Yves here. This detailed account of the making and unmaking of Yugoslavia may seem a bit overwhelming. But it isn’t clear whether outsiders can understand how events played out without considering the very complex history of the ethnic groups in the region. One part of the story that was new to me was the last ditch (1989-1991) effort to preserve Yugoslavia and why it failed.
By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic, Ex-University Professor, Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade, Serbia
The First Yugoslavia (1918‒1941)
In retrospect, one outsider may state that the creation of Yugoslavia was triggered by the bloody assassination at Sarajevo, on June 28th, 1914, when “Serb” Gavrilo Princip[1] killed (purposely) Austro-Hungarian Archduke Ferdinand (heir to the throne) and (accidentally) his wife, Sofia. According to Austrian-Hungarian authorities, the massacre was a part of the project by official Belgrade to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Kingdom of Serbia, designed in the heads of Serbia’s secret military circle in Belgrade and driven by the desire of the Serbs behind the River of Drina (Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia) to live in a united Serbian state.[2]
In fact, the mastermind of this secret project, the “Black Hand” Serbia’s secret organization of the military officers (persecuted by the Serbian Government and military authorities for their terrorist intentions), whose slogan was “Unification or Death”, was a mid-officer in Serbian army, Dragutin Dimitrijević-Apis (the ethnic Vlach from Serbia), who organized the infamous assassination of Serbian royal couple (King Alexander and Queen Draga Mašin) in Belgrade, in June 1903.[3] Nevertheless, the 1914 Sarajevo Assassination triggered WWI, which cost Serbia half of its male population, but initiated what Serbian nationalists were up to – unification of all Serbs in the Balkans into a single, common state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, later named the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (in 1929).[4]One of the prominent plotters in the “Young Bosnian” movement (the organization guilty for the Sarajevo Assassination), which organized the massacre in Sarajevo in June 1914, was a Bosnian Serb, Vasa Čubrilović, who became a prominent university professor in Belgrade after the war.[5] Yugoslavia, in different political-economic forms and names, lasted for 70 years (1918−1941 and 1945−1991), about the average age of its citizens. According to some researchers, its disintegration was triggered by another bloody massacre, which in the army casern at Paraćin in Serbia, in 1987, was committed by an ethnic-Albanian from Kosovo – Aziz Keljmendi.
Contrary to buildings, which are difficult to erect but easy to destroy, forming a new state appears easier than dismantling it. The interwar Yugoslav state (1918‒1941) had two official names: the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918‒1929) and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929‒1941). The so-called royal Yugoslavia (the first Yugoslavia) was created as an agreement between Slovenian, Croat, and Serb politicians, including Montenegrin ones (the Montenegrins, however, have always considered themselves as the ethnic Serbs from Montenegro until 1945). The Macedonians and the majority of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian population were considered by Serbian academics and politicians to be the Serbs as well. In November 1918, 2/3 of Bosnian-Herzegovinian counties declared their unification with the Kingdom of Serbia. This fusion of various Slavic parts of the Western Balkans was not an easy task, but was carried out without many troubles. At least, it seemed so after the constitution was effectuated on June 28th, 1921 (the Vidovdan constitution). The new Yugoslav post-WWI state numbered around 11.900.000 inhabitants with a state territory of 248.000 square km. The final state borders were fixed by the peace treaties signed in 1919 and 1920.[6]
Nevertheless, it is of extreme importance to stress here that the initiative for forming a common Yugoslav state came from outside Serbia, in particular from the Croats, who used to live in the former Austria-Hungary, having essentially lost their independence in 1102 (to the Kingdom of Hungary).[7] The advantage of the constituent nations was that they were all Slavs, except for ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Western Macedonia, Hungarians in Vojvodina, and some other “minorities” (Gypsies/Roma, Germans, Turks, Slovaks, Vlahs, Jews…). However, the disadvantage was the numeric proportion, which was approximately as follows: Serbs: Croats: Slovenians (Slovenes) = 4:2:1. This appears to be the worst proportion, for the more numerous populations may treat the half-numerous one either as “minority”, or “on equal footing”. Thus, no problems arose between Serbs and Slovenians, but Croats appeared “sandwiched” between both populations. The tension between the Croats and Serbs will turn out to be a constant in the new state, both before and after WWII. Nonetheless, in the interwar Yugoslav state, there were recognized only three ethnic nations: Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. The official political ideology and cultural politics were framed within the idea of “integral Yugoslavism“.[8]
Both the King (Montenegrin) Alexander Karađorđević (1888−1934) and (unofficial Emperor of mixed Slovenian-Croat origin) Josip Broz Tito (1892−1980) tried to forge a new “Yugoslav nation”.[9] The former (ruler of royal Yugoslavia) coined the notion of “triple-one nation” (composed of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs), whereas J. B. Tito (dictator of socialist Yugoslavia) pressed for the ”brotherhood and unity” of all Yugoslav nations (six of them were recognized as such).
The first approach was defective in the sense that the ethnical approach was obsolete and illegitimate (considering the presence of non-Slavic populations), whereas Tito’s brotherhood was equally out of context, considering the ethnical mixture of the Yugoslavs. With nationalism, one encounters the same problem as with religions. They help the same nationalities or confessions become more compact, but on the other hand, they create the feeling of alienation between different entities and ultimately bring about animosities and even conflicts. As in the rest of East-Central Europe, socialism (communism) was finally replaced with nationalism, but only in Yugoslavia with the civil war (1991‒1995).[10]
It is necessary to mention that one of the crucial features of the royalist Yugoslavia, a country officially proclaimed on December 1st, 1918, under the official title, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, was the fact that the three recognized ethnonational groups (“tribes”) expressed diametrically different political projects concerning the political system of the new country. In other words, the Serbs favored centralism for the sake of avoiding a civil war with Croats concerning the division of the country according to ethnic background/lines. On the other side, Slovenes and Croats favored federalism, with clear ethnonational administrative borders. In practice, however, no one side was satisfied as a new state was divided administratively into 33 artificial territorial units. However, since 1929, according to the new territorial-administrative division of the state, only Slovenia and Montenegro received their own territorial satisfaction within a single administrative unit (banovina/banat)-Slovenia as Dravska banovina and (Greater) Montenegro as Zetska banovina (do not forget that the King of Yugoslavia at that time, Alexander Karađorđević, was born in Montenegro in 1888, having a royal Montenegrin blood!).
The Second Yugoslavia (1945‒1991)
Socialist (second) Yugoslavia (Titoslavia) was born in 1945 after WWII, which started in Yugoslavia in April 1941 and finished in May 1945. In other words, royalist Yugoslavia was just about to disintegrate when WWII started (by German heavy bombing of Belgrade on April 6th, 1941), and the division of the occupied territory of Yugoslavia made the heterogeneous structure more than conspicuous.
