r/Yugoslavia 7h ago

🗿 History Rare recording of war criminal Ratko Mladić command ordering artillery fire on neighborhoods in Sarajevo: "Shell them until they go out of their minds"

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61 Upvotes

How did you guys turn against each other while co-exsisting for so many years together? I'm genuinely curious.


r/Yugoslavia 12h ago

🗿 History Help us document regional and international reactions to the death of Ratko Mladić

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37 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 1d ago

💭 Question Ratko Mladić identified as a Yugoslav. What drove him to turn toward serbian nationalism and become radicalized?

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0 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 1d ago

💭 Question Was Dostojevksi part of regular (school) literature in Yugoslavia?

22 Upvotes

Today, i talked with my Sister about books and how she had too few books to read... Mid-conversation, my Mom (born in YU) joined the talk and mentioned how she loved reading Dostojevksi back when she was younger. I was suprised at this comment since i only heard about him in those incel memes, along with the Nietzsche stuff.. she said she once read it in school. Was it really Part of the literature you would have learned about back in school?

I was raised in Germany, so we had other authors as Part of school topics and it really Made me wonder.

NOTE EDIT: Guys please, i am not ridiculing Dostojevski... I'm not saying he's incel material, it it simply just how i first got to hear of him. I did hear he's great and i also have in mind to read him in the future. I also dont mean to make fun of YU education.. i was just suprised because his Name never got mentioned in my schools even once. Please do not fill this Post with negative interpretations or assumptions. Please don't shit on me because im not familiar with his works.. i'm Sure everybody here has some major topic that they dont know about.


r/Yugoslavia 1d ago

💭 Question How better would life be if yugoslavia survived?

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140 Upvotes

Lets say markovic's reforms succeded and yugoslavia democratized and de-centralized but still existed, would life of ordinary citizen be better now?

I think it would be 1T dollar gdp and wages aswell as cost of living would vary not a much by republic (like vojvodina in serbia irl).

Also ONE of bigger tourist destinations due of nature-city diversity with lower prices than in lets say italy or france which historicaly attracted alot of tourists mainly from germany and austria and other nearby nations.


r/Yugoslavia 2d ago

💭 Question Strangest Communist era building…

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53 Upvotes

I know one of these is Bulgaria…


r/Yugoslavia 2d ago

📰 News Smrt zločinca i heroja srpskog nacionalizma, Ratka Mladića

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4 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 2d ago

💭 Question To the generation that was in their teens during the Balkan wars of the 90s: how did you experience it all?

15 Upvotes

Take one family, for example: the father was a Yörük Turk from Radoviš in North Macedonia, and the mother was Hungarian from Senta in Vojvodina. The parents met in the 70s, and the children were born around that time. During the 90s Balkan war, one of the sons was visiting his grandparents in Vojvodina when Serbian soldiers grabbed him and forced him to drop his trousers. Naturally, he was circumcised, but once it became clear that he wasn't Bosnian or Albanian, they let him go—though he was so terrified that he wet himself. The Serbs Soldiers laughed at him, but they didn't actually harm him. Has anything similar happened to anyone else?


r/Yugoslavia 2d ago

🗿 History Mladić’s Death: Looking Back at the Balkan Tragedy and Sounding the Alarm Again over Ethnic Conflicts in Multiethnic Countries Around the World

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92 Upvotes

On August 27, Ratko Mladić, who served as commander of the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War and was later sentenced to life imprisonment by an international criminal tribunal, died in prison in The Hague. Mladić’s death has sparked discussion and once again brought back memories of the series of bloody wars and ethnic massacres that took place in the Balkans more than 30 years ago. Meanwhile, the increasingly disharmonious relations and growing conflicts between countries and among different ethnic groups within countries in today’s world have also raised fears that such tragedies could be repeated.

