When, at the end of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Monarchy collapsed and large parts of Europe were rearranged, the opportunity arose to resurrect an old dream. In the 19th century, intellectuals, especially in Croatia, had been pushing the "Illyrian Movement. In , southern Slav representatives from Austria-Hungary — including Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and representatives of the Serbian state that had already been founded in — met on the Greek island of Corfu.
Together they agreed to announce the founding of a common state. This proved to be a fatal birth defect. Already at the time, the political debate was marked by fierce contrasts between Serbia's centralist state concept and the Croats' and Slovenes' desires for a federal system.
Read more: Redrawing Balkan borders is still a bad idea. Now the seat of the Serbian Parliament, this imposing edifice in Belgrade served as the Yugoslavian Parliament from its completion in until the country's dissolution. This is another reason why, since the s, it has been increasingly claimed, especially in Croatia, that Yugoslavia — like the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire — was a "prison of nations" in which Croats and Slovenes were oppressed by Serbs.
Historians, however, largely contradict this view. According to Brunnbauer, while Serbia saw itself as the victorious power of the First World War — in which it had bloodily fought for the independence of the new, common state — Croats and Slovenes wanted to liberate themselves from Austro-Hungarian rule in order finally to live in a country in which they had equal rights. Statehood was not very popular. Yugoslavia was wanted by many.
Read more: Hero worship and villain worship in the Balkans. The Communist revolutionary Tito, who later served as president for life, organized the Yugoslav Partisans resistance that expelled the Axis powers from Yugoslavia in This is perhaps exactly why the new state did not break apart with the internal tensions.
Instead, it was decimated from the outside in when Germans and Italians occupied Yugoslavia. In the second Yugoslavia emerged from the struggle against the occupiers. The United States recognized the Kingdom of Serbia as a sovereign nation on October 14, , with the signing of consular and commercial agreements between the two nations.
Acting Secretary of State Frank Polk. The United States considered this new state as the successor state to the Kingdom of Serbia. Diplomatic relations between the U. Consul General Eugene Schuyler presented his credentials to the government of Serbia. At this time, the American Legation in Belgrade was established, though Schuyler was resident at Athens. The Government of Yugoslavia went into exile in England on April 14, , in anticipation of German occupation.
Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr. He presented his new credentials on November 3, On September 28, , the Government of Yugoslavia was transferred to Egypt. Lincoln MacVeagh , the U. The Government of Yugoslavia was transferred yet again to England in On July 1, , Rudolf E. Schoenfeld was designated U. Ambassador near the Government of Yugoslavia Established in England.
Kosovo's Albanian population was restive too. Albanians were not Slavs and were bitter that Kosovo had not been able to join the newly independent Albania which proclaimed its independence in Macedonian nationalists also resented the new state. So Yugoslavia lurched from crisis to crisis until finally it collapsed, with barely a fight, in - when attacked by Nazi Germany and Mussolini's fascist Italy. The country was carved up.
A tiny extreme fascist quisling clique, known as the Ustashas, was installed in power in the Croatian capital Zagreb. They began a campaign of terror and genocide directed especially at the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia. Resistance soon began to emerge. In Serbia so-called Chetnik forces loyal to the old Serbian-dominated Yugoslav order began to fight, and so did a communist dominated resistance under the half-Slovene half-Croat Josip Broz - also known as Tito.
While Yugoslavia was occupied and resistance was directed against the occupiers, in fact the majority of those who died, did so in fighting between nationalists of various stripes - royalists, communists, quislings and so on. Tito's forces, however, soon gained the recognition and help of the Allies. They also offered an ideal - a dream of 'brotherhood and unity' - that would link the nations or peoples of Yugoslavia.
By Tito's forces were victorious, and crucially, although the Soviet Red Army had helped in the struggle, it had now moved on to central Europe.
So Tito, not Moscow, would shape the new state. But Tito was a communist, loyal to Stalin. He wanted to model his country on the Soviet Union, so a federal state of six republics was proclaimed Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia. Stalin was wary of Tito, however, and in the two fell out.
Yugoslavia was expelled from the communist bloc but Tito did not fall from power, as many had expected. He survived, and began to chart an independent course for the nation he ruled. Over the next 40 years Yugoslavia changed beyond recognition. It developed its own brand of socialism, and a society far more open than that of its communist neighbours.
For them, and for many communists around the world, Yugoslavia seemed to be a paradise on earth. At home the federation appeared to have solved the bitter national questions of the past, living standards were high and, unlike in other communist countries, citizens were free to travel to the west, either to work or to take holidays.
Tito's Yugoslavia also gained enormous prestige as a founder of the non-aligned movement, which aimed to find a place in world politics for countries that did not want to stand foursquare behind either of the two superpowers. Despite all this, and although there was much substance to Tito's Yugoslavia, much was illusion too.
The economy was built on the shaky foundations of massive western loans. Even liberal communism had its limits, as did the very nature of the federation. Stirrings of nationalist dissent in Croatia and Kosovo were crushed. The federation worked because in reality the voice of only one man counted - that of Tito himself. They had been prepared for his demise with the slogan 'After Tito - Tito'.
But there was no new Tito. Without him the state began to unravel, as the governments of the republics began to exercise the powers that were due to them under the constitution.
Dissent began to grow. Serbs complained of persecution at the hands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Croats and Slovenes resented the fact that money earned from tourists in their republics went to subsidise poorer parts of Yugoslavia, such as Kosovo. Albanians there demonstrated for their own republic, and even for secession and union with Albania. Managing these strains and crises was hard enough, but by the late s some people began to sense that communism itself was in question.
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