The content of the article
YUGOSLAVIA, a state that existed in 1918–1992 in southeastern Europe, in the northwestern and central parts of the Balkan Peninsula. Capital - Belgrade (about 1.5 million people - 1989). Territory- 255.8 thousand sq. km. Administrative-territorial division(until 1992) - 6 republics (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and 2 autonomous regions (Kosovo and Vojvodina), which were part of Serbia. Population - 23.75 million people (1989). State languages – Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian; Hungarian and Albanian were also recognized as official languages. Religion– Christianity and Islam. Currency unit- Yugoslav dinar. National holiday - November 29 (the day of the creation of the National Liberation Committee in 1943 and the proclamation of Yugoslavia people's republic in 1945). Yugoslavia has been a member of the UN since 1945, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) since 1964, and a number of other international organizations.
Geographic location and boundaries.
Population.
In terms of population, Yugoslavia ranked first among the Balkan countries. On horseback 1940s in the country lived approx. 16 million people, in 1953 the population was 16.9 million, in 1960 - approx. 18.5 million, in 1971 - 20.5 million, in 1979 - 22.26 million, and in 1989 - 23.75 million people. Population density - 93 people. per 1 sq. km. The natural increase in 1947 was 13.9 per 1,000 people, in 1975 - 9.5, and in 1987 - 7. Birth rate - 15 per 1,000 people, mortality - 9 per 1,000 people, infant mortality - 25 per 1,000 newborns. The average life expectancy is 72 years. (Data for 1987).
Press, television and radio broadcasting.
More than 2.9 thousand newspapers were published in Yugoslavia with a circulation of approx. 13.5 million copies. The largest daily newspapers were Vecherne Novosti, Politika, Sport, Borba (Belgrade), Vecherni List, Sportske Novosti, Viesnik (Zagreb) and others. More than 1.2 thousand were published. magazines, the total circulation of which was approx. 10 million copies. The work of all radio stations and television centers was coordinated by the Yugoslav Radio and Television, created in 1944-1952. Worked ok. 200 radio stations and 8 television centers.
STORY
By the time the First World War began, most of the Yugoslav lands were part of the Habsburg monarchy (Slovenia - from the 13th century, Croatia - from the 16th century, Bosnia and Herzegovina - in 1878-1908). During the war, Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian troops occupied Serbia in 1915 and Montenegro in 1916. The kings and governments of Serbia and Montenegro were forced to leave their countries.
History of the countries that were part of Yugoslavia before 1918 cm. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA; MACEDONIA; SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO; SLOVENIA; CROATIA.
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
At the beginning of the First World War of 1914, the Serbian government declared that it was fighting for the liberation and unification of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Political emigrants from Slovenia and Croatia formed the Yugoslav Committee in Western Europe, which began to campaign for the creation of a united Yugoslav (Yugoslav) state. On July 20, 1917, the Serbian government in exile and the Yugoslav Committee announced a joint declaration on the island of Corfu (Greece). It contained demands for the separation of Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian lands from Austria-Hungary and their unification with Serbia and Montenegro into a single kingdom under the control of the Serbian dynasty Karageorgievich. In August 1917, representatives of the emigrant Montenegrin Committee of National Unification also joined the declaration.
Opportunities for the implementation of the plan presented themselves in the autumn of 1918, when the Habsburg monarchy, unable to withstand the burden of the war, began to disintegrate. Local power in the South Slavic lands was taken by the people's veche. On October 6, 1918, the Central People's Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs met in Zagreb, and on October 25, it announced the abolition of all laws linking the Slavic regions with Austria and Hungary. The creation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (GSHS) was proclaimed. Meanwhile, the Entente troops and Serbian units, having broken through the front, occupied the territories of Serbia and Montenegro. On November 24, the People's Council elected a committee to carry out the unification of the SSHS with Serbia and Montenegro. On December 1, 1918, these states officially united into the Yugoslav state - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSHS). The Serbian monarch Peter I (1918-1921) was proclaimed king, but in reality the functions of regent were transferred to Prince Alexander. In 1921 he took the throne.
On December 20, 1918, the first central government was formed, headed by the leader of the Serbian Radical Party, Stojan Protic. The cabinet included representatives of 12 Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Muslim parties (from the right to the social democrats). In March 1919, a provisional parliament of the country, the State Council, was established.
Economic and social situation in the new state remained catastrophic. The decline in production, inflation, unemployment, lack of land, the problem of employment of former soldiers represented a serious challenge to the government. The internal political situation was aggravated by the bloody clashes that continued in December 1918 in Croatia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and other regions. In the spring of 1919, a powerful wave of strikes arose among railroad workers, miners, and workers in other professions. In the countryside there were stormy protests of the peasants demanding land. The government was forced to start carrying out an agrarian reform, which provided for the redemption of the landlords' land by the peasants. The authorities forced the low exchange rate of the Austrian currency against the Serbian dinar, which led to a deterioration in the economic situation of the population and caused new protests.
The question of the forms of the future state structure remained acute. Supporters of the former Montenegrin monarchy opposed the united state, and the Croatian Peasant Party (HCP), led by Stepan Radic, demanded that Croatia be granted the right to self-determination (for which it was persecuted by the authorities). Various projects of state structure were put forward - from centralist to federalist and republican.
The government formed in August 1919 by the leader of the Serbian Democrats, Ljubomir Davidovich (it also included Social Democrats and a number of small non-Serbian parties), adopted a law on an 8-hour working day, tried to cope with the state budget deficit (by raising taxes) and curb inflation by implementation of monetary reform. However, these measures did not prevent a new wave of strikes in the con. 1919.
In February 1920, the radical Protich returned to the post of head of government, having received the support of the clerical "Slovenian People's Party" and the "People's Club". In April of the same year, the authorities crushed a general railroad strike. In May, a coalition cabinet of Democrats, Slovenian clerics and other parties was led by another radical leader, Milenko Vesnic. His government held elections in November 1920 in constituent Assembly. The bloc of radicals and democrats failed to achieve a majority in them (the democrats won 92, and the radicals 91 out of 419 seats). The influence of the left parties increased: the communists came in third place, having received approx. 13% of the vote and 59 seats, and HKP ("Croatian People's Peasant Party") - in fourth (50 seats). The HCP achieved an absolute majority in Croatia. In December 1920, it was renamed the Croatian Republican Peasant Party (HRKP) and proclaimed its goal to proclaim an independent Croatian Republic.
Under these conditions, the government of the KSHS, reflecting mainly the interests of the Serbian elite, decided to strike at its opponents. On December 30, 1920, the Decree "Obznana" was adopted, which prohibited the propaganda activities of the Communist Party and related workers' organizations and trade unions; their property was confiscated and the activists arrested. On January 1, 1921, the leader of the "Radical Party" Nikola Pasic formed a cabinet, which included representatives of Serbian radicals, democrats, farmers, as well as Muslims and small parties.
In 1921 the HRCP deputies were forced to leave the Constituent Assembly. On June 28, 1921, the constitution of the KSHS was adopted, according to which the kingdom was proclaimed centralized state. The constitution was called "Vidovdan" because it was approved on the day of St. Vid. After a series of assassination attempts on Prince Alexander and a number of politicians, in August 1921 the assembly passed a law On the protection of security and order in the state who officially outlawed the Communist Party. In March 1923, in the elections to the National Assembly, the radicals received 108 out of 312 seats. Pasic formed a one-party radical cabinet, which in 1924 included representatives of the Independent Democratic Party, which broke away from the Democrats.
HRKP, gaining 4% fewer votes in the elections than the Serbian radicals, won 70 seats. Party leader Radić proposed to unite the opposition and transform the KSHS into a federation. Having been refused, he went to an agreement with the ruling radicals. In the summer of 1923 he was forced to go abroad, and in his homeland he was declared a traitor. In domestic politics, the Pasic government widely resorted to methods of repression against political opponents. In the beginning. 1924 it lost the support of Parliament and dissolved it for 5 months. In response, the opposition accused him of violating the constitution. In an atmosphere of mass discontent in July 1924, Pasic was forced to resign.
The government of Democrat Davidovich (July-November 1924), which also included Slovenian clerics and Muslims, promised to ensure the peaceful and equal coexistence of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, as well as to establish diplomatic relations with the USSR. The new government restored the regional administration in Zagreb. The charges against Radić were also dropped and he was allowed to return to the country. In November 1924 Pasic returned to power in alliance with the Independent Democrats. In December, the government banned the HRKP and ordered the arrest of Radić, and new elections were held in February for the National Assembly. On them, the radicals received 155 out of 315 seats, and the supporters of the HRKP - 67. The authorities ordered the abolition of the mandates of the Croatian Republicans, but then Pasic held secret negotiations with the imprisoned Radic and forced him to refuse to put forward slogans of Croatian independence. The Croatian leader was released and appointed minister. In July 1925, Pasic headed a new coalition government, which included representatives of the radicals and the HRKP. It passed a reactionary law on the press, raised the tax on wages, and made changes to the agrarian reform that allowed landowners to sell land subject to alienation to strong farms of wealthy peasants. In April 1926, the cabinet resigned due to the refusal of the Croatian coalition partners to ratify the convention with Italy, in which the CCHS made significant economic concessions to the neighboring state. The new government was formed by the radical Nikolai Uzunovich, who promised to pay special attention to the development Agriculture and industry, help attract foreign capital, reduce taxes and government spending as part of austerity. But the country's political system remained unstable. The "Radical Party" split into 3 factions, the "Democratic Party" - into 2. At the beginning. 1927 HRPK withdrew from the government, and Slovenian clerics became Uzunovich's support. In February 1927, the opposition demanded that the minister of the interior be brought to justice, who was accused of mass police reprisals against voters during local elections. The scandal gained international resonance and Uzunovich resigned.
