A benevolent unifier or power-hungry dictator? On the 40th anniversary of his death, the legacy of the late Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito remains a subject of debate in the Balkan lands once united by his grip. Though coronavirus restrictions put on a damper on mass gatherings Monday, small groups of faithful devotees still paid tribute at various sites honouring Tito in the countries that emerged from Yugoslavia's bloody unravelling. "If everything was as it should have been, now there would be a big gathering here. From Macedonia, Croatia, from the whole of ex-Yugoslavia," lamented Vladimir Vignjevic, one of about 15 people who visited Tito's marble grave in Belgrade, normally a site of pilgrimage for fans from the region. Across the border in Tito's native Croatian village of Kumrovec, sirens were set to wail at 13:05 GMT -- the exact time of his passing -- while supporters will lay a wreath. "This is a modest commemoration for a great man. We will do what we can in current circumstances," Franjo Habulin, whose anti-fascist association is organising the ceremony, told AFP. With a mix of charisma and coercion, Tito held Yugoslavia's diverse peoples together for almost 40 years until his death at age 87 on May 4, 1980. Without him, the federation lasted only a decade longer before fracturing along ethnic lines in a series of wars that claimed more than 130,000 lives. Today, the Marshal's shadow falls unevenly across the countries that still bear the scars of those conflicts. Critics highlight his jailing of political opponents, while some argue his suppression of nationalist sentiments created the pressure cooker that exploded into bloodshed. But strains of Yugo-nostalgia, as it is known, are still found across the region among those who remember -- or have heard stories about -- the open borders and prosperity that elude the Balkans today. "Despite the fact that Tito was a dictator by definition, life in that time was much better," said Bojan Milenkovski, a 42-year-old programmer from Skopje. Aleksandra, a 48-year-old in Montenegro, also feels the region has gone south ever since Tito's time. "I felt a sense of belonging in Yugoslavia," she told AFP. "The last three decades have been a regression in every sense: economic, social, cultural." The communist leader has always defied easy categorisation. Born to a Slovene mother, Croat father and married to a Serb, he seemed to embody his vision for a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. The proponent of socialism also had a taste for glamour and hosted a range of glitterati, from Hollywood stars to British royalty, at his many villas. And unlike other communist countries, Yugoslavs enjoyed significant cultural freedoms and opportunities to travel to the West under Tito, who broke ties with the Soviet Union. But the autocrat drew a line when it came to criticising his state. Thousands of his political opponents were purged and thrown in jail under his watch, while hundreds are estimated to have died. The total number of the regime's victims has never been officially established. Gordana, a 77-year-old pensioner in Belgrade who declined to give her surname, told AFP she "never liked" Tito or "his communists". "His regime confiscated our private property and imprisoned those who thought differently," she said. Accused of encouraging a personality cult by some, Tito's image was once ubiquitous and his name graced a town or city in each of Yugoslavia's six republics and two provinces. In the years since, his name has been scrubbed out while many photographs and monuments have also been removed from the public eye. In Serbia, only one daily put Tito on the front page Monday, asking if the trope to 'not to speak ill of the dead' had helped his legacy. Montenegro's media was more mournful, with one portal recalling his passing as the "The day when Yugoslavia cried". And in Croatia, the state-run HINA ran a piece titled: "Josip Broz Tito: Memories of his times are 'complex and ambivalent'." burs-ssm/jv