You know what I just realised. This was probably the first time that I read in depth about Serbian/Yugoslavian history. Isn't it strange that is school we study all the details about British, French and American history but we don't know the history of our neighbours (I am Bulgarian).

This explains, at least partially, why we have these constant "misunderstandings" in the Balkans. And why each (tiny) country thinks high of itself and its people cannot realise that they are basically the same .... people. (I wouldn't say "brothers" as this still has communistic connotation in the Balkans.)

 We don't know each other - that is why we cannot be tolerant.


"Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think." - BUDDHA

I live exactly in the same region - in the town, which is perceived to be the center of VMRO, and I can tell you that people here are sensitive about how somebody calls their efforts to prove that Macedonian lands are actually Bulgarian.

I know it is not YOU who wrote it ... but even today you can see the flag of the organization on some buildings. Which has always been curious to me - why do they still believe in this cause.

"Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think." - BUDDHA

Croats:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+yu0016)
Yugoslavia
The Croats and Their Territories

Most historians believe that the Croats are a purely Slavic people who probably migrated to the Balkans from the present-day Ukraine. A newer theory, however, holds that the original Croats were nomadic Sarmatians who roamed Central Asia, migrated onto the steppes around 200 B.C., and rode into Europe near the end of the fourth century A.D., possibly together with the Huns. The Sarmatian Croats, the theory holds, conquered the Slavs of northern Bohemia and southern Poland and formed a small state called White Croatia near today's Kraków. The Croats then supposedly mingled with their more numerous Slavic subjects and adopted the Slavic language, while the subjects assumed the tribal name "Croat."

A tenth-century Byzantine source reports that in the seventh century Emperor Heraclius enlisted the Croats to expel the Avars from Byzantine lands. The Croats overran the Avars and Slavs in Dalmatia around 630 and then drove the Avars from today's Slovenia and other areas. In the eighth century, the Croats lived under loose Byzantine rule, and Christianity and Latin culture recovered in the coastal cities. The Franks subjugated most of the Croats in the eighth century and sent missionaries to baptize them in the Latin rite, but the Byzantine Empire continued to rule Dalmatia.

Croatia emerged as an independent nation in 924. Tomislav (910-c. 928), a tribal leader, established himself as the first king of Croatia, ruling a domain that stretched eastward to the Danube. Croatia and Venice struggled to dominate Dalmatia as the power of Byzantium faded, and for a time the Dalmatians paid the Croats tribute to assure safe passage for their galleys through the Adriatic. After the Great Schism of 1054 split the Roman and Byzantine churches, Normans (probably with papal support) besieged Byzantine cities in Dalmatia. In 1075 a papal legate crowned Dmitrije Zvonimir (1076-89) king of Croatia.

A faction of nobles contesting the succession after the death of Zvonimir offered the Croatian throne to King László I of Hungary. In 1091 Laszlo accepted, and in 1094 he founded the Zagreb bishopric, which later became the ecclestictical center of Croatia. Another Hungarian king, Kálmán, crushed opposition after the death of Laszlo and won the crown of Dalmatia and Croatia in 1102. The crowning of Kálmán forged a link between the Croatian and Hungarian crowns that lasted until the end of World War I. Croats have maintained for centuries that Croatia remained a sovereign state despite the voluntary union of the two crowns, but Hungarians claim that Hungary annexed Croatia outright in 1102. In either case, Hungarian culture permeated Croatia, the Croatian-Hungarian border shifted often, and at times Hungary treated Croatia as a vassal state. Croatia, however, had its own local governor, or ban; a privileged landowning nobility; and an assembly of nobles, the Sabor.

The joining of the Croatian and Hungarian crowns automatically made Hungary and Venice rivals for domination of Dalmatia. Hungary sought access to the sea, while Venice wished to secure its trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean and to use Dalmatian timber for shipbuilding. Between 1115 and 1420, the two powers waged twenty-one wars for control of the region and Dalmatian cities changed hands repeatedly. Serbia and Bosnia also competed for Dalmatia. Serbia seized the coast south of the Gulf of Kotor on the southern Adriatic coast around 1196 and held it for 150 years; Bosnia dominated central Dalmatia during the late fourteenth century. Dalmatian cities struggled to remain autonomous by playing one power against the others. Most successful in this strategy was Dubrovnik, whose riches and influence at times rivaled those of Venice. In the fourteenth century, Dubrovnik became the first Christian power to establish treaty relations with the Ottoman Empire, which was then advancing across the Balkans. Dubrovnik prospered by mediating between Europe and the new Ottoman provinces in Europe, and by exporting precious metals, raw materials, agricultural goods, and slaves. After centuries as the only free South Slav political entity, the city waned in power following a severe earthquake in 1667.

