The Balkans

May 9th, 2022

This is going to be a rough read. The names of people towns just look very foreign, and not only in a single language. I assume there is romanization of various Slavic names, but as we are talking about the Ottomans, Arab and Turkic names. Then I don’t really know the geography, and names of regions that once were part of different empires now are part of certain small countries. Right now it is the start of the 19th century and a lot of this area is Ottoman, under Semil III. I don’t know so much about the Ottomans other than they are past their prime by this point. The basis of the society is confusing. There’s the emperor and he has elite warriors, janissaries. They are not supposed to marry and all that, but by this time they are doing whatever they want and creating sort of mini dynasties. Semil wants to reform all that and go back to the old ways. He has another problem. The governors (pashas?) of distant territories have since become semi-autonomous. Semil does not really have control of his empire. There is some sort of revolt going on up north in the Balkans and Semil was supporting a governor, but in 1798, Napoleon invades Egypt. Semil has to leave the Balkans to themselves and fight this front. The Ottomans have not kept up with Europe. They rejected the modern approach to economics and fell behind as western Europe filled with American gold and silver. They became poor and unstable, often near famine conditions. The book starts off at full sprint, so it will be slow going for a while.

May 10th, 2022

So there were dahi (janissary leaders) and knez (local Serb chieftains). There were 4 dahi and they were corrupt and cruel. They learned some knezes were bringing in weapons from Austria (I guess this region sided with Austria in the war a few years before) and decided to slaughter a bunch of knezes before they could rebel. This, surprisingly, led to rebellion. At first the Serbs and Sultan worked together, and the dahi were killed. The Serbs had formed a rag-tag military force under Karadjordje, who ultimately forced many Serbs to fight under penalty of death. He made some demands to the Ottomans, and the Sultan was likely to concede to them under they went to war with Russia in 1806. Another money-wrench was Austerlitz. With the end of that war, France got the Dalmatian coast and was now a Balkan power. Russia and the Ottomans mostly went to war over Wallachia and Moldavia. The Russians and Serbs teamed up, but the Russians sold out the Serbs in 1812 to end the war and deal with Napoleon. Karadjordge and other leaders fled to Austria. During this chaotic period, nobody had firm control over the Belgrade pasha or had the same plans for its future. Some wanted a monarchy, others localized oligarchy. The northern Germanized Serbs in Vojvodina wanted a westernized system of government. I think the story is getting a little clearer.

May 11th, 2022

The book is very detailed and I’ll be lucky to remember 10% of it. The First Serbian Uprising ended in 1813 with the flight of Karadjordje. A new governor was installed by Mahmud II; Semil III was dead. He turned out to be ruthless and things were as bad as before. The new organized peasantry rebelled again. A new Serb, Milos something-o-vich, filled his spot and in place of armed rebellion, established power within the confines of the empire. The Sultan became very dependent on him and he became very powerful and rich. He was very oppressive though, and the peasants rebelled to no gain. Milos establish his own dynasty with hereditary rule. Karadjordje returned in 1817 and was executed. Next the book moves to the Greeks. To be Greek didn’t mean much. There was no real ethnic identity. They called themselves Christians, Romans, or Greeks (Hellenes was “revived” later). If you were in the Orthodox Church, you were a Greek. If you were a Muslim, you were not, even if you were from the Peloponnese and spoke Greek. The Greek speakers had a wide diaspora and many held important roles, as a result of the history of the Byzantines. There were also peasants who were in the same state as Serbs and others. Greeks ruled Wallachia and Moldavia and essentially controlled commerce and maritime trade. In 1814 in Odessa, Russia, some Greeks establish a secret society, the Friendly Society, to vaguely reclaim the “motherland”. This didn’t mean much. They started to spread throughout the empire. The Patriarch of the Church tried to stop its spread, fearing the reaction of the Turks. In Albania, there was a fat man named Ali Pasha who had gained much power as governor. The Turks blamed him for the Society and invaded in 1820. He had nothing to do with the Society, but joined its forces in reaction. By 1821, there was full blown civil war for an independent Greece. And it was not limited to modern Greece. Rebellion was in all locations of Christian society. It led to Christians being massacred in Istanbul and other Muslim cities. In retaliation, Muslims were slaughtered in Greek cities. It was genocide, but by 1825, the Turks had reclaimed a lot of the areas in rebellion.

May 12th, 2022

There were some conflicting groups within the Greek Independence movement. There were the Peloponnesians, the Rumelians (“mainland Greeks”), and the islanders (mostly of Hydra, Psara, Spetses). Within these groups were the low-class militants who just wanted to replace Ottoman rule with their own, and sort of aristocrats who wanted a new central government. This is the main difference from the Serb uprising. There were also Greeks who were influenced by western and French Revolutionary thought, and many of these guys lived outside the empire. So there was no unified front and there was plenty of fratricide on the mainland. The islanders tended to hold their own and keep the Ottomans at bay. The main aid to independence was foreign intervention. The British, French, and Russian governments signed a treaty in 1827 that they would not interfere, but later a British fleet destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Navarino because they did not hold up their end of the treaty. The British government was angry at this move by the navy. They wanted Ottoman unity to keep Russia in place and to keep their access to eastern colonies secure. But the die was cast after they decided to loan the Greek insurgents money. Without a navy, the Ottoman army was screwed. Greek had attained its independence by 1831, and a constitution and government were imposed on them by the three powers. But there was no unity and civil war plagued the country for several more years. Their self-established government ended with assassination. The three empires established a monarchy in Greece with a Bavarian prince as its first king. The book then moves onto Croatia and Hungary in 1848, beginning to tell of Jelacic, a Croatian field marshal who came to help the region against its Hungarian oppressors. The Hungarians had recently tried to become independent and reclaim its ancient lands.

May 13th, 2022

Like most places in the Balkans, Croatia has a complicated history. Like Serbia, it was once an independent kingdom. I guess it was under Hungarian authority within the empire. In 1809, Napoleon did what Napoleon does and created a new kingdom in the area. I think the Kingdom of Illyria encompassed Dalmatia, parts of Croatia, and maybe up to Venice. A big change was Napoleon allowed Croatian (and Slovenian?) to be used as official administrative languages. This kind of awoke a nationalism or cultural identity. There usual Balkan question then came up: what exactly is a Croatian? Should there be a Croatian movement, a Pan-Slav movement, a Yugo-Slav movement? And the Serbs and Greeks and Croats and Hungarians, all preaching about their “ancient kingdoms” happen to claim the same lands. Not a recipe for peace. Then the revolutions of 1848 make everything messy. The Hungarians get their own parliament and some autonomy and oppress the Croatians and Serbs of Vojvodina. These guys team up and fight the Hungarians, with some support from the “independent” Serbia of the Ottoman Empire. Both Hungarians and Slavs continue to profess fealty to the Kaiser. The Kaiser, with is Viceroy Jelacic, support the Croats (though secretly the Kaiser is opposed to national movements). It gets bloody quickly with military movements and regular lynchings of the supposed enemy. Hungary also makes some claims to Transylvania and Slovakia, and thus provokes uprisings there. Italians in Venice and Lombardy revolt. Czechs in Prague revolt. The Russians come to the empire’s aid against Hungary. It’s crazy. I read a book on 1848 already and it’s still a lot to follow. I guess for the purpose of the Balkans, it’s important to know that Croats and Serbs (of Vojvodina) unify under the emperor to fight Hungary, while at the same time their national movements dream of claiming the same lands.

