"Kosovo, My Land"? Slovenians, Albanians, and the Limits of Yugoslav Social Cohesion

Abstract

The author examines the Kosovo crisis in the context of the pluralisation and democratisation of Slovenian society in the 1980s and early 1990s. This issue became a catalyst not only for the repositioning of structures of party leadership in relation to Belgrade, but also with respect to general public debates. By charting individual stages of the critical decade of 1981-1991, the author presents Slovenian perceptions of Kosovo's political, economic, and social issues, first through the works of neo-Marxist critics and later through the activism of a group of left-liberal intellectuals, which included the provision of legal support and a high-profile social action related to the violations of Kosovar Albanian human rights. The author discusses the constraints encountered by this brief attempt to establish a pan-Yugoslav civil society initiative. At the same time, he shows how the complexities of the Kosovo crisis were used to coalesce the Slovenian nation into flight from Yugoslavia.