Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito (Јосип Броз Тито) ⓘ (May 7, (originally May 25th on the official birth certificate) 1892 – May 4, 1980) was the leader of Yugoslavia between the end of World War II and his death in 1980.
Early years
Tito was born Josip Broz in Kumrovec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Croatia), in an area called Zagorje. He was the seventh child in the family of Franjo and Marija Broz. His father Franjo Broz was a Croat, while his mother Marija (née Javeršek) was Slovenian. After spending part of his childhood years with his maternal grandfather in Podsreda, he entered the primary school in Kumrovec, and failed the first grade. He left school in 1905.
In 1907, moving out of the rural environment, Broz started working as a machinist's apprentice in Sisak. There he became aware of the labor movement and celebrated May 1 - Labor Day for the first time. In 1910 he joined the union of metallurgy workers and at the same time the Social-Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia. Between 1911 and 1913, Broz worked for shorter periods in Kamnik, Slovenia; Cenkovo, Bohemia; Munich and Mannheim, Germany, where he worked for Benz automobile factory; then went to Vienna, Austria, where he worked at Daimler as a test driver.
From autumn 1913, Broz was conscripted and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army; in May 1914 he won a silver medal at a fencing competition of the Austro-Hungarian Army in Budapest. At the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to Ruma. He was arrested for anti-war propaganda and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress. In 1915, he was sent to the Eastern Front in Galicia to fight against Russia. In Bukovina he was seriously injured by a howitzer shell. In April, the whole battalion fell into Russian captivity.
After spending several months at the hospital, Broz was sent to a work camp in the Ural mountains in autumn of 1916. In April, 1917, he was arrested for organizing demonstrations of prisoners of war but later he escaped and joined the demonstrations in Saint Petersburg on July 16-17, 1917. He fled to Finland to avoid the police, but was arrested and locked in the Petropavlovsk fortress for three weeks. After being imprisoned in a camp in Kungur, he escaped from the train. In November, he enlisted in the Red Army in Omsk, Siberia. In the spring of 1918, he applied for membership in the Russian Communist Party.
In 1936 the Comintern sent comrade Walter (i.e. Tito) back to Yugoslavia from Moscow to purge the Communist Party there. In 1937 he became secretary general of the Yugoslav Communist Party. During this period he faithfully followed Comintern policy, criticizing Serbian domination of other Yugoslav nationalities and agitating for the breakup of the Yugoslav state.
Origin of the name "Tito"
In 1920, he became a member of the soon to be banned Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Their influence on the political life of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was minor at the time. In 1934, he became a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party, then located in Vienna, Austria, and adopted the code name "Tito".
World War II
In April 1941, the Communists were among the first to organize a resistance movement. On April 10th, the Politburo of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia met in Zagreb and decided to start the resistance, naming Tito the chief of the military committee. On June 22, a group of 49 local men attacked a German supply train near Sisak thus beginning the first anti-fascist uprising in occupied Yugoslavia. On July 4, Tito issued a public call for armed resistance against the Nazi/Fascist occupation, as the supreme commander of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and Partisan Detachments. The partisans staged a wide-spread guerrilla campaign and started liberating chunks of territory. The activities provoked Germans in to retaliation against civilians that resulted in mass murders (for each killed German soldier 100 civilians were to be killed and for each wounded 50).
In the liberated territories, the Partisans organized people's committees to act as civilian government. Tito was the most prominent leader of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia - AVNOJ, which convened in Bihać on November 26, 1942 and in Jajce on November 29, 1943. On these two sessions they established the basis for post-war organisation of the country, making it a federation, and naming Tito the Marshal of Yugoslavia. On December 4, 1943, while most of the country was still occupied by the Axis, Tito proclaimed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government.
