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Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Communist President of Yugoslavia, and 1st Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, was born as Josip Broz on May 7, 1892, in the village of Kumrovec, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Croatia). He was the seventh of 15 children born to Roman Catholic peasants. His blacksmith father, Franjo Broz, was a Croat, and his mother, Marija, was Slovene. After spending part of his childhood years with his maternal grandfather in Podsreda (present-day Slovenia), he returned to Kumrovec to attend school. He failed the first grade and left his formal education behind in 1905, to be apprenticed with a locksmith. As a journeyman locksmith he moved around the Empire.

The 18-year-old Broz joined the Croatian Social Democratic Party, and in 1913, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army. At the beginning of World War I, Broz, who had won a silver medal at an army fencing competition in May of 1914, was sent to Ruma. It was there he began to find himself and his life's calling, and was later arrested for anti-war propaganda and imprisoned. He was sent to Galicia to fight against the Russians and Serbs in 1915, and was seriously wounded by shellfire. In April 1915 his entire battalion was captured by the Russians.

The wounded Broz spent several months convalescing in a military hospital, where he learned to speak Russian. In the fall of 1916 he was sent to a work camp in the Ural mountains. While at the camp the first Russian Revolution of February 1917 (March, new style) occurred, culminating in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II on March 15th. Broz was arrested for organizing demonstrations among the prisoners of war in April 1917, but he escaped and joined the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd after the first revolution), engaging in street fighting during the attempted Bolshevik coup d'etat in Petrograd on July 16-17, 1917.

The Bolshevik insurrection failed to spark a wider revolt and was crushed by forces loyal to Aleksandr Kerensky, head of the provisional government. Broz fled for Finland to try to avoid arrest, but he was captured and sent to prison. He escaped from a train taking him to another work camp and in November joined the Red Army in Omsk, Siberia, fighting with the Red Guards in the first years of the Russian Civil War, pitting Reds against Whites (royalists). Broz applied for membership in the Russian Communist Party in the spring of 1918.

The Treaty of Versailles incorporated the territory of Croatia into the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and when he returned to his village in 1920, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Now employed as a metalworker, Broz became a union organizer. He was arrested after a Bosnian KPJ member assassinated the Yugoslav Minister of the Interior, which led to the outlawing of the KPJ. Broz switched his organizing activities to the underground, and in April 1927 he had ascended to the KPJ's Committee in Zagreb. As a KPJ committeeman he caught the attention of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Through Soviet influence, Broz was raised to the position of deputy of the Politburo of the KPJ Central Committee and named leader of the Croatian and Slovenian committees.

By 1934 parliamentary democracy in Yugoslavia had been replaced by a dictatorship under the Yugoslav king, and the KPJ remained banned. It was in this year, shortly after his release from his latest prison sentence, that Broz was named a full member of the KPJ Politburo and Central Committee. He adopted nomme de guerre "Tito" to use in his party work (possibly because "tito alba", the owl, a creature of the night, which also represents wisdom).

The newly nicknamed Tito went to the USSR in 1935, where he served in the Communist International's (Comintern) Balkan section. After a year with the Comintern, Tito, who apparently won the confidence of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, was named Secretary-General of the KPJ and returned to Yugoslavia to rebuild the party. Tito filled party posts with his hand-picked replacements. Eventually his position as Secretary-General of the KPJ was officially ratified by KPJ members at a secret meeting in Zagreb in 1940.

The Yugoslav government was pressured by Germany and Italy to join the Axis Powers. Initially it resisted, but finally threw in its lot with the Axis on March 25, 1941, under duress. On March 27th the government was overthrown by a pro-Western military coup in Belgrade, thus aborting Yugoslavia's alliance with the Axis. Ten days later, on April 6th, Yugoslavia was invaded by German, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops, and the Royal Yugoslav army was vanquished in less than two weeks, surrendering on April 17th.

