What caused the break-up of Yugoslavia?

Question

What caused the break-up of Yugoslavia?

Answer 1

it consisted of different ethnicities namely Slavs, Croatians, Serbs, Motenegrines, Albanians, Bosnians.  Eventhough there are lot of Muslims among Albanians and Bosnians both have different cultural background and do not mingle and the same for different ethnic backgrounds.  

Communism was the only unifying force which had kept the country together, but once it was gone, the old ethnic rivalries came to the foreground and resulted in the breakup.

Answer 2

See below.  It's complicated.

Answer 3

Simple and Short answer, the fall of the USSR

Answer 4

The Soviet Union pulling out of their countries.  The countries took back their own borders and their own names.  eg. Chech Republic and Slovakia.

Answer 5

It was basically held together by not just Communism, but the personal power/mystique of their leader, General Tito.  (He was like Mao or Stalin, people had to have his picture everywhere.)  Once he died, the whole thing collapsed.

The country was an artificial creation, in the first place, as the main nationalities involved - the Serbs and Croatians - had been at each other's throats for centuries.  It was remarkable that it held together for so long.  The writers of the Treaty of Versailles, (after WWI) thought such a combination had to be made, to be militarily viable, but there was common history or even economics to hold the various parts together.

In the end, there came to be great jealousy between the several nations, esp. of Croatians and Slovenians, for having all the economic power; and of Serbians, for hoarding the political power....as other communist countries broke up along lines of nationality (eg., Ukraine leaves Russia, Czech republic becomes independent), this convinced the various parts of Yugoslavia they could do the same.  (THough for Y. it happened in steps, not all at once.)

Answer 6

The simplest way to put it is

"Ethnic Tensions"

Answer 7

A better question would be 'what held Yugoslavia together?'

This is because there are many fault lines that run through the country.

The Serbs are Orthodox, the Croats Catholic.  The Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet, the Croats and Slovenes use the latin.  The Northern part of the country was under Austro-Hungarian rule, the southern part under Ottoman.

The Serbs look to Russia and the East, the Kosovans to Albania, the Bosnians to Turkey, the Slovenes and Croats to Italy, Austria and the West.

Yugoslavia was a mess - held together by what it was not - it was not Ottoman, it was not Austrian and by lucky or clever rulers, The King and Tito.

The shocking thing is just how long this multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic patchwork of a country stayed together.