Editing Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–2003)

{{Infobox country|name=Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|native_name=Савезна Република Југославија<br>Savezna Republika Jugoslavija|image_flag=FR Yugoslavia flag.svg|image_coat=FR Yugoslav COA.svg|capital=Belgrade|largest_city=Belgrade|mode_of_production=[[State Capitalism]]|government_type=Federal republic|year_start=1992|year_end=2003|image_map=FRY map 1999.png|map_width=290|map_caption=Map of FR Yugoslavia since 1999. Occupied territory of [[Kosovo]] in light green.|official_languages=Serbo-Croatian|title_leader=Federal President|year_leader1=1992-1993|leader1=Dobrica Ćosić|year_leader2=1993–1997|leader2=Zoran Lilić|year_leader3=1997-2000|leader3=[[Slobodan Milošević]]|year_leader4=2000-2003|leader4=Vojislav Koštunica|established_event1=Formation|established_date1=27 April 1992|event1=Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević|date_event1=7 October 2000|event2=Transformation into a confederation|date_event2=4 February 2003|area_km2=102,173|population_estimate=10,832,545|population_estimate_year=2006|p1=[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]]|s1=[[Serbia and Montenegro (2003-2006)|Serbia and Montenegro]]|flag_p1=Yugoslav flag.png|flag_s1=FR Yugoslavia flag.svg}}

The '''Federal Republic of Yugoslavia''' (also spelled '''Federal Republic of Jugoslavia''' and abbreviated as either '''FRY''' or '''FRJ'''), was a country in the Balkans. After the [[counterrevolutions of 1989]] and [[Overthrow of the Soviet Union|1991]], it was the only country in Eastern Europe that resisted [[neoliberalism]] and [[North Atlantic Treaty Organization|NATO]] occupation, until the [[US]]-backed overthrow of Slobodan Milošević.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Michael Parenti]]|year=2000|title=To Kill a Nation|page=18|chapter=Third Worldization|publisher=Verso|pdf=https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1614706295182-3.pdf}}</ref>

== History ==
During 1991 and 1992, the United States and [[Federal Republic of Germany|Germany]] supported [[Republic of Croatia|Croatia]], [[Republic of Slovenia|Slovenia]], and [[Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnia]]'s [[Yugoslav Wars|wars of secession]] from the [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992)|SFR Yugoslavia]]. By April 1992, Yugoslavia was reduced to only [[Republic of Serbia|Serbia]] and [[Montenegro]], and the other former Yugoslav republics became [[Neocolonialism|neocolonies]] of NATO. The United States supported the [[Fascism|fascist]] [[Kosovo Liberation Army]] in its war against Yugoslavia.<ref name=":0">{{Web citation|author=Victor Penn|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=Yugoslavia: Ten years after the NATO massacre|date=2009-03-31|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/09-03-31-yugoslavia-ten-years-after-nato-html/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220506081614/https://www.liberationnews.org/09-03-31-yugoslavia-ten-years-after-nato-html/|archive-date=2022-05-06|retrieved=2022-09-09}}</ref> On 24 March 1999, U.S. president [[Bill Clinton]] ordered the bombing of Yugoslavia. The NATO bombing raids lasted 78 days and targeted 200 cities and towns. The bombings killed at least 5,000 people and created over a million refugees, most of which were [[Republic of Albania|Albanians]] from [[Kosovo]], which NATO claimed to be defending.<ref name=":0" />

