Yugoslavia

[Dreamwoven]

See the Wikipedia item on Yugoslavia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia), and for its history see Creation of Yugoslavia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_of_Yugoslavia). See also the item on Josip Broz Tito (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito). See also the Wikipedia page on Death and State Funeral of Josip Broz Tito (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Josip_Broz_Tito).

I made several visits to Yugoslavia in the 1960s - each of about 6 weeks - when I was a University student. I was initially only planning one visit but went several times more. Really loved it there. In this thread I will give my impressions of those visits.

If anyone else has visited Yugoslavia, or was born there, pease give your impressions in this thread. I travelled by public transport, mostly by bus, but also by sea down the Adriatic coast, from Split to Dubrovnik.

After Tito died I didn't believe Yugoslavia would break up into its separate parts. But it did.

[YesNo]

I've never been there, but it sounds like an interesting place. Normally I would think of going to Italy or Greece, but there are all those other countries right next door.

[Dreamwoven]

The reason I didn't think Yugoslavia would collapse into chaos was the enormous élan of the ordinary people. They sang and played instruments everywhere, in groups on the corners, on buses, sometimes on buses swaying together to the beat, laughing and making jokes.

I also thought that southern slavs were more like the southerners of the Mediterranean, who also were more laid back and friendly, compared to the northern slavs like Czechs and Poles, just that bit more dour. It may well be so, for it is not the ordinary folk who want to make war, but the elites, those who want power.

There was also something called Korso, a sort of promenade that people went on in the cool of the evening, dressed in their better clothes and where they could meet their friends and watch other youngsters.

The language spoken at that time was Serbo-Croat. This, I soon learned, was an important part of Tito’s policy of creating a united country from the various national groups that made it up. I met several mixed marriages between Serbs and Croatians, and there were no hostilities between ethnic groups in that polyglot country that I could see. I learned the language quite quickly it was a rolling soft slav language: Yugoslavia means “South Slavia”. Several times I took the ferry service down the Dalmation coast from Trieste or Rijeka to Dubrovnik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik). I stopped off in most places - Split, and the inhabited islands, like Korčula (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korčula) and Hvar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hvar_(city)). There was a special cheap accommodation available from local residents, which meant I could meet a range of people. I remember one day on the ferry when there was a huge thunderstorm, the biggest I have ever seen, causing rough seas.

Dubrovnik became a favourite city for me to visit, with its fortified walls and historic past. Richard Lionheart was imprisoned in the island offshore. Here there was also a nightly event called korso: a promenade which was a remarkably busy event, mostly for young people in their evening clothes on the main street of the Stradun:
“Each evening the Stradun roars to life for the nightly korso, or promenade. A motley crowd emerges: teenagers in sunbleached-blond dreadlocks, grizzled Croatian men smoking pipes, cruise-ship passengers in flip-flops, Italian men in Ferragamo loafers. A white-haired nun passes by, cocooned in an all-white habit. She's trailed by a surfer dude in satin shorts, nothing more. Both wear crucifixes.”

Dubrovnik was built of yellow sandstone, the street, the defensives and I loved the atmosphere there.

[YesNo]

I found this on Stradun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stradun_(street). It seems that Corso is the Stradun.

[Dreamwoven]

Not quite, Stradun is the street on which korso takes place in Dubrovnik, but thanks for the link. But I am pretty sure that Korso was held in other places in Yugoslavia, though Dubrovnik was almost certainly the main place for korso that I remember. I wish we had some Yugoslavs on LitNet who could explain properly.

Budva (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budva) in Montenegro, south of Dubrovnik was at the time just a modest, attractive walled town. Both now have substantial newer suburbs outside the walls.

Inland Yugoslavia was also well worth visiting. The hairpin bends on the road east from Dubrovnik over the mountains was a remarkable and somewht scary experience. The whole coachload of Yugoslavs sang and swayed together in unison with each sharp bend, laughing while doing so. Such a joyous folk!

