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The mass movement known as the Croatian Spring began with the Socialist Republic of Croatia's ruling Communist party, led by a new generation of party leaders who sought greater economic and political autonomy from Yugoslavia's federal government. It quickly grew outside of the party, particularly among students and intellectuals, and led to a strike in Zagreb in late 1971. Despite his initial support for the party's reforms, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito ultimately sided with its more conservative factions to suppress the movement.

An Uncertain Spring draws on extensive primary source materials, including interviews, memoirs, and archival documents, to examine this mass movement and the domestic factors that made it possible. Author Mila Dragojevic argues that, far from homogenous, the Croatian Spring consisted of several different interest groups not only within the Communist party but also within Croatian society. While reformist leaders were committed to the inclusion of different perspectives, transparency, and crucial changes to modernize the obsolete system, their discussions of Croatian national identity stoked fears of marginalization among ethnic Serbs and other minorities, and their insistence on stopping the strike and the use of political jargon, among other differences in approaches to reforms, distanced them from the student-led activists. By mobilizing the support of Croatia's Serbian population as well as the Yugoslav federal government, the party's conservatives removed their reformist opponents from power and maintained political order, but they also lost political legitimacy among the general populace.

Offering many valuable lessons to students and scholars of democratization and nationalism, An Uncertain Spring invites readers to consider the roles that political leaders in culturally diverse societies can and should play during major economic and political reforms.