About a different time

Written by: Slobodan Vuković

At the mention Tita, the New York cab driver didn't charge me for the ride!

When the Mexican border guard saw my red Yugoslav passport, he waved his hand and said:

- Passing! And keep that passport!

It was the time of Tito's Yugoslavia. For many countries, especially Eastern European ones, the Yugoslavs were "Americans". The passport of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia opened all the doors of the world. We could travel where we wanted and when we wanted. We had freedom.

Everyone who studies, or will study that time, will search for the truth by flipping through the pages of history and science, but the soul of that era can only be felt by those who lived in that era.

Today is May 25, the birthday of the man who, as the professor said Dr. Radovan Radonjić, from a literally semi-feudal, divided Balkan province, as Yugoslavia was before the Second World War, created a relatively modern, free, democratic, industrially developed country, which the world admired... A warm house for all its peoples and nationalities.

One hundred and thirty-two years have passed, since in Kumrovac, on the lovely river Sutli, from his father Fringe, Croats, and mothers Marije, Slovenian woman, born to Josip Broz, one of the constellation of great statesmen and war commanders of the twentieth century.

The winner in the bitter anti-bloc battles for non-alignment in the world.

Tito ended almost every speech with the words:

- Let's protect brotherhood and unity like the apple of our eye!

He knew well what the Balkans were.

Not long after his death, we got the bloody disintegration of the country...

The relay races, May dawns and landings, the dawn of May...

And once... The worker was a saint.

- I have to tell you that I and my colleagues have objections that some managers down there sometimes behave improperly towards the people, as well as towards the working man in companies - warned Tito in September 1959 in Pljevlja. - You are communists and don't ever forget that even now, as you did before the war and during the war itself, you should first of all take care of people and treat them properly...

Tito's eighty-seventh birthday was approaching. Zagreb. Saturday, May 19, 1979. On the metal plate of the apartment in Moše Pijade Street, it is written: Bros. I rang the bell and Tito's son opened the door. Aleksandar Mišo Broz, graduated in law, director of "Inakamerc", specialized in foreign trade.

Spacious living room. In a wicker basket, newspapers and magazines. From the front page of "Studia" he smiles Đorđe balasevic.

Paintings and tapestries Rajzer, Ivan Lovrenčić, Ed Murtić, graphics Kuna i Jakca and an oil portrait of Miš that she created in 1946 Miranda Morić. On the bowl is a bouquet of postcards from the world's capitals that Mišo sends from his official trips.

And an old typewriter.

- That machine is a fond memory of my father - says Mišo. - Before World War II, he wrote articles on it, I think, for "Proleter". It was kept by my grandmother during the war.

Two parrots, Mickey and Koki.

- Dad brought it to the children - says Mišo - and the origin of the water is from Indonesia. - Mickey loves nuts, but Koki doesn't.

- Koki likes sticks - says Mish's six-year-old son Andrei. (Ten-year-old Aleksandra Saš, she was at school). There is also Mish's wife, Mira, dentist.

On the chest of drawers is a portrait of Tito in a red leather frame. On the photo it is written: "Mirici, Tito, 12 September 9.1978." years".

Mira tells me, with a smile, to pay attention to this "Mirica". She told me for a long time about Tito's connection with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren...

Mišo Broz was born in Zagreb in 1941. His name is Aleksandar, and he only got it in 1949!

- Mišo is my illegal name from the war - he says - because they couldn't baptize me during the war, so they gave me my real name only after liberation, that's why I often jokingly say that it's my partisan name...

He spent the war illegally, in a family in Zagreb. When the war ended, he came to Belgrade, where he saw his father for the first time. He addressed him as "Hey, you"... "Hey, you"...

After finishing high school in Belgrade (former tenth grade), his father suggested that they should become independent and go to study in Zagreb. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb.

- Regarding my student days, my father didn't have any problems with me - Mišo Broz told me. - Nor did I set myself up as the son of a great father; nor was I treated that way. Then came the army (Zadar, Zagreb). I got Zagreb as a citizen of Belgrade. After the army, I got a job in the metal industry, where my father used to work. I went to "Prvomajska" precisely because I was interested in mechanical engineering, and law, again, is closely related to international trade, so I am not far from my profession. There wasn't a day that I wasn't in the plants. Everything that was done was related to production. Maybe I had the opportunity to achieve more in my profession, but I went to "Prvomayjska", in the economy.

