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Josip Broz Tito: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz was born on the 7th of May 1892 in the small village of Kumrovec, a place so remote that its name would eventually echo across the globe. He was the seventh or eighth child of Franjo Broz, a Croat whose family had lived in the village for three centuries, and Marija Javeršek, a Slovene from the nearby village of Podsreda. His early years were marked by tragedy and instability, as several of his siblings died in infancy, leaving him to navigate a childhood where survival was not guaranteed. Despite his mixed heritage, Broz identified as a Croat, yet he spoke Slovene better than Croatian when he began school at the age of eight. He failed his second grade and graduated in 1905, leaving behind a limited formal education that would haunt him with spelling difficulties for the rest of his life. By the time he was fifteen, he had left Kumrovec to seek work, traveling south to Sisak where he apprenticed under a Czech locksmith named Nikola Karas. This apprenticeship provided him with food, room, and board, but it also exposed him to the harsh realities of industrial labor and the growing currents of socialist thought. He read socialist newspapers like Slobodna Reč and participated in his first labor protest at the age of eighteen, joining the Metal Workers' Union and the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia. His early life was a tapestry of movement and struggle, taking him from the quiet hills of Zagorje to the bustling factories of Plzeň, Munich, and Vienna, where he learned to drive and test cars for Austro-Daimler. He was a man of many skills, fluent in German and passable Czech, yet he remained a man of the people, a factory worker who would one day command armies and nations.
The Soldier Who Defied Empires
In May 1913, Broz was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, a decision that would set him on a collision course with history. He successfully requested to serve with the 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment, and by the age of twenty-two, he had become the youngest sergeant major in the entire Austro-Hungarian Army. His military career was marked by bravery and a strange duality; he was a loyal soldier who won the regimental fencing competition and came in second in the army fencing championships in Budapest, yet he was also a man who would later claim to have opposed the empire he served. On the 25th of March 1915, he was wounded in the back by a Circassian cavalryman's lance and captured during a Russian attack near Bukovina. This wound would change the course of his life, sending him east to a hospital in the town of Sviyazhsk on the Volga river, where he spent thirteen months recovering from pneumonia and typhus. During his recovery, he learned Russian with the help of two schoolgirls who brought him Russian classics by authors like Tolstoy and Turgenev. He was then transferred to a prisoner of war camp in the Ural Mountains, where he used his skills to maintain a grain mill and later a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was here, in the chaos of the Russian Revolution, that Broz walked out of an unguarded POW camp in June 1917, hiding aboard a goods train bound for Petrograd. He joined the Bolsheviks, participated in the July Days demonstrations, and was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. He escaped again, this time to Omsk in Siberia, where he met a fourteen-year-old girl named Pelagia Belousova who hid him and helped him escape to a Kazakh village. They married in January 1920, when he was twenty-seven and she was fourteen, a union that would end in divorce in the 1930s. His time in Russia was a crucible that forged his political identity, exposing him to the brutal realities of the Soviet Union and the promise of revolution. He joined the Communist Party in 1920 in Omsk, and by the autumn of that year, he and his pregnant wife returned to his homeland, arriving in Vienna on the 20th of September 1920.
Josip Broz Tito was born on the 7th of May 1892 in the small village of Kumrovec. He was the seventh or eighth child of Franjo Broz and Marija Javeršek.
What happened to Josip Broz Tito during World War II?
Josip Broz Tito became the commander-in-chief of all national liberation military forces on the 27th of June 1941. He led the Partisans to liberate territory and eventually took power in Yugoslavia by the end of the war.
How did Josip Broz Tito break relations with the Soviet Union?
Josip Broz Tito expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform on the 28th of June 1948 after the Soviet Union condemned his independent policies. This led to the Informbiro period and the establishment of the Goli Otok prison camp.
When did Josip Broz Tito become the President of Yugoslavia?
Josip Broz Tito succeeded Ivan Ribar as the President of Yugoslavia on the 14th of January 1953. He held this position until his death in 1980.
What role did Josip Broz Tito play in the Non-Aligned Movement?
Josip Broz Tito co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 with leaders from Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Ghana. He became the first Secretary-General of the movement in September 1961.
