Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (in Serbo-Croatian, Jugoslavija, Југославија ) was a state located in southeastern Europe that existed for most of the 20th century. It was founded in 1918 after the end of the First World War under the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes when the ephemeral State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs merged (after declaring its independence from the Empire Austro-Hungarian) with the Kingdom of Serbia. It was the first union of the South Slavic peoples under a sovereign state after centuries of occupation by the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. Its first head of state was King Peter I of Serbia. It obtained international recognition on July 13, 1922 when the Conference of Ambassadors took place in Paris. The country changed its official name to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on October 3, 1929, although it had already been colloquially known by that name since its foundation.
During World War II, Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers on April 6, 1941. Two years later, in 1943, the partisan resistance that emerged during the occupation proclaimed a new state under the name of Yugoslavia Federal Democratic Party. In 1944, King Pedro II (who was in exile) gave him his recognition as the legitimate government of that country. After the victory of the partisans in the liberation of Yugoslavia in 1945 at the end of the war, the new government abolished the monarchy in November of that year. The country was renamed Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia the following year, with the installation of a communist government. The regions of Istria, Fiume and Zadar, previously occupied by Italy in the interwar period, were added to its territory. The partisan leader, Josip Broz Tito, ruled the country as president until his death in 1980. By 1963, the country changed its name again to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).
The country, during its socialist period, was composed of six constituent republics, which were (as "socialist republics") Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The latter had two autonomous provinces (Vojvodina and Kosovo), which came to have the same autonomy as the rest of the republics after the adoption of a new constitution in 1974. Yugoslavia went through an economic and political crisis during the 1980s and experienced the rise of nationalism, factors that led to the disintegration of the country under the borders of its constituent republics, initially giving rise to five new states. This situation triggered the Yugoslav Wars, considered the worst war conflict in Europe since World War II, with a balance of 140,000 deaths and 4 million displaced persons. Between 1993 and 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was in charge of convicting the political and military leaders of the already dissolved country for war crimes, genocide or other crimes during this conflict.
After the dissolution, the republics of Montenegro and Serbia formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in 1992, a small federative state that considered itself the sole legal successor of socialist Yugoslavia, a position that the rest of the new republics rejected. In 2003, after finally adopting the resolution of the Badinter Arbitration Commission regarding the shared succession of the legacy of Yugoslavia with the rest of the nations that emerged in 1991, the FRY changed its name to State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and reformed its existing political system to provide greater autonomy for its two constituent republics. This country ceased to exist in 2006 with Montenegro's declaration of independence, while the previously autonomous province of Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia two years later, in 2008.
Background
The Slavs
The first settlements of the Slavic peoples in the Balkan Peninsula date back to the middle of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century of our era and they were adopting its historical name; "South Slavs" or "Sudeslavs". Since before their arrival on the peninsula they were subjected to the persecution and domination of the Varangians, the Alemanni, the aegis of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Venetians, the Franks, the Bulgarians, the Turks and the Austrians (during the reign of the Habsburgs). Later, they were subjected to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later to the designs of the Axis Powers led by Nazi Germany.
Serbia and the Pan-Slav Movement
The progressive disappearance of Ottoman power in Europe, as well as the results of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, with their outcome favorable to Serbia, contributed decisively to increase the pan-Slav sentiment of the peoples of that region, in order to overcome the existing political and religious divisions between them, based on belonging to a common ethnic group.
The creation of the new state arises from the union of the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro (both independent from the Ottoman Empire in the XIX) and incorporating a substantial amount of the territory that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
These formerly Austro-Hungarian areas that formed part of the new kingdom included Croatia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina from the Hungarian part of the empire; Carniola, part of Styria and most of Dalmatia on the Austrian side, plus the imperial province of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- A plebiscite was held in the province of Carinthia, which it chose to continue in Austria.
- The Dalmatian port city of Zadar and a few islands of the Adriatic were granted to Italy.
