ABSTRACT
Throughout the existence of the Yugoslav state from 1918 to 1991, survival against the odds was its quintessential feature. Viewing Yugoslavia's highly diverse regional, religious, and ethnic composition, both foreign and domestic observers typically drew attention to the country's innate fragility or, sometimes less generously, its basic illegitimacy and artificiality. At the end of the 1980s, only fifteen years after Kardelj's proud claims, Yugoslav communist leaders again faced a major crisis of survival, regretfully conceding that their country lacked the "elementary rules of behavior in conflict situations which the crisis imposes" and that "priority efforts" must be directed at "raising Yugoslavia's low credibility in the world." During 1990, with the disintegration of the League of Yugoslav Communists (LCY) as a political organization and the advent of competitive elections, Yugoslavia's interregional and interethnic divisions became so pronounced that the country virtually ceased to function as a unified federal state.
