Today nationalist differences are probably more a rationale for violence than a cause. The Franjo Tudjman regime in Croatia, the Slobodan Milosevic regime in Serbia, and the lesser nationalist leaders in both countries and within Bosnia, have utilized the politics of national renewal as the ideological framework within which they have justified their aggressions. From 1974 through 1991, Bosnia was almost a mini-Yugoslavia. Many Bosnians lived in integrated communities, many in mixed marriages. While the conflicts that have ripped Bosnia apart in the 1990s take on a national coloration, their roots are not entirely national.
Nationalist hatreds are often expressions of rural-urban conflicts.
Multi-ethnic communities have also developed more readily there. The countryside, on the other hand, has developed more slowly and has been the home base of the most extreme nationalism. Nationalist logics were rooted in the poorest and most religious social categories and regions. Clearly, nationalist hatred is not a given and multi-ethnic communities are not utopian. In the former Yugoslavia their success or failure depended upon concrete historical, economic, and political developments.