Author: Vladimir Stojković
Although I am someone who was very small when the breakup of Yugoslavia began, I became aware of the importance of the idea of such a federation. The very idea of such a community was significantly progressive and went beyond the primitive narrow ethnic views of a multicultural society. In the idea of Yugoslavia, I saw at least an attempt at the formation of nations that happened after the French Revolution throughout Europe. It meant connecting people from different regions and different cultures. Like say in France and Italy. People created and adopted their new common identity over time. This is how societies of free people were formed, who voluntarily took part in such a community. However, something like that in the Balkans, i.e. former Yugoslavia was not possible. In other words, Yugoslavia was an attempt to achieve something like this here as well, but the nationalism of the ethnic groups interrupted that good idea.
This is the climate of societies that base their existence on mythology. This constant need for societies to compete in who has a “richer” national history, etc. they cannot lead to progress and the survival of a social community. The aim of such “histories” is to glorify ethnic virtues and to somehow develop a sense of uniqueness of a certain ethnic group and supremacy in relation to its neighbors in the region. It is especially interesting to see this in the area of the former Yugoslavia, where peoples who speak the same language live and who are much closer to each other in terms of mentality than, say, Italians from southern and northern Italy.
The wars of the 1990s on the territory of the former Yugoslavia set a lot of things back. People argue over territories and drawing borders. The dominance of a certain ethnic group and the suppression of minority groups is one of the main characteristics of such societies. That way of functioning of a society has been absolutely surpassed and reminds of some medieval times and the age of feudalism.
It is difficult to expect the restoration of Yugoslavia as we knew it in the near future, but the idea of association and federalism certainly exists and that is what we should strive for. Perhaps the peoples of this area can once again be in some form of a common federation. The political and security situation in Europe and the world is such that the entry of all the countries of the former Yugoslavia, and the Balkans as a whole, into the EU would be a rational step forward. In this way, the idea of uniting into one union would be realized. It would be a stimulating injection for the Balkan countries, which would definitely push our societies into much more progressive trends in order to try to cross paths with the ghosts of the past.