Yugoslavia

File:LocationYugoslavia.png

General location of the political entities known as Yugoslavia. The precise borders varied over the years

Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in the Latin alphabet, Југославија in Cyrillic; English: South Slavia") describes three political entities that existed one at a time on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the twentieth century.

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ( December 1, 1918,–April 17, 1941), also known as the First Yugoslavia, was a monarchy formed as the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" after World War I and re-named on January 6, 1929, by Alexander I of Yugoslavia. It was invaded on 6 April 6, 1941, by the Axis powers and capitulated 11 days later.

The Second Yugoslavia (November 29, 1943,–June 25, 1991), a socialist successor state to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, existed under various names, including the "Democratic Federation of Yugoslavia (DFY)" (1943), the "Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY)" (1946), and the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)" (1963). It disintegrated in the Yugoslav Wars, which followed the secession of most of the constituent elements of SFRY.

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) (April 27, 1992,–February 4, 2003), was a federation on the territory of the two remaining republics of Serbia (including the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija) and Montenegro.

The Union of Serbia and Montenegro was formed on February 4, 2003, and officially abolished the name "Yugoslavia." On June 3 and June 5, 2006, Montenegro and Serbia respectively declared their independence, thereby ending the last remnants of the former Yugoslav federation.

Geography

Yugoslavia controlled the most important land routes from central and western Europe to Aegean Sea and Turkish straits. The nation shared borders with Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Romania.

With a land area of 98,610 square miles (255,400 square kilometers) Yugoslavia in 1990 was slightly larger than Wyoming in the United States.

The territory’s terrain is extremely varied, with rich fertile plains to the north, limestone ranges and basins to the east, ancient mountains and hills to the southeast, and extremely high shoreline with no islands off the coast to the southwest. The highest point is Daravica at 8713 feet (2656 meters).

The climate in the north is continental, with cold winters, hot, humid summers, and well-distributed rainfall. The central region is a mixture of continental and Mediterranean. To the south, the coast has an Adriatic climate, with hot, dry summers and autumns, and relatively cold winters with heavy snowfall inland. The continental climate of Vojvodina has July temperatures of about 71°F (22°C), and January temperatures of around 30°F (-1 °C). Precipitation ranges from 22 inches to 75 inches (560mm to 1900mm) a year, depending on elevation and exposure.

The Danube river flows through the northern third of the region of Serbia, forming the border with Croatia and part of Romania. The Sava river forms the southern border of the Vojvodina province, flows into the Danube in central Belgrade, and bypasses the hills of the Fruška Gora in the west. Sixty kilometers to the northeast of Belgrade, the Tisza river flows into the Danube and ends its 1350 km long journey from Ukraine, and the partially navigable Timiş River (60 km/350 km) flows into the Danube near Pancevo. The Begej river flows into Tisa near Titel. All five rivers are navigable, connecting the country with Northern and Western Europe' (through the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal–North Sea route), to Eastern Europe (via the Tisa–, Timiş River–, Begej– and Danube–Black sea routes) and to Southern Europe (via the Sava river).

Dinara, near the source of Cetina river.

Croatia’s main rivers are the Sava, Drava, Danube and Kupa. The Drava and the Sava flow from the Pannonian Plain into the Danube, which forms part of Croatia’s eastern border with Serbia. The Kupa flows east along the Slovenian border into central Croatia, to join the Sava.

Natural resources include coal, copper, bauxite, timber, iron ore, antimony, chromium, lead, zinc, asbestos, mercury, crude oil, natural gas, nickel, and uranium.

Twenty eight percent of the land was arable, three percent in permanent crops, 25 percent meadows and pastures, 36 percent forest and woodland, and eight percent classified as other, including one percent irrigated land.

Croatia has deciduous forests, including beech and oak, predominate on the plains and in much of the mountainous area, and there are 50 types of protected plant life. The floodplain of the Sava has extensive wetlands that provide a habitat for numerous plant and animal species. Wildlife includes hare, fox, lynx, weasel, otter, bear, deer, marten, boar, wildcat, wolf, and mouflon (wild sheep). Dinara is host to an endemic species of rodents, a vole called "Dinarski miš" ("Dinaric mouse"), which is declared an endangered species.

The dry Vojvodina plains were a grassland steppe, before Austrian agriculture started inthe area in the eighteenth century, although forests at one time dominated the area. Up to one-third of Serbia proper is in broad-leaved forest, mostly oak and beech. Serbia has a rich diversity of wild animals, including deer, and bears. Wild pigs are a distinctive feature of beech forests in the mountains. Serbia has five national parks: Fruška Gora, Kopaonik, Tara, Đerdap (Iron Gate), and Šar mountain.

The region of Yugoslavia is subject to frequent and destructive earthquakes. Environmental issues included pollution of coastal waters from sewage outlets, especially in tourist-related areas such as Kotor, air pollution around Belgrade and other industrial cities, and water pollution from industrial wastes dumped into the Sava which flows into the Danube.

The capital was Belgrade, a cosmopolitan city at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. First settled around 4800 B.C.E., Belgrade had a population in 2002 of 1,576,124. Other cities in Serbia proper with populations surpassing the 100,000 mark include Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac, Leskovac, Subotica, Zrenjanin, Kruševac, Pančevo, Kraljevo, Čačak, and Smederevo. Cities in Kosovo with populations surpassing the 100,000 mark include Priština, Prizren, Djakovica, Peć and Kosovska Mitrovica.

History before seventeenth century

File:Paja Jovanović-Krunisanje Cara Dušana.jpg

Crowning of Emperor Dusan, Skoplje, 1346.

The area that became Yugoslavia has been the location of pre-human and human habitation for 100,000 years. The remnants of a Neanderthal, subsequently named Homo krapiniensis, were discovered on a hill near the town of Krapina, in Croatia.

The Balkans were home to the iron-working Illyrians, who settled through the western Balkans by the seventh century B.C.E., and iron-skilled Celts began to settle the area from 300 B.C.E. Romans began to move into the Balkan Peninsula in the late third century B.C.E., conquered Illyria in 168 B.C.E., and organized the land into the Roman province of Illyricum.

