Real Dictators - Tito Part 1: The Young Gun

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Josip Broz was the wartime resistance leader who became Tito, the strongman ruler of Yugoslavia. He defeated both Hitler and Mussolini. He stared down Stalin. He consolidated much of the Balkans as a single state, helping it to punch above its weight. But beyond his undoubted political skill and avuncular demeanour there was also a darkness… and an iron fist. So who really was the man behind the name? How did he chart a third way through the Cold War? And how is he remembered today? A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Neil Barnett, Branko Brkic, Christopher Catherwood, Richard Mills, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Geoffrey Swain, Susan L Woodward. This is Part 1 of 5. Written by Jeff Dawson | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by George Tapp | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer, Josh Latham | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann. You can listen to the next two episodes of the Tito story straight away, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noiser+. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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about 10 to 7 in the evening. We're in the Pollute Stadium in the city of Split. It's the crunch match of the Yugoslav football season. Heiduk, the local team, versus Red Star Belgrade, Croatia versus Serbia. The reigning league champions against the side poised to depose them. Both sets of supporters, 50,000 of them packed in like sardines, singing, chanting, blowing horns, setting off flares, with as much energy devoted to haranguing the opposition as to cheering on their own team. On the pitch, it's a full-blooded encounter, still in the first half, but already deadlocked at 1-1.

An early Red Star penalty equalized by a strike from Heidukslatko Vyovic, the Yugoslav player of the year. But then, something strange happens. A buzz starts to go around. a rumor that sweeps across the terraces, passing from one fan to another. Some press their ears to transistor radios. The action on the field now of little interest as they listen for updates. Reacting to the change in atmosphere, the game slows, the players shrugging in confusion. A league dignitary races from the tunnel waving his arms.

He gestures for the referee to halt play. The stadium comes to a hush, absolute silence. And then, over the tannoy, comes the somber announcement. Umroo Jethro Tito. Comrade Tito has died. The news is not unexpected. The 88-year-old leader, president for life of Yugoslavia, marshal of its armed forces, national hero,

has been in a critical condition these past few weeks. weeks. Everyone knows it, no matter what the government may have been claiming. But in historical terms, the words are still earth-shattering. In the centre circle the players gather, their teams intermingling, the white shirts of Haiduk, the red and white stripes of Red Star. They stand with their arms round each other's shoulders, faces etched with sorrow. Some weep openly. Others drop to their haunches, downed. grabbing tears with their jerseys. Tito was a Heiduk supporter, but that's irrelevant.

Both teams stand united in grief. Whether Croat or Serb, whether the three-match officials or Bosnian, or the players present from the state's other republics, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia. In the stands, grown men blob like babies. Burly, bare-chested ultras lapsed. into wailing hysteria. Then a song starts up, a rousing socialist anthem, and soon everyone is joining in. Fans, players, officials, press.

Comrade Tito, we swear by you. Tito was not just their leader, but a father figure. A world statesman, the man who gave modest Yugoslavia a voice, allowing it to punch way above its weight on the international stage. The guardian of this multi-ethnic Balkan federation, a melting pot of cultures, languages and religions. As it is often said, he was the glue that held it altogether. For the tears flow too in realization that the life these Yugoslavs have come to enjoy to love will soon be at an end.

In just a few short years, their country will be ripped apart. The men here today, brothers in arms, slaughtering each other with abandon, engaged in the most devastating European war since 1945. According to the football records, the match between Hydoch and Red Star was officially abandoned in the 41st minute. The result declared Nolan Void, a replay scheduled for the following Wednesday. Only one man disapproves. Branko Stankovic, the Red Star coach.

That game, he says, was theirs for the taking. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is the Tito story, and this is real dictators. Marshal Tito's record is indeed remarkable. He led the Yugoslav resistance movement, the partisans in World War II. making him the only wartime leader who can truly claim that his country liberated itself.

