ABSTRACT
The argument to be presented here is that the Yugoslav meltdown involved three factors or sets of factors: first, the various underlying problems such as economic deterioration, political illegitimacy, and structural factors which drove the system toward crisis; second, the presence and persistence of inter-ethnic resentments deriving from irreconcilable national historical narratives in which Yugoslavia's constituent peoples cast each other as “the Enemy” (usually across the Serb-non-Serb cleavage) and specifically stoked by certain ambitious political figures; and third, the emergence, in Serbia, of a national “revitalization movement” led by Slobodan Milošević, nurturing grandiose territorial fantasies. I shall also argue that understanding the Serb national awakening of the late 1980s as a “revitalization movement” helps to understand the nature of what happened in Serbia, in particular how Serb nationalists could construe their initiatives as responses to some perceived threat coming from outside the community of Serbs, the phases in the development of that movement, and its role in impelling socialist Yugoslavia toward breakup and meltdown.
