Uloga JNA-a u velikosrpskom projektu
The Role of the YPA in the Greater Serbia Project

A Special Review Of The Territory Of The Đakovo-Osijek Archdiocese

Summary/Abstract: Greater Serbia is a colloquial term for a nationalist and irredentist concept made by a part of the Serbian intelligentsia, originated in the early 19th century. However, the project of Greater Serbia dates back to 1557, that is, after the re-establishment of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć, when Serbian Orthodox clergy began to promote the idea of re-establishing the Serbian (Dušan) Empire, which had stretched over the territory of nine sovereign states of today. The revival of the Greater Serbia project, that is, the homogenization of Greater Serbia circles, started again during Tito’s lifetime, and it became even more dynamic after his death, followed by the re-opening of Serbian issue in Kosovo. This revitalization of the process was not meant to resolve the Kosovo issue, but to re-homogenize and mobilize the Serbian people in the whole of Yugoslavia. The most significant factor in the operationalization of the Greater Serbia project was the Yugoslav People’s Army (YPA), which was supposed to be its very guarantor. Therefore, at the beginning of the 1980s, the systematic Serbization of the command staff began, where Serbs and Montenegrins took the dominant positions. In 1990/1991, the Yugoslav People’s Army was the key factor in arming Serbian rebels. In this paper, the authors give an analysis of the military power of the Yugoslav People’s Army on the territory of the Đakovo-Osijek Archdiocese, where it was actively engaged in the disintegration of the Republic of Croatia. Namely, such an analysis has not yet been systematically done for this area. The analysis was made based on the reduced written sources and the personal experience in the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Croatia in the area.

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