Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito (born Josip Broz; Cyrillic script: Јосип Броз Тито) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a highly popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation.
Josip was born as the seventh child of Franjo and Marija Broz in the village of Kumrovec within Austria-Hungary (modern-day Croatia). Drafted into the army, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest Sergeant Major in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Josip was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains, after being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians. He participated in the October Revolution, and later joined a Red Guard unit in Omsk. Upon his return home, Josip found himself in a newly created Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
He was Secretary-General (later President) of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (1939–80), and went on to lead the World War II Yugoslav guerrilla movement, the Yugoslav Partisans (1941–45). After the war, he was the Prime Minister (1943–63) and later President (1953–80) of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). From 1943 to his death in 1980, he held the rank of Marshal of Yugoslavia, serving as the supreme commander of the Yugoslav military, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). With a highly favourable reputation abroad in both Cold War blocs, Josip Broz Tito received some 98 foreign decorations, including the Legion of Honour, and the Order of the Bath.
Tito was the chief architect of the "second Yugoslavia", a socialist federation that lasted from World War II until 1991. Despite being one of the founders of Cominform, he was also the first (and the only successful) Cominform member to defy Soviet hegemony. A backer of independent roads to socialism (sometimes referred to as "national communism" or "Titoism"), he was one of the main founders and promoters of the Non-Aligned Movement, and its first Secretary-General. He supported the policy of nonalignment between the two hostile blocs in the Cold War. Such successful diplomatic and economic policies allowed Tito to preside over the Yugoslav economic boom and expansion of the 1960s and '70s. His internal policies included the suppression of nationalist sentiment and the promotion of the "brotherhood and unity" of the six Yugoslav nations. He remains a controversial figure in the Balkans.
“During the war, a battle was fought here, not only for the creation of a new Yugoslavia, but also a battle for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign republic. To some generals and leaders their position on this was not quite clear. I never once doubted my stance on Bosnia. I always said that Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot belong to this or that, only to the people that lived there since the beginning of time.”
“Let that man be a Bosnian, Herzegovinian. Outside they don't call you by another name, except simply a Bosnian. Whether that be a Muslim (Bosniak), Serb or Croat. Everyone can be what they feel that they are, and no one has a right to force a nationality upon them.”
“A decade ago young people en masse began declaring themselves as Yugoslavs. It was a form of rising Yugoslav nationalism, which was a reaction to brotherhood and unity and a feeling of belonging to a single socialist self-managing society. This pleased me greatly.”
“None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together; but we have to create our own history - history of United Yugoslavia, also in the future.”
“No one questioned "who is a Serb, who is a Croat, who is a Muslim (Bosniak)" we were all one people, that's how it was back then, and I still think it is that way today.”
“We have spilt an ocean of blood for the brotherhood and unity of our peoples and we shall not allow anyone to touch or destroy it from within.”