May 16th, 2022

The guy who bombed Prague was essentially in charge of saving the empire. They got Ferdidand to abdicate and his nephew Franz Joseph was made emperor at age 18. They used Jelacic to weak Hungary but didn’t provide him promised troops, probably to weaken the Croat nationalists also. Eventually Russia joined Austria and crushed the Hungarians, ruthlessly. The Croats were a bit less reactionary than the Hungarians and didn’t even get rid of feudal obligations. The last section of the chapter is about the Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia, which make up part of modern Romania. These principalities are part of the Ottoman Empire, Transylvania is part of Austria, and Russia is very interested in the region. For a long time these principalities were under the heel of the Greek aristocrats, but during the Greek War of Independence, they more or less got the boot, though they were supposed to be a significant battleground for the Greeks. The Romanians had some autonomy, though the Romanian boyars just kind of replaced the Greeks. It was still oppressive for the peasants. This was the one region of the Ottoman Empire to revolt in 1848. The Ottomans didn’t really care since they had little sway in the region, but Russia convinced the Ottomans to step in. There was a lot of rivalry between Wallachia and Moldavia, and the population was divided on whether to join as one Romanian country. Wallachia tended to outshine Moldavia with its capital at Bucharest. The Romanians wanted their own monarchy instead of being a Russian protectorate in the Ottoman Empire. They got their chance during the Crimean War. Russia occupied this region and Austria threated to invade if they did not leave. When Russia lost the war, Romania was part of the spoils. England didn’t want an independent Romania because they wanted a strong Ottoman Empire, but France under Napoleon III did. Romania had a native king for some time, but deposed him and recruited a German of some Hohenzollern branch. This was controversial, but Bismarck and the Prussians invaded Austria and took some land, and Italy (or maybe Piedmont. Don’t know if Italy was unified yet) took Venice, so Austria was in no place to interfere. When Germany became a unified country in 1871, having a German king gave them a boost of legitimacy. That’s all I can remember.

May 17th, 2022

Chapter two starts off with Bosnia. It’s main focus seems to be the Bosnian Uprising of 1875, but it starts a few decades earlier. The Ottoman Empire was organized by nations of religion (millets). Ethnicity or language or location were not a factor. All Christians were a nation, all Muslims were a nation, and all Jews were a nation, with their own laws. It worked for a couple centuries, but the changes of the 19th century shook things up. The Ottomans were too rural to economically undeveloped to compete in the modern world. Some Ottomans tried to make some reforms in the 1850s or so, called the Tazmat. They wanted to abolish the nations rule and feudal dues and some other things. The Bosnian Muslim landlords blew a gasket and essentially went into rebellion. The Sultan sent Omar Pasha, a Hapsburg Croat turned Ottoman Muslim who was an excellent field marshal. He wiped out the Muslim hierarchy and consolidated the emperor’s power in Bosnia, all in the name of helping the poor Christian peasants. As with any war, the peasants suffered greatly. With the job done, Pasha left and the region was destabilized. The rebellion was over, and I think next something happens as result of the Crimean War.

May 18th, 2022

I don’t really remember what I read. It jumped around through several short topics. After the Crimean War, the British and French gave the Ottomans lots of loans and put them in serious debt. They were in millions of pounds of debt which they could never repay. They also had to sign treaties to for certain trade rules which undermined native product. Eventually, the declared bankruptcy which led to crisis. Also, with Russian expansion into the Caucasus, Muslims fled to the Ottoman Empire. Many Crimean Tartars also immigrated there after the war. Some were resettled in Anatolia, but others in Bulgaria. This led to overpopulation and clashing between religious groups. Also during this time was a growth of a “Turkish” as opposed to “Ottoman” ethnic identity.

May 19th, 2022

I think some of the chapters are a bit ambitious and try to cover too many things. The author jumps around in time and space regularly. The author mentions a financial crisis of 1873 and a bad winter and following spring that led to famine, with many people in the food-starved cities dying. Then in Bosnia and Hercegovina they were struggling against their tax collectors, who had quite abusive powers. Especially after the economic breakdown, they tried to extract more money. The Bosnians and Serbs had a plan to break away, with Austrian aid. But someone decided to attack a Muslim band of merchants and the shot was heard ‘round the world. The Ottomans brought the armies into Hercegovina and there was plenty of blood. This inspired the Bulgarians to rebel, but they had no real plan and they were shut down very quickly. None of the great powers really cared about Bulgaria. It had no strategic value for them yet, and was too close to Istanbul. Muslims and Christians were massacring each other, with tens of thousands killed. The Europeans were shocked at the murder of Christians and wanted their governments to intervene. There was also something about Turks finding national identity. Turk was a pejorative as it implied peasantry. The high-class guys spoke Ottoman, a bastard child of Turkish and Arabic but was incredibly confusing and nobody could read it. People started to refer to the Ottoman Empire as a Turkish empire, not just a Muslim empire.

May 20th, 2022

The book talks more about Bulgarians and how their national identity was formed as a struggle against the Greek influence. The Bulgarians got permission to establish their own Orthodox Church and of course it was a conflict. Then it goes back to Serbia and its progress as an autonomous region from the 1830s to the 1870s or so. Milosh Obrenovich played the political game and was able to get some foreign entities to establish consuls in Serbia. Political turmoil got him exiled and his son Michael reigned for 3 years. He was ousted for the son of Karadjordje. Then Michael came back 20 years later and reigned for a decade before getting assassinated. The Serbs struggled with the idea of Pan-Slavism or Pan-Orthodoxism, while at the same time wanting to centralize power in Belgrade. Their goals clashed with the Greek goals of wanting to establish their old Hellenistic empire. Place is a mess.

May 23rd, 2022

Finished chapter two, not really sure what happened. Serbia raised an army, but it was really outdated. In 1876 or so, after the Bulgarian massacres, the militant spirit was up. Some Russians volunteered to fight in the name of Pan-Slavism and the Serbs declared war on the Ottomans. The war lasted 2 weeks, Serbia was crushed. Russia intervened to end the war and the status quo before the war was kept. Something else to note is that after Austria got beat up by Prussia in 1866, they created the Dual Monarchy and Hungary was given equal/higher status. While the Austrians eye up Bosnia, the Hungarians don’t want any more Slavs to dilute their power. Then the Prussians beat up France in 1871 and Europe is all messed up. Some time after the Serbian war, Russia declares war on the Ottomans and whip them. They come up with the San Stefano treaty to redraw borders, but Prussia intervenes to draw more favorable borders, ones that won’t lead to war among the European powers. Austria “administered” Bosnia. Serbia, Romania, Montenegro got independence. The main discussion was over Bulgaria. Russia wanted a huge Bulgarian state. The Berlin treaty created a small Bulgaria, with the rest of the territory split between an autonomous East Rumelia and Macedonia, which stated Ottoman.

May 24th, 2022

Chapter 3 starts with a more detailed description of the Berlin Conference after the war between Turkey and Russia. The powers of Europe, those being France, England, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Turkey gathered in Balkan-neutral Germany to discuss the fate of the region. With the Ottomans on their way out, Austria and Russia were moving in. This could only lead to war, which Germany wanted to prevent. Germany, Austria, and Russia were the great conservative powers and Bismarck did not wany any rifts. The people of the Balkans had no official representation and were lucky to be allowed to speak at the conference. Turkey was essentially there to give up its lands. England got Cyprus to watch over, Austria got Bosnia to watch over, Russia got its Bulgaria and wrangled Bessarabia from Romania, and France got nothing. To compensate France, it got Tunisia, which set off the whole scramble for Africa. This conference is responsible for much of the problems of the Balkans (other than nationalism as an ideology) and the colonial effects in Africa. But it averted a major war for 30 years, so that’s not too bad. Maybe a major war would’ve been better sooner, before airplanes and machine guns.

