A history of Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe according to some of my students
May 26, 2010 59 Comments
Click here on a post on the recent press coverage of the text below.
A history of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia as you might not know it. From exams 2006-2010 at the University of Kent:
The History of Yugoslavia
There have been many different countries/empires which have been huge and have had a range of different cultures but have managed to stay as one country. A very important example in term of Yugoslavia is the Ottoman Empire which oversaw some of that region. It was a huge empire with millions of servants who were of different race, religion, customs and beliefs. The empire managed to stay together regardless of this issue.
Furthermore, this can be debated as Yugoslavia never really had any enemy in ancient times…
The Creation of Yugoslavia
The formation of Yugoslavia was ‘man made’ rather than inherent and formed through the same values and cultures.
Yugoslavia ….was forced together by the Ottomens and meinteined by leaders such as Tito.
After Yugoslavia was formed three dominant groups fought for power on the left the fascist Usteche who used aggressive ethnic cleansing techniques to drive non-Serbians from the land.
Yugoslavia was formed in 1929 out of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Cheks
Communist Yugoslavia
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Communist leaders took and expanded the idea of a united Yugoslavia.
It is true to say that Yugoslavia was a young state, before the second WW the area consisted of several kingdoms…. After Tito removed Yugoslavia from the Soviet Union & pioneered the non-aligned movements during WW2, Yugoslavia entered relative calm.
Communist rule in Yugoslavia defind the nation until 1948 and when the region detached itself from Commuism it scrambled to find an identity.
Tito was already emerging as the glue that binds this group of autonomous provinces.
Tito was almost the puppeter of Yugoslavia pulling its strings.
In the years before Tito’s death, when he was forgetful and sported a terrible wig…
In 1980, President Tito of Yugoslavia died, having ruled the state for over 10 years…
When Tito died the emperror died with him.
There were two bodies that led Yugoslavia right before it disintegrated, Tito Braz and Slobodan Milosevic.
Tito had maintained a Yugoslavia with a federal government system: again, not a typical feature of countries…if Milosevic had succeded would have made Yugoslavia a less artificial country.
The provinces of Yugoslavia include Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, , Yugoveada and others…
It consisted of eight republics and of the eight two were provinces: Kosovo and Vojvonec.
Kosovo was 95% Algerian.
Yugoslavia had been in a terrible economic climate–following the 1930 global depression and the 1973 Yugoslavian oil crisis…
…Slovenia housed a large amount of institutions that Serbia used.
The Rise of Milosevic
When right wing Serbs were making their voices heard in Kosovo Ivan Stambolic sent Milosevic to sort out the situation. Tito would have never considered this. He would have sent an armed force and destroyed them.
Yugoslavia was powerful before Slobodan Milosevic, because it wasn’t just about Serbs but it was about other places as well such as Bosnea, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia, etc.
Milosevic attempted to mobilize the people by lighting a fire under their growing concerns for nationalism.
Milosevic attempted to keep the state as cohesived as possible by introducing the masses into politics.Unfortunately, all the masses had very strong views which was one of the factores led to its demise.
Milosevic was a gruel rotten apple.
His ambitions would not stop him from attempting to take the capital of Croatia Dubronik which as 90% Croat in which he failed.
Although Kosovo had been an independent nation for over 600 years, Serbia…had pulled the nation under Serbian rule
As both Croatia and Serbia were Orthodox believers that were majority.
While Serbia is Orthodox, Croatia and Bosnia are Muslim
War and International Intervention
The international community had viewed the situation in the Balkans as a bit of a ‘so what?’ scenario.
[In 1991] NATO was a relatively new organization and was busy with the USSR… and the UN was happy to observe the looming conflict yet unwilling to act.
The EC also felt under pressure to act because of ethnic ties that they had to ‘Yugoslavians’
The Baltic States are built on blood stains, and for the UN to go in, assuming it could achieve what it set out to was naive and demonstrated it’s lack of cultural understanding.