The Bridge at Mostar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stari_Most) (Stari means old) was still in it original form as built by the Ottoman Turks (destroyed in the internecine war was rebuilt and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site). I also visited Belgrade by which time my still rudimentary Serbo-Croatian was good enough to know that Beo meant white. It was on the Danube but otherwise was disappointing to visit. It had very modern rubbish removal by means that in the UK was still undeveloped. Zagreb was much the same. By now I had learned some basic Serbo-Croatian, “koliko sati” (what time is it?) the basic numbers, forgotten most by now but remember the claim “nishta nema, nema nishta” ("don't have it", when bargaining in the market).

Finally, I visited Slovenia on the way home. A beautiful Alpine part of Yugoslavia. By Lake Bled (https://lakebledslovenia.com) where Tito had a home, and Postojna Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postojna_Cave). Foreigners were charged a higher entry price than Yugoslav citizens to the cave, so I asked in Serbo-Croat, and got in at the cheaper rate! We travelled through the cave on a railway - the cave was huge - only 2 km were open for viewing, at least by train - getting out now and again to observe stalagmites or some other feature.

This private website was created by a young man, Rok Pletersek, complete with photos: https://lakebledslovenia.com.

[YesNo]

Lake Bled looks interesting. I read from the link that a Slavic goddess called "Live" was supposed to live there. It makes me wonder about Slavic mythology.

[Dreamwoven]

In World War II Tito organised and led the resistance movement with his Yugoslav Partisans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Partisans):

According to Tito, the national composition of the Partisan army in May 1944 was 44% Serb, 30% Croat, 10% Slovene, 5% Montenegrin, 2.5% Macedonian, and 2.5% Bosnian Muslim.[46] Italians and Hungarians were also in the army. 20.000 Italian fighters were in Partisan Battalion Pino Budicin, Division Garibaldi and Division Italia later.[47] According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

After the war Tito made Yugoslavia non-aligned and neutral. Sweden, by contrast is neutral but by no means non-aligned. It clearly identify with the Western bloc under US Hegemony. Tito chose nonaligned neutrality so as to keep the Serbs happy and to minimise ethnic conflict within the new state of Yugoslavia. The Napoleonic Marshal, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was invited to take the vacant Swedish crown, and it was Bernadotte who made Sweden neutral. The Bernadotte Dynasty continues to this day. Sweden has been neutral since 1815, over 200 years ago. Finland is also neutral and aligned with the US.

I have now bought and read a book, which I will be reviewing in the book review section of the Forums. It is by Richard West Tito and the Fall of Yugoslavia (Faber and Faber, 1996).

Richard West (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_West_(journalist)) first went for a year as a teenage national service soldier serving in Trieste, which at the time was under UN administration. He learned Serbo-Croat, and returned to Yugoslavia several times in the years since. The book continues up to 1993, so it covers the breakup of Yugoslavia.

While Tito lived there was widespread affection for him and the decades of peace and security in Yugoslavia, much, I guess, as I remembered it in the 1960s, when I visited it several summers in a row.

[YesNo]

In World War II Tito organised and led the resistance movement with his Yugoslav Partisans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Partisans):

According to Tito, the national composition of the Partisan army in May 1944 was 44% Serb, 30% Croat, 10% Slovene, 5% Montenegrin, 2.5% Macedonian, and 2.5% Bosnian Muslim.[46] Italians and Hungarians were also in the army. 20.000 Italian fighters were in Partisan Battalion Pino Budicin, Division Garibaldi and Division Italia later.[47] According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

After the war Tito made Yugoslavia non-aligned and neutral. Sweden, by contrast is neutral but by no means non-aligned. It clearly identify with the Western bloc under US Hegemony. Tito chose nonaligned neutrality so as to keep the Serbs happy and to minimise ethnic conflict within the new state of Yugoslavia. The Napoleonic Marshal, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was invited to take the vacant Swedish crown, and it was Bernadotte who made Sweden neutral. The Bernadotte Dynasty continues to this day. Sweden has been neutral since 1815, over 200 years ago. Finland is also neutral and aligned with the US.

I am trying to make sense how "non-aligned" and "neutral" are different. Is it a question of having treaties or not with other countries?

