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The termGreater Serbia orGreat Serbia (Serbian:Велика Србија,romanized: Velika Srbija) describes theSerbian nationalist andirredentistideology of the creation of a Serbstate which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance toSerbs, aSouth Slavicethnic group, including regions outside modern-daySerbia that are partly populated by Serbs.[1] The initial movement's main ideology (Pan-Serbism) was to unite all Serbs (or all territory historically ruled, seen to be populated by, or perceived to be belonging to Serbs) into onestate, claiming, depending on the version, different areas of many surrounding countries, regardless of non-Serb populations present.
The Greater Serbian ideology includes claims to various territories aside from modern-day Serbia, including the whole of the formerYugoslavia exceptSlovenia and part ofCroatia. According toJozo Tomasevich, in some historical forms, Greater Serbian aspirations also included parts ofAlbania,Bulgaria,Hungary andRomania.[2] Its inspiration comes from the medievalSerbian Empire which existed briefly in 14th-centurySoutheast Europe from 1346 to 1371, prior to theOttoman conquest of the Balkans. Some territories intended to be incorporated in the Greater Serbia exceeded the boundaries of the Serbian Empire, however.[3]
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Following the growing nationalistic tendency in Europe from the 18th century onwards (as exemplified in theunification of Italy), Serbs in Serbia – after first achieving the recognition of thePrincipality of Serbia within theOttoman Empire in 1817 – experienced a popular desire for full unification with the Serbs of the remaining territories, mainly those living in neighbouring entities.[4] However, as stated byChristopher Clark, the "underpinning the idea of the 'unification of all Serbs' was a mental image of Serbia that bore little relation to the political map of the Balkans at the turn of the twentieth century", and the "historical template" for the Serbian state was the restoration of theSerbian Empire during the time ofStefan Dušan (1346–1355).[5] Although the empire was short-lived, multi-ethnic and did not include some territories (e.g.Bosnia), the restoration was perceived as a "historical right" compatible with creating a monoethnic nation-state, as the "Serb patriots saw no inconsistency here, since they argued that virtually all the inhabitants of these lands were essentially Serbs".[6] These aspirations were also reproduced in books and maps, for example byDimitrije Davidović (1821 and 1846),Miloš Milojević (1877),Spiridon Gopčević (1889),Vladan Đorđević (1902), but also in Europe byApollon Aleksandrovich Maykov (1857), Henri Thiers (1862),Alexander Pypin andWłodzimierz Spasowicz (1879),Ernest Denis (1915), due to the Serbian diplomatic propaganda.[7][8][9]
The SerbianMinister of Internal Affairs,Ilija Garašanin, a conservative statesman withBismarckian aspirations, formulated the idea of Serbian territorial expansion in 1844 inNačertanije (Serbian:Начертаније), a secret draft political programme.[10] According to the draft, the new Serbian state could include the neighboring areas ofMontenegro, NorthernAlbania,Bosnia and Herzegovina.[11] In the early-20th century, all political parties of theKingdom of Serbia (except for theSocial Democratic Party) planned to form aBalkan Federation, and generally accepted the idea of uniting all Serbs into one only Serbian state which would be a part of that proposed Balkan Federation.[12] From the formation of the Principality until the First World War of 1914-1918, the Serbian state successively expanded its territory.[13]
After the end of theBalkan Wars in 1913, theKingdom of Serbia expanded towards the south,[14] but there was a mixed reaction to the events, because promises of lands giving access to theAdriatic Sea remained unfulfilled. Instead, Serbia received the territories ofVardar Macedonia (coveted by theKingdom of Bulgaria) and theSerbian Army had to evacuate the coastal territories that would become part of the newly-formedPrincipality of Albania. This settlement, together with the Austro-Hungarianannexation of Bosnia in 1908, frustrated Serbian aspirations: a large number of Serbs remained outside of the Serbian kingdom.[15]
