After the Second World War, Yugoslavia, although it entered the socialist camp, chose for itself a slightly different path of development than the USSR and other socialist countries. To a large extent, this was also dictated by the ambitions of the charismatic leader of the Yugoslav anti-fascist resistance, General Tito. In 1948, Yugoslavia quarreled with the Stalinist Soviet Union, and before Khrushchev came to power, Tito was called the "bloody executioner", "foreign spy" and "fascist" in the USSR.
Tito allowed elements of the market into the Yugoslav economy and abandoned collectivization. Emphasis was placed on the development of self-government in enterprises, significant powers were given to the management bodies in the Yugoslav republics: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a result of the constitutional reform of 1963, the country was named the SFRY - the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1980 Tito died.
Having achieved obvious success in the economy, Yugoslavia still could not cope with a number of problems. The planned traditions of the central leadership came into conflict with market elements, the republican authorities that received a certain autonomy took care of the interests of their region, separatist, nationalist tendencies began to appear more and more often in the republics, which especially intensified in the late 1980s. The most industrially developed Slovenia and Croatia provided 50% of the exports of the SFRY. It was these republics that took the initiative to introduce amendments to the country's constitution aimed at expanding their autonomy. Serbia and Montenegro made their own counterproposals that strengthened centralization.
After the federal parliament - the Federal Assembly - actually supported Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia in September 1989 proclaimed the priority of republican laws over federal laws and declared its right to withdraw from the SFRY. The disintegration of inter-republican economic relations began, trade within the SFRY switched to mutual settlements in German marks, eight autonomous energy systems operated in the country. Crash inflation has begun. Attempts by the SKU (Union of Communists of Yugoslavia) to prevent the disintegration of the army failed. The Unions of Communists of all the republics changed their name, and many other parties appeared. In 1990–1991 in elections in all republics except Serbia and Montenegro, anti-communist forces came to power.
In Slovenia, at the end of 1990, a referendum on independence was held, in which 86% were in favor. The “Demos” (“Democratic Opposition”) bloc headed by M. Kuchan came to power. Small Slovenia rapidly moved to the standards of developed capitalist countries.
In Croatia, the majority was won by the "Croatian Democratic Commonwealth" headed by Franjo Tudjman, a former general of the Yugoslav People's Army, commissar of a partisan detachment, historian and dissident. From the beginning of the 1970s, he promoted the idea of the national revival of Croatia, for which he was persecuted by the authorities. The referendum that placed Tuđman in power boycotted the population of Krajna, a self-proclaimed Serbian enclave within Croatia.
On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia officially declared their independence. The territories of these republics, inhabited by Serbs, began the struggle for joining Serbia. The Yugoslav People's Army was drawn into the ethnic conflict. Then, after its withdrawal, the war in Croatia was continued (and quite successfully) by detachments of the Serbian self-defense. Belgrade supported them with weapons and money. The tragedy also lay in the fact that the differences between Croats and Serbs were, in general, small for an outside observer. They spoke the same Serbo-Croatian language, fought together for many years for the independence of Yugoslavia. There were differences in religion (Serbs - Orthodox, Croats and Slovenes - Catholics). For a long time, Croatia and Slovenia were in the sphere of interests of Hungary, Austria, Germany, while Serbia was conquered by Turkey, then it was supported by Russia. The outbreak of civil war was temporarily suspended due to the emergency intervention of the UN peacekeeping contingent. The country was given a special status.
In Macedonia, independence was achieved without military conflicts in September 1991. This country has problems with international recognition due to the position of Greece, claiming a number of territories.
Serbia and Montenegro, left alone, proclaimed in April 1992 a new Yugoslavia - the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Power was concentrated in the hands of the Serbs under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic.
The most bloody was the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the relative majority (about 40%) was Muslim (Slavs who converted to Islam during the reign of the Ottoman Empire). 32% were Orthodox Serbs, who at the same time inhabited the largest territories in the republic; 18.4% are Catholic Croats. After the elections in October 1991, Croats and Muslims entered into an alliance and, having formed a majority, proclaimed a Memorandum of Independence for the country. The Serbian community refused to recognize this document and announced the creation of a separate Serbian Republic in Bosnia. The referendum held in March 1992 was ignored by the Bosnian Serbs. The majority of those who voted were in favor of independence. In April 1992, a civil war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina on interethnic and interfaith grounds. By 1993, 160,000 people had died here. Mutual ethnic "cleansing operations", partisan raids, filling concentration camps, shelling Sarajevo and other cities continued for more than three years. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been charged with genocide and war crimes by an international tribunal.