When the Axis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Stalin ordered the KPJ to offer no resistance due to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact signed in August 1939. Despite ample warning, Stalin did not believe Adolf Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. What he did not know about the Axis incursion into Yugoslavia was that Hitler was securing his southern flank prior to the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the imminent invasion of the USSR. When Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941, it now became a duty for a communist to defend his "motherland" by fighting the Axis powers. Tito called a meeting of the Central committee, which named him Military Commander. The partisans' struggle began with Tito's call to arms for the people of Yugoslavia with the slogan, "Death to Fascism, Freedom to the People!"

Their prior organization as underground communist cells used to functioning in secrecy and with the strictest discipline meant that Tito's partisans were very well-organized and extremely effective. His aim was not only to liberate Yugoslavia but establish the KPJ in liberated areas. Revolutionary governments were established in areas the partisans liberated, which foreshadowed the administrative structure of postwar Yugoslavia.

The non-communists, mostly Serbian Chetniks, also fought against the Axis and had the support of both the British and the Yugoslav government in exile. However, they were not seen as effective as Tito's partisans, and the US and the UK switched their support to the partisans after they successfully fought off ferocious Axis attacks from January to June 1943. The partisans were officially recognized at the Tehran Conference, with the result that Allied arms, supplies and agents were parachuted behind Axis lines to assist them. Stilll, Tito refused to cooperate with the government-in-exile in London.

After the February 1945 Yalta Conference, at which the parameters of postwar Europe were agreed upon, Marshal Tito consolidated his power and that of the KPJ by purging his government of non-communists. Tito signed an agreement with the USSR on April 5, 1945, that permitted "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory". With the help of the Red Army, Tito's partisans won the war against the Axis and their collaborators. Tito then ordered foreign troops off of Yugoslav soil after V-E Day, and turned to eliminating domestic rivals, including members of the originally anti-fascist Chetnik movement (who eventually collaborated with the Germans to try to stop Tito) and the fascist Ustashe, who from the beginning had supported the Nazis as a vassal state in Croatia. Members of both organizations were summarily tried and executed en masse. General Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic, the Chetnik leader, was executed in March 1946.

Winning the rigged November 1945 elections, Tito imposed a new constitution on Yugoslavia. He further consolidated his power by organizing a strong army and a secret police force (the UDBA), both of which were personally loyal to him. In the postwar years Tito used the UDBA to eliminate Nazi collaborators. He also targeted Catholic priests and those who had opposed the communist-led war effort. The purge was eventually extended to include even those communists who did not agree with Tito.

Initially, the economy and society were collectivized in Soviet fashion, although he did not push for the collectivization of agriculture. Tito began to resent Stalin's constant meddling with his government and his suggestions on how Tito should run his economy. On his part, Stalin was unhappy with what he perceived as an independent foreign policy that was out of sync with Moscow. Stalin tried to depose Tito but would not go so far as to invade Yugoslavia, whose mountainous terrain had hamstrung Hitler's troops and was ideal territory for partisan attacks against an organized military force.

Tito denounced the Soviet policy of "... unconditional subordination of small socialist countries to one large socialist country." In response, Stalin had Tito and the KPJ expelled from the Cominform in June 1948. The USSR, through its Common Market-style organization called Comecon, boycotted Yugoslavia.

Through the vehicle of UDBA, Tito purged the KPJ of hardcore Stalinists, those that could not be "reeducated." He began decentralizing the economy, putting more power into the hands of workers' councils on the principle of workers' self-management. To keep himself in power and Yugoslavia independent of the USSR, he turned to the West for financial aid. The Greek civil war, pitting mostly Communists against the anti-Communist Greek government, sputtered out after Tito sealed off the border with Greece, effectively keeping arms, supplies and fighters from getting to the Communist rebels.

After the death of Stalin in March 5, 1953, Tito attempted a reconciliation with the USSR, meeting with new CPSU party boss Nikita Khrushchev in Belgrade in 1955. The meeting resulted in the Belgrade Declaration, which affirmed equality in relations between communist countries (although in the case of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, that equality was observed in the breach rather than the observance).

