This age’s “Balkanization” of the Balkans is laid in this era, at great human and material cost.

At the era’s beginning, there are five Balkan states: Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

“Ethnic cleansing,” a phrase that will enter public consciousness during this era, begins with the violent Bulgarization campaign directed against ethnic Turks in Bulgaria, while Turkey hovers near the brink of war with Greece and Bulgaria, engendering cooperation between these two former enemies.

When the Soviet Union finally collapses in 1991, the Moldavian S.S.R becomes the independent state of Moldova and the second, postwar Yugoslavia begins to break apart as four of its constituent republics—Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina—fight for independence from the dominant Serbian republic.

When the dust has settled and the blood has dried, only Montenegro remains in the Yugoslav federation.

At the same time, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria shed their socialist governments—the latter two imprison or execute their former leaders—and even Albania, having increasingly walled itself off over its several decades of independence, begins to retreat from its peculiarly isolationist brand of Stalinism and let in the light of the outside world.

A new, smaller, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is inaugurated on April 27, 1992,although only comprising Serbia and Montenegro.

Its capital and assembly are both placed in Belgrade.

The entire international community does not recognize the new state, however, because of its continued military involvement in other republics of the former Yugoslavia.

Montenegro holds a referendum on remaining in Yugoslavia in 1992, in which all but four-tenths of a percent of the votes are cast for remaining in the federation with Serbia, although the turnout is only sixty-six percent because of a boycott by the Muslim, Albanian and Catholic minorities as well as of pro-independence Montenegrins.

The opposition claims that the poll had been organized under undemocratic conditions, during war time in the former Yugoslavia, with widespread propaganda from the state-controlled media in favor of a pro-federation vote.

There is no impartial report on the fairness of the referendum, as it had not been nicmonitored.

Montenegro thus accedes in 1992 to the “third Yugoslavia,” a federal republic comprising only it and Serbia.

On the other hand, in 1989, the remains of King Nicholas and other members of the former royal family had been returned to Montenegro to be reinterred with great ceremony in Cetinje.

This sign of the continuing strength of a sense of distinctive Montenegrin identity is matched by lively criticism of the conduct of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In addition, UN sanctions against Yugoslavia seriously harm Montenegro, especially by undermining its lucrative tourist trade; their impact, however, is somewhat softened by the opportunities created for smuggling, in collaboration with interests in Albania.

Open warfare breaks out in Sarajevo on April 6 following a tense period of escalating tensions and sporadic military incidents between the forces that are loyal to the government of Bosnia, Croatian units attempting to secure a union among Croatia and Croat-majority areas of the republic, and a secessionist Serb army.

The destructive use of “ethnic cleansing” (depopulating areas of a particular ethnic group) by irregular Serb troops to gain a stronghold in places with a mixed population creates a flood of refugees.

The most brutal chapter in the breakup of Yugoslavia is the bitter and protracted Bosnian civil war, which begins several months later than fighting in the republics of Slovenia and Croatia.

Serbian leaders like Slobodan Milosevic channel arms and military support to the Serb minority in Bosnia under the guise of protecting them.

Serb forces besiege Croats and Muslims in Sarajevo from May 1992.

Foreign governments respond ...

… with a United Nations security council resolution in May 1992 that imposes stricter economic sanctions (not always tightly enforced) than those that had been imposed in 1991 to keep fuel and weapons from Serbia and Montenegro.

International recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina results in the official withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) from the republic's territory, although their Bosnian Serb members merely join the Army of Republika Srpska.

Armed and equipped from JNA stockpiles in Bosnia, supported by volunteers and various paramilitary forces from Serbia, and receiving extensive humanitarian, logistical and financial support from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Republika Srpska's offensives in 1992 manage to place much of the country under its control.

Rebel Serbs shell Dubrovnik in July 1992.

Bosnian Serb guerrillas carry out deadly campaigns of "ethnic cleansing," massacring members of other ethnic groups or expelling them from their homes to create exclusively Serb areas.

Attacks on civilians and international relief workers disrupt supplies of food and other necessities just when such aid is most crucial: millions of Bosnians (and Croatians) have been driven from their homes by July 1992 in what will become the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War.

The UN sanctions have precipitated a rapid economic decline in the new Yugoslav federation, of which Milosevic is reelected president in 1992, the same year in which he founds the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

Relations between Serbia …

The United Nations, alarmed by ethnic cleansing and other human rights abuses (in which Croats and Muslims also engage, though to a lesser extent than do the Serbs), resolves to punish such war crimes.