As a historical fact, J. B. Tito succeeded in re-establishing Yugoslavia in 1945 after the bloody civil war, followed by ethnic cleansing and genocide primarily against the Serbs, but at the cost of a communist dictatorship.[11] Moreover, he was able to keep his position thanks to his Croat-Slovenian nationality (and his Serb wife, to some extent), thus balancing the numerical predominance of the Serb population under the unofficial slogan: “Weaker Serbia – Stronger Yugoslavia!” A new ideological conception of socialist Yugoslavia offered a new dimension of the Yugoslav unification. The new socialist/communist state was, after 1944, under firm Slovenian-Croatian ideological and political rule by J. B. Tito (Croat/Slovenian) and Edvard Kardelj (Slovenian). However, up to 1971 (when the Croatian Spring started), a common Yugoslav identity and solidarity, but within the socialist system of the Titoist Yugoslavia, was developed.
Another important balancing factor was the economic strength of the leading republics, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, which appeared evenly distributed, owing to the different levels of civilization in these parts of the common state. Namely, the gross national product per capita was inversely proportional to the number of the respective republic. The Republic of Serbia was an average of the whole state, and its contribution to the federal fund for the underdeveloped republics and Kosovo matched the donation from the federal fund to Kosovo. That means the other underdeveloped republics, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, were supported by Slovenia and Croatia. Here, it has to be noticed that the Yugoslav federal fund for the underdeveloped regions (republics and Kosovo, coming from the former Ottoman-occupied and ruled provinces) functioned like to similar fund by the European Union (EU) devoted to the underdeveloped EU member states (coming from the ex-socialist systems).
A serious threat to the so-called centrifugal Yugoslav forces appeared in the late 1980s, in the form of the Croat Ante Marković, elected (within the communist political system) as the Prime Minister (PM) of the federal state structure. This capable executive, a manager of a successful Croatian enterprise, managed to give a considerable impulse to the declining Yugoslav economy. He introduced the convertible Yugoslav dinar, the first in socialist Yugoslavia, and the people managed to save a great deal of money in the local banks. He became ever more popular, to the consternation of the nationalists from the Yugoslav republics. Ante Marković founded a new party, the so-called Reform Party, which threatened to marginalize all local republican political organizations, including communist and pro-communist parties, followed by all republican national-patriotic newly established political organizations.
However, his economic policy was framed within the framework of transferring federal money to Croatia and Slovenia at the expense of the “southerners”. The response of those against him was quick. The campaign against Ante Marković was open from all public means, in particular from Croatia and especially from Serbia. Serbia did not even hesitate to raid the federal fund and take money for its own use. Various republics turned against Ante Marković for different reasons. Slobodan Milošević saw in him his rival, somebody who would take the leading role on the federal scene. Croatia and Slovenia were afraid of his eventual successful preservation of the federal state and thus prolongation of their efforts to secede from Yugoslavia.
The practical dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia was initiated by Slovenia. The dissolution started with a seemingly innocent incident. A Slovenian journalist wrote an article sympathetic to the Kosovo Albanian cause.[12] The next day, when he was entering his office, he was intercepted by an Albanian, who presented him with a bottle of Skenderbegbrandy (the famous spirit drink from Albania), thanking him for the support (of Kosovo’s separation from Serbia and Yugoslavia). After that, new articles on the subject were issued, and the Slovenian public was “prepared” for the pro-Kosovo Albanian cause. Soon, a meeting was arranged in the largest hall in Ljubljana (and Slovenia), “Cankarjev dom”, when Slovenian and Kosovo Albanian speakers accused Serbia of suppression of the Albanians in Kosovo. This absolutely provocative and Serbophobic meeting was organized under the official slogan: “Kosovo‒My Motherland”. Nevertheless, the response from Serbia was as furious as superfluous, with the rhetoric of “wounded national feelings”, “betrayal”, etc. But the ghost was released from the bottle. Slovenia showed that it was opting for secession from Yugoslavia. The politics of secession was immediately followed by Croat nationalists, and the process of the Yugoslav dissolution was soon gaining impetus.
Division Lines Within Post-Titoist Yugoslavia (1980‒1991)
From the more “ideological side”, the division of the Yugoslav political scene at the end of the 1980s was outlined by the speed of democratization of the society. In this respect, Slovenia took the lead, with Croatia following. However, the democratization process in Croatia took the pure form of banal nationalism and even neo-Nazism. In Serbia, it was Slobodan Milošević, and more importantly, his wife, Mirjana Marković, who obstinately tried to slow down the inevitable development of the Yugoslav society, from an autocratic to (quasi)democratic (and nationalistic) one. They remained chained in their communist mentality, incapable of adopting a more flexible attitude. Slovenes and Croats accused them that they dreamed of restoring Tito’s Yugoslavia, with S. Milošević taking over the role of Josip Broz Tito.
However, at the same time, the Serbs accused Croatian “democrats” (the HDZ led by Dr. Franjo Tuđman) of restoring a Nazi-fascist Greater Croatia from WWII. When the Milošević couple realized the illusory character of their political intentions, the time was lost, and Serbia came to crtan extend behind Slovenia and Croatia in the process of political “democratization”.
As for other republics, their roles appeared marginal, as expected, since they were even less advanced in that matter than Serbia. In Slovenia and Croatia, oppositional political parties, different from the existing communist party, won the first “free elections”,[13] whereas in Serbia, newly founded non-Communist parties attracted much fewer voters and remained marginal on the political scene. Thus, a serious division in Yugoslavia appeared – (quasi)democratic west and modified communist Serbia. When the practical disintegration moves started, it was obvious who was going to gain sympathy from the West.[14]
Another important division between the eastern and western parts of Yugoslavia was a confessional one. Slovenia and Croatia are predominantly Roman-Catholic, whereas Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia belong to the Christian-Orthodox realm. As for Bosnia-Herzegovina, their partition was the following: Muslims 43,7%, Serb-Orthodox 31,3% and Croat Roman-Catholic 17,3%.[15] However, such an ethno-confessional composition will turn out fatal for this republic in the first half of the 1990s (during the civil war).
We turn now to two important aspects of the Yugoslav disintegration: 1) ethno-sociological diversity and 2) a formal frame for the dismantling of a state which was existed for almost a century.
The focal ethnic groups in the first (royalist) Yugoslavia were (according to post-1945 ethnonational identification):[16]
Serbs (Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia)
Croats (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia)
Slovenians (Slovenia)
Muslims/Bošnjaks (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro)
Macedonians (Macedonia)
Albanians (Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro)
Hungarians (Serbia)
Germans (Serbia, Slovenia)
Roma/Gypsis (Yugoslavia, except for Slovenia)
Principal languages: Serbo-Croat (Serbs, Croats, Muslims)
Slovenian (Slovenians)
Macedonian (Macedonians)
Albanian (Shqiptars).
