Yugoslavia - What Really Happened

Revolucionar

Jedi Council Member
FOTCM Member
I've been meaning to start this thread for a while, but postponed repeatedly due to the great complexity involved in painting a proper picture of what went down and my lack of time to invest in that endeavour.

I realize that my views go against the grain of the general sentiment of the group and I just want to assure everyone that my intention is not to cause any sort of conflict here, but merely to add what I consider to be crucial context to the history of the Western Balkans that I believe is missing from the facts upon which the general consensus here is based.

To give this topic it's due, I would love to write a lenghtly article going through the history and addressing misconceptions point by point, but I don't have the time to do so, unfortunately, so I hope to be able to kickstart a discussion that will allow us to go through all of that piece by piece.

To start off, I have to mention that I was born in 1988, in Dalmatia, the southern Croatian coastal province that was one of the focal points of the Yugoslav wars, called the Homeland War in Croatia.

I could approach this topic from many different angles, but the one that has been coming up again and again for me lately is the comparison with the conflict in Ukraine.

It's been noted how Ukraine was never a real country and most of its territory was gifted by the Soviet authorities over the years, and therefore Russian has a legitimate claim.
Even though there are many who attempt to negate the historical statehood of Croatia, the fact is that Croatia has existed as a kingdom, either independent or as part of different Monarchical unions for more than 1000 years, and a few centuries longer as a loose entity of competing duchies.
Throughout this time, Croatia was a distinct and fully separate entity from whatever Serbia was existing as at any given time. The cultures and politcs were almost entirely separate until around the beginning of the 19th century. This period will be shown to be crucial to what ended up hapenning in the 90s.

It's also been noted how the Ukrainian junta started a campaign against the Russian language, culture and all its citizens who dared consider themselves Russian or close to Russia, going so far as to bomb their own people.
This was not the case in 1990s Croatia. Even though Milosevic would have you believe otherwise, there was nothing at that time that was a serious indication that Croatia would infinge upon Croatian Serbs human and civil rights. It was invented whole cloth by the Yugoslav/Serbian secret services and Milosevic's administration by spinning different facts to suit their propaganda.

Ukraine never tried to implement the Minsk accords.
Croatia actually had a proposal to avoid any conflicts before the war ever started, and another before the so-called genocide of Serbs in Croatia in 1995 that ended the war. First, there was a proposal for keeping Yugoslavia intact by turning it into a confederation in 1990, well before the war and while Yugoslavia still existed with all its constituent republics. This was summarily dismissed by Serbia at the parliament with Serbia refusing to even read the proposal.
The other plan, called Z-4, in 1994, would have given the territories with majority Serbian population in Croatia autonomy, something along the lines of the Minsk accords. This was also turned down with the Serbian rebel authorities declining to even receive the document.

It's also been noted that Russia has a legitimate claim to East and South Ukraine by virtue of those territories being part of Russia less than a century ago.
Serbia has had no such claim. The territories that Serbia started the war over have never been Serbian. The Serbs living there lived there for centuries as part of the Croatian Kingdom, coming from several historical waves of refugees running from the Turkish invasions. Also, a great deal of them, quite possibly a majority were not Serbian at all, but merely Orthodox Croatians, and Vlachs.
As a matter of fact, in the first Yugoslavia, which was under the rule of the Serbian royal family, an entity called Banovina of Croatia was formed that comprised a great deal of territories that are currently either part of Serbia or the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of those parts is today a satellite town of Belgrade.

Ukraine has been sponsored by the West to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while Croatia was under an embargo and the only reason it survived the initial onsluaght of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) is because very few officers or soldiers actually wanted to fight. In rather short order, all of the army barracks in Croatia surrendered and the personnel was allowed to leave home to their respective republics.

I'll stop here for now. I want to make it clear that I glossed over many things while also touching upon many issues that require much deeper analysis, so I invite everyone to poke holes and point out what they think I got wrong. I was certainly being onesided, but the reason is that the perspective I'm putting forth above is not one that's been explored by SOTT editors or this forum over the years.

As the thread progresses I would love to discuss the world wars, the interbellum period, the Ustashe, Partisans and Chetniks, the 19th century national renaissance movements, the Turkish invasions, Bosnia, and of course, Yugoslavia itself, together with the much ballyhooed Tito.

It's a really fascinating subject to try to unpack and I hope we can arrive at some conclusions that are closer to the truth than what is available out there at the moment.
 
This was the time which opened my eyes to finally see thru the Western propaganda after communist regime fell.