In 1409 Ladislas of Naples, a claimant to the throne of Hungary, sold Venice his rights to Dalmatia. By 1420 Venice controlled virtually all of Dalmatia except Dubrovnik. The Venetians made Dalmatia their poorest, most backward province: they reduced Dalmatian local autonomy, cut the forests, and stifled industry. Venice also restricted education, so that Zadar, the administrative center of Dalmatia, lacked even a printing press until 1796. Despite centuries of struggle for dominance of the region and exploitation by Venice, Dalmatia produced several first-rate artists and intellectuals, including the sculptor Radovan, Juraj Dalmatinac, an architect and sculptor, writer Ivan Gundulic, and scientist Rudjer Boskovic.

Ottoman armies overran all of eastern and southern Croatia south of the Sava River in the early sixteenth century, and slaughtered a weak Hungarian force at the Battle of Mohács (Hungary) in 1526. Buda was captured in 1541, then Turkish marauders advanced toward Austria. After Mohács, Hungarian and Croatian nobles elected the Habsburg Ferdinand I of Austria king of Hungary and Croatia. To tighten its grip on Croatia and solidify its defenses, Austria restricted the powers of the Sabor, established a military border across Croatia, and recruited Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, and other Slavs to serve as peasant border guards. This practice was the basis for the ethnic patchwork that survives today in Croatia, Slavonia, and Vojvodina. Austria assumed ownership and direct control of the border lands, and gave local independence and land to families who agreed to settle and guard those lands. Orthodox border families also won freedom of worship, which drew stiff opposition from the Roman Catholic Church.

Turkish inroads in Croatia and Austria also triggered price increases for agricultural goods, and opportunistic landowners began demanding payment in kind, rather than cash, from serfs. Rural discontent exploded in 1573 when Matija Gubec led an organized peasant rebellion that spread quickly before panic- stricken nobles were able to quell it.

Religious ferment in Europe affected Croatian culture in the sixteenth century. Many Croatian and Dalmatian nobles embraced the Protestant Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, and in 1562 Stipan Konzul and Anton Dalmatin published the first Croatian Bible. The Counterreformation began in Croatia and Dalmatia in the early seventeenth century, and the most powerful Protestant noblemen soon reconverted. In 1609 the Sabor voted to allow only the Catholic faith in Croatia. The Counterreformation enhanced the cultural development of Croatia. Jesuits founded schools and published grammars, a dictionary, and religious books that helped shape the Croatian literary language. Franciscans preached the Counterreformation in Ottoman-held regions.

Western forces routed a Turkish army besieging Vienna in 1683 and then began driving the Turks from Europe. In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, the Turks ceded most of Hungary, Croatia, and Slavonia to Austria, and by 1718 they no longer threatened Dalmatia. During the Western advance, Austria expanded its military border, and thousands of Serbs fleeing Turkish oppression settled as border guards in Slavonia and southern Hungary (see fig. 2). As the Turkish threat waned, Croatian nobles demanded reincorporation of the military border into Croatia. Austria, which used the guards as an inexpensive standing military force, rejected these demands, and the guards themselves opposed abrogation of their special privileges.

From 1780 to 1790, Joseph II of Austria introduced reforms that exposed ethnic and linguistic rivalries. Among other things, Joseph brought the empire under strict central control and decreed that German replace Latin as the official language of the empire. This decree enraged the Hungarians, who rejected Germanization and fought to make their language, Magyar, the official language of Hungary. The Croats, fearing both Germanization and Magyarization, defended Latin. In 1790, when Joseph died, Hungary was on the verge of rebellion. Joseph's successor, Leopold II, abandoned centralization and Germanization when he signed laws ensuring Hungary's status as an independent kingdom under an Austrian king. The next Austrian emperor, Francis I, stifled Hungarian political development for almost four decades, during which Magyarization was not an issue.

