The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) held the first annual Eurovision Song Contest in Lausanne, in 1956. This was eleven years after the end of World War II and Europe was still recovering from the catastrophe. The aim of the event was to build lasting international peace through sharing of cultures through music – an idea that has remained core to the competition to this day, despite having had its fair share of controversies. During the Cold War, the contest acted as the cultural leg of Western Europe’s, and West Bloc’s along with it, “soft power” indoctrination methods. “Soft power” is the ability of a nation to persuade others and accomplish its objectives through cultural appeal, appealing political ideals, and persuasion as opposed to financial pressure or force. After the end of the Cold War, with the break up of the USSR and Yugoslavia consecutively, newly formed Eastern European and Balkan nations sought to become new contestants in their nation-building process. The contest was the perfect battleground for new members to use their political, cultural and most importantly their national ties with other countries to display strength and gain recognition.  Yugoslavia joined Eurovision in 1961 after the decision to break up from the Eastern Bloc and remain neutral for the remainder of the Cold War. The debut was an easy process since Yugoslavia was already a founding member of the EBU. They continued to participate up until their break up, with Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia all participating separately afterwards. To this day, Serbia is the only nation of the former Yugoslavia to win the contest, also being the only nation to win in their debut year. But Serbia did not achieve this alone. Their victory came from a geopolitical voting pattern that continues to this day with other nations also having their own voting patterns and blocs. The time period between 2001 and 2011 reflects the victories of one former Yugoslav and five former USSR member states thanks to the aforementioned voting patterns and blocs. The most well-known voting blocs are the Nordic, Balkan

(Post-Yugoslavian), the Baltic Triad, and the Eastern European (Post-Soviet) blocs, with other nations having their own bilateral voting relations such as Greece and Cyprus or France and Armenia. Other than Serbia, who won the contest in 2007, said ex-USSR victories in the contest come from Estonia in 2001, Latvia in 2002, Ukraine in 2004, Russia in 2008 and Azerbaijan in 2011. When analyzed altogether, it is apparent that every nation in these respective blocs helps in jury voting. In 2001, Estonia got twelve points from Poland, Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania, who are all in the Eastern Bloc (with Poland being a former satellite nation to the USSR). Latvia won the contest next year with twelve points from Estonia and Lithuania. Ukraine won the contest in 2004 with twelve points from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia while Serbia and Montenegro finished in second place with twelve points from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Ukraine. Serbia won in its debut year in 2007 with twelve points from Slovenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Hungary and Bosnia; all the while, Ukraine and Russia finished in second and third places, respectively. The biggest support of the Eastern Bloc was in effect in 2008 when Russia won, with Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus and Armenia all giving their twelve points. Ukraine also finished second that year. Finally in 2011, Azerbaijan won with the least amount of help from their alliance with only Russia giving twelve points while Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Croatia all gave ten points to the Caucasian nation.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, several former members made attempts to become a part of the “Western world” by building cultural, political and economic relations with Western Bloc nations. As mentioned before, Eurovision was the perfect format for building cultural alliances, as we can see from examples such as Albania and Italy or France and Armenia. The Eurovision Song Contest became the cultural-political stepping stone for these nations to create their own national identity through music and exhibit this national identity to other nations. While this transition process was much smoother for the Baltic Triad composed of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, other former USSR members and former Yugoslav nations needed more support from each other to achieve success. This was also not a hard process, since most of these nations had established cultural ties that brought similar tastes in food, music, tradition, literature and politics along with it. One Balkan nation has a much better chance to impress their neighbors and gain points since one victory is a victory for all. On the other hand, historical relations and diaspora power comes into effect in the voting process. For example, Bosnia and Herzegovina has a significant Serbian population and vice versa, just as Serbia has a significant amount of an Albanian population; or France has an important Armenian population. This causes a huge shift in the voting procedures, as those diaspora citizens have more chances in the number of votes they can cast as they are not living in countries they migrated from. Another perfect example to this situation would be Germany and Türkiye since Germany has a Turkish population of more than five million people.

