The existence of Broz’s SFRY (Titoslavia) was based primarily on the establishment of his personal dictatorship and personality cult, as well as the wholehearted material, political, and financial support of the Western so-called democracies, but primarily the United States of America (USA) since Stalin’s break with Tito in 1948.[1] Until the very death of the president-for-life of the SFRY.

Broz-Kardelj’s ideology of national communism, based on the banal practice of (quasi)socialist self-government, played the role of ideological cement in a multinational and fundamentally disunited state that lasted as long as its dictator.[2] The US artificially maintained Yugoslavia for a full ten years after the official (and unproven) death of the Austro-Hungarian corporal and self-proclaimed marshal Tito (1980), until the geopolitical basis of international relations fundamentally changed with the disappearance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the Warsaw Pact, and the unification of the two German states (1989-1991).[3] Given that Yugoslavia became unnecessary in American military-political plans for the post-Cold War era, it was left to sink into the bloody civil war of 1991-1995, which is only part of the historical wars of civilizations in the Balkans and the global space.[4]

The (quasi) Yugoslav policy of “brotherhood and unity” of Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) had as its main goal the political and economic preparation of   the disintegration of the country after his death according to the administrative-territorial template: all socialist republics and both autonomous provinces were to become independent states with the ultimate consequence of an internationally recognized ethnically pure Greater Croatia (Broz’s homeland) and Lesser Serbia reduced to the borders of “Bismarck’s Serbia” in the period after the Berlin Congress of 1878 until the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.

Therefore, Broz created autonomous provinces only in Serbia (according to the 1974 Constitution, in fact, truly independent republics) and did everything to prevent the truth about the horrific ethnocide against Serbs in the ISC after 1945[5], and finally to verify and legalize it. 

After Broz’s death (May 4th, 1980), the Kosovo Albanians were the first to begin the organized violent dismantling of the SFRY in the spring of 1981[6] with the ultimate intention of separating Kosovo province from Serbia, ethnically cleansing Serbs and all other non-Albanians, and restoring Mussolini /Hitler’s Greater Albania of the Second World War. Organized and systematic terror by Kosovo Albanians against the Serbian population of the province [7] as well as Albanian separatism in Kosovo after Broz’s death, were directly fuelled and politically encouraged by the leaderships of Croatia and Slovenia as the most effective way to continue the functioning of Broz’s asymmetrical Yugoslav federation, in which the Socialist Republic of Slovenia and the Socialist Republic of Croatia had a privileged political, economic and financial position in relation to all other republics, but especially in relation to the Socialist Republic of Serbia, within which the two autonomous provinces (Vojvodina and Kosovo) served as the best mechanism for preserving this asymmetrical state of inter-republic relations and politics.

Proposal of the newly elected “democratic” governments of Slovenia and Croatia[8] on the restructuring of the Yugoslav federation into a confederation of six “sovereign states”, each of which would have its own armies and diplomatic missions[9] was nothing else than a proposal for de facto recognition of the independence of the Yugoslav republics but within the borders created in Titoslavia in 1945, which primarily benefited a greater Croatia but also a greater Slovenia. This proposal for an asymmetrical confederation also had its political function of being created on such a way to be surely rejected as objectively unacceptable by Serbia and other Yugoslav republics, and thus providing a formal reason for Ljubljana and Zagreb to declare the independence of Slovenia and Croatia from the rest of Yugoslavia, which happened on June 25, 1991, which also marked the beginning of a bloody civil war.

Western academic literature, as well as Western mass media and political circles, generally directly accuse the “nationalist” policies of Slobodan Miloševic (1941-2006) as the main, and even the sole, inspirer of the breakup of the SFRY.[10] Slobodan Miloševic, however, is certainly not more guilty of the disappearance of the former common state and the outbreak of civil war than other leaders of the Yugoslav republics, especially Dr. Franjo Tudman (1922-1999) and his Croatian Democratic Union (CDU), but it is certainly true that he led his political struggle for the administrative unification of the Republic of Serbia, its equal political and economic position in the Yugoslav federation, and the protection of Serbs both in Kosovo and throughout Yugoslavia, but especially in Croatia, where neo-Nazi Ustashi came to power in the spring of 1990 in the garb of democracy and “European values”. However, Miloševic (mis)used such a situation and general political atmosphere in Yugoslavia to establish personal authoritarian rule and ethno-populism in Serbia[11], but the same authoritarian and ethno-popular politics Franjo Tudman introduced in Croatia, implementing his policy of Serbophrenia (not only Serbophobia) and Ustashi ideology from the time of the Second World War.[12]    

The political leadership of Serbia is directly accused by the same sources of attempting to realize the idea of ??a Greater Serbia during the period of the breakup of Yugoslavia[13] on the ideological foundations of Ilija Garašanin’s (1812-1874) Nacertanije from 1844.[14] Slobodan Miloševic (1941-2006) allegedly wanted to become the new Josip Broz Tito of the whole of Yugoslavia, which is not excluded in essence, but is not factually provable either.   

