Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was a country in Central Europe and the Balkans that existed from 1918 to 1992. Its name means 'Land of the South Slavs'. It began after World War I, under the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, when the Kingdom of Serbia joined with the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. It was the first union of South Slavic peoples as a sovereign state. Before this, they had lived for centuries under foreign rule, including the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy.

The House of Karađorđević ruled the kingdom. In 1922, other countries recognized it at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. On 3 October 1929, it was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Alexander I ruled during a long time of political crisis that led to the 6 January Dictatorship. In 1934, he was killed. Prince Paul led the state as a prince regent until Alexander's son Peter II was declared old enough to rule, after the Yugoslav coup d'état in March 1941.

In April 1941, the kingdom was invaded and occupied by the Axis powers. This started World War II in Yugoslavia. The Communist-led Partisan resistance declared the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia and received the backing of the Allies at the Tehran Conference. In November 1945, the Constituent Assembly declared Yugoslavia a federal republic, ending monarchical rule. Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country from 1944 until his death in 1980. He was first prime minister and later president. In 1963, the country was renamed for the last time, as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia was made up of six republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Inside Serbia were two self-governing provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. After Tito's death, the country faced economic and political problems. Nationalism grew, and ethnic conflicts came up. Yugoslavia broke up along the borders of its republics during the Revolutions of 1989, which led to the Yugoslav Wars.

After the breakup, Montenegro and Serbia formed a smaller state, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which is covered in Serbia and Montenegro. This state ended in 2006, when Montenegro and Serbia each became independent countries. Kosovo has had an ongoing dispute over its declaration of independence in 2008.

Background

Main article: Creation of Yugoslavia

The idea of Yugoslavia began in the late 1600s. It was one shared country for all South Slavic peoples. The idea became well known through the Illyrian Movement in the 1800s. The name joins two Slavic words: jug, meaning "south," and Slaveni or Sloveni, meaning "Slavs." Plans to form Yugoslavia moved forward quickly after the Corfu Declaration of 1917. That was an agreement between the Yugoslav Committee and the government of the Kingdom of Serbia.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

Main article: Kingdom of Yugoslavia

See also: 6 January Dictatorship

The country was formed in 1918, right after World War I. It was called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It came from a joining of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia. At the time, people often called it a "Versailles state." In 1929, King Alexander I renamed the country Yugoslavia. In 1920, the Treaty of Trianon gave some northern lands from Hungary to Yugoslavia.

In 1928, a politician named Puniša Račić attacked members of the Croatian Peasant Party in the National Assembly. Two people died. The party's leader, Stjepan Radić, died a few weeks later. On 6 January 1929, Alexander ended the constitution, banned national political parties, and took power himself. He hoped this would reduce feelings of wanting to separate from the country. Later, he introduced a new constitution and ended his rule in 1931. Alexander's policies also drew criticism from other countries. These included Germany, where the Nazis had come to power, and the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin had become absolute ruler.

In 1934, King Alexander was killed in Marseille during a official visit to France. His son, Peter II, became king at only eleven years old. A group that helped rule in his place was led by Prince Paul. In 1939, with support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Croatian leader Vladko Maček helped create the Banovina of Croatia. In March 1941, Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact. Many military officers disagreed with this, and they took control of the government in the Yugoslav coup d'état. Army General Dušan Simović took power, and King Peter, who was 17, was given full powers. Then Hitler decided to attack Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, which led to war.

World War II

Main article: World War II in Yugoslavia

On 6 April 1941, German, Italian and Hungarian forces invaded Yugoslavia. The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) bombed Belgrade and other large cities. On 17 April, leaders from Yugoslavia's regions signed an armistice with Germany in Belgrade. This ended eleven days of fighting. The Axis powers took control of the country and divided it up. The Independent State of Croatia became a Nazi partner state, ruled by the Ustaše militia. German troops took parts of Serbia and Slovenia, while Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy took other parts. From 1941 to 1945, the Croatian Ustaše government persecuted and murdered many people, including Serbs, Jews and Roma. Many people were forced to leave their homes. Some were even forced to become Catholics.

