biography
| name: |
Tito
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| |
known as Marshal Tito, originally Josip Broz
|
pronunciation:
[teetoh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1892–1980)
|
| biography:
| Yugoslav statesman and president (1953–80), born in Kumrovec, NW Croatia. In World War 1 he served with the Austro–Hungarian army, was taken prisoner by the Russians, and became a Communist. He was imprisoned for conspiring against the regime in Yugoslavia (1928–9), and became secretary of the Communist Party in 1937. In 1941 he organized partisan forces against the Axis conquerors, and after the war became the country's first Communist prime minister (1945), consolidating his position with the presidency in 1953. He broke with Stalin and the Cominform in 1948, developing Yugoslavia's independent style of Communism (Titoism), and played a leading role in the association of nonaligned countries. His marriage to a Serb symbolized his attempts to unify the two conflicting national groups within Yugoslavia. Some believe that unity was never viable, however, and that Tito's rule encouraged nationalism - which erupted in civil war in the 1990s. |
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