Josip Broz Tito

Josip Broz (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Јосип Броз, pronounced [jǒsip brôːz] ^ⓘ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (/ˈtiːtoʊ/; 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 was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe. He also served as the prime minister from 2 November 1944 to 29 June 1963 and president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 14 January 1953 until his death on 4 May 1980. Tito's political ideology and policies are collectively known as Titoism.

Tito was born to a Croat father and Slovene mother in the village of Kumrovec in Austria-Hungary (present-day Croatia). 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. He participated in some events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and 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 (KPJ). Having assumed de facto control over the party by 1937, he 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 the area, he led the Yugoslav guerrilla movement, the Partisans (1941–1945). By the end of the war, the Partisans – with backing of the Allies since mid-1943 – took power in Yugoslavia.

After the war, Tito was the chief architect of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), serving as the prime minister (1944–1963), president (1953–1980; since 1974 president for life), and marshal of Yugoslavia, the highest rank of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). 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 the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the organisation in 1948 in the event known as the Tito–Stalin split. In the following years, alongside other political leaders and Marxist theorists such as Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Đilas, Tito went on to initiate the idiosyncratic model of socialist self-management in which firms were managed through workers' councils and all workers were entitled to workplace democracy and equal share of profits. Tito wavered between supporting either a centralised or more decentralised federation and ended up favouring the latter in order to keep ethnic tensions under control; thus, the constitution was gradually developed in order to delegate as much power as possible to each republic in keeping with the Marxist theory of withering away of the state. Tito 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 was built around Tito, which was maintained by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia even after his death. After Tito's death, the leadership of Yugoslavia was transformed into an annually rotating presidency to give representation to all of Yugoslavia's nationalities and to prevent the emergence of an authoritarian leader. Twelve years after his death, as communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and ethnic tensions escalated, Yugoslavia dissolved and descended into 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. He remains a popular leader in the former countries of Yugoslavia. Viewed as a unifying symbol, his internal policies maintained the peaceful coexistence of 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 the Order of the Bath.