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We don't think of war when we say "Europe", do we? Most think of a community of democratic nations, which, after centuries of conflicts, have seemingly risen above war, and seek cooperation and peaceful coexistence rather than armed confrontation. And that is mostly true. But of course, not entirely. The war in Ukraine has been raging for more than 4 years now. But it is not just Ukraine. The Balkans is one of the most beautiful, culturally and historically rich regions of the world. Alas, it has long been known as the powder keg of Europe because many national,
ethnic, and religious communities are concentrated in a relatively small area, and disputes arise from historical grievances and territorial claims. And when you accompany these grievances and claims with ambitious politicians, who saw extreme nationalism and chaos as the ladder to power, you get a recipe for disaster. In a nutshell, this is what happened in Yugoslavia. Today we are starting our series about the Yugoslav Wars, a bloody series of conflicts, which reminded Europe that it was not immune to bloodshed, ethnic conflict and genocide. WHAT IS YUGOSLAVIA? BACKGROUND For centuries, the Balkans had been a border area slash battleground between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Specifically,
Serbia and Montenegro became independent after the Ottoman defeat against Russia in 1878, while the rest of the country was mostly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then the First World War led to the collapse of the aforementioned two empires, and on their ruins emerged the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which a decade later rebranded itself as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Although the Serbian Karadjorjevic dynasty ruled it, it was, in a way, a product of the aspirations of the intelligentsia of the Southern Slavic peoples, who saw a Southern Slavic union as
liberation from the foreign yoke. However, soon Yugoslavia descended into a Serbian-dominated dictatorship, which obviously caused disillusionment among other Yugoslav nations. In 1941, the Axis invaded Yugoslavia, quickly occupied the Kingdom, and created a puppet state in Croatia led by a fascist Ustaše regime. But very quickly Yugoslavians started one of the most powerful resistance movements against the Nazi occupation, led by a half-Croat, half-Slovene communist Josip Broz Tito. Tito's army, admittedly with the help of the Soviet
Union and other allies, liberated Belgrade in October 1944 and then the rest of Yugoslavia in May 1945. In 1945, he proclaimed Yugoslavia a communist federation consisting of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Under Tito, Yugoslavia became a truly unique country. It was communist, but opposed the Soviet Union's dominance, which caused the two states to fall out. It allowed much more contact with Western Europe, welcomed Western tourists, and allowed its citizens to travel and work abroad. While undoubtedly a dictatorship with little tolerance for dissent,
especially by communist standards, Yugoslavia was a remarkably decentralized country. All six republics and Serbia's autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina had considerable control over local matters. This became even more pronounced with the adoption of the 1974 Constitution, which granted the republics significant powers. They had their own constitutions, parliaments, communist parties, police structures, courts, and other structures. Most importantly, the Constitution established a 9-member presidency, which was to become Tito's successor, however
strange it may sound. It included representatives from each republic, two autonomous provinces, and the president of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. This structure was meant to serve as head of state and commander in chief of the Yugoslav army after Tito's death. But while Tito sought decentralization, he also used the state security apparatus to curb any expression of nationalism. Guided by his doctrine of Brotherhood and Unity, the Yugoslav leader jailed or exiled nationalists across the country. By doing so, he was sweeping all potential
ethnic-based grievances under the rug, making sure that they wouldn't manifest while he was alive. But none of us are immortal, and like many powerful, effective strongman leaders before and after him, Tito left no viable succession plan. His death on May 4, 1980, ended an era. The ethnic Albanian communist Mahmut Bakalli later said this about Tito's death: "We all cried, but we did not know we were also burying Yugoslavia." START OF THE CRISIS In Tito's absence, nationalist sentiments previously expressed occasionally and violently suppressed began to creep back into the political scene. Kosovo was where the first signs of trouble emerged. According to the 1981 census,
77% of Kosovo's 1.5 million inhabitants were Albanian, with Serbs in the minority at 13%. Kosovo was also one of Yugoslavia's poorest regions, with extremely high unemployment. On March 11, 1981, around 2,000 Albanian students gathered in the capital of the Kosovo autonomy, Priština, demanding republic status. The Yugoslav security forces suppressed the movement in their usual heavy-handed manner, expelling them from the party and jailing hundreds of Albanians. This only exacerbated their discontent. At the same time, many Serbs emigrated from Kosovo. Economic reasons were obvious, as many Serbs left the autonomous province to
seek employment and better opportunities elsewhere. However, Serb emigrants also complained of discrimination by Albanian-dominated institutions, with reports of harassment, rape, and pressure to leave Kosovo widely circulating in Serbia. This soon became a dominant narrative. Simultaneously, Tito's death weakened Yugoslavia's ability to control the historical narratives. More and more historians and scholars deviated from the official Brotherhood and Unity line, revisiting the horrors of World War II and ethnic conflict within Yugoslavia.
