The Dimitrov Constitution was the second Constitution of Bulgaria , in effect from 1947 to 1971. It formed the legal basis for Communist rule in Bulgaria.
168-483: The document was named after the country's first Communist leader, Georgi Dimitrov . He guided the framing of the 1947 constitution on the model of the 1936 Soviet Constitution . The Dimitrov Constitution guaranteed citizens all manner of personal freedoms, such as equality before the law, freedom from discrimination, freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and inviolability of person, domicile, and correspondence. However, these rights were effectively rendered meaningless by
336-710: A communist state , which was eventually renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . Despite being one of the founders of the Cominform , he became the first Cominform member and the only leader in Joseph Stalin 's lifetime to defy Soviet hegemony in the Eastern Bloc , leading to Yugoslavia's expulsion from the organisation in 1948 in what was known as the Tito–Stalin split . In
504-773: A compositor , and became active in the labor movement in the Bulgarian capital. By age 15, he was an active trade union member. By age 18 in 1900, he was secretary of the Sofia branch of the printers' union. Dimitrov joined the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1902. The following year he allied himself with Dimitar Blagoev and the faction that formed the Social Democratic Labour Party of Bulgaria ("The Narrow Party", or tesniaks ). In 1919, this party became
672-570: A people's republic . Later that year, he succeeded Kimon Georgiev as Prime Minister , though Dimitrov had already been the most powerful man in the country since the monarchy was abolished two months earlier. He retained his Soviet citizenship. One of Dimitrov's first acts as Prime Minister was to negotiate with Josip Broz Tito on the creation of a Federation of the Southern Slavs . The Bulgarian and Yugoslav Communist leaderships had been discussing this matter since November 1944. The idea
840-489: A 3,200-kilometre (2,000 mi) journey. At one point, police searched the train looking for an escaped POW, but were deceived by Broz's fluent Russian. In Omsk, local Bolsheviks stopped the train and told Broz that Vladimir Lenin had seized control of Petrograd. They recruited him into an International Red Guard that guarded the Trans-Siberian Railway during the winter of 1917 and 1918. In May 1918,
1008-489: A Russian attack near Bukovina . In his account of his capture, Broz wrote: "suddenly the right flank yielded and through the gap poured cavalry of the Circassians, from Asiatic Russia. Before we knew it they were thundering through our positions, leaping from their horses and throwing themselves into our trenches with lances lowered. One of them rammed his two-yard, iron-tipped, double-pronged lance into my back just below
1176-727: A Slovene mother in Kumrovec in what was then Austria-Hungary . Drafted into military service, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army of that time. After being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians during World War I , he was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains . Tito participated in some events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and
1344-703: A battle against the occupation. On 27 June 1941, the Central Committee appointed Tito commander-in-chief of all national liberation military forces. On 1 July 1941, the Comintern sent precise instructions calling for immediate action. Tito stayed in Belgrade until 16 September 1941, when he, together with all members of the CPY, left Belgrade to travel to rebel-controlled territory. To leave Belgrade Tito used documents given to him by Dragoljub Milutinović, who
1512-468: A bomb and another with a rifle. [...] If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second. One significant consequence of the tension arising between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union was Tito's decision to begin large-scale repression against enemies of the government. This repression was not limited to known and alleged Stalinists but also included members of
1680-477: A clause prohibiting activity that would jeopardize the attainments of "the national revolution of 9 September 1944." Citizens were guaranteed employment but required to work in a socially useful capacity. The constitution also prescribed a planned national economy, and provided for a national welfare system. Unlike the Soviet Constitution, private property was allowed, provided that it was not used "to
1848-592: A deal. On 12 September 1944, King Peter II called on all Yugoslavs to come together under Tito's leadership and stated that those who did not were "traitors", by which time Tito was recognised by all Allied authorities (including the government-in-exile) as the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia , in addition to the commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav forces. On 28 September 1944, the Telegraph Agency of
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#17327649433902016-636: A disorderly surrender. On 14 May he dispatched a telegram to the supreme headquarters of the Slovene Partisan Army prohibiting the execution of prisoners of war and commanding the transfer of the possible suspects to a military court. On 7 March 1945, the provisional government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (DFY) was assembled in Belgrade by Josip Broz Tito, while the provisional name allowed for either
2184-399: A father from Razlog ). His father was a rural craftsman, forced by industrialisation to become a factory worker. His mother, Parashkeva Doseva, was a Protestant Christian , and his family is sometimes described as Protestant. The family moved to Radomir and then to Sofia . Several of Georgi's siblings engaged in leftist political activities. His brother Nikola moved to Russia and joined
2352-704: A fondness for luxury, taking over the royal palaces that had belonged to the House of Karađorđević together with the former palaces used by the House of Habsburg in Yugoslavia. His tours across Yugoslavia in his luxury Blue Train closely resembled the royal tours of the Karađorđević kings and Habsburg emperors and in Serbia. He also adopted the traditional royal custom of being a godfather to every 9th son, although he modified it to include daughters as well after criticism
2520-693: A forged Czech passport, where he joined Gorkić and the rest of the Politburo of the CPY. It was decided that the Austrian government was too hostile to communism, so the Politburo travelled to Brno in Czechoslovakia , and Tito accompanied them. On Christmas Day 1934, a secret meeting of the Central Committee of the CPY was held in Ljubljana, and Tito was elected as a member of the Politburo for
2688-430: A half years at Lepoglava, Broz was accused of attempting to escape and was transferred to Maribor prison, where he was held in solitary confinement for several months. After completing the full term of his sentence, he was released, only to be arrested outside the prison gates and taken to Ogulin to serve the four-month sentence he had avoided in 1927. He was finally released from prison on 16 March 1934, but even then, he
2856-795: A little of Trotsky, and "as for Stalin, during the time I stayed in Russia, I never once heard his name". Tito joined the Communist Party in 1920 in Omsk. In the autumn of 1920, he and his pregnant wife returned to his homeland, by train to Narva , by ship to Stettin , then by train to Vienna, where they arrived on 20 September. In early October, Broz returned to Kumrovec in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to find that his mother had died and his father had moved to Jastrebarsko , near Zagreb. Sources differ over whether Broz joined
3024-536: A melee outside the venue, police arrested him. They failed to identify him, charging him under his false name for a breach of the peace. He was imprisoned for 14 days and then released, returning to his previous activities. The police eventually tracked him down with the help of a police informer. He was ill-treated and held for three months before being tried in court in November 1928 for his illegal communist activities, which included allegations that police had planted
3192-468: A mill mechanic. After the arrest of the CPY leadership in January 1922, Stevo Sabić took over control of its operations. Sabić contacted Broz, who agreed to work illegally for the party, distributing leaflets and agitating among factory workers. In the contest of ideas between those that wanted to pursue moderate policies and those that advocated violent revolution, Broz sided with the latter. In 1924, Broz
3360-517: A professional revolutionary. The CPY concentrated its revolutionary efforts on factory workers in the more industrialised areas of Croatia and Slovenia, encouraging strikes and similar action. In 1925, the now unemployed Broz moved to Kraljevica on the Adriatic coast, where he started working at a shipyard to further the aims of the CPY. During his time in Kraljevica, he acquired a love of
3528-462: A protest against the neutrality policy of the Stojadinović government. It was eventually broken up by the police. In March 1938, Tito returned to Yugoslavia from Paris. Hearing a rumour that his opponents within the CPY had tipped off the police, he travelled to Belgrade rather than Zagreb and used a different passport. While in Belgrade, he stayed with a young intellectual, Vladimir Dedijer , who
