Croatia held multi-party elections in May 1990, with the nationalist HDZ or Croatian democratic Union winning a landslide. Former partisan, political dissident and modern-day conservative nationalist Franjo Tuđman became Croatian president.

Negotiations between republics aiming to preserve Yugoslavia as a loose confederation came to nothing, and both Slovenia and Croatia opted to leave in 1991. The Yugoslav army responded by attempting to reassert control of Slovenia, only to find their columns surrounded by local territorial defence units. The war lasted ten days; the humiliated Yugoslav army gave up.

War in Croatia

The situation in Croatia was more serious, with Serbs in ethnically mixed areas of Croatia demanding the right to secede from any future independent Croatia. The Yugoslav army moved in, ostensibly to keep the peace, but in effect supporting Serbian ambitions to dismember Croatia. Full scale war broke out in autumn 1991, with the Yugoslav army backed by Serb irregulars subjugating and ejecting Croats from areas where populations were mixed, sending hundreds of thousands into exile as refugees.