Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to the former Pan-Slavic state that dominated the Slavic Balkans for most of the 20th century and was finally totally dissolved in 2002, when the only regions left in the Yugoslav federation, Montenegro and Serbia, renamed their federation as “Serbia and Montenegro.” Yugoslavia was conceived in 1918, after the end of World War I, as a proposed united kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (all unified under Slavic identity and culture). Slavic nationalism was strong in the late 19th century and enjoyed considerable Russian support for the ideal of a Pan-Slavic state. Yugoslavia was the closest manifestation of the Pan-Slavic ideal, but it always strained under the diversity of religion, ethnicity, and national identity within its borders. Croatia and Slovenia joined the union more to stave off Austrian and Italian expansion than to identify with Slavic ethnicity.

Religion was one of the key distinguishing factors that led to early disillusionment with the project of the Slavic state. Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, [Page 1398]Roma, Slovenes, and Montenegrins, all resented the increasing dominance of Eastern Orthodox Serbs in the government. Prior to World War II, the Ustae, an extreme Catholic fascist group, and other terrorist groups tugged at the already tenuous hold of the Serbian-led government in Belgrade. Yugoslavia attempted to remain neutral during the war but wavered under economic pressure from Nazi Germany and the Serbian monarchy's affinity toward Britain. The tensions were resolved when the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941. After the war, the country was once again unified as Yugoslavia under a nonaligned communist regime led by Marshal Tito, who played off of Western and Soviet concerns masterfully. The disintegration of the communist state in 1990 sparked off what is now known as the Wars of Yugoslavian Secession, with the first armed conflict in Slovenia in 1991 and the last in Kosovo in 1998.

Prior to the communist regime, religion was only suppressed insofar as it was connected to sedition and internal conflict. Tito's partisans generally did not claim an overt religious affiliation, unlike the Catholic Ustae. Tito maintained internal order through typical iron-fisted communist tactics early during his regime and was particularly suspicious of religious institutions that promoted ethnic identity or were viewed as foreign (e.g., Mormon or Protestant evangelical groups). However, after the formal break with the Soviets in 1948, Tito began a process of increased autonomy for the various provinces, which included more latitude for the respective religious groups. The ever-simmering nationalism took on more pronounced religious meaning over the 20th century, which led to a deadly combination of religious and ethnic warfare from 1992 to 1998 between the Croatians (Catholic), Bosnians (Muslim), Albanians (Muslim), and Serbs (Orthodox), most notably in Bosnia and Kosovo. Warfare strengthened the bonds between ethnicity and religion in such a powerful way that religious diversity is, at the very least, seen as unpatriotic in the former Yugoslav republics as they seek to heal from a century of resentment and a decade of war.