The declaration of independence infuriated Serbia. That is why today Serbia has rejected the acknowledgement of Serbia as a nation-state, it fears for the Serbians inside Kosovo.
With Germany independently supporting Serbia and the rest of Europe condemning its actions.
Bosnians soon rose up against the Muslims …forcing them to flee.
The Baltic States have always been at least troublesome…It’s a conflict hotspot teaming with ethnic tension and racial prejudice that has built up over centuries and passed down over generations
During the 1990s Yugoslvia and most of the Baltic region witnessed some of the worst atrocities and widespread genocide the area had ever seen.
The Kosovo Rambouillet plan succeeded in invading the conflict in former Yugoslavia, but failed in the short term with the loss of lives in the war.
Communism in Eastern Europe
More than 4 centuries of Communist rule has aggravated the economic situation and the competitiveness to the West.
Eastern Europe has been under the influence of five religions, three of which are branches of Catholicism.
A case example can be seen between Afghanistan and Armenia between 1918 and 1926. Between and much throughout the interwar period, the CPSU had problems with Afghanistan.
The cold war ended in 1950 when the US and the USSR signed a treaty of peace in Yalta
The appeal of Communism was that people would no longer work for the rich, but for each other.
The richest elite in a communist society tends to be the leader. As according to Karl Marx the buorgeoisie and the ruling class in a society tend to rule and keep the state in good order.
They created what was called Goulash communism–goulash being a Hungarian dish compiled with unlikely ingredients.
Gorbachev and 1989
Gorbachev not only talked the talk but walked the walk
Gorbachev made discussions and relations to the Western states about the plan to collapse the Communist regime…The United States president then Regan also accepted his plan…
Gorbachev was the ‘golden eye’ and the hero of east Europe helping to collapse communism and began his plan since the earlier 1990s.
It seems that the madness that took hold of the people of East and Central Europe in that momentous year of 1989, was one that had been inevitable forming like a thunderous cloud on the horizon, bringing with it the winds of change.
The claim that short term …factors are key to explain Communism’s collapse in 1989 is rather reactionary and ill-judged….Long term factors are key to explaining communism collapse in 1989 as one can assess the fall of communism or its demise started from a while ago.
there was a multi-party election carried out in Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bosnia for a more decentralized east Europe.
Countries with a single party system run the risk of slipping back into a type of authoritarian regime.
…there is still the block mentality in Eastern Europe, showing it hasn’t integrated that greatly, this is made most apparent in the Eurovision Song Contest where the East European Countries will all vote for each other. This was seen this year when the Serbian entry won, despite how crap it was, because the Eastern Europe will vote for it’s own.
What is all means for Britain
Britain now is a coalition government, the icon of the West now using democratic practices most commonly fund (found?) in Eastern Europe…
Britain looked at the whole idea [EU] of the scheme as a waste of time…under Margeret Thatcher…but [she] was eventually removed and Britain joined… after Britain had been in a huge recession and were the 3rd poorest country in Europe.
The copyright to these statements lies exclusively with the students who wrote this.
Florian Bieber 
This is hilarious! I come from Kosovo myself and I can’t tell that I know everything about Kosovo and former Yugoslavia, but this is way too poor. Have these students done any research whatsoever. Fortunately, access to the Internet has illuminated us all and there’s lots of data available; and books too. I bet Kosovo students know much more about UK and the whole of Europe! My score for the students who contributed to this is zero. :)))))
it is amazing in being terryfing) I heard rather similar masterpieces during the class on History of Russia and also on World Politics)
I can’t wait to have my own students again and compile one of these lists of my own 🙂
Good god! Some of them are pretty understandable (like the student who refers to four centuries of Communist rule, where I assume they meant four decades), but some are horrendous—did they turn up to any lectures?!
This, though, is absolutely inspired:
I have tried to state all mistakes in this blog but as there are too many, some of them are mentioned bellow;
-Usteche drove non-Croatians (not non-Serbians) from the land.
-Yugoslavia was formed in 1929 out of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians (not Cheks)
– Serbian King Aleksandar was one who promoted the idea about united Yugoslavia, after Serbia went out from the first WW as a winner. Communist took over Yugoslavia after WW2.
