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Originally Posted by Mahatatain
Just being picky a little Rae (sorry) but can you really describe Yugoslavia as a satellite state of the USSR? I'm not an expert on the history of Yugoslavia but Tito fell out with Stalin in 1948 and I thought that Yugoslavia was always regarded as a bit of an independent communist state from then onwards. For a start I don't believe that they were ever members of the Warsaw Pact and they also founded the Non-Aligned Movement.
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You're absolutely right, Mahatatain. However, the Yugoslavs always had to look over their shoulders and consider the potential reaction of their powerful Slavic neighbor before acting. IIRC, Yugoslavia (under Tito) at one point considered annexing Albania but decided against it because they did not want to draw the ire of the Soviet Union. Even though the Yugoslavs tried to straddle the fense between east and west, there was always a bear in the room. With a healthy, robust Soviet union looking right over their shoulder, it is debatable whether the Yugoslavian government would have allowed the dissent and nationalism that led to the breakup and ethnic conflict which enveloped the country in the early '90s. Even if it did start to break up in a continued Cold War scenario, it's possible that the Soviet Union could have stepped in to stop it from doing so. They could have justified it to the west as a peacekeeping mission. This would certainly have increased tensions between east and west. Now that I think about it, I kind of like this idea because it segues nicely into the start of WWIII in Europe five or six years later.
It may be a case of correlation without causation but I don't think it's any coincidence that the breakup of Yugoslavia began shortly after the fall of the Soviet empire and not before.