Defiant Tito stood up to Stalin

Press, 6 May 1980, Page 18

Defiant Tito stood up to Stalin

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade Marshal Josip Broz Tito, the tough and charismatic ruler of Yugoslavia for more than three decades, will be remembered as the man who defied the Soviet dictator. Joseph Stalin, and survived to write a new chanter in the history of international communism.

Years before other splits appeared in the Communist movement, Marshal Tito began the process which destroyed the concept of communism as a monolithic movement, taking unquestioned directions from Moscow. Historically, this may well rate as his big achievement.

Championing the cause of non-alignment, he went on to become a leading political figure in the Third World. His name became a virtual synonym for the postwar Yugoslavia at home and abroad, and he oversaw the development of a new, decentralised Communist economic system of workers’ self-manage-ment. ■

“Tito” was an assumed name. He used it while a Communist underground revolutionary before World War 11. But a popular version later attributed its origin to the command words in Serbo-Croat, “Ti,to,ti,to” which he used constantly during the war, mean, “You will do this, you will do that.” By the end of the war, Tito was in command of several hundred thousand fighters tying down 40 German divisions.

Though he spent several years in Moscow, Marshal Tito insisted that Yugoslav ecommunism was not “imported ready-made” but originated in the hills and forests of his own country. The Soviet bloc onslaught was launched after a 1948 decision to expel the .Yugoslav Communist Party from the Cominform (Communist International), a Soviet-controlled grouping of the main European Communist parties which was later disbanded. Yugoslavia’s fight for economic and political survival thereafter shaped the course of its political line. President Tito slowed down the pace of communism making concessions to suit the stubborn, independent-minded peasantry and gain easier popular acceptance for the regime.

Within the limits of a one-party dictatorship, he then permitted a measure of freedom of thought and speech generally in advance of Soviet bloc practice. By the time of the eleventh party congress in 1978, it was even accepted in principle that members could express a different opinion from the majority —as long as they followed majority decisions. Attempts by other Communist countries to introduce a greater measure liberalisation brought Soviet intervention in

Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). President Tito reserved the right to, reimpose curbs if they threatened his concepts. He continued to deal harshly with real and suspected political opponents and rivals. The Yugoslav leader was known among intimates for decades as “Stari,” meaning “the Old Man” but the nickname had little to do with age, rather with national stature, respect and personal magnetism. A flamboyant ‘ character whose rise to supreme power was a classic “rags to riches” story, Marshal Tito always believed in enjoying life. For many years he lived in high style with a fleet of more than 20 big, fast cars.

In recent years he has spent much of his time at private residences on the Adriatic coast at Igalo and Split, where the dry Mediterranean climate helped to reduce the recurrent bouts of sciatica which long afflicted him. He also kept a town house in Belgrade and an elaborate home on Brioni, his private pine-firinged island in the northern Adriatic where he liked to cook barbecue meals for his guests. Always immaculately tailored, Marshal Tito favoured brilliant white uniforms or lounge suits for day wear and a dinner jacket for formal evening occasions.

His love of luxury went back to his boyhood days when he invested his first savings in a new suit. In Moscow in 1937 he used the roubles he earned for translating the official history of the Soviet Communist Party to buy a diamond ring. A healthy, year-round tan gave him an appearance of youthful vigour which for long belied his years. But sciatica and several other apparently minor ailments forced him to rest and undergo periodic medical treatment after entering his eighties. He scarcely cut back on rounds of trips abroad. In 1976 he toured Latin America, in 1977 he went to China and the Soviet Union, in 1978 to France, the United States, Portugal and Algeria, and in 1979 his tours included the Middle East and North Africa. He showed few signs of fatigue on bis return.

Asked once how he kept his health while travelling abroad so much, he replied: “This great activity seems to suit me. Even rapid changes of climate do not affect me.”

Hunting was his favourite sport. He was an accomplished marksman and as late as the winter of his eighty-sixth year he led the Belgrade diplomatic community in an annual hunting party culminating in a barbecue under the stars.

President Tito married three times. By his first wife, a Russian, he had a son, Zarko, who lost an arm and won distinction in the Soviet Army during World War 11. His second wife, a Slovene schoolmistress, also bore a son Aleksandar, in 1939. These two marriages ended in divorce. He married his third wife in 1952. Jovanka, normally seen almost constantly at his side, disappeared from the

public view amid unconfirmed reports that President Tito was angered by her alleged meddling in political affairs. They subsequently lived apart. Tito, was born Josip Broz on May 7, 1892, in the village of Kumrovec. Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (his birthday is officially celebrated on May 25 because it was mistakenly recorded as such in his military sendee document). A cowherd at 12, he be-

came a locksmith’s apprentice at 15 and studied at evening classes. Conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, he’ fought against Tsarist troops as a sergeant-major on the Russian front in World War I- He was wounded and captured in 1915.

