Was there a way to stop break up of Yugoslavia in 1990s
- Thread starter flfsvexl
- Start date
Probably not. Or at least it's very difficult. Yugoslavia was a one man state, held together by Tito. When he died.....
There's even a proverb, in a couple of forms, that counts down 7,6,5,4,3,2,1 with nationalities, republics, languages, ending 3 religions, 2 scripts, and one Tito.
When he died, the Serbs, the largest and most powerful grouping, wanted to rule Yugoslavia as Greater Serbia, and pretty much only the zmontenegrans were OK with that.
How you keep the Serbs from pushing that, I dont know, but that's likely your best bet.
The Ante Marković government seemed to have a chance there for a moment, but...yeah. Not much.
SFR Yugoslavia did not have just one problem, although it did have one major problem that gave even more weight to all the others.
It would help if the government was willing to start a gradual decommunization and opening up to democracy immediately after Tito's death, instead of the whole "After Tito comes Tito!" thing, which turned out to be about as useful as dressing Tito's corpse in his Marshal uniform and stuffing him back into his old chair would have been.
The power (dis)balance and fears of hegemony were the major problem, and definitely needed to be resolved. Having a different 1974 constitution might help - its consequences were what slowly but surely led to the establishment of a dangerous, corrosive environment in Serbia, which would have probably produced someone a bit like Milosevic even if Milosevic himself wasn't around to exploit it.
Having Yugoslavia federalized in a completely different way in 1945 so no one can really complain, demand revision or fear hegemony would be even better, but even this doesn't actually guarantee anything. Can't escape the suspicion that maybe Yugoslavia wasn't the best of ideas in the first place.
SFR Yugoslavia did not have just one problem, although it did have one major problem that gave even more weight to all the others.
It would help if the government was willing to start a gradual decommunization and opening up to democracy immediately after Tito's death, instead of the whole "After Tito comes Tito!" thing, which turned out to be about as useful as dressing Tito's corpse in his Marshal uniform and stuffing him back into his old chair would have been.
The power (dis)balance and fears of hegemony were the major problem, and definitely needed to be resolved. Having a different 1974 constitution might help - its consequences were what slowly but surely led to the establishment of a dangerous, corrosive environment in Serbia, which would have probably produced someone a bit like Milosevic even if Milosevic himself wasn't around to exploit it.
Having Yugoslavia federalized in a completely different way in 1945 so no one can really complain, demand revision or fear hegemony would be even better, but even this doesn't actually guarantee anything. Can't escape the suspicion that maybe Yugoslavia wasn't the best of ideas in the first place.
There's always a great emphasis on the role of Tito as unifying factor for the SFRY, and it's obliviously hard to downplaying his role; anyway the problems that leaded the country to its own downward spiral were highly connected with its economic mismanagement (basically during the 70s Yugoslavia borrowed huge amounts of cash from IMF but failed to improve the efficiency of its production) something that even a surviving Broz would not have prevented.
When sour times came, northern SRs felt tired of subsidizing failing enterprises in Serbia or Macedonia or in SAP Kosovo; moreover the political leadership also failed in answering convincingly to key phenomena ranging from the aspiration to a more Westernized society in Slovenia to the issues of minorities in the South.
When sour times came, northern SRs felt tired of subsidizing failing enterprises in Serbia or Macedonia or in SAP Kosovo; moreover the political leadership also failed in answering convincingly to key phenomena ranging from the aspiration to a more Westernized society in Slovenia to the issues of minorities in the South.
Yugoslavia would need a stronger apparatus than Tito for holding it together. While he was alive, any hints of nationalism were ruthlessly crushed. Yugoslavia would need a strong organization like the NKVD or Gestapo to keep the Serbs, Croats and others from killing each other. Too much bad blood in that part of the world to do otherwise.
Perhaps if the cold war continued longer? I seem to recall that most of the constituants of Yugoslavia were fairly united by their fear of the ussr. So keep an external enemy and prevent eyes turning inward?
People in Goli Otok would have disagree with this; Amnesty International also ran an IIRC annual publication focused on the political prisoners in SFRY in the 80s and what was inside those pages wasn't exactly a showcase of progressivism in management of political dissent.
Going off what the above 2 said, maybe an actual war to unite the country? Like Hoxha losing his mind completely and invading Kosovo as a prerequisite to establishing Greater Albania anywhere in the 70's to mid 80's? Or even a Soviet invasion after the Tito-Stalin Split, that could have titanic butterflies.