Upon arrival to Balkans in the 7th and 8th century, Serbs formed their first unified state under the Vlastimirovic dynasty by 812. The state would achieve full independence, evolving into the Serbian Kingdom and the Serbian Empire under the rule of the prominent House of Nemanjic.

Serbia reached an apogee in economy, law, military, and religion during the rule of the House of Nemanjic, especially during Emperor Dusan. As a result of internal struggle between the rival noble families, it succumbed fully to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. The first Serbia was formed in 1217, and modern Serbia reemerged in the 19th century, when it became an independent principality and then a kingdom.

The Croats settled in the Balkans in the early 7th century and formed two principalities: Dalmatia and Pannonia. The establishment of the Trpimirović dynasty ca 850 brought strengthening to the Dalmatian Croat Duchy, which together with the Pannonian principality became a Kingdom in 925 under King Tomislav.

In 1102, Croatia entered into a personal union with the Hungarian Kingdom. After the 1526 Battle of Mohács the "reliquiae reliquiarum" of Croatia became a part of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1527.

Christianity arrived in the Bosnia region by the end of the first century. Following the split of the empire between 337 and 395, Dalmatia and Pannonia became parts of the Western Roman Empire. The region was conquered by the Ostrogoths in 455, and then changed hands between the Alans and Huns in the years to follow. By the sixth century, Emperor Justinian had reconquered the area for the Byzantine Empire. The Slavs, a migratory people from northeastern Europe, were conquered by the Avars in the sixth century. Together they invaded the Eastern Roman Empire in the sixth and seventh centuries, settling in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina and surrounding lands.

The principalities of Serbia and Croatia split control of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the ninth and tenth century, but by the High Middle Ages political circumstance led to the area being contested between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Byzantine Empire. Following another shift of power between the two in the late twelfth century, Bosnia found itself outside the control of both and emerged as an independent state under the rule of local bans.

Seoba Srbalja (The Moving of Serbs), a picture by Paja Jovanović.

The Ottomans allowed for the preservation of Bosnia's identity by incorporating it as an integral province of the Ottoman Empire with its historical name and territorial integrity - a unique case among subjugated states in the Balkans.

European powers, and Austria in particular, fought many wars against the Ottoman Empire, relying on the help of the Serbs. The last Austrian-Ottoman war was the Dubica War (1788–91), when the Austrians urged the Christians in Bosnia to rebel. No wars were fought afterwards until the twentieth century that marked the fall of both mighty empires.

First Yugoslavia

The first idea of a state for all South Slavs emerged in the late seventeenth century, a product of visionary thinking of Croat writers and philosophers who believed that the only way for southern Slavs to regain lost freedom after centuries of occupation under the various empires would be to unite. They gave it the name Ilirski Pokret (Illyric Movement) and gathered prominent Croatian intellectuals and politicians around the new idea. The movement started gaining large momentum only at the end of the nineteenth century, mainly because of the harsh policies against freedom movements among occupied southern Slavs practiced by Austrian and Hungarian dictators.

The scholar Aurel Popovici proposed a reform called "United States of Greater Austria (Vereinigte Staaten von Groß-Österreich)" in 1906. His proposal was not retained by the Emperor but inspired the peace conferences at the end of World War I.

World War I

File:LandsForSerbia.PNG

Lands offered to Serbia by the Allies in 1915

During the early period of World War I, a number of South Slavic prominent political figures, including Ante Trumbić, Ivan Meštrović, Nikola Stojadinović and others fled to London, where they formed the Yugoslav Committee (Jugoslavenski odbor) on April 30, 1915 in London, and began to raise funds, especially among South Slavs living in the Americas. While the committee's basic aim was the unification of the Habsburg south Slav lands with Serbia (which was independent at the time), its more immediate concern was to head off Italian claims in Istria and Dalmatia. In 1915, the Allies had lured the Italians into the war with a promise of substantial territorial gains in exchange, and offered independent Serbia Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slavonia, Bačka and parts of Dalmatia.

The unification of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs

During June and July of 1917, the Yugoslav Committee met the Serbian Government in Corfu, and on July 20 issued a declaration that laid the foundation for a post-war Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

As the Austrian Habsburg Empire dissolved, a National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs took power in Zagreb on October 5,1918. On October 29, the Croatian Sabor (or parliament) declared independence and vested its sovereignty in the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, comprising the former kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro (including Serbian Macedonia), Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austrian land in Dalmatia and Slovenia, and Hungarian territory north of the Danube.

Quarrels broke out immediately about the terms of the proposed union. Croats wanted a federal structure respecting the diversity of traditions, while Serbs sought a unitary state to unite their scattered population. The 1921 constitution established a centralized state, under the Karadjordjevic dynasty of Serbia. The monarchy and the Skupština (assembly) shared legislative power. The king appointed a Council of Ministers and retained control over foreign policy. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was declared on 1 December 1, 1918, in Belgrade. The most prominent opponent of this decision was Stjepan Radić, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska Seljačka Stranka, HSS).

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

The assembly only considered legislation that had already been drafted, and local government only transmitted decisions made in Belgrade. The Croats soon came to resent the Serbian monarch and being governed from Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The Croatian Peasant Party under Stjepan Radić boycotted the government of the Serbian Radical People's Party. In 1928, the Ustaše (Ustashe) Party was formed to fight for independence, supported by Italy and Germany. In 1928, Radić was mortally wounded during a Parliament session by Puniša Račić, a deputy of the Serbian Radical People's Party.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

File:Banovine kj.jpg

Map showing banovinas in 1929

After 10 years of acrimonious party struggle, in 1929, King Alexander I proclaimed a dictatorship and imposed a new constitution, and changed the name of the state to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions. He replaced the historical regions with nine prefectures (banovine), named after rivers. Many politicians were jailed or kept under tight police surveillance. The effect of Alexander's dictatorship was to further alienate the non-Serbs of the idea of unity. His policies soon ran into the obstacle of opposition from other European powers due to developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists and Nazis rose to power, and the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin became absolute ruler. None of these three regimes favoured the policy pursued by Aleksandar I.