In April 1927, the radical V. Vukicevic headed the government, which consisted of radicals and democrats, who were later joined by Slovenian clerics and Bosnian Muslims. During the early parliamentary elections (September 1927), the radicals won 112 seats, while the opposition HRCP won 61 seats. The government refused to provide state assistance to the unemployed, to reduce the debt of the peasants and to unify the tax legislation. The confrontation between the authorities and the opposition grew. The HRKP agreed with the Independent Democrats to form a bloc. A split deepened in the "Democratic Party", and its various factions left the government coalition. There were mass demonstrations of protest, strikes and peasant uprisings. Opposition deputies who accused the regime of corruption were often forcibly removed from the Assembly. On June 20, 1928, in the midst of disputes over the ratification of economic agreements with Italy, the radical P. Racic shot two Croatian deputies in the parliament hall and wounded Radic, who died of his wounds in August of the same year. In Croatia, mass protests and demonstrations escalated into barricade battles. The opposition refused to return to Belgrade and demanded new elections.
In July 1928, the leader of the clerical "Slovenian People's Party" Anton Koroshets formed a government that included radicals, democrats and Muslims. He promised to carry out tax reform, provide credit to the peasants, and reorganize the state apparatus. At the same time, the authorities continued to arrest oppositionists, and laws were being prepared to tighten censorship and give the police the right to interfere in the activities of the authorities. local government. As the social crisis worsened, the government of Koroshetz resigned at the end of December 1928. On the night of January 5-6, 1929, King Alexander carried out a coup d'état: he dissolved parliament, local governments, political parties and public organizations. The law on the 8-hour working day was also repealed and severe censorship was established. The formation of the government was entrusted to General P. Zhivkovich.
Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The established military-monarchist regime announced its intention to save the country's unity. The KSHS was renamed the "Kingdom of Yugoslavia". The administrative-territorial reform carried out in October 1929 abolished the historically established regions. The strengthening of pro-Serbian tendencies, manifested incl. in preferential lending to agriculture in Serbian regions, as well as in the field of education, led to the intensification of separatist activities in Croatia (“Ustashe”) and in other regions of the country.
In the beginning. In the 1930s, Yugoslavia was gripped by an acute economic crisis. In an attempt to mitigate its impact, the government created the Agrarian Bank, introduced until 1932 a state monopoly on the export of agricultural products, but categorically refused to regulate working conditions and wages. The protests of the workers were suppressed by the police.
In September 1931, the king promulgated a new constitution that significantly expanded the powers of the monarch. The elections to the Assembly held in November 1931 were boycotted by the opposition. In December 1931, the ruling coalition was reorganized into a new party called the Yugoslav Radical Peasant Democracy (from July 1933 it was called the Yugoslav national party", UNP).
After the representatives of Slovenia and Croatia left the government, in April 1932 Zhivkovic was replaced as prime minister by V. Marinkovic, in July of the same year the cabinet was headed by M. Srskich. In January 1934, Uzunovich was again appointed head of the government.
In October 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated in Marseille by a Macedonian nationalist. Power in the country passed to the minor king Peter II, and the regency council was headed by Prince Paul. In foreign policy, the new authorities were ready to compromise with Germany and Italy, in domestic policy, with the moderate factions of the opposition.
In May 1935, the government, headed by B. Eftich in December 1934, held parliamentary elections. The UNP won 303 seats, the united opposition 67. But there was a split in the government bloc. The formation of the cabinet was entrusted to the former Minister of Finance M. Stojadinovic, who created in 1936 a new party - the Yugoslav Radical Union (YURS). Stojadinović attracted some of the former radicals, Muslims and Slovenian clerics to his side, promising to decentralize state power and solve the so-called. "Croatian question". However, negotiations with the opposition HRKP failed. The government went to reduce the debt obligations of the peasants (frozen in 1932), issued a law on cooperatives. In foreign policy, it went for rapprochement with Italy and Germany, which became the main trading partner of Yugoslavia.
Early elections to the Assembly (December 1938) showed a significant strengthening of the opposition: it collected 45% of the votes, while the HRPK received an absolute majority of votes in Croatia. Party leader V. Macek said that further coexistence with the Serbs is impossible until the Croats receive complete freedom and equality.
The new government was formed in February 1939 by the YRS representative D. Cvetkovich. In August 1939, the authorities signed an agreement with V. Maczek, and representatives of the HRPK entered the cabinet along with the "Democratic Party" and the "Peasant Party" of Serbia. In September 1939 Croatia gained autonomy. The government of the autonomy was headed by Ban Ivan Shubashich.
In May 1940, Yugoslavia signed an agreement on trade and navigation with the USSR, and in June of the same year officially established diplomatic relations with it. After some hesitation, Cvetkovic leaned towards cooperation with Germany. In March 1941, the government discussed the question of joining the Germany-Italy-Japan bloc. A majority of ministers voted in favor of the move, and the losing minority left the cabinet. On March 24, the reorganized government unanimously approved the agreement, and it was formally signed in Vienna.
The signing of this document caused mass protests in Belgrade, held under anti-German and anti-fascist slogans. The army went over to the side of the demonstrators. On March 25, 1941, a new government headed by General D. Simovich was formed. The agreement with Germany was terminated. King Peter II was declared of age. The coup was supported by the underground communists. On April 5, Yugoslavia signed a treaty of friendship and non-aggression with the USSR. The next day, German troops (with the support of Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) invaded the country.
The period of occupation and the people's liberation war.
The balance of forces of the parties was unequal, the Yugoslav army was defeated within 10 days, and Yugoslavia was occupied and divided into zones of occupation. A pro-German government was formed in Serbia, Slovenia was annexed to Germany, Vojvodina to Hungary, and Macedonia to Bulgaria. In Montenegro, the regime of Italian, and since 1943 - German occupation was established. Croatian nationalists-"Ustashe" led by Ante Pavelic proclaimed the creation of the Independent State of Croatia, captured Bosnia and Herzegovina and launched a massive terror against Serbs and Jews.
The king and government of Yugoslavia emigrated from the country. In 1941, on the initiative of the emigrant authorities, the creation of armed detachments of Serbian Chetnik partisans began under the command of General D. Mikhailovich, who received the post of Minister of War. The partisans fought not only against the occupying forces, but also attacked the communists and non-Serb minorities.
Large-scale resistance to the invaders was organized by the Yugoslav communists. They created the Headquarters of the partisan detachments and began to form insurgent units, raising uprisings in various parts of the country. The detachments were united into the People's Liberation Army under the command of Communist Party leader Josip Tito. On the ground, rebel authorities were created - people's liberation committees. In November 1942, the first session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) was held in Bihac. At the second session of the AVNOJ, held on November 29, 1943 in the city of Jajce, the veche was transformed into the supreme legislative body, which formed a provisional government - the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia, headed by Marshal Tito. The veche proclaimed Yugoslavia a democratic federal state and spoke out against the return of the king to the country. In May 1944, the king was forced to appoint I. Šubašić as the prime minister of the émigré cabinet. Great Britain sought an agreement between the emigration and the partisans, led by the Communist Party. After negotiations between Šubašić and Tito (July 1944), a single democratic government was formed.
In the autumn of 1944, Soviet troops, who fought fierce battles with the German army, entered the territory of Yugoslavia. In October, as a result of joint actions of the Soviet and Yugoslav units, Belgrade was liberated. The complete liberation of the country's territory ended by May 15, 1945 by detachments of the Yugoslav army (NOAU) without the participation of Soviet troops. Yugoslav troops also occupied Fiume (Rijeka), Trieste and Slovene-populated Carinthia, which were part of Italy. The latter was returned to Austria, and according to the peace treaty with Italy concluded in 1947, Rijeka and most of Trieste went to Yugoslavia.
YUGOSLAVIA
(Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)
Geographical position. Yugoslavia is located in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula. It borders with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the west, with Hungary in the north, in the northeast with Romania, in the east with Bulgaria, in the south with Albania and Macedonia. The new Yugoslavia includes the former socialist republics of Serbia and Montenegro.
Square. The territory of Yugoslavia occupies 102,173 sq. km.
Main cities, administrative divisions. The capital is Belgrade. Largest cities: Belgrade (1,500 thousand people), Novi Sad (250 thousand people), Nis (230 thousand people), Pristina (210 thousand people) and Subotica (160 thousand people). Yugoslavia consists of two union republics: Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia has two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina and Kosovo.
Political system
Yugoslavia is a federal republic. The head of state is the president. The legislative body is the Federal Assembly consisting of 2 chambers (Veche of Republics and Veche of Citizens).
Relief. Most of the country is occupied by mountains and plateaus. The Pannonian Plain is bordered by the Sava, Danube and Tisza rivers in the northeast. The interior of the country and the southern mountains belong to the Balkans, and the coast is called the “hand of the Alps”.
Geological structure and minerals. On the territory of Yugoslavia there are deposits of oil, gas, coal, copper, lead, gold, antimony, zinc, nickel, chromium.
Climate. In the interior of the country, the climate is more continental than on the Adriatic coast in Montenegro. The average temperature in Belgrade is around +17°C from May to September, around +13°C in April and October and around +7°C in March and November.
Inland waters. Most of the rivers flow in a northerly direction and empty into the Danube, which flows through Yugoslavia for 588 km.
Soils and vegetation. The plains are mostly cultivated, large areas in the intermountains and basins are occupied by gardens; on the slopes of the mountains - coniferous, mixed and broad-leaved (mainly beech) forests; along the Adriatic coast - Mediterranean shrub vegetation.
Animal world. The fauna of Yugoslavia is characterized by deer, chamois, fox, wild boar, lynx, bear, hare, as well as woodpecker, dove, cuckoo, partridge, thrush, golden eagle, vulture.
Population and language
About 11 million people live in Yugoslavia. Of these, 62% are Serbs, 16% are Albanians, 5% are Montenegrins, 3% are Hungarians, and 3% are Slavic Muslims. Small groups of Croats, Gypsies, Slovaks, Macedonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Turks and Ukrainians also live in Yugoslavia. The language is Serbian. Both Cyrillic and Latin are used.