The Serbo-Croat linguistic region was the most important and central, covering Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro. We have to keep in mind that around 75% of the Yugoslavs spoke the official Serbo-Croat language (in essence, this language was Serbian).[17]
One has to designate that the biggest part of Yugoslavs (75%) spoke the official Serbo-Croat (or Croato-Serb) language as a mother tongue/native (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro) with some understandable regional lexical differences, although the grammar and orthography were the same (with two alphabets – Latin and Cyrillic). Nevertheless, it was there that the most violent and bloody events occurred during the destruction of Titoist Yugoslavia, followed by the civil war in the first half of the 1990s. However, the above division along the formal ethnic and confessional (Roman Catholic, Christian Orthodox, and Muslim) lines turned out for many experts to be probably of lesser importance in the issuing conflicts and massacres in the period (1991−1995). In fact, therefore, it is needed to reformulate the partition of the territory of the ex-Serbo-Croat language (Shtokavian dialect), to understand properly the way the whole state disintegrated.
The Regional Mentalities and Politics
There are three crucial regions of ex-Yugoslavia playing the fatal role in the formation of the mentality and behaviour of their inhabitants – Dinaric, Pannonian, and Intermediate:
- The highland Dinaric region (composed of the Mt. Dinaric Range) comprises Croatia south of the River Sava, Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Northern Albania.
- The lowland Pannonian region (Vojvodina, Slavonia, Northern Bosnia) is inhabited predominantly by lowlanders.
- Intermediate areas (Serbia south of the River Danube, Zagorje in Croatia, and Central Bosnia) are inhabited by the population whose anthropological characteristics lie between the hard and violent Dinaric highlanders and mild and civilized lowlanders.[18]
This simplified picture, however, may be misleading. Due to permanent migration from the highlands towards the lowlands, mountainous people have been present all over the Serbo-Croatian linguistic area, in particular in the towns. Apart from the steady individual/familial influx from the Dinaric region, plain people have been experiencing waves of migrations after some violent events, like wars or uprisings (the so-called metanastatic migrations).
One of these migration waves took place in 1944‒1945, after WWII, when a considerable number of Dinaroids moved to the Pannonian plain and capital towns, like Belgrade and Zagreb. Since it was they who took the principal part in the vining Titoist partisan guerrilla during the war, these intruders occupied high state positions after the war, both military and civic. With their pronounced tribal mentality, they took control over the surrounding population, mainly via communist party membership, since they constituted the bulk of the membership of the Yugoslav communist party. Actually, this situation will prove to be focal in the events that ensued in the disintegration and destruction of the second Yugoslavia.[19]
Nevertheless, a few words on the organization of power in the state are necessary. Two principal common sectors in the second Yugoslavia were the tools that J. B. Tito used for controlling the state (and society in general) and keeping all republics together. One was the Yugoslav communist party (the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, later the Union of Yugoslav Communists), the other the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA). The first sector was partitioned, however, into republican parties and was liable for mutual tensions and disputes, as it happened several times after WWII. The YPA, on the contrary, was unique and compact, fully devoted to “Marshal” Tito (in fact, he was only an Austro-Hungarian corporal from WWI), who was considered a semi god by the army officers, from corporals to generals. And whenever the state was in danger of disintegrating and the party failed to ensure absolute unity, J. B. Tito (life-long President of Yugoslavia) resorted to his YPA, which was always ready to fulfil his orders.[20]
When the multiparty system was introduced in 1990, first in Slovenia and Croatia, and then in the rest of Yugoslavia, communist parties became transformed across the country, at least formally, into other entities, suitably renamed (either according to republican or ethnic names). New parties were formed, led as a rule by the former members of the communist parties.[21] This turn was to be expected.
First, anybody with political affinities had to choose during Tito’s rule: either to suppress his ambitions or to join the party. The former became apolitical, the latter (in)sincere party members. Some of the latter, unsatisfied with their position within the party hierarchy, founded their own parties to satisfy their craving for power. And in the latter respect, Dinaroids had no match on the Yugoslav political scene. Except for Slovenia and Macedonia (which did not belong to the Serbo-Croat region, anyway), almost all “oppositional parties” followed their Dinaroid leaders. In Croatia, these were Franjo Tuđman and Stipe Mesić, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović and Radovan Karadžić, in Montenegro, Momir Bulatović and Milo Đukanović, and finally in Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, as head of his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), Vuk Drašković, leader of the Serb Movement for Renaissance (SPO), and Vojislav Šešelj (got his Ph.D. in Sarajevo), leading the Serb Radical Party (SRS).
The only true Western-type oppositional party in Serbia was the Democratic Party (DS), led by Dragoljub Mićunović (who himself was in his youth a communist party member) and Zoran Đinđić, a young, represented as liberal philosopher, who got his PhD in West Germany, born in Bosanski Šamac in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the same town where the Muslim fundamentalist Alija Izetbegović was born as well (his father was a Yugoslav officer and a member of the communist party). However, later, it turned out that the Democratic Party was pro-NATO and pro-EU. During the NATO aggression on Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, Zoran Đinđić, at that time the leader of the Democratic Party and pro-Western opposition in Serbia, openly supported the heavy bombing by NATO. His personal friend from his studying years in West Germany was Joshika Fisher, the German minister in 1999 who directly participated in the politics of NATO aggression on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the third Yugoslavia, composed of Serbia and Montenegro).
The Beginning of the Destruction of the Second Yugoslavia
After the officially announced death of J. B. Tito on May 4th, 1980, Yugoslavia started to experience a new life within the framework of a cross-national coalition of the Yugoslav market reformist communists. In the 1970s, the same concept of a liberal market economy was not successful. However, after 1980, once again, the concept was put on the agenda under pressure from the West, and as a result, a liberal market-oriented reform of the Yugoslav economy became supported by the central Government of the SFRY (second Yugoslavia).
