7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

the federation to the republics, conservative centralist

forces fought back, dividing the Communist elite

between 1963 and 1972. During this period Tito purged

first the Serbian centralists and then the leaders of the

decentralizing and liberal forces in Croatia in 1971 and

then in Serbia in 1972.

Retrenchment of the 1970s

Tito’s response to the crises of the 1960s and early 1970s

was to fashion a system of “symmetrical federalism,” in

which various internal rules and rituals (including a rotat-

ing presidency to lead Yugoslavia after Tito’s death) were

supposed to formalize equality among the six republics

and Serbia’s two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and the

Vojvodina. This system, enshrined in the constitution of

1974, promoted the weaker and smaller federal units at

the expense of the big two—Serbia and Croatia. Serbia’s

displeasure at the independent role assigned to its auton-

omous provinces and the promotion of minority

identity—especially that of the Albanians in Kosovo—

was felt already in Tito’s last years, but it became

radicalized after his death in 1980. Serb resentment pro-

vided the opening for Slobodan Milošević and other

promoters of recentralization, who contributed greatly

to the undoing of Tito’s federal system during the follow-

ing decade.

Francisco Franco

(b. Dec. 4, 1892, El Ferrol, Spain—d. Nov. 20, 1975, Madrid)

F

rancisco Franco was a general who led the Nationalist

forces that overthrew the Spanish democratic repub-

lic during the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936