Directory:Josip Broz Tito and Wikipedia

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Wikipedia's article on Dictator Josip Broz Tito and Titoism is mostly Communist propaganda of the now defunct Communist Party of the former Yugoslavia. As it turns out Jimmy Wales has provided a perfect vehicle for propaganda of this type. The articles are mainly written by Editors from Croatia and supported by other Editors who have communist leanings. It is written in a non-encyclopaedic fashion and does not represent contemporary views. Sections of the Josip Broz Tito article about the Dictator are written in a child-like manner, similar to the Yugoslav primary school textbooks from the 1970s.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Yugoslavia, factual evidence has emerged that Josip Broz and his regime were responsible for executing mass murders, arrests and torture.The worst of these events are the Way of the Cross,[1] Bleiburg [2][3][4] and Foibe massacres.[5]

Encyclopaedia Britannica on events post World War Two in Yugoslavia:[6]

“ British commanders refused to accept their surrender and handed them over to the Partisans, who took a merciless revenge. Tens of thousands, including many civilians, were subsequently slaughtered on forced marches and in death camps. ”

Additionally there is the ethnic cleansing of Germans, Hungarians and Italians of the former Yugoslavia.[7][8] One only has to mention Goli Otok, a notorious prison on the Croatian coast (former Yugoslavia’s Evil Island-Gulag). The terror campaign lasted for about twenty years until the regime introduced reforms in the 1960's.

Government of the Slovenia

The government of the Republic of Slovenia (a former republic of Yugoslavia) has commission a study of communist crimes in the immediate post World War Two period. It was called Commission on Concealed Mass Graves in Slovenia. Their work was completed in October 2009. Below is a Croatian Newspaper Jutarnji report on the matter:[9]

Jutarnji wrote on the 01/10/2009 - 100 000 Victims In 581 Mass Graves:

“ In Slovenia, three basic books came out needed for the study of communist crimes in the immediate post-war period. It specifies graves where liquidation and execution of prisoners of war were carried out in its territory

This is a report by the Commission of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for testing grave sites under the leadership of Joze Dezman and the historian Mitja Ferenc (author of 'Hidden in his Father Zakrito' & 'Prikrita Grobišča 60 Let po Koncu Druge Svetovne Vojne'). The report of the Commission of the Government specifies the number of mass graves and victims and their nationality.

In this collection, in Slovenia, there was discovered and detected 581 mass graves in which, the author estimates about 100 000 victims in total. According to the research of Slovenian and Croatian historians, Partisans in Slovenia liquidated most of the Ustasa and Home Guard units. The Croats accounted for between 50 to 80 thousands casualties.

”

The factual evidence (above) has cast a very different light on Josip Broz Tito (the Commander of all Yugoslav Partisans/Communists during World War Two). He and his comrades were responsible for these Communist Crimes. Wikipedia's article on this individual seems to gloss over all of the mentioned historical events (in this article), or just does not mention them at all.

Note: Joze Dezman is a Slovenian historian. He is currently the director of the National Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Usage of Wikipedia

The usage of Wikipedia as a tool for promoting this type of propaganda is second only to Google itself. It is quite possible that this came about due to the fact that other editors and Admin are simply uneducated in these matters.

This exposes a major flaw in Wikipedia which is that a group of editors can learn to work the system so they can promote their own point of view, so that the article will become a stated Wiki fact, and itself a piece of history. Is Wikipedia taking on a darker tone? Where are the ethical and moral issues involved in creating a feel good story about Dictator Josip Broz Tito.

Encyclopaedia Britannica:[10]

“ After the armistice the British repatriated more than 10,000 Slovene collaborators who had attempted to retreat with the Germans, and Tito had most of them massacred at the infamous Pits of Kocevje. ”

Wikipedia: Yugoslavia-Link:

“
  • The post-World War II Yugoslavia was in many respects a model of how to build a multinational state.
  • The ethnic violence was only ended when the multiethnic Yugoslav Partisans took over the country at the end of the war and banned nationalism from being publicly promoted.
 ”

European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes"

Reports and proceedings of the 8th of April European public hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes”,[11] organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission, stated the following:

“

Totalitarian machines:

Let us mention briefly Fascism, National Socialism and Titoism in Italy, Austria and Slovenia. Three Christian nations, with nationalist tendencies, were infected with totalitarianism. The descent into barbarism has comparable structural elements: [12]