Nevertheless, the reform pro-Western politicians were faced with a very strong socialist-conservative policy coming from the republican management structures. The Yugoslavs experienced in the 1980s the influx of uncontrolled inflation mainly due to the three factors: 1) The national debt (credits) made during the Titoist era had to be paid back; 2) The petrodollar boom became replaced by the extreme cutbacks; 3) The temporal recipe to keep social peace and compensate for a speedy falling standard of living was found in the printing money. The final result was a spiral of rising prices followed by rising salaries, but the living standard of the people was not improved compared with the “golden age of J. B. Tito” (in fact, with the 1970s). In addition, the social crisis in the 1980s was also kept under certain control by the huge influx of hard currencies from the Yugoslav foreign workers, usually in Western Europe (Germany and Switzerland primarily).[22]
The Last Attempt to Save Yugoslavia
The last PM of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a Croat Ante Marković (1989‒1991), the professional economist-manager, succeeded in sharply stopping the inflation and, therefore, stopped the economic safety of the people, but laid the healthy basis for the future normal economic life of the country. He promised a quick and radical turn to a liberal market economy, followed by the (problematic and corrupted) wave of the privatization of the state (in the Yugoslav case, formally of people’s) economic property. However, the local republican media, controlled by the republican political establishment, especially in Croatia and Serbia, created the picture of him as an imposter working against the benefits of their own republics. Consequently, his official policy of economic salvation of Yugoslavia did not receive the crucial popular support across the country. Especially his promise of a new kind of Titoist policy of “brotherhood and unity” within the new framework of a common, free liberal Yugoslav market, failed to be accepted essentially more for political reasons than economic ones.
Slovenia and Croatia, on the one hand, saw A. Marković’s economic reforms as an attempt to integrate Yugoslavia, but as the political expression of a new unitarian conspiracy from Serbia. On the other hand, in Serbia, he was represented as a Croatian Trojan horse of the former Croat Titoist policy of the division of the Serbian nation into several republican boundaries and exploiting Serbia financially at the benefit of Croatia and Slovenia. As the last attempt to economically save Yugoslavia (and therefore politically as well), A. Marković created the coalition of economic leaders coming from all six Yugoslav republics in 1990, but this attempt became immediately undermined by Zagreb and Belgrade (Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević) as in both republics the so-called “integrationalist” economic experts (in fact, industrialists, as A. Marković himself was) became quickly replaced by politically loyal local party members.
Alongside the economic reforms, A. Marković, as the PM, tried to strengthen the political power of the central Yugoslav Government at the expense of the republican ones, by running the policy of free, federal multi-party democratic elections across the country, but this policy, like his economic reforms, was rejected by the republican leaderships for two reasons: 1) Prepared path to separatism and political independence of the republics; and 2) To defend their own legitimacy, political position, and independent power in their own republics.
The final results of A. Marković’s economic reforms were of a political feature as they provoked a dangerous political crisis of legitimacy, which finally destroyed the whole country into republican pieces. In other words, the political interregnum that was formed immediately after the collapse of the pro-Yugoslav reforms by A. Marković became totally fulfilled by the populist nationalistic ruling structures from Slovenia to Macedonia. Instead of the reformed economic policy by A. Marković, the nationalistic republican leaderships promised to their ethno-nations welfare but mainly at the expense of other ethnic groups (ethnic minorities). The most drastic, and even Nazifascist, case was implemented in Croatia by Dr. Franjo Tuđman and his neo-fascist HDZ (Croatian Democratic Unity), which was doing everything to provoke the open military conflict with the local ethnic Serbs in Croatia. As a result, the real civil war in Yugoslavia started in several locations in Croatia in 1990 between the Croatian armed forces and local Serbian militia.
Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity, which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.
© Vladislav B. Sotirovic 2025
_______
[1] He was a citizen of Austria-Hungary from the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. His surname was not at all Serbian Christian Orthodox but rather of Latin Roman Catholic feature while the real personal name probably was Gabriel also of Latin Roman Catholic characteristic. Nevertheless, he had nothing common with Serbia, being born in Bosansko Grahovo in Western Bosnia so far from Serbia, in the town claimed by the Croats to be Croat populated settlement.
[2] Probably the crucial point of the Sarajevo assassination was that first, Serbia did not want the war against Austria-Hunary and, therefore, second, Serbian ambassador in Vienna, Jovan Jovanović Pižon, informed the authorities of Austria-Hungary several days before the event about the possibility of assassination but Austro-Hungarian intelligent service did nothing to prevent it [др Чедомир Антић, Српска историја, Београд: Vukotić Media, 2019, 245].
[3] D. D. Apis (who incidentally was a Vlach from East Serbia) will be accused of a plot against Serbian Prince-Regent Alexander Karađorđevic in 1917 at the Thessalonica (Macedonian) Front and executed. In sum, he executed one King, one Queen, one Archduke, and tried to kill one Prince-Regent.
[4] See more in: Мира Радојевић, Љубодраг Димић, Србија у Великом рату 1914‒1918. Кратка историја, Београд: СКЗ‒Београдски форум за свет равноправних, 2014.
[5] His the most prominent academic publication was: Васа Чубриловић, Историја политичке мисли у Србији XIX века, Београд, 1982. On relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungary in the 20th century with the focal issue of“Sarajevo Assassination” and Austro-Hungarian war proclamation to Serbia in summer 1914 see: Владимир Ћоровић, Односи између Србије и Аустро-Угарске у XX веку, Београд: Библиотека града Београда, 1992. The author of the book, a Bosnian Serb and Belgrade University professor and rector after 1918, claims that according to all relevant historical sources, especially those from the Austro-Hungarian archives, official Serbian Government and state institutions are not guilty for the “Sarajevo Assassination” – an event that became used as a pretext to launch the war against Serbia by Austria-Hungary (in fact Germany).
[6] Ivan Božić, at al., Istorija Jugoslavije, drugo izdanje (second edition), Beograd: Prosveta, 403.
[7] Dragutin Pavličević, Povijest Hrvatske, Drugo, izmijenjeno i prošireno izdanje, Zagreb: Naklada P.I.P. Pavičić, 2000, 75‒77.
[8] See more in: Љубодраг Димић, Културна политика Краљевине Југославије 1918‒1941, I‒III, Београд: Стубови културе, 1997.
[9] On the life of the King Alexander Karađorđević see: Бранислав Глигоријевић, Краљ Александар Карађорђевић, I‒III, Београд: Завод за уџбенике и наставна средства. On the life of Josip Broz Tito see: Перо Симић, Тито: Феномен 20. века, Београд: Службени гласник−Сведоци епохе, 2011.
[10] See more in: Ruth Petrie (ed.), The Fall of Communism and the Rise of Nationalism, The Index Reader, London‒Washington: Cassell, 1997.
[11] On the Balkan dictators see in: Bernd J. Fischer, Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritatian Rulers of Southeast Europe, 2007.
[12] Whether it was motivated by the fear from Kosovo Albanian violent political demands, in view of the Paraćin massacre, or was a genuine sympathy of the by far most advanced republic of Yugoslavia with by far the most retarded region in the same state, is a question, though interesting in itself, but outside the scope of our topic here.
[13] In Croatia both parliamentary and presidential elections won ultranationalistic and even Nazi party of HDZ – Croatian Democratic Union and its party leader, Dr. Franjo Tuđman.
[14] However, those sympathies, especially by Vatican and Germany, have been gained even before the elections in 1990.
