Yugoslavia

I

Introduction

Yugoslavia, former country in southeastern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. The country existed from 1918 to 1941, when German-led Axis forces invaded and dismembered it during World War II. It was reestablished in 1945, but in 1991 political and ethnic conflicts led to its second disintegration. In the first period, Yugoslavia was a kingdom. In the second period, it was a federation consisting of six republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina (often referred to simply as Bosnia), Croatia, Macedonia (see Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. In addition, two autonomous provinces existed within the republic of Serbia: Vojvodina and Kosovo. Belgrade was the federal capital.

Yugoslavia, meaning “land of the South Slavs,” was created as a constitutional monarchy at the end of World War I (1914-1918). It was known as the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes until 1929, when it was renamed Yugoslavia. The kingdom was destroyed and divided by Axis invasion and occupation in 1941. At the end of World War II (1939-1945), Yugoslavia was recreated as a federal republic by the Partisans, a Communist-led, anti-Axis resistance movement. Under Josip Broz Tito, founder and leader of the Partisans, Yugoslavia emerged as a faithful copy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), with a dictatorial central government and a state-controlled economy. Tito broke with the USSR in 1948, and he decentralized the Yugoslav government and gradually eased repression. Economically, the government experimented with looser controls under the labels of workers’ self-management and market socialism. Yugoslavia was unique among Communist countries in its relatively open and free society and its international role as a leader of nonaligned nations during the Cold War.

Following Tito’s death in 1980, ten years of economic crisis and growing political and ethnic conflicts led to the federation’s disintegration in 1991 and 1992. The breakup was bloody, resulting in civil wars in two successor states, Croatia and Bosnia. Serbia’s leadership, which tried to preserve the federation and then to extend the republic’s boundaries to create a Greater Serbia, was involved in both civil wars. Together with Montenegro, Serbia formed what its leaders claimed to be the successor state to Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (see Serbia and Montenegro).

II

The Land

At the time of its breakup in 1991 Yugoslavia had a total land area of 255,804 sq km (98,766 sq mi). It was bounded on the west by Italy and the Adriatic Sea, on the north by Austria and Hungary, on the east by Romania and Bulgaria, on the south by Greece, and on the southwest by Albania. The country encompassed a variety of terrains and climates. Yugoslavia’s relatively long coastline along the Adriatic Sea tended toward a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and warm, dry summers. Rising up from the coast were the Dinaric Alps, which dominated mountainous western and southern Yugoslavia. The limestone ranges and basins of the Balkan and Carpathian mountains distinguished the country’s eastern borders. The Pannonian Plain extended south from Hungary into north central Yugoslavia, and fertile plains characterized Vojvodina and the Slavonia region of Croatia. Most of inland Yugoslavia had a continental climate, with cold winters and hot summers.

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A

The People of Yugoslavia

The population of Yugoslavia recorded in the country’s last census in 1991 was 23,528,230. This figure was nearly double the 11,984,911 counted in a slightly smaller country in 1921 and nearly 50 percent more than the 15,841,566 recorded in 1948. Until the 1960s the country experienced rapid population growth, attributed to a high birthrate typical of developing nations. By 1981 the average annual rate of population growth in more developed regions—Slovenia, Vojvodina, Croatia, and Serbia proper (Serbia minus Vojvodina and Kosovo)—was 0.39 percent. In the less developed regions—Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Kosovo—it was 1.46 percent, still well below the rates typical of developing nations. Serbia was the largest and by far the most populous of the six republics. In 1991 Serbia had about 9.8 million people, Croatia 4.8 million, Bosnia 4.4 million, Macedonia 2 million, Slovenia 1.7 million, and Montenegro 584,000.

Yugoslavia’s population was ethnically mixed. According to the 1991 census, Serbs made up 36 percent of the total population, Croats 20 percent, Muslim Slavs 10 percent, Albanians 9 percent, Slovenes 8 percent, Macedonian Slavs 6 percent, “Yugoslavs” (people who declined to declare themselves members of any specific ethnic group) 3 percent, Montenegrins 2 percent, and Hungarians 2 percent. The government recognized the Serbs, Croats, Muslim Slavs (beginning in 1968), Slovenes, Macedonian Slavs, and Montenegrins as six nations, that is, South Slav ethnic groups with homelands in Yugoslavia. More than a quarter of the 8.5 million Serbs lived outside Serbia, mostly in Bosnia and Croatia, while 20 percent of the Croats lived outside Croatia, mostly in Bosnia and Vojvodina. The populations of Bosnia and Vojvodina were particularly mixed. In 1991, 44 percent of the inhabitants of Bosnia identified themselves as Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), 31 percent as Serbs, 17 percent as Croats, and 5 percent as Yugoslavs. Vojvodina was a mosaic of Serbs (about 51 percent of the population), Hungarians, Croats, Slovaks, Romanians, Rusins (also known as Carpatho-Rusyns or Subcarpathian Ukrainians, after their homeland in the Carpathian Mountains), and others.

The second or post-1945 Yugoslavia had three official languages: Serbian (then known as Serbo-Croatian), Slovenian, and Macedonian. In the first Yugoslavia, Macedonian was considered a Serbian dialect, although it is more closely related to Bulgarian. Serbs, Croats, Muslim Slavs, and Montenegrins all spoke regional dialects of Serbo-Croatian, which are now held to be the separate languages Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. The Serbs and Montenegrins wrote in the Cyrillic alphabet, while the Croats and Muslim Slavs used the Latin alphabet.