He defeated both Hitler and Mussolini. He frustrated Churchill. He was the only communist head of state to confront Stalin. His pragmatism towards both east and west ushered Yugoslavia into an unparalleled period of economic growth and stability. He was the architect of the non-aligned movement of nations. navigating a third way through the Cold War's superpower struggle, rejecting both Soviet vassalage and Western hegemony. I'd say that he was the most successful leader in the communist world in the 20th century, in terms of the outcome for his country.

It was compelling because he was a genuine war here. He presided of a renewal of the old South Slashire. love dream of having a country together. To have a Yugoslav passport made you able to travel to more countries than any other country in the world. That position was a result of Tito's leadership. It's a genuine case of charisma. We use the term very loosely in political terms, truly beloved. The other element is incredibly important to understand is that Tito stood up to Stalin in

1948. And that is one of the greatest moments in, I think, in the history of the 20th century, because the Europe and the world would have looked differently. Should youoslavia have meekly just became a part of the Soviet Union structure in Europe? He was one of the most important world statesman from the mid-20th century, vastly respected. He was given the Lejean d'E by France, the Order of the Bath by Britain, even the Even the Russians, I think, afforded him a few crinkets. I mean, we were a country which existed on a kind of on a barrel of gumpowder, but somehow he managed to bring us a tense of state insecurity,

which has been unleashed ever since. And the thing about Tito, he wasn't as a communist. He actually believed in Yugoslavia. He was the person who actually believed in the country for which he was fighting. And that's what makes Tito quite remarkable, actually. And that's why, of course, when he went in disintegrates. He kept the country together, but equally he sowed some of the reasons why it fell apart. But there was also a darkness behind Tito's avuncular demeanour, that of a man who ruled with an iron fist,

whose autocratic governance was characterized by decadence, repression, ruthlessness, and sometimes brutality. He was also someone who liked the finer things in life, attracted to expensive white suits, speedboats. He even built up his own personal zoo. He fraternised with Hollywood film stars and personally oversaw the making of war films, which presented him in a very positive light. He was ruthless when he needed to be when people disagreed with him. When he emerges as the country's leader, he is popular. But they weren't interested in having a free election. They were interested in creating a single-party state

in which the Communist Party was the only party. So he's a dictator, very much a dictator in the sense that he led a dictatorial party and opponents were removed fairly brutally. Today, there was no such thing as Yugoslavia. To outsiders, its constituent parts of proud independent states, better known to many in the West as holiday hotspots, tourists flocking to beautiful Dubrovnik, Croatia,

or the beaches of the spectacular Dalmatian coast, perhaps a stagdo in Lubiana, Slovenia. To anyone under 40, the old overarching federation, Yugoslavia, it is a historical relic, a curio, a failed state, one that ultimately disintegrated, not an entity that had endured for the best part of a century, one that had seemed till 1980 indestructible. For the story of Tito is the story of Yugoslavia. Marshall Tito wasn't born in Yugoslavia.

No such thing existed then either. His name, come to that, wasn't even Tito. Before he assumed that revolutionary handle, he was known only as Yossip Ros. Such as the mystique attached to him, that in some circles to this day, doubts persist as to whether the young revolutionary who styled himself Tito and the elder statesman called Tito are even the same person. But we'll come to that in due course. It's spring 1892. We're in the village of Komrovets, in a northern Zagoria region of today's Croatia. It's farming country, hilly.

just a stones throw, literally, from the Sutla River, which marks the border with Slovenia. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, not just here but in the wider Balkans. The region in the late 19th century is barely industrialized at all. Fragno or Maria Bros live on a 10-acre farm in a decent-sized property that has been passed down through the generations. Franio is Croatian, someone who can trade. his roots back locally over three centuries, hailing from a long line of serfs. His wife, formerly Maria Yavashik, is Slovenian, though with all the mingling in these parts, that's nothing unusual.

