Yugoslavia: the beginning of the end

[Music] Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History Magazine, Britain's best-selling history magazine. [Music] I'm Ellie Corporn, 30 years ago in the summer of 1991, Slovenia waged a brief successful war against Yugoslav forces to secure its independence from Yugoslavia. Though the conflict lasted just a few days and saw relatively few casualties, it helped set in motion events that would lead to the breakup of Yugoslavia and far greater bloodshed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. One of the Yugoslav soldiers based in Slovenia at the time was Dayian Jockic. He's now a historian based at Goldsmith's University. And for his current research project, he's revisiting the conflict, investigating his own memories as well as those of former comrades. He was joined in conversation by BBC History Magazine editor Robata. So Dayian, before we talk specifically about the war in Slovenia, I think we'll probably need a bit of background about Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. So how had the country come to the point where constituent parts of it were starting to look to break away? Yeah, this is a kind of an obvious question to start with and it's also a very difficult question to answer. I think there are several kind of factors that contributed to this eventually fragmentation in a violent war or rather serious wars. One can say that there were three other wars that followed Slovenia in Croatia, Bosnia and then Kosovo at the end of the decade. One could start with the death of President Tito, who was also martial Tito. He was in charge of the army as well in 1980. So Tito was this powerful leader who emerged first as a resistance leader and the Communist Party leader during the Second World War in occupied Yugoslavia and he led a successful resistance movement against Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and a series of local collaborators, most notably the Croatian Usterse regime. He also fought against a royalist resistance, also various groups that also sometimes collaborated with the enemy in order to fight against the communist. So this is the first thing to keep in mind and Tito and the Communist Party were able to not only liberate what was effectively the first former Yugoslavia but also to reunite it and to reimagine it as a kind of a generation of six socialist republics, the largest one of which was Serbia, which itself had two kind of autonomous regions or provinces, avoid the name of the north and Kosovo in the south. This was very much based on the Soviet model in which you had a Russian republic within the Soviet Union, which itself was also a federation, the Russian federation within the Soviet federation. The second thing to keep in mind is that even though Tito and Yugoslav Communist Party at that time were unquestionably Stalinist, they clashed with Stalin in 1948. By the end of the 1940s, Yugoslavia under the Communist Party and under Tito's leadership became a country that successfully resisted both Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and then Stalin's Soviet Union. Unsurprisingly this also led to quite a lot of interest in Yugoslavia and support from the West. Yugoslavia received quite a lot of economic but also military aid from the United States in particular but also great Britain in the 1950s. Later Yugoslavia kind of reconciled with the Soviets after death of Stalin in 1953, but it never became a member of the Soviet bloc and it never joined the Warsaw back. Similarly, it never joined NATO or Western institutions. And it was some sort of a neutral but not exactly neutral country. It actually pursued a policy of active and peaceful coexistence and non-alignment in foreign affairs. The reason why this is important is that for Yugoslavia, Cold War is crucial for the existence of Yugoslavia and for the stability of Yugoslavia. As a country that was a communist country but not part of the Soviet bloc. It was a European country but its main foreign policy focus was actually on what we now call global south or used to be called the Third World. Asian and African countries. There were also several South American and Latin American countries and also Cyprus was involved in this movement. But Yugoslavia was kind of the only really European country that was part of this. And Tito is central to this. He was the head of state, chairman of the Communist Party and he was also martial. He was in charge of the army. So he's a central figure. And this is how Yugoslavia kind of understands itself. For the last few years, we have had the anniversaries of the end of the Cold War and the end of the East-West binary. But for Yugoslavia, this binary did not exist so much. I mean, it was there but they understood their position in the world slightly differently. But of course, Yugoslavia's place in this world which was not simply East-West but it was more complex was nevertheless very much dependent on that kind of balance of power. And also on the leadership of this very strong leader Tito, one thing I didn't maybe mention and I would not go into any detail. But what happened in occupied Yugoslavia during the Second World War was even more violent than what happened in the 1990s. And I don't mean just Nazi, the very brutal Nazi German occupation, for instance in Serbia or Italian occupation of what is now the major creation coast and Montenegro. But I mean the war among the Yugoslavs between various Serb and Crot and Bosnian Muslim groups but also among these groups. Very brutal war was fought by, for instance, communist Serbs and royalist Serbs and similarly among Crot. Something like one million people died in the territory of what was Yugoslavia which at the time had around 16 million population. Now during the wars of the 1990s the figure is thankfully much lower. It's almost certainly not higher than 150,000 in a country that at that time had 25 million population. So this is just to give you an illustration how brutal this war was. Nevertheless, Tito and the Communist Party managed to reunite the Yugoslavs. I guess in a long way I've already given you answers to so. So the factors that kept Yugoslavia together that perhaps helped keep Yugoslavia together. I think this was a little bit more simple. It would be simplistic to say that there were only these factors because this idea about the Yugoslav unity actually dates back to the first half of the 19th century and it's very similar to German and Italian kind of unificationist movements of that era of the 19th century. But nevertheless by the late 1980s Tito is no longer alive. The international relations that kind of defined Yugoslavia in many ways and to which Yugoslavia made an important contribution were also kind of changing and changing quite radically. But of course there was a number of other reasons. Nationalism is something that historians and sociologists are debating whether this nationalism ever went away or it was simply kept under control by the Communist Party. I think this is also very simplistic. Communism anywhere, including in the Soviet Union, often used nationalism as an ideology that in certain times could help with popular support and with mass mobilization. And the same was true of Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, Tito kept a kind of fine balance within Yugoslavia. So he kind of kept, especially serves, but also crots on a tight leash because they were the two largest and potentially most destructive nations for this federation. But then he encouraged some smaller nationalisms, for instance Montenegro in an eventually Bosnian Muslim or Macedonian or their identities became stronger and recognized officially by the state. But again, this is all all these balances kind of disappearing towards the late 1980s. And Yugoslavia also really from the from the late 1960s, but certainly from the mid-70s become becomes a loose federation. It's increasingly confederalized really and it's it's six constituent republics are now described by the Yugoslav 1974 constitution as states sovereign states within the Yugoslavia. So the Yugoslavia almost moves towards some sort of a socialist mini socialist European union on the side. East periphery of Europe, right? And so that this is kind of, and we know in recent times that certain countries, when certain countries declare independence or seek independence from a broader federation, that this could actually destabilize things considerably. On top of that, there was also serious economic crisis in the 1980s. By that time, it became clear that that state socialism, state socialist command economies were not working. One thing that perhaps I could add at this point is that another dilemma for me as a historian is to what extent do I put an emphasis on events on the top among the leadership and political intellectual elites, and to what extent events driven from below. And I think one needs to kind of combine both. But what was very unfortunate for Yugoslavia is that in the 1980s, there was a series of leaders emerged who actually were not really interested in kind of dialogue and kind of peaceful resolution to a series of political and economic crisis, but rather in promoting their own republic or perhaps their own nation, their own ethnic group. And this is especially true of Serbia's new leader, Slobodan Milošević, who became the leader of the Serbian Communist Party in 1987. After conflict within the party in which he managed to marginalize and then completely purge a more moderate faction that was actually in favor of a dialogue. And so the final point in this in this first part is that Yugoslavia, as I mentioned at the beginning on my answer, was a federation of six republics, and in the case of Serbia, a republic that had its two provinces. And it was in some ways an ethnic federation. So each republic had a titular nation. So Slovenia was a republic for the Slovenians, Croatia for the crowds, but also for a rather sizable Croatian serve minority, which in 1991 numbered around 11 to 12%. Bosnia, which kind of resembled the Mimi Yugoslavia, with something like 42% to 43% of Bosnian Muslim population and 34% Bosnian Serb, and just under 20% Bosnian crowd, a population was nobody's titular republic. But nevertheless, it was understood as possibly primarily a Bosnian Muslim republic since they had no other republic. But as I said already, so 31/3 of Bosnian's population was Serb, and 1/6 maybe of Croatia's population was also Serb. And so from Serbia's leadership point of view, from Milošić's point of view, the thinking was if this federation is going to further become further loose and possibly even disintegrate, where do we draw the borders of these new successor states? Should they be these republics? Or should they be modified these borders so that they kind of more or less resemble ethnic borders? Which of course would not be possible without conflict because people lived in mixed areas, especially in Bosnia, but also parts of Croatia and parts of Serbia. And to make things even more complicated, the last Yugoslav constitution of 1974 was not actually clear on this question. This was debated widely, but the problem was that the constitution supported both use. You could argue that the constitution argued that these republics should be allowed, should they wish so to become independent, but also that the peoples of Yugoslavia can do that. So both sides used to interpret the constitution in the way that it suited them. Now this paradox actually became clear already in 1974, but while Tito was alive, it did not matter. Tito was this overall leader and the Yugoslav army was the only institution that was neither federalized. So these two institutions kept the federation together. By the beginning of the Slovenian war or the final Yugoslav crisis, which really one codargue started in January 1990, when the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was officially called collapsed. Its last Congress in Belgrade was held in January in Belgrade 1990. And after a series of disagreements and arguments, the Slovenian and Croatian delegates left the Congress. And this was January 1990. In June 1991, these two republics would declare independence from the Yugoslav federation. So what happened in January 1990 and the last Congress of the Communist Party in a way anticipated the political developments of a year and a half later. Now it's obviously a very complex history. So thank you for going through that all for us. So the focus of our discussion today mainly on what happened in Slovenia. So as you said, Slovenia declared independence and then a short war was fought. So what was the broader Yugoslav reaction to the Slovenian Declaration of Independence? A brief background again. So when scholars or outside observers look at Yugoslavia historically, they quite rightly point out that the key axis is between Serbs and Croats, the two largest groups. I have been also, this is also in my previous research, I have also subscribed to this school of thought. However, the scholars who have argued always that the key relationship was between Serbian Slovenia, between the Serbs and the Slovenians. For different reasons, even geographically, Slovenians are in the north, Serbs are in the east, kind of in northeast and Croats are squeezed in between. If Slovenians and Serbs want to live in a federation together, Croats actually have little choice, right? But there are other reasons also. I will not go into detail. I previously mentioned that from the mid to late 1960s, there is a great decentralization of Yugoslavia. And this was not just at the political level, but also the level of economy. The individual republics begin to actually enjoy more freedom to pursue their own economic policies. And it was around that time that the Slovenian party leadership begins to pursue a more liberal and actually market influence, not exactly market economy, but kind of a socialist economy with elements of market economy. So Slovenia actually begins to push towards greater decentralization also economically. Where Serbia is not its complex, but Serbia also has actually various liberals. But nevertheless, this conflict between Slovenia and Serbia really erupts in the late 1980s with the rise of Slobodan Milošević, who as I mentioned seeks to keep the federation tighter or to re-kind of make it a little bit more centralized, not centralized, but a kind of tighter federation. Whereas the Slovenian leadership seeks to actually make