After World War I, a new unified state called theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes formed, which included the Kingdom of Serbia, the short-livedState of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and some territories from the disintegratedAustro-Hungarian monarchy.[16] Ruled by the Serbian royal family, theHouse of Karađorđević, it would be renamed as theKingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929.[17] During theinter-war period (1918 to 1939), many Serb-oriented political parties promoted the concept of a strong centralised country with the doctine ofYugoslavism, while their opponents favored decentralization and demanded autonomy for the regions.[18]
Following theGerman-led invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, tensions grew and erupted into one of the most brutal civil wars that occurred inWorld War II. The Royal Government soon capitulated and fled toexile in London.[19] TheChetniks, who advocated the restoration of the monarchy, initially resisted the invaders, but would eventually collaborate with theAxis powers with the goal of forming a post-war Greater Serbia. On the other hand, thePartisans, a multi-ethnic antifascist movement, waged an ongoingguerrilla campaign against the occupying forces and supported the transformation of the old royal Yugoslavia into asocialist federal republic.[19][20] The Serbs were largely divided between these two factions, leading to internal fighting.[21][22] Others found themselves in the collaborationist factions ofMilan Nedić andDimitrije Ljotić such as theSerbian Volunteer Corps.[22] Beside this, other Yugoslav non-Serb nationalists took advantage of the situation and allied themselves with the Axis powers, regarding this moment as their historical opportunity of fulfilling their own irredentist aspirations, which they saw as a better alternative to the Serbian-led rule of the interwar period.[23]
The first person to formulate the modern idea ofPan-Serbism wasDositej Obradović (1739–1811), a writer and thinker who dedicated his writings to the "Slavoserbian people", which he described as "the inhabitants of Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Croatia, Syrmium, Banat, and Bačka", and who he regarded as all his "Serbian brethren, regardless of their church and religion". Other proponents of Pan-Serbism included historianJovan Rajić and politician and lawyerSava Tekelija, both of whom published works incorporating many of the aforementioned areas under a single umbrella name of "Serbian lands".[24]The concept of Pan-Serbism espoused by these three was not an imperialist one, based upon the notion of Serbian conquest, but a rationalist one. They all believed thatrationalism would overcome the barriers of religion that separated the Slavs into Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Muslims, uniting the peoples as one nation. The idea of a unification and homogenization by force was propounded byPetar II Petrović-Njegoš (1813–1851).[24]
Stefan Stratimirović, the Serbian Metropolitan inSremski Karlovci from 1790 to 1836 and the head of theSerbian Church in theHabsburg monarchy, was one of the Serbs who fought for independence, and unification. His most significant and influential political work is theMemorandum, written in June 1804. The core idea from the Memorandum stipulated that all Serbs should live in a single national state. This renewed Serbian national state (which may be calledSerbia rediviva) was based on the idea that all Serbs, both those fromTurkey (theOttoman Empire) and those fromAustria, should be united within it. Consequently, he proposed that the following territories of Austria inhabited by Serbs should be included which Stratimirović himself called the Slavonic-Serbian State (Slavenoserbsko gosudarstvo): theBay of Kotor with the town ofKotor, the parts ofDalmatia andCroatia east of theUna River, theKrka River, and the city ofŠibenik, the territory between theDanube River, theSava River, and theVuka River and its surroundings, and the greater part ofSlavonia.[25]
