Birthday celebration shows sentimentality for Tito, former dictator of Yugoslavia

Several thousand visit Tito’s grave

BELGRADE, Serbia — Several thousand people visited Josip Broz Tito’s grave to celebrate his birthday Tuesday in a sign of the sentimentality many feel about the Yugoslav communist dictator 30 years after his death.

Tito’s admirers flocked in from all over former Yugoslavia, the ethnically-diverse federation he skillfully stirred through the Cold War era, but which broke up in brutal warfare only a decade after Tito died in 1980.

The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s — the most brutal conflicts in Europe since World War II — pitted regions and ethnic groups against one another, killed about 120,000 people and divided the federation into seven independent states.

Carrying Tito’s pictures, former Yugoslavia flags and symbols, the late leader’s admirers sang Communist-era songs at his memorial center in a residential Belgrade area on Tuesday, trying to evoke the long-gone times they now view with nostalgia.

“Belgrade was an important political center in the world during Tito’s era,” said one of the visitors who identified himself as a retired general.

Milorad Radulovic, a Serb who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, told the Beta news agency that he comes every year to “honor the man who provided me and my family with a carefree childhood and a good life.”

Although Tito ruled Yugoslavia with a heavy hand for decades and is widely viewed as a dictator, he also allowed some freedoms to his citizens — such as open travel — that other eastern European nations under the Communists did not enjoy.

Many also credit Tito with keeping the country out of the Soviet grip, while securing for the good ties with the West and substantial financial support that provided for relative prosperity at home.

This, combined with the breakup of the country and today’s widespread poverty, has led many to believe the Tito era was better than the present.

In the former Yugoslavia, Tito’s birthday on May 25 was celebrated by having relay runners carry a baton for weeks and hand it to him on his birthday.

On Tuesday, admirers gave a baton to Tito’s grandson, Joska Broz.

“They have no one else to turn to,” he said.