You could say the same for the Civil War. Many of the states held statehood for only a short amount of time before the war broke out. Some territories involved in fighting weren't states at all. The US wasn't as solidified as it is now, or as it seems now.
In my opinion, Yugoslavia experienced a civil war, or rather a series of civil wars. Very different than how things unfolded in the USSR. Of course there are similarities, a new country held together by a Communist Dictatorship, but as far as their collapses, I think they unfolded very differently. Damn shame really.
Of course, the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslav Wars were driven by nationalism, that seems to be the only significant difference (and of course, the Confederates didn't win their independence). USSR was a country for 70 years, only 20 years younger than the USA was when it experienced it's civil wars.
yugoslavia was also victim of the russian's penchant for mix and match destabilization.
the russians would move whole villages across previously established borders and resettle ethnic groups near people with long standing grudges so they would fight each other and not the soviets, a brutal and vicious refinement of britain's "divide and rule" strategy in their colonies.
the former yugoslavia was NEVER one country, ever. it was a small cluster of middleweight kingdoms that alternately fought each other and the ottomans for most of their history as nations the prussians (and later the soviets) simply squashed them all into a single administrative region for their own imperial convenience, and after the war (ww1) all the big nations said "fuckit" and declared the status quo good enough for government work. after the prussians became footnotes in history in came the soviets to fuck shit up royally (as they were prone to do) with imperious commands, wool headed ideas of socialism and ultimately oppression, ethnic rearrangement and finally balkanization. the presumption in the west that yugoslavia was a nation at all is laughable especially when it comes from the same assholes who GAVE POLAND TO THE SOVIETS like an unwanted kitten!
there was no way yugoslavia could hold together, the united states all chose to be a nation, only the heavy handed abuses of the north with their domination in congress and their attempts to gain dominance in the senate could drive the states into secession.
thats what the late unpleasantness was about.
the north, with it;'s greater population of free men of voting eligibility had a decisive edge in the house of representatives, and they used that edge to push through initiatives (no more slave states provisions, taxes, tarrifs, etc) that put the south and the states dependent on cheap forced labour on the hind tit, and the north continued to press harder until the schism was inevitable. they "negotiated" just like the democrats do today, "yield or perish" and compromises are the other guy's responsibility. needless to say the south was a little pissed, and said fuck you, we're goin home.
they ordered the north to get their tropps out of fort sumter and the north said fuck you, we will leave when we are ready, and thats NEVER! we own you bitches!
next thing you know, its a rumble.
THATS what the war of northern aggression was about.
