Tito: The Achievement and the Legacy

John C. Campbell

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1980

Article preview: first 500 of 6,220 words total.

Summary:  During the dark days of the Second World War, when exploits of Yugoslav guerrilla forces known as Partisans were first heard of in the West, they were said to be led by a mysterious figure known as Tito. Who or what was Tito? Rumor had its day. A Yugoslav or a Russian? An individual or a committee? A man or a woman? Later in the war the mystery cleared. The Germans published his picture and put a price on his head. The exploits multiplied. The world press got the story.

John C. Campbell is former Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of Tito's Separate Road and other works on Yugoslavia and international affairs.

During the dark days of the Second World War, when exploits of Yugoslav guerrilla forces known as Partisans were first heard of in the West, they were said to be led by a mysterious figure known as Tito. Who or what was Tito? Rumor had its day. A Yugoslav or a Russian? An individual or a committee? A man or a woman? Later in the war the mystery cleared. The Germans published his picture and put a price on his head. The exploits multiplied. The world press got the story.

He was Josip Broz, head of the Yugoslav Communist Party, leading the fight under the banner of anti-fascism and liberation. His Partisan forces tied down many German divisions. They liberated parts of the country. They got substantial help from Britain and America, for obvious military reasons. By 1944 Broz-Tito was on the world stage. He talked strategy and politics with Churchill in Italy. He then flew off to Moscow to see Stalin, to get help but also to nail down Soviet agreement that the "temporary" presence of Soviet forces in Yugoslavia in pursuit of the Germans should be at the request of the National Committee of Liberation in Yugoslavia, and that after completing their operational task the forces should be withdrawn. Stalin agreed, but on political matters the differences between the two men were sharp and the atmosphere was far from comradely. The future was casting shadows, but the outside world knew nothing of it, and the principals themselves did not accept the full implications.

After the war Tito and his movement, led by the Communist Party, took over power in Belgrade. There he remained, center stage, for the next 35 years. But the question, "Who is Tito?", could still be asked and can be asked today. For there were many Titos, as is evident from the now familiar facts of his life and from the differing encomiums now heaped upon his name, at home and by the world's leaders, at the time of his death.

II

All phases of his past left their mark. He was a Croatian peasant boy, a draftee in Franz Josef's army, prisoner of war in Russia and participant, more or less by historical accident, in the convulsions of 1917-20 in that country. He was Broz, metal worker and union organizer in Zagreb and guest in King Alexander's jails. He was "Walter," agent of the Comintern, and Secretary General (named by Stalin in 1937) and underground leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). He was Tito, leader of wartime resistance. Already middle-aged by then, he was "the old man" to his younger comrades in arms, who gave him loyalty and affection then and thereafter; yet, liberator but also conqueror of Yugoslavia, he waged a ruthless civil war against anti-communist forces, democrats as well as fascists and quislings. He was a bitter enemy of the West as the lines of the cold war were drawn; heroic defier of Stalin; champion of separate roads to ...

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