Serbia rediviva would also consist, according to his view, of the following historical-ethnic Serbian lands which at that time belonged to the Ottoman Empire: theBelgrade Pashalik (from the Sava and Danube rivers in the north to theWest Morava River in the south, and from theDrina River in the west to theTimok River in the east);Bosnia and Herzegovina,Montenegro,Kosovo andMetohija, and the northwestern part of present-dayBulgaria with the town ofVidin, its surrounding area, and theLom River. He also mentioned the part of westernWallachia between the Danube andJiu rivers, present-day southeastern Serbia with the towns ofNiš,Leskovac,Vranje, andBujanovac, and the northern part of present-dayAlbania with the town ofShkodra which should be considered part of the "ethnic space" of the Serbian people.[25]
In determining the borders of the renewed Serbia, he applied both the historical and the ethnic principle. According to the first principle, the territories of medieval Serbia andDuklja (Montenegro) would constitute part of it. According to the second principle, all Balkan territories inhabited by ethnic Serbs—that is, according to Stratimirović’s understanding, the entire Orthodox population of theSouth Slavs whose mother tongue was theShtokavian dialect and whose literary language wasSlavonic-Serbian—would also be included in this state. Regarding the determination of the ethnic space of the Serbian people, the Metropolitan of Karlovci was strongly influenced by the theory of the ethnic-linguistic criterion for defining the Serbian nation, which at that time was favored by the Serbian nobleman fromArad and president of theMatica srpska, Sava Tekelija. Tekelija’s ethnic-linguistic concept of “Serbdom” was elaborated in his short essay titled Description of Life (Opisanije života).[25]
Tekelija believed that all members of the South Slavs who used the Shtokavian,Kajkavian, orChakavian dialect, regardless of their religious affiliation, belonged to the true Serbian people. Thus, according to his understanding, the following South Slavic lands were inhabited by ethnic-linguistic Serbs: Serbia in the narrower sense (minusVojvodina), Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro,North Macedonia, theRepublic of Ragusa,Carniola,Styria,Carinthia, Southern Hungary (present-day Vojvodina), and Northern Albania. Tekelija advocated that all the above-mentioned South Slavic territories, inhabited by these "Serbs", should form a single unified Serbian national state, whose borders would extend from theBlack Sea to theAlps, and from theAdriatic Sea to north of the Danube. This united Serbia would be inhabited by a majority Orthodox population and a minority Roman Catholic and Muslim population. Tekelija called all the above-mentioned "Serbian", i.e. South Slavic, lands by the common nameIllyria (Illyricum), being strongly influenced by the widely spread theory dating back to the Middle Ages that all South Slavs were of Old-BalkanIllyrian origin, who, in Tekelija’s view, were ethnic-linguistic Serbs. Stratimirović did not fully adopt Tekelija’s linguistic conception as he believed that only the Orthodox believers of the South Slavic population who used the Shtokavian dialect as their spoken language and Slavonic-Serbian as their literary language were, in essence, true ethnic Serbs. Thus, Stratimirović’s concept of defining Serbdom can be described as a religious-linguistic one.[25]
Petar I Petrović-Njegoš,Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, conceived a plan in 1807 to revive a Serbian Empire ("Slaveno–Serb empire"), which he informed the Russian court.[26][27][28][29] Earlier, in June 1804, Habsburg Serb metropolitanStefan Stratimirović informed the Russian court of the same plan.[30] Petar I's plan was to unitePodgorica,Spuž,Žabljak, theBay of Kotor,Bosnia,Herzegovina,Dubrovnik andDalmatia with Montenegro.[26] The title of Serbian emperor would be held by the Russian emperor.[26] The French–Russian peace treaty thwarted the plan.[26] After the French conquered Dalmatia, they offered Petar I the title of "Patriarch of all of the Serb nation or all Illyricum" under the condition that he stop cooperation with Russia and accept a French protectorate, which he declined, fearing eventual Papal jurisdiction.[27] The Metropolitanate of Cetinje began exerting influence towardsBrda andOld Herzegovina, which considered Montenegro as the leader for liberation.[27] While his reputation and influence reached the surrounding lands, he increasingly directed himself toRevolutionary Serbia as the backbone for liberation and unification.[27] The project is included in several historiographical works.