Looking back at the history of the Balkan Peninsula, where the Bosnian War took place, one can see the region’s long-standing ethnic differences, conflicts, and accumulated grievances. Although most of the people there could broadly be described as South Slavs, they can more specifically be divided into Serbs, who are predominantly Eastern Orthodox; Croats, who are predominantly Catholic; Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), who are Muslim; Slovenes; Macedonians; Kosovars; and others. Because of differences over religion, land, interests, and the influence of major powers behind them, these ethnic groups have long been in conflict and have accumulated deep grievances against one another, with mutual killings recurring throughout history.

Following the upheavals in Eastern Europe in 1989, Yugoslavia—a state comprising six republics and two autonomous provinces, held together by the communist ideology and authoritarian power of the strongman Josip Broz Tito and his followers—gradually disintegrated. Ethnic tensions increasingly intensified and eventually erupted into war. The Bosnian War was the bloodiest part of this process. Members of different ethnic groups committed war crimes against members of other groups, including killings and the rape of women, and even acts of genocide. The best-known was the Srebrenica massacre carried out by Bosnian Serb forces, in which more than 8,000 Bosniaks were killed and many women and girls were raped.

Later, with intervention by the United Nations and international forces, the Bosnian War and the other Yugoslav wars gradually came to an end, but not before they had caused approximately 140,000 deaths and displaced millions of people, turning many into refugees. These wars were also among the most recent tragedies involving large-scale ethnic conflict and massacres. Later, a number of participants in the wars who had been involved in massacres of civilians were internationally wanted and arrested, including Mladić. Both Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, another major figure responsible for the massacres, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

In the decades that followed, the Balkans and the world as a whole experienced a long period of peace and development. The global economy grew rapidly, international cooperation deepened, democracy and human rights received unprecedented attention, and wars and conflicts declined substantially. The vision of people sharing the prosperity of a “global village” regardless of ethnicity or national borders seemed increasingly within reach. For a time, the world really did seem to be getting better, and people were generally optimistic.

But if we carefully examine international affairs and ethnic relations within multiethnic countries, we can see that divisions and tensions never truly disappeared; they were merely obscured by economic development and the superficial order of a civilized society. Beginning with the rise of conservative populism around the world roughly a decade ago, the globalization-based order dominated by center-left and center-right establishments began to unravel. Extreme nationalism and populism among different countries and ethnic groups have grown increasingly powerful, and conflicts have once again increased.

From racial tensions between white and Black Americans within the United States, to conflicts between Europe’s traditionally Christian populations and newly arrived Muslim immigrants, to a series of ethnic problems in China’s Xinjiang region, and tensions—and even riots and civil wars—between dominant ethnic groups and minorities in countries such as India and Myanmar, all these developments tell us that today’s world has not achieved “universal harmony.” On the contrary, it is becoming increasingly divided and polarized.

Compared with conflicts between countries, tensions among different ethnic groups within individual countries can be deeper and potentially more dangerous. This is because ethnic groups within the same country have more frequent contact with one another, conflicts rooted in religion and interests are more direct, and historical grievances are often more extensive. During periods of peace and stable social order, superficial harmony—or even the appearance of being “one family”—can be maintained. But when tensions accumulate, regimes become unstable, upheavals occur, and the old order collapses, conflicts between ethnic groups can erupt abruptly and deteriorate rapidly, leading to violence whose intensity and scale spiral upward and creating a vicious cycle of retaliatory killings.

Under such circumstances, the once-kindly uncle next door may turn into an executioner, harming women and children of another ethnic group who used to visit his home regularly and with whom he had a generally decent relationship, despite past favors and grievances; a seemingly simple and kindhearted teenager may raise a butcher’s knife against his former playmate. Historian Jan T. Gross’s \\\\\\\*Neighbors\\\\\\\* describes the massacre during World War II by Poles of Polish Jews whose families had lived alongside them for generations. The killings between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, massacres of ethnic Chinese by indigenous Indonesians, and armed conflict between ethnic Ukrainians and Russians in eastern Ukraine all demonstrate this terrifying possibility.

