One of the youngest nations of Europe, Yugoslavia was created after World War I as a homeland for several different rival ethnic groups. The country was put together mostly from remnants of the collapsed Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Demands for self-determination by Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and others were ignored. Yugoslavia thus became an uneasy association of peoples conditioned by centuries of ethnic and religious hatreds. World War II aggravated these rivalries, but Communist dictatorship after the war controlled them for 45 years. When the Communist system failed, the old rivalries reasserted themselves; and in the early 1990s the nation was rent by secessionist movements and civil war. Within several years these conflicts had drastically altered the size of the country.
As it existed in 1990, Yugoslavia was bounded on the north by Austria and Hungary, on the northeast by Romania, on the east by Bulgaria, on the south by Greece, and on the west by Albania, the Adriatic Sea, and Italy. It was 600 miles from north to south and 250 miles from west to east at its widest part. Its total area was 98,766 square miles. Three years later the country’s area had been reduced by 60 percent and its population of 23 million cut by more than half. The provinces of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina had seceded, leaving Serbia and Montenegro as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The description below covers Yugoslavia, as it existed prior to disintegration.
Yugoslavia has a mountainous terrain. The northwestern area consists of the Karawanken and Julian alps in Slovenia. The latter range contains Mount Triglav at 9,396 feet. The Dinaric Alps occupy much of the west with peaks reaching more than 8,000 feet. To the south the Sar Mountains and adjacent ranges belong to the Rhodope massif, which extends southward into Greece. The major area of flatland lies in the northeast and is part if the large Mid-Danube, or Pannonian, Plain. Along the shore of the Adriatic Sea is a small coastal plain known as the Dalmatian coast.
The longest river in Yugoslovia is the Sava, which flows from the Austrian border eastward for 584 miles to join the Danube at Belgrade. The Danube flows for 367 miles through Croatia and Serbia. Its major tributaries are the Sava, Dr...
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...icated by religious differences. Many of its residents, Serb and Croat alike, were Muslims. Serbs tended mostly to be Serbian Orthodox, while Croats were mostly Roman Catholic. These rivalries added to the ethnic hatreds. Croat and Serb Christians also turned their weapons on the Muslim minority.
A campaign of terrorism and genocide, which they termed ethnic cleansing, was started by the Serbs against Muslim. Many Muslims were killed outright. Muslim women were raped, and men and boys were put into concentration camps. At least two million people became refugees, and about 140,000 were missing – presumed dead.
By the end of 1992, Serb forces had occupied more than 70 percent of Bosnia. Many of its cities were in ruins, among them Sarajevo, the capital. The United Nations imposed economic sanctions but obtained no peace settlement. Croatia and Serbia had determined to divide Bosina between them, leaving small enclaves for Muslims to inhabit. In Serbia itself the sanctions had created havoc. Hyperinflation was running at the unparalled percentage rare of quadrillions per year, posing a threat to the survival of the state.
In fact, sometimes it is actively encouraged as part of preserving the culture and the traditional aspects of the nation in question; for example, routine celebrations of national holiday and the wearing of cultural clothing demonstrate moderate forms of nationalism. However, it is when extreme pride in one’s nation leads to acts that contravene common decency that the forces of nationalism become dangerous. A historical example of such an event was the Bosnian war and the resulting Bosnian genocide that occurred shortly after the partition of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s. In this event, extreme Serbian nationalism called for the unity of the Serbian peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina - an event that echoes the words of the source. Serbian leaders and followers believed that their culture and people were superior to that of the neighbouring ethnic groups - the Bosniaks and the Croatians - and thought that they needed to be eliminated because of the potential threat they posed to the establishment of an autonomous Serbian Republic, or “Greater Serbia”. In the course of the war, and the ethnic cleansing that followed, more than 100,000 Bosniaks and Croatians were to be killed in a mass act of genocide. This appalling and gruesome figure shows the extent to which extreme nationalism is unacceptable and how unification of a people by force is both detrimental and wrong on all
In 1992 (and with resolutions created earlier) Kosovo's Albanian majority also voted to secede from Serbia and Yugoslavia, hoping to unite with Albania. The conflict in Kosovo could be seen as t...
policies of President Trudjman. Ethnic Serbs were opposing Slobodan. Milosevic. The case of Bosnia is slightly more complex with both. ethnic Serbs and ethnic Croats identifying themselves as Bosnians.
Genocide, the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. From 1992-1995 that was happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, conflict between the three main ethnic groups, the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, resulted in genocide committed by the Serbs against the Muslims in Bosnia.
The Split between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1948 occurred due to a conflict of interest between Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin, the respective leaders of the Nations. Through this essay, my aim is to highlight the causes of the dispute and then discuss the consequences of the split for both the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The period of 1948-1955 was known as the Informbiro and the distinguishing features of this period were conflict and schism between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The main causes for the Split were the implementation of the Cominform, Yugoslav role in the civil war in Greece, and the personalities of the leaders. Tito’s popularity and political position were both strengthened by his role in the liberation of Yugoslavia in World War II and also his survival of Stalin’s 1930s purges.