Some authors claim that the roots of the Greater Serbian ideology can be traced back to Serbian ministerIlija Garašanin'sNačertanije (1844).[31][32]Načertanije ("The Draft") was influenced byConseils sur la conduite a suivre par la Serbie, a document written byPolish PrinceAdam Czartoryski in 1843 and the revised version byCzech ambassador to Serbia,Franjo Zach, "Zach's Plan".[33][34] However, Zach "envisaged a federal organization of the South Slav peoples. But where Zach had written 'South Slav', Garašanin substituted 'Serb" or 'Serbian'. This and other changes transformed Zach's cosmopolitan vision into a more narrowly focused Serbian nationalist manifesto".[32]
"A plan must be constructed which does not limit Serbia to her present borders, but endeavors to absorb all the Serbian people around her."[31]
— Ilija Garašanin,Načertanije
The work claimed lands that were inhabited by Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Hungarians, Croats and Slovenes[35] as part of Greater Serbia.[31] Garašanin's plan also included methods of spreading Serbian influence in the claimed lands.[36] He proposed ways to influence Croats and Slavic Muslims, who Garašanin regarded as "Serbs of Catholic faith" and "Serbs of Islamic faith".[31] The document also emphasized the necessity of cooperation between the Balkan nations and it advocated that the Balkans should be governed by the nations from the Balkans.[37]
This plan was kept secret until 1906 and has been interpreted by some as a blueprint for Serbian national unification, with the primary concern of strengthening Serbia's position by inculcating Serbian and pro-Serbian national ideology in all surrounding peoples that are considered to be devoid of national consciousness.[33][36] BecauseNačertanije was a secret document until 1906, it could not have affected national consciousness at the popular level. However, some scholars suggest that from the second half of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I, "leading political groups and social strata in Serbia were thoroughly imbued with the ideas in the Nacertanije and differed only in intensity of feeling and political conceptualization".[38] Political insecurity, more so than Yugoslavism or Serbian nationalism, appeared to be the prevailing reasoning behind the idea of expanding Serbian borders.[39] The document is one of the most contested of nineteenth-century Serbian history, with rival interpretations.[40] Some scholars argue that Garašanin was an inclusive Yugoslavist, while others maintain that he was an exclusive Serbian nationalist seeking a Greater Serbia.[41]
The most notable Serbian linguist of the 19th century,Vuk Karadžić, was a follower of the view that all south Slavs who speak theShtokavian dialect (ofSerbo-Croatian) were Serbs, speaking theSerbian language.[42] As this definition implied that large areas of continental Croatia,Dalmatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, including areas inhabited by Roman Catholics – Vuk Karadžić is considered by some to be the progenitor of the Greater Serbia program. More precisely, Karadžić was the shaper of modern secular Serbian national consciousness, with the goal of incorporating all indigenous Shtokavian speakers (Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim) into one, modern Serbian nation. Although there were many people (mostly the Croats), as Karadžić conceded, "who still find it difficult to call themselves Serbs", but "they will gradually become used to it".[43]
There are at least 5 million people who speak the same language, but by religion they can be split into three groups ... Only the first 3 million call themselvesSerbs, but the rest will not accept the name.[44]
— Vuk Karadžić,Srbi svi i svuda (Serbs All and Everywhere)
German historian Michael Weithmann considers that Karadžić expressed dangerous ideological and political idea in scientific shape i.e. that all southern Slavs are Serbs while Czech historian Jan Rychlik consider that Karadžić became a propagator of greater Serbian ideology and uttered a theory according to which all Yugoslav people speaking the shtokavian dialect are Serbs.[45] This view is not shared by Andrew Baruch Wachtel (Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation) who sees him as a partisan of South Slav unity, albeit in a limited sense, in that his linguistic definition emphasized what united South Slavs rather than the religious differences that had earlier divided them. However, one might argue that such a definition is very partisan: Karadžić himself eloquently and explicitly professed that his aim was to unite all native Shtokavian speakers whom he identified asSerbs. Therefore, Vuk Karadžić's central linguistic-political aim was the growth of the realm of Serbdom according to his ethnic-linguistic ideas and not a unity of any sort between Serbs and the other nations. A clerical support to Greater Serbian ideology, and Karadžić's idea, was provided byNikodim Milaš in his writings ofPravoslavna Dalmacija (1901).[46][47]
