Talk:Josip Broz Tito

An event in this article is a April 5 selected anniversary (may be in HTML comment).

Contents

1 Wrong image

2 Lack of content 1945-1980

3 Funeral photos

4 Anonymous edit

5 Grenades vs. shells

6 The name Broz

7 1930s

8 "communist dictator"

9 Children

10 Tito's propaganda over Macedonia

11 Tito in Argentina

12 Murdered POWS ? =

13 Josip Broz Tito Was Not A Communist

14 photos

15 Quite the little bit in 'Aftermath'

Wrong image

Sorry Andre the image of Tito is incorrect. It shows a Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov. Please correct this. Best regard. -- XJamRastafire 13:48 Aug 26, 2002 (PDT)

Lack of content 1945-1980

The entry at present doesn't say anything of consequence about Tito's role in the formation of Yugoslavia and from then to 1980. It just chops off after the "early life" section. Wikipedia should cover someone as important as this in much greater detail. I'm not qualified to do it, can someone else? Tannin 11:11 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. The history after WWII is basically condensed into the timeline, which is inserted pretty ad hoc. This needs work. --Shallot 23:12, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I added a fair bit, though of course it could still be expanded.

I think we also have way a disproportional amount of pictures of him with foreign leaders.

--Shallot 10:40, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Funeral photos

i am writing from Bosnia and herzegovina and i would be very grateful if you could show some photos from Tito's funerel. It is almnoust impossible to find those pics on the web.

i have a pictures of his funeral but how can i put it up

ther is no uplad file in the side bar, there is no sidebar , i dont see it

There are circumstances under which the sidebar will not appear and they depend on which skin Wikipedia displays when you view it. For example, if you use the Classic skin, then you can't see the sidebar when comparing two edits. Tim Ivorson 07:51, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Anonymous edit

examined edit by anonymous IP. safe. - Hemanshu 10:21, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Grenades vs. shells

Can someone please fix this sentence? I don't know anything about Tito's life or history beyond what I've learned here, but I do know that grenades are hand-thrown (or at best, rifle-propelled) weapons and that a howitzer shell can not possibly be mistaken for a grenade. Which was it, please? Rossami 03:22, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

BTW, that is a misconception; there is also the contemporary RPG (launched from either a rifle or a special one-person launcher or perhaps sometimes one and other times the other) and is propelled by a built-in rocket engine, hence Rocket Propelled Grenade. (These figured crucially in the Mogadishu Black Hawk Down battle, bringing down the choppers with tactics developed against the Russians in Afghanistan.) --Jerzy (t) 15:26, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)

In Bukovina he was seriously injured by a grenade from a howitzer.

That clear, even tho anonymous, statement is helpful but does not fix the problem: everyone who looks at the article text is going to have the same reaction, bcz the apparatus implied by it is so obscure. Either this was an improvised use of a howitzer, or an unusual item produced by a specific nation, or a fragmenting mortar shell whose native name invites mistranslation. This has not been shown to be verifiable yet, and further, it will remain confusing (giving the impression, sadly true, that we don't know what we're talking about) until we can explain in the article what it means and why it sounds confusing. (This is very much like, in its effect, Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated with the pick end of an ice axe, not with "an ice pick" as the common mistranslation has it, and our article used to; it may be, or not, rooted in the same kind of error.) --Jerzy (t) 15:26, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)

It means a shell, yes. The local word for both is the same (at least colloquially), which is probably the reason for the wrong English term, it's a bad translation. --Shallot 22:23, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The name Broz

The article leaves me with the impression that my vague recollection is accurate, that he was born "Josip Broz" and that "Tito" was a nom de guerre, alias, or code-name that facilitated his revolutionary work. Much like the grenade issue above, this lack of clarity undercuts the credibility of the article. I'm adding an entry for

Broz, Josip, birth name of Yugoslaw partisan leader and president Joseph Tito

at List of people by name: Bro#Brox - Broz and assuming i've gotten it right, despite the lack of the confirmation i expected here. --Jerzy (t) 15:26, 2004 Mar 20 (UTC)