it even more loose at this time. And one should not forget the beginning of civil society at this time in both Serbia and Slovenia and across former Yugoslavia. But it was particularly strong in Slovenia and also various alternative groups and movements that emerged. Listeners might know of the band Laibach, which is a well-known Slovenian music band, which actually merged at this time. And it was part of a movement that challenged the social system. So it was not just the Slovenian party, but actually non-party. And various kind of nationalist intellectuals and youth students who wanted to change. So this clash between Slovenia and Serbia begins then. And another major player in this and the story is the Yugoslav People's Army, which as I previously mentioned is not federalized. So it's still a centralized institution. Top leadership does most senior offices, quite representative of the Yugoslav mix at this time. The two actually out of say five top offices to Slovenians. And one and a half is a croat and one and a half is a serve. The chief of staff was half-croad half-serve. Never the lies. The lower office accore is actually most predominantly served in Montenegroen. And this is true of conscripts because of because serves and serves together with Montenegroen's with the largest group. So now to answer more directly your question, following the collapse of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia really in January 1990, then the Slovenian party leadership agrees to hold a multi-party elections. In other words, for the first time since the Second World War, to allow for other political parties to contest for power. So there is already in April. So only three months later, April 1990, the first multi-party elections in Slovenia. And I've kind of brought coalition called the democratic opposition of Slovenia wins the elections. But the former communist party leader becomes the first president. So it's a kind of some sort of a compromise between the communists and various liberals and Democrats and nationalists. And Croatia follows the actually also at the end of April. There are first multi-party elections in Croatia in which a right-wing nationalist conservative kind of a Christian democratic party wins the elections. And this alarms Serbia in which Milošević, as I already said, he kind of Serbia really does this two years before in 1987. There is a really a change of government in Serbia, which is still communist but now increasingly borrows from nationalist rhetoric. So Milošević of course doesn't look at this very kindly and he has an ally in the Yugoslav army, which also is keen to preserve kind of a more centralized Yugoslav iteration and to preserve if possible the communist ideology. I think it's important to remember even though it's tempting and sometimes not entirely incorrect and wrong to interpret Yugoslavia through nationalist conflict. This was just one layer. This was a complex multi-layered conflict and ideology certainly played a part. And so once this new government is formed in Slovenia, they promise that they will hold a referendum on independence by the end of the year, which is what they do in December in late December 1990. Both Slovenia and Croatia hold a referendum on independence and in both republics, those who vote overwhelmingly vote for independence. The caveat is that in Slovenia, this was not such a huge problem because the vast majority of the population of this still Yugoslav Republic of Slovenia is ethnically Slovenia, something like 95%. In Croatia this is not true. As I mentioned, there is a significant creation serve minority, which during the Second World War was a victim of a kind of a victim of a genocide that was committed by the local fascist puppet regime of satellite Croatia. And they react very strongly. They boycott the referendum. So in Croatia, again, those who voted overwhelmingly vote for independence, but this is perhaps 60% of the population only. Once the results of these referendum are announced, both Slovenia and Croatia say that this will become legally binding in six months. So in six months, they will declare independence. And this happens on the 25th or 26th of June 1991. In fact, it was meant to be on the 26th of June that would have been exactly the six months, but Slovenia does it one day before and Croatia immediately follows. How does the rest of Yugoslavia respond? Slovenia and Croatia respond differently. Their leaderships respond differently to this. Crots they claim independence, but do nothing about this. A little bit like Catalonia in recent times. They say, now we are independent. And that's it. Slovenians, however, say, now we are independent, which also means we have to establish control over our borders. So the Slovenian. Okay, so one other thing, when I said that the Yugoslav people's army was actually not a federalized institution. It was still very Yugoslav. One needs to keep in mind that it was still part of something that was called the Yugoslav Armed Forces and the People's Defense. It was a socialist style defense system, which also included reservist forces who were organized on territorial basis. They were actually Republican. If you want, there were many Republican reserve armies. Slovenia possessed one, which was mostly Slovenia, which actually had. It was not as well armed as the Yugoslav army, but it was much more numerous than the Yugoslav army troops and garrisons that were based in Slovenia at the time. So they immediately actually took over from. took over border posts, international border posts with Italy and Austria, but also they put border posts with the rest of Yugoslav in this case with Croatia and started kind of clashing with the Yugoslav army. The Yugoslav army was ordered to prevent this because this was part of the Yugoslav constitution that the army must preserve the territorial integrity of the country. So a war breaks out pretty much within a day from Yugoslavinia's declaration of independence. The rest of Yugoslav is shocked. I think Croatia is also very worried. The new Croatian president, who is the leader of this endocratian democratic right-wing nationalist party, is in fact a former communist general who still has contacts in the army and he's cautious about confronting the army directly. He thinks the army is still superior. So they're also maybe nervous about Slovenia moving so quickly. In Bosnia for instance there is an overwhelming support for the preservation of the federation and for the Yugoslav army. The same was true of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. So the response is rather different but it's one of shock and I think it's also one of shock internationally. I was recently reading some international press at the time and even though the Yugoslav crisis had been going on and there were even some small armed incidents in parts of Croatia where Serbs and Krots lived in mixed areas since actually already since August 1990. Everybody was shocked that this was now happening. Yugoslavia after all had been hailed for decades as this model of multi-ethnic and multi-religious and multicultural coexistence. And suddenly this was all happening and to keep the wider context I think in mind. This is also the time when Europe is