’Tito tour’ in Croatian capital delves into strongman’s legacy

With no street or statue to remember Yugoslavia's late strongman Josip Broz Tito, a new tour in the Croatian capital Zagreb is hoping to trace the leader's complicated legacy in a city where he remains divisive.

Adored by some and hated by others, Tito remains a polarizing figure four decades after his death across the former Yugoslav republics, including Croatia, where he helped usher in prosperity and authoritarianism alike.
The tour's curator Danijela Matijevic said the idea for the project came in 2017, after authorities in Zagreb stripped Tito's name from a prominent square.
The move was the latest in a string of measures over the years aimed at ridding the country of its Yugoslav past, removing plaques and monuments along with renaming streets and squares.
But for Matijevic, history still matters.

"Tito was definitely one of the 20th century's political giants," Matijevic said.
The "Walk with Tito" tour, launched last year, takes people to eight sites in downtown Zagreb linked to the Croatian-born leader and the anti-fascist movement he founded at the start of World War II, commonly known as the Partisans.
It stops at the square once named after Tito, the main railway station where Croatia's pro-Nazi regime deported people to concentration camps, and a passage named after two sisters who were resistance heroes.
The tour does not indulge in sugar-coating the past as it explores Tito's successes along with his share of failures.
The late leader is known for charting a middle road for the socialist federation he founded, siding neither with the United States nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

"Tito had good relations with the West but did not neglect good ties with the East either, positioning Yugoslavia...