  • Abuse of national sentiment to carry out racial and class revolutionary projects;
  • Cult of a great leader, who permits his fanatics to murder, steal and lie;
  • Dictatorship of one party;
  • Militarisation of society, police state – almighty secret political police;
  • Collectivism, subjection of the citizen to the totalitarian state;
  • State terrorism with systematic abuses of basic human rights;
  • Aggressive assumption of power and struggle for territory. (page 197.)
 ”

Additional:

“
  • Property was confiscated, inhabitants were expelled from Slovenia/Yugoslavia and their residences, political and show trials were carried out, religion was repressed and the Catholic Church and its clergy were persecuted. At the beginning of the 1950s, Communist rule in Slovenia abandoned these forms of repression but was ready to reapply them if it felt threatened.
  • Thus the regime set up political and show trials against certain more visible opponents later. In the case of an “emergency situation”, even the establishment of concentration camps was planned in Slovenia in 1968, where around 1,000 persons, of whom 10 % were women, would be interned for political reasons. (Page 161.)
 ”

Note: Titoism are political ideologies and government policies that dominated the history of the former Yugoslavia. Titoism as a ideology emerged after the Tito and Stalin split and was named after Josip Broz Tito.

'The Reforms in Yugoslavia After 1948' by Fred Warner Neal. Page 214. Second chapter:[13]

“ In a totalitarian state,[14] personal freedom and human rights invariably most at the hands of unrestrianed police activity. That Yugoslavia was no exception was admitted by Aleksandar Rankovic, himself head of secret police or State Security Administration. This organization is known in Yugoslavia as UDBA. ”

Cult of Personality

The article doesn't even mention Josip Broz Tito's Cult of Personality:[15][16]

“ Virtually every communist system extinct or surviving at one point or another, had a supreme leader who was both extraordinarily powerful and surrounded by a bizarre cult, indeed worshipped. In the past (or in more traditional contemporary societies) such cults were reserved for deities and associated with conventional religious behaviour and institutions. These cults although apparently an intrinsic part of communist dictatorships (at any rate at a stage in their evolution) are largely forgotten today.

Stalin, Maio, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Sung, Enver Hoxha, Ceascesu, Dimitrov, Ulbricht, Gottwald, Tito and others all were the object of such cults. The prototypical cult was that of Stalin which was duplicated elsewhere with minor variations. [17]

”

Above is referenced from Paul Hollander's ‘Discontents: Post-modern and Post-communist’ Paul Hollander is an American scholar, journalist, and conservative political writer. (Ph.D in Sociology. Princeton University, 1963, B.A. London School of Economics, 1959 Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Centre Associate, Davis)

Economic realities

An interesting fact is that the article does not mention that Josip Broz and his fellow communists were committing economic suicide in the 1960's and 70's. Credit where credit is due; the Communist party of Yugoslavia did raise the standard of living in the 1960s and 1970s. This was achieved through Western investment,[18] but it was all a short-term solution. Economic problems started with the inflation crisis in 1978 due mainly to Communist mismanagement.

Factual statements on economic realities of Josip Broz and his fellow Communists:

  • Encyclopaedia Britannica states:
“ He knew that the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and others could not be integrated within some new supranation, nor would they willingly accept the hegemony of any of their number; yet his supranational Yugoslavism frequently smacked of unitarism. He promoted self-management but never gave up on the party’s monopoly of power. He permitted broad freedoms in science, art, and culture that were unheard of in the Soviet bloc, but he kept excoriating the West. He preached peaceful coexistence but built an army that, in 1991, delivered the coup de grace to the dying Yugoslav state. At his death, the state treasury was empty and political opportunists unchecked. He died too late for constructive change, too early to prevent chaos.[19] ”
  • BBC UK/History by Tim Judah:
“ Tito's Yugoslavia also gained enormous prestige as a founder of the non-aligned movement, which aimed to find a place in world politics for countries that did not want to stand foursquare behind either of the two superpowers. Despite all this, and although there was much substance to Tito's Yugoslavia, much was illusion too. The economy was built on the shaky foundations of massive western loans. Even liberal communism had its limits, as did the very nature of the federation. Stirrings of nationalist dissent in Croatia and Kosovo were crushed. The federation worked because in reality the voice of only one man counted - that of Tito himself. [20] ”
  • Ivo Goldstein 'Croatia A History':
“
  • Self-management as system was only slightly more efficient than the Soviet model. It was bureaucratised and cumbersome and could not compete with Western economies. People could obtain so much free or for less than the market price (e.g. apartments) that they could be obtain without work. All this made the settling of accounts in the 1980s and in the post-socialist age more difficult.
  • In Tito’s system no interest or ideas could be expressed in a truly democratic way. This did most harm where feelings of ethnic identity were concerned because their suppression led to growth of extreme nationalism. Furthermore, the economic failure of Tito’s system, most clearly expressed in the protracted crisis of the 1980s, left people who even if they were not poor, were disillusioned and open to manipulation by demagogues. Finally Tito’s practical solutions ensured that he would retain unlimited power during his life time, but foreshadowed the problems would come after his death. [21]
 ”