Then he moved to "Ina".

While we are talking, little Andrej shows me books, draws on the blackboard.

- No one can leave the house without Andrej showing him that blackboard of his - says his mother Mira. - Look what he learned.

On the blackboard, Andrej wrote in chalk: Tito.

It is noticeable that Mišo wants to talk more about his work, about economic issues. And when they meet, what do father and son talk about the most?

- Only about "Ina", business problems, the economy - says Miš's wife Mira, a Slavonka from Pakrac. - I think they have a wonderful relationship. Dad never told him, well, Misha, you have to do it. He always told him, I would advise you this and that, and you think about it...

Micho joins the conversation.

- Focusing on your own results and strengths is exactly what guides you in the direction you should go - says Mišo. - What surprises me the most about dad is that no one knows how to create a mood in society like him. Wherever he is, he will always create an atmosphere. He never preached what a man should be. But in every conversation there was a message, a lesson, his vision of what should be, and that always represented, I wouldn't say an obligation to carry it out, but a good basis for a person to think about it and later accept it. He never ordered me: you have to do this, you have to do that. He was giving his opinion, leaving it up to me to judge what was best at a given moment...

He was an esthete. He played the piano?

- Dad loved beauty: he was a great esthete, as you say. It was a combination of broad interest, memorization of things with aesthetics and a sense for certain areas; all that together creates a result that is not everyday - Mišo Broz told me. - Dad represented two people for me: one was my father, and the other was the President of the Republic. He taught me from a young age: it's one thing that a person makes with his own work, and another thing that someone else made. His interests were very wide. There was hardly anything that did not interest him. We often talked when I was in "Prvomajska", about machines, for example. Well, let's say, machines were, somehow, his profession, so he knew them because of that. But even later, when it was about "Ina", about oil, he was better informed than I was about what was happening at a certain moment. While I was studying, he was interested in all those student questions, but not only in the information, but also in the analysis of that information...

Tito died on May 4, 1980 in the Clinical Center in Ljubljana.

The great funeral, which was attended by a huge number of statesmen in the House of Flowers in Belgrade. It was a kind of "summit" of humanity.

And great deaths, said the Montenegrin writer Cedo Vuković, never extinguished in time.

...Zagreb. Thursday, April 29, 1981. A modest office in an old baroque palace on Radićeva Square. (Mišo is the deputy president of the Committee for Foreign Relations of the Socialist Republic of Croatia). ready-made suit; roll the color of rotten cherry. On the wall is a portrait of Tito from 1945. "Ina" calendar and a photo of her sons Hot and Mišo visiting his father at the Clinical Center in Ljubljana...

- To me, that period is all crumpled - says Mišo, commenting on the aforementioned photo. - I remember that the atmosphere was good. It was a cheerful conversation. Dad liked to solve his problems himself, he never passed them on to others. He himself stated that we knew about this difficult operation of his, he did not ask for an answer. That was not our last meeting. We saw each other later...

He also tells me about his diplomatic work.

- Our Committee covers economic and diplomatic-consular relations with foreign countries, so it is a very wide range - emphasizes Mišo Broz. - Our entire team is relatively young and almost all of them have worked in the economy for part of their experience. Therefore, we are not burdened by those classical schemes of administration. I don't have much time. When someone asks me how your family is at home, I jokingly say: as far as I saw from the note last night, everything is fine. It really works from morning to night, in order to start economic relations, to direct them in the desired direction...

Like his father, Micho loved photography. He bragged to me that he bought a new Pentax camera.

- Since the age of twelve, I have been developing films, shaking things up. Now I mostly work in color - he says. - A photograph can be a reflection of a moment, and it can give something more than that. Somehow, my favorite photos are of my daughter Aleksandra, taken a few years ago in Brioni. There were more of us at lunch. The old man and my daughter talked for a long time. About what? Only they know that...

Later, Mišo served as a diplomat in the embassies of the Republic of Croatia in Moscow, Jakarta, and Cairo. Tito's eighty-three-year-old son lives in Zagreb, on the same street, now with a different name; sometimes he also stays in his cottage in nearby Samobor...

Tito is a happy man! - he said Miroslav Krleža. - He never doubted his ideals for a single moment, and he achieved them more than anything that generations of our poets, politicians, rulers and military leaders have dreamed about for centuries.