- 5 hours ago
Yugoslavia seemed like a risky idea in hindsight—but after centuries of foreign rule, many South Slavs saw unity as a path to independence and security. This history explainer traces the competing visions behind the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, from calls for a Serbian-led state to hopes for a federation of equal nations under the Habsburgs.
Follow the political turmoil of World War I: Serbia’s push for unification, the Yugoslav Committee’s negotiations, and the disputed borders that followed the empire’s collapse. A concise look at Balkan history, South Slav nationalism, the creation of Yugoslavia, and why unity did not resolve the region’s deep political tensions.
Follow the political turmoil of World War I: Serbia’s push for unification, the Yugoslav Committee’s negotiations, and the disputed borders that followed the empire’s collapse. A concise look at Balkan history, South Slav nationalism, the creation of Yugoslavia, and why unity did not resolve the region’s deep political tensions.
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00:00We all know how Yugoslavia ended, so badly that we here at SideQuest have refused to touch this topic with
00:07a 10-foot pole.
00:09But how did Yugoslavia start?
00:12And who exactly thought that mashing a bunch of different cultures into a single state would result in anything other
00:19than a bloody battle royale?
00:21Like something out of our dear friends over at War Thunder, the sponsor of today's video.
00:26While it might sound ridiculous in hindsight, it did actually make sense to a lot of people at the end
00:33of the First World War.
00:34But to understand why, we need to go back even earlier to the Balkans.
00:40The Southern Slavs had spent nearly five centuries under foreign domination, ruled by either the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires.
00:49It was only in 1878 that the first Slavic states in the Balkans managed to win their independence.
00:57And even then, the majority of Southern Slavs remained outside their borders.
01:02Compared to the 1.3 million Serbs in Serbia, Austria-Hungary ruled about 1.5 million, and the Ottomans another
01:10150,000.
01:12As if that wasn't enough, another 3.5 million Slovenes, Croats, and Bosniaks were similarly left behind.
01:21Slavic intellectuals of this era dreamed of liberating their people.
01:26But there was little agreement on how that could be achieved.
01:30Some wanted a separate homeland for each nationality, while others feared such fragmentation and instead argued for a single united
01:39country that could protect all Southern Slavs, the so-called Yugoslavia.
01:44How this country would look like is again something that barely anyone could agree on.
01:50Some wanted to simply expand Serbia to encompass all the Southern Slavs, arguing that Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks all spoke
01:59the same language and were branches of the same culture.
02:02The same arguments were made for Slovenes and Bulgarians, though they were much weaker there.
02:08But of course, that didn't stop the dreams of anyone.
02:12For all these non-Serbs in this equation, Yugoslavia was hoped to be a union of equals, perhaps some sort
02:19of federation, where Serbia wouldn't overpower everyone else.
02:23For some in this camp, the solution was to negotiate with Austria-Hungary and to form an autonomous Yugoslavia ruled
02:31by the Habsburgs, much like the Hungarians had done a few decades earlier, which is how Austria became Austria-Hungary
02:38in the first place.
02:39The only thing uniting the proponents of such radically incompatible ideas was the conviction that change was needed.
02:49They would spend the next 30 years organizing various political movements on both sides of the border, with some advocating
02:57nation-states, while others pressing for their preferred flavor of Yugoslavia.
03:02Serbia itself was obviously too small to force anything out of the Habsburgs, so change had to come from the
03:09other side of the border.
03:11In Austria-Hungary, the Serbs and Croats had formed a coalition, but they spent the next decade debating how to
03:18get autonomy from the Habsburgs, rather than any hypothetical union with Serbia.
03:23But fate rarely waits for people to reach a consensus, and so, in 1914, a Serbian-Yugoslavic nationalist shot the
03:33air to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
03:35And before you knew it, Austria had declared war on Serbia, and the First World War was underway.
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04:54Now, we'll explore the complex absurdity of the rapid string of events that led to World War I another time.
05:01But suffice it to say, the war drastically narrowed down the political choices available to the Southern Slavs.
05:09Serbia miraculously managed to defend Austria's initial invasion three separate times in 1914,
05:16and its official war goal expanded to carving its own version of Yugoslavia out of Austria-Hungary.
05:24Meanwhile, the South Slavs in Austria-Hungary were formally at war with Serbia,
05:30and many served in the Habsburg armies, fighting against their supposed liberators.
05:35Unfortunately for Serbia, 1915 would run short on miracles.
05:41Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May, which might sound like good news,
05:47but the Italians were promised the Dalmatian coast and all its Slavic inhabitants by Britain, France, and Russia.
05:54So now Serbia was competing with Italy for the same land, even though they were fighting on the same side.
06:01But much worse than that, in October, Bulgaria declared war on Serbia,
06:07invading from the east and obviously disqualifying it from the Yugoslavic project.
06:13This combined assault quickly forced the Serbian army to retreat into Albania,
06:18where the French and Italians managed to evacuate what was left of it to the Greek island of Corfu.
06:24Over the next three years, Serbia remained occupied by the Central Powers.
06:29Yet the Serbian government and its crown prince survived on Corfu,
06:34from where they lobbied the Entente for their Yugoslavia.
