Yugoslavia-The Communist/Socialist Utopia?

Other Wars Cold War
#1

Like many Australians of my vintage (yes I improve all the time;)) I grew up with immigrant kids from many nationalities. Now we kids did not care of/or understand politics, so when several Yugoslav kids joined our school we did not understand their backgrounds.

It was as a teenager I learnt about Communism, it’s evils etc, but the one thing I could not understand was how these kids having ‘escaped’ from Yugoslavia would want to go back and serve their conscription. Of course it was a shock to discover Yugoslavia was not the hell hole our western press portrayed.

So was Marshall Tito a true hero in the ordinary Yugoslav’s eyes and was he incorrectly portrayed in the west?

Regards Digger

#2

Yugoslavia was certainly one of the less nasty communist states, largely because it managed to remain more or less independent of the Soviet Union.

Tito could, however, be as brutal as any of the other eastern bloc dictators on occasion.

#3

Correct me if I’m wrong, the worst of Tito’s excesses were in the immediate post war years as the various ethnic groups jockeyed for power. One could claim this period was really a civil war.

Regards digger:)