uniting increasingly. We already know by this time that the European community will transform into a European Union. We already know by this time that actually the communist regime elsewhere have collapsed and there is this wave of optimism that liberal democracy is being established the end of history as it was famously declared then. The reunification of Germany. So this is a bit of a paradox that this country that had been previously such a model of successful coexistence is now disintegrating. So I think this came as a shock to many. Even organizations such as CIA apparently were quite surprised that things got out of control so quickly apparently. And then yeah. Still to come on the history extra podcast. They were talking on motorrollers and walkie talkies. And he basically said if you shoot at a single soldier, if you kill one of my soldiers, I will flatten Lublano. I will destroy the city. So this wall breaks out between Slovenia and the Yugoslav people's army. Presumably the Yugoslav people's army had at its disposal much more military power. Should it choose to use it? How was the Slovenian government and their army? How did they hope to counter what could be a much superior military force? Yes. So that's an excellent question actually. We now know a little bit more about this. So again things are a bit more complex than they seemed at the time. So the first thing is Slovenians are inferior in terms of the weaponry, but actually they're superior in terms of manpower. Secondly, they knew that the Yugoslav people's army. So again, I don't know if it would be appropriate to introduce a personal experience. I was one of these Yugoslav army conscripts stationed in Lublano in a major garrison on the outskirts of Lublano, the capital of Slovenia. And from the first moment, the strict order was we we cannot shoot only in self-defense. We are still the people's army. So my two immediate officers, most immediate officers, Lieutenant and a captain were non-served in case people are wondering. So my lieutenant was a crowd from Bosnia and the captain was a Slovenian. And the major in charge of the military police battalion in which I served was a Slovenian also. However, he deserted from the Yugoslav army point of view or kind of fled to his own side within several days. And then he was in charge of the siege of the barracks, which lasted for about 10 days in total. But the point is that there was already quite a lot of espionage and counter-espionage. So I guess the Slovenian leadership had some idea, some idea that the army would probably be a little bit try to be restrained at this point. Recently, we also have suggestions from from kind of evidence that is coming out and memoirs being published that there was perhaps some hope that the army would overreact in order to attract international sympathy. And remember that the sympathy was not necessarily with the Slovenians everywhere. Germany and Austria pushed for Slovenians recognition and creations. But Britain and the United States did not. They still actually publicly at least are used statements in support of the preservation of the Yugoslav Federation at this point. I'm talking about June, July 1991. This changed later, of course. So I think that there are several things to keep in mind. And I think they probably also thought that this is the only way to do something. Now the question, of course, as part of my current research, I also interviewed one of the officers who was a Serb, a Bosnian, a Croatian Serb actually. And who now, from this perspective, thinks that the army made a terrible mistake by reacting. So the question is, what if the army did nothing? If the Slovenians simply, okay, they they tried to take over these border posts and they succeeded. The army quickly re-actually captured them. But what if things stopped them? I'm not sure. I think it's very hard to become independent, actually, more difficult than it seems. I mean, think about Catalonia, I mentioned, which declined independence, but nothing happened. I mean, even Britain, from such a loose union of countries, it took ages and it was very difficult procedure of leaving the European Union. And so, let alone the U.S., so this is a kind of a hypothetical question. The army certainly overreacted it, but actually also showed a remarkable restraint, especially if we compare what happened later. But also your question, suppose, is, pre-supposed that some of these nationalist leaders are rational. The Slovenian leadership was heterogeneous. As I mentioned, the president was a former communist and he was generally a moderate politician who was in favor of some sort of compromise. And not compromise. At this point, he unquestionably supported an independent Slovenian state, but he was not necessarily in favor of armed conflict. But that may not have been the case of everybody. So, one of the leaders, kind of, used relatively young, nationalist leader, was somebody called Janis Janša, who was kind of the war minister in this first government. He is the current prime minister of Slovenia, quite controversial due to his populism and actually most recently, a statement that has been interpreted as an anti-Semitic statement. It was only yesterday, I think. He has closed links with Viktor Orbán of Hungary, and possibly Alexander Vucic of Serbia, and other populist leaders. So, he was one of the leaders of Slovenia's independence. And finally, and then I will finish this part of the answer, it has also emerged subsequently. It seems that there have been an agreement between Slovenia and Serbia to let Slovenia go. Now, at the end of this 10-day war, by the way, I should mention, why this war is very important. One of the reasons is that this was the beginning of international presence in the Yugoslav crisis. The European community sent a trójka, a three ministers to try to negotiate, to mediate between the two boring parties. The Yugoslav peoples are me and the Slovenian territorios, and they managed to do that. On the 7th of July 1991, they met a Titus former residence of the Croatian coast, on an island of the Croatian coast. And the two sides agreed to cease fire and to actually a peace agreement that would last for three months. And during this period, some kind of peaceful resolution to the conflict would be found, it was called. And during this period, the Slovenians would seize the siege of the barracks. So, all the army barracks actually had electricity, water, and food supplies cut off. And the army should withdraw into the barracks and seize any hostility towards the Slovenians. So, both sides had to kind of back off. However, within days, the army unexpectedly and suddenly started withdrawing from Slovenia. Now, the army is not under Milosevic's control at this time. It's still, its leadership is still multi-ethnic, but it has subsequently emerged that Milosevic and the Serbian leadership put pressure on the army to do this. Because Slovenia had no Serbian or any other significant minority, it was felt that if they want to leave, they can go. And then for the rest of the country, which was more complex in terms of ethnic mix, new borders would have to be drawn one way or another. So, we also know that this is what happened as well. So, I guess this also