Religion
Serbs have Orthodoxy, Hungarians have Catholicism, Albanians have Islam.
Brief historical sketch
The first inhabitants of this territory were the Illyrians. Behind them here in the IV century. BC e. came the Celts.
The Roman conquest of present-day Serbia began in the 3rd century. BC e., and under Emperor Augustus, the empire expanded to Singidunum (now Belgrade), located on the Danube.
In 395 AD e. Theodosius I divided the empire and the current Serbia was ceded to the Byzantine Empire.
In the middle of the 6th century, during the great migration of peoples, Slavic tribes(Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) crossed the Danube and occupied most of the Balkan Peninsula.
In 879, the Serbs converted to Orthodoxy.
In 969, Serbia separated from Byzantium and created an independent state.
The independent Serbian Kingdom re-emerged in 1217 and during the reign of Stefan Dušan (1346-1355) became a great and powerful power, including most of modern Albania and northern Greece with its borders. During this golden age of the Serbian state, numerous Orthodox monasteries and churches were built.
After the death of Stefan Dusan, Serbia began to decline.
The Battle of Kosovo on June 28, 1389 became greatest tragedy in the history of the Serbian people. The Serbian army was defeated by the Turks under the leadership of Sultan Murad, and the country fell under Turkish oppression for as much as 500 years. This defeat for many centuries became the main theme of folklore, and the Serbian prince Lazar, who lost the battle, is still considered a national hero and great martyr.
The Serbs were forced out to the north of the country, the Turks came to the territory of Bosnia in the 15th century, and Republic of Venice completely occupied the Serbian coast. In 1526, the Turks defeated Hungary, annexing the territory in the north and west of the Danube.
After the defeat in Vienna in 1683, the Turks began to gradually retreat. In 1699 they were expelled from Hungary, and a large number of Serbs moved north to the region of Vojvodina.
Through diplomatic negotiations, the Sultan managed to return northern Serbia for another century, but the uprising of 1815. led to the declaration of independence of the Serbian state in 1816.
Serbian autonomy was recognized in 1829, the last Turkish troops were withdrawn from the country in 1867, and in 1878, after the defeat of Turkey by Russia, full independence was proclaimed.
Tensions and national contradictions in the country began to grow after Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. At that time, Serbia was supported by Russia.
In the First Balkan War (1912), Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria united in the struggle against Turkey for the liberation of Macedonia. The Second Balkan War (1913) forced Serbia and Greece to unite their armies against Bulgaria, which had usurped control of the province of Kosovo.
The First World War exacerbated these contradictions, as Austria-Hungary used the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, as a justification for the capture of Serbia. Russia and France sided with Serbia.
In the winter of 1915-1916. the defeated Serbian army retreated through the mountains to Montenegro on the Adriatic, from where it was evacuated to Greece. In 1918 the army returned to the country.
After the First World War, Croatia, Slovenia and Vojvodina united with Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia into a single Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, headed by the King of Serbia. In 1929, the state began to call itself Yugoslavia. G
After the invasion of the Nazi troops in 1941, Yugoslavia was divided between Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. The Communist Party, led by Josip Broz Tito, launched a liberation struggle. After 1943, Great Britain began to support the communists. Partisans played an important role in the war and the liberation of the country.
In 1945 Yugoslavia was completely liberated. It was proclaimed a federal republic and began to develop successfully as a socialist state, in which "brotherhood and unity" reigned (the slogan of the Yugoslav communists).
In 1991, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia decided to secede from the federal Yugoslavia. This was the reason for the outbreak of hostilities, in which the UN then intervened.
In 1992, Yugoslavia broke up into several independent states: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and New Yugoslavia, which included the former union republics of Serbia and Montenegro. Belgrade was again proclaimed the capital of the new state formation.
Brief economic essay
Yugoslavia is an industrial-agrarian country. Extraction of lignite and brown coal, oil, ores of copper, lead and zinc, uranium, bauxite. In the manufacturing industry leading place occupied by mechanical engineering and metalworking (machine tool building, transport, including automobile, and agricultural engineering, electrical and radio-electronic industry). Non-ferrous (copper, lead, zinc, aluminum smelting, etc.) and ferrous metallurgy, chemical, pharmaceutical, woodworking industries. The textile, leather and footwear, food industries are developed. The main branch of agriculture is crop production. Cereals (mainly corn and wheat), sugar beets, sunflowers, hemp, tobacco, potatoes and vegetables are grown. Fruit growing (Yugoslavia is the world's largest supplier of prunes), viticulture. Cultivation of cattle, pigs, sheep; poultry farming. Export - raw materials and semi-finished products, consumer and food products, machinery and industrial equipment.
The monetary unit is the Yugoslav dinar.
A Brief Outline of Culture
Art and architecture. At the beginning of the XIX century. secular art began to take shape in Serbia (portraits of the painters K. Ivanovich and J. Tominets). With the development of the educational and national liberation movement in Serbia in the middle of the XIX century. a national historical and landscape painting. It combined romantic features with realistic tendencies (works by D. Avramovich, J. Krstić and J. Jaksic). Since the second half of the 19th century, ceremonial buildings in the spirit of European eclecticism have spread in architecture (University in Belgrade).
Belgrade. Fortress Kalemegdan - the largest museum in the city (Roman baths and wells, exhibitions of weapons, two art galleries and the zoo, as well as the symbol of Belgrade - the statue "Winner"); Cathedral; the Palace of Princess Ljubica, built in the Balkan style in 1831; church of st. Sava - one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world, the construction of which has not yet been completed; the Russian church of Alexander Nevsky (Baron Wrangel is buried in the cemetery at the church); orthodox church of st. Brand (built from 1907 to 1932). Novi sad. Petrovaradinskaya fortress (1699-1780, the work of the French architect Vauban); Fruska Gora - a former island of the Pannonian Sea, and now the National Park - one of the largest linden forests in Europe with 15 monasteries built from the 15th to the 18th centuries; Vojvodina Museum; Museum of the city of Novi Sad; Gallery of Serbian Matica; Gallery them. Pavel Belyansky; building of the Serbian National Theater (1981).
The science. P. Savich (b. 1909) - physicist and chemist, author of works on nuclear physics, low temperatures, high pressures.
Literature. J. Jaksic (1832-1878) - the author of patriotic poems, lyrical poems, as well as romantic dramas in verse ("Resettlement of the Serbs", "Standing Glavash"); R. Zogovich (1907-1986), Montenegrin poet, author of civil lyrics (collections "Fist", "Stubborn stanzas", "Articulated word", "Personally, very personally"). world fame won the works of the Nobel laureate
Serbs and Russians during the collapse of the SFRY and the USSR: are the discrepancies really accidental?
The history of the collapse of Yugoslavia is relevant in that it is interpreted only by political scientists, and not by economists-investors Moreover, only one, pro-Western interpretation of events has become dominant, blaming all the troubles and problems of the SFRY exclusively on the Serbs, placing on them all the political and criminal responsibility for the collapse of Yugoslavia, for the numerous crimes and bloody atrocities that accompanied this drama, including .h. for the destruction and loss of investors in this country. For Western European politicians and ordinary citizens, they have long become the embodiment of evil, real criminals and incorrigible villains. And therefore, in the prison of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, as the main war criminals of that tragedy, there were mainly Serbs - Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and others (all of them were immediately announced in the Western press as another “Serbian Butcher”). This year marks the 20th anniversary of not only the disintegration of Yugoslavia, but also of Yugoslavia. The collapse of the state is a force majeure for investors. What lessons can be learned from 20 years of history so as not to repeat the mistakes of others when investing in this or that country, which will suddenly be drawn into civil war and then fall apart?
Only very recently have there been calls (for example, Tad Galen Carpenter in the article "Stop demonizing the Serbs" published in the highly influential American magazine "The National Interest") to move away from the simplified mythology of those dramatic events, to provide a balanced approach to the coverage of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, etc., so that in 20 years we can calmly sort it out and learn lessons.
Indeed, why are myths needed today when the country has already been wiped off the face of the earth, including by NATO bombings. But seriously, as the experts of the Academy and Masterforex-V exchange trading explained, quite rational explanations can be found for the then, to put it mildly, inflexible behavior of the Serbs and their leadership. Notice, not an excuse, but an explanation. It is best to conduct this analysis by comparing their actions with the behavior of the Russians and the leadership of the RSFSR, who avoided a bloody scenario during the collapse of the USSR. Moreover, in those days only the lazy did not draw such parallels and did not set the Serbs as an example. Let's start by stating the obvious: the actions of these two peoples in those dramatic days for the fate of the SFRY and the USSR differed significantly, but the point, of course, is not in "good Russians" and "bad Serbs", but in significant historical, geographical, demographic, economic, foreign policy differences between the two peoples.
How is the collapse of the SFRY different from the collapse of the USSR? "Fathers ate sour grapes, and children have set teeth on edge"
The main difference is that in the USSR, in most cases, there were no global national contradictions caused by the "legacy of blood" in the relationship between peoples. Of course, there was everything in the USSR (as, indeed, in most multinational states) - what are at least the same Stalinist mass deportations of 1944 (2.7 million people - Karachays, Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Germans, etc.). There were long-standing antagonisms, for years, decades, insults and misunderstandings accumulated, but nevertheless, in the USSR, the peoples coexisted quite peacefully with each other. Thus, according to the KGB, in 1957-1986, out of 24 conflicts that occurred on the territory of the USSR, only 5 (according to other sources, 12) were ethnic in nature. Note that this is 30 years old. A wave of national-ethnic conflicts began with perestroika.