From the start, there were two main groups fighting back. The communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and the royalist Chetniks both resisted. The Partisans were led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito, and the Chetniks by Draža Mihajlović. The Partisans received support from the Allies at the Tehran conference in 1943. The Partisans used guerrilla tactics, and their movement grew into the largest resistance army in occupied Western and Central Europe. The Chetniks focused more on fighting the Partisans. They also persecuted Muslims and Croats. The Partisans won famous battles at Neretva and Sutjeska. The Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia met in Bihać, in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1942. It met again in Jajce in 1943. In 1944, the Partisans pushed the Axis out of Serbia, and in 1945 they pushed them out of the rest of Yugoslavia. The Red Army gave them some help. By May 1945, they had taken Trieste and parts of the Austrian provinces of Styria and Carinthia. In June 1944, a Tito-Šubašić Agreement tried to bring the Partisans together with supporters of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but Tito remained in control. Many victims were left behind after the war. Historians Vladimir Žerjavić and Bogoljub Kočović later studied the losses and found that a very large number of people had died.

Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia

Main article: Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia

On 11 November 1945, parliamentary elections were held. Only the Communist-led People's Front appeared on the ballot. It won all 354 seats in the new Constituent Assembly. On 29 November, the Assembly declared the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, and the country was no longer a monarchy. A regency council had been set up by the King on 2 March 1945 to prepare for the elections. Historians disagree on whether this was an abdication. Marshal Tito now had full control of the country, and opposition groups were removed from power. The 1946 Constitution of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was modelled on the Constitution of the Soviet Union. It created six republics, with Belgrade as the federal capital. The government was strongly centralized under the Communist Party, and the constitution recognized the many nationalities in the country.

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Main article: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

On 7 April 1963, the country changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Josip Broz Tito was named President for life. Each republic and province had its own constitution, parliament, and leaders. Tito was the most powerful person in the country. Officials who disagreed with him could lose their jobs, as Aleksandar Ranković did. Some people began to push back against the strict system. Students in Belgrade and several other cities joined the worldwide protests of 1968. Tito later removed the protest leaders from their university and Communist Party jobs. In 1970 and 1971, students in Zagreb led protests for more freedom and greater Croatian self-rule, during the Croatian Spring. The government stopped the protests and arrested the leaders.

A new 1974 Yugoslav Constitution gave more power to the republics and to the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo. Serbia's influence in the country became smaller, which upset some Serbian officials. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo wanted their province to become a republic with the right to separate, but this was not allowed. From the 1950s to the early 1980s, Yugoslavia's economy grew quickly. After the oil price shock of the 1970s, however, the country fell into economic crisis and had large debts. By 1989 and 1990, many businesses had closed and many workers had lost their jobs. Many people felt very discouraged. This was an important turning point in the events that followed.

Breakup

Main article: Breakup of Yugoslavia

Main article: Yugoslav Wars

After Tito died in 1980, ethnic tensions grew in Yugoslavia. The Constitution of 1974 made it hard for the country to make decisions, and its different groups often disagreed. In 1981, Albanians in Kosovo held protests and asked for their region to become a republic. In the late 1980s, Slobodan Milošević became an important leader in Serbia. Slovenia, led by Milan Kučan, supported Albanian miners during the 1989 Kosovo miners' strike. In January 1990, at a meeting of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Serbs and the Slovenes disagreed about the country's future. The Slovene and Croatian groups left the meeting. That same year, Lojze Peterle led Slovenia's government, and Franjo Tuđman led the government of Croatia. Both wanted more independence. Serbs living in Croatia rebelled, and their areas were later joined together as the Republic of Serb Krajina.