As the leader of the communist resistance, Tito was a target for the Axis forces in occupied Yugoslavia. The Germans came close to capturing/killing Tito on at least three occasions: in the 1943 Fall Weiss offensive, and in the subsequent Schwarz offensive, when he was wounded on June 9. On May 25, 1944 he barely managed to evade the Germans after their Operation Rösselsprung airdrop outside his Drvar headquarters.
During the early stages of the Second World War, the partisan activities were not directly supported by the western Allies, but after the Tehran and Yalta conferences in 1943, the partisans were supported directly by Allied airdrops to their headquarters, with Brigadier Fitzroy MacLean playing a significant role in the liaison missions. The Balkan Air Force was formed in June 1944 to control operations that were mainly aimed at helping his forces. Due to his close ties to Stalin, Tito often quarreled with the British and American staff officers attached to his headquarters.
On April 5, 1945 Tito signed an agreement with the USSR allowing "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory". Aided by the Red Army, the partisans won the war in 1945. Nevertheless, the "Liberation War for Yugoslavia" is considered to be the only victory in World War II achieved by local guerrilla forces, albeit with minor help from the outside.
All external forces were ordered off Yugoslav soil after the end of hostilities in Europe. The remaining fascist Ustaša and royalist Četnik troops and their supporters were subject to summary trials and execution en masse, particularly in the Bleiburg massacre.
Post-war
After the Tito-Šubašić Agreement in late 1944, the provisional government of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was assembled on March 7, 1945 in Belgrade, headed by Tito. After the elections in November 1945, Tito became the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was at this time that Tito's Partisans, in loose conjunction with the Red Army, were involved in killings and deportations to Yugoslav and Soviet labor camps of many Donauschwaben (ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia), as well as those Yugoslavs who objected.
In 1948, Tito became the first Communist leader who defied Stalin's leadership over the Cominform, and the Yugoslav Communist Party was ejected from the association on June 28, 1948. This brought Tito much international recognition, but also caused a rift with the Soviet Union and triggered a period of instability often referred to as the Informbiro period. Tito's form of communism was labelled Titoism by Moscow which encouraged purges against suspected "Titoites'" throughout the Communist bloc.
On June 26, 1950, the National Assembly supported a crucial bill written by Milovan Đilas and Tito about "self-management" (samoupravljanje): a type of independent socialism that experimented with profit sharing with workers in state-run enterprises. On January 13, 1953, they established that the Law on Self-management was the basis of the entire social order in Yugoslavia. Tito also succeeded Ivan Ribar as the President of Yugoslavia on January 14, 1953. On April 7, 1963, the country changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Under Tito's leadership, Yugoslavia also became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1961, Tito co-founded the movement with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and India's Jawaharlal Nehru, thus establishing strong ties with the third world countries.
For a period in the 1960s and '70s, some intellectuals in the west saw Tito's model of market socialism as representing a point to which the Soviet and western economic systems would over time converge. The Yugoslav standard of living was somewhat higher than Eastern Europe, particularly because Yugoslavs were permitted to travel easily to Western Europe or other countries, bringing in money to support the economy.
Tito's greatest strength in the eyes of the west had been in suppressing nationalist insurrections and maintaining unity throughout the country. It was Tito's call for unity, and related methods, that held together the people of Yugoslavia. This ability was put at a test several times during his reign, notably during the so-called Croatian Spring (also referred to as masovni pokret, maspok, meaning "mass movement") when the government had to suppress both public demonstrations and dissenting opinions within the Communist Party.
On May 16, 1974, a new Constitution was passed, and Josip Broz Tito was named President for life.
In January 1980 Tito was admitted to the clinical centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia with circulation problems in his legs, and his left leg was amputated soon afterwards. He died there on May 4, 1980, three days before his 88th birthday, and his funeral drew many world celebrities, mainly politicians. It was the second largest funeral in history, by number of politicians and state delegations.
