Serbs Ponder Vucic's Claim to Tito’s Legacy

As Aleksandar Vucic increasingly compares his achievements with those of Josip Broz Tito some say he is consciously tapping into a historic yearning among Serbs for an authoritarian leader.

PM Aleksandar Vucic with children in traditional Serbian clothes. Photo: Beta/Slobodan Miljevic.

He may once have compared himself to Serbia’s reformist late prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, but these days Aleksandar Vucic more often matches his goals and results with those of former Yugoslavia’s “president for life”, Josip Broz Tito.

At a summit in Riga, in the beginning of November, Prime Minister Vucic said one goal of his government was to build twice as much highway as was built during the 35 years of Tito’s rule, when 48 kilometers of highway were built a year on average in Yugoslavia.

Earlier this year, Vucic said that under his rule, Serbia had accomplished as much as was ever done during Tito’s reign.

“One day, people will say that there was Tito and there was Vucic, who did as much as Tito. Until someone else comes,” Vucic mused to Serbian TV station Prva in April.

Tito ruled Yugoslavia from 1945 to his death in 1980, after leading the Partisan struggle during World War II, and many view his time in office with nostalgia, recalling full employment and Yugoslavia’s powerful image in the world.

Because of his non-aligned diplomatic stance, he was admired also by many in the West, seen as a benign dictator who had successfuylly maintained peaceful coexistence between the often warring peoples of Yugoslavia.

Sociologist and university professor Ratko Bozovic told BIRN on Tuesday that references to Tito are intended to draw on widespread memories of “better times” among the public.

The habit of drawing comparisons with Tito started in December 2014, when Vucic claimed that under him, Serbia had regained the good reputation on the international political stage that it had enjoyed under Tito.

Before he started mining Tito’s legacy, Vucic was more often compared to the reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, killed in 2003, whose words Vucic used to quote.

Ruzica Djindjic, Djindjic’s widow, said in March 2013 that she did not object to the comparison, as both men shared an energy that they invested in Serbia’s progress.

However, Bozovic said the comparison with Tito was highly questionable. “During Tito’s reign, we lived in a relevant country that was destroyed by the same people that are in power now,” he said, referring to Vucic’s Serbian nationalist past.

“Djindjic, on the other hand, was a reformer. The government intends to connect those names with current leader Vucic – despite his own political past,” he added.

Bozovic also said that Serbia had again entered a period of autocratic government and a cult of personality was being deliberately created, which, according to him, was easy to do in an impoverished country with a cowed population.

“The ruling Progressive Party has already build up a personality cult around Vucic. In an autocracy, it is not important what is written in the law but what the leader says – and we have that situation in Serbia right now,” said Bozovic.

He concluded that Vucic had learned his lessons about the importance of the media in the creation of a personality cult while he was Minister for Information during the 1990s, when Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was in power.

Bojan Klacar, director of the Belgrade-based Center for Free Elections and Democracy, CESID, told BIRN that traditional and conservative societies like Serbia’s often lean to strong leaders.

“The Progressive Party is doing political marketing based on the personality of PM Vucic. We have an ongoing campaign, and all the resources of the government and Progressive Party are being directed to the promotion of Vucic as a leader,” he said.

He agreed that Tito is still seen in the collective memory as a figure who delivered peace, stability, and prosperity – and Vucic wants to connect with that image.

“On the other hand, the comparison with Djindjic has a different target group, one that does not vote for the Progressive Party,” he noted.

“Djindjic personified the intellectual elite, a prestige that the Progressive Party is yearning for. Part of the public positively reacts to Tito and other to Djindjic. That is why both of them are mentioned so often,” he observed.