May 25th, 2022

Next topic is some of the aftermath of the Berlin Treaty. First, the Albanians were completely ignored. Pretty much alone in the Balkans, they speak a unique language unrelated to the Slavic branch of Indo-European. They also were spread out in the empire and had a good mix of Muslims and Christians (not sure if there were Catholics). The Albanians were so useful to the empire that the Porte actively tried to repress any Albanian nationalism from growing. The treaty more or less gave Albania to Montenegro, and this was too much. The Albanians wouldn’t mind being in the empire, but they would not be subject to Montenegrins. They formed an army and fought for their territory. Unfortunately, everyone was against them. The Greeks, the Montenegrins, the Austrians, and even the Ottomans were convinced to get involved. This in turn created a fiery Albanian nationalism. They were crushed and would be forced to turn to subversive efforts to gain their independence. Similar things happened in Macedonia. This was a key region in the Balkans; it was the main thoroughfare through the mountains. Thus is had a strong mix of nationalities and religions. These people felt robbed that they were forced to remain in the empire and of course revolted. I don’t really remember how it went, but this would be a recurring problem for Macedonia. It didn’t really have a religious or ethnic identity, but a regional identity. This stands out from the other nations fighting for a Serbian or Bosnian or Albanian land. Next up was Bosnia. The Muslims were not happy about Austrian soldiers marching into their land and, you may have guessed, revolted. It took several months and a third of the Austrian army to stamp down this revolt. Just one more powder keg that could explode at any moment.

May 26th, 2022

I should have mentioned that Chapter 3 covers 1878 or so until 1914, so the between the Berlin Conference and WWI. Today’s reading moves to the independent kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria. King Minas of Serbia was an autocrat in the Germanic style and was welcome at the courts of Berlin and Vienna. He was pretty much in the pocket of Austria, which many of the radical Serbians saw as a problem. These Serbs saw Russia as their patron and viewed Austria as hostile towards their goals, especially of taking Bosnia as Serbian land. There was an election for a parliament to pass some laws regarding railroads required by the Berlin Treaty but many radicals were elected. Another issue were laws to take away the weapons from peasants not in the military. Minas was building a “strong” military and didn’t need his own people causing domestic trouble. There was a revolt, which lasted two weeks but almost split the country in half. Minas’ army obeyed his commands and killed their own people. In Bulgaria, Alexander von Battenberg was installed as king and welcomed with open arms. He was the cousin of Tsar Alexander III, one brother married a daughter of Queen Victoria and another married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. He was connected. His capital, Sofia, was way on the western border, but would’ve been central if, as per San Stefano, Bulgaria had gotten Macedonia. Alexander stood up to the Tsar and was not his puppet, but he also had to follow the will of the people. The Bulgarians of East Rumelia wanted to join with the kingdom, and Alexander was threatened with death if he opposed. Suddenly, a rebellion in the capital of East Rumelia seceded from the Ottomans and joined Bulgaria. Alexander voiced his support. This defied the Berlin Treaty, but the signers did nothing. The British supported Alexander, Austria was not interested, and Bismarck did not want to get tied down by Balkan problems. Russia was not happy. I don’t remember Turkey’s reaction, but they were probably not happy to lose more land, even if in name.

May 27th, 2022

After the Bulgarian union, King Milan of Serbia declared war on Bulgaria. Some Russians officers defied the tsar and remained in Bulgaria, and the Bulgarians were united in outrage against the aggression. They moved remarkably quickly and the Russian officers’ experience enabled them to fight of the Serbian army after a couple weeks. It was embarrassing, and Austria stepped in to ensure that the status quo before the war was kept. The Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885 was the first instance of internal fighting among the Balkan nations, with no great power instigating. By 1900, Milan was dead or abdicated in favor of his son, who was a bad king. The army officers were one of his targets and they revolted, assassinating the king. A descendent of Karadjordje was again installed on the throne after 30 some years of Obredovic rule. The author also talks a lot about Sephardic Jews in Salonika. They’re unique because the Jews were very powerful and pretty much ran the city (in Macedonia). Some Bulgarians were there and formed a revolutionary group. This led to much bloodshed and problems.

May 31st, 2022

It’s hard to keep track of who’s killing who and why. The Russians managed to get King Alexander von Battenberg exiled and had him replaced with someone of Saxe-Coburg, though he proved to be a thorn in their side too. This chaos allowed the PM to take control and he ruled fairly ruthlessly and oppressively. Eventually the King got him outvoted, and he ended up murdered. All this time groups of Bulgarians are trying to stir trouble in Macedonia to be able to annex it. There’s also Macedonians who are trying to form their own insurrectionary group, but in order to be autonomous. So they’re all killing each other. Then you have insurrections in Crete, which the Greeks support so that they can join the kingdom. This leads to war with Turkey, who knock the Greeks out and the outside powers intervene. Crete becomes autonomous, but the Greeks lost so much money and manpower that they can’t expand north like they wanted. This leaves it to the warring Slavic groups. There’s no law or order and guerilla bands roam around forcefully converting villages to Bulgarianism. The external guys cause more trouble because they kill Turks and leave, and then the Turks get revenge on innocent bystanders. It really sucks in Macedonia. Then in 1902, the external guys force an insurrection that took the peasants by storm. The internal guys were not prepared and did not want it. At this point, Austria was worried about internal problems and Russia was focused on the far east, so they didn’t really care about the Balkans. The French and British just wanted to protect their property from terrorists, who were bombing indiscriminately. The Turks stepped in and stopped the uprising, but it was pretty bad.

June 6th, 2022

I was deathly ill so haven’t really read in a week. I still kinda am, so I’m don’t remember much of what I read. It was mostly about Turkey. Caliph or Emperor Abdulhamid was ruthlessly oppressive and much hated. But once the European powers started to make him look weak, conspiratorial groups took root against his regime. The Russians lost a war with Japan, badly, and so their Far East goals got stopped. They looked back to the Balkans. After the Turks killed all the Macedonian insurgents, the Greeks stepped into the void and undid all the Bulgarian work. It mentioned something how the Turks had very few universities, but excellent military schools due to Prussian influence. Turkey and Germany were pretty close. These military schools are where many of the conspirators were educated. I’m sure somewhere people are killing lots of other people. Right, the Turks genocided the Armenians. That’s why Germany was their only friend.

June 7th, 2022

The book is a bit boring. The Young Turks deposed the sultan in 1908 with astonishing ease. They were not quite sure it would happen that way and were not prepared to lead a nation. They ended up just as repressive to counter-revolutions and non-Turks as the regime they wanted to replace. The nations of the Balkans took advantage of this display of empirical weakness. The Bulgarians declared full independence, the Greeks annexed Crete, and the Austrians annexed Bosnia. After this, some of the Balkan states took state building into their own hands. The Serbs and Bulgarians put a ton of money and effort into improving their military. The Greeks lagged in this regard, especially after their defeat by Turkey. The Serbs were unhappy with Austrian encroachment on what they thought was their path to the sea. The Austrians held Bosnia and a path through Montenegro. The Serbs and Bulgarians ended up forming some alliances and treaties of their own. These expanded to include Greece and Montenegro in time for the First Balkan War in 1912. The Turks still refused to allow Albanian autonomy, and they finally revolted. They took some city with extreme ease. The other Balkan countries, seeing this, decided to push try and Turkey out of Europe.

