[vrganj]

The fall of Yugoslavia was a horrible tragedy and a stark example of the horrors of nationalism.

Neighbors, brothers, friends, who spoke the same language and occupied the same cultural space, suddenly reduced to their narcissism of small differences and committing horrible atrocities in the name of a tribe.

And for what? For the chance of living in a dysfunctional rump state with nowhere near the relevance of what they used to have.

[ungovernableCat]

If Yugoslavia had survived it'd have the relevance of maybe a combined Bulgaria and Romania today.

Slovenia and Croatia were the most developed parts of it and would be burdened by fiscal transfers to undeveloped regions of Bosnia Macedonia and Kosovo. I'd argue Croats and Slovenians enjoy a higher quality of living with a government that can focus on the needs of its own citizens.

You don't need political relevance or even resources to develop a great country. Look at Denmark as an example.

[imiric]

I think you're underestimating the significance of Yugoslavia in its heyday (~1960-1980).

It was a major political power not just in the region, but globally. Tito led and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement, and effectively maintained sovereignty during the peak of the Cold War. It had a unique liberal flavor of socialism, where people enjoyed high standards of living, intellectual and cultural freedoms, freedom of movement (the Yugoslav passport was accepted globally), housing as a social right, decent wages, universal healthcare, etc. People were generally very happy. This is a big reason why "Yugonostalgia" still persists today.

Yes, the regime could be considered a dictatorship, with a strong police presence, and there are documented human rights violations, but it was far from an oppressive country.

Slovenia and Croatia were indeed wealthier than other regions, but the fiscal burden you mention is part of the socialist system that ensures a respectable standard of living for everyone. This doesn't work if there's a large wealth disparity between regions.

Yugoslavia was an interesting country with a unique political and social model which was not perfect, but IMO had less faults than the systems we have today. I think it's shortsighted to say that it would have the relevance of Bulgaria and Romania today.

[justsomehnguy]

> Yes, the regime could be considered a dictatorship, with a strong police presence, and there are documented human rights violations, but it was far from an oppressive countr

I can bet a half case of Guinness what if you describe that to a modern American sans the mention of the country most whould confirm what this is what happening now.

Oh Hystory, YSOAB.

[gessha]

Bulgaria almost joined but negotiations broke through at the last moment and then Georgi Dimitrov passed away, killing the momentum.

[revolution88]

When you say it like that, it sounds like we didn't have a side that started all wars, like we killed each other for fun. And it was all because of the "all Serbs in one state" ideology.

[vrganj]

Brate, this is exactly the toxic nationalism that caused this all.

No side is without blame. Everyone did horrible things, everyone is trying to tune out their own atrocities and emphasize the ones committed by the others.

Yes, the Serbs did horrible crimes. But ask the population of Mostar if the Croats were without blame. Ask Serbs how they felt about their treatment by Bosniaks in Čelebići.

As long as we keep this pretense of "our side good, other side bad", we are falling for the same trap that caused this mess in the first place.

Bratstvo i jedinstvo, a ništa drugo.

[revolution88]

ICTY has the same conclusion as you, except it is totally opposite :) It can't be only "everyone did horrible things", and to talk the same about the aggressor and the victims. Yes, all sides did SOME horrible things, but one side started all of it, did the majority of the horrible things, and has 99% of the ones prosecuted by ICTY. What the hell was JNA doing in Bosnia when Bosnia was an independent country? Gradjanski rat, ali u qrcu. Bratstvo i jedinstvo umrlo s Titom.

[vrganj]

This whole category of thinking in terms of sides is the problem in the first place. Thinking in these categories only strengthens the nationalist prosecution complex that drives the hatred in the first place.

Which subethnicity started it or whatever doesn't fucking matter., this whole line of thinking only leads to more hatred, more destruction, more dysfunction.

As a Croat, my enemy is not my fellow Yugoslav, my enemy is the nationalist thugs on all sides that destroyed my country so they could rule over their hateful little fiefdoms.

Bratstvo i jedinstvo is coming back, under a blue flag with yellow stars. Montenegro is joining the EU next, with Schengen etc bratstvo i jedinstvo between crna gora and hrvatska will be restored.

[foobarian]

I think the problem is every tribe/nation/area has a percent of psychopaths (the estimates are 1 in 25), and if they run unchecked they end up doing evil things. This can then echo as the other side seeks retribution, etc. It takes significant effort to stomp out the fire.

