The Bosnian democracy is too corrupt to be truly democratic

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Three people serve the interests of their own ethnic groups instead of one single nation. Two insidious entities that simply play by their own instead of the nation whereas the RS is more keen with pro-Russia and Serbian separatist rheotoric. In the Herzegovina there is a chance that you will find a neighborhood waving the Herzeg-Bosna flag as their means of wanting to establish another RS entity that will propagate Croatian separatism. I see nothing but anti-Yugoslav bigotry solely for the purposes of their own ethnicity politics and what does the West and East do?

They just extract the investments they achieve by making these people angry at one another over their religion, culture, and language. Need I remind that Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia (as well as Montenegro) speak the literal same language, the Serbo-Croatian which is now divided into these useless languages called Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin. You have the Croats actively purifying their language, disregarding any foreign element. Such practice dated even in the NDH regime and Croatia is willingly enforcing their own Newspeak which threatens the unity of the Yugoslavs.

I don't wanna say "redarstvenik" or "redarstvo"! I wanna say "policajac" and "policija" and there should be a balance between the words that are Slavic and loanwords from other languages because just imagine the English language being 100% Germanic, you wouldn't understand most of it since it also tends to borrow words from Latin, French, Italian, and such. But imagine if we Balkanized these and just made British angry at the Germans for different culture, different religion, different language (even if they're the same group), and different taste in general and where we see Germans actively purifying their own language to deter away more from non-Germanics.

And where do I even start with this insidious Dayton Agreement which literally declared that the war in Yugoslavia would end but America and Russia get to expand their influence without any consequence while our Yugoslav brothers continue being hostile to one another no matter. The fate of this cold peace was solely decided upon by the West an the East which for some part it did prevent Serbia from becoming a Balkan threat with their separatist terrorist force but it also made Bosnia an unreasonable dystopia of three people being angry with one another while the West and the East would be arm wrestling with the West gaining their upper hand with NATO candidate status in 2018 and EU candidate status in 2022.

Between the Western liberal outlook that enforces primarily American-West European standards and the Eastern reactionary outlook that enforces Sino-Russian standards, Bosnia itself cannot find any guaranteed hope for its civilians and should either fight for its own or never achieve progress.

Yeah sure, the Bosnian economy is doing well but the political system and ethnic hostility are the major issues that Bosnia has. Until we become a unitary post-Yugoslav state, we will never be able to catch to the West or the East. I say we abolish Dayton and abolish the federal state that failed because of the persistent ethnic supremacy of one of the three major groups.

I didn't fully understand the above, so I did some Googling. Apparently "RS" refers to Republika Srpska and "NDH" refers to Independent State of Croatia?

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 28 Jan 2024, 9:32 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes!

I would be interested in your perspective on how all the ethnic hostility got started in the formerly united Yugoslavia.

In late 1972, when I was 20, I happened to be in Vienna and took a side trip to Zagreb (Croatia) simply because I'd never been there. Zagreb at that time of year was actually rather dull, not a bad place, just not much happening. I have one story though. Bear in mind that "Yugoslavia" in those days was run by a Marxist/Leninist government, but wasn't a signatory to the Warsaw Pact. I point that out, because the propaganda to which we Americans were exposed throughout my youth would lead one to expect that Communism would be the single biggest political concern for people in that country. I will also explain that my conversational German was rather good at the time, and in addition, many people there had spent time in Germany as "guest workers" so it wasn't unusual to encounter people who spoke German.

Having said all that, it happened that I was in a sort of largish restaurant that I believe served meals throughout the day or you could just buy a drink there. there were maybe 3 young men I ended up talking to, some or all of whom spoke German. I won't go into everything that was discussed, but this one young man, at one point, without any prompting, started to repeat the assertion "there's going to be a civil war". That was it, but I didn't know anything about the prospect of a civil war in that part of the world. Turns out he was right. Doesn't explain everything, but it was definitely going to happen.

PS I really should have gone to Ljubljana. Stupid me!

Last edited by MaxE on 28 Jan 2024, 10:23 am, edited 2 times in total.

You see, the Balkans have had this issue persist since the 19th century. In the 1840s, a wave of radicalism swept throughout Europe, especially with the Revolutions of 1848. In this time, two Yugoslav people emerged in the Balkan scene. For Serbs, it was Ilija Garašnanin. For Croats, Ante Starčević. Both Garašnanin and Starčević were known for their view on a united South Slavic nation. However, neither were keen on the inclusivity of other Yugoslavs. Garašnanin's Načertanije called upon the expansion of Serbia into the lands of south Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and North Macedonia. Starčević on the other hand, espoused Greater Croatia where he saw Slovenia, Bosnia, and Croatia as one big Croatian state and Starčević rejected the idea of an Illyrian or Yugoslav nation. Starčević claimed that Croats and Bulgarians were the only true South Slavs.

You see, what Garašnanin and Starčević made for their own super Serbian and Croatian states would be later used by the more evil Četniks and Ustašas. Both of them are often credited as the origin of this very nationalism and separatism that is a common issue as well as the hostile rivalry between Serbia and Croatia. Religious differences, and yet the same ethnic and linguistic background, but the nationalist rhetoric that enveloped these two people is what opened the Pandora's Box.

