Yugoslavia

You ever heard of the Yugo, perhaps the worst car ever made? It's from Yugoslavia, or the former Yugoslavia. So what's up with Yugoslavia, and why is it so unique? As a communist nation, Yugoslavia was not exactly the most unified nation. The idea of Yugoslavia existed for some time and was seen as a union of the south Slavic people.

So Yugoslavia was created at the end of WWII when the Croat, Bosnian, and Slovenian territories broke from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They joined the Serbian Kingdom. However, WWII came and that messed up everything until Josip Broz Tito liberated the Nazi-occupied Croat area. Though it was communist, Yugoslavia broke from the Soviet sphere in 1948 and joined the Non-Aligned movement and developed a less centralized and repressive government. Sounds pretty good, right? You are correct. 

Now comes the problem. There are cultural and religious divisions between ethnic groups in the nation along with nationalist forces. Croats and Slovenes were Roman Catholic and used the Latin alphabet and were basically western-oriented. The Serbs, Macedonians, and Montenegrins were Eastern Orthodox and used Cyrillic. The Bosnians converted to Islam. Between these groups, there was a lot of conflict and killing and even genocides even after WWII. After the hero Tito died in 1980, the laws somehow gave all the power to Serbia and allowed it to control the other 8 provinces. Germany's reunification along with the fall of the mighty Soviet Union only further pointed toward Yugoslavia's dissolution.

Eastern European states moved away from communist government and toward free elections and market economies, the West’s attention focused away from Yugoslavia and undermined the extensive economic and financial support necessary to preserve a Yugoslav economy already close to collapse. The absence of a Soviet threat to the integrity and unity of Yugoslavia and its constituent parts meant that a powerful incentive for unity and cooperation was removed.

But that's not all. Enter Slobodan Milosevic, who took advantage of the vacuum created by a progressively weakening central state and deployed Serbian nationalism to gain power. As a banker in Belgrade, he then became involved in politics and became head of the Serbian Communist Party in 1986. After speaking about the harshness of Albanians, he became the symbol of Serbian nationalism. He then stripped Kosovo and Vojvodina of their constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy within Serbia by through rallies to force the local leadership to be transferred to his people. By mid-1989, Kosovo and Vojvodina became Serbia and Montenegro was basically controlled by Milosevic's allies.

Slovenia and Croatia, however, drifted away from communism and those two eventually declared sovereignty. Soon, Bosnia-Herzegovina also joined them. The formally left in 1991.

And thus, Yugoslavia was no more.

https://www.onthisday.com/europe/yugoslavia.php

https://allthingscruise.com/understanding-yugoslavia-why-did-it-break-up-in-the-1990s/

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/breakup-yugoslavia

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4997380.stm