Identity and Secession: The Case of the Secession of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia

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The secessions of Slovenia andCroatia – two interrelated and interdependent processes – put an end to the existenceof the socialist federal Yugoslavia. The article examines the mutual influence of theidentity transformations of the Slovenes andCroats in the second half of the 1980s – early 1990s and the disintegration of the SFRY.Historical and cultural background, the influence of socio-political conditions and thepurposeful efforts of key actors to transformidentities are analyzed.It is shown that the main vector ofchanges in the identity of Slovenes andCroats in the second half of the 1980s –early 1990s favored secessions, but theywere not predetermined. The influence ofexternal factors was very strong, including, firstly, changes in the political landscape of Serbia and their echoes in thestructures of power at the federal level,and, secondly, the approaching collapse ofthe political regime in the USSR and othercountries of Eastern Europe, and also theend of the Cold War.The actions of political leaders were ofparticular importance for the transformations in the sphere of identity. Thanksto their efforts, the secessionist strategiesstrongly affected the identities of Slovenesand Croats. But in Croatia, with the coming to power of F. Tudjman and the Croatian Democratic Union, practically the entire system of government bodies began tofunction in the regime of a “nationalizingstate” (R. Brubaker).