Tito: A Biography (Communist Lives)

232 Pages·2010·1.34 MB·English

by  Geoffrey Swain

TITO
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 most
recent publications include: Between Stalin and Hitler: Class War and Race
War on the Dvina (Routledge, 2004); Trotsky (Pearson-Longman, 2006);
and, with Nigel Swain, Eastern Europe since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan,
Fourth Edition, 2009).
Other titles in the Communist Lives series:
Palmiro Togliatti
Aldo Agosti
Maurice Thorez
John Bulaitis
Ernst Thälmann
Norman LaPorte
Antonio Gramsci
Claudio Natoli
Wladyslaw Gomulka
Anita Prażmowska
Imre Nagy
János Rainer
Georgi Dimitrov
Marietta Stankova
TITO
A Biography
Geoffrey Swain
Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2011 Geoffrey Swain
The right of Geoffrey Swain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book or any part thereof, may not be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher
Communist Lives: Volume 5
ISBN: 978 1 84511 727 6
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author
CONTENTS
List of Abbreviations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Series Foreword by Matthew Worley xi
Introduction 001
1. The Making of a Yugoslav Revolutionary 5
2. Learning to Implement the People’s Liberation Struggle 33
3. Revolution Through War 57
4. Revising Marxism–Leninism 83
5. The Khrushchev Decade 109
6. Reforming Communism 139
7. Actually Existing Self-Management 165
Conclusion 185
Endnotes 193
Index 209
ABBREVIATIONS
AVNOJ: the Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia, the
founding body of the post-war Yugoslav state which met twice in November 1942 and
November 1943.
EAM: the Greek Resistance Movement, established by the Greek Communist
Party during the Second World War and while ostensibly open to other parties, always
dominated by the Communist Party.
SRZ: Peasant Work Co-operative, the equivalent of the Soviet ‘collective farm’
during Yugoslavia’s short experiment with collective agriculture.
ZAVNOH: the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Croatia,
responsible for organising the liberation struggle in Croatia, but subject to the
decisions of AVNOJ.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Part of Chapter One is based on an article ‘Tito: the Formation of a Disloyal
Bolshevik’ published in International Review of Social History, volume 24,
no. 2, 1989, and reproduced here with the kind permission of the editor of
that journal. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the staff of
two libraries, the University of Glasgow Library and the National Library of
Scotland; Tania Konn-Roberts of the Slavonic Collection at the University
of Glasgow Library deserves special mention for her help while I was
working on this project.