Due to an edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Josip_Broz_Tito&diff=3266738&oldid=3105015) which i have now reverted, this page represented, from 2004 Apr 8 until Apr 20, a colleagues' comment as being mine. What i suggested appears, restored, in the preceding comment. I did not suggest that there be an entry reading like this one that i have struck through:

~~Broz, Josip, birth name of Yugoslaw partisan leader and president Joseph Tito Tito~~

--Jerzy (t) 16:08, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

Who made the silly decision to call this article Josip Broz rather than Josip Tito or Josip Broz Tito? He is universally known as Tito, regardless of what his legal name might have been. We don't call Lenin Vladimir Ulyanov or Stalin Iosif Djugashvili. Unless someone can give me a good reason not to, I am going to redirect it. Adam 10:48, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

At least in former Yu, his real name was well known. Are there guidelines for naming articles about persons with well-known nicknames? (Possibilities might be "Josip Broz Tito" or "Josip Broz - Tito", for example.) If yes, these should be followed. Josip Tito is not a good idea. Nikola 19:30, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I moved it back because inclusion of the nickname Tito is indeed the Right Thing to do as far as the Wikipedia naming conventions are concerned. --Shallot 22:12, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As i stated earlier in this section, i made an entry at List of people by name: Bro#Brox - Broz for Tito. A colleague (not the one who appropriately edited me at Brox - Broz) editted my discussion of that (without a signature or other indication that modification had occurred, as it happens), making it read

Broz, Josip, birth name of Yugoslaw partisan leader and president Joseph Tito Tito

The suggestion that the name "Tito" may stand alone is not particularly harmful, but it is unneeded clutter in a List of people by name entry that links to a full bio, which in this case seems to make the point adequately; LoPbN needs only enough information for people with a name in mind to be, once they've found a link to the bio they want, pretty sure of that fact. Telling them the ways they can (and preferably the ways they can't) use the name properly is the job of the bio article.
The apparent suggestion that the entry have two more links that redirect to the same bio is a violation of WP style, and a poster child for why that style almost always calls for avoiding redundant links: the three links in one line would practically demand that the reader explore the differing implications of the three related names by following them each in turn. Fuggeddabowdit. --Jerzy (t) 16:08, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

1930s

A new IP edit is awash in vagueness, and on reflection i have moved it here to be worked on, rather than just discussing it here: i think it is so hedged that it detracts more than it contributes. (However, i'd like to see a more precise account of this included.) Removed from the article:

During the 1930's Tito worked from the Communist Party and spent some time in Spain. While in Spain he was instrumental is suppressing socialists whose views were opposed to those of the Stalinist Communist Party.

Does "from" have the meaning of "through", "within", or the like? If not, then what?
Was he in Spain for a whirlwind tour (and if so, when?), or from Jan 1931 until the fall of the Republic?
Is this innuendo that he was an executioner, or an informant for executioners? Or did he make dandy speeches about the dustbin of history that embarrassed non-Stalinists into leaving Spain to go home and marry artists?

Please forgive this tone of mine (which comes forth from frustration, despite my distaste for Stalinism), especially if your inarticulateness reflects struggling in a foreign language. If you're a Stalist troll, parodying your opponents within the left, then congratulations; if not, please get your facts together (or be explicit about what things you can't find out), and then speak up clearly. --Jerzy (t) 17:59, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)

Tito didn't go to Spain in the 1930s. He returned from USSR to Yugoslavia to organize the transport of the communist fighters from Yugoslavia to Spain. This attempt however failed and 500 of them were imprisoned by the Yugoslav police. The reason that the mission failed is the boat which did not come in time to the agreed spot to pick the fighters up.

"communist dictator"

User:GeneralPatton wants to add the phrase "communist dictator" to the first 'graph, and believes it can not be considered PoV.

I don't think my objection to it it is just a matter of that phrase being contaminated by his other phrase, "brutal reign of terror", that OB&G has (IMO wisely) at least deferred re-proposing.

