yugoslavias implosion

Chetnik 16 and Ustasha 17 movements, both of which committed genocide—the
Ustashas against Serbs, Roma, and Jews in Croatia and
parts of Bosnia; the Chetniks against Muslims in eastern Bosnia (the
scene of another Serbian genocide in 1992–95) and Croats.
The decision to revive Yugoslavia was taken at the first session
of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia
(avnoj) in 1942; the settlement of the national question was crucial
for reintegration of the country. The second avnoj session, held the
next year, reaffirmed the process of federal institutionalization of
Yugoslavia. On the basis of these preliminary deliberations on how
to organize the country, the avnoj presidency set up a committee in
June 1945 to determine a boundary between Vojvodina (a province in
the north of Serbia) and Croatia; a law on the administrative division
of Serbia was passed that September.
With the Communist Party at its head, the People’s Liberation
Movement (the political incarnation of the Partisan resistance
movement) brought together all Yugoslav peoples and united
them in the second Yugoslavia organized on a federal principle.
This anti-Fascist movement, along with that in Albania, was unusual
in that it was not created by Soviet Russia. Yugoslavia became
16 The Chetniks first appeared in Macedonia in the first half of the nineteenth century as
fighters against Ottoman rule and were especially active in the wake of the Serbo-Turkish
War of 1886–88 . They became less active after the creation of the Balkan League in 1912 .
They fought during World War I and afterwards set up an association fostering Chetnik
traditions . The movement was then headed by Kosta Pećanac, who later threw his weight
behind the quisling forces of occupation . At the head of the movement stood Draža
Mihailović, minister of war of the government exiled in London . In 1941, he broke off the
short-lived cooperation with the partisans and raised the slogan of “the time is not ripe yet .”
Their goal was an ethnic state (i .e ., a Greater Serbia) and genocide of Muslims and Croats .
17 A Croatian ultranationalist, fascist, and Roman Catholic organization created in 1929,
following the imposition of dictatorship within Yugoslavia . From 1933, the Ustasha
operated abroad, with headquarters in Italy and training camps in Hungary, and proclaimed
the goal of an independent Croatian state . From 1935 onwards they began terrorist
operations within Yugoslavia . On April 10, 1941, they proclaimed the Independent
State of Croatia (NDH)—a puppet state of Nazi Germany—set up concentration camps
and carried out reprisals against the Serb population, Jews, and anti-fascists . The
largest of these camps was at Jasenovac, where some 80,000 people were killed .
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