Bloody dog Tito in Prague. The man Stalin feared warned Dubcek just before the occupation
Czechoslovakia, led by Alexander Dubcek, provoked Moscow. No one wanted to hear the threatening messages from the Soviet Union, and the citizens enjoyed an unprecedented period. One of the highlights of the Prague Spring was also the visit of Jozip Broz Tito, who arrived in Prague on 9 August.
Just a few days before the invasion of Soviet troops, Dubček warned that their pace of disintegration could have fatal consequences and needed to be slowed down. This did not happen and this very unique historical figure was right. Who exactly was Joseph Tito and how did he manage to create independence from the Soviet Union?
Get rid of Tito?
Disobedience was punishable by death in these times. Guerrilla hero Jozip Broz Tito decided to take advantage of the fact that Yugoslavia largely succeeded at the end of World War II without the substantial help of the Soviet Union.
The Red Army was not the one people celebrated in the streets. It was Jozip Broz Tito. He could afford to jump on such a brutal personality as Stalin undoubtedly was. It is no surprise that the Soviet leader wanted to get rid of him.
Independent foreign policy
The Soviet Union embraced its satellites by force, and local politicians were only frightened vassals. Whoever tried to resist ended up in the gallows either as a true rebel or as a victim of a fabricated trial.
Rudolf Slánský, a similar purge that was supposed to arouse fear and boundless loyalty, bounced back in Czechoslovakia, but even President Klement Gottwald was not sure of a quiet life.
Given that most countries under Stalin’s control did not find the courage to break free and resist, the character of Jozip Broz Tito is all the more unique. He decided to lead the independent policy of Yugoslavia, regardless of what the Soviet Union wanted.
Although it was clear that the dictator from Moscow would not be thrilled, Tito bet on his own personalities and, in addition, introduced the people to a slightly freer regime than was usual in other Eastern Bloc states.
But let us not have the illusion that Tito was a holy hero who liberated and saved Yugoslavia from subversive Stalinist dictates. His conception of communism also had opponents who disappeared in dungeons or had never been heard of. However, upset Stalin is a big problem…
Assassination of Tito
At first, Stalin was content with threatening diplomacy. As Tito continued to long for his plan, he took radical action. In 1948, Stalin decided to definitively expel the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from the Informbyr – an international communist foreign organization.
Diplomatic and economic relations have thus come to a standstill. The Soviet Union identified the Yugoslav communists as spies of the West, and Tito was to be removed. Stalin similarly got rid of the hiding exile Leo Davidovich Trotsky.
The plan sounded clear. Stalin disobeyed and was completely unforgivable obsessed with Tito’s assassination. Its liquidation was to be carried out by the assassin Joseph Grigulevich. He was to pretend to be a Costa Rican diplomat named Teodor B. Castro, and very successfully. Grigulevich allegedly represented Costa Rica in the Vatican and also met with his planned victim.
Details of the murder of a lady in 1953 in Vienna. It was decided whether he should be shot, poisoned with poison gas from a donated jewelry box, or spray the germs of a deadly lung disease in the room. The assassination, as cut from James Bond films, was facing one major rift. Stalin died and probably saved Tito’s life.
With Khrushchev at the head of the Soviet Union, relations with Yugoslavia have already improved radically. In 1955, the so-called Belgrade Declaration was signed, where both countries officially committed themselves to mutual sovereignty and independence.
Tito’s Yugoslavia was thus still an exceptional example of socialism with a human face, partially open borders, business, better goods and radically better foreign relations. However, it must be remembered that Tito was also a dictator who built his cult of personality very hard.
Source: Czech Television, Czech Radio, History of Czechoslovakia.
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