Venice repulsed Ottoman attacks on Dalmatia for several centuries after the Battle of Mohács, and it helped to push the Turks from the coastal area after 1693. But by the late eighteenth century, trade routes had shifted, Venice had declined, and Dalmatian ships stood idle. Napoleon ended the Venetian Republic and defeated Austria; he then incorporated Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, and western Croatia as the French Illyrian Provinces. France stimulated agriculture and commerce in the provinces, fought piracy, enhanced the status of the Orthodox population, and stirred a Croatian national awakening. In 1814 the military border and Dalmatia returned to Austria when Napoleon was defeated; Hungary regained Croatia and Slavonia. In 1816 Austria transformed most of the Illyrian Provinces into the Kingdom of Illyria, an administrative unit designed to counterbalance radical Hungarian nationalism and coopt nascent movements for union of the South Slavs. Austria kept Dalmatia for itself and reduced the privileges of the Dalmatian nobles.

The Croatian-Hungarian language conflict reemerged in the 1830s, as Hungarian reformers grew more critical of Austrian domination. French-educated Croatian leaders, fearing Hungarian linguistic and political domination, began promoting the Croatian language and formation of a Slavic kingdom within the Austrian Empire. In 1832, for the first time in centuries, a Croatian noble addressed the Sabor in Croatian. With tacit Austrian approval, Ljudevit Gaj, a journalist and linguist, promoted a South Slavic literary language, devised a Latin-based script, and in 1836 founded an anti-Hungarian journal that called for Illyrian cultural and political unity. Hungary feared the Illyrian movement and banned even public utterance of the word "Illyria." In 1843 the Hungarian assembly voted to make Magyar the official language of Hungary and Slavonia, and eventually to make it the official language of Hungarian-Croatian relations. Croats called the law an infringement on their autonomy, saturated Vienna with petitions for separation from Hungary, and returned to Budapest all documents sent them in Hungarian.

Hungary rose against Austria during the revolution that swept Europe in 1848. The Croats, rightly fearing Hungarian chauvinism and expecting union of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, sided with Austria. Ban Josip Jelacic led an army that attacked the Hungarian revolutionary forces. His units soon withdrew, but Russian troops invaded Hungary to crush the revolution. Despite their loyalty to Austria, the Croats received only the abolition of serfdom. Rather than uniting the Slavic regions as promised, the emperor suspended the constitution and introduced absolutist rule and Germanization.

Austria ended absolutist rule in 1860, and a military defeat in 1866 brought the empire to the brink of collapse. In 1867 Emperor Franz Joseph entered the Dual Monarchy with Hungary, uniting the two states under a single crown. Conflicting interests kept Austria-Hungary from uniting the South Slavs: Croatia and Slavonia fell under Hungarian control, while Austria retained Dalmatia. In 1868 a Sabor dominated by pro-Hungarian deputies adopted the Nagodba, or compromise, which affirmed that Hungary and Croatia comprised distinct political units within the empire. Croatia obtained autonomy in internal matters, but finance and other Croatian-Hungarian or Austro-Hungarian concerns required approval from Budapest and Vienna. Hungarian leaders considered that the Nagodba provided ample home rule for Croatia, but Croatia opposed it strongly. A subsequent election law guaranteed pro-Hungarian landowners and officials a majority in the Sabor and increased Croatian hatred for Hungarian domination. Croatian members of the Hungarian assembly then resorted to obstructionism to enhance their meager influence.

After 1868 the Croatian leadership was divided between advocates of a South Slav union and nationalists favoring a Greater Croatia; a bitter rivalry developed between the Croats and Serbs. Bishop Josip Strossmayer dominated the Croatian South Slav movement and supported liturgical concessions to help reduce the religious differences dividing Croats and Serbs. In pursuit of a South Slav cultural union, he founded the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1867 and the University of Zagreb in 1874. Ante Starcevic opposed Strossmayer, pressed for a Greater Croatia, and founded an extreme nationalist party. In 1881 Austria-Hungary reincorporated the military border into Croatia, increasing the number of ethnic Serbs in Croatia to about 25 percent of its 2.6 million population. The change raised ethnic tensions. The Croats' ill will toward Hungary and ethnic Serbs deepened under Ban Karoly Khuen-Héderváry (1883-1903), who ignored the Nagodba and exploited the Croatian-Serbian rivalry to promote Magyarization. In 1903 Hungary rejected Croatian demands for financial independence, quelled demonstrations, and suppressed the Croatian press. After 1903 moderate Croats and ethnic Serbs found common ground, and by 1908 a Croatian-Serbian coalition won a Sabor majority and condemned Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. A new ban, hoping to split the coalition, brought bogus treason charges against ethnic Serbian leaders in Croatia; the subsequent trials scandalized Europe and strengthened the tenuous Croatian-Serbian coalition.

