Yugoslavia: the Rise, Fall, Reestablishment, Fall, and Future of the Land of the South Slavs - by Tre

We've recently been exploring Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and we've found that it's hard to go anywhere in the Balkans without running into some mention of Yugoslavia, whether an ancient city, submarine tunnel, or Montenegro's political system. But what exactly is, or should I say was, this Yugoslavia?

While many of my prior history lessons have been long winded things that took many hours of research, (Hah, did you really think that I could create anything short? Don't worry, you've still got a lot of scrolling to do.) I decided to let someone else do the talking for a change. Just kidding...our current Airbnb has very poor internet so research was hard. Luckily, we had the fifth edition Rick Steves Snapshot guide to Dubrovnik on us, which featured a history of the region. The vast majority of the information in this post is paraphrased from this book. So...Tada!

Before I get to explaining what Yugoslavia actually was, I have to first give you an understanding of the many peoples that inhabit the region. The Balkan Peninsula, (aka the Balkans) has long been a gathering place for different peoples and powers throughout, including Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans. 

There are several lines dividing the Balkan peninsula's religious groups. The first was largely caused by the breaking apart of the Roman Empire (The empire got too big to be ruled by one emperor, resulting in civil war, disputes, etc.). This split the Balkans (especially the western Balkans, where Yugoslavia would be founded much later) into two religious sides: On the west were the Roman Catholics, while the east was mainly Byzantine Orthodox.

The second line dividing the Balkans was formed when the Ottomans invaded in the 14th century from Turkey, bringing the religion of Islam with them. The Ottomans ended up winning the war and gaining much control in the region. Many converted to Islam, especially the Bogomils (a Christian sect denounced to be heretical due to their doctrines). This group was unsupported by foreign powers, unlike the Byzantine Orthodox and Roman Catholics. So, many converted to Islam due to the many perks of being a Muslim under the Ottomans (such as exemption from taxes, immunity to slavery, and opportunity for government jobs). This Islamic influence made another line through the region, this one a west-east divider between the mainly Christian north and the Muslim south.

Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina features many mosques and minarets, which were brought to the region by the Ottomans.

Between all of these dividing lines, several distinct ethnicities emerged, all of which are considered South Slavs (According to Rick Steves "The huge Slav ethnic and linguistic family — some 400 million strong — is divided into three groups: South (the peoples of Yugoslavia, plus Bulgarians), West (Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks), and East (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians).") The different South Slavs of the region are divided by their religious beliefs, with Croats and Slovenes being Roman Catholic, Serbs being Orthodox, and Muslim South Slavs being called Bosniaks.

After World War I, many maps and borders were redrawn, and the South Slavs of the Balkans were tired of being governed by foreign entities. The Serbs had fought on the side of the allied powers, while the Croats and Slovenes, many of them friends and neighbors of the Serbs, were compelled to fight against them. The war showed them that their shared history was more important than their different ethnicities (as well as proving the safety in numbers) and they joined together, becoming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (meaning Land of the South Slavs). However, right off the bat there were many problems, mainly due to the number of ethnicities that had long been at odds to each other that were now joined in one country. The different peoples struggled for power within the union, and the country struggled at the brink of collapse.

At the start of the World War II, Yugoslavia had struck tenuous deals with Nazi Germany, but many of the people were against them, and they started an uprising. This angered Hitler, and he decided to act on the unrest in the country and the power struggle surrounding the 17-18 year old king, air bombing Yugoslavia's capital, Belgrade, which was then followed by a ground invasion. Yugoslavia surrendered within 11 days. The country was broken up into several pieces, with much of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina becoming the Independent State of Croatia, run by a Nazi puppet government called the Ustaše. Slovenia was appointed with a puppet dictator, Montenegro was folded into Mussolini's Italy, and much of Serbia was occupied by Nazi Germany.

The Croat Ustaše followed the lead of their Nazi puppeteers, using concentration camps to exterminate all of their enemies. The Nazis declared Jews, the Romani, and many thousands of Croatian and Bosnian Serbs "undesirables" and were sent to concentration camps. No one knows how many were killed, but estimates range from 40,000 (what the nationalistic Croatian leaders said in the 1990s, to the 800,000 (the high guess in today's times).

Through all of this, two groups arose to resist the Ustaše, but their visions were extremely different. The first group was the Četniks, who came from the mountains and were almost entirely Serbs, fighting to reestablish a Serbian monarchy in the region. Their motto was "Freedom or Death" and they were every bit as brutal as their oppressors. They killed or expelled any Croats or Muslims in the land they controlled.

Fighting against both the Ustaše and the Četniks were the Partisans, lead by Josip Broz, better known by his code name, Tito. The Partisans main goal was a free, self governing, communist Yugoslavia. 

After years of fighting (mainly guerrilla warfare) the Partisan Army emerged victorious. Considered the most effective anti-axis resistance group in all of WWII, they managed to defeat the Četniks as well as the Ustaše. Despite the many failings of the former Yugoslavia, the Partisans still wanted their goal of a united, communist Yugoslavia. And they did achieve it for a time, by the efforts of one man holding the entire country together.