06:38The Entente was also being lobbied by South Slavs who had emigrated or had been exiled from Austria-Hungary.
06:46They had built their very own Yugoslav committee in London,
06:50which was simultaneously competing and cooperating with Serbia for the creation of Yugoslavia after the war.
06:57Unlike Serbia, however, this committee had no army or foreign recognition,
07:03so it couldn't really steer the Yugoslav project on its own.
07:07And, to make matters more complicated, even as late as 1917,
07:12there were still some Slavic politicians in Austria-Hungary calling for a Habsburg-Yugoslavia.
07:18Like before, the South Slavs were squabbling amongst themselves too much to agree to anything.
07:24But fate would conveniently give them a second wake-up call, this time around from Russia.
07:31You see, up until 1917, the Russian Empire was Serbia's biggest supporter.
07:37But then, blink and you miss it,
07:39two revolutions in the span of eight months brought the whole thing crumbling down.
07:44With its principal supporter out of the game,
07:48Serbia agreed to meet with the Yugoslav committee to hash out their differences.
07:52After weeks of tense negotiations,
07:55they finally settled some pretty important points.
07:59The future Yugoslavia would be a monarchy ruled by the Serbian royal dynasty,
08:04with a constitution and equality between cultures and religions.
08:09Conveniently, they didn't settle what would actually be written in the constitution,
08:13and they also completely ignored the opinions of the South Slavs in Austria-Hungary and Montenegro.
08:20But, since Serbia was the only party with an army in this whole ordeal,
08:25it could afford to take the lead.
08:27Never mind that the Serbian army spent the whole of 1917 and most of 1918
08:34without making any meaningful progress towards liberating its homeland.
08:38Only in September did the Serbians actually manage to break through,
08:43after Austria-Hungary had already begun collapsing.
08:46Bulgaria was quickly forced into an armistice,
08:49and by the start of November, Serbia had liberated its entire territory.
08:54The Austrians unwittingly did Serbia a favor by focusing on the Italians,
09:00and so, by the end of November,
09:03Serbia had occupied most of what would eventually become Yugoslavia.
09:07The South Slavs of Austria-Hungary declared independence
09:11and joined Serbia on December 1st,
09:14while Montenegro held an election at gunpoint
09:17and, unsurprisingly, also voted to unite with Serbia.
09:21And so, before anyone across the rest of Europe could really react,
09:26Yugoslavia was born.
09:28Yet, even by the time of the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919,
09:34not a single foreign state had recognized Yugoslavia's existence.
09:38When the Yugoslav delegation arrived in Paris,
09:42the victorious Great Powers treated it
09:44as if it was still representing only Serbia.
09:47The biggest blocker was, of course, Italy,
09:51who had fought the Central Powers
09:53and lost hundreds of thousands of men
09:55for the promise of the Adriatic coast,
09:58which was now, instead,
09:59going to be handed over to some wannabe South Slavic kingdom.
10:03If you were Italian,
10:05it did make sense to be outraged.
10:07Many Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes
10:10had fought against Italy
10:11as part of the Austro-Hungarian army,
10:13and the same people were now trying to pass themselves off as allies
10:17to invalidate Italy's war goals.
10:21In the end, it was America that prevented Italy
10:24from arguing Yugoslavia out of existence.
10:27Unlike Britain, France, and Russia,
10:30President Wilson hadn't promised anything to Italy.
10:33And so, in line with its selectively enforced belief
10:36of people's right to self-determination,
10:39the U.S. became the first major country
10:41to recognize Yugoslavia,
10:43three weeks into the conference.
10:46This, however, merely shifted the problem.
10:49Now, the peace conference had to wrestle
10:51not with whether Yugoslavia existed,
10:54but where it ended.
10:56Yugoslavia's borders would remain up in the air
10:59for nearly two years,
11:01months after the Paris peace conference itself had concluded,
11:04and in the end,
11:05neither the Italians nor the South Slavs were happy.
11:09The Italians felt cheated out of their war sacrifices,
11:13which, in a very long and roundabout way,
11:16was how they eventually stumbled into Fascism and Mussolini.
11:20The Yugoslavs, meanwhile,
11:22had to contend with hundreds of thousands
11:25of their compatriots remaining under foreign rule,
11:28just under Italy instead of Austria-Hungary,
11:31which was hardly an improvement.
11:34Yugoslavia also had to answer
11:36all those uncomfortable questions
11:38that had been postponed during the war,
11:40like whether Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes
11:43really were equal,
11:45or whether the country would really be democratic.
11:48After ten long years of debates,
11:51ethnic tensions, and political assassinations,
11:54the king decided that equality and democracy
11:57were too hard,
11:58and so he instituted a dictatorship.
12:01And that was it for real democracy
12:03in that part of the Balkans
12:04all the way till the fall of communism.
12:08Nevertheless,
12:09considering where the South Slavs had started
12:11in the late 1800s,
12:13Yugoslavia was a huge achievement.
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12:34Let us know in the comments
12:35which other topics you'd like us to cover,
12:37and stay tuned for the next
12:39unexpectedly united episode of SideQuest.
12:44What did the Serbian soldier
12:46say to his officer
12:48after being ordered to storm
12:49the Austrian trench?
12:51You go first.