Freed to a degree of the Soviet threat, Tito's policy of "nonengagement" developed into a policy of "nonalignment." He overhauled his foreign policy to promote a non-aligned bloc between the West and the Warsaw Pact. Convening a meeting of 25 non-aligned states with India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, a third, alternative neutral bloc came into being. Tito traveled extensively in the developing world during the 1960s and 1970s to promote non-alignment.

On the domestic front, Tito maintained a balance among the different ethnic groups and nationalities of his multi-ethnic country. It ensured stability for as long as the KPJ and the secret police maintained control of Yugoslavia. Tito's system of "symetrical federalism," while predicated upon the principle of equality among the six republics and two autonomous provinces, in fact played the nationalities off against each other.

His ties with the West encouraged trade, which helped boost Yugoslavia's standard of living. Yugoslavia's beaches became a top tourist destination for Western European tourists, due to their beauty, the relative openness of Yugoslav society and the favorable exchange rate, which made an excursion to Yugoslavia very affordable. The economy of some of the Yugoslav provinces, particularly Croatia and Slovenia, thrived during the Cold War.

Marshal Tito was styled President-for-Life in 1974. While he allowed a freer exchange of people and ideas than most of the countries in the communist bloc, the major question of his regime remained would Yugoslavia survive the death of Tito. Without a strongman and the monopoly on power enjoyed by the KPJ, backed up by the army and the secret police, would Yugoslavia remain a country?

Josip Broz Tito died on May 4, 1980 in a hospital in Ljubljana, Slovenia, after being gravely ill for almost four months. He was the last of the World War II leaders to leave the world stage, having outlived his patron, then nemesis Stalin by almost 30 years. The country that he kept together did not outlive him by much more than a decade. Croatian nationalists won the first free elections in their republic in April and May 1990. The independence of Slovenia was proclaimed on June 25, 1991. Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaimed their independence on October 8, 1991 and March 3, 1992 respectively, triggering civil wars in those republics, which left Yugoslavia a rump federation consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro.

Nikolas Vogel was born on 9 March 1967 in Vienna, Austria. He was an actor, known for Herzklopfen (1984), The Inheritors (1983) and Bibo's Männer (1986). He died on 28 June 1991 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

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Demeter Bitenc was born on 21 July 1922 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was an actor and production manager, known for Slom (1979), Captain America (1990) and The War Boy (1985). He died on 22 April 2018 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Tugo Stiglic was born on 8 November 1946 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia [now Ljubljana, Slovenia]. He was an assistant director and director, known for A Summer in a Sea Shell (1985), Tantadruj (1994) and Pozabljeni zaklad (2002). He died on 11 October 2022 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Gottfried Kolditz was born on 14 December 1922 in Goldbach-Altenbach, Haut-Rhin, France. He was a director and writer, known for The Small White Mouse (1964), The Thing in the Castle (1979) and Signale - Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970). He was married to Erika Koch. He died on 15 June 1982 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia [now Slovenia].

Vilko Filac was born on 14 February 1950 in Ptuj, Slovenia. He was a cinematographer, known for Arizona Dream (1993), Underground (1995) and Time of the Gypsies (1988). He died on 25 November 2008 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Borisav "Bora" Djordjevic, also known as Bora Corba, was a Serbian singer, songwriter, and poet. He was best known as the frontman of the rock band Riblja Corba. Renowned for his brand of poetic lyrics and husky baritone voice, he is widely considered one of the top and most influential authors of the Serbian rock scene. Throughout his career, he was celebrated for his contributions to music and his ability to capture the spirit of his times through his art. Some of his greatest hits include "Lutka sa naslovne strane," "Ostani djubre do kraja," "Amsterdam," and "Pogledaj dom svoj, andjele," which have left a lasting impact on the music landscape.