The UN and the EU were the most serious against the FRY. The Serbian leadership was accused of an expansionist policy, interference in the affairs of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Economic sanctions were imposed against Belgrade, which were lifted only in January 1996. During this time, the country's economy suffered enormous damage. At the same time, NATO aircraft were attacking the bases of the Bosnian Serbs, thus persuading them to sign peace agreements.
In November 1995, at the initiative of England and the United States, Milosevic, Tudjman and the Bosnian leader Izitbegovic signed an agreement in the city of Dayton (USA) that extinguished the flames of the civil war. With the assistance of UN and NATO peacekeepers, the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided into three enclaves. The Serbian part of Sarajevo was handed over to the Muslims, which left about 150 thousand people. In general, the war in Bosnia claimed more than 200 thousand human lives. About 800 thousand Muslims were expelled from the eastern part of Bosnia, about 600 thousand Serbs from the western and central parts, and about 300 thousand Croats from the central part. Many of them remained abroad; by 2000, the number of those who left the country reached 800 thousand people.
The civil war in the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia was a series of armed inter-ethnic conflicts that eventually led to the complete collapse of the country in 1992. The territorial claims of various peoples that had been part of the republic up to that point, and the sharp interethnic confrontation demonstrated a certain artificiality of their unification under the socialist banner of the power, which was called Yugoslavia.
Yugoslav wars
It is worth noting that the population of Yugoslavia was very diverse. Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Hungarians, Romanians, Turks, Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrins lived on its territory. All of them were unevenly distributed among the 6 republics of Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina (one republic), Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia.
The so-called "10-day war in Slovenia", unleashed in 1991, laid the foundation for prolonged hostilities. The Slovenes demanded recognition of the independence of their republic. During the hostilities from the Yugoslav side, 45 people were killed, 1.5 hundreds were injured. From Slovenian - 19 killed, about 2 hundred wounded. 5 thousand soldiers of the Yugoslav army were taken prisoner.
This was followed by a longer (1991-1995) war for the independence of Croatia. Its secession from Yugoslavia was followed by armed conflicts already within the new independent republic between the Serb and Croat populations. The Croatian war claimed the lives of more than 20 thousand people. 12 thousand - from the Croatian side (moreover, 4.5 thousand are civilians). Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and all material damage is estimated at 27 billion dollars.
Almost in parallel with this, another civil war broke out inside Yugoslavia, which was falling apart into its components - the Bosnian (1992-1995). It was attended by several ethnic groups at once: Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims and the so-called autonomist Muslims living in the west of Bosnia. Over 100 thousand people were killed in 3 years. The material damage is colossal: 2,000 km of roads were blown up, 70 bridges were demolished. The railroad has been completely destroyed. 2/3 of the buildings are destroyed and unusable.
In the war-torn territories, concentration camps were opened (on both sides). During the hostilities, there were egregious cases of terror: mass rape of Muslim women, ethnic cleansing, during which several thousand Bosnian Muslims were killed. All those killed were civilians. Croatian militants shot even 3-month-old children.
Crisis in the countries of the former socialist bloc
If you do not go into the subtleties of all interethnic and territorial claims and grievances, then you can give approximately the following description of the civil wars described: the same thing happened with Yugoslavia that happened at the same time with the Soviet Union. The countries of the former socialist bloc experienced an acute crisis. The socialist doctrine of "friendship of fraternal peoples" ceased to operate, and everyone wanted independence.
The Soviet Union in terms of armed clashes and the use of force in comparison with Yugoslavia literally "got off with a slight fright." The collapse of the USSR was not as bloody as it was in the Serb-Croat-Bosnian region. Following the Bosnian War, protracted armed confrontations began in Kosovo, Macedonia and Southern Serbia (or the Presevo Valley) on the territory of the already former Republic of Yugoslavia. In total, the civil war in the former Yugoslavia lasted 10 years, until 2001. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands.