Unlike him, Franjo Tudman (1922-1999) very likely had as his main personal and political goal to remain recorded in Croatian history as the new national Poglavnik (supreme leader /Führer) who restored Pavelic’s ISC from the Second World War within its “ethno-historical” borders and, if possible, finally ethnically cleansed of Serbs. Croatian historiography in this period, primarily for political rather than scientific reasons, went a big step further by directly accusing the Serbian political and national elite of implementing the ideological-historical concept of not only a Greater Serbia but also a genocidal Serbia in which there would be no place for non-Serbs. This concept can allegedly be traced historically in a connected ideological series from the article “Serbs all and everywhere” by Vuk Stefanovic Karadžic (1787-1864) from 1836 (printed in 1849) up to the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA, originally SANU) in 1986.[15]

However, at least as far as the role of the Croatian side in the breakup of Yugoslavia is concerned, the new CDU (originally HDZ) government in Zagreb was, for the vast majority of Serbs throughout the country, nothing more than a reincarnation of Pavelic’s Serb-killing ISC (originally NDH) and the 19th century’s ideology of Croatian Party of Rights (CPR, originally HSP, the 20th century Nazi-Ustashi ideology) of “blood and soil” in resolving the “Serbian question” not only in the areas of Broz’s already Greater Croatia, but also in the entire area west of the Drina River, which has been claimed as an exclusively Croatian ethno-historical space since Ante Starcevic (1823-1896), a father of Croatian ultra-nationalism and the policy of genocide on Serbs.

In essence, the CPR-Ustashi ideology and policy of Tudman’s HDZ in resolving the “Serbian question” west of the Drina River during and after the dissolution of the SFRY was based on the ideology and policy of genocide against Serbs west of the Drina River since the 19th century in Croatian clerical and nationalistic-chauvinist circles.[16] That the ruling CDU was a copy of Pavelic’s ISC was clear to Serbs not only from the rhetoric of official Croatian state bodies, but also from the used Ustashi symbolism from the Second World War, as well as the official party and state stance towards the ISC’s leader Ante Pavelic (1889-1959) - the “Balkan Butcher” who headed the state in which up to 750,000 Serbs were killed in the most brutal manner.[17]

Therefore, it is no wonder that the Serbs from Croatia who lived in compact masses there, primarily in Banija, Lika, and Kordun, were simply forced to self-organize nationally, i.e., to first proclaim the Serbian Autonomous Region (SAR, originally SAO) Krayina on December 21, 1990, and on February 28, 1991, to adopt the Resolution on the separation of the Republic of Croatia and the SAR Krayina, which remained in Yugoslavia.[18]

After the declaration of independence of the Republic of Croatia on June 25, 1991, the well-equipped armed formations of Croatia (with around 200,000 long barrels)[19] assisted by party militias and various Croatian and foreign “dogs of war”, attacked Serbian settlements in the SAR Krayina area, but also the barracks of the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA, originally JNA), having diplomatic and political support in the Western “democracies”, and above all in a united Germany, which used the Yugoslav crisis and war to impose itself as the leader of the entire European Community (since 1992, the European Union).[20]

Thus formally began the four-year civil war in the territories of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, although fighting between the Serbian territorial defense forces and reserve militia units with Croatian regular police and paramilitaries had been waged earlier. On August 1t, 1991, fighting began in Dalj, Erdut, Osijek, Darda, Vukovar, and Kruševo. The Croats fought for the territorial integration of Titoist Croatia and to expel as many Serbs from it, while local Serbs fought for territorial separation from Croatia as the only way to save their lives from the newly coming genocide.  

References:

1] The official position of Yugoslav Titoist historiography and state-political propaganda that Tito broke with Stalin in 1948 is incorrect as Stalin finally severed relations with Broz as a Western client and expelled him and his Yugoslavia from the Informburo. The claim that Broz refuted all the Informburo slanders from the Resolution of June 28th, 1948, at the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (July 21st-28th, 1948) is also incorrect.  [Branislav Ilic, Vojislav Cirkovic (urednici/eds.), Hronologija revolucionarne delatnosti Josipa Broza Tita, Beograd: Export-Press, 1978, 123]. About Titoslavia from that period, see [????? ?. ???????, ?????? ??????? ????? – ???????????, ???????: ?????? ??????, 2004].   

2] On the psychopolitical character of Broz’s cult of personality and dictatorship, see [???????? ????????, ??? ?????????, ??????, ??????, ????: ?????????????? ????????, ???????: Informatika, 2008, 445-610].

