"that were culturally or ethnically distinct, like much of Europe"
Other than religion I'd like to know what these cultural differences are? Serbs, Bosnians and Croats speak the same language which is very much unlike, say, French and Germans. Or even Slovak and Czechs. People of the UK are more ethnically distinct than people of former Yugoslavia.
Culture is more than language (and as Slovenian our language is different too). You don't have to spend a lot of time in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia to be able to see that they are culturally very different.
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.
Agree about Slovenia. Very different story. But the rest of the region has been dominated by nationalist politics for couple of decades whose survival depends on amplifying those national differences. And as a result cultures are now different. But don't think this was the case in former Yu (80s and earlier). As an extreme example North and South Korea are very different cultures now as a result of politics, don't think this was the case before 1950s.
The nationalist politics is an organic expression of the population. Croatia wasn't created by a nationalist coup d'etat but by a democratic vote. Two decades later it joined the EU, which is hardly the behavior of a nationalist fervor. It's a similar story for the other former republics.
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.
