Summary/Abstract |
Many writers before and after 1980 have pondered Tito’s historical significance. What kind of Communist was he? He crafted an image of an alternative kind of socialism in which workers were self-managed and had high standards of living. Tito courted the leaders of developing countries through the Non-Aligned Movement and in this role was eventually respected by the Soviet leadership (at least after 1955) and by the West. Kim Il-sung, Leonid Brezhnev, Helmut Schmidt, Yasser Arafat and a host of other prominent world leaders attended his state funeral in 1980 in an apparently rare moment of unanimous reverence for his role in World War II.
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