This article is about the country that existed until 1992. For the self-proclaimed successor state, called "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" until 2003, seeSerbia and Montenegro.
On 20 June 1928, Serb deputyPuniša Račić shot at five members of the oppositionCroatian Peasant Party in theNational Assembly, resulting in the death of two deputies on the spot and that of leaderStjepan Radić a few weeks later.[16] On 6 January 1929,KingAlexander I got rid of theconstitution,banned national political parties,assumed executive power, and renamed the country Yugoslavia.[15][17] He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions. He imposed anew constitution and relinquished his dictatorship in 1931.[18] However, Alexander's policies later encountered opposition from other European powers stemming from developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists andNazis rose to power, and theSoviet Union, whereJoseph Stalin became absolute ruler. None of these three regimes favored the policy pursued by Alexander I. In fact, Italy and Germany wanted to revise the international treaties signed after World War I, and the Soviets were determined to regain their positions in Europe and pursue a more active international policy.[citation needed]
Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia. He decided to abolish Yugoslavia's historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas.[19][20] The banovinas were named after rivers.[19] Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance. During his reign, communist movements were restricted.[21]
The international political scene in the late 1930s was marked by growing intolerance between the principal figures, by the aggressive attitude of thetotalitarian regimes, and by the certainty that the order set up after World War I was losing its strongholds and its sponsors their strength. Supported and pressured byFascist Italy andNazi Germany, Croatian leaderVladko Maček and his party managed the creation of theBanovina of Croatia (Autonomous Region with significant internal self-government) in 1939.[citation needed] The agreement specified that Croatia was to remain part of Yugoslavia, but it was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations.[citation needed]
Prince Paul submitted to fascist pressure and signed theTripartite Pact in Vienna on 25 March 1941, hoping to continue keeping Yugoslavia out of the war. However, 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 on27 March. Army GeneralDušan Simović seized power, arrested the Vienna delegation, exiled Prince Paul, and ended the regency, giving 17-year-oldKing Peter full powers.Hitler then decided to attack Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, followed immediately by an invasion of Greece whereMussolini had previously been repelled.[28][29]
PartisanStjepan Filipović shouting "Death to fascism, freedom to the people!" shortly before his execution (1942)
At 5:12 a.m. on 6 April 1941,German,Italian andHungarian forcesinvaded Yugoslavia.[30] The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) bombedBelgrade and other major Yugoslav cities. On 17 April, representatives of Yugoslavia's various regions signed an armistice with Germany in Belgrade, ending eleven days of resistance against the invading German forces.[31] More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner.[32]
TheAxis Powers occupied Yugoslavia and split it up. TheIndependent State of Croatia was established as aNazi satellite state, ruled by the fascist militia known as theUstaše that came into existence in 1929, but was relatively limited in its activities until 1941. German troops occupiedBosnia andHerzegovina as well as part ofSerbia andSlovenia, while other parts of the country were occupied byBulgaria, Hungary, and Italy. From 1941 to 1945, the CroatianUstaše regimepersecuted and murdered around 300,000 Serbs, along with at least 30,000 Jews and Roma;[33] hundreds of thousands of Serbs were also expelled and another 200,000-300,000 were forced to convert toCatholicism.[34]
From the start, the Yugoslav resistance forces consisted of two factions: the communist-ledYugoslav Partisans and the royalistChetniks, with the former receiving Allied recognition at the Tehran conference (1943). The heavily pro-Serbian Chetniks were led byDraža Mihajlović, while the pan-Yugoslav oriented Partisans were led byJosip Broz Tito.[35]
The Partisans initiated aguerrilla campaign that developed into the largest resistance army in occupied Western and Central Europe. The Chetniks were initially supported by the exiled royal government and theAllies, but they soon focused increasingly on combating the Partisans rather than the occupying Axis forces. By the end of the war, the Chetnik movement transformed into a collaborationist Serb nationalist militia completely dependent on Axis supplies.[36] The Chetniks alsopersecuted and killedMuslims andCroats,[37] with an estimated 50,000-68,000 victims (of which 41,000 were civilians).[38] The highly mobile Partisans, however, carried on their guerrilla warfare with great success. Most notable of the victories against the occupying forces were the battles ofNeretva andSutjeska.
