Tito--Yugoslavia's Great Dictator: A ReassessmentThis new biography offers a straightforward, balanced approach to the man who reigned over Yugoslavia for thirty-five years. Stripping away the myths about Tito and his life. Stevan Pavlowitch places him within a larger perspective as a key twentieth-century European leader. Pavlowitch begins with an examination of the economic, social, and national factors that helped to create Josip Broz Tito. He goes on to consider Tito's role as a national unifier after the chaos of the Second World War, demonstrating how Tito brought Yugoslavia together by offering something to each of the country's constituent ethnic communities. While admitting that Tito remains something of a mystery because the important mechanisms of his regime always functioned behind closed doors, Pavlowitch reconciles the various contradictory versions of Tito's life and policies - as a ruthless revolutionary and an imaginative statesman, as a successfully dogmatic hard-liner and a triumphant heretic, as a good disciple of Soviet Stalinism and the force behind a Yugoslav-style Marxism. According to Pavlowitch, the seeds of Tito's long-term failure lay in his short-term successes, and the style and substance of his regime provided little more than transient unity. This study of one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century, and one of the least understood, is especially valuable today since the collapse of communism and the breakup of Yugoslavia have called into question Tito's motives, directions, and achievements. General readers and students alike will find it a stimulating guide to the historical continuity of Eastern Europe and the situation there today. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
achieved Allies already army Austria-Hungary AVNOJ Balkans became Belgrade Bosnia British Central Committee chetniks Cominform Comintern Communism Communist Party Communist Yugoslavia Congress Constitution continued country's crisis Croatia Croatian Peasant Party Croats cult Dedijer disintegration Djilas economic reform elections ethnic Europe eventually fear Federal forces foreign policy Germans Gorkić Habsburg Hungarian Hungary ideological independent Italy Josip Broz Tito Jovanka Kardelj KPJ leadership Kumrovec leader longer ment Mihailović military Montenegro Moscow movement munist myths nationalist never non-aligned non-aligned movement organisation partisans peasants People's Liberation political President prestige purges Ranković régime region Republic of Yugoslavia revolution revolutionary rôle rule Russia Second World self-management Serbia Serbs Sisak Slovenes Slovenia socialism socialist South Slav Soviet Union Stalin Stalinist struggle territory tion Tito's Tito's death Titoism told took turned unity Ustaša wanted West Western workers Yugoslav Zagreb Žarko