Word: serbia
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...have been unraveling for years. Since 1981, the 1.7 million Albanians in the Serbian-controlled province of Kosovo have been agitating for separate status. Last spring and summer the relatively prosperous northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia voted in free elections to install noncommunist, Western-oriented governments, while Serbia, the largest republic, chose to retain its communist government -- lately renamed socialist -- under hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic. Those divisive events were followed by a landslide referendum in which 88% of Slovenia's 2.1 million citizens voted for independence from Belgrade. Since then, the federal tax and monetary systems have...
...crumbling. What else can hold the union together? And if Croatia (pop. 4.6 million) should secede, what would become of its 600,000 Serbian minority? "All Serbs," says Milosevic, "must have the right to live in one state." This implies that he would lay claim to a "greater Serbia" by annexing the Serbian regions not only of Croatia but of adjacent Bosnia and Herzegovina as well...
...only did Milosevic become the first holdover from the communist past to retain the presidency of a Yugoslav republic in an open election; his habit of waving the bloodied shirt of ethnic grievances set Serbia on a course of imminent collision with other Yugoslavs, notably Croats and Slovenes. Said Aleksandar Baljak, a Serbian journalist: "Democracy came and knocked at the door, but we weren't at home...
...Serbia's balloting was an unmistakable act of self-determination: despite charges of "Stalinist-style propaganda" and spot vote rigging, Milosevic's landslide appeared to be genuine. So it was democracy in one sense. Liberal, however, it was not. "I'm for Slobo because he's for Serbia," said a Belgrade voter exultantly, summing up the ethnic antipathies...
Whether Milosevic manages to retain control in Serbia's parliament in upcoming elections may determine whether the Yugoslav federation shatters. With a governing bloc, he could more easily press territorial claims against Croatia and grudges against Slovenia. Disintegration was not Poland's problem, and Walesa, despite his affection for Poland's prewar dictator, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, strikes few people as a Volk-glorifying Fuhrer. But in trouncing candidate-come-lately Stanislaw Tyminski, a returned emigre who offered a form of national salvation as easy as a drug trip, Walesa himself could not quite shake off charges of pandering to emotions...