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#17327649433903696-414: A republic or monarchy. This government was headed by Tito as provisional Yugoslav Prime Minister and included representatives from the royalist government-in-exile, among others Ivan Šubašić . In accordance with the agreement between resistance leaders and the government-in-exile, post-war elections were held to determine the form of government. In November 1945, Tito's pro-republican People's Front , led by
3864-558: A result of his limited schooling, throughout his life, Tito was poor at spelling. After leaving school, he initially worked for a maternal uncle and then on his parents' family farm. In 1907, his father wanted him to emigrate to the United States but could not raise the money for the voyage. Instead, aged 15 years, Broz left Kumrovec and travelled about 97 kilometres (60 mi) south to Sisak , where his cousin Jurica Broz
4032-523: A retreat beyond Yugoslav borders. After the Partisan victory and the end of hostilities in Europe, all external forces were ordered off Yugoslav territory. In the autumn of 1944, the communist leadership adopted a political decision on the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia . On 21 November, a special decree was issued on the confiscation and nationalisation of ethnic German property. To implement
4200-545: A secret conference of the CPY in Slovenia. The conference was held at the summer palace of the Roman Catholic bishop of Ljubljana , whose brother was a communist sympathiser. It was at this conference that Broz first met Edvard Kardelj , a young Slovene communist who had recently been released from prison. Broz and Kardelj subsequently became good friends, with Tito later regarding him as his most reliable deputy. As he
4368-421: A series of interethnic wars . Historians critical of Tito view his presidency as authoritarian and see him as a dictator , while others characterise him as a benevolent dictator . He was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, and remains popular in the former countries of Yugoslavia. Tito was viewed as a unifying symbol, with his internal policies maintaining the peaceful coexistence of
4536-670: A series of moves in search of work, first in Ljubljana , then Trieste , Kumrovec and Zagreb, where he worked repairing bicycles. He joined his first strike action on May Day 1911. After a brief period of work in Ljubljana, between May 1911 and May 1912, he worked in a factory in Kamnik in the Kamnik–Savinja Alps . After it closed, he was offered redeployment to Čenkov in Bohemia . On arriving at his new workplace, he discovered that
4704-468: A smuggler but pressed on across the border and was detained by the local Heimwehr , a paramilitary Home Guard. He used the Austrian accent he had developed during his war service to convince them that he was a wayward Austrian mountaineer, and they allowed him to proceed to Vienna. Once there, he contacted the General Secretary of the CPY, Milan Gorkić , who sent him to Ljubljana to arrange
4872-629: A socialist during the First World War and campaigned against his country's involvement in the conflict, which led to his brief imprisonment for sedition . In 1919, he helped found the Bulgarian Communist Party . Two years later, he moved to the Soviet Union and was elected to the executive committee of Profintern . In 1923, Dimitrov led a failed communist uprising against the government of Aleksandar Tsankov and
5040-665: A strong independent economy, Tito modelled his economic development plan independently from Moscow, which resulted in a diplomatic escalation followed by a bitter exchange of letters in which Tito wrote that "We study and take as an example the Soviet system, but we are developing socialism in our country in somewhat different forms". The Soviet answer on 4 May admonished Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) for failing to admit and correct its mistakes and went on to accuse them of being too proud of their successes against
5208-627: A success of farming. Josip spent a significant proportion of his pre-school years living with his maternal grandparents at Podsreda, where he became a favourite of his grandfather Martin Javeršek. By the time he returned to Kumrovec to begin school, he spoke Slovene better than Croatian , and had learned to play the piano. Despite his mixed parentage, Broz identified as a Croat like his father and neighbours. In July 1900, at age eight, Broz entered primary school at Kumrovec. He completed four years of school, failing 2nd grade and graduating in 1905. As
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5376-598: A total loss. The U.S. was outraged and sent an ultimatum to the Yugoslav government, demanding the release of the Americans in custody, U.S. access to the downed planes, and full investigation of the incidents. Stalin was opposed to what he felt were such provocations, as he believed the USSR unready to face the West in open war so soon after the losses of World War II and at the time when U.S. had operational nuclear weapons whereas
5544-640: Is a Bulgarian." Among those impressed with Dimitrov was the noted U.S. attorney Arthur Garfield Hays , co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union . Hays attended the Leipzig Trial and devoted a chapter to it in his 1942 autobiography. In an oft-quoted passage, Hays wrote of Dimitrov: I have never seen such a magnificent exhibition of moral courage. The man was not only brave but reckless, and selflessly so. Whenever he got to his feet, he would by force of his personality place
5712-665: Is a part of me, each phrase is the expression of my deep indignation against the unjust accusation, against the putting of this anti-Communist crime, the burning of the Reichstag, to the account of the Communists. Dimitrov's calm conduct of his defence, and the accusations he directed at his prosecutors, won him world renown. In Europe, a popular saying spread across the Continent: "There is only one brave man in Germany, and he
5880-409: Is frank and open. I am used to calling a spade a spade. I am no lawyer appearing before this court in the mere way of his profession. I am defending myself, an accused Communist. I am defending my political honor, my honor as a revolutionary. I am defending my Communist ideology, my ideals. I am defending the content and significance of my whole life. For these reasons every word which I say in this court
6048-460: Is often referred to as the Leipzig Trial. Dimitrov decided to refuse counsel and defend himself against his Nazi accusers, most famously Hermann Göring . Dimitrov used the trial as an opportunity to defend the Communist ideology. Explaining why he chose to speak in his own defense, Dimitrov said: I admit that my tone is hard and grim. The struggle of my life has always been hard and grim. My tone
6216-605: The 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment garrisoned in Zagreb. After learning to ski during the winter of 1913 and 1914, Broz was sent to a school for non-commissioned officers (NCO) in Budapest , after which he was promoted to sergeant major . At age 22, he was the youngest of that rank in his regiment. At least one source states that he was the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After winning
6384-765: The Balkan Wars and World War I . In 1915, he voted against awarding new war credits and denounced Bulgarian nationalism, for which he received short prison sentences. In summer 1917, after he intervened in defense of wounded soldiers who were being ordered by an officer to clear out of a first-class railway carriage, Dimitrov was charged with incitement to mutiny, stripped of his parliamentary immunity, and imprisoned on 29 August 1918. Released in 1919, he went underground and made two failed attempts to visit Russia, finally reaching Moscow in February 1921. He returned to Bulgaria later in 1921, but then travelled again to Moscow and
6552-720: The Balkans , the Axis began to divert more resources to the destruction of the Partisans main force and its high command. This meant, among other things, a concerted German effort to capture Josip Broz Tito personally. On 25 May 1944, he managed to evade the Germans after the Raid on Drvar ( Operation Rösselsprung ), an airborne assault outside his Drvar headquarters in Bosnia . After
6720-599: The Bolsheviks in Odessa. In 1908, Nikola was arrested and exiled to Siberia where he died in 1916. Georgi's brother Konstantin became a trade union leader but was killed in the First Balkan War in 1912. One of his sisters, Lena, married a future communist leader, Valko Chervenkov . Dimitrov was sent to Sunday school by his mother, who wanted him to be a pastor, but he was expelled at age 12. He then trained as
6888-703: The Bulgarian Communist Party when it affiliated with Bolshevism and the Comintern . From 1904 to 1923, Dimitrov was Secretary of the General Trade Unions Federation, which the Narrows controlled. In 1911, he spent a month in prison for libeling an official of the rival Free Federation of Trade Unions, whom he accused of strike-breaking. In 1913, he was elected to the Bulgarian Parliament. He opposed government policies in
