Australian here - I too want to go back to old Yugoslavia and see what it was like. I recently had some time in Serbia and Kosovo, and it was eye-opening to say the least - the differences and the similarities between the cultures don't make a lot of sense to the milquetoast mentality inculcated into me by my Aussie upbringing. It is a very fascinating region of the world and I can only say that having spent time in both Belgrade and Pristina, there is a little bit of hope that the new generation will rise from the turmoil of their parents past. Slowly, bit by bit, the prejudice and distrust is eroding.
Hate those border crossings, though. The drive from Vienna to Pristina was something I'll never forget.
As a Serb, I wouldn't really describe Serbia as being unaligned/centrist. The corrupt politicians (I wouldn't dare call them people) in the gov't itself eat from the laps of Russia because the West = Evil for some nebulous reason that nobody quite understands anymore (slightly exaggerating, it's mostly to do with Kosovo and NATO involvement in the Yugo wars in the 90s but most of the youth don't give a shit about that anymore), while the youth, at least in the bigger cities, tend to support the EU and want Serbia to join them one day if we're to have any hope of advancement.
At the same time they're also selling the country to the highest bidder, which for now are various Arab states like the UAE and the Saudis (lookup the Belgrade waterfront as an example), though there's also lots of Chinese money flowing into the pockets of the politicians as well.
It's a horrifically corrupt country with legitimate war criminals and their leashed dogs (like current PM Vucic) still holding the reigns, trying to scam and bruteforce their way to as much money as they can muster before the inevitable happens. Meanwhile it experiences insane levels of brain drain as anyone sensible and with the means to (my parents in the 80s and myself and pretty much everyone else in my family now included) gets the fuck out and never looks back twice.
Mind you, myself and most Serb diaspora I know don't want anything to do with the place. I was born and grew up in Indonesia and have visited Serbia a handful of times at most, so it's not a country I'd call home in any sense of the word. Even then, it still depresses me how hopeless the situation seems for anyone living there, as relayed to me by the few friends and family that are still stuck there with no way out.
If the GP had gone to Kosovo or (as the common English shorthand for “Bosnia and Herzegovina”) Bosnia, do you think that would change anything? In my experience, northern Kosovo and Republika Srpska are the very hotbeds of banging on about Serb identity and national character in the region, more than Beograd.
Vojvodina is a good escape from all that. Obviously the ethnic Hungarian population there doesn’t care about “Kosovo is Serbia” stuff, but even a lot of the Serb population feel those disputes are far away.
This has been my experience traveling in ex-Yugoslavia. It's exactly the same language, but It's difficult getting anyone to admit that for the reasons you stated. They really didn't have any interest in being grouped together in any way. Though, almost everyone I spoke with who remembered Yugoslavia said they missed it and things were better back then. It could just be rose colored glasses though.
I lived in the Balkans for 30 years. Serbs have great culture and kafanas, but they are extremely political. It’s so hard to hold a normal conversation without them mentioning Russia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo/Albanians, NATO la-la-la. Especially in kafanas, I can confidently say that a majority of them still live in the past and can’t move on and it’s really sad.
I was in Belgrade in 1999 about five days before the US started bombing the place. The people there were very friendly to me, even when they knew I was an American. The border guards sure scrutinized me and my passport (I had a transit visa), but they didn't give me any trouble other than that.
One of my more memorable experiences was visiting Tito's mausoleum. It was very quiet and I was the only person there. I got the impression that nobody was interested in visiting Tito anymore. The elderly security guard there was very happy to seem me and he talked to me in rudimentary German, the only language we had in common. As a gift he gave me some book discussing some Yugoslavian communist party conference back in the 60s with an English translation. Nice guy.
I was traveling from Sarajevo (a sad city at the time) on a bus through the Serbian part of Bosnia, and I was a little nervous about that. There were no problems though. Our bus did break down in a snowstorm and we were stuck there next to the road for about six hours, so I had plenty of time to talk to the other passengers (all Serbian as far as I could tell). They were either friendly or didn't pay attention to me, probably because most didn't speak any language I knew.
A couple in front of me on that bus were telling me that they heard that the Americans were about to bomb Belgrade at any moment. There was no animosity toward me personally, though: they were friendly people. I thought that was nonsense because the news had been talking about that for months and nothing seemed to be coming out of it. It turned out that in the few weeks I'd been traveling that things had gotten much more serious. I might have reconsidered traveling through Serbia if I knew things had gotten that serious. I saw a newspaper in Greek a few days after I left the country showing Belgrade and pictures of stealth bombers. I knew then that the people I was talking to had been right.
I haven't been to that region since that time, but I'd love to go again. I have lots of memories of friendly people.
At this point what does it matter why Tito did what he did? Serbia certainly has been hard done by in some ways, but complaining about the loss of Macedonia and Kosovo is utterly pointless now. There is no conceivable way of getting them to combine into a single nation state. If the Serbian leaders wanted to retain those territories the time to do something was 25+ years ago. Kiss them goodbye and move on instead of dwelling in the past.
As an Albanian, I take offense at what you are saying. Serbian regime has always been represessive and very similiar to the Apartheid, where 10-15% of the population (Serbians), rule with the iron fist over the majority.
If you were albanian, you couldn't go to school were you could learn your own language, you couldn't get a job a state industry (except for crappy jobs), you couldn't go to college/university where you can study in your own language. You even needed a visa to get out of Kosova!
