Local reflects on watching Yugoslav army's pullout from island Vis
Written on the 44th anniversary of the death of Tito
May 4, 2024
Today marks the 44th anniversary of the death of Josip Broz Tito, leader of Yugoslavia since 1943. His death started the chaotic dissolution of Yugoslavia, which ultimately led to the Balkan Wars and the death of nearly 140,000 people. So it’s only appropriate that I joined my guide and friend Medo Ilić yesterday at the island port of Vis at the exact spot where some 30 years ago he had witnessed and photographed the Yugoslav army’s pullout from the island. Medo was 13.
History books will tell you that Vis, the Croatian island where I’m spending several weeks, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of World War I, when the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia.
During World War II, Vis became an Allied stronghold supported by island partisans led by Tito. After the war and under Tito’s leadership, Yugoslavia became an independent communist state consisting of six socialist republics including Croatia.
In 1991, Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, but it took four years of fighting before the last Yugoslav forces left Croatian lands.
Medo shared his photos as we drank tea outside a harbor bakery.
They showed soldiers boarding a troop carrier at the pier where I’d arrived in Vis by ferry two days earlier. They showed a jeep with the red, white and blue Yugoslav flag marked with a red star in its center as well as a white vehicle with U.N. forces. They showed destroyers docked where today luxury yachts line up side by side.
Medo even showed a photo of his bicycle. Like the military vehicles he’d been encountering for years, its headlight was nearly fully blocked by black tape to avoid detection. Only a slit of light showed.
Photos from after the pullout showed workers sandblasting large lettering from a waterfront building with a message supportive of Tito. Soon the words “LONG LIVE THE CROATIAN REPUBLIC” were spray painted on a nearby wall.
Medo’s partner, Monika, greeted us on her way to his parents’ waterfront home, in the family for more than a century, where their two toddlers were spending time with grandma.
As I soon learned, Medo’s stories of the pullout were just a small preview of the millennia-long island history he would reveal over the coming days. His family had been here for five centuries, which gave me the opportunity to learn the history from a unique perspective.
Photos by Medo Ilić