'The Berlin Wall Crumbled Down upon Our Heads!': 1989 and Violence in the Former Socialist Multinational Federations

This contribution deals with the violence, conflicts and wars that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in the former socialist multinational federations. The question of why these federations disintegrated so soon after the collapse of the communist regimes is followed by more puzzles. Why did violence occur in some places and not in others? Where, under what circumstances, and when was violence most likely to happen? Finally, why was the disintegration of Yugoslavia so uniquely brutal? In the author’s view, two crucial questions determined the fate of many citizens of the former socialist federations in the context of their imminent disintegration: Did the incipient states (republics) and the federal centre accept the separation and the existing borders? Did all groups and all regions accept independence and the authority of the new states? The analysis of the possible answers to these questions across the former socialist federations and their former republics that experienced violence brings us to what the author defines as three decisive triggers of violence: citizenship, borders and territories, and the role of the military apparatus of defunct federations.