Tito bez příkras a předpojatosti
Tito Unembellished and without Bias

An Extraordinary Historical Biography of a Yugoslav Statesman

Summary/Abstract: Ivo Goldstein and Slavko Goldstein. Tito. Zagreb: Profil, 2015, 911 pp., ISBN 978-953-313-417-8. The reviewer looks in detail at this work by two Croatian authors, father and son, which, published 35 years after his death, is the first biography of Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) to fully meet all scholarly standards. The biography, according to the reviewer, impresses the reader not only by its considerable length, but also by its comprehensiveness, balance, factual precision, convincing judgements, and, last but not least, readability. The reviewer praises the authors’ great knowledge of the topic and their exemplary handling of the sources. Although they did not work in archives, they have paid careful attention to all the important episodes of Tito’s political career, sensitively portraying his private life, and identifying the subtle boundaries between, on the one hand, the life and deeds of the man who held power in Yugoslavia for so many years and, on the other, the post-war history of Yugoslavia, while keeping within the bounds of the biography genre. The authors merit respect, according to the reviewer, for their mostly nonconformist opinions, which are frequently aimed against nationalistically burdened interpretations of the majority in Croatia today, though on some questions they too succumb to them. Although the authors are considerably critical of many of Tito’s actions and decisions (for example, his repression of opponents after the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia and particularly the conflict with Stalin), they present the man and his historical role in an essentially positive light. They attribute to him features of great statesmanship, for example, his extraordinary political intuition, mettle, and ability to unite an ethnically diverse society and make it into a functioning state. The high points of Tito’s career, according to the authors, were the partisan war against the German-Italian occupation and the independent political course for Yugoslavia in the face of pressure from Stalin and the Eastern bloc.

• Details
• Contents