BERSERKISTAN
Berserkistan Navigator Josip Tito’s Widow Honors Husband
In Subdued Birthday Rememberance

Josip Broz Tito BELGRADE, May 25 (Reuters) - The widow of the late dictator Josip Broz Tito who ruled the former Yugoslavia for 35 years laid flowers at his grave on Saturday in a subdued memorial commemorating the anniversary of his birth.

Jovanka Broz joined relatives to lay the tributes at the grave site in Belgrade on the 104th anniversary, the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported. A comparatively small number of people turned out for the modest ceremony to honour the man regarded as the father of the Yugoslav state that began dissolving in blood five years ago. It was a stark contrast to the celebrations that took place each year while Tito was alive.

Then, the anniversary was proclaimed national "Youth Day." Runners would carry a richly decorated baton through the country, arriving on May 25 at a stadium in Belgrade. Before an audience of thousands, a youth would present the baton to Tito as others performed a gymnastics display.

In place of the grand events and adulatory speeches that were traditional during Tito's rule, a few small delegations queued on Saturday to lay flowers at the memorial. A representative of one group, the Society for Truth about the National Liberation Struggle, wrote in the memorial's visitors' book:

"Tito was not only a leader and a hero of the liberation war and an architect of socialist construction. He was also a citizen of the world, for he fought for freedom, and just and equal relations among nations and states," it said.
A ruthless autocrat, Tito welded the Yugoslav republics into a single communist state after World War Two. He disassociated himself from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1948, and founded the Non-aligned Movement of states that declared themselves outside the influence of both the United States-led western hemisphere and the Soviet-led eastern block.

Tito kept Yugoslavia unified under the slogan ``Brotherhood and Unity'' by stamping out nationalism with a heavy hand. He died on May 4, 1980, barely 10 years before the country fell apart with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 and the brutal war in Bosnia the following year.



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