SOCIETY-BALKANS: Tito Raises Questions 25 Years After His Death

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, May 3 2005 (IPS) - On May 4 a quarter of a century ago, an era in the country called Yugoslavia came to an end with the death of its leader of 45 years, Josip Broz Tito.

Today, 25 years later, that former Yugoslavia too is no more. The legacy of Tito has officially been brushed aside. But his legacy lingers on, no matter how new ideologies, and newly introduced capitalism in the new nations that came up in the place of former Yugoslavia try to erase it.

"Some are desperately trying to change history," Tito’s grandson Josip Broz (58) told IPS. Broz runs a traditional Serb restaurant in Belgrade. He has always stayed out of politics.

"But I’m so glad that many people say that the best part of their lives was under Tito," Broz says. "His were the years of peace, progress and creation. Later, it was only destruction."

Tito, of mixed Croatian-Slovene origin, was the undisputed leader of the six-member Yugoslavia since World War II, when his communist troops liberated the country from German occupation.

The six-member federation fell apart in the bloody wars of the 1990s, barely a decade after Tito’s death. It gave birth to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and the Union of Serbia and Montenegro – at the cost of some 250,000 lives.

Former countrymen are still trying to re-establish relations, but antagonism remains high and ethnic hatred is hard to overcome.

"One of the tools for the purpose of independence of new nations was an organised effort to erase good memories from the minds of people," historian Todor Kuljic told IPS. "From 1991 on, it was collective brainwashing regarding Tito’s work and era."

Official propaganda in the newly created nations blanked out Tito’s achievements, such as his role in the non-aligned movement that he established with Indian and Egyptian leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser back in the early 1960s.

The memory of Tito is still strong in many of those non-aligned countries such as Iraq, where hundreds of Croatian or Serb truck drivers place his photograph on windshields to win goodwill.

That position of "neither East nor West" earned his regime the reputation of "communism with a human face."

Tito did not persecute political opponents at home, but critics began to speak of his regime as a "dictatorship", particularly when the country started to fall apart in 1991.

"Ignoring could not last forever and we now see the revival of an exotic past the young people were banned from knowing in the past 15 years," Kuljic adds.

All over former Yugoslavia, cafes and restaurants called Tito have sprung up.

Whether in Banjaluka or Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Serbian capital Belgrade, or big Serbian towns like Kragujevac and Nis, they carry memorabilia of Tito’s era, and attract thousands of regular customers.

Tito’s native village Kumrovec close to Croatian capital Zagreb is among the favourites of domestic and foreign visitors. "I came to pay my respect to those times when god walked on earth," 55-year-old Mirna Strabek told IPS recently in Zagreb. "Yes, Croatia is independent now, but our lives cannot be compared to his era."

Tito’s grave in Belgrade has become a major tourist spot for people from former Yugoslav republics. Coaches with licence plates from towns like Sarajevo, Ljubljana or Zagreb fill the streets surrounding Tito’s Memorial Centre. His ‘Blue Train’ was put back on the track as a tourist attraction last January.

When the four centuries old bridge was reopened in the Herzegovina town Mostar last summer after it was destroyed in the 1992-95 war, small statues of Tito were the best-selling souvenirs.

"It’s no wonder," vendor Zaim Smajic (45) told IPS then. "Tito’s times meant progress, each day being better than the other…what we had in this last war (1992-95) looked like the end of the world. That is why we all cherish his (Tito’s) memory."

In Slovenian capital Ljubljana, a statue of Tito was put up in front of the offices of the ruling Slovenian National Party last December. Slovenia became a full member of the European Union in May last year, the only former Yugoslav republic to accomplish such a goal.

Other nations are still fighting the combined legacy of war and then the transition to a market economy that has brought hundreds of thousands of job losses, and widespread poverty.

"Nostalgia is one thing, while defining the years of Tito’s rule is another," sociology professor Ratko Bozovic told IPS. "It is an era that needs fair analysis by historians, above all his anti-fascist role, but that can come only when passions settle and the whole region enters more quiet waters than these we’re swimming in now."