What explains the disintegration of Yugoslavia?

Résumé du document

The Second Yugoslavia created in 1943, under the name of Democratic Federation of Yugoslavia, was a federal state consisting of six republics -Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia- and two autonomous provinces - Kosovo and Vojvodina. It became the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946 and was later renamed to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963. This federation broke up in the early 1990s when Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence on June 25, 1991, followed by Macedonia in October and Bosnia Herzegovina in November. There are many grounds for this disintegration. It is impossible to reduce the complexity of socialist Yugoslav disintegration to some supposed pre-eminent factor. On the contrary, there were a multitude of causes like the economics of choices, institutional structures, religious cultures, elite dynamics, and deficiencies in systemic legitimacy that played a role in pushing the country toward violent break-up. Yugoslavia was a mosaic of ethnic groups, whose unity was undermined by the revolutionary statesman Marshal Tito's death, economic crisis, ethnic tensions, changing international context and the rise of nationalism in the 1980s.

Extraits

[...] He thinks economic factors are important per se for the disintegration of Yugoslavia but provided for political leaders who used them to argue that their ethnic or/and political group was disadvantaged”[27]. The economic crisis was the base for an increase in ethnic tensions and resentment between ethnic groups. “Although the causes of the crisis had little to do with inter-ethnic hatred, the crisis itself encouraged the rise of nationalist feeling”[28]. In Kosovo, the least economically developed region of Yugoslavia, the underdevelopment remained an enduring source of tension between its ethnic populations: Albanians on one side and Serbs and Montenegrins on the other side. [...]

[...] Moreover, Slovenia and Croatia were keen to become integrated into the new pan-European political structures and were eager not to be dragged down by the parlous economic condition of the rest of the federal state. They thought they had more chance to integrate the capitalist world and to enter the European Community outside Yugoslavia. So “Slovenia broke with Yugoslavia for the same reasons as the Czechs broke with Slovakia - to shed a millstone round their necks and pave the way for membership of the European Union. [...]

[...] Western economies then entered recession, blocked Yugoslav exports and created a huge debt problem. 1980 foreign debt reached $ 20 billion, marking the beginning of a decade of crisis and conflict during which thousands of strikes broke out.”[21] The unemployment rate was one million in 1980 and “prices for food, clothing, electricity and other daily necessities rose 60% approximatively every 6 months”[22]. Increasing economic chaos was reported in the media, creating resentment from the working class and illustrating the incompetence of the Communist Party to run the country. [...]

[...] This disintegration happened very violently, unlike in USSR, with the 10-day war in Slovenia in July 1991 and the war in Croatia in 1991. Could this disintegration happen peacefully? a community such as that of the former Yugoslavia, disintegration without the consent of all parties meant, to say the least, that none would be able to realize its objective without a major conflict.”[41] However, Yugoslav political leaders and the international community could have made the Yugoslav disintegration, not evitable, but less violent. [...]

[...] Watchel, Making a nation, Breaking a nation: Literature and Cultrural Politics in Yugoslavia Ibid. E. Renan, “What is a nation?” Allock J. Rupnik, L'Echec Yougoslave J. Udovicki, J. Ridgeway, Burn this house: The making and unmaking of Yugoslavia. SP Ramet, Balkan Babel: the disintegration of Yugoslavia from the death of Tito to the fall of Milosevic D. Jović, Disintegration of Yugoslavia: A critical review of Explanatory Approaches” J. Udovicki, J. Ridgeway, Burn this house: The making and unmaking of Yugoslavia. [...]