The primary difference that distinguished Yugoslavia’s ethnic groups was religion. The Serbs, Macedonian Slavs, and Montenegrins were traditionally Orthodox Christians, while the Croats and Slovenes were Roman Catholics. The Muslim Slavs and Albanians were primarily Sunni Muslims. The only census after World War II that asked for religious affiliation was taken in 1953. In that census, 42 percent of Yugoslavia’s population declared Orthodox Christianity as their religion, 32 percent declared Roman Catholicism, 12 percent declared Islam, 1 percent identified themselves as Protestants, 1 percent declared some other faith, and 12 percent said they had no religious affiliation. Religion also determined which alphabet each of Yugoslavia’s peoples usually used: the traditionally Orthodox peoples preferred the Cyrillic alphabet, while the rest used the Latin alphabet.

The percentage of Yugoslavia’s population classified as urban grew explosively after 1950 but remained one of Europe’s lowest throughout the country’s history. The urban population rose from barely 20 percent in 1921 to 25 percent in 1951, and up to 46 percent in 1981. Migration from the countryside to the cities accounted for almost all of the rapid urban growth and its counterpart, rural depopulation. The percentage of the population dependent on agriculture for its livelihood declined from 75 percent in 1921 to 64 percent in 1951, then down to 20 percent in 1981.

Yugoslav cities with populations over 100,000 in 1991 were, in order of size, Belgrade, the federal capital and the capital of Serbia; Zagreb, the capital of Croatia; Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia; Skopje, the capital of Macedonia; Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia; Banja Luka, a major city in western Bosnia; Zenica, Bosnia’s major industrial center; Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina and a major agricultural-industrial center; Niš, an industrial center in southern Serbia; Rijeka, Yugoslavia’s and Croatia’s major seaport; Kragujevac, an automobile and armaments manufacturing center in Serbia; Split, a major Croatian seaport; Tuzla, a Bosnian industrial center; Mostar, the capital of Bosnia’s Herzegovina region; Titograd, now called Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro; and Osijek, a major Croatian agricultural center.

In the second Yugoslavia the education system included free preschool and free and compulsory schooling from age 7 to 15. The illiteracy rate declined from about 50 percent of those over ten years old in 1921 to about 25 percent in 1948, then down to less than 10 percent, most of them older persons, in the 1980s. The rate was different for men and women: in the 1980s, 4 percent of men and 15 percent of women could not read or write. In 1988 regional illiteracy rates ranged from 1 percent in Slovenia, the most developed part of the country, to 18 percent in Kosovo, the least developed part. In the 1980s the proportion of the labor force that had completed elementary education was about 60 percent. Thirty percent had completed secondary education and 6 percent had earned a university or other higher education degree. At its founding in 1918, Yugoslavia inherited three universities: the University of Zagreb, the University of Belgrade, and the University of Ljubljana. By 1965 there were three more: the University of Sarajevo, the University of Skopje, and the University of Niš. In the 1980s Yugoslavia had 17 major universities and numerous minor or branch campuses. The average annual enrollment in post-secondary education reached about 400,000 students, of which about 45 percent were women.

B

Way of Life

The way of life in Yugoslavia was as varied as its ethnic composition, diverse histories and religions, and landscapes. The Slovenes and Croats especially were shaped by Roman Catholicism and centuries under Austrian, Hungarian, or Venetian rule. Most of the other ethnic groups, both Orthodox Christians and Muslims, had lived an equally long time under Byzantine and then Ottoman rule.

Traditions and traditional clothing, housing, food and beverages, and social and cultural values varied among the ethnic groups. Only in the 20th century did living together in a common state and an increasingly global culture gradually make them more similar, particularly after World War II. Colorful traditional clothing that distinguished local as well as regional communities from one another as late as the 1950s gave way to globalized workday and holiday clothing, including jeans, pullovers, and neckties. Food and traditional customs had already been influenced by central European, Ottoman, and Italian fashions before Yugoslavia’s creation. In the 20th century ethnic food and customs crossed old internal cultural boundaries to be consumed by most people throughout the country. For example, Turkish coffee and sweets, once unknown outside areas formerly under Ottoman rule, became popular in Slovenia, which had long been a part of Austria. Various types of folk music and dance also caught on in areas where they had not been previously known.

In most of Yugoslavia the traditional extended family of numerous children and several generations living in the same household gave way to the nuclear family, with two parents and usually only two children in each home. The major exception was in Kosovo, where the extended family remained common among many Albanians. Most Yugoslavs came to believe that educating one or two children for jobs with decent wages either at home or abroad was better than producing numerous children who could not possibly eke out a living on tiny peasant farms.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization after 1945 generally influenced aspirations and values more than they affected lifestyles. The Communist regime’s emphasis on industrialization over agriculture and propaganda exalting workers over peasants all reinforced the basic attractions of city jobs and city lights. Most Yugoslavs aspired to lifestyles like those of Western Europeans. In fact, more than 900,000 Yugoslavs were living in Western Europe during the late 1960s and early 1970s, finding jobs as temporary guest workers. But rapid migration to the cities did not mean rapid adoption of urban lifestyles nor the spread of urban lifestyles back to the villages.

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