Polar Bear: I know some neo-Nazis would’ve fought for Serbia in the Yugoslav War.
Odd because the armed Serbian nationalists in WW2 were very much anti-Nazi, probably mostly because of the Croatian Nazi Ustashe regime that killed so many Serbs.
I don’t know about the Chetniks. I think they were some sort of armed Far Right Serbs, but they were not pro-Nazi.
The genocidal Serbs of the 1990’s were the descendants of the Chetniks, as the armed Croats of that war were the descendants of the Ustashe. Franjo Tudjman was absolutely a Croatian fascist, basically a Nazi. Milosevic was a Communist but he seemed to have turned into a fascist after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Rightwing Serbs hate Muslims first, then Croats.
Marshall Tito was a Croat but he absolutely hated fascists and Nazis. He cracked down hard on Croatian nationalists who he saw as Nazis. A number of them were killed.
His forces also murdered many civilians on the islands off the coast of Croatia in the last days of the war, throwing the bodies into the deep karst crevasses that are common on those islands. The accusation was that they collaborated with Italian fascists during the War. There’s a lot of Italian influence along the Croatian coast in Istria and the islands. A dialect of the Venetian language with Slavic influence is spoken in places along that coast, especially in Istria.
All Tito did was keep a lid on a boiling pot. We can see this is so because as soon as Yugoslavia broke up, all of those ethnic hatreds came to the surface, most prominently Serbian paranoia of Muslims dating back to wars against the Turks 700 years ago. History goes way back in Eastern Europe much more than it does here.
The present is much more connected to the past there, whereas we in the US are almost ahistorical or “outside of history,” though I suppose that’s never really true about any group no matter how Globohomo they are. Of course Americans are an historical people, but the tail of history doesn’t extend back nearly so far here, and ethnic hatreds among nations barely exist in the Western Hemisphere. In a sense, we are too “new” and “uprooted” for any of that. One nice thing about deracination is the lack of deep-rooted ethnic hatreds due to, naturally, the lack of the very roots that sustain them.
The past isn’t dead. Hell, it isn’t even past!
– William Faulkner
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Mostly outsiders like Varg Vikernes, who said he would’ve fought for the Serbs. It may well not make sense to an insider.
The East is timeless like a rock. The West is like fire and all it leaves is ashes in the end. Women are probably happier with more sexism in the East. In the West we have a bunch of unhappy “free” feminist freaks.
Nazism doesn’t seem to die in the East.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jure_Franceti%C4%87#/media/File:Patch_of_13th_battalion_Jure_the_knight_Franceti%C4%87.svg
Ustashe or at least Neo-Ustashe were active in the Yugoslav wars. Much of what little I know of Stalin is through Tito.
Like the Serbs (like Milosevic) versus the Albanians? Them of at least somewhat Turkish heritage. The Albanians like to view themselves as descendants of the ancient Ilyrians.
Right.
I wouldn’t tell the Serbs that they have Turkish heritage unless you want a fistfight. According to them, all of the Serb traitors converted to Islam, and that’s where you get your Bosnians. Bosnians are just Serbs who sold out to the Turks and converted to get better lives.
Albanians are half Muslim and half Catholic, however, in general, they are not very religious. I think the Constitution even says something like Albania is officially a secular country. The Muslims and Catholics get along fine. And they saved almost all of the Jews who took refuge with them in WW2. Interesting people. They may indeed be the descendants of the Ilyrians.
Ilyrian is the local flavor there imo. Linguistically, Albania is the most interesting to me.
It’s a beautiful language!