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7056-550: The Cominform and the other Eastern Bloc countries. In December 1947, Enver Hoxha and an Albanian delegation were invited to a high-level meeting in Bulgaria. Dimitrov was aware of the subversive activity of Koçi Xoxe and other pro-Yugoslav Albanian officials. He told Enver Hoxha during the meeting: "Look here, Comrade Enver, keep the Party pure! Let it be revolutionary, proletarian and everything will go well with you!" After
7224-509: The Comintern executives , Tito was by October 1938 reassured that the party would not be disestablished; he was then tasked to compile two resolutions on plans of future CPY activities. Hoping to return to Yugoslavia before the 1938 Yugoslavian parliamentary election in December, Tito requested permission to do so from Comintern's Georgi Dimitrov several times, saying that his stay in Moscow
7392-483: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia , won the elections with an overwhelming majority, the vote having been boycotted by monarchists . During the period, Tito evidently enjoyed massive popular support due to being generally viewed by the populace as the liberator of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav administration in the immediate post-war period managed to unite a country that had been severely affected by ultra-nationalist upheavals and war devastation, while successfully suppressing
7560-460: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union while in Russia, but he said that the first time he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) was in Zagreb after he returned to his homeland. Upon his return home, Broz was unable to gain employment as a metalworker in Kumrovec, so he and his wife moved briefly to Zagreb, where he worked as a waiter and took part in a waiter's strike. He also joined
7728-664: The Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), the same U.S. aid institution that administered the Marshall Plan . Still, Tito did not agree to align with the West, which was a common consequence of accepting American aid at the time. After Stalin's death in 1953, relations with the USSR were relaxed, and Tito began to receive aid from the Comecon as well. In this way, Tito played East–West antagonism to his advantage. Instead of choosing sides, he
7896-409: The Order of the Bath . Josip Broz was born on 7 May 1892 in Kumrovec , a village in the northern Croatian region of Zagorje . At the time it was part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire . He was the seventh or eighth child of Franjo Broz (1860–1936) and Marija née Javeršek (1864–1918). His parents had already had a number of children die in early infancy. Broz
8064-447: The Red Army . Tito's leading role in liberating Yugoslavia not only greatly strengthened his position in his party and among the Yugoslav people but also caused him to be more insistent that Yugoslavia had more room to follow its own interests than other Bloc leaders who had more reasons to recognise Soviet efforts in helping them liberate their own countries from Axis control. Although Tito was formally an ally of Stalin after World War II,
8232-523: The Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in July and August 1935, where he briefly saw Joseph Stalin for the first time. After the congress, he toured the Soviet Union and then returned to Moscow to continue his work. He contacted Polka and Žarko, but soon fell in love with an Austrian woman who worked at the Hotel Lux, Johanna Koenig, known within communist ranks as Lucia Bauer. When she became aware of this liaison, Polka divorced Tito in April 1936. Tito married Bauer on 13 October of that year. After
8400-410: The Yugoslav Partisans , often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe . Following Yugoslavia's liberation in 1945, he served as its prime minister from 29 November 1945 to 29 June 1963 and president from 14 January 1953 until his death in 1980. The political ideology and policies promulgated by Tito are known as Titoism . Tito was born to a Croat father and
8568-643: The prime minister , was almost always the leader of the Communist Party. The judiciary was appointed by the National Assembly at all levels and lost all independence. Local government was exercised by people's councils, who elected executive committees responsible to the Presidium. The constitution remained in effect until 1971, when it was replaced by the Zhivkov Constitution . Georgi Dimitrov Georgi Dimitrov Mihaylov ( / d ɪ ˈ m iː t r ɒ f / ; Bulgarian : Гео̀рги Димитро̀в Миха̀йлов) also known as Georgiy Mihaylovich Dimitrov ( Russian : Гео́ргий Миха́йлович Дими́тров ; 18 June 1882 – 2 July 1949),
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#17327649433908736-445: The 1980s. Josip Broz Tito Josip Broz ( Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic : Јосип Броз , pronounced [jǒsip brôːz] ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito ( / ˈ t iː t oʊ / ; Тито , pronounced [tîto] ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II , he led
8904-410: The Austrian Army records showed that he was a brave soldier, which contradicted his later claim to have opposed the Habsburg monarchy and his self-portrait of himself as an unwilling conscript fighting in a war he opposed. Broz's fellow soldiers regarded him as kaisertreu ("true to the Emperor"). On 25 March 1915, Broz was wounded in the back by a Circassian cavalryman's lance and captured during
9072-487: The Blagoevgrad Region should claim а Macedonian identity. However, differences soon emerged between Dimitrov and Tito with regard to both the future joint country and the Macedonian question. Whereas Dimitrov envisaged a state where Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would be placed on an equal footing and Macedonia would be more or less attached to Bulgaria, Tito saw Bulgaria as a seventh republic in an enlarged Yugoslavia tightly ruled from Belgrade. Their differences also extended to
9240-409: The Bulgarian CP, Dimitrov was tried in absentia in May 1926 and sentenced to death, although he had not approved the attack. Living under pseudonyms , he remained in the Soviet Union until 1929, when he was ousted from his Bulgarian CP leadership role by a faction of younger, more left-wing activists. Dimitrov then relocated to Germany where he was given charge of the Central European section of
9408-439: The Bulgarian Communist Party) talking in a cafe with Van der Lubbe. Dimitrov would remain in Nazi detention until the following February. His diary entries during this period tended to be "dry and elliptical, and occasionally obscure" since he knew they would be subject to examination by his captors. The Reichstag fire trial lasted from September to December 1933. Because it occurred at the Reich Supreme Court in Leipzig , it
9576-416: The CPY . He later explained that he survived the Purge by staying out of Spain, where the NKVD was active, and also by avoiding visiting the Soviet Union as much as possible. When first appointed as general secretary, he avoided travelling to Moscow by insisting that he needed to deal with some disciplinary issues in the CPY in Paris. He also promoted the idea that the upper echelons of the CPY should be sharing
9744-426: The CPY's most prominent leaders, including over 20 members of the Central Committee. Both Tito's ex-wife Polka and his wife Koenig/Bauer were arrested as "imperialist spies". Both were eventually released, Polka after 27 months in prison. Tito therefore needed to make arrangements for the care of Žarko, who was 14. He placed him in a boarding school outside Kharkov , then at a school at Penza , but he ran away twice and
9912-574: The CPY. The CPY's influence on the political life of Yugoslavia was growing rapidly. In the 1920 elections, it won 59 seats and became the third-strongest party. In light of difficult economic and social circumstances, the regime viewed the CPY as the main threat to the system of government. On 30 December, the government issued a Proclamation ( Obznana ) outlawing communist activities, which included bans on propaganda, assembly halls, stripping of civil service for servants and scholarships for students found to be communist. Its author, Milorad Drašković ,
10080-400: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia. The Croatian branch of the CPY was in disarray, a situation exacerbated by the escape of the executive committee of the CPY to Vienna in Austria, from which they were directing activities. Over the next six months, Broz travelled several times between Zagreb, Ljubljana and Vienna, using false passports. In July 1934, he was blackmailed by
10248-409: The Comintern. In 1932, he was appointed Secretary General of the World Committee Against War and Fascism , replacing Willi Münzenberg . Dimitrov was living in Berlin in early 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took power. On the night of 27 February, the German parliament building, the Reichstag , was severely damaged in an arson attack. A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe , was found near
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#173276494339010416-472: The Communist Party or anyone exhibiting sympathy towards the Soviet Union. Prominent partisans, such as Vlado Dapčević and Dragoljub Mićunović , were victims of this period of strong repression, which lasted until 1956 and was marked by significant violations of human rights. Tens of thousands of political opponents served in forced labour camps, such as Goli Otok (meaning Barren Island), and hundreds died. An often disputed but relatively feasible number that