Data as of December 1990

Bosnia & Hercegovina
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+yu0018)
Yugoslavia
Bosnia and Hercegovina

In the seventh century, Croats and Serbs settled in the land that now makes up Bosnia and Hercegovina. Dominance of the regions shifted among the Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Byzantine rulers for generations, before the Croatian and Hungarian crowns merged and Hungary dominated. Foreign interference in Bosnia and Hercegovina exacerbated local political and religious hostilities and ignited bloody civil wars.

The heretical Bogomil faith played an important early role in Bosnian politics. Ban Kulin (1180-1204) and other nobles struggled to broaden Bosnian autonomy, rejected the Catholic and Orthodox faiths, and embraced Bogomilism, a dualistic offshoot of Christianity. The Bogomils enraged the papacy, and the Catholic kings of Hungary persecuted them to exterminate the heresy and secure Hungarian rule over Bosnia. Kulin recanted his conversion under torture, but the Bogomil faith survived crusades, civil war, and Catholic propaganda.

In the fourteenth century, Bosnia became a formidable state under the rule of Ban Stefan Tvrtko I (1353-91). Tvrtko joined Bosnia with the principality of Hum, forerunner of Hercegovina, and attempted to unite the South Slavs under his rule. After the Serbian Nemanja dynasty expired in 1371, Tvrtko was crowned King of Bosnia and Raska in 1377, and he later conquered parts of Croatia and Dalmatia. Bosnian troops fought beside the Serbs at Kosovo Polje. After that defeat, Tvrtko turned his attention to forming alliances with Western states. Rival nobles and religious groups vied to gain control of Bosnia after the death of Tvrtko; one noble in Hum won the title of "Herzeg," (German for "duke") whence the name "Hercegovina."

The fifteenth century marked the beginning of Turkish rule in Bosnia. Most of Bosnia was taken in 1463, Hercegovina in 1483. Many Orthodox and Roman Catholics fled, while Bogomil nobles converted to Islam to retain their land and feudal privileges. They formed a unique Slavic Muslim aristocracy that exploited its Christian and Muslim serfs for centuries and eventually grew fanatical and conservative. Turkish governors supervised Bosnia and Hercegovina from their capitals at Travnik and Mostar, but few Turks actually settled in this territory. Economic life declined and the regions grew isolated from Europe and even Constantinople. As the sultan's military expenses grew, small farms were replaced by large estates, and peasant taxes were raised substantially. When the Turkish Empire weakened in the seventeenth century, Bosnia and Hercegovina became pawns in the struggle among Austria, Russia, and the Turks.

The nineteenth century in Bosnia and Hercegovina brought alternating Christian peasant revolts against the Slavic Muslim landholders, and Slavic Muslim rebellions against the sultan. In 1850 the Turkish government stripped the conservative Slavic Muslim nobles of power, shifted the capital of Bosnia to Sarajevo, and instituted centralized, highly corrupt rule. Austrian capital began to enter the regions, financing primitive industries, and fostering a new Christian middle class. But the mostly Christian serfs continued to suffer the corruption and high rates of the Turkish tax system. In 1875 a peasant uprising in Hercegovina sparked an all-out rebellion in the Balkan provinces, provoking a European war. The Treaty of Berlin, which followed the Turkish defeat of 1878, gave Austria-Hungary the right to occupy Bosnia and Hercegovina to restore local order.

The Treaty of Berlin brought a period of manipulation by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The empire suppressed Muslim and Orthodox opposition to the occupation and introduced an orderly administration. But it retained the feudal system because Bosnia and Hercegovina technically remained Turkish states. Seeking to increase the Catholic population of Bosnia, Vienna sent Austrian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Polish administrators, and colonized northern Bosnia with Catholic Slavs and Germans. The administrator of the regions, Baron Benjamin Kállay (1882-1903) fostered economic growth, reduced lawlessness, improved sanitation, built roads and railways, and established schools. However, Kállay, a Hungarian, exploited strong nationalist differences among the Muslim Slavs, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs.