During the post-communist transition, Eurovision evolved from a straightforward entertainment event to a key platform for nation-building, nation-branding, and negotiating local micro-identities. Achieving full membership in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and competing in Eurovision was a symbolic declaration of sovereignty for recently independent post-communist governments. Immediate soft-power recognition came from competing as an independent nation with their own flag, country code, and national broadcaster. In 1993, Bosnia and Herzegovina portrayed their participation in the competition while under siege in Sarajevo as an act of both worldwide recognition and existential national survival. Latvia (2002 winner) and Estonia (2001 winner) projected a particular political message through their participation in Eurovision and following host-city broadcasts: We are contemporary, Nordic-leaning, technologically advanced European democracies, not post-Soviet. Winning provided an early PR platform to indicate preparedness for NATO and EU membership.

The platform was utilized by countries such as Ukraine to distinguish their identity from Russian influence. Acts such as Ruslana’s “Wild Dances” (2004) created a story of rich, unique indigenous history by fusing contemporary pop with traditional Hutsul folk elements. Internal federation rivalries developed into worldwide micronationalism at Eurovision in the former Yugoslavia, where boundaries changed quickly and conflict left lasting wounds. The national selection (Jugovizija) was already a site of fierce inter-republic competition amongst studios (RTV Zagreb, RTV Ljubljana, RTV Belgrade) during the SFRY era. These domestic contests moved into official international borders after 1991. Entries frequently wavered between more general European pop tropes and hyper-local ethnic pride in the 1990s and 2000s. With Marija Šerifović’s ‘Molitva’ (2007) and Šeljko Joksimović’s ethno-ballads, Serbia triumphed, showcasing a proud, unique Balkan musical culture and establishing Belgrade as the region’s cultural center. Eastern Bloc voting has long been denounced as “political collusion” or Eastern mafia tactics by Western pundits. Nonetheless, scholarly examination of voting in the post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav eras reveals intricate sociocultural factors. Throughout former Yugoslavia, artists such as Bosnia’s Dino Merlin and Serbia’s Šeljko Joksimović are well-known. Voting for a Serbian entry sung by a performer that Bosnians often listen to is a reflection of cultural consumption rather than a geopolitical agreement.

Natural audiences for similar lyrical subjects and musical structures are created by the mutual intelligibility of post-Yugoslav languages or the widespread use of Russian throughout the CIS. Large post-Yugoslav and post-Soviet communities were established throughout Central and Western Europe as a result of mass migrations in the 1990s (for example Serbs and Bosniaks in Austria/Switzerland, Lithuanians in Ireland). These countries with major diaspora groups frequently return to their home countries with high televote results. Voting patterns indicate considerable cultural homogeneity, but post-Soviet voting in particular shows how cultural blocs can be shattered by real-world geopolitics. Due to linked media platforms and familial links, public point transfers between Russia and Ukraine were continuously high until 2013. Mutual voting failed after the invasion in 2022 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, leading to landslide televote victories for Ukraine (such as Jamala’s “1944” in 2016 and Kalush Orchestra in 2022) and Russia’s eventual expulsion from the EBU. On the other hand, due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenia and Azerbaijan routinely give each other zero points despite having similar geographic locations and regional musical genres. This shows that military and national strife can supersede cultural proximity.

In the end, the series of Eurovision wins by former Yugoslav and USSR nations between 2001 and 2011 show that the competition is a dynamic platform for post-communist statehood rather than merely a stage for pop music. These developing countries effectively used the platform to project sovereignty, promote nation-branding, and negotiate intricate local micro-identities on a global scale by strategically aligning regional voting blocs, common cultural consumption, and diaspora networks. The contest’s voting history reveals a deeper reality: musical success in the post-socialist era was founded on the confluence of genuine cultural affinity and a common drive for international recognition, despite Western critics’ frequent dismissal of these point exchanges as simple geopolitical collusion. However – as the vote breakdowns between warring neighbors show – even the most powerful regional alliances are still subject to actual geopolitics, demonstrating that although music can momentarily unite divided borders, national identity ultimately determines the map.