Difference between revisions of "Tito"

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(Break-up with Moscow)
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The Soviet army never reached Yugoslavia, or else the Soviets might have seized control. Instead Tito installed a comprehensive dictatorship of the Communist Party.  
 
The Soviet army never reached Yugoslavia, or else the Soviets might have seized control. Instead Tito installed a comprehensive dictatorship of the Communist Party.  
  
"Stop sending people to kill me," Tito once wrote to [[Joseph Stalin]].  "If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."  [[Stalin]] expelled the [[Yugoslav Communist Party]] on June 28, 1948.  Tito was perhaps the only person who stood up to Stalin and survived.  The U.S. provided large-scale military equipment.
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"Stop sending people to kill me," Tito once wrote to [[Joseph Stalin]].  "If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."  [[Stalin]] expelled the [[Yugoslav Communist Party]] on June 28, 1948.  Tito was perhaps the only person who stood up to Stalin and survived.  The U.S. provided large-scale shipments of military equipment in the 1950s.
  
 
==Cold War==
 
==Cold War==

Revision as of 21:42, May 27, 2009

Tito (born Josip Broz, 1892–1980) was a Croat and the leader of Yugoslavia, which existed from 1943 until 1991. Tito spent much time in the Soviet Union and became a member of the Comintern, returned to Yugoslavia during World War II and led the Yugoslav Partisans. After World War II he defied Stalin and founded the Non-Aligned Movement. He held Yugoslavia together; after his death it disintegrates into chaos and civil war.

Tito1.jpg

Leading the Yugoslav Partisans

In 1941 the armies of Germany, aided by Italy, Hungary and Bolgaria, invaded Yugoslavia and swiftly reduced it to submission. The government of Yugoslavia joined other Allied Powers exile governments in London, became a signatory of the Atlantic Charter, and held recognition as the legitimate government of Yugoslavia. Colonel Draja Mikhailovitch remained behind in Yugoslavia to lead the Chetnik army[1] which quickly started collaborating with Axis forces. The Chetniks' prime goals were the dectruction of communism and the fight for a Greater Serbia (chetniks often slaughtered Croats and Bosnians on nationally-mixed teritories)[2].

Tito’s antifascist guerrilla movement, formed in 1941 to oppose Axis aggression, was fully supported by Stalin who, by siding with Tito, openly diverged from British and US policy supportive of the chetnik (nationalist guerrilla), General Draza Mihajlovic (1893-1946).

The Yugoslav government - in - exile in London continued to support Mikhailovitch. The British Foreign Office in its dealings with the Stalin closed the British Broadcasting Company to the Yugoslav government - in - exile and a little later put the broadcast facilities at the disposal of the Partisans of Tito.

President Franklin Roosevelt paid tribute to Mikhailovitch in 1942. But at the Teheran conference, as part of the policy of appeasing Stalin, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill abandoned Mikhailovitch completely and yielded to Soviet Union’s choice of Tito. Shortly after the Teheran conference, Churchill in a speech in February 1944 indicated that the allies were no longer sending supplies to Mikhailovitch. Two months later King Peter, the Yugoslavian Head of State, was forced to dismiss Premier Purich, which meant the entire cabinet in which Mikhailovitch was Minister of War. The Communist Subasich was made Prime Minister. With the subsequent Russian invasion and the aid of American supplies, the Communists and Tito took control. Mikhailovitch was sentenced to death after the war as a collaborator.

Break-up with Moscow

The Soviet army never reached Yugoslavia, or else the Soviets might have seized control. Instead Tito installed a comprehensive dictatorship of the Communist Party.

"Stop sending people to kill me," Tito once wrote to Joseph Stalin. "If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second." Stalin expelled the Yugoslav Communist Party on June 28, 1948. Tito was perhaps the only person who stood up to Stalin and survived. The U.S. provided large-scale shipments of military equipment in the 1950s.

Cold War

Marshall Tito in 1971 during a visit to the Nixon White House.

"Titoism" meant a form of Communism trying to be independent from the Soviet Union. Tito accepted fellow Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas's proposal of self-management of factories to show that Yugoslavia was more communist than the Soviet Union yet more democratic than the West. The new constitutional law of 1953 contained the concept of socialist direct democracy as the expression of the working people through self-management. With the death of Stalin, Tito was reconciled with the Soviet leaders, and Djilas's attempt to apply criticism of Soviet Communism to Yugoslavia led to his trials and incarceration. Liberalization of Communism ended in Yugoslavia and Tito turned his ambitions as a leader outside the two blocs, to the countries of the Third World. Tito then followed an independent course in foreign affairs--maintaining good relations with the East European Communist satellite states, while establishing ties with the Western powers and nonaligned nations. He built a multiethnic Communist state notable for its policies of economic decentralization and increased worker participation in government. Made marshal of Yugoslavia and elected president in 1953, Tito became president for life in 1974

Further reading

  • Barnett, Neil. Tito (2006) excerpt and text search
  • Beloff, Nora. Tito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia and the West since 1939. (1986). 287 pp.
  • Dedijer, Vladimir. Tito (1972)
  • Djilas, Milovan. Tito: The Story from Inside (1980) highly revealing memoir by top aide.
  • Pavlowitch, Stevan K. Tito, Yugoslavia's Great Dictator (1992).
  • Vucinich, Wayne S., ed. At the Brink of War and Peace: The Tito-Stalin Split in a Historic Perspective. (1982). 341 pp.
  • West, Richard. Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia. (1995). 448 pp. excerpt and text search

References

  1. David Martin, Ally Betrayed, Prentice-Hall, 1946, pps. 224-231,
  2. A symposium about chetnik crimes in Bosnia