[Dreamwoven]

It was only Yugoslavia that was non-aligned and neutral. No it does not have to be as formal as Treaties, though it can be. It is a fine distinction. For example, the Swedish Social Democrats have recently opened the way to co-operation with NATO, which can be interpreted as leaving it possible for the US to bring nuclear weapons into Sweden. On these grounds the Greens who are supporting the Social Democrats are considering whether to agree to this change or not. They will make a decision in the coming days or weeks.

I've decided to keep all my posts about Yugoslavia in this thread, rather than writing a book review in a different thread.

Yugoslavia lasted for much of the twentieth century, starting with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia) from 1918 to 1943, though sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, with its capital in Belgrade. Read the long piece in Wikipedia for more information.

[YesNo]

The section on debt in that article made me see why people were forced to align with the Nazis. When debt was used to expand the productivity of agriculture and the market for those products fell, the depression occurred. How did the Nazis help relieve the debt situation for Yugoslavia?

[Dreamwoven]

Nazi Germany got out of debt by developing its war machine. The benefits of this only extended to the Germanic peoples in the Third Empire. Austria, which was added to the Reich and so benefited from the war programme. Untermenschen were just meant to man the factories.

The Yugoslavs loved Tito, according to Richard West (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_West_(journalist)) in his book Tito and the rise and fall of Yugoslavia
(p.329): "Tito was a father figure to the older generation...and to the younger generation there had never been any other President."

This matched my understanding of Tito in Yugoslavia.

The last 3 chapters of the book made sorrowful reading and all begin with the words "Towards disaster in" [Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina].

Ethnic Cleansing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing)has a sadly Yugoslav meaning.

Richard West's book concludes his Epilogue with the following paragraph:

"In August 1995 [President] Tudjman ordered his army to clear the Serbs from their largest remaining enclave in Croatia with its capital at Knin. After a massive shelling of Knin itself, the Croats occupied the enclave, brushing aside the UN peace-keeping force. Some 150,000 Serbs fled east across Bosnia in a pathetic convoy to Serbia. In four years Tudjman had achieved what his predecessor Pavelic had failed to do - to drive almost all the Serbs from Croatia." West (2009) p. 401

[YesNo]

Nazi Germany got out of debt by developing its war machine. The benefits of this only extended to the Germanic peoples in the Third Empire. Austria, which was added to the Reich and so benefited from the war programme. Untermenschen were just meant to man the factories.

"Untermenschen" is an interesting word. I assume it means "under man".

----------------

I only heard the name Tito. I didn't know he as so popular.

[Dreamwoven]

More applies to a race, in this case slavs. The Nazis thought in terms of superior and inferior races.


"Untermenschen" is an interesting word. I assume it means "under man".

----------------

I only heard the name Tito. I didn't know he as so popular.

His state funeral was one of the biggest inn terms of attendance. Wikipedia called it the largest state funeral in history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Josip_Broz_Tito

[Dreamwoven]

Serbia is expected to become a new member state of the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Serbia_to_the_European_Union) in 2020.

Its ties with Russia and NATO remain problematic, and indeed with Kosovo (http://global.britannica.com/event/Kosovo-conflict).

[Dreamwoven]

This is a collection of pics of Serbian villages: https://eurasia-news-online.com/2016/09/10/serbian-villages-hidden-treasury-of-serbia/

A very beautiful country! Check the pics out..

[Dreamwoven]

https://eurasia-news-online.com/2016/10/03/from-belgrade-with-love/. This is an interesting post on Belgrade, capital of Serbia. I've been there but didn't think it especially beautiful. Means White City in Serbian (Beograd). It has konditorei from its time as an Austrian-Hungarian city of considerable note.

[Lendo]

I was at Croatia some years ago, which was one of the countries that composed Yugoslavia, and it's clear how the country as developed since the collapse of communism. There's still some traces of the difficulties that the country went threw over the years, but it has clearly evolved. Altough Croatia was always one of the most developed parts of Yugoslavia during the communist regime of Tito, there's no comparassing with what the country has reached today.