Tito believed that the South Slavs could unite to form one country, and with a Slovene mother, Croat father, Serb wife, plus a home in Belgrade, Tito was proof of his own vision. But he could not achieve it without doing first reforging the country through force. He used ruthless strong arm tactics to do so, executing many soldiers who fought against the Partisan Army. Many Croats—some of whom had supported the Ustaše, believing that they were their ticket to an independent Croat state—believe that they were unfairly targeted by Tito, sometimes even being denied funding for post war rebuilding. Today, Croatia is where you'll find the least Tito nostalgia. 

Ultimately Tito prevailed, and while not all supported him, they went along with his vision. Here's Rick Steves for more on Tito's system of government: "Tito's new incarnation of Yugoslavia aimed for a more equitable division of powers. It was made up of six republics, each with its own parliament and president: Croatia (mostly Catholic Croats), Slovenia (mostly Catholic Slovenes), Serbia (mostly Orthodox Serbs), Bosnia-Herzegovina (the most diverse — mostly Muslim Bosniaks, but with very large Croat and Serb populations), Montenegro (mostly Orthodox — sort of a Serb/Croat hybrid), and Macedonia (with about 25 percent Muslim Albanians and 75 percent Orthodox Macedonians). Within Serbia, Tito set up two autonomous provinces, each dominated by an ethnicity that was a minority in greater Yugoslavia: Albanians in Kosovo (to the south) and Hungarians in Vojvodina (to the north). By allowing these two provinces some degree of independence — including voting rights — Tito hoped they would balance the political clout of Serbia, preventing a single republic from dominating the union." Each republic was allowed to self manage, but "president" (or dictator for life, its a matter of opinion) Tito ruled over them all, maintaining that the republics should be like "white lines in a marble column."

Despite being communist, Tito helped Yugoslavia maintain good relations with both the East and West. He managed to break away from the Soviets, receiving the good will and roughly $2 billion in aid, from the U.S. My favorite Rick Steves quote about Tito is: "He ingeniously played the East and the West against each other. He'd say to both Washington and Moscow, "If you don't pay me off, I'll let the other guy build a base here." Everyone paid up." During this period, Yugoslavia became a popular tourist destination, and the country's western-like ways made Yugoslavian residents the only members of a communist state allowed to travel in the west. Yugoslavia was doing well for a time.

But, Tito's death in 1980 demonstrated just how tenuous the peace in Yugoslavia was. The various republics gained more autonomy and a rotating presidency, which seemed like a very good thing. But it appears that Tito alone had been holding the fragile republics together, as everything started to unravel. Serbs wished to reclaim their homeland in Kosovo from which the Ottomans had long ago displaced them, and the Serbian politician Slobodan Milošević further inflamed this through his famous speeches, eventually rising to presidency of Yugoslavia and leading Serbia to annex Kosovo. Things went downhill from there, and Slovenia and Croatia, the two republics most skeptical about the Yugoslav union, decided it was time to declare their independence. 

On June 25, 1991, both Croatia and Slovenia announced their independence from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav People's Army swept in to deal with the two rebellions, but were quickly repelled and forced out by the Slovenians. The Croatians, however, were much less prepared than the Slovenians, and were already fighting among themselves—Serbs rebelling against the extreme and somewhat Ustaše-like leader Franjo Tuđman. The Yugoslav People's army swept in to quell the rebellion and regain control, successfully overwhelming the unprepared Croatian army, made only of police officers and a few Yugoslav People's Army defects. Meanwhile, the "Croatian" Serbs were rebelling, and managed to gain control of large swaths of Croatia, declaring the area to be their own country. This "Republic of Serbian Krajina" (Krajina meaning border) was rarely recognized by other nations but still minted its own currency and raised its own army. The two (three?) countries remained at an impasse until 1995, when Croatia swept in with two offensives, Blijesak and Oluja (Lightning and Thunder, in the North and South of Serbian Krajina respectively), and quickly gained control of the area, establishing today's Croatian borders. Despite declaring independence at the same time, the Slovenian succession only took ten days of fighting and less than 100 deaths, while the Croatian succession took four years and 14,000 deaths, as well as forcing out approximately half their Serb population.

In fall 1991, Bosnia-Herzegovina started pushing for their own independence. The ensuing war was perhaps the most bloody and terrible of all of the secessions, mainly due to Bosnia-Herzegovina being the most ethnically diverse of the Yugoslav republics. Most Croats and Bosniaks supported Bosnia-Herzegovina's push for independence, but many Serbs did not. Back in Yugoslavia, with many of the Croats and Slovenes gone, the Serbs were a huge majority, along with having their own president, Milošević, in charge. But, if Bosnia-Herzegovina split off, the Serbs would be a small minority within the small, new country. Impending votes on Bosnian (We're just going to call the republic "Bosnia" for the sake of simplicity") independence forced the Serbs to make their move, banding together to form The Republic of the Serb People of Bosnia-Herzegovina, semi-secretly supported by Slobodan Milošević and Yugoslavia proper. The new Serb Republic moved to take control of land along the Drina river, especially Muslim majority towns that had been forced out of by the Ustǎse. They would secretly warn the Serb residents to evacuate, then encircle the town and massacre all that stood in their way. There are many horror stories of this time: family members being forced to watch each other be shot, bodies floating down the river—warning those downriver of what was to come. Mixed ethnicity families were torn apart. The Serb leaders, particularly the general Radovan Karadžić, fed their soldiers hateful propaganda and made sure that their methods of extermination were intentionally brutal so that the various ethnicities would never tolerate living together again, securing an entirely Serb country. Bridges collapsed and beautiful cities turned to rubble.