At the turn of the century, nationalist differences reached the point of explosion. Fearful that Turkey might demand the return of Bosnia and Hercegovina after a revolutionary government was established in Constantinople, Austria-Hungary precipitated a major European crisis by annexing the regions in October 1908. Serbia, which had coveted the regions, mobilized for war. The crisis subsided a year later when Russia and Serbia bowed to German pressure and all Europe recognized the Serbian annexation as a fait accompli. Domination by Austria had embittered the ethnic groups of Bosnia and Hercegovina. Muslim Slavs resented Turkish withdrawal from the Balkans; the Croats looked initially to Vienna for support, but were increasingly disappointed by its response; and the Bosnian Serbs, deeply dissatisfied with continued serfdom, looked to Serbia for aid.

Data as of December 1990

Macedonia

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+yu0019)

In its earliest history, Macedonia was ruled by the Bulgars and the Byzantines, who began a long tradition of rivalry over that territory. Slavs invaded and settled Byzantine Macedonia late in the sixth century, and in A.D. 679 the Bulgars, a Turkic steppe people, crossed into the Balkans and directly encountered the Byzantine Empire. The Bulgars commingled with the more numerous Slavs and eventually abandoned their Turkic mother tongue in favor of the Slavic language. The Byzantines and Bulgars ruled Macedonia alternately from the ninth to the fourteenth century, when Stefan Dusan of Serbia conquered it and made Skopje his capital. A local noble, Vukasin, called himself king of Macedonia after the death of Dusan, but the Turks annihilated Vukasin's forces in 1371 and assumed control of Macedonia.

The beginning of Turkish rule meant centuries of subjugation and cultural deprivation in Macedonia. The Turks destroyed the Macedonian aristocracy, enserfed the Christian peasants, and eventually amassed large estates and subjected the Slavic clergy to the Greek patriarch of Constantinople. The living conditions of the Macedonian Christians deteriorated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as Turkish power declined. Greek influence increased, the Slavic liturgy was banned, and schools and monasteries taught Greek language and culture. In 1777 the Ottoman Empire eliminated the autocephalous Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the archbishopric of Ohrid. Because of such actions, the Slavic Macedonians began to despise Greek ecclesiastical domination as much as Turkish political oppression.

In the nineteenth century, the Bulgars achieved renewed national self-awareness, which influenced events in Macedonia. The sultan granted the Bulgars ecclesiastical autonomy in 1870, creating an independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Nationalist Bulgarian clergymen and teachers soon founded schools in Macedonia. Bulgarian activities in Macedonia alarmed the Serbian and Greek governments and churches, and a bitter rivalry arose over Macedonia among church factions and advocates of a Greater Bulgaria, Greater Serbia, and Greater Greece. The 1878 RussoTurkish War drove the Turks from Bulgarian-populated lands, and the Treaty of San Stefano (1878) created a large autonomous Bulgaria that included Macedonia. The subsequent Treaty of Berlin (1878), however, restored Macedonia to Turkey, and left the embittered Bulgars with a much-diminished state.

The Bulgarian-Greek-Serbian rivalry for Macedonia escalated in the 1890s, and nationalistic secret societies proliferated. Macedonian refugees in Bulgaria founded the Supreme Committee for Liberation of Macedonia, which favored Bulgarian annexation and recruited its own military force to confront Turkish units and rival nationalist groups in Macedonia. In 1896 Macedonians founded the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), whose two main factions divided the region into military districts, collected taxes, drafted recruits, and used tactics of propaganda and terrorism.

A 1902 uprising in Macedonia provoked Turkish reprisals, and in 1903 IMRO launched a widespread rebellion that the Turks could not suppress for several months. After that event, the sultan agreed to a Russian and Austrian reform scheme that divided Macedonia into five zones and assigned British, French, Italian, Austrian, and Russian troops to police them. Pro-Bulgarian and pro-Greek groups continued to clash, while the Serbs intensified their efforts in northern Macedonia. In 1908 the Young Turks, a faction of Turkish officers who promised liberation and equality, deposed the sultan. The Europeans withdrew their troops when Serbs and Bulgars established friendly relations with the zealous Turks. But the nationalist Young Turks began imposing centralized rule and cultural restrictions, exacerbating Christian-Muslim friction. Serbia and Bulgaria ended their differences in 1912 by a treaty that defined their respective claims in Macedonia. A month later, Bulgaria and Greece signed a similar agreement.

