Foreign News: THE PEASANT'S SON

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Most sought-after dictator in Europe last week:

Marshal Josip Broz Tito, 63, Communist President of Yugoslavia.

Born: May 25, 1892, the seventh of 15 children of a hard-drinking peasant; at Kumrovec, a hamlet in Croatia.

Early Life: Raised in poverty, he turned his family's millstone at the age of seven, but unlike most village children, learned the three Rs. As a teenager, Tito planned to emigrate to the U.S., where tens of thousands of Croats settled between 1890 and 1913. Instead, he got a job as a locksmith near Trieste.

World War I: Drafted into the Austrian imperial army, he was a good soldier, won the regimental fencing championship. He was promoted to sergeant major, posted to the Russian front, badly wounded by a cavalryman's lance, captured and sent to Siberia. As a P.W., Tito learned Russian, married his first wife, Pelaghia, got caught up in the Red Revolution. He joined the International Red Guard, became a Communist.

Between Wars: Returning to Yugoslavia in 1920, Tito was jailed on arrival. Later, under the dictatorship of King Alexander, Tito organized a Communist metalworkers' union, and paid the penalty: five years in a royal jail. Released in 1934, Tito became a member of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and was sent to Moscow to study Marxism. Thereafter, using false names and forged passports, Tito flitted from capital to capital in Europe, organizing strikes, recruiting Red volunteers for the Spanish Civil War. In 1937, at the height of the great purge wave in Moscow, he was named Secretary-General of the Yugoslav Communist Party, secretly returned home with orders to purge the Yugoslav party and start training an underground army of guerrillas,

World. War II: When the Germans invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Tito took to the hills. Stalin, still chummy with Adolf Hitler (the Nazi-Soviet pact stayed in force until June, when the Nazis invaded Russia), ordered the Yugoslav Communists to confine themselves to sabotage. During these first months, Serb Colonel Draja Mihailovich, loyal to the Mon archy, fought off the Nazis. Tito set up a rival guerrilla army, eventually had 150,000 men, enough to tie down 15 Axis divisions. He proved himself the most successful guerrilla commander of World War II. At first the Western Allies supported Mihailovich, but at Winston Churchill's urging, abruptly in 1944 switched to Tito on the grounds that Tito's Partisans were killing more Germans, and that some of Mihailovich's men were collaborating with the Germans. King Peter's Yugoslav government in exile in London was forced to recognize Com munist Tito. Mihailovich was later captured by Tito's Partisans, tried "for treason," and executed.

Communist Dictatorship: In October 1944, Belgrade was liberated by a combination of the Red army and Tito's Partisans. Tito proclaimed the Communist Revolution: collective farms, a switch to heavy industry, Marxist education and a drive against religion (including the imprisonment of Roman Catholic Cardinal Stepinac).