YU040401.
Serbian demonstrator burning photograph of Tito, Belgrade,
1990
Courtesy Charles Sudetic
YU040402.
Nationalist Serbs in anti-Tito demonstration, Belgrade,
1990
Courtesy Charles Sudetic
YU040403.
Voting in the first multiparty election in Croatia, 1990
Courtesy Charles Sudetic
Throughout the postwar era, each of Yugoslavia's six republics and two provinces maintained its own political posture and agenda, many aspects of which had originated centuries before. Geography, natural resources, religion, nationality, economic policy, and traditional relations with other countries influenced the positions of republics and provinces. In 1987 Pedro Ramet, a scholar of Yugoslav politics, summarized interrepublican political differences thus: ". . . liberal recentralizers are dominant in the Serbian Party, conservative recentralizers in the Bosnian and Montenegrin Parties, liberal decentralizers in the Slovenian and Vojvodinan Parties, and conservative decentralizers in the Croatian, Macedonian, and Kosovan Parties." By 1990, a complex combination of differentiating factors again threatened to divide the federal structure of the Yugoslav state.
Data as of December 1990