The existence of Yugoslavia was literally weighed down by an unkind historical memory. This legacy of the past can be explained by several factors:
- geographical. The Balkans are the gates of Europe or, if you like, the bridge between West and East, Europe, Asia and Africa;
- civilizational. It was through the Balkans that Islam attacked Europe, and it was here that it was stopped. Because of this, in the former Yugoslavia, peoples, cultures, religions, traditions were bizarrely intertwined, in general, a unique historical junction of three civilizations arose - Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic;
- historical. For many centuries, different parts of Yugoslavia were part of different states - Byzantium, Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, that is, for many centuries, its peoples lived separately, having almost nothing in common with each other. It is no coincidence that the term "Balkanization" has become synonymous with the repeated redrawing of the territory: someone constantly seized, annexed, disconnected and divided them. In general, behind the shoulders of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia there was a whole millennium of a completely different historical experience. Perhaps only here the saying could be born: "The best friend is my neighbor's neighbor."
When, in 1918, at the behest of the victorious Entente in the war, the "fragments" of the defeated Austria-Hungary were united around Serbia and a new state was created - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes (since 1929 - Yugoslavia), Serbian dynasty Karageorgievich became its ruling dynasty. Almost until World War II, the country was unitary, centralized (governors, police, command posts in the army were mainly occupied by Serbs), any separatism, especially Croatian, was severely suppressed in it.
In World War II, the Croatian Ustashe (“rebels” - Croatian nationalists) recouped the Serbs more than in full. In the vassal "independent" Croatian state formed in 1941, they quickly declared all "non-Aryan citizens" - Serbs, Gypsies, Jews (Croats, of course, were equated with Aryans) outside the law, in order to "protect the Aryan blood and honor of the Croatian people" interethnic marriages were banned, the Cyrillic alphabet fell under the ban, they built concentration camps, shot, burned alive, buried alive in the ground and cut Serbs into pieces. The Ustaše even invented a special knife for ripping the throat, which they called the "serb cutter". Even the Germans and Italians who occupied Yugoslavia were embarrassed by such inhuman cruelty of the Ustashe. Naturally, all this caused a backlash among the Serbs, so the famous Chetniks appeared - participants in the nationalist partisan movement. Soon, World War II in Yugoslavia acquired the features of a national-religious one: Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims, Chetniks, Ustashe and Muslim SS divisions. It's hard to imagine, but out of the 1 million 700 thousand Yugoslavs who died then, the vast majority were killed not by the invaders, but by their compatriots (305 thousand people died on the battlefields). There is a telling historical anecdote. When the former king of Yugoslavia was asked how he felt about Broz Tito, he replied that he was very sympathetic: "I alone know how to lead all these peoples who hate each other." After the war, Tito forbade even mentioning the words “Chetniks”, “Ustashees”, but the memory preserved all this, stimulating ethnic hatred in 1991.
Do investors need to know about this? Yes, to understand what the news media and investment funds do not tell, offering investors to place their capital in such an explosive region, where memory and revenge are passed down from generation to generation for centuries.
Why is the breakup of Yugoslavia more painful for Serbs than the end of the USSR for Russians? "The disease is small, but the disease is great"
For the Serbs, the breakup of Yugoslavia was more painful than for the Russians. The fact is that even after the collapse of the USSR, the Russians had enough living space:
- almost 50% of the population of the USSR lived in the RSFSR;
- Russia, even without the 14 other union republics, remained the 1st in the world in terms of territory(76% of the area of the USSR);
- had enormous natural resources. The RSFSR accounted for about 2/3 of the electricity of the entire USSR, over 4/5 of oil production, about 2/5 of gas, more than 1/2 of coal, over 9/10 of wood, etc. We will not bore our reader with the continuation of this list;
- dominant economic position in the USSR. Russia possessed 60% of the national wealth, produced more than 66% of industrial and over 46% of agricultural products of the Soviet Union. Let us pay attention to the self-sufficiency of the Russian economy, almost all industries (except textile) developed on the local resource base.
Serbian opportunities, after the collapse of Yugoslavia, significantly narrowed, they de facto ceased to be a "great nation", having a state with which both Europe and the world were considered:
- ethnicity. Ethnic proportions in the SFRY were different than in the USSR. So, the Serbs made up 38% of the country's population, and if we take into account that Serbia is one of the most colorful in terms of ethnic composition states in the Balkans (in Vojvodina, the non-Serb minority - Hungarians, Croats, Slovaks, Romanians, etc. - makes up almost half of the population, about 90% of the population of Kosovo is Albanian), then these proportions become simply critical;
- territory. The territory of Serbia was only a third larger than Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina;
- economy. Serbia's economic potential in Yugoslavia was much more modest than Russia's in the USSR. Slovenia was the most industrialized in the SFRY, followed by Croatia. Serbia provided about 2/5 of the national income and 1/3 of the industrial output of Yugoslavia. But what is there, suffice it to say that after the declaration of independence by Montenegro, the Serbs simply did not have access to the Adriatic;
- Serbs were the most "scattered" people in Yugoslavia, 1/3 of all ethnic Serbs then lived outside Serbia (however, 25 million Russians turned out to be outside the RSFSR). The fact is that Broz Tito, the son of a Croat and a Slovene (by the way, for himself his ethnic background did not matter, he felt like the leader of all the peoples of Yugoslavia, but for the Serbs it was sensitive), cracked down harshly on any nationalism. He considered the nationalism of the dominant nation, that is, Serbian, to be the most dangerous for the unity of the country (after all, the largest ethnic group, the largest republic, the capital of the country was in Serbian Belgrade), therefore, he consistently implemented the principle “weak Serbia - strong Yugoslavia”. In this regard, when the Yugoslav federation was created, some Serbian lands were ceded to other republics, 2 autonomous regions were literally imposed on it - Vojvodina and Kosovo (at the same time, for some reason, they did not create Albanian autonomy in Montenegro or Macedonia, where there were also enough Albanians), later they were actually equated with the union republics, that is, they were taken out of Serbia, etc.
Hence, when it became clear that the collapse of Yugoslavia was inevitable, the Serbian leadership tried to implement the project of "Great Serbia" - all Serbs should live in one state. Slobodan Milosevic easily said goodbye to Slovenia and Macedonia, where there were practically no Serb population and Serbian lands, but he did not want to let go of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, where there were many Serbs.
What is the difference between Russian and Serbian elite? "Not everyone has a disease - to death"
The different behavior of the political classes of Serbia and the RSFSR during the collapse of the allied states is literally striking. This is explained by the fact that the Russian elite gained a lot with the collapse of the USSR, while the Serbian lost the same amount.
The problem was that the largest Soviet republic, because of this, was practically completely deprived of economic and political independence, the RSFSR had the least developed republican state institutions: it was the only one until 1990 that did not have its own Communist Party, the KGB, the Academy of Sciences, the RSFSR Council of Ministers ruled only 7% of economic resources, the rest were in union control, only its territory was reduced in favor of neighboring union republics (during the existence of the USSR, it decreased by about a third). Hence, by the way, the famous "Leningrad case" of the late 1940s - early 1950s, then the Leningrad leadership was accused, among other things, of trying to move the capital of the RSFSR to Leningrad, of wanting to create the Communist Party of the RSFSR, that is, of forming a parallel center of power in the country. For our story, all this meant that the RSFSR did not have its own ethnic elite. The ruling class in the USSR was multi-ethnic, international, supra-republican. It was entirely and completely Soviet political elite. The Russian ruling class will arise at the end of perestroika, and having appeared, of course, it will begin to consider national movements in other Soviet republics as their allies in the fight against the center and Mikhail Gorbachev. For example, in memoirs one can read about an alleged agreement between Boris Yeltsin and the chairman Supreme Council Lithuanian Vytautas Landsbergis that in exchange for support, the latter will aggravate Lithuania's relations with the Kremlin as much as possible and will not enter into serious negotiations with Gorbachev. Hence, among other things, the benevolent attitude of Yeltsin, the Russian leadership to the proclamation of their statehood by the republics. As you know, on August 24, 1991, Yeltsin, bypassing the authority of the President of the USSR Gorbachev, will declare the recognition of the independence of the Baltic countries.
Serbia in Yugoslavia, like all other republics, had its own elite (for example, there was the Union of Communists of Serbia, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts), which also occupied a central position in the country, so it lost a lot with the collapse of the SFRY. This is also why it actively resisted the destruction of the federation.
In addition, in the USSR, representatives of the republics in Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreed on December 8, 1991, albeit in in general terms, on the boundaries of national minorities, which unambiguously took the edge off many of the problems that caused bloody conflicts in Yugoslavia. And what happened in the SFRY? There was a unilateral and uncompromising declaration of independence by the ethnocratic leadership of Slovenia and Croatia, without the slightest attempt to establish cooperation between former republics SFRY of the CIS type. And the collapse without prior agreement, as you know, is fraught with serious conflicts and endless wars.
The behavior of Serbian communities in national republics with the collapse of the SFRY. "Don't ask the sick for health"
The behavior of the Serbs in Croatia was seriously different, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Russians in the republics of the USSR. As already noted, in the Soviet Union for many decades there were no serious ethnic clashes in the republics where Russians lived, so they in their bulk supported the independence of the republics. Although skeptics believe that the Russians who lived outside the RSFSR were simply well aware that they would not be supported by Yeltsin's Russia.
In Yugoslavia, things were different. Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia created their autonomies, and the Serbian leadership actively helped the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs. Let's take Croatia. The Croatian leadership, fearing their Serbs, did not think of anything better than to deny them even cultural autonomy, a campaign began to test the loyalty of the Serbs new republic, this was followed by their mass dismissals from public institutions, accusations of all mortal sins, searches and beatings. Today, by the way, many already admit that the Croats openly discriminated against the Serbs, frankly wanting to get them out of the republic. In general, when it was decided to hold a referendum on independence in Croatia in 1991, local Serbs boycotted it, in the Serbian Krajina enclave (1/4 of the territory of Croatia) they proclaimed their republic, declared separation from Croatia and joining Serbia. In the summer of 1991, a full-scale war will begin, in which more than 26 thousand people will become victims on both sides. In 1995, the Croats did crush the Serbian Krajina, driving out almost 250,000 Serbs. So Croatia solved its historical task - to clear the country of the Serbs.
