The states of the former Yugoslavia and, more broadly, the Balkans today remain one of the reference points of world politics. In many ways, the Balkan Peninsula is still considered the “powder keg of Europe” due to the political division of its communities. However, the well-established toolkit for analyzing political processes in the region often reveals its predictive failure. One of the solutions in constructing trajectories for the political development of the Balkans can be an identity prism of research. In the context of the exacerbation of ethno- political conflicts after the disintegration of the SFRY, the competition of national projects and discourses of the development of newly formed polities, wars of memory and the struggle of historical narratives, economic crises and the global reorganization of the world, this paper presents a classification of post-Yugoslav states according to the nature of the politicization of social divisions that accompany identification processes in the region. Exploring the historical and political development of the Balkans and its modern narratives, the article proposes a new approach to the identity analysis of the former Yugoslavia countries — the “Center — Frontier” polarity, as well as a cognitive map of the region based on this approach.