- The city of Rijeka was declared free city-state, but was soon occupied and annexed in 1924 by Italy.
Nevertheless, tensions on the border with Italy continued as, on the one hand, that country claimed more areas of the Dalmatian coast and, on the other, Austria claimed rights to the Istrian peninsula, territory part of the former a coastal province of that country that had been annexed to Italy, but contained a sizeable population of Croats, Slovenes, and Italians.
History
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia
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After the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed in 1918. As a commitment, and strengthening its multicultural character, the name of the nation was recognized in each language and spelling:
- serbocroata: Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, Крадевина Срба, CHAрвата и Словенаца
- Slovenian: Kraljevina Srbov, Hrvatov in Slovencev
- Macedonian: Кралство на Србите, CHAрватите и Словенците
The kingdom was officially proclaimed on December 1, 1918, with the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty on the throne and Alexander I (son of Peter I, King of Serbia) as first king and, after the Treaty of Trianon, the territories of Croatia and the north of present-day Serbia were officially annexed, which were part of the Kingdom of Hungary for more than nine hundred years. Due to the poor health of the Serbian king, his son Alexander took care of the government of the country from the beginning as regent. The kingdom was called Yugoslavia or Yugoslavia (literally, "Land of the South Slavs or South Slavia", an expression composed of two Serbian words, Yug - «South» and Slavija - «Land of Slavs».)
The new Government tried to unite the country politically and economically, a difficult task due to the great diversity of nationalities and religions in the new State, and the great differences between them in terms of economic development.
Tensions between the growing Serbian nationalism and the rest of the country's nationalities erupted in 1928 with the murder in the Yugoslav parliament of Stjepan Radić, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, a crime for which a Montenegrin deputy was accused.
This led the king to close, at the beginning of 1929, the parliament and to assume the government of the country in a dictatorial manner, changing the name of the state to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, decreeing a new territorial organization regardless of historical nationalities, claiming for the kingdom a geopolitical vision of Greater Serbia, as the predominant axis in the region.
However, this only reignited tensions. In 1934, a Bulgarian guerrilla fighter assassinated King Alexander I and the French foreign minister in Marseilles, in concomitance with Croatian factions in exile. His son Pedro II succeeded him on the throne, only twelve years old, who due to his young age, could not exercise leadership over the Yugoslav kingdom.
Prince Paul governed the country until, at the beginning of 1941, a coup d'état against his pro-German policy (adhesion of the Yugoslav government to the Tripartite Pact) brought Peter II to the throne early.
This coup against the pro-German alignment of the government had enough popular support to legitimize it, but it represented a challenge to the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler then decided to execute military operations to take control of Yugoslavia and, to some extent, prepare the ground for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Thus, it can be said that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ceased to exist de facto when Nazi Germany bombed Belgrade on April 6, 1941 and in the following weeks the country was invaded by German troops, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, and distributed among them.
The king and government fled to London giving the country a formal and legal prolongation until the Allied victory in 1945. In their place, the Axis countries created the Independent State of Croatia, the Independent State of Montenegro and the Independent State of Serbia, known as Nedić's Serbia.
World War II
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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After a bitter war in which just over 10 percent of the country's population died, Tito's victorious partisans organized the refounding of the country, creating a new socialist Yugoslavia.
The territorial organization of the country broadly followed what was agreed by the resistance forces to the Axis during the war in various meetings, especially what was stipulated by the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia in Jajce (1943). On January 31, 1946, the new constitution of the Yugoslav SFR established the six constituent republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia.)
In this way, and after a failed attempt to collaborate with the monarchical government in exile, in 1945 the Federal Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed. The first president was Ivan Ribar, and partisan leader Josip Broz Tito was named prime minister.
On November 29, 1946, the Federal Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia was reestablished as a socialist state, ushering in changes to the country's constitutional order. It was renamed the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia, further emphasizing the socialist character of the country and introducing the socio-economic system of self-management socialism, which was widely perceived as an alternative third way both to that of the United States like the Soviet Union.