=== Yugoslav Wars ===
In the 1980s, the [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]] was undergoing economics crises and disparities between its constituent republics. In Kosovo particularly, antisocialists sabotaged power plants and prevented miners from working.<ref name=Tika>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Jared Israel, Petar Makara &Tika Janković|title=Kosovo Before 1989 - Nightmare with the Best Intentions|url=http://tenc.net/interviews/tika.htm|date=2000-03-06|accessdate=2020-04-14}}</ref> Croatia and Slovenia accounted for half of federal tax revenues even though they were only 30% of the SFRY’s population. They openly resented these obligations and revolted with the goal of obtaining Western European support. Both Croatia and Slovenia held multiparty elections on independence, but the Socialist Party of Serbia was interested in preserving the federation, receiving 65% of the vote. Serbia considered using force to prevent the secessions, but the Statesian ruling class strongly discouraged this.<ref name=MonthlyReview>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Edward Herman & David Peterson|title=The Dismantling of Yugoslavia (Part I)|url=https://monthlyreview.org/?p=2404|journal=The Monthly Review|volume=59|issue=05|date=2007-10-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140708151424/http://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia|archivedate=2014-07-08}}</ref> Early on in the 1990s, the [[Bourgeois media|corporate media]] in Croatia,<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Michael Parenti|chapter=5|title=To Kill a Nation: the Attack on Yugoslavia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qWbGftW07WoC|location=New York|publisher=Verso|year=2000|page=47|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=qWbGftW07WoC&pg=PA47|ISBN=1-85984-366-2}}</ref> Slovenia,<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Sylvia Poggioli|title=Scouts Without Compasses|url=https://fair.org/?p=1229|date=1994-05-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190812221624/https://fair.org/extra/scouts-without-compasses|archivedate=2019-08-12}}</ref> and the Anglosphere<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Olga Kavran|title=Cold War Lives On in Yugoslavia Reporting|url=https://fair.org/?p=1200|date=1991-11-01|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20191019180525/https://fair.org/extra/cold-war-lives-on-in-yugoslavia-reporting|archivedate=2019-10-19}}</ref> all portrayed the war against Yugoslavia as a struggle against [[communism]]. By April 1992, the only republics left in Yugoslavia were those of Montenegro and Serbia.

With Western support, the antisocialist Party of Democratic Action illegally seized power in Bosnia and unconstitutionally seceded it from the SFRY in 1992. The party’s goal was to create an [[Islamism|Islamist]] régime, even though most of the other Muslims shared no interest in this.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Francisco Gil-White|title=What really happened in Bosnia?|url=http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija3.htm|date=2005-08-19|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160123153931/http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija3.htm|archivedate=2016-01-23}}</ref> Despite its own links to the [[Axis]] and its low tolerance for nonconforming Muslims, the Party of Democratic Action also accused the Serbian Presidencies of Islamophobia and likened them to the [[Third Reich]], although a former the then Bosnian Serb leader presented elaborate evidence contradicting these claims.<ref name=KaradzicInterview>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Andy Wilcoxson|coauthors=Radovan Karadžić|title=Interview with Radovan Karadzic|url=http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/Karadzic_Interview_06142020_Public.pdf|date=2020-06-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200627064535/http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/Karadzic_Interview_06142020_Public.pdf|archivedate=2020-06-27}}</ref> In 1993, the Statesian ruling class sabotaged a series of peace efforts between 1993 and the Dayton accords of 1995; encouraged the Bosnian antisocialists to reject any settling until their military position had improved; helped arm and train the Islamist and Croatian antisocialists to shift the balance of forces on the ground; and finally settled at Dayton with an agreement imposed upon the warring factions.<ref name=MonthlyReview/><ref name="KaradzicInterview" /> Lieutenant Colonel John E. Sray, while still misbelieving that the Serbian Presidency ‘certainly aggravated the conflict with his nationalistic bombast’, freely conceded that,

{{quote|America has not been so pathetically deceived since Robert McNamara helped to micromanage and escalate the Vietnam War. […] Popular perceptions pertaining to the Bosnian Muslim government […] have been forged by a prolific propaganda machine. A strange combination of three major spin doctors, including public relations (PR) firms in the employ of the Bosniacs, media pundits, and sympathetic elements of the US State Department, have managed to manipulate illusions to further Muslim goals.|LTC John E. Sray|<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=John Sray|title=Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware|url=http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/bosnia2.htm|journal=Foreign Military Studies Office Publications|publisher=Department of the Army|month=October|year=1995|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100605013354/http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/bosnia2.htm|archivedate=2010-06-05}}</ref>}}

