The Factors That Caused The Breakup Of Yugoslavia

Following the fall of the “Iron Curtain”, historical events took place in Europe and reflected its development. Two parallel processes were developing on the European continent – one of the unification of the two Germanies and the other of the breakup of multinational federations. There was no longer a bipolar model in Europe and in the world, but national problems were growing. Conflicts of an interethnic basis emerged. They lead to the collapse of artificially created multiethnic communities. New countries were revealed, relying mainly on national ideas for their future development, in complete contrast to European values, the ideas of democracy and the aspirations of United Europe. Attempts have been made to reshape borders and to homogenize the ethnic composition. By 1989-1990, nationalities in multinational European countries lived in such a way intertwined with one another and reminded of the great empires until the middle of the nineteenth century

After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, national problems intensified, which until now have been overwhelmed by the ideological opposition of the Cold War. Emerging conflicts were mostly ethnic, religious or national. This has been most relevant to the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In the 1980s, the Yugoslav federation and the Communist Party – the Union of Yugoslav Communists (SUC) – were in a severe crisis, and that led to the emerged of pure nationalism in individual federal units. In them, the political, state and economic interests of their own national republic stand above the federation, seeking ways to break the ties with Belgrade and create independent states.

By an unwritten rule, they do not take their hand out of the weapon of nationalism. A hardly convincing truth was that aggressive nationalism which comes out on the public surface when the political foundations of a state system were shaken as a result of conflicting economic and social problems or when there was a combination of a political and economic crisis. Jenő Szűcs has tried to display, conceptualizing the European continent as a unitary entity is rather controversial, since the cultural, political and economic developments that occurred throughout the continent have been substantially different and led into different understandings of state, nation, ethnicity, religion and their relationships (Szűcs, 1996, pp. 7-8). The prerequisites for the disintegration of the SFRY have been pending since its creation as there were huge discrepancies between the cultural and religious habits of different ethnic groups and economic development in the different federal regions. Yugoslavia failed where both Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire failed: creating a state capable of embracing the same nations that were seeking auto-determination and independence since centuries.

Political reasons for the collapse of Yugoslavia

Political reasons can be seen as a foreign policy that reflects the country’s position in the international situation and domestic politics, which take the social roots of disintegration and “seeking for” their country in the complex international climate of the Cold War.

Belgrade, immediately after the World War and the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, implemented a Greco-Serbian policy pursuing its true goal of “infusing” the rest of the peoples into the Serbian nation through aggressive integration. This inevitably led to a confrontation, tension internationally, and enmity not only to the Croats and the Slovenes but also to the other peoples in the kingdom. This extremely colorful picture of ethnicity with different cultures, traditions, and beliefs has been subjected to pressure and forceful political decisions inevitably leads to a conflict. The foreign policy of the governments of the SFRY can be characterized as very flexible in the rest of the world. The undisputed leader of the Yugoslav federation – the Yugoslav of Croatian origin Josip Broz Tito

Yugoslav foreign policy during this period can be distinguished as a rift between the East and the West (this is also recognized by Moscow and Washington) as continuous “slaloms” between the two blocks. Because of its geo-strategic position SFRY – was a kind of political, economic and ideological bridge between East and West, forcing the two blocks to exclude multinational Balkan state of their accounts direct control over it and look for – adequate roads to Belgrade

The economic basis of the crisis

The impact of the economy on international relations have been a problem that requires special attention. The economic factor is one of the most important in the international relations of any multinational state, including in former Yugoslavia. The way in which funds are created and their distribution in the federal state has been the core of relations between republics and nations. The international relations have an economic aspect. With their non-economic content (political, cultural, moral, individual – psychological basis) they influence economic development.

During the last decade of the federation, the economic aspect of national politics in the SFRY become crucial. The notion that the national question in Yugoslavia was an economic question. The best characterization of the state and trends in the Yugoslavian economy give some general economic processes and indicators. The economic development of the country in the 1980s has been stagnant, which qualifies as an economic crisis. The main features of the crisis were: the fall in labor output, the huge scale of inflation, the decline in living standards and rising unemployment

Economic differentiation between the Republics

To clarify the economic basis of the national controversies in the SFRY as a prerequisite for the Federation’s disintegration in the 1980s, it is necessary to address problems of the country’s regional development. It has two main parameters: interregional and intra-regional. In a multinational state based on federal principles, interregional relations are a sensitive sphere. It is here where the question of economic and any other equality is the most common.