The king was assassinated in Marseilles during an official visit to France in 1934 by a marksman from Ivan Mihailov’s IMRO in the cooperation of the Ustaše, a Croatian separatist organization that pursued Nazi policies. Aleksandar was succeeded by his 11-year-old son Peter II and a regency council headed by his cousin Prince Paul.

Supported and pressured by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Croatian leader Vlatko Maček and his party managed the creation of the Croatian banovina (administrative province) in 1939. The agreement specified that Croatia was to remain part of Yugoslavia, but it was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations.

Under the monarchy, some industrial development took place, financed by foreign capital. The centralized government spent heavily on the military, created a bloated civil service, and intervened in industries and in marketing agricultural produce. By 1941, Yugoslavia was a poor rural state. More than 75 percent of the workforce was engaged in agriculture, birth rates were among the highest in Europe, and illiteracy rates were 60 percent in rural areas.

World War II

File:Jasenovac6.jpg

Children in Jasenovac concentration camp.

Prince Paul submitted to fascist pressure and signed the Tripartite Treaty in Vienna on March 25, 1941, hoping to keep Yugoslavia out of the war. But senior military officers opposed to the treaty launched a coup d'état when the king returned on March 27. Army General Dušan Simović seized power, arrested the Vienna delegation, exiled Paul, and ended the regency, giving 17-year-old [[Peter II of Yugoslavia] full powers.

Adolf Hitler attack Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941.On April 17, representatives of Yugoslavia's various regions signed an armistice with Germany at Belgrade, ending eleven days of resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. More than three hundred thousand Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoners.

The Axis Powers occupied Yugoslavia and split it up. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi puppet-state, ruled by the Fascist militia known as the Ustaše that came into existence in 1929, but was relatively limited in its activities until 1941. German troops occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as part of Serbia and Slovenia, while other parts of the country were occupied by Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy. During this time the Independent State of Croatia created concentration camps for anti-fascists, communists, Serbs, Gypsies and Jews, one of the most famous being Jasenovac. A large number of men, women and children, mostly Serbs, were executed in these camps.

File:Tito.jpg

Josip Broz Tito during the winter of 1942.

Following the pattern of other fascist puppet regime in Europe, the Ustashi enacted racial laws, and formed eight concentration camps targeting minority Roma and Jewish populations. The main targets for persecution, however, where the minority Serbs, who were seen as a trojan horse of Serbian expansionism, and bore the brunt of retribution for the excesses of the Serb royal dictatorship of the First Yugoslavia.

In Serbia, the German authorities organized several concentration camps for Jews and members of the Partisan resistance movement. The biggest camps were Banjica and Sajmište near Belgrade, where around 40,000 Jews were killed. In all those camps, some 90 percent of the Serbian Jewish population perished. In the Bačka region annexed by Hungary, numerous Serbs and Jews were killed in 1942 raid by Hungarian authorities. The persecutions against ethnic Serb population occurred in the region of Syrmia, which was controlled by the Independent State of Croatia, and in the region of Banat, which was under direct German control.

Yugoslavs opposing the Nazis organized resistance movements. Those inclined towards supporting the old Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, also known as the Chetniks, a multiethnic, though largely Serb, royalist guerilla army led by Draža Mihajlović. Those inclined towards supporting the Communist Party, and were against the king, joined the Partisans, also known as the Yugoslav National Liberation Army (NOV), led by Josip Broz Tito.

For every soldier killed, the Germans executed 100 civilians, and for each wounded, they killed 50. Regarding the human cost as too high, the Chetniks terminated war activities against the Germans, and the Allies eventually switched to support the NOV, which carried on its guerrilla warfare. The Yugoslav death was estimated at between 1,027,000 and 1,700,000. Very high losses were among Serbs who lived in Bosnia and Croatia, as well as Jewish and Roma minorities, high also among all other non-collaborating population.

During the war, the communist-led partisans were de facto rulers on the liberated territories, and the NOV organized people's committees to act as civilian government. On November 25, 1942, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia was convened in Bihać. The council reconvened on November 29, 1943, in Jajce and established the basis for post-war organisation of the country, establishing a federation (this date was celebrated as Republic Day after the war).

The Second Yugoslavia

File:SFRYugoslaviaNumbered.png

Numbered map of Yugoslav republics and provinces.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, formed on January 31, 1946, covered the same territory as its predecessor, plus land acquired from Italy in Istria and Dalmatia. The kingdom was replaced by a federation of six Socialist Republics, a Socialist Autonomous Province, and a Socialist Autonomous District that were part of SR Serbia. The federation was modelled on the Soviet Union, and the federal capital was Belgrade. The six nominally equal Socialist republics were: Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Serbia’s provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina were given autonomous status to take into account the interests of Albanians and Magyars, respectively.

Government

This second Yugoslavia, led by Josip Broz Tito, was at first highly centralized both politically and economically, with power held firmly by Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia and a constitution closely modeled on that of the Soviet Union. There were three levels of government: the federation, the republics, and 500 communes (opštine), which were agents for the collection of government revenue, and provided social services.

At the federal level, the executive branch of government comprised the Federal Executive Council, which consisted of a president, members representing the republics and provinces, and officials from various administrative agencies.

The legislative branch of government was the federal assembly (Skupština) that consisted of the Federal Chamber, consisting of 220 delegates from work organizations, communes, and sociopolitical bodies, and the Chamber of Republics and Provinces, containing 88 delegates from republican and provincial assemblies.

The judiciary consisted of the Federal Court (Savezna Sud), Constitutional Court, courts of appeal and of first instance. The legal system was mixture of civil law system and Communist legal theory.

On April 7, 1963, the nation changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Each republic and province had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president and prime minister.

The assemblies of the communes, republics, and autonomous provinces, under the constitution of 1974, consisted of three chambers. The Chamber of Associated Labor comprised delegates representing self-managing work organizations; the Chamber of Local Communities consisted of representatives of constituencies; and the Sociopolitical Chamber was elected from members of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia, the League of Communists, the trade unions, and organizations of war veterans, women, and youth.

In 1988, there are about 90 political parties operating country-wide including the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, of which there were 2,079,013 party members. In 1974, Tito was made president for life, and after his death in 1980, it rotated among regional representatives.

