The question is not if Jugoslavia could have survived longer, but actually how it actually survived that long anyway. It has been an artificial political body all along.
The sh*thole the Serbs are in for the last 150 years is mostly thanks to Garashanin. Garashanin was a minister of the interior in the middle of the 19th century, he could be considered the father of serbian ultra-nationalism. He wrote a small book entitled
Načertanije (or Prescription, Waypoints if you like) for the policy of the Serbian state. Basically what it said is following, put short:
- Serbia is a small, insignificant and isolated country
- in order for us not to get assimilated by a foreign power we have to enlarge. But how do we do it?
- we are southern slavs, so we have to unite all the southern slavs around us, but this won't be that easy: first off the Bulgarians are the most numerous southern slavic people, so that turns them in a major obsticle for us and we have to assimilate them, building on our common religion; then come the Croats and Slovenians, they are catholics, so our job would be harder. BUT: although Serbs and Croats have been traditionally hostile they have an uneasy and increasingly problematic relationship with the Magyars (Hungarians); the Slovenians on their side ahev an uneasy relationship with the Austrians. So what we should do is that while not saying a word about our different religions we should promote our common southern slav ancestry. Then come the Bosniaks, who although converted to Islam are also Slavs, so with them we have the greatest chance for assimilation.
This book has been secretely circulating among the Serbian politicians for a long, long time and has been the major political doctrine ever since its printing until early 21st century. The first point as already mentioned was Bulgaria. The Serbs tried to convince all the western Bulgarians that they were actually Serbs. The constant failure in that direction didn't discourage them. Even before we became independent we achieved our own separate church (The Bulgarian Exarchate). So the Sultan oredered that a plebiscite should be held in all the European municipalities of the Ottoman Empire, which have a slavic eastern orthodox population. Then every municipality where a majority has voted in favour of the exarchate was added to it. This is the result (the red area):
As a matter of fact the voting was mostly around 90-95% in favour. Please note that Nis has voted in favour.
Then the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 started and while the Russian and the Romanian armies carried all the brunt of fighting the Serbs entered the war just as it was already won in order to have a claim of being a co-belligerent and have an excuse to take the Nis area. So when they contacted the Russians, the latter have already realised they dont have the strength to go into a diplomatic or, God forbid, a prolonged military conflict. So the logical solution for St. Petersburg was to appeace Belgrade, by granting it Nis. This proved to be irrelevant as the Serbs laid claims for the whole of Western Bulgaria all the way to present-day Pazardzhik. So in order to underline the bulgarian character of the lands claimed the Parliament in Tarnovo voted to move the capital to Sofia, this is the reason this city is the Bulgarian capital today. The Serbs realised that, for what they did they turned the newly-liberated bulgarian state in a mortal enemy so this is why they always tried to hurt its interests (the war of 1885, The Balkan Wars, the serbian actions in Macedonia, the Balkan Entente etc. etc. etc.) So in the east the serbian policy was to protect the things they have achieved.
Then comes Croatia. Ever since the Croats converted to Roman catholicism and the Serbs to Eastern orthodox christianity their relations have been hostile. While the Serbs tried to setlle down in the Ottoman Empire (the Sultan married a serbian princess, then at the Battle of Ankara her brother was a loyal turkish ally, saved Sultan Beyazid's sons, in the following turkish civil war, which was a feud between them for the throne, constantly changed sides and most probably saved the empire by opposing the Balkan rulers in their uprisings.) Then in the following decades many serbian families voluntarily sent their sons to the Janissary Corps with the idea that this way they were giving them a kick-start to top political and military positions of the empire. I am not implying that all the Serbs were that way, but those who kept on fighting simply left for the Austrian Military Border or to the romanian principalities or to Russia. So Serbia was actually built by those who settled down. Croats on the other side always kept on fighting the Turks, and this is an esteem they had, which gave them in their eyes a moral superiority over the Serbs. Not to mention that they had their own doctrine to unite all the southern slavs around themselves, which wasn't as nearly as reactionary as the serb one and had a much greater chance to succeed. Croats kept a fighting tradition and they were actually also mercenaries like the Swiss, although on a much smaller scale. Then when the Magyars rebelled against Vienna the Croats supported the Austrians. So after that the Croats had fairly good political positions in Austria-Hungary, although being part of the hungarian kingdom. So around 1914 if you have asked them which way should they go: Stay in A-H, secede to an independent Croat state or join Serbia you would probably get 75% / 25% / 0%.
Slovenia is very different than that. They never were an independent political entity until they gained independence in 1991. They also didn't have a class of slovenian scholars, or statesmen of their own. The composition of the population until the mid-19th century was a german higher class of major landowners , statesmen, lawyers, military men etc., a slovenian lower class of peasants and inbetween an extremely thin and insignificant class ot some italian artists, middle european artisans etc. Until then the Slovenians haven't realised themselves as being a nation themselves. And what is even worse for the ideas of Garasanin, they didn't even consider themselves as southern slavs. When the Slovenian Enlightment began they saw themselves as very close to Bohemians (Czechs), rather than close to Croats or to Serbians. The Slovenians even took the Idea and the name itself of the Bohemian youth sport and cultural movement - the "Sokol". So they started forming their indigenious slovenian elite, but by the time the A-H Empire collapsed they weren't ready just yet.
