Yugoslavia - What Really Happened

[Revolucionar]

From what I've gathered it did indeed simmer under the surface well before. One of the contributing factors (not the only one of course) being that Yugoslavia received the IMF shock doctrine treatment during the 80's, if not a bit earlier. As we know, in a deteriorating economic situation, the people will be more likely to buy into the propaganda of opportunistic elites who provide simple solutions to complex problems, such as blaming other nationalities.

Economy was definitely a factor, but the fact that the IMF messed with Yugoslavia in the 80s belies the fact that the entire Yugoslavian endeavour was financed and made possible by exorbitant loans provided by the west in the first place. Yugoslavia would have failed much sooner if it weren't for western support. Once Tito died, they started calling in the debts and the whole house of cards started tumbling down.

I think they turned on him the moment they noticed that he wasn't going to play along with the plans they had for the region - fragmentation and then unification into the Western Borg. For all the faults of Milošević, I think that Zelensky is in a category of his own.

I don't think that was the initial plan. It looks to me like the west wanted for Milosevic to subjugate the other republics and create a centralized vassal state that they could integrate into the western system. Once they realized it's not going to happen that easily, they went with plan B, fragmentation. As you pointed out with this quote from the book, Milosevic was their guy in terms of economic policy. Btw, are there any citations for this claim in the book? Would love to find some sources on this.

 

[Joe]

It might be helpful for you to do the same, including doing some emotionally detached research instead of raging at everyone and being hotheaded.

Or more generally, to work on yourself with a view to controlling your emotions. I'm sure your Illyrian ancestors would be proud if you were able to display emotional control to an extent that few, if any, of them could.

 

[Joe]

I understand that this sort of material was given so much air time to serve as a counterweight to the established narrative of Serbs are the worst and everyone else is the victim. I wouldn't have a problem with absolving Serbia if it were the truth, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Yeah, that was the cause of it I think. That was Western propaganda that clearly saw and targeted the Serbs as the 'aggressors'. This was done for fairly clear geopolitical reasons. While the attitude that "if NATO doesn't like someone, there must be something good about them" is a bit oversimplified, it does hold true from a broader geopolitical perspective, just not 'on the ground' in terms of what actually went on during the war.

NATO definitely wanted to make sure that no unified Yugoslavia survived the fall of the SU, because NATO really hates unified countries/peoples that are not fully aligned with the West.

 

[Keit]

Alternatively, you could all just become Jewish. They seem to have a similar self-image.

Wait until you see the evidence that offshoot of neolithic Vinca culture which precluded the Illyrian culture gave birth to Minoan culture while Etruscans are directly related to Illyrians.
So the parts of Italy, Sardinia and whole Greece should be included in that map.
Not to mention the Ireland and all Celtic lands since Keltoi are known to have been hanging with us.

12 tribes of the Illyrian kingdom.

 

[Corvus]

Agreed, there were psychos on the front on both sides. That's war unfortunately. Croatia threw many of these in prison, including some high ranking officers. How many Serbian war criminals were processed by Serbia?

That is for the fact when you play with the west then you have to play their rules when it is in their interest to appease other side. The highest one some who did not die from age or sickness are free and still walking and those some officers you are talking about got mostly symbolic sentences.

The JNA didn't invade Croatia then

JNA was yugoslav army and Croatia was part of Yugoslavia, so they had army bases in Croatia. So it was not an invasion but a civil war and Croat propaganda always mentions they were invaded. That is like saying in the US if Texas secedes they were invaded by US army, so you did not even stop to think basic logical process but swaloved propaganda. JNA tried to get Slovenia in order at first and when they saw it is too late for that maintained tampon zone between Serbs and Croats because Croats started to arm themselves and sending their police, JNA wanted for Yugoslavia to be perserved but Slovenia and Croatia had different desires. And that myth that serbs were in all high positions in army does not hold water, there were many Croats and last president of presidency was Croat and he was also ex president of Croatia, and it was him who messed it up and JNA had to intervene. After international recognition JNA retreated to Serbia and some of JNA techniqe was left to Croat Serbs.

