Two Paths Of State Breakup: Czechoslovakia And Yugoslavia

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long national lines in the 1990s (Rupnik 20-21).
Yugoslavia, similarly, entered WWII as a nationally heterogeneous nation, but unlike Czechoslovakia, it emerged from WWII in much the same form. Even with the Nazi extermination of resident Jews and a similar post-war anti-German backlash, Yugoslavia was left deeply divided between Serbs, Croats and Muslims. This plurality of nations could more easily have been devolved into nation states, as in the Czechoslovakia case, were it not for the lack of definite national territorial concentration; Serbs, Croats and Muslims collided throughout the Yugoslavia state (Djilas 88). True, significant territorial majorities existed for each nation – Serbs in Serbia, Croats in Croatian, and Muslims in Bosnia – but due to historical factors these national majorities were, to varying extents, far from absolute. When the push came for territorial divisions based on nationality, the problem of eliminating minority nations came to the forefront of Yugoslav politics. The prospect of massive population relocatio...