Jump to content

History of Yugoslavia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Nikola Smolenski (talk | contribs) at 06:19, 19 May 2004 (At that points in history, province was called that way. Notice that I haven't changed earlier mentionings of the province. Stop writing about topics you don't know about!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This is the history of the Yugoslav state. For history of the region before 1918, see history of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Also see history of Europe and list of extinct countries, empires, etc.

In 1918, in the aftermath of World War I, parts of Austria-Hungary which were populated by Southern Slavs seceded and formed 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".

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.

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 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 (from Jugoslav, meaning "Southern Slav"). 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 Macedonian nationalists.

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.

Royal Regent Paul submitted to the facist 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 Dusan Simovic seized power, arrested the Vienna delegation, exiled Paul, and instated the 17-year old crown prince Peter as the new king. Apparently this defiance infuriated Hitler, so the Axis decided to attack both Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6. (As a result, Hitler had to delay the launch of Operation Barbarossa by four weeks, which proved to be a costly decision.)

At 05:15 on April 6, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces attacked Yugoslavia. The Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade and other major Yugoslav cities. The Axis powers soon occupied Yugoslavia and split it up. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a nazi puppet-state, ruled by the right-wing militia Ustaše. German troops occupied Serbia, while other parts of the country were back to Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy.

Yugoslavs opposing the Nazis joined the partisan forces (National Liberation Army), led by Croat Josip Broz Tito. The NLA staged a wide-spread guerrilla campaign, and the Germans answered by punishing the civil population. This led to great losses for Yugoslavia, approximately one million people (the demographic loss was 1,700,000 people or 10% of the population). In liberated territories, NLA 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 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. After the war, Yugoslavia was reunited as an independent Communist state with Tito as prime minister.

On January 31, 1946 the new constitution of Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, modeling the Soviet Union, established six constituent republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia). Then on April 7, 1963 the nation changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Josip Broz Tito was named President for life.

The country was unitary until the mid 1960s, when the suppression of national identities escalated with the 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.

After Tito's death in 1980, ethnic tension grew in Yugoslavia. 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.

The Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences published a memorandum in the 1980s that opposed the policy of the federation and promoted Serbian nationalism. The ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo organized strikes which turned out to be an ethnic conflict between the Albanian majority and the Serbian minority in the province. Milošević's people organized the abolition of the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, though peculiarly enough both entities retained a vote in the Yugoslav Presidency Council.

On the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the delegation of Serbia 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. This caused the Slovenian and Croatian delegations (led by Milan Kučan and Ivica Račan, resp.) to leave the Congress in protest and marked a culmination in the rift of the ruling party.

Following the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and in Yugoslavia, each of the republics elected a new government democratically, but 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 unionists.

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 and Metohia and Vojvodina voted for the decision, while Croatia (Stipe Mesić), Slovenia (Janez Drnovšek), Macedonia (Vasil Tupurkovski) and Bosnia (Bogić Bogićević) voted against. The tie somewhat delayed escalation of conflicts, but not for long.

Republics of Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991; Macedonia followed in 1992 together with Bosnia-Herzegovina, albeit only two out of three constitutive peoples, Bosniaks and Croats.

The forces of Slobodan Milošević, supported by the Yugoslav People's Army, tried to prevent secession of the new-formed states, which marked the beginning of the bloody and gruesome Yugoslav wars. It started with a short war in Slovenia and continued with a war in Croatia in 1991 and in Bosnia in 1992. 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]

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia officially ceased to exist on April 28, 1992, when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) was formed. Other dates that are frequently considered as the end of SFRY are June 25, 1991, when Slovenia declared independence, October 9, 1991, when the moratorium on Slovenian and Croatian secession, agreed on July 9 at Brioni (see detailed entry at Brioni Agreement) by representatives of all republics, was ended and January 15, 1992, when Slovenia and Croatia were internationally recognized.

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.

Milošević then turned his attention to the southeast. NATO had already deployed a small amount of troops on the border with Macedonia, but that didn't stop ethnic cleansing in Serbia's autonomous province of Kosovo and Metohia in 1998. NATO bombed Serbia and Montenegro for more than two months (see Kosovo War). Since June 1999, the province has been governed by peace-keeping forces from NATO and Russia, although all parties continue to recognise 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 April 1, 2001, Milošević was arrested on charges of abuse of power and corruption. On June 28 he was 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 Kosovo and Metohia 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 dissolve 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 ceased to exist.

Readings

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.

Cohen, Lenard J. BROKEN BONDS: THE DISINTEGRATION OF YUGOSLAVIA. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Dragnich, Alex N. SERBS AND CROATS. THE STRUGGLE IN YUGOSLAVIA. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

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.

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.


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Yugoslavia&oldid=3655304"