ABSTRACT
This chapter suggestes that the dissolution of Yugoslav historiography occurred because of the continuity of partisan loyalties to changing ideological banners. In 1979, Yugoslav historiography, or, more exactly, its dominant institutional part, was still bound by the ideology of the Titoist party-state. The internal troubles inside the Titoist establishment—the emergence, in the 1960s, of a reformist bloc with a strong base in the northwestern republics and the associated correlation between systemic reform and administrative decentralization—had immediate repercussions in historiography. Opposition to centralism and unitarism came largely as an unexpected gift to Croatian historiography, which did not really take full advantage of the opportunity. The pursuit of politics through historiography wound down by the middle of the 1970s, at the time of Tito’s last legislative effort. The centralist and unitarist bloc held that the distinctions between the nationalities were being blurred and that Yugoslavia could be homogenized on the traditions—real or invented—of forceful Yugoslavism.