Bosnians had an independent country at the time before the Turkish conquest. This was a result of the independent Bosnian church, itself based on the bulgarian Bogomil sect, which was so utterly opposed to the Eastern Orthodox Christianity, that when the Turks came to our lands the bogomils converted to Roman Catholicism or to Islam, and didn't revert back to orthodoxal christianity. The same thing happened there. By that time a "croat" was rather a southern slav catholic, so those who chose catholicism actually joined the croat people. The majority of Bosniaks chose Islam with the simple idea to stay out of trouble. So the Turks kinda hoped that the same way they will assimilate them. But this didn't happen, they insisted on their distinct slav nature. So from that moment on until our present day the Bosniaks have always been outsiders - to the Turks, to the Austrians, to the Croats and to the Serbs. So to them it didn't matter much who their master would be when they were always second-class citizens.
This is the background. The official serbian position is: "When WWI ended both the Croats and the Slovenians voluntarily joined our state, so we were right. What right do they have to break away, when we didn't force them to join us?" In fact both catholic nations would rather form a state resembling Czechoslovakia. The problem for them was that the Czechs had nationalist leaders in exile, working against Vienna. Both the Czechs and the Slovaks deserted in masses to the Russians. Croats and Slovenians on the other side fought entussiastically against the Italians. If they formed their country it would be considered a defeated one, like Hungary for example. So they joined Serbia simply to be considered part of the Entente, and Bosnia and Herzegovina went along with them without the right to say a word. Both the other states, that could have laid claims on B-H were defeated countries.
Those people simply decided to give the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs a try. But from the start it turned out that the new state was considered actually a Greater Serbia and was intended to be governed that way. The more Croats, Slovenians and Bosniaks drifted away, the harsher dictatorship was imposed by Belgrade. Purely violent force was everything that kept them in line and when that force collapsed... well, we know about the Independent Croat State, the Bosnian Waffen-SS units etc. The jugoslav partisans weren't at all the force they pretended to be, they just existed with their role being purely symbolic. They got Jugoslavia on a silver plate the same way the Kingdom of Serbia got it after the previous world war. The southern part of the country was liberated by the Bulgarian army and the northern part - by the 3rd Ukraininan Front, of which the Bulgarian country was part. There are numerous memoires of bulgarian veterans that say: "we fought the Germans, pushed them away and then out the blue came the partisans stating - we are allies now, but you were fascists until yesterday, so you wait here as we enter the village." So this is the legend of Partisan fighting power. Bulgaria was part of the Socialist block and was ordered to shut its mouth and support the official jugoslav position of "brotherly fighting together". The Croats were in an even worse position, as they fought on the side of the Reich until the end. So did Hungary, and so it had to leave any claims on Vojevodina (where a magyar ethnic majority lived). The Slovenians were OK with Jugoslavia just for the moment, as it was pushing forward their territorial asspirations against the Austrians and Italians.
Knowing all that Josip Broz Tito was smart enough not to push his luck, so he worked hard on shrinking serb nationalism, suppressing croat nationalism and pressing hard on the religions. The whole idea of breaking ties with the USSR was to give to the jugoslav nations a common enemy so an internal ethnic conflict wouldn't errupt, while drawing western finances needed to raise the standard of living with the same goal - to make an internal ethnic conflict highly unlikely. This is why Jugoslavia was so successfull at the Time of Tito, simply because it dropped all the agendas, that could set it alight. Tito's Jugoslavia is not a triumph of jugoslavism, but its full denial. The federalism that was established by him had the idea to convince the separatists, that this was the better way, not that it was Tito's fancy and he was wrong to pull it through, there was no other option. The problem is that they were not convinced. They wanted out, and the Serbs wanted a firmer grip on the whole country. The separatists wanted Jugoslavia to be dismantled, and the Serbs wanted to keep it alive. The federalism was not a bad thing, it wasn't even real. Its goal was to convince everyone in the statement that everything is as usual and the state is united as ever, when in fact wasn't. This changed, when Milosevic came to power. At that time most of the Serbs were pro-jugoslav. His idea was to alienate them from the Croats, Slovenians and muslim Bosniaks in order to consolidate the Serbs around himself, convincing them that they are in a state of siege and them keeping as much of Jugoslav territory as possible.
So Jugoslavia was never alive. Throughout all of its timeline it existed merely as a consequence of external factors. THAT are the facts. Not irrelevant statetments like: "Oh, but we lived so well back then." Croats and Slovenians live much better today, even Bosniaks don't live worse than before 1990 (of course, not concidering the war). Montenegrins don't live worse either, with the possibility to make it even better if they choose to curtail their mafia. The only nations that have lower standard of living are the Serbians and the Macedonians and that is because they lost the incomes of the yugoslav economy, that were produced mainly by Croats and Slovenians. And the straw that broke the camel's back were the stupid and cheap serbian tricks of "Oh, we are more important because, we forged Jugoslavia and we must lead the way", combined with "We are all equal and every nation has a vote in the Presidency, but as Vojevodina and Kosovo are part of Serbia we get 3 votes, so screw you."
