Yugoslavia that exceeded anything witnessed else-
where, including the Soviet Union. The Western
powers and the United Nations sought to
mediate, but Serbs, Croats and Muslims – while
endlessly talking and concluding ceasefire agree-
ments – went on bloodily fighting each other.
The memory of the bitter struggle between Serbs
and those Croats who had supported the fascist
puppet regime in Croatia during the Second
World War was revived. Tito’s legacy of a federal
state held together by the Communist Party dis-
integrated with disastrous effect. But after his
death in 1980 even his huge prestige and the
power of the Communist Party apparatus could
not overcome the weakening of the centre. Local
party bosses, cultural differences and gross eco-
nomic discrepancies between comparatively
prosperous Slovenia and the poverty of parts of
Serbia hastened the separation of the republics.
Successive constitutions sought to avoid violent
nationality clashes by conceding more power to
the communist leadership and its apparatus in
each republic. Yugoslavia was open to the West.
Indeed, tourism became the most important
hard-currency earner with the start of mass air
travel in the 1960s. By the 1980s, the Yugoslav
economy was in a mess and reached levels of
hyperinflation similar to the worst in Latin
America. In 1990 the federal prime minister’s
currency reform and economic measures restored
financial stability but at the cost of hardship and
unemployment which exacerbated the conflict
between the nationalities.
The conflict had become very evident in 1987
when the Communist Party of the most power-
ful republic, Serbia, was taken over by Slobodan
Milosˇevic ́. He gained momentum and popularity
by fanning Serbian national fervour. An issue was
immediately at hand: the problem presented by
the province of Kosovo, one of the poorest
regions in the whole country, peopled by a major-
ity of Albanians, but with a large Serbian minor-
ity. The proportion of Albanians, with their much
higher birth rate, would increase further in any
case, but this process was hastened by the mass
emigration of Serbians. Without real evidence,
Milosˇevic ́ claimed that this was the result of
Albanian terrorism. Albanian protest against
Serbian repression led to uprisings, demonstra-
tions and bloody conflict. More serious still was
1
THE IRON CURTAIN DISINTEGRATES 899
Rome
Ljubljana
Vienna
Budapest
Bucharest
Sofia
Tirana
Podgorica Prishtina
Skopje
Sarajevo
Novi Sad
Belgrade
Zagreb
AUSTRIA
SLOVENIA
CROATIA
ITALY
HUNGARY
CZECH.
ROMANIA
BULGARIA
MACEDONIA
GREECE
ALBANIA
SERBIA
VOJVODINA
BOSNIA-
HERZOGOVINA
MONTE-NEGRO KOSOVO
YUGOSLAVIA
A
DR
IA
TI
C
SE
A
M
ED
IT
ER
RA
NE
AN
SE
The break-up of Yugoslavia, 1991–5
Yugoslavia, 1991–5
