AHC: Create a Better Yugoslavia

With any POD after WWII, find a way to create a better and more stable Yugoslavia. Bonus points if it becomes a full-fledged Democracy, and manages to make it to the year 2010 intact.
 
Basically Tito needs to plan for his death rather than just using his personal popularity and force of personality to paper over the cracks and keep things going. He needs to go in either one of two ways - strengthen the central government and have a designated successor in place so that you can avoid the governmental log jam that happened in out timeline when he died or decentralise things to such an extent that it's more like an EU-esque free trade area. Making a real concerted effort to squash nationalism would also be a good idea as would decentralising the location of military units and infrastructure so not no one republic could come to dominate the others militarily like Serbia did.
 
Someone suggested moving the capital to Sarajevo. That would strengthen the idea of Yugoslavia as belonging to all ethnic groups rather than being a Serb empire in drag.
 
Someone suggested moving the capital to Sarajevo. That would strengthen the idea of Yugoslavia as belonging to all ethnic groups rather than being a Serb empire in drag.

What about building a new city in one of the more ethnically diverse areas (maybe modern Republika Srbska?) as a made-to-order capital? Rename Podgorcia back to its real name, and have the capital of Titograd become the center of a real Yugoslav identity :D
 

abc123

Banned
Someone suggested moving the capital to Sarajevo. That would strengthen the idea of Yugoslavia as belonging to all ethnic groups rather than being a Serb empire in drag.

Well, I don't consider that as panacea, but it can certainly be beneficial.
But ressistance of Serbs would be too big to do that.

Basicly, problem with Yugoslavia is: If Yugoslavia is too centralised ( like Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia/Yugoslavia until 1974 ) then other nations doesn't want Yugoslavia because it is a Serbian empire under another name.
OTOH, if Yugoslavia is very decentralised ( like Yugoslavia afret 1974 ) then Serbs don't want it, because it isn't Serb empire anymore.

A type of damned if you do-damned if you dont do it- situation.
;)
 
and have a designated successor in place

In the beginning, he did have a successor - someone by the name of Milovan Ðilas. So why didn't he succeed Tito? Because both of them had a falling out as Ðilas became critical vis-à-vis the formation of a new élite which Communism was supposed to avoid. So he got purged and fled. If you can keep Ðilas in Tito's good graces, then you have your successor.
 

abc123

Banned
In the beginning, he did have a successor - someone by the name of Milovan Ðilas. So why didn't he succeed Tito? Because both of them had a falling out as Ðilas became critical vis-à-vis the formation of a new élite which Communism was supposed to avoid. So he got purged and fled. If you can keep Ðilas in Tito's good graces, then you have your successor.

Yes, but then you wouldn't have Yugoslavia as Tito's personal feud and that was impossible...
 
Doable

Actually, as a Serb, I am pretty certain that we wouldn't have opposed moving the capital to Sarajevo, if its prestige was strengthened before becoming a capital or if there was a sizable propaganda campaign on the government's part. Of course, you would need Tito's approval.

So, centralization is a possible option:

1. Move capital to Sarajevo;
2. Curbstomp the growing nationalism in Serbia, Croatia (and Slovenia, perhaps); 3. Appease the Serbs by adding Vojvodina and (maybe) Kosovo to Serbian administrative unit;
4. Have Tito acquire a capable or at least a decent heir (optional);
5. Make certain to have Ante Markovic in your government when the Soviet Union falls. When people are in an economical bliss, they care little about holy lands, old wars and other such crap.
 
Actually, as a Serb, I am pretty certain that we wouldn't have opposed moving the capital to Sarajevo, if its prestige was strengthened before becoming a capital or if there was a sizable propaganda campaign on the government's part. Of course, you would need Tito's approval.

So, centralization is a possible option:

1. Move capital to Sarajevo;
2. Curbstomp the growing nationalism in Serbia, Croatia (and Slovenia, perhaps); 3. Appease the Serbs by adding Vojvodina and (maybe) Kosovo to Serbian administrative unit;
4. Have Tito acquire a capable or at least a decent heir (optional);
5. Make certain to have Ante Markovic in your government when the Soviet Union falls. When people are in an economical bliss, they care little about holy lands, old wars and other such crap.

Gotta add a 6th one: Butterfly Reagan's presidency, or at least his concerted economic warfare against Yugoslavia. If the Yugoslav economy is in decent shape at the time the USSR falls, it may be able to avoid becoming beholden to IMF "structural adjustment", which exacerbated many of the political problems. Austerity in a time of political instability and ethnic strife is never a good idea.
 
Hm. I didn't know about that.

Well, ethnic strife began(grew) because there was no authority figure(s) to limit it. Also, it really, really didn't help matters that Yugoslavia had considerable economic problems. But then again, that's why I said to include Ante Markovic in the government, in order to start earlier adaptation to the new economic situation.
 
