The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

overwhelm the others. The Serbian leadership thought that the League
of Communists of Yugoslavia, the state structures, the president, the
governments of the republics, and the diplomatic corps, would support
the Serbian side, as would the banks concentrated in Belgrade, and also
the international community, which would want to protect the unity of
Yugoslavia, i.e., a Serbian Yugoslavia. It was assumed that such a superior
force would be sufficient to break any resistance and win, even with -
out actually using force, without war. It was also assumed that there
would be strong pro-Yugoslav forces among other peoples, which would
free the country “from the Croatian and Slovenian separatists”.
In 1989-’90, all these conditions favourable to Serbia disappeared overnight.
In January 1990, the League of Communists dissolved itself.
When the People’s Army intervened, no Croat or Slovene took the Serbian
side to defend Yugoslavia. Bosnia-Herzegovina too withdrew from
Yugoslavia in 1992.
The collapse into chaos
The slowly growing nationalism in all parts of the country was the result
of the serious economic crisis and the great uncertainty in the population.
The 2700% inflation before the outbreak of the war in 1991 – like that in
Europe during the 1920s – threatened people’s very livelihoods, especially
in the larger towns. There were reports of people who killed themselves
because they were hungry and couldn’t pay their electricity bills.
In this situation, the interest in the preservation of the state was lost.
The media had a major part in this, interpreting and disseminating the
daily news in national terms. Anti-nationalism was discredited as the her -
itage of the socialist regime, and Tito demonized as a “totalitarian Bol -
shevik” by the Croatian and Serbian nationalist leaders alike. A new
memorial culture was to be forged, nationalism rehabilitated and antifascism
called into question. In Serbia, the etniks were celebrated as
anti-fascists, and in Croatia, the Ustaša were revered as heroes and defenders
of their people. This process was underpinned by the disclosure
of the covered-up crimes of the communist government at the end of
the Second World War. To spread hatred and panic, Serb nationalists
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