yugoslavias implosion

deprived autonomous provinces of their constitutional functions and
excluded Serbia from the legal system of the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia (sfry). It was the first secessionist document, a fact
underlined in Article 135, which states that Serbia will enforce federal
legislation only if it is not “contrary to its interests.” On March 15,
1991, Milošević declared in one of his speeches on Radio Television of
Serbia that “Yugoslavia does not exist any more.”
Having failed to export his anti-bureaucratic revolution to other
republics, Milošević went ahead with implementing his plan with
the help of his supporters, namely, other parties that had previously
set out Serbia’s expansionist aims in their programs. These parties
were the Serbian Renewal Movement (spo) led by Vuk Drašković,
the Serbian Radical Party (srs) of Vojislav Šešelj, and the Serbian
National Renewal (sno) party of Mirko Jović. All these parties effectively
promoted the fascist Chetnik movement from the Second
World War and drew on its traditions.
Chapter 1 concludes by assessing the degree to which Serbia
achieved its war aims by the time the Dayton Accords brought an
end to the fighting in Bosnia. Some Serbian nationalists expressed
disappointment with the results of the war, which had not seen Serbia
extend its borders as they (and the Serbian Orthodox Church)
had hoped. Others, however—among them, Milošević and the leading
nationalist ideologue of his generation, Dobrica Ćosić—saw reason
for satisfaction: the republics of the former Yugoslavia were
now organized along ethnic lines; the Serbs in Bosnia had achieved
an internationally recognized degree of autonomy in an ethnic Serbian
entity, Republika Srpska; and, in the words of Ćosić, the Serbian
people were “coalescing in a living space in which it can cover civilizationally
and culturally and develop economically.”
CHAPTER 2 shifts attention from the Serbian political elite to the
Serbian military. The chapter examines how the nature of the Serbian
nationalists’ agenda ensured that the Serbian military would
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IntroduCtIon