Tito's Last Secret: How Did He Keep the Yugoslavs Together?

When Marshal Tito, president of Yugoslavia, died on May 4, 1980, the representatives of 122 states, including an impressive array of world leaders, attended his funeral. He was almost universally hailed as the last great World War II leader, the first communist to successfully challenge Stalin, and the founder of "national communism." Above all else, Tito was praised as the creator of modern Yugoslavia, the leader whose wisdom and statesmanship had united Yugoslavia's historically antagonistic national groups in a stable federation.

In his excellent book, Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West provides us with a biography, travelogue, and popular history of Yugoslavia and an analysis of the personalities and events that brought about the country's disintegration and civil war. West loves Yugoslavia and has a native's feel for local color and anecdotes. He writes so admirably that one enjoys his book even when its conclusions are questionable. This is certainly one of the most readable books ever written about Yugoslavia.

Tito as unifier of Yugoslavia is one of the author's main themes. The Communist Party came to power in Yugoslavia at the end of World War II after its Partisan army fought not only German, Italian, and other occupiers but also fellow Yugoslavs in rival, often quisling, military units. The Partisans were a multinational group (although Serbs predominated in the first half of the war), as was the Communist Party. They advocated national equality and a federal Yugoslavia in their propaganda. This helped them win the civil war since their opponents were mostly nationalists who had followings only inside their own national groups and whose extremism alienated large segments of the population.

After the war and throughout the Cold War, a triumphant Communist Party, with Tito at its helm, claimed that it had once and for all solved the nationalities problem. Because Yugoslavia collapsed after Tito's death, many--including West--believe that it was his genius that kept it together. Nothing could be further from the truth.

RISE OF A COMMUNIST

Josip Broz "Tito" (the last name being an alias he adopted in the 1930s for illegal party work) was born in 1892 in Croatia, then a part of Austria?Hungary. His father was Croatian and his mother Slovene, and they were among the better?off peasants in their village. At the age of 15, Tito left home and, frequently switching jobs, wandered from one industrial city of central Europe to another.

As a young locksmith's assistant, Tito had some sympathy for the social democratic movement, but was not politically active. Nor did he get involved with the young revolutionary Croats and Serbs of Austria?Hungary who wanted the dissolution of the Hapsburg monarchy and the unification of its South Slav lands with Serbia and Montenegro to form a new state, Yugoslavia (meaning "the land of South Slavs"). When Austria?Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914, Tito was sent as a sergeant to the Serbian front. Today's Serbian nationalists interpret this as a sign of his early anti?Serbian attitude, but many other Hapsburg Croats and Serbs fought loyally for the monarchy on all its World War I fronts.

Transferred to the Russian front, Tito was wounded and captured. After recovering, he escaped in 1917 to Petrograd (the Russified name for St. Petersburg), but did not participate in the October Revolution. He thought of emigrating to the United States, but the vicissitudes of fate brought him to Omsk, Siberia, where the Bolsheviks were in power. He became a member of the party in 1919.

When Tito returned home in 1920, Austria?Hungary was no more, and Croatia had become a part of the newly founded Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (the name "Yugoslavia" was officially adopted in 1929). However, the state ideology of Yugoslav unity was soon challenged by national conflicts, in particular between the Serbs, who favored centralism and predominated in the government and the military, and Croats, who favored federalism or the creation of a separate Croatian state. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia, created in 1919, initially attracted a considerable following, but was more revolutionary in rhetoric than in action. Even so, it was outlawed in 1921.

The party had not prepared its cadres for an underground struggle, and most of its activities ceased. Nor was Tito a fervent militant at the time. But he eventually became one and in 1927 was appointed secretary of the important Zagreb party committee. As a communist leader Tito blossomed, showing initiative and resourcefulness. He opposed factional struggles within the party and was proud and defiant during his police interrogations, trial, and more than five years of imprisonment for party activity.

CONVERSION TO FEDERALISM

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the main quarrel inside the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was between moderates (who were mostly in power) and radicals (mostly in opposition). The former were usually middle?class, middle?aged intellectuals who preferred legal action and engaged in endless intellectually stimulating but politically unproductive polemics. They kept the party, in the name of "pure class struggle," away from nationalistic quarrels. The latter were mostly younger intellectuals and workers who favored underground work, though usually not terrorism, and the energetic recruitment of the young. Following Lenin, who during the Russian Revolution sought the support of non?Russian nations dissatisfied with tsarism and Russification, they wanted the party to side with non?Serbian nations against "Serbian hegemony." Neither the moderates nor the radicals, however, were nationalists.