Josip Broz Tito - Yugoslavia’s iron fist

 

Josip Broz, nicknamed Tito, was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary who was the leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, from 1945 until his death in 1980.

Tito was the chief architect of the “second Yugoslavia,” a socialist federation that lasted from World War II until 1991. He was the first Communist leader in power to defy Soviet hegemony, a backer of independent roads to socialism, and a promoter of the policy of nonalignment between the two hostile blocs in the Cold War.

Early life

Tito was born in Komrovec, Croatia, where his parents had a small farm. At that time, Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in 1913 Broz was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. After the outbreak of World War I, he fought against Serbia and in 1915 was sent to the Russian front, where he was captured. After a long hospitalization he was sent to prisoner-of-war camps, where he became acquainted with Bolshevik propaganda and in 1917 participated in the Russian Revolution. 

He fought in the Red Guard during the Russian Civil War and in 1920 returned to Croatia, which had been incorporated into the multinational but Serb-dominated kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Communist organizer

Not long after his return, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). In this organization, he thrived even though it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed.

The Flag of CPY

In 1928 he was arrest as a political agitator. Tito spent these years crafting his communist skills, working in the Comintern apparatus.

Released from prison in 1934, he rapidly rose in the ranks of the CPY and took the name Tito, which was a pseudonym he used in underground Party work.

When Stalin started his Great Purges against internal enemies, Tito not only managed to survive but profited from them, In 1939, Tito became secretary-general of the CPY. By this time Tito had the complete communist scene of Yugoslavia in his hands.

World War II: From a Partisan to a Statesman

In April 1941. the Axis powers, led by Germany and Italy, occupied and partitioned Yugoslavia. 

Tito and his communist partisans emerged as the leaders of the anti-Nazi resistance. The main stated objectives of the Partisans were the liberation of Yugoslav lands from occupying forces and the creation of a federal, multi-ethnic socialist state in Yugoslavia.

Marshal Tito stands with his headquarters in Drvar, Yugoslavia on 14 May 1944

Their successes were based on swift guerrilla tactics, Titos' own magnetic personality, and the appeal of his political idea of a federated Yugoslavia to non-Serbian elements.

Tito's partisans

In 1944, Soviet forces liberated Yugoslavia, and in March 1945 Marshal Tito was installed as head of a new federal Yugoslav government. Non-communists were purged from the government, and in November 1945 Tito was elected Yugoslav premier in an election limited to candidates from the communist-dominated National Liberation Front. The same month, the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising the Balkan republics of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia and Macedonia, was proclaimed under a new constitution. Today, they are all independent countries.

Tito signs the declaration establishing the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia

Tito's Presidency

As premier and minister of defense from 1945, Marshal Tito ruled Yugoslavia as a dictator, suppressing internal opposition. He nationalized Yugoslav industry and undertook a planned economy. Tito built up a highly efficient secret police, and purged dissident elements in the Party.

In 1953, Tito was elected Yugoslav president and was repeatedly re-elected until 1963, when his term was made unlimited.

He provided for succession by establishing in 1971 a 22 member collective presidency, comprised of the sitting presidents of the 8 republican and provincial assemblies and fourteen others picked from those same assemblies. Their terms would be five years.

The flag of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia

The conflict with Stalin

Although the Yugoslav republics were granted autonomy over some of their affairs, Tito held the ultimate power and ruled dictatorially, suppressing opposition to his rule. He soon came into conflict with Moscow, which disapproved of his independent style, especially in foreign affairs, and in early 1948 Joseph Stalin attempted to purge the Yugoslav leadership. Tito maintained and solidified his control over the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as well as the army and the secret police.

Thus, Tito completely cut off Yugoslavia from the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites and steadily drew closer to the West.

Somewhere around this time, Tito is credited with telling Stalin: “Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.”

The historical accuracy of these exact words was never confirmed, but it did go with Tito’s general attitude towards Stalin, the most feared man at that time.