Upon his return to Yugoslavia, Broz found a country in turmoil, with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) growing in influence but facing severe repression. He became a professional revolutionary at the age of thirty-three, working as a mill mechanic and then as a union organizer in Kraljevica, where he acquired a love for the Adriatic coastline that would last a lifetime. His political ascent was rapid and ruthless; by 1937, he had assumed control of the CPY, becoming its general secretary. The Great Purge in the Soviet Union threatened to engulf him, yet he survived by staying out of Spain, where the NKVD was active, and by avoiding visits to the Soviet Union as much as possible. He promoted a new, younger leadership team that was loyal to him, including the Slovene Edvard Kardelj, the Serb Aleksandar Ranković, and the Montenegrin Milovan Đilas. In 1937, he organized the return of Yugoslav volunteers from German concentration camps to Yugoslavia, preparing for the armed resistance that would come with the invasion of 1941. His survival during the purges was a testament to his political acumen and his ability to make influential friends, yet it also raised questions about his loyalty and the cost of his ambition. He was a man who could navigate the treacherous waters of international communism, yet he was also a man who would one day defy the very empire he had once served. His early years as a revolutionary were marked by arrests, imprisonments, and the constant threat of death, yet he emerged as a leader who would shape the destiny of a nation.
The Partisan Commander
On the 6th of April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia, and the armed forces of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia quickly crumbled. Tito responded by forming a Military Committee within the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and on the 27th of June 1941, he was appointed commander-in-chief of all national liberation military forces. He stayed in Belgrade until the 16th of September 1941, when he, together with all members of the CPY, left Belgrade to travel to rebel-controlled territory. Despite conflicts with the rival monarchic Chetnik movement, Tito's Partisans succeeded in liberating territory, notably the Republic of Užice. During this period, Tito held talks with Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović, and it is said that he ordered his forces to assist escaping Jews, with more than 2,000 Jews fighting directly for Tito. On the 21st of December 1941, the Partisans created the First Proletarian Brigade, and on the 1st of March 1942, Tito created the Second Proletarian Brigade. In liberated territories, the Partisans organized People's Committees to act as a civilian government. The Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) convened in Bihać on the 26th and the 27th of November 1942 and in Jajce on the 29th of November 1943, establishing the basis for the post-war organization of the country. With the growing possibility of an Allied invasion in the Balkans, the Axis began to divert more resources to the destruction of the Partisans main force and its high command. On the 25th of May 1944, Tito managed to evade the Germans after the Raid on Drvar, an airborne assault outside his Drvar headquarters in Bosnia. After the Partisans managed to endure and avoid these intense Axis attacks between January and June 1943, and the extent of Chetnik collaboration became evident, Allied leaders switched their support from Draža Mihailović to Tito. King Peter II, American President Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in officially recognizing Tito and the Partisans at the Tehran Conference. This resulted in Allied aid being parachuted behind Axis lines to assist the Partisans. On the 17th of June 1944, on the Dalmatian island of Vis, the Treaty of Vis was signed in an attempt to merge Tito's government with the government in exile of King Peter II. The Balkan Air Force was formed in June 1944 to control operations that were mainly aimed at aiding his forces. On the 12th of August 1944, Winston Churchill met Tito in Naples for a deal, and on the 12th of September 1944, King Peter II called on all Yugoslavs to come together under Tito's leadership. By the end of the war, the Partisans, with the Allies' backing since 1943, took power in Yugoslavia, and Tito became the Prime Minister of the country.
The Split That Shook The World
In 1948, motivated by the desire to create a strong independent economy, Tito modeled his development plan independently from Moscow, which resulted in a diplomatic escalation followed by a bitter exchange of letters. The Soviet answer on the 4th of May admonished Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for failing to admit and correct its mistakes, accusing them of being too proud of their successes against the Germans. Tito's response on the 17th of May suggested the matter be settled at the meeting of the Cominform to be held that June, but Tito did not attend the second meeting of the Cominform, fearing Yugoslavia was to be openly attacked. In 1949, the crisis nearly escalated into armed conflict, as Hungarian and Soviet forces were massing on the northern Yugoslav frontier. An invasion of Yugoslavia was planned for 1949, via the combined forces of neighboring Soviet satellite states of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, followed by the removal of Tito's government. On the 28th of June, the other member countries of the Cominform expelled Yugoslavia, citing nationalist elements that had managed in the course of the past six months to reach a dominant position in the leadership of the CPY. The expulsion banished Yugoslavia from the international association of socialist states, while other socialist states of Eastern Europe underwent purges of alleged Titoists. Stalin took the matter personally and arranged assassination attempts on Tito, none of which succeeded. One consequence of the tension between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union was Tito's decision to begin large-scale repression against enemies of the government. This repression was not limited to known and alleged Stalinists, but included members of the Communist Party, or anyone exhibiting sympathy towards the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of political opponents served in forced labor camps, such as Goli Otok, and hundreds died. A disputed, but feasible number, put forth by the Yugoslav government in 1964, places the number of Goli Otok inmates incarcerated between 1948 and 1956 to be 16,554, with fewer than 600 having died during detention. The facilities at Goli Otok were abandoned in 1956, and jurisdiction of the now-defunct political prison was handed over to the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia. Tito's estrangement from the USSR enabled Yugoslavia to obtain US aid via the Economic Cooperation Administration, yet Tito did not agree to align with the West. Instead, he was instrumental in kick-starting the Non-Aligned Movement, which functioned as a third way for countries interested in staying outside the East-West divide. This rift with the Soviet Union brought Tito international recognition, but triggered instability often referred to as the Informbiro period. Tito's form of communism was labeled Titoism by Moscow, which encouraged purges and repression against suspected and accused Titoists throughout the Eastern Bloc.
