A British journalist friend living in Belgrade was told by his taxi driver that Yugoslavia was an EU before the EU. He is a very keen believer in the EU and didn't find this parallel made him cheerful.
It does me.
I thought back at the time of the Brexit referendum that the EU was fine for Europe, just not for the UK. I now see that it is bad for every country except the Eastern European member states which get a lot of money from it and markets.
"Like the old Austro-Hungarian empire, the EU continues because it cannot be either reformed or replaced" as Professor Robert Tombs has said.
A couple of intellectuals I spoke to in Serbia think the same.
Perhaps it will take a war to do, far in the future I hope.
Yugoslavia was the embodiment of a post-national state, as was the USSR. The USSR was called Russia by foreigners but it was not the Russian empire renamed. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a greater Serbia but Communist Yugoslavia was not.
Multi-ethnic states only work if they are federal and power is very diffused, as in Switzerland. Even then Yugoslavia didn't - and Belgium is a mess.
Great Britain has worked very well but now has separatists, happily ones who are losing influence and hope of secession.
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