Yugoslavia came to be because of a group of people wanted their own nation, and worked out as the Allies of Britain wondered what could come of dominating the Austro-Hungarians. The beginning of Yugoslavia is well known, but why did the country fall apart completely? As stated in the thesis, there was always a sense of nationality and diversity between the republics of the nation. The six never came together as one nation, and if there would have, many of Yugoslavia 's conflicts would have ceased to happen.
- Review of reasons why there was a split between the Serbs, Croats and Muslins.
Genocide is the act of killing a lot of people, depending on their race, ethnicity, and religion. There are 8 stages of genocide, which include extermination and denial. The victims of the Bosnian genocide consists of elders, women, men, children, and even babies. The Bosnian genocide is a war between Bosnian Serbians and Bosnian Muslims to which the republic can control Bosnia. Many Serbains deny the fact that his genocide even happened, even though there is scientific proof that this genocide happened.
Millions on millions were killed and even more were harmed, starved, and worked to near death. Eventually an international effort was created, a war against Germany, The Nazis, and the Axis powers. They were stopped, but only after millions had already been killed. On the other hand, an estimated two million Armenians were killed in the Ottoman empire. At least a million others were deported. After the Central Powers were defeated, the genocide ended because the perpetrators no longer had power. In most cases, these situations are ended by other countries uniting together to end these
On April 24, 1915 the Armenian genocide began. 1 million and 5 hundred-thousand people got killed because of Turkish government. Many of them got raped, enslaved and murdered. For instance, they drowned people in rivers, burned them alive, executed and etc. They also kidnapped children and sent to Turkish families. In many places, Turkish people rapped and used Armenian women as a slave. “The Armenians marched by Turkish soldiers” picture in “artvoice.com” website shows the Armenians nearby prison in Mezierh by armed Turkish soldiers. Also only 25% Armenians deported to the deserts of Syria and Iraq. After the war between Armenian and Turks, only 380’000 Armenian remained in the Ottoman Empire. In June 1915, 25 percent of the Armenian population was deported t...
The Night of Broken Glass, or the Krystal Naught, is a prime example of how dire the situation grew for Jews as their homes, businesses, and churches were destroyed. The true genocide, or race killing, began when Jews were collected up and sent to concentration or work camps. It was in these camps that they would be tortured, murdered, or worked like slaves. As World War 2 neared its end, Hitler put into act what he called the Final Solution, a last ditch effort to eliminate Judism in Europe, in which he killed over six million of them.
The Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide had many similarities and differences in their course of events. Unfortunately, genocides like the Jewish Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide still continue to happen today. Jews were constantly persecuted before the Holocaust because they were deemed racially inferior. During the 1930’s, the Nazis sent thousands of Jews to concentration camps. Hitler wanted to wipe out all the European Jews in a plan called The “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” (World History).
... that other republics felt to the need to be the same so that they did not become disadvantaged. Exaggeration was an integral part of the huge amounts of propaganda being beamed at the common people, all in an attempt to imbue them with the nationalist ideologies (Rogel 45). The Serb death count at Jasenovac was a wildly varying number, grossly overinflated by the Serbs and downplayed by the Croats. The Serbs even asserted that the Bosnia was just an administrative creation of Tito, designed to thwart the rights of the Serbs (Rogel 43). The Croats countered that the whole Yugoslav system under the communists had been run for the benefit of the Serbs, and Croatia had borne the economic brunt of it. All of this propaganda was disseminated in order to make the common get people feeling anxious enough that they felt it was necessary to take up arms to defend themselves.
Croatia intended to break away from Yugoslavia to become an independent country, while Serbians living in Croatia, supported the Yugoslavian war efforts. They combated the withdrawal that Croatia wanted because they wanted Croatia to stay under the control of Yugoslavia, because the Serbs sought to be a new state with new borders in parts of Croatia. The Serbs envisioned themselves as the majority in the country order to bring to make this vision a reality the Serbs attempted to takeover as much of Croatia as they could.
Most war victims during the Kosovo War were considered victims of ethnic cleansing, which is the internationally condemned practice of driving out members of other nationalities from territories that had been part of the SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) . All of this began with the presidency of Slobodan Milosevic in 1988 who was president of the Serbian League of Communists and also Serbia a year later. He began a campaign to reassert communist dominance as well as Serb dominance. He purged into countries such as Croatia and transformed its army from one that wanted to preserve Yugoslavia to one that wanted unification of all Serb populated territories and eventually create a Greater Serbia. A way that Milosevic felt he could achieve that task was through a strategy of ethnic cleansing and the expulsion and massacres of the non-Serbs.