ABSTRACT
Yugoslavia, first under the name of 'The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes', and then under the name of Yugoslavia existed for seventy-four years, interrupted only by four years of German military occupation from 1941 to 1945. This chapter examines the peculiar historical and psychological heritage of the Serb people. It explains the roots of the hostility between Serbs and Croats, that sprang up from the accidental situation created by two world wars, where a large number of Serbs and Croats found themselves on opposite sides. When the Republic of Yugoslavia foundered on the rocks of ethnic and religious separatism, the international community decided to recognise four of the five republics within the country as independent states on their own — Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Serbia-cum-Montenegro. 'The principle of self-determination', the Dutch paper maintained, 'cannot exclusively apply to the existing Republics while being deemed inapplicable to national minorities within those Republics.