It's also interesting that the croatians preserved some traces of the II World War, like damaged buildings and bombed locations, so the people never to forget what the country went threw during the conflict. It's a very raw approach of History, that it's at the some time moving, interesting, memorable and shocking for a turist.

[Dreamwoven]

The countries that made up Yugoslavia also went through a serious civil war as part of the breakup. Very sad.

[tassel]

Was it technically a civil war?

[Dreamwoven]

Yes, it was. Fighting was hard. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War

[Dreamwoven]

This was a very bloody civil war. I was afraid that the beautiful port of Dubrovnik would be badly damaged. It was besieged by Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers. There was also an old and famous bridge nearby that was also badly damaged. Richard Lionheart was imprisoned here in an offshore island. Dubrovnik is well worth visiting!

[Dreamwoven]

Tito’s Yugoslavia (copied from a piece I wrote on my mac).
In the early- and mid-1960s I went to Jozip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia for much of the summer
vacation, several years in a row. This was the age of cheap student flights and long
vacations so I took advantage of these by flights to Basel then train and bus to Yugoslavia.
I used so many different means of transport that I can't remember which years I went with
what means. But I loved it there. Everyone sang - in groups on the streets, all passengers
singing together in buses and coaches, it created a wonderful atmosphere.
The language spoken at that time was Serbo-Croatian. This, I soon learned, was an
important part of Tito’s policy of creating a united country from the various national groups
that made it up. I met several mixed marriages between Serbs and Croatians, and there
were no hostilities between ethnic groups in that polyglot country that I could see. I learned
the language quite quickly it was a rolling soft slav language: Yugoslavia means “South
Slavia”. Several times I took the ferry service down the Dalmation coast from Trieste or
Rijeka to Dubrovnik. I stopped off in most places - Split, and the inhabited islands, like
Korčula and Hvar. There was a special cheap accommodation available from local
residents, which meant I could meet a range of people. I remember one day on the ferry
when there was a huge thunderstorm, the biggest I have ever seen, causing rough seas.
Dubrovnik became a favourite city to visit, with its fortified walls and historic past. Richard
Lionheart was imprisoned in the island offshore. Here there was also a nightly event called
korso: a promenade which was a remarkably busy event, mostly for young people in their
evening clothes. This is a modern description:
“Each evening the Stradun roars to life for the nightly korso, or promenade. A motley
crowd emerges: teenagers in sunbleached-blond dreadlocks, grizzled Croatian men
smoking pipes, cruise-ship passengers in flip-flops, Italian men in Ferragamo loafers. A
white-haired nun passes by, cocooned in an all-white habit. She's trailed by a surfer dude
in satin shorts, nothing more. Both wear crucifixes.”
Budva in Montenegro, south of Dubrovnik was at the time just a modest, attractive walled
town. Both now have substantial newer suburbs outside the walls.
Inland Yugoslavia was also well worth visiting. The hairpin bends on the road east from
Dubrovnik over the mountains was a remarkable and somewht scary experience. The
whole coachload of Yugoslavs sang and swayed together in unison with each sharp bend.
The Bridge at Mostar was still in it original form (destroyed in the internecine war was
rebuilt and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site). I also visited Belgrade by which time
my Serbo-Croatian was good enough to know that Beo meant white. It was on the Danube
but otherwise was disappointing to visit. It had very modern rubbish removal by means
that in the UK was still undeveloped. Zagreb was much the same. By now I had learned
some basic Serbo-Croatian, “koliko sati” the basic numbers, forgotten most by now but
remember the claim “nishta nema, nema nishta”.
Finally, I visited Slovenia on the way back. A beautiful part of Yugoslavia. Bled where Tito
had a home, and Postojna Cave. Foreigners were charged a higher entry price than
Yugoslav citizens to the cave, so I asked in Serbo-Croatian, and got in! We travelled
through the cave on a railway, getting out now and again.
The Death and Funeral of Josip Broz Tito was one of the biggest funerals ever, and is
described like this on Wikipedia:
“The funeral of Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia, was held on 8 May 1980, four
days after his death on 4 May. His funeral drew many world statesmen, both of nonaligned
and aligned countries.[1] Based on the number of attending politicians and state
delegations, at the time it was the largest state funeral in history.[2] They included four
kings, 31 presidents, six princes, 22 prime ministers and 47 ministers of foreign affairs.
They came from both sides of the Cold War, from 128 different countries out of 154 UNO
members at the time.”
The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the Civil War
What does this tell us about the civil war and who supported it? See Yugoslav_Wars. The
images on the website make it clear that the war was one fought with advanced weaponry:
tanks, rockets and other army hardware. This is also clear the siege of Sarajevo lasted
longer than the Siege of Leningrad.
“After Bosnia and Herzegovina had declared independence from Yugoslavia, the Bosnian
Serbs—whose strategic goal was to create a new Bosnian Serb state of Republika Srpska
(RS) that would include parts of Bosnian territory—encircled Sarajevo with a siege force of
13,000 stationed in the surrounding hills. From there they assaulted the city with weapons
that included artillery, mortars, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, heavy machine-guns, multiple
rocket launchers, rocket-launched aircraft bombs and sniper rifles.”
Ethnic Cleansing in the Bosnian War: “Widespread ethnic cleansing accompanied the war
in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–95), large numbers of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and
Bosnian Croats were forced to flee their homes and were expelled by Bosnian Serbs;[1]
and some Bosnian Croats also carried out similar campaign against Bosniaks and Serbs.”
Ordinary Yugoslavs as Victims
The people, where they are shown, are shown as victims lining up for drinking water, in
death camps, like Omarska Camp or Dretelje Camp, digging graves for themselves,
memorials built for genocide victims, such as the one at Srebnica. It was fuelled by the
ambitions of a few leaders interested in power for themselves, after they had taken control
of their part of Yugoslavia. Many of these have been tried and convicted. Much the same
has occurred in all wars. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial , the two opium wars, the Atlantic
Slave Trade, indentured servitude. There is a long list of countries that have practised
colonialism in one form or another. Most countries have done so, including Russia. This
takes place wherever there are major powers against smaller states. But it also figures in
wars between Great Powers. It is so easy to moralise about iniquities over this or that
specific issue. But every country has done so. And in all of these the ordinary person
suffers.
Things also seem to have returned to their original state, depite the horrors listed above.
Do a search on your internet search engine for “serb and croatian kiss” and check the date
of publication. The earliest date I have found is on the Huffington Post, 10th March 2013. It
is presented as a kiss-and-make-up after the genocidal civil war. To me this says
something else: the way ordinary people are caught up in the conflicts of their powerhungry
political leaders, and how the next generation of young people overcome this.