would have given the Slovenian leadership some confidence that perhaps Belgrade and the most powerful leader, Milosevic, the most powerful of these Yugoslav leaders would not necessarily side with the army, maybe publicly, but in reality not so much. So, I've seen that the casualty figures for this Slovenia war were quite low. So, how much fighting actually did take place during these 10 days? There wasn't actually so much fighting in certain parts where we had a kind of smaller isolated military posts. There was more fighting, but the larger garrisons, such as the one in which I was based, they were not attacked. They were simply cut off. They were kept under blockade. So, we are talking about 44 Yugoslav army officers and soldiers in total and approximately 18 Slovenian territories. Out of those 44 Yugoslav army, casualties, there were also some Slovenians who were still in the army, including the first kind of well-known victim of the war, who was a helicopter pilot, who was shot over the center of Ljubljana when he was on the way to bringing bread to our barracks, from another barracks where bread was being baked. And so, he was a Slovenian actually. And this happened kind of in the city of Ljubljana. His coal pilot was a Macedonian, in fact, but everybody seems to forget him. There has also been some recent kind of controversy over this, whether the Slovenians shooting at the helicopter knew that he was a Slovenian and wanted to kind of further alienate the population from the army or to encourage those Slovenians still remaining in the army to leave or to desert. I don't know. This is a mere speculation. But there were incidents like this, but there wasn't some major kind of frontline battles or bombardment of cities and ethnic cleansing that we saw later on in the other Yugoslav conflict. So, this was, as I said, it lasted between 25th of June, really, 26th of June and 7th of July. In total, it was about 10 days of war because there was a short, true and kind of halfway through this conflict. But nevertheless, so from this perspective, this sounds relatively peaceful, relatively bloodless. Well, if one can say that because we're talking about around 60 casualties, more than 60 in total. But at the time, it was a complete shock. This was the first time that people were being killed in a kind of military confrontation since 1945. And it was also between the Yugoslavs themselves. And this actually marked the end of Yugoslavia after this. Also, it became almost impossible to kind of hope for some kind of peaceful disintegration. So, if you wish Slovenia started a domino effect of what happened later, even though it was relatively short and not such a violent war. So, I mean, I realized that the wars over Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo are very complicated. We probably don't have time to go into all the details there. But is the reason why they were so much longer and bloodier because their populations were much more mixed? Where Slovenia, as you said, was quite ethnically homogenous. I think this is the main reason, actually, yes. Yes. Because I think if you look at Bosnia in particular, one tends to focus on the war between the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims, especially Sarajevo Srebrenica, these are the key points. But don't forget that there was also war between Bosnian crowds and Bosnian Muslims in the Herzegoviniian region. So, the city of Mostar was also badly damaged, including the 16th century Ottoman bridge. The city remains divided to this day. And in Croatia, it was actually similar also in those regions which were heavily populated by Serbs. One needs to add, as a historian, I think it's important. And I would say that the current literature that we have on this topic has not paid sufficient attention to the legacy of history, especially the legacy of the Second World War. One could actually look at the major spots of ethnic violence and fighting during the 1940s in Bosnia and in Croatia, in particular, then look at the 1990s and they would be almost the same or more or less in the same region. So, there was also a legacy of war. There was a fear of becoming a victim again. And if I would be allowed to simplify hugely, one could argue, I think, with one should argue that in Bosnian in Croatia during the 1940s, the Serbs were the main victims. But then they became the main perpetrators 50 years later. And this is not unusual. You have other cases in around the world where former historic victims become perpetrators and so on. I mean, I'm not making direct analogies, but some analogies could be made. And so, I think this memory of conflict kind of came back. Or perhaps it existed as I'm sort of unofficial history. Several scholars have done work on this kind of unofficial histories or hidden historical accounts, which only began to re-emerge in the public swier in the late 1980s. So, and actually, there is no history of conflict and an imitative between Serbs and Slovenians. In fact, Serbs and Slovenians have a history of kind of collaboration in the Second World War. Most of what is present day central Serbia was under a very brutal Nazi German occupation, but actually large parts of Slovenia, including the capital of Lublana, were annexed by Nazi Germany, which one needs to remember boldly Yugoslavian following the Anshluss with Austria in 1938. So, basically, Germany simply extended. And there was an attempt to Germanize the Slav population of Slovenia. So, there was some sort of solidarity between Serbs and slogans that also kind of dates back to the Second World War. A member of the Slovenian refugees actually ended up in Serbia during the Second World War, trying to escape being Germanized. And again, this is complex, but I think these historical legacies and memories also play a role here. And this also maybe explains why Serbian Slovenia relatively quickly kind of made up after an era. And this kind of nostalgia for Yugoslavia emerged in Slovenia before then in any other republic. Or already, by the late 1990s, Slovenians were going on holiday to Serbia and kind of becoming showing, you know, in popular culture, for instance, in music, signs of nostalgia for this Yugoslav era. So I would say that this conflict kind of did not really have all these preconditions. It was not, did not have the potential to be so violent as the conflict in Bosnia. And Croatia and in Kosovo indeed had later. This is a very simplistic explanation, but I think I would kind of, I would agree with this kind of, I think that there is something in this. And so do you think the main legacy of the war in Slovenia is the fact that it kicked off the disintegration of Yugoslavia and it meant that it couldn't go back to peaceful coexistence. Is that why this war is so important? Yes, yes, I think also it showed that the Yugosl, so this is the first reason, as I already mentioned. Another one is that kind of invited international intervention, which has not always been great, but kind of Yugoslavia invited others to try to manage its own affairs. And this is fine, but the earlier part of our interview when I talked about Yugoslav, Yugoslav's sense of their own identity and their importance, inflated importance in international affairs. This