And this hostility was also problematic for the Bosnians too. Most of the Bosnians are Muslim because they have submitted themselves to Islam enforced by the Ottomans and Bosnians were also targeted by both Serbs and Croats mainly due to the anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish sentiment that Serbs and Croats have developed and didn't consider the Bosnians as true Yugoslavs.

Despite the hostility, these three would be part of Yugoslavia TWICE. First was a Serbian monarchist Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941 which persecuted anyone who opposed the Serbian policies. Ethnic segregation in the monarchist Yugoslavia was documented as early as 1919 when in Sarajevo, the Ulema noted that the Serbs considered the Bosnians as "intruders". In 1924, a massacre of over 1,000 Muslims took place in Šahovići. From 1929 to 1931, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a royal dictatorship under Aleksandar I of the Karađorđević dynasty who used "Yugoslav ideology" as his pretext.

The first Yugoslav state was destroyed in 1941 by the Axis invasion and was partitioned by the Axis powers. Throughout WW2, two movements would arise against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia. The first were the communist Yugoslav Partisans led by Tito. Their uprising began in June 22nd, 1941 the moment Germany invaded Soviet Union. The second were the ultranationalist and monarchist Četniks led by Draža Mihajlović. Both of these movements at first tried to cooperate but never had any formal alliance with one another due to their ideologies. In Autumn 1941, these two would fight one another with Četniks slowly drifting towards collaboration with the Axis.

The idea of a communist Yugoslavia was never supported by the Allies (even the USSR) at first and they relied on the return of King Petar I who was in exile in London and they counted on the Četniks until 1943. But when Tito and the Partisans proved to be the worthy resistance to Axis occupation who have gone through hardships and still maintained high morale, the Allies stopped supporting Četniks and began focusing more on the Partisans. However, the Allied nations such as UK were still keen on bringing back the monarchy as they feared the spread of communism in Europe.

When the second Yugoslavia was formally established during WW2 on November 29th, 1943, and when the nation liberated itself mostly with limited help from the Allies in 1945, the communists disbanded the monarchy and Tito became the head of state. Whether he was a ruthless dictator or a benevolent autocrat, Tito is primarily characterized for keeping Yugoslavia at bay and not conforming to the standards of the West or the East as he pushed Yugoslavia through a more independent route of socialism which to some degree benefited the country as it maintained the trade with both blocs despite near-confrontation in 1948 from Tito-Stalin split and the paranoia that ensued until Stalin's death.

Many Yugonostalgics, communists, and socialists in the Yugoslav states have a positive liking for Tito just specifically for the reason that he led the country by his own rules and path. Tito was the strongman for Yugoslavia, a father of a nation he genuinely cared for and wouldn't let any foreign influence from America and Russia take it down. But because of the cult of personality and the lack of any other strongmen, Yugoslavia would experience political and ethnic instability when Tito died in 1980. Yugoslavia also was growing in debt to the IMF since the 1970s and the IMF was pressured Yugoslavia to abolish its workers' self-management in favor of liberal capitalism mainly due to the new global economic and banking rules set by the IMF. In the end, without a strong leader and without a clear instruction on how to spot and defeat nationalism, the nation would collapse into a bloody ethnic war fought between the chauvinist Serbia led by Milošević and the anti-Serbian Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia from 1991 to 1995. A short war would then break in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999 which resulted in nearly 9,000 Albanian civilians killed as well as a NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.

Unlike other ex-YU states, Bosnia was lacking behind every of them due to a political system that ultimately failed at basic decision-making for the nation and only focuses on the interests of ethnic groups instead of actual issues. It has yet to become a basic and acceptable democracy but until then, the three-presidential system will continue delaying the development of Bosnia and its ability to catch up with others.

The Marxist-Leninist government in Yugoslavia, as you acknowledge, isn't that of what many anti-communists tend to spew. Yugoslavia followed the path of Tito which was workers' self-management, market socialism, and some degree of internationalism mainly with the Third World Non-Aligned Movement. Also, the foreshadowing in the end.

Marshal Broz was an awesome dude ngl.



He was Croatian, but didn't support the Nazis like so many of his compatriots. I don't know much about how he ran the country in peacetime, though. He did bring the Winter Olympics to Bosnia, though. Not likely to happen again.

True. He was a Croat that respected other Yugoslavs unlike what we are seeing in modern-day Croatia now that their anti-Serb sentiment is back again. He ran the country as Prime Minister from 1945 to 1963. He officially became President in 1953 though many people point out to his role from 1945 since he was a father figure of Yugoslavia. Tito was also quite the traveler having received nearly 120 awards and decorations from 60 nations (including Yugoslavia who gave him 21). He was the only person to have served the highest military rank of Yugoslavia that is Marshal which was given to him back in 1943 making him the longest-serving.

He even smoked in the White House despite the prohibition. It was a Cuban cigar that he took out in the midst of tensions between the US and Cuba and when told politely to stop smoking, Tito said "Good for You!". Best politician of all time.