Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!

Yugoslavia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in all south Slavic languages, in Macedonian and Serbian Cyrillic Југославија) is a term used for three separate but successive political entities that existed during most of the 20th century on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe. Translated, the name means Land of the South Slavs (jug in the word Jugoslavija means south).

The first was a kingdom formed in December 1, 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was re-named the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in January 6, 1929 and existed under that name until it was invaded in April 6, 1941 by the Axis powers. Capitulated only 11 days after, it ceased to exist April 17, 1941.
The second was a Socialist state established immediately after World War II in November 29, 1945 as Democratic Federation of Yugoslavia (DFY), which in 1946 became the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY) and in April 7, 1963 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). This remained in place until 1992, January 15, by which time four of its six constituent republics - Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina - had seceded.
The third was called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and was formed in 1992 on the territory of the remaining republics of Serbia (including the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and of Kosovo, officially known as Kosovo and Metohija) and Montenegro. In 2001, the name Yugoslavia was to be officially abolished when the state would transform into a loose commonwealth called Serbia and Montenegro which finally happened on February 4, 2003.

1 Origins
2 The First Yugoslavia
3 Yugoslavia during the Second World War
4 The Second Yugoslavia
- 4.1 Breakup
5 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
6 Further reading
7 Legacy
8 Miscellaneous
9 See also
10 References
11 External links

[edit]

Origins

Probably the first "official" mention of the term Yugoslav (as opposed to simply south Slav) was the forming of the group of advocates of a joint country of South Slavs, by politicians from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were then both in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

On November 22, 1914, Ante Trumbić, Frano Supilo, Ivan Meštrović, Hinko Hinković and Franko Potočnjak from Croatia and Nikola Stojanović and Dušan Vasiljević from Bosnia and Herzegovina first met with Pavle Popović, a representative of Nikola Pašić's Serbian government, on neutral ground in Florence, Italy, in an effort to coordinate their efforts towards building an independent state of western South Slavs. Lujo Vojnović was also present as an observer from the Kingdom of Montenegro.

The new "Yugoslav" cause (from Jugosloven, meaning "Southern Slav") was receiving an increasing amount of support: in the western states, the people were generally tired of Austria-Hungary and a union with the eastern states was probably seen as the best way to come out of the anomie caused by the Great War. Even the large diasporas, known for their nostalgia and patriotism, started supporting the new idea.

The Yugoslav Committee (Jugoslavenski odbor) was officially formed on April 30th, 1915 in London, and the aforementioned politicians were its members. The Committee and the Kingdom of Serbia subsequently signed the Corfu Declaration on July 20, 1917 that declared their desire to form a new joint kingdom.

[edit]

The First Yugoslavia

Main article: Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The goals of the Yugoslav Committee were partly reached by the end of the First World War in 1918, when Austria-Hungary disintegrated, and the South Slavs organized into the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. This short-lived state soon, on December 1, 1918, joined Serbia and Montenegro to form "The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes". In the chaotic conditions that followed the break-up of Austria-Hungary, the formation of the new state as soon as possible was a priority. Disagreements over whether the new state should be a federation or a centralised state were put off for later.

On June 28, 1921, — a day of historical importance to Serbs (see Vidovdan) — parliament (Skupština) passed a new constitution despite a boycott from Croatian MPs. The constitution centralized political authority and strengthened the power of the royal government in Belgrade, causing dissatisfaction among the more federally minded Croat and Slovene politicians.

In 1928, [Puniša Račić] an ethnic Serbian nationalist leader from Montenegro, shot and killed Croatian Peasant Party Leader Stjepan Radić in the parliament chambers. King Alexander (Aleksandar) used the shooting as a pretext to strengthen his power and on January 6, 1929 he suspended the constitution, dissolved the Skupština and proclaimed a royal dictatorship. He went on to reorganize the regional divisions within the country and renamed it the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. All national identities except "Yugoslav" were abolished.

Yugoslavia became a highly militarized state, which spawned several insurgent nationalist groups opposed to the royal dictatorship. The king was highly unpopular, particularly among non-Serbs, and while on a visit to Marseille, France in 1934, he was assassinated by Bulgarian nationalist and IMRO activist Velichko Kerin (more popular with his revolutionary pseudonym Vlado Chernosemski). His son and successor, Peter II (Petar II), was a child, so power fell into the hands of the ineffectual Prince Paul (Pavle), who continued on an authoritarian path with the prime minister Milan Stojadinović.

In the beginning of World War II, Yugoslavia was pressured by Germany and Italy to join the Axis powers. Italy was mired in an inconclusive war with Greece, and before Germany committed its forces to the Greek campaign, it wanted to secure Yugoslavia's support.

Prince Paul submitted to the fascist pressure and signed the Tripartite Treaty in Vienna on March 25, 1941, hoping to still keep Yugoslavia out of the war. But this was at the expense of popular support for Paul's regency. Senior military officers were also opposed to the treaty and 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 King Peter full powers.

