 November after a 3,200-kilometre (2,000 mi) journey.[56][59] At one point, police searched the train looking for an escaped POW, but were deceived by Broz's fluent Russian.[57] Upon his return home, Broz was unable to gain employment as a metalworker in Kumrovec, so he and his wife moved briefly to Zagreb, where he worked as a waiter and took part in a waiter's strike. He also joined the CPY.[64] On 7 March 1945, the provisional government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (DFY) was assembled in Belgrade by Josip Broz Tito, while the provisional name allowed for either a republic or monarchy. This government was headed by Tito as provisional Yugoslav Prime Minister and included representatives from the royalist government-in-exile, among others Ivan Šubašić. In accordance with the agreement between resistance leaders and the government-in-exile, post-war elections were held to determine the form of government. In November 1945, Tito's pro-republican People's Front, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, won the elections with an overwhelming majority, the vote having been boycotted by monarchists.[143] During the period, Tito evidently enjoyed massive popular support due to being generally viewed by the populace as the liberator of Yugoslavia.[144] The Yugoslav administration in the immediate post-war period managed to unite a country that had been severely affected by ultra-nationalist upheavals and war devastation, while successfully suppressing the nationalist sentiments of the various nations in favour of tolerance, and the common Yugoslav goal. After the overwhelming electoral victory, Tito was confirmed as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DFY. The country was soon renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY) (later finally renamed into Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY). On 29 November 1945, King Peter II was formally deposed by the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly. The Assembly drafted a new republican constitution soon afterwards.[citation needed]

Yugoslavia organised the Yugoslav People's Army (Jugoslavenska narodna armija, JNA) from the Partisan movement and became the fourth strongest army in Europe at the time, according to various estimates.[145] The State Security Administration (Uprava državne bezbednosti, UDBA) was also formed as the new secret police, along with a security agency, the Department of People's Security (Organ Zaštite Naroda (Armije), OZNA). Yugoslav intelligence was charged with imprisoning and bringing to trial large numbers of Nazi collaborators; controversially, this included Catholic clergymen due to the widespread involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime. Draža Mihailović was found guilty of collaboration, high treason and war crimes and was subsequently executed by firing squad in July 1946.[citation needed]

Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito met with the president of the Bishops' Conference of Yugoslavia, Aloysius Stepinac on 4 June 1945, two days after his release from imprisonment. The two could not reach an agreement on the state of the Catholic Church. Under Stepinac's leadership, the bishops' conference released a letter condemning alleged Partisan war crimes in September 1945. The next year, Stepinac was arrested and put on trial, which some saw as a show trial.[146] In October 1946, in its first special session for 75 years, the Vatican excommunicated Tito and the Yugoslav government for sentencing Stepinac to 16 years in prison on charges of assisting Ustaše terror and of supporting forced conversions of Serbs to Catholicism.[147] Stepinac received preferential treatment in recognition of his status[148] and the sentence was soon shortened and reduced to house arrest, with the option of emigration open to the archbishop. At the conclusion of the "Informbiro period", reforms rendered Yugoslavia considerably more religiously liberal than the Eastern Bloc states.[citation needed]

In the first post-war years, Tito was widely considered a communist leader very loyal to Moscow; indeed, he was often viewed as second only to Stalin in the Eastern Bloc. In fact, Stalin and Tito had an uneasy alliance from the start, with Stalin considering Tito too independent.[149]

From 1946 to 1948, Tito actively engaged in building an alliance with neighbouring communist Albania, with the intent of incorporating Albania into Yugoslavia.[150] According to Enver Hoxha, the then communist ruler of Albania, in the summer of 1946 Tito promised Hoxha that the Yugoslav province of Kosovo would be ceded to Albania.[151] Despite the decision of unification being agreed upon by Yugoslav communists during the Bujan Conference, the plan never materialised.[152] In the first post-war years in Kosovo, Tito enacted the policy of banning the return of Serb colonists to Kosovo, in addition to enacting the first large-scale primary education program of the Albanian language.[153]

During the immediate post-war period, Tito's Yugoslavia had a strong commitment to orthodox Marxist ideas. Harsh repressive measures against dissidents and "enemies of the state" were common from government agents,[154] although not known to be under Tito's orders, including "arrests, show trials, forced collectivisation, suppression of churches and religion".[155] As the leader of Yugoslavia, Tito displayed a fondness for luxury, taking over the royal palaces that had belonged to the House of Karađorđević together with the former palaces used by the House of Habsburg in Yugoslavia.[156] His tours across Yugoslavia in his luxury Blue Train closely resembled the royal tours of the Karađorđević kings and Habsburg emperors and in Serbia. He also adopted the traditional royal custom of being a godfather to every 9th son, although he modified it to include daughters as well after criticism was made that the practice was sexist.[157] Just like a Serbian king, Tito would appear wherever a 9th child was born to a family to congratulate the parents and give them cash.[157] Tito always spoke very harshly of the Karađorđević kings in both public and private (through in private, he sometimes had a kind word for the Habsburgs), but in many ways, he appeared to his people as sort of a king.[157] After the constitutional changes of 1974, Tito began reducing his role in the day-to-day running of the state, transferring much of it to the prime minister who was the head of government, but retained the final word on all major policy decisions as president and head of state and as the head of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. 40th anniversary of his communist party leadership was observed on the Youth Day of 1977 throughout Yugoslavia.[216] He continued to travel abroad and receive foreign visitors, going to Beijing in 1977 and reconciling with the Chinese leadership that had once branded him a revisionist. In turn, Chairman Hua Guofeng visited Yugoslavia in 1979. In 1978, Tito travelled to the U.S. During the visit, strict security was imposed in Washington, D.C., owing to protests by anti-communist Croat, Serb and Albanian groups.[217]


Tito's tomb at the House of Flowers, a mausoleum within the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, Serbia
Tito became increasingly ill over the course of 1979. During this time, Vila Srna was built for his use near Morović in the event of his recovery.[218] On 7 January and again on 12 January 1980, Tito was admitted to the Medical Centre in Ljubljana, the capital city of the SR Slovenia, with circulation problems in his legs. Tito's stubbornness and refusal to allow doctors to follow through with the necessary amputation of his left leg played a part in his eventual death of gangrene-induced infection. His adjutant later testified that Tito threatened to take his own life if his leg was ever amputated and that he had to hide Tito's pistol in fear that he would follow through on his threat. After a private conversation with his sons Žarko and Mišo Broz, he finally agreed, and his left leg was amputated due to arterial blockages. The amputation proved to be too late, and Tito died at the Medical Centre of Ljubljana on 4 May 1980, three days short of his 88th birthday.[citation needed]