Two separate studies from the ’00s, the first sponsored by the ICTY itself and the next by the [[Kingdom of Norway|Norwegian]] government, concluded that the Bosnian conflicts had actually resulted in a combined death count (including both civilian and military victims) on the order of one hundred thousand for ''all'' sides,<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Jakub Bijak & Ewa Tabeau|first2=|title=War-related Deaths in the 1992–1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina|journal=European Journal of Population|volume=21|month=June|year=2005|pages=187–215}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Patrick Ball|title=Bosnian Book of the Dead: Assessment of the Database|url=http://www.idc.org.ba/presentation/content.htm|location=Sarajevo|publisher=Research and Documentation Center|month=June|year=2007}}</ref> contradicting the capitalist media’s much higher estimates misattributed to the Serbs.<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Edward Herman & David Peterson|title=The Politics of Genocide|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TTkUCgAAQBAJ|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=2010|page=47|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=TTkUCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA47|ISBN=978-1-58367-213-6|LCCN=2010004852}}</ref>

In the summer of 1995 the Bosnian Serb army was presented with an opportunity to conquer Srebrenica and end the massacring of Serb villagers. But it was a trap set by the American ruling class and the Bosnian antisocialists, who were both looking for “genocide” so that the [[NATO]] would have the justification to extensively intervene in Bosnia.<ref name=logic>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Paul Treanor|title=The logic of the war in Bosnia|url=http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/bosnia.html|year=2002|accessdate=2020-03-08|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060806024413/http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/bosnia.html|archivedate=2006-08-06}}</ref> Unauthorized Serbian soldiers took it upon themselves to exact revenge against Muslim men. Although civilian deaths were certainly involved, the demographic unit of the ICTY Prosecutor’s office also found military service records for 5,371 of the 7,661 people on the list of Srebrenica’s missing and dead.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Andy Wilcoxson|title=Srebrenica: The Ugly Truth|url=http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/srebrenica071114.htm|date=2014-07-11|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190806114046/http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/srebrenica071114.htm|archivedate=2019-08-06}}</ref> Western reporters argued that this was not a mere massacre but rather a genocide<ref name=GlobalResearch>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Marcus Papadopoulos|title=The Defining Year Was 1991: The Demise of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union|url=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-nC83|date=2018-02-02|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190606172150/https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-defining-year-was-1991-the-demise-of-yugoslavia-and-the-soviet-union/5628115|archivedate=2019-06-06}}</ref> and blamed the FRY’s presidency for it. However, nobody from the FRY’s presidency could have issued such an order, nor were they aware of it either. When President [[Slobodan Milošević|Milošević]] first heard news of this crime, he was enraged, deeply upset, and visibly shaken.<ref>https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/030617IT.htm</ref><ref>https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/030618IT.htm</ref>

=== NATO bombing ===

By 1999, NATO illegally<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=John Laughland|chapter=1|title=Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milošević and the Corruption of International Justice|location=London|publisher=Pluto Press|year=2007|pages=7–11|ISBN=978 0 7453 2636 8}}</ref> invaded Kosovo under the excuse that Yugoslav forces were committing ethnocides and expulsions. However, Spanish forensic doctors, whom somebody mislead into expecting thousands of bodies to examine, returned home in September 1999 with only 187 bodies.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Pablo Ordaz|title=Policías y forenses españoles no hallan pruebas de genocidio al norte de Kosovo|date=1999-09-23|url=https://elpais.com/diario/1999/09/23/internacional/938037612_850215.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170916155311/https://elpais.com/diario/1999/09/23/internacional/938037612_850215.html|archivedate=2017-09-16}}</ref> ''[[Reuters]]'' confirmed in October 1999 that nobody found any corpses at the rumored grave site in Kosovo, and the ICTY’s speaker Kelly Moore said that after ICTY investigators had examined Trepča, ‘They found absolutely nothing.’<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|title=No Bodies at Rumored Grave Site in Kosovo|date=1999-10-13
|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150527102031/http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/13/world/no-bodies-at-rumored-grave-site-in-kosovo.html|archivedate=2015-05-27}}</ref> George Kenney, a now former foreign service officer of Washington’s State Department, remembers looking at various reports of atrocities in Kosovo and thinking that they were ‘complete nonsense’; basing his experience on Bosnia, he realized that the stories were at best inaccurate reports and at worst pure fiction.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|title=Milošević Trial: Corruption of International Justice|language=Dutch|url=https://invidious.snopyta.org/embed/p0wptqp1OSY}}</ref> Contrary to the capitalist media’s much higher estimates,<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Edward Herman|last2=David Peterson|title=The Politics of Genocide|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TTkUCgAAQBAJ|location=New York|publisher=Monthly Review Press|year=2010|page=50|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=TTkUCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA50|ISBN=978-1-58367-213-6|LCCN=2010004852}}</ref> investigators found only some four thousand bodies (including Serbs and military personnel) in Kosovo,<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Carla Del Ponte|title=Statement to the Press by Carla Del Ponte|publisher=International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia|date=2000-12-20|paragraph=16|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070813073148/http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/p550-e.htm|archivedate=2007-08-13}}</ref> and estimated that 2,047 were still missing as of 2007.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=International Committee of the Red Cross|title=Kosovo: ICRC publishes new edition of ‘Book of the Missing’|date=2007-08-29|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090912223458/http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/kosovo-news-290807?opendocument|archivedate=2009-09-12}}</ref> Capitalist outlets such as the ''[[The Guardian|Guardian]]'', the ''Wall Street Journal'', and ''USA Today'' eventually admitted that the NATO had grossly exaggerated the scale of the atrocities.<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=John Laughland|chapter=1|title=Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milošević and the Corruption of International Justice|location=London|publisher=Pluto Press|year=2007|pages=7–11|ISBN=978 0 7453 2636 8}}</ref>

