Josip Broz Tito

Beginning

Josip Broz was born the May 7th 1892 has Kumrovec, in the Zagorje, in Croatia, in what was then the Austria-Hungary. He is the 7th child of the family of Franjo and Marija Broz. His/her father, Franjo Broz, were Croatian whereas his/her mother Marija Broz, born Javeršek, was Slovenien.

After having passed part of its childhood with his maternal grandfather with Podsreda, it enters to the elementary school to Kumrovec which it leaves in 1905. In 1907, it is engaged as a machinist with Sisak.

Sensitized with the Labor movement, it celebrates the Labor Day for the first time. In 1910, it joined the trade union of the workmen of the metallurgy and, at the same time, the party Social-démocrate of Croatia and Slavonie. Between 1911 and 1913, it works of short periods with Kamnik (Slovenia), Cenkovo (Bohemia), Munich and Mannheim (Germany) where it is employed by the car manufacturer Benz. It goes then to Wiener Neustadt (Austria), where it works for Daimler as a test pilot.

End 1913, Broz is mobilized and is useful in the army of Austria-Hungary. In May 1914, it gains the money medal of a contest of Escrime within the Armée Austro-Hungarian with Budapest. It is sent to Ruma (Voïvodine). Stopped for propaganda anti-war, he is imprisoned with the fortress of Petrovaradin close to Novi Sad. In 1915, it is sent on the face of the east, in Galicie to fight against the Russia. With Bukovina it is seriously wounded by a glare of shell. In April, the whole battalion is made prisoner by the Russians.

After having spent several months at the hospital, Broz is sent in a camp in the fine Ural 1916. In April 1917, it is stopped to have organized demonstrations of prisoners of war. He escapes and joined the demonstrations of Saint-Pétersbourg 16 and July 17th 1917. He flees in Finland to escape the police force but is stopped and locked up with the fortress of Petropavlovsk for three weeks. After being transferred to Kungur (Krai de Perm), he escapes from a train. In November, it engages in the Red Army with Omsk (Siberia). In 1918, it is registered with the Russian Communist party. In 1920 he becomes member of the Communist party of Yugoslavia which will be soon prohibited.

It becomes clandestine agent of the party in its native land (between 1923 and 1928), activities which were worth to him to be imprisoned during 5 years (between 1928 and 1934).

In 1935, it worked one year in the section Balkans of the Komintern. He was member of the Soviet Communist party and the Soviet secret police, NKVD. In 1936 the Comintern sends the comrade Walter (i.e. Tito) in Yugoslavia to purge the party. In 1937 Stalin makes carry out the general secretary of the Communist party of Yugoslavia Milan Gorkic with Moscow. Tito is named by Stalin general secretary of the Communist party of Yugoslavia, always outlaw. According to the historian Jean-Jacques Marie ( Stalin , Beech, 2001), it was a question in Moscow of also liquidating Tito, but Stalin opposed it and let it set out again of the USSR, not without to have made shoot its wife. For this period Tito pursues the policy of the Comintern and supports Stalin, criticizing the Western democracies, fascistic Italy and the Nazi Germany. At the time of the War of Spain, it was in Paris a turntable of recruitment and organization of the International Brigades.

Origin of the name Tito

Josip Broz adopted the name of Tito in 1934 whereas he was member of the political office of the party, then with Vienna in Austria. An explanation popular but not proven known as that the name comes from the Croatian concatenation of two words or Serbe Ti (i.e you) and to (i.e that). It would have used these words to give orders by pointing a person then a task to be achieved. Tito is also an old Croatian name corresponding to Titus. The biographer of Tito, Vladimir Dedijer, affirmed that its name would come from the Croatian author Tituš Brezovački.

Second world war

After Yugoslavia was invaded by the armed forces Italy in April 1941, the Communists are among the first to organize a movement of resistance. The April 10th, the Politburo of the Communist party of Yugoslavia meets in Zagreb and decides to begin resistance, naming Tito chief of the military committee.

The June 22nd, a group of 49 men attacks a German train of reserve close to Sisak; thus the first actions antifascists in occupied Europe start. The July 4th, Tito makes print and diffuse publicly a plea for the resistance armed against the occupation Nazi, as a supreme commander of the Popular Armée with Release and Partisane Separation of Yugoslavia. The in favor are the protagonists of a large campaign of guerilla and they start to release from the parts of the territory.

After the expulsion of the Germans of Serbia (Belgrade is released with the assistance of the Red Army in October 1944), Tito becomes the chief of a provisional government the March 7th 1945, with the representative monarchist Ivan Šubašić. This last is évincé by the Communists in October 1945.