Bostjan Hladnik was born on 30 January 1929 in Kranj, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was a director and actor, known for The Sunny Whirlpool (1968), A Dance in the Rain (1961) and Erotikon - Karussell der Leidenschaften (1963). He died on 30 May 2006 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Dunja Klemenc was born on 28 May 1943 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. She was a producer and costume designer, known for No Man's Land (2001), Cirkus Columbia (2010) and The Wind (1974). She died on 1 January 2023 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Miha Baloh was born on 21 May 1928 in Jesenice, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was an actor, known for Grajski biki (1967), Les évasions célèbres (1972) and Operacija Ticijan (1963). He died on 6 December 2022 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Joze Zupan was born on 25 August 1909 in Laibach, Carniola, Austria-Hungary [now Ljubljana, Slovenia]. He was an actor, known for Lucija (1965), Blossoms in Autumn (1973) and Na svoji zemlji (1948). He died on 13 November 1980 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia [now Slovenia].

Joze Gale was born on 11 May 1913 in Grosuplje, Austria-Hungary [now Slovenia]. He was a director and writer, known for Kekec (1951), Wasteland (1982) and The Family Diary (1961). He died on 24 September 2004 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Ulay, born Frank Uwe Laysiepen,1943 is a German artist, now based in Amsterdam, Holland, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ulay received international recognition for his work as a photographer, mainly in Polaroid, from the late 1960s, and later as a performance artist, including his collaborative performances with Marina Abramovic from 1976 to 1988. His work has continuously dealt with politics, identity and gender. In 2016 Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, held the first major retrospective show of his work 'Ulay Life-Sized'. In recent years Ulay's work has also been on show at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and GNYP Gallery in Berlin. Ulay's work, as well as his collaborative work with Marina Abramovic, is featured in many collections of major art institutions around the world such as Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Modern in London and Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Adem Cejvan was born on 2 March 1927 in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Yugoslavia. He was an actor, known for Vuk Karadzic (1987), Djavolje merdevine (1975) and Osma ofanziva (1979). He died on 5 November 1989 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia.

Gasper Tic was born on 7 May 1973 in Koper, Slovenia. He was an actor, known for Come Along (2016), Bread and Circuses (2011) and Ode to the Poet (2001). He died on 18 June 2017 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Matjaz Klopcic was born on 4 December 1934 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was a director and writer, known for The Widowhood of Karolina Zasler (1976), On Paper Wings (1967) and Fear (1974). He died on 15 December 2007 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Jurij Soucek was born on 5 April 1929 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was an actor, known for Tri zgodbe (1955), Life in Kajzar (1952) and Moments of Decision (1955). He died on 17 January 2024 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Damjan Berkopec was born on 3 March 1972 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was an actor and editor, known for Goveja postrv (2016) and Blackred (1992). He died on 22 October 2010 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Milan Stefe was born on 26 May 1960 in Kranj, Yugoslavia [now Slovenia]. He was an actor, known for The Windhunter (1989), Rusevine (2004) and Desperado Tonic (2004). He died on 25 August 2019 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Slovenian composer, musician, conductor. Adamic was in Ribnica in the Duchy of Carniola in Slovenia on August 9, 1912. He attended Poljane Grammar School, attended the National Piano Conservatory at 13, and received his degree in piano from Ljubljana Music Academy in 1941, having already completed courses in organ, trumpet, and composition. Somehow he managed to graduate from a course in law at the same time. He played accordion and saxophone in a jazz band up until the opening of the Second World War. During the war, he served with the Slovenian partisans and was wounded in a German attack. Following the war, he maintained a frantic and widespread career, conducting the RTV Slovenia Big Band, scoring hundreds of films and stage plays, and creating music for the Slovenian song festival. He also wrote many pop songs, chamber pieces, children's songs, operas, and music for radio plays. He carried on just as busy a performing career, playing concerts as pianist for a variety of orchestras around Europe and North America. He was given scores of awards and honors in his native country and throughout Europe, and he served as head of numerous musical organizations including the Slovenian Composers Association. One major event colored his personal life badly. On August 31, 1950, he shot Zdravko Rus, a friend of Adamic's underage mistress Breda Kruh, in the back. That same year, he was tried for the killing and sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year in prison for manslaughter. His career did not seem to suffer, and his work continued without respite for much of the rest of his life. He received the coveted Preseren Award, Slovenia's highest cultural honor, in 1979, for his body of work. He was also a noted photographer and was the subject of several major exhibitions. He retired from RTV Ljubljana, where he was director of music production and head of the music department, in 1981. He died November 3, 1995, in Ljubljana, survived by his wife Barbara and their daughter Alenka. Since 1999, The Association of Slovenian Bands has awarded annually the Bojan Adamic Award. A memorial plaque was dedicated to his memory in 2000, at his birthplace in Ribnica.