10584-449: The Congress were transcribed and published in a September 1935 pamphlet, The United Front Against Fascism , which went through numerous editions over the ensuing years. During the Great Purge in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov knew about the mass arrests, but did almost nothing. In November 1937, he was told by Stalin to lure the German communist Willi Münzenberg to the USSR so that he could be arrested. Dimitrov did not object and did as he
10752-405: The Eastern Bloc. In fact, Stalin and Tito had an uneasy alliance from the start, with Stalin considering Tito too independent. From 1946 to 1948, Tito actively engaged in building an alliance with neighbouring communist Albania , with the intent of incorporating Albania into Yugoslavia. According to Enver Hoxha , the then communist ruler of Albania, in the summer of 1946 Tito promised Hoxha that
10920-402: The First Proletarian Brigade (commanded by Koča Popović ) and on 1 March 1942, Tito created the Second Proletarian Brigade. In liberated territories, the Partisans organised People's Committees to act as a civilian government. The Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) convened in Bihać on 26–27 November 1942 and in Jajce on 29 November 1943. In the two sessions,
11088-418: The Germans, maintaining that the Red Army had saved them from destruction. Tito's response on 17 May suggested that the matter be settled at the meeting of the Cominform to be held that June. However, Tito did not attend the second meeting of the Cominform , fearing that Yugoslavia was to be openly attacked. In 1949 the crisis nearly escalated into an armed conflict, as Hungarian and Soviet forces were massing on
11256-462: The Griedl Works before getting a job at Wiener Neustadt . There he worked for Austro-Daimler and was often asked to drive and test the cars. During this time, he spent considerable time fencing and dancing, and during his training and early work life, he also learned German and passable Czech . In May 1913, Broz was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army for his compulsory two years of service. He successfully requested to serve with
11424-409: The League of Communists of Yugoslavia maintained even after his death. After Tito's death, Yugoslavia's leadership was transformed into an annually rotating presidency to give representation to all of its nationalities and prevent the emergence of an authoritarian leader. Twelve years later, as communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and ethnic tensions escalated, Yugoslavia dissolved and descended into
11592-416: The Macedonian question. The ideas of a Balkan Federation and a United Macedonia were abandoned, the Macedonian teachers were expelled and the teaching of Macedonian throughout the province was discontinued. At the 5th Congress of the Bulgarian Workers' Party (Communists), Dimitrov accused Tito of "nationalism" and hostility towards the internationalist communists, specifically the Soviet Union. Despite
11760-405: The National Assembly was not in session, its powers were exercised by a Presidium comprising a president (a post equivalent to that of president of the republic) and 18 members. The Presidium also had the power to declare war, make peace, amend the constitution, and approve the national economic plan. Executive authority was vested in a Council of Ministers appointed by the Presidium. Its chairman,
11928-517: The Partisans at the Tehran Conference . This resulted in Allied aid being parachuted behind Axis lines to assist the Partisans. On 17 June 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. The Balkan Air Force was formed in June 1944 to control operations that were mainly aimed at aiding his forces. On 12 August 1944, Winston Churchill met Tito in Naples for
12096-464: The Partisans managed to endure and avoid these intense Axis attacks between January and June 1943, and the extent of Chetnik collaboration became evident, Allied leaders switched their support from Draža Mihailović to Tito. King Peter II , American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in officially recognising Tito and
12264-781: The Russian side but also claiming that the whole matter arose from a clerical error. A third version was that he had been overheard saying that he hoped the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be defeated. After his acquittal and release, his regiment served briefly on the Serbian Front before being deployed to the Eastern Front in Galicia in early 1915 to fight against Russia . In his account of his military service, Broz did not mention that he participated in
12432-547: The Soviet Union (TASS) reported that Tito signed an agreement with the Soviet Union allowing "temporary entry" of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory, which allowed the Red Army to assist in operations in the northeastern areas of Yugoslavia. With their strategic right flank secured by the Allied advance, the Partisans prepared and executed a massive general offensive that succeeded in breaking through German lines and forcing
12600-586: The Soviets had set up a spy ring in the Yugoslav party as early as 1945, giving way to an uneasy alliance. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, several armed incidents occurred between Yugoslavia and the Western Allies . Following the war, Yugoslavia acquired the Italian territory of Istria as well as the cities of Zadar and Rijeka . Yugoslav leadership was looking to incorporate Trieste into
12768-592: The USSR had yet to conduct its first test. In addition, Tito was openly supportive of the Communist side in the Greek Civil War , while Stalin kept his distance, having agreed with Churchill not to pursue Soviet interests there, although he did support the Greek communist struggle politically, as demonstrated in several assemblies of the UN Security Council. In 1948, motivated by the desire to create
12936-786: The United States but was stopped at the border. He was arrested along with other suspected Bolsheviks during the subsequent crackdown by the Russian Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky . He was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for three weeks, during which he claimed to be an innocent citizen of Perm. When he finally admitted to being an escaped POW, he was to be returned by train to Kungur, but escaped at Yekaterinburg , then caught another train that reached Omsk in Siberia on 8 November after
13104-484: The World Congress, Tito worked to promote the new Comintern line on Yugoslavia, which was that it would no longer work to break up the country and would instead defend the integrity of Yugoslavia against Nazism and Fascism. From a distance, Tito also worked to organise strikes at the shipyards at Kraljevica and the coal mines at Trbovlje near Ljubljana. He tried to convince the Comintern that it would be better if
13272-651: The Yugoslav Minister of the Interior, was assassinated by a young communist, Alija Alijagić , on 2 August 1921. The CPY was then declared illegal under the Yugoslav State Security Act of 1921, and the regime proceeded to prosecute party members and sympathisers as political prisoners . Due to his overt communist links, Broz was fired from his employment. He and his wife then moved to the village of Veliko Trojstvo where he worked as
13440-599: The Yugoslav province of Kosovo would be ceded to Albania. Despite the decision of unification being agreed upon by Yugoslav communists during the Bujan Conference , the plan never materialised. In the first post-war years in Kosovo, Tito enacted the policy of banning the return of Serb colonists to Kosovo, in addition to enacting the first large-scale primary education program of the Albanian language . During
13608-527: The anti-Bolshevik Czechoslovak Legion wrested control of parts of Siberia from Bolshevik forces, the Provisional Siberian Government established itself in Omsk, and Broz and his comrades went into hiding. At this time, Broz met a 14-year-old local girl, Pelagija "Polka" Belousova [ sh ] , who hid him and then helped him escape to a Kazakh village 64 kilometres (40 mi) from Omsk. Broz again worked maintaining
13776-617: The area , he led the Yugoslav guerrilla movement, the Partisans (1941–1945). By the end of the war, the Partisans, with the Allies' backing since mid-1943, took power in Yugoslavia. After the war, Tito served as the prime minister (1945–1963), president (1953–1980; from 1974 president for life ), and marshal of Yugoslavia , the highest rank of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). In 1945, under his leadership, Yugoslavia became
13944-550: The attempt was approved by the Comintern, and secured the positions of Kolarov and Dimitrov – who escaped via Yugoslavia to Vienna – as the joint leaders of the Bulgarian CP. The political struggle in Bulgaria intensified in 1925. Dimitrov's only surviving brother, Todor, was arrested and killed that year by royal police. After the April 1925 St Nedelya Church assault , which was a terrorist bomb attack carried out by members of
14112-647: The bishops' conference released a letter condemning alleged Partisan war crimes in September 1945. The next year, Stepinac was arrested and put on trial , which some saw as a show trial. In October 1946, in its first special session for 75 years, the Vatican excommunicated Tito and the Yugoslav government for sentencing Stepinac to 16 years in prison on charges of assisting Ustaše terror and of supporting forced conversions of Serbs to Catholicism. Stepinac received preferential treatment in recognition of his status and
