Here are some resources available for those wishing to know more about those terrible times outside of PCG's information bubble.
A heartfelt and personal memoir of one Bosnian Muslim as he recounts what happened to his family and home during the war in the days of his youth and how he confronts the legacy of war and hate during a family trip back to the land of his nativity.
Exposes how some of the Serbs PCG likes to idealize indulged in looting the possessions of Bosnian Muslims who were forced to flee their homes in fear of their lives. Needless to say far worse things occurred as well.
A lengthy overview of the events and acts of the Yugoslav Wars. Many aspects and details of these complex struggles are discussed.
This book reveals that Milošević had little interest in keeping Slovenia within Yugoslavia because there were few Serbs there. Sometimes Milošević is viewed as simply a head of state trying to maintain national unity. As his attitude regarding Slovenia exposes this is an oversimplification of the matter.
Another thing revealed in this book is that when Kosovo's autonomy was abolished and was essentially forcibly integrated into Serbia the Kosovar Albanians chose to respond to this act with non-violent activism. In one sense the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the late 1990s can be seen as the tragic result of what many Kosovar Albanians viewed as an occupation by Serbia and the refusal of the Milošević regime to alleviate their grievances during the early 1990s.
Vukovar: Both Sides Now by Linda Garrett and Sandra Marić.
An oral history of Vukovar, a town which endured the full fury of war in a three month siege that killed about 3000 people. Those who went through this ordeal from each side tell their stories and how they have lived their lives since that cataclysm. Reveals that some persons are still missing from the time of the siege.
The siege occurred before Germany recognized Croatia and Slovenia as independent states in December 1991. PCG's writers rarely acknowledge that armed conflict had begun months earlier. Instead they often allege that it was this diplomatic move which began the Yugoslav Wars. This is a terrible oversimplification of the matter.
Was the Yugoslav Wars really about ethnicity? But how does that account for the many Serbs who refused to fight for Milošević and his minions? Many people did not simply fight for "their" ethnicity and acted in ways contrary to the cause of ethnic nationalism.
Here Gagnon argues that the appeals to ethnic identity by various demagogues was really an attempt by elites to maintain their power and frustrate popular demands for liberal reforms which would have eroded those elites' hold on power and money. An important and bold attempt to look beyond conventional wisdom about these terrible events.
Prime Time Crime: Balkan Media in War and Peace by Kemal Kurspahic.
A remarkable account of how the media within what used to be Yugoslavia was co-opted by political elites to stir up ethnic hatreds from a Bosnian journalist who was there at the time.
Kurspahic reveals that during the Communist era the media was simply a tool of the political leadership. But as the leadership passed from Communist politicians who extolled national unity to politicians who appealed to ethnic division the media establishment merely continued their subservient role as tools of the political leadership. But this now required stirring up ethnic division. This was a change as dramatic as the Tkach changes but in another way things had simply stayed the same. Their bosses had changed but the media's role as the mouthpiece of the political leadership was still the same.
Kurspahic also does important work in detailing some of the journalists who refused to follow the crowd into stirring up war but strove to report the news independent of political patronage.
During the course of the war in Bosnia The New Republic determinedly argued that the United States needed to intervene against the genocidal forces of the internationally unrecognized Republika Srpska led by Karadžić and Mladić. Many disturbing details about this most terrible war are revealed in this book including how some Serbs were murdered by "their" side because they refused to collaborate in armed violence against the other ethnicities.
After reading so much about how Yugoslavia fell apart I thought I should try to gain some insight into how communist Yugoslavia maintained itself.
First of all this e-book would have been more accurately labelled "Writings about Yugoslav Communism" as some of the selected articles are actually by Trotskyites discussing it. It also contains a pro-Stalin article condemning Tito from some pro-Stalin propaganda outfit.
In one Trumpet Daily program hosted by Stephen Flurry it is simplistically asserted that during World War II the Serbs fought the Nazis and the Croatians collaborated with the Nazis.
The very first article in this e-book exposes that simplistic version of events as false. It is an article by Tito published September 8, 1941, which condemned the work of Serbian collaborators with the Nazis.
The establishment of the miserable puppet government, headed by that repulsive traitor to the Serbian people, that German spy and mercenary, the miserable General Nedic, ...
the German fascist bandits have found yet other bandits and traitors, headed by Nedic, who, under cover of the [collaborationist] Serbian Government, destroy and massacre our people, so that Serb kills Serb, so that the Slavs exterminate themselves.It is amazing how some people just peddle simple stories that cover up so many things.
The SANU Memorandum (1986)
The literature about the Yugoslav Wars very often cited the publication of what is called the SANU Memoradum in 1986 by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU in Serbian) as one of the first major signs that Yugoslavia would fracture apart. Reading it for myself I saw first hand why this document gained so much attention.
It is a most curious piece of writing. The first half of it sounds very enlightened and liberal. It talks about the many problems within Yugoslavia. There is no hint of dividing people by ethnicity in the first half of this document. It sounds like an enlightened call to solve problems within Yugoslavia.
One enlightening aspect of this part of the article is it asserts that the 1974 Constitution had made Federal institutions practically non-existent and that Yugoslavia was already divided into six Republics (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro) and two Provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina). This assertion seems to explain a lot about how things developed during the wars.
Then suddenly halfway through the memorandum Serbian nationalism is thrown into the reader's face. Suddenly it claims that Serbs are oppressed and have always been oppressed. That Serbs are made to hate themselves for being Serb. That this denial of their alledgedly rightful place was imposed on them by the Soviets before 1948. That the Croatians and Slovenes have it all while the Serbs have less than their due. That the Kosovar Albanians are fascists and the heirs of collaborators with the Nazis. They are trying to create the complete Albanianization of Kosovo. That the current humiliation of Serbs in Kosovo is the worst catastrophe the Serb nation has ever faced in history (this was said in 1986, five years before the wars even started).
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And so we see that there are a lot of things to be said about the Yugoslav Wars. It is sad that PCG's writers, instead of enlightening people about those terrible events, simplistically used them to demonize Germany in order to convince readers that Germany will soon conquer America.
Here are some further posts discussing PCG's superficial support for the Milošević regime.
Here are some other posts regarding the topic of the Yugoslav Wars and how PCG discusses it:
Reading PCG's Booklet, Germany's Conquest of the Balkans (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
PCG Using the Yugoslav Wars to Demonize Germany and the Pope
PCG Advertizing Flurry's Yugoslav Wars Booklet
PCG Exploits Yugoslav Wars to Demonize Germany
PCG's Support for Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars
How PCG's Ron Fraser Viewed the Kosovo War in 1998
PCG Calls Srebrenica Massacre "a Crime of Passion"
PCG Only Supported Milošević in 1999
PCG's Ron Fraser: The EU Will Divide Macedonia (2001)
Gerald Flurry: "“Do-gooders” are Some of the Most Dangerous People on This Planet!"
PCG's Ron Fraser Demonizing Bosnia as a "Terrorist Enclave" (2008)
Serb War Criminals Convicted
Watching PCG's Telecast, Putin Remembers Yugoslavia
Watching PCG's Program, Germany's Conquest of Europe
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