The Dissolution of Yugoslavia The country of Yugoslavia was first formed as a kingdom in 1918 after combining land areas from the now both defunct Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires and then recreated as a Socialist state in 1945 after the Axis powers were defeated in World War II. The Soviet Union took control of Yugoslavia after the war and wrote a new constitution for the country that established six constituent republics in the federation: Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. The Republic of Serbia also had two self-governing provinces: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Yugoslavia was a part of the Soviet Union until the Union dissolved in 1991 and as a result Yugoslavia soon followed, but this is about …show more content…
Exceptions to this pattern of stability were the marked increase of the Albanian population and a steep decline in the numbers of Jews, ethnic Germans, and Hungarians after World War II (Cushman). Another definitive cause of the Yugoslavian breakup was the nationalism of ethnic groups in the early 1990s. Nationalism replaced communism as the dominant ideology in the country. Slovenia and then Croatia were the first to break away, but this caused Serbia to become hostile towards the two nations. Consequently, the war in Croatia led to hundreds of thousands of refugees and also brought back memories of the harsh acts of the Nazis in the 1940s. By 1992 a further conflict had broken out in Bosnia, which had also succeeded from Yugoslavia. The Serbs who lived there were determined in remaining within Yugoslavia and to help build a more homogenous Serbia. They received strong backing from radical groups in Belgrade. Muslims were driven from their homes in carefully planned operations that become known as "ethnic cleansing". By 1993 the Bosnian Muslim government was besieged in the capital Sarajevo, surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces who controlled around 70% of Bosnia. In Central Bosnia, the mainly Muslim army was fighting a separate war against Bosnian Croats who wished to be part of a greater Croatia. The presence of United Nations peacekeepers was required to contain the situation. The idea from culminated in the Yugoslav Peace Conference,
The Bosnian-Herzegovina genocide or “ethnic cleansing” went on from April 1992 to December 1995 around the end of the Second World War. When Bosnia became its own independent nation on April 5th 1922 it wanted to “cleanse” its country of any non Serbian residents. The killing of Bosnian Muslims during this time was stated by international tribunals to be an ethnic cleansing however the events that took place in July 1995 in Srebrenica was so horrific it was deemed a genocide. The United Nations should have intervened a lot sooner than they did and should have sent more than just peace keepers to protect the human beings that were being slaughtered.
Serbians held an “ethnic cleansing” for anyone who was non-Serbian. Most non-Serbians did not correspond with the political and religious background which led to war and the Bosnian Genocide(”Bosnian” 1). The two genocides were both influential in making the world come together and work for the better good, yet they do differ in how they were conducted. Although the genocides of the Jewish ethnicity and Bosnian Muslims have comparisons, there are many differences in the processes on how and why people were killed.
The phrase became traditional in the follow-up of Serbian assaults on ethnic Bosnians during the Bosnian War. The crusade of the Bosnian War in 1992 lead the bigotry to a global dispute, as the Croats enforced ethnic cleansing protocols against the Muslim Bosnians. A number of genocides in 1994 and 1995 supported the continued entanglement of NATO air strikes in both applying a no fly zone and establishing the Serbian air force. United Nations arbitrators on the ground missed the opportunity to fix up the situation earlier. A heavy occupation force enforcing the end of the conflict brought 60,000 troops to the area. These crisis represents a criterion within the discussion about military force to avert a massive ethnic cleansing.
The Serbs then dominated Yugoslavia so they then decided to try and expand by setting up Serbian regions in Bosnia. The Bosnian government did not allow that, thus leading to armed conflicts between the Serbs and the non-Serbs. Another major difference was the fact that Hitler started the mass murder within his own country and expanded outward through Imperialism, Bosnia however did not. When the Serbs got control of Yugoslavia they became more of a nation banded together than the Croats and the Slovenes were, so what started off as a war became blown up into a mass-murdering spree.
ABC-CLIO writes, “Other ethnic groups dreamed of forming their own homelands” (Unraveling the Causes of World War I). The German unification caused Germany became one of the strongest European countries in Europe. German’s were proud of their military power and industrial leadership. Other ethnic groups, like the French, longed to regain its place of Europe’s leading power. The French were bitter of their loss in the Franco-Prussian war and the German occupation of Alsace and Lorraine. They were eager for revenge against Germany and win back their lost provinces. The Slavs were another ethnic group that dreamed of forming their own homelands. The Balkans had a dream of unifying all of the Slavic states. In 1878, Serbia gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. At that time, Serbia decided to claim to several regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were inhabited primarily by Serbs. However, the Congress of Berlin granted permission to Austria-Hungary to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the other disputed Serbian areas. In 1908, Austria-Hungary officially annexed all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, adding more fuel to the fires of Serbian nationalism. So when the Archduke was assassinated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria reacted quickly, as it was seen as the Empire's last chance to proclaim its superiority in the Balkans. Count Leopold von Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister was determined to make use of the
After the First World War country was united with other Slav territories to form Yugoslavia. At the time, the population of Bosnia consisted of over 1,300,000 Serbs which were Orthodox Catholic Christians, million Muslim Bosnians and around 700,000 of Croats. They all were strong attached to this land by the historical and local claims. After the death of Josip Broz Tito, elections in 1990 brought nationalists to power in Slovenia, Macedonia and Croatia, which declared independence in 1991 and were recognised internationally. The Leader of Bosnia’s, Alija Izetbegovic called for independence too, and the country was recognised as independent by the USA and the EU in 1992. However, Bosnia’s Serbs weren’t happy because they wanted to be part of “Greater Serbia”. a Serbian named Slobodan Milosevic, a former Communist responded to Bosnian’s declaration of independence by attacking and bombarding the capital city, Sarajevo. Serbs shot down civilians in the streets, including over 3,500 children.