June 8th, 2022

The first war started in October 1912 when Montenegro moved into Albania. Soon, Turkey was pulled into a war on several fronts. The Greeks were pushing northward, but didn’t perform very well. The Turks were able to hold their own. Montenegro marched south to Albania and probably into Macedonia. The Serbs moved into Macedonia and picked up the slack from the Greeks. The Bulgarians drove the Turks in Thrace back to just 30 miles from Istanbul. Only Adrianople was held by Turkey because that is the only fortress that Abdulhamid upgraded. The war lasted six weeks and Turkey was devastated. The Bulgarians and Greeks raced for Salonika because whoever got there first got the city. Unfortunately for the Sephardic population, they would be Greeks. Their economic status would decline. Tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in single battles as artillery bombarded unguarded infantry and civilians. Even airplanes were used to drop bombs. Both sides committed atrocities. Serbs massacred Albanians, Turks massacred Christians. It was a violent affair. The Turks managed to hold the line outside Constantinople and their navy protected the Dardanelles, and an armistice was signed.

June 9th, 2022

The Greeks did not sign the armistice and the Turkish commander of an outpost in Albania refused to recognize it, so war continued in the west. The Greeks eventually captured Ioannia, but the war between Turkey and the Montenegrins and Serbs intensified. The Turks eventually left and the city was devastated. Austria, Italy, and Russia forced the combatants out of the city. They mobilized and nearly went to war, I think it was related to this. Maybe Russia wasn’t involved yet. It’s kind of muddled in my head. Then there was the blockade of Adrianople. British Foreign Minister Lord Grey intervened and organized a conference to end the war. At first, Turkey refused to give up Adrianople but they were starved out. The Lord Grey conference was able to settle matters and an “autonomous” Albania was created. Global War was averted for a year. After this, Bulgaria was huge, but weak. Serbia and Greece attacked Bulgaria to take some of its gains. It was easy and lasted a month. The Bulgarians were war weary and wanted to go home. They didn’t care about Turkish or Greek territory. Romania annexed some Bulgarian land on the Black Sea to “maintain balance” in the region. These two wars explain a lot about why Bulgaria and Turkey teamed up with Austria and Germany in the war. It was a path to revenge.

June 10th, 2022

Chapter 4 covers the same 1878 to 1914 period, but the northern Balkans. I’m guessing that mostly means the parts in Austria, that is, Croatia, Bosnia, and parts of Serbia. The chapter starts of kind of incoherent and talks a lot about Serbia, which I thought was already covered in the last chapter. I guess there’s lots of Serbs in Bosnia, and Serbia desperately wants to control Bosnia, so they’ll be important in this chapter too. The Black Hand is a Serbian organization, after all. Gavrilo Princip was a Bosnian Serb, and they tell a little anecdote about how he was mocked and not accepted by the Serbian army in 1912. Guess he showed them. Then it talks about Austria and its struggle with Hungary and how they fight over influence in the Balkans. Hungary technically is in charge of Croatia, but Austria tries to administer Bosnia. The Hungarians don’t want more Slavs to challenge their authority, and Austria plays the Croats by teasing offers of making it a third kingdom in the empire. The Croats want Bosnian lands, too. It’s just a big mess. This is a relatively short chapter, so the region must be fairly stable (before the war).

June 13th, 2022

The Croats and the Serbs fight each other a bit because they all want the same lands. They’re in a power struggle. There was a guy, I can’t remember his name, it was like Rapic or Racic with accented c’s, who took an active part in politics as a teenager. He recognized that the root of the Croat problems was Hungarian oppression and he organized protests against their actions. Still, there were flareups of violence between Croats and Serbs. This antagonistic relationship would continue throughout the 20th century. Maybe they’re still like that today. That’s the gist of it. Then it talks about Bosnia and how the Muslims reacted to being the supreme power under Ottoman control to being on the same level as Catholics and Orthodox under Austrian control. It was a big change. It also described the culture of Bosnia and how despite the proximity of these religions, there was very little conversion and it was a big deal when it happened.

June 14th, 2022

I really don’t remember. There was stuff about Bosnians wanting autonomy but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. The Hungarians were especially involved in subjugation. They prevented railroads from being built. Then it went to describing the Austrian culture and how divided it was. People outside of the government circle had little to discuss about politics. It was completely dependent on the emperor, and a man over 80.

June 15th, 2022

Continuing the section about Austria, the book talks about a triumvirate of sorts. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Foreign Minister Aehrenthal, and General-in-Chief Hoetzendorf were somewhat controlling the country. Ferdinand had no real power, Franz Joseph didn’t like him, but had power because we would one day soon be emperor. These guy didn’t exactly get along or work together well. Hoetzendorf was of the mind that preemptive offense was the best defense, and he was not able to keep up with modern warfare such as the devastation of artillery. They all hated Serbia and they wanted a strong monarchy, pre-Hungary days. Aehrentahl organized the annexation of Bosnia and used Bulgaria’s independence to try to take attention away. Hoetzendorf wanted to knock out Serbia and Russia in 1908, and he probably should have. The annexation of Bosnia backfired and it did not bring any greater feeling of belonging to the empire in Slavic circles. It just pissed off Serbs. Franz Ferdinand wanted to use it to federalize the empire, as a way to take power from Hungary, and somehow this would make him stronger. It didn’t really make sense.

June 20th, 2022

I’m pretty sure I read some on the 16th, but I couldn’t tell you if I did and what it was about. Today I finished the chapter leading up to WWI. It described the Young Bosnians as students that were radicalized by the decadence brought in by Austrian culture and the Austrian annexation. Most of the older people and wealthier Serbs were fine with it. The Young Bosnians intended to assassinate the patriarch who added prayers for the monarchy and empire. It had been proven that there were no Serbian plans for revolution within Bosnia and the annexation actually created the problem it wanted to avoid. Many of the Young Bosnians hooked up with the Black Hand after being rejected for the Serbian army in the first Balkan war. They were not good assassins and had no idea what they were doing. All over the word, assassinations and attempted ones increased drastically at the turn of the century. Most of them were attempts. Franz Ferdinand is one of the unlucky ones whose assassination succeeded. He was only shot because the driver took a wrong turn and was reversing, thus he was a sitting duck in a location Princip just happened to be. It seems preordained. This was after the 5 assassins failed or lost their nerve. The archduchess was only killed because Princip was aiming for a general and someone tried to block his shot. Like the Austrians, the Young Bosnians brought about the thing they wanted to avoid. Franz Ferdinand was the one who was keeping things cool while the older, more conservate guys were pushing for war with Serbia. They not only killed the guy who was more or less protecting them, they gave Austria the casus belli. The Austrians forced the war with their ultimatum on Serbia, whose government was not involved and was opposed to military led conspiracies after the 1903 regicide. Austria assumed that there would be no wider war and that Germany could handle Russia. Germany, to the surprise of Austria, was mostly interested in gains in the west. Princip, horrified that his actions led to destruction in Serbia, took solace in the fact that war was inevitable. Was it really?