14280-409: The bombs found at his address. He was convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. After Broz's sentencing, his wife and son returned to Kumrovec, where sympathetic locals looked after them, but then one day, they suddenly left without explanation and returned to the Soviet Union. She fell in love with another man, and Žarko grew up in institutions. After arriving at Lepoglava prison , Broz
14448-475: The country as well, which was opposed by the Western Allies. This led to several armed incidents, notably attacks by Yugoslav fighter planes on U.S. transport aircraft, causing bitter criticism from the West. In 1946 alone, Yugoslav air-force shot down two U.S. transport aircraft. The passengers and crew of the first plane were secretly interned by the Yugoslav government. The second plane and its crew were
14616-552: The court, the prosecutors, the German audience, and the Nazis on the defensive. This striking characterization was cited in multiple American newspaper reviews of Hays' book and helped introduce Dimitrov's name throughout the U.S. On 23 December 1933, the verdicts were read. While Van der Lubbe was found guilty and sentenced to death, the judge acquitted Dimitrov, Tanev, and Popov because of insufficient evidence to connect them to what
14784-699: The dangers of underground resistance within the country. He developed a new, younger leadership team that was loyal to him, including the Slovene Edvard Kardelj, the Serb, Aleksandar Ranković , and the Montenegrin, Milovan Đilas . In December 1937, Tito arranged for a demonstration to greet the French foreign minister when he visited Belgrade, expressing solidarity with the French against Nazi Germany. The protest march numbered 30,000 and turned into
14952-450: The decision, 70 camps were established in Yugoslav territory. In the final days of World War II in Yugoslavia, units of the Partisans were responsible for atrocities during Bleiburg repatriations , and accusations of culpability were later raised at the Yugoslav leadership under Tito. At the time, according to some scholars, Josip Broz Tito repeatedly issued calls for surrender to the retreating column, offering amnesty and attempting to avoid
15120-561: The detriment of the public good." The constitution set up a highly centralized governmental structure. The legislature, the National Assembly , was defined as the "highest organ of state power." It was elected for a four-year term and met in regular session twice a year. In practice, it did little more than rubber-stamp decisions already made at the highest levels of the Bulgarian Communist Party When
15288-667: The duties of imprisoned communists and on trade unions. He was in Ljubljana when Vlado Chernozemski , an assassin for the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) and instructor for the Croatian ultranationalist organisation Ustaše , assassinated King Alexander in Marseilles on 9 October 1934. In the crackdown on dissidents that followed his death, it was decided that Tito should leave Yugoslavia. He travelled to Vienna on
15456-732: The employer was trying to bring in cheaper labour to replace the local Czech workers, and he and others joined successful strike action to force the employer to back down. Driven by curiosity, Broz moved to Plzeň , where he was briefly employed at the Škoda Works . He next travelled to Munich in Bavaria . He also worked at the Benz car factory in Mannheim and visited the Ruhr industrial region. By October 1912, he had reached Vienna . He stayed with his older brother Martin and his family and worked at
15624-611: The end of 1939 and start of 1940, Rade Končar and Ivan Milutinović . On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia . On 10 April 1941, Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia , and Tito responded by forming a Military Committee within the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). Attacked from all sides, the armed forces of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia quickly crumbled. On 17 April 1941, after King Peter II and other members of
15792-722: The failed Austrian invasion of Serbia, instead giving the misleading impression that he fought only in Galicia, as it would have offended Serbian opinion to know that he fought in 1914 for the Habsburgs against them. On one occasion, the scout platoon he commanded went behind the enemy lines and captured 80 Russian soldiers, bringing them back to their own lines alive. In 1980 it was discovered that Broz had been recommended for an award for gallantry and initiative in reconnaissance and capturing prisoners. Tito's biographer Richard West wrote that Tito actually downplayed his military record as
15960-560: The fallout, Yugoslavia did not reverse its position on renouncing Bulgarian war reparations, as defined in the 1947 Bled accord . In 1906, Dimitrov married his first wife, Serbian emigrant milliner, writer and socialist Ljubica Ivošević , with whom he lived until her death in 1933. While in the Soviet Union, Dimitrov married his second wife, the Czech -born Roza Yulievna Fleishmann (1896–1958), who gave birth to his only son, Mitya, in 1936. The boy died at age seven of diphtheria . While Mitya
16128-784: The federation included the incorporation of the Blagoevgrad Region ("Pirin Macedonia") into the People's Republic of Macedonia and the return of the Western Outlands from Serbia to Bulgaria . In anticipation of this, Bulgaria accepted teachers from Yugoslavia who started to teach the newly codified Macedonian language in the schools in Pirin Macedonia, and also issued an order that the Bulgarians of
16296-477: The first time. The Politburo decided to send him to Moscow to report on the situation in Yugoslavia, and in early February 1935, he arrived there as a full-time official of the Comintern. He lodged at the main Comintern residence, the Hotel Lux on Tverskaya Street and was quickly in contact with Vladimir Ćopić , one of the leading Yugoslavs with the Comintern. He was soon introduced to the main personalities in
16464-428: The following years, alongside other political leaders and Marxist theorists such as Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Đilas , he initiated the idiosyncratic model of socialist self-management in which firms were managed by workers' councils and all workers were entitled to workplace democracy and equal share of profits . Tito wavered between supporting a centralised or more decentralised federation and ended up favouring
16632-447: The government fled the country , the remaining representatives of the government and military met with German officials in Belgrade . They quickly agreed to end military resistance. Prominent communist leaders, including Tito, held the May consultations to discuss the course of action to take in the face of the invasion. On 1 May 1941, Tito issued a pamphlet calling on the people to unite in
16800-649: The help of two schoolgirls who brought him Russian classics by such authors as Tolstoy and Turgenev . After recuperating, in mid-1916, Broz was transferred to the Ardatov POW camp in the Samara Governorate , where he used his skills to maintain the nearby village grain mill. At the end of the year, he was transferred to the Kungur POW camp near Perm where the POWs were used as labour to maintain
16968-400: The immediate post-war period, Tito's Yugoslavia had a strong commitment to orthodox Marxist ideas. Harsh repressive measures against dissidents and " enemies of the state " were common from government agents, although not known to be under Tito's orders, including "arrests, show trials, forced collectivisation, suppression of churches and religion". As the leader of Yugoslavia, Tito displayed
17136-478: The initial rupture, Stalin invited Dimitrov and Tito to Moscow regarding the recent incident. Dimitrov accepted the invitation, but Tito refused, and sent his close associate Edvard Kardelj instead. The resulting rift between Stalin and Tito in 1948 gave the Bulgarian Government an eagerly-awaited opportunity of denouncing Yugoslav policy in Macedonia as expansionistic, and of revising its policy on
17304-413: The international association of socialist states, while other socialist states of Eastern Europe subsequently underwent purges of alleged "Titoists". Stalin took the matter personally and arranged several assassination attempts on Tito's life, none of which succeeded. In one correspondence between them, Tito openly wrote: Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with
17472-818: The joint country as well as the Macedonian question, and was completely abandoned following the fallout between Stalin and Tito . Dimitrov died after a short illness in 1949 in Barvikha near Moscow. His embalmed body was housed in the Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum in Sofia until its removal in 1990; the mausoleum was demolished in 1999. The first of eight children, Dimitrov was born in Kovachevtsi , in present-day Pernik Province , to refugee parents from Ottoman Macedonia (a mother from Bansko and
