John Connelly is professor of history
at the University of California, Berkeley,
and author of From Peoples into Nations:
A History of Eastern Europe (Princeton, 2020)the people seemed to be those who
claimed to be the only force that could
save them from destruction.
What makes such a process difficult
to understand and impossible to predict
is how weak the supposed threats could
be. The ‘Muslim danger’ was said to
originate from tiny Kosovo, where Serbs
were a minority but not under physical
assault. (Kosovo had been part of Serbia
in the Middle Ages, but over time its
population had become majority Alba-
nian.) Nevertheless, in 1986 the highest
academic body in Belgrade claimed that
Serbs in Kosovo faced “genocide”. That
was the message Serb dictator Slobodan
Miloševi ́c used to build power in the
late 1980s, based on mass rallies and the
mobilisation of hundreds of thousands in
his version of ‘people power’.EU solution
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which
Yugoslavia might have survived, except
perhaps one: if it had joined the EU
before the rise of mass politics. Then it
would have belonged to a large entity
claiming to balance the interests of its
regions while maintaining separate iden-
tities. Croats or Bosnian Muslims would
have been like the Scots or Northern
Irish in a UK before Brexit; belonging to
the larger entity would have reduced the
sense of being foreign within Yugoslavia
(which was seen as Serb-dominated).
Perhaps Brexit has made eastern
Europe more understandable in the UK.
Now the Northern Irish and Scots might
understand the feelings of Croats and
Muslims living in Bosnia in 1992 – that
suddenly they were in a much smaller
union dominated by one historically
aggressive and imperial people: for the
Serbs, read the English. Brexit may thus
take Britain closer to a European sensi-
bility – unfortunately, a potentially very
dangerous one.Women in traditional dress carry pictures of Stalin and Yugoslav leader Josep Broz Tito during a
May Day parade. Yugoslavia was ruled from Belgrade and failed to build a sense of national unity
Stjepan Radi ́c, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, addresses supporters in 1928. By that point,
Croats were pushing hard for autonomy, resenting perceived Serb hegemony in Yugoslavia Æ