In 1953, Tito was elected president and later, in 1963, he was declared "President for Life." Finally in 1963 the country adopted the name Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), ultimately the longest-lived and most publicized name.
This Yugoslavia was a European socialist state made up of the socialist republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. The federal and socialist character of the Yugoslav state was consigned in the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974, which highly reinforced the self-management power of the republics (and even the Serbian provinces) that comprised it.
Josip Broz Tito, the country's leader, broke with Moscow since he came to power. He refused to provide aid to the Greek communist guerrillas and tried to create a Balkan socialist federation, causing distancing with the USSR and the countries in its orbit. He was a harsh critic of the Soviet interventions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan.
Yugoslavia, unlike other socialist countries in Europe, chose an independent course from the USSR, and was not a member of the Warsaw Pact or NATO. It was one of the driving countries of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1956.
The dissolution of Yugoslavia
After Tito's death in 1980, and in the midst of an economic crisis, tensions grew between the peoples of the country. Following the rise of nationalist parties to power in Serbia, two of its constituent republics (Slovenia and Croatia) declared their independence in 1991, followed by Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina the following year, not without resistance from Serbia. In 1991 the tension between the different republics led to the bloody conflict known as the Yugoslav war.
The republics that decided to remain in the federation replaced the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992 with the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, integrated only by Montenegro and Serbia and also abandoning the socialist system. The ethnic Albanian minority in the south of Serbia was also a source of tension and, in the face of the confrontations between the Yugoslav army and the Kosovar guerrillas as well as after the NATO bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, from 1999 the UN took charge, temporarily, from Kosovar territory. Following the approval and promulgation of the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro by the Assembly of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on February 4, 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia became the state union of Serbia and Montenegro. Some time later, in 2006, Montenegro would become independent from Serbia, forming two autonomous states.
Geography
During the interwar period, the country covered an area of 247,542 km². After World War II, Yugoslav territory extended to reach 256,850 km². Roughly speaking, Yugoslavia was divided into three major geographical regions: the Pannonian Plain to the north; the Adriatic coast, to the west; and the central highlands.
The geography of the country, very varied, had six main mountain ranges. In the northwest, in the Slovenian area, are the eastern foothills of the Alps. These include several mountain ranges: the Kamnik and Savinja Alps, to the east; the Karavanke, to the north, which borders Austria; and the Julian Alps to the southeast.
To the southwest of Ljubljana begins the second major Yugoslav mountain system: the Dinaric Alps. This is the largest of the six and runs parallel to the Adriatic coast. To the southeast, the range widens, covering about of 40% of Yugoslavia: part of Slovenia, southwestern Croatia, and all of Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro, plus all of Bosnia and western and Southwestern Serbia. The Dinaric massif was divided into three zones: the coastal (primorje), low-lying; the interior (planine), with the main peaks; and the intermediate (zagora). The entire area is karst, making it generally unsuitable for agriculture and sparse in rivers. Vegetation divides the Yugoslav karst area into seven regions. One of them, close to the coast, is the very arid karst desert. The mountains become hills in the northern (Bosnia) and northeastern (western Serbia) limits and a plateau in the southeast (southwestern Serbia). The Dinaric Alps enclose the broad Pannonian Plain to the south. The Sava River runs through it from west to east before flowing into the Danube and into it flow several rivers that originate in the Dinaric Alps.
To the south of the Dinaric Alps is the third Yugoslav mountain range: the Pindos and Šar mountains, which occupied the southwest of Yugoslavia, the west of Macedonia. It is, like the two aforementioned ranges, a mountainous system of formation "recent"; unlike the Dinaric Alps, limestone is not abundant in these mountains.
Yugoslavia's fourth notable mountain range was the Rhodope Mountains, which occupy eastern Macedonia and central Serbia. They are ancient, rounded mountains whose forests in the XX had been cleared to make way for crops and meadows.
