Geoffrey Swain, Tito: A Biography, London: I.B.

Tauris,2011 some extracts

- In 1913, aged twenty-one, Josip Broz was called up for two years military service. He asked to serve
in the 25th Domobran Regiment in Zagreb, in which orders were given in Croatian rather than
Hungarian. Over the winter of 191314 he trained as a skier, and subsequently attended a course for
non-commissioned officers in Budapest, becoming the youngest sergeant-major in the regiment.
(...)When the First World War began, Tito was arrested and imprisoned on the charge of threatening to
desert to the Russians, something several of his compatriots succeeded in doing. Ultimately Tito gave
conflicting versions of this story, telling the Yugoslav historian Vladimir Dedijer that he had indeed
threatened to desert to the Russians, but also claiming, as his defence counsel argued at the time, that
the whole thing was the result of a clerical error.
- After his release, Tito was transferred to the Serbian Front, and then, at the beginning of 1915, the
25th Domobran Regiment was sent to the Russian Front in the Carpathian Mountains. Tito was put in
charge of a scouting platoon, and later wrote about this experience with fond memories: One thing
interested me in the science of warfare: that was scouting, because it required a clear head. Soon my
wishes were granted and I was given command of a platoon which night after night crossed the enemy
lines and operated deep in the rear. We were very successful and the reason, I believe, was that I took
care of my men, saw to it that they were not cheated on their food rations, that they had shoes and the
best possible sleeping accommodation. Although this was the extent of Titos military experience,
scouting taught him invaluable lessons about maintaining morale when behind enemy lines. Milovan
Djilas, at one time his closest associate but later his bitterest critic, argued that Titos time as an NCO
in the Austro-Hungarian army gave him a highly developed sense of military organisation.
- On 25 March 1915 Titos regiment was attacked by Russian, Circassian and Cossack troops and Tito
was wounded by a Circassian lance and taken prisoner; this wound was so serious that he spent the
next thirteen months in a prison hospital established in an old monastery in the small town of
Sviyazhsk, on the river Volga close to Kazan. Here he learnt Russian, helped by two secondary-school
girls who brought him the Russian classics to read. In summer 1916 he was considered well enough to
be moved to the Ardatov PoW camp in Samara Province, where he was given the job of mechanic
maintaining the local village mill. At the end of 1916 he was moved once again, to the Kungur PoW
camp near Perm, where prisoners were used to repair the Trans-Siberian Railway. Here he discovered
that Red Cross parcels from Sweden were being stolen by camp officials, and when he complained he
was put in prison and beaten up by Cossacks.
- During the revolutionary disturbances of February 1917 when the Russian Tsar was forced from the
throne, a crowd broke into the prison and returned him to his camp. Amongst those with whom he had
been imprisoned was a Polish Bolshevik, who befriended him, then got him a job on the railway, and
then helped him escape to Petrograd in June 1917, where he lodged with the son of his Polish friend.
Tito arrived at the height of the political crisis known as the July Days. After the Tsars overthrow,
Russias various liberal parties had formed a Provisional Government, supported from the sidelines by
the socialist parties represented in the soviet. In April, the moderate socialists had decided to support
that government, joining it and turning it into a coalition; Lenins Bolsheviks had defined themselves
by refusing to support this government and calling instead for the transfer of power to the soviets. The
Coalition Government had been held together by its commitment to Russias continued participation in
the First World War, but the offensive launched at the end of June had gone so disastrously that the
Coalition Government had collapsed. In this power vacuum at the start of July, the Bolsheviks
organised a series of massive demonstrations calling for a new Soviet Government and toyed with the
idea of seizing power. Tito took part in these demonstrations, and was one of the many suspected
Bolsheviks arrested when the new Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky restored order. Tito was sent to
the Peter Paul Fortress where, after three weeks of posing as an innocent inhabitant of Perm, he
confessed to being an escaped PoW. Ordered back to Kungur, he jumped off the train in Ekaterinburg
and fled, taking another train as far as Omsk. Here, on 8 November, the local Bolsheviks stopped the
train and explained that Lenin had seized power in Petrograd the previous day and that recruits were
being sought for a new International Red Guard. Tito joined the International Red Guard and spent the
winter of 191718 guarding the Trans-Siberian railway.