For the next 35 years, he would hold the federation together, the strength of his personality containing the country’s divisions.

The policy of nonalignment

The West smoothed Yugoslavia’s course by offering aid and military assistance. However, Western ideals of capitalism and liberal democracy were far from what Broz and his party associates wanted for his country. Too liberal for the East and too socialist for the West, Tito aspired to design his internal and foreign policy as equidistant from both blocs.

Seeking like-minded statesmen elsewhere, he found them in the leaders of the developing countries. Negotiations with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Jawaharlal Nehru of India in June 1956 led to a closer cooperation among states that were “nonengaged” in the East-West confrontation.

The non-alignment movement 

The purpose of this federation went from nonengagement to the concept of “active nonalignment”—that is, the promotion of alternatives to bloc politics, as opposed to mere neutrality. 

Self-management and decentralization

The break with the Soviet Union also inspired a search for a new model of socialism in Yugoslavia.

Responsible for Yugoslavia’s new theoretical direction was Tito’s right-hand man, Edvard Kardelj, who was generally regarded as the chief ideological theoretician of Yugoslav Marxism, or Titoism, as it became known. The new socialist model included abandoning Soviet-style central planning, trimming down central agencies, and, most notably, workers’ production management, embodied in the formation of the first workers’ councils in 1950.

Placing brass ingots into position at a mill near Titovo Uzice, Yugoslavia

The impact of this was especially important for the internal relations of multinational Yugoslavia. The power shifted from the federation to the republics, giving them some freedom to express their dissatisfaction. This was mainly seen in Yugoslavia’s most developed republic, Croatia, where the Croatian Spring movement displayed people’s wish for national liberation in the early 1970s.

Tito managed to silence the movement, but even with his endless efforts to push Yugoslavism as an identity above national identities, he was never able to erase national and religious sentiment in the republics.

 

Retrenchment of the 1970s of Josip Broz Tito

With all of the civil unrest before him, Tito had to work towards a new constitution in 1974, which promoted the weaker and smaller federal units at the expense of the big two—Serbia and Croatia. Serbia’s displeasure at the independent role assigned to its autonomous provinces and the promotion of minority identity (especially that of the Albanians in Kosovo) was felt already in Tito’s last years, but it became radicalized after his death in 1980.

Funeral

The funeral of Josip Tito, President of Yugoslavia, was held on 8 May 1980, four days after his death on 4 May. His funeral was visited by most of world statesmen.

They included four kings, 31 presidents, six princes, 22 prime ministers and 47 ministers of foreign affairs. They came from both sides of the Cold War, from 128 different countries out of 154 UN members at the time

Aftermath

When Tito died, the whole country was left in tears. But these tears were not tears of mourning. They were tears of fear. Deep down, everybody knew something terrible was about to happen. The mask of brotherhood and unity never managed to cover the fact that national and religious divides were deep in Yugoslavia.

Tito’s death in 1980 was followed by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, destabilising Yugoslavia’s economy and leading to a rise of nationalism and calls to break up the country.

After the collapse of communism in 1989, ethnic tensions resurfaced, and in 1991 the Yugoslav federation broke apart, leaving only Serbia and Montenegro remaining in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1992, civil war erupted over Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s attempts to keep ethnically Serbian areas in other republics under Yugoslav rule.

Conclusion

Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito was undoubtedly one of the most praised personas of the 20th century, not just in the Balkans but across the countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Time Magazine Cover, 1955

Even today, more than forty years after his death, discussions about Yugoslavia’s ruler can get heated in the countries of the former communist power. While some view him as a benevolent dictator who built a self-sufficient socialist empire in the middle of divided Europe without bowing down to any Eastern or Western leaders, others see him as an authoritarian who used political oppression to forge the image of peaceful cohabitation between the peoples deeply diverged by ethnicity and religion.

The Kosovo Conflict

 

What was the Kosovo conflict? 