was also a bit of a disaster for many Yugoslavs and a shock. But now they were saying some guy from Luxembourg is coming to talk to us about not fighting. I mean, this is of course extremely unfair, why not? But this kind of changed the self-perception among Yugoslavs, does it kind of led to some sort of a crisis of identity. And I'm talking about various Yugoslav groups, not only the Serbs. Also, I think it showed that the Yugoslav people's army could not really survive the end of communism. It was a communist army. And in fact, the main reason why I think there was this alliance between Milošević and the army generals is because they both wanted to preserve one party system. Milošević one should add eventually also allowed, or the reformed communists, allowed multi-party elections to be held in Serbia in November, December, 1990. So six, seven months after those took place in Slovenia and Croatia. But nevertheless, they did it only hesitantly and they would rather not have done that. So the army also had to transform from an ideological army into a kind of, an apolitical party army if you wanted to some sort of a civic army. And Slovenia proved that this was not possible. Slovenia also proved that the army would have probably used, maybe I'm contradicting myself now a little bit, but I think the army maybe would have used more power if it had been given a clear signal from Belgrade. Again, to use a personal experience, I actually overheard a kernel who was the commander of the barracks in which I was stationed simply by chance I was based around the building where the command was as a military policeman. And I overheard his conversation with a Slovenian commander who was just a few hundred meters away. And he basically said, if you shoot at a single soldier, if you kill one of my soldiers, I will flatten Lubljana, I will destroy the city. And I think I thought this is completely, of course, exaggerated. It's an empty threat, but nevertheless I was happy and I was proud that my commander would say this because we were showing that we were powerful, but I did not think that this would ever happen, of course. The same kernel later as a general was briefly the commander, because he was originally a Bosnian Serb of the Bosnian Serb blockade of Sarajevo, at the beginning of the Bosnian war. Now we know what the Bosnian Serb army, which was one of the successor armies of the Yugoslav peoples army, did to Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia. I mean, the cities were indiscriminately bombarded. So I think Slovenia already showed that this army, as the last kind of Yugoslav Tituist institution, could not really survive in this changing world. So this is another reason why I think this war is important. The army at that time was still, nevertheless, as I said, and I think it's important to remember. It included many Bosnian Muslims and Macedonians, Kosovo Albanians, Croats, and a few Slovians still. But increasingly it became a Serb army. I would say by spring 1992, within nine months from the war in Slovenia, it was a Serbian army. And then it officially ceased to exist anyway, also. So I realized this was a long time ago, but do you remember yourself during the war? What did you hope the outcome of the war would be? Were you concerned by the prospect of Slovenia leaving or were you keen to avoid bloodshed yourself? Both. So actually, as part of my current project, I also actually saved my correspondence from those days. This is the time before email, of course. So the communication was done via handwritten letters, some phone calls, of course, but we couldn't really always go out to post office to make phone calls. And I've also spoken with so far, I've held extensive interviews over a period in each interview of several days, many hours of interviews with six other former soldiers from across former Yugoslavia, and then less kind of detailed communication with another five or six. And it's interesting that actually virtually all of us were very happy to have been kind of posted to Ljubljana. My military service began in September 1990. So this is actually only two months before this referendum on independence. And so I wondered, I first thought that I was probably spectacularly uninformed about what was going on in Yugoslavia, but actually everybody else was similarly, it seems uninformed. Not really. Nobody believed that there would be a war with other political tensions, but Ljubljana is a cool place. It's kind of as I said, it already had this alternative culture and you know, it actually sounds totally okay to go there rather to end up in some kind of Bosnia mountain or on the border of Kosovo and Albania. I mean, so to us, this was great. I personally, most of us, all that we were concerned about in certainly during this really tough military training, the first three months, but the trainings lasted six months, but the first three months were very tough. I was in the military police. We were only concerned about, you know, we were counting days. We were waiting for this to end. Now, once the war begins, things change and it's different with different people, but I personally can say I was extremely scared. So during this training period, which I think in our case just finished, but all you want to do is to try to kind of avoid doing heavy duties, especially after the training. So any excuse you can use to not do some training, you know, going on a march or whatever, clean your bathroom, you do. So just a day or two before the war broke out, we played football. It was actually late June and it was very warm. And because we only had boots, we played football barefoot. Now, remember that I got some minor infection. I'm not sure why. Some sort of not infection allergy, allergic reaction, probably to some grasses and plant that was on this within the barracks. So I slightly exaggerated this and I was given by a local military doctor kind of some sort of medical statement that I could, that I can be excused from wearing boots for three days and I should apply some cream. And if you cannot wear boots, that means you don't need to do any work. And so just to explain my frame of mind, but this was very typical. I was not unusually bad. I probably shouldn't be saying this in public. But when the war starts, my officer actually tells me that this is a joke, you must put the shoes on the war has started. Something like that was a dramatic statement. And of course, I immediately became very embarrassed that I was, I kind of, you know, I'm loyal to this army. And then I'm extremely afraid. I actually really begin to, for the first time we were given a real ammunition. He the two, we never used real ammunition. So the first time we have real ammunition, we don't sleep. I was sleep deprived. I remember seven nights of not sleeping at all. We could only sleep during the day, but at night we expect an attack. And I remember the eighth night, or maybe the seventh, but after about a week of not sleeping during the night, I thought I will, I will take a map even if somebody shoots at me. I don't care anymore. So we are afraid. We are hoping that this war will not last long. We are hoping that you at least I, but speaking to, to, to, let's say, Bosnia, Muslim and Macedonia and