My first reaction is that the phrase has a lot stronger POV than the sum of its two words, and the idea of situating it (or even one and then the other, in separate phrases) in the lead 'graph is PoV in pre-empting the opportunity to bring them in in a more nuanced fashion later in the article, where there's more room for qualifications and the like.

The pairing of those two words, even if they are each accurate, expresses the PoV that they are crucially relevant to each other. If we were writing about Stalin, i, and i think most editors, would be sympathetic: his bolshevik ideology and his realization of the idea "L'etat, c'est moi" seem an awful lot like two inseparable sides of a coin -- or perhaps his paranoia was the weld that joined them against attempts to drive them apart.

In contrast, i see Tito having a tension with Stalin and the Soviet system that in many ways put him outside the Soviet bloc; i see a foreign policy independent enough to involve him deeply in the so-called "unaligned movement"; i see an internal situation of ethnic divisions that probably called for a strong hand to balance the factions (in a significantly pluralistic fashion?), for reasons other than paranoia and megalomania. So i see sort of a communist, and a perhaps fairly dictatorial strongman, with nothing like the firm connection between them that i imagine between Stalin's ideology and his stranglehold on state and society.

So, yes, i find your wordings so far too PoV, but i'm optomistic that you may be capable of working with your colleagues to find ways to bring those two concepts in, in ways you couldn't conceive at first and may even surprise you before we're done. I expect this talk page to be a more fruitful place to pursue that than whole-cloth edits of the article. --Jerzy (t) 05:43, 2004 May 11 (UTC)

It is indeed entirely biased to replace "was President between" with "whose brutal reign of terror lasted betwen", at least I don't see much need to elaborate that... but again, the article is missing a huge chunk of content while he was the head of Yugoslavia in which one could elaborate things that make him a president and things that make him a terrorist, without making any such off-the-cuff remarks that are really not encyclopedic. --Shallot 09:55, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I see User:24.126.189.85's edit with "communist president" as no obvious problem, and likely an enhancement; i'm no expert on Yugoslavia, tho i think i can often be pretty sure about the absence of nuance.

I presume the party mentioned in the article was, like the "Social Unity-party of Germany" in the GDR, the local communist-party-in-all-but-name; perhaps someone able state nuances in this context can state this situation with more nuance than i just did. I expect that would enhance the article, by making the connection between "communist" and the later, more nuanced but apparently still incomplete 'graph. --Jerzy (t) 07:59, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Actually the Communist Party was indeed called that way in Yugoslavia. But anyway. --Shallot 09:41, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! I see now i was referring to the Croatian SDP, and i gather that was an early, minor affiliation. --Jerzy (t) 13:24, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Think about this sentence: Josip Broz Tito was elected to be a communist dictator. Do you see any sense in it? If yes, then you might agree with GP (read GeneralPatton), if no, you might be correct. In fact Tito was elected to be a president of post (2nd WW) war Yugoslavia. He was just a president as are all presidents all around. The same thing happened in the United States where Dwight David Eisenhower was elected as 34th president. Both Ike and Tito fought against Nazi-Germany, and they both showed a lot of succes, so natural way was that they also might won the race for presidency. Yes, the sytem in USA is different since they have presidency which can last twice for 4 years. Tito's one (as a 1st president) lasted for life - what is wrong with this? In fact nothing. We can go into many of his mistakes and such (foreign debts, Goli otok, ... ...), but we must also consider his role in prewar situation in this so hot territory. The same we might designate Haile Selassie to be a 'whatever' dictator - and further on - Tito and Selassie were 'good friends' as it is well known. Every leader/ruler/'?' makes mistakes, so this role takes and needs a lot of responsibility as Mr. Winston Rodney said in many accasions aka songs. Recently one Slovene officer wrote a book about attempts upon Tito's life. It was said he summed up to about 76 attempts. Tito's role was in fact pretty hard - think about what happend after 1990 in Yugoslavia, where botherhood and unity was (as it showed) really just on the paper. Best regards. DζMarshal 13:53, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Tito was never elected as a president, because in former Yugoslavia, elections were only inside the Communist party, and Communist party came to Rule with force. Aside from his foriegn political succeses, he was a dictator who ruled with the brute force: killing, prosecuting and inprisoning. I think this is the most importat fact about Tito, and it should not be hidden behind his possitive roles in antifascistic movement and "suppressing nationalims" (which was only thanks to his dictatorship). Anyway, I mean the complete article should be rewritten, and the word dictator should be put. --Mestric 07:40, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

