Was Josip Broz Tito a dezent dictator?

[Stantroll]

[Stantroll]

back in the 60s, many yugoslavs used, to assure someone they weren't pulling their leg, to swear by the name of Tito they were speaking the truth...

[Egbert]

I voted no.

[Egbert]

Dictators are bad.

[Uncle Sparky]

Are any of the republics that made up former Yugoslavia doing better (by any metric) than Yugoslavia under Tito? Do any of them even have less censorship and better political freedoms than under Tito?

Slovenia maybe? Serbs might argue Serbia (but not Kosovo). Croatia (at least around Dubrovnik)?

[N35t0r]

I never saw him flashing in public or doing any other indecent acts, so i would say yes?

[Bereta_Eder]

He did bring a quality of life for all yugoslavs. He was a croat partizan. That must have unified croats and serbs alike.
People were living good under yugoslavia. Probably at some point better than other "capitalist" european countries.

Yugoslavia was not aligned to stalin.

I had the chance when I was little to go through it. But it was in the phase jsut before the civil war started and it had begun to go apart on the seems (sp?)

They had a vibrant rock scene and (particularly in croatia) a vibrant comic scene.

When the cold war ended and there were no hard borders and walls there was a good feeling of reapproachement. Many many common music festivals between greeks and yugoslavs, music, comics, politics, literature. A nice period I remember
Then the civil war happened and screwd up everything

[-Jrabbit]

go apart on the seems (sp?) = fall apart at the seams.

Seams are where two pieces of material are permanently fastened or sewn together.

[Uncle Sparky]

Seems correct.

[Proteus_MST]

My parents and myself spent several holidays in Yugoslavia (more exactly, Croatia), in the latter half of the 1980s, before the war broke out.
It surely was a tourist paradise at that time.

But already at this time it had a huge inflation.
You could expect every year, to pay 2-10 times more (in Yugoslav Denarii) for the things, than you did in the year before.
But german marks definitely were a favorite among Yugoslavs ... so often you didn't even need to exchange money to Denarii

But well, of course he was a decent dictator. He held the country with its different ethnicities together ... and after he died it was just a matter of time before it would go downhill.
I had the impression that the many Tito-Pictures you saw in almost every store were not just decoration, but that Tito was actually venerated by lots of Yugoslavs

[toWERS]

He held the country with its different ethnicities together .

I have to respect him for that

But still I prefer a political system in which I have more rights than a worm, so I voted banana.

[Bereta_Eder]

thanks jrabbit. (cant give thanks to the post itslef, won't let me)

yep inflation was something I remember too.. also since we were from the "west" we couldn't pay to gas stations with yugoslav money and we gave some special coupons that we had pre-buy. The people at gas stations would overfil the gas tank and let the gas flow out of the car and make rivers in order to get more coupons. Especially in south yugoslavia. The gas wasn't theirs so they didn't mind I guess.
I remember being little and standing guard by the gas tank of the car and say "mister, STOP"

[Meticulous Man]

[dannubis]

I visited his 'prison island'. "No" it is.

[BeBMan]

But already at this time it had a huge inflation.
You could expect every year, to pay 2-10 times more (in Yugoslav Denarii) for the things, than you did in the year before.
But german marks definitely were a favorite among Yugoslavs ... so often you didn't even need to exchange money to Denarii

Should have used Roman silver denarii

[PLATO]

One has to wonder if holding the country together may have fueled latent anger and made the eventual separation that much more violent. In that case, he would have been a terrible dictator...as most dictators tend to turn out to be.

[N35t0r]

Also, if your rule doesn't also allow for a smooth transition after it ends (for whatever reason), it's ultimately not a good rule then is it?