When the former head of the FRY’s secret services, [[Radomir Marković]], attended the ICTY, Milošević asked if Belgrade authorities had menaced and bribed him into falsely confessing to a Yugoslav order for ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to which he replied ‘Yes.’ Radomir Marković broke his agreement in Belgrade, confirming that the FRY never ordered an ethnic cleansing, in fact that the FRY was trying to prevent one,<ref>https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/020726IT.htm</ref> and for this the Belgrade authorities imprisoned him for seven years,<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|title=Milošević Trial: Corruption of International Justice|language=Dutch|url=https://invidious.snopyta.org/embed/V-neyr99hHg}}</ref> even though torture, inciting somebody to false testimony, and inciting somebody to false accusations, are all illegal under European law.<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=John Laughland|chapter=8|title=Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milošević and the Corruption of International Justice|location=London|publisher=Pluto Press|year=2007|page=164|ISBN=978 0 7453 2636 8}}</ref> In 2016, the ICTY (unofficially) admitted that President Milošević was innocent of the crimes during the Bosnian War misattributed to him; crimes that his administration was, in fact, struggling to prevent.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Andy Wilcoxson|title=Hague Tribunal Exonerates Slobodan Milosevic for Bosnia War Crimes Ten Years Too Late|url=http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-aw071816.htm|date=2016-07-18|accessdate=2020-04-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200104205720/http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-aw071816.htm|archivedate=2020-01-04}}</ref><ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Andy Wilcoxson|title=Milosevic Exoneration: Radio Free Europe's Clumsy Attempt at Damage Control|url=http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-aw080916.html|date=2016-08-09|accessdate=2020-04-19}}</ref> Another trial chamber in The Hague reconfirmed this in 2017.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=Andy Wilcoxson|title=Hague Tribunal Exonerates Slobodan Milosevic Again|url=http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg_aw113017.htm|date=2017-11-30|accessdate=2020-04-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20200324012538/http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg_aw113017.htm|archivedate=2020-03-24}}</ref>

In total, antisocialist forces in the former Yugoslavia have probably caused 107,000 deaths from the 1990s to the early 2000s,<ref name=Lucas>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=James A. Lucas|title=US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II |archiveurl=https://wp.me/p2vCQD-n2Jt |archivedate=27-November-2015 |date=27-November-2015 |url=https://popularresistance.org/?p=78226}}</ref> which is almost identical to the original number of killings of which antisocialists had falsely accused the FRY.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=John Laughland|chapter=1|title=Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milošević and the Corruption of International Justice|location=London|publisher=Pluto Press|year=2007|pages=10–11|ISBN=978 0 7453 2636 8}}</ref>

Throughout the Yugoslav wars, the FRY never committed any expulsions.<ref name=MonthlyReview/>

=== Post-Milošević era ===
After the overthrow of Milošević, the FRY became a puppet state of the USA.

