Born in Croatia on May 25, 1892 of a native peasant and a Slovene mother.
Kumrovec lies in the Croatian Zagorje and Croatia was still under Austro-Hungarian rule. Broz worked as a mechanic in small workshops. During World War I, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was captured as a prisoner of war and transported to the Russian interior. He joined a Bolshevik group while in prison and after escaping, he joined the Bolshevik Red Guards several months before the October Revolution.
He was registered as a member of the Communist party. Back in Yugoslavia, he continued his revolutionary work as a secretary of a metal union. He was picked up and spent six years in prison. He was released in 1934 and joined the Comintern in Moscow. Visited Moscow several times and was appointed Secretary of Yugoslav Communist Party in 1937. His success was due in part to the internal rivalry of communist leaders. In January 1939, he was officially appointed general secretary of the Yugoslav Communist Party.
After Nazi invasion, set up his Partisans in Southern Serbia in 1941, and led by far the most powerful resistance movement in Europe. By end of the War, Tito’s forces had control of the whole country. Refused to take Stalin’s direction, and was expelled from the Cominform in 1948. Remained leader of the country till his death in 1980.
From then on, Tito had a major voice in all the ensuing phases of the Yugoslav revolution. During World War II, he became commander in chief of the partisan armed forces. In 1943, the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia established the second Yugoslavia as a federal socialist republic of six republics. Tito had to make use of all his charisma to convince his comrade-partisans that all peoples of Yugoslavia should be granted equal rights. The partisan struggle ended with a complete victory of the communists. Supported strategically by their allies, both of the West and the East, complying formally with some demands for a multi-party system, Tito could form his first government on March 7, 1945.
More dangerous for Tito’s political career was the clash with the USSR. The Cominform conflict led to a break with Moscow. Tito’s internal power base was threatened as well, and large-scale purges in the party were bitterly needed. Needed also was an alternative ideology. In the beginning of the 1950s self-management was rediscovered in Marx’s writings and step by step introduced in Yugoslavia.
After the fall of hardliner Ranković, economic and political liberalization broke through and this threatened the party monopoly anew. At the same time, on advice of the Slovene Edvard Kardelj, he pushed through constitutional reforms to take the wind out of the sails of nationalism. By granting more autonomy, responsibility and formal self-government to the republics, he hoped to reduce the tensions between the federal units. In the same spirit, he set up a federal presidency structure to ensure the continuity of the system after his death.
In international affairs, Tito profited much from the rivalries of the two blocs during the Cold War. He played a leading role in the movement of the so-called Non-Aligned Countries.
Tito died in May 1980 and the structures set up to ensure continuity functioned more or less satisfactorily for a few years. Then, divergent aspirations could no longer be reconciled and the federal structure exploded.
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