Marshal Tito (1892 - 1980)

It's been 61 years since Marshal Tito signed a quasi-alliance with the Soviet Union. On April 5, 1945, when World War II was in its final hours, Tito signed the treaty on behalf of Yugoslavia, setting in stone that nation's status as Soviet sphere of influence.

Josip Broz was born in 1892, of Croatian stock. He fought for the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and returned to Croatia after the war. Broz rose to be one of the most influential leader of Yugoslavia and was charged with reorganizing the Yugoslav Communist Party during the late 1930s.

In 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and took control of the government. Broz assumed the alias Tito and headed the Yugoslav resistance to Axis occupation. His resistance force was composed of several different political affiliations, so there were clashes between opposing ideologies. Tito was responsible for the execution of Draza Mihajlovic, the other leader of Yugoslav resistance forces and Tito's main opponent for power. In an instance of strange bedfellows, Great Britain and the United States supported the self-proclaimed Communist in his fight against the Nazis.

In 1945, Germany was defeated, and Tito solidified his rule as leader of Yugoslavia. He was elected president of the Republic of Yugoslavia in November 1945, and became practically a dictator for the next 35 years.

Tito transformed Yugoslavia into a Communist state with a controlled economy. He brutally suppressed opposition to his rule with a secret police force. He did a remarkable thing, however, when he broke with the Soviets in a quarrel over correct Communist ideologies and became an independent Communist. Tito was one of the three main leaders of the Nonaligned Nations (the others were Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and India's Jawaharlal Nehru), which claimed neutrality during the Cold War, refusing to support either side.

Despite proclaiming Yugoslavia's neutrality, Tito had to deal with the Soviet Union due to its close proximity. Relations with the Soviets were love-hate; sometimes the two nations got along, sometimes they did not. Tito opposed the Soviet crackdown of Alexander Dubcek's liberalization of Czechoslovakia's economy known as the Prague Spring.

Tito was reelected President in 1953, and in 1963 he was proclaimed President for Life. Domestically, Tito began to face growing tensions between the different ethnicities in Yugoslavia: Croats, Serbs, Albanians, and Slovenes were among the different ethnic groups that threatened to split the nation apart. Tito suppressed civil liberties, especially among intellectuals.

Marshal Josip Broz Tito died in 1980 at the age of 88 years. He had hoped to quell the uneasiness among the different ethnic groups, but his death proved to be the death knell for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Only a decade later, the country would erupt into violent civil war, complete with ethnic genocides and other atrocities. Tito's dream of a unified Yugoslavia was impossible to realize: the nation could only live within Tito, under Tito; when he died, his hopes for a unified Yugoslav republic died with him.

Sources: The History Channel Website, Encyclopedia.com