A similar situation with Croatia was in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the local Serb community (1/3 of the population) did not want to submit to the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo, which headed for secession from Yugoslavia, boycotted the independence referendum (1992) and proclaimed the creation of the Republika Srpska as an integral part of Yugoslavia, a bloody war began, which claimed the lives of 100 thousand people.
In Kosovo, by that time 90% Albanianized, already the Serbs, responding to the riots of the Albanians, in 1991 deprived it of the status of an autonomous region (replaced by an autonomous region, however, the fate of Vojvodina was the same), banned the use of the Albanian language in official documents, arrested the leadership of Kosovo, etc. After a while, in 1998, the Kosovo Liberation Army will start hunting the Serbs. And on the other hand, how should the central government have reacted to unilateral declarations of the independence of its constituent parts? Does it really not have the right to defend its territorial integrity? I remember the “brilliant” war between Britain and Argentina (1982) for the Falkland Islands, a tiny archipelago of sheep breeders, located at a distance of 1/3 of the globe from Great Britain, on which about 2 thousand people, 750 thousand sheep and several million penguins. But when the Argentines landed on the island, Thatcher began a war for this rotten swamp and wild pasture. Jorge Luis Borges will call it a fight between two bald men over a comb. About a thousand people will die on both sides, but Thatcher will not make any concessions, and victory in London will be met with stormy patriotic applause and chanting in the streets of "Rule Britannia".
Conclusion for investors: "What is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull", the ancients said. The same logic of behavior of states of different "weight" and influence in the world leads to diametrically opposite consequences for investors in these countries.
Intervention of third forces in the collapse of the SFRY and the USSR. "We undertake to treat others, but we ourselves are sick"
It's time to talk about outside intervention in the Yugoslav conflict. This is another discrepancy in the history of the collapse of the USSR and the SFRY. There was not and could not be direct military intervention by foreign countries in the Soviet Union.
Firstly, no one will dare to climb into a country with 30 thousand nuclear warheads without an invitation. And most importantly, why? As you know, after the signing of the Belovezhskaya agreement on the dissolution of the USSR, Yeltsin first called US President George W. Bush. As Andrey Kozyrev, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, told a press conference, the response was "positive statements from the State Department ... The United States is encouraged and delighted." So, as Mikhail Zadornov says, the Americans tried for a long time to destroy our country, and we outwitted them and destroyed the USSR ourselves.
As for outside interference in the affairs of Yugoslavia, then Masterforex-V Academy experts believe that we should talk not only about the straightforward maliciousness of Western countries, but also about their inept intervention in the civil war, dictated by the desire to stop bloody ethnic cleansing, about the very simplicity, which, as you know, is worse than theft .
Let's start with the end cold war the former bloc system of states disappeared. For Yugoslavia, this meant the loss of a unique status - a kind of “gray” neutral zone between NATO and the Warsaw Pact (all these years, being a socialist, it was not part of the Warsaw Pact; moreover, in contrast to it, it created the Non-Aligned Movement, was just an associate member of the regularly received cash loans from Western countries, which sometimes reached half of the annual budget, with a Yugoslav passport it was possible to freely visit developed countries (because of this it was called an "all-terrain vehicle"), etc.). It is no coincidence that the United States assigned the SFRY the role of an icebreaker of the socialist bloc. In general, all parties were interested in its stability in one way or another. It is no coincidence that 208 delegations from 126 countries arrived at the funeral of Broz Tito in 1980, even those politicians, who couldn’t stand each other for spirit (for example, Leonid Brezhnev and Margaret Thatcher).
With the end of the Cold War, as historians rightly point out, Yugoslavia was no longer needed for a balance between West and East, and it was thrown into disintegration. What guided the powerful of this world, intervening in the ethnic conflict on the territory of a sovereign state? How did it happen that Yugoslavia and the Yugoslavs became a pawn, a bargaining chip in the hands of powerful players on the "big chessboard"?
The European Union, intervening in the affairs of Yugoslavia, in addition to preventing further bloodshed, simultaneously solved several important tasks:
- demonstrated itself as the new center of world power;
- sought immediate peace in the Balkans, so necessary for the further enlargement of the EU;
- took control of the transport arteries. It is known that it is easier to control them through the system of protectorates, which were soon created in the post-Yugoslav space;
- completed the destruction of the "world red danger", in this regard, Serbia was perceived as "the last stronghold of communism in Europe." So red Serbia received the status of "black sheep". The EU took the side of "its" Catholic Croatia and Slovenia, which for a long time were part of the Austrian Empire, objectively gravitating towards Austria, Germany, Italy, the "non-communist republics" of Yugoslavia;
- recognizing Orthodox Serbs, historically acting as an ally of Russia in the Balkans "alien", indirectly weakened the already weakened Russia.
Germany. The new, note, united, was the first to recognize the independence of Croatia and Slovenia in December 1991, which immediately led to the division of Yugoslavia into 6 parts. Thus, her readiness for an independent foreign policy was demonstrated to the whole world. The world felt the weight of the new Germany for the first time. In addition, let's not forget, she has always had special interests in this region - access to the warm Mediterranean and Black Seas.
As for the declared comparison of Serbs and Russians, then, despite all the significant differences in their behavior, the most important thing is that both Yugoslavia and the USSR collapsed. So, by and large, what difference does it make whether Danila died or the sore crushed him, and there was enough blood in the post-Soviet space.
The final, second in a row, disintegration of Yugoslavia took place in 1991-1992. The first occurred in 1941 and was the result of the defeat of the Yugoslav kingdom at the beginning of World War II. The second was associated not only with the crisis of the socio-political system of Yugoslavia and its federal structure, but also with the crisis of the Yugoslav national identity.
So, if the unification of the Yugoslavs stemmed from their uncertainty in the ability to withstand and assert themselves as self-sufficient nations, being in a hostile environment, then the second disintegration was the result of this self-assertion, which, it must be admitted, happened precisely due to the existence of a federal state. At the same time, the experience of 1945–1991 also showed that stakes on collectivist interests, even under the mild regime of Yugoslav socialism, did not pay off. The “time bomb” was the belonging of the Yugoslav peoples to three mutually hostile civilizations at once. Yugoslavia was doomed to disintegration from the very beginning.
On December 18, 1989, in his report to the Parliament, the penultimate Prime Minister of the SFRY A. Markovic, speaking about the causes of the economic catastrophe in which Yugoslavia found itself, made a bitter but truthful conclusion - that economic system The “market, self-governing, humane, democratic” socialism that Tito created and which they have been building for more than 30 years with the help of Western loans and allies, in the conditions of 1989, without systematic annual subsidies from the IMF and other organizations, is not viable. In his opinion, in 1989 there are only two ways.
Either return to a planned economy, or open eyes carry out a complete restoration of capitalism with all the ensuing consequences. The first way, according to A. Markovich, unfortunately, is unrealistic in the conditions of 1989, because it requires Yugoslavia to rely on the strength of the socialist community and the USSR, but under the leadership of Gorbachev, the socialist countries have become so weak that not only others, but also themselves can hardly help. The second way is possible only if Western investments are provided in full.
Western capital must be given guarantees that it can buy whatever it pleases in Yugoslavia - land, factories, mines, roads, and all this must be guaranteed by a new federal law, which must be adopted immediately. Markovic turned to Western capital with a request to speed up investments and take control of their implementation.
A reasonable question may arise: why is it that the United States, and at the same time the IMF and the West as a whole, which so generously financed the Tito regime, suddenly stopped not only financial support at the end of the 80s, but also changed their policy towards Yugoslavia by 180 degrees? An objective analysis shows that in the 1950s-1980s, the Tito regime was necessary for the West as Trojan horse in the struggle against the socialist community led by the Soviet Union. But everything comes to an end. Tito dies in 1980, and closer to the mid-80s, the Yugoslav mouthpiece of anti-Sovietism becomes completely unnecessary - the West found conductors of its destructive policy in the very leadership of the USSR.
On Yugoslavia, all in debt and without reliable allies, directs its eyes, blunted until the second half of the 1980s, and now again on fire, powerful German capital. By the early 1990s, West Germany, having swallowed the GDR, was indeed becoming the leading force in Europe. arrangement internal forces in Yugoslavia by this time also favored the defeat. The partyocracy of the Union of Communists (UK) has completely lost its authority among the people. Nationalist forces in Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina receive systematically powerful support from Germany, the United States, Western monopolies, the Vatican, Muslim emirs and bigwigs. In Slovenia, the UK received only 7% of the vote, in Croatia no more than 13%. The nationalist Tudjman comes to power in Croatia, the Islamic fundamentalist Izetbegovic in Bosnia, the nationalist Gligorov in Macedonia, and the nationalist Kucan in Slovenia.
Almost all of them are from the same deck of the reborn Titov leadership of the UK. The sinister figure of Izetbegovic is especially colorful. He fought in World War II in the famous SS Khanjardivizia, which fought against the Soviet Army near Stalingrad, and also "became famous" as a punitive formation of the Nazis in the fight against the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. For his atrocities, Izetbegovic was tried in 1945 people's court, however, he did not stop his activities, now in the form of a nationalist, fundamentalist, separatist.
All these odious figures, having been in opposition to the ruling elite of the Union of Communists for some time, were waiting in the wings. Tudjman and Kucan are closely connected with German politicians and German capital, Izetbegovic - with Islamic extremists in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran. All of them, as if on command, put forward the slogans of separatism, secession from Yugoslavia, the creation of "independent" states, referring (irony of fate!) At the same time to the Leninist principle of the right of nations to self-determination up to secession.