3] Jeffrey Haynes, Peter Hough, Shahin Malik, Lloyd Pettiford, World Politics, London-New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011, 34-43.

4] Victor Roudometof, “Nationalism, Globalization, Eastern Orthodoxy: ‘Unthinking’ the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ in Southeast Europe”, European Journal of Social Theory, 2 (2), 1999, 233-247; Samuel P. Hungtington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, London: The Free Press, 2002; Ignas Kapleris, Antanas Meištas, Istorijos egzamino gidas: Nauja programa nuo A iki Ž, Vilnius: Leidykla “Briedis”, 2013, 387. Western powers played a direct role in the dissolution of the SFRY by fueling religious and interethnic intolerance as well as nationalist passions in the territory of Yugoslavia [Veljko Kadijevic, Moje videnje raspada: Vojska bez države, Beograd: Politika, 1993, 40]. For information on the role of international factors in the process of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the wars that followed in its territory, see [Richard H. Ullman (ed.), The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars, New York: A Council on Foreign Relations, 1996]. Western antagonism towards Serbia and Serbs in a historical context was perhaps best defined by H. Sitton-Watson in 1911 when he wrote that “the victory of the Pan-Serbian idea would mean the victory of Eastern culture over Western culture” [Trajan Stojanovic, Balkanski svetovi: Prva i poslednja Evropa, Beograd: Equilibrium, 1997, 377].

5] For information on Serbocide in the ISC and the direct cooperation of the Roman Catholic Church with the Nazi Ustashi regime in the ISC, see [????? ??????? ??????, ????????? ????????: ???????? ????????, ??????? ? ??????? ????????? ? ?????????, 1941-1945, ??????: ?????, 1999].    

6] ???????? ?. ?????????, ?????? ? ???????????, ???????: ????, 2002, 243.

7] For documented Albanian terror against Kosovo Serbs in the SFRY, see [?????? ??????????, ???????? ???????, ????????, ?????????? ??????, ???????: ????????, October 22nd, 1988].

8] This fact that the governments of Slovenia and Croatia in 1990 were formally elected democratically after the first post-war parliamentary elections served and continues to serve as the main alibi for the “anti-Serbian” bloc both in Yugoslavia and abroad for the declarative defense of the policies of Ljubljana and Zagreb in the process of breaking up the SFRY. However, it must be emphasized that all the governments of all other Yugoslav republics in the same 1990 were just as democratically elected as the governments of Slovenia and Croatia. Moreover, Adolf Hitler came to power in the Weimar Republic in January 1933 in an extremely democratic manner, at least from a purely formal and legal perspective.

9] Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995, 132.

10] See, for instance: [Louis Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Durham-London: Duke University Press, 2003; Richard Overy, XX amžiaus pasaulio istorijos atlasas, Vilnius: Leidykla “Briedis”, 2008, 144; Kimberly L. Sullivan, Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Minneapolis, MN: Twenty-First Century Books, 2010; Adam Lebor, Milosevic: A Biography, London-Berlin-New York-Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2012].

11] Bernd J. Fišer, Balkanski diktatori: Diktatori i autoritarni vladari jugoistocne Evrope, Beograd: IPS, Beograd-IP Prosveta, Beograd , 2007, 481-539.

12] Jill A. Irvine, “Ultranationalist Ideology and State-Building in Croatia, 1990-1996”, Problems of Post-Communism, 44 (4), 1997, 30-43. However, the Ustashi ideology regarding the “Serbian question” in Croatia is completely contradictory in relation to its practical solution during the ISC, given that the Ustashi, as well as Poglavnik Ante Pavelic himself, claimed that in Croatia there were essentially very few true Serbs because the vast majority of Croatian “Serbs” were in fact ethnic Croats of the Orthodox faith [Irina Lyubomirova Ognyanova, “Nationalism and National Policy in Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945)”, draft of the paper presented at the Special Convention Nationalism, Identity and Regional Cooperation: Compatibilities and Incompatibilities, organized by the Centro per l’Europa centro orientale e balcanica, University of Bologna, Forli, Italy, June 4-9, 2002, 5]. However, in practice during the ISC, the Ustashi regime sought to eliminate in one way or another all Orthodox Christians in both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which suggests that the Ustashi were primarily the Vatican’s crusading army. Tudman’s regime faced a similar problem in the new „democratic” ISC in the 1990s.     

13] Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, London-New York:  Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012, 442.

14] About Garašanin’s Nacertanije, see [????? ?????, ????? ? ???????????: ?????????? ? ??????? ??????? ????????? ?????? (1844), ???????: ????, 1993]. About Ilija Garašan’s as a statesman, see [?????? ???????, ????? ?????????: ???????? ? ?????????, ???????: ????????, 1987].

