Yugoslavia: From a superpower to non-existence

Diversity. What comes to your mind when you first hear it? India is indeed a secular nation that is truly diverse in every that it possesses in its body. But is just India that has always been known this way since the beginning of time? Not quite. Way before India was even an independent nation there existed an equally diversified nation that many of us have heard about but have no clue on where, when, and how did it exist. Yugoslavia, a country in  Southeast and Central Europe was a really powerful country that was on the world map for half a century. Its neighbors were present-day Italy to the west, Bulgaria, and Romania to the east, Austria and Hungary to the west, and Greece and Albania to its south. Now imagine a country, extremely powerful in the very heart of Europe going deep down under in just a decade. Sounds shocking right.  The full name of the country was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and was called SFR Yugoslavia or just Yugoslavia in common use and had six present-day countries: Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina and Croatia and two provinces that were mostly autonomous called Kosovo and Vojvodina. The autonomous provinces are currently in present-day Serbia. How did such different and conflicting lands come together? Back in 1942, when world war 2 ended, the country was brought together and governed by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.

In the year 1945, the country changed the form of governance from a monarchy to a communist government. On 29 November 1945, King Peter II’s deposition led to the ceasing of the monarchial form of government. It is important to understand the basis of why a communist government was chosen. With communism in full-fledged flow in Russia, the idea of communism was widespread. Tito was a very important character when we talk about Yugoslavia. Parallelly when Yugoslavia existed, another extremely powerful country with an equally powerful leader existed namely, the Soviet Union or the USSR for short. Its leader at that point and time was Russia’s almighty Stalin. Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin were allies and this allegiance broke apart in 1948 and was termed as the Tito-Stalin split or Yugoslav- Soviet split. Till when this allegiance existed, the communist government under Tito’s supervision sided with the Eastern Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was also known as the communist bloc and composed of communist states of parts of Europe, parts of Asia under what was known as the hegemony or leadership of the USSR. The opposing bloc was the Western Bloc during what was the Cold war that lasted from the year 1947 to 1991. It remained as a neutral party in the testing times of the Cold war. The once-powerful but now non-existent nation was a founding member of many organizations such as the United Nations, Non- Aligned movement, World Trade organization to name a few.

Going back to when we started, we would remember that two autonomous provinces were a part of Yugoslavia back then. Out of the six present-day governments that were socialist republics back then under the YSR Yugoslavia, the Socialist Republic of Serbia had control over them till the Constitution was remade. In the year 1974, a new constitution was made and it certainly reduced the control of the central Serbian government over the regions and Serbians have deep-rooted sentiments 

Over this region and even regarded one of them, Kosovo as “cradle of the nation”. The constitution also changed the major executive board from the President of Yugoslavia to an eight-member council as the head of states with all 6 socialist republics and the two autonomous powers. Tito’s this constitution helped regulate the presidency with each leader getting a chance to head. This constitution was highly unsuccessful after Tito passed away. Tito’s passing away in 1980 changed everything. He was seen as the main unifying force and the ethnically diverse region has tensions arising. The communist states weakened severely and toward the end of the cold war period. The oldest governing party, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia albeit present had lost its charm and power.

All this while, the Socialist Republics of Slovenia and Croatia were in a better state than other provinces like Serbia that had growing questions on ethnic identities and wanted 

democracy and the governments to be decentralized. As for Kosovo(the autonomous power), Serbia had deep-rooted sentiments in the area and considered it apart from that they would mourn over losing but Kosovo wanted to be an independent republic. Yugoslavia’s economic downfall was also significant. When Tito was the head in the seventh decade of the 20th century, the economy boomed and constantly grew. The over-expansion plateaued and later caused depression in the economy through inflation.

All of this slowly grew on them and caused the downfall gradually. The absence of a politically powerful figure, growing debts, ethnic animosities paved the way for the destruction of this country from rich to poor.