17640-412: The judge was convinced was a conspiracy to burn down the Reichstag. The three Bulgarians were expelled from Germany and sent to the USSR. When Dimitrov arrived in Moscow on 28 February 1934, he was encouraged by Joseph Stalin to end the practice of denouncing Social Democrats as 'social fascists', practically indistinguishable from actual fascists, and to instead promote " united front " tactics against
17808-584: The latter to keep ethnic tensions under control; thus, the constitution was gradually developed to delegate as much power as possible to each republic in keeping with the Marxist theory of withering away of the state . He envisaged the SFR of Yugoslavia as a "federal republic of equal nations and nationalities, freely united on the principle of brotherhood and unity in achieving specific and common interest." A very powerful cult of personality arose around him, which
17976-492: The law had marked him as a communist agitator, and his home was searched on an almost weekly basis. Since their arrival in Yugoslavia, Pelagija had lost three babies soon after their births and one daughter, Zlatica, at the age of two. Broz felt the loss of Zlatica deeply. In 1924, Pelagija gave birth to a boy, Žarko, who survived. In mid-1925, Broz's employer died, and the new mill owner gave him an ultimatum: give up his communist activities or lose his job. So, at age 33, Broz became
18144-524: The left arm. I fainted. Then, as I learned, the Circassians began to butcher the wounded, even slashing them with their knives. Fortunately, Russian infantry reached the positions and put an end to the orgy". Now a prisoner of war (POW), Broz was transported east to a hospital established in an old monastery in the town of Sviyazhsk on the Volga river near Kazan . During his 13 months in hospital, he had bouts of pneumonia and typhus, and learned Russian with
18312-518: The local mill until November 1919, when the Red Army recaptured Omsk from White forces loyal to the Provisional All-Russian Government of Alexander Kolchak . He moved back to Omsk and married Belousova in January 1920. At the time of their marriage, Broz was 27 years old and Pelagia Belousova was 14. They divorced in the 1930s in Moscow. Broz later wrote that during his time in Russia, he heard much talk of Lenin,
18480-438: The movement of volunteers and creating a separate Communist Party of Croatia . The new party was inaugurated at a conference at Samobor on the outskirts of Zagreb on 1–2 August 1937. Tito played a crucial role in organizing the return of the Yugoslav volunteers from German concentration camps to Yugoslavia when the decision was made to mount an armed resistance in Yugoslavia, the 1941 Uprising in Serbia . In June 1937, Gorkić
18648-611: The national character of the Macedonians ; whereas Dimitrov considered them to be an offshoot of the Bulgarians , Tito regarded them as an independent nation of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bulgarians. The initial tolerance for the Macedonization of Pirin Macedonia gradually grew into outright alarm. By January 1948, Tito's plans to annex Bulgaria and Albania had become an obstacle to policy of
18816-661: The nationalist sentiments of the various nations in favour of tolerance, and the common Yugoslav goal. After the overwhelming electoral victory, Tito was confirmed as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DFY. The country was soon renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY) (later finally renamed into Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY). On 29 November 1945, King Peter II
18984-530: The nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained further international attention as the founder of the Non-Aligned Movement , alongside Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia. With a highly favourable reputation abroad in both Cold War blocs, he received a total of 98 foreign decorations , including the Legion of Honour and
19152-584: The newly completed Trans-Siberian Railway . Broz was appointed to be in charge of all the POWs in the camp. During this time, he became aware that camp staff were stealing the Red Cross parcels sent to the POWs. When he complained, he was beaten and imprisoned. During the February Revolution , a crowd broke into the prison and returned Broz to the POW camp. A Bolshevik he had met while working on
19320-459: The northern Yugoslav frontier. An invasion of Yugoslavia was planned to be carried out in 1949 via the combined forces of neighbouring Soviet satellite states of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, followed by the subsequent removal of Tito's government. On 28 June, the other member countries of the Cominform expelled Yugoslavia, citing "nationalist elements" that had "managed in the course of
19488-599: The organisation. Tito was appointed to the secretariat of the Balkan section, responsible for Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. Kardelj was also in Moscow, as was the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov . Tito lectured on trade unions to foreign communists and attended a course on military tactics run by the Red Army, and occasionally attended the Bolshoi Theatre . He attended as one of 510 delegates to
19656-627: The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War . At the time, the Great Purge was underway, and foreign communists like Tito and his Yugoslav compatriots were particularly vulnerable. Despite a laudatory report written by Tito about the veteran Yugoslav communist Filip Filipović , Filipović was arrested and shot by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD . However, before the Purge really began to erode
19824-479: The party leadership were located inside Yugoslavia. A compromise was arrived at, where Tito and others would work inside the country, and Gorkić and the Politburo would continue to work from abroad. Gorkić and the Politburo relocated to Paris, while Tito began to travel between Moscow, Paris and Zagreb in 1936 and 1937, using false passports. In 1936, his father died. Tito returned to Moscow in August 1936, soon after
19992-435: The party's "dogmatic-doctrinaire approach". After Vasil Kolarov had been sent from Moscow to impose a change in the Bulgarian party line , Dimitrov accepted the Comintern's authority. In September 1923, he and Kolarov led the failed uprising against the regime of Aleksandar Tsankov , which cost the lives of possibly five thousand communist supporters during the fighting and the reprisals which followed. Despite its failure,
20160-447: The past five or six months to reach a dominant position in the leadership" of the CPY. The Hungarian and Romanian armies were expanded in size and, together with Soviet ones, massed on the Yugoslav border. The assumption in Moscow was that once it was known that he had lost Soviet approval, Tito would collapse; "I will shake my little finger, and there will be no more Tito," Stalin remarked. The expulsion effectively banished Yugoslavia from
20328-555: The poisoning theory claim that Stalin did not like the "Balkan Federation" idea of Dimitrov and his closeness with Tito. After the funeral, Dimitrov's body was embalmed and placed on display in Sofia's Georgi Dimitrov Mausoleum . After the end of Communist rule in Bulgaria , his body was buried in Sofia's central cemetery in 1990. His mausoleum was demolished in 1999. The Sandinista government of Nicaragua renamed one of Managua 's central neighbourhoods "Barrio Jorge Dimitrov" to commemorate him during that country's revolution in
20496-512: The position since 1923. Finally, in 1934, Stalin chose Dimitrov to head the international organization. At this point, Tzvetan Todorov writes, Dimitrov "became part of the Soviet leader's inner circle." From 25 July to 20 August 1935, the 7th World Congress of the Communist International met in Moscow. Dimitrov was the dominant presence; he was elected the Comintern's General Secretary. His impassioned anti-fascist speeches at
20664-587: The railway told Broz that his son was working in engineering works in Petrograd , so, in June 1917, Broz walked out of the unguarded POW camp and hid aboard a goods train bound for that city, where he stayed with his friend's son. The journalist Richard West has suggested that because Broz chose to remain in an unguarded POW camp rather than volunteer to serve with the Yugoslav legions of the Serbian Army , he
20832-417: The ranks of the Yugoslav communists in Moscow, Tito was sent back to Yugoslavia with a new mission, to recruit volunteers for the International Brigades being raised to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Travelling via Vienna, he reached the coastal port city of Split in December 1936. According to the Croatian historian Ivo Banac , the reason the Comintern sent Tito back to Yugoslavia
21000-460: The regimental fencing competition, Broz came in second in the army fencing championships in Budapest in May 1914. Soon after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment marched toward the Serbian border. Broz was arrested for sedition and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress in present-day Novi Sad . He later gave conflicting accounts of this arrest, telling one biographer that he had threatened to desert to
21168-425: The resistance representatives established the basis for the post-war organisation of the country, deciding on a federation of the Yugoslav nations. In Jajce , a 67-member "presidency" was elected and established a nine-member National Committee of Liberation (NKOJ; five communist members) as a de facto provisional government . Tito was named President of NKOJ. With the growing possibility of an Allied invasion in