3. Appease the Serbs by adding Vojvodina and (maybe) Kosovo to Serbian administrative unit;

Or at the very least have either (1) a smaller Vojvodina - I read somewhere that Syrmia (the part of Vojvodina that was once part of the kingdom of Croatia), on this map in green) was added later to Vojvodina, greatly increasing its Serbian population, or (2) a very small Vojvodina, similar to Kosovo, and comprising mostly of the Hungarian-majority areas, (labelled on this map in yellow, allong with a few neighbouring districts), with its capital at Subotica.

Also, maybe trim the Serb-majority part of Kosovo off, and add it to Serbia.

Would having more ethnic Serbs concentrated in Serbia proper help?
 
Gotta add a 6th one: Butterfly Reagan's presidency, or at least his concerted economic warfare against Yugoslavia. If the Yugoslav economy is in decent shape at the time the USSR falls, it may be able to avoid becoming beholden to IMF "structural adjustment", which exacerbated many of the political problems. Austerity in a time of political instability and ethnic strife is never a good idea.

Yugoslavia, the Communist country that was a de facto Western ally and actually exported cars (albeit crappy ones) to the United States?

Do elaborate.
 
@Analytical Engine: It's not really just the administration part that is the problem. The problem was that Kosovo and Vojvodina had (at the federal level) the same political rights/power as the republics themselves. For example, in the collective presidency after Tito's death (a rotation model), Kosovo and Vojvodina had the same position as Serbia and Croatia, for example.

Actually, that was the main problem with the Serbian public opinion. That, and considering both Kosovo and Vojvodina a part of Serbia proper. Justifiable in Vojvodina's case, but thruthfully not in Kosovo's. Too much of the Kosovo population were Albanians, and (ultra)nationalistic Albanians at that.

Perhaps Kosovo should have been declared a republic, with its northern parts (Serbian majority) being included in Serbia proper.

The sooner this is done, the lesser is the Serbian resistance.

It's complicated.
 
3. Appease the Serbs by adding Vojvodina and (maybe) Kosovo to Serbian administrative unit;
.

Wasn't the very point of making those two autonomous provinces outside Serbian borders in the first place the fact that Serbia was already viewed as too strong by the rest of the state?

Anyway; my two cents
- Sarajevo as a capital, very desirable.
- No centralization, but the very opposite. Making Yugoslavia a confederacy of states. No Serbo-Croatian as a dominant language but all six must be official. Add even Albanian to appease Kosovo and possibly entice Albania to join Yugoslavia in the end.
- As for democracy after WW2, let the King and government in exile with Ivan Šubašić play real part in the political life beside Communists and ensure that Treaty of Vis is honored. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito-Šubašić_agreement
 
@Grumpy young man: Well, with Yugoslavia after WWII, there is simply no middle way.

Either it becomes a confederacy with enormous autonomy (in which case, there is no way that Serbia will allow "mutilation" of its territory), or it becomes a very centralized state with Tito's policy of curbing nationalism and promoting Yugoslavian culture. The second option needs a strong leader such as Tito, or rather several such strong leaders in a succession.

In either case, I think that these two points are vital:

1.Moving capital to Sarajevo.
2.Gradual economic reformation/modernization.
 
Yugoslavia, the Communist country that was a de facto Western ally and actually exported cars (albeit crappy ones) to the United States?

Do elaborate.

From what I understand, after Tito's death, as the country was going through a series of weak leaders and was suffering from political instability, the United States and West Germany began to quietly encourage political instability by supporting ethnic separatists and anti-Communists. They also lent Yugoslavia a significant amount of money at extortionately high long-term interest rates, knowing that the Yugoslav government was desperate for cash to prop up their economy (which had been struggling since the Oil Shocks).

As the situation in Yugoslavia worsened, the IMF (which is controlled by the United States, its European allies and Japan) used "structural adjustment" policies to try to improve Yugoslavia's economy (In my opinion, structural adjustment has never really worked, especially when compared to slow, democratically driven reforms helped along by debt forgiveness). What the IMF program of austerity did was a few things. First, it completely destroyed Yugoslavia's system of workers' co-operatives, relied upon for most peoples' employment. Second, it caused a massive recession, which caused tax receipts to go down, which then made more austerity necessary (think Greece). Third, the apparent foreign control of Yugoslavia's economy made much of the population lose faith in any part of the ruling establishment, and vulnerable to nationalistic populists like Milosevic.

Basically what I'm saying is that the United States treated Yugoslavia like an enemy in the way it manipulated its economy and political system. Yugoslavia had loyally resisted the USSR and had acted as a buffer against increased Communist expansion, while also acting as a go-between for the USA and USSR. The Americans should have actually tried to help Yugoslavia, rather than do what they did, which was at best standing by and doing nothing, and at worse feeding the flames that eventually collapsed the country.
 
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