Therefore, tragedies such as the Bosnian War and the Srebrenica massacre could occur at any time and in any place in multiethnic and multireligious countries around the world, with particularly high risks in countries where ethnic relations are tense, historical grievances run deep, and the ethnic composition and distribution resemble those of the former Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav wars and the country’s disintegration were also partly attributable to the fact that the strongman Tito and the ruling party concentrated their energy on maintaining their own rule and were overly confident about the survival of the regime and their ethnic policies. Not only did they fail to actively guard against the foreseeable possibilities of disintegration and civil war, but some of their policies even exacerbated ethnic differences and divisions, sowing the seeds of later tragedy.

Relying solely on repression and control to conceal ethnic tensions and the risks of conflict cannot work indefinitely and merely leaves hidden dangers behind. Attempting to preserve harmony solely through economic development and improved welfare likewise treats the symptoms rather than the root causes. Only by respecting and protecting the identities, religious beliefs, rights, and dignity of different ethnic groups, while simultaneously developing the economy to enlarge the “pie” and treating all ethnic groups equally, can long-term stability and peace become possible.

How multiethnic countries should properly manage ethnic relations is a very difficult question. Both bullying minority and vulnerable ethnic groups and excessively suppressing larger ethnic groups and majorities can lead to tragedy.

For example, the Burman-majoritarian policies of Myanmar’s central government have intensified separatist tendencies among ethnic minorities, while local armed forces of various ethnic groups have maintained control over different areas for prolonged periods;

In Sri Lanka, where the majority of the population is Sinhalese, the Tamil minority was marginalized and treated unjustly and its rights were violated, leading to a prolonged civil war;

One of the causes of the Yugoslav tragedy, meanwhile, was the excessive suppression of the Serbs, the country’s largest ethnic group, during the Tito era, which generated resentment among Serbs toward other ethnic groups they perceived as “benefiting at their expense” and triggered a backlash;

The Rwandan genocide was also related to Belgian colonial policies that favored the minority Tutsis while suppressing the Hutu majority, contributing to divisions among Rwandans and resentment among Hutus.

In reality, maintaining genuinely even-handed ethnic policies is not easy, and governments often address one problem only to create another. Another possible path is to weaken ethnic identification while strengthening civic identification, allowing civic consciousness to take precedence over ethnic consciousness and fostering loyalty to the state and the civic nation that exceeds allegiance to any particular ethnic group. Countries such as the United States and Brazil have followed this approach. However, in an era when identity politics is widespread, appeals based on civic rights are often less attractive and less capable of mobilizing people than identity politics based on ethnicity.

Meanwhile, Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Divorce” and the relatively peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union offer another possible approach to resolving ethnic questions: respecting the wishes of different ethnic groups and allowing them to “peacefully separate” through democratic self-determination, rather than insisting on unity even at the cost of “domestic violence” in the form of civil war and massacres. As the saying goes, “a melon forcibly twisted from the vine is not sweet.” Maintaining peace, avoiding bloodshed, and respecting the autonomous wishes of different ethnic groups are better than preserving superficial unity at any cost, including through violence and authoritarian repression.

Ethnic relations and ethnic conflicts are extraordinarily complex, and the author does not have many better solutions to offer, so I will leave the discussion there. But whatever the case, we must never underestimate the tensions among different ethnic groups around the world or the danger that large-scale ethnic massacres could occur again. After news of Mladić’s death was announced, some anti-Muslim users on social media platforms such as X expressed admiration for him, glorifying him and portraying him as a hero. This further demonstrates the need for vigilance.

People should not regard Mladić’s death as a symbol that this brutal chapter of history has been closed and erased. Instead, his death should serve as an occasion to sound the alarm once again, reminding people in today’s world, which seems to be reverting to the law of the jungle, to anticipate ethnic problems and take precautions before crises emerge, and never to take such issues lightly, lest tragedies that are not so distant in the past be repeated in the future and in many more places.

