ID: Photo of a pink felt heart on a slightly paler pink background, overlaying is stylised text: “make the world a better place punch a nazi in their face”

  • алсааас [she/they]@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    no of course not, but the breakup of Yugoslavia is a special case…

    Although you could argue that the SFRY in (especially late) 80s was hardly socialist anymore, since they had to implement exceedingly more wide-reaching reforms dictated by the IMF. Thus giving rise to material conditions which could be exploited by fascists as soon as the strong suppression of fascism stopped (which started much sooner relative to other ex-socialist countries, thanks to said reforms).

    Or even that it had stopped being socialist with the beginning of depper implementations of “self-managment socialism” (to judge that is out of the scope of this comment), giving more time for the sentimenrs to foster.

    Ofc the sudden rise of fascist and (ultra-)nationalist forces wasn’t only bc of material reasons, even if they fed the spread of it. Culture, questions of ethnicity and nationalism played a huge role for both historical and structural reasons.

    Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state with deep interwoven ties between it’s peoples. A part (or result or reason for, again out of scope) of that was a either a confused dispersion, or deep regiobal integration of said ethnicities, depending on how you put it.

    Here is a map based on the 1981 census

    Picture of ethnic map of the SFRY

    To cut things short, ethnic tension was one of the main problems the '74 constitution tried to solve. It didn’t succeeded, but was able to prolong it’s “explosion” for quite a while.

    With the gradual weakining of the central government – aggrevated by Tito’s death – nationalism was allowed to spread or even cultivated inside of the individual republics…

    Edit: another thing (aside from western intervwntion ofc) that enabled the dream of unity and brotherhood between the southern slavs to turn into a nightmare:

    It’s military doctrine of “Total Defence”

    The JNA adopted the concept of total defence (as did a number of other small European and neutral countries). Yugoslavia based its defence doctrine upon the total war concept of “Total People’s Defence” (sh. Opštenarodna odbrana / Općenarodna obrana) which drew upon Yugoslavia’s successful partisan history during the Yugoslav People’s Liberation War during the Second World War. “TND prepared the entire population to contest the occupation of the country and finally to liberate it. The Territorial Defence Forces would mobilize the population for this purpose. The combat readiness of the TDF meant that the steps of organization and training could be bypassed after the start of hostilities. The TDF would supplement the YPA, giving it greater defensive depth and an armed local population ready to support combat actions.” The entire Yugoslav population was to be engaged in armed resistance, armaments production, and civil defence under this concept. It was believed by the Yugoslav planners to be the best method by which a smaller nation could properly defend itself against a much stronger invader, specifically, NATO or the Warsaw Pact.

    also:

    yet another reason was the liberlization of religious policies which led to more freedom for the catholic church and of muslim organizations, which fostered nationalistic oppition in both Croatia and Bosnia

    (those are the instances I know of, might be that religious orgs of other beliefs did the same and/or additionaly in the other republic)

    Edit1: writing this comment made me wanna rewatch the following video: History of Yugoslavia through music ♪♫.
    It always manages to make me tear up, especially “Samo da rata ne bude” at 12:30 which practically devestates me. every. fucking. time. after that still but less so

    Here is the full version with eng translation: “Samo da rata ne bude” - Yugoslav Anti-War Song [Just let there be no war]