[vrganj]

The only way to stop the fire is to stop blaming others for their fires.

[dccoolgai]

The tricky thing about that is it depends "what period of time" you choose to look at. When the Serbs had the upper hand in the 90s, yes - a lot of the aggression was due to their actions... But if you choose to look 50 years before that, it was the Croat ustazi allied with Nazis slaughtering Serbs wholesale, to the point where even the Nazis themselves were appalled... A little while before that, it was the Bosniaks/Muslims impaling everyone else with the backing of the Ottomans.

It's more accurate to say "whoever had the upper hand at a given time" was using their temporary advantage to terrorize the others over the last couple centuries.

Given this, it's easy to understand why Serbs wouldn't want their friends and families living in states administered by people who were massacring them with the backing of Nazis and/or Ottomans within a generation.

It doesn't justify the atrocities of the Milosevic era, and it's still technically correct that "yes, the Serbs were the lone bad guys" but only if you choose to look at a certain decade and pretend history doesn't exist before that: which is very much how the American news media at the time "sold it" to justify U.S. involvement in the region.

[vasac]

So Croats and Muslims fought each other bloodily because all Serbs wanted to live in one state? Funnily enough, they were already living in one state - Yugoslavia - so they certainly had no reason to start the war.

[imiric]

I agree that it was a tragedy, but the cultural and religious tensions have existed in the Balkans for centuries. Tito's strong leadership, charisma, "bratstvo i jedinstvo", etc., managed to keep it together, often by sheer force that suppressed nationalism. After he died, all it took for it to fall apart was a group of small-minded political pawns that filled the vacuum and infected the masses with their narrative, along with external influence from all sides that wanted their own piece of the pie.

Today each country might not be as relevant as Yugoslavia once was, but there's relative peace in the region, and the countries that are part of the EU today are significantly better off in many ways than they were before. It's a miracle that the Yugoslav experiment lasted as long as it did, so perhaps we should accept that the only way southern slavs can coexist is in independent states.

Pozdrav!

[collabs]

I saw a YouTube short video recently that claimed something that might seem obvious to many but not to me — it claimed then Prime Minister of UK and the President of France were displeased by the reunification of Germany because their own countries' relative status would go down. Is this really how people think?

Is this how our allies think?

[1-more]

> Is this how our allies think?

The old quip about NATO is that its purpose was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. I don't know how much that really reflected elite sentiment or not.

EDIT: well it was coined by the first Secretary General of NATO so make of that what you will https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay

[dotancohen]

Interestingly, I see now that the Wikipedia article mentions that this famous quip was made three years before he was Secretary General.

Did NATO not have a Secretary General for the first three years? And what does that say of the organization that elected the guy who said this as their first SG?

[stkdump]

Yes, France had the idea to weaken Germany in exchange by forcing it off the D-Mark. A move that unexpectedly had the opposite effect and further strengthened Germany's economy.

In post war Germany the sentiment of relative status compared to our allies in the most powerful people was mostly gone. You can expect as we move more towards the right, and WW2 gets more and more forgotten, it will come back.

[dotancohen]

The intended effect of having economically-strong Germany subsidize the poorer European states (e.g. Greece) definitely succeeded. Or at least the Greeks think so. But nobody expected that it would also strengthen the German economy to more than make up for that.

[UncleSlacky]

I don't think it was concern about relative status, more the risk that a reunited Germany could once again become a significant economic/military power that could threaten the stability of Europe.

[rrr_oh_man]

I love reading historical documents, and this is how people have been thinking for as long as there is recorded history.

[vrganj]

Why do you think the Trump admin is so set on sabotaging the EU?

They even put it into their National Security Strategy: https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/12/make-europe-great-...

[thaumasiotes]

Did you miss all the explicit American messaging about "we need to keep China down, or else it might surpass us"?

[wiseowise]

> I saw a YouTube short video recently

You could’ve stopped there.

[RobotToaster]

It's how the psychopaths in charge think

[PearlRiver]

Slovenia and Croatia are members of the European Union- I would say that is pretty relevant.

[nradov]

The fall of Yugoslavia was a tragedy in a sense, but on the other hand maybe it should have never existed as a single state in the first place. It was always an artificial construct with the central government barely holding the country together, sort of like Iraq. People can mourn the loss but it was doomed from the start.

[vrganj]

Every country is an artificial construct.