Note: Ivo Goldstein is a Professor at the University of Zagreb & former Director of the Institute for Croatian History of the University of Zagreb. Zagreb is the capital city of Croatia (a former republic of Yugoslavia).

Testimony-Eye Witness

  • Mitja Ribicic - Internal Security of the Former Yugoslavia: Interview BBC 4
  • Ivan Supek - Croatian Physicist, Philosopher, Writer, Playwright, Peace Activist Humanist & former Yugoslav Partizan: Interview BBC 4
  • Janez Stanovnik - Slovenian Politician & Economist/Former Yugoslav Partizan Commander.
  • Simo Dubajic- Link Former Yugoslav Partizan Commander: Simo Dubajic published a book entitled 'Life, Sin and Killing' (Život, Grijeh i Kajanje).The book is a detail account about the post World War Two massacre of Croatian POWs at Kocevski Rog.
  • Josip Zoretic - Political prisoner of the former Yugoslavia's most notorious prison, Goli Otok:Yugoslavia’s Evil Island-Gulag
  • Vera Winter – Economist/Political prisoner of the former Yugoslavia's most notorious prison, Goli Otok: BBC 4
  • Alfred Pal - Artist/Political prisoner of the former Yugoslavia's most notorious prison, Goli Otok: BBC 4
British Government representative
  • Frank Waddams a British Government representative who had lived outside of Belgrade, said:
“ He knew first hand of ten concentration camps and had talked with inmates from nearly all of them. “ The tale is always the same, he said “ Starvation, overcrowding, brutality and death condition, which make Dachau and Buchenwald mild by comparison. Many Slovenes who were released from Dachau at the end of the war came home only to find themselves in a Slovene camp within a few days. It is from these people that the news has come that the camps are worse than Dachau.” Out of a Slovene population of 1,200,000, Waddams believes that 20,000 to 30,000 were imprisoned.[22] ”
  • British Consulate, Ljubljana to British Ambassador Belgrade, 22 August 1947- concerning post World War Two political trials:
“ A brief reading of the newspaper reports, however, will suffice to make it clear that the trial was first and foremost a gigantic political propaganda stunt whose double aim was first to show Britain and America as the irreconcilable enemies of the new Yugoslavia, and second, finally to frighten off anyone who might still think that it is possible to associate with officials of the Western countries and get away with it.[23] ”

Media

“ a. Josip Broz Tito, the hard man who managed to unite Yugoslavia after World War II, has long been regarded as somehow less awful than his fellow communist leaders. This French documentary makes it clear that even now, after Yugoslavia has disintegrated (mostly chaotically), Tito is still adored by some in the Balkans, with festivals commemorating his birthday and enthusiasts kissing his statue and declaring their love for him.

b. Turned back from Austria by the Allies and handed over to Tito's forces, they were executed in the woods without trial. Investigations in Slovenia have found evidence to suggest the dead were naked, or partly naked, and tied with wire when they were killed.The graves' existence was an open secret for decades, yet they were not documented and not commonly discussed.

c. Yet Tito, internationally feted unifier of Yugoslavia, wrought violence on many fronts. His purges were merciless, and his forces rounded up thousands of suspected opponents and sent them to a prison on Goli Otok (Barren Island) where they were beaten, tortured and killed.