Germany also pursued special interests. Having united itself two years before the start of the war in Yugoslavia, she did not want to see a strong state at her side. Moreover, the Germans had long-standing historical accounts with the Serbs: the Slavs never submitted to the warlike Germans, despite two terrible interventions of the 20th century. But in 1990, Germany remembered its allies in the Third Reich - the Croatian Ustashe. In 1941, Hitler gave statehood to the Croats who had never had it before. Chancellor Kohl and German Foreign Minister Genscher did the same.
The first conflict arose in mid-1990 in Croatia, when the Serbs, of whom there were at least 600,000 in the republic, expressed their will to remain part of the federal Yugoslavia in response to growing demands for secession. Soon Tudjman is elected president, and in December the parliament (Sabor), with the support of Germany, adopts the country's constitution, according to which Croatia is an indivisible unitary state - despite the fact that the Serbian community, called the Serbian or Knin (after the name of its capital) Extreme, historically, with XVI century, existed in Croatia. In the constitution of this former socialist republic dated 1947, it was said that Serbs and Croats were equal.
Now Tudjman declares the Serbs a national minority! Obviously, they do not want to put up with this, wanting to gain autonomy. In a hurry, they create police detachments to protect themselves from the Croatian "territorial defense troops". Krajina was proclaimed in February 1991 and announced its withdrawal from Croatia and joining Yugoslavia. But the neostashi did not want to hear about it. A war was looming, and Belgrade tried to curb it with the help of units of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), but the military was already on different sides barricades. Serb soldiers came to the defense of Krajina, and the fighting began.
Not without bloodshed in Slovenia. On June 25, 1991, the country declared its independence and demanded that Belgrade withdraw its army; the time for playing the confederate model of the state is over. Already at that time, Slobodan Milosevic, who headed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Yugoslavia, declared the decision of Ljubljana hasty and called for negotiations. But Slovenia was not going to talk and again demanded the withdrawal of troops, already in the form of an ultimatum. On the night of June 27, fighting began between the JNA and Slovenian self-defense units, which tried to take key military installations by force. For a week of battles, the victims numbered in the hundreds, but then the "world community" intervened and convinced the Yugoslav government to begin the withdrawal of the army, guaranteeing its safety. Seeing that it was useless to prevent the secession of Slovenia, Milosevic agreed, and on July 18 the troops began to leave the former Soviet republic.
On the same day as Slovenia, June 25, 1991, Croatia declared its independence, in which the war had been going on for almost half a year. The number of dead speaks of the fierceness of the fighting; according to the Red Cross, their number for the year amounted to ten thousand people! Croatian troops carried out the first ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Second World War: three hundred thousand Serbs fled the country in the same year. At that time, the Russian democratic press, which had kindergarten ideas about geopolitics, blamed Milosevic for everything: if he is a communist, then he is bad, but the fascist Tudjman leads the democratic party, which means he is good. Western diplomacy also adhered to this position, accusing Milosevic of plans to create a "Greater Serbia". But this was a lie, because the president demanded only autonomy for the Serbs who had settled in Western and Eastern Slavonia for centuries.
It is characteristic that Tudjman declared Zagreb, a city located just in Western Slavonia, the capital of Croatia; less than a hundred kilometers away was Knin, the capital of the historic Serbian Krajina. Fierce battles unfolded on the Zagreb-Knin line. The Croatian government, naturally supported by NATO countries, demanded the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops. But not a single Serbian soldier would have left Krajna, seeing the atrocities of the revived Ustashe. The JNA units, transformed into the Serbian Self-Defense Forces (for Milosevic nevertheless gave the order to withdraw troops), were led by General Ratko Mladic. By November 1991, troops loyal to him laid siege to Zagreb and forced Tudjman to negotiate.
The indignation of the "world community" knew no bounds. Since that time, the information blockade of the Serbs begins: all the Western media talk about their, mostly invented, crimes, but the Serbs themselves are deprived of the right to vote. Germany and the United States with their allies decide to punish them for their willfulness: in December 1991, the Council of Ministers of the EU (not the UN!) Imposes sanctions against Federal Yugoslavia (of which only Serbia and Montenegro remained by that time) allegedly for violating the UN ban on supply of weapons to Croatia. Somehow no attention was paid to the fact that Tudjman's gangs were armed no worse than the Serbs. Since then, the economic strangulation of Yugoslavia has begun.
The following facts speak about how the Croatian state gradually became. To begin with, the Ustasha symbols and the uniform of the army were restored. Honorary pensions were then awarded to Ustaše veterans and they received a special civil status; President Tudjman personally made one of these murderers a member of parliament. Catholicism was proclaimed the only state religion, although at least 20% of the Orthodox population still remained in the country. In response to such a "gift", the Vatican recognized the independence of Croatia and Slovenia earlier than Europe and the United States, and on March 8, 1993, the Pope of Rome cursed the Serbs from the window of his office overlooking St. Peter's Square and prayed before God for revenge! It got to the point that Tudjman began to seek the reburial of the remains of the main Croatian fascist Ante Pavelic from Spain. Europe was silent.
On November 21, 1991, the third union republic, Macedonia, declared its independence. She turned out to be more perspicacious than Slovenia and Croatia: first she got the UN to bring in peacekeeping troops, and then demanded the withdrawal of the JNA. Belgrade did not object, and the southernmost Slavic republic became the only one to secede without bloodshed. One of the first decisions of the government of Macedonia was the refusal of the Albanian minority to create an autonomous region in the west of the country - the Republic of Illyria; so the peacekeepers did not have to sit idle.
On December 9 and 10, 1991, in Maastricht, the heads of the 12 states of the European Economic Community (EEC) decide to recognize all the new states (Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia) within the boundaries corresponding to the administrative division of the former Yugoslavia. Purely conditional borders, hastily drawn by Tito's henchmen in 1943, in order to formally not give the Serbs more rights than all other peoples, are now recognized as state. In Croatia, the Serbs did not even get autonomy! But since it actually already existed (no one lifted the siege of Zagreb, and the Ustashe turned out to be strong only in words), they assign a certain “special status” to the extreme, which from now on will be guarded by 14,000 “blue helmets” (“UN peacekeeping” troops). The Serbs, albeit with reservations, are getting their way. The war ends, and self-government bodies are formed in Krajna. This small republic lasted a little over three years...
But Maastricht laid another ethnic mine. Until now, the most ethnically complex republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has not declared its independence. The southwestern part of the country has long been inhabited by Croats; it was part of the historical region of Dalmatia. In the north adjoining Slavonia, northwest, east (on the border with Serbia) and in most central regions the majority were Serbs. The Sarajevo region and the south were inhabited by Muslims. In total, 44% of Muslims, 32% of Orthodox Serbs, 17% of Catholic Croats, 7% of other nations (Hungarians, Albanians, Jews, Bulgarians, and so on) lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By "Muslims" we mean basically the same Serbs, but who converted to Islam during the years of the Turkish yoke.
The tragedy of the Serbs lies in the fact that the same people, divided by religion, shot at each other. In 1962, Tito ordered by special decree that all Yugoslav Muslims should henceforth be considered one nation. "Muslim" - has since been recorded in the "nationality" column. The situation was also difficult on the political stage. Back in 1990, in parliamentary elections, Croats voted for the Croatian Democratic Commonwealth (the Bosnian branch of the Tudjman party), Serbs for the Democratic Party (leader - Radovan Karadzic), Muslims for the Democratic Action Party (leader - Aliya Izetbegovic, he was also elected chairman of the parliament, i.e. head of state).
Regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina, on January 11, 1992, the following decision was made in Maastricht: the EEC recognizes its sovereignty if the majority of the population votes for it in a referendum. And again, according to the existing administrative boundaries! The referendum took place on February 29, 1992; he became the first page of the tragedy. Serbs did not come to vote, wishing to remain in Federal Yugoslavia, Croats and Muslims came to vote, but in total - no more than 38% of the total population. After that, in violation of all conceivable norms of democratic elections, the referendum was extended by Izetbegovic for another day, and many armed people in black uniforms and green headbands immediately appeared on the streets of Sarajevo - Aliya did not waste time to establish independence. By the evening of the second day, almost 64% had already voted, of course, the absolute majority was in favor.
The results of the referendum were recognized by the "world community" as valid. On the same day, the first blood was shed: a group of militants attacked a wedding procession passing by an Orthodox church. Serb who carried National flag(this is due to the Serbian wedding ceremony) was killed, the rest were beaten and wounded. Immediately, the city was divided into three districts, and the streets were blocked by barricades. The Bosnian Serbs, represented by their leader Karadzic, did not recognize the referendum and hastily, literally within a week, held their own referendum, where they voted for a single state with Yugoslavia. The Republika Srpska was immediately proclaimed with its capital in the city of Pale. The war, which seemed impossible a week ago, broke out like a stack of dry hay.
Three Serbias appeared on the map of the former Yugoslavia. The first is the Serbian Krajina in Croatia (the capital is Knin), the second is the Republika Srpska in Bosnia (the capital is Pale), the third is the Serbian Republic (the capital is Belgrade), part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, proclaimed in the spring of 1992, where Montenegro entered the second part ( capital - Podgorica). Belgrade, unlike the EEC and the US, did not recognize independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. Milosevic demanded an end to the riots in Sarajevo and the hostilities that began throughout the country, demanded guarantees of autonomy for the Bosnian Serbs, and called for the UN to intervene. At the same time, he ordered the troops to remain in the barracks for the time being, but to prepare for a possible evacuation; in the case of armed attempts to seize weapons depots and other military facilities - to defend. In response to the demands of Milosevic, Izetbegovic ... declared war on Serbia, Montenegro and the JNA on April 4, 1992, while signing an order on general mobilization. Further more.
In April 1992, the Croatian regular army invades the territory of Bosnia from the West (during the conflict, its number reached 100,000 people) and commits mass crimes against the Serbs. UN Security Council Resolution 787 directs Croatia to immediately withdraw its troops from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nothing of the sort followed. The UN was silent. But by resolution No. 757 of May 30, 1992, the UN Security Council imposes an economic embargo against Serbia and Montenegro! The trigger was an explosion in a market in Sarajevo, which most foreign observers in the city believe was carried out by Muslim terrorists.