[15] Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth & the Destruction of Yugoslavia, New Haven−London: Yale University Press, 1997, 317.
[16] In the second (socialist) Yugoslavia, the same ethnic content was retained, with the difference that Germans in Serbia (so-called Volksdeutschers, Vojvodina) have migrated to Germany, or have been banished there by the new communist regime. Also, a small Italian minority in Slovenia and Croatia (Istria and Dalmatia) has been banished to Italy in 1945.
[17] See more in: Милош Ковачевић, У одбрану језика српскога‒и даље. Са Словом о српском језику, Друго, допуњено издање, Београд: Требник, 1999; Петар Милосављевић, Српски филолошки програм, Београд: Требник, 2000.
[18] On the mental and ethnocultural characters of the Yugoslavs, see in: Владимир Дворниковић, Карактерологија Југословена, Београд: Просвета, 2000 (1939).
[19] On the fall of second Yuoslavia from the Wstern perspective, see in: Carl-Ulrik Schierup, „From Fraternity to Fratricide. Nationalism, Globalism and the Fall of Yugoslavia“, in Stefano Banchini, George Schöpflin (eds.), State Building in the Balkans: Dilemmas on the Eve of the 21st Century, Ravena: Longo Editore, 1998.
[20] This was the case in 1971/1972 (“Croatian Spring”), when first Croatian, and then Serbian parties exhibited some rebellious mood and J. B. Tito threatened them by the YPA intervention.
[21] The only notable exception was the Bosnian Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegović, who started (end ended) his political career as Muslim fundamentalist, and spent many years in prison but never was a membr of communist party.
[22] See more in: Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Migration, Socialism and the International Division of Labour: The Yugoslav Experience, Avebury, Gower, 1990.
Thanks for this. A reminder that history of neighbors, especially the neighbors who lived wuthin a common political structure, is always “complicated.” Of course they always “hated” each other–all people have at least some issues with each other: name one country/region that doesn’t “hate” its neighbor. But they also have dealt with each other profitably for a long time and are invested in keeping things going, too. The breakdown is bound to be never a simple (or, probably, the “final” story…
Thanks for the overview, a very good history of centrifugal forces. But no autopsy of Yugoslavia is half complete without considering foreign intervention. The Germans especially were pushing for breakup into more digestible small states (a more polite version was the Velvet Divorce in Czechoslovakia), and the west wanted to control and incorporate the coastal zones (Tick).
Another external-internal dynamic was “weakening Serbia”, and even how Moscow partícipes. Vojvodina & Kosovo were made autonomous, with separate votes and Vardarska (what is unethically called Macedonia) was carved out of Serbia to make an independent nation-republic. The Slavs in this region are Western Bulgarians and referring to them as “Macedonians” should have been no different that using Herzegovinians for Croats from that region. But there were wider international games being played: Tito wanted to “create” a “Macedonian” nation, so there was linguistic revisionism to make this Bulgarian dialect a distinct language, and appropriate medieval Bulgarian and ancient Greek history to lay claim to the wider region for Yugoslavia to reach the Aegean. The same way the Tsarist and Bolsheviks sponsored the ethnogenesis of a Moldovan nation, they pressured Bulgaria to recognise a “Macedonian” minority in Bulgaria and secretly negotiated with the Greek communists in the civil war to surrender that region. Respect Yalta, but support Tito in disrupting NATO. National, historical and linguistic revisionism to create a new nation, a new identity based on propaganda and now there’s a whole “nation” that is convinced of a false identity. And it’s not being rolled back now, in case the powers that be want to re-arrange the Balkans further and need a useful pretext.
Correct about Macedonia, and in a way the Serbs paid for their sins there with what happened to them in the 1990s, and the Russians are paying for their sins there and in Moldova with what is happening now to them in Ukraine. It’s the same scheme — carve out a new “nation” out of the ethnic space of the existing larger one, then the only way it can exist is if it turns into a cartoonishly anti-Bulgarian/Russian/etc. entity because if you don’t go that route, there is nothing else left as a foundation for remaining separate.
Except in Moldova — they never became anti-Romanian, but that is because the geopolitical interest of their current masters goes in the direction of absorbing them back into Romania; which is bad for both Russia and Bulgaria.
Having said that, two wrongs don’t make a right, and what the West did to Yugoslavia (that part of the story — Western first instigation, and later direct military participation in the Yugoslavian collapse — is indeed entirely missing from the original article) and is now doing in Ukraine is extremely harmful for the people there and for the world as a whole, and in no way fixes the past evils of Great-Serbian chauvinism or Russian imperialism and later the Bolsheviks and the Comintern playing the role of nation creators.
Vojvodina & Kosovo were made autonomous, with separate votes and Vardarska (what is unethically called Macedonia) was carved out of Serbia to make an independent nation-republic. The Slavs in this region are Western Bulgarians and referring to them as “Macedonians” should have been no different that using Herzegovinians for Croats from that region.
Well, the region you call Vardarska, the preeminent Serbian geographer and etnhnologist Jovan Cvijic (1865-1927) called “Macedonia,” He did so following long-standing customs both in Serbia and in the West, and not for want of attention. He traversed the region, interviewing its locals town upon town and village upon village, and recorded his findings in detail in his signature monograph “Basics of Geography and Geology of Macedonia and Old Serbia” (1906) which became a staple reference for future researchers. His finding: In Macedonia, only a smallish minority of the population identifies itself as Bulgarian.
With the Balkan wars preceding WW1, Serbia freed Macedonia from the Ottoman rule. In the aftermath of WW1, the Serbian government experienced a phenomenal problem: a longstanding wave of terrorist actions in Macedonia, impossible to maintain itself for over a decade without local support. It made it clear that the local population resents the governing apparatus. The reasons for that were complex. As the great lover of Serbia, the Swiss criminologist Archibald Reiss warned the Serbian public, the Belgrade goverment sent the worst possible people as civil servants to Macedonia, and thus exposed the local population to great abuses. While it was clear the local population has much less sense of an ethnic identity than the Serbs or Bulgarians, it emerged that, by and large, it perceives itself as something different. Like the way Westerners define themselves as being different from the East. Like the fact that a fish can’t be aware of the water in which it swims, — until it jumps in the air or gets fished out of it.
Now, regarding the issue of idnetity, the long-standing policy of the Communist movement eveywhere was to respect all ethnic identities. We all know how the Bolsheviks federalised Russia, and so on. So, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the 1930s made its explicit policy to respect a Macedonian ethnic identity. That was long before Tito came to any kind of prominence within the Communist Party.
Now, let’s assume that you’re right that Macedonia is called Macedonia “unethically,” and the over a million people who insist they’re Macedonians are NOT Macedonians, or are fake Macedonians. That leads to questions such as: How should they be called? How should they call themselves?, and What kind of a situation is that where outsiders tell a certain population what’s their real name, etc.?
