ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interconnections between democratization and the utilization of violence in Yugoslavia’s multi-ethnic society. It argues that there are many factors that may help explain the growing nationalism and even belligerence during the early phase of Yugoslav democratization. The term ‘crisis’ – which became a buzzword in Yugoslavia almost overnight – brought into focus the complex experiences of an entire decade. All over Yugoslavia, a new political generation, a cohort that had been socialized in the 1960s and 1970s, aimed at rethinking Yugoslav socialist federalism without necessarily negotiating its dissolution. The Yugoslav state lost its monopoly on violence, and new actors surfaced that challenged the old political and military power elite. Yugoslavia’s deep economic, political, and social-psychological crisis reached its peak in 1990, resulting in a loss of orientation, in insecurity and a fear of the future.