21336-399: The rest were expatriates in France, Belgium, the U.S. and Canada. Fewer than half were communists, and the rest were social-democrats and anti-fascists of various hues. Of the total, 671 were killed in the fighting, and 300 were wounded. Tito himself never went to Spain, despite speculation that he had. Between May and August 1937, he travelled several times between Paris and Zagreb, organising
21504-408: The rival monarchic Chetnik movement , Tito's Partisans succeeded in liberating territory, notably the " Republic of Užice ". During this period, Tito held talks with Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović on 19 September and 27 October 1941. It is said that Tito ordered his forces to assist escaping Jews, and that more than 2,000 Jews fought directly for Tito. On 21 December 1941, the Partisans created
21672-426: The scene of the crime and presumed to be the culprit. Hitler quickly blamed a Communist conspiracy for the arson, and the Nazis proceeded to make mass arrests. On 9 March, Dimitrov was arrested based on the evidence of a waiter who claimed to have seen "three Russians" (in reality, Dimitrov and two other Bulgarians, Vasil Tanev , and Blagoy Popov , both of whom were members of the faction that had supplanted Dimitrov in
21840-416: The sentence was soon shortened and reduced to house arrest, with the option of emigration open to the archbishop. At the conclusion of the " Informbiro period ", reforms rendered Yugoslavia considerably more religiously liberal than the Eastern Bloc states. In the first post-war years, Tito was widely considered a communist leader very loyal to Moscow; indeed, he was often viewed as second only to Stalin in
22008-411: The subsequent Russian Civil War . Upon his return to the Balkans in 1920, he entered the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia , where he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia . Having assumed de facto control over the party by 1937, Tito was formally elected its general secretary in 1939 and later its president, the title he held until his death. During World War II , after the Nazi invasion of
22176-408: The threat of European fascism . In April, as Dimitrov's fame grew in the wake of the Leipzig Trial, he was appointed a member of the Executive of Comintern and of its political secretariat, in charge of the Anglo-American and Central European sections. He was being groomed to take control of the Comintern from two of the so-called " Old Bolsheviks ", Iosif Pyatnitsky and Wilhelm Knorin , who had held
22344-405: The trial he relocated to Moscow and was elected head of Comintern. In 1946, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile and was elected prime minister of the newly founded People's Republic of Bulgaria. He negotiated with Josip Broz Tito to create a federation of Southern Slavs , which led to the 1947 Bled accord . The plan ultimately fell apart over differences regarding the future of
22512-399: The volunteers were turned away, Tito claimed credit for the Yugoslav response, which worked in his favour. By this stage, Tito was well aware of the realities in the Soviet Union, later saying he "witnessed a great many injustices" but was too heavily invested in communism and too loyal to the Soviet Union to step back. After restoring the image of a decisive, coherent and non-fractional CPY to
22680-414: The warm, sunny Adriatic coastline that lasted for the rest of his life, and throughout his later time as leader, he spent as much time as possible living on his yacht while cruising the Adriatic. While at Kraljevica , he worked on Yugoslav torpedo boats and a pleasure yacht for the People's Radical Party politician, Milan Stojadinović . Broz built up the trade union organisation in the shipyards and
22848-455: Was a voivode with the collaborationist Pećanac Chetniks . Since Pećanac was already fully co-operating with Germans by that time, this fact caused some to speculate that Tito left Belgrade with the blessing of the Germans because his task was to divide rebel forces, similar to Lenin's arrival in Russia. Tito travelled by train through Stalać and Čačak and arrived to the village of Robaje on 18 September 1941. Despite conflicts with
23016-426: Was a Bulgarian communist politician who served as leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1933 to 1949, and the first leader of the Communist People's Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 to 1949. From 1935 to 1943, he was the General Secretary of the Communist International . Born in western Bulgaria, Dimitrov worked as a printer and trade unionist during his youth. He was elected to the Bulgarian parliament as
23184-567: Was a friend of Đilas. Arriving in Yugoslavia a few days ahead of the Anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria, he made an appeal condemning it, in which the CPY was joined by the Social Democrats and trade unions. In June, Tito wrote to the Comintern, suggesting that he should visit Moscow. He waited in Paris for two months for his Soviet visa before travelling to Moscow via Copenhagen. He arrived in Moscow on 24 August. On his arrival in Moscow, Tito found that all Yugoslav communists were under suspicion. The NKVD arrested and executed nearly all of
23352-422: Was alive, Dimitrov adopted Fani, a daughter of Wang Ming , the acting General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1931. He and his wife adopted another child, Boiko Dimitrov, born 1941. Dimitrov died on 2 July 1949 in the Barvikha sanatorium near Moscow . The speculation that he had been poisoned has never been confirmed, although his health seemed to deteriorate quite abruptly. The supporters of
23520-421: Was also formed as the new secret police, along with a security agency , the Department of People's Security ( Organ Zaštite Naroda (Armije) , OZNA). Yugoslav intelligence was charged with imprisoning and bringing to trial large numbers of Nazi collaborators; controversially, this included Catholic clergymen due to the widespread involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime . Draža Mihailović
23688-450: Was appointed secretary of the Zagreb branch of the Metal Workers' Union and, soon thereafter, the union's whole Croatian branch. In July 1927, Broz was arrested along with six other workers, and imprisoned at nearby Ogulin . After being held without trial for some time, he went on a hunger strike until a date was set. The trial was held in secret, and he was found guilty of being a member of the CPY. Sentenced to four months' imprisonment, he
23856-602: Was arrested and executed. He worked on with a fellow surviving Yugoslav communist, but a Yugoslav communist of German ethnicity reported an inaccurate translation of a passage and claimed it showed Tito was a Trotskyist. Other influential communists vouched for him, and he was exonerated. A second Yugoslav communist denounced him, but the action backfired, and his accuser was arrested. Several factors were at play in his survival: his working-class origins, lack of interest in intellectual arguments about socialism, attractive personality, and capacity to make influential friends. While Tito
24024-414: Was asked about the Croatian communist leader Kamilo Horvatin, but wrote ambiguously, saying that he did not know whether he was a Trotskyist. Nevertheless, Horvatin was not heard of again. While in Moscow, he was given the task of assisting Ćopić to translate the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) into Serbo-Croatian , but they had only got to the second chapter when Ćopić too
24192-409: Was avoiding arrest in Moscow, Germany was placing pressure on Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland . In response to this threat, Tito organised a call for Yugoslav volunteers to fight for Czechoslovakia, and thousands of volunteers came to the Czechoslovak embassy in Belgrade to offer their services. Despite the eventual Munich Agreement and Czechoslovak acceptance of the annexation and the fact that
24360-429: Was based on the fact that Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were the only two homelands of the Southern Slavs , and were separated from the rest of the Slavic world. The idea eventually resulted in the 1947 Bled accord , signed by Dimitrov and Tito, which called for abandoning frontier travel barriers, arranging for a future customs union, and having Yugoslavia unilaterally forgive Bulgarian war reparations. The preliminary plan for
24528-417: Was christened and raised as a Roman Catholic . His father, Franjo, was a Croat whose family had lived in the village for three centuries, while his mother, Marija, was a Slovene from the village of Podsreda . The villages were 16 kilometres (10 mi) apart, and his parents had married on 21 January 1881. Franjo Broz had inherited a 4.0-hectare (10-acre) estate and a good house, but he was unable to make
24696-440: Was doing army service. Jurica helped him get a job in a restaurant, but Broz soon got tired of that work. He approached a Czech locksmith , Nikola Karas, for a three-year apprenticeship, which included training, food, and room and board . As his father could not afford to pay for his work clothing, Broz paid for it himself. Soon after, his younger brother Stjepan also became apprenticed to Karas. During his apprenticeship, Broz
