Information Related to "Lessons From Yugoslavia"
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Europe is a patchwork quilt of ethnic groups, many demanding their own independence.
by Melvin Rhodes
he century that began in Sarajevo is also ending there.
It was in June 1914 that the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated while on a visit to the ancient Balkan city, an event that led to World War I: the "great war" that lasted over four years, changed forever the global balance of power and ended the lives of millions of people.
Europe was never to be the same again. At the turn of the century most European nations had their own kings, emperors or ruling princes. Various ideologies-nationalism, fascism, communism and democracy-forced kings off their thrones or forced them to change. Stable political systems that had endured for centuries were replaced by instability, ethnic strife and demagoguery. Tensions arose between new nations that had not existed before the great global conflict. Croats, freed from Austrian rule, fought Serbs, who had not long had their independence from the Ottoman Empire of the Turks.
After World War I, at the Treaty of Versailles, the major powers of the world tried to force ethnic groups together into artificial entities. One such "country" was Yugoslavia, dominated by Serbs, with their king, but containing within its borders groups such as Serbs, Croats and Bosnians.
Invasion by the Third Reich in 1941 led to the eventual fall of the Yugoslav monarchy. Serbian Chetniks and Croatian Ustashi led resistance to the Nazis. After the German attack on the Soviet Union, communist insurgents began a resistance under the leadership of their secretary general Tito. Communist partisans fought the monarchist Chetniks as well as the Germans. Tito was victorious, but became a renegade in the communist world after World War II by refusing to take orders from Moscow.
Tito ruled over Yugoslavia's various ethnic groups for more than 30 years. Realizing the potential for more strife after his death, he arranged a rotating presidency system, whereby a leader from each ethnic group would have an opportunity at the top. It wasn't to last.
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