There are facts that are true there, but overall this is wrong. The CP came to power after the partisans led by it won the war -- had the HSS done anything comparably useful during the war, maybe they would have had some success like they had before the war, but there was realistically no other option than the CP at the time and it's not really that a lack of the scare tactics at the first and only post-war general election would have made a lot of difference on the result. Further, his regime used all those violent methods, but in general that simply can't be "the most important fact" (I take that to mean "something we should endlessly pontificate over") because otherwise ex-.yu wouldn't have been a fully functional country with by and large a consensus that he was ultimately doing the right thing even when he was doing the wrong thing. The dictatorship stuff is clearly mentioned in my version exactly where it is supposed to be and I don't see much reason to alter it in any more negative fashion. --Shallot 08:28, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

I reverted Mestric's 2nd edit of Josip Broz Tito, in hopes they will bring the arguments implicit in that edit to this talk page in an effort to find consensus before editing it again. IMO the recent, apparently successful, efforts at finding consensus here (which may not be apparent to an editor completely new to the article) deserve such care. --Jerzy (t) 08:08, 2004 May 28 (UTC)

I changed the text before seeing this discussion, sorry for that. I should admit that Shallot has right about the 1st elections in after war Yu. Anyway, CP was very brute to his opponets after the war, and Tito's responsibility there is certain. The fact is that in 1945 communists in Yu killed tens of thousends political opponents, including masaccre in Bleiburg. That's why comparing Tito with Eisenhower has no sense.My opinion about the topic is following: the non-tendetious article about Josip Broz should not try to disguise negative (I mean anti-democratic and human-rights-violating) aspects of his rule. When you mention all political succeses he made, you should mention the negative facts too. Tito was a controversial person, and I think everyone would agree about that. So, my suggestion would be not to avoid giving an information of: a) Tito's responsibility for after-war mass-killings 1945.b) the founding of extremly crude penal camp at Croatian island Goli otok 1948 - 1989 (where the defendants of Informbiro-politics ended as well) c) 35 year long violent suppressing of national and religious rights of citizens of Yugoslavia d) the thousends of Stalin-like political "processes" after the Croatian Spring 1971., I would also suggest the erasing or reformulating the sentence "It was Tito's call for unity, and related methods, that held together the people of Yugoslavia." because these were really suppresive methods, together with Western interests who financed the regime.--Mestric 15:17, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, there are a few sentences there that were from an older version and that were unencyclopedic. I amended that particular one to say not just "call for unity" (which sounds more like shallow demagoguery :) but "and related methods" which was supposed to imply that his policy was implemented with the use of force wherever there was resistance. On second look, I should have rephrased that sentence completely, it's way too subtle. I'll have a look at the whole article again and see if I can fix up all such subtleties that border whitewashing. --Shallot 15:45, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Children

Whether true or not, it is very oftenly speculated that he was changing women every few days, which resulted in huge number of children. Various politicians, including Milosevic were rumored to be successful because they were Tito's children. This deserves a mention. Nikola 05:53, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Like I said in the commit log, there's those seventeen documented cases of wives and/or women bearing his children, and that's plenty, by anyone's standard! Vague speculation and rumours aren't particularly useful in an encyclopedia. --Shallot 17:22, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

But noting that there are some speculations and rumour are. Remember final scenes from "Tito i ja"? People who don't know about the rumours can't understand them. Nikola 17:49, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Feel free to try, but I doubt it's easy to avoid weasel terms :) --Shallot

