ABSTRACT
Tito’s death in May 1980 changed very little for Yugoslavia on the surface. The transition of power to the collective presidency was smooth, based on the agreed strategy of the leadership to continue “along Tito’s path.” The lavish state funeral of Yugoslavia’s late leader symbolized the commitment of his successors to maintaining the status quo. Yet these appearances hid underlying tensions. The collective presidency lacked both vision and unity of purpose to deal with the challenges of the 1980s, while the country descended into economic and political crisis. The increasingly public differences between Serbia and Slovenia came to the forefront, creating the space for a broader public debate on the causes of the crisis and possible solutions. As the Serbian and Slovenian leaderships sought greater legitimacy, they allowed progressive liberalization of the public sphere, enabling the “critical intelligentsias” in the two republics to gain greater public exposure for their increasingly nationalist platforms. In contrast to 1971, when the Croatian “mass movement” led by its intelligentsia was brutally suppressed, the Serbian and Slovenian leaders of the late 1980s decided instead to embrace their intelligentsias’ nationalism. By 1989, Serbia’s new leader Slobodan Milošević embraced tactics that explicitly sought to overturn the existing political order and recentralize the Yugoslav federation under Serbian control. Meanwhile, under the leadership of Milan Kučan, Slovenia decided to pursue multi-party democracy and seek as much independence as possible from the common state.
