ABSTRACT
The second disintegration of the Yugoslav state in 1991, fifty years after the first disintegration, appears to signal the futility and failure of the national idea on which the state was founded-the Yugoslav idea. Yet this appearance, like many others in that part of the world, is deceptive. The state which disintegrated in 1991 and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which was carved up by the victorious Axis in 1941 resembled little the state which the creators of the Yugoslav idea dreamed about in the 19th century. Their dreams of a common state were based on their firm belief that the South Slav-Yugoslavpeoples or, as they put it, tribes, constitute one and the same nation. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which ended in 1991 with the secession of two of its six federal units was not based on any such belief. On the contrary, from its inception in 1943 to its end, the state never officially recognised the existence of a Yugoslav nation. As a consequence, this state never officially recognised Yugoslavism as a separate national identity. In spite of this, in the 1981 census there were 1.2 million Yugoslavs (around 6% of the population in Yugoslavia), the only group of people in Yugoslavia whose national identity was effectively denied.