-Yugoslavia has never been part of Soviet Union.
-Kosovo and Vojvodina have never been republics and they are provinces inside Serbia.
-Kosovo was 95% Albanians (not Algerian)
-The capital of Croatia is Zagreb; Dubronik is town on Croatian coast.
– Kosovo has never been an independent nation and it was Serbia 800 years ago.
Bravo.
Nice:) Frankly speaking, some people in former Yugoslavia are of the same opinion :))
This student has the point, but completely mixed up, with wrong names an years, but point is there, in some crazy way…
Its always good to know the alternative history, the one that was not written by the winner
very funny indeed.
95% of Kosovo people are Algerians 😀
its funny.. and completly wrong..
milosevic never was president of socialist federal republic of yugoslavia.. and the last president of yugoslavia was stjepan mesic (who is croatian)..
“The provinces of Yugoslavia include Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, , Yugoveada and others…”
never heard for yugoveada.. yugoslavia was a socialist state and a federation made up of six republics: bosnia and herzegovina, croatia, macedonia, montenegro, serbia and slovenia.
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Many of the examples seen here fail to surprise me.
As one of Dr. Bieber’s undergraduate students at the University of Kent I have spent plenty of time with people in seminars who do not care one iota about anything to do with Yugoslavia. The complexity of the subject and the somewhat prejudiced way that other young British people view the Balkans means that very few people bother to engage with the topic. This is exacerbated by the Universities status as a mid-range university which will accept almost any student. I assume this is why the learned man has gambled that very few of his students bother to read his blog!
As for me, I have taken a great interest in all things Yugoslav and indeed ex-Yugoslav, and spend my money on visiting the region whenever possible. I find it truly fascinating. I even display the flag of Kosovo in my student accommodation. Unfortunately, keeping up with the problems of BiH’s presidency or trying to watch b92 has not make me immune to writing strange and possibly erroneous things in exams about the subject I enjoy so much. I will never know why I wrote about Tito’s forgetfulness or indeed his wig!
How embarrassing; I can only hope that my fellow student who expects to find even a single Algerian in Pristina will not be following the writings of Florian Bieber so intently!
Thanks, Tom. I think I am pretty confident that you did not bring up Tito’s wig. I am glad about your response, however.
There is no doubt that the subject is tricky and as a result small mistakes happen to everybody, especially in the stressful environment of the exam. My post thus omitted many of these simple and less funny mistakes (like just confusing a date or missing out a republic, etc.).
Furthermore, I need to note that I have over the years read many more excellent or good exams than those which are as bad as the funnies I have posted. Of course, good exams are not as entertaining, but luckily they prove that with interest and motivation, even the complexities of Southeastern Europe can been maneuvered.
Finally, the mistakes come from both native and non-native speakers and reflect not just short-comings in the British educational system, as one comment noted. However, they reflect for the most part students who never showed up in lectures and seminars and thus did not take the opportunity to learn about the issues. As exams here are anonymous, of course, I cannot be sure about that…
as im hungarian it was terribly shocking to read this. its so WRONG
goulash is a fine soup. austrians and germans turned it to that crap dish as you may know it in western europe.
the other parts are mainly correct.
Damn, I wish my capital was Dubrovnik, although Split would never allow it as according to these students, it is part of the Roma-Hungarian Empire that was fighting the USSR in the 18th century.
Very bad article. Ottomans and Yugoslavia don’t go together – you can take this as a starting point. Many errors.
Hahahahahaha! This was a good laugh. I just hope that students in medical schools are not as “talented” as these guys. Minor fever could turn into penis removal and two years of forced treatment in a mental hospital.
As a student myself, I have to add that I had even worse experience studying abroad, especially with British professors.
