The main causes of the disintegration of Yugoslavia can be traced to events set in motion after the death of Marshal Tito. Under Tito's authoritarian Communist rule, Yugoslavia enjoyed a period of security, inter-ethnic peace, and relative prosperity. All this disintegrated after Tito's death in 1980.
Without Tito's guidance, Yugoslavia gradually experienced resurgent nationalism. Granted, ethnic divisions existed under Tito's regime. But although Serbs were the most numerous group in his multi-ethnic guerrilla movement, Tito strove to create a Yugoslavian structure based on equal nationalities. For thirty years, Yugoslavia functioned as a federal union of sovereign national states. Yugoslavia enjoyed relative freedom from nationalist conflict because Tito acted as the final arbiter of such disputes: "Tito followed a very careful policy of balancing all national claims and conflicts, sometimes to the point of artificiality and visible injustice" (Mojzes, 1994, p. 76). The fact that no ethnic group believed themselves discriminated against contributed to Yugoslavia's ethnic harmony during Tito's regime. Thus the national question was merely masked. As one political analyst put it, "Tito kept the ethnic groups from killing each other" (Hall, 1994, p. 117).
After Tito's death, the Communist Party changed its name to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) and leadership of Yugoslavia disintegrated into a series of intense power struggles among the political elites. The power structure of the Yugoslavian government was hopelessly splintered--there were eight regional Communist parties, in addition to the secret police and the Army. Collectively, none wielded the power and influence that Tito had enjoyed: "Tito was frequently likened to a great oak tree, in the shade of whose immense branches nothing else could grow" (Silber and Little, 1996, p. 29). According to Mojzes (1994), "The end of Yugoslavia took place wh...