Oh people, come on, please do some research before implying that something is a fact. The whole claim comes from a book by Filip Radulovic, called "The Loves of Josip Broz" ("Ljubavi Josipa Broza"). He is said to claim that the book was research with Tito's consent, but I have seen no proof of this. It is barely mentioned on the internet outside titoville.com, and where it is, it is always "if we can believe this book...". I have seen no site but titoville.com endorse it as true. What makes me further suspicios is this fine article (in BCMSxyz) (http://www.medijaklub.cg.yu/arhiva1/yu/press/zanimljivi-24-8_copy(1).htm), in which Radulovic claims that Madeleine Albright is blackmailing him for USD 5 million because he has discovered that she has an affair and a son with a Montenegrin man. Maybe that article should include A researcher has found that Albright has a Montenegrin lover, who is also the father of her son. Zocky 12:26, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

*chuckle* Perhaps it is just spin, but where's smoke there's usually fire. Something should be written about Tito's reputation as something of a womanizer. I tried to phrase it in a fashion that doesn't expound on the various (unconfirmed?) escapades but instead proceeds to mention his legitimate grandchildren -- indicatively, in both of the two main ex-yu republics. --Shallot 12:48, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Tito's propaganda over Macedonia

Before 1944 the area that later comprised of the former Yugoslavia's southern republic was not called Macedonia but was called Vardarska Banovina (Province -of the river- Vardar). It was in 1944 that Joseph Broz Marshal Tito, the Communist dictator ruling Yugoslavia at that time, created Yugoslavia's southern republic and called it "Socialist Republic of Macedonia". However, "Macedonia" was already the name of one of Greece's northern provinces. In ancient times, the land that Macedonia covered included this northern province of Greece, a small part of Bulgaria, a small part of Albania, and a small part of the region that Tito named the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. It is pertinent to note that Tito’s Socialist Republic of Macedonia consisted of not only a small part of ancient Macedonia but also a far larger part from Slavic Yugoslavia. There is no doubt that creating this Republic in the southern region in Yugoslavia and including "Macedonia" in its name was deliberate with the main intention of laying claim to the region of ancient Macedonia of the northern province of Greece. Particularly, what Tito and his Communist allies wanted was the city of Thessaloniki with its lucrative warm water port.

After 1944 a deliberate and systematic campaign was initiated for Yugoslavia's southern republic to take over the history of ancient Macedonia. “Scholars” from the “People’s Republic of Macedonia” were commissioned to re-write their history books to include the ancient Macedonian History according to the wishes of the League of Communists of communist Yugoslavia, accompanied by perverted maps showing their "Macedonia" going all the way down to the northern half of Mount Olympus. Also, “linguists” led by Blagoj Konev, a.k.a. Blaže Koneski, were appointed to create the alphabet for and refine the "newly discovered" Macedonian language, which, of course, was made to sound as if it were the “natural development” of the ancient Macedonian language. Through their control of mass media and education, the government of “People’s Republic of Macedonia” then introduced this language and claimed that it is the language that was spoken by the ancient Macedonians. However, this language is grammatically nearly identical to Bulgarian and, due to continuous government interventions, its vocabulary tends to include more Serbo-Croatian words that have replaced the Bulgarian words. They clearly overlooked the unquestionable fact that the inhabitants of ancient Macedonia were Greeks and spoke the Greek language. Numerous excavations in all of the ancient Macedonia area have consistently unearthed relics clearly with Greek writings, and depictions of rulers clearly designated with Greek names. --Themata 01:50, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tito in Argentina

Hey there. I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It's quite well-known fact here in Argentina that Marshall Josip Broz Tito spent a couple of years here before his call to power, around the mid-20s, early 30s. He worked as a constructor-builder in the country's Northern provinces (San Juan, Jujuy, etc), and later on moved to Buenos Aires to continue his political pursuits.
He's even credited to have worked at the world famous 'Tren a las Nubes' (train to the clouds), and he's also very well-known for his fanaticism over a renowned soccer team (Estudiantes de La Plata). The only problem here is hard evidence. I can't find any precise dates on arrival, departure, exploits, anything...