That was the turning point which shaped his future. Freed by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he enlisted in the Red International Guard and became steeped in Marxism. In 1920 he returned to Yugoslavia, then a fledgling state created by the Versailles Treaty and known as the Serb-Croat-Slovene Kingdom. He joined the outlawed Communist Party and throughout the 1920 s worked as a trade union agitator and organiser. In 1928 he was jailed for five vears for distributing Communist propaganda. Soon after his release he went to Moscow to work in the Comintern and helped organise the recruitment of Yugoslav volunteers for the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 he became sec-retary-general of the Yugoslav Communist Party. He hurried back to Yugoslavia where he travelled illegally all over the country, tightening party discipline eliminating factionalism and revitalising its ranks with an influx of new members. In 1941, when Hitler invaded Yugoslavia, he rallied resistance forces.

In 1943, backed by a well-organised Communistled partisan army and in

physical control of a large part of Bosnia, he formed a provisional government, the National Liberation Committee. He became its president and took the title of Marshal and com-mander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army. Britain and the United States sent him military missions and at the same time withdrew support from General Draza Mihailovich, a royalist and leader of the Serbian Chetnik resistance movement. Stalin was reluctant to

send the partisans the arms they had requested, prompting Tito to send an angry telegram in 1943 saying: “If you cannot help us, then at least do not hinder us.” It was the first open sign of the Yugoslav leader’s deepening irritation with Moscow. The end of the war in Europe left Marshal Tito and his National Liberation Committee the main power factor ’ in Yugoslavia. In elections in 1945 he led the Communistdominated Liberation Front to victory’.

King Peter II was deposed and a Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia proclaimed.

Marshal Tito’s Government quickly eliminated all opposition. By the time Stalin died in 1953, Yugoslavia had established itself firmly as an independent Communist power. Under a new constitution, Marshal Tito became his country’s first president in 1953. He held the post until he died.

When Mr Nikita Khrushchev took over as the new Soviet leader and denounced Stalin’s misdeeds in 1956, he hoped to bring Yugoslavia back into the fold as an orthodox Soviet bloc member. Mr Khrushchev visited Belgrade in 1955 — a political triumph for Marshal Tito — and the Yugoslav leader went to th 6 Soviet Union in 1956. Relations between Moscow and Belgrade fluctuated but with Marshal Tito refusing to make big concessions to the Kremlin, no solution to the

underlying tensions was found.

A Yugoslav Communist Party programme in 1958 contradicted many of Moscow’s basic ideological conceptions. Mr Khrushchev once called Marshal Tito, “the Trojan horse of imperialism.”

Tito maintained a delicate balance between Eastern and Western blocs, while strongly promoting the concept of an uncommitted vet forceful Third World. With the late President Nasser of Egypt, he called a conference of 24 nonaligned nations in Belgrade in 1961. He also played a big role in organising summit meetings of non-aligned states in Cairo (1964), Lusaka (1970), Algiers (1973) and Colombo (1976), by which time the movement numbered 85 countries.

Diplomatic observers saw this vigorous promotion of non-alignment partly as insurance against possible superpower pressures after President Tito’s death. In 1978 and 1979 President Tito expressed growing concern about what he saw as attempts by Cuba, Vietnam and other radical pro-Moscow members to split the non-aligned movement from within and tilt it towards the Soviet Union. Over the last three decades Tito paid visits to virtually all the world’s big countries, and scores of others. In return, he received an almost constant stream of foreign heads of state, government leaders and politicians. In 1970 he was host to President Richard Nixon, received visits from Queen Elizabeth (1972), President Gerald Ford (1975), President Leonid Brezhnev (1976), and Chairman Hua. Tito purged two old and once close colleagues, Milovan Djilas and Aleksandar Rankovic..

Mr Djilas, the former Vice-President, demanded far more liberty and free expression than Tito was prepared to allow in the mid-19505. These suggestions were condemned as likely to lead to anarchy. Mr Djilas, expressing his views in books which had an international circulation, was charged with spreading “hostile propaganda” and _ spent • nearly nine years in jail before his release in December, 1966.

Mr Rankovic, the former state security chief and also a Vice-President, was dismissed from office and expelled from the party in 1966. He was accused of power-seeking, “disobedience” and Serbian nationalism.

Tito took charge of a purge aimed at suppressing alleged nationalist tendencies in Croatia in 1971 and Serbia in 1972. He followed this up with, a drive to strengthen the party’s position. In 1974-76 he oversaw a crack-down on “Cdminformists” — pro-Soviet Communist hardliners — and more than 100 of 30 and 40 pro-Albanian and more than 100 of them were jailed. Between 30 and 40 pro-Albanian Stalinist separatists were jailed in Kosovo Province. Tito made careful and detailed arrangements designed to ensure a smooth transition after he left the political scene.