Nobody chose for it to come to this point, yes there could have been better ways to deal with the disagreement or there were ways to end the genocide before the Bosnians had to rise above. It wasn't fair that the Bosnians just wanted power in their country but they could have confronted the subject differently than just trying to overthrow the already set people in charge. Everyone likes power, but when is it enough to where you should give it up or you have gone too far. If you believe that the way to deal with disagreements is to turn to genocide you shouldn't be in charge at that point you’re over using your power for evil things. In my opinion and beliefs I think that the Bosnians could have waited a little bit to demand power because the cold war. The Serbians could have also given up power because the economy wasn't that good for them and they were just in the cold war which made the Bosnians angered because the Serbians got them in the cold war. It doesn't do much justice for the Serbians saying as they got them involved in the cold war, refused to give up after power, and the genocide was began against the Bosnians. Not only were the Bosnians killed but they were beat, killed, raped and humiliated. They didn't always do a “quick death” they wanted the Bosnians suffering to last (Bosnian Genocide). We notice the genocide but we
The major domestic challenges to the new independent states were the deterioration of housing markets and balance sheets. Yugoslavia was formally a national state; prior to its collapse the Yugoslavian nation consisted of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Yugoslavia broke apart and slide into civil war because of economic collapse, the deterioration of the culture, and the split of the nation’s religions. The West responded by recognizing the independence of different regions after Yugoslavia’s collapse. They also used NATO to stop invasions of these countries by their
This meeting may have been what inspired the Serbs to launch an ethnic cleansing campaign in which they killed as many as 50,000 Bosniaks. The ethnic cleansing was the largest atrocity since the holocaust in Europe and much like the holocaust, concentration camps, mass grave, rape camps, and many other psychological factors were utilized by the Bosnian Serbs during this time period.
This paper will discuss the many horrible acts and atrocities of the Bosnian Genocide. It will also go over the reasons, process, as well as the aftermath of fear and hostility caused by the genocide. The victim group involved in the Bosnian Genocide were the Bosnian Muslims that were killed in mass. The perpetrators were a combination of Serbian government officials and the Serbian Army. The hostility was mostly caused by a long time hatred between the Serbs and Bosnians. The long time hatred is caused by a combination of religious differences as well as territorial disputes. The Serbs and Bosnians have been attempting to take land from the each other and use it for its natural resources. These reasons were exacerbated by the Bosnian war that
Furthermore, these wars cannot be fully understood without a basic knowledge of the former Yugoslavia. Formally known as the Soviet Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it was a federation that was comprised of six socialist republics: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. Additionally, two autonomous provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, were established in Serbia. Many different ethnic groups called Yugoslavia home, namely the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Albanians, and Montenegrins. However, the presence of large ethnic minorities across republic lines made things complicated, especially with the advent of rising nationalism among these different peoples. The borders of the republics had originally been of little significance; Josip Tito, the beloved leader of the Communist Party in Yugoslavia, decided the borders with little opposition from anyone, as the federation was supposed to be a centralized “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Only with later decentralization and democratization would any concern for the individual republics and nationalities be voiced and nationalism become an issue. Tito’s death in 1980 seemed to suddenly remind all the Yugoslav peoples that they had in fact retained their separate ethnic identities and that the ethnic identity of Tito’s successor would certainly affect them, whether positively or negatively, and inter-republic relations began deteriorating quickly. Tito and his communist
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
Kosovo used to be part of Yugoslavia, but it was an autonomous province within Serbian borders. It had its own governing body, which could make its own decisions, but there was still tension between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians. After the break up of Yugoslavia, Albanians of Kosovo wanted independence, but Slobodan Milošević took away their autonomy, which led Albanian separatists to declare Kosovo independent, but it was not officially recognized (Chronology of Events
Bosnia-Herzegovina was made up of three main ethnic groups, Bosniak Muslim, Serb, and Croat (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Before Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia had a history of political, economic, and cultural conflict. Towards the end of World War II, Tito, a communist, ran Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia’s government fell apart and each nation had its own self-rule to be apart of the
So, what is sovereignty? It is the capability of a country to govern itself. Thus, citizens are the ones who decide about creating government, institutions and choosing representatives of their state. Yugoslavia constituted several republics, but none of them possessed the complete autonomy because