Relationships with USSR in Gorbačëv era were quite good, moreover people had already started to lost confidence in claims made by the Party about external enemies attempting to the Federation; the only ones believing into this were parts of the ruling elites, some out of looking for a scapegoat others out of suggestions made by KGB or other agencies.
If they actually were invaded then the claims might carry more weight. Even if they had to pull a gulf of Tonkin.
The main problem in a plan like invading SAP Kosovo is that Albanian forces were, leaving apart their appalling technological backwardness and small size compared to the JNA, doctrinally prepared to fight defensive wars; it wouldn't be a mismatch like Eire trying to seize Northern Ireland from UK but not exactly a fair fight.
Also, according to what we know by the 80s press, a large part of SR Slovenia and Croatia leaders didn't share Serbian POV regard Kosovo question: they saw in the local Albanian minority struggle for more autonomy something related to their own struggles and the most cynicals even thought that losing an economic black hole wouldn't be a great loss.
The claims, when not completely invented out of the blue, were mainly based on rigged intelligence from KGB insisting that NATO countries and Austria were prepared to dismember SFRY just after the death of Tito.
Supposing cold war continued, and multipolar world persisted through 80s and 90s to 21st century, perhaps by tottally different Gorbacov politics, and lets say Boris Yeltsin never got to be a factor in USSR, can we see Yugoslavia surviving nineties? If so, what happens with non-aligned movement? I suppose there would be peace now in Syria, Lybia. Would world be a more peaceful place in such scenario? And was Yugoslavia in 80s too big bite for USSR, considering fairly strong JNA army, and one of best tanks in the world that they had, M84? I read some claims of JNA being among top 5 strongest armies in the world in 80s.
Three things would be required:
1) No crushing of the Prague spring in 1968. A Soviet invasion "next door" served as a horror scenario for Tito and became an official excuse to basically arm the whole population.
2) A genuine federalisation with less emphasis on national identity and more power to the republics. The contradiction in Tito's policy was to create two types of nationalism: a regional one and a Titoist/Yugoslavian one. The power was in the hands of the Communist party, but all republics were sort of encouraged to identify as Croat, Macedonian or Bosnian. Therefore, people developed a national identity while at the same time hating the central government in Belgrade for being too authoritarian.
3) No economic crisis in the 1980s. In OTL, this was a factor which propelled disaffected youth into the (later) paramilitary units. It also helped to bring back religion into the public sphere.
Basically, it would mean that the Communist party would have to adopt similar principles like in economics (a syndicalist type of organisation) in the sphere of politics. And maybe in the 1980s massive Western (possibly US) aid to Yugoslavia. A Tito willing to share power after the "Croat spring" in the early 1970s could be a POD for this.
1) No crushing of the Prague spring in 1968. A Soviet invasion "next door" served as a horror scenario for Tito and became an official excuse to basically arm the whole population.
2) A genuine federalisation with less emphasis on national identity and more power to the republics. The contradiction in Tito's policy was to create two types of nationalism: a regional one and a Titoist/Yugoslavian one. The power was in the hands of the Communist party, but all republics were sort of encouraged to identify as Croat, Macedonian or Bosnian. Therefore, people developed a national identity while at the same time hating the central government in Belgrade for being too authoritarian.
3) No economic crisis in the 1980s. In OTL, this was a factor which propelled disaffected youth into the (later) paramilitary units. It also helped to bring back religion into the public sphere.
Basically, it would mean that the Communist party would have to adopt similar principles like in economics (a syndicalist type of organisation) in the sphere of politics. And maybe in the 1980s massive Western (possibly US) aid to Yugoslavia. A Tito willing to share power after the "Croat spring" in the early 1970s could be a POD for this.
"I am the leader of one country which has two alphabets, three languages, four religions, five nationalities, six republics, surrounded by seven neighbours, a country in which live eight ethnic minorities."
—Josip Broz Tito
Another thing that could have been very helpful: a non-biased Nuremberg-like trial against war criminals of WW2 and an open debate on the excesses of the war. During the war of the 90s, many stories from WW2 were brought up again, with families seeking revenge for war crimes committed by either the Ustasa, Cetniks or Communists.
And maybe no Milosevic.
And maybe no Milosevic.