BTW, Albanians there have been trying to secede peacefully since 1990, where they formed their own goverment. They had their own parallel structures, schools, etc.
Slovenia split, got attacked, then Croatia split and endedup with war, then we all now of the Bosnian massacres.
It seem in all these, the common denominator is Serbia, and Slobodan, using vapid nationalism for his own purposes.
Kosova was going to end up just like Bosnia, where over 200k people were massacred if the west didn't intervene. he was doing the exact same tactics that he did during the previous war.
BTW, the Albanians in Kosova got armed after 1997, when there were trouble in Albania, and all the army depot got emptied, and you could find a Ak-47 for less than $100.
Its worth mentioning that there is a second perspective to this being a matter of EU/NATO vs Serbia. Aljazeera had an interesting opinion piece framing it as Kosovo getting dropped to achieve Serbian integration into the western block
Cant say anything about the plausibility but the references to EU sanctions against Kosovo and the former president of Kosovo being currently on trial in the Hague are interesting points.
Would be happy to hear from anyone familiar with that perspective, it was news to me. But pressuring Kosovo to play ball in the negotiations doesnt seem to be out of the question?
Serbia has no intention to claim this territory whatsoever. Serbia treats the Danube as the border and that is it. The new Danube stream that is, the one now dividing the two countries. There is an old Danube stream which is almost completely gone decades ago, and Croatia considers it its border. The reason is that there are some other inversely interweaving parts which are pretty and maybe a nice tourist attraction and both countries want them. So, accepting Liberland as their own territory would mean waving the right to those other, more profitable, territories. But TBH, using the old stream as the border would just cause more trouble.
To be fair, I'm a Serb and I fully welcome Liberland. Since the two neighbors cannot decide on their boundaries, I do not see why anyone else cannot take a no-mans land. The issue is that we must define our borders sooner or later, and I am afraid there will be no more space for Liberland. But, that will be Croatia's business then, I hope :D .
What I always loved about Yugoslavia was the freedom.
You couldn't criticize the party but everything else was free.
I was 13, at 11am I watched TV and saw a music clip where the content was 2 people fucking and smiling while doing so. They were having fun.
You could drive a light motorbike, no helm, no license.
The food was natural. You could sleep anywhere without anyone bothering you or having to be afraid that someone would steal from you.
I just can't explain the freedom by mere examples.
Likewise if you try to tell the young Croats about the freedom, they don't believe you. They're indoctrinated in school with hate for Serbs.
How can you tell a blind man the beauty of colors? You had to experience it to understand it.
Croatian here, although I was a child when Yugoslavia fell apart (born in 1982.), I remember many details about life back then - and in certain aspects, it was better.
I had no notion of Croatians, Serbians, Slovenians, Macedonians.. we were all Yugoslavian, with slightly different accents. To this day, I've friends in all ex-yugoslavian countries and the feeling I get about them is that of brotherhood, not friendship.
We could go to seaside at any point for free or enjoy national parks.
Nowadays, it's cheaper if I fly to Thailand for 2 weeks. It costs me less than a week at my own country's seaside.
National parks are overcrowded and deteriorating, and rightist-nationalism ruins the interaction for people like us - who don't hate and just want to get along and enjoy life together.
There was plenty of food and I particularly remember comics, especially characters called Raja, Gaja and Vlaja :)
The only thing I feel sorry for is the animosity that was stirred up because of selfish reasons, the feeling of brotherhood and ability to enjoy the land's natural beauties was something special. I hope that one day we can have all the good back without the negatives.
Although it's a very unpopular sentiment these days, I also want to go back in time to Old Yugoslavia. I still remember reading "Moj Mikro" and "Svet Kompjutera", attending JUDEF in Šibenik and making friends with kids from all over Yugoslavia. My generation, at least, believed in brotherhood and unity.
Many who identified as Yugoslavians left in 90s and are now Americans, Germans, Australians or Canadians. They don't live in the Balkans because ethnically clean countries and ethnicity ranking so high on the political agenda is offensive to them.
Many people in central Bosnia identified as Yugoslavians before the war and I would say most in the same region born in late 60s, 70s would have identified the same. So when someone says Yugoslavia, I think Sarajevo and Bosnia, not Serbia.
A Serbian emigrant here. There hasn't been 25 years of work to join EU. The actual work has been done between 2001 and 2004 and between 2008 and 2012. Since then, since the current governing parties are in power, there hasn't been anything done. They don't care.
For the first time I am actually concerned and I don't believe the de-escalation is a given. If you read the government tabloids, it's a frightening picture.
My current estimate is that it's about 50-50 chance that there will be a very short war, that will end up in Serbian defeat of course, and a probable exodus of the Serbian population of northern Kosova. It will also leave Serbia under Western/EU economic sanctions, renewal of the visa regime to Schengen, and an even tighter grip of President Vucic on the country.
I just hope NATO does us a favor and actually go all the way and occupies the country. That's the only way to neuter Serbia for a generation of two, and the only hope that I have for a return to normalcy.
As a Serbian expat I would very much avoid putting too much trust in Serbian locals.
Sure, there are obviously some nice people but overall it's a very poor, corrupt, and cut-throat country. Serbian doctors have been caught stealing children from hospitals for god's sake.
Hate those border crossings, though. The drive from Vienna to Pristina was something I'll never forget.
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