June 21st, 2022

The fifth chapter is about the years during WWI. It says that what could have been a Third Balkan War was expanded due to Germany’s ambitions and England’s opposition to those ambitions. The Austrians forced the war to survive as a great power and the French were dragged in due to being attacked, though they wouldn’t mind avenging some past wrongs. The Russians sided with the republics because it could not allow Austria to undermine its ambitions in the Balkans, plus the Russians wanted the Black Sea Straits. The Austrians began bombarding Belgrade and its industrial north. Most of Serbia’s history was about defending the southern border from Turks, so the entire army had been down there. Not sure why they didn’t start moving once the ultimatum was given. Austria bombarded for a couple weeks, however, giving Serbia time to mobilize. The Austrians crossed the river and moved into Serbian territory, while the world expected a quick victory. That didn’t happen. The Serbs even got a couple of victories at major battles, a huge embarrassment for Austria. Eventually the western front stagnated into trench warfare and the Germans thought that opening a front in Balkans would weaken Russian efforts on the eastern front. Germany and the Turks (who had now joined the war with its friend the Kaiser, though it could have been wooed to the Entente) bombarded a Russian fleet at Crimea. Romania initially allowed Germany access through its railroads, but now closed them for the sake of neutrality. Bulgaria was not yet in the war, nor were the other Balkan countries. They really didn’t know which side would benefit them, if joining the war would bring any benefits.

June 23rd, 2022

The book talks about Turkish involvement in the war. There were several factions in Turkey, one for each alliance and some for neutrality. Due to French indifference, British aggression, and Russian apprehension, the Turks ended up going with Germany. The benefits for Turkey were taking some lands back in the Balkans and dropping its debts. The Turkish group, the CUP, ended up running the show and pushed the clerical/religious leaders out of power. During the war, Turkey changed drastically into a secular, nationalistic country. This can be seen further by the Armenian genocide and violence against Greeks, culminating in war. This violence was all state supported, as are many instances of slaughter, especially in the Balkans. Without the Germans, Turkey probably would’ve been crushed. It was a surprise to the world that the Turks did not crumble when the Allies assaulted the Dardanelles. This violent theater of war led to many more defender deaths than the attackers, but the attackers would not press the issue. The Turks were slaughtered in the Caucus and were doing poorly in Arabia, but the Dardanelles held. There’s probably more to it, I don’t remember. Then in 1916, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. Why? They had the better offer. Bulgaria would gain a lot of land in Macedonia and Romania and some of the land they took earlier from Turkey. They’d also get revenge on Serbia for the Second Balkan War, not even 3 years ago. The Allies did not focus enough on getting more of the Balkan states on their side. Only the fact that Serbia held by a thread prevented the Austrians from diverting full force to the Eastern front, with Turkey, and knocking Russia out of the war.

June 27th, 2022

Today’s reading discussed Bulgaria’s entry into the war and Romania’s. Essentially, the Central Powers drove the better bargain for Bulgaria and they joined in 1916. They joined a German-led offensive to knock Serbia out of the war, and they did so. The Serbs and their prisoners were forced to cross the mountains into Albania in winter, and it was quite horrible. The weather killed many, and Albanians killed some more, out of revenge. The Bulgarians were satisfied with taking Serbia, built up defenses in the south against the Allies in Salonika, and gave it a rest. The Germans were mad, and it almost led to war with Austria. But Ferdinand could not risk further war from his war weary nation. The peasants probably would’ve killed him. They made out pretty well. Romania did not. They were reluctant to join the war, but French promises (lies) got them to join. Plus they wanted Transylvania. Romania was to work in conjunction with the Allies in Salonika. The allies never got far. Romania was pushed out of Transylvania and then the Bulgars, Germans, and Turks attacked. Romania, on her own, was done for. The government was in exile and many died from starvation as the victors took the spoils. It was worse once Russia left the war, under the Bolsheviks. Will socialism affect the Balkans at this point?

June 28th, 2022

The Greek involvement in the war was minimal and odd. There was a big split in the country over how to handle the war. One faction was adamantly pro-Ally. The king’s faction leaned Central but try to stay neutral. The Allied faction controlled the northern country and worked with the allies at Salonika. The Macedonian front was considered a joke, but it got serious. The allies could not penetrate Bulgarian defenses. The British and French ended up attacking Greece to depose the king, but were repulsed. The king was forced to abdicate anyway and the pro-Ally faction gained power. They got rid of all the dissenters and joined the war, and thus got some spoils. One of the main factors that led to the end of the war was the penetration on the Macedonian front. The Serbs, with French aid, secretly moved a large amount of artillery on top of a mountain at the end of the German and Bulgarian entrenchments. In September 1918, they bombarded the defenses and easily overran the first two lines of trenches. British and Italian(?) air forces strafed and bombed the retreaters. The Allies kept pushing for the next month and essentially knocked the Central powers out of the region. After this, the Germans reached out to America to help work out peace talks.

June 29th, 2022

When Bulgaria was knocked out of the war, the country was in a bit of turmoil. Most people were against the war to begin with and people were restless after the losses, the deaths, and the German mistreatment. Members of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union declared a Republic in Radomir, but it failed. The tsar abdicated anyway and the leader of the BANU ended up prime minister and went to the Paris Peace Conference. The Paris Peace talks were a facade for imperialism and revenge. Many small nations were hopeful by Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points and stuff about self-determination. But only the Allies got anything. The losers were not invited and thus had no say in their treatment. The new nation of Yugoslavia wasn’t really recognized and was not treated with respect. The Slavs were getting a raw deal in favor of Greeks, Romanians, and the new major power, Italy. Italy had some bold claims for the Adriatic.

June 30th, 2022

The 1915 Treaty of London promised Italy tons of Austro-Hungarian land (Croat, Slovene, Albanian, etc) along the Adriatic. This put Italy as a new aggressor in the region and an antagonist for the Yugoslav nation that sort of existed as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. American sympathies were with the Slavs, and Wilson despised the secret treaties of Old Europe and did not care for the Italians in charge. Matters got worse when the Italians demanded Fiume, a town that was historically Croat. The Hungarians flooded the town with Italians to keep the Croat riff raff down, but it was still a majority Croat. The stubborn Italians would not budge and things got crazy. As talks wore on, the Italian government changed and some thought that Rome would abandon the Fiume claim. This poet-soldier guy led some soldiers to claim the city. More soldiers joined on the way, and the general at Fiume surrendered. A new republic was founded and the birth of Italian fascism took place. All the bizarre theatrics and militarism stemmed from this one guy. The US and other delegates were worn out and eventually gave up, ceding the field to the Italians at the cost of Yugoslavia.

July 1st, 2022

The rest of chapter 5 is about the Greco-Turkish war. “Mandates” were all the rage, with non-European countries being administered by “Great power” countries. The US Senate was not interested in getting more involved in the other continents and the Turkish mandate was given to Greece. The Italians had already taken a city on the southern coast, but the major city of Smyrna was blocked by the Big Three. Lloyd George was big on Greece occupying Smyrna and being the dominant power in the region. Everyone else saw this as a disaster preluding to war. There were a minority of Greeks concentrated on the coast of Anatolia, not enough to stop the Turkish masses. The Greeks were blinded by greed and invaded, and atrocities started almost immediately. This is the time Ataturk left the army for politics and united the different factions with his personality and abilities. He also had the peasantry behind him, all the while the government in Istanbul gave more and more away in concessions. The Greeks invaded further, with Armenians, and it was full blown war. The British offered no support, and the French and Italians seemed to favor the Turks. The Greek PM was confident in his policy and called for elections, assuming his group would win. The King then got bit by a monkey and died, and the population brought in the exiled King and elected his faction. The other guys were kicked out of leading positions. The Greeks ended up losing, as most predicted, and the Turks controlled Asia Minor. The peace deal led to a new development: entire populations were exchanged. 1.3 million Greeks were deported to Greece, and some 700k Muslims were sent to Turkey.

