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The results of the first free elections in Yugoslavia since World War II, held in 1990, set the stage for the civil war that broke out in summer and fall 1991. In those elections, strongly nationalist parties or coalitions won in each of the republics. In Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and to some extent in Macedonia, nationalists asserted anticommunism in order to bolster their appeal and their legitimacy internationally, while the new Socialist Party of Serbia (nee the League of Communists of Serbia) and the League of Communists in Montenegro effected Ceausescu-like transformations by turning nominally socialist parties into openly nationalist ones.
Robert M. Hayden (Wed,) studied this question.