Yugoslavia

Flag of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Origins

The former state of Yugoslavia (literally "Land of the South Slavs") was created following the Paris Peace Talks of 1919-1920 as the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes." Since these were not the only ethnic groups existing in the country, the name was changed in 1929 to "Kingdom of Yugoslavia." During the span of its existence it was the largest nation in the Balkan peninsula. While none of the countries created at the Peace Conference perfectly represented the Wilsonian ideal of national self-determination, Yugoslavia was more of a repudiation of this idea than probably any other. Most of its territory had previously been part of the recently destroyed kingdom of Serbia; the Austro-Hungarian Empire; or prior to World War I, the Ottoman Empire.

World War II

Besides Britain and France, Yugoslavia was the only European country to openly defy Nazi Germany after the Munich agreement of 1938 but before being attacked or annexed. It earned this distinction as a result of a coup d'etat in April 1941 triggered by Benito Mussolini's unsuccessful invasion of neighboring Greece. The coup overthrew a pro-Nazi prime minister and was treated by Adolf Hitler as a casus belli.

Following the Axis invasion and partition in 1941, Yugoslavia became the scene of numerous interrelated ethnic and ideological conflicts fought by insurgents, occupiers, and various local bands and militias--in effect, a civil war fought within the wider context of global war. This view, now widely accepted, contrasts with the communists' black-and-white interpretation of the postwar period, which held that the war in Yugoslavia was merely an extension of a global anti-fascist struggle.

The Nazis also set up Croatia as a separate puppet state run by the fascist Ustashe, providing yet another combatant to the ensuing confusion.

During the war a bitter struggle was waged between two anti-Nazi forces, the Chetniks and the Communsit partisans under Tito. The defeat of the royalist and Serb nationalist forces, known collectively as the Chetniks, resulted from chronic disunity as well as their lacking appeal to non-Serbs. By contrast, their great rivals, Josip Broz Tito's Communists and the partisan movement they led, realized that they had to appear as a broader patriotic movement in order to acquire and retain the support of non-communist followers, all the while focused on establishing communist rule in postwar Yugoslavia. The Chetniks and their nominal leader, Draa Mihailović, had been the first to take up the insurgency against the Axis occupiers. But they never developed either an effective central command structure or an ideological appeal that could transcend the boundaries of nationality, and thereby attract non-Serbs to their cause in significant numbers, even though they enjoyed official legitimacy for much of the war. In some regions there was a high degree of passive and sometimes even active cooperation of Chetnik forces--and others as well--with the Axis occupiers and their regional satrapies, such as "Serbian Residual State." The facts and perception of resistance and collaboration proved decisive not only to the military and diplomatic course of the war but also to the history of postwar Yugoslavia.

All parties assumed—falsely—that sooner or later the Allies would invade. Many optimistic plans were based on the assumption of Western Allied support, and on its magical power to put everything right. Historians are unsure why there was such universal faith among all parties in Allied invasion or intervention. Was it Nazi disinformation? Faulty intelligence? Wishful thinking? Or a combination of all three? Meanwhile there was an exiled royal government in London sponsored by Churchill. Besides receiving British aid, Mihailović served as war minister of the royalist government and chief of Supreme Command Staff in the homeland. But the Allies, the exiled government, and even young King Peter II eventually concluded (not without reason) that the Communist partisans were the only ones effectively resisting the Axis and transferred their support to Tito during 1944.

Insurgents in Yugoslavia caused the Nazis more trouble than in any other country with the exceptions of the Soviet Union and perhaps Poland.

Cold War

An anti-fascist Croat, Josip Broz Tito, emerged as the leader of the Communist arm of the resistance and, after the Nazi defeat in 1945, as the new leader of Yugoslavia overall. In 1949, he broke with the Societ Union andadopted a policy of armed neutrality in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The U.S. provided large amounts of military equipment. Yugoslavia prospered considerably from this policy and was able to trade on favorable terms with both superpowers and their economic blocs. Shortly after Tito's death in 1980, the state industrial ministry began marketing the last new European car brand, the Yugo, to the United States. The Yugo suffered, however, from the same quality deficiencies as the state-made cars of other communist countries and never caught on.

Collapse

In 1991-1992 the internal republics comprising the country of Yugoslavia divided up and became five separate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). In 2006 Montenegro became independent and in 2008 even Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, declared its independence.

It was said at the time that only Tito could have held the fractious nation together, although the monarchy had also managed tolerably well prior to the Nazi invasion.

Serbia and Montenegro both claim to be the successor country to the former Yugoslavia so each use the name "Yugoslavia."

Further reading

• Bennett, Christopher. Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course, and Consequences. (1995). 253 pp.
• Gapinski, James H. The Economic Structure and Failure of Yugoslavia. (1993). 212 pp.
• Judah, Timothy. The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. (1997). 347 pp.
• Lane, Ann. Britain, the Cold War and Yugoslav Unity, 1941-1949. (1996). 220 pp.
• Magas, Branka. The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking Yugoslavia's Break-Up, 1980-92. (1993). 384 pp.
• Pavlowitch, Stevan K. Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. (2008). 352pp
• Ramet, Sabrina Petra. Balkan Babel: Politics, Culture, and Religion in Yugoslavia. (1992). 230 pp.
• Silber, Laura and Little, Alan. Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. (1996). 306 pp.
• West, Richard. Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia. (1995). 448 pp.
• Woodward, Susan L. Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. (1995). 536 pp.
• Woodward, Susan L. Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990. (1995). 443 pp.

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