The Kosovo conflict occurred in 1998–99 when ethnic Albanians fought ethnic Serbs and the government of Yugoslavia in Kosovo. The conflict gained widespread international attention and was resolved with the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

How did the conflict begin?

Tensions between the ethnic Serbians, the majority of them Orthodox Christian, and their majority-Muslim ethnic Albanian neighbours to the south had simmered for centuries, exacerbated by frequently shifting geographical and political boundaries during the 20th century.

After the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, the majority-Albanian border region of Kosovo was absorbed into the Christian Serb-Croat Kingdom of Serbia.

Following the Second World War, Serbia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, along with the modern-day states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

Technically a province of Serbia - a majority Christian and ethnically Slavic nation - Kosovo was given autonomous status, allowing its ethnic Albanian Muslim majority, known as Kosovars, a degree of self-rule.

In the 1980s, tensions began to rise between the opposing powers within Serbia, as Kosovars pushed for increased independence while a rising tide of Serbian nationalism led others to call for the restive province to be placed under stricter central control.

In March of 1981, the first significant protests in Kosovo erupted, marking the beginning of the Yugoslav collapse. Students demonstrated for more autonomy and more liberties, whilst the federal and Serbian authorities answered by sending in troops. It ended with several casualties on both sides, thousands of arrests, and the massive sacking of people from the Kosovar branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. 

In 1989, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic began the process of abolishing Kosovo’s autonomy. He wanted to bring Kosovo under the direct control of Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Milošević and members of the Serbian minority of Kosovo had long objected to the fact that Muslim Albanians were in demographic control of an area held sacred to the Serbs (Kosovo was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as the site of the Turkish defeat of the Serbs in 1389 and the Serbian victory over the Turks in 1912).

Ethnic Albanians were forced out of local government and education and lost their jobs in state-owned industry. In response, they created the Democratic League of Kosovo led by Ibrahim Rugova. The Democratic League of Kosovo established parallel government and education structures and even held its own elections, all with the goal of proving to the international community that Kosovars deserved to be independent.

When this failed to work, Rugova’s more radical opponents gained ground, arguing that peaceful means would not achieve their demands.

Ibrahim Rugova

 

The War

In 1996, the guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - viewed as freedom fighters by most Kosovars but considered terrorists by the Serbian state - began open military operations against Serbian authorities. By 1998, counter terror police and Yugoslav armed forces were struggling to reassert control over what had essentially turned into an armed uprising.

The Kosovo Liberation Army launched a series of targeted strikes against Serbian officials, police officers, and other key figures in Kosovo.

Serbian special police and, eventually, Yugoslav armed forces attempted to reassert control over the region. By February of 1998, Yugoslav authorities had started engaging in a full-on war in Kosovo by sending the actual army and divisions, not only law enforcement, to crush the insurgency once and for all. The Yugoslavian troops were well equipped but lacked the full knowledge of the terrain the KLA had.

Atrocities committed by the police, paramilitary groups, and the army caused a wave of refugees to flee the area, and the situation became well publicized through the international media. The Contact Group—an informal coalition of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia—demanded a cease-fire, the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian forces from Kosovo, the return of refugees, and unlimited access for international monitors. Milosevic, who had become president of Yugoslavia in 1997, agreed to meet most of the demands but failed to implement them.

The KLA regrouped and rearmed during the cease-fire and renewed its attacks. The Yugoslav and Serbian forces responded with a ruthless counteroffensive and engaged in a program of ethnic cleansing. The United Nations Security Council condemned this excessive use of force and imposed an arms embargo, but the violence continued.

During the following months, Kosovo was plagued with war and massacres coming from both sides. In March 1998, Serb security forces stoked the fires by massacring 85 people in a clear attempt to stem the KLA's growing importance in Kosovo. At that point, the violence in Kosovo had reached a critical threshold that demanded sustained international attention. 

