I hope my english is correct.
What i always heard was that ewven if Austria would have won WW1 they still would have collapsed someday.
As far as i know (i might be wrong) Archduke Ferdinand was one of the few persons in the Empire who actually wanted to "fix" the ehtnic and national problems in the empire by creating a federation. So by assasinating him the Serbians/Bosnians killed the only man in the Empire who wanted to help them.
So if he wouldnt have been assasinated and he would have done all the things he wanted to do, could the Austrian Empire have survived to this day?
Sry for this bad english xD
Austria-Hungary was in a perilous position by the time the 20th century rolled around. Many of its problems were rooted in its ethnic makeup. Unlike Germany (which was ethnically homogenous), Austria-Hungary contained no fewer than 11 distinct ethnic groups: a liability in the age of nationalism, where there was an increasing desire to define countries' borders based on ethnicity.
A large slice of the Dual Monarchy's population was Slavic, a broad ethnic group that includes Ukrainians (then known as Ruthenians), Bosnians, Croats, Poles, Czechs, and others. When the Serbians (who were also Slavic) gained their freedom from the Ottoman Empire and established a strong Slavic state in the Balkans, many of the Slavs within the Austro-Hungarian Empire (particularly those in the annexed provinces of Bosnia-Herzogovina which bordered Serbia) felt that joining with Serbia would be preferable to remaining under the Austrian yoke. Serbia's magnestism only increased after their territorial gains during the Balkan Wars, and the problem was further exacerbated by provocateurs from Serbia, who would cross over the border into Bosnia-Herzogovina and stir up trouble.
Franz Ferdinand was a curious man, because although he harbored prejudices against many of the Dual Monarchy's ethnicities (particularly Slavs and Hungarians), he did recognize the need for reform if the Monarchy was to survive. One of these proposed reforms was the creation of a third, Slavic state which would be given semi-autonomy like the Hungarian half of the Empire (effectively transforming AH from a Dual Monarchy into a Triple Monarchy: a form of proto-Federalism).
Why was this important? It would simultaneously help to defray nationalistic rumblings for independence from the Slavs and weaken the Hungarian parliament's stranglehold over the Empire's policies. It had reached a point where many Austrians would refer to the Hungarians as der innere Feinde ("the inside enemy") because of their parliament's tendency to block proposals coming out of Vienna (particularly funding for military reforms). And if the Hungarians objected to the new Slavic component, Franz Ferdinand was also prepared to bring them back into the fold by force.
Would that have saved Austria-Hungary from collapse? It wouldn't have hurt. Franz Joseph's successor, Emperor Karl, attempted to institute Federalism in the end-days of the war, but by then it was too little, too late. The massive loss of life and the economic devastation that the war had brought about had shaken all faith in the monarchy, and the various ethnic groups in the crumbling empire raised banners and announced their secession.
Another question, wasn't Austria-Hungary dismantled as a part of the terms of WWI rather than ongoing nationalistic tensions within A-H?