Part Two - Indymedia

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Setting the Stage
Historical Review
The liberation of Belgrade from German occupation by the combined efforts
of Tito's Partisans and the Soviet Red Army on October 20, 1944,
represented the symbolic beginning of Communist rule over the second
"new" Yugoslavia. Although there had been and would be dates of more
legal importance, control over the country's political center not only suggested
the solidity of the Communist organization, but provided it with
the secure basis and administrative apparatus necessary for governance, 1
The first "old" Yugoslavia, which had perished in the Second World
War, had been formed on December 1, 1918, as an alliance of several
South Slavic and other nations. Originally entitled "The Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," the new state really combined members of
over a dozen ethnic groups, each with its own culture, history, and in
some cases, language and religion. While the unification of these groups
made a certain amount of sense given the geographic, demographic, and
political makeup of the region, it was nonetheless at odds with the exclusivist
atmosphere typical of many 19th-century nationalist ideologies.
Moreover, the newly formed entity rested on shaky foundations since
each of the predominant member nations joining it held different concepts
of state organization. While the Croats hoped the Yugoslav state
would be a loose federation of equal and autonomous nations, the Serbs
envisioned and successfully established it as a highly centralized, unitaristic
entity dominated by Serbian governing institutions. As a result,
many citizens of the new state never accepted its legitimacy and even
fewer came to see themselves as members of a new "Yugoslav" nation.
The resultant clashes between these conflicting notions of the new state,
combined with the concurrent growth of national intolerance and the
monarchical government's increasingly oppressive and autocratic style,
made for a turbulent interwar experience. 2 Eventually, faced by the
growing threat from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, the prewar govern-
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