Instead of toeing the line to safeguard Yugoslav unity, many authors preferred to write about history from the perspective of their countries and peoples, which often exaggerated the atrocities of other ethnic groups, while downplaying those that were perpetrated by their side. Intelligentsias were growing increasingly nationalistic. The culmination of this process was the publishing of an unfinished Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in September 1986, which claimed that Yugoslavia was suffering a profound political crisis due to the 1974 Constitution and decentralization process. It also blamed the Yugoslav system for creating an advantage for Croatia and Slovenia over Serbia,
along with warning about dangers for the Serb minority in Croatia and claiming "physical, political, legal and cultural genocide" of Serbs in Kosovo. To some extent, this memorandum became a political program for Serb nationalists. Initially, Yugoslavia's top brass strongly condemned the document, and the media followed. However, one major name was conspicuously missing. The leader of Serbia's Communist Party, Slobodan Milošević, who seemed like an ordinary orthodox Communist bureaucrat, did not join the chorus of voices condemning the Memorandum.
Almost simultaneously, a Serb movement in Kosovo was gaining momentum. Remember that Kosovo has a special place in the hearts and minds of the Serbs. It is considered the cradle of the Serbian state and its Orthodox Church and the place where the Battle of Kosovo, an important pillar of Serbian historical memory, took place in 1389. In 1986, the Committee of Serbs and Montenegrins gathered 50,000 signatures demanding change in Kosovo. They lobbied Belgrade for more attention to their plight, and their chance arrived on April 24, 1987, when Milošević
went to Kosovo Polje to meet with Kosovo Serbs. While Milošević met with movement leaders, a large Serb crowd gathered outside. Clashes with the police occurred, as people started hurling rocks taken from a truck parked nearby by Serb activists. Milošević went outside to check what was happening, and demonstrators approached him, complaining of police brutality. His words later shown on national television transformed him into a leader of Serb nationalism: "No one should dare to beat you", calling on Serbs to remain in Kosovo and promising to solve their problems. Some,
like Albanian Party Chief of Kosovo Azem Vllasi, went on to claim that Milošević orchestrated these events to galvanize a public movement to support his claim to power and demand changes in Kosovo. Things got even more tense when, in September, an Albanian military conscript killed four fellow soldiers - two Muslims, a Croat, and a Serb at the Paraćin barracks. The ethnic composition of the victim group did not prevent the Serb media from calling this event an act of Albanian separatism. Thousands attended the funeral of the killed Serbian soldier, with an anti-Albanian campaign
spreading. The Communist Party grew alarmed by the rise of nationalist sentiment. The Belgrade Party leader, Dragiša Pavlović, offered scathing criticism of those stoking nationalism, implying Milošević and his clique without explicitly naming him. Serbia's president Stambolić backed Pavlović, but Milošević used all his power in the Party and the media to orchestrate Pavlović's dismissal from his post at the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party. Soon Stambolić met the same fate. Riding the wave of nationalism, Slobodan Milošević went from an unspectacular bureaucrat to Serbia's most
powerful political leader in a matter of months. With popular support behind him, Milošević continued to rely on mass nationalist rallies called "Meetings of Truth" to pursue the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution. The goal was to abolish autonomies of Kosovo and Vojvodina and to expand the extent of his power. The wave of Milošević-organized or -supported demonstrations led to the fall of previous leaders of Vojvodina and Montenegro in the fall of 1988 and winter of 1989, with power switching to politicians aligned with Milošević. The same pressure
was being applied to Kosovo. However, due to very powerful internal dissent, expressed in actions like Trepča miners' strike, along with the opposition of other republics, the process was not as easy. Other republics feared that if Milošević was now taking over autonomous provinces and moving to abolish them, the same could happen to them in the future. Moreover, Yugoslavia's 8-member presidency meant that Milošević's co-optation of the Kosovo Communist Party would guarantee him half the votes on any given vote. Specifically, Slovenia openly sided with Kosovo,
organising a mass demonstration in support of Trepča miners in the capital Ljubljana. However, this did not stop Milošević. In March 1989, he pushed through a new constitution of Serbia, which significantly curtailed the autonomy of Kosovo and Vojvodina. 22 ethnic Albanians and two policemen were killed in protests against the new constitution, but it did not change the result. Serbia's new nationalist leader Slobodan Milošević had won the first round of battle. SLOVENIA AND CROATIA INDEPENDENCE However, his victory over Serbia's autonomous provinces raised the alarm among the Republics, particularly Croatia and Slovenia. The
transformation of Yugoslavia after Tito's death also brought the national question to the fore in these republics. Both resented what they saw as the dominant position of Serbs in the Union. Both saw themselves as part of the greater Catholic Austro-Hungarian realm of Central Europe, rather than an extension of Orthodox Serbia. This resentment and memory of its previous independent states made Croat nationalism and desire for an independent state the central theme of the republic's dissidents. Croatian nationalism was one of the taboo subjects in Yugoslavia, and its open expression, like the Croatian Spring of 1971,
had been ruthlessly crushed by Tito. Meanwhile, in Slovenia, considered by many as the most developed republic of Yugoslavia, the post-Tito thaw paved the way for a different kind of political and cultural expression - a more liberal and progressive one. The new Slovene communist leadership of Milan Kučan showed unusual levels of tolerance for independent journalism, alternative youth culture, feminist groups, and other grassroots organisations. As in Serbia, the politically active intelligentsia in Slovenia also made its views known through a proposed