On one hand Yugoslavia was a former ally from Warsaw Pact we were supposed to stand by and on the other hand guided by western propaganda or downright lies, our former president at that time aired & coined the expression "humanitarian bombing" and allowed NATO air strikes by letting their aircraft thru our air space. And he did it for the honor of one speech in US Congress?

With Soviet Union in shambles in late 90ties there was no force that could stand up to NATO or collective West forces. What was not given freely (read privatized by western billionaires or their onshore patsies) was taken by force. And what followed was nothing short of evil. Set up a puppet subject resembling nation/country and puppet leader, set former countries agaist each other on false subject and thus make them even weaker. Then force them all to recognize this abomination and you are done. I mean what would any human call a creating of the biggest (at that time) drug, prostitution, organ trafficking gig in the middle of one of the oldest Europian nations with total impunity?

Technology of power for the first time - at least for me - became clearly visible.
 
I've been meaning to start this thread for a while, but postponed repeatedly due to the great complexity involved in painting a proper picture of what went down and my lack of time to invest in that endeavour.

I realize that my views go against the grain of the general sentiment of the group and I just want to assure everyone that my intention is not to cause any sort of conflict here, but merely to add what I consider to be crucial context to the history of the Western Balkans that I believe is missing from the facts upon which the general consensus here is based.

To give this topic it's due, I would love to write a lenghtly article going through the history and addressing misconceptions point by point, but I don't have the time to do so, unfortunately, so I hope to be able to kickstart a discussion that will allow us to go through all of that piece by piece.

To start off, I have to mention that I was born in 1988, in Dalmatia, the southern Croatian coastal province that was one of the focal points of the Yugoslav wars, called the Homeland War in Croatia.

I could approach this topic from many different angles, but the one that has been coming up again and again for me lately is the comparison with the conflict in Ukraine.

It's been noted how Ukraine was never a real country and most of its territory was gifted by the Soviet authorities over the years, and therefore Russian has a legitimate claim.
Even though there are many who attempt to negate the historical statehood of Croatia, the fact is that Croatia has existed as a kingdom, either independent or as part of different Monarchical unions for more than 1000 years, and a few centuries longer as a loose entity of competing duchies.
Throughout this time, Croatia was a distinct and fully separate entity from whatever Serbia was existing as at any given time. The cultures and politcs were almost entirely separate until around the beginning of the 19th century. This period will be shown to be crucial to what ended up hapenning in the 90s.

It's also been noted how the Ukrainian junta started a campaign against the Russian language, culture and all its citizens who dared consider themselves Russian or close to Russia, going so far as to bomb their own people.
This was not the case in 1990s Croatia. Even though Milosevic would have you believe otherwise, there was nothing at that time that was a serious indication that Croatia would infinge upon Croatian Serbs human and civil rights. It was invented whole cloth by the Yugoslav/Serbian secret services and Milosevic's administration by spinning different facts to suit their propaganda.

Ukraine never tried to implement the Minsk accords.
Croatia actually had a proposal to avoid any conflicts before the war ever started, and another before the so-called genocide of Serbs in Croatia in 1995 that ended the war. First, there was a proposal for keeping Yugoslavia intact by turning it into a confederation in 1990, well before the war and while Yugoslavia still existed with all its constituent republics. This was summarily dismissed by Serbia at the parliament with Serbia refusing to even read the proposal.
The other plan, called Z-4, in 1994, would have given the territories with majority Serbian population in Croatia autonomy, something along the lines of the Minsk accords. This was also turned down with the Serbian rebel authorities declining to even receive the document.

It's also been noted that Russia has a legitimate claim to East and South Ukraine by virtue of those territories being part of Russia less than a century ago.
Serbia has had no such claim. The territories that Serbia started the war over have never been Serbian. The Serbs living there lived there for centuries as part of the Croatian Kingdom, coming from several historical waves of refugees running from the Turkish invasions. Also, a great deal of them, quite possibly a majority were not Serbian at all, but merely Orthodox Croatians, and Vlachs.
As a matter of fact, in the first Yugoslavia, which was under the rule of the Serbian royal family, an entity called Banovina of Croatia was formed that comprised a great deal of territories that are currently either part of Serbia or the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of those parts is today a satellite town of Belgrade.

Ukraine has been sponsored by the West to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while Croatia was under an embargo and the only reason it survived the initial onsluaght of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) is because very few officers or soldiers actually wanted to fight. In rather short order, all of the army barracks in Croatia surrendered and the personnel was allowed to leave home to their respective republics.