TheYugoslav Partisans were able to expel the Axis from Serbia in 1944 and the rest of Yugoslavia in 1945. TheRed Army provided limited assistance with the liberation ofBelgrade and withdrew after the war was over. In May 1945, the Partisans met with Allied forces outside former Yugoslav borders, after also taking overTrieste and parts of the southern Austrian provinces ofStyria andCarinthia. However, the Partisans withdrew from Trieste in June of the same year under heavy pressure from Stalin, who did not want a confrontation with the other Allies.[39]
Western attempts to reunite the Partisans, who denied the supremacy of the old government of theKingdom of Yugoslavia, and the émigrés loyal to the king led to theTito-Šubašić Agreement in June 1944; however,Marshal Josip Broz Tito was in control and was determined to lead an independent communist state, starting as a prime minister. He had the support of Moscow and London and led by far the strongest Partisan force with 800,000 men.[40][41]
The official Yugoslav post-war estimate ofvictims in Yugoslavia during World War II is 1,704,000. Subsequent data gathering in the 1980s by historiansVladimir Žerjavić andBogoljub Kočović showed that the actual number of dead was about 1 million.[42]
On 11 November 1945,parliamentary elections were held with only the Communist-ledPeople's Front appearing on the ballot, securing all 354 seats in the newly formedConstituent Assembly. On 29 November, the Constituent Assembly proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, thus abolishing monarchical rule.[43] The elections were called by theregency council[c] appointed by the King on 2 March 1945, though whether this represented anabdication is in dispute among historians.[44] Marshal Tito was now in full control, and all opposition elements were eliminated.[45]
Tito's regional goal was toexpand south and take control of Albania and parts of Greece. In 1947, negotiations between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria led to theBled agreement, which proposed to form a close relationship between the two Communist countries, and enable Yugoslavia to start acivil war in Greece and use Albania and Bulgaria as bases. Stalin vetoed this agreement and it was never realised. The break between Belgrade and Moscow was now imminent.[46]
Yugoslavia solved the national issue of nations and nationalities (national minorities) in a way that all nations and nationalities had the same rights. However, most of theGerman minority of Yugoslavia, most of whom had collaborated during the occupation and had been recruited to German forces, were expelled towards Germany or Austria.[47]
Yugoslav–Soviet split and the Non-Alignment Movement
All the Communist European Countries had deferred to Stalin and rejected theMarshall Plan aid in 1947. Tito, at first went along and rejected the Marshall plan. However, in 1948 Tito broke decisively with Stalin on other issues, making Yugoslavia an independent communist state. Yugoslavia requested American aid. American leaders were internally divided, but finally agreed and began sending money on a small scale in 1949, and on a much larger scale 1950–53. The American aid was not part of the Marshall plan.[51]
Tito criticised bothEastern Bloc andNATO nations and, together with India and other countries, started theNon-Aligned Movement in 1961, which remained the official affiliation of the country until it dissolved.[citation needed]
On 7 April 1963, the nation changed its official name toSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Josip Broz Tito was namedPresident for life.[52] In the SFRY, each republic and province had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president and prime minister.[53] At the top of the Yugoslav government were the President (Tito), the federal Prime Minister, and the federal Parliament (a collective Presidency was formed after Tito's death in 1980).[53][54] Also important were theCommunist Party general secretaries for each republic and province, and the general secretary of Central Committee of the Communist Party.[53]
Tito was the most powerful person in the country, followed by republican and provincial premiers and presidents, and Communist Party presidents. 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. Minister of the interiorAleksandar Ranković lost all of his titles and rights after a major disagreement with Tito regarding state politics. Some influential ministers in government, such asEdvard Kardelj orStane Dolanc, were more important than the Prime Minister.[citation needed]
First cracks in the tightly governed system surfaced whenstudents in Belgrade and several other cities joined the worldwideprotests of 1968. President Josip Broz Tito gradually stopped the protests by giving in to some of the students' demands and saying that "students are right" during a televised speech. However, in the following years, he dealt with the leaders of the protests by sacking them from university and Communist party posts.[55]
