After Tito died in 1980, what led to the rise of nationalism and the eventual dissolution of Yugoslavia?
A. After Tito’s death, as I indicated earlier on, we had the sort of turning presidency. So, in other words, you did not have one single person who would impersonate the state, it would rotate every single year. So, of course, his authority was actually very limited. But from that moment on some nationalistic trends could be voiced and started to emerge less timidly than before in the different republics and, more specifically, in Serbia. In Serbia, even the press, came up with Serb nationalist opinions. As of ’81, a year after Tito’s death, some troubles arose in Kosovo. Kosovo, might I remind you, is an autonomous province whose population is — Albanian represented about 80 to 90 per cent. But Kosovo did not have the status of a Republic, and so the Albanians from Kosovo, who claimed the status of Republic for their province (and some were even more radical and they wanted to be reunited with Albania,) generated major troubles, riots, that started at the University of Kosovo and the
