Introduction

This chapter analyzes the reform discourses and attempts in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and other countries, and explains why the new elites stuck with the radical reforms, although the political and economic side effects had already become increasingly costly in 1990. It demonstrates that the debates on the oft-conjured image of a ‘thick line’, behind which the communist past was allegedly left, were just the façade of a division that had little to do with the treatment of communist crimes, and much more to do with conflicting moral values and the understanding of politics and democracy. The chapter explores the interconnections between democratization and the use of violence in Yugoslavia’s multi-ethnic society. Factors that may explain the growing nationalism and even belligerence in the early phase of Yugoslav democratization refer to the following: a profound economic, political, and socio-psychological crisis.