A more severe sign of disobedience was so-calledCroatian Spring of 1970 and 1971, when students in Zagreb organised demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy, followed by mass protests across Croatia.[56][57] The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, though many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause.[58] As a result, a newConstitution was ratified in 1974, which gave more rights to the individual republics in Yugoslavia and provinces in Serbia.[56][57]
Ethnic tensions and economic crisis
After theYugoslav Partisans took over the country at the end of WWII, nationalism was banned from being publicly promoted. Overall relative peace was retained under Tito's rule, though nationalist protests did occur, but these were usually repressed and nationalist leaders were arrested and some were executed by Yugoslav officials. However, the Croatian Spring protests in the 1970s were backed by large numbers of Croats who complained that Yugoslavia remained a Serb hegemony.[59]
Tito, whose home republic was Croatia, was concerned over the stability of the country and responded in a manner to appease both Croats and Serbs: he ordered the arrest of the Croatian Spring protestors while at the same time conceding to some of their demands. Following the1974 Yugoslav Constitution, Serbia's influence in the country was significantly reduced,[60] while its autonomous provinces ofVojvodina andKosovo were granted greater autonomy, along with greater rights for the Albanians of Kosovo and Hungarians of Vojvodina.[61] Both provinces were afforded much of the same status as the six republics of Yugoslavia, though they could not secede.[62] Vojvodina and Kosovo formed the provinces of theRepublic of Serbia but also formed part of the federation, which led to the unique situation in whichCentral Serbia did not have its own assembly but a joint assembly with its provinces represented in it.Albanian andHungarian 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. In Slovenia the recognized minorities were Hungarians and Italians.[citation needed]
The fact that these autonomous provinces held the same voting power as the republics but unlike other republics could not legally separate from Yugoslavia satisfied Croatia and Slovenia, but in Serbia and in the new autonomous province of Kosovo, reaction was different. Serbs saw the new constitution as conceding to Croat and ethnic Albanian nationalists.[63] Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo saw the creation of an autonomous province as not being enough, and demanded that Kosovo become a constituent republic with the right to separate from Yugoslavia. This created tensions within the Communist leadership, particularly among Communist Serb officials who viewed the 1974 constitution as weakening Serbia's influence and jeopardising the unity of the country by allowing the republics the right to separate.[63]
Several groups ofCroats from Herzegovina maintained close ties with the Croatian Ustaše émigrés, aiming to dismantle Yugoslavia and reestablish an independent Croatian state. On June 20, 1972, theBugojno group attempted to infiltrate SFR Yugoslavia with the aim of inciting a rebellion against the socialist Yugoslav government.[64] Another group, inspired and possibly organized byfriar Jozo Križić fromDuvno, included soldiers serving their military service in the Yugoslav army. In 1985, they were arrested and imprisoned for attempted terrorism.[65][66]
According to official statistics, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, Yugoslavia was among the fastest growing countries, approaching the ranges reported in South Korea and other countries undergoing aneconomic miracle.[67] The unique socialist system in Yugoslavia, where factories wereworker cooperatives and decision-making was less centralized than in other socialist countries, may have led to the stronger growth. However, even if the absolute value of the growth rates was not as high as indicated by the official statistics, both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were characterized by surprisingly high growth rates of both income and education during the 1950s.[67] The period of European growth ended after the oil price shock in 1970s. Following that, an economic crisis erupted in Yugoslavia due to disastrous economic policies such as borrowing vast amounts of Western capital to fund growth through exports.[67] At the same time, Western economies went into recession, decreasing demand for Yugoslav imports thereby creating a large debt problem.[68]
In 1989, 248 firms were declared bankrupt or were liquidated and 89,400 workers were laid off according to official sources[who?]. During the first nine months of 1990 and 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 layoff of more than 600,000 workers out of a total industrial workforce of the order of 2.7 million.[69] An additional 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.[70] 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 and social programmes collapsed; creating within the population an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness.[70] This was a critical turning point in the events to follow.[citation needed]