So, should I add a paragraph on this part of Tito's life? Should I research a little bit more? Anyone here knows a little bit more about this?

--Txurlo 17:26, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Josip Broz Tito spent most of his life between 1927 and 1934 in various prisons in Kingdom of Yugoslavia:

1927 by court of Ogulin: 7 months for communist propaganda
same year: additional 5 months after for same reason,
november 1928: sentenced to 5 years of hard prison for propagating revolution (time spent in Maribor and Lepoglava)

Source: Opća enciklopedija JLZ, 1977. Is it possible that there was another person named Tito in Argentina? --romanm (talk) 19:36, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, it IS strange, but all sources quote him as being no other than Marshall Josip Broz Tito... but failing to provide hard evidence. Reportedly he was in Argentina between 1928 and 1931, and years later allegedly (sorry: found and lost the link) he invited the whole soccer team Estudiantes de la Plata (the team he was a hardcode fan of) on a tour of 'his' Yugoslavia later. There are anecdotes like these all over the place here, but all of them highlight (and later dismiss) it as just a curiosity, so the mystery grows and grows. I'll do some real research and get back here...

--Txurlo 00:16, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I found the link! it's in Spanish (http://www.ull.es/publicaciones/latina/aa2000sab/123laplata.html), but I'll provide a quick translation.

Josip Broz Tito

Mihailovic's enemy within was a resistor who called himself Tito. His origins where so much shrouded in mystery that some believed this particular name was in fact something like an acronym (Third International Terrorist Organization). His father was a Croat and his mater a Slovene. In his early years he'd been a locksmith and unioner, and during the First World War he'd got a Sargent rank in the Austro-Hungarian army. He was exiled in many countries, including Argentina, where he worked blue collar at the Berisso's (municipality in Greater Buenos Aires) Swift meat-packing facility. He was an active supporter of Estudiantes de la Plata soccer team, up to the point of personally inviting the team over to Belgrade for an European tour when he was already the leader of Yugoslavia. He also worked as a builder at the construction of the 'Train to the Clouds', in the Northern province of Jujuy. Afterwards while passing over Russia, he became a Communist. He came back home, activated and jailed. AFter that, in 1937, using the alias of 'Walter', he took charge of the Yugoslavian Communist Party (his predecessor had been terminated by Stalin). By that time he recuirted combatants for the Spanish Civil War in the name of the Communist International.

Revista Latina de Comunicación Social

La Laguna (Tenerife) - april 2000 - issue 28

D.L.: TF - 135 - 98 / ISSN: 1138 – 5820 (year 3º)

http://www.ull.es/publicaciones/latina

As you can see, this info is focused on General Mihailovic and its relationship with Argentina and Spain, but -again- it doesn't have a lot of hard information.

Anyway, I personally think there's too much information available on this subject to dismiss it flatly as just wild rumours... --but it could too had been hyped to death too. As I said before, I'll look into it.

--Txurlo 00:35, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Murdered POWS ? =

Someone added the following POV rant to the main page:

War in Yugoslavia ended 15 may,1945 seven days later because Tito and his army murdered around 300,000 prisoner of Allied forces-Chetniks and Ustasa(nazi Croat) refuges and other miserable refugee who dont like communist regime. Shooting-range is resume i "clearenced" YU, after may,15 1945.

Is there any truth/documentation on the claim of murdered POWs &Refugees ? If so it should be mentioned, without the ranting. --Key45 20:25, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is a rant indeed, though there's some factual backing in the Operation Keelhaul and the subsequent Bleiburg massacre. Tito was the supreme commander of all partisan forces, so responsibility is implicit... I'll make a mention of it. --Joy [shallot] 12:20, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Josip Broz Tito Was Not A Communist

Any person who says that the late Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito was a communist, does not understand the S.F.R. Yugoslavia. Only those who lived in Yugoslavia can understand the great things that Tito did for the nation. Even those who have traveled to the former Yugoslavia and seen the problems, and that have talked about Tito with the local people, only then will a outside person of non-Yugoslavian blood understand that Tito was not a communist.