What does this have to do with anything? Besides, even if Tomislav was mythical, his successors were very much historical. Do you subscribe to the Serbian notion that the Kingdom of Croatia didn't exist?

It has to do that most of history is scam, globally and nationally. I did not live then so can not know, just know Croatia had under offical history small period of independance and then came under Hungarians and after under Austrians. In the end I do not have anything against anyone black, White, Pink, etc... the most important you are human you are human no matter from where. Small people bore the Brunt of war like it is always and everywhere it is same. People because of their subjective experiences, family influence and because of media brainwashing have hard time coming to objective reality.

Anyway, would it be fair to say that the wrangling and jostling over national identities mythos and territory in the Balkans is at least partly a function of the 'erasure' of that identity during Commie rule and, since the fall of the SU and independence, the diverse peoples of the area set out to rediscover and reassert those identities. National identity and the history associated with it being a pretty important part of personal identity for a lot of people.

It was supressed because they were aware if that nationality factor gains traction it would lead to that that it led in the end, many states, balkanisation and losing of power.

 

[Konstantin]

I found one interesting article that summarizes the breakup of Yugoslavia especially the last part of it, the bombing of Yugoslavia and the war in Kosovo.

...
The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the West's intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus.

The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte's role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include NATO's 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and television studios, and destroyed economic infrastructure.

"If I am not willing to [prosecute Nato personnel]," said Del Ponte, "I must give up my mission." It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into NATO war crimes was scrapped.
...

The FBI failed to find a single mass grave and went home. The Spanish forensic team did the same, its leader angrily denouncing "a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines." A year later, Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The "holocaust" was a lie. The NATO attack had been fraudulent.

That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation "was nipped in the bud" so that the tribunal's focus would be on "crimes committed by Serbia." She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians--the very people in whose name NATO had attacked Serbia.

Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of "liberated" Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the "international community," led by the U.S., recognized Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women.

But it has one valuable asset: the U.S. military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner as "a smaller version of Guantánamo." Del Ponte, a Swiss diplomat, has been told by her own government to stop promoting her book.

Yugoslavia was a uniquely independent and multiethnic, if imperfect, federation that stood as a political and economic bridge in the Cold War. This was not acceptable to the expanding European Community, especially newly united Germany, which had begun a drive east to dominate its "natural market" in the Yugoslav provinces of Croatia and Slovenia.

By the time the Europeans met at Maastricht in 1991, a secret deal had been struck; Germany recognized Croatia, and Yugoslavia was doomed. In Washington, the U.S. ensured that the struggling Yugoslav economy was denied World Bank loans and the defunct NATO was reinvented as an enforcer.

At a 1999 Kosovo "peace" conference in France, the Serbs were told to accept occupation by NATO forces and a market economy, or be bombed into submission. It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In her Book, The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals (Italian: La caccia: Io e i criminali di guerra), Carla Del Ponte, writes about this:
( from Wikipedia)

According to Del Ponte she received information saying about 300 Serbs were kidnapped and transferred to Albania in 1999 where their organs were extracted. The book caused a considerable controversy with Kosovan and Albanian officials denying these allegations and Russian and Serbian officials demanding more investigation. ICTY stated no substantial evidence supporting the allegations was brought to the court.

On 12 December 2010, the Council of Europe released a provisional report confirming Ms Del Ponte's allegations, and naming both Shaip Muja, current political adviser to the Kosovar Prime Minister, and Prime Minister Hashim Thaqi himself, in this context.

The Swiss government has asked Del Ponte not to promote her book. It has been criticized for tarnishing the country's celebrated neutrality, particularly as Del Ponte has been named as the Swiss ambassador to Argentina.

It is interesting that in the process of breaking up Yugoslavia, almost all ethnicities had their paramilitary units that were just war criminals. From today's perspective knowingly or unknowingly, they served the Western imperialistic interests in the process of breaking up Yugoslavia, by firing up dangerous nationalism of each ethnic group against another.

