DBWI My holiday in Yugoslavia.

Hello all, just a little story I wish to share with you from a while back. In April of 2011 I went on a High School Skiing trip to the mountains near Sarajevo in southern Yugoslavia, I can’t remember the name of the resort, only that it was within driving range of the city. My Dad had a bit of a mid life crisis mid-late 2010, much to the chagrin of my Mother he also discovered eBay at the same time, He’d been a Skier in his youth and had the crises had rekindled the flame. Three weeks in and we were up to the gunnels with Skis, boots, poles and enough winter gear to shame the Finnish Army!

Fortuitously the winter of that year meant that it was all put to good use and we all headed out to Glen Coe for the occasion. It was at the same time that the school PE department announced that it was arranging the trip to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; I felt that my skills were of the level that I could undertake it, plus I wanted to travel. There was a slight mar though, the entire trip, to and from the resort was to taken on a bus. Worst. Journey.... Ever. Nah actually there was allot of banter and fun
.
The trip lasted a week, and at the tail end we went for a shopping excursion to Sarajevo. We stopped for a bite in a local cafe, I ended up across from a much older Gentleman, I assumed he couldn’t understand me, so I was surprised when He asked in clear English “pass the Salt”, I should admit at this point that I was not versed in the local tongue. We got to talking despite this, it turned out his Name was Joseph, he told me that he could speak English from the literature courses he took in University and that he had wasted said education chasing a girl from Belgrade. I asked Joseph a bit about the history of Yugoslavia, he surprised me by telling me that Yugoslavia is infact a multitude of Nations within a Nation. They are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia (were Joseph was born in 1927), Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Vojvodina and Slovenia
.
In Joseph’s words, an Empire in miniature, “How does it all hold together” I asked, he said that all of the republics retain a degree of autonomy as well as an involvement in Belgrade. He also told me that, “Yugoslavian Nationalism” helps as well, it consists of encouraging unity and support for each internal Republic, rather than one individual Republic. It’s a very grey and strange beast. Yugoslavia really is a law unto itself, advertised as one nation, but instead a union of eight, Nationalism that supports a union, instead of frowning on it. Other interesting points, Yugoslavia has no official anthem or language! It really is Europe’s oddball.

OOC, a few notes: If anyone feels this is ill advised please let me know. Also could you maybe take the time to grade this as a writen work, just weather or not I have any knack for story telling.
 
Last edited:
Interesting, though I can't understand why Yugoslavia would not have an anthem, since what we had OTL is exactly the same song used by Poland with a slightly diferent tact of the melody. It was a pan-slavic song that promoted unity of Slavs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hej_Slaveni

and the lyrics

Hey, Slavs, you still live
the word (spirit) of our grandfathers
As long as the heart of their sons
beats for our nation!

It lives, it lives the Slavic spirit,
It will live for centuries!
Vainly threatens the abyss of Hell
and the fire of the thunder!

Let everything above us now
be shattered by a Bura.
The cliff cracks, the oak breaks,
Let the earth quake!

We stand firmly
like clifs,
Damned be the traitor
of his homeland!
 
Interesting, though I can't understand why Yugoslavia would not have an anthem, since what we had OTL is exactly the same song used by Poland with a slightly diferent tact of the melody. It was a pan-slavic song that promoted unity of Slavs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hej_Slaveni

and the lyrics

Oh yes, sorry that is the De facto anthem thats used, its just not ratified as offical. Still it was lovely to hear it no less than seven times this summer.
 
How do Vojvodina and Kosovo get Republic status? You'd have to go all the way back to Tito's first few years in power to make that work.

Otherwise, sure -- Yugoslavia could have (and arguably should have) survived. There are lots of PODs that could do it. IMO it gets a lot harder after the passage of the disastrous Constitution of 1973, but I'd say it's still possible as late as the early 1980s.


Doug M.
 
It's an interesting start. I don't know enough about Balkans history to know how plausible it is, but it's pretty well written-certainly grabbed my interest.
 
How do Vojvodina and Kosovo get Republic status? You'd have to go all the way back to Tito's first few years in power to make that work.

Otherwise, sure -- Yugoslavia could have (and arguably should have) survived. There are lots of PODs that could do it. IMO it gets a lot harder after the passage of the disastrous Constitution of 1973, but I'd say it's still possible as late as the early 1980s.


Doug M.

I'm not sure, anyone with actual knowledge of the Balklans want to chime on in this?
 
Post WW II Yugoslavia to work needs a PoD during the WW I where Serbs agree to a federation rather than trying to dominate other ethnic groups.
 
Marko, this was actually tried -- briefly -- just before WWII. I wrote about it on this forum a couple of years back.

Hang on a moment... okay, here we go:

After King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated in 1934, his cousin Paul became Regent for Alexander's seven-year-old son. OTL, Paul ruled until spring 1941, when he was run out of the country on the eve of the German invasion.

Regent Paul had his little quirks, but he was no fool. And he gradually came to realize that Serb dominance, and the corresponding resentment that it generated, was crippling Yugoslavia. So, starting in 1938, he began actively seeking an accommodation with the Croats.