What a great, roundabout way to say that the Serbianization campaign, often carried out with violence, was met with violence in turn, so Macedonization was settled upon as a safer middle course 🙄
You woud prefer Bulgarization, I guess. 🙄
Wow, a red herring! Never seen that before 🙄
Maybe someone should check with the Greeks about where Macedonia is……
If memory serves correctly it was the Serbian diplomat Stojan Novaković who was the key player in encouraging the emergence of a distinct “Macedonian” identity separate from the core Bulgarian identity. The historic figures and parties (IMRO, Delchev, Gruev and the kook historian Misirkov) were all Bulgarian.
In the first Balkan war the Serbs and Bulgarians had agreed territorial splits, where this region would go to Bulgaria (as it was likely to be captured by Serbs with Bulgaria busy in Thrace) and Serbia would take Albania. The Great powers intervened to create Albania to keep the Russophile Serbs from controlling the straight of Ortronto, so the Serbs reneged and refused to hand the area over to Bulgaria. This lead to the 2nd Balkan War, and Bulgaria’s defeat. In both World Wars Bulgaria again maneuvered to incorporate this territory with the support of the majority of the Slav inhabitants for their mother country.
As for an ethical treatment, deprogramming people raised on historical falsehoods and national propaganda is difficult. Like weaning people out of a cult. There’s clearly cultural appropriation of Bulgarian medieval and 19th/20th century history, and the ridiculous claims to ancient Macedonian lineage (South Slavs only arrived in the Balkans from the 8th century). Below the surface of both cultural/historic claims are territorial claims – using symbols (Star of Vergina, Statue of Alexander) and claiming leaders (Gruev, Delchev) that imply that part of the nation is outside of the present borders. It would be better for this delirium to pass and the country to become a type of Switzerland, where the Swiss Germans acknowledge that they had common origins from old Germanic tribes but have since diverged, as with the other communities like Albanians, Serbs, Vlachs, etc. Ethnogenesis has emerged, it’s undeniable and there’s no turning back. But it’s shallow and built on false historical foundations and keeping the entire country hostage to “recognition and redemption” that cannot come, much to the frustration of its minorities and national development.
As GM says, cartoonish and a useful lever for external interference.
Quoting Qwerty, directly above: “But no autopsy of Yugoslavia is half complete without considering foreign intervention. The Germans especially were pushing for breakup into more digestible small states (a more polite version was the Velvet Divorce in Czechoslovakia), and the west wanted to control and incorporate the coastal zones (Tick).”
It is indeed important to understand that the internal rivalries of Yugoslavia were troublesome, but the project by the Germans, and then NATO, to divide the country into small, easily intimidated pieces, has to be acknowledged.
From my viewpoint here in Italy, I am seeing constant references to the breakup of Yugoslavia. I am reminded of the adage, The past isn’t even past. For the Italians, Yugoslavia was a sizable, stable state.
[Historically, the Republic of Venice controlled some lands and some chains of islands in the Adriatic, from Istria to Dalmatia to Ragusa / Dubrovnik to Corfu, the Ionian Islands, Crete, and even Cyprus.]
Consequently, the Italians see NATO’s involvement in the destruction of Yugoslavia as NATO’s first major offensive operation, which has now led to the messes in Iraq, Ukraine, and, arguably, Israel and Syria.
NATO’s mess in Libya is often tied to the adventure in Yugoslavia.
Here in Italy, Libya and Yugoslavia are considered indications of NATO’s deterioration into an aggressive “alliance.”
Finally, a quibble with footnote 16. The WWII and postwar expulsion of Italians, plus the agreement on Trieste as Italian and the amalgamation of Rijeka into Yugoslavia, nevertheless left some Italians in place. There is still a small Italian minority in Slovenia and a tiny one in Croatia.
Yes, this was my reaction as well. It is certainly necessary to understand this complex history of ethnic, religious, and regional tensions. But there is a curious omission of the role of external forces in this story. Even before the dismantling of Yugoslavia, its history was shaped by its position *between* the West and the USSR, and Tito’s attempts to navigate this terrain. The disintegration of the latter was crucial in unleashing these internal centrifugal forces. But if the subject is the “destruction of Yugoslavia,” the West was anything but a neutral observer of this process.
I do not want to minimize the importance of this internal history. But telling this story without pointing out the actions and interests of external powers is to me like telling the story of Ukraine’s disintegration while focusing solely on its internal ethnic conflicts, leaving out its central position in the Great Game.
The internal rivalries of Yugoslavia were troublesome, just like in many other places, but the balkanization was done from the outside. Divide and conquer, and then continue eastwards towards the big prize.
Fully agree that the author’s downplaying to the point of omission of references to external forces is a serious problem, his apparently complicated picture in fact overly simplifies the dynamics of disintegration.
I wish he would have considered Diana Johnstone’s Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Illusions, in which she makes much of Serbian efforts to continue the Titoist policy of avoiding nationalist references, which grew in volume and intensity as tensions over economic “reforms” pushed by the IMF increased. (Susan Woodward’s Balkan Tragedy is also very strong on this point.) In her view the Serb’s were wrongly painted as nationalist because they tried to maintain the system of redistribution to less-developed areas under the national Yugoslavian framework, while the better off areas, particularly Slovenia and Croatia, mobilized to leave. Croatia began smuggling arms from Hungary and formed paramilitaries, who openly threatened a revival of the murderous Ustashe project of WW2 in which thousands of Serbs were killed. But US ambassador Zimmerman informed the Serbs that Washington would not approve of efforts to contain them. This was perhaps the first example of the US adopting a posture there that nominally endorsed “peace” but in fact was indifferent to the threat to Serbs living outside of Serbia proper.
According to Croatian human rights activists, the first civilian massacre of the wars was carried out in late September of 1991, in which over 120 Serbs living in Gospic were slaughtered after their security had been guaranteed by the Croatian government. Paramilitary commanders later provided documentation, including videos, of the attacks which western media ignored in favor of the Serbia-blaming line. (Chris Hedges did some good work trying to get the story properly aired.) Their documentation included instructions from the Croatian defense ministry to terrorize the Serbian population.
The author’s concluding statement that hostilities in the war began between the Croatian military and local Serb militias blurs this. The parallel with what we hear about the Ukrainian army in the runup to the Russian invasion is rather striking. There’s an organized, fascist-controlled military pursuing an ethnic cleansing policy that is being opposed by local paramilitaries defending their communities. But what we are told is that “fighting has broken out.” The same could be said for other sorry episodes in the Yugoslav conflict, particularly in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Izetbegovic’s Muslim separatist party won the support of the US and then successfully embroiled the Serbs in fighting to defend Serb enclaves, which was then portrayed as evidence of murderous Serb nationalism, which inevitably became murderous as provocations and fighting went on.
