«Serbs» or «Yugoslavs»: on the question of national self-determination in socialist Yugoslavia

Abstract

In the 1960s, national consolidation of society became one of the most important directions in the internal policy of socialist Yugoslavia. And at that time the project of eliminating national differences and turning all the peoples of Yugoslavia into a single «Yugoslav nation» for national peace and equality began to be implemented. Josip Broz Tito himself propagated a new identity in official speeches. However, in the 1980s this project failed because of the activities of the Serbian national intellectual opposition and because of the long struggle of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia and the Union of Communists of Serbia with «Great Serbian nationalism and chauvinism». Against the backdrop of the systemic crisis that hit the SFRY in the 1980s, in the Republic of Serbia (as in other republics) the movement towards national self-determination prevailed. The failure of the project of create a Yugoslav nation became one of the most important causes of wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.