- It was at this time that Tito met Pelagiya Belousova, then only 14 years old. She gave him shelter in
May 1918 when the Czechoslovak Legion staged its rebellion and overthrew Bolshevik power in
Siberia. Omsk became the headquarters first for the anti-Bolshevik Siberian Government, and then for
Admiral Kolchaks White Government. Pelagiya helped Tito take refuge forty miles outside Omsk in a
Kirghiz village, where he again found employment maintaining the local mill. Then, in November
1919 Omsk was recaptured by the Red Army, Tito moved back to the town and he and Pelagiya
married in January 1920. In autumn 1920 a massive operation began to return German and AustroHungarian PoWs to their homelands and Tito and his new bride decided to take advantage of this
opportunity. Like thousands of others, they travelled to Narva in newly-independent Estonia, and then
by boat to Stettin. From there Tito and Pelagiya took a train to Vienna, where they arrived on 20
September 1920; by early October they were in Kumrovec, where Josip discovered that his mother had
died in 1918 and his father had moved to Jastrebarsko near Zagreb.
- When Tito had been taken prisoner, Croatia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary which was itself
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; by the time he returned, it was part of the new Kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Communist activity in the new state was significant. In the local elections
held in 1920 in March and August, the communists won 39 per cent of the vote in Zagreb and 34 per
cent in Belgrade, making them the biggest party in both cities; in November 1920 elections were held
to the Constituent Assembly in which the Yugoslav Communist Party got the fourth largest percentage
of the vote, 12.4 per cent, and when the seats were allocated in December, the communists emerged as
the third largest party. On the night of 2930 December 1920 the ruling government coalition issued a
decree banning Communist Party activities until after a constitution for the new state had been drawn
up. That constitution had no sooner been agreed on 28 June 1921, than the Minister of the Interior,
who had issued the ban on the Yugoslav Communist Party, was murdered by a young Bosnian
communist on 21 July and all fifty-eight communist members of parliament were removed from the
assembly and from local government; the Yugoslav Communist Party was declared illegal and the
death penalty could be invoked for activity leading to the spread of communism.
- In this political climate, Tito struggled to find work. In Zagreb he was briefly a waiter, taking part in
a successful waiters strike, and then worked as a locksmith. When in November 1920 the Zagreb
Trade Unions organised a meeting to mark the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Tito was
asked to speak and ended his oration with the slogan the workers can only conquer with the help of
arms! Tito also actively campaigned for the communists during the elections held to the Constituent
Assembly in November, but this got him sacked and employment for a known communist became
even harder to find (...).
- in 1923 he was contacted by a former officer in both the Austro-Hungarian Army and the Red Army,
who had been charged by the Party with trying to re-establish contact with dispersed party members
and sympathisers. There were elections in 1923 and the communists had registered the Independent
Workers Party as a front for communist propaganda for the duration of the election campaign. Tito
was brought back into Party work and by early 1924 was in charge of the Partys Krievci District
Committee, as well as being elected to the local trade union committee. It was as a member of the
trade union committee in early 1924 that first brought his communist activities to the attention of the
police. When a trade union member died, Tito was asked to deliver a funeral ovation. Although the
funeral took place in a Catholic church, Tito took the occasion to declare: comrade, we swear to fight
to the end of our lives for the ideas to which you were so devoted; he then unfurled a red flag.
Arrested and taken to Bjelovar prison, after eight days in detention he was acquitted. In summer 1925
Titos employer died and the nephew who took over the business did not appreciate Titos political
activities; he was now under regular police surveillance and his room was regularly searched.
- on 28 October 1927 he was sentenced to seven months in prison. Tito was allowed to go free pending
an appeal, but when the appeal was heard and the sentence reduced to five months, Tito could no
longer be found; his underground life had begun. It was on Titos return to Zagreb in March 1927 that
he entered a new stage in his political career. It was not just the ever increasing trade union activity,
but he was also elected to the Zagreb Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and that gave him
the chance to intervene decisively in Party affairs for the first time. Ever since its foundation, the
Yugoslav Communist Party had experienced an intense internal struggle between Right and Left
factions.