Neither centuries under Turkish and Austro-Hungarian domination nor more than four decades of communist rule have obliterated the ethnic passions that made the Balkans a synonym for fractious politics. Now, with the communist world crumbling, new instability may follow the glum quiet of the Pax Sovietica. The peril exists side by side with the opportunity for healthy change, but the current political ferment of Eastern Europe is an inherently volatile mix in which old demons -- belligerent nationalism and demagogic populism -- could win out as easily as liberal democracy.
Nowhere are destabilizing and potentially disruptive forces more clearly displayed than in Yugoslavia, the fragile coalition of six republics and two semi-autonomous provinces. Over the past three months, the northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia have held elections, ejecting incumbent communist governments and staking out positions that fall just short of independence. Slovenia's new government has served notice that it will declare itself independent if the other states do not accept its demands to turn Yugoslavia into a grouping of sovereign republics.
Federal President Borisav Jovic bowed to nationalist sentiment this month when he said the troubled country may soon hold a referendum to decide if Yugoslavia's six republics should split into separate nations. "The right of self-determination, including the right of secession," he said, "is a natural political right of each nationality."
At the same time, the semi-autonomous province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9 to 1 but which is administered by Serbia, is engaged in a bitter dispute with Belgrade over a recent attempt to break away. Serbia, the largest republic, with 36% of Yugoslavia's 23.6 million people, has suspended the Kosovo parliament and rushed more troops into the province. The move came after more than 100 Kosovo deputies declared their region's independence from Serbia and demanded full republic status within the Yugoslav federation.
For Serbia's Communist leader, Slobodan Milosevic, the struggle over control of Kosovo may provide a last chance to revive his and his party's flagging fortunes. Milosevic came to power in 1986 on the force of his strident Serbian nationalism, but a deepening economic crisis and the party's refusal to permit open elections in the province have since undermined his authority. Just last year, hundreds of thousands of Serbs turned out at a Milosevic rally to hear him promise a new golden age for Serbia; last month 30,000 people demonstrated against him in Belgrade, burning pictures of him and chanting "Traitor, traitor." In a bid for survival, a Serbian Communist congress in Belgrade voted two weeks ago to merge with a front organization, the Socialist Alliance, to become the Serbian Socialist Party. The change is widely thought to be purely cosmetic: a few non-Communists were elected to the new party's leadership, but Milosevic was voted into the top post without opposition.