Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) Few

Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980)

Few people have impacted the history of their country in such a profound way as Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia. He was a larger than life figure who organized the Communist Party in Yugoslavia; was in the forefront of the armed resistance against the Germans during the Second World War; almost single-handedly carved out a post-war Yugoslavia from a devastated, disparate region; defied Stalin at the peak of his powers when other East European leaders could not dare to do so; envisioned a world of non-aligned nations who would not be beholden to either of the world's superpowers; and finally, has even been held responsible by some for the eventual bloody break-up of his country that did not survive his death for long. Looking at the twentieth century through the eyes of someone like Tito is like having a bird's eye view of all epoch-making events that took place until the time of his death.

In order to understand the psyche of any person, it is important to examine his family background and the socio-economic conditions in which he grows up. Josip Broz was born into a family of peasants in the Croatian town of Kumrovec, when Croatia was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were desperately poor, as were most of the other Croatian peasants. Moreover, Croatians suffered from cruel economic discrimination and forced "Magyarization" at the hands of the Hungarians. Prospects for a clever young man such as Josip Broz in such an environment were decidedly bleak. Forced to work at the age of 15, Josip was unable to keep a proper job for long and soon got involved in trade union activities, which were mainly inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx (Rezun, 1995, pp. 85-86).

Fate pushed Josip Broz further down the road of radical Communism. The First World War broke out as he was serving a compulsory term of military service and was sent to the Carpathian front in the Austro-Hungarian army, where he was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. Already inclined towards Marxism, as most struggling working class young men in Europe were at the start of the twentieth century, he became further enamored by Russian revolutionary ideas while in prison. After his release, he took part in revolutionary activities in Russia and got arrested. He would have ended up in Siberia but for the success of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which rescued him. Having witnessed with his own eyes the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution and the heady spectacle of the working class rise and seize power; he returned to Croatia with a single mission: "to spread the gospel of Communism, to bring about as soon as possible a Communist revolution in his own country." (MacLean, 1957, p. 19).

The political, social, and economic condition of Croatia in the newly-formed Kingdom to which Josip Broz returned was no better than it had been when he had left to fight the War. Grinding poverty, social injustice, and corruption were still the order of the day. The only thing that had changed for the Croats was that Hungarian domination was now replaced by Serbian hegemony. In such a bleak situation, the Communist ideology that promised a solution for all problems of the working class and the deprived seemed to offer the only solution. By 1920, the Yugoslav Socialist Worker's party had changed its name to "the Yugoslav Communist Party" and was admitted to the Comintern. The young Josip Broz was among the first to join its Zagreb branch but the Party was banned the following year and Josip was forced to work through underground cells. Even at this early stage of his political career, Josip played an important role in checking the tendency towards factional divisions in the Communist Party on ethnic lines. He kept a close liaison with the Comintern and fought tenaciously within the Party against factionalism and for a policy of a Communist Yugoslav state for all inhabitants of the region, regardless of their ethnicity (Rezun, 1995 pp. 88-91).

Like all leaders who have made their mark on history, the path chosen by Josip Broz was not easy. He was arrested in 1928 and given a jail term of 5 years. Josip used his time in prison to educate himself in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin and emerged as a more committed "International Communist" when released from prison in 1934. During this period, the Yugoslav Communist Party had almost been decimated due to widespread arrests and murders of its members by the dictatorial government of King Alexander. Re-organizing the Party in such conditions was a major achievement as Josip had to not only constantly try and avoid arrest in his own country, but also escape Stalin's murderous purges of the 1930s in which over sixty Yugoslav Communists perished (Markham, 1947). That he managed to do so within a short period was no mean achievement and a tribute to his political acumen.

Faced with Hitler's growing power in the late 1930s, Josip's burning desire for a Communist Revolution in Yugoslavia, however, had to be put on hold as the Communists in Yugoslavia started to cooperate with other democratic parties under a "Popular Front against Fascism." When the Soviet Union signed a "non-aggression pact" with Hitler in August 1939, many international and conservative European Communists were dismayed but Tito displayed his loyalty by standing by the Soviets and accepting their logic that the pact was necessary for the survival of the Soviet motherland.

Hitler was on the rampage in Europe in the late 1930s and looking for excuses to occupy all "weaker" countries which did not co-operate with him. When the Serbs opposed the Yugoslav government's signing of a Tripartite Agreement of co-operation with the Nazis and deposed Prince Paul, replacing him with his nephew, Hitler got his chance to annex Yugoslavia. Tito was once again prepared to make his own mark on history and chose to fight the fascist occupiers. He organized the Partisans and attracted Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Albanians, as well as Montenegrins to his ranks. This was in stark contrast to the other resistance groups fighting the Nazis such as the Serbian Chetniks; (or the Croatian fascist group Ustasha that co-operated with the Germans) which were formed strictly on ethnic lines.

Tito's experience with the Russians during the war against the Nazis also sowed the seeds of his independent post-war policies. The Partisans had repeatedly asked for Soviet help during its fight but instead of guns and medical supplies, they got lectures on ideology and politics from the Russians. Stalin objected to petty matters such as the red stars the Partisans wore in their hats. "What do you need red stars for?" he complained at one time, "You are only frightening the British. The form is not important." (MacLean, 1957, p. 217). Instead of being "frightened" by Tito's style of fighting the Germans, the British (and the Americans) were apparently impressed; they threw their weight behind Tito's resistance movement by providing the Partisans with considerable material and military help and tacitly agreed towards the end of the War that Tito would be Yugoslavia's leader at the end of the War. Tito, however, did not break completely with the Soviets during the war and played on both sides of the fence in order to achieve his primary objective of winning the war against the Germans.

When Yugoslavia was finally liberated on May 7, 1945, Tito set about shaping the country according to his own independent vision. Although still a dedicated Communist, Tito did not exactly follow the Soviet model in running his country. More importantly, he chose to implement an independent foreign policy and defied the directions of Stalin in his relations with other East European countries and on domestic matters such as the shape of the economy. Stalin only now realized that he had grossly underestimated his former protege and had mistakenly thought that Tito could easily be got rid of. "I will shake my little finger," he had once told Khrushchev, "and there will be no more Tito." (MacLean, 1957 p. 351) Tito, however, was made of sterner stuff and he survived. When Stalin tried to "get rid of" the man who had the "temerity" to defy him, he got a note from Tito which must have been shocking in the extreme to a man who was hardly used to such defiance, especially from fellow Communists. It read: "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.-President Joseph Tito." ("Today's Quote," 2006).