A (Brief!) History of Yugoslav Nationalism

The Balkans have always been, at their core, a crossroads. In this intersection between Europe and Asia we find a coexistence of:

• Religion (Orthodox/Catholic/Muslim)
• People Groups (Latin/Greek/Slavic)
• Historic Cultures (Byzantine/Ottoman/Venetian/Austro-Hungarian)

This contested peninsula has been traded and dominated and reorganized throughout its history - and for most of its early history (16th-19th centuries) was dominated by other regional powers.

Sometimes we just need to look at maps to understand this stuff - so let's look at some maps!

Starting in the late 16th century, the Balkans were controlled by the Ottoman Turks, and the territories acted as the empire's foothold in Europe.

But, of course, no one was happy having the Turks in their backyards, and through a series of Ottoman wars, the European powers generally beat back the Turks until Russia finally defeated them in 1878.

This led to the Congress of Berlin, in which the major world players (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Turks) sat down to carve up the Balkans in all their imperial goodness.

Due to German/Hapsburg fears of Pan-Slavism, they decided to not unite the southern Slavic territories with Russia, but instead gave a large swath of the Balkans to Austria-Hungary (including present-day Bosnia, Croatia, and parts of Serbia/Montenegro), in addition to creating independent states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro. 

However, due to the burgeoning Pan-Slavic movement, Serbia was unhappy with this arrangement and wanted to see the formation of a united Southern Slavic nation (what would eventually become Yugoslavia). Thus, the Serbs sponsored multiple nationalist (arguably terrorist!) groups that operated in Bosnia/Croatia during the early 20th century. 

The most notable group is the Black Hand, a group of Serbian military-sponsored students who advocated for a united Yugoslavia. This group decided the best way to split the southern Slavic territories from Austria-Hungary was by assassinating an upper-level Austria-Hungarian official, namely Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

On June 28, 1914, the Black Hand enacted a plot that ended with Gavrilo Princip shooting the Archduke and his wife during their visit to Sarajevo. This assassination set off a chain of events that allowed regional tensions to boil over into a much more massive conflict. The nationalists got a bit more than they bargained for -- namely, World War I. 

In the aftermath of World War I, the Slavic nationalists got their wish, and a united southern Slav nation was formed due to the work of the Yugoslav Committee, a group of politicians who worked ceaselessly in London during WWI to draw up plans for the new united Slavic nation. The new Yugoslavia united all of the Slavic people in the Balkans, regardless of religion or region, except for Bulgaria, which remained independent.

-----End History! ----

I think I'm just glad to get the history straight in my head. It seems that the ideas of pan-Slavism and southern Slavic unification weren't entirely born out of the imperialist climate of 19th century Europe, but instead out of necessity. The Balkans are essentially the middle four squares on the chessboard between Europe and Asia, and these people groups had been dominated by the complete list of regional powers.

There's a lot more subtlety to the history of their unification. For instance, I should mention the Illyrian movement, a group of Croat scholars and thinkers who advocated for the unification of southern Slavic culture in the mid-19th century, resulting in the official Serbo-Croatian language, as well as an outpouring of Croat literature and philosophy. I could also talk about the general nationalist movements of the 19th century, ranging from the well-known (Germany, Italy) to the less-mentioned (like Ukraine, or the Balkans!). These movements and cultural revivals obviously added to the desire for independence found in the Balkans.

At its core, the idea of a united Yugoslavia represented the hope southern Slavs had for peace. European and Asian empires had fought their wars on Balkan soil, and the only way to end this ceaseless cycle was to become a regional power. A united Yugoslavia offered all southern Slavs, regardless of religion or region, protection, influence, and peace. Essentially, it was safety in numbers.

What they didn't foresee was the large cultural differences between the different constituents of the country. These differences later caused the fracturing and wars of the late 20th century. It would be interesting to examine what happened to cause people groups who in just two generations went from being Slavic brothers to being at each other's throats.

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Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_of_Yugoslavia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Congress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Slavism