On April 8, 1992, the United States recognized the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina; By that time, the war was already in full swing. From the very beginning of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the US ruling circles took an open anti-Serb position and unashamedly supported all the separatists. When it came to the creation of Serbian autonomy, the United States did everything to prevent this. The reasons for this behavior are not difficult to find. First, the desire to finally destroy the communist camp; The states understood very well that the Serbian people were the unifying element in Yugoslavia, and if hard times were arranged for them, the country would fall apart. Serbs in general, as representatives Orthodox civilization, never enjoyed the favor of the West.
Secondly, the oppression of the Serbs undermined the authority of Russia, which was unable to protect its historical allies; with this, the States showed all countries focused on the former Soviet Union that now they are the only superpower in the world, and Russia no longer has any weight.
Thirdly, the desire to find the support and sympathy of the Islamic world, with which strained relations because of the American position on Israel; oil prices directly depend on the behavior of the countries of the Middle East, which, due to American imports of petroleum products, have a significant impact on the US economy.
Fourth, support for Germany's position on the former Yugoslavia, in order to prevent even a hint of a divergence of interests among NATO countries.
Fifthly, the expansion of its influence in the Balkan region, which is one of the steps in the plan to create a new world order in which the United States will have absolute power; The writings of the ideologists of American imperialism such as Z. Brzezinski, F. Fukuyama, and so on testify to the fact that such sentiments dominate a part of American society. For this, it was supposed to create several "pocket" Balkan states, burdened with constant inter-ethnic conflicts. The existence of these midgets would be supported by the US and its instrument of the UN in exchange for a pro-American policy. Relative peace would be maintained by NATO military bases, which would have absolute influence over the entire Balkan region. Assessing the situation today, we can say that the United States has achieved what it wants: NATO reigns supreme in the Balkans...
At the turn of 1980-1990, only in Serbia and Montenegro, progressive forces, having dissociated themselves from the rotten leadership of the Union of Communists, torn apart by nationalist aspirations and unable to make any constructive decisions to save the country from collapse, took a different path. Having organized the Socialist Party, they came out under the slogan of maintaining a united, indivisible Yugoslavia and won the elections.
The Union of Serbia and Montenegro lasted until May 2006. In a referendum organized by the ardent Westerner Djukanovic, President of Montenegro, its population voted by a narrow majority for independence from Serbia. Serbia has lost access to the sea.
The next piece that will inevitably be torn away from Serbia is its historical core of Kosovo and Metohija, where there is practically no Serbian population left. It is also possible to separate from Serbia Vojvodina, in which the percentage of the Hungarian population is significant. Macedonia is also on the verge of collapse, having once accepted a large number of Albanians, who are now actively demanding autonomy.
Final, second in a row breakup of Yugoslavia occurred in 1991–1992. The first occurred in 1941 and was the result of the defeat of the Yugoslav kingdom at the beginning of World War II. The second was associated not only with the crisis of the socio-political system of Yugoslavia and its federal structure, but also with the crisis of the Yugoslav national identity.
So, if the unification of the Yugoslavs stemmed from their uncertainty in the ability to withstand and assert themselves as self-sufficient nations, being in a hostile environment, then the second disintegration was the result of this self-assertion, which, it must be admitted, happened precisely due to the existence of a federal state. At the same time, the experience of 1945–1991 also showed that the stake on collectivist interests, even in the mild regime of Yugoslav socialism, did not justify itself. The “time bomb” was the belonging of the Yugoslav peoples to three mutually
hostile civilizations. Yugoslavia was doomed to disintegration from the very beginning.
On December 18, 1989, in his report to the Parliament, the penultimate Prime Minister of the SFRY A. Markovic, speaking about the causes of the economic catastrophe in which Yugoslavia found itself, made a bitter but truthful conclusion - that the economic system of "market, self-governing, humane, democratic" socialism, which Tito created and which they have been building for more than 30 years with the help of Western loans and allies, in the conditions of 1989, without systematic annual subsidies from the IMF and other organizations, is not viable. In his opinion, in 1989 there are only two ways.
Either return to a planned economy, or with open eyes carry out a complete restoration of capitalism with all the ensuing consequences. The first way, according to A. Markovich, unfortunately, is unrealistic in the conditions of 1989, because it requires Yugoslavia to rely on the strength of the socialist community and the USSR, but under the leadership of Gorbachev, the socialist countries have weakened so much that it is unlikely not only for others, but for themselves can help. The second way is possible only if Western investments are provided in full.
Western capital must be given guarantees that it can buy whatever it pleases in Yugoslavia - land, factories, mines, roads, and all this must be guaranteed by a new federal law, which must be adopted immediately. Markovic turned to Western capital with a request to speed up investments and take control of their implementation.
A reasonable question may arise: why is it the United States, and at the same time the IMF and the West as a whole, which so generously financed the Tito regime, suddenly in the late 80s? stopped not only financial support, but also changed their policy towards Yugoslavia by 180 degrees? An objective analysis shows that in the 1950s-1980s, the West needed the Tito regime as a Trojan horse in the fight against the socialist community led by the Soviet Union. But everything comes to an end. Tito dies in 1980, and closer to the mid-80s. the Yugoslav mouthpiece of anti-Sovietism becomes completely unnecessary - the West has found the conductors of its destructive policy in the very leadership of the USSR.
On Yugoslavia, all in debt and without reliable allies, directs its eyes, blunted until the second half of the 1980s, and now again on fire, powerful German capital. By the beginning of the 1990s. West Germany, having swallowed the GDR, is indeed becoming the leading force in Europe. The alignment of internal forces in Yugoslavia by this time also favored the defeat. The partyocracy of the Union of Communists (UK) has completely lost its authority among the people. Nationalist forces in Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina receive systematically powerful support from Germany, the United States, Western monopolies, the Vatican, Muslim emirs and bigwigs. In Slovenia, the UK received only 7% of the vote, in Croatia no more than 13%. The nationalist Tudjman comes to power in Croatia, the Islamic fundamentalist Izetbegovic in Bosnia, the nationalist Gligorov in Macedonia, and the nationalist Kucan in Slovenia.
Almost all of them are from the same deck of the reborn Titov leadership of the UK. The sinister figure of Izetbegovic is especially colorful. He fought in World War II in the famous SS Khanjardivizia, which fought against the Soviet Army near Stalingrad, and also "became famous" as a punitive formation of the Nazis in the fight against the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. For his atrocities, Izetbegovic was tried in 1945 by the people's court, but he did not stop his activities, now in the form of a nationalist, fundamentalist, separatist.
All these odious figures, having been in opposition to the ruling elite of the Union of Communists for some time, were waiting in the wings. Tudjman and Kuchan are closely connected with German politicians and German capital, Izetbegovic - with Islamic extremists in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran. All of them, as if on command, put forward the slogans of separatism, secession from Yugoslavia, the creation of "independent" states, referring (irony of fate!) At the same time to the Leninist principle of the right of nations to self-determination up to secession.
Germany also pursued special interests. Having united itself two years before the start of the war in Yugoslavia, she did not want to see a strong state at her side. Moreover, the Germans had long-standing historical scores with the Serbs: the Slavs never submitted to the warlike Germans, despite two terrible interventions of the 20th century. But in 1990, Germany remembered its allies in the Third Reich - the Croatian Ustashe. In 1941, Hitler gave statehood to the Croats who had never had it before. Chancellor Kohl and German Foreign Minister Genscher did the same.
The first conflict arose in mid-1990 in Croatia, when Serbs, of whom there were at least 600,000 in the republic, expressed their will to remain part of federal Yugoslavia in response to growing demands for secession. Soon Tudjman is elected president, and in December the parliament (Sabor), with the support of Germany, adopts the country's constitution, according to which Croatia is an indivisible unitary state - despite the fact that the Serbian community, called the Serbian or Knin (after the name of its capital) Extreme, historically, with XVI century, existed in Croatia. The constitution of this former socialist republic of 1947 stated that Serbs and Croats were equal.
Now Tudjman declares the Serbs a national minority! Obviously, they do not want to put up with this, wanting to gain autonomy. In a hurry, they create police detachments to protect themselves from the Croatian "territorial defense troops". Krajna was proclaimed in February 1991 and announced its withdrawal from Croatia and joining Yugoslavia. But the neostashi did not want to hear about it. A war was looming, and Belgrade tried to curb it with the help of units of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), but the military was already on opposite sides of the barricade. Serb soldiers came to the defense of Krajina, and the fighting began.
Not without bloodshed in Slovenia. On June 25, 1991, the country declared its independence and demanded that Belgrade withdraw its army; the time for playing the confederate model of the state is over. Already at that time, Slobodan Milosevic, who headed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Yugoslavia, declared the decision of Ljubljana hasty and called for negotiations. But Slovenia was not going to talk and again demanded the withdrawal of troops, already in the form of an ultimatum. On the night of June 27, fighting began between the JNA and Slovenian self-defense units, which tried to take key military installations by force. For a week of battles, the victims numbered in the hundreds, but then the “world community” intervened and convinced the Yugoslav government to begin the withdrawal of the army, guaranteeing its safety. Seeing that it was useless to prevent the secession of Slovenia, Milosevic agreed, and on July 18 the troops began to leave the former Soviet republic.
On the same day as Slovenia, June 25, 1991, Croatia declared its independence, in which the war had been going on for almost half a year. The fierceness of the fighting is evidenced by the number of dead; according to the Red Cross, their number for the year amounted to ten thousand people! Croatian troops carried out the first ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Second World War: three hundred thousand Serbs fled the country in the same year. At that time, the Russian democratic press, which had kindergarten ideas about geopolitics, blamed Milosevic for everything: if he is a communist, then he is bad, but the fascist Tudjman leads the democratic party, which means he is good. Western diplomacy also adhered to this position, accusing Milosevic of plans to create a "Greater Serbia". But this was a lie, because the president demanded only autonomy for the Serbs who had settled in Western and Eastern Slavonia for centuries.