I'll stop here for now. I want to make it clear that I glossed over many things while also touching upon many issues that require much deeper analysis, so I invite everyone to poke holes and point out what they think I got wrong. I was certainly being onesided, but the reason is that the perspective I'm putting forth above is not one that's been explored by SOTT editors or this forum over the years.

As the thread progresses I would love to discuss the world wars, the interbellum period, the Ustashe, Partisans and Chetniks, the 19th century national renaissance movements, the Turkish invasions, Bosnia, and of course, Yugoslavia itself, together with the much ballyhooed Tito.

It's a really fascinating subject to try to unpack and I hope we can arrive at some conclusions that are closer to the truth than what is available out there at the moment.
Why should anyone who regard her/himself to be working on her/himself pay any attention to any sectarian war?

For any croatian "argument" you could have two serb "arguments", and vice versa, and so on . . . I think that's enough to know (and understand, if there is capacity for that) the mechanism and machinations behind such issues. But no need to go deeper than that.

It really is irrelevant and pointless. Its time to go beyond that.
 
I've been meaning to start this thread for a while, but postponed repeatedly due to the great complexity involved in painting a proper picture of what went down and my lack of time to invest in that endeavour.

I realize that my views go against the grain of the general sentiment of the group and I just want to assure everyone that my intention is not to cause any sort of conflict here, but merely to add what I consider to be crucial context to the history of the Western Balkans that I believe is missing from the facts upon which the general consensus here is based.

To give this topic it's due, I would love to write a lenghtly article going through the history and addressing misconceptions point by point, but I don't have the time to do so, unfortunately, so I hope to be able to kickstart a discussion that will allow us to go through all of that piece by piece.

To start off, I have to mention that I was born in 1988, in Dalmatia, the southern Croatian coastal province that was one of the focal points of the Yugoslav wars, called the Homeland War in Croatia.

I could approach this topic from many different angles, but the one that has been coming up again and again for me lately is the comparison with the conflict in Ukraine.

It's been noted how Ukraine was never a real country and most of its territory was gifted by the Soviet authorities over the years, and therefore Russian has a legitimate claim.
Even though there are many who attempt to negate the historical statehood of Croatia, the fact is that Croatia has existed as a kingdom, either independent or as part of different Monarchical unions for more than 1000 years, and a few centuries longer as a loose entity of competing duchies.
Throughout this time, Croatia was a distinct and fully separate entity from whatever Serbia was existing as at any given time. The cultures and politcs were almost entirely separate until around the beginning of the 19th century. This period will be shown to be crucial to what ended up hapenning in the 90s.

It's also been noted how the Ukrainian junta started a campaign against the Russian language, culture and all its citizens who dared consider themselves Russian or close to Russia, going so far as to bomb their own people.
This was not the case in 1990s Croatia. Even though Milosevic would have you believe otherwise, there was nothing at that time that was a serious indication that Croatia would infinge upon Croatian Serbs human and civil rights. It was invented whole cloth by the Yugoslav/Serbian secret services and Milosevic's administration by spinning different facts to suit their propaganda.

Ukraine never tried to implement the Minsk accords.
Croatia actually had a proposal to avoid any conflicts before the war ever started, and another before the so-called genocide of Serbs in Croatia in 1995 that ended the war. First, there was a proposal for keeping Yugoslavia intact by turning it into a confederation in 1990, well before the war and while Yugoslavia still existed with all its constituent republics. This was summarily dismissed by Serbia at the parliament with Serbia refusing to even read the proposal.
The other plan, called Z-4, in 1994, would have given the territories with majority Serbian population in Croatia autonomy, something along the lines of the Minsk accords. This was also turned down with the Serbian rebel authorities declining to even receive the document.

It's also been noted that Russia has a legitimate claim to East and South Ukraine by virtue of those territories being part of Russia less than a century ago.
Serbia has had no such claim. The territories that Serbia started the war over have never been Serbian. The Serbs living there lived there for centuries as part of the Croatian Kingdom, coming from several historical waves of refugees running from the Turkish invasions. Also, a great deal of them, quite possibly a majority were not Serbian at all, but merely Orthodox Croatians, and Vlachs.
As a matter of fact, in the first Yugoslavia, which was under the rule of the Serbian royal family, an entity called Banovina of Croatia was formed that comprised a great deal of territories that are currently either part of Serbia or the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of those parts is today a satellite town of Belgrade.