Data as of December 1990

Serbs

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+yu0017)

Yugoslavia
The Serbs and Serbia, Vojvodina, and Montenegro
Like the Croats, the Serbs are believed to be a purely Slavic people who originated in the Ukraine. Some scholars now argue that the original Serbs and Croats were Central Asian Sarmatian nomads who entered Europe with the Huns in the fourth century A.D. The theory proposes that the Sarmatian Serbs settled in a land designated as White Serbia, in what is now Saxony and Western Poland. The Sarmatian Serbs, it is argued, intermarried with the indigenous Slavs of the region, adopted their language, and transferred their name to the Slavs. Byzantine sources report that some Serbs migrated southward in the seventh century A.D. and eventually settled in the lands that now make up southern Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Hercegovina. Rival chiefs, or zupani, vied to control the Serbs for five centuries after the migration. Zupan Vlastimir formed a Serbian principality under the Byzantines around 850, and the Serbs soon converted to Eastern-rite Christianity. The Serbs had two political centers in the eleventh century: Zeta, in the mountains of present-day Montenegro, and Raska, located in modern southwestern Serbia.

The zupan of Raska, Stefan I Nemanja (1159-96), threw off Byzantine domination and laid the foundation for medieval Serbia by conquering Zeta and part of southern Dalmatia. His son and successor, Stefan II Nemanja (1196-1228) transformed Serbia into a stable state, friendly with Rome but with religious loyalty to Constantinople. In 1218 Pope Honorius III recognized Serbian political independence and crowned Stefan II. The writings of Stefan II and his brother (later canonized as St. Sava) were the first works of Serbian literature.

Later kings in the Nemanja line overcame internal rivalries and pressure from Bulgaria and Constantinople. They also rejected papal invitations to link the Serbian Orthodox Church with Rome, and they ruled their country through a golden age. Serbia expanded its economy, and Dalmatian merchants marketed Serbian goods throughout Europe and the Levant. The Nemanje dynasty left to Serbia masterpieces of religious art combining Western, Byzantine, and local styles.

Serbia dominated the Balkans under Stefan Dusan (1331-55), who conquered lands extending from Belgrade to present-day southern Greece. He proclaimed himself emperor, elevated the archbishop of Pec to the level of patriarch, and wrote a new legal code combining Byzantine law with Serbian customs. Dusan had ambitions toward a weakened Byzantine Empire, but the Byzantine emperor suspected his intentions and summoned the Turks to restrain him. Dusan repelled assaults in 1345 and 1349, but was defeated in 1352. He then offered to lead an alliance against the Turks and recognize the pope, but those gambits also were rejected.

Rival nobles divided Serbia after the death of Dusan in 1355, and many switched loyalty to the sultan after the last Nemanja died in 1371. The most powerful Serbian prince, Lazar Hrebeljanovic, raised a multinational force to engage the Turks in the Battle of Kosovo Polje on St. Vitus Day in 1389. The Turks barely defeated Lazar, and both he and the sultan were killed. The defeat did not bring immediate Turkish occupation of Serbia, but during the centuries of Turkish domination that followed, the Serbs endowed the battle with myths of honor and heroism that helped them preserve their dignity and sense of nationhood. Serbs still recite epic poems and sing songs about the nobles who fell at Kosovo Polje; the anniversary of the battle is the Serbian national holiday, Vidovdan (St. Vitus's Day), June 28.

Civil war in the Turkish Empire saved Serbia in the early fifteenth century, but the Turks soon reunited their forces to conquer the last Serbian stronghold at Smederjevo in 1459 and subjugate the whole country. Serbs fled to Hungary, Montenegro, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Bosnia, and some formed outlaw bands. In response to the activities of the latter, the Turks disinterred and burned the remains of St. Sava. By the sixteenth century, southern Hungary had a sizable Serbian population that remained after the Turks conquered the region in 1526. Montenegro, which emerged as an independent principality after the death of Dusan, waged continual guerrilla war on the Turks, and never was conquered. But the Turkish threat did force Prince Ivan of Montenegro to move his capital high into the mountains. There, he founded a monastery and set up a printing press. In 1516 Montenegro became a theocratic state.