Fighting soon spread across the region. This time is known as the Yugoslav Wars. In March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes incident was one of the first signs of open fighting in Croatia. On 25 June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. This led to the Ten-Day War. A ceasefire was agreed in the Brioni Agreement. The two countries were asked to pause their independence for three months under a moratorium. In September 1991, the Republic of Macedonia also declared independence. Kiro Gligorov became its first president. On 27 November 1991, the United Nations Security Council passed UN Security Council Resolution 721, which led to peacekeeping work in Yugoslavia. In early 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina held a vote on independence. Most people who voted supported it, but most Bosnian Serbs did not take part. After this, the war in Bosnia began. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed on 27 April 1992. On 14 December 1995, leaders from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia signed the Dayton Agreement.

New states

As the Yugoslav Wars affected Bosnia and Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, which were mostly spared from fighting, formed a rump state called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in 1992. The FRY wanted to be the only legal successor of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but the other former republics disagreed. The United Nations also did not allow it to automatically keep the former state's membership. In 2000, after Slobodan Milošević lost power as president of the federation, the country gave up these claims. It accepted the opinion of the Badinter Arbitration Committee about how the former country's property and responsibilities should be shared. It then rejoined the UN on 2 November 2000. Milošević was put on trial for crimes connected to his years in power in Serbia and the Yugoslav Wars. From 1992 to 2000, some countries, including the United States, called the FRY Serbia and Montenegro. In April 2001, the five successor states drafted an Agreement on Succession Issues of the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Under this agreement, signed in Vienna on 29 June 2001, the former Yugoslavia's property was divided among the five successor states:

In 2003, the FRY was officially renamed Serbia and Montenegro.

In June 2006, Montenegro became an independent nation after a May 2006 referendum. Serbia and Montenegro then no longer existed. Serbia became the legal successor of Serbia and Montenegro, and Montenegro applied again for membership in international organisations. In February 2008, the Republic of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. This led to an ongoing disagreement over whether Kosovo is a legally recognised state. Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations, but a number of countries, including the United States and several members of the European Union, have recognised it as an independent state.

Main article: Yugo-nostalgia

Remembrance of the time of the joint state and its good qualities is called Yugo-nostalgia. Many parts of Yugo-nostalgia relate to the socialist system and the feeling of security it gave people. Some people from the former Yugoslavia still describe themselves as Yugoslavs, and this identity can be seen in population records about ethnicity in today's independent countries.

Demographics

Main articles: Demographics of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Demographics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was home to many different nationalities and religions. People practiced Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, and Protestantism. After World War II, religion changed a lot. In the censuses of 1921 and 1948, almost everyone seemed deeply involved in their religion. As the government modernised the country and cities grew, the number of religious believers dropped quickly. Religion and nationality were closely linked, so the Communist government saw religion as a threat to national unity. Yugoslavia became a de facto atheist state, unlike many other socialist states of the time. The Catholic Church still stayed active in society. The Holy See normalized its relations with Yugoslavia by 1967, and the two worked together to stop the Vietnam War. The Serbian Orthodox Church was also treated well. Yugoslavia did not run anti-religious campaigns as widely as other countries in the Eastern Bloc. A survey in 1964 found that just over 70% of people still called themselves religious believers. The highest shares were in Kosovo (91%) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (83.8%). Religious differences between Serbs, Macedonians, Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, and Albanians, along with growing nationalism, helped lead to the country's breakup in 1991.

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia tried to unite its peoples under one identity. It said that Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Slovenes were all parts of one nation of Yugoslavs (see Yugoslavism). Many Croats and other groups strongly disagreed, and they saw this as a slow Serbianization of the non-Serb people. The Communist Party that ruled the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia opposed this approach. It supported ethnic diversity and a shared Yugoslav identity under the idea of "brotherhood and unity." It also organized the country as a federation. The three major languages were Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian. Serbo-Croatian was the only language taught across the whole country, so it remained the second language of many Slovenes and Macedonians, especially those born during Yugoslavia's time. After Yugoslavia broke up, Serbo-Croatian lost its single official standard. It became four standard forms of one pluricentric language: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian.^{[citation needed]}