Born May 7, 1892
Kumrovec, Croatia, Austria-Hungary
Died May 4, 1980
Ljubljana, Yugoslavia

President of Yugoslavia and revolutionary

Josip Broz Tito established a communist government in the country then known as Yugoslavia. Fiercely independent, Tito managed to successfully distance himself and his country from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879–1953; see entry) and Soviet control. During the entire Cold War period, Tito took his country down a liberalized path in agriculture, management of workers, trade with Western nations, art, education, and travel between Western nations and Yugoslavia. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry from 1945 to 1991 between the United States and the Soviet Union falling just short of military conflict. Tito stressed nonalignment, the right of nations to be neutral and not align with either superpower, the...