15] Ante Beljo et al. (eds.), Serbia from Ideology to Agression, Croatian Information Centre, Zagreb-London-New York-Toronto-Sydney: Zagrebacka tiskara, 1992. For the truths, misconceptions and abuses of the concept and ideology of Greater Serbia, see [???????? ?. ???????, ????? ????? (????????/eds.), ?????? ??????: ??????, ???????, ???????????, ??????? ?????? ?? ???????????? ??????? ????? ???????? ? ??????? ????????? ????? ? ????????? ? ???????? ?? 24-26. ??????? 2002. ??????, ???????: ?????? ???????? ???????, 2003]. On the mutual connection between Garašanin’s Nacertanije and Vuk’s article “Serbs All and Everywhere” see [Vladislav B. Sotirovic, Srpski komonvelt: Lingvisticki model definisanja srpske nacije Vuka Stefanovica Karadžica i projekat Ilije Garašanina o stvaranju lingvisticki odredene države Srba, Vilnius: privatno izdanje, 2011]. Both works were a direct response to the national-chauvinist ideology and policy of the Croatian Illyrian Movement about the Croatization of Roman Catholic and Ijekavian Serbs and the creation of Greater Illyria, i.e. Greater Croatia [Vladislav B. Sotirovic, The Croatian National (“Illyrian”) Revival Movement and the Serbs: From 1830 to 1847, Saarbrücken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2015].  

16] On the genesis of the idea and ideology of Serbocide among Croats in the context of the creation of a Greater Croatia with its eastern borders till the Drina River, see [???????? ?. ???????, ????????? ?? ?????? ????????, ????????: ??????, 2002].

17] Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, London-New York:  Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2012, 442. For example, the Croatian Party of Rights (CPR) – a tacit coalition partner of the leading CDU, adopted the so-called June Charter on June 17th, 1991, which openly demanded the restoration of Pavelic’s Nazi ISC within its eastern borders as far as northern Serbian territories of Subotica and Zemun, the Drina River, Sandžak (Raška) in southern Serbia and the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. The claim that all of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro (“Red Croatia” – Croatia rubea, in Croatian ultra-nationalistic ideology) are historically and ethnographically Croatian lands, from the time of Prince Trpimir and King Tomislav (the 10th century) to the present day, is clearly emphasized by the Croatian newspaper Narod – Glasilo za demografsku osnovu i duhovni preporod hrvatskog naroda from 1998. [???????? ?. ???????, ????????? ?? ?????? ????????, ????????: ??????, 2002, ???????]. Since the summer of 1990, the CPR/HSP has organized its paramilitary (Nazi Ustashi) units of the Croatian Defense Forces – CDF (originally HOS), which have been largely integrated into the regular formations of the Croatian Army since October 1991. CDF/HOS openly advocated Nazi Ustashi extremism, used Ustashi symbolism and glorified the Poglavnik/Führer Ante Pavelic of the ISC. [Ivo Goldstein, Croatia: A History, London: C. Hurst & Co, 1999, 225].

18] ????? ????? ??????, ????????? ?????? ???????: ????? ?????? ???????, ???????: ????? ????, 2005, 16-19.

19] Croatian (as well as Slovenian) armed formations were then equipped with the most modern light weapons and military equipment and trained by Austrian and German military experts to carry out quick and effective actions against the YPA. At the same time, as a form of special war against the YPA and the SFRY, mass desertion from YPA units was prepared and carried out, so that they would remain unfilled and therefore unprepared for carrying out more serious actions [???????? ?. ?????????, ?????? ? ???????????, ???????: ????, 2002, 260].

20] For example, on the direct incitement and financing of separatism by Kosmet Albanians by Germany, see [Matthias Küntzel, Der Weg in den Krieg: Deutschland, die NATO und das Kosovo, Berlin: Elefanten Press, 2000]. In the process of the foreign policy disintegration of the SFRY, it is certain that the diplomacy of the united Germany was the most prompt and convincingly the most effective. By breaking up the Yugoslav state into its republics as “independent” states, Berlin was realizing its old geopolitical project of “penetration to the Southeast” (Drang nach Südost) in peacetime conditions [???????? ?????, ?????? ????? ?? ??????, ???????: ?????????????? ?????, 1999, 177]. However, this German geopolitical and economic penetration into southeastern Europe is only part of the strategic geopolitical project of the Eastern Question of the West and especially Germany, which should be understood as the geostrategic struggle to transform Russia into a Western colonial sphere, and not the issue of the survival of the Ottoman Sultanate in Europe, as has been considered so far in academic circles [????? ???????, ???? ??????????? ??????, ???????: ?????? ?????? “???????”, 2015, 56-60 ]. For a united and strengthened Germany, the brutal disintegration of Yugoslavia and the peaceful disappearance of the USSR were part of a long-term project of revising the results of both world wars [???????? ?????, ???????????? ?????? ???????, ???????: ?????????????? ?????, 2004, 116-122].