Since it once started it was like an uncontrollable fire that spread across the ex-Yugoslavia and destroyed everything. In the present, we have a caricature of small states that are led by the same nationalists or their descendants who destroyed the parent state.

The tactic they use( I mean the Western masters) is straightforward. They help them come to power. Then they let them illegally earn a lot of money and power and they documented all that. And at the end when bills have to be paid they use them.
Now they have to do anything they tell them, or they will be compromised with the evidence about their crimes and be locked in prisons for a long time.

Since then, the Western centers of power have been real "owners" of the Balkan countries. Every 4 years or so there are elections and the people get the illusion that they can choose a better leadership. The point is that the choices offered to the people have passed the same process of "selection" and "conditioning" described above.

And it is a vicious cycle that goes on for decades. New generations are taught the false history and brainwashed by false and dangerous forms of nationalism.

 

[Konstantin]

NATO definitely wanted to make sure that no unified Yugoslavia survived the fall of the SU, because NATO really hates unified countries/peoples that are not fully aligned with the West.

Before the Soviet Union's breakup and Germany's reunification, Yugoslavia was a promising country. It ranked as the fourth military power in Europe, following the UK, France, and Germany. Yugoslavia had its own factories producing a wide range of goods, from needles to bulldozers, with many of these products exported worldwide.

Given this strong position, there was no reason to confront Yugoslavia directly. Instead, it was easier to destabilize it from within, like a disease that silently undermines its host until it's too late to recover.

 

[Revolucionar]

Anyway, would it be fair to say that the wrangling and jostling over national identities mythos and territory in the Balkans is at least partly a function of the 'erasure' of that identity during Commie rule and, since the fall of the SU and independence, the diverse peoples of the area set out to rediscover and reassert those identities.

I think that's pretty much it. As I hinted at before, I think one of the biggest mistakes committed by Yugoslavia was the attempted erasure of national identities. If they went with the Soviet/Russian model of respecting national identites and not trying to fit everyone into this artificial Yugoslav identity, the country might have worked, at least from a sociological point of view. The other related issue was the suppression of religion which is intimately tied to ethnicity in these here parts. Incidentally that is also partly a result of the Serbian attempts dating back to the 19th century to convince all Orthodox Croatians that they were Serbs. The refusal of the Vatican to allow the creation of the Croatian Orthodox Church was also a terrible misstep.

And the animosity towards the Serbs from some quarters a result of them being viewed as more or less a 'quisling' of the Soviets at the time (the capital of Yugoslavia being in Belgrade and the Serbs representing the largest population and territory)

I think the animosity came mostly from the fact that the Serbs dominated the military, political and intelligence hierarchies out of proportion with their actual numbers.
Yugoslavia and Tito had a falling out with Stalin and the SU back in 1948, which put Yugoslavia on track to closer relations with the west and the creation of the Unaligned Movement. I don't think there was any thought given to Serbian relations with Russia. The Serbs didn't create Yugoslavia alone. Tito was Croat and the Partisan movement started in Croatia. Tito was Stalin's agent long before the war. The whole Communist endeavour here was very much in line with the Soviet International ideas and people from all across the region took part in building it up.

NATO definitely wanted to make sure that no unified Yugoslavia survived the fall of the SU, because NATO really hates unified countries/peoples that are not fully aligned with the West.

I think they just wanted to make sure that they can control whatever was there. That worked out as fragmentation in the end.
This wouldn't have been the first time where Serbia was doing the bidding of western powers. World War 1 was started by Serbia on behalf of Britain, Serbia getting some concessions for their trouble after the war. The Serbian royal court escaped to London upon the fall of the first Yugoslavia in 1941.

 

[Z...]

Oh wow. Well let me be the first to bow down and pay homage to my Illyrian masters!

Actually it should be said that Illyirians or their predecessors from the neolitihic Danube civilisation ( Vinca, Lepenski Vir) didnt seek to master and conquer.