Hitler then decided to attack Yugoslavia on April 6, followed immediately by an invasion of Greece where Mussolini had previously been repelled. (As a result, the launch of Operation Barbarossa was delayed by four weeks, which proved to be a costly decision.)

[edit]

Yugoslavia during the Second World War

At 05:15 on April 6, 1941, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces attacked Yugoslavia. The Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade and other major Yugoslav cities. 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 prisoner.

In the Independent State of Croatia, Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were marched to the Jasenovac concentration camp

The Axis Powers occupied Yugoslavia and split it up. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi puppet-state, ruled by the Catholic fascist militia known as the Ustaše which actually 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.

Yugoslavs opposing the Nazis organized resistance movements. Those inclined towards supporting the old Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined the Chetniks, a mostly Serb-composed nationalistic royalist guerilla led by Colonel Draža Mihajlović. Those inclined towards supporting the Communist Party (and against the King) joined the Yugoslav National Liberation Army, led by Josip Broz Tito, a Croat-Slovenian member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

The NLA initiated a guerrilla campaign which was developed into the largest resistance army in occupied Western and Central Europe. The Chetniks initially made notable incursions and were supported by the exiled royal government as well as the Allies, but soon started to collaborate with axis powers against NLA. After the allies realised that the Chetniks were helping the Germans they ceased to support them.

The German response to the resistance movement was to punish the civilian population by carrying out reprisal killings and by giving a free hand to the quisling forces of the Independent State of Croatia. Italian occupying forces also committed many atrocities (cf. Italian war crimes). This led to great civilian loss of life in most regions of Yugoslavia. The estimated demographic loss was 1,700,000 individuals or 10% of the population of Yugoslavia. Very high losses were among Serbs of Bosnia and Croatia, and members of non-aryan (according to the German racist theory: Jews, Gypsies) 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 NLA organized people's committees to act as civilian government. In Autumn of 1941, the partisans established the Republic of Užice in the liberated territory of western Serbia. In November 1941, the German troops occupied this territory again, while the majority of partisan forces escaped towards Bosnia.

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 NLA was able to expel the Axis from Serbia in 1944 and the rest of Yugoslavia in 1945. The Red Army aided in liberating Belgrade as well as some other territories, but withdrew after the war was over. In May 1945, NLA met with allied forces outside former Yugoslav borders, after taking over also Trieste and parts of Austrian southern provinces Styria and Carinthia. This was the territory populated predominantly by Slovenians (and Croats in Istria). However, the NLA withdrew from Trieste in June of the same year.

Westerner attempts to reunite the partisans, who denied supremacy of the old government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the emigration loyal to the king, led to the Tito-Šubašić Agreement in June 1944, however Tito was seen as a national hero by the citizens and so he gained the power in post-war independent communist state, starting as a prime minister.

[edit]

The Second Yugoslavia

Main article: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Marshal Tito led Yugoslavia from the end of World War II until his death in 1980.

On January 31, 1946 the new constitution of Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, modeling the Soviet Union, established six constituent republics and two autonomous provinces.

The republics were:

and within Serbia's new reduced borders, the people of the following two regions were granted limited autonomous rights:

In 1974, the two provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo as well as the republics of Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro were granted greater autonomy to the point that Albanian and Hungarian became nationally recognised minority languages and the Serbo-Croat of Bosnia and Montenegro altered to a form based on the speech of the local people and not on the standards of Zagreb and Belgrade.

Vojvodina and Kosovo form a part of the Republic of Serbia. The country distanced itself from the Soviets in 1948 (cf. Cominform and Informbiro) and started to build its own way to socialism under strong political leadership of Josip Broz Tito. The country criticized both Eastern bloc and NATO nations and, together with other countries, started the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, which remained the official affiliation of the country until it dissolved.

On April 7, 1963 the nation changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Tito was named President for life.

In SFRY, each republic and province had its own internal constitution, supreme court, parliament, president and prime minister. At the top of the Yugoslav government was Tito as President (a collective Presidency was formed after Tito's death in 1980), the federal Prime Minister, and the federal Parliament. An important role was one of the president of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for each republic and province, and the president of presidency of Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Josip Broz Tito was the most powerful person in the country, and after him there were republic and province premiers and presidents, plus Communist Party presidents. People whom he did not favor varied greatly. Slobodan Penezić Krcun served under Tito as chief of secret police in Serbia and then after he started to complain about Tito's politics, he was victim of a dubious traffic incident. Minister of the Interior Aleksandar Ranković lost all of his titles and rights after a major disagreement with Tito regarding state politics. Sometimes ministers in government were more important than the premier, such as in the case of Edvard Kardelj or Stane Dolanc.

The suppression of national identities escalated with the so-called Croatian Spring of 1970-71, 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 and provinces. According to this constitution, individual republics had a right for self-determination, up to secession, which made later break-up easier.