He set un collective State and Party presidencies of 24 and nine members ■ respectively. The posts of vice-chairman in both bodies rotates regularly — a device aimed at avoiding jealousies or power-building by an individual. The system was further refined after the death in earlv 1979 of Mr Edvard Kardelj, aged 69, for many vears President Tito s chief ideologist and closest associate. He had long been slated as Tito’s most probable successor. In 1974 the Federal Assemblv (Parliament) granted him the right to remain President of the country for as long as he wished and the tenth congress of the League of Communsits of Yugoslavia (Communist Party) gave him the same right as party president. Marshal Tito said in 1976 that a new system of collective leadership set up in the top state and party bodies, had proved efficient so “I can leave any day without anything changing.” Three years later Presideitt Tito, still enjoying seemingly undiminished vigour, declared on his eighty-seventh birthday that he was imt rtviy for retirement. “I could not do without work. As long as I have the physical and mental abilities, as long as the people want me, I will do my best.” In 1948 — three years after the end of the Second World War Marshal Tito took the fateful decision to resist Stalin, causing the traumatic isolation of his country from the Soviet bloc. Just before the break, Stalin told close colleagues: “I will lift my little finger and there will be no more Tito.”

The Yugoslavs feared Soviet armed intervention. In the event, the Russians did not invade but tried every other political and economic way of breaking Tito. They failed.

Referring to that moment of decision, Marshal Tito said later: “Historywill mark it as one of the most powerful actions undertaken by our people. It was as important as life itself.”

Since then, the political barometer of Moscow-Bel-grade relations has often swung from high to low, with many fluctuations in between. In 1972 President Tito visited Moscow and received an order of Lenin, the highest Soviet civilian award. In 1973 the Soviet Union declared its support for President Tito as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This was a sharp contrast to the Stalin era, when Tito had been denounced as an arch-revi-sionist, traitor, renegade, and Judas. After 1974 new strains appeared beneath the surface of relations between the Kremlin and Belgrade, the Yugoslavs suspecting the Russians of helping prp-Soviet dissidents to organise opposition to Marshal Tito.

Mirroring the general see-saw relationship with the Kremlin, links improved again — only to sour when President Tito achieved reconciliation with Peking’s Communist leaders after the death of Mao Tse-tung. For President Tito, the few close links with China

were a triumph. Piking which had reviled him for many years as a Marxist heretic, gave him a tumultuous welcome during a visit in 1977 a nd the Chinese leader Hua Guefeng visited Yugoslavia in 1978. x

President Tito rejected angry Soviet charges that Yugoslavia had allowed. Chairman Hua to use the visit to slander the Kremlin.

Relations between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union were put on a more even keel again in 1979 when Marshal Tito visited Moscow.

At the time of the split with Stalin, Marshal Tito’s name gave rise to a new word in the Communist vocabulary, “Titoism.” Moscow applied this to any leader in a Communist state who deviated in the slightest from the approved Moscow party line.

“Titits” were jailed and in some cases executed, in show trials in Eastern bloc states. After Stalin’s death, Moscow came in time to show more acceptance of the thesis of “more than one road to socialism,” at least in theory. Non-ruling Communist parties in Western Europe in particular, the so-called Euro-communists, worked out independent policies. A conference of 29 European Communist parties in East Berlin in June, 1976, attended by President Tito, formally endorsed the right of each Communist Party to choose its own path. This was a moment of great triumph for him. In economic policy, Tito’s national-style communism modified the harshness of the Moscow blueprint by borrowing freely from capitalist experience in reorganising a backward economy. • Its unique Communist feature was decentralised .workers’ self-management. Politically, Marshal Tito tried to bridge the gulf dividing East and West. He failed to achieve this, but instead emerged as a driving force in the creation of the Third World group of nonaligned countries, his influence and prestige extending to africa, Asiaand Latin America. It was characteristic of Tito that he condemned, equally the American action in Vietnam and the Soviet-led invasion ofCzechoslovakia in 1968. / He never retracted his/ condemnation of the vasion but said in 1973 7 that the events there had 1 been “transcended.” He gave early strong support to left-wing guer- • rilla and liberation movements in Angola, Mozam-' bique and Zimbabwe-Rho-desia.

In domestic terms, one of Tito’s biggest achievements was in welding his country into a multipnational federal replublic. Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Montenegrins, and Macedonians, all of them fiercely and proudly independent peoples, were incorporated into a unified State along with other ethnic groups. Even so, separatists were active as late as 1976 and the Government was worried about . the activities abroad of extreme Croatian and Serbian nationalists,