Sarajevo - The Ideal Yugoslav Capital that never was

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The beauties of Beograd and Zagreb are admirable to look upon but how come have you not realized that the ideal Yugoslav city is Sarajevo and has been this whole time? Sarajevo pretty much filled the criteria of Brotherhood and Unity in theory and yet they never picked Sarajevo in 1945 as the capital city.

Sarajevo is a city with two churches (Orthodox and Catholic), several mosques, and one synagogue operating within the old town area. It has a predominantly Bosnian Muslim population but is religiously diverse and had a greater presence of Serbs and Croats during socialist Yugoslavia. Sarajevo was a missed opportunity to truly immerse the Brotherhood and Unity. Good old Tito himself was against Serbian hegemony and yet he chose Beograd anyways over the truly diverse Sarajevo.

Most Americans rarely think about cities of former Yugoslavia. So ..in this US dominated site you probably wont find anyone who either ...strongly agrees, nor anyone who strongly disagrees with you...about the primacy of any particular city there.

How did that saying go? "Yugoslavia has five republics, four religions, three spoken languages, two alphabets, and one political party".

A country like that would benefit from a capital city that Wiki says "is often called the 'Jerusalem' of Europe'" because it has a Catholic church, an Orthodox church, a mosque, and a synagogue, all on the same block.

So yeah. I am not gonna argue with you. Sarajevo sounds like an awesome place to visit. Historic city surrounded by lovely mountains. Mountains that make for great skiing (they had a winter olympics there I believe), AND are great for an enemy army to lay siege to the city, shell it, and starve it out (as happened in the 90s).

Indeed the whole length of former Yugoslavia is kinda like that. Rugged land with rivers and sea coasts and islands, with a nice Mediterraranean climate...that...must be awesome to visit...but a landscape that contrbuted to its tragic history of division and ethnic rivalries.

I heard the burek there is great. Ćevapi too. So, he should have chosen it based on the culinary matters, IMHO.

But Tito chose Beograd since it was the capital already, before, of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. Also, it has a good strategic position. Etc etc.

I don't think that Tito as a communist cared for religion btw. Quite the opposite That was one of the rare awesome things about Yugoslavia.

Yeah, but also there's a bunch of folks who agree like cake and onions. They only really agree on some contests, like Eurovision. Usually, they brotherly give each other 12 points, though not this year. Otherwise, they exile their diplomatic personnel on the charges of "espionage", like it was last year. But apart from that, and butchering each other in World War II and beyond, they love each other dearly.

Haha, something like that. I'm surprised younger generations, like our WP Bosnian communist, is so much pro-Yugoslavia. Recent trends are very pro-nationalistic, Croatia just chose a very rightist government, which didn't let one Serbian party in it (that is usually there), Dodik just broke some agreement with Hungary due to the agreement about Srebrenica...Vučić is accusing Croats of having an Ustashi government, PM from Macedonia is antagonising Greeks with her choice of the name for her country. Slovenia is accusing Croatia of "letting in freely" huge hoards of immigrants mostly from Pakistan, Afghanistan and similar places, ever since they were let into the Schengen zone....and this guy is preaching about brotherhood and unity. I can only say he has a very good sense of humour.

The human suffering is inevitable but in the sense of Dostoyevsky should the suffering of the Yugoslavs be transformed into reuniting Yugoslavia and redirect the suffering and pain the Yugoslavs have into some form of content with working together against rooting out corruption that may seem rather Sisyphean. Sisyphus himself despite the suffering he was condemned with constantly lifting a rock to the top only for it to fall down and having to repeat the process again, never gave up nor did he cave into his suffering and decided to push onward despite the outcome.

For one man like me may be the voice of outcry and outrage, it is not just the one man's work to unite Yugoslavia but the collective effort of all who have the will to do so. We must have suffered long enough in order to realize that 30 years for Bosnia have changed nothing about the country positively and that we must get out of the comfort zone and change the course of Bosnia itself.

Haha. Good strategic position you say? Surely the river is of good use but the terrain is so even for the most part that it would be easier to take down Beograd rather than Sarajevo. Mountains are useful as a natural defense in wars, so Sarajevo would be the better choice of capital if Yugoslavia ever came back. That is if we disregard the aerial warfare and Sarajevo was pretty much spared for the most part thanks to NATO denying the Serbs the right to conduct aerial campaigns.

I would say, round up the anti-air artillery and proclaim yourself the Bekrija. It will give ya 100% Defense bonus against the Serbian MIG aircraft.

And here we come to the root cause. The American-dominated bias of the website. Surely, Wrong Planet is an inclusive website to autistics like me but seeing your words and seeing the behavior of the people and their political views, I can tell that this is not a very diverse website to find an autistic person which explains why it is rather hard for me to find a like-minded person because there is a lack of diversity which I find very ironic in a website that supports diversity and yet is rather homogenous as you imply.

As a fellow inhabitant of the truly diverse Sarajevo, I must say that the lack of diversity of the userbase in this website is what makes it quite a hard time for me to find people and to express my own interests and my own culture which I come from. But I can't give up. I must create an example for other fellow Yugoslavs to come to this website by suffering long enough to gain some fame from other fellow Yugoslavs who would congratulate me on my efforts of this pragmatic diversity tactic.



