The New Belle Époque: Democracy and Prosperity Since 1975 657been exacerbated by questions of collaboration with
the Nazis during World War II. The forceful personal-
ity of President Tito—a Croatian who had been the
leader of the predominantly Serbian resistance to
Nazism—had held Yugoslavia together as a federation
of equals. His refusal to follow Moscow as a satellite of
the Soviet Union had earned Yugoslavia massive West-
ern assistance, which helped to sustain his regime. His
successors were less able to follow these policies. Re-
gional nationalism increased after Tito’s death in 1980,
despite Yugoslavia’s rotating presidency, which gave
each major ethnic group a turn at leadership. The Al-
banian minority rioted in 1981, seeking independence.
Widespread unrest was evident among the Muslim pop-
ulation of Bosnia in 1983. Croatian terrorists conducted
a bombing campaign in 1985.
The collapse of the Yugoslav Communist Party in
the revolution of 1989 worsened the federation’s crisis of
nationalist regionalism. Without the strong central au-
thority that had held the federated republics together,
political power passed to local authorities during 1990.
The two most westernized republics, Slovenia and
Croatia, held free elections in the spring of 1990. Slove-
nia, the most prosperous portion of Yugoslavia, adopted
a declaration of sovereignty a few weeks later, and by
the end of the year a public referendum had approved
secession from Yugoslavia. Croatia meanwhile prepared
a new constitution that asserted the right to secede.
Stimulated by these developments, the Serbian minority
population in the non-Serbian republics of Croatia and
Bosnia formed separatist groups that claimed the right
of self-government.
The Yugoslav crisis became the Yugoslav War in- Slovenia and Croatia each proclaimed their inde-
pendence from Yugoslavia in July. The Serbian minor-
ity in Croatia (especially those concentrated in a region
that the Serbs called Krajina) resisted this declaration
and announced the secession of some districts that
would join the neighboring republic of Bosnia. Serbia,
the largest state of Yugoslavia, controlled the military
and intervened on behalf of the Serbian minority. The
Yugoslav air force bombed Zagreb, the capital of Croa-
tia, in October 1991, and a few days later the Yugoslav
army besieged and shelled the picturesque Croatian
town of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Coast. In Novem-
ber the Croatian city of Vukovar surrendered to Ser-
bian forces; shortly thereafter, the first stories of war
atrocities—the murder of Croatian civilians in Vuko-
var—began to reach the West (see illustration 32.7). By
the end of 1991 the president of Yugoslavia announced
that the country had ceased to exist. In early 1992 the
European Union recognized the independence of
Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, and the United Nations
accepted all three as members. Simultaneously, the re-
publics of Serbia and Montenegro announced their
merger as the new Republic of Yugoslavia.
Outsiders seemed powerless to prevent an expan-
sion of the Yugoslav War. The European Union, the
United Nations, and the United States applied many
forms of pressure—an embargo on arms shipments to
the Balkans, a larger embargo against the new Yu-
goslavia and its expulsion from UN membership, re-
peated cease-fire negotiations, the proclamation of safe
zones, and the intervention of UN peacekeeping forces
Illustration 32.7
War Crimes.The Yugoslav War of
1991–95 produced evidence of terrible
war crimes, which persuaded the United
Nations to establish the first war crimes
tribunal to sit since the crimes of the
Holocaust were tried at Nuremberg in
1945–46. The Hague Tribunal found evi-
dence of crimes committed by all sides in
the Yugoslav War, but most of the evi-
dence involved Serbian atrocities. This
photograph shows one section of a mass
grave near the town of Vukovar, where
Croatian civilians were massacred by
Serbs.