Tito Life Times

The charismatic, near-mythological figure of Josip Broz Tito was many things: an inspirational partisan leader and scourge of the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia; a doctrinaire communist and yet a thorn in Moscow’s side; an oppressor, a reformer, a playboy. During his life Tito could manage the country’s growing internal tensions through his sheer personality and prestige. But after his death in 1980 the country’s institutions and politicians were revealed as rudderless and Lilliputian. The break-up of Yugoslavia, the country Tito, the Croat turned Yugoslav had created, was inevitable the day when Slobodan Milosevic released the demon Tito had spent his life containing: ethnic rivalry. The five wars that followed - some of them yet to be fully resolved today - were Tito’s nightmare, but they were in many ways the result of his own egomania and myopia. The former Yugoslavia is still much in the news, It is moving haltingly towards the EU and NATO, with one republic, Slovenia, now a member of both.