[Dreamwoven]

There was a documentary on the Bridge at Mostar in Swedish TV. See this http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/946. The bridge was destroyed in the 1990 conflict, but rebuilt. The mixing of religions and cultural history was probably rejected by the Bosnian nationalists.

"Mostar has been long known for its old Turkish houses and the Old Bridge – Stari most, an extraordinary technological achievement of bridge construction. The historic part of Mostar is a result of interaction between the natural phenomena and human creativity throughout a long historical period. The essence of centuries-long cultural continuity is represented by the universal synthesis of life phenomena: the bridge and its fortresses – with the rich archeological layers from the pre-Ottoman period, religious edifices, residential zones (mahalas), arable lands, houses, bazaar, its public life in the streets and water. Architecture here presented a symbol of tolerance: a shared life of Muslims, Christians and Jews. Mosques, churches, and synagogues existed side-by-side indicating that in this region, the Roman Catholic Croats with their Western European culture, the Eastern Orthodox Serbs with their elements of Byzantine culture, and the Sephardic Jews continued to live together with the Bosniaks-Muslims for more than four centuries. A specific regional architecture was thus created and left behind a series of unique architectural achievements, mostly modest by physical dimensions, but of considerable importance for the cultural history of its people. The creative process produced a constant flow of various cultural influences that, like streams merging into a single river, became more than a mere sum of the individual contributing elements."

The younger generation of Mostar residents don't hold with the racist beliefs of those who fought the war and look forward to a time of peaceful re-building, preserving the multicultural heritage they have inherited.