"Vigorous, passionate, humane, and extremely readable. . . For an account of what has actually happened. . . Glenny's book so far stands unparalleled."--The New Republic The fall of Yugoslavia tells the whole, true story of the Balkan Crisis--and the ensuing war--for those around the world who have watched the battle unfold with a mixture of horror, dread, and confusion. When Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence in June 1991, peaceful neighbors of four decades took up arms against each other once again and a savage war flared in the Balkans. The underlying causes go back to business left unfinished by both the Second and First World Wars. In this acclaimed book, now revised and updated with a new chapter on the Dayton Accords and the subsequent U.S. involvement, Misha Glenny offers a sobering eyewitness chronicle of the events that rekindled the violent conflict, a lucid and impartial analysis of the politics behind them, and incisive portraits of the main personalities involved. Above all, he shows us the human realities behind the headlines, and puts in its true, historical context one of the most ferocious civil wars of our time.

The fourth edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new chapter, a new epilogue, and revisions throughout the book. Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, while the federal system and multiethnic fabric laid down fault lines, the final crisis was sown in the failure to resolve the legitimacy question, triggered by economic deterioration, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on power - either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an 'ethnically cleansed' Greater Serbia. With her detailed knowledge of the area and extensive fieldwork, Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugoslavia's demise and the emergence of the Yugoslav successor states.

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.

This book examines the relationship between nationalism and the rise and fall of Yugoslavia under the rule of Josip Broz Tito. It deals particularly with the interactions between communist and intellectual elites. The authors analyze elites’ initial enthusiasm about the Yugoslav federation and how, with time, they found themselves unable to suppress the nationalists in Yugoslavia. Other scholars have argued that, in a certain sense, Tito’s Yugoslavia proved to be a “hatchery” for the nations that once constituted Yugoslavia, making them ever closer to “completeness.” However, as the authors highlight in this study, this process was one of conflict. The personal role of Tito as an arbiter was essential, although, for the majority of his time in power, he did not act as a dictator. His departure was strongly felt in the 1980s, when ethnic entrepreneurial activity began to flourish—and when ethnic and political relations had gone out of control. While a significant part of this book follows the chronology of ethnic elite interaction in communist Yugoslavia, the global context of Yugoslavia’s rise and fall is taken into account. The authors also use Yugoslavia as a case study to test the validity of nationalism studies more generally.

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.

Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation draws on hundreds of interviews with politicians, soldiers, and citizens to bring readers behind the scenes of Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. Published as the companion to the critically acclaimed BBC documentary broadcast on the Discovery Channel.of photos.

Few figures have dominated a nation's destiny as much as Marshal Tito of former Yugoslavia. For nearly thirty years he held together mutually hostile religious groups in a deeply divided country, but his death in 1980 rekindled centuries-old hatreds and by 1992 Yugoslavia ceased to exist. In this revealing biography, Richard West questions the full impact of Tito's reign of power and his implicit responsibility for the ensuing violent, bloody war in Bosnia. 'Excellent ... I recommend his book for those who already know about Yugoslavia and want food for thought about the future.' David Owen, Sunday Times 'Admirable ... Carefully researched and extremely readable.' Literary Review 'A passionate book, in which West's historical sense is interlaced with his own very intimate knowledge of Yugoslavia from the late 1940s on and of the poignancy of [subsequent] events.' Fergus Pyle, Irish Times 'Masterly'. Glasgow Herald