Tito 'Symbol Of Better Times' For Ex-Yugoslavs, Historian Sabrina Ramet Says
Thirty years after his death and nearly 20 years after the disintegration of the Yugoslavia he helped create, Yugoslavia's longtime ruler Josip Broz Tito still commands affection and respect, a unifying figure in a now deeply divided region.
RFE/RL correspondent Ahto Lobjakas spoke with Sabrina Ramet, professor of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a senior research associate with the Center for the Study of Civil War in Oslo, and the author of a dozen books on the former Yugoslavia, about what Tito means to the region.
RFE/RL: Thirty years after his death, is Josip Broz Tito still relevant? How does he compare, for instance, to figures like Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Poland's Wojcech Jaruzelski, who ruled at about the same time?
Sabrina Ramet: There's absolutely no comparison. Because if you go to Serbia or Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina today -- even, to some extent, Slovenia, though to a much, much lesser extent -- you'll find that there is still a cult of Tito. Tito continues to be ranked as very popular among people; there's a certain nostalgia for the Tito era among the people there.
In some cases it is a sort of blind nostalgia, but in many cases it's a more critical nostalgia, where people do remember that there was a harsh side to the Tito era as well, but nonetheless they value things -- such as the fact that it was a time of peace, a time of unity; it was a time when Yugoslavia was a larger and more important player than any of the successor states which we have now.
And it was a time when -- certainly in the 1960s into the mid-1970s, we can say, roughly speaking from the time of the reform, which went from 1962-65 until about 1974 -- it was a time when you had improving and rising expectations.
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RFE/RL correspondent Ahto Lobjakas spoke with Sabrina Ramet, professor of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a senior research associate with the Center for the Study of Civil War in Oslo, and the author of a dozen books on the former Yugoslavia, about what Tito means to the region.
RFE/RL: Thirty years after his death, is Josip Broz Tito still relevant? How does he compare, for instance, to figures like Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Poland's Wojcech Jaruzelski, who ruled at about the same time?
Sabrina Ramet: There's absolutely no comparison. Because if you go to Serbia or Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina today -- even, to some extent, Slovenia, though to a much, much lesser extent -- you'll find that there is still a cult of Tito. Tito continues to be ranked as very popular among people; there's a certain nostalgia for the Tito era among the people there.
In some cases it is a sort of blind nostalgia, but in many cases it's a more critical nostalgia, where people do remember that there was a harsh side to the Tito era as well, but nonetheless they value things -- such as the fact that it was a time of peace, a time of unity; it was a time when Yugoslavia was a larger and more important player than any of the successor states which we have now.
And it was a time when -- certainly in the 1960s into the mid-1970s, we can say, roughly speaking from the time of the reform, which went from 1962-65 until about 1974 -- it was a time when you had improving and rising expectations.