While average student had no idea where Yugoslavia was (Chinese professors had nice memories about it from exchange during their studies though…), “western” professors have criticized me for going too deep (for undergraduate level) into Rwanda genocide for instance, while I payed less attention on brainless reproduction on differences between realist and liberal concepts. Do I have to say that the topic of my essay was something like “Three level of analysis on case of Rwanda” (meaning boring individual, state and international level lesson)??? Finally, noting (in the same essay) that British and US governments supply the weapons to the army later also called on responsibility for counter-genocide caused my essay to be marked B-. Moreover, for asking a British professor to draw on table where UK is, regarding the position of Argentina (while he was explaining Britain’s “struggle” to secure Malvinas/Falklands) my final grade had been concluded as C.
I went studying pretty late (which resulted in pre-knowledge of course) but the main feature of nowdays schooling, by my modest opinion, is lack of critical thinking. Also, while we in Montenegro still have oral exams, in most of foreign schools all the exams are in written form which, by my opinion, promote those students able to learn by heart. Those familiar with education system in former Yugoslavia would know that it was tough one and that energy can still be felt in local schools, even though the educational system has generally dropped after 20 years of hell in Balkans. However, average “Yugoslavian” student won’t place Scotland in France or Nigerians in Northern Ireland.
Nevertheless, it is not clever (or right) to proclaim UK students stupid in general. One is able to track down a bad student in all parts of the globe.
I’d rather argue that the power of money and consumerism (not the social dimension and solidarity) are what drive students from “developed world” to pay attention only on such countries (developed ones) and their history, while others have to “prove” themselves in the market first in order to be seriously studied by western students. All this is not, of course, the fault of the students, but the system that creates such atmosphere. Typical “coffee break question” from German students for me was, for instance, “Do you have FaceBook in Montenegro?”, mysteriously missing the fact that internet is global good and, therefore, access to the FB is free to everyone. This is not the proof of German students’ stupidity, but the notion of the top of the iceberg of widespread underestimation of one another. While ones been taught/informed by the system (media) that Balkan people are killers, narko-dealers, sex-traffickers etc. others are being convinced that all the Germans are Adolph Hitler, British are brutal colonialists and so on.
The problem of ethics is what can be seen all around and, regarding that problem, the students won’t be able to approach to studying specific country’s history with respect and appreciation. If MTV is teaching them nowdays that their own women are all bitches who deserve to be undressed on music videos and than treated as animals, why shouldn’t they thing that Balkan is not a black hole of civilization and vice versa?
Dragi gospodine Popovicu, I totally agree with you. But what has shocked me most is not the ignorance of the future diplomats, but the one of the current ones! For 11 years that I’ve been living in Geneva, I came to deal with lots of U.N. diplomats with a very poor knowledge regarding not only the Balkans, but world history and geography in general! I failed to see in the beginning why were they so impressed with my knowledge (after all, I only have three years of middle school to brag with, and they had college degrees, masters, universities and who would know what other achievements). It was later that I came to learn, when I met this young lady from Poland, that the schooling system in the west differs from the one we have (or have had) in the eastern part of Europe. The second reason is that we in the East do not have the complex of economic superiority, which makes us more curious about thing surrounding us. While in the west most of them can afford to travel the world, almost none of them bothers to learn a language or two, or to be able to point the countries they have visited on a map, for that matter. They are encouraged only to spend money and to “learn” from such mediocre and simple sources as Hollywood and Dan Brown. When we in the East read newspapers, we start with current affairs, not with show-biz gossip; when we want to know about ancient Greek history we don’t rent a film, we rent a book in a library. When we go to school, we go to learn, not to be members of secret societies that engage in “American Pie” style orgies.
Keeping in mind all that I said, in most parts of Eastern Europe I would have been nothing special, but for these “learned minds” of the West I was a “prodigy”. And to think that we wash their dishes in restaurants and prepare their salads, or clean their houses here in the West!
Dear Florian,
This is something I was never able to comprehend. How come these students ever end up studying political science.
For me the shocking experience with my colleagues was the fact that they did not have any interest in the current local, national, European and global affairs and the overwhelming majority wasn’t even reading the papers regularly.