According to most recent archeological consensus Vinca culture first showed up 12000 BCE and it reached its peak 7000 BCE. The oldest ever found wheel was found there and some scholars believe that the Vinča symbols represent the earliest form of writing ever found, predating ancient Egyptian and Sumerian writing by thousands of years.
also first ever calendar, first woven fabric, first soil fertilisation, first metallurgic and mining enadvours etc.
This Danube civilisation had its offshots everywhere in Balkans all the way to Dalmatian Islands.
For 2 thousand years there are no traces of of weapons, fortifications or violent deaths and then all of the sudden only violence, genocide and chaos. About 5000 years ago, according to New Scientist avery violent race bursted in from Russian steeps and practically annihilated this old Danube civilisation before moving further to the western eurpe and settling there.
These people are considered to be proto Celts, proto Gauls, proto Galatians and they carry the R1B genetic.
Basically, ginger pests

The survivors of Vinca culture flee mainly to Dinaric Mountains and some to Carpathian mountains. Once the danger was over they decend back to surrounding plains and this is the birth of Illyrian tribes and their culture. There is some eveidence than one smal;l;er offshot of these refuges made it all the way to Iran and India, and other all the way to Crete where it laid foundations of Minoian civilisation.
They are somtimes reffered to as Pelasgians and Homer speaks of them as proto humans or proto Europeans, describing them as culturally and technologically advanced and peace loving.

These Illyirian tribes that emerged from the ruins of Vinca culture are now more cautios and since 2.500 BCE we find magnificent megatlithic setllements strawn all across the Balkans, alwayson the locations that have good command of the landscape.

It should also be mentioned here that ethno genesis of Slavs in general needs to be revised.
Parallel to the a bove described Vinca culture which developed in Balkan and subsequently birthed Illyrian culture, in Eastern and Central Europe - also all the way down to Northern Italy - existed so called Urnfield culture.
Both these people and Vinca people are now considered by many antropologists and historians to be proto Slavs, however with slightly different charachteristics. Urnfield culture people are of smaller stature, blond and with blue eyes, they are more docile and agrarian while Vincan descendants are significantly taller and more dark and they are what we know today as Dinaric type. In fact it is unique cahrachteristic of Dinaric type Slavs that that they are born with blond hair which gets much darker by teenage years. There was a lot of mixing between these two prot- types and today you can find different percentages in all Slavic countries, however Dinaric type is predominant amongst the South Slavs.

Anyway, would it be fair to say that the wrangling and jostling over national identities mythos and territory in the Balkans is at least partly a function of the 'erasure' of that identity during Commie rule and, since the fall of the SU and independence, the diverse peoples of the area set out to rediscover and reassert those identities. National identity and the history associated with it being a pretty important part of personal identity for a lot of people.

I think it goes much further in the past than Tito's regime and it is not as simple.
The national identities were certainly not erased during socialist Yugoslavia, on the contrary all the national republics got clear borders and pretty high level of self governance. I think we have to look for clues much further than that.

A lot was done to promote the idea of "brotherhood and unity" amongst the South Slavs during Yugoslavia, however not enough and I belive it was a big mistake to continue with the version of history that was imposed on us by Austro-Hungarian and generally German school. With the advance of genetic research in the late 90-ies the fary tale about us appearing in Balkans in the early middle ages got final nail in the coffin.

Like Nikolic says in his book our trauma is much more ancient and it probably goes back all the way to Diocletian times.

There is also a theory about the genocide of giants who predated Ilyrians in these lands as remnants of pre cataclysmic civilisation but that is perhaps another story.

And the animosity towards the Serbs from some quarters a result of them being viewed as more or less a 'quisling' of the Soviets at the time (the capital of Yugoslavia being in Belgrade and the Serbs representing the largest population and territory). And that that continues until today vis a vis Russia, with a certain amount of animosity towards Russia and the associated support for the West, hence statues of Tony Blair in Kosovo?

It has to be said here that according to many hystorians every since Vinca culture met its end, the Ilyrian tribes that emerged afterwards were never unified and that was always their downfall. This is the theme that repeats itself since Illyrian wars with Rome. these wars lasted 300 hundred years and Romans won. Most historians agree this would have never happened if Illyrians united. only after the defeat of Illyrians Rome became an empire and systematic annihilation of our true origins begun to culminate in Austro Hungarian times.

