Post-Yugoslav States Thirty Years after 1991: Unfinished Businesses of a Fivefold Transition

The article critically examines and evaluates from a 30-year perspective the developments in states that emerged after the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. It places 1991 in opposition to 1989, and to what 1989 symbolized for most of Europe. But it also argues that 1991 in Yugoslavia was a direct, although undesirable, consequence of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. The article develops the concept of fivefold transition to explain expectations and achievements for each of the five sectors of transition: political, economic, statehood, identity and war-to-peace transition. In all five sectors the results are mixed. Three areas of unfinished business remain particularly pertinent. They are related to questions: (1) whether or not the disintegration of Yugoslavia is now over?; (2) whether the reintegration of post-Yugoslav states that disintegrated simultaneously with Yugoslavia is over or not?; and (3) whether integration into the European Union is still a viable option for all countries of the Western Balkans. The article argues for a need that the new generation of post-Yugoslavs (re)consider for themselves the big promises of 1989 and 1991, and to try to either complete the process or—if not convinced of its worth—to begin imagining and conceptualizing a new one.