The idea of reclaiming historic Serbian territory has been put into action several times during the 19th and 20th centuries, notably in Serbia's southward expansion in theBalkan Wars. Serbia claimed "historical rights" to the possession ofMacedonia, acquired byStefan Dušan in fourteenth century.[48]: 25–27
...for economic independence, Serbia must acquire access to theAdriatic Sea and one part of the Albanian coastline: by occupation of the territory or by acquiring economic and transportation rights to this region. This, therefore, implies occupying an ethnographically foreign territory, but one that must be occupied due to particularly important economicinterests and vital needs.[49]
Serbia gained significant territorial expansion in the Balkan Wars and almost doubled its territory, with the areas populated mostly by non-Serbs (Albanians,Bulgarians,Turks and others).[48]: 159–164 Serbia's most important goal of the Balkan Wars was access to the open sea.[50] The Kingdom of Serbia occupied most of the interior of Albania and Albania'sAdriatic coast. A series ofmassacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were committed by theSerbian andMontenegrin Army.[48] According to theReport of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars, Serbia consider annexed territories "as a dependency, a sort of conquered colony, which these conquerors might administer at their good pleasure".[48] Newly acquired territories were subjected tomilitary government, and were not included in Serbia's constitutional system.[48] The opposition press demanded therule of law for the population of the annexed territories and the extension of the constitution of the Kingdom of Serbia to these regions.[48]
TheRoyal Serbian Army captured Durazzo (Albanian:Durrës) on 29 November 1912 without any resistance.[51]Orthodox Christian metropolitan of Durrës Jakob gave a particularly warm welcome to the new authorities.[52] Due to Jakob's intervention to the Serbian authorities several Albanian guerrilla units were saved and avoided execution.[53] The army of the Kingdom of Serbia retreated from Durrës in April 1913 under pressure of the naval fleet of theGreat Powers, but it remained in other parts of Albania for the next two months.[54]
The secret military society called Unity or Death, popularly known as theBlack Hand, headed by Serbian colonelDragutin Dimitrijević Apis, which took an active and militant stance on the issue of a Greater Serbian state. This organization is believed to have been responsible for numerous atrocities following theBalkan Wars in 1913.[55]
By 1914 the Greater Serbian concept was eventually replaced by the YugoslavPan-Slavic movement. After theFirst World War, Serbia achieved a maximalist nationalist aspirations with the unification of the south Slavic regions ofAustria-Hungary andMontenegro, into a Serb-dominatedKingdom of Yugoslavia.[56]
TheTreaty of London (1915) of the allies would assign to Serbia the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srem, Bačka, Slavonia (against Italian objections) and northern Albania (to be divided with Montenegro).[57]
During theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the government of the Kingdom pursued a linguisticSerbisation policy towards the Macedonians inMacedonia,[58] then called "Southern Serbia" (unofficially) or "Vardar Banovina" (officially). Thedialects spoken in this region were referred to as dialects ofSerbo-Croatian.[59]Either way, those southern dialects were suppressed with regards education, military and other national activities, and their usage was punishable.[60]
DuringWorld War II, the Serbian royalistYugoslav Army in the Fatherland which was headed by GeneralDraža Mihailović attempted to define its vision of a postwar future. One of its intellectuals was the Bosnian Serb nationalistStevan Moljević who, in 1941, proposed in a paper which was titled "Homogenous Serbia" that an even larger Greater Serbia should be created, incorporating not only Bosnia and much of Croatia but also chunks ofRomania,Bulgaria,Albania and Hungary in areas where Serbs did not represent a significant minority.[61][62] In the territories which were under their military control, the Chetniks wagedethnic cleansing in agenocidal campaign[63][64][65] against ethnicCroats andBosnian Muslims.[66][67][68]
The Serbs today have a primary and basic duty – to create and organize a homogeneous Serbia which must consist of the entire ethnic territory on which the Serbs live.[69]
It was a point of discussion at a Chetnik congress which was held in the village ofBa in central Serbia in January 1944; however, Moljević's ideas were never put into practice due to the Chetniks' defeat byJosip Broz Tito'sPartisans (initially a movement predominantly composed of Serbs which became more multi-ethnic by this time[70]) and it is difficult to assess how influential they were, due to the lack of records from the Ba congress.
