Josip Broz Tito

[[File:Josip Broz Tito uniform portrait.jpg|right|thumb|165px|Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.]]
{{communism|1}}
{{cquote|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 a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won't have to send another. |||Tito blowing off Stalin like a boss<ref>Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 592.</ref>}}
'''Josip Broz Tito''' (1892-1980) was a Yugoslav [[communist]] revolutionary and ruler of [[Yugoslavia]] from the end of [[World War II]] until his death in 1980. Lauded by the [[West]] for his independence from [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] influence (he broke with [[Stalin]] in 1949),<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol11/no06/banerji.html Interview with Marshal Tito]</ref><ref>[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/juraj-katalenac-yugoslav-self-management Yugoslav self-management]</ref> he managed to keep his multi-ethnic state stable (both economically and politically) but by repressive means,<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josip-Broz-Tito Josip Broz Tito]</ref> earning the title of a [[Benevolent dictatorship|benevolent dictator]].<ref>[https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/history/yugoslavia/tito-josip-broz/titos-dictatorship Tito, Josip Broz: Tito's Dictatorship]</ref><ref>[https://sloveniatimes.com/naming-street-after-tito-unconstitutional/ Naming Street After Tito Unconstitutional]</ref><ref>{{cite book|author-last1=Shapiro |author-first1=Susan |author-last2=Shapiro |author-first2=Ronald |title=The Curtain Rises: Oral Histories of the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe |publisher=McFarland |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-7864-1672-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oCqWFQ1WKlkC&pg=PA180 |ref=Shapiro_2004}}<br />"...All Yugoslavs had educational opportunities, jobs, food, and housing regardless of nationality. Tito, seen by most as a benevolent dictator, brought peaceful co-existence to the Balkan region, a region historically synonymous with factionalism."</ref> This means that his reputation, enhanced during the terrible wars of the 1990s, is based partly on a willingness to look away from his faults. Yugoslavia under Tito had few freedoms and many friends, but his failure to solve the country's ethnic tensions must be looked on as his greatest fault. He did, however, manage to create an 
organization
 evil pinko commie fascist imperialist system called the "Non-aligned movement," which consisted of countries mainly in the developing world that claimed independence from both the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Early on in the WWII, Tito was actually a hard-line [[Marxist]]-[[Lenin]]ist, and when he led the partisans, a guerrilla resistance movement against [[Axis]] occupation of Yugoslavia, he required them to take indoctrination classes in Stalinist ideology. With the [[Cold War]] in full swing when he broke from Stalin, the west trotted Tito out as a "reformed" and "moderate" leader they could court and work with. The initial cause of the split was Tito's taking a ''more'' hard-line position than Stalin in the immediate aftermath of World War II, specifically, Tito supporting the Communists in the civil war in [[Greece]] while Stalin failed to do so out of deference to his then-ally [[Winston Churchill]] and Tito's desire to seize Trieste and incorporate it into Yugoslavia, also opposed by Stalin.

The USSR did not, or perhaps could not, invade Yugoslavia to bring it back into the Soviet orbit as they later did with immediately neighboring [[Hungary]] (1956), [[Czechoslovakia]] (1968), and [[Afghanistan]] (1979) when they also tried to steer an independent course from Moscow; geographic distance is probably the reason, as with the similarly successful break of [[Albania]] under [[Enver Hoxha]] from the Soviet orbit. Tito's Yugoslavia and Hoxha's Albania, however, were very different cases, with Hoxha taking an exceptionally-hard Stalinist line and Tito trying to steer a course of being more moderate than the USSR, so they were not exactly allied with each other in any sense. Indeed, Hoxha denounced Tito louder than nearly anyone else as a "revisionist." After the break from the USSR, Yugoslavia under Tito largely abandoned the Soviet-style [[planned economy]] in favor of a "market socialist" economy of workers' self-management similar to syndicalism, although Yugoslavia remained a one-party Communist state. By all accounts, it went much better and remained stable until the fall of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia also avoided most of the cultural repression found in other states of the region, with Yugoslavs enjoying western music, films, and many Western consumer goods. Yugoslavia also had its own vibrant and varied art scene, with wide varieties of film, music, and other arts being allowed (and even encouraged) by the state. Yugoslavia's was, at one time, considered the strongest passport in the world, and many Yugoslavs could and did travel more or less freely through both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Yugoslavs were allowed to seek education and find work abroad, and many did. For these reasons, Tito maintains some popularity in multiple ex-Yugoslav nations.<ref>[https://balkaninsight.com/2021/05/25/titos-yugo-nostalgic-admirers-celebrate-socialist-era-holiday/ Tito’s Yugo-Nostalgic Admirers Celebrate Socialist-Era Holiday]</ref><ref>[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-montenegro-monument-idUSKBN1OI1TT/ Montenegro unveils monument of ex-Yugoslav communist leader Tito]</ref> However, some criticize Tito's policies and claim that Yugoslav workers lost their sense of class consciousness due to his party's suppression of strikes.<ref>[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aleksandar-simic-the-workers-movement-in-serbia-and-ex-yugoslavia#toc The workers’ movement in Serbia and ex-Yugoslavia]</ref> Yugoslav communists are also criticized for taking out an IMF loan which destroyed the economy.<ref>[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/aleksandar-simic-the-workers-movement-in-serbia-and-ex-yugoslavia#toc The workers’ movement in Serbia and ex-Yugoslavia]</ref><ref>[https://balkaninsight.com/2012/03/02/wikileaks-the-imf-s-fault-for-balkan-war/ Wikileaks: The IMF’s Fault for Balkan Wars]</ref> Another criticism that is made is that he proclaimed himself ''"president for life"'' (in a clear [[bullshit|non-monarchical gesture]]).<ref>See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Yugoslav_Constitution 1974 Yugoslav Constitution].</ref>

Tito, however, failed to solve the country's long-standing ethnic feuds. One major mistake made by Tito was his attempt to cover up elements of the [[Ustaše|Genocide of Serbs in the "Independent" State of Croatia]]. His government papered over WWII atrocities in order to create a shared "Yugoslav" identity.<ref>[https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://en.wikipedia.org/&httpsredir=1&article=1183&context=gsp The United States’ Response to Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945 (see page 9)]</ref> After his death in 1980, Yugoslavia began to destabilize, breaking apart completely in 1991-1992 with several of the resulting countries undergoing [[civil war]]s along ethnic and religious lines.

On a more trivial note, he and [[Hermann Göring]] could have been body-doubles. Not that you'd have wanted to tell him that.

==See also==
*[[Boris Malagurski]]

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

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[[Category:Atheists]]
[[Category:Authoritarianism]]
[[Category:Cold War]]
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[[Category:History of communism]]
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[[Category:Socialists]]
[[Category:World War II]]

Categories: Atheists, Authoritarianism, Cold War, Dictators, European politicians, History of communism, Left-wing activists, Machismo, Military, Racists, Socialists, World War II