The author explains the violent break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s in the context of two legal principles - sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples. She also offers an analysis of Kosovo's future status, international recognition of secession, implications for other conflicts, and much more.

Jasna Dragovi -Soso asks why this strong and apparently democratic opposition movement subsequently turned towards an extreme form of nationalism and had by the end of the 1980s accepted Miloševi 's undemocratic policies. Based on the author's extensive primary source research and interviews with key protagonists, Saviours of the Nation examines both the causes and the consequences of the opposition's transformation into a nationalist force. Highlighting the role of historical context, it argues that three main factors contributed to the intellectuals' elaboration of a radical nationalist ideology: abandonment of cultural "Yugoslavism" in conjunction with the post-Tito crisis of the state, difficulties in solving the thorny "Kosovo question," and relationships between the dissidents and their Slovenian counterparts. Soso also includes a thorough analysis of the "Memorandum" of the Serbian Academy and the intellectuals' relations with Miloševi . She argues that the intellectual opposition's search for Serbian statehood at any price undermined its ability to present a convincing political alternative, allowing the regime to overcome its crisis of legitimacy and continue its reckless and belligerent policies.

Containing essays by leading Cold War scholars, such as Wilfried Loth, Geir Lundestad and Seppo Hentilä, this volume offers a broad-ranging examination of the history of détente in the Cold War. The ten years from 1965 to 1975 marked a deep transformation of the bipolar international system of the Cold War. The Vietnam War and the Prague Spring showed the limits of the two superpowers, who were constrained to embark on a wide-ranging détente policy, which culminated with the SALT agreements of 1972. At the same time this very détente opened new venues for the European countries: French policy towards the USSR and the German Ostpolitik being the most evident cases in point. For the first time since the 1950s, Western Europe began to participate in the shaping of the Cold War. The same could not be said of Eastern Europe, but ferments began to establish themselves there which would ultimately lead to the astounding changes of 1989-90: the Prague Spring, the uprisings in Gdansk in 1970 and generally the rise of the dissident movement. That last process being directly linked to the far-reaching event which marked the end of that momentous decade: the Helsinki conference. The Making of Détente will appeal to students of the Cold War, international history and European contemporary history.