Yugoslavia Essays - Southeastern Europe, Ethnic Groups In Croatia

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Recently, there has been much fighting in the former country of Yugoslavia, involving all ethnicities and religious groups and without making a difference between military or civilians. Diplomats have been hard at work to attempt to resolve the differences that led to conflict and bloodshed, but it has proven to be a very difficult thing to do with extremely limited success. To understand the situation, it has to be realized that a big part of the problem lies in the geography of the region and its demography. These factors have contributed to conflicts in the past and do so now. Yugoslavia covers mountainous territory. The backbone of the region is made up of the Balkans, a mountain range that runs north-south. Continental plate movement from the south has created an intricate landscape of plains, valleys and mountains. This led to intensive compartmentalization of the region. As a result, there were few low-level routes and those that existed became very important strategically. Most notable are the Varda-Morava corridor, which connected the Aegean Sea and the Danube, and the Iron Gates of the Danube, linking Central Europe and the Black Sea, that controlled much of the trade between the Mediterranean and Central Europe since ancient times. Most of the populations have lived separated from each other geographically and culturally, developing very strong national and tribal allegiances. This region is a frontier between Eastern and Western European civilizations and has also been influnced by Islam during the Turkish invasion. The roots of the conflict in the Balkans go back hundreds of years. Farther than recent events in the region indicate. Dating back to Roman times, this area was part of the Roman Empire. It was here that the divide between Eastern and Western Roman Empires was made when it split under the Roman emperor Diocletian in A.D. 293. Along with the split, the religions divided also into Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. This line still divides Catholic Croatians and Hungarians and Orthodox Montengrins, Serbs, and Romanians. The Romans left behind them excellent roads, cities that are still important political or economic centers, like Belgrade, Cluj, or Ljubljana, and the Latin language, which is preserved in Romanian. The period of Turkish dominance during the middle ages left a much diffferent imprint on the region. An alien religion, Islam, was introduced, adding to already volatile mixture of geography, politics, religion, and nationalism. The administration of the Ottoman Empire was very different from that of the Romans. The Turks did not encourage economic development of areas like Albania, Montenegro and Romania that promised little in producing riches. They didn't invest in building roads or creating an infrastructure. Greeks controlled most of the commerce and Sephadic Jews, expelled from Spain, had influence as well. The diversity of Yugoslavia can best be captured in this capsule recitation: "One state, two alphabets, three religions, four official languages, five nations, six republics, seven hostile neighbors, and eight separate countries." This had more than a little truth. Yugoslavia employed Latin and Cyrillic alphabets; it was home to Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslims; it's Slavic groups spoke Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian; they identified themselves as Serbs, Montenegrins, Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians; each had its own republic, with an additional Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina for a mixed population of Serbs, Croats, and Serbo-Croatian-speaking Muslims; Yugoslavia was bordered by Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania, all of whom harbored some grievances against it; and the "autonomous regions" of Hungarian Vojvodina and Albanian Kosovo within Serbia functioned until 1990 in an independent manner comparable to that of the six formal republics. This indeed was a diverse state. Yugoslavia had been "a geographic impossibility, tied together by railroads, highways, and a Serbian-dominated army." (Poulsen, 118-9) This country is a patchwork of complicated, interconnected ethnic and religious entities that intertwined so densely that it is probably impossible to separate them and make everybody happy. It was a witness to two bloody Balkan wars that took place in 1912 and that contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The conflict seems intrinsic to the region, with painful fragmentation after the fall of the Hapsburg empire and further discord during and after World War II. In fact, there was hardly any time when there was little or no conflict. The events that started the most recent escalation of conflict took place in 1991. The first republic to express anti-Serbian sentiments was Slovenia. They felt that although they and Croats had prospered the most in Communist Yugoslavia, they were lagging behind Austria, Italy, and even Hungary. They saw the transfer of their profits to the southern republics as