Josip Broz Tito was the most powerful person in the country, followed by republican and provincial premiers and presidents, and Communist Party presidents. A wide variety of people suffered from his disfavor. Slobodan Penezić Krcun, Tito's chief of secret police in Serbia, fell victim to a dubious traffic incident after he started to complain about Tito's politics. The Interior Minister Aleksandar Ranković lost all of his titles and rights after a major disagreement with Tito regarding state politics. Sometimes ministers in government, such as Edvard Kardelj or Stane Dolanc, were more important than the Prime Minister.

The economy

Despite common origins, the economy of Yugoslavia was much different from economies of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist countries, especially after the Yugoslav-Soviet break-up of 1948. The occupation and liberation struggle in World War II left Yugoslavia's infrastructure devastated. Even the most developed parts of the country were largely rural and the little industry the country had was largely damaged or destroyed.

The communist government nationalized landholdings, industrial enterprises, public utilities, set up a central planning apparatus, and embarked on industrialization. Tito forced the collectivization of peasant agriculture (which failed by 1953). Despite this Soviet-style dictatorship, relations with the Soviet Union turned bitter, and in June 1948, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Communist Information Bureau and boycotted by the socialist countries.

Worker self-management

In the 1950s, worker self management was introduced, which reduced the state control of the economy. Managers of socially owned companies were supervised by worker councils, which were made up of all employees, with one vote each. The worker councils also appointed the management, often by secret ballot. The Communist Party was organized in all companies and most influential employees were likely to be members of the party, so the managers were often, but not always, appointed only with the consent of the party.

With the exception of a recession in mid-1960s, the country's economy prospered formidably. Unemployment was low and the education level of the working force steadily increased. Due to Yugoslavia's neutrality and a leading role in the Non-aligned Movement, Yugoslav companies exported to both Western and Eastern markets. Yugoslav companies carried out construction of numerous major infrastructural and industrial projects in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Associated labor reorganisation

In the 1970s, the economy was reorganised according to Edvard Kardelj's theory of associated labour, in which the right to decision making and a share in profits of socially owned companies is based on the investment of labour. All companies were transformed into organisations of associated labour. The smallest, basic organisations of associated labour, roughly corresponded to a small company or a department in a large company. These were organised into enterprises also known as labour organisationswhich in turn associated into composite organisations of associated labour, which could be large companies or even whole industry branches in a certain area. Most executive decision making was based in enterprises, so that these continued to compete to an extent even when they were part of a same composite organisation. The appointment of managers and strategic policy of composite organisations were, depending on their size and importance, in practice often subject to political and personal influence-paddling.

In order to give all employees the same access to decision making, the basic organisations of associated labour were also introduced into public services, including health and education. The basic organisations were usually made up of just dozens of people and had their own workers councils, whose assent was needed for strategic decisions and appointment of managers in enterprises or public institutions.

The workers were organized into trade unions which spanned across the country. Strikes could be called by any worker, or any group of workers and they were common in certain periods. Strikes for clear genuine grievances with no political motivation usually resulted in prompt replacement of the management and increase in pay or benefits. Strikes with real or implied political motivation were often dealt with in the same manner (individuals were prosecuted or persecuted separately), but occasionally also met stubborn refusal to deal or in some cases brutal force. Strikes occurred in all times of political upheaval or economic hardships, but they became increasingly common in the 1980s, when consecutive governments tried to salvage the slumping economy with a programme of austerity under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund.

Oil crisis

During and after the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, the foreign debt grew massively and by early 1980s it reached more than US$20-billion. Governments of Milka Planinc and Branko Mikulić renegotiated the foreign debt at the price of introducing the policy of stabilisation which in practice consisted of severe austerity measures — the so called shock treatment. During 1980s, Yugoslav population endured the introduction of fuel limitations (40 litres per car per month), limitation of car usage to three days a week, based on the last digit on the licence plate, severe limitations on import of goods and paying of a deposit upon leaving the country (mostly to go shopping), to be returned in a year (with rising inflation, this effectively amounted to a fee on travel). There were shortages of coffee, chocolate and washing powder. During several dry summers, the government, unable to borrow to import electricity, was forced to introduce power cuts.

Collapse

Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial power and economic success. Two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years. The state provided housing, health care, education, and child care. Citizens lived well on a per capita income of $3000 a year (in 1980 dollars), with one month paid vacation, plus a year's maternity leave, if needed. Respect for workers was a central concern of government and society. But after a decade of Western economic ministrations and five years of disintegration, war, boycott, and embargo, the economy of the former Yugoslavia collapsed.

The Reagan administration of the United States targeted the Yugoslav economy. A 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) advocated "expanded efforts to promote a 'quiet revolution' to overthrow Communist governments and parties," while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented economy.

Western trade barriers dramatically reduced Yugoslavia’s economic growth. In order to counter this, Yugoslavia took on a number of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and subsequently fell into heavy IMF debt. As a condition of receiving loans, the IMF demanded "liberalisation" of Yugoslavia. By 1981, Yugoslavia had incurred $19.9-billion in foreign debt. However, Yugoslavia’s real concern was the unemployment rate, at 1 million by 1980.

In 1989, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav federal Premier Ante Markovic went to Washington to meet with President George Bush, negotiating for a new financial aid package. In return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more sweeping economic reforms, including a new devalued currency, another wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the elimination of socially owned, worker- managed companies.

Rising inflation coincided with the spectacular draining of the banking system, caused by the in which millions of people were effectively forgiven debts or even allowed to make fortunes on perfectly legal bank-milking schemes, involving the use of cheques. Repayments of debts for privately owned housing, which was massively built during the prosperous 1970s, became ridiculously small and banks suffered huge losses.

On New Year's Eve 1989, Ante Marković introduced his program of economic reforms. Ten thousand Dinars became one New Dinar, pegged to the German Mark at the rate of 7 New Dinars for one Mark. The sudden end of inflation brought some relief to the banks. Ownership and exchange of foreign currency was deregulated, which, combined with a realistic exchange rate, attracted foreign currency to the banks. In the late 1980s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the federal government was effectively losing the power to implement its programme.