Aftermath
At the time of his death, speculation began about whether his successors could continue to hold Yugoslavia together. Ethnic divisions and conflict grew, and eventually erupted into a series of Yugoslav wars a decade after his death and the end of his strong-rule that had kept a lid on ethnic tensions.
Tito was buried in his mausoleum in Belgrade, called Kuća cveća (The House of Flowers) and numerous people visit the place as a shrine to "better times," although it no longer holds a guard of honour.
The gifts he received during his presidency are kept in a Museum of the History of Yugoslavia (whose old names were "Museum 25. May", and "Museum of the Revolution") in Belgrade. The value of the collection is priceless: it includes many world-famous artists, including original prints Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya, and many others.
During his life and especially in the first year after his death, several places were named after Tito.
Personal
Tito's first wife was Pelagija Broz (maiden: Belousova), a Russian who bore him a son, Žarko. They got married in Omsk before moving to Yugoslavia. She was transported to Moscow by communists when Tito got thrown in jail in 1928.
His next notable relationship was with Hertha Haas, a Slovene of German ethnicity, whom he met in Paris in 1937. They never entered marriage although in May of 1941 she bore him a son Mišo. They parted company in 1943 in Jajce during the 2nd meeting of AVNOJ. All throughout his relationship with Haas, Tito maintained a promiscuos life and had parallel relationship with Davorjanka Paunovic, a courier and his personal secretary, who, by all accounts, was the love of his life. She died of tuberculosis in 1946 and Tito insisted she be burried in the backyard of his Belgrade villa.[1]
His best known wife was Jovanka Broz (maiden: Budisavljevic). Tito was just shy of his 67th birthday while she was 34 when they finally married in April 1959, with Aleksandar Rankovic as his best man. Their eventual marriage was a bit of a surprise because Tito actually rejected her some years earlier when his confidante Ivan Krajacic brought her in originally. At that time she was in her late 20s and Tito, objecting to her energetic personality, opted for a more mature opera singer Zinka Kunc instead. Not the one to be discouraged easily, Jovanka continued hanging around Beli dvor and eventaully got another shot after Tito's strange relationship with Zinka failed. Since she was the only female companion he married during his time in power, Jovanka also went down in history as Yugoslavia's first lady. Their relationship was not a happy one, however. It had gone through many, often public, ups and downs with episodes of infidelity (Tito with another opera singer Gertruda Munitic, Jovanka with general Djoko Jovanic), and even allegations of coup d'etat preparation by the latter pair. Certain unofficial reports suggest Tito and Jovanka even formally divorced in the late 1970s, shortly before his death. The couple didn't have any children together. (More about many women in his life: http://www.titoville.com/women.html)
Tito's notable grandchildren include Aleksandra Broz, a prominent theatre director in Croatia, and Svetlana Broz, a cardiologist and writer in Bosnia.
Tito was most likely born on the May 7, but celebrated his birthday on May 25, after he became president of Yugoslavia, to mark the occasion of an unsuccessful attempt at his life by the Nazis in 1944. Nazis found forged documents of Tito, where May 25 was stated as his birthday. They attacked Tito on the day they believed was his birthday.
May 25 was institutionalized as the Day of Youth in former Yugoslavia. The Relay of Youth started about two months earlier, each time from a different town of Yugoslavia. The baton passed through hundreds of hands of relay runners and typically visited all major cities of the country. On May 25 of each year, the baton finally passed into the hands of Marshall Tito at the end of festivities at the FK Partizan stadium in Belgrade.(May 25, 1977: http://www.titoville.com/images/tito-in-stafeta.jpg)
See also
- Titoism
- Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
- Yugoslav People's Army
- Comintern
- List of Yugoslav politicians
- Georgi Dimitrov
- Fitzroy MacLean
References
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V. Dedijer, Novi prilozi za biografiju Josipa Broza Tita, Rijeka 1980.
External links
- Titoville
- Interview on book King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership
- http://www.rex.b92.net/vlastitoiskustvo/izlozba_fotografije.html
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