State and identity: The controversies of identity change in Croatian society in the 1990s

Statehood and nation-building, wars and social transition were some of the basic (internal) elements which determined the complexity of identity changes in Croatian society at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The shift to plural society at a time of increasing national tensions in Croatia and Yugoslavia activated wide-scale identity reconstruction, ranging from a tendency toward modernization to a revival of violent and exclusive ethnonational paradigms. Extremely complex historical circumstances, combined with the extraordinary tempo of change – “the acceleration of history” – resulted in some controversial aspects of identity reconstruction: the concept of nationstate building in relation to identity, the problem of redefining the identity of the warring nations in terms of national homogenization and the implementation of the so-called humane resettlement of nations as solutions to interethnic conflict