national program that advocated more sovereignty, more democracy, and less dependence on Yugoslavia. Slovenia's communist leadership criticised the program, but did not suppress its authors. But a true pro-independence movement in Slovenia was sparked by a reaction to the Yugoslav People's Army arrest of four Slovenian journalists of the youth magazine Mladina, who leaked secret military documents. Slovene dissidents formed the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights and soon met with Slovenian President Stanovnik, who publicly expressed support for their cause
and the arrested journalists. Thousands attended the trials. And even though the journalists were sentenced, their arrest sparked the start of a powerful pro-independence movement in Slovenia. In September 1989, the Slovenian parliament adopted constitutional amendments, which expanded Slovenia's sovereignty and gave it the right to secede from Yugoslavia, after a fierce political battle with the Federal government and Serbia. Notably, Croatia supported Slovenia in this, understanding that Slovenia "was the only hope of resistance to Milošević", as Silber and Little
put it. Croatia's support for Slovenia became even more apparent during the final political breakdown between Slovenia and Serbia - at the Fourteenth Extraordinary Party Congress on January 23, 1990, in Belgrade. The Serbian and Montenegrin delegations rejected all proposals from Slovenia. Each rejection was followed by applause. All Slovene representatives walked out. Then the Croats did the same. This was a clear message. Two western republics of Yugoslavia did not intend to continue with the union in its current form, under someone like Milošević. Slovenia,
which was already way ahead in its reforms to legalise other political parties, and Croatia, which did the same in 1989, scheduled their first multi-party elections for April 1990. In Slovenia, former communist leader Kučan won the election to become the country's first democratically elected president, while in Croatia the newly established broad-umbrella nationalist party HDZ, led by the former general of the Yugoslav army turned dissident Franjo Tuđman, emerged with an absolute majority. Šahovnica - Croatia's checkerboard old national symbol, which
was also used by the Ustaše puppet regime and was associated by the Serbs with Croat nationalism and World War II atrocities, once again became the country's coat of arms. Tensions rose further when the always highly charged football match in Zagreb between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade turned into a massive brawl on May 13. Croat Serbs, a large minority of almost 600,000 people, started to organise. The Mayor of a Serb town, Knin, Milan Babić, created the Association of Serbian Municipalities, and by the end of 1990, many Serb-majority areas joined in, and those who
were unwilling were forced to do so under pressure from repeated demonstrations organised by Babić. Around the same time, a Serb police inspector from Knin, Milan Martić, wrote a letter to Belgrade, stating that he and his officers would refuse to wear new Croatian police uniforms with Šahovnica and defied the demands of Croat police chiefs in a public meeting, which turned him into a military leader of the Serb movement in Croatia. After receiving guarantees of support in Belgrade, Babić announced plans for a referendum on Serbian autonomy in Croatia in August.
Croatia declared the referendum illegal and decided to solve the issue by force. On August 17, 1990, three columns of Croatian police vehicles with seven armoured vehicles and three helicopters moved on Knin to disarm the Serb police, which had already distributed weapons to the population. But the Croat advance stopped halfway when the Yugoslav Air Force intercepted the helicopters, forcing them to back down. A month later, Babić proclaimed the Serb Autonomous Region of Krajina and then gradually moved to geographically link all territories under their control.
By then, it was becoming clear where the process was heading. Slovenia and Croatia were moving towards independence, and in both cases, particularly with respect to Croatia, a war with Serbia seemed like a real possibility. Both countries started covertly building their militaries and smuggling weapons from abroad to prepare for a potential conflict. However, Yugoslav Military Intelligence exposed the Croat smuggling campaign. They even managed to film some of the secret meetings, where the smuggling work was being planned, and later showed this footage
on national television during the meeting of the Federal Presidency in January 1991, which gathered to decide whether to give the Yugoslav Army authorization to disarm paramilitary groups in Croatia and Slovenia. Nevertheless, the proposal was rejected. Another attempt by the Serbian leadership to gain the authorization of the Federal Presidency for the intervention of the army to suppress the powerful anti-Milošević movement in Belgrade on March 14, 1991, was rejected as well. On the next day, Milošević declared: "Yugoslavia is finished",
in all but name announcing Serbia's secession from the Union. On the same day, Croatian Serbs declared independence. The first shots of the Yugoslav Wars were about to be fired. CONCLUSION In this first video on the Yugoslav Wars, we tried to provide a brief political background of very complicated processes that eventually led to wars in different parts of Yugoslavia. The rise of Milošević riding the nationalist wave in Serbia, the initial crisis in Kosovo, Slovene and Croatian preparations for independence and war, the Serb mobilisation in Croatia and the paralysis of federal structures, which was
unable to solve these problems, snowballed into something truly horrifying. In the next episode we will cover the start of the war in Croatia, the Croatian and Slovene declarations of independence, the Ten-Day War, and other important events of the early stage of the Yugoslav Wars. So if you don't want to miss it, make sure you have subscribed and pressed the bell button. Please consider liking, subscribing, commenting, and sharing, it helps immensely. Our patrons and YouTube members can watch more than 300 exclusive videos, join their ranks via the link in the
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