another Serbian, Montenegro and conscripts, they were all pro-Yugusla this time. One of my creation informants, for instance, who was a model soldier. He would have never done what I just explained. described. He told me that he felt awful because Croatia declared independence and he felt that he was now the enemy, that he would be probably arrested. But it never crossed anybody's mind. I mean, my mind and I don't think that we all went through various fears and we didn't know this was a complete shock. Now, once that this 10-day war was over, as I mentioned, the army began retreating to other parts of Yugoslavia, mainly Bosnia and Serbia. And as a military policeman, my unit actually, as a military police, we were part of many of this convoys. We were securing this convoys. And this is this would be another story. But we had various kind of experiences in Croatia and Bosnia and Serbia. We were welcomed in Bosnia, for instance, in a predominantly Muslim city, which would lay to suffer from the Bosnia and Serbia army. A city called Bihac. We were greeted like heroes of the veterans of Slovenia and war, which we lost. We didn't have to pay for any drinks in a bar, which turned out to be owned by a famous rock star. We didn't know at the time. We didn't have to pay for food in restaurants and so on. So it was very, but I actually felt very sad that Yugoslavia would collapse. And I didn't know what I guess we were all surprised that the war came. And now, maybe we were like 1920. You can imagine what kind of things we think about, especially in this sort of a prison-style environment. No female presence anywhere. We want to talk about music. We want to talk about girls. Maybe we want to talk about football, basketball. At that time Yugoslavia became a European champion in basketball at the end of June. But we didn't even know this. So these were the things that we were interested in, not really the war. This is certainly me and soldiers I have interviewed extensively. Now, of course, this is 30 years later. I don't know whether that, you know, they're telling the truth, but I'm pretty sure that we were a bit confused, actually. We are talking about conscripts who are 1920 year olds, old, who, as I said, always counted days until they go home. And now this is nine months into that 12-month military service. You're already a veteran soldier, you can get away with doing things that perhaps you could in the beginning and you were hoping for this less stressful, final quarter of your service before you go home. Suddenly, you're told your national service may be extended indefinitely. So, of course, you're not happy about that. So, also of emotions. What, actually, for instance, also interesting, perhaps it might be how memory works. I was convinced, for instance, that this blockade was total during this period. And I certainly remember we didn't have any bread for days. So we had to eat some very, very old army food packs and it was awful. But I discovered now going through my own papers that even during this period, there was a time when I was able to send a telegram to my parents to say, I'm alive from a small post office, which was kind of on the edge of my barracks. And I'm not sure how this was possible. So, the blockade must not have been a total during this period. I also, there was also a kind of a small kiosk within the barracks where we could buy newspapers. And there was a woman who was working there and she was still coming to work during this siege. It's not all the time, but at the beginning she was able to come to work. And I know that we gave her, I gave her my parents' home numbers so that she could call them and say that I was okay. And now looking at my letters, I see that I was able to write during this time and these letters eventually made their way to my parents. This is a strange moment when this country collapses, but it's not collapsed yet. So, things still function. Like post office phone connections. I actually, when I ended my military service on the 13th, it was Friday the 13th of September, 1991. It was during, for a few days, the flights between Lublan and Belgrade had been reestablished. So, I actually flew back because it became dangerous by that time to go by train through Croatia, where the war was beginning to escalate. But there were flights between, even though these countries were no longer, this was kind of still domestic flight. So, this break never happens at once. And also, it takes different kind of form and it happens at a different pace in different levels, if that makes sense. It's actually quite an interesting period when everything collapses around you, but you're part of that and you don't really always see it maybe as much as maybe one can from outside, or as you can now from a perspective, you know, after 30 years from this distance. So, I suppose you're quite unusual as a historian that you're writing about a subject where you lived through you participated in. What do you think are the challenges of that approach? And also, I suppose, what are the benefits of writing about a period that you witnessed first hand? That's a great question. And actually, I've talked a lot about this. In fact, I kind of, I always remember one, one, one, well known historian Donald Sassoon once said that actually the advantage of being a historian is that you should really, you can write about whatever you want, so long as you do it, you do serious research, but you can choose your own topics. And I suppose that Donald was a very established historian and I was at the beginning of my career, and I was always told you should choose something that maybe would be published or. And I also didn't, you know, and one of the things you always have to have documents to prove. But I suppose I was at this stage of my career or perhaps I became adventurous enough. I said, you know, I decided to write about this. It was partly because I was contacted by some of these former soldiers, fellow soldiers, with whom I had not had any contact for that time, 26, 7 years. They formed a Facebook group for these members of this unit. You know, all sorts of crots, Muslims, Serbs, Bosnians and so on. Macedonians, Montenegro, and exchanging memories, photos, and so, historians I started kind of asking serious questions, but guys, what do you think? I mean, you're only talking this in the nostalgic terms and, obviously it was maybe a great time, but then soon after there was a war and you know, I know they really responded to me, but then when I had some one-to-one discussions, some of some of these soldiers said, yeah, what you said, maybe you think, and you're right. And then I thought it would be good to talk to people, actually, to try to discover, to find out a little bit more, because in the literature on Yugoslavia, we don't have this. There is a gap in, there's several gaps. First of all, this war is largely forgotten. Secondly, this is a period, as I said, where Yugoslavia is maybe, is transforming into something else, but it's still there. So many things still function at a federal level. So it's a kind of this very short transition from peace to war, from a unified country to a fragmented country, this integrated country. And it's not really covered by me, but