Balkan Babel: The Disintegration Of Yugoslavia From The Death Of Tito To The Fall Of Milosevic

The fourth edition of this critically acclaimed work includes a new chapter, a new epilogue, and revisions throughout the book. Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, while the federal system and multiethnic fabric laid down fault lines, the final crisis was sown in the failure to resolve the legitimacy question, triggered by economic deterioration, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicians bent on powereither within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an "ethnically cleansed" Greater Serbia. With her detailed knowledge of the area and extensive fieldwork, Ramet paints a strikingly original picture of Yugoslavia's demise and the emergence of the Yugoslav successor states.

Sabrina P. Ramet is professor of political science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. She is the author of six other books, among them Whose Democracy? Nationalism, Religion, and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989 Eastern Europe(1997) and Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia(1998). She has also edited a dozen books, mostly about Eastern Europe and Russia.