By looking through the prism of the West's involvement in the breakup of Yugoslavia, this book presents a new examination of the end of the Cold War in Europe. Incorporating declassified documents from the CIA, the administration of George H.W. Bush, and the British Foreign Office; evidence generated by The Hague Tribunal; and more than forty personal interviews with former diplomats and policy makers, Glaurdić exposes how the realist policies of the Western powers failed to prop up Yugoslavia's continuing existence as intended, and instead encouraged the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosević to pursue violent means.The book also sheds light on the dramatic clash of opinions within the Western alliance regarding how to respond to the crisis. Glaurdić traces the origins of this clash in the Western powers' different preferences regarding the roles of Germany, Eastern Europe, and foreign and security policy in the future of European integration. With subtlety and acute insight, "The Hour of Europe" provides a fresh understanding of events that continue to influence the shape of the post-Cold War Balkans and the whole of Europe.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1991 shed entirely new light on the character of their political systems. There is now a need to re-examine many of the standard interpretations of Soviet and Yugoslav politics. This book is a comparative study of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union - as multinational, federal communist states - and the reaction of European and US foreign policy to the parallel collapses of these nations. The authors describe the structural similarities in the destabilization of the two countries, providing great insight into the demise of both.

Europe's recognition of new states in Yugoslavia remains one of the most controversial episodes in the Yugoslav crisis. Richard Caplan offers a detailed narrative of events, exploring the highly assertive role that Germany played in the episode, the reputedly catastrophic consequences of recognition (for Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular) and the radical departure from customary state practice represented by the EC's use of political criteria as the basis of recognition. The book examines the strategic logic and consequences of the EC's actions but also explores the wider implications, offering insights into European security policy at the end of the Cold War, the relationship of international law to international relations and the management of ethnic conflict. The significance of this book extends well beyond Yugoslavia as policymakers continue to wrestle with the challenges posed by violent conflict associated with state fragmentation.

A multidisciplinary approach exploring the historical antecedents and the dynamic process of Yugoslavia's violent dissolution. This volume examines issues broadening our understanding of the Yugoslav case, and also sheds light on how to deal with state fragility and failure.

Why did Yugoslavia fall apart? Was its violent demise inevitable? Did its population simply fall victim to the lure of nationalism? How did this multinational state survive for so long, and where do we situate the short life of Yugoslavia in the long history of Europe in the twentieth century? A History of Yugoslavia provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive synthesis of the political, cultural, social, and economic life of Yugoslavia—from its nineteenth-century South Slavic origins to the bloody demise of the multinational state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Calic takes a fresh and innovative look at the colorful, multifaceted, and complex history of Yugoslavia, emphasizing major social, economic, and intellectual changes from the turn of the twentieth century and the transition to modern industrialized mass society. She traces the origins of ethnic, religious, and cultural divisions, applying the latest social science approaches, and drawing on the breadth of recent state-of-the-art literature, to present a balanced interpretation of events that takes into account the differing perceptions and interests of the actors involved. Uniquely, Calic frames the history of Yugoslavia for readers as an essentially open-ended process, undertaken from a variety of different regional perspectives with varied composite agenda. She shuns traditional, deterministic explanations that notorious Balkan hatreds or any other kind of exceptionalism are to blame for Yugoslavia’s demise, and along the way she highlights the agency of twentieth-century modern mass society in the politicization of differences. While analyzing nuanced political and social-economic processes, Calic describes the experiences and emotions of ordinary people in a vivid way. As a result, her groundbreaking work provides scholars and learned readers alike with an accessible, trenchant, and authoritative introduction to Yugoslavia's complex history.

Countries rarely disappear off the map. In the 20th century, only a few countries shared this fate with Yugoslavia. The dissolution of Yugoslavia led to the largest war in Europe since 1945, massive human rights violations and over 100,000 victims. Debating the End of Yugoslavia is less an attempt to re-write the dissolution of Yugoslavia, or to provide a different narrative, than to take stock and reflect on the scholarship to date. New sources and data offer fresh avenues of research avoiding the passion of the moment that often characterized research published during the wars and provide contemporary perspectives on the dissolution. The book outlines the state of the debate rather than focusing on controversies alone and maps how different scholarly communities have reflected on the dissolution of the country, what arguments remain open in scholarly discourse and highlights new, innovative paths to study the period.

Workers' self-management was one of the unique features of communist Yugoslavia. Goran Musić has investigated the changing ways in which blue-collar workers perceived the recurring crises of the regime. Two self-managed metal enterprises, one in Serbia another in Slovenia, provide the frame of the analysis in the time span between 1945 and 1989. These two factories became famous for strikes in 1988 that evoked echoes in popular discourses in former Yugoslavia. Drawing on interviews, factory publications and other media, local archives, and secondary literature, Musić analyzes the two cases, going beyond the clichés of political manipulation from the top and workers' intrinsic attraction to nationalism. The author explains how, in the later phase of communist Yugoslavia, growing social inequalities among the workers and undemocratic practices inside the self-managed enterprises facilitated the spread of a nationalist and pro-market ideology on the shop floors. Yet rather than being a mass taken advantage of by populist leaders, the working class Musić presents is one with agency and voice, a force that played an important role in shaping the fate of the country. The book thus seeks to open a debate on the social processes leading up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

A unique survey of the evidence and academic debates surrounding the break-up of Yugoslavia.