On May the seventh, or thereabouts, no one's really sure, comes into the world a son, whom they name Yosep, a Slavic variant of Joseph. He's the seventh of their fifteen children. of whom failed to survive infancy. Susan L. Woodward is professor of political science at the City University of New York. She was a special representative for the UN Secretary General for Unprefor, the peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He came from an area of Croatia that was primarily Slovene, so his parentage is mixed, Slovene and Croat. It was often said the people from that area, especially his town, there was a

a term in Cyber Croatian called Lukavl, the skill of a peasant. Very clever cut out with people, and so he's often used for him. Yossip, like his siblings, is brought up as a Catholic. But the family have neighbors who are Orthodox. Some are Lutheran. There's a sprinkling of Jewish families. Others hailing from further south are Muslim. The Balkans, in short, is Europe at a crossroads.

Though many of these cultures remain suppressed, unable to express their historic identities. They're governed as part of larger imperial projects. If Yossip-Ros had a passport at this point, it would demonstrate that he is one thing and one thing only. A citizen, a subject of Austria-Hungary. Staples' preferred business membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about. With Staples Preferred, get free delivery. No minimums.

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It came into being in 1867, successor state to the VAT, Austrian Empire, which is itself a legacy of the old Holy Roman Empire. At its peak, it once covered all of Central Europe and Northern Italy. Then, like now, it's ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. Richard Mills is Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of the politics of football in Yugoslavia, sport, nationalism and the state. So Tito has this remarkably long life, an individual born in the final decade of the 19th century,

in a completely different political context to the one that will develop during his later lifetime. That village in which he's born, Kumrovets, is in many respects a microcosm of the Austro-Hungarian state. It's a place where language is a fluid concept. The language spoken from village to village will change in perceptive. as you move in one direction or another. And this dialect that he speaks cannot be classed as standard Croatian or standard Slovenian. It's very much of the region that he is from and has all kinds of borrowings from other languages as well. Following military defeat by the Prussians in 1866, the greater Austrian realm has been rationalized,

subdivided into what's called the dual monarchy. It's still a patchwork, multi-ethnic collective, only divi-rapna between regional rule from either Vienna or Budapest. Slovenia, the Czech lands and Galicia, what amounts to a chunk of today's Poland and Ukraine, come within the Austrian purview, as do the Istrian peninsula, Dalmatia and the Alpine Tyrol region. Meanwhile, Slovakia and Transylvania, a large part of modern Romania, are under Hungarian Souserente, as indeed is Croatia, or to give it its full title, the Kingdom of Croatia and Slovakonia. That's Slavonia, by the way, not to be confused with Slovenia, which is something completely different.

Professor Christopher Catherwood is the author of Churchill and Tito, S.O.E. Bletchley-Par and supporting the Yugoslav communists in World War II. Technically speaking, Croatia was a kingdom from 1102 to 1918. Croatia existed, but it was a kingdom under the kingdom of Hungary. And so he was a Hungarian subject as a Croat. Albeit under the supreme governance of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. And if you're developing a headache already, you can be forgiven for deconstructing the Balkans is to unravel a Gordian knot.

Across Europe, the genie of nationalism has long been out of the bottle, sweeping through the continent in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, laying down a gauntlet to the post-Napoleonic order still being upheld by the great powers. The recent unifications of Italy and Germany have ripped up the rulebook, and there are plenty of smaller nations too now aspiring to self-determination, none more so than in the book. Balkans. In the years preceding Yusipros's birth, Greece has gone solo. The 1870s have seen what is known as the Great Eastern Crisis, with the likes of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro also flexing their muscles. By 1878, thanks to Russian military intervention, they've thrown off the yoke of another nominal great power dominating the Balkan region, the Ottoman Empire. Weakened and bankrupt, the Ottomans are known now as the sick man of Europe. With the majority of their territory lying in the Arab world, they cling to the last Balkan

vestiges of a once expansive Islamic Commonwealth, chiefly Bosnia and Albania, still with significant Muslim populations, still notionally governed by the Turkish administration in Constantinople. And then there is Russia again, which has expansionist designs of its own, dressed up as pan-slavism, or perhaps more correctly, greater Russiaism. A cry for the Slavic nations to band together and orientate themselves eastwards. Russia continues to foment trouble, stoking old grievances, which isn't difficult, for this This is a region where enmities run deep. In Serbia, for example, the year 1389, as it is to this very day, is held in near mystical

