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.