Noël Favrelière, known as Nordine, is a painter who was a non-commissioned officer in the French army during the Algerian War, and who deserted in 1956. He then joined the ranks of the ALN fighters for ten months. He inspired many characters of objectors and resistance fighters, including the one in René Vautier's film "Avoir Vingt Ans Dans Les Aurès" (1972). He was part of the "Righteous of Algeria" who supported the Algerian people's fight for their independence.

As a child, Noël Favrelière was marked by the Nazi Occupation and the Resistance fights during the Liberation, in September 1944. He lived in Paris, in artistic circles, then left to do his military service in Algeria, with his sketchbook that would accompany him throughout the Algerian period. Shocked by the conditions of treatment reserved for Muslim natives, he realized that the resistance fighters he had known as a child during the Second World War were now those in the opposing camp.

In 1956, Noël Favrelière was assigned to the 8th Colonial Parachute Regiment in Algeria. During a sweep operation, his company killed a seven-year-old Arab girl. Other abuses by the French army reinforced his radical hostility to this war. At dawn on August 19, 1956, tasked with guarding an Algerian prisoner who was going to be executed, he left his unit with him and joined the ALN troops on the border of Tunisia and Algeria, he would take part in the fighting. of the ALN under the name Nordine. Wanted by the French army, he was wounded in the foot after an air attack. Having gone to Tunisia, after having testified about his actions in the press, he was sentenced to death a first time, in absentia, in 1958, he was sentenced a second time in 1960. Les Éditions de Minuit published his story, Le Désert À L'Aube, in October 1960. It was seized the week following this publication, and its distribution was prohibited.

In 1963, he returned clandestinely to France: he held a press conference and exhibited his paintings, thanks to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Benefiting from a scholarship in Yugoslavia, he obtained a degree in Art History in Ljubljana in 1964. In Algeria and then directed the Museum of Algiers from 1964 to 1966. His mother wrote a letter to the wife of General De Gaulle resulting that her son had acted like the General when he had taken refuge in the United Kingdom in 1940, he was pardoned by the latter of his two death sentences in 1966. He then worked at the Renault company in Sofia and Ljubljana from 1967 to 1983. From 1983 to 1989, he became the director of the French Institute of Ljubljana (Slovenia), then of that of Amman (Jordan) from 1989 to 1995. He retired in 1999. He drew and painted all his life. He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by decree of May 20, 1985.

Noël Favrelière died from Suffering from Alzheimer's. Noël Favrelière is the subject of various documentaries, including Algeria, The Two Soldiers. His name appears on the stele in memory of the French "Righteous of Algeria" who supported the fight of the Algerian people for their liberation, inaugurated in Algiers in 2002.

Laci Cigoj was born on 12 July 1922 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was an actor, known for Operation Cross Eagles (1968), The Family Diary (1961) and Amandus (1966). He died on 12 May 1991 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Manca Kosir was born on 3 March 1948 in Maribor, Slovenia. She was an actress, known for Breza (1967), Four Days to Death (1976) and Passion According to Matthew (1975). She died on 2 May 2024 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Rudi Kosmac was born on 23 June 1932 in Dovje, Drava banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia [now in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia]. He was an actor, known for Lucija (1965), Valley of Peace (1956) and Balada o trobenti in oblaku (1961). He died on 29 September 1981 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.