24864-408: Was elected as a union representative . A year later, he led a shipyard strike and soon after was fired. In October 1926, he obtained work in a railway works in Smederevska Palanka near Belgrade . In March 1927, he wrote an article complaining about the exploitation of workers in the factory, and after speaking up for a worker, he was promptly sacked. Identified by the CPY as worthy of promotion, he
25032-414: Was elected in December 1922 to the Executive Bureau of Profintern , the communist trade union international. In June 1923, when Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski was deposed through a coup d'état , Dimitrov and Khristo Kabakchiev , the leading communists in Bulgaria at the time, resolved not to take sides, a decision condemned by the Comintern as a "political capitulation" brought on by
25200-403: Was elected to the CPY district committee, but after he gave a speech at a comrade's Catholic funeral, he was arrested when the priest complained. Paraded through the streets in chains, he was held for eight days and was eventually charged with creating a public disturbance. With the help of a Serbian Orthodox prosecutor who hated Catholics, Broz and his co-accused were acquitted. His brush with
25368-401: Was employed in maintaining the electrical system and chose as his assistant a middle-class Belgrade Jew, Moša Pijade , who had been given a 20-year sentence for his communist activities. Their work allowed Broz and Pijade to move around the prison, contacting and organising other communist prisoners. During their time together in Lepoglava, Pijade became Broz's ideological mentor. After two and
25536-474: Was encouraged to mark May Day in 1909, and he read and sold Slobodna Reč ( lit. ' Free Word ' ), a socialist newspaper. After completing his apprenticeship in September 1910, Broz used his contacts to gain employment in Zagreb . At age 18, he joined the Metal Workers' Union and participated in his first labour protest. He also joined the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia . He returned home in December 1910. In early 1911, he began
25704-440: Was eventually taken in by a friend's mother. In 1941, Žarko joined the Red Army to fight the invading Germans. Some of Tito's critics argue that his survival indicates he must have denounced his comrades as Trotskyists . He was asked for information on a number of his fellow Yugoslav communists, but according to his own statements and published documents, he never denounced anyone, usually saying he did not know them. In one case, he
25872-420: Was formally deposed by the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly. The Assembly drafted a new republican constitution soon afterwards. Yugoslavia organised the Yugoslav People's Army ( Jugoslavenska narodna armija , JNA) from the Partisan movement and became the fourth strongest army in Europe at the time, according to various estimates. The State Security Administration ( Uprava državne bezbednosti , UDBA)
26040-412: Was found guilty of collaboration , high treason and war crimes and was subsequently executed by firing squad in July 1946. Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito met with the president of the Bishops' Conference of Yugoslavia , Aloysius Stepinac on 4 June 1945, two days after his release from imprisonment. The two could not reach an agreement on the state of the Catholic Church. Under Stepinac's leadership,
26208-492: Was greatly prolonged, but to no avail. The Comintern formally ratified his resolutions on 5 January 1939, and he was appointed General Secretary of the CPY. After his appointment to the party's highest position of leadership, the newly formed Politburo of the Central Committee retained the old leadership team of Tito, Kardelj, Đilas, Aleksandar Ranković, and Ivo Lola Ribar (the representative of SKOJ ) and expanded it with Franc Leskošek , Miha Marinko and Josip Kraš , and by
26376-548: Was made that the practice was sexist. Just like a Serbian king, Tito would appear wherever a 9th child was born to a family to congratulate the parents and give them cash. Tito always spoke very harshly of the Karađorđević kings in both public and private (through in private, he sometimes had a kind word for the Habsburgs), but in many ways, he appeared to his people as sort of a king. Unlike other states in east-central Europe liberated by allied forces, Yugoslavia liberated itself from Axis domination with limited direct support from
26544-430: Was one of 32 delegates to the conference of the Croatian branch of the CPY. During the conference, he condemned factions within the party, including those that advocated a Greater Serbia agenda within Yugoslavia, like the long-term CPY leader Sima Marković . Broz proposed that the executive committee of the Communist International purge the branch of factionalism and was supported by a delegate sent from Moscow. After it
26712-400: Was proposed that the Croatian branch's entire central committee be dismissed, a new central committee was elected, with Broz as its secretary. Marković was subsequently expelled from the CPY at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern , and the CPY adopted a policy of working for the breakup of Yugoslavia. Broz arranged to disrupt a meeting of the Social-Democratic Party on May Day that year; in
26880-449: Was put forth by the Yugoslav government itself in 1964 places the number of Goli Otok inmates incarcerated between 1948 and 1956 to be 16,554, with less than 600 having died during detention. The facilities at Goli Otok were abandoned in 1956, and jurisdiction of the now-defunct political prison was handed over to the government of the Socialist Republic of Croatia . Tito's estrangement from the USSR enabled Yugoslavia to obtain U.S. aid via
27048-407: Was released from prison pending an appeal. On the CPY's orders, Broz did not report to court for the hearing of the appeal, instead going into hiding in Zagreb. Wearing dark spectacles and carrying forged papers, Broz posed as a middle-class technician in the engineering industry, working undercover to contact other CPY members and coordinate their infiltration of trade unions. In February 1928, Broz
27216-452: Was still loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire , undermining his later claim that he and other Croat POWs were excited by the prospect of revolution and looked forward to the overthrow of the empire that ruled them. Less than a month after Broz arrived in Petrograd, the July Days demonstrations broke out, and Broz joined in, coming under fire from government troops. In the aftermath, he tried to flee to Finland in order to make his way to
27384-500: Was subject to orders that required him to live in Kumrovec and report to the police daily. During his imprisonment, the political situation in Europe had changed significantly, with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the emergence of right-wing parties in France and neighbouring Austria. He returned to a warm welcome in Kumrovec but did not stay long. In early May, he received word from the CPY to return to his revolutionary activities and left his hometown for Zagreb, where he rejoined
27552-451: Was subsequently forced into exile. He lived in the Soviet Union until 1929, at which time he relocated to Germany and became head of the Comintern operations in central Europe. Dimitrov rose to international prominence in the aftermath of the 1933 Reichstag fire trial. Accused of plotting the arson, he refused counsel and mounted an eloquent defence against his Nazi accusers, in particular Hermann Göring , ultimately winning acquittal. After
27720-475: Was summoned to Moscow, where he was arrested, and after months of NKVD interrogation, he was shot. According to Banac, Gorkić was killed on Stalin's orders. West concludes that despite being in competition with men like Gorkić for the leadership of the CPY, it was not in Tito's character to have innocent people sent to their deaths. Tito then received a message from the Politburo of the CPY to join them in Paris. In August 1937, he became acting General Secretary of
27888-426: Was to purge the CPY. An initial attempt to send 500 volunteers to Spain by ship failed, with nearly all the volunteers arrested and imprisoned. Tito then travelled to Paris, where he arranged the volunteers' travel to France under the cover of attending the Paris Exhibition . Once in France, the volunteers crossed the Pyrenees to Spain. In all, he sent 1,192 men to fight in the war, but only 330 came from Yugoslavia;
28056-402: Was told. He noted in his diary when Julian Leszczyński , Henryk Walecki , and several members of his staff were arrested, but again did nothing, though he did raise questions when the NKVD representative in Comintern, Mikhail Trilisser , was arrested. In 1946, Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile. After a referendum abolished the monarchy in September, Bulgaria was declared
28224-458: Was wanted by the police for failing to report to them in Kumrovec, Broz adopted various pseudonyms, including "Rudi" and "Tito". He used the latter as a pen name when he wrote articles for party journals in 1934, and it stuck. He gave no reason for choosing the name "Tito" except that it was a common nickname for men from the district where he grew up. Within the Comintern network, his nickname was "Walter". During this time, Tito wrote articles on
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