The fifth range was the Balkan Mountains, the western end of which covered part of eastern Serbia. These mountains were rugged and devoid of trees.
The sixth was the Carpathians, which stretched north-east of Serbia, and has characteristics similar to the Balkans.
The north and northeast of the country was occupied by the Pannonian plain, formed by the valleys of the Danube, Sava, Drava, Tisza rivers and part of their tributaries.
National (ethnic) composition of the former Yugoslavia
The social composition of the Federation, in 1981, the year in which the last census that covered its entire territory was carried out, was as follows:
| Group | Population | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Serbs (Orthodox) | 8 140 000 | 36.3 % |
| Croats (Catholics) | 428 000 | 19.8 % |
| Bosnian (Muslims) | 2 000 000 | 8.9 % |
| Slovenian (Catholics) | 1 754 000 | 7.8% |
| Albanians | 1 730 000 | 7.7% |
| Macedonios | 1 340 000 | 6.0 % |
| Yugoslav | 1 219 000 | 5.4 % |
| Montenegrinos | 579 000 | 2.6% |
| Hungarian | 427 000 | 1.9 % |
| Other | 233 000 | 1.3 % |
In the previous table, you can see the social composition, in the last complete census. Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, "Muslims", Montenegrins, Macedonians, Albanians, Hungarians and "Yugoslavs" (the latter were those who did not recognize themselves as belonging to any of the country's identities, but to the whole), represented at least < span style="white-space:nowrap">83% of the population of the Federation, and spoke the Serbo-Croatian language.
The Yugoslavs themselves define their country as if they were counting the pieces of a mosaic: six republics, five nations, four cultures, three languages, two alphabets, one state. Eventually, the count could be extended and also cite seven religions, eight cultural roots, nine national catastrophes, ten foreign influences... Leon Thoorens.
Political-administrative organization
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
After the establishment of the monarchy in 1929, Yugoslavia was divided into banovinas (provinces):
- Banovina del Drava, with capital in Ljubljana;
- Banovina del Sava, with capital in Zagreb;
- Banovina del Vrbas, with capital in Bania Luka;
- Banovina del Litoral, with capital in Split;
- Banovina del Drina, with capital in Sarajevo;
- Banovina de Zeta, with capital in Cetiña;
- Banovina del Danubio, with capital in Novi Sad;
- Banovina del Morava, with capital in Niš;
- Banovina de Vardar, with capital in Skopie.
In 1939 the Croatian Banovina was created with its capital in the city of Zagreb, which arose from the merger of the Banovinas of Litoral and Sava, adding additional territories of the Banovinas of Drina, Danube, Vrbas and Zeta (present-day Montenegro).
Nazi occupation
During World War II, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was occupied and divided by the Axis powers into 3 puppet states:
- Independent State of Croatia;
- Independent State of Montenegro;
- Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia.
Other parts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were occupied by German, Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Albanian Axis troops.
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
After World War II the state was internally divided into six socialist republics, the Socialist Republic of Serbia included two autonomous socialist provinces. The federal capital was Belgrade. The republics and provinces were:
- Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with capital in Sarajevo;
- Socialist Republic of Croatia, with capital in Zagreb;
- Socialist Republic of Macedonia, with capital in Skopie;
- Socialist Republic of Montenegro, with capital in Titograd;
- Socialist Republic of Serbia, with capital in Belgrade, including:
- (5th) Kosovo Socialist Autonomous Province, with capital in Priština;
- (5b) Socialist Autonomous Province of Voivodina, with capital in Novi Sad;
- Socialist Republic of Slovenia, with capital in Ljubljana.
Current Countries
The territory of the former Yugoslavia is currently distributed among six sovereign states:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Slovenia
Northern Macedonia
Montenegro
Serbia
And a disputed territory:
Kosovo: territory in dispute between Serbia and the self-denominated Republic of Kosovo. It is currently recognized as a state by 98 of the 193 UN members.
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