The reaction of the neighbors
This war was characterized by exceptional cruelty. Europe, guided by the principles of democracy, initially tried to keep aloof. The former "Yugoslavs" had the right to find out their territorial claims themselves and to sort things out within the country. At first, the Yugoslav army tried to resolve the conflict, but after the collapse of Yugoslavia itself, it was abolished. In the first years of the war, the Yugoslav armed forces also showed inhuman cruelty.
The war has dragged on too long. Europe and, above all, the United States decided that such a tense and prolonged confrontation could threaten the security of other countries. The mass ethnic cleansing, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, caused particular indignation in the world community. In response to them, in 1999, NATO began to bomb Yugoslavia. The Russian government was unambiguously opposed to such a solution to the conflict. President Yeltsin said that NATO aggression could push Russia to take more decisive action.
But after the collapse of the Union, only 8 years have passed. Russia itself was greatly weakened. The country simply did not have the resources to unleash the conflict, and there were no other levers of influence yet. Russia was not able to help the Serbs, and NATO was well aware of this. The opinion of Russia was simply ignored then, because it weighed too little in the political arena.
The upheavals in the Soviet Union occurred in parallel with the most acute crisis of statehood in Yugoslavia, which, like the USSR, began to collapse. The “special path” of I.B. Tito did not rid this country of the weaknesses that were characteristic of “real socialism”. The system of government of the country gradually led to the economic and political autarchy of the republics and territories, and increased the unevenness of their development. Only the authority of JB Tito's personal power and the rigid organizational structure of the Communist Party saved the country from disintegration.
But by the beginning of the 70s, a new generation of leaders had formed in the republics and territories, who did not share the revolutionary internationalist views of I.B. Tito and were influenced by nationalist sentiments. First of all, this applied to the leaders of Croatia, whose history of joining the united Yugoslavia was extremely controversial (see vol. 1 present, ed.). The center of ethnic tension was also the autonomous region of Kosovo and Metohija (since 1974 - Kosovo) as part of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, the majority of whose population after the end of World War II began to be Albanians who migrated there from Albania during the Nazi occupation. In an attempt to prevent separatism, the federal authorities made concessions to the Kosovo Albanians, as a result of which the local Serb and Montenegrin population was subjected to covert discrimination by the local Albanian authorities and gradually left Kosovo. Demographic ratios changed even more in favor of the Albanians.
After the death of IB Tito in May 1980, presidential power passed to the institution of collective leadership - the federal presidium. Subject to the principle of annual rotation, a representative of one of the republics and territories was chosen as its chairman. The economic situation in the country was difficult. After the collapse of the USSR (♦), there was a devaluation of the “special” role played by Yugoslavia in the geopolitical calculations of East and West. Aid from external sources has been reduced. Economic difficulties, the growth of foreign debt exacerbated the contradictions between parts of the federation.
An attempt to bring the country's economy out of the abyss was made in 1989, according to the canons of "shock therapy" dictated by the IMF, by the government headed by the Croatian Ante Markovic. He managed to bring down inflation at the cost of rising unemployment, bankruptcies and poverty. But as soon as the reform touched the sphere of privatization, its implementation ran into resistance from various political groups. First of all, the reform was dissatisfied with the economic and managerial elites of individual republics, who sought to seize the most profitable privatization objects. It was easier to do this by allying with the republican authorities against the federal ones, which is what business representatives in most of the republics of Yugoslavia focused on. This stimulated separatism. The reforms of A. Markovich, which required the unification of the economic systems that existed in the republics, provoked additional interethnic tension.
It was exacerbated by religious and historical factors - the majority of the population of Slovenia and Croatia were Catholics, Serbs, Montenegrins and Macedonians were Orthodox, in Bosnia and Herzegovina there was a significant number of Muslim Slavs who were considered a separate ethnic group on the basis of religious affiliation. The Albanians who inhabited the autonomous province of Kosovo were also Muslims.
On September 27, 1989, the parliament of the Yugoslav Republic of Slovenia adopted amendments to its constitution, proclaiming the right of the republic to secede from the SFRY. This was the first step towards the destruction of a united Yugoslavia.