reverence. It was then at the Battle of Kosovo that an Ottoman army inflicted a humiliating defeat upon the Serbs, something yet to be avenged. The date of the battle has been seared into the Serbian nationalist consciousness. June 28th, it is one that will soon assume a new significance. In Croatia, the woes seemed trivial by comparison. The Brose family may express resentment that the purchase of a train ticket can only be done in Hungarian. But, in a bubbling regional cauldron, being Austro-Hungarian represents something far more important than the odd inconvenience, stability and security.

The Brose family are not dirt poor, but still relatively impoverished by the day's standards. Education is not a priority. Yossip Brose will spend less than four years at elementary school, though he will become an autodidact, educating himself as he passes through life. It leads to a certain no-nonsense approach, that of a man not given to suffer fools gladly. Later on, as a revolution,

he will be wedded less to communist dogma than a more practical assessment as to whether something works or not. Nicholas O'Shaughnessy is Emeritus Professor of Communication at Queen Mary University of London. The fact that Keito had no interest in Marxist theoretics

probably saved his life because he couldn't and wouldn't get involved in the arcane theological disputes between Marxists. Family life is not harmonious, unfortunately. As a tenant farm, a father Franio is deeply indebted to his aristocratic landowners, who live in the castle upon the hill. They impose massive interest hikes on the loans he's been forced to take out, placing great strain upon the household. It pushes him towards drink

and his children towards their mother. While Maria tries to salvage the farm, the kids are shipped off to their maternal grandparents across the Slovenians. border. Jeffrey Swain is Professor of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. One of the things lots of people say about Cito is that he had a very strange accent. Some of his critics say that's because he was really Russian. He wasn't really Russian, but he did have a strange accent because he spent so much time with his Slovene grandparents.

Branko Berkic is a publisher and editor and the founder of Global Media, media organization, Project Continuum. After he died, there was so many crazy theories and there were so many crazy theories about him. And I think it doesn't do him justice because he was extraordinary men without any of those things. So grew up as a little peasant child who failed the first grade in a school and to grow up to be a legendary leader like that. It acts incredible ability. Age 12, Yusipros leaves school to help out herding the farm's cows. in what will be a peripatetic existence.

At 18, he goes to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and becomes a metal worker. What we see in Tito is someone who is very keen for life experience, someone who moves away from the village at an early stage in life, as an apprentice gets to know the world living in various towns, initially small towns, but then he moves on to Zagreb, where he, He is immediately familiarized with trade union politics, becomes a member of the metal workers' union, but then never really stays anywhere for very long. In 1911, he ventures to Lubiana, the Slovenian capital this time.

From there, it's on to Trieste, Austria-Hungary's key Adriatic port, all in the pursuit of gainful employment. But he winds up back in Zagreb again as a bicycle repairman. Things are going nowhere fast. Hearing of industrial opportunities in the Empire's heartland, Yusipro's heads north to Czech Bohemia. He lands work, temporarily, at the Skoda Armaments' works in Pilsen. The tour continues on to Germany, Munich first, then the Rue Valley.

Next up is Austria, working alongside his older brother Martin at the Daimler-Benz car factory near Vienna. He was very proud that he had test driven a Dame Lecar in 1912 or something like that. But he was also always active in the trade unions and that, of course, didn't always go down very well and so he loses jobs on occasion. He gets blacklisted. But there is work and there is play. In Vienna, Bross learns to fence and he indulges in cafe society. He was also very keen. dancer. I was fantasising earlier that maybe if we have a, you know, strictly come dancing of the dictators, Tito would be the one who would win hands down. Along the way he has affairs with assorted women. And for this burgeoning polyglot, adds passable German to his newly acquired Czech.

