>>7819754it wasnt only ethnicities, especially not at the start. South slavs, excluding slovenians were basically the same ethnicity when they settled there. They've always been a marginalized group within europe, though. I'd say the troubles started after the fall of the roman empire, where most of the south slavs, except for northern croatians and slovenians were part of the byzantine empire. This led to Slovenians creating the first slavic state to ever exist, meaning it had more of a connection with central european powers than the others did(it was even part of the frankish empire). Later on, there was another split, between catholics and orthodox, where croatia and slovenia were (ignoring many minorities in the rest of the balkans)the only catholic states left. Later on, the Slovenes were conquered by the Holy Roman Empire, which was ethnically german. In between that there were also things like the first bulgar empire in the 10th century, r*omanian states like wallachia and Moldova forming, s*rbian empire, and many other minor south slav states forming, until the 16th/early17th century, where there wasnt a singly south slav state anymore, becuase of the ottoman empire(which conquered half the balkans, and made many muslim communities, which are still especially prevelant in bosnia and the Austrians. before the 1st world war, the ottoman empire, which was slowly collapsing for ~300 years eventually had revolts in the balkans, that resulted in them losing almost all of its territory there, except for Constantinople.
After WWI, Yugoslavia formed, which was a monarchy. There were multiple attempts at trying to unify the south slav people at that time, but it mostly failed. In WWII, there was a croatian fascist puppet state, which, in (((today's history books))), is known for killing ~100k jews, gypsies and serbs. If the numbers are correct, or if they were wrong in doing so, you cna decide for yourself. after 1945, tito, a communist, took control of yugoslavia.