especially from this perspective, and then especially the army. The few works, good works that we have on the army tend to focus on generals and officers. And the army was, of course, a huge institution. One should not necessarily paint it in simplistic brushes. There were very different responses to the conflict among different officers, even junior officers, let alone conscript. And I thought that I could not possibly hope to cover all of this, but if I focused on this small group, one other thing that actually might be of interest, and it's relevant to this, which made me think about doing this project, is that I actually returned to Slovenia and to Ljubljana in 2004, already. And the reason for that is that I had just published a book that was well received by scholars in the region. It was an edited book called Yugoslavism. And so a rather eminent Slovenian historian who was based at the Slovenian Academy invited me. He read a book and he wanted to organize a kind of round table discussion, by way of launching the book. So I returned there for the first time since 1991. I went now at this time as a lecturer at that time, based at Nautikim University, but relatively young, British based academic. And I'm going back to talk about, and to me, this was actually, I left as somebody who was supposed to be defending Yugoslavia, but who was seen by many among the locals, as somebody who was occupying them. And I go back only 13 years later, less than 13 years later, to actually talk about the history of the Yugoslav idea. And I am received very well and everybody there, all these young students who are really curious. And I unexpectedly during my presentation, I mentioned that I was here in what capacity, and then everybody was so impressed. And they wanted to talk about it. So I felt that there was actually some interest in this, that even among Slovenians, especially younger generations, who wanted to know more about this. And of course, it's a challenge because I'm also kind of interviewing myself. I'm still not sure whether I will have a footnotes in which I would come, because I mean some things that I was absolutely certain about, I've now discovered the time. that my memory was wrong. Even in my own papers I found out. So I'm not sure yet whether I will have, you know, in the main text I will say what I, because I'm in a way interviewing myself. I'm relying on my own memory. I have to do that actually even more than I had originally intended, because my research has been affected by very much by the pandemic. So actually I'm kind of really I started in late 2019, but I only managed to do the first round of interviews. The idea was to do at least three and to expand this number from six to 10, approximately, even 12, but this may not be possible now. There is a great emphasis now on autobiographic. And in the moment I call this approach collective autobiography, because it's also what I learned about myself, I learned from what others have told me. There were things like some embarrassing things, the kind of musical, listen to that I chose to forget. I don't know, MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice and this kind of bad hip hop, but apparently I also liked Joy Division and the Smiths, which is true actually. And I chose to remember only that, but things that I learned about myself from speaking to others, 'cause I also asked them to tell me what they remember about me and what they remembered about others. So it's a challenge. It's actually also much more emotional than I thought. I must admit that I found it much, much more difficult than I expected. I'm also now a part of my research when now look at that, how it is to feel your own research. This would be part of a kind of this, there is one of the trends currently in historiography is to look at the history of emotions. But in this particular case, it's unusual because I'm feeling my own research even more than I normally would, I guess. So it is an original, if I'm allowed to say a pioneering methodology that combines several approaches, including local history, micro history. And so I mentioned that I was there in 2004 for this. And I actually, then I established a good collaboration with Slovenian historians and I went back to Slovenia quite frequently in the following years. And on one of those visits, I actually went to the former barracks to see them. And now part of it is now given back to the Roman Catholic Church. So it's a Slovenian Catholic seminary. But part of it is now used by the current Slovenian army. So I was not allowed to make any photos because of that, but I was allowed to look. And so when I joined this group, I kind of asked this awkward question at the beginning, nobody responded. And I was kind of not an important member of this discussion actually. But then I mentioned in one of the discussions that I was back there. And then suddenly I became like the most important, I almost ever, almost like I'm the one who made a pilgrimage, right? So I'm the one who went back the only one. So they asked me, but how was it? And I realized that there is some connection with this space with the barracks. So some of these former soldiers would be posting Google images from their village in West and Serbia or from their new home in South Germany. And they're not able to go there, but they're constantly looking at Google images of the barracks. So I realized that there is some connection with this space. So this story that I'm trying to say is a story that could only happen in this relatively small space. And there is something sacred about this, also I felt in this. And of course, Tito is very important. Tito, who had been dead for 10 years, but who was still officially our kind of never to be forgotten founder of the army. He was also, as I said, the leader of the partisan resistance during the Second World War, out to which the army grew at the end of the war. And Tito is very much so I'm introducing two other characters in the book. And one is the space, the stage. This is the barracks. And another one is a Tito is a some sort of demigod figure who is there, who is also very present in many of these. Because also in discussions with others, I'm also interested in growing up in socialists, growing up in how was it to be a child? In the 1970s, you go slavage during the golden age of Titoism. How was it to be a teenager? What kind of music did you listen? What kind of smells do we remember from the barracks, for instance? I mean, things like that. I'm interested in a number of things. So hopefully this will eventually be an interesting book once I write it. I'm approximately halfway through the project. But as I said, because of the pandemic, things have been delayed a little bit, like everything else. But it's good to thank you for this opportunity to discuss a little bit more 30 years after all this happened. That was Professor Dayiann Jockich of Goldsmiths University. His research project is funded by the British Academy and the Leather Home Trust. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Benuit, Jack Baateman and Brittany Colley. Tune in again on Friday for the first episode in our new series on festive food through the ages with the Food Historian Annie Gray. [MUSIC PLAYING]