Add his later mastery of Russian, and it will inflect further that already unfathomable speaking voice. Neil Barnett is the author of Tito, Life and Times, and the founder of the Intelligence Consultancy Istog. The fact that he spoke in that way spawned various suspicions, one of which is that this boy who grew up in Kumravets was not the same boy he came back from Russia after the First World War, but actually it was a doppelganger sent by common term. He actually had great Thespian skills.

in his earlier career posing as something he wasn't. He was so fluent in a whole stream of European languages that he could pose as a native and for a man constantly under threat, that was highly significant. It's during this period in the bars and staff canteens that Brose becomes aware of the power of the workers' movements he's been flirting with and that there are seismic shifts about to occur in European politics. Above all, there's a sense that the old order cannot be sustained, that it could all come crushing down, and that the Balkan region in particular is ground zero.

Sure enough, in October 1912, war breaks out. The Balkan League, an alliance between Orthodox Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, takes on its ailing Ottoman masters. The Ottomans, fresh from defeat to Italy and Libya, are in poor shape militarily. Victory by the Balkan League will result in the Ottomans losing over 80% of their European territories. The League's members are recognised as independent states, and Serbia will emerge as the dominant alternative force in the region. Serbia had been rising as an independent, power from 1903 really, evolving as quite a powerful state. Then in 1912, the first Balkan war broke out.

The Slavic inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire were rebelled against Turkish rule. Serbia came to their support and that military operation increased the power of the Serbian military enormously. This oft overlooked conflict, notable for its savagery and atrocities, will be followed soon after by a second Balkan war. Serbia, unhappy at concessions made to Macedonia, will embark on a fresh round of fighting. It has the feel of an overture for something truly cataclysmic. And it will coin a phrase,

one that refers to the fragmentation of the region into its ethnic constituencies. a term still used today. Balkanization. In May 1913, with storm clouds gathering, Yossip Broz-like thousands of young men is conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army. It would later be suggested, chiefly by himself, that he was forcibly press-ganked, but this seems a reinvention.

In the 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment, bros appears well suited to army life, a good soldier. He is personable, has assorted trade skills, is a multilingualist, and can suck up a bit of hardship. Tito himself seems to have been a pretty loyal Habsburg soldier. He doesn't like the Karayorviks,

the ruling family of Serbia. The Habsbergs he does have time for. There were some Croats who refused to serve in the army, but he doesn't refuse to serve. He actually seems to have quite, enjoyed his military career. His fencing abilities get him noticed. He's a runner-up in the All-Army Championships.

He also takes advantage of alpine training to become a proficient skier. A bit of a star. Brose is pegged instantly as non-commissioned officer material and fast-tracked. At 21 years old, he becomes the youngest staff sergeant in the Austro-Hungarian Army. It's Sunday morning, June 28, 1914. We're in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, on the banks at the Miliatska River. The town has a largely Muslim population, betraying its Ottoman heritage, its skyline dotted with minarets and the domes of mosques, though its populace seem largely loyal to its Habsburg overlords.

In 1908, controversially, they step up. in to make Bosnia a protectorate. The streets are packed, the crowd in a flag-waving celebratory mood, there to greet today's royal visitors, the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Franz Ferdinand is 50 years old, seemingly another Habsburg clone with his moustache and plumed hat. But underneath the imperial trappings, the Archduke is actually a realist. Fully aware of the fragility of the region, he is a would-be facilitator of Balkan self-determination,

a modernizer. And also, in a bit of a domestic pickle, as only the third in lines of the throne, the Archduke had avoided scrutiny of his romantic life. His marriage to Sophie, a mere lady-in-waiting, a commoner, had never been of particular concern. But, due to the unexpected deaths of his two older brothers, Franz Ferdinand finds himself elevated to the imperial box seat, and with a wife that the House of Habsburg determines to be a deeply

unsuitable empress. Sophie finds herself ostracized by the establishment. She is a ghost, barred from royal functions, recognized only as the spouse of the emperor to be when he's acting in a military capacity. inspecting troops in an imperial outpost, say, somewhere like Bosnia. For Mr. and Mrs. Franz Ferdinand, Sarajevo had presented itself as a rare, grand day out. And June the 28th, quaintly, happens to be their wedding anniversary. Amid simmering political tensions, however, this seems now to be an unwise excursion.