Yugoslavia has a relatively developed North and less developed South. The industrialization emerging in England and Western Europe reaches first to Slovenia, Croatia, and Vojvodina. The southern regions of Sava and the Danube were not only geographically separated, but they also experience the consequences of the centuries-old occupation of a feudal regime that leaves nothing behind it, which contributed to the modern development.

Upon the creation of the federation, Slovenia was the most developed republic, much more developed than Croatia and Vojvodina and even more so than Serbia. Economic differentiation between Slovenia and other parts of Yugoslavia was a reality that affects the relations. Croatia and Vojvodina form the next group of economic development. Croatia has an advantage over all comparative criteria and development of the productive forces and the structure of the economy. Vojvodina compensates for this with developed agriculture, which affects the per capita public product. Slovenia, Croatia, and Vojvodina refer to the developed regions of Yugoslavia. The rest of the republics and the Autonomous Community of Kosovo were below the Middle East level and refer to the underdeveloped republics. Among them, a special place belongs to Serbia without the Autonomous Communities, which, in all the most important indicators, were below the Middle Eastern level. Fourth were, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. The Autonomous Community of Kosovo was at the fifth-highest point in the economic development of the various regions of the SFRY. It lags considerably, even from the three underdeveloped republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia). This was for a certain demographic peculiarity

The differences in the economic development between the different republics become one of the main factors that periodically complicate the relations in the country. Ignoring these differences would hide the truth because they were at the root of economic contradictions.

Cultural, Historical and Religious Ethnic Reasons

Socio-cultural sources of the crisis

In the Balkans, the historical layering dates back many millennia. Many peoples lived on the lands of the peninsula and everyone left a trace of remembrance. If we look back at the old maps, we will see how the Balkans looked like a hundred years ago. There were two great empires and five small states on the peninsula. Bulgaria after the Berlin Congress was divided into the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, Austro-Hungary collapsed, and Serbia remained a small state at the top of the peninsula. A phrase by the English humorist writer Henry-Munro Saki, who resided as a pennant on the peninsula, became popular for the Balkans as a whole. Saki states that the Balkans produce more history than they can consume. This conclusion has been repeatedly confirmed during the Yugoslav and Kosovo crisis. There was something remarkable about Saki’s fate – he finds his death on the battlefields of the First World War in the Balkans.

Two major events, corresponding to two major political failures, came with the end of the First World War: the collapse and disaggregation of the two major actors that shaped the history of the European continent in previous centuries, the Ottoman and Habsburg empires that failed in their attempt to resist and refuse ethnic or nationalist principles. Their obvious failure was that the principle of nationalism have been completely anchored to the minds of the masses, bringing to completion the merging of ethnic and national concepts and the third phase of Hroch, that of mass mobilization (Hann, 2006, p. 403).

Clarifying the essence of the national controversies that lead to the disintegration of the FYRG implies that they should be considered in relation and interdependence with all aspects of public relations.It can be concluded that the essence of national contradictions in Yugoslavia was not exhausted by the various material interests of the republics and the autonomous regions. Under the influence of these factors, contradictions arise in different spheres of the spiritual life of society. Culture, science, education, religion are precisely those spheres of social life in which controversies are exacerbated. It is in them that the national contradictions, on the basis of which are economic problems, form and the different nations communicate through the spiritual. The differentiation of different cultures, their opposition, and closure at republican borders, violates the natural processes of spiritual communication in a multinational state, deepens and exacerbates the national contradictions between individual republics and individual regions.

The emergence of national contradictions in the spiritual sphere of Yugoslav society in the 1980s results from two trends. One of them seeks to unite cultural life and its centralization, ignoring the specifics of national cultures. Most of the supporters have this trend in the Republic of Serbia. The Serbs assert the thesis of a unified language and a unified culture, and that was their language and culture, which underestimates the cultural individuality of other peoples. The other tendency is radically opposed. It highlights the peculiarity of the specific cultures and underestimates those factors that bring together and unite the national cultures.

Religious Confrontation

Explaining the socio-cultural basis of national contradictions in the SFRY implies the consideration of a very important factor that in the 1980s increasingly influenced the social and political life of the country – the church. The confessional dimension of the crisis was conditioned by the devaluation of ideology and the weakening of SOUC’s(Union of Yugoslav Communist) influence. It compromises ideals and poems, and to devalue the moral values of socialism. In the spiritual life of the country, have been a vacuum that is filled with religious influence. In intense international and inter-state relations, the church was trying to play the role of a defender of the nation’s interests. This role is to a certain extent conditioned by the relationship between religion and nationalism.

