Word: croatia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stitched together an unwieldy federation of rivalrous ethnic groups since World War II have been unraveling for years. Since 1981, the 1.7 million Albanians in the Serbian-controlled province of Kosovo have been agitating for separate status. Last spring and summer the relatively prosperous northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia voted in free elections to install noncommunist, Western-oriented governments, while Serbia, the largest republic, chose to retain its communist government -- lately renamed socialist -- under hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic. Those divisive events were followed by a landslide referendum in which 88% of Slovenia's 2.1 million citizens voted...
Similar secessionist fever in Croatia, meanwhile, nearly erupted in war when Belgrade accused Croatian defense minister Martin Spegelj of fomenting an armed insurrection. Federal troops were called in, and a tense standoff was resolved only when Croatia agreed to demobilize -- but not disarm -- its police reservists. Unrepentant, Slaven Letica, an aide to Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, declared, "If it comes to civil war, Croatia is willing to fight and confident that it will prevail...
...that is crumbling. What else can hold the union together? And if Croatia (pop. 4.6 million) should secede, what would become of its 600,000 Serbian minority? "All Serbs," says Milosevic, "must have the right to live in one state." This implies that he would lay claim to a "greater Serbia" by annexing the Serbian regions not only of Croatia but of adjacent Bosnia and Herzegovina as well...
Whether Milosevic manages to retain control in Serbia's parliament in upcoming elections may determine whether the Yugoslav federation shatters. With a governing bloc, he could more easily press territorial claims against Croatia and grudges against Slovenia. Disintegration was not Poland's problem, and Walesa, despite his affection for Poland's prewar dictator, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, strikes few people as a Volk-glorifying Fuhrer. But in trouncing candidate-come-lately Stanislaw Tyminski, a returned emigre who offered a form of national salvation as easy as a drug trip, Walesa himself could not quite shake off charges of pandering to emotions...
...each of today's conflicts exposes layers of the past. Friction between the various republics may reflect the conflict between Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy, or Islam and Christianity, or Slav and Turk, or Slav and German. Yugoslavs do not even share an alphabet: Serbia uses Cyrillic script; Croatia and Slovenia, Roman. As the old British dictum went, Yugoslavia is a small country with big problems -- six republics, five nationalities, four languages, three religions, two alphabets and one political party. The only change today is a proliferation of parties as well...