After Tito's death on 4 May 1980,ethnic tensions grew in Yugoslavia. The legacy of theConstitution of 1974 threw the system of decision-making into a state of paralysis, made all the more hopeless as the conflict of interests became irreconcilable. The Albanian majority in Kosovo demanded the status of a republic in the1981 protests in Kosovo while Serbian authorities suppressed this sentiment and proceeded to reduce the province's autonomy.[71]
In 1986, theSerbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum addressing some burning issues concerning the 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 the six republics and the two autonomous provinces), they sometimes even entered into coalitions 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 the total Serbian population) living outside Serbia.[citation needed]
After Tito's death, Serbian communist leaderSlobodan Milošević began making his way toward the pinnacle of Serbian leadership.[72] Milošević sought to restore pre-1974 Serbian sovereignty. Other republics, especially Slovenia and Croatia, denounced his proposal as a revival ofgreater Serbian hegemonism. Through a series of moves known as the "anti-bureaucratic revolution", Milošević succeeded in reducing the autonomy ofVojvodina and ofKosovo and Metohija,[73] 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 at a minimum: Serbia proper, then-loyal Montenegro, Vojvodina, and Kosovo.[74]
As a result of these events,ethnic Albanian miners inKosovo organised the1989 Kosovo miners' strike, which dovetailed into an ethnic conflict between the Albanians and the non-Albanians in the province. At around 80% of thepopulation of Kosovo in the 1980s, ethnic-Albanians were the majority. With Milošević gaining control over Kosovo in 1989, the original residency changed drastically leaving only a minimum number of Serbians in the region.[72] The number of Serbs in Kosovo was quickly declining for several reasons, among them the ever-increasing ethnic tensions and subsequent emigration from the area.[75][76]
Meanwhile,Slovenia, under the presidency ofMilan Kučan, andCroatia supported the Albanian miners and their struggle for formal recognition. Initial strikes turned into widespread demonstrations demanding a Kosovar republic. This angered Serbia's leadership which proceeded to use police force and later, federal police troops to restore civil order.[77]
In January 1990, the extraordinary 14th Congress of theLeague of Communists of Yugoslavia was convened, where the Serbian and Slovenian delegations argued 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 plurality population, theSerbs. In turn, the Slovenian delegation, supported by Croats, sought to reform Yugoslavia by devolving even more power to republics, but were voted down. As a result, the Slovene and Croatian delegations left the Congress and the all-Yugoslav Communist party was dissolved.[78][79]
The constitutional crisis that inevitably followed resulted in a rise of nationalism in all republics: Slovenia and Croatia voiced demands for looser ties within the federation.[citation needed] Following the fall of communism in 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 cede power peacefully. Other Yugoslav republics—especially Serbia—were more or less dissatisfied with the democratisation in two of the republics and proposed different sanctions (e.g. Serbian "customs tax" for Slovene products) against the two, but as the year progressed, other republics' communist parties saw the inevitability of the democratisation process.[citation needed] In December, as the last member of the federation, Serbia held parliamentary elections confirming the rule of former communists in the republic.[citation needed]
Slovenia and Croatia elected governments oriented towards greater autonomy of the republics (underMilan Kučan andFranjo Tuđman, respectively).[80] Serbia and Montenegro elected candidates who favoured Yugoslav unity.[citation needed] The Croat quest for independence led to large Serb communities within Croatia rebelling and trying to secede from the Croat republic. Serbs in Croatia would not accept the status of a national minority in a sovereign Croatia since they would be demoted from the status of a constituent nation.[81]
The war broke out when the new regimes tried to replace Yugoslav civilian and military forces with secessionist forces. When, in August 1990, Croatia attempted to replace police in the Serb-populated Croat Krajina by force, the population first looked for refuge in the Yugoslav Army barracks, while the army remained passive. The civilians then organised armed resistance. These armed conflicts between the Croatian armed forces ("police") and civilians mark the beginning of the Yugoslav war that inflamed the region. Similarly, the attempt to replace Yugoslav frontier police by Slovene police forces provoked regional armed conflicts which ended with a minimal number of victims.[82]