‘The YPA, on the contrary, was unique and compact, fully devoted to “Marshal” Tito (in fact, he was only an Austro-Hungarian corporal from WWI)’
The author of this post is deliberately understating Tito’s record here for their own reasons. From Wikipedia-
‘Drafted into military service, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army of that time. After being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians during World War I, he was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains. Tito participated in some events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War…
During World War II, he led the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito
I agree, the understating of Tito is a bit strange; Tito was a truly remarkable leader who earned his leadership position by literally surviving and beating the Nazi occupation and creating a post-war government practically from scratch. And somehow surviving pissing off Stalin in the process. From speaking with many former Yugo’s around here, one always got a sense of great respect for the man. Tito was probably the closest modern equivalent of an Augustus-like figure, who could rule through sheer force of personality. They would go through hell for him if he asked them to. It’s hard for Westerners to understand the level of political authority and legitimacy that Tito wielded because our own (mis)leadership is so universally dogsh*t that we just can’t understand it.
Tito’s greatest error was in not being able to come up with a system that could survive his exiting the stage, because the federal government structure they came up with was clearly not up to the task.
I also don’t agree with the author’s insinuation that Tito had some underlying Croat/Slovenian ethnic element that was central to his leadership. The man was, especially early on, a committed communist through and through, and worked tirelessly to promote a Yugoslav identity above all. “Brastvo i Jedinstvo” etc. In fact, up until the mid 1970s it was dangerous to even espouse anything approaching nationalist sentiments that weren’t Yugoslav; as an example, the famous Serbian singer Tozovac (who was sadly an early casualty of Covid, at 86 y.o.) temporarily left the country in the early 1970s because he was worried about the fallout over the song “Jeremija”. As you can see from the album cover, it’s an old folk song about a Serbian WW1 artillery officer, but that was skating dangerously close to being interpreted as četnik (Chetnik) by Yugoslavia’s authorities. Similarly (and obviously not confined to just Serbian nationalism), in the early 1970s the Croatian singer Vice Vukov was suspected of being a Croat nationalist and didn’t dare return to Yugoslavia for a few years (ironically, he was later blacklisted by Tuđman after Croatia’s independence, not nationalist enough I guess?). Among others.
Anyway, a toast to the Marshal, drȗže! Uz Maršala Tita – With Marshal Tito (with Lyrics)
> Anyway, a toast to the Marshal, drȗže! Uz Maršala Tita – With Marshal Tito (with Lyrics)
A Colossus, truly. I’ll always remember, there was a period in the Spring of 1980 when three giants (of rather different spheres) all left the stage within a span of just a few weeks: Sartre, then Alfred Hitchcock and finally Tito.
As far as I can tell, Tito made himself a Marshal (or rather, a resistance organisation he created and largely controlled declared him a Marshal). I suppose the point is that he was not a “legitimate” Marshal in any preexisting military organisation, but an effectively self-made one. But on the other hand, it’s not like it was some sleight of hand on his or his followers’ part to call him that.
He crowned himself, but the title of Yugoslav king was already taken (not to mention that it was not compatible with communism narrative that he was selling), so another title had to be made up. He did live in royal White Palace, not a military base.
The value of an article like this, even if the details eventually blur before your eyes, and you can’t remember everything, is as a worked example of the fearsome and almost overwhelming complexity of real crises around the world, compared with the way that they are treated in the media and popular history. Such articles are also useful in discouraging those who think crises are easy to understand and it’s just a case of finding the right villain. And whilst the author is clearly a Serb, he makes a great effort to be objective, which isn’t always the case in that region.
The story of the frantic attempts to keep the SFRY together in the 1980s aren’t always given the significance they deserve. Although a lot of stress is laid in this article on the economic reforms, it’s arguable that the continuing devolution of powers to the Republics, and attempts to balance the demographic domination of the Serbs by among other things, creating semi-autonomous areas (Kosovo and Vojvodina) in Serbia were at least as important. One thing that most of us who were around at the time decided was that SFRY was a problem with no solution, although the inevitable dissolution could certainly have been better handled.
The article is also useful in stressing the essentially domestic nature of the problem and the attempted mechanisms for dealing with it, whereas the Western ego is unable to tolerate the idea that there are crises in the world that are not About Us. It’s arguable that a really strong and united European approach in 1991 could have managed a dissolution with a lot less pain and suffering. But that was impossible at the time, with a hundred other more important subjects clammering for attention, and the Germans fixated on Croatian independence for domestic political reasons, and nobody else prepared to fight them with so many other difficult subjects to resolve. If there’s one thing you can fairly criticise the Europeans for, it’s lack of concern: the SFRY was thought to be like the Warsaw Pact, and if the republics wanted to be independent, so be it. Those who warned what the consequences might be were not listened to.
This implies that outside that region things are different, and great effort to be objective is always made.
A school geography teacher of mine used to be fond of saying ‘In my lifetime, Belgium and Yugoslavia will break up and cease to exist…’.
When the crisis was building up I remember the Channel 4 news at the time had a resident Yugoslavian expert they would call in to discuss events would vehemently deny that it was possible for the country to break up – over the months he grew increasingly fervent and eventually I would guess he was dropped from the show when it was obvious even to casual outside observers like myself that it was a lost cause.
Years later, I travelled a little bit around the region with my Serbian then girlfriend. It struck me afterwards that despite all the problems they faced – and still face – I never met a single person who expressed any regret for the passing of the SFRY. I assume they exist (including of course, the London based expat Channel 4 news interviewed), but they seem to have been either few in number, or lacking any conviction. Which given the very intense efforts of the Tito-ists over decades to forge a new Yugoslav identity, shows that you can only do so much to ‘create’ a national identity if the individual cultures are strong (or stubborn) enough to refuse it. I suspect SFRY died not because of the strength of the nationalism of the Serbs, Croats, etc., but the underlying weakness of Yugoslavian identity – as with the Soviet Union.
We will perhaps soon discover if this applies in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Oh yes they exist. Dying out now, true, but they were probably a majority of the 60/70s generation.
Branko Milanovic often sounds like he’s a Yugoslav remnant…but he is, I think, in his 70s.
That is legit funny to hear, because amongst the ex-Yugo’s I know here in Canuckistan there is a huge amount of ‘Yugo Nostalgia’, even amongst the younger generations (ie people born there in the 1980s). Maybe it’s the passage of time that’s really softened up the memories?
