Great Yugoslavian Leader:

Josip Broz Tito

Main Life Accomplishments:

He was the leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II, Tito organized the anti-fascist resistance movement known as the Yugoslav Partisans. Later he was a founding member of Cominform, but resisted Soviet influence (see Titoism), and became one of the founders and promoters of the Non-Aligned Movement. He supported the creation of a Yugoslav nationality and identity as a Pan-Slavic replacement of the existing nationalities in Yugoslavia, and thus considered himself a Yugoslav. He was an ethnic Croat of mixed Croatian-Slovene ancestry, with his father a Croat and his mother Slovene.

 

Basics:

Born: May 25, 1892 Kumrovec, Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary 

Died: May 4, 1980 (aged 87) Ljubljana, SR Slovenia, SFR Yugoslavia

Nationality:  Yugoslav

Religion: Atheist

Fields: Politics, Military

Main Accomplishments: 

 

Chronology of Life Events:

May 25, 1892 

Birth of Josip Broz Tito

 

March 25, 1915

While in Bukovina, he was seriously wounded and captured by the Russians.

 

February 1917

Revolting workers broke into the prison and freed the prisoners. Broz subsequently joined a Bolshevik group.

 

April 1917

He was arrested again but managed to escape 

 

July 16-17, 1917

Join the demonstrations in Saint Petersburg

 

spring of 1918

He applied for membership in the Russian Communist Party.

 

June 1918 

Broz left Omsk to find work and support his family.

 

January 1920

He and his wife made a long and difficult journey home to Yugoslavia where he arrived in September.

 

1920

Elections the Communists won 59 seats and became the third strongest party.

 

1921

All Communist-won mandates were nullified. 

 

1921

He moved to Veliko Trojstvo near Bjelovar and found work as a machinist.

 

1925 

Broz moved to Kraljevica where he started working at a shipyard. He was elected as a union leader and a year later he led a shipyard strike.

 

1934

He became a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, then based in Vienna, Austria, and adopted the code name "Tito".

 

1935

Tito traveled to the Soviet Union, working for a year in the Balkan section of Comintern. He was a member of the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet secret police (NKVD).

 

1936 

The Comintern sent "Comrade Walter" (i.e. Tito) back to Yugoslavia to purge the Communist Party there.

 

1937 

Stalin had the Secretary-General of the CPY, Milan Gorkić, murdered in Moscow. The same year, Tito returned from the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia after being appointed there as Secretary-General of the still-outlawed CPY.

 

6 April 1941

German, Italian, and Hungarian forces launched an invasion of Yugoslavia.

 

April 17
After King Peter II and other members of the government fled the country, the remaining representatives of the government and military met with the German officials in Belgrade. They quickly agreed to end military resistance.

 

10 April 1941

Tito's first responses to the German invasion of Yugoslavia were the founding of a Military Committee within the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party

 

May 1, 1941

Issuing a the pamphlet calling on the people to unite in a battle against occupation.

 

July 4, 1941
After Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Tito called a Central committee meeting which named him military commander and issued a call to arms. On the same day, Yugoslav Partisans formed the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment, the first armed resistance unit in Europe (mostly consisting of Croats from the nearby city). Founded in the Brezovica forest near Sisak, Croatia, its creation marked the beginning of armed anti-Axis resistance in occupied Yugoslavia.

 

December 4, 1943

While most of the country was still occupied by the Axis, Tito proclaimed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government.

 

June 9

The Germans therefore came close to capturing or killing Tito on at least three occasions: during the 1943 Battle of Neretva (Fall Weiss); during the subsequent Battle of Sutjeska (Fall Schwarz), in which he was wounded being saved only because his loyal dog sacrificed himself

 

May 25, 1944 

When he barely managed to evade the Germans after the Raid on Drvar (Operation Rösselsprung), an airborne assault outside his Drvar headquarters in Bosnia.

 

January and June 1943 

After Tito's Partisans stood up to these intense Axis attacks and the extent of Chetnik collaboration became evident, Allied leaders switched their support from them to the Partisans.

 

June 17, 1944

On the Dalmatian island of Vis, the Treaty of Vis (Viški sporazum) was signed in an attempt to merge Tito's government (the AVNOJ) with the government in exile of King Peter II. This treaty was also known as the Tito-Šubašić Agreement.

 

June 1944

The RAF Balkan Air Force was formed to control operations that were mainly aimed at aiding his forces.

 

28 September 1944

The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) reported that Tito signed an agreement with the USSR allowing "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory" which allowed the Red Army to assist in operations in the northeastern areas of Yugoslavia. 

 

March 7, 1945

The provisional government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (Demokratska Federativna Jugoslavija, DFY) was assembled in Belgrade by Josip Broz Tito, while the provisional name allowed for either a republic or monarchy. 

 

November 1945

Tito's pro-republican People's Front, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, won the elections with an overwhelming majority.

 

November 29, 1945

King Peter II was formally deposed by the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly. The Assembly drafted a new republican constitution soon afterwards.

 

October 1946

In its first special session for 75 years, the Vatican excommunicated Tito and the Yugoslav government for sentencing Catholic archbishop Stepinac to 16 years in prison on charges of helping terrorists and of forcing conversion of Serbs to Catholicism.

