I also disagree that it was more multi-cultural than new countries are now. Possibly true at the beginning of 90s, definitely not true for Slovenia now.
By contrast, any claimed Yugoslavian identity is a function of a repressive (communist) state since its creation was by fiat. Croatian and other identities predate the creation of Yugoslavia but their expression was suppressed in the service of maintaining its existence. Tito is renowned for pulling this off but after his death things unravelled over time.
The reason why Balkans is such a shit-show for centuries is in the similar mentality of the people living here, embodied in the saying "God, please make my neighbor's cow die"; mentality, language and culture of Croatians, Bosnians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Slovenians is 90% the same.
There is a reason why Yugo-nostalgia is such a thing in this region, and a great great majority of regular folks did not have anything against any of their neighbors, were mixing like crazy, and in a lot of cases living their best lives then - until politics and power struggles of very few, pushed by the West as well, destroyed most of what was good. Of course SFRJ had a lot of traits of communist regimes, in forced culture and "unity" aspects that were bothering people to some extent (not unsimilar to how those exist even in modern Germany, for example), but that was definitely not the main reason for the failure of the federation.
In the manufactured scenario that lead to the breakup, Milosevic gained a disproportionate number of votes in the federation, through basically taking over the political top of other members - but a lot of people also note how it was Croatia that was disproportionately favored by Tito for decades before and it created the "unequal" sentiment - just to advance the point that finger-pointing is always a thing and not useful for the discussion. If we were any smarter and had less self-absorbed and everyone-else-is-to-blame mentality , we would have formed at least economic alliances between the former Yugoslav countries not long after the breakup - in the end, we're all pretty much the same idiots, and got played. (Also, to clarify, I'm Croatian).
I could tell you’re Croatian the moment I read that line.
Don’t you feel that, given the history of Serbs and Croats taking turns oppressing and/or massacring one another, that’s a bit of a simplification?
What divides us is infinitely smaller than what unites us, and yet nationalists poisoned minds with what Freud called the narcissm of small differences.
Croats always claimed Serbs dominated Yugoslavia, while Serbs always claimed the opposite. The result was war and poverty.
Yugoslavia was nothing like the USSR, with much higher freedom of expression, an economic system based on coops competing on a market and freedom to travel.
For what it's worth, I'm also ethnic Croatian.
Some might argue with this but it's notable that a majority wanted out of Yugoslavia and Serbia was willing to use force to stop that.
In my travels, those who think of the communist era as "the good old days" are usually those who had a relatively privileged position in those times and were affiliated with the communist party and often Serbian. For most people communism was an oppressive system that delivered little in the way of quality of life compared to democratic states and repressed personal freedoms.
Full disclosure: I'm an ethnic Croatian.