In the 1990s, IMF effectively controlled the Yugoslav central bank. Its tight money policy further crippled the country's ability to finance its economic and social programs. State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went instead to service Belgrade's debt with the Paris Club and London clubs. The republics were left on their own to survive. From 1989 through September 1990, more than a thousand companies went into bankruptcy. By 1990, the annual GDP growth rate had collapsed to a negative 7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined by a further 15 percent, while industrial output shrank by 21 percent.

The reforms demanded by Belgrade's creditors struck at the core of Yugoslavia's system of socially-owned and worker-managed enterprises. The objective of the reforms was to privatize Yugoslav economy and to dismantle the public sector. Instead of rebuffing the reforms, Yugoslavia was desperate and could not refuse their demand. With external pressure by Western, Markovic's government passed financial legislation that forced "insolvent" businesses into bankruptcy or liquidation. Under the new law, if a business were unable to pay its bills for 30 days running, or for 30 days within a 45-day period, the government would launch bankruptcy proceedings within the next 15 days.

Demographics

The population of Yugoslavia according to the 1981 census was 22.4 million.

The suppression of national identities escalated with the so-called Croatian Spring of 1970-1971, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy. The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, but many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause, so a new Constitution was ratified in 1974 that gave more rights to the individual republics in Yugoslavia and provinces in Serbia.

Ethnic tensions and the economic crisis

The post-World War II Yugoslavia was in many respects a model of how to build a multinational state. The Federation was constructed against a double background: an inter-war Yugoslavia which had been dominated by the Serbian ruling class; and a war-time slaughter in which the Nazis made use of the earlier Serbian oppression to use Croatian fascism for barbarous acts against the Serbs and also exploited anti-Serb sentiment amongst the Kosovar Albanians - and some elements in the Bosnian Muslim population - to bolster their rule.

There has been one structural element in the post-World War II Yugoslav state's stability: the joint concern of the USSR and the USA to maintain the integrity of Yugoslavia as a neutral state on the frontiers of the super-power confrontation in Europe.

The economic crisis was the product of disastrous errors by Yugoslav governments in the 1970s, borrowing vast amounts of Western capital in order to fund growth through exports. Western economies then entered recession, blocked Yugoslav exports and created a huge debt problem. The Yugoslav government then accepted the IMF's conditionalities which shifted the burden of the crisis onto the Yugoslav working class. Simultaneously, strong social groups emerged within the Yugoslav Communist Party, allied to Western business, banking and state interests and began pushing towards neoliberalism, to the delight of the US. It was the Reagan administration which, in 1984, had adopted a "Shock Therapy" proposal to push Yugoslavia towards a capitalist restoration.

This, naturally, undermined a central pillar of the state: the socialist link between the Communist Party and the working class. The forms and effects of this varied in different parts of Yugoslavia. First in Kosovo in 1981, where the links between Yugoslav communism and the population had always been the weakest and where the economic crisis was most intense, there was an uprising demanding full republican status for Kosovo, as well as unification with Albania.

File:Ante Marković.jpg

Ante Marković

In 1989 Jeffrey Sachs was in Yugoslavia helping the Federal government under Ante Marković prepare the IMF/World Bank "Shock Therapy" package, which was then introduced in 1990 just at the time when the crucial parliamentary elections were being held in the various republics.

One aspect of Yugoslavia's "Shock Therapy" programme was both unique within the region and of great political importance in 1989-90. The bankruptcy law to liquidate state enterprises was enacted in the 1989 Financial Operations Act which required that if an enterprise was insolvent for 30 days running, or for 30 days within a 45 day period, it had to settle with its creditors either by giving them ownership or by being liquidated, in which case workers would be sacked, normally without severance payments.

In 1989, according to official sources, 248 firms were declared bankrupt or were liquidated and 89,400 workers were laid off. During the first nine months of 1990 directly following the adoption of the IMF programme, another 889 enterprises with a combined work-force of 525,000 workers suffered the same fate. In other words, in less than two years "the trigger mechanism" (under the Financial Operations Act) had led to the lay off of more than 600,000 workers out of a total industrial workforce of the order of 2.7 million. A further 20% of the work force, or half a million people, were not paid wages during the early months of 1990 as enterprises sought to avoid bankruptcy. The largest concentrations of bankrupt firms and lay-offs were in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo. Real earnings were in a free fall, social programmes had collapsed creating within the population an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness. This was a critical turning point in the Yugoslav tragedy.

In the spring of 1990, Marković was by far the most popular politician, not only in Yugoslavia as a whole, but in each of its constituent republics. He should have been able to rally the population for Yugoslavism against the particularist nationalisms of Milošević in Serbia or Tuđman in Croatia and he should have been able to count on the obedience of the armed forces. He was supported by 83% of the population in Croatia, by 81% in Serbia and by 59% in Slovenia and by 79% in Yugoslavia as a whole. This level of support showed how much of the Yugoslav population remained strongly committed to the state's preservation.

But Marković had coupled his Yugoslavism with the IMF "Shock Therapy" programme and EC conditionality and it was this which gave the separatists in the North West and the nationalists in Serbia their opening. The appeal of the separatists in Slovenia and Croatia to their electorates involved offering to repudiate the Marković-IMF austerity and by doing so help their republics prepare to leave Yugoslavia altogether and "join Europe." The appeal of Milošević in Serbia was based around the idea that the West was acting against the Serbian people's interests. These nationalist appeals were ultimately successful: in every republic, beginning with Slovenia and Croatia in the spring, governments ignored the monetary restrictions of Marković's stabilisation programme in order to win votes.

The newly elected regional government then turned their efforts to the break-up of the country. They were aided by the US government's stance of sidelining Yugoslav cohesion in favour of pushing ahead with the "Shock Therapy" programme. The few European states with strategic interests in the Yugoslav theatre tended to favour fragmentation.

It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that there were no other, specifically Yugoslav, structural flaws which helped to generate the collapse. For instance, many would argue that the decentralised Market Socialism was a disastrous experiment for a state in Yugoslavia's geopolitical situation. The 1974 Constitution, though better for the Kosovar Albanians, had given increased power to the republics, whilst dampening the institutional and material power of the federal government. Tito's authority substituted for this weakness until his death in 1980, after which the state and Communist Party became increasingly paralyzed and thrown into crisis.