Ukraine has been sponsored by the West to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while Croatia was under an embargo and the only reason it survived the initial onsluaght of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) is because very few officers or soldiers actually wanted to fight. In rather short order, all of the army barracks in Croatia surrendered and the personnel was allowed to leave home to their respective republics.

I'll stop here for now. I want to make it clear that I glossed over many things while also touching upon many issues that require much deeper analysis, so I invite everyone to poke holes and point out what they think I got wrong. I was certainly being onesided, but the reason is that the perspective I'm putting forth above is not one that's been explored by SOTT editors or this forum over the years.

As the thread progresses I would love to discuss the world wars, the interbellum period, the Ustashe, Partisans and Chetniks, the 19th century national renaissance movements, the Turkish invasions, Bosnia, and of course, Yugoslavia itself, together with the much ballyhooed Tito.

It's a really fascinating subject to try to unpack and I hope we can arrive at some conclusions that are closer to the truth than what is available out there at the moment.

Hi, Revolucionar

I’ll start by saying that I’ve never actually read up on what happened in the Balkans. I have heard it mentioned a few times recently though, as you say, in relation to what’s happening in Ukraine.

So rather than contribute to the thread from a perspective of what actually happened, I do just want I offer some feedback from a Work standpoint.

It's been noted how Ukraine was never a real country and most of its territory was gifted by the Soviet authorities over the years, and therefore Russian has a legitimate claim.

This point that you make, it seems a bit off. And the flavour of it seems to me to continue throughout the rest of your post.

This argument, about Russia having some sort of claim to the territory of Ukraine for historical reasons, is not at all relevant to what has happened there objectively. I would guess that you know this? I give you that much credit, my friend.

Yet, you use this narrative in order to try to make a point. This is a red flag for me.

What this demonstrates is that this is obviously a subject that you’re highly identified with - for better or for worse. So bear in mind everything you know about beliefs, subjectivity, the various ways we can fool ourselves and the tricks our minds can play on our perceptions.

Make sure you ask yourself those questions which are a few layers deeper in the onion than the subject of the thread: how you feel about it; why you want to explore it; is there any buried pain or anger that might be coming out through intellectualisation; how is the war in Ukraine and the coverage of it affecting you emotionally, etc.
 
I've been meaning to start this thread for a while, but postponed repeatedly due to the great complexity involved in painting a proper picture of what went down and my lack of time to invest in that endeavour.

I realize that my views go against the grain of the general sentiment of the group and I just want to assure everyone that my intention is not to cause any sort of conflict here, but merely to add what I consider to be crucial context to the history of the Western Balkans that I believe is missing from the facts upon which the general consensus here is based.

To give this topic it's due, I would love to write a lenghtly article going through the history and addressing misconceptions point by point, but I don't have the time to do so, unfortunately, so I hope to be able to kickstart a discussion that will allow us to go through all of that piece by piece.

To start off, I have to mention that I was born in 1988, in Dalmatia, the southern Croatian coastal province that was one of the focal points of the Yugoslav wars, called the Homeland War in Croatia.

I could approach this topic from many different angles, but the one that has been coming up again and again for me lately is the comparison with the conflict in Ukraine.

It's been noted how Ukraine was never a real country and most of its territory was gifted by the Soviet authorities over the years, and therefore Russian has a legitimate claim.
Even though there are many who attempt to negate the historical statehood of Croatia, the fact is that Croatia has existed as a kingdom, either independent or as part of different Monarchical unions for more than 1000 years, and a few centuries longer as a loose entity of competing duchies.
Throughout this time, Croatia was a distinct and fully separate entity from whatever Serbia was existing as at any given time. The cultures and politcs were almost entirely separate until around the beginning of the 19th century. This period will be shown to be crucial to what ended up hapenning in the 90s.

It's also been noted how the Ukrainian junta started a campaign against the Russian language, culture and all its citizens who dared consider themselves Russian or close to Russia, going so far as to bomb their own people.
This was not the case in 1990s Croatia. Even though Milosevic would have you believe otherwise, there was nothing at that time that was a serious indication that Croatia would infinge upon Croatian Serbs human and civil rights. It was invented whole cloth by the Yugoslav/Serbian secret services and Milosevic's administration by spinning different facts to suit their propaganda.