[edit]

Breakup

After Tito's death in 1980, ethnic tensions grew in Yugoslavia. Some members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum in 1986 that opposed the policy of the federation and promoted Serbian nationalism in response to the perceived weak position of Serbia in the federation. The ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo organized strikes which dovetailed into ethnic conflict between the Albanians and the non-Albanians in the province. In the 1980s, the Albanians were the largest ethnic group in Kosovo with over 90% of the population. The principle Slavs, mainly Serbs, were fast reducing in size and would by 1999 be as little as 10% of the two million population.

Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević, the new strong man of Yugoslavia, tried to play on the revived Serb nationalism, but ended up alienating all the other ethnic groups in the federation. Autonomy of Vojvodina and of Kosovo and Metohija was reduced, though both entities retained a vote in the Yugoslav Presidency Council. As a result, Milošević in effect now controlled three of the eight votes in the Presidency.

Milošević

Meanwhile Slovenia, under the presidency of Milan Kucan had since 1986 been following a course of democratisation and economic liberalisation, which put it on a collision course with Milošević' policies. Croatia later followed suit.

In January 1990, the extraordinary 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was convened. The Serbian delegation, led by Milošević, insisted on the reversal of 1974 Constitution policy that empowered the republics and rather wanted to introduce a policy of "one person, one vote", which would empower the majority population, the Serbs. The Slovenian and Croatian delegations (led by Milan Kučan and Ivica Račan, respectively), favored democratisation and economic liberalization, but were voted down. As a result, the Slovene and Croatian delegations left the Congress, and the all-Yugoslav communist party was dissolved.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in the rest of Eastern Europe, each of the republics held multi-party elections in 1990. The unresolved issues remained. In particular, Slovenia and Croatia elected governments oriented towards independence (under Milan Kučan and Franjo Tuđman, respectively), while Serbia and Montenegro elected candidates who favoured Yugoslav unity.

In March 1990, the Yugoslav People's Army (Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija, JNA) met with the Presidency of Yugoslavia (an eight member council composed of representatives from six republics and two autonomous provinces) 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 representatives of Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo-Metohija, and Vojvodina voted for the decision, while Croatia (Stipe Mesić), Slovenia (Janez Drnovšek), Macedonia (Vasil Tupurkovski) and Bosnia-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 all Serbs should live in the same country.

On March 9, 1991 demonstrations were held against Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade, but the police and the military were deployed in the streets in order to restore order, killing two people. In late March, 1991, the so-called Plitvice Bloody Easter incident was one of the first sparks of open war in Croatia. The Yugoslav People's Army maintained an impression of being neutral, but as time went on, it was becoming more and more involved in state politics.

On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia became the first republics to declare independence from Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, the Yugoslav People's Army took armed action, leading to a ten-day war, marking the beginning of the bloody Yugoslav wars. At the end of the ten days, the Yugoslav Army was defeated, and pulled out of Slovenia. In the Brioni Agreement, agreed upon by representatives of all republics, the international community pressured Slovenia and Croatia to place a three-month moratorium on their independence declarations. During these three months, the Yugoslav Army completed its pull-out of Slovenia, but in Croatia, a bloody war broke out in the autumn of 1991. Ethnic Serbs, who had created the Republic of Serbian Krajina in heavily Serb-populated regions, with the aid of the Yugoslav Army, fought the forces of the republic of Croatia.

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. 500 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 Serbo-Montenegrin 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 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. [1]

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 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 and newly established Bosnian Serb government; it was largely boycotted by 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 since that decision was made without the consent of all three nations living in Bosnia (the votes of Serbs were ignored, though such decision should be supported by all Bosnian nations), the Serbs immediately declared the independence of Republika Srpska to protect their rights. The war in Bosnia followed shortly thereafter.

The so-called Badinter Commission formed by the European Community declared in early 1992 that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had "dissolved".

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)
January 15, 1992, when Slovenia and Croatia were internationally recognized
April 28, 1992, the formation of FRY (see below)

[edit]

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 Republics of Serbia and Montenegro.

The war in the western parts of former Yugoslavia ended in 1995 with U.S.-sponsored peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, with 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 (considered a terrorist organisation by, among others, Serbian authorities, and the U.S. State Department, which added it to its list of terrorist organisations) 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 the Milošević 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, reformed nationalist Vojislav Koštunica took office as Yugoslav president on October 6.

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. On April 11, 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 FRY in favour of a new, much weaker form of cooperation called Serbia and Montenegro. By order of Yugoslav Federal Parliament on February 4, 2003, Yugoslavia, at least nominally, ceased to exist. A federal government remains in place in Belgrade but now assumes only ceremonial powers. The local governments of Serbia and of Montenegro now conduct their respective affairs almost as though the two republics were independent. Furthermore, customs have been established along the traditional border crossings between the two republics.

[edit]

Legacy

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

The first former Yugoslav republic that joined 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. 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. See also: Enlargement of the European Union

[edit]