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Yugoslavia European Neighbors
The issue of Macedonian nationality caused friction between
Yugoslavia and neighboring Bulgaria and Greece, which contained
large Macedonian minorities. Throughout the postwar period, the
Yugoslav press propagandized against Bulgarian expansionist
policies toward Macedonia and the failure to recognize
Macedonians as a separate nationality in Bulgaria. Although the
Bulgarian press reciprocated much more strongly after the 1989
change of government in Bulgaria, the two governments showed
little desire to magnify an issue that had been at the center of
the Balkan Wars before World War I
(see The Balkan Wars and World War I
, ch. 1).
In the mid-1980s, as a way of stirring unrest in the Balkans,
the Yugoslav press strongly criticized the Greek government for
failing to recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church. But
relations with Greece were generally warm in the 1980s, and
Yugoslavia backed the Greeks against the Turks on the Cyprus
issue early in the decade. For diplomatic reasons, the Yugoslav
government did not permit Macedonian nationalist writers to
protest Greek discrimination against Macedonians until the 1980s.
The other ethnic-based foreign policy dilemma was dealing with
Albanian intervention in Kosovo. The enmity between Yugoslavia
and Albania began with Tito's repudiation of Stalinism, and with
the personal hatred Albanian president Enver Hoxha felt for Tito.
Stalinist Albania and revisionist Yugoslavia remained hostile
throughout the postwar period, with a brief thaw in the late
1960s. For Albania, economic discontent in adjoining Kosovo was a
prime weapon throughout the postwar period in preventing
penetration of Yugoslav influence into its closed society, and in
discrediting Yugoslav economic and political innovations. Albania
maintained strong cultural ties with Kosovo (which contained over
half as many Albanians as Albania itself), while remaining
isolated from the rest of Yugoslavia. Officially the Yugoslav
government strongly condemned Albanian intervention in Kosovo,
although the northeastern republics insisted that Serbian
intransigence was the root of the Kosovo problem.
Relations with Hungary, the other neighbor with a substantial
ethnic minority within Yugoslavia, continued without major
complication. In light of Hungarian political reforms, new
agreements in 1989 and 1990 demilitarized the common border and
expanded economic ties, emphasizing regional cooperation that
also included Austria.
Data as of December 1990
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