Ukraine never tried to implement the Minsk accords.
Croatia actually had a proposal to avoid any conflicts before the war ever started, and another before the so-called genocide of Serbs in Croatia in 1995 that ended the war. First, there was a proposal for keeping Yugoslavia intact by turning it into a confederation in 1990, well before the war and while Yugoslavia still existed with all its constituent republics. This was summarily dismissed by Serbia at the parliament with Serbia refusing to even read the proposal.
The other plan, called Z-4, in 1994, would have given the territories with majority Serbian population in Croatia autonomy, something along the lines of the Minsk accords. This was also turned down with the Serbian rebel authorities declining to even receive the document.

It's also been noted that Russia has a legitimate claim to East and South Ukraine by virtue of those territories being part of Russia less than a century ago.
Serbia has had no such claim. The territories that Serbia started the war over have never been Serbian. The Serbs living there lived there for centuries as part of the Croatian Kingdom, coming from several historical waves of refugees running from the Turkish invasions. Also, a great deal of them, quite possibly a majority were not Serbian at all, but merely Orthodox Croatians, and Vlachs.
As a matter of fact, in the first Yugoslavia, which was under the rule of the Serbian royal family, an entity called Banovina of Croatia was formed that comprised a great deal of territories that are currently either part of Serbia or the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of those parts is today a satellite town of Belgrade.

Ukraine has been sponsored by the West to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while Croatia was under an embargo and the only reason it survived the initial onsluaght of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) is because very few officers or soldiers actually wanted to fight. In rather short order, all of the army barracks in Croatia surrendered and the personnel was allowed to leave home to their respective republics.

I'll stop here for now. I want to make it clear that I glossed over many things while also touching upon many issues that require much deeper analysis, so I invite everyone to poke holes and point out what they think I got wrong. I was certainly being onesided, but the reason is that the perspective I'm putting forth above is not one that's been explored by SOTT editors or this forum over the years.

As the thread progresses I would love to discuss the world wars, the interbellum period, the Ustashe, Partisans and Chetniks, the 19th century national renaissance movements, the Turkish invasions, Bosnia, and of course, Yugoslavia itself, together with the much ballyhooed Tito.

It's a really fascinating subject to try to unpack and I hope we can arrive at some conclusions that are closer to the truth than what is available out there at the moment.
It is all most impossible to stay objective if you are engaged in any way with the materia that you want to brake into peaces and analyse. Its good that you aware of your limitations and that you asking for help from others from this forum but reading your post I couldn't help but noticed that you already have the answers obviously guided by wishful thinking or want to get some conformationhere.
I'm not trying to criticise you, but you should know by now that you can't learn/see the truth by following mainstream media and so it wash better to be start without asummptions.
If you are following what is going on in our world, how PTB operates,
I wonder how you came to conclusion that there is any difference in the roles that have been played than and now, and who's have been orchestring all of that?
 
This point that you make, it seems a bit off. And the flavour of it seems to me to continue throughout the rest of your post.

This argument, about Russia having some sort of claim to the territory of Ukraine for historical reasons, is not at all relevant to what has happened there objectively. I would guess that you know this? I give you that much credit, my friend.

Yet, you use this narrative in order to try to make a point. This is a red flag for me.
Hi T.C., the reason I touched upon this particular point about Ukraine is not because it has any real bearing on the conflict over there, but because this argument had been used in relation to Croatia by the Serbian nationalists since forever. The typical Serbian argument is that Croats are merely catholicised Serbs, with the possible exception of the Croatian island and some of the coastal population. I've seen this similar argument repeated in different ways in articles carried by SOTT over the years.
Make sure you ask yourself those questions which are a few layers deeper in the onion than the subject of the thread: how you feel about it; why you want to explore it; is there any buried pain or anger that might be coming out through intellectualisation; how is the war in Ukraine and the coverage of it affecting you emotionally, etc
Thanks for the reminder. I'm trying my best to stay objective about this and I'm double checking everything that I thought I know about the relevant history.

I have no issues with the general stance about the Ukraine conflict here.
And about any buried pain or anger, I think I worked through that years ago. I had to accept certain truths about my country that weren't obvious to me before, but even though for awhile I was trying to align myself with and find evidence for the accepted narrative that Serbia was a victim of western hegemony and Croatia ultimately the bad guy, I can't see any good evidence for that other than the heuristic thinking that since Serbia was at a certain point obviously wronged by the west and was opposed to its dictates, that that automatically means that they were in the right from the start and it was all a conspiracy to harm Serbia.
The evidence doesn't bear this out.

My only motivation for starting this thread is to bring forth a different part of the story from what formed the basis of the consensus here and on SOTT, which in my opinion is putting members in a position of believing lies which we know is no bueno.
I felt I would be doing a disservice to everyone if I hadn't pointed those lies out.
 
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