Yugoslavia’s Tito still a mystery 40 years on
JOSIP Broz Tito, who died 40 years ago at the age of 87, was both revered and feared as the leader of former Yugoslavia, a country that later unravelled without his unifying presence.
Admired for driving out Nazi German forces in World War II with his partisan fighters, he later brought prosperity to Yugoslavia and successfully balanced it between the East and the West during the Cold War.
However, the president also jailed political dissidents, enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and was criticised for encouraging a personality cult.
Here are five things to know about Tito:
Who was he really?
Although he was the unquestioned leader of the Yugoslav federation for almost four decades, rumours have long circulated that Tito’s true origins were not Yugoslav.
According to his official biography, he was born in the Croatian town of Kumrovec to a Croat father and Slovenian mother.
But conspiracy theories have spread suggesting that the “real” Tito never returned after he was captured by Russians during World War I.
Instead, the legend goes, it was a Russian agent who assumed his identity and went on to found Yugoslavia.
In 2015, a Serbian tabloid claimed the CIA had “established through a phonetic analysis” that Tito spoke Serbo-Croatian with a foreign accent and that he was “probably of Russian or Polish origin”.
Prison island
Some remember Tito’s rule as the golden era of socialism, when jobs, free health care and quality education were available to all.
But the dictator was also a ruthless leader who put thousands of political opponents in special prisons and camps, including a jail on the Croatian island of Goli Otok, where hundreds perished.
The total number of victims of Tito’s regime has never been officially established.
Bon vivant
While Tito praised the equalising hand of socialism, he himself enjoyed a taste for the finer things, from extravagant parties to Cuban cigars and a yacht.
The opulent lifestyle he shared with his wife Jovanka, the last of three official marriages, impressed Hollywood star Richard Burton, who visited the pair in 1971.
“They live in remarkable luxury unmatched by anything else I’ve seen and [I] can well believe Princess Margaret who says the whole business makes Buck House [Buckingham Palace] look pretty middle-class,” Burton wrote in his diaries.
Burton was one of a number of celebrities, including Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Elizabeth Taylor, but also Queen Elizabeth II, who were Tito’s guests in Belgrade or in his seaside summer residence.
Yet in the end, the leader did not leave much of an inheritance for his descendants, with his belongings becoming the property of the Museum of Yugoslavia.
Youth relays
Tito’s official birthday, May 25, was for decades celebrated with great fanfare as national Youth Day.
Starting in 1947, young people across Yugoslavia joined a nationwide relay race to deliver a baton to the communist leader, who would receive the final hand-off at a birthday rally held in a football stadium.
The month-long relay wound through most major cities in the country and was closely followed on national radio and television.
Youngsters kept carrying the batons, which had messages for Tito inside, until 1987.
Non-Aligned Movement
After splitting with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1948, Tito nurtured ties with the West.
But in 1961, he became a founding father of the NonAligned Movement with the leaders of India, Indonesia, Ghana and Egypt.
The forum of developing countries offered an alternative to the East versus West rivalry of the Cold War era.
Today the movement has some 120 members, but of the former Yugoslav republics, only Serbia and Montenegro have stayed involved as observers.
In Phnom Penh, the segment of St 214 between St 163 and Monivong Boulevard in Prampi Makara district’s Boeung Prolit commune is named in his honour.