Combining political analysis, reportage, polemic and personal reflection, this book provides an inside account and explanation of the tragic path leading to Yugoslavia's break-up and to the atavistic war unleashed by Belgrade upon its nascent successor states. Against the background of events as they occurred during the decade since Tito's death in 1980, it tracks the process whereby an equitable political settlement between the country's constituent nations was destroyed by the rise of an increasingly virulent Great-Serb nationalism, bent on re-centralizing the country under its own hegemony. The book is written not by a passive spectator, but by an active participant with a firm grasp of the nation's history, which accounts for the diversity of its content. As the decade it covers draws to a close, Branka Magas's initial cautious optimism changes to a growing intimation of impending tragedy, and finally to outrage at the wanton slaughter and destruction visited upon Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Serbian army, with the tolerance or complicity of Western chancelleries - who thereby also betrayed the beleaguered democratic forces in Serbia itself.
- ISBN10 0860913767
- ISBN13 9780860913764
- Publish Date 29 January 1993
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 9 May 1996
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Verso Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 392
- Language English