The April 5th 1945, Tito signs an agreement with the Soviet Union allowing l'" temporary entry of Soviet troops on the territory yougoslave". Supporting the Red Army , the partisans gain the war in 1945, demolishing the State independent of Croatia, vassal of the Nazis, and pushing even until Trieste in Italy, to the great displeasure of the Allies. Without any doubt, the " War for the release of Yougoslavie" is regarded as the single victory of the Second world war to more put over the account of the local forces of guerilla, although there was an external support, on behalf of the Britanniques Soviets.

Rupture between Tito and Stalin

The adhesion of the Yugoslavia to the Kominform requires an absolute obedience of Tito to the line fixed by the the Kremlin. However, the Yugoslav leader, extremely of his glorious past (release of Yugoslavia at the time of the Second world war), wishes to remain independent of the wills of Stalin. As of the Second world war, the relations will be surging, the Soviets censuring the messages which Yugoslav resistance wanted to launch on the radio " Free Yugoslavia " who diffused from Moscow.

Tito takes initiatives which displease to the Soviet leaders: project of a Balkan federation, support for the Greek Communists in an insurrection that Stalin holds for an adventure.

The rupture between the two men is inevitable, because Stalin, irritated by the prestige of Tito, does not plan to share the authority and it fears that its spirit of independence does not become contagious in the people's democracies.

This rupture intervenes in several stages: Since 1945, Stalin places men being devoted to him in the administration and the Yugoslav Communist party. However, Tito refuses to be let subordinate its police force, its army and its foreign policy and to see creating mixed companies of production by which the Soviets would control the essential branches of the economy of the country.

In March 1948, Stalin points out all his military advisers and his civil specialists based in Yugoslavia. A little later a letter of the Soviet Central committee criticizing the decisions of the Yugoslav PC tries to sow the discord in this one. Nevertheless, the reverse occurs, the Yugoslav leaders make block around Tito and the faithful ones to Moscow are excluded from the Central committee then stopped. The Kremlin then tries last a recourse while carrying the business in front of Cominform. But Tito refuses, feeling “unequal in rights” and “déjugé by the other sister parties”. Cominform regards this act as a treason. June 28th, 1948, Cominform publishes a resolution condemning the Yugoslav attitude. By excluding Yugoslavia from Cominform, Stalin thus hopes to cause a retreat of the Yugoslavians. It is a failure; the Yugoslav PC, purified kominformists, elects a new completely devoted Central committee with Tito.

Stalin then tries to subordinate Yugoslavia by the economic weapon. He reduces exports of the USSR towards this country of 90% and obliges the people's democracies to make in the same way. This blockade economic constrained Tito to increase its exchanges with the Western block. It is nevertheless always faithful to the Socialisme and claims same principles as the Soviet Union even if there remains politically independent of this one. Tito thus calls into question the single direction of the socialist world by the USSR and opens the way with the idea of a national socialism. Only the Déstalinisation launched to the USSR under the impulse of Nikita Khrouchtchev will allow a standardization of the soviéto-Yugoslavians ratios.

Following the Conference of Bandung in 1955, it approaches Nehru and Nasser, which it again meets with the conference of Brioni in 1956. It becomes thus one of the principal representatives of the movement of non-aligned, created in 1961 at the time of the Conference of Belgrade.

The President of the socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia

With the new constitution of 1953, Tito becomes President. It will remain it until its death. Its policy remains authoritative, although a certain liberalization, which benefits in particular with the artists and the writers, follows the resignation of the chief of safety Aleksandar Rankovic in 1966. January 1st, 1967, the Yugoslavia is the first communist country to open its borders with all the foreign visitors. Tito violently criticizes the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact in 1968, which contributes to improve its image in the Western countries.

In 1971, Tito, coldly re-elected president for the sixth time, represses hard the nationalist demonstrations in Croatia. However, on May 16th, 1974, it yields to part of the requirements “Croatian Printemps” by promulgating a new constitution which reinforces the federalism. This constitution will be strongly criticized by certain Serb which will be estimated wrongfully private of their role dominating. Tito is in parallel named Life president, however which it starts to imply less directly in the businesses.

Tito must be made hospitalize at the medical center of Ljubljana in January 1980, at the 87 years age, for a thrombosis with the left leg. The amputation is not enough; he dies on May 4th. The skin of Tito is honoured with national funeral, to which many crowned heads and political officials assist, of which Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher or Willy Brandt.

Tito rests today in a mausoleum (“Kuća cveća” or the “House of the flowers”) located in the southern suburbs of Belgrade, beside the Museum of May 25th when the gifts are exposed which it received.

The toponymy of Yugoslavia was strongly marked by the print of Tito. Today, although the cities found their name of before Communism (Titograd is become again Podgorica), of many streets and places still bear the name of Tito. Since the bursting of Yugoslavia, one notes the return of a certain nostalgia of the era titist, as well as a idealization of this time at the inhabitant of the republics resulting from old Yugoslavia.

See too

Historic decisions of Tito
Yugoslavia in the Second world war
Resistance in Yugoslavia during the Second world war
Left working Socialist Croatia

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