These negotiations resulted in the _Sporazum_ ("Agreement") of 1939, which gave home rule to Croatia. It un-gerrymandered the borders (which had been redrawn by Alexander, enraging everyone and accomplishing nothing) and created a Croatian Parliament. The new Croatian state was given a very high degree of internal autonomy, including control over the judiciary, internal commerce, and all non-military state property.

The _Sporazum_ bore a more than passing resemblance to the Austro-Hungarian _Ausgleich_ of 70 years earlier. For good reason! It had the same purpose and effect: to amicably settle relations between the nation's two largest ethnic groups -- albeit at the expense of all the smaller groups -- by creating a sort of Siamese twin nation joined only at the very top, in the person of the King. (Or, in Yugoslavia's case, the Regent.)

Unfortunately, the _Sporazum_ was given less than two years to show its possibilities; it went into effect in September 1939, and Yugoslavia was crushed in April 1941. Furthermore, it was perpetually under internal attack from day one. In Serbia, it was widely seen as a sellout of Serb interests by the "foreign" Prince Paul. Some moderate voices spoke in its favor, but Serb nationalists loathed it from day one. And even in Croatia, it was attacked and undermined both by radical nationalists (who wanted full independence, not autonomy) and by Communists (who had been making good headway fishing in the troubled waters of Croat-Serb tension, and had no interest in seeing the issue peacefully resolved).

Also, Prince Paul made the mistake of not holding elections. True, it was a reasonable mistake; World War Two was going on, and Paul felt that elections would be disruptive and dangerous. But the result was the _Sporazum_ was never given the legitimacy of having been tested electorally, and remained a top-down enactment with limited popular support.

That said, the _Sporazum_ seems to have been a very reasonable compromise, acceptable to a clear majority of Croats and at least a large minority of Serbs. Unfortunately, it was a little too closely associated with the person of Prince Paul...
I think "WI the Sporazum had been tried earlier" is just one of several possibly YugoWin PODs. There are a number of others.



Doug M.
 
A united Yugoslavia will of course be an EU member by now. It would probably have joined in 2004, with Poland and Hungary.

A united Yugoslavia would also be a powerhouse in international basketball, football, water polo, and about twenty different Olympic sports.

A united Yugoslavia would have excellent relations with a great many developing countries, and would likely be held up as a fine, progressive model for multi-ethnic integration, suitable for emulation by many countries around the world.

On the minus side, uniYu will be a major international arms dealer.


Doug M.
 
Yugoslavia is quite the place. I can recall seeing some pictures of Belgrade from when my uncle visited the place in 2009......the city's really changed since the Tito era ended....in fact, the whole country has! And very much for the better, I might add. :D
 
Yugoslavia is quite the place. I can recall seeing some pictures of Belgrade from when my uncle visited the place in 2009......the city's really changed since the Tito era ended....in fact, the whole country has! And very much for the better, I might add. :D

Yeah Sarajevo was beautiful, it was like Vienna and Istanbul, no were did it seem that dullness had permeated in any seriousness, even the communist era high rises and flats seemed to have there own flare not matched by there western contemporaries. As I said before a law unto itself.
 

Incognito

Banned
On the minus side, uniYu will be a major international arms dealer.
Ah, yes, Yugoslavia would have its own home-grown own 4th-generation fighter by now, wouldn't it?

27yvq7q.jpg

xapc7r.jpg
 
That could do it. OTOH, it'll be increasingly hard for Yugoslavia -- now a signed-up member of the Axis -- to resist joining the war in the east.

Even if they manage to stay out, a la Bulgaria, Prince Paul is going down, and it's not really clear what might replace him. I don't think the Red Army would be able to pull a Bulgaria (i.e., roll up to the border, declare war, and occupy the whole country in a couple of days) -- Yugoslavia was much bigger. But I could see Paul being replaced by a weak republican government which falls to Communism a la Czecheslovakia.


Doug M.
 

Incognito

Banned
But I could see Paul being replaced by a weak republican government which falls to Communism a la Czecheslovakia.
I don't think that, in itself, would effect whether Yugoslavia falls apart or not. Correct me if I am wrong, but so far as I know the underlying problems that tore the country apart steamed from the long-time ethnic tensions, not communist ideology.
 
Correct me if I am wrong, but so far as I know the underlying problems that tore the country apart steamed from the long-time ethnic tensions, not communist ideology.

It's complicated. Communism kept the lid on the ethnic tensions for ~40 years, but it also helped keep them alive by refusing to acknowledge the history. And then the dismount from Communism was horrifically botched -- as Communism began to visibly crumble in the late 1980s, the Communist elites looked around and said, hey, we just reinvent ourselves as nationalists! That works!

I'm grossly oversimplifiying;there were Communist elites who weren't quick or clever enough to make the jump, and non-Communist nationalists who managed to climb aboard. But in most of Yugoslavia, the people in charge in 1993 were broadly speaking pretty much the same group who'd been in charge in 1988. (In some places -- especially Serbia -- this was obvious. In Croatia, Tudjman's new government was full of people who'd been high Party officials but who suddenly discovered that they'd always really been Catholic nationalists and anti-Communist dissidents. Oh, Croatia.)


Doug M.
 
Top