Amazing …
I understand that many of young people in western countries comprehend everything outside of western borders as burden that they must go through to get diplomas. Sad part is that the same people will sit at the same table with people in ex Yugoslavia and tell them what to do. Well, I hope that maybe some of them will say: I should have listened on those classes. There is so much I would write here, regarding the display of ignorance on this topic, but this is not the place for it…
Dear Milovan,
I do agree with you that these matters are a burden for the westerners untill they get their diplomas, but what is very scary about this is that once they get their diplomas they sit in a cushioned chair and decide about other parts of the world, like for example the bombing of Belegrade of 1991
There is a joke about Slovenia and USA. Something like: Slovenia declare the war to the USA and the USA will struck back as soon as they find Slovenia on the map! 😀
I’m shocked while reading these comments. There are stereotypes about people from the US and also from the UK about their terribly poor knowledge of world geography. These mistakes by students of the topic make just support the stereotypes. If students make such mistakes, what idea do regular people have about the region?
I’m not saying that people from SE Europe are very familiar with topics from W Europe history, but it feels as they have a better general idea about the history and the world.
It is obvious that some changes in the education system are needed.
I just thought i’d point out from reading this that it seems to me like most of these exams may have been written by non-native english speakers, who probably came from different countries to undertake a degree in the UK. Therefore us Brits and the Americans might not be entirely to blame here…I at least hope that’s the case because if it isn’t there are some serious primary school grammar issues…
Interesuje me, kako su ovi bizgovi stigli do fakulteta?
Čitaju li bar novine ?
Is a really sad that those students don’t know something like that.Maybe in future they will decide about someones destiny and they will make wrong decision and everyone will obey them,only because they have power…really sad,I was thinking that world of unfair is behind us…some things are changed,but base never..”Law and order is written by Powerfull”.
i guess that they know what you taught them?
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Shiiis, a long looooong time ago there was a wizard named Merlin, he was a founder of Ethiopian Royal House. After several century’s in 2001 he ruled a province of Great Britain which was under Republic of Wales and Yorkshire.
And we all lived like one big family.
I had a great laugh indeed. British education system is definitely too lax as it only awards correct answers, and does not bring into equation these very obnoxious statements.
Average person in Balkans does not know much about Turkmenistan either, however such an average person is not going to be a diplomat nor say High representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina with next to colonial powers.
If negative marks were applied, I doubt you would be left with many diplomats.
this one definitly goes to my bookmarks..ouuu yeah…
Sorry lad, about 50% of your thesis are mistaken. I know that USA has really pure education system, but this is too much. Any short reading of web sites about Yugoslavian history, even wikipedia, would be enough to form correct opinion.
You may have missed the point. These lines were all taken from different students’ exams on the subject of Yugoslavia. They were not from students in the US, but from the University of Kent in the UK. Most, if not all, of these lines came from different exam answers by different students. Florian listed these excerpts in a humorous vein to illustrate how some students viewed this particular subject. As for me, I commiserate with Florian. I’m glad I didn’t become a teacher, as I wouldn’t even begin to have enough patience to grade these papers. My hat is off to him for being able to wade through stacks of papers like these and still keep his wits about him.
Come on man. Maybe you should try to explore thesis before you do paper like this crap. Oh no, maybe it is better to come to our “countries“ ( Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia) ant try to learn sth.
Anyways, never in my life i haven’t seen so much ridiculous statements like in this paper.
Good luck, you will need it!
Dear Florian,
I am Slovenian and having studied and practically lived myself what was going on in our region (I was 14 when Slovenia reached independence in 1991), I am completely astonished to see how confused the idea of Yugoslavia is within non-Yugoslavian people.
It is also true that our history is pretty complex and you get easily confused by all the different people, religions and states.
But please, I hope that those who wrote that nonsense failed at their exam and you made them read the literature all over again.
In my opinion one of the best historians of Yugoslav history is Joze Pirjevec.If you can read Italian or Slovenian his books are highly recomemended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C5%BEe_Pirjevec
Good luck with the future work!