”

See also


References

  1. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"Hrcak Portal of Scientific Journals of Croatia: An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross". Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help) by Mr Dizdar's
    • An Addition to the Research of the Problem of Bleiburg & Way of the Cross. This paper dedicated to the 60th anniversary of these tragic events represents a small step towards the elaboration of known data and brings a list of yet unknown and unpublished original documents, mostly belonging to the Yugoslavian Military and Political Government 1945-1947. Amongst those documents are those mostly relating to Croatian territory although a majority of concentration camps and execution sites were outside of Croatia, in other parts of Yugoslavia. The author hopes that the readers will receive a complete picture about events related to Bleiburg and the Way of The Cross and the suffering of numerous Croats, which is confirmed directly in many documents and is related to the execution of a person or a whole group of people and sometimes non-stop for days.
  2. ^ Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases by Inc Icon Group International
  3. ^ Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical by David B. MacDonald. Page 168.
    • The Partisans also carried out massacres, best known being at Bleiburg (Austria), where retreating Croatian and Slovenian forces and their families were massacred.
  4. ^ Bleiburg Massacre:
    • "Among the Croats were real or alleged members or collaborators of the fascist regime. Killings were done presumably with the full knowledge of their supreme commander Josip Broz Tito" to "The majority of the Croats were members or collaborators of the fascist regime, although there were many frightened innocent people, however, these two were inextricably mixed and the pursuing partisans appear to have unfortunately labelled them all as traitors since they were fleeing with the fascist units that were attempting to surrender to British forces in Austria. Apart from Croats, present in the fleeing military columns were remaining units of the Serbian Chetniks and the Slovenian Bela Garda, the vast majority of both were killed as well. The British forces refused to accept the Ustasa's surrender as per the Allied agreement and they were prevented from entering the British occupied areas."
  5. ^ Where the Balkans Begin (The Slovenes in Triest-The Foiba Story) by Bernard Meares:
    • During the early Communist occupation in Trieste, Gorizia and the Littoral, and the 40 days of Communist rule in Trieste city, some 6000 arrests were made and the prisoners carried off to Communist-controlled areas. When the Allies finally imposed their rule they found out about the Yugoslav execution squads. The more objective Italian historians and statisticians such as Galliano Fogar and Raoul Pupo point to between 1000 and 1800 Italians and Slovene victims. The Red Cross estimates that 2,250 failed to return , in rough agreement with Bogdan Novak who said in 1971 that 4200 Italians returned out of 6000 arrested.
  6. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica: Croatia
  7. ^ Communist Retaliation and Persecution on Yugoslav Territory During and After WWII by Dr. Ph. Michael Portmann:
    • The following article deals with repressive measures undertaken by communist-dominated Partisan forces during and especially after WWII in order to take revenge on former enemies, to punish collaborators, and “people’s enemies“ and to decimate and eliminate the potential of opponents to a new, socialist Yugoslavia. The text represents a summary of a master thesis referring to the above-mentioned topic written and accepted at Vienna University in 2002
  8. ^ www.enotes.com "Yugoslavia." Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Ed. Dinah L. Shelton. Gale Cengage, 2005. eNotes.com. 2006. 26 Jun, 2010 Yugoslavia: Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity-Mark Thompson.
    • The killing continued after the war, as Tito's victorious forces took revenge on their real and perceived enemies. British forces in Austria turned back tens of thousands of fleeing Yugoslavs. Estimates range from 30,000 to 55,000 killed between spring and autumn 1945.
    • Native German and Hungarian communities, seen as complicit with wartime occupation, were brutally treated; tantamount in some cases to ethnic cleansing. The Volksdeutsch settlements of Vojvodina and Slavonia largely disappeared. Perhaps 100,000 people—half the ethnic German population in Yugoslavia—fled in 1945, and many who remained were compelled to do forced Labour, murdered, or later ransomed by West Germany. Some 20,000 Hungarians of Vojvodina were killed in reprisals. Albanian rebellions in Kosovo were suppressed, with prisoners sent on death marches towards the coast. An estimated 170,000 ethnic Italians fled to Italy in the late 1940s and 1950s. (All of these figures are highly approximate.)
  9. ^ www.jutarnji.hr U 581 Grobnici je 100.000 žrtava. English version-The Jutarnji newspaper reported on the 01/10/2009 commissions find, in all it is estimated that there are 100 000 victims in 581 mass graves
  10. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica: Slovenia
  11. ^ International Law Observer Responding to post-Second World War totalitarian crimes in Slovenia Posted on June 22, 2009 by Jernej Letnar Cernic
  12. ^ European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" Reports and proceedings of the 8 April European public hearing on “Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes”, organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission. Page 197. Joze Dezman: COMMUNIST REPRESSION AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN SLOVENIA Additional chapter: COMMUNIST REPRESSION Of “INTERIOR ENEMIES” IN SLOVENIA
    • In the greater part of this paper, the author deals with individual repressive measures that Communist rule imposed in Slovenia in the period from the end of the war in 1945 until the beginning of the 1950s. In this period, the Communist authorities in Slovenia implemented all the forms of repression that were typical of states with Stalinist regimes. In Slovenia, it was a time of mass killings without court trials, and of concentration and labour camps.
  13. ^ Titoism in Action: The Reforms in Yugoslavia After 1948 by Fred Warner Neal.
  14. ^ Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy by Carl Joachim Friedrich & Zbigniew Brzezinski: Characteristics of a totalitarian regime; a total ideology, a single mass party, a terrorist secret police, a monopoly of mass communication, all instruments to wage combat are in the control of the same hands, and a centrally directed planned economy. Totalitarian dictatorships emerge after the seizure of power by the leaders of a movement who have developed support for an ideology. The point when the government becomes totalitarian is when the leadership uses open and legal violence to maintain its control. The dictator demands unanimous devotion from the people and often uses a real or imaginary enemy to create a threat so the people rally around him.
  15. ^ Governing by Committee: Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies by Thomas A. Baylis. Communist Collective Leadership, page 91
  16. ^ Government Leaders, Military Rulers and Political Activists: An Encyclopaedia of People Who Changed the World (Lives & Legacies Series)-By David W. Del Testa, Florence Lemoine & John Strickland/ page181 Legacy Chapter
  17. ^ Discontents: Post-modern and Post-communist by Paul Hollander.
  18. ^ Keeping Tito Afloat by Lorraine M. Lees:
    • Tito Afloat draws upon newly declassified documents to show the critical role that Yugoslavia played in U.S. foreign policy with the communist world in the early years of the Cold War. After World War II, the United States considered Yugoslavia to be a loyal Soviet satellite, but Tito surprised the West in 1948 by breaking with Stalin. Seizing this opportunity, the Truman administration sought to "keep Tito afloat" by giving him military and economic aid.
  19. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica-History & Society: Josip Broz Tito
  20. ^ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>"BBC-History by Tim Judah". Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  21. ^ Croatia: A History by Ivo Goldstein
  22. ^ Frank Waddams, a British representative in the former Yugoslavia Death by Government by R. J. Rummel.Page 354.
  23. ^ Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes Appendices/Appendix A: Foreign office documents on the 1947 show trial:
    • From Foreign Office to Belgrade, 15 August 1947 Waddams, vice-consul Ljubljana 1945, considers he may be the diplomatic representative referred to in the trial, as both Furlan and Sirc were the only people who helped him to get the Ljubljana consulate going when he first opened it. He considers this the probable reason for their sentence.