July 6th, 2022

Didn’t write yesterday. The 6th chapter is the interwar years. It starts of describing the Turks and Greeks exchanging citizens back to their “home” land. A lot of time was spent on Bulgaria and the National Agricultural Union. The BANU won more and more parliamentary seats as conditions worsened. The BANU leader persuaded Ferdinand to abdicate to steal ammo from revolutionaries. Bulgaria doesn’t really have an army as a condition of their loss. There are some extralegal groups form that do policing, mostly under the BANU. The BANU leader angered the now unemployed officer class and was assassinated. The Communists took a neutral stance, and there was a “White Terror” as the new government oppressed/killed BANU and Communists. Attempts were made to kill the new tsar. It was chaotic and deadly. Yugoslavia was also a mess as the Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs could not agree on a government. Serbia wanted central control, the other Slavic states wanted federalization. Regional competition was fierce, and regional ties tended to be stronger than religious or “national”. The Croat leader messed up by protesting the parliament in Belgrade. Thus the Croats had no representation for years and were viewed as subversive. He eventually changed tunes and became a staunch monarchist, after the king pulled some strings to make a coherent system. It was still only a tenuous piece and the Croat leader was eventually murdered. The King would take total control of the government because of the inability of democracy to govern. These Slavs are not good at democracy.

July 7th, 2022

The book goes into Albania now and how messed up it was. The Albanians were pretty backwards since the Ottomans kept them down and they never had a state. Plus they’re half mountain tribes who blood feud and kill each other. Zogu was a somewhat crazy guy who killed his way to power. I don’t really know what kind of government they had, I guess a faux republic. He got pushed out of power once, but the Yugoslavs helped Zogu regain power. The Italians also were interested in Albania. The fascists wanted it more for the fact that they lost a fight there before, a la Ethiopia. Luckily for Mussolini, Zogu was easily bought off. The Italians had their own little, expensive, useless, protectorate. Zogu became King Zog I.

July 8th, 2022

The Balkan countries were mainly agrarian, and after WWI pushed non-European countries into becoming main food suppliers, the prices for produce dropped significantly. The Balkan countries had very little industrialization and couldn’t compete with US, UK, France, or Germany. The Balkans took on lots of loans, mainly backed by German banks. Then the Great Depression hit, and US and German output dropped to half. Now the Balkans couldn’t make money selling produce and they couldn’t get loans. They barely avoided starving, and sometimes didn’t. The democracies collapsed and dictatorships took over. We already discussed Albania and Yugoslavia. The king of Yugoslavia at least tried, but couldn’t, fix the dividing issues between Croats and Serbs. Croatians turned to paramilitary groups, terrorism, and assassination. They found a safehold in Italy, who wouldn’t mind Yugoslavia breaking up. Then it could expand into Croatia. There was also the VRMO (Macedonian revolutionaries), who already had a part in killing the Croat leader Radic. Yugoslavia turned into a police state to stop the terrorists and oppression was everywhere. The terrorists finally succeeded in killing the king. I think Yugoslavia will now lean more to the fascists. Germany had by now not only caught up to Italy, but surpassed it. They strong-armed Italy out of the Balkans and claimed it for their own interests. The Germans supported a united Yugoslavia and provided aid and loans. The Yugoslavs would sell the Germans crops they were interested in and give them exclusive rights to certain minerals. The Yugoslavs would get cheap German imports. It seems like a good deal.

July 11th, 2022

The book talks about Boris, tsar of Bulgaria. He was at first a weak ruler who really did not have any power. Seemed like a good guy though. His country was very fractured and the parliament had many factions. Then, a military group performed a coup and took over. They also eliminated the VMRO. Boris decided it was time to do something and took advantage of the situation. Not trusting the military, he make the Minister of War report to him and installed the PM. Boris seems alright, I hope he doesn’t get murdered like the king of Yugoslavia. He also tried to get some economic connections with UK and France, but they weren’t interested. Germany was more and more their sole source of imports. Then the book moves onto Romania, which seems like it sucked. Unlike the other countries in the Balkans, Romania had a long history of aristocratic dominance. It remained that way and the lower class was treated like garbage. Their king was not so great a guy either. King Carol had given up his birth right twice, and decided to reclaim the crown in 1930. I don’t remember the details, but some people welcomed him, others were not happy. Then it starts about antisemitism in Romania, which this one politician formed an openly anti Jewish and anti Communist group.

July 12th, 2022

We’ll call the Romanian man Cordenau. He was a prominent fascist and anti-Semite who first formed a secret underground group and then an open group called the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard was meant to appeal to the peasantry and get them on the side of the fascists. Recruiting people to antisemitism would have been redundant. King Carol’s mistress was a Jew, so that led to some heated remarks in his direction. Somehow these fascists started to lead in the polls and the king’s party lost the majority. He formed a coalition with radicals, but it didn’t last long. The king seized control and banned political parties, and the liberals reluctantly agreed. Better a royal dictator than a fascist one. The Iron Guard leaders were arrested and then were murdered. Soon after this, Hitler added Austria to Germany. Czechoslovakia had a treaty with Yugoslavia and Romania, who did nothing when Hitler took the Sudetenland. What could they have done? Romania was a bit of a thorn for Hitler, but economically they still needed it. It was either the fifth most producer of oil of a producer of a fifth of the world’s oil. While Hitler was spreading east, he was enjoying economic domination of the south. Things turned sour when Hitler and Stalin signed their pact, especially since Stalin wanted Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania. They invaded, and despite Germany’s investment and interest in those regions, couldn’t afford to do anything. The King welcome the invaders, since he could not fight, and then abdicated or was exiled. Then the Nazis invade, but that might be saved for the next chapter.

July 13th, 2022

Greek democracy had collapsed after the war with Turkey and the schism between republicans and monarchists ended with the return of the exiled King. A general Metaxas had installed himself as prime minister and was not a bad dictator. In 1940, the Italians gave Metaxas an ultimatum they would never accepted and he famously shouted “No!” (in Greek). Mussolini was upset by Hitler always doing thing without telling him and decided to invade Greece to spite him. The Italians invaded from Albania, but they had been given two weeks of preparation and it was a disaster. They were pushed out of Greece and the Greeks then occupied a third of Albania. Hitler knew about the invasion before Mussolini told him about it, and when they met, Hitler advised him to take Crete quickly and offered paratroopers to help. Mussolini never did. By the time the Italians were pushed out, the neutral Greeks had turned to Britain, and the British were now in Crete. After Hitler’s invasion of Britain fell apart, he wanted to fragment the empire. Now Mussolini had given them a new Mediterranean foothold. Hitler and Molotov met to discuss the Soviets joining the axis and being given central Asia as their sphere of influence, Molotov said they couldn’t do much without Bulgaria. They needed the Black Sea and the British would cause problems for the Russians if they joined without a better hold on the straits (ie Bulgaria). Hitler wanted to use Bulgaria to get to Greece and could not allow Russian military in the region. Stalin responded to Hitler later emphasizing the importance of Bulgaria. This breakdown would lead to Barbarossa, while Mussolini’s blunder bogged troops down in the Balkans.

