Quote:
Originally Posted by Heffe
One area I’m really struggling with in the Ref’s manual, at least in the timeline, is Yugoslavia. There’s no mention of Yugoslavia or the nations that followed its collapse.
What do you all think, would Yugoslavia still have collapsed in FL’s timeline?
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Yes and I absolutely see this as one of Europe's flashpoints in 1997.
The fragmentation of Yugoslavia started around Tito's death in 1980, but was not just related to his death, though he was a unifying force for the country. Since the 1970, economic growth throughout the country came paced very differently. Something similar can be said for the idea of a unified state, which changed a lot with the new constitution of 1974. The constitution ended in Kosovo becoming an autonomous province within Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia arguing for greater autonomy and Serbia taking the most unitarist stance. To make matters worse, Yugoslavia by the late 1980s was economically failing. So much, that the Reagan administration feared Yugoslavia might enter the Soviet bloc to save its economy. Austerity was the word of the day and that didn't sit well with the richer states of the country.
De facto, Yugoslavia was a confederation after 1974 and then the economical factor hit full force. Croatia and Slovenia were the most developed and industrialized federal states within in the union. In 1987, public opinions in Slovenia saw better economic opportunities for the state outside a Yugoslav union than within. At that time, communism lay on its worldwide ideological deathbed and when the USSR was visibly breaking apart - being the world leader in communist matters - the idea of that being a goal to aim for in Yugoslavia, was just evaporating. As the USSR was softening up on power and started talking to Yugoslavia again, the West stopped pouring so much money into Yugoslavia, but the USSR couldn't compensate. So matters grew worse fiscally and that added to Slovenia and Croatia wanting out of the republic. It didn't help that Serbians began driving an evermore rhetorically nationalist course and Milosevic became president of Yugoslavia after going on record with the sentence, "[a]t home and abroad, Serbia's enemies are massing against us. We say to them 'We are not afraid. We will not flinch from battle'" in November 1988.
In January 1990 the communist party more or less imploded and multi-party elections were held the same year. The Slovenes held an independence referendum the same year and Croatia followed on 2 May 1991. On 25 June 1991 Slovenia declared independence and Croatia followed the same day. Slovenia made it out within ten days, but Croatia was more complicated, because there were larger parts of the country where Serbians lived, who in turn declared splitting off from Croatia in December.
So, even before the August Coup changes history of 4E, Yugoslavia is de facto broken up, having lost Slovenia completely and seeing fighting during the Croatian War of Independence.
What happens after late 1991 in 4E Yugoslavia is open for speculation, of course, but I don't see the USSR acting very differently for at least two years than Russia did. It seems, they wouldn't have been powerful enough to intervene in any large way. With communism hopping of the deathbed in 1994, after the death of Gennady Yanayev and Vladimir Kryuchkov taking over, the USSR might intervene more actively. Honestly, I don't see them automatically becoming allies of Serbian led Yugoslavia, because, while the Russian-Serbian bonds werre historically strong, Serbian nationalism wouldn't necessary play well with the USSR: Serbians emphasized their Orthodox Church a lot again and that's not in the interest of the USSR. But should Milosevic approach the USSR and propose a deal like "we downplay nationalistic and religious tones for weapons and peace troops", I could see the USSR meddle with that.
Of course, the West by then was active in the Balkans as well. IFOR wasn't a thing until 1995, but by 1994 this looked like it might happen. The USSR might want to join in on stabilization, albeit with its own agenda. Similar to the 1999 incident at Pristina airport, there might something like that in the winter of 1996/1997 at Mostar airport. With the Soviets already actively fighting in the Baltics, they might try to grab Mostar airport. Who knows, maybe the Italian, Franco-German and Spanish forces behave a lot like the US and British did at Pristina, but maybe they also buckle and let Moscow have that airport for Soviet troops to pour in. It might throw oil into the fire for what happens later that year and convince President West that the US need to be swift, decisive and hard in their response to the USSR invading Poland and other former Warsaw Pact countries.