Notes

  • Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • BBC-History by Tim Judah
  • BBC-History: Partisan Fighters War in the Balkans 1941-1945. Dr Stephen A Hart: Senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Author of 'The Road to Falaise: Operations Totalize & Tractable' (Alan Sutton 2004), 'Montgomery and Colossal Cracks: The 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe,1944-45' (Praeger, 2000).
  • European Public Hearing on “Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Regimes" organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–June 2008) and the European Commission.
  • Australia's Four Corners: Tito's UDBA Activities in Australia from the 1960's
  • Paul Hollander: Discontents: Post-modern and Post-communist
  • Great leaders, Great Tyrants Contemporary Views of World Rulers by Arnold Blumberg
  • Communist Retaliation and Persecution on Yugoslav Territory During and After WWII by Dr. ph. Michael Portmann (Fellow of the ZEIT Foundation in Hamburg, doctoral studies at the University of Vienna (Dr. phil.)
  • Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical by David B. MacDonald
  • Yalta and The Bleiburg Tragedy by C Michael McAdams.University of San Francisco, California-USA. Presented at the International Symposium for Investigation of the Bleiburg Tragedy Zagreb, Croatia and Bleiburg, Austria May 17 and 18, 1994.
  • Ivo Goldstein: 'Croatia A History', a Mc Gill Queen’s University Press Publication
  • Zdravko Dizdar (Croatian Historian/Croatian Institute for History in Zagreb): Partisan and Communist Repression and Atrocities in Croatia, 1944th-1946th Documents/Hrcak Portal of Scientific Journals of Croatia.
  • Mentioning the War: Genocide discussions in post-Tito Yugoslavia by Tea Sindbaek Link

External links

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