Franz Ferdinand has been warned not to travel. The Serbs, it seems, have not taken well to the Bosnian annexation. There is the specter of terrorism. But the wheels, both figuratively and literally, are already in motion. And so, on that sunny Sunday morning, having run his eye over a local Bosnian regiment, the Archduke's Greff and Stift Limmer, open-topped, takes a turn along Miljatka's cobbled impenement. There is confusion, misdirection and other farcical twists to this tragic tale, including someone lobbing a bomb at the Royal Motorcade and disabling one of the vehicles.

But then at 10.45 a.m. by the Latin Bridge, a 19-year-old student named Gavrilo Prince, jumps up onto the Royal Limos running board. With his automatic pistol, he fires two shots at point-blank range. Franz Ferdinand and Sophia are sitting ducks. I guess as they say in the gangster movies, nothing personal. But yes, it really was the spark in the tinderbox. Obviously, the gears were in motion for the First World War throughout Europe and it happened in Bosnia, but it wasn't ultimately a Bosnian problem.

Princehip is in fact a Bosnian Serb. He is one of seven assassins lining the route, agents of a Serbian revolutionary movement, the Black Hand. The sad thing about Franz Ferdinand is that if he hadn't been assassinated, you'd have had a federation of the Balkans. Galicia would have been in it, the Poles would have their kingdom, and Gehras had the kingdom, the Kurdish, the kingdom. And they'd say you'd have had a balkan federation.

And that would have been a very different outcome from what then subsequently happened. Within the hour, both Franz Ferdinand and Sophie will be pronounced dead. And the chain of events that follows, has been fodder for history students ever since. Austria-Hungary bombards Belgrade. Russia, Serbia's patron, mobilizes its army, prompting Austria's ally, Germany, to respond likewise.

Faced with a war on two fronts against Russia and its ally France, Germany attempts a preemptive knockout blow against the French, violating Belgian neutrality. Britain, with obligations both to Belgium and its part, partners France and Russia in the Triple Entente joins the fray. The world and Sergeant Yossipros are going to war. If the war had been prosecuted differently, Yossipros could have found himself as a Croat soldier

fighting directly against and killing Serbs, in which case a whole new narrative might have to have been constructed. He is posted temporarily to the Serbian front. front, something he will later downplay. He fights for Austria-Hungary against Serbia in 1940. Now, this is an aspect of his biography which will become rather uncomfortable when he comes to power in Yugoslavia, the idea that he has actually fought against the Serbs. It's probably with retrospective relief that in early 1915 his unit is redeployed to the Carpathians,

the mountain range which curves around Austria-Hungary's eastern border. It's here that Broza's regiment beds in to hold off the imperial Russian army. It may not seize the popular imagination in the same way as the trench warfare of the Western Front. But the mountain campaigns fought with the Russians, and later in the Alps against the Italians, are every bit as brutal, a series of frost-bitten high-altitude slogs,

A war of relentless artillery bombardment, savage hand-to-hand combat in the ice and snow. A white war, as it will be dubbed. There are further complications. It's patently obvious that the Austro-Hungarian army is not a happy camp. There is discord in the ranks, resentment by the perceived lesser nationalities, a sense that they are held in low esteem by their Austro-Hungarian officers,

deliberately under-provisioned, deemed expendable. Tito will later protest that as a Croatian he always objected to the Austro-Hungarian cause, that he was on the verge of desertion or defection. In truth, all evidence suggests that Sergeant Yossipros enters into combat with gusto and is well regarded by his superiors. But on March the 25th, 1915, on the slopes of Bush, His unit is caught in a cavalry skirmish, on the wrong end of a mounted charge by troops from Asian Circassia. Amid the gunfire and slashing blades, a Circassian cavalryman thrusts his lands low,

scuring Brose in the back. With a deep wound under his left shoulder blade, Brose collapses, seemingly a goner. He's actually penetrated by a lance from a Circassian lancer. and has the nightmare of watching as the prisoners and the wounded are butchered by the Circassians until the regular Russian troops arrive and stop the butchery. His life is saved. The young Croatian sergeant is patched up at a field post and placed on a hospital train heading east. It will take two weeks to reach its destination, a tortuous journey, skirting battle lines and passing through endless pine forests. But the train will eventually pull into the town of Kazan, deep in the Russian interior, 500 miles east of Moscow.