Social and economic life in Serbia changed radically under the absolute rule of the Turkish sultan. The Turks split Serbia among several provinces, conscripted Serbian boys into their elite forces, exterminated Serbian nobles, and deprived the Serbs of contact with the West as the Renaissance was beginning. The Turks used the Orthodox Church to intermediate between the state and the peasantry, but they expropriated most church lands. Poorly trained Serbian priests strove to maintain the decaying national identity. In 1459 the sultan subordinated the Serbian Church to the Greek patriarch, but the Serbs hated Greek dominance of their church, and in 1557 Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic, a Serb who had been inducted into the Turkish army as a boy, persuaded the sultan to restore autonomy to the Serbian Church. Turkish maltreatment and exploitation grew in Serbia after the sixteenth century, and more Serbs fled to become mountain outlaws, or hajduci. Epic songs of the hajduci kept alive the Serbs' memory of the glorious independence of the past.

From 1684 to 1689, Christian forces attempted to push the Turks from the Balkans, inciting the Serbs to rebel against their Turkish overlords. The offensive and the rebellion ultimately failed, exposing the Serbs south of the Sava River to the revenge of the Turks. Fearing Turkish reprisals, the Serbian patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic emigrated in 1690 to Austrian-ruled southern Hungary with as many as 36,000 families. The Austrian emperor promised these people religious freedom and the right to elect their own vojvoda, or military governor, and incorporated much of the region where they settled, later known as Vojvodina, into the military border. The refugees founded new monasteries that became cultural centers. In Montenegro, Danilo I Petrovic of Njegos (1696-1737) became bishop-prince and instituted the succession of the Petrovic-Njegos family. His efforts to unify Montenegro triggered a massacre of Muslims in 1702 and subsequent reprisals.

Austrian forces took Serbian regions south of the Sava from Turkey in 1718, but Jesuits following the army proselytized so heavily that the Serbs came to hate the Austrians as well as the Turks. In the eighteenth century, the Turkish economy and social fabric began deteriorating, and the Serbs who remained under the Ottoman Empire suffered attacks from bands of soldiers. Corrupt Greek priests who had replaced Serbian clergy at the sultan's direction also took advantage of the Serbs. The Serbs in southern Hungary fared much better. They farmed prosperously in the fertile Danubian plain. A Serbian middle class arose, and the monasteries trained scholars and writers who inspired national pride, even among illiterate Serbs.

The eighteenth century brought Russian involvement in European events, particularly in competition with Austria for the spoils of the Turkish collapse. The Orthodox Serbs looked to the tsar for support, and Russia forged ties with Montenegro and the Serbian Church in southern Hungary. In 1774 Russia won the diplomatic right to protect Christian subjects of the Turks; later it used this right as a pretext to intervene in Turkish affairs. When Russia and Austria fought another war with Turkey in 1787 and 1788, Serbs fought guerrilla battles against the Turks. Austria abandoned the campaign, and the Serbs, in 1791. To secure their frontier, the Turks granted their Serbian subjects a measure of autonomy and formed a Serbian militia. Montenegro expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Bishop-Prince Petar I Njegos (1782-1830) convinced the sultan to declare that the Montenegrins had never been Turkish subjects, and Montenegro remained independent through the nineteenth century.

In 1804 renegade Turkish soldiers in Belgrade murdered Serbian leaders, triggering a popular uprising under Karadjordje ("Black George") Petrovic, founder of the Karadjordjevic dynasty. Russia supported the Serbs, and in 1806 the sultan granted them limited autonomy (see fig. 3). But internal discord weakened the government of Karadjordje, and the French invasion of Russia in 1812 prevented the tsar from protecting the Serbs. In 1813 the Turks attacked rebel areas. Karadjordje fled to Hungary, then Turkish, Bosnian, and Albanian troops plundered Serbian villages. The atrocities sparked a second Serbian uprising in 1815 that won autonomy under Turkish control for some regions. The corrupt rebel leader Milos Obrenovic (1817-39) had Karadjordje murdered and his head sent to the sultan to signal Serbian loyalty.

In 1830 Turkey recognized Serbia as a principality under Turkish control, with Milos Obrenovic as hereditary prince. The sultan also granted the Serbian Church autonomy and reaffirmed the Russian right to protect Serbia. Poor administration, corruption, and a bloody rivalry between the Karadjordