Vojvodina
The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Serbian: Аутономна Покрајина Војводина, Romanian: Provincia Autonomă Voivodina) is a northern province of Serbia. Its capital is Novi Sad and the second largest town is Subotica. It is extremely ethnically diverse, with non-Serb minorities representing 25 different ethnic groups and comprising a third of the region's population. It has no less than six official languages, reflecting the region's great cultural and linguistic diversity. Vojvodina is one of two autonomous provinces of Serbia, the other being Kosovo and Metohija.
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| Map showing Vojvodina within the state union | ||
| Official languages | Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Ruthenian, Croatian | |
| Capital | Novi Sad | |
| Area - Total - % water |
21,500 km² n/a | |
| Population - Total (2002) - Density |
2,031,992 94.51/km² | |
| Ethnic groups (2002) |
Serbs: 65.05% Hungarians: 14.28% Slovaks: 2.79% Croats: 2.78% Others: 15.1% | |
| Time zone | UTC +2 | |
History
Vojvodina is the Serbian name for the territory of Northern Serbia, which belonged to Austria-Hungary before World War I.
The area of Vojvodina has been inhabited continuously since the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. Sirmium was an important Roman town.
During the early medieval migrations, Slavs (Severans) settled today's Vojvodina in the 6th century. The Magyars arrived in the Pannonian Plain in the 9th century but are believed to have settled in present-day Vojvodina later on. Isolated pockets of Slavs remained in the Pannonian Plain, including Vojvodina. The region was later conquered by the Kingdom of Hungary which ruled over it until the 16th century.
An increasing number of Serbs began settling from the 14th century onward. By 1483, according to a Hungarian source, as much as half of the population of Vojvodina territory of the Kingdom of Hungary at the time would have been made up of Serbs. Another Hungarian source from the same century put the number of Serb settlers in Vojvodina at 200,000.
Vojvodina was occupied by the Ottoman Empire following the Battle of Mohacs of 1526 and the fall of Banat in 1552. This turbulent period caused a massive depopulation of the region. The Banat areas were administered from Temesvar, while Bačka and Sirmium were under Budim.
The Habsburg Empire took control of Vojvodina among other lands by the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718). The areas adjacent to the Turkish territory in the south were separated into the Military Frontier (Krajina), its Slavonian and Banat sections.
Significant settlement of Germans took place under Austrian rule . With the reshuffling of the country and the abolishment of the military frontier between 1867 and 1881, Bacska and Banat were reabsorbed into Hungary while the Sirmium region was part of the Hungarian crownland of Croatia-Slavonia.
At the end of the World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. In November 1918 the Serbian Assembly of Novi Sad proclaimed the union of Bačka, Banat, Srem and Baranja with the then Kingdom of Serbia.
Vojvodina in its current form (south Bačka, east Srem, west Banat) was formally ceded to Yugoslavia in the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The region was again temporarily split by the Axis Powers during World War II, but was later restored as a province of Serbia with varying degrees of autonomy. It was only nominally autonomous at first but enjoyed extensive rights of self-rule under the 1974 constitution, which also gave it voting rights equivalent to Serbia itself on the country's collective presidency. During this period, the German community of Vojvodina was virtually eliminated through mass expulsions.
Under the rule of Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, Vojvodina and Kosovo were stripped of their autonomy in September 1990, eliminating the provinces' leaderships' ability to oppose his policies. This was an extremely unpopular move in both provinces, prompting demonstrations and riots in early 1991. The outbreak of the Yugoslav Wars contributed to the increase of ethnic tensions, with many refugee Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia being resettled in Vojvodina while Hungarians and especially Croats were driven out or fled in the face of official pressure and paramilitary intimidation. Fortunately, the province avoided armed conflict of the sort seen in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The fall of Milosevic in 2000 created a new climate for reform in Vojvodina, with the province's ethnic minorities strongly supporting the new democratic government in Belgrade. Following talks between the parties, the province's autonomy was restored in 2002 with a new flag also being introduced.
Geography
The region is traditionally divided by the Danube and Tisa rivers into: Bačka in the northwest, Banat in the east and Srem in the southwest. Today, the western part of Srem is in Croatia while Baranja (which is between Danube and Drava, rather) is in Hungary and Croatia. Vojvodina has a total surface area of 21,500 km² (8,299 mi²).
Demographics
Population by national or ethnic groups:
- 1,321,807 Serbs (65.05%)
- 290,207 Hungarians (14.28%)
- 56,637 Slovaks (2.79%)
- 56,546 Croats (2.78%)
- 55,016 undeclared (2.71%)
- 49,881 Yugoslavs (2.45%)
- 35,513 Montenegrins (1.75%)
- 30,419 Romanians (1.50%)
- 29,057 Romanies (1.43%)
- 19,766 Bunjevci (0.97%)
- 15,626 Rusyns (0.77%)
- 11,785 Macedonians (0.58%)
- 10,154 regional affiliation (0.50%)
- 4,635 Ukrainians (0.23%)
- other
Population by mother tongue:
- 1,557,020 Serbian language (76.63%)
- 284,205 Hungarian language (13.99%)
- 55,065 Slovak language (2.71%)
- 29,512 Romanian language (1.45%)
Population by religion:
- 1,401,475 Eastern Orthodox (68.97%)
- 388,313 Catholics (Roman Catholic and Eastern Rite) (19.11%)
- 72,159 Protestants (3.55%)
Population by gender:
- 984,942 males
- 1,047,050 females
Population by age groups:
- 0-14 years: 15.85% (165332 males, 156873 females)
- 15-64 years: 68.62% (693646 males, 700416 females)
- 65 years and over: 15.53% (125964 males, 189761 females)