The Self-Manager And The Non-Aligned
In June 1950, the National Assembly supported a crucial bill written by Milovan Đilas and Tito regarding socialist self-management, a type of cooperative independent socialist experiment that introduced profit sharing and workplace democracy in previously state-run enterprises. On the 13th of January 1953, they established that the law on self-management was the basis of the social order in Yugoslavia. Tito succeeded Ivan Ribar as the President of Yugoslavia on the 14th of January 1953, becoming the official head of state. After Stalin's death, Tito rejected the USSR's invitation for a visit to discuss the normalization of relations between the two nations. Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin visited Tito in Belgrade in 1955 and apologized for wrongdoings by Stalin, signing the Belgrade declaration. Tito visited the USSR in 1956, which signaled to the world that animosity between Yugoslavia and USSR was easing. Rapprochement between the two countries would not last long, as Yugoslav leadership took an increasingly explicit posture of non-alignment in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Relations further deteriorated in the 1960s because of Yugoslav economic reforms which consciously linked Yugoslavia to the international system, as well as Tito's support for the Prague Spring, which found much of its inspiration in Yugoslav market socialism, and opposition to the subsequent Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Under Tito's leadership, Yugoslavia became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1961, Tito co-founded the movement with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno, and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, in an action called The Initiative of Five, thus establishing strong ties with Third World countries. This move improved Yugoslavia's diplomatic position. Tito saw the Non-Aligned Movement as a way of presenting himself as a world leader of an important bloc, that would improve his bargaining power with the eastern and western blocs. In September 1961, Tito became the first Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement. Tito's foreign policy led to relationships with various governments, such as exchanging visits with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, where a street was named in his honor. In 1953, Tito visited Ethiopia, and in 1954, the Emperor visited Yugoslavia. Tito's motives in befriending Ethiopia were self-interested as he wanted to send graduates of Yugoslav universities to work in Ethiopia, one of the few countries willing to accept them. As Ethiopia did not have much of a health care or university system, Selassie, from 1953 encouraged Yugoslav graduates, especially with medical degrees, to work in his empire. Reflecting his tendency to pursue closer ties with Third World nations, from 1950 Tito permitted Mexican films to be shown in Yugoslavia, where they became popular, especially Un día de vida, which became a hit when it premiered in Yugoslavia in 1952. The success of Mexican films led to the Yu-Mex craze of the 1950s and 1960s as Mexican music became popular, and it was fashionable for Yugoslav musicians to don sombreros and sing Mexican songs in Serbo-Croatian.
The Cult Of Personality
A powerful cult of personality arose around Tito, which the League of Communists of Yugoslavia maintained even after his death. He 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. His tours across Yugoslavia in his luxury Blue Train closely resembled the royal tours of the Karađorđević kings and Habsburg emperors. He also adopted the traditional royal custom of being a godfather to every ninth son, although he modified it to include daughters as well after criticism was made that the practice was sexist. Just like a Serbian king, Tito would appear wherever a ninth child was born to a family to congratulate the parents and give them cash. He always spoke very harshly of the Karađorđević kings in both public and private, yet in private, he sometimes had a kind word for the Habsburgs. In many ways, he appeared to his people as sort of a king. He was popular in Yugoslavia and abroad, and remains so in the former countries of Yugoslavia. Tito was viewed as a unifying symbol, with his internal policies maintaining the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained further international attention as a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement. With a highly favorable 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. Despite being a founder of the Cominform, his party became the first member, and he the only leader during Joseph Stalin's lifetime, to defy Soviet hegemony in the Eastern Bloc. He wavered between supporting a centralized or more decentralized federation, and ended up favoring the latter to keep ethnic tensions under control. Thus, the constitution was developed to delegate as much power as possible to each republic in keeping with the Marxist theory of the withering away of the state. He envisaged the Socialist Federal Republic 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. After Tito, Yugoslavia's leadership was transformed into an annually rotating presidency, to give representation to all its nationalities and prevent an authoritarian leader. Twelve years later, as communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and ethnic tensions escalated, Yugoslavia dissolved and descended into interethnic wars. Historians critical of Tito view his presidency as authoritarian, while others characterize him as a benevolent dictator.