==Politics==

===Military===
The FRY’s military was relatively unsophisticated and low-budget, with some technologies dating back to the 1960s. However, they compensated by being very innovative in tactics, such as frequently relocating missile batteries and briefly activating a tracking radar strictly for the purpose of intercepting a passing aircraft. Because of the FRY’s tactics and techniques, anticommunist forces had to repeatedly fly through active SAM engagement zones, requiring a certain level of standoff and penetrating tactical jamming, but they exhausted nearly their entire inventory of terrestrial EA-6Bs throughout the entire air campaign of 1999.<ref>{{safesubst:Citation| publisher = United States Strategic Institute | title = Strategic Review| date = 2000| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=HwrfAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA3-PA43}}</ref> The FRY also made extensive use of cheap decoys in the forms of bridges, airfields, and military vehicles, which greatly taxed NATO’s resources and successfully deceived the pilots into thinking that they had decimated the FRY’s air force. Postwar research indicated that they had only struck a small fraction of legitimate military targets: NATO inflicted severe damage on numerous civilians and their structures, but the FRY’s forces in Kosovo survived the conflict largely unscathed. Consequently General Wesley Clark insisted on referring to an unscientific report instead.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|author=John Barry|title=The Kosovo Cover-Up|url=https://www.newsweek.com/node/160273|date=2000-05-14|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150404231749/http://www.newsweek.com/kosovo-cover-160273|archivedate=2015-04-04}}</ref> Afterwards, many [[Republic of Iraq|Iraqi]] intelligence officers visited Yugoslavia to study the military’s innovative techniques.<ref>{{safesubst:Web citation|title=NATO attack on Yugoslavia gave Iraq good lessons|url=http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20021120/wless1120/Front/homeBN/breakingnews|date=2002-11-22|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20021122163917/http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20021120/wless1120/Front/homeBN/breakingnews|archivedate=2002-11-22}}</ref>

==Economy==
During the 1990s, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was a [[semiplanned economy]] in which some of the laborers managed their own enterprises until the antisocialists bombed them.<ref>{{safesubst:Citation|author=Michael Parenti|chapter=15|title=To Kill a Nation: the Attack on Yugoslavia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qWbGftW07WoC|location=New York|publisher=Verso|year=2000|page=168|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=qWbGftW07WoC&pg=PA168|ISBN=1-85984-366-2}}</ref> Unlike the other former Yugoslav republics, the FRY refused to be an export colony. As late as 1999, 75% of industry was still public.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Michael Parenti]]|year=2000|title=To Kill a Nation|page=22|chapter=Third Worldization|publisher=Verso|pdf=https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1614706295182-3.pdf}}</ref>

== Demographics ==
Because of the Western-backed ethnonationalist campaigns in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, Serbia was the most diverse society in former Yugoslavia. It contained 26 nationalities, including tens of thousands of Albanians and hundreds of thousands of Croats, [[Czech Republic|Czechs]], [[Hungary|Hungarians]], [[Judaism|Jews]], [[Romani people|Roma]], [[Romania|Romanians]], [[Slovak Republic|Slovaks]], and [[Republic of Türkiye|Turks]]. It was also the only country in the world to officially recognize the [[Rusyn]] people, 19,000 of whom lived in [[Vojvodina]]. Vojvodina provided primary and secondary education in the languages of all national minorities. Before NATO's war, it had 50 Albanian-language publications.<ref name=":02">{{Citation|author=[[Michael Parenti]]|year=2000|title=To Kill a Nation|chapter=Multiculturalism in Yugoslavia|page=187–189|pdf=https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1614706295182-3.pdf|publisher=Verso|quote=}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Serbia and Montenegro (2003-2006)|Serbia and Montenegro]]

==Further information==

=== Books ===

* ''[[Library:To kill a nation|To Kill a Nation]]''

=== Videos ===
* [https://invidio.us/embed/waEYQ46gH08 The Weight of Chains]

== References ==
[[Category:Countries targeted by imperialist aggression]]
<references />
[[Category:Anti-imperialist states]]