Challenge: Counter-Balkanized Balkans

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a state including at least the post-WWI territory of Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania by the present day with a POD after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
 
Hmm, to get Greece in there would probably have to involve the National Schism between Venizelists and monarchists getting worse than in OTL, leading to an actual civil war in tandem with WW1. Hence, Greece does not get Smyrna from the get-go. Now how would that affect Anatolia?
 

Baskilisk

Banned
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a state including at least the post-WWI territory of Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania by the present day with a POD after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
Not going to happen. The only thing that could unite Greece with Yugoslavia is the EU. Throw that out, you could probably get some sort of south slavic union with Yugoslavia, ALbania, and Bulgaria. Thats what Yugoslavia was anyqways...a union of south slavs >_>
 
Not going to happen. The only thing that could unite Greece with Yugoslavia is the EU. Throw that out, you could probably get some sort of south slavic union with Yugoslavia, ALbania, and Bulgaria. Thats what Yugoslavia was anyqways...a union of south slavs >_>

Albanians aren't Slavs though, but I think they wouldn't mind an extra bonus ;)
 

Baskilisk

Banned
Albanians aren't Slavs though, but I think they wouldn't mind an extra bonus ;)
True. More Slavs than are Greeks, they'd be the ones that were forced into the union. Bulgarians aren't the same Slavs as the Yugoslavs. Hell, the Yugoslavs aren't even all the same. But at least a large influential Bulgaria would counteract the Serbia-revolving Yugoslavia.
 
Easy. Tito and Stalin never have their falling-out after World War II (or Stalin dies a few years early), and Tito goes ahead to form his planned Balkan Federation consisting of Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria. At the same time the Communist rebels in Greece are more successful due to increased Yugoslav and Soviet aid, and after they win the civil war Tito pressures them into having Greece join the Balkan Federation as well.
 
Bulgarians aren't the same Slavs as the Yugoslavs.

Yugoslav means South Slav, something that the Bulgarians are. There were Bulgarians who wanted to join Yugoslavia after both World Wars. As for Albania, Hoxha or some other communist leader could be convinced to form a union with his larger neighbor, especially if it means obtaining Kosovo.
 
Post-Sarajevo, I agree, only Marxist-Leninist ethnic policy has the cajones and Soviet might to back it up to see a Balkan Federation formed. Boy, I bet the 1990s are really interesting in this TL. :rolleyes:
 
Easy. Tito and Stalin never have their falling-out after World War II (or Stalin dies a few years early), and Tito goes ahead to form his planned Balkan Federation consisting of Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria.

Ayup. That's the way to do it.

Mind, the details are tricky. Stalin disliked the Balkan Federation idea, so you have to handwave that right off.


At the same time the Communist rebels in Greece are more successful due to increased Yugoslav and Soviet aid, and after they win the civil war Tito pressures them into having Greece join the Balkan Federation as well.

...stretch. The outcome of the Greek Civil War was somewhat overdetermined.


Doug M.
 
Yugoslav means South Slav, something that the Bulgarians are.

Um? OTL Yugoslavia was full of non-Slavs, from Albanians to Germans, and OTL Bulgaria had almost zero interest in joining it.


As for Albania, Hoxha or some other communist leader could be convinced to form a union with his larger neighbor, especially if it means obtaining Kosovo.

...actually, Hoxha was a nationalist who disliked the federation idea. That's the reason he came out on top in the internal power struggles of 1946-8.

Doug M.
 
...stretch. The outcome of the Greek Civil War was somewhat overdetermined.
Doug M.

Have the Allied landings in Italy or Normandy fail in 1943 or 1944 and the Soviets perform better in WWII. They grab Italy before the British+American can react.
 
...stretch. The outcome of the Greek Civil War was somewhat overdetermined.

The communists can still gain power at a later date.

OTL Yugoslavia was full of non-Slavs, from Albanians to Germans,

How does that contradict what I said? "Yugoslav" means "South Slav". It was meant to be a Slavic "nation"-state, for all the non-Slavic minorities.

and OTL Bulgaria had almost zero interest in joining it.
There was Stamboliyski, and the communists were open to the idea.
 
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