A similar attempt in Bosnia and Herzegovina led to a war that lasted more than three years (see below). The results of all these conflicts were the almost total emigration of the Serbs from all three regions, the massive displacement of the populations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the establishment of the three new independent states. The separation of Macedonia was peaceful, although the Yugoslav Army occupied the peak of the Straža mountain on Macedonian soil.[citation needed]
Serbian uprisings in Croatia began in August 1990 by blocking roads leading from the Dalmatian coast towards the interior almost a year before Croatian leadership made any move towards independence. These uprisings were more or less discreetly backed by the Serb-dominated federal army (JNA). The Serbs in Croatia proclaimed "Serb autonomous areas", which were later united into theRepublic of Serb Krajina. The federal army tried to disarm the territorial defence forces of Slovenia (the republics had their local defence forces similar to the Home Guard) in 1990 but was not completely successful. Still, Slovenia began to covertly import arms to replenish its armed forces.[citation needed]
Croatia also embarked upon the illegal importation of arms, (following the disarmament of the republics' armed forces by the federal army) mainly from Hungary. These activities were under constant surveillance and produced avideo of a secret meeting between the Croatian Defence minister Martin Špegelj and two unidentified men. The video, filmed by the Yugoslav counter-intelligence (KOS, Kontra-obavještajna služba), showed Špegel announcing that they were at war with the army and giving 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. Guns were also fired from army bases through Croatia. Elsewhere, tensions were running high. In the same month, the Army leaders met with the Presidency of Yugoslavia in an attempt to get them to declare astate of emergency which would allow for the army to take control of the country. The army was seen as an arm of the Serbian government 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 Vojvodina voted for the decision, while all other republics, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, voted against. The tie delayed an escalation of conflicts, but not for long.[82]
Following the first multi-party election results, in the autumn of 1990, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia proposed transforming Yugoslavia into a looseconfederation of six republics. By this proposal, republics would have right to self-determination. HoweverMilošević 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.[citation needed]
On 9 March 1991, demonstrations were held against Slobodan Milošević inBelgrade, but the police and the military were deployed in the streets to restore order, killing two people. In late March 1991, thePlitvice Lakes incident was one of the first sparks of open war in Croatia. TheYugoslav People's Army (JNA), whose superior officers were mainly of Serbian ethnicity, maintained an impression of being neutral, but as time went on, they became increasingly more involved in state politics.[citation needed]
On 25 June 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 simply changed uniforms since most of them were local Slovenes. The following day (26 June), the Federal Executive Council specifically ordered the army to take control of the "internationally recognized borders", leading to theTen-Day War. As Slovenia and Croatia fought towards independence, the Serbian and Croatian forces indulged in violent and perilous rivalry.[72]
TheYugoslav People's Army forces, based in barracks in Slovenia and Croatia, attempted to carry out the task within the next 48 hours. However, because of misinformation given to the Yugoslav Army conscripts that the Federation was 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 days with minimal loss of life on both sides.[citation needed]
There was, however, evidence of a suspected war crime. The AustrianORF TV network showedfootage of three Yugoslav Army soldiers surrendering to the territorial defence force when gunfire was heard and the troops were seen falling down. None were killed in the incident, yet there were numerous cases of destruction of civilian property and civilian life by the Yugoslav People's Army, including houses and a church. A civilian airport, along with a hangar and aircraft inside the hangar, was bombarded; truck drivers on the road from Ljubljana to Zagreb and Austrian journalists at theLjubljana Airport were killed.[citation needed]
