The disintegration of Yugoslavia
The problem is social
Western powers present the Balkan conflicts as political and religious confrontations. Catherine Samary prefers a socioeconomic explanation of the regional crisis. A crisis of unequal development that the European Union has no intention of solving. Catherine Samary
The explosion of the Yugoslav federation since 1991 is above all conflicts. The country was always on the fringe of the capitalist world, and with a very uneven level of development. Communists took control after the second world war, the north of the country was massively industrialised, while Kosovo and other southern regions remained 80% President Tito's main strategy to cement the different republics and ethnic groups together was to industrialise the south, and bring its standard of living up to the rest of country. But although considerable progress was made, in 1989 the average salary in the northern republic of Slovenia was seven times higher than in the poorest region, Kosovo.