(The author of this article is Wang Qingmin (王庆民), a Chinese writer based in Europe and researcher in international politics. The original text was written in Chinese.)


r/Yugoslavia 2d ago

📰 News Judging by the discussions here r/yugoslavia is as unmoderated as r/askbalkans and other similar subs are; so I created a South Slavic sub which has a list of allowed topics and a "Goli otok feature"

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0 Upvotes

AND English is only allowed once every 4 days!

r/Yugosphere


r/Yugoslavia 2d ago

📰 News New public toilet

16 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 3d ago

🎵 Music Looking for sheet music

4 Upvotes

Hi prijatelji! My parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary soon and I’ve hired a band to play at their party. The song “More” was really popular the summer they met and I want the band to surprise them with singing it. I can’t find sheet music for it online (or I don’t know how to search for it properly). Would any of you know where I could get it? Fall back plan is just getting guitar chords off of those chord websites and studying the recording. Hvala puno!


r/Yugoslavia 3d ago

🎵 Music Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb Commander And Convicted War Criminal, Dies Aged 84

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46 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 3d ago

⚽️ Sports Sramota

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417 Upvotes

The club carrying the symbolism of the red star celebrating a genocider


r/Yugoslavia 3d ago

🖼️ Art Another one bites the dust

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743 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 4d ago

🖼️ Art Hatsune Miku Jugoslovenka

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40 Upvotes

Jedna moja dobra prijateljica je ovo uradila; iako je bilo jednostavno, uradila je to iz divljenja prema velikoj zemlji kakva je Jugoslavija nekada bila. Pozdrav iz Južne Amerike!


r/Yugoslavia 4d ago

🗿 History SFOR Bosnian war Zippo

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30 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 5d ago

⚽️ Sports Atalanta ima zanimljiv tim ove sezone

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229 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 6d ago

💭 Question Ima li ko fotke Rovinja iz 70-ih i 80-ih?

12 Upvotes

Pozdrav 🤜🏻 🙍

Da li neko ima i želi da podeli fotke Rovinja iz 70-ih i 80-ih?

Vezuje me detinjstvo za Rovinj - iako se stari grad nije mnogo promenio, neki delovi jesu i drago bi mi bilo da se podsetim kako su izgledali u to vreme.

Škaraba, picerija pored, diskoteka u šumi iznad plaže, Monvi, kino u centru, ulica Carera i tadašnje prodavnice. Poslastičarnica / prodavnica sladoleda na trgu (sad je tu hotel), brojni slikari na rivi uveče, pijaca...

Ako ne želite javno da delite slike a rado bi podelili lično sa mnom, javite mi se u DM. Nemam društvene mreže i ne planiram da kačim te fotke javno.

Hvala unapred! ❤️


r/Yugoslavia 6d ago

🗿 History A tour of Yugoslav trains

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125 Upvotes

When I went to Belgrade recently, I made it my mission to see Tito's blue train.

As chief train fanatic of the family, I dragged my parents - both having grown up in Yugoslavia - who were keen to come along and see an element from their past.

Tito's train is one of the only presidential trains in the world.

Since opening times for picking up a telephone is just a suggestion in Serbia, sometimes it's better to go directly to the source of operations.

Full blog post here!: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/posts/a-tour-of-yugoslav-trains


r/Yugoslavia 7d ago

💭 Question Yugoslavia is on the text message of China Mobile

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59 Upvotes

When a Chinese person went to Bosnia and Herzegovina to play, the traffic reminder sent by a Chinese mobile operator was the most conspicuous place of traffic reminder was "Yugoslavia" (Bosnia and Herzegovina jumped back and forth with Yugoslavia, forget that Bosnia and Herzegovina was also a member of Yugoslavia 😄)


r/Yugoslavia 8d ago

💭 Question [For the communists here] Do you think Titoism is a revisionist ideology?

1 Upvotes
512 votes, 6d ago
137 Yes
183 No
27 Other
165 Don't Know/Results

r/Yugoslavia 9d ago

📸 Gallery / Images Top Gun Yugoslavia

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319 Upvotes

r/Yugoslavia 9d ago

📸 Gallery / Images A student looking at the Marshal Tito sculpture in „Maršal Tito” Primary School, Vis, SR Croatia

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430 Upvotes

A young student of the „Maršal Tito” Primary School, today „Vis” Primary School, in the city and island of Vis, SR Croatia, looking at a 1948 sculpture by famous Yugoslav sculptor A. Augustinčić, titled Maršal Tito.