Greetings from Slovenia!
OMG, this text rocks 😀
Your students are extremely talented, it’s impossible to describe how fun this article is for someone who actually lives in Croatia 😀
I couldn’t even read till the end ,I got brain damage after the first part WTF
Interesting Blog and funny text… 🙂
OK, we have to admit that most students have heard very little about YU before, most of them being born after it fell appart but this one for me is scary:
[In 1991] NATO was a relatively new organization and was busy with the USSR… and the UN was happy to observe the looming conflict yet unwilling to act.
Considering that UK was one of the founding countries of NATO (1949) and the first secretary general was supposedly British (1952 – 57). And what has NATO to do with YU? Except much later.
And also the last lines about Britain are unbelievable since it has to do with their own country.
How can they go out in the world without really knowing who they are and where they came from. History is important. Knowing it prevents us from making the same mistakes.
I have to say that based on this the entire system failed. Not meaning only school, but parents and government. Kids have to much and are not interested in anything but what they want. And the reprecautions are in my opinion still to come.
In four years a lot of students go through university.
Let’s say 500 of them take your class.
If 5 % of them are “talented” that means 25 students in that period.
25 students can produce a lot of nonsense.
I seriously think this is pure Baywatch Nights education, episode about mythological creature from Yugoslavia which is kidnapping kids, named Zargtha and lives on the mountains Sava and Dunav.
First few paragraphs so reminded me of that, , so I couldn’t read the whole text because I was afraid stupidity could kill me and I don’t want to push my limits. What can I say, hardly survived that mythological creature while I was switching channels in year 1997, almost ate me.
Serious comment about this..hmm.
Considering how in every messy thing called war every side has own version of the story, and usually the ones who win write history.
I won’t be surprise if at the end we end up as terrorists cause of Gavrilo Princip ( as some people already claim) even though no one ever had answer to my question – then why you chose to fight with terrorists together against the ones that weren’t terrorists by your opinion?
And many things are already forgotten, some things are celebrated as a holiday, some things already twisted.
So what I learned through my life is how history is pointless thing – you can never be sure what really happen cause you don’t know which side writer picked to present.
Gospodine Bieber, ja sam potpuno šokiran ovim što sam sad pročitao. Pišem vam na srpskom jeziku jer sam Vas malopre gledao na TV pa znam da me razumete. Ovo izgleda kao da su namerno ovako pričali da bi napravili šalu. Prosto ne mogu da verujem da mešaju Baltik i Balkan…. Česi u jugoslaviji… Svašta… Puno sreće sa ovim momcima i devojkama, trebaće Vam. Puno pozdrava iz Srbije.
haha classic! awesome!
Well, they did get two things right:
Too many wars and way too complicated for one exam.
Long live Yugoveda:D
This looks as professor’s FAIL.
Either the prof does not know how to transfer his knowledge to students or the whole ‘bunch’ (prof included) is on “something”.
It is quite likely that one day some of those students will be delegated by their governments to work on Balkan issues as “experts”. I’ve seen legions of such people working in different international agencies in Bosnia, and all I can say is God help us all 😦
Fact checking, anyone?
No, this is absolutely hillarious!
Dear God, I hope Algeria will not ask rights on Kosovo!!! Puh!
“[In 1991] NATO was a relatively new organization and was busy with the USSR… and the UN was happy to observe the looming conflict yet unwilling to act.”
“The cold war ended in 1950 when the US and the USSR signed a treaty of peace in Yalta”
Oh my God… It’s a time paraodx! We’re all doomed!
As a former student of UKC who attended your class 2007, I am happy to see that I was left unquoted ;P
This is all wrong, very wrong…
I’m a war jurnalist, and I know history of Yugoslavia pretty good, these are all nonsense…
And I never heard about Yugoveda? What a hell is that?
I had such a good laugh! Bless you for keeping and posting these! Pray you print them soon as they would make great B-day and New Year’s presents (for Yugoveadans, in particular). Thank you, thank you!!!
OMG! This is really a nonsense.