A ceasefire was eventually agreed upon. According to theBrioni Agreement, recognised by representatives of all republics, the international community pressured Slovenia and Croatia to place a three-monthmoratorium on their independence.[citation needed]
During these three months, the Yugoslav Army completed its pull-out from Slovenia, but in Croatia, a bloodywar broke out in the autumn of 1991. Ethnic Serbs, who had created their own stateRepublic 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.[citation needed]
In September 1991, theRepublic of Macedonia also declared independence, becoming the only former republic to gain sovereignty without resistance from the Belgrade-based Yugoslav authorities. 500 US soldiers were then deployed under the UN banner to monitor Macedonia's northern borders with the Republic of Serbia. 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 thePreševo valley complete the northern reaches of the historical region known as Macedonia (Prohor Pčinjski part), which would otherwise create a border dispute if ever Macedonian nationalism should resurface (seeInternal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization). This was despite the fact that the Yugoslav Army refused to abandon its military infrastructure on the top of the Straža Mountain up to the year 2000.[citation needed]
In Bosnia and Herzegovina in November 1991, the Bosnian Serbs held a referendum which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of forming a Serbian republic within the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and staying in a common state with Serbia and Montenegro. On 9 January 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 proclaimedunconstitutional by the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina and declared illegal and invalid. 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 the Federal constitution by the federal Constitutional Court in Belgrade and the newly established Bosnian Serb government.[citation needed]
The referendum was largely boycotted by the Bosnian Serbs. The Federal court in Belgrade did not decide on the matter of the referendum of the Bosnian Serbs. The turnout was somewhere between 64 and 67% and 98% of the voters voted for independence. It was not clear what the two-thirds majority requirement actually meant and whether it was satisfied. The republic's government declared its independence on 5 April, and the Serbs immediately declared the independence ofRepublika Srpska. Thewar in Bosnia followed shortly thereafter.[citation needed]
Timeline
Various dates are considered the end of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:
8 September 1991: following a referendum theRepublic of Macedonia declared independence which was ratified by the Assembly of Macedonia on 17 September[85]
8 October 1991, when the 9 July moratorium on Slovene and Croatian secession ended and Croatia restated its independence in the Croatian Parliament (that day is officially considered the date of Independence)[86]
6 April 1992: full recognition ofBosnia and Herzegovina's independence by the European Union followed by the U.S.[87]
According to the Succession Agreement signed in Vienna on 29 June 2001, all assets of former Yugoslavia were divided between five successor states:[93]
In June 2006,Montenegro became an independent nation after the results of aMay 2006 referendum, therefore rendering Serbia and Montenegro no longer existent. After Montenegro's independence, Serbia became thelegal successor of Serbia and Montenegro, while Montenegro re-applied for membership in international organisations. In February 2008, theRepublic of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, leading to an ongoing dispute on whether Kosovo is a legally recognised state. Republic of Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations, but a number of states, including the United States and various members of theEuropean Union, haverecognised Republic of Kosovo as a sovereign state.[95]
Remembrance of the time of the joint state and its positive attributes is referred to asYugo-nostalgia.Many aspects of Yugo-nostalgia refer to the socialist system and the sense of social security it provided. There are still people from the former Yugoslavia who self-identify asYugoslavs; this identifier is commonly seen in demographics relating to ethnicity in today's independent states.[97]
This sectionis missing information about overall statistics on religion, ethnicity, and language. Please expand the sectionby making an edit requestto include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(April 2022)
Ethnic map of Yugoslavia based on 1991 census data, published by CIA in 1992