In the same 1989, the Albanian majority of Kosovo came out with demands to raise the status of this region, declaring it a republic. The Serbian population of the region was frightened by these sentiments. Anti-Albanian sentiments began to grow throughout Serbia. In their wake, on January 9, 1990, at the first multi-party elections in Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, the head of the Serbian organization of communists, became president, who transformed their party into a socialist one. S. Milosevic spoke under the slogans of maintaining the territorial unity of Yugoslavia and the need to fight separatism. On September 28, 1990, the Serbian Republican Parliament decided to liquidate the autonomy of Kosovo, and troops were sent to the region.
Nationalist movements under militantly patriotic slogans won in the same 1990 elections in Croatia and Slovenia. At the same time, the outcome of the elections in Croatia was greatly influenced by the financial assistance provided from abroad to the nationalist-minded candidate, retired general (and fellow (♦) nickname I.B. Tito) Franjo Tudjman, Ustaše emigrants who left Yugoslavia after World War II . The idea of the Ustaše to restore the independence of Croatia met the understanding of F. Tuđman.
On December 23, 1990, a referendum was held in Slovenia, the participants of which spoke in favor of the independence of Slovenia. Immediately after that, a similar referendum was held in Croatia, which also decided to withdraw from Yugoslavia. In December 1990, a new constitution was adopted in Croatia, declaring it "the state of the Croatian people." Meanwhile, 30% of the population of Croatia within the administrative boundaries that it had as part of the SFRY were Serbs.
Croatian Serbs lived compactly. This was due to the fact that after the Second World War, when the administrative borders of the Yugoslav republics were being formed, lands with a predominance of the Serbian population were included in the Socialist Republic of Croatia at the insistence of I.B. Tito (who was a Croat by nationality). At the same time, the entire Muslim-populated Bosnian Adriatic coast was transferred to Croatia - which soon caused a conflict between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Fearing discrimination after the adoption of the new constitution, the Serb population of Croatia proclaimed the creation of its own state entity in the predominantly Serb territories - the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK). It proclaimed its independence, including in its composition all historical regions and territories predominantly Serbian in terms of population - Eastern and Western Slavonia, Baranya, Western Srem and Kninska Krajina. The Republic of Serbian Krajina began to seek unification with Serbia. Assistance to the RSK actually began to be provided by the units of the Yugoslav People's Army that were on the territory of Croatia.
In April 1991, the parliament of the self-proclaimed RSK turned to Serbia with a request to accept it into its membership, but the Serbian parliament rejected this request. Serbian President S. Milosevic, of course, sympathized with the Croatian Serbs. But he was afraid to openly speak out for the unification of the Serbian Krajina with Serbia, insisting on the inviolability of all existing borders of Yugoslavia. His plan was to keep Croatia within a unified Yugoslavia, while retaining the Serbian territories that were part of Croatia.
Thanks to this prudent position, S. Milosevic managed at that moment to maintain constructive relations with the United States and other Western countries, although the latter demanded that he agree to make concessions to ethnic minorities, including the Albanian population of Kosovo.
A political crisis developed in Yugoslavia. The activities of the institute of collective leadership of Yugoslavia were paralyzed. In March 1991, a series of meetings of the leaders of the Yugoslav republics took place in order to determine the future path of development of the federation. (♦) It was not possible to develop a common vision. In May 1991, when the time came to elect the Croatian candidate, Stefan Mesim, to the presidium of Yugoslavia, the delegates of Serbia and Montenegro blocked the procedure. This was a violation of law and tradition, the legitimacy of the unified supreme federal power in the country was called into question. The federal presidium actually ceased to function. Since that time, the federal government in Belgrade has already expressed the interests primarily of Serbia, and the representatives of Croatia and Slovenia have ceased to participate in it.
In this situation, on May 9, 1991, the government in Belgrade decided to grant special powers to the Yugoslav People's Army to conduct operations in Croatia - formally in order to prevent the seizure of army and federal property by the Croatian authorities. This only made the situation worse. June 26, 1991 Slovenia and Croatia announced their withdrawal from the SFRY.