 

[Z...]

I think one of the biggest mistakes committed by Yugoslavia was the attempted erasure of national identities.

Well this simply is not true.
Nobody was encouraged to declare as Yugoslav, nor there were official policies with this objective.
Most people who did, did it out free will. They were mostly from mixed marriages. If I am not mistaken there was couple of millions on the last consensus. The total population of Yugoslavia at that time was about 22 million if I am not mistaken.
In fact during the Croatian spring in 1972 Croatian communists managed to secure even greater degree of autonomy and self determination for their Republic.

 

[Z...]

Or more generally, to work on yourself with a view to controlling your emotions. I'm sure your Illyrian ancestors would be proud if you were able to display emotional control to an extent that few, if any, of them could.

How dare you Joe
Albanians have no connection whatsoever with Illyrians. This is Austro-Hungarian fabrication.

 

[Revolucionar]

A lot was done to promote the idea of "brotherhood and unity" amongst the South Slavs during Yugoslavia, however not enough

The relentless promotion of this ideology was the single biggest mistake of the communist regime and it led directly to the ethnic conflicts of the 90s, IMO.

The national identities were certainly not erased during socialist Yugoslavia, on the contrary all the national republics got clear borders and pretty high level of self governance.

Republics are not the same as national identities. I don't see how anyone with firsthand knowledge of the social atmosphere of the time can claim that there was no attempt to erase national identity.
We mentioned the changing of street names before. Trg Bana Jelačića, the main Zagreb square was changed to Trg Republike in 1947. after 80 years of being called after one of the giants of Croatian history. At the same time they removed his statue from the square, as well. Why if not to attempt to erase national identity?
People were thrown into prison for expressing patriotic sentiment and religion was being suppressed.

Well this simply is not true.
Nobody was encouraged to declare as Yugoslav, nor there were official policies with this objective.

No, but you were better of not saying you were Croatian and proud of it. See above.

 

[Nević Nenad]

I'm not. I'm itched, if you will, by the whitewashing of Serbia's responsibility for the war. Just sharing some facts and my own current ideas as a counterbalance to the established wisdom about the conflict here on the forum. You're welcome to give your perspective on the history of the conflict.

I lived that, so I really don't feel the need to explain or clarify it. I'm not the one who can know all or is called to "make the wrong right". And most important, there isn't anything in it of use for me personally. It cant help in my knowledge and growth.

As a serbian traditionalist and ultra (giga mega) nationalist (which just means that I love people around me and that I am against globalisation), I know all the stories, narratives, emotional states that goes with all that, but in the same time I understand that all of that is not important, no one is special, and its easy for me to just let it go. There is no use of that. Dwelling on the past can only hold you in that past, and that's not good for you.

I'm more interested in modern day Balkan countries. Their perception of nationality, statehood, Russia, NATO . . .

One curiosity on Illiryians, I believe (if I remember school right) there is no evidence that they even existed. No written or any other proof that the nation or tribe called Illiryians existed. There was roman province called Illyria, and documents that refer to the roman people living there, but no tribe or nation. So, the whole thing could very well be just scam with the newer date.

 

[Revolucionar]

JNA was yugoslav army and Croatia was part of Yugoslavia, so they had army bases in Croatia. So it was not an invasion but a civil war and Croat propaganda always mentions they were invaded.

So JNA forces didn't enter Vukovar from Serbia and even if they did, it was justified because it was a civil war. This is a semantic argument at best. The fact is that the JNA at the time acted as de facto Serbian military. Why was Dubrovnik bombed by the Montenegrin branch of the JNA? Was Mladić, who led the war effort in Dalmatia not a JNA officer? I really don't understand where you're getting these facts from.