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Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1986) was the single most important document to set into motion the pan-Serbian movement of the late 1980s which led toSlobodan Milošević's rise to power and the subsequent Yugoslav wars. The authors of the Memorandum included the most influential Serbian intellectuals, among them:Dobrica Ćosić,Pavle Ivić,Antonije Isaković,Dušan Kanazir,Mihailo Marković,Miloš Macura,Dejan Medaković,Miroslav Pantić,Nikola Pantić,Ljubiša Rakić,Radovan Samardžić,Miomir Vukobratović,Vasilije Krestić,Ivan Maksimović,Kosta Mihailović,Stojan Čelić andNikola Čobelić. Philosopher Christopher Bennett characterized the memorandum as "an elaborate, if crude, conspiracy theory."[71]: 81 The memorandum claimed systematic discrimination against Serbs and Serbia culminating with the allegation that the Serbs ofKosovo and Metohija were being subjected to genocide. According to Bennett, despite most of these claims being obviously absurd, the memorandum was merely one of several similar polemics published at the time.[71]: 81
The Memorandum's defenders claim that far from calling for a breakup of Yugoslavia on Greater Serbian lines, the document was in favor of Yugoslavia. Its support for Yugoslavia was however conditional on fundamental changes to end what the Memorandum argued was the discrimination against Serbia which was inbuilt into the Yugoslav constitution. The chief of these changes was abolition of the autonomy ofKosovo andVojvodina. According to Norman Cigar, because the changes were unlikely to be accepted passively, the implementation of the Memorandum's program would only be possible by force.[72]: 24
With the rise to power of Milošević the Memorandum's discourse became mainstream in Serbia. According to Bennett, Milošević used arigid control of the media to organize a propaganda campaign in which the Serbs were the victims and stressed the need to readjust Yugoslavia due to the alleged bias against Serbia. This was then followed by Milošević'santi-bureaucratic revolution in which the provincial governments of Vojvodina and Kosovo and the Republican government ofMontenegro, were overthrown giving Milošević the dominating position of four votes out of eight in Yugoslavia's collective presidency. Milošević had achieved such a dominant position for Serbia because, according to Bennett, the old communist authorities had failed to stand up to him. During August 1988, supporters of the Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution were reported to have shouted Greater Serbia themed chants of "Montenegro is Serbia!".[73]
Croatia and Slovenia denounced the demands by Milošević for a more centralized system of government in Yugoslavia and they began to demand that Yugoslavia be made a full multi-party confederal state.[74] Milošević claimed that he opposed a confederal system but also declared that should a confederal system be created, the external borders of Serbia would be an "open question", insinuating that his government would pursue creating a Greater Serbia if Yugoslavia was decentralized.[75] Milosevic stated: "These are the questions of borders, essential state questions. The borders, as you know, are always dictated by the strong, never by weak ones."[76]
By this point several opposition parties in Serbia were openly calling for a Greater Serbia, rejecting the then existing boundaries of the Republics as the artificial creation of Tito's partisans. These includedŠešelj'sSerbian Radical Party, claiming that the recent changes had rectified most of the anti-Serb bias that the Memorandum had alleged. Milošević supported the groups calling for a Greater Serbia, insisting on the demand for "all Serbs in one state". TheSocialist Party of Serbia (SPS) appeared to be defenders of the Serb people in Yugoslavia. Serbian presidentSlobodan Milošević, who was also the leader of the SPS, repeatedly stated that all Serbs should enjoy the right to be included in Serbia.[77] Opponents and critics of Milošević claimed that "Yugoslavia could be that one state but the threat was that, should Yugoslavia break up, then Serbia under Milošević would carve out a Greater Serbia".[78]: 19
Major changes took place in Yugoslavia in 1990 when free elections brought opposition parties to power in Croatia and Slovenia.[71] In 1990, power had seeped away from the federal government to the republics and were deadlocked over the future of Yugoslavia with the Slovene and Croatian republics seeking a confederacy and Serbia a stronger federation. Gow states, "it was the behavior of Serbia that added to the Croatian and Slovene Republic's belief that no accommodation was possible with the Serbian Republic's leadership". On 15 May 1991, the outgoing Serb president of the collective presidency along with the Serb satellites on the presidency blocked the succession of the Croatian representativeStjepan Mesić as president. According to Gow, from this point on Yugoslaviade facto "ceased to function".[78]: 20
TheVirovitica–Karlovac–Karlobag line (Serbian:Вировитица–Карловац–Карлобаг линија /Virovitica–Karlovac–Karlobag linija) is a hypothetical boundary that describes the western extent of an irredentist nationalist Serbian state.[79] It defines everything east of this line,Karlobag–Ogulin–Karlovac–Virovitica, as a part ofSerbia, while the west of it would be withinSlovenia, and all which might remain ofCroatia. Such a boundary would give the majority of the territory of theSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to theSerbs.