The federal authorities in Belgrade did not recognize these acts. The conflict between the federal and republican authorities resulted in bloody clashes involving parts of the regular army. Armed clashes between detachments of the Croatian right and formations of the Serbs of the Republic of Serbian Krajina began. A civil war broke out in Yugoslavia.
It had little effect on Slovenia, which is relatively ethnically homogeneous and separated from Serbia by the territory of Croatia. Federal troops were withdrawn from Slovenia two weeks after their entry as a result of a compromise between the Slovenian government and the federal authorities in Belgrade, mediated by the European Community, which convinced first Slovenia and then Croatia to declare a "moratorium on independence" for a period of three months.
Macedonia, which declared itself independent on September 18, 1991, also broke away from the united Yugoslavia with amazing bloodlessness.
But inside Croatia, the war began to proceed in extremely cruel forms - primarily because of the stubborn resistance to the new Croatian authorities by the Serbs in Serbian Krajina. At first, the war was characterized by the victories of the Serbian side, which, with the support of the regular Yugoslav army, captured a third of the territory of Croatia. Croatian forces had to withdraw from all territories inhabited by Serbs. In October 1991, under pressure from the international community, federal forces withdrew from Croatia, leaving control over Serbian territories to the authorities of the unrecognized RSK. The conflict remained unresolved, and separatist tendencies continued to develop.
In November 1991, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed its independence from the united Yugoslavia. The Macedonian authorities decided to hold a referendum in March 1992 to (♦) determine whether the declaration of independence adopted by the Macedonian Parliament would come into force.
The international community tried to promote the cessation of hostilities in Yugoslavia. In 1991, the UN imposed an arms embargo on any region of Yugoslavia (Security Council resolution No. 713 of September 25, 1991) and began to provide humanitarian assistance to the population of the affected regions. To protect UN humanitarian convoys, small contingents of UN forces were introduced into the territory of Yugoslavia (resolution No. 724 of December 25, 1991).
The USSR was the second world pole that determined the course of international relations after the end of World War II, so the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the end of a long period of bipolar development of the world. The Russian Federation, which became the successor state and successor of the USSR, could not perform the functions inherent in the Soviet Union as one of the pillars of bipolarity, because it did not have the necessary resources for this.
The disappearance of the USSR as one of the two defining elements of the system of international relations in the period 1945-1991. can be considered the final event of the post-war era. The bipolar structure of international relations collapsed. The Yalta-Potsdam order ceased to exist. It did not cause a global cataclysm. The stability of the international system as a whole has been preserved.
Tendencies towards unification and rapprochement of the former socialist and capitalist countries began to develop in international relations, and the international system as a whole began to develop the features of a “global society”. This process was fraught with new acute problems and contradictions.
Sources and literature
Gorbachev M.S. Reflections on the past and the future. M.: Terra, 1998.
Bush G., Scowcroft B. A World Transformed. N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Shultz S.R. Turmoil and Triumph. My Years as Secretary of State. N.Y.: Charles Scribners Sons, 1993.
Gorbachev-Yeltsin: 1500 days of political confrontation. M., 1992.
Sogrin V. Political history of modern Russia. 1985-1994. From Gorbachev to Yeltsin. M., 1994.
Garthoff R.L. The Great Transition. American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994.
Gates R.M. Through the Shadows. The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
SECTION IV. GLOBALIZATION
The self-destruction of the Soviet Union completely changed the nature of international interaction. The watershed between the two opposing blocs disappeared. The subsystem of international relations, the basis of which was the "socialist camp", ceased to exist. The peculiarity of this grandiose transformation was its predominantly peaceful character. The collapse of the USSR was accompanied by conflicts, but none of them resulted in a major war that could threaten the overall peace in Europe or Asia. Global stability has been preserved, although the national security interests of many countries (USSR, SFRY, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan, etc.) have suffered crushing or very significant damage. Universal peace and overcoming the half-century split of the international system were secured at the price of the destruction of multinational states.
