ABSTRACT

The small nation-state problem During the two year period 1918-1919 the Balkans witnessed the birthing of two major institutions: the establishment of the nation-state of Yugoslavia in 1918; and the creation of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia a year later. Neither event came out of the blue; neither event was completely unexpected. In the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution attempts to set up Communist regimes proliferated in Europe – in Germany, in Hungary – and one consequence of the Peace of Paris was the breakup of old empires, specifically the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy of the Habsburgs. That said, the overlap in timing of the two events is interesting. It is interesting because the tragic history of Yugoslavia between 1919 and 1990 testifies to an important theme of this book: the fact that nationalism trumps all other “isms” whether classic liberalism, Fascism, or Communism. At the same time the story of Yugoslavia illustrates the importance of ideological branding for the interaction of economic and political progress with beliefs embedded in national ideologies. Finally, the Yugoslavian story testifies to the importance of geopolitics – particularly military considerations – in encouraging minuscule protonation-states to band together in an uneasy alliance of convenience in order to benefit from a security umbrella provided by combining the militaries of each constituent proto-state. Neither the birthing of Yugoslavia nor the birthing of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia went smoothly. As World War I was winding down, the constituent nationalities of the major empires – Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman – were organizing committees to declare independence from what they perceived as hegemonic imperialist rule. All hopes were on a postwar peace conference that – committed to the principle of nation-states as opposed to dynastic states – would confirm their independence and establish boundaries within which the nationalities could live peacefully. The problem, of course, is that there were far too many nationalities in Europe, particularly Central Europe, for each nationality to possess its own nation-state. For one thing there was the problem of associating territory with nationality: many nationalities lived interspersed with other nationalities within particular regions. The other problem was security. In the absence

of a strong collective security system – as it turned out the League of Nations was not up to the challenge, partly because the United States Senate rejected the treaty that would have allowed the United States to join the League as a full member – small states were vulnerable to conquest from their neighbors. This was the small state problem; this is why the military force equation is and was so important, particularly in parceling out property in the aftermath of the Great War. Of all of the regions of Europe the Balkans was the most problematic region. The problem was historical. Lying between east and west, the Balkans had been fought over by armies of all stripes. Initially it was divided between settlements of Illyrians living in its western reaches and Thracians who resided in the east.1 In the fourth century bce Celts moved into the area, driving the Illyrians into the mountains. Then Alexander the Great conquered the area, incorporating the region into his shortlived empire. In 298 bce the Romans began fighting with the Illyrian state, eventually taking over the entire peninsula after protracted conflicts. Having pacified the zone, the Roman state commenced systematic colonization. For this reason many Latin words are still found among the Albanians, who are the descendents of the Illyrians. Under Roman rule, Illyria became an important source of military defense for the Empire. Indeed, a number of Roman emperors were deposed by Illyrian forces. Constantine the Great, who promulgated Christianity in the Empire, was born in the Balkan Peninsula. The arrival of the Goths led to further conflict in the region. Following the Gothic invasions came intrusion by Bulgarian and Slavic tribes. During the seventh century Slavic invasions brought a variety of pagan cults. Eventually converted to Christianity by two Macedonian missionaries, Cyril and Methodius (who developed the Cyrillic alphabet adopted by the Slavs in the region), the area became a vital center of Slavic culture. Arrival of the Hungarians in Eastern Europe threatened the states created in the peninsula, particularly the Croatian state that eventually succumbed to Hungarian rule (later on becoming part of the Austrian, then Austro-Hungarian dual Habsburg Empire).2 With the growth of Ottoman power in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Ottoman Turks conquered the southern and eastern portions of the Balkan Peninsula, incorporating Serbia into their empire after achieving a major victory at Kosovo towards the end of the fourteenth century. With all of these conquests and invasions the Balkans emerged as an area with – as Churchill once wryly quipped – a richer history than it could consume. In particular three major religions ended up co-existing in the region: Catholicism (largely in the northwest), Islam, and Orthodox Christianity. This was and is cultural diversity with a vengeance. Another symptom of cultural diversity in Yugoslavia is language diversity. There are two major types of language: Slavic and non-Slavic. The Slavic languages include Serbo-Croat or Croata-Serbian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Ruthenian, and Czech; the non-Slavic language group includes Albanian, Hungarian, Romanian, Italian, and German. In the 1980s about 70 percent of all

language speakers in Yugoslavia spoke either Serbo-Croat or Croata-Serbian which are quite close to each other in their spoken forms. That said, the SerboCroat version is written in Cyrillic script, while the Croata-Serbian version is written using the Latin alphabet. In comparison to Switzerland – where German, French, Italian, and Romansh function as spoken languages – the diversity represented by Yugoslavia’s twelve functional languages is staggering in the extreme. One of the practical problems this posed for Yugoslavia prior to its breakup beginning in 1990 was the cost of publishing documents, books, and newspapers in some of the languages spoken by relatively small nationality groups. This is an obvious barrier to developing a common infrastructure in the educational sector. With the gradual decline of Ottoman power in the nineteenth century, larger and larger slices of the Balkans became independent or quasi-independent of Ottoman control: in particular Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria. At the same time the Habsburgs managed to wrest away some of the former Ottoman dependencies under their military control: in the late 1870s as a result of a number of conflicts and rebellions in the region, Bosnia-Herzegovina was basically awarded to Austria (but not to the Hungarian portion of the Dual Monarchy).3 On the eve of World War I the two biggest imperial powers in the region were Russia (whose influence over Bulgaria was immense) and the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire. Coming in third was the “sick man of Europe,” the faltering Ottoman Empire. Not surprisingly, with the outbreak of World War I Russia and Austria were on opposite sides (Austria-Hungary with the Central Powers, Russia with the Triple Entente prior to the Russian Revolutions of 1917); the Ottomans eventually choosing to ally themselves with the Central Powers. In particular Austria-Hungary was solidly entrenched in the region, ultimately going to war in 1914 to expand its geopolitical role by attacking Serbia. As can be seen from Panels A and B of Table 7.1, Austria-Hungary’s gamble in the Balkans was a dangerous game, precisely because Austria-Hungary was a state that operated as an umbrella for a large number of nationalities, many increasingly desirous of breaking away from Habsburg rule as the idea of establishing independent nation-states spread across Europe in the nineteenth century. The consolidation of Germany and Italy as nation-states was increasingly viewed as a model for Central European nationalities.4 Indeed, with the collapse of Austria-Hungary’s war effort in 1918 the fissure feared by the Habsburgs came to pass. In late October of 1918, meeting in Zagreb (the capital of Croatia) a National Council of Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes declared independence from the Dual Monarchy. While the idea of forging a union of southern Slavs went back historically – the name “Yugoslavia” conveys this idea – it was clear from the outset that the coalition that was put together in 1918 was mainly designed to counter perceived military threats from across the Adriatic namely from Italy.5