ABSTRACT
Many writers before and after 1980 have pondered Josip Broz Tito 's historical significance. Tito ran up huge international debts and actively encouraged one of the most elaborate cults of the personality of any Leninist leader before or since. Geoffrey Swain's decision to revisit the subject of the Yugoslav leader in 2010 in the I. B Tauris Communist Lives series proved to be a very good one and the end result was outstanding. World War II was crucial in understanding the Tito phenomenon and the fact that ‘Tito felt that the best form of defence was attack’. Tito succeeded him as party leader and in discussing the transfer of power Swain's grasp of ‘political’ detail and superior understanding of Marxist–Leninist discourse and theory is to be particularly commended. The amount of material about Tito's personal life in Swain's essays and in the biography is strikingly sparse, although he made ample use of official League of Communists of Yugoslavia sources.