The Russians treat Brose well. The building being used as the prison hospital is actually an old monastery. Set on the island of Sviatsk in the Volga River, it has a calming, recoupative air about it. Here the war seems remote, an intangible thing. Certainly the guards and hospital staff do not look upon Broz as if he were the enemy. For him, there is an endless supply of literature and plenty of time on his hands. He immerses himself in self-education. He was taught Russian in the hospital by two young Russian girls who came to see him and they bought books by Tegenev and so forth Tolstoy and he learned in the end to speak Russian like a native. This start of starts a whole new chapter of his life as he finds himself deep in the Russian interior.

Just as he had done as a teenager where he embraced the opportunities of work and travel and language, he continues to do this as a prisoner of war, starts to read in Russian, has relationships with Russians. Using his newfound skills, it's patently obvious to this Croatian interloper, that there's something rotten to Russia's core. And the people he meets are not shy about telling him so. This is not about ethnicity, not about nationalism or borders. It's the struggle of a people in servitude and bondage, and for whom the Great War is seen as a futile adventure,

the straw that has broken the camel's back. Radicals whisper of a political movement, one that preaches equality and shared ownership. They declare themselves, themselves Bolsheviks. Devotees of a creed espoused by a man named Vladimir Lenin. Some of them here remember Lenin. He'd been a student, a rabble-rouser, right there at Kazan University. A bit of a local hero. Bouts of pneumonia and typhus set back Broza's recovery. But, after a year or so, he's released to a POW camp at Cungo in the Urals.

There he's put to work in a railway gang, mending the train tracks. It's a less convivial setup than the monastery. Guards are wont to steal the prisoner's Red Cross parcels. With his old union inclinations to the fore, Rose protests about it, and for his pains is sent to a local prison. That February, 1917, events are about to veer off on a brand new trajectory. A crowd storms the jail and throws open the gates. Many of the inmates are political prisoners, now to be set free.

Rumors that have been spreading among the convicts are confirmed as fact, that on the eastern front, Russian soldiers are laying down their arms and walking home, rejecting the very notion of the war. And that after mass protests on the streets of St. Petersburg, Petrograd, the Tsar has abdicated. Russia is now a republic ruled by a provisional government. Lenin, the great prophet, has returned from exile. There is chaos.

It's a golden opportunity for bros to make an escape. Though he's returns of the camp, it's now virtually unguarded. Hearing that a train is heading to Petrograd, he simply strolls down to the rail yard to stow away in a goods wagon. Even better, an old Bolshevik sympathiser, a pole, has given Brose the address of his son and the capital. He can lie low there while he figures out his next move. The Crocs tick is 1917 and he makes his way to Petrograd and he gets caught up in the events that were known as the July days. The Bolsheviks actually come to power in October but they make an attempt to seize power in July 1917.

When Brose arrives that summer, he finds Petrograder city in utter turmoil. On the streets, mobs mill about, demanding the fall of the new provisional government. It seems the perfect cover for getting out of the country altogether. Broz is but a short step to going home via Finland, then parts of the Russian Empire. Only Joseph Brose doesn't go home. Not yet. for he is about to bag a ringside seat for a key event in history. It's July the 17th, 1917.

We're on Nevsky Prospect, Petrograd, the most fashionable avenue in the capital. Or it was before the war. Thousands have taken to the streets. Troops, now under the command of the provisional government, are doing their best to maintain order. There have been pitched battles running throughout the day. And then the Russian first machine gun regiment trundles onto the scene. Protesters are mown down without mercy, and Broz is witness to it all.

