Tito: A Biography

Geoffrey Swain

Nov 2010 · I.B.Tauris

About this ebook

Josip Broz Tito was a remarkable figure in the history of Communism, the Second World War, the Balkans and Post-War Eastern Europe. He was the only European besides Lenin to lead a successful Communist revolution and became one of the most renowned Communist leaders of all time. For a certain generation, he was remembered as someone who stood up to both Hitler and Stalin and won. Tito was above all else a communist, and was devoted to the communist cause until the day he died. What made him different to other communist leaders was that his early experience of Soviet Russia had given him knowledge of the Soviet experiment not to be bound by its spell. Throughout his life he sought to distinguish between Leninism and Stalinism, while never abandoning the internationalism that he maintained stood at the heart of the Marxist message. In his new Yugoslavia, he developed a system of socialist self-administration which appeared able to compete with the West and provided his people with the consumer benefits associated with capitalism. However, within a decade of his death, the edifice he had constructed imploded into the most brutal of ethnic conflicts - in essence, Tito was responsible for both the success and the failure of post-war Yugoslavia. In this, the first post-communist biography of Tito, the renowned historian Geoffrey Swain paints a new picture of this famous figure. Swain explores not only Tito's relationship with Stalin, but also his earlier relationship with the Comintern and his long engagement with Khrushchev and the de-Stalinisation process.

Ratings and reviews

Awesome Leader, read the book, great man. A great man only gets born every 2 thousand years, there was Jesus, than there was Tito. R.I.P.

About the author

Geoffrey Swain holds the Alec Nove Chair in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. He has written extensively on the history of Russia and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. His mostrecent publications include: 'Between Stalin and Hitler: Class War and Race War on the Dvina'; 'Trotsky'; and, with Nigel Swain, 'Eastern Europe since 1945'.