 

1948

Motivated by the desire to create a strong independent economy, Tito became the first (and the only successful) socialist leader to defy Stalin's leadership in the COMINFORM; he was one of the few people to stand up to Stalin's demands for absolute loyalty. 

 

June 28, 1948

The Yugoslav Communist Party was expelled from the association 

 

June 26, 1950

The National Assembly supported a crucial bill written by Milovan Đilas and Tito about "self-management" (samoupravljanje): a type of independent socialism that experimented with profit sharing with workers in state-run enterprises.

 

January 13, 1953 

They established that the law on self-management was the basis of the entire social order in Yugoslavia.

 

January 14, 1953

Tito also succeeded Ivan Ribar as the President of Yugoslavia

 

1961 

Tito co-founded the movement with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, in an action called The Initiative of Five (Tito, Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah), thus establishing strong ties with third world countries.

 

April 7, 1963

The country changed its official name to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 

 

1966 

An agreement with the Vatican was signed according new freedom to the Yugoslav Roman Catholic Church, particularly to teach the catechism and open seminaries.

 

January 1, 1967

Yugoslavia was the first communist country to open its borders to all foreign visitors and abolish visa requirements.[18] In the same year Tito became active in promoting a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

1967

Tito offered Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubček to fly to Prague on three hours notice if Dubček needed help in facing down the Soviets.

 

1971

Tito was re-elected as President of Yugoslavia for the sixth time. 

 

May 16, 1974

The new Constitution was passed, and Josip Broz Tito was named President for life.

 

January 1980 

Tito was admitted to Klinični center Ljubljana (the clinical centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia) with circulation problems in his legs. His left leg was amputated soon afterwards. 

 

May 4, 1980 

Death of Tito

 

Early Life:

Josip Broz Tito was born in Kumrovec, Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the small region of Zagorje. He was the seventh child of Franjo and Marija Broz. His father, Franjo Broz, was a Croat, while his mother Marija (born Javeršek) was a Slovene. After spending part of his childhood years with his maternal grandfather in village of Podsreda (Slovenia), he entered the primary school (four clases) in Kumrovec in 1900.. He failed the 1st grade and finally graduated in 1905.. In 1907, moving out of the rural environment, Broz started working as a machinist's apprentice in Sisak. There, he became aware of the labor movement and celebrated May 1 - Labour Day for the first time. In 1910, he joined the union of metallurgy workers and at the same time the Social-Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia. Between 1911 and 1913, Broz worked for shorter periods in Kamnik (Slovenia), Cenkovo (Bohemia), Munich, and Mannheim (Germany), where he worked for the Benz automobile factory; he then went to Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and worked as a test driver for Daimler.

In the autumn of 1913, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was sent to a school for non-commissioned officers and become a sergeant. In May 1914, Broz won a silver medal at an army fencing competition in Budapest.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he was sent to Ruma. He was arrested for anti-war propaganda and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress. In January 1915, he was sent to the Eastern Front in Galicia to fight against Russia. He distinguished himself as a capable soldier and was recommended for military decoration. On Easter March 25, 1915, while in Bukovina, he was seriously wounded and captured by the Russians.

 

Wife Background:

Jovanka Budisavljević Broz (Serbian Cyrillic: Јованка Будисављевић Броз) (born December 7, 1924 in the Pećani village in Lika region, Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, today's Croatia) is the widow of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. They were married from 1952 until his death in 1980. She now lives in Belgrade, Serbia.

As an immediate witness and insider of the entire turbulent epoch in the history of the Balkans, she is still the subject of immense regional media interest. For her part, Jovanka maintains an extremely low-key existence and rarely gives interviews. Most think her secluded lifestyle comes as a consequence of the enormous trouble she went through following her husband's death, when all of her property was nationalized and she was placed under house arrest.

She was reported to be living in relative poverty as of 2006, after a government inquiry found that her house in Dedinje, a suburb (next to the Royal Palace) of Belgrade, had received no maintenance since her arrest. Efforts are now being made to improve her living conditions.

Jovanka Broz (née Budisavljević) is of Serbian ethnicity. She held the rank of major in the Yugoslav People's Army.
Born into a peasant family to father Milan and mother Milica, Jovanka Budisavljević grew up with two brothers, Maksim and Pero, and two sisters, Zora and Nada. Jovanka was very young when their mother passed away and their father remarried, meaning that much of her childhood was spent with a stepmother.

World War II broke out when she was 16 years old. The family was forced to flee the Ustasha regime that took power in the newly created Nazi-puppet Independent State of Croatia. Their house was eventually burned down by the Ustashe.

At 17, Jovanka joined the Partisans and was assigned to the Prve ženska partizanska četa (First female Partisan brigade), where she quickly distinguished herself as an excellent marksman. After the brigade was disbanded, she was reassigned to First Corpus' headquarters where she worked as a nurse. She was on the scene in Drvar in the summer of 1944 during the German raid codenamed Operation Rösselsprung, where she greatly helped out in the evacuation of the wounded. She saw Tito for the first time there. She continued as a nurse until the end of the war, advancing to the rank of captain in the Fourth Lika brigade. She was wounded twice during the war.

 

Father Background:

His blacksmith father, Franjo Broz was a Croat.

 

Mother Background:

His mother is Marija Javeršek

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