Breakup

The neutrality of this article or section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.

After Tito's death on 4 May 1980, ethnic tensions grew in Yugoslavia. The legacy of the Constitution of 1974 was used to throw the system of decision-making into a state of paralysis, made all the more hopeless as the conflict of interests had become irreconcilable. The constitutional crisis that inevitably followed resulted in a rise of nationalism in all republics: Slovenia and Croatia made demands for looser ties within the Federation, the Albanian majority in Kosovo demanded the status of a republic, Serbia sought absolute, not only relative dominion over Yugoslavia. Added to this, the Croat quest for independence led to large Serb communities within Croatia rebelling and trying to secede from the Croat republic.

In 1986, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum addressing some burning issues concerning position of Serbs as the most numerous people in Yugoslavia. The largest Yugoslav republic in territory and population, Serbia's influence over the regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina was reduced by the 1974 Constitution. Because its two autonomous provinces had de facto prerogatives of full-fledged republics, Serbia found that its hands were tied, for the republican government was restricted in making and carrying out decisions that would apply to the provinces. Since the provinces had a vote in the Federal Presidency Council (an eight member council composed of representatives from six republics and two autonomous provinces), they sometimes even entered into coalition with other republics, thus outvoting Serbia. Serbia's political impotence made it possible for others to exert pressure on the 2 million Serbs (20% of total Serbian population) living outside Serbia.

File:Milosevic-1.jpg

Slobodan Milošević

Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević sought to restore pre-1974 Serbian sovereignty. Other republics, especially Slovenia and Croatia, denounced this move as a revival of great Serbian hegemonism. Milošević succeeded in reducing the autonomy of Vojvodina and of Kosovo and Metohija, but both entities retained a vote in the Yugoslav Presidency Council. The very instrument that reduced Serbian influence before was now used to increase it: in the eight member Council, Serbia could now count on four votes minimum - Serbia proper, then-loyal Montenegro, and Vojvodina and Kosovo.

As a result of these events, the ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo organized strikes, which dovetailed into ethnic conflict between the Albanians and the non-Albanians in the province. At 77% of the population of Kosovo in the 1980s, ethnic-Albanians were the majority. The number of Slavs in Kosovo (mainly Serbs) was falling fast due to several reasons, among them being the ever increasing ethnic tensions and subsequent emigration from the area, and by 1999 they formed as little as 10% of the total population.

Meanwhile Slovenia, under the presidency of Milan Kučan, and Croatia supported Albanian miners and their struggle for formal recognition ^{[citation needed]}. Initial strikes turned into widespread demonstrations demanding a Kosovan republic. This angered Serbia's leadership which proceeded to use police force, and later even the Federal Army was sent to the province by the order of the Serbia-held majority in the Yugoslav Presidency Council.

In January 1990, the extraordinary 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was convened. For most of the time, the Slovenian and Serbian delegations were arguing over the future of the League of Communists and Yugoslavia. The Serbian delegation, led by Milošević, insisted on a policy of "one person, one vote," which would empower the majority population, the Serbs. In turn, the Slovenes, supported by Croats, sought to reform Yugoslavia by devolving even more power to republics, but were voted down. As a result, the Slovenian, and eventually Croatian delegation left the Congress, and the all-Yugoslav Communist party was dissolved.

Following the fall of communism in the rest of Eastern Europe, each of the republics held multi-party elections in 1990. Slovenia and Croatia held the elections in April since their communist parties chose to secede from power peacefuly. Other Yugoslav republics - especially Serbia - were more or less dissatisfied with the democratization in two of the republics and proposed different sanctions (e.g. serbian "customs tax" for slovenian products) against the two of the union but as the year passed other republics communist parties saw the inevitability of the democratization process and in December as the last member of the federation - Serbia held parliamentary elections which confirmed (former) communists rule in this republic. The unresolved issues however remained. In particular, Slovenia and Croatia elected governments oriented towards greater authonomy of the republics (under Milan Kučan and Franjo Tuđman, respectively), since it became clear that Serbian domination attempts and increasingly different levels of democratic standards are becoming increasingly incompatible. Serbia and Montenegro elected candidates who favoured Yugoslav unity. Serbs in Croatia wouldn't accept a status of a national minority in a soverign Croatia since Serbs considered Yugoslavia as a whole as their realm. Serbian uprisings in Croatia began in August 1990 by blocking roads leading from Dalmatian coast towards the inland almost a year before Croatian leadership made any move towards independence. These uprisings were more or less discretely backed up by the serbian dominated federal army (JNA). The Serbs proclaimed the emergence of Serbian Autonomous Areas (known later as Republic of Serb Krajina) in Croatia. Federal army tried to disarm the Territorial defence forces of Slovenia (republics had their local defence forces similar to Home guard ) in 1990 but wasn't completely successful. Still Slovenia began to covertly import arms to replenish it's armed forces. Croatia also embarked upon the illegal importation of arms, (following the disaramament of the republics armed forces by the federal JNA) mainly from Hungary, and were caught when Yugoslav Counter Intelligence (KOS, Kontra-obavještajna Služba) showed a video of a secret meeting between Croatian Defence Minister Martin Špegelj and two men. Špegelj announced that they were at war with the army and gave instructions about arms smuggling as well as methods of dealing with the Yugoslav Army's officers stationed in Croatian cities. Serbia and JNa used this discovery of Croatian rearmament for propaganda purposes, hinting at the fascist quisling Croatian state from the II. WW and to legitimise Serbian uprisings in Croatia.

In March 1990, during the demonstrations in Split (Croatia), a young Yugoslav conscript was pushed off a tank after driving it through a crowd of people.^{[citation needed]} Also, guns were fired from army bases through Croatia. Elsewhere, tensions were running high.

In the same month, the Yugoslav People's Army (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija, JNA) met with the Presidency of Yugoslavia in an attempt to get them to declare a state of emergency which would allow for the army to take control of the country. The army was seen as a Serbian service by that time so the consequence feared by the other republics was to be total serbian domination of the union. The representatives of Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Metohija, and Vojvodina voted for the decision, while all other republics, Croatia (Stipe Mesić), Slovenia (Janez Drnovšek), Macedonia (Vasil Tupurkovski) and Bosnia and Hercegovina (Bogić Bogićević), voted against. The tie delayed an escalation of conflicts, but not for long.

