WI: Prevention of the Break-up of Yugoslavia by looking back to WW2, and more
- Thread starter Damian0358
- Start date
My additional idea would be to avoid ethnic based federal Republic. No Serb/Croat Banovinas etc, no borders post-1945. The new Federal States are regional names (Vojvodina, Kosovo, Herzegovina, Morava, Slavonia, Istria etc...) If possible change the name of the Serb Orthodox Church to Yugoslav Orthodox Church and include the Macedonian Orthodox. If the Yugoslav authorities enforce this for the first three decades, the new generations will open up to it.
Muslims, Albanians not included, were generally more willing to indentify as Yugoslav. That part is even easier resolved. I don't know how Yugoslav Education looked at certain heroes of certain federal republics (like Husein Kapetan Gradascevic, hero of Bosnia but also feudal leader). Promotion of those heroes as general South Slavic heroes rather than Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian heroes could help fueling the Yugoslav identity.
If people feel like Yugoslav rather than Serb/Croat/Bosniak there is less reason to break away. There will be Slovenes, Hungarians and Albanians not really feeling Yugoslav but they can only do little against a joint Bosnia-Croatia-Serbia-Macedonia. The most important part is Croats and Serbs. Bosnians will follow anyway. The people in urban areas will feel Yugoslav as well as many youngers while the rural area will show divisions. But for how long?
Muslims, Albanians not included, were generally more willing to indentify as Yugoslav. That part is even easier resolved. I don't know how Yugoslav Education looked at certain heroes of certain federal republics (like Husein Kapetan Gradascevic, hero of Bosnia but also feudal leader). Promotion of those heroes as general South Slavic heroes rather than Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian heroes could help fueling the Yugoslav identity.
If people feel like Yugoslav rather than Serb/Croat/Bosniak there is less reason to break away. There will be Slovenes, Hungarians and Albanians not really feeling Yugoslav but they can only do little against a joint Bosnia-Croatia-Serbia-Macedonia. The most important part is Croats and Serbs. Bosnians will follow anyway. The people in urban areas will feel Yugoslav as well as many youngers while the rural area will show divisions. But for how long?
While this sounds like a good idea on paper, keep in mind that this was basically attempted during the times of Royal Yugoslavia, and because of frustrations with the administration and fear of Serb domination, we ended up seeing the Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo and Novi Sad Points. And given the fears of Serb retaliation following WW2, to me, I think they've basically written off the idea of having strictly-regional-based republics. Even then, while we did have national-based federal republics, most did still have minorities which had to be presented in some fashion.
And I think any attempts to mess with the Serbian Orthodox Church any further than OTL would possibly lead to its denouncement by other autocephalous churches, damaging its legitimacy, and perhaps even encouraging a splintering of the church (and even if suppressed, the church still had its uses). And I believe the Macedonian Orthodox are considered part of either the Serbian or Bulgarian Orthodox churches, given the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric, declared in 1967, is said to have declared its independence from the former, and today remains unrecognized still by all other canonical Orthodox churches.
This is a good idea though! Aside from everything else mentioned so far to maintain the internal integrity of Yugoslavia, the use of education to identify given figures as overall Yugoslav heroes rather than just those of a given national/ethnic group makes a whole lot of sense. How efficient this would be, I dunno, but education as a whole is another avenue to consider.
This does remind me though, of when I spoke to a mainland Chinese peer of mine and he told me about the way education/schools were handled back home. I recounted this to my father, and he told me that he had quite a few flashbacks to his own school days, indicating to me how much things had changed for us, but how much they remain the same elsewhere, even if not exact.
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