This is rather interesting to read. Yes. I love the Burek and Ćevaps that the city provides. Especially in the Baščaršija where it really gets tasty. Plus, they're rather cheap. One ćevabdžinica offers a portion of 10 ćevaps into your tummy for just 10 KM (5 EUR). They don't seem to charge additionally for foreigners AFAIK from my experience but they will charge additionally if you go to Trebević via the cable car which costs 20 KM (10 EUR) to ride on while Bosnian nationals get to ride it for 6 KM (3 EUR).

Well...WP is not being hypocritical, and it does invite diversity (geographic and otherwise). But simply because we are English speaking...it tends to be US dominated...with the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, and Kiwis, marching close behind.

If Wrongplanet were Spanish oriented...you would have few Aussies or Canadians, and a LOT more Latin Americans and European Spaniards on this site than you do now. Just because we would be using the language of different one time colonial empire than English...so you would get a different, but comparably large part of the world represented. Not because of deliberate suppression of diversity. I assume that there probably are comparable sites in the Spanish, Portugese, and Arab parts of the world.

There are non English speaking countries that are also well represented here on WP. Like Finland, northern Europe.

Poland has quite a number of prolific users (slavic speaking but NORTH east Europe).

But for some reason your Balkan southeastern part of Europe is not well represented.

You might consider...maybe starting your own autism support site based in your country ...that would be "Slavic languages friendly", and maybe would use both cyrillic and Roman alphabets, that would attract members who are tuned in to the local politics in and around former Yugoslavia.

The biggest issue IMHO is that in that region up until recently they were only diagnosing those with severe Autism, in Croatia only in the last 10 years is it possible to get a diagnosis of high-functioning autism. There are centres for Autism, but they are for those what they call these days level 3 autism. The others struggle and perhaps get an assistant in the mainstream schools.

Dunno about the other countries, but my guess is that only in Slovenia is the diagnostic treatment and everything related following the Western practice.

Most younger generations speak English up to a certain level, so I don't think it's due to the language barrier. But this site has been steadily losing its members, due to various reasons, and this SQL error definitely isn't helping.

lol dude, I don't work in the military, that's just what I read. But I think strategically more in the economic than military sense.
Some others apparently think so too:

The historical background of Belgrade as one of the most important cities of Europe which was under the reign of the Ottoman Empire dates back to the Paleolithic Age. The city was a popular place as it was placed on the important roads and routes during the Crusades, and it was destroyed by them. Later, the city passed into the hands of Serbia, Hungary and Bulgaria. The city is of importance not only due to the fact that it was founded in the plateau of Belgrade, Tuna and Sava Rivers but also it is on the route to connect the Middle and West Europe with Asia Minor. Thus, the city has been a center of population. Moreover, Belgrade is on the intersection place of industrial districts and important trade roads Europe and Asia Minor. Along with being on the way of important roads, Belgrade serves as a door for Europe, and Aşık Paşazade describes this city as “Belgrade is the door of the Ungürüs city”. Known as the key of Europe, Belgrade could be conquered in 1521 by the Ottoman Empire although it was encompassed many times. The grand period of Belgrade after conquered by Ottoman Empire in 16th century. In this period, it became one of the most important cities of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Furthermore, it was counted as one of the best cities in Europe. Belgrade has been an important city in terms of trade as much as military and strategic point of view. The city in the position of captaincy of Tuna stayed significant in terms of its military, strategical and economical aspects until it was out of the Ottoman Empire’s hands. This article examines, it was aimed to focus on the effect of Belgrade on the conquests of the Ottoman Empire in addition to its economic and military importance, primarily using Ottoman archival documents.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... grade_City

What I also heard is that it was due to Tito wanting to curb potential Croatian nationalism, but that's just hearsay.
But IMHO, I think he just wanted to continue the tradition. Zagreb would have been a more obvious choice for him, being Croat and all that, but Belgrade/Beograd was already a capital city before.
Dunno about Sarajevo, I've never been there, I just heard it's very pretty.

Last edited by Bestiola on 18 May 2024, 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes. I figured that that might be the case. That that part of Europe would be "behind the curve". Slovenia would be more up on the latest Western trends in medicine and in everything else.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 18 May 2024, 9:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

Bouncing the server would probably clear that right up, but I don't know who would be responsible for that. Is anybody home?

I have an acquaintance who visited Bosnia recently, and he is convinced further bloodshed is in their future. I am not convinced.

I think the most pain came exactly from the fact that they were (somewhat forcefully) united. If the Turks didn't invade when they did, and your area of Bosnia was still Croatia to this day, I don't think many would have wanted to unite with the Serbs, Slovenes, Macedonians, or Montenegrins. it seems to me everyone is much happier under their own flag.

I've not met much of Yugonostalgia lately, more xenophobia due to the influx of just about everyone, including huge numbers of Nepalese, Philipinos, Bangladeshe etc. That partially explains the rise of the extreme right party.

As far as communism is concerned, that somewhat persists at a certain level. in 2017. there was a red flag at the University of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb with the message "proleteri svih zemalja ujedinite se" when some tried to commemorate the October Revolution, but not without incidents.
https://www.srednja.hr/faks/dio-filozof ... sami-sebe/

I am a Yugoslav who can speak English. Ofc, there is also a section of WP about foreign languages which is good but it is rather inactive due to small amount of foreigners. Also, you make a point on starting an autism website that is more friendly to the Yugoslav or Slavic audiences.