Following the first multi-party election results, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia proposed transforming Yugoslavia into a loose confederation of six republics in the autumn of 1990, however Milošević rejected all such proposals, arguing that like Slovenes and Croats, the Serbs (having in mind croatian Serbs)should also have a right to self-determination.

On March 9, 1991 demonstrations were held against Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade, but the police and the military were deployed in the streets to restore order, killing two people. In late March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes incident was one of the first sparks of open war in Croatia. The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), whose superior officers were mainly of Serbian ethnicity, maintained an impression of being neutral, but as time went on, they got more and more involved in the state politics.

On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia became the first republics to declare independence from Yugoslavia. The federal customs officers in Slovenia on the border crossings with Italy, Austria and Hungary mainly just changed uniforms since most of them were local Slovenes. The border police was already slovenian before declaring independence. The following day (June 26), the Federal Executive Council speifically ordered the army to take control of the "internationally recognized borders." See Ten-Day War .

The Yugoslav People's Army forces, based in barracks in Slovenia and Croatia, attempted to carry out the task within next 48 hours. However, due to the misinformation given to the Yugoslav Army conscripts that the Federation is under attack by foreign forces, and the fact that the majority of them did not wish to engage in a war on the ground where they served their conscription, the Slovene territorial defence forces retook most of the posts within several days with only minimal loss of life on both sides. There was a suspected incident of a war crime, as the Austrian ORF TV station showed footage of three Yugoslav Army soldiers surrendering to the Territorial defence, before gunfire was heard and the troops were seen falling down. However, none were killed in the incident. There were however numerous cases of destruction of civilian property and civilian life by the Yugoslav Peoples Army - houses, a church, civilian airport was bombarded and civilian hangar and airliners inside it, truck drivers on the road Ljubljana - Zagreb and austrian journalists on Ljubljana Airport were killed. Ceasefire was agreed upon. According to the Brioni Agreement, recognized by representatives of all republics, the international community pressured Slovenia and Croatia to place a three-month moratorium on their independence. During these three months, the Yugoslav Army completed its pull-out from Slovenia, but in Croatia, a bloody war broke out in the autumn of 1991. Ethnic Serbs, who had created their own state Republic of Serbian Krajina in heavily Serb-populated regions resisted the police forces of the Republic of Croatia who were trying to bring that breakaway region back under Croatian jurisdiction. In some strategic places, the Yugoslav Army acted as a buffer zone, in most others it was protecting or aiding Serbs with resources and even manpower in their confrontation with the new Croatian army and their police force.

War in former Yugoslavia

Countries of former Yugoslavia

In September 1991, the Republic of Macedonia also declared independence, becoming the only former republic to gain sovereignty without resistance from the Belgrade-based Yugoslav authorities. Five hundred U.S. soldiers were then deployed under the U.N. banner to monitor Macedonia's northern borders with the Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia. Macedonia's first president, Kiro Gligorov, maintained good relations with Belgrade and the other breakaway republics and there have to date been no problems between Macedonian and Serbian border police even though small pockets of Kosovo and the Preševo valley complete the northern reaches of the historical region known as Macedonia, which would otherwise create a border dispute if ever Macedonian romantic nationalism should resurface (see IMORO).

As a result of the conflict, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution 721 on November 27, 1991, which paved the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina in November 1991, the Bosnian Serbs held a referendum which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of staying in a common state with Serbia and Montenegro. On January 9, 1992 the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb assembly proclaimed a separate "Republic of the Serb people of Bosnia and Herzegovina." The referendum and creation of SARs were proclaimed unconstitutional by the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and declared illegal and invalid. However, in February-March 1992 the government held a national referendum on Bosnian independence from Yugoslavia. That referendum was in turn declared contrary to the BiH and Federal constitution by the federal Constitution court in Belgrade and the newly established Bosnian Serb government; it was largely boycotted by the Bosnian Serbs. It is interesting that the Federal court in Belgrade did not decide on the matter of the referendum of the Bosnian Serbs. The turnout was somewhere between 64-67% and 98% of the voters voted for independence. It was unclear what the two-thirds majority requirement actually meant and whether it was satisfied ^{[citation needed]}. The republic's government declared its independence on 5 April, and the Serbs immediately declared the independence of Republika Srpska. The war in Bosnia followed shortly thereafter.

The end of the Second Yugoslavia

Various dates are considered as the end of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:

• June 25, 1991, when Croatia and Slovenia declared independence
• October 8, 1991, when the July 9th moratorium on Slovenian and Croatian secession was ended and Croatia restated its independence in Croatian Parliament (that day is celebrated as Independence Day in Croatia)
• September 8, 1991, when Macedonia declared Indepedence
• January 15, 1992, when Slovenia and Croatia were internationally recognized by most European countries
• April 6, 1992, full recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence by the United States and most European countries
• April 28, 1992, the formation of FRY (see below)

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisted of Serbia and Montenegro

The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) was formed on April 28, 1992, and it consisted of the former Socialist Republic of Serbia and Socialist Republic of Montenegro.

The war in the western parts of former Yugoslavia ended in 1995 with U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, which resulted in the so-called Dayton Agreement.

In Kosovo, throughout the 1990s, the leadership of the Albanian population had been pursuing tactics of non-violent resistance in order to achieve independence for the province. In 1996, radical Albanians formed the Kosovo Liberation Army which carried out armed actions in the southern Serbian province. The Yugoslav reaction involved the indiscriminate use of force against civilian populations, and caused many ethnic-Albanians to flee their homes. Following the Racak incident and unsuccessful Rambouillet Agreement in the early months of 1999, NATO proceeded to bombard Serbia and Montenegro for more than two months, until Milošević's government submitted to their demands and withdrew its forces from Kosovo. See Kosovo War for more information. Since June 1999, the province has been governed by peace-keeping forces from NATO and Russia, although all parties continue to recognize it as a part of Serbia.

