Yugoslavia Was the Richest Communist Country in Europe... Then It Tore Itself Apart (Why?)

On the fourteenth of February 1984, Jure Franko won Yugoslavia's first Winter Olympic medal on the mountain above Sarajevo, and two British skaters earned perfect sixes in the city's new Zetra arena. Eight years later that arena was on fire, its seats were being cut up for coffins, and the Olympic bobsled track on Mount Trebević had become a firing position above a city under siege. This full documentary tells the story of how the most open country in the communist world threw away what it had built. It covers Tito's Partisans and the 1948 split with Stalin, the Non-Aligned Movement, the red passport and shopping trips to Trieste, more than a million Yugoslavs working abroad in Germany, Austria and beyond, and the Adriatic tourist boom. Then it follows the bill, from foreign debt that grew from about one billion dollars to twenty, petrol coupons and four-figure inflation after Tito's death, and the rise of Slobodan Milošević from Kosovo Polje in 1987 to the Gazimestan speech in 1989. We look at Ante Marković's reforms that almost saved the economy, the 1990 elections, the wars in Slovenia and Croatia, the siege of Vukovar, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide, the Dayton agreement and the Kosovo war of 1999, with the court verdicts that named who was responsible. Who do you think carried the most blame for the breakup of Yugoslavia? Tell us in the comments, and tell us where you're watching from. Subscribe to Empty Palaces for full-length stories of countries that had everything and lost it. The bobsled track on Trebević is still there, cracked and covered in graffiti, and next to the rebuilt Zetra arena the white headstones of the siege still stand in rows. Jure Franko's silver medal from 1984 still exists. The country that won it doesn't.