This line was frequently referenced by Serbian politicianVojislav Šešelj.[80][81]
A greater Serbian state was supported for irredentist as well as economical reasons, as it would give Serbia a large coastline, heavy industries, agricultural farmland, natural resources and all of the crude oil (mostly found in thePannonian Plain, and particularly in theSocialist Republic of Croatia). There were various Serbian politicians associated withSlobodan Milošević in the early 1990s who publicly espoused such views:Mihalj Kertes,Milan Babić,Milan Martić,Vojislav Šešelj,Stevan Mirković.[82]
Milošević believes he now has the historic opportunity to, once and for all, settle accounts with the Croats and do what Serbian politicians after World War I did not – rally all Serbs in one Serbian state.[77]
— Belgrade newspaperBorba, August 1991.
Thewar crimes charges against Milošević are based on the allegation that he sought the establishment of a "Greater Serbia". Prosecutors at the Hague argued that "the indictments were all part of a common scheme, strategy or plan on the part of the accused [Milošević] to create a 'Greater Serbia', a centralized Serbian state encompassing the Serb-populated areas ofCroatia and Bosnia and all of Kosovo, and that this plan was to be achieved byforcibly removing non-Serbs from large geographical areas through the commission of the crimes charged in the indictments. Although the events in Kosovo were separated from those in Croatia and Bosnia by more than three years, they were no more than a continuation of that plan, and they could only be understood completely by reference to what had happened in Croatia and Bosnia."[83]
The Hague Trial Chamber found that the strategic plan of the Bosnian Serb leadership consisted of "a plan to link Serb-populated areas in BiH together, to gain control over these areas and to create a separate Bosnian Serb state, from which most non-Serbs would be permanently removed".[84] It also found that media in certain areas focused only onSerb Democratic Party policy and reports fromBelgrade became more prominent, including the presentation of extremist views and promotion of the concept of a Greater Serbia, just as in other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina the concept of aGreater Croatia was openly advocated.[85]
Vuk Drašković, leader of theSerbian Renewal Movement, called for the creation of a Greater Serbia which would include Serbia, Kosovo, Vojvodina, North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as regions within Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia with high concentrations of Serbs.[77] About 160,000 Croats were expelled from territories Serbian forces sought to control.[86]
Much of the fighting in theYugoslav Wars of the 1990s was the result of an attempt to keep Serbs unified.Mihailo Marković, the Vice President of the Main Committee ofSerbia's Socialist Party, rejected any solution that would make Serbs outside Serbia a minority. He proposed establishing a federation consisting of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Serbs residing in the Serbian Autonomous Region ofKrajina,Slavonia,Baranja, andSrem.[77]
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So I say: if a Greater Serbia should be held by committing crime, I would never accept it; may Greater Serbia disappear, but to hold it by crime – no. If it were necessary to hold only a small Serbia by crime, I would not accept it. May small Serbia disappear, but to hold it by crime – no. And if there is only one Serb, and if I am that last Serb, to hold on by crime – I do not accept. May we disappear, but disappear as humans, because then we will not disappear, we will be alive in the hands of the living God.[87]
TheInternational Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) accusedSlobodan Milošević and other Serb leaders of committing crimes against humanity which included murder, forciblepopulation transfer,deportation and "persecution on political, racial or religious grounds." Tribunal prosecutor's office has accused Milosevic of "the gravestviolations of human rights in Europe since the Second World War and genocide."[86]
Serbian historianSima Ćirković stated that grumblings about Greater Serbia and pointing fingers at Garašanin'sNačertanije and theMemorandum is not helping to solve the existing problems and that it is an abuse of history.[88]
