page_title: Croatian War of Independence
section_title: Political changes in Yugoslavia
hierarchical_section_title: Croatian War of Independence / Background / Political changes in Yugoslavia
caption_attribution_description: English: Slobodan Milosevic, just after signing the Dayton Agreement
context_page_description: The Croatian War of Independence was fought from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia —and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations in Croatia by 1992. In Croatia, the war is primarily referred to as the "Homeland War" and also as the "Greater-Serbian Aggression". In Serbian sources, "War in Croatia" and "War in Krajina" are used.
  A majority of Croats wanted Croatia to leave Yugoslavia and become a sovereign country, while many ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, supported by Serbia, opposed the secession and wanted Serb-claimed lands to be in a common state with Serbia. Most Serbs sought a new Serb state within a Yugoslav federation, including areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with ethnic Serb majorities or significant minorities, and attempted to conquer as much of Croatia as possible. Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, but agreed to postpone it with the Brioni Agreement and cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia on 8 October 1991.
context_section_description: In the 1970s, Yugoslavia's socialist regime became severely splintered into a liberal-decentralist nationalist faction led by Croatia and Slovenia that supported a decentralized federation to give greater autonomy to Croatia and Slovenia, versus a conservative-centralist nationalist faction led by Serbia that supported a centralized federation to secure Serbia's and the Serbs' interests across Yugoslavia – as they were the largest ethnic group in the country as a whole. From 1967 to 1972 in Croatia and 1968 and 1981 protests in Kosovo, nationalist doctrines and actions caused ethnic tensions that destabilized Yugoslavia. The suppression by the state of nationalists is believed to have had the effect of identifying Croat nationalism as the primary alternative to communism itself and made it a strong underground movement.
  A crisis emerged in Yugoslavia with the weakening of the communist states in Eastern Europe towards the end of the Cold War, as symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Croatia, the regional branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the League of Communists of Croatia, had lost its ideological potency. Slovenia and Croatia wanted to move towards decentralization. SR Serbia, headed by Slobodan Milošević, adhered to centralism and single-party rule, and in turn effectively ended the autonomy of the autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina by March 1989, taking command of their votes in the Yugoslav federal presidency. Nationalist ideas started to gain influence within the ranks of the still-ruling League of Communists, while Milošević's speeches, notably the 1989 Gazimestan speech in which he talked of "battles of quarrels", favored continuation of a unified Yugoslav state — one in which all power would continue to be centralized in Belgrade.
  In the autumn of 1989, the Serbian government pressured the Croatian government to allow a series of Serb nationalist rallies in the country, and the Serbian media and various Serbian intellectuals had already begun to refer to the Croatian leadership as "Ustaše", and began to make reference to genocide and other crimes committed by the Ustaše between 1941 and 1945. The Serbian political leadership approved of the rhetoric and accused the Croatian leadership of being "blindly nationalistic" when it objected.
  Having completed the anti-bureaucratic revolution in Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Montenegro, Serbia secured four out of eight federal presidency votes in 1991, which rendered the governing body ineffective as other republics objected and called for reform of the Federation. In 1989, political parties were allowed and a number of them had been founded, including the Croatian Democratic Union (Croatian: Hrvatska demokratska zajednica) (HDZ), led by Franjo Tuđman, who later became the first president of Croatia. Tudjman ran on a nationalist platform with a program of "national reconciliation" between Croatian communists and former Ustašes (fascists) being a key component of his party's political program. Accordingly, he also integrated former Ustaše members into the party and state's apparatus. 
  In January 1990, the League of Communists broke up on ethnic lines, with the Croatian and Slovene factions demanding a looser federation at the 14th Extraordinary Congress. At the congress, Serbian delegates accused the Croatian and Slovene delegates of "supporting separatism, terrorism and genocide in Kosovo". The Croatian and Slovene delegations, including most of their ethnic Serb members, eventually left in protest, after Serbian delegates rejected every proposed amendment.
  January 1990 also marked the beginning of court cases being brought to Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court on the matter of secession. The first was the Slovenian Constitutional Amendments case after Slovenia claimed the right to unilateral secession pursuant to the right of self-determination. The Constitutional Court ruled that secession from the federation was only permitted if there was the unanimous agreement of Yugoslavia's republics and autonomous provinces. The Constitutional C
caption: Serbian President Slobodan Milošević wanted to retain Serb-claimed lands in Croatia within a common state with Serbia.
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