Yugoslavia had always been a home to a very diverse population, not only in terms of national affiliation, but also religious affiliation. Of the many religions, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism, as well as variousEastern Orthodox faiths, composed the religions of Yugoslavia, comprising over 40 in all. The religious demographics of Yugoslavia changed dramatically since World War II. A census taken in 1921 and later in 1948 show that 99% of the population appeared to be deeply involved with their religion and practices. With postwar government programs of modernisation and urbanisation, the percentage of religious believers took a dramatic plunge. Connections between religious belief and nationality posed a serious threat to the post-war Communist government's policies on national unity and state structure.[98] Although Yugoslavia became ade factoatheist state, in contrast to othersocialist states of the time, Catholic Church maintained an active role in society of Yugoslavia,[99] theHoly See normalized itsrelations with Yugoslavia by 1967 and worked together on stopping theVietnam War.[100] Likewise, theSerbian Orthodox Church received favorable treatment, and Yugoslavia did not engage in anti-religious campaigns to the extent of other countries in theEastern Bloc.[101]
After the rise of communism, a survey taken in 1964 showed that just over 70% of the total population of Yugoslavia considered themselves to be religious believers. The places of highest religious concentration were that ofKosovo with 91% andBosnia and Herzegovina with 83.8%. The places of lowest religious concentration wereSlovenia 65.4%,Serbia with 63.7% andCroatia with 63.6%. The percentage of self-declared atheists was highest amongYugoslavs by nationality at 45%, followed bySerbs at 42%.[102] Religious differences between OrthodoxSerbs andMacedonians, CatholicCroats andSlovenes, and MuslimBosniaks andAlbanians alongside the rise of nationalism contributed to the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.[98]
TheKingdom of Yugoslavia had unitary policies, suppressed autonomy and proclaimed the official ideology to be that Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Slovenes were tribes of one nation ofYugoslavs (seeYugoslavism), to the heavy disagreement and resistance from Croats and other ethnic groups; this was interpreted as gradualSerbianization of Yugoslavia's non-Serb population. The rulingCommunist Party of theSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was ideologically opposed to ethnic unitarism and royal hegemony, and instead promoted ethnic diversity and socialYugoslavism within the notion of "brotherhood and unity", while organizing the country as a federation.[103]
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^Portmann M (2010). "Die orthodoxe Abweichung. Ansiedlungspolitik in der Vojvodina zwischen 1944 und 1947".Bohemica. A Journal of History and Civilisation in East Central Europe.50 (1):95–120.doi:10.18447/BoZ-2010-2474.
^Čubrilo, Jasmina (2020). "The Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and Post-Revolutionary Desire". In Garcia, Noemi de Haro; Mayayo, Jesús Carrillo, Patricia; Carrillo, Jesús (eds.).Making Art History in Europe After 1945. Routledge. pp. 125–128.ISBN978-0-8153-9379-5.
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West, Rebecca:Black Lamb and Gray Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. Viking, 1941
Historiography and memory
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Beloff, Nora (1986).Tito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia and the West Since 1939. Westview Pr.ISBN978-0-8133-0322-2.online
Brunnbauer, Ulf. "Serving the Nation: Historiography in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) After Socialism."Historein 4 (2003): 161–182.online
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Cicic, Ana. "Yugoslavia Revisited: Contested Histories through Public Memories of President Tito." (2020).online
Cosovschi, Agustin. "Seeing and Imagining the Land of Tito: Oscar Waiss and the Geography of Socialist Yugoslavia."Balkanologie. Revue d'études pluridisciplinaires 17.1 (2022).online
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Foster, Samuel.Yugoslavia in the British imagination: Peace, war and peasants before Tito (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021)online. See alsoonline book review
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Trošt, Tamara P. "The image of Josip Broz Tito in post-Yugoslavia: Between national and local memory." inRuler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond (Routledge, 2020) pp. 143–162.online
f Annexed by Italy (1941–1943) and Germany (1943–1944). Smaller part annexed by the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1944).
g North Macedonia's official and constitutional name was the Republic of Macedonia until 2019. It was known in the United Nations asthe former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia because of anaming dispute withGreece.
h Free Territory was established in 1947. Its administration was divided into two areas (Zone A) and (Zone B). Free Territory was de facto taken over by Italy and SFRY in 1954.
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