Yugoslavia - What Really Happened

[Possibility of Being]

Actually, Yugoslavia was not really in USSR's influence zone. If it was in any zone, it was inside the Western influence zone. Look here Economy of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - Wikipedia
Yugoslavia owed heaps of money to the West, not the USSR. The West propped up Yugoslavia almost since its inception and it would have fell apart much sooner without support from the West.

It depends. For some time the status quo was more or less just as Churchill had offered to Stalin in Yalta: we go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia. She was part of the Eastern Bloc, otherwise the Czechs, Poles, Bulgarians etc. wouldn't be allowed to visit the country, and they could. Yugoslavia was a socialist country, even if in her own unique way. When CIA forced a ban on already promised spare fighter parts, Tito went to USSR for reconciliation and was greeted with honours. Yugoslavia broke relations with the West many times due to the US' foreign policy including in the Middle East that Tito strongly opposed. Anyway, my point was that Yugoslavia wasn't theirs, and the US/UK wanted her whole, and indivisibly.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Look up "Operation Valuable" and "Operation Bloodstone".

In short, the first one was Greece with US' backing and heavily funding the Holy Bond of Greek Officers/ IDEA made up of Nazi collaborators (1947); right after came Italy; then Albania with Balli Kombetar; then ratlines with Intermarium organisation and Ustachi smuggling ex-Nazis and Nazi collaborators to the US or wherever there was a job for them. The same tactic was applied to about any other country of the Eastern Bloc.

A very good book: Blowback - Americas Recruitment of Nazis and Its Destructive Impact on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy (2014) by Simpson Christopher. Another one, by the same author is The Splendid Blond Beast - Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century where you can also learn how Tito's government's repeated requests to the Western allies to extradite dozens of Yugoslav Nazis and collaborators, including top-level officials, who had landed in U.S. and British hands were repeatedly turned down. Hoxha tried too.

 

[emmanuel]

Indeed, for those of us who remember 'before' and see 'after' - it is like heaven and earth.
Before ( up until mid 1990) there was a sense of prosperity and positive outlook for the future, there was a sense of security and stability.
Now there is mostly sense of gloom and doom all the way from Slovenia to Macedonia. And I feel sorry for younger generation who grew up only with that sense not knowing anything else.

Yeah. I feel the same. I was born in 1966 on former Yugoslavia, father from Serbia, mother from Dalmatia, I livon Slovenija, so...
I personally always declared myas Yugoslavian or Istrian because I lived on Slovenian part of Istria at that time.
Anyway we were all from the mixed marriages there and we ever never discussed nationalities.
But the thing is, Yugoslavia was far from perfect but definitely much better than now. And I am speaking about Slovenija who supposed to be the best and richest country of of all Yu states. " little Switzerland " Teah, right.
Just ask people who live there and who were living in old Yugoslavia. Sentiments or not the living was easier that's for sure.

Far from perfect but easier.

 

[Joe]

Meanwhile, some Kosovars are celebrating American independence day. How sad. Don't they have an identity of their own?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1808606321044041955

 

[Niall]

 

[Nević Nenad]

Meanwhile, some Kosovars are celebrating American independence day. How sad. Don't they have an identity of their own?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1808606321044041955

Short answer: No. They don't.

Longer: No identity in the sense of national identity, but more like tribal identities. There are Gegs, Bekteshis, Toskas, etc. Then some are catholics, some orthodox, then muslims in all flavours, even Sufis.


And then some of them are Shqiptar and some don't like to be Shqiptar. Shqiptar is the real name of the people. That's how they call themselves - Shqiptar and Shqiperia. Albania is just toponym, and actually has nothing to do with Shqiperia people.


BTW, the next "Albania, Illyria, Dardania, Shqipe" is Swiss. They go there in tens of thousands.


On top of that, when comparing them socially and culturally to neighbouring nations, or with broader Mediterranean or Mediterranean - Near East nations its obvious that Shqiptars are not from these areas.


Today, they are sort of nation, called "Albanians". Their "nation" was engineered and made from all those tribes in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Austo - Hungarian empire to counter Serbian and Greek, and orthodox christian influence on that part of the Balkans.


