From the start of the 1980s, Yugoslavia underwent a deep economic and social crisis. The mechanisms of redistribution between the Yugoslavian republics were no longer functioning, and each republic became more inward looking, exacerbating national tensions. The myth of a unified Yugoslavian society now belonged to the past. It was then that Slobodan Milosevic, an obscure apparatchik, appeared in Serbia. His project was to save the system by recentralising it with Serbia at its head. This was the return of Serb nationalism. But the disintegration of Yugoslavia was underway. One after the other the republics seceded and proclaimed their independence. War became inevitable. The explosion of nationalisms, the manipulation of past tragedies and the suicidal strategies of the main political players had taken their toll.

Following World War 1, the first unified Yugoslavia was born, the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Very quickly, the first separatist tensions appeared in Kosovo, and particularly in Croatia. This institutional entity did not survive World War 2, which was to plunge the Yugoslavian people into the darkest period of their history. In 1945, Tito created the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This new entity was a federation of peoples and republics placed under the authority of a sole party. At the end of the 1960s, the model that Tito had implemented was contested in Serbia, Croatia and Kosovo. When he died in 1980, socialist Yugoslavia was out of breath, undermined by divisions, incoherence and the resurgence of national tensions.