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Tito (1892-1980)Yugoslav president. Josip Broz was born on 25 May 1892, in the Croatian town of Kumrovec near the Slovenian border, into a family of mixed Croatian and Slovenian ancestry. He fought in World War I in the Austro-Hungarian army, but was captured by the Russians in 1915. As a prisoner of war, he joined the Bolsheviks and, from 1917, fought in Trotsky's Red Army against the Russian counter-revolutionaries. After returning home to the newly independent 'Kingdom of Croats, Slovenes and Serbs', he joined the Croatian Communist party. In 1922, when the party was outlawed, he went underground, changing his name to Tito. Imprisoned for six years for his revolutionary activities, he was exiled in 1934, and went to Moscow. There, he was made general secretary of the Communist party of Yugoslavia in 1937, and returned home to rebuild the organisation. After the German invasion of 1941, Tito formed the Partisan Army of National Liberation, and led a successful guerrilla war against the invaders. His troops also fought against the rival guerrilla Chetniks, who represented Serbian nationals. At the end of World War II in 1945, Tito was victorious, and formed a government with himself as prime minister. Despite having promised the Allied powers that he would unite the nation, he expelled his opponents. In 1948, he broke with the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin, who had claimed to lead the peoples of eastern Europe. Tito's independence greatly enhanced his domestic popularity, and as the first Communist to break with the Soviets, he became a self-confident proponent of non-alignment, much respected in the West. In 1953, he became president for life. As a Slovenian-Croat leader of a country in which Serbs were the majority, he understood Yugoslavia's ethnic tension, which helped him maintain stability. After his death on 4 May 1980, Yugoslavia's internal conflicts led to a bitter civil war (1992-5). |
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