The tragedies of state collapse turned into an encouraging trend towards the restoration of the political unity of the world. In the early 1990s, this trend was perceived in the former socialist countries through the prism of naive expectations of a better life, the liberation of the individual and the growth of well-being. The bitterness of the loss of statehood was coupled with hopes of gaining freedom through democratization. Public conscience in many parts of the former "socialist world" sought to turn its attention from thinking about losses to looking for new opportunities that an end to confrontation would give countries and people. The democratization of a large group of former socialist countries became the most important feature of international relations for almost a decade.
But their other characteristic was the fall in the manageability of the international system, which resulted in a crisis of world-system regulation in the first half of the 1990s. The old mechanisms of international governance relied on "confrontation by rules" between the USSR and the USA and the observance by their allies of "bloc discipline" - rules of conduct based on the principle of "equalizing with the elder" within the framework of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The cessation of confrontation and the disintegration of the WTO undermined the effectiveness of such a system.
The UN-based regulation, which had previously been ineffective, in the new conditions coped with the tasks of ensuring peace even less successfully. The UN, as it took shape, was geared primarily to prevent war between the great powers, the Soviet Union (♦) and the United States. This was its, so to speak, prohibitive "mandate", with which the UN in the second half of the 20th century. did an excellent job.
But the constructive “mandate” of the UN, in fact, was not implemented in practice. Its rare efforts to engage in peacemaking either ended in failure or were of secondary importance in relation to the results that the great powers could achieve through direct dialogue with each other. It was necessary to re-formulate the tasks facing the UN, making it, if possible, not a formal, but a real basis for international regulation. This required a reform of the UN. Then one could count on the harmonization of international relations and their ordering, taking into account the interests of all countries of the world.
But strong powers, for various reasons, were distrustful of the UN. The United States felt like the winning side after the end of the confrontation. Strengthening the UN could limit the freedom of action of the United States in the international arena and therefore was not beneficial to them. The United States was wary of UN reform. The Russian Federation, which became the legal successor and successor of the USSR, was also afraid of the UN reform. Russia did not have the potential of the USSR. The privileged status in the UN Security Council that she inherited from him made it possible to compensate for the weaknesses of the position in which she found herself after the destruction of the Soviet Union. UN reform, which, according to most of the proposed projects, was supposed to expand the permanent membership of the Security Council and limit the practice of using the veto right, could further devalue Moscow's "voice" in international affairs.
There was an unspoken consensus between Russia and the United States on the issue of slowing down the reform of the UN. International regulation after 1991 "spontaneously" continued to be carried out on the basis of existing mechanisms. Since they were built and balanced among themselves in such a way as not to prevent the two superpowers from using the advantages of their national potentials, in the new conditions a more significant role in international governance was automatically guaranteed to the stronger side. This was the organizational prerequisite for strengthening the US role in international politics.
Chapter 12. DECAY OF A BIPOLAR STRUCTURE
It is worth noting that the population of Yugoslavia was very diverse. Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Hungarians, Romanians, Turks, Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrins lived on its territory. All of them were unevenly distributed among the 6 republics of Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina (one republic), Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia.
The so-called "10-day war in Slovenia", unleashed in 1991, laid the foundation for prolonged hostilities. The Slovenes demanded recognition of the independence of their republic. During the hostilities from the Yugoslav side, 45 people were killed, 1.5 hundreds were injured. From Slovenian - 19 killed, about 2 hundred wounded. 5 thousand soldiers of the Yugoslav army were taken prisoner.
This was followed by a longer (1991-1995) war for the independence of Croatia. Its secession from Yugoslavia was followed by armed conflicts already within the new independent republic between the Serb and Croat populations. The Croatian war claimed the lives of more than 20 thousand people. 12 thousand - from the Croatian side (moreover, 4.5 thousand are civilians). Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and all material damage is estimated at 27 billion dollars.
Almost in parallel with this, another civil war broke out inside Yugoslavia, which was falling apart into its components - the Bosnian (1992-1995). It was attended by several ethnic groups at once: Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims and the so-called autonomist Muslims living in the west of Bosnia. Over 100 thousand people were killed in 3 years. The material damage is colossal: 2,000 km of roads were blown up, 70 bridges were demolished. The railroad has been completely destroyed. 2/3 of the buildings are destroyed and unusable.
