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Several thousand fans of the fascinating and controversial former leader of Communist Yugoslavia, Joseph Pros Tito, celebrated his 130th birthday on Saturday in his home village in Croatia, which houses the museum.
The dictators marched on Kumrovek in honor of Tito’s memory.
AFP
Coming from all four corners of the former Yugoslav Confederation, they traveled to Kumrov (northern Croatia) to pay their respects, especially during World War II, against the Nazi occupiers and against Stalin. Formation of the Non-Aligned Movement.
“The purpose of the meeting was not only to remind us of the past, but also to remind us of the times when we lived rich and secure lives,” said Joan Veznovic, president of Tito’s Nostalgia Association. Many participants displayed the flags of the former Yugoslavia and T-shirts depicting the former leader.
An iron hand
After being hunted down by Nazi occupation forces during World War II, Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron fist for 35 years, until his death on May 4, 1980, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Without the leader’s magnetism and his authoritarian leadership, the mosaic of peoples and religions that formed the Yugoslav Federation would have lasted only a decade before erupting into a series of wars that killed more than 130,000 lives.
Tito’s legacy remains controversial in countries of origin since the secession of Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia). Some like it, others hate it. Its name evokes a kind of golden age, when Yugoslavia was one of the most prosperous communist countries.
(AFP)