Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T02:43:50.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Could a Confederation have Saved Yugoslavia?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Slobodan Antonić
Slobodan Antonić*
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Studies, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Today, after the signing of the peace agreement in Paris, when the end of the Yugoslav war is in sight, one frequently hears the questions: Could the war have been avoided and could a confederation have saved Yugoslavia? Namely, in late 1990 and early 1991, the republics now outside Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia) proposed that Yugoslavia be reorganised as a confederation which would, as they claimed, have fulfilled their main political aspirations. The Serbian side refused resolutely, and, soon afterwards, war started in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, which was actually their war of liberation. Now, when the republics in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia are internationally recognised, when they have largely recognised each other and when we are witnessing the restoration of economic and other relations between the peoples who shared a common state for seventy-three years, we may justifiably ask: Would it not have been better if the Serbian side had accepted a confederation and, thus, preserved some kind of Yugoslavia, than, by its persistent refusal, have lead the secessionist republics to take up arms?

Type
Part II: The Politics of Disintegration
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 25 , Issue 3: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: Inevitable or Avoidable? , September 1997 , pp. 469 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Antonić, S., “O nekim argumentima protiv konfederalizma” (On Some Arguments against Confederalism), Vreme politickog pluralizma (Beograd: Institut za politicke studije, 1990), pp. 17–32.Google Scholar
Antonić, S., “Za i protiv konfederacije” (Confederation—Pros and Cons), Gledista (Beograd, 1991), Vol. XXXIII, Nos. 3–4, pp. 54–63.Google Scholar
Antonić, S., “Fighting for the Truth,” East European Reporter (Budapest, 1992), Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 62–64.Google Scholar
Antonić, S., “The Place and Role of Parliament,” Challenges of Parliamentarism: The Case of Serbia in the Early Nineties (Belgrade: Institute of Social Sciences, 1995), pp. 27—43.Google Scholar
Baćević, Lj., ed., Jugoslavija na kriznoj prekretnici (Yugoslavia on a Critical Crossroads) (Beograd: Institut drustvenih nauka, 1991).Google Scholar
Jugoslavija treći put (Third time Yugoslavia—Anthology of Documents), special edition of Borba, November 1991.Google Scholar
Ch., Krauthammer, “Blest be the Ties That Bind,” Time, 13 August 1990.Google Scholar
Stokić, Lj., Demokratija i osvajanje vlasti: izbori u Srbiji 1990 (Democracy and Rise into Power: Elections in Serbia 1990) (Beograd: Zenit, 1994).Google Scholar