In the disintegrating Yugoslavia, the connection between the national affiliation and religious beliefs of the believers can be considered very strong. It depends not only on religion but on the specific historical circumstances of the country. The Yugoslav Federation was characterized by the fact that three world religions were confessed within its borders. Historically, these religions are associated with different civilizations – the Christian world and the Islamic Orient. Historically, nations in Yugoslavia was formed around a particular religion; Slovenians and Croats accept Catholicism; Serbs, Montenegrins and the population of Macedonia – the Eastern Orthodox faith, and the Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albanians – Islam.

In a federation such as Yugoslavia, where there were three cultures closely linked to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Muslim religions, controversies with high conflict. Unfortunately, the boundaries between individual cultures are substantial and will become insurmountable in the foreseeable future. At their core was the forming influence of world religions.

Nationalisms

Self-governance was conceived as an anti-stale model of socialism as a special, specific form of development of the socialist society in Yugoslavia, which should be based on the widespread use of democratic institutions in the political sphere. The development of processes in Eastern Europe in the 1980s created a more distinctive setting to highlight a particular aspect of these contradictions. During this period the contradictions between the realization of the essence of self-government, such as the decentralization of the public life and the tendency for decentralization imposed by the political practice, were manifested. Parallel to the decentralization of economic life the intervention of the state and, to a large extent, of the party bodies intensifies. Self-governance as a political idea involves the problem of democratizing national relations, balancing union and Republican interests, creating real opportunities for the independent development of individual republics in the multinational state. According to Yugoslavian theory, in the system of self-governance, the nation is a community that overcomes both national and state borders. In fact, the problems and the results in building self-government, the transition from political idea to political practice and realization of this process cannot be seen unambiguously. Generally, the reason for not realizing an idea is its inadequacy of the specific conditions and of the determined democratization of society.

The most distinctive form of expression of the various contradictions between the republics and the SFRY in the decade before its disintegration is the various nationalism. Nationalism arises where national contradictions do not find their solution where national egotism takes hold and does not encounter a counter-act. The ideology of nationalism starts from the same preconditions and arrives at the same conclusions. It always starts with some denigration of a nation and striving to repair the severe damage done to this nation by time and society.

Serbian nationalism relies on the idea of threatening the Serb nation. Its purpose is to convince society that the Serbian people in Yugoslavia have received nothing but has lost everything that has been broken and subjected to the attacks of other peoples that all great benefits in the federal community are being used to its detriment.

Croatian nationalism is characterized by attempts to create psychosis and the threat to the split of the Croatian people. The propaganda, emphasized the threats of Croatian culture and intelligence and the threat of Serbian infiltration.

The Slovenian, Macedonian and other types of nationalism are also based on the idea of the nation’s threats and denigration. This idea contains a strong emotional charge and affects broad sections of society.

The manifestations of nationalism in Yugoslav society in the 1980s were conditioned by many economic, socio-cultural and political factors. Their impact in the context of a deep crisis has led the federation to the brink of disintegration and to the heavy confrontation between nationalities. Particularly strong, over the period under review, Greco-Serbian nationalism and chauvinism. Its main features are expressed in the desire to emphasize the superiority of Serbian national history and culture and territorial claims to Bosnia and Herzegovina and much of Croatia. The idea of “great Serbia” is central to Serbian nationalism, and the slogan “Serb unite!”. During the period under review, tries to redeem himself for the missed chances of the Serbian people to create a national state within their ethnic boundaries.

The stereotypes of Serbian nationalism contain the tendency to challenge the national individuality of Montenegrins and Macedonians and the ethnic distinctiveness of Muslims in the SFRY. An attempt is being made to appropriate cultural heritage not only to these peoples but also to the Croatian (for example, the treatment of Dubrovnik and the old Dalmatian and Dubrovnik literature). It is characterized by extreme, intolerance towards Albanians and their presence in Kosovo, and assimilation tendencies towards minorities

Conclusion

In retracing the history of the Balkan region, it is clear how the breakup of Yugoslavia had to be a logical consequence of the events that continuously shaped the region. There were no ideologies strong enough to overcome the failure The Habsburg and Ottoman empires introduced some new cleavages but failed. With the 19 and 21 centuries, the seed of nationalism reached its peak with the fading of the empires. However, the Balkans embarked themselves in another attempt to create supra-national state entities such as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. This happened probably because of the identity confusion of its composing nationalities on whether they belonged to a narrower nation or a broader concept of Southern Slavism and, at the same time, due to Serbia’s hegemonic and Eastern European

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