July 15th, 2022

I forgot to write yesterday. I believe the chapter finished with information on Bulgaria and Yugoslavia at the start of the war. Bulgaria was essentially coerced into joining the Tripartite Act, and thus became open for Nazi movement. Yugoslavia was also coerced, but managed to get it so that only material may pass through the territory, no soldiers. These countries were the two avenues to invade Greece. The Yugoslav citizens were not happy and overthrew their government, which had “federalized” since the Radic assassination. The new government was goad by the Croat leader to follow the Pact. Didn’t matter. The German’s invaded and decimated Belgrade. Yugoslavia and Greece fell within weeks. Chapter 7 is about the occupation years, 1941 to 1949. It’s pretty horrible so far. Just massacre after massacre. I can’t keep up, it’s too depressing. The Croat Italian terrorists are slaughtering not Croats. The Nazis are rounding up Jews and Communists. They’re killing hundreds of innocents as retaliation for guerrilla attacks. The Serbs have two competing underground bands. The Chetniks were local Serbs who were only worried about their Serb villages. Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were more open and had different tactics. They both fought Germans separately and occasionally side by side. By the end of 1941, the Chetniks planned on attacking the Communist Partisans and reached out to Germans for weapons. I think the Partisans moved into Croatia. It’s just slaughter. Really depressing.

July 18th, 2022

The genocides in the Balkans were terrible and not talked about much, at least in what I’ve read. The Croats under the Ustashe (fascist terrorists) slaughtered Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs. Their camps were not very advanced and a lot of men, women, and children were killed by shooting or stabbing. Victims who escaped joined the Communist Partisans, or escaped to Italian territory where it was safe. The Italians were not into the genocide and their territories were safe until the Mussolini government collapsed and the Germans took the territories. The Nazis did terrible things to the Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies in Serbia. The male Jews were executed by the Wehrmacht. The women and children were put in camps until they were gassed in vans. Practically every Jew in Serbia was killed. Romania, as mentioned, was antisemitic, killed their own Jews, and joined the Nazis in the invasion of the USSR. The Bulgarians were unique. Unfortunately, the “expanded” Bulgarian Jews of Macedonia and Thrace were killed, sent to Treblinka or shot. Tsar Boris was playing power politics and tried to keep the genocide from coming into Bulgaria. The Bulgarians themselves were not very antisemetic, so there was no base to work with. Once the Nazis started to lose in Russia, Boris declared himself an ally of the British and western allies, and no genocide occurred in his land proper. Too bad he didn’t take a stand for his new subjects.

July 19th, 2002

The next section talks about the Jews of Salonika and other Greek Jews. They were deported to Auschwitz and most of them killed. Then we turn to the end of the war and liberation of the Balkan states. First, Romania was invaded by the USSR. As they invaded the USSR with the Germans, this was inevitable. There was a coup and the fascist government replaced, which angered Hitler. So the Germans invaded. Romania was invaded by two sides, but the Germans were pushed out by the Russians. They were occupied territory under Soviet control, though they were given back Transylvania from Hungary. The Romanians appealed to the British, but the Allies had already divvied up the Balkans. Romania was Soviet, Greece British, and they’d share the remainder.

July 20th, 2022

Next topics were the liberation of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Bulgaria did not declare war on the USSR as demanded by Germany, but the USSR declared war on Bulgaria and invaded. The Bulgarians surrendered within hours. The Communist Party took power and, per usual, there were the executions. It was a bad place to be if you weren’t on the party’s good side, like the Agrarians. They’d kill you. The leader was Georgi Dmitrov, I believe. Stalin was a fan of his. The Yugoslavs were pretty independent since they spent the whole war fighting, and Tito’s Communist Party took control after liberation. Tito was more of a thorn in Stalin’s side than an asset and often caused tension with the British, which Stalin did not want. This Communist Party, you may have guessed, executed tens of thousands of people, especially Chetniks and Croats. I guess keep in mind that the Yugoslavs were sort of independent of Moscow and were a little too die hard communists. They didn’t realize it was all make believe to justify power. But the main theme is communist dictatorships are controlling the governments after the war and killing lots of dissidents.

July 21st, 2022

The chapter ends with the “end” of the war in Greece. It was a dividing country and the communists held most of it. The British and republicans/monarchists held a small portion of the country. This ended up leading to civil war, with many people being killed. For some reason, the communists did not attack when the opportunity was there and the British were able to turn the tide. Stalin did not want strife and hoped the communists would lose quickly, knowing they could not win. By 1947, British public opinion turned and they wanted out of the country. The Americans, wanting to fight communism, announced the Truman Doctrine to send aid/weapons to Greece and Turkey. Eventually the communists took to the hills and lost the war. Now the Balkans were settled in their various dictatorships. Chapter 8 is about the post war years up to 1989, which is possibly the year Yugoslavia split up. I don’t remember how it opens up other than describing the Yugoslav government forcing collectivism on the peasantry. This was mostly to show the USSR how hardcore communists they are. The other Balkan communist countries were afraid to force collectivism due to peasant reaction.

July 22nd, 2022

The collectivism in Yugoslavia led to an uprising in northwest Bosnia. People could not meet the demands and the government was causing them to starve. The region had been militant and isolated since Ottoman times, and was a vast majority Muslim. The Serb secret police did not sniff out the uprising because they had no spies among the close community. Like most peasant uprisings, it failed. The peasants overestimated their size and potential and were sent scattering by the army. Some 1000 men participated, making it a significant rebellion. Some other rebellions occurred in other Yugoslav regions around this time. The communists started to slow, and maybe reversed, the collectivism. Next is the dictatorship of Romania. It’s bad but what you’d expect from a communist dictatorship. Purging, forced labor, torture, etc. Same for Bulgaria. The Romanian leader held on after Stalin died, but Bulgaria was only propped up by his association with Stalin. Kinda boring.

July 25th, 2022

Read about Albania during the Communist years. The Albanians, a xenophobic people, took the Yugoslavian concept and ran with it. Like most communist countries, the government was autocratic and built around one person, and the one person wanted to be Stalin. Even worse, he wanted to Stalin from the 1930s, and he pretty much was until 1990. Well, he was dead by then, but the country remained in those terror years for the whole regime. Albania, a poor peasant country with little industry and unable able to feed its population. It imported a lot of grain from the USSR. The leader pursed and alienated the UK, US, USSR, Yugoslavia, and China until it was all alone. It closed its borders to most. Despite the murdering and oppressing, the communists did achieve some good things. They forced industrialization, sanitation, and education. The life expectancy rose, literacy rose, but they still couldn’t feed themselves. Still, they were possibly the most oppressive communist country to live under.