I have a friend who went to a concert in 2019 in Zagreb for “Brena” (or “Lepa Brena”), who is/was Yugoslavia’s biggest ever superstar (she is Bosnian born and now lives in Serbia), and one of the highlights was her singing one of her late 80s Yugoslav patriotic hits that everyone from that era would know, “Jugoslovenka”. The music video is from 1989, the copious flag waving and wide country shots gives an idea of the songs theme. Anyway, this song was still a hit in Zagreb of all places, and apparently people in the audience were brought to tears singing it.
I was referring to people actually living in the country, not North American expats. They left for a reason.
The nature of the problem may have started out as a domestic one, but it wasn’t one of the Yugoslavian remnants that bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
The West may not start everything, but they are more than happy to jump in and play ‘peacekeeper’, especially if someone gets a whiff of money to be made.
I think the economic crisis of the 1980ies in Yugoslavia deserves a more extensive treatment as a role in the breakup.
We have the oil price shock in the 70ies, the IMFs role in lending money but with strings attached in the 80ies, the subsequent hyperinflation of the late 80ies and early 90ies. A severe economic crisis is very destabilising. Of course all of these events are political, both foreign and domestic.
Used to do around the world in 80 days trips* looking for aged round metal discs, and one time was with a fellow numismatist whose fiance was of Yugoslav heritage, and he thought it’d be neat to go, so we took a in theory 24 hour express train from Athens to Belgrade that in fact took 52 hours to arrive in the capitol of a country that had been held together by bailing wire and Tito-not necessarily in that order. and the latter had the nerve to up and die on them a couple years prior.
I’d guesstimate that 1/4 of the people I saw in Belgrade were en route to getting plastered or already there.
In a store I saw a liter bottle of vodka for the equivalent of a buck, while a 20 inch black and white tv was $300, it was pretty obvious which direction diversion was headed, bottoms gottem’
Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet bloc party and thus the currency was convertible with western currencies but with a much bigger spread than you’d get converting DM’s into Drachma in the west, for example.
It was the first time i’d ever seen what I’d term ‘reverse seigniorage’ as the smallest denomination Dinara coin equaled around 300 to the Yanqui $, it had to be multiples of cost versus face value to mint these, just like it does now in these not so united states with our lowest denomination coins.
When the shit hit the fan a decade later, I was so not surprised, and they took hyperinflation to the outer limits, here’s a 500 billion Dinara banknote from the era…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#/media/File:500000000000_dinars.jpg
* it was around $1300, and you had to decide which direction to go and you couldn’t go the other way once so decided. One had to complete the trip within 6 months. I did 4 of these.
Back in the early 70’s, Yugoslavia briefly became a fashionable place for the poorest of European backpackers to visit, as a few units of some hard currency could go a long way. An older relative of mine used to love telling my mother the story of when one night he and his friend had a little too much of the local vodka and went and stole a flag from what they thought was a school. In the cold light of day they passed by and realised it was a military base they’d broken into. I’ve no idea if the story is true, but he did once show me the flag. As a 12 year old, it appeared to me to be an impossibly exotic souvenir of a foreign adventure.
We exited stage left on a choo-choo to Vienna, and in the Belgrade rail station we were in the furthest back car, and witnessed what we hoped was a once in a lifetime occurrence of around 40 bottles of booze being thrown against the asphalt in-between train tracks in wild celebration, or did that happen all the time in seeing off someone?
I took that Vienna to Belgrade night train in the opposite direction. I had my copy of Graham Greenes ‘Stamboul Train‘ to read on the way – the train was pretty much as described in the book.
I’d hoped to get a good sleep on my first sleeper train experience – but I’d forgotten to check the train route – at that time (around 2000 I think) it crossed numerous pre-EU borders, each of which required a full customs stop. At one point I was awoken around 3am by a border patrol sniffer dog closely inspecting my face. My Serbian gf greeted me at Belgrade by loudly demanding why I couldn’t just take a plane like a normal person.
I don’t buy the “internal sins” theory. The destruction of Yugoslavia, even with more than enough collaborators inside, come from outside, as the Spanish Civil War or the Nazis assault to power in Germany. One thing is to have an unstable country, and another totally different is a civil war. By the way, where the weapons came from?
Things must be seen in a wide horizon. Since the fall of the “Iron Curtain”, Euroamerica has been dinamiting all its borders: Yugoslavia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, and many others that failed (in being burned)… too much for random causes, aren’t they? It is a huge difference with China environment, for instance (with as much explosive points, if not more).
For those of you who are not fed up with me touting it, Provoked by Scott Horton has a deep explanation of the NATO/USA (CIA) meddling in the breakup of Yugoslavia. Tom Gallagher has also published a couple of books on Balkan history which I found valuable.
Thanks for this detailed essay. Yugoslavia was a complicated place, to put it mildly. Amazing that it held together as long as it did.
My first and only trip to Belgrade was last year (as a tourist, so we had plenty of time to wander around). We visited the Museum of Yugoslavia, which is really a kind of shrine to Tito. Fascinating and well worth a visit:
https://muzej-jugoslavije.org/en/o-nama/
The museum is a time warp: a flashback to the Cold War and the non-aligned movement. It made me nostalgic for my childhood world that has utterly vanished. The premises were well-maintained but weirdly quiet–maybe it was an off day, but one had the impression that it doesn’t attract many visitors anymore. Which is a shame, as Tito was a remarkable person. His funeral in 1980 was quite the international event (Jimmy Carter skipped it–sent his mother and his Veep instead–and he took a lot of flak for that) and featured many impromptu meetings between foreign leaders who might otherwise have never crossed paths. Wikipedia has a good summary with a detailed list of the attendees (essentially all world leaders except Carter and Castro), but I like this quirky little write-up more:
https://www.youngpioneertours.com/worlds-largest-state-funeral-tito/
I’m not sure if killing the Archduke and his wife qualifies as a massacre. How many people does it take?
But that’s just me.
How many people does it take for a massacre/genocide/etc, depends on their nationality/religion/allegiance/etc.
As a boy listening to Sunday morning Serb radio show in Toronto, I came away thinking that Serbs were the wisest , bravest and rest of the world was blind , crazy or jealous not to recognize this . Same radio show glorified Četnik past while forgetting Četnik Nazi connections . When I came home in the 90’s my parents had me at different Serb functions . I recall the celebration of Serbs killing Croats in Vukovar , Muslims in Srebrenica. I learned to hate Croats and Muslims, and especially Kosovars . Why Kosovars? Because of a battle of Kosovo in 1389. We can’t move ahead as a people as long as this petty Serb nationalism persists .
One of the things that Serbs are know for is autochauvinism. That being said, I doubt that you are one, because the things you said are so off base. What you wrote is even beyond CNN, which is an achievement in itself.
Obvious troll is, well, obious.
Well written explanation of a complex subject, along with good commentary. I had to bookmark it for a day when I had the time to go through it all. I will second the comment that CIA is absent, but beyond the scope of the article.