Serbian academic Čedomir Popov considers that the allegations of "Greater Serbian intentions" are often used for politically anti-Serbian interests and that they are factually incorrect. Popov stated that throughout the Serbian history there never was nor ever will be a Greater Serbia.[89]
In 2008,Aleksandar Vučić, a former member of theSerbian Radical Party, which advocated the creation of a Greater Serbia, stated that Šešelj's vision of Greater Serbian was unrealistic and that idea of Greater Serbia was unrealistic at the moment because of balance of power held by thegreat powers.[90]
In 2011, there was a movement calling for the unification ofRepublika Srpska withSerbia.This idea is detested byFederation of Bosnia and Herzegovina where it is seen as an act of breaking theDayton Agreement, while Serbs see it as an example ofself-determination.[91]
The2021 Balkan non-papers, were two documents of unknown origin, with several sources claiming that they had been drafted by the government of Slovenia. The first non-paper called for the "peaceful dissolution" ofBosnia and Herzegovina with the annexation ofRepublika Srpska and great parts ofHerzegovina andCentral Bosnia into a Greater Serbia andGreater Croatia, leaving a smallBosniak state in what is central and western Bosnia.[92][93]
Ever since 2020, a new term called "Serbian world" (Serbian:Srpski svet) came to use among prominent Serbian politicians such asAleksandar Vulin. Some authors maintain the idea of the "Serbian world" is a copy, or at least close of the infamous project called "Russian world".[94][95] In November 2024, while speaking inBanja Luka, Vulin as a deputy prime minister of Serbia said that "process of creation of Serbian world, process of unification, had begun".[96][97] Several regional media outlets and political commentators interpreted this term as a replacement for the earlier concept of "Greater Serbia".[98][99][100] On June 8, 2024, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić hosted the Pan-Serb Assembly in Belgrade, bringing together representatives of Serbs from across the former Yugoslavia. According to political scientist Alexander Rhotert, who quotes Vulin, the main objective of the assembly was to execute the strategic goal of Serbian world, which is creation of "political and state territory" on which all Serbs would live and which would be a somewhat smaller version of Greater Serbia.[101] The assembly produced General Serb Declaration; the document asserts thatKosovo is an integral part of Serbia, and Republika Srpska is being considered a "national interest of Serbia".[102][103]
..the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 , which expanded Serbian territory to the south..
This was the time when Petar I devised his visionary programme of creation of a Slavonic-Serb state
Montenegro sent to Russia in the spring of 1807 a project for establishing a Slavic-Serbian kingdom in the Balkans
Srpske granice dopiru do Karlobaga, Ogulina, Karlovca, Virovitice.
He defined the so-called Karlobag-Ogulin-Karlovac-Virovitica line as the western border of this new Serbian state which he referred to as "Greater Serbia" and which included Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and considerable parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
8. "The Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag line" – the amputation line which was intended to come into being by the imposed Yugoslav king Alexander after the assassination of Croatian national tribune Stjepan Radić in 1928. The remains of thus amputated Croatia "would be seen from the Zagreb Cathedral's tower". That line is also mentioned in Četniks' plans during WW2 (Moljević, Dražža Mihajlović), the line mentioned by Serb radical politicians (Šešelj) and by the JNA military strategists as the western border of "Greater Serbia".Alt URL
The projected future frontiers of the "Great Serbia" are derived from the recent Army offensives and extrapolated from the public statements of Serbian politicians known to be "the mouthpiece of Milosevic". [...] The line Karlovac–Virovitica incidentally covers the only oilfields in Yugoslavia. The entire Slavonia represents probably the best agricultural soil in Europe.
FromProject Rastko website:
FromCroatian Information Centre website:
International sources