This famous bridge in Mostar, Bosnia, was authentically rebuilt after it was destroyed by Croats shelling it as they were attempting to cut off Bosniak forces within the city.

While all of these horrors and atrocities continued, Serbs fighting Croats, Croats and Bosniaks allying against the Serbs then turning on each other, Croat and Serb leaders Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević secretly negotiated to divide Bosnia into Serb and Croat sections, leaving the Bosniaks out in the cold. The Bosniaks meanwhile desperately pleaded with foreign powers to support the succession of an independent Bosnian state, beleiving that an independent Bosnia was the only way to ensure the safety of the Bosniaks. The war was rather against the Bosniaks, since the Serbs had support from Serbia/Yugoslavia and the Croats had support from Croatia, while the Bosniaks were caught in the middle. 

The United Nations tried to help out, but their United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) did very little to help the situation. They were often called "Smurfs" due to their light blue helmets and ineffectiveness, as they were only allowed to feed people and forbidden to use force even in self-defense, making them have to stand by as many terrible things came to pass. Eventually, after four years of brutal war and bombings of innocent cities and civilians, the United Nations decided they needed to take a more major role and began bombing Bosnian Serb positions, forcing them to stop their sieges and come to the negotiation table. The Dayton Peace Accords, brokered by Richard Holbrooke and other U.S. Diplomats, brought an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The accords divided Bosnia-Herzegovina into three different sectors: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (mainly Croats and Bosniaks), the Republika Srpska (almost all Serbs), and Brčko district (mixed ethnicities). The different districts brought peace, but also forced four redundant and independent governments onto the new nation, making it near-impossible for the country to get anything done.

Also in 1991 (during Croatia's bloody war and right before Bosnia-Herzegovina's), Macedonia announced its independence (peacefully and with only a few small changes to its borders) and is know called North Macedonia. I don't know why Yugoslavia/Serbia didn't care about this one.

In early 2000, public opinion began to sway against Slobodan Milošević, and Serbians of many different and opposing political parties rallied behind one candidate, Vojislav Koštunica. Milošević was confident in his hold on the nation and called an early election, but was soundly defeated. He tried to claim that the election results were invalid and tampered with (sounds familiar to my American audience), but the Serbs marched on the Parliament and peacefully took back their nation. Milošević was taken to The Hague in the Netherlands to stand trial, where he served as his own attorney, delaying the trial so it wore on five years until he was found dead in his cell just as the trial was starting to come to a close. His death was ruled a heart attack. Many other leaders of the time were taken to The Hague to stand trial, such as Radovan Karadžić (one of the worst culprits in the Bosnian Serb's ethnic cleansing). He went into hiding and they searched for him for twelve years before finding him, and many more were sentenced to life in prison.

In 2003, Montenegro began a gradual process of becoming more independent before peacefully declaring its independence from Serbia (now the only other republic in the former Yugoslavia). To save face, Serbia declared its independence from Montenegro two days later. 😂

The Yugoslav problems ended where they began many centuries earlier, in the Serbian province of Kosovo. As I've previously said, the Serbs consider Kosovo to be their ancestral homeland, from which they were forced out of by the Ottomans. Kosovo is now 92% Albanian, which many Serbs resent. In 1998, inspired by the other republics striving for independence, the Albanian majority in Kosovo rebelled against Serbian rule. Serbia responded with an ethnic cleansing similar to the ones carried out in the Croatian and Bosnia-Herzegovinan wars, killing 13,000 people, mostly Albanians (around 200,000 or 600,000 people fled Kosovo, destabilizing many surrounding countries, especially relatively new ones like North Macedonia), until the Serbian army was forced out by NATO warplanes. Kosovo stayed within Serbia for nearly another decade as a UN protectorate, and was mostly independent and self governing for a time. In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia but made sure to state that they would protect the rights of all of their minorities. Nonetheless, many Serbs fear that losing Kosovo means losing a big part of their history and culture, and they also fear retribution from the long oppressed Albanians against the Serb minority. There is still annimosity between the two countries, and the Serbian president has vowed that Serbia will never recognize Kosovo as independent.

Despite this, the Balkans seem to be stabilizing somewhat. It's become a popular tourist destination, and while there is still ethnic tension, younger generations seem to be able to see beyond the past. 

I know that this blog post has been rather long and rambling, but it's a very complex subject. There is no clear good and bad. Atrocities have been committed by so many involved, while those same people are also victims. While visiting countries in the former Yugoslavia, the past lies everywhere, so it's best to understand it. And I do recommend that you visit this area, it truly is an amazing place. 

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!