And that myth that serbs were in all high positions in army does not hold water, there were many Croats and last president of presidency was Croat

Here are some facts instead of cherry picking and vague assertions:

Percentages of Croats in state bodies​

In 1971, Yugoslavia had a little over 20 million inhabitants, of which the share of Croats was 21.6 percent (4,426,221 inhabitants), and Serbia, which included Vojvodina and Kosovo, had 8,446,591 inhabitants (41.2 how much).
According to some authors, there were only 20 percent Croats in the Croatian UDB, and about 30 percent in the police. According to estimates, the number of Serbs in these bodies was from 76 to almost 80 percent. For example, in Vinkovci, out of 46 employees of the Secretariat of Internal Affairs (SUP), only one was Croat, and that was in an administrative job, and in Zagreb, out of 13 chiefs of police stations, only three were Croats.

The JNA is a mirror of national inequality​

One of the most sensitive federal institutions in terms of its role, but also the importance of the national composition, was the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). However, any public expression of opinion about problems in the army could provoke a reaction and accusation of hostile intentions. Certainly the most sensitive issue related to the JNA was the national composition within the army.
Available data on the structure of officers confirm the most unfavorable structure for Croats. According to some historians, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Serbs and Montenegrins, who had a share of 43.8 percent of the total population, had more than 67 percent of generals and officers. The national composition of active officers shows a decrease in the percentage of Croats and Slovenes, and a large increase in the percentage of Serbs and Montenegrins since 1945.

Nevertheless, numerous data support earlier conclusions about the unbalanced national structure of officers at lower levels. Even where it would have been expected that there would be a larger proportion of Croats and Slovenes, especially in the Fifth Military District based in Zagreb, the situation was not like that.
Thus, in the Fifth Military District, there were 12 Serb chiefs of staff of regiments and brigades, and only five Croats. Also, there were 34 Serbs among battalion and division commanders, compared to nine Croats. The biggest difference was among company commanders, where there were as many as 228 Serbs and only 43 Croats.

Resurgence of Serb supremacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina​

Considering the significant presence of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is important to analyze data about that republic. In the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it also happened that the share of Serbs was much higher than would correspond to their share in the total population.
According to the population census, 39.57 percent of Muslims, 37.19 percent of Serbs, and 20.62 percent of Croats lived in BiH in 1971. However, according to data from the same year, in the Union of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the share of Croats was only 11.1 percent, while the share of Muslims was 28.3 percent, and Serbs 53.5 percent.
From 1945 to 1966, only 2.75 percent of the officers of the BiH Ministry of Internal Affairs were Croats, almost 10 percent were Muslims, and as many as 87.13 percent were Serbs. Likewise, according to data for the period from 1945 to 1991, 9.30 percent of Croats, 23.60 percent of Muslims and 66.60 percent of Serbs were in the State Security Service (SDS).

It is interesting that there were most Croats in the structures of suspicious persons and those who were considered enemies of the state. Thus, at the end of the 80s, Croats led the way with 73.19 percent, followed by Muslims with 16.83 percent, while Serbs were the least with 15.62 percent.

It has to do that most of history is scam, globally and nationally. I did not live then so can not know, just know Croatia had under offical history small period of independance and then came under Hungarians and after under Austrians.

It's accepted in historical circles in Croatia that Tomislav may not have been crowned king, but it's also accepted that Croatia was a kingdom from the first half of the 10th century. At the beginning of the 12th century it became part of a personal union with the Hungarian kingdom and existed officially all the way up to 1918. Before the kingdom, Croatia was divided between competing duchies for an additional couple of centuries, which was pretty normal at the time in Europe.

 

[Z...]

No, but you were better of not saying you were Croatian and proud of it. See above.

Seems like we lived in two entirely different countries.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on the Croatian Spring events from the late 60-ies to early 70-ies which is fairly accurate representation.

It completely contradicts your narrative about Serbian hegemony in SFRJ and alleged persecution of Croats or anything Croatian.
Pretty similar thing happened in Kosovo with Albanian separatists.

Croatian Spring - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

One curiosity on Illiryians, I believe (if I remember school right) there is no evidence that they even existed. No written or any other proof that the nation or tribe called Illiryians existed. There was roman province called Illyria, and documents that refer to the roman people living there, but no tribe or nation. So, the whole thing could very well be just scam with the newer date.

Right