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ALL LOVES AND AFFAIRS OF TITOJosip Broz Tito was a Yugoslav Marshall and founder of non-aligned movement, one of rare dictators that enjoyed huge popularity in the west. His funeral was one of largest in history, attended by all big names from east and west. Tito owes his cult of personality and popularity to the fact he was only European leader able to free his country from the Axis without Americans or Soviets, and he kept the warring Balkan "tribes" together by rulling with iron fist and quickly industrializing his backward agrarian nation, chosing the third position between east and west. He had courage to say no to Stalin.
Who was Tito really? His opponents accuse him of being a war criminal, mass murderer and perpetrator of heinous crimes commited in post-war Yugoslavia. He was rumored to be merciless towards his subordinates and even his numerous lovers.
Tito's private life, which was kept secret in his Yugoslav-era official biographies, helps to shed shocking light on Yugoslav dictator who posessed personality of unscrupulous chameleon, which shatters his image as benevolent ruler and essentialy "good guy".
Josip Broz, a locksmith apprentice by trade, found his way to Bohemia, at that time part of Austro-Hungarian Empire Tito himself belonged. On arriving at his new workplace, he discovered that the employer was trying to bring in cheaper labour to replace the local Czech workers. Josip and others joined successful strike action to force the employer to back down.
Josip Broz Tito was a great seducer, and his first love was Marusa Novakova, well-known to biographers, high school student, daughter of general medicine doctor Franjo Novak. Although only a locksmith, Josip introduced himself to the girl and her father as a graduate engineer from poor Croatia. According to some claims, he promised her marriage, but due to moving to Maruša's aunt's house, which came about because of her problems with her ex-fiancé and his affair with former bourgeois Clara, they had to postpone the wedding, but there was never a better time for that opportunity.
In front of the entrance to the company building where he was employed for a short time, there is still an inscription: Josip Broz Tito, Marshall of Yugoslavia, worked in this factory in 1912. In Plzen, he got a job at Škoda and rented a room in a hotel where he brought his lovers, while his pregnant fiancee Marusa was staying with her aunt and planning a wedding at which he did not show up. Their son Leopold, born in March 1913, lived and worked as an economist in Prague, but was never in contact with his father.
Tito left the new family for Lisa Špuner, a clothier ten years his senior, with whom he fled to Vienna. He went into business with her and proved to be a good merchant, earning his new lover a lot of money. He lived in Lisa's house and slept with her maids while she was on a business trips. However, he also escaped from her when she fell pregnant. In 1914, Liza gave birth to a son, Hans, who was killed in the fighting near Kozara in 1943, where he was together with his father, but defending the interests of the Germans. After that failed relationship, Tito returned to Zagreb and began a romance with Tereza Štacner, the daughter of a banker, whom he met in Vienna. Their short-lived romance was interrupted by Austria-Hungary's attack on Serbia and Russia. Tito became a soldier in the 25th Home Guard Regiment commanded by a close friend of Terez's father, so Broz had a privileged position.
Due to the simulation of deafness, since the army wanted to release him completely, Josip Broz was sentenced to death, but thanks to the influence of Teresa's father, he was still only imprisoned in the Petrovaradin Fortress. They released him after twenty days and sent him to fight in Serbia and then in Russia. He never saw Tereza again, even though she gave birth to his twins Paula and Gabriela. The daughter died after two months, and the son lived in Paris, where he designed bridges.
After surviving the Russian winter with the regiment in battle, Tito deserted from the army. After a long wandering, he came to the estate of Mihail Sedlovski Baćuška in the village of Korutov and got a job as an auxiliary worker shoeing horses. He progressed very quickly, but, unfortunately, he also seduced the owner's wife, Luca. Baćuška caught them in the act, wounded Tito with a shot from a pistol, and drove Ljusa out of the house. In the same year, she gave birth to a son, Kiril, whom Tito never saw. Kirill later became a veterinarian, but never got in touch with his father.
Some historians claim that Broz was wounded during the war in the Carpathians on May 25, 1915, and that he spent thirteen months in the hospital, where he passed the time by learning the Russian language and reading Russian literature. The wounded Josip Broz, in the hospital in nearby Svijažensk, was treated by Ira Gligorijevska, whom he married after leaving the hospital on July 17, 1915, which was his first marriage, which he later did not recognize. They lived in a rented apartment, and he got a job as a technical supervisor at the hospital.
He soon met Irina's friend, veterinarian Darja Andirelova, a woman from a rich Moscow family of distinguished doctors. After their separation, Ira gave birth to his son Serjoža in 1915, whom he never saw, and his mother died during childbirth. At that time, he was already living on the property of a well-situated female veterinarian and taking care of the affairs in her stable of Arabian horses. When she fell pregnant, they moved to her parents' mansion in Moscow, but the romance, like everything before, failed after she gave birth and the arrival of her son Alexander, who died in 1944, as an officer in the Red Army.
However, Tito already had a new love, Olja Kutina, a student of economics and the daughter of a large Russian middleman in the fur trade. He spent several months with her, and during their joint winter vacation he met Nina Bažan from Petrograd. A disappointed Olja returned to Moscow from a love vacation, and the future president returned to Petrograd with a new girlfriend. Her parents accepted him because Nina explained to them that she would marry him. To make the soap opera complete, Tito cheated on Nina with her own sister Svetlana. Due to parallel relationships and the almost simultaneous pregnancy of his sisters, Josip intended to escape, but by chance the plan was foiled by the army, which arrested him because he did not have documents, so he was sent to Siberia. Near Omsk, he jumped off the train and shaved in the Russian steppe. He never saw Nina and Svetlana again. In 1918, Nina gave birth to his son Vladimir, a future Leningrad doctor, while Svetlana claimed that the child was not his.
At the foot of the Han-Tengri mountain, where the Kyrgyz live, he ran into nomad shepherds, and after getting into the family of the richest Kyrgyz herdsman Zalid Baldahur, he conquered his daughter Zuhra. Of course, he soon got married, which was his second unofficial marriage. However, after a few months, he slipped out of the marital bed one evening, and in 1918, Zuhra gave birth to his legitimate son, Kadi, who lived as a petrochemical engineer in Baku.
In the spring of 1918, Tito requested admission to the Russian Communist Party, and upon his return to Omsk, he became a member of the Yugoslav section of the Russian Communist Party. At that time, affectionately called Joža, he was having fun with Pelagia Denisovna Belousova – Polka. During the several months that the relationship with Polka lasted before the wedding, only one of his affairs with professor Ana Ivanović was recorded. Nevertheless, he married Pelagia on June 19, 1919, in front of the registrar, and they celebrated the wedding in a canteen. At the time of the wedding, Pelagia was 13 years old, and Josip Broz was 24. Although it was Josip's third marriage, in his biographies Pelagia is listed as his first official wife.
Not long after, the revolution took off and Broz, then already thirty years old, calmed down a bit with emotional trips. Polka bore him three children, the first son Hinko died eight days after birth, and the daughter Zlatica lived only seventeen months. Tito's son Žarko, born in 1924, a former Red Army officer and national hero of the USSR, was the first child that Tito officialy recognized, and Pelagia took care of during his lifetime.
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