yugoslavias implosion

Mindful of the changes in the international environment, especially
the collapse of Communism, Serbian propagandists made
much of the notion that Serbia had always been anti-Communist. In
1991, when the international community was trying to save Yugoslavia,
Ćosić gave interviews to Politika in January and July in which he
suggested that the “survival of Yugoslavia is a utopia” and that trying
to “save Yugoslavia through political blackmail and economic
pressure by external actors in the name of a fictitious anti-Communist
ideology and European constellation will bring no good either
to the Yugoslav peoples or to Europe.” He argued that while “Serbs
have no right on national and democratic grounds to prevent Croats
and Slovenes from seceding from Yugoslavia and creating their own
independent states,” the Croats could “establish an independent state
only on their ethnic territories”; otherwise, should they attempt to
“establish [their own] state through the annexation of Serb ethnic
territories, then they will become occupiers and provokers of war.” 125
THE COMING OF WAR
This final stage of Yugoslavia’s disintegration had two phases: in
the first, Milošević used various forms of political violence, and in
the second he switched over to armed violence.
Political violence was first employed in October 1988, when
Milošević toppled the Vojvodina leadership in the “Yogurt Revolution,”
126 uniting Serbia under the slogan “one people, one state, one
court of law.” Montenegro was annexed in January 1989 after the
fall of the republic’s leadership. Under the pretext of a “replenishment
of cadres,” Milošević’s cronies were installed in federal posts,
giving Serbia a controlling majority in the federal leadership. A
wave of demonstrations against the sacking of Azem Vllasi and the
125 Politika, January 21, 1991 .
126 The Vojvodina leaders who tried to address the rally were pelted with yogurt cartons .
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