Saviours of the Nation?: Serbia's Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism

The early 1980s saw the forging of a strong intellectual opposition movement in Serbia which contested the communist system and rallied around the defence of human and civil rights. By the end of the decade, this movement had become engulfed in the process of national homogenisation around Serbia's communist leader Slobodan Milosevic and his undemocratic approach to the resolution of the national question. The Belgrade intelligentsia's choice of nation over democracy and its de facto abdication of its critical role not only prevented it from representing a convincing alternative to Milosevic's belligerent and ultimately self-destructive policy, but also helped Serbia's neo-communist regime overcome its legitimacy crisis.