Milošević's rejection of claims of a first-round opposition victory in new elections for the Federal presidency in September 2000 led to mass demonstrations in Belgrade on October 5 and the collapse of the regime's authority. The opposition's candidate, Vojislav Koštunica took office as Yugoslav president on October 6 2000. On Saturday, March 31, 2001, Milošević surrendered to Yugoslav security forces from his home in Belgrade, following a recent warrant for his arrest on charges of abuse of power and corruption. On June 28 he was driven to the Yugoslav-Bosnian border where shortly after he was placed in the custody of SFOR officials, soon to be extradited to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. His trial on charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia and in Kosovo and Metohija began at The Hague on February 12, 2002, and he died there on 11 March, 2006, while his trial was still ongoing. On April 11, 2002, the Yugoslav parliament passed a law allowing extradition of all persons charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal.

In March 2002, the Governments of Serbia and Montenegro agreed to reform the FRY in favour of a new, much weaker form of cooperation called Serbia and Montenegro. By order of the Yugoslav Federal Parliament on February 4, 2003, Yugoslavia, at least nominally, ceased to exist. A federal government remained in place in Belgrade but assumed largely ceremonial powers. The individual governments of Serbia and of Montenegro conducted their respective affairs almost as though the two republics were independent. Furthermore, customs were established along the traditional border crossings between the two republics.

On May 21, 2006, 86 percent of eligible Montenegrin voters turned out for a special referendum on the independence of Montenegro from the state union with Serbia. They voted 55.5% in favor of independence, recognised as above the 55% threshold set by the European Union for formal recognition of the independence of Montenegro. On June 3, 2006, Montenegro officially declared its independence, with Serbia following suit two days later, effectively dissolving the last vestige of the former Yugoslavia.

Further reading

• Hall, Brian: The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia. Penguin Books. New York, 1994
• Allcock, John B.: Explaining Yugoslavia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000
• Chan, Adrian: Free to Choose: A Teacher's Resource and Activity Guide to Revolution and Reform in Eastern Europe. Stanford, CA: SPICE, 1991. ED 351 248
• Clark, Ramsey: NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition. International Action Center, 1998
• Cohen, Lenard J.: Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993
• Conversi, Daniele: "German -Bashing and the Breakup of Yugoslavia," The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, no. 16, March 1998 (University of Washington: HMJ School of International Studies) http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/conversi/german.html
• Dragnich, Alex N.: Serbs and Croats. The Struggle in Yugoslavia. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992
• Fisher, Sharon: Political Change in Post-Communist Slovakia and Croatia: From Nationalist to Europeanist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006 ISBN 1 4039 7286 9
• Glenny, Misha, The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999 (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2000)
• Gutman, Roy.: A Witness to Genocide. The 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning Dispatches on the "Ethnic Cleansing" of Bosnia. New York: Macmillan, 1993
• Harris, Judy J.: Yugoslavia Today. Southern Social Studies Journal 16 (Fall 1990): 78-101. EJ 430 520
• Hayden, Robert M.: Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000
• Jelavich, Barbara: History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Volume 1. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1983 ED 236 093
• Jelavich, Barbara: History of the Balkans: Twentieth Century, Volume 2. New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1983. ED 236 094
• Johnstone, Diana: Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Monthly Review Press, 2002
• Kohlmann, Evan F.: Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network Berg, New York 2004, ISBN 1-85973-802-8; ISBN 1-85973-807-9
• Lampe, John R: "Yugoslavia As History: Twice There Was a Country Great Britain, Cambridge, 1996, ISBN 0 521 46705 5
• Silber, Laura and Allan Little: "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation." New York: Penguin Books, 1997
• Owen, David: Balkan Odyssey Harcourt (Harvest Book), 1997
• Sacco, Joe: Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995. Fantagraphics Books, January, 2002
• West, Rebecca: Black Lamb and Gray Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. Viking, 1941
• White T. Another fool in the Balkans - in the footsteps of Rebecca West. Cadogan Guides, London , 2006
• Misha Glenny: The fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, ISBN 0-14-026101-X
• New Power

Legacy

New states

The present-day countries created from the former parts of Yugoslavia are:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Croatia
• Montenegro
• Republic of Macedonia
• Serbia
• Slovenia

The first former Yugoslav republic to join the European Union was Slovenia, which applied in 1996 and became a member in 2004. Croatia applied for membership in 2003, and could join before 2010. Republic of Macedonia applied in 2004, and will probably join by 2010–2015. The remaining three republics have yet to apply so their acceptance generally isn't expected before 2015. These states are signatiories of various partnership agreements with the European Union. Since January 1 2007 they have been encircled by member-states of EU. See also: Enlargement of the European Union.

Remaining cultural and ethnic ties

The similarity of the languages and the long history of common life have left many ties among the peoples of the new states, even though the individual state policies of the new states favour differentiation, particularly in language. The Serbo-Croatian language is linguistically a unique language, with several literary and spoken variants and also was the imposed means of communication used where other languages dominated (Slovenia, Macedonia and Kosovo). Now, separate sociolinguistic standards exist for Bosnian language, Croatian language and the Serbian language. SFRY technically had three official languages, along with minority languages official where minorities lived, but in all federal organs only Serbo-Croatian was used and others were expected to use it as well.

Remembrance of the time of the joint state and its perceived positive attributes is referred to as Yugonostalgy (Jugonostalgija). A lot of aspects of Yugonostalgia refer to the socialist system and the sense of social security it provided and inertness it allowed.

Miscellaneous

• Asteroid 1554 Yugoslavia was discovered by Milorad B. Protić and named after Yugoslavia.

See also

• History of the Balkans
• History of Europe
• Yugoslav war
• Music of Yugoslavia

Template:Yug-timeline

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain.

– Yugoslavia

External links

• Teaching about Conflict and Crisis in the Former Yugoslavia
• Maps
• Slobodna Jugoslavija

• The Official Website of the Royal Family of Serbia
• WWW-VL: History: Yugoslavia
• Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Yugoslavia
• Timeline: Break-up of Yugoslavia at BBC News

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Yugoslavia  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Yugoslavia"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.