Disintegration of Yugoslavia

The country of Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was a country in the western part

of Southeast Europe. Before 3rd October 1929 it was

known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes which was established on 1 December 1918 by the union of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia. Yugoslavia was commonly called a

"Versailles state“ It was invaded by the Axis powers

on 17 April 1941 and disintegrated it.

Josip Broz Tito

• Josip Broz Tito was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans , at the beginning of the Cold War, Yugoslavia pursued a policy of neutrality after the Tito–Stalin split of 1948, and became one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement.

• Hi s successful economic and diplomatic policies were viewed as a unifying symbol.

• Tito's death in May 1980 was the first and perhaps most significant of the causes. It was often said that he was 'likened to a great oak tree, in the shade of whose immense branches nothing else could grow.‘

• But it was this command and control that he had over the area, which was responsible for its stability; therefore it is not surprising that as 'Tito's health began to deteriorate, federal institutions deteriorated with him.'

Breakup of Yugoslavia

The Breakup of Yugoslavia occurred as a result of a series of political upheavals and conflicts.

Communism fell in Eastern Europe nationalism began to rise. The authoritarian rule of Josip Broz Tito was the main reason that

was preventing the aspirations for breaking the Yugoslavia. Tito through his political engagement did a lot on the creation and strengthening of the Yugoslav state and Yugoslav nation.

The economic factor also did not go in favor of the proponents of the Yugoslav state.

Despite the strong post-war industrial development and modernization of the state, Yugoslavia was forced to take significant amount of money as a loan from the Western European countries.

Inside the country itself, it came to a significant economic gap between developed west and poor east where people were living mainly from state financial aid..

The decline of communist ideology in the rest of Europe in the 1980s lead to the severe weakening of Yugoslavia's crucial unifying factors.

In addition, Yugoslavia in the 1980s increasingly suffered from an unprecedented Economic Crisis.

This crisis was triggered by the oil shocks of the 1970s, the global recession of the 1980s and a $US20 billion foreign debt.

This caused Slovenia and other relatively economically prosperous regions to push for economic and political change.

Slovenia had significant economic weight as while it comprised only eight percent of the nation's population it produced 20 percent of the national GNP. Without a powerful central figure, differences between reformers and conservatives produced a deadlock at the center during the early and mid 1980s.

The economy thus continued its decline allowing conservative groups time to mobilize support.

The federal government has failed to respond to the new circumstances and all the weaknesses of the existing political system came to the surface.

• Yugoslav communists were trying to build a strong state by placing the Yugoslav nation as a counter weight to ethnic tensions that existed in society at the time. Unfortunately, nationalist tensions escalated in the early nineties and it was clear that the idea of the Yugoslav nation has experienced collapse.

• On 31 January 1946, the new constitution of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, modeled after the Soviet Union, established six republics, an autonomous province, and an autonomous district that were part of SR Serbia. The federal capital was Belgrade.

• 1991 & 1992 Slovenia and Croatia Macedonia Bosnia and Herzegovina each declare independence.

• Serbia and Montenegro form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

• Finally Yugoslavia disintegrated to form 6 independent countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia.

The situation could have been avoided.

So we conclude that the disintegration of Yugoslavia was because of political instability and economic crises in the country after 1980.

Far from contributing to peace and stability, the policy and actions of Western powers undermined the federal institutions that held Yugoslavia together and then prevented compromise solutions, between and within republics, that could have minimized the conflict.

These weaknesses were fully exposed, and regional and ethnic divisions consolidated, as a variety of external diplomatic, economic, political and military interventions by major Western powers and international institutions undermined regional mechanisms of conflict resolution.

Made by: Chhavi BansalX-D