But that's just what Serbs and Greeks are saying ( and they are very unpopular, terrible, terrible people, especially those Serbs )

 

[Possibility of Being]

Short answer: No. They don't.

Longer: No identity in the sense of national identity, but more like tribal identities. There are Gegs, Bekteshis, Toskas, etc. Then some are catholics, some orthodox, then muslims in all flavours, even Sufis.

Not to mention that the dancing people may be just Americans. There is a whole lot of them in Kosovo. More than those on the stage for sure. A US mil. base celebrating perhaps?

 

[Nević Nenad]

Not to mention that the dancing people may be just Americans. There is a whole lot of them in Kosovo. More than those on the stage for sure. A US mil. base celebrating perhaps?

Could be. But US personnel, especially in Bondstil, US army base is much less in numbers than they were 20 or even 10 or 5 years ago. On the other hand, Kosovars have that "America almighty" fetish.


Croats had their own share of such idiocy too. There is infamous "Danke Deutschland", song. Where singer thanks Germany for recognising Croatia.

Reason why Serbs, who actually see Croats as very close to them, despise Croats is Croats' servility to the West. In the style of: "Nice, but show some backbone for gods sake. Rebel, resist!" (which Croats, according to Serbs of course, doesn't do enough)

 

[Nević Nenad]

Could be. But US personnel, especially in Bondstil, US army base is much less in numbers than they were 20 or even 10 or 5 years ago. On the other hand, Kosovars have that "America almighty" fetish.


Croats had their own share of such idiocy too. There is infamous "Danke Deutschland", song. Where singer thanks Germany for recognising Croatia.

Reason why Serbs, who actually see Croats as very close to them, despise Croats is Croats' servility to the West. In the style of: "Nice, but show some backbone for gods sake. Rebel, resist!" (which Croats, according to Serbs of course, doesn't do enough)

On the other hand, Serbs have proverb that goes: God is in heavens, Russia is on Earth.

 

[Revolucionar]

But you just wrote:





I don't think anyone can reasonably think that the West was entirely to blame, they rarely are in such conflict, but when people see clear US meddling in the affairs of another state(s) I think it is understandable that the biggest fingers are pointed in that direction because, without that interference, we can never know if there would have been any war at all, or if the war may have been less destructive or protracted, and the outcome different.

Anyway, what is your position, given that it's not, as you say "the West was entirely to blame for what happened by propping up nationalists in Croatia and elsewhere and that the Serbs were somehow anti-imperialists who the West smeared, etc, etc..."

?

My current position, based on the facts that I could gather, if we're talking about blame, it lays mostly on the leadership of Yugoslavia and the constituent republics themselves. I don't see what reason the West would have to try to pull apart a country that they already had full control of. This sort of breakup is usually done to adversarial countries. Their only goal towards the end of the 80s was to bring Yugoslavia into the liberal capitalist fold completely.
If they wanted to make Yugoslavia fall apart, they could have been a lot more aggressive and made the country fall apart merely by making it go bankrupt instead of doing everything to keep it afloat financially.

And just another point. Croatia, and any other republic had every right to secede (and why wouldn't they want to leave a failing country like Yugoslavia?). Croatia voted overwhelmingly to secede in a referendum. Serbia didn't want that and that was how the war started. Of course, it's all a lot more complex, but ultimately, it boils down to that.

 

[Mytja]

And just another point. Croatia, and any other republic had every right to secede (and why wouldn't they want to leave a failing country like Yugoslavia?). Croatia voted overwhelmingly to secede in a referendum. Serbia didn't want that and that was how the war started. Of course, it's all a lot more complex, but ultimately, it boils down to that.

Well, not really, the bolded quoted sentence; if you check the referendum question posed, it does not mention secession in any way.

One rather clear indication that the break-up was the ultimate goal of the West for the ex-Yu region can be found in the aftermath of the events in the early 1970's, so called Croatian Spring as it's known here, which resulted in the new Yu constitution in 1974 which officially introduced autonomous region of Kosovo as a separate distinct administrative region within the Serbia "proper" (among other things like introduction of Yugoslav Muslims as a nationality and not only religious denomination). That same constitution gave later the legal grounds on which seperatists largely based their claims during the wars and conflicts in the 1990's.