Serbia and the new Yugoslavia

Abstract

The dramatic fall of Slobodan Milosevic, at first president of Serbia between 1989 and 1997 and, from 1997 to October 2000, president of the new Yugoslavia which includes only Serbia and Montenegro, closed a ten-year period during which Serbia isolated itself from the rest of Europe and, alone with Croatia, was ruled in an authoritarian manner apparently irrespective of the consequences for the country. The domination of Milosevic over Serbia, which began in the last years of the communist regime, was confirmed at the first multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections of December 1990. At the presidential election, Milosevic was popularly elected as a moderate former communist against Vuk Draskovic, whose platform was anti-communist but also was then virulently nationalistic. At the parliamentary election, Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) obtained 194 out of 250 seats, the Serbian Renaissance Movement (SRM) of Draskovic was second with 19 seats.