It is characteristic that Tudjman declared Zagreb, a city located just in Western Slavonia, the capital of Croatia; less than a hundred kilometers away was Knin, the capital of the historic Serbian Krajina. Fierce battles unfolded on the Zagreb-Knin line. The Croatian government, naturally supported by NATO countries, demanded the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops. But not a single Serbian soldier would have left Krajna, seeing the atrocities of the revived Ustaše. The units of the JNA, transformed into the Serbian Self-Defense Forces (for Milosevic nevertheless gave the order to withdraw troops), were led by General Ratko Mladic. By November 1991, troops loyal to him laid siege to Zagreb and forced Tudjman to negotiate.
The indignation of the "world community" knew no bounds. Since that time, the information blockade of the Serbs begins: all the Western media talk about their, mostly invented, crimes, but the Serbs themselves are deprived of the right to vote. Germany and the United States with their allies decide to punish them for their willfulness: in December 1991, the Council of Ministers of the EU (not the UN!) Impose sanctions against the Federal Yugoslavia (of which only Serbia and Montenegro remained by that time) allegedly for violating the UN ban for the supply of weapons to Croatia. Somehow no attention was paid to the fact that Tudjman's gangs were armed no worse than the Serbs. Since then, the economic strangulation of Yugoslavia has begun.
The following facts speak about how the Croatian state gradually became. To begin with, the Ustasha symbols and the uniform of the army were restored. Honorary pensions were then awarded to Ustaše veterans and they received a special civil status; President Tudjman personally made one of these murderers a member of parliament. Catholicism was proclaimed the only state religion, although at least 20% of the Orthodox population still remained in the country. In response to such a "gift", the Vatican recognized the independence of Croatia and Slovenia earlier than Europe and the United States, and on March 8, 1993, the Pope of Rome cursed the Serbs from the window of his office overlooking St. Peter's Square and prayed before God for revenge! It got to the point that Tudjman began to seek the reburial of the remains of the main Croatian fascist Ante Pavelic from Spain. Europe was silent.
On November 21, 1991, the third union republic, Macedonia, declared its independence. She turned out to be more perspicacious than Slovenia and Croatia: first she got the UN to bring in peacekeeping troops, and then demanded the withdrawal of the JNA. Belgrade did not object, and the southernmost Slavic republic became the only one to secede without bloodshed. One of the first decisions of the government of Macedonia was the refusal of the Albanian minority to create an autonomous region in the west of the country - the Republic of Illyria; so the peacekeepers did not have to sit idle.
On December 9 and 10, 1991, in Maastricht, the heads of the 12 states of the European Economic Community (EEC) decide to recognize all the new states (Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia) within the boundaries corresponding to the administrative division of the former Yugoslavia. Purely conditional borders, hastily drawn by Tito's henchmen in 1943, in order to formally not give the Serbs more rights than all other peoples, are now recognized as state. In Croatia, the Serbs did not even get autonomy! But since it actually already existed (no one lifted the siege of Zagreb, and the Ustashe turned out to be strong only in words), they assign a certain “special status” to the extreme, which from now on will be guarded by 14,000 “blue helmets” (“UN peacekeeping” troops). The Serbs, albeit with reservations, are getting their way. The war ends, and self-government bodies are formed in Krajna. This little republic lasted just over three years...
But Maastricht laid another ethnic mine. Until now, the most ethnically complex republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has not declared its independence. The southwestern part of the country has long been inhabited by Croats; it was part of the historical region of Dalmatia. In the north adjoining Slavonia, the northwest, the east (on the border with Serbia) and in most of the central regions, the majority were Serbs. The Sarajevo region and the south were inhabited by Muslims. In total, 44% of Muslims, 32% of Orthodox Serbs, 17% of Catholic Croats, 7% of other nations (Hungarians, Albanians, Jews, Bulgarians, etc.) lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By "Muslims" we mean basically the same Serbs, but who converted to Islam during the years of the Turkish yoke.
The tragedy of the Serbs lies in the fact that the same people, divided by religion, fired at each other. In 1962, Tito ordered by special decree that all Yugoslav Muslims should henceforth be considered one nation. "Muslim" - has since been recorded in the "nationality" column. The situation was also difficult on the political stage. Back in 1990, in parliamentary elections, Croats voted for the Croatian Democratic Commonwealth (the Bosnian branch of the Tudjman party), Serbs for the Democratic Party (leader - Radovan Karadzic), Muslims for the Democratic Action Party (leader - Aliya Izetbegovic, he was also elected chairman of the parliament , i.e. the head of the country).
Regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina, on January 11, 1992, the following decision was made in Maastricht: the EEC recognizes its sovereignty if the majority of the population votes for it in a referendum. And again, according to the existing administrative boundaries! The referendum took place on February 29, 1992; he became the first page of the tragedy. Serbs did not come to vote, wishing to remain in Federal Yugoslavia, Croats and Muslims came to vote, but in total - no more than 38% of the total population. After that, in violation of all conceivable norms of democratic elections, the referendum was extended by Izetbegovic for another day, and many armed people in black uniforms and green headbands immediately appeared on the streets of Sarajevo - Aliya wasted no time to establish independence. By the evening of the second day, almost 64% had already voted, of course, the absolute majority was in favor.
The results of the referendum were recognized by the "world community" as valid. On the same day, the first blood was shed: a group of militants attacked a wedding procession passing by an Orthodox church. The Serb who carried the national flag (this is the Serbian wedding ceremony) was killed, the rest were beaten and wounded. Immediately, the city was divided into three districts, and the streets were blocked by barricades. The Bosnian Serbs, represented by their leader Karadzic, did not recognize the referendum and hastily, literally within a week, held their own referendum, where they voted for a single state with Yugoslavia. The Republika Srpska was immediately proclaimed with its capital in the city of Pale. War, which seemed impossible a week ago, broke out like a stack of dry hay.
Three Serbias appeared on the map of the former Yugoslavia. The first is the Serbian Krajina in Croatia (the capital is Knin), the second is the Republika Srpska in Bosnia (the capital is Pale), the third is the Serbian Republic (the capital is Belgrade), part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, proclaimed in the spring of 1992, where Montenegro entered the second part (capital - Podgorica). Belgrade, unlike the EEC and the US, did not recognize independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. Milosevic demanded an end to the riots in Sarajevo and the hostilities that began throughout the country, demanded guarantees of autonomy for the Bosnian Serbs, and called for the UN to intervene. At the same time, he ordered the troops to remain in the barracks for the time being, but to prepare for a possible evacuation; in the case of armed attempts to seize weapons depots and other military installations, to defend themselves. In response to the demands of Milosevic, Izetbegovic ... declared war on Serbia, Montenegro and the JNA on April 4, 1992, while signing an order on general mobilization. Further more.
In April 1992, the Croatian regular army invades the territory of Bosnia from the West (during the conflict, its number reached 100,000 people) and commits mass crimes against the Serbs. UN Security Council Resolution 787 directs Croatia to immediately withdraw its troops from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nothing of the sort followed. The UN was silent. But by resolution No. 757 of May 30, 1992, the UN Security Council imposes an economic embargo against Serbia and Montenegro! The trigger was an explosion in a market in Sarajevo, which most foreign observers in the city believe was carried out by Muslim terrorists.
On April 8, 1992, the United States recognized the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina; By that time, the war was already in full swing. From the very beginning of the process breakup of Yugoslavia US ruling circles took an open anti-Serb stance and unashamedly supported all the separatists. When it came to the creation of Serbian autonomy, the United States did everything to prevent this. The reasons for this behavior are not difficult to find. First, the desire to finally destroy the communist camp; The states understood very well that the Serbian people were the unifying element in Yugoslavia, and if hard times were arranged for them, the country would fall apart. Serbs in general, as representatives of the Orthodox civilization, have never enjoyed the favor of the West.
Secondly, the oppression of the Serbs undermined the authority of Russia, which was unable to protect its historical allies; By doing this, the States showed to all countries oriented towards the former Soviet Union that now they are the only superpower in the world, and Russia no longer has any weight.
Thirdly, the desire to find the support and sympathy of the Islamic world, with which tense relations were maintained due to the American position on Israel; oil prices directly depend on the behavior of the countries of the Middle East, which, due to American imports of petroleum products, have a significant impact on the US economy.
Fourth, support for Germany's position on the former Yugoslavia, in order to prevent even a hint of a divergence of interests among NATO countries.
Fifthly, the expansion of its influence in the Balkan region, which is one of the steps in the plan to create a new world order in which the United States will have absolute power; The writings of the ideologists of American imperialism such as Z. Brzezinski, F. Fukuyama, etc. testify to the fact that such sentiments dominate a part of American society. For this, it was supposed to create several "pocket" Balkan states, burdened with constant inter-ethnic conflicts. The existence of these midgets would be supported by the US and its instrument of the UN in exchange for a pro-American policy. Relative peace would be maintained by NATO military bases, which would have absolute influence over the entire Balkan region. Assessing the situation today, we can say that the United States has achieved what it wants: NATO reigns supreme in the Balkans...
At the turn of 1980–1990. only in Serbia and Montenegro did the progressive forces, dissociating themselves from the rotten leadership of the Union of Communists, torn apart by nationalist aspirations and unable to make any constructive decisions to save the country from collapse, took a different path. Having organized the Socialist Party, they came out under the slogan of maintaining a united, indivisible Yugoslavia and won the elections.
The union of Serbia and Montenegro lasted until May 2006. In a referendum organized by the ardent Westerner Djukanovic, President of Montenegro, its population voted by a narrow majority for independence from Serbia. Serbia has lost access to the sea.
***Materials of the site www.publicevents.ru
