“Marshall Tito is extremely beloved for a dead Communist dictator. Even coming from an American perspective, I always had a pretty vaunted impression of him. He was like the dictator who cared; minimal human rights violations, genuine popular support… All in all not, a terrible guy to worship.”

Apart from being a completely unfounded statement, it raises an issue that has recurred on this website: Yugonostalgia. So, let’s clarify a few things.

To commemorate Yugoslavia as a peaceful state is false. It was a foreign imposed “union” held together by oppression. It was enabled by ignorance from the outside world regarding the inherent internal differences between the peoples of the Balkans at the conclusion of the First World War. The attempted elimination of ethnicity through the excessive restriction of ethnic rights (e.g. language and religious rights) fueled the idea of a collective Yugoslav identity. People who opposed this identity were imprisoned or killed. So if by “peaceful” you mean “silent”, yes, it was a peaceful state. There was very little internal fighting because any potential threat to the regime was eliminated.

To commemorate Yugoslavia as a state with minimal human rights violations is false. It held the highest number of prisoners out of all the post-WWII Communist states. It dedicated two entire islands to gulag-style labor camps; Goli Otok for men and Sveti Grgur for women. The number of prisoners is unknown but has been estimated to collectively be close to 100,000. Amongst the prisoners was Adem Demaci, who served nearly 3 decades of his life in his fight for ethnic rights for the Albanian minority. Alija Izetbegović was another prisoner. The UDBA was one of the most aggressive secret police organizations of its time. A book named Čuvari Jugoslavije, written by a former agent surfaced in 2002 from Bosnia & Herzegovina, giving thousands of specific names of agents who were stationed throughout the world and the names of their assigned targets. Enver Hadri was a target. As were Kadri Zeka, Bruno Busic, Vehbi Ibrahimi, Stjepan Đureković, Nahid Kulenović and the Gervalla brothers.

To commemorate Marshal Tito as the “dictator who cared” is false. The Non-Aligned Movement which he founded intentionally played both the Communist and Capitalist blocs while maintaining a state of isolation, and in turn a decreased threat to his own power. There was no political opposition in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, nor were there ever any direct elections for the assemblies at the regional or federal level. Marshal Tito was a dictator and he did what dictators do: isolate their states enough to secure their own power at the expense of the people.

People commemorate Yugoslavia as being a place of economic prosperity, where they could live comfortably and travel freely throughout the world. What’s forgotten is that the wealth was distributed with undeniable discrimination against the regions that brought the most profits via industrialized labor, and in favor of the regions that remained reliant on unproductive agriculture. What’s overlooked is the fact that this era of supposed “economic prosperity” had nothing to do with the state itself. What’s ignored is that by the time of the breakup, the country that so many commemorate for being “prosperous” had an inflation rate of 583%.

Tito is dead, Yugoslavia is dead, Communism has thankfully committed suicide. Yugo-nostalgia needs to depart immediately.

Zbogom, Jugoslavijo.

The article was originally written in English.

Illustration: Marie Fette

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