It is my hope that the foregoing chapters have provided some clarification of the nature of the debates within the field of Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav studies as well as concerning the differences in point of view among the various authors discussed. I have tried, to the extent of my knowledge and ability, to discuss those works which have had the greatest impact in the field and/or are the most deserving of attention. I have left to the side books which are best left to the side, though I hasten to point out that no survey of literature in a given field can ever hope to be complete and that no special meaning should be read into the exclusion of one or another book from discussion in the foregoing pages. What an alert reader will note at once is that scholars in the field of Yugoslav studies (and, of course, principals engaged in writing their memoirs) have some serious disagreements with each other and that these involve both substantive questions and questions related to research methodology.

Where substantive controversies are concerned, there are differences of opinion concerning when the conflict ‘really’ started – did it start, for example, somewhere between 1986 and 1991 as most scholars think, with 1991 being the ‘common sense’ view, or should one trace the conflict back in time?