July 26th, 2022

The next bit is about Tito’s Yugoslavia, which was kind of covered at the beginning. Besides the standard horrible policing and killing, Tito was well liked by his people. He was a Croat peasant, fought on the Serbian and Russian fronts for Austria in WWI and was wounded and taken prisoner. He was in Russia during the Revolution, then made it back to Serbia and avoided being murdered in the anti-Communist years by being in jail. He was went to the Soviet Union and avoided being killed there too. During WWII, he formed a close circle of men who became his advisers, one of whom died in the war. Then he was in power for 40 years and it was a cult of personality. There was all the weird communist theories and stuff, but it was mainly Tito. He was “betrayed” by some of his close advisers, and then they were on the outs. As we’ve seen, he did his own thing separate from the USSR, but relations reopened in the Khrushchev years. Yugoslavia was pretty open for a communist country and had fairly good relations with the west. These good relations kind of gave them the benefit of the doubt when the police murdered people. There’s another section on Tito next.

July 27th, 2022

After Tito kicked out his bulldog (Rancovich?), there was a bit of a liberal spell. In the 60s, there was a student protest that wanted reforms. Tito promised them their reforms to quell things, but this was a lie. Even so, it proves that Tito was in complete control of the country. There was some lessening of censorship and the Croats wrote more about their struggle with the Serbs. The Serbs in Croatia were, rightfully so, afraid of the Ustashe years repeating. The peasantry was half the country and mostly ignored. Many young peasants left for the city or for western Europe for work. Albanians in Kosovo got some recognition, as did Muslims. The periphery republics, like Slovenia, were steal second fiddle to Croatia and Serbia. Eventually Tito proclaimed a new constitution to try to stem the “Serbianism” for a better federalism, but the liberalism was also toned down a lot.

July 28th, 2022

Now they’re back on Romania. Ceausescu had made a big speech defending Romanian sovereignty after the Soviets and several other Warsaw Pact countries invaded a liberalizing Czechoslovakia in 1968. His popularity soared after this and he ended up head honcho after Dej, the first dictator, died, though he may have died a few years before this. It sounds all fine and dandy but Ceausescu was completely mental and wanted to be royalty. On the surface, it seemed to be a fairly liberal communist country, but it was very oppressive and Ceausescu was controlling even minute aspects of people’s lives. The west loved him. He stood up the Khrushchev, who wanted some of the Balkan countries to be the bread basket for other communist countries. Obviously, nobody wants to be a bread basket, they want to be an industrial powerhouse. As the west and east warmed up to each other, Ceausescu was stuck in the past. By the Gorbachev years, he was the outdated brutal dictator, despite acting the same as he always had. Pretty sure this is the guy who gets executed live on TV. I always thought that was brutal, and it is, but it becomes a little more understandable when you see what his guy had done.

July 29th, 2022

The Greeks and the Turks are back at their disdain for each other. The Turks stayed neutral during the war and tried to build up their infrastructure. Ankara was the new capital in the comfort of Asia Minor and all of their major improvements were a good distance from the coast. They were a single party country with a garbage democratic system, but became a US ally when the other option was being another Romania. This single party disregarded the officer class, who ended up performing a coup and installing a new government after executing a few leaders. Not a great system, but it was stable and of course the US supported them. The Greeks recovered after the war and were doing well economically, also supported by the US. There were some crazy guys in charge who still wanted all the old Greek territory. Some terrorists in Cyprus gave them their chance. Cyprus was around 80% Greek and 20% Turk who lived separately but peacefully. Then some Greek dudes threw some bombs and it was a tense situation for a decade. Then the Greeks, ruled by some military dictatorship now, declared Cyprus Greek in 1974. The Turks invaded in response. To this day, there is a unrecognized North Cyprus Republic.

August 1st, 2022

The eighth chapter ends with the end of Yugoslavia. It glances over the execution of Ceausescu and his wife. At this point the author is starting to mention his own experiences in the Balkans, since he was there during some of these events as a BBC correspondent. Yugoslavia started to collapse after Tito’s death in 1980. Apart from economic issues, the main problem was nationalism over federalism. Each republic and autonomous region had a representative on the president’s board or whatever they had, and Serbia under Miloshevich started taking over the Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro (or Macedonian) votes. Seeing this as a Serbian takeover, the Croats, Slovene, Bosnian, and other M one had to form their own block. After the military declined to perform a coup, Miloshevich declared an independent Yugoslavia, There will be war with Croatia over Bosnia, it seems.

August 2nd, 2022

The last chapter is about the 90s and will probably just be about Yugoslavia. There’s so many countries in the Balkans now, it’s easy to forget before the 90s there were 5: Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Turkey. Croatia and Slovenia declare independence and it ends up with more ethnic slaughtering. Slovenia is pretty isolated and safe. Croatia and Serbia exchange some fire, but a lot of this is initially overshadowed by the fall of communism and the Gulf War. Croatia finds support in Germany (newly unified) and Serbia initially finds support in Russia, but Miloshevich supports a failed coup and the new president Yeltsin has no love for him. France and Britain don’t recognize the new nations and, with the US, prefer to maintain a single nation. The UN sends peacekeepers. The situation then turns into a war over Bosnia. Serbs and Croats fight in Bosnia with Muslims caught in the middle. It is genocide. The Bosnian Serbs declare their own nation, the Croats claim the whole country, and the Bosnian government cannot maintain order. The country ends up partitioned into “cantons” but there’s no way this is will last. Pretty sure there will be war in Kosovo and Macedonia also. The Balkans really suck.

August 4th, 2022

I said there were 5 Balkan countries in the last entry. How could I forget about Bulgaria? I guess it was pretty absent from the late 20th century section. It wasn’t even mentioned in the 1990s section. The last chapter ends with Bosnia and Hercegovina being partitioned. 51% goes to the federal government of Bosnia Hercegovina, the rest to the Republic Srpska, a government for the mostly Serb areas. It is still like this today. Very bizarre, I had no idea that this country had two governments. How is it considered a single country? Do they have a single foreign policy? Surprised it’s been stable since 1995. After the Bosnian War, terrorists in Kosovo started targeting Serbs and demanding independence. So there was more war, but the international community ignored it at first. Montenegro was still part of Yugoslavia at this point, but was now starting to take a separate stance from Serbia. The Serbs attacked Kosovo and sent all the Albanians out to destabilize Montenegro, Macedonia, and Albania. Bulgaria was mentioned at this point for not recognizing Macedonia as a separate country (still sore of 1878). Then NATO gets involved and starts bombing to “help” with the humanitarian crisis. Eventually Kosovo agreed to remain in Serbia if it was returned to autonomous status, which Serbia revoked in 1989. America made a mess of things. Then they leave and let the refugees handle it themselves. The chapter ends in 1999 at this state because that is when the book was written. There is an epilogue for the years up to 2012. We’ll see how much of this I remember. I know Kosovo will declare independence 2007-2008, and I think only the US really recognized them. Maybe that has changed.

August 7th, 2022

The epilogue is pretty long for an epilogue and I read it over three sittings. Bulgaria and Romania aren’t really discussed, so they must be good. They got into the EU. Albania also isn’t really discussed, to my knowledge, and they’re not in the EU. Probably run by criminals. A lot is talked about Serbia and some of its neighbors and how they were essentially run by criminal gangs. They filled the void of legitimate government when there was none. Miloshevich got replaced after killing some people and then died a couple years later. His replacement president and the PM were not really compatible and the PM tried to do some reforms and got assassinated, probably by the gangs. There was quite a bit of killing. Anyway, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, are all EU candidates. Maybe Bosnia. There were some near war breakouts but it was all good. Turkey is also a candidate but their old party got outvoted by the Muslim Erdogan party and that’s not so great as far as democracy goes. Then the book ends blaming Greece for its economic crisis which got overshadowed by the global crisis. The end.