Tito spent time in Petrograd. He was there for the Russian Revolution, and not as Bartissombollah, but as an observer. And of course that helped radicalize him. He actually saw it first hand. Unfortunately, he's made himself too conspicuous. In the police crackdown, he's arrested. not for being an escaped P.O.W. But for being a suspected Bolshevik, a now far greater crime. Confessing his true identity seems to save a bet. And so, after three weeks held in a Petrograd fortress, Brose is dispatched east again, back to his camp. But he's learned enough about the security by now,

or lack of it, to know just where to jump the train. At the station in Yacatherine, He gives his guards the slip and scans the departure board. With his fluent Russian, he buys a ticket to the furthest destination that any other train is headed. Omsk, Siberia. So skilled is he at passing himself off as an ordinary citizen. Bross bluffs his way through numerous questionings by guards and police as the coaches roll along the tiger. The shape-shifting, shape-changing, all theities of Tito were always at his disposal.

And so when authorities come for Tito, whether Austrian or Russian or what have you, very suspiciously, he composes a German. He composes a Russian, and they can't actually tell. We're talking about a incredibly clever man who had hardly any formal education, and yet he was extraordinarily intelligent. resource for.

But the train never reaches its destination. On the way it's held up by a unit of armed Bolsheviks, or Red Guards as they now style themselves. Civil War has indeed broken out. The Reds need every available person to aid their struggle against the counter-revolutionaries, the so-called whites. Key to that is the guarding of the very strategic route upon which Brose is currently traveling. Trans-Siberian Railway. The situation is really becoming very fluid, and he finds himself in a part of Russia,

which is already in Bolshevik hands, whether in late 1918, early 191919, it's all a little bit obscure. But what we see here clearly is an exposure to revolution. We see an exposure to the nuts and bolts of how you make a revolution happen. What it looks like on the ground, the practice. And I think this is something which is going to have a definite impact on Tito's life going forward. And so, Sergeant Yossipros, formerly of the Austro-Hungarian army, becomes Comrade Yosipros of the Russian Revolutionary Red Guard. The October Revolution of 1917 has changed everything, it turns out.

In Petrograd, the Bolsheviks have seized control. Russia is out of the European war. But out in the sticks, it's a proverbial wild west, or wild east, a struggle between reds and whites, even more so from 1918 with the ad hoc execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Fearing revolutionary contagion, European military units have been dispatched to Russia to restore order. the Reds' adversaries out in Siberia are the pro-ontont-Chek Legion, made up, ironically, of Austro-Hungarian POWs and deserters. Bross is part of the Red Guard that goes on to take Omsk and establish it as a Bolshevik regional capital. He is now part of a movement that has been rebranded as the Communist Party.

Though a white resurgence will see Omsk fall and Broz go into hiding. While on the run, Bross meets a local girl, Pelagio Bolusova, or Polka. He is 27. She, controversially, is 14, maybe 15, though he will later claim 17. When order is restored, they will return to Omsk, and in January 1920, get married. With it, for Bross comes a decision. After five years away, it is finally time to go home. It's an epic voyage by land and sea of over 3,000 miles.

But that September, when Yossipros and a now pregnant polka step off the train in Kummeritz, it's into an unfamiliar world. Sadly, Bross learns, his mother has since died. His father, too, is absent. He's moved away. abandoning the farm altogether. Perhaps more discombobulating is the notion that the country Yosep Ross was born into, the country he fought for no longer exists.

Thanks to the Treaty of Versailles, Austria-Hungary, sclerotic, vanquished, has been euthanized. And Croatia is now part of a brand-new entity, the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Quite a mouthful. Its citizens prefer something else, a name that will become the kingdom's official title in due cause. The land of the South Slavs, Yugoslavia. In the next episode, an assassination in Marseille plunges the Balkans into turmoil.

Pegged as a troublemaker, pursued by the authorities, the shape-shifting bros flees to Russia. There he will be retooled as a Soviet agent. Dispatched by Moscow, he will return home with a new mission and a new name. Tito. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Real Dictators right now,

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