In the war-torn territories, concentration camps were opened (on both sides). During the hostilities, there were egregious cases of terror: mass rape of Muslim women, ethnic cleansing, during which several thousand Bosnian Muslims were killed. All those killed were civilians. Croatian militants shot even 3-month-old children.
The civil war in the former Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia was a series of armed inter-ethnic conflicts that eventually led to the complete collapse of the country in 1992.
The territorial claims of various peoples that had been part of the republic up to that point, and the sharp interethnic confrontation demonstrated a certain artificiality of their unification under the socialist banner of the power, which was called Yugoslavia.
Yugoslav wars
It is worth noting that the population of Yugoslavia was very diverse. Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Hungarians, Romanians, Turks, Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrins lived on its territory. All of them were unevenly distributed among the 6 republics of Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina (one republic), Macedonia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia.
The so-called "10-day war in Slovenia", unleashed in 1991, laid the foundation for prolonged hostilities. The Slovenes demanded recognition of the independence of their republic. During the hostilities from the Yugoslav side, 45 people were killed, 1.5 hundreds were injured. From Slovenian - 19 killed, about 2 hundred wounded. 5 thousand soldiers of the Yugoslav army were taken prisoner.
This was followed by a longer (1991-1995) war for the independence of Croatia. Its secession from Yugoslavia was followed by armed conflicts already within the new independent republic between the Serb and Croat populations. The Croatian war claimed the lives of more than 20 thousand people. 12 thousand - from the Croatian side (moreover, 4.5 thousand are civilians). Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and all material damage is estimated at 27 billion dollars.
Almost in parallel with this, another civil war broke out inside Yugoslavia, which was falling apart into its components - the Bosnian (1992-1995). It was attended by several ethnic groups at once: Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims and the so-called autonomist Muslims living in the west of Bosnia. Over 100 thousand people were killed in 3 years. The material damage is colossal: 2,000 km of roads were blown up, 70 bridges were demolished. The railroad has been completely destroyed. 2/3 of the buildings are destroyed and unusable.
In the war-torn territories, concentration camps were opened (on both sides). During the hostilities, there were egregious cases of terror: mass rape of Muslim women, ethnic cleansing, during which several thousand Bosnian Muslims were killed. All those killed were civilians. Croatian militants shot even 3-month-old children.
Crisis in the countries of the former socialist bloc
If you do not go into the subtleties of all interethnic and territorial claims and grievances, then you can give approximately the following description of the civil wars described: the same thing happened with Yugoslavia that happened at the same time with the Soviet Union. The countries of the former socialist bloc experienced an acute crisis. The socialist doctrine of "friendship of fraternal peoples" ceased to operate, and everyone wanted independence.
The Soviet Union in terms of armed clashes and the use of force in comparison with Yugoslavia literally "got off with a slight fright." The collapse of the USSR was not as bloody as it was in the Serb-Croat-Bosnian region. Following the Bosnian War, protracted armed confrontations began in Kosovo, Macedonia and Southern Serbia (or the Presevo Valley) on the territory of the already former Republic of Yugoslavia. In total, the civil war in the former Yugoslavia lasted 10 years, until 2001. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands.
The reaction of the neighbors
This war was characterized by exceptional cruelty. Europe, guided by the principles of democracy, initially tried to keep aloof. The former "Yugoslavs" had the right to find out their territorial claims themselves and to sort things out within the country. At first, the Yugoslav army tried to resolve the conflict, but after the collapse of Yugoslavia itself, it was abolished. In the first years of the war, the Yugoslav armed forces also showed inhuman cruelty.
The war has dragged on too long. Europe and, above all, the United States decided that such a tense and prolonged confrontation could threaten the security of other countries. The mass ethnic cleansing, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, caused particular indignation in the world community. In response to them, in 1999, NATO began to bomb Yugoslavia. The Russian government was unambiguously opposed to such a solution to the conflict. President Yeltsin said that NATO aggression could push Russia to take more decisive action.
But after the collapse of the Union, only 8 years have passed. Russia itself was greatly weakened. The country simply did not have the resources to unleash the conflict, and there were no other levers of influence yet. Russia was not able to help the Serbs, and NATO was well aware of this. The opinion of Russia was simply ignored then, because it weighed too little in the political arena.
