How did ethnic and nationalistic tensions turn into violent conflict in Yugoslavia in the 1990s?
In the years following the end of world war II, Marshal Tito had successfully held together Yugoslavia’s six republics under the communist slogan of ‘brotherhood and unity.’ Until the beginning of the 1990s, the Republic of Yugoslavia had been one of the largest, strongest, and most diverse countries in the Balkans. The six republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Croatia, were a blend of many ethnic groups and religions, with Orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Catholicism being the most dominant religions.
But all this while, from the early 1930s after World War I, it had been apparent that the republics were not entirely willing to blend and work together. The Serbs, who made up 40 percent of the Yugoslav population, quickly gained control of the government and implemented stringent and repressive policies that criminalized political parties, grabbed Muslim and Croat’s land and transferred it to the Serbs. For this reason, the Croats and the Slovenes resented the Serbs for unfairly dominating Yugoslavia’s government, military, and finances. The Croats advocated for a federal approach to governance and independence, while the Serbs pushed for a centralist system with the goal of retaining most of the powers. As a result, the two groups were uneasy and distrustful of each other, which gave rise to some form of ethnic tension.
However, the extent of the rivalry was first demonstrated by ethnic violence between the Serbs and the Croats during the second World War. The conflict included extermination, expulsion, and forced religious conversions. This experience solidified the conflict and tension between the two republics. In the period that ensued, nationalism emerged to become a vital influence on irredentist movements, paving the way for more extreme violence between opposing nationalities.
The fall of communism and the revival of nationalism in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s evoked a state of powerful economic and political unrest. The militant nationalism grew immensely, weakening the central government. Numerous political parties were born, which outrightly supported the independence of republics while advocating for the allocation of more powers to specific republics within the alliance. Political leaders also played a central role in destroying the existing unity among the republics and triggered fear and mistrust among different ethnic groups.
The actual conflict erupted in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. All through 1990, mayhem had dominated the region, fueled by the long-standing ethnic tensions born during and after world war II. The conflict resulted in mass killings among different republics, particularly among ethnic Serbs, Croats, Bosnia Muslims, and Kosovo Albanians. During this period, ethnic prejudice and violence were so intense that the term “ethnic cleansing’ (the intentional killing and elimination of certain ethnic, religious, and cultural groups) was adopted.
Mirilovic, Nikola. “War and Religion: The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. 2019.
Piacentini, Arianna. “Ethnic Groups and Nations in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).” In Ethnonationality’s Evolution in Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia, pp. 29-54. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020.
Strezoski, Slavco. Origins of the Breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Naval Postgraduate School Monterey United States, 2019.

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