Josip broz tito, yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, the premier or president of yugoslavia from 1945 to 1980 He was the first communist leader in power to defy soviet hegemony, a backer of independent roads to socialism, and a promoter of the policy of nonalignment between the two hostile blocs in the cold war. A communist dictator who, against all odds, held the former yugoslavia together, a partisan leader during the second world war, a charismatic, but vain, man, says hilary green. From 1945 onwards marshal tito ruled yugoslavia as premier and minister of defense as a dictatorship, suppressing internal opposition, executing mihajlovi, and jailing archbishop stepinac of zagreb Tito nationalized the yugoslav industry and undertook a planned economy. His mother was slovene, but he always spoke the language of his croat father in public.
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