The UÇK answered Yugoslav actions by abducting and killing Serbian civilians all around Kosovo, as well as forcible relocations. The UÇK opened up prison camps and used their prisoners for forced labour, often under the threat of summary executions. Answering the Yugoslav army’s destruction of mosques, the UÇK went up to destroy or damage orthodox churches and monasteries.

Diplomatic negotiations began in Rambouillet, France, in February 1999 but broke down the following month.

 

NATO bombing of Yugoslavia

On March 24 1999 NATO began air strikes against Serbian military targets. The NATO bombing campaign lasted 11 weeks and eventually expanded to Belgrade, where significant damage to the Serbian infrastructure occurred. The official NATO operation code name was Operation Allied Force whereas the United States called it Operation Noble Anvil.

In response, Yugoslav and Serbian forces drove out all of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, displacing hundreds of thousands of people into Albania, Macedonia (now North Macedonia), and Montenegro.

 

Yugoslavia's refusal to sign the Rambouillet Accords was initially offered as justification for NATO's use of force. NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, NATO launched its campaign without the UN's approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case. It was the first time that NATO had used military force without the expressed endorsement of the UN Security Council, which triggered debates over the legitimacy of the intervention.

 

Milosevic surprised the West when he suddenly accepted their demands to end the conflict on 3 June 1999, after 11 weeks of bombing, and allowed NATO peacekeepers into Kosovo. The Yugoslav government and the NATO-led peacekeeping force signed the Kumanovo Agreement, officially bringing the Kosovo War to an end. Experts credit his capitulation to a combination of factors, including NATO’s strategic attacks on Belgrade and fear of potential US ground offensives. Under the terms of the agreement, Yugoslavia withdrew its troops from Kosovo, UN peacekeeping forces were deployed in Kosovo, which came under UN administration.

 

Ethnic cleansing

Yugoslav and Serbian forces engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign throughout the duration of the war. By the end of May 1999, 1.5 million people had fled their homes. At the time, that constituted approximately 90 percent of Kosovo’s population.

 

Immediately after the end of the war in June 1999, while the Yugoslav people were turning against the dictator and the opposition was gaining more and more traction, UÇK guerrilla fighters, despite the efforts of KFOR and UN troops, started to harass Serbian civilians in Kosovo. Beatings, assassination, burning of homes and churches became widespread, as well as pressures on Serbian and Roma communities. Everything was fair game to force them to leave Kosovo.

It is estimated that up to 200.000 Serbs were driven out of their homes by UÇK fighters, in addition to the 90.000 Serbs that had fled during the war. Along with them went several thousands of hundreds of Roma people, although their precise number is unknown.

At the end of 2016, a tribunal was established in the International Criminal Court to try Kosovars for committing war crimes against ethnic minorities and political opponents. Additionally, an EU taskforce set up in 2011 found evidence that members of the KLA committed these crimes after the war ended. Previously, the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia tried several the KLA members.

 

War Casualties

 

By the end of the war, the Yugoslavs had killed 1,500 to 2,131 combatants, while choosing to heavily target Kosovar Albanian civilians, with 8,676 killed or missing and some 848,000 expelled from Kosovo. The NATO bombing killed about 1,000 members of the Yugoslav security forces in addition to between 489 and 528 civilians. It destroyed or damaged bridges, industrial plants, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, private businesses as well as barracks and military installations. In the days after the Yugoslav army withdrew, over 164,000 Serbs and 24,000 Roma left Kosovo. Many of the remaining non-Albanian civilians (as well as Albanians perceived as collaborators) were victims of abuse which included beatings, abductions, and murders.

  

Kosovo in the 21^st century

Tensions between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo continued into the 21st century.

In February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Several EU powers and the US recognised Kosovo’s independence, but Serbia did not. The EU states of Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have also refused to recognize Kosovo as an independent nation.

The partially recognised Balkan state still feels the impact of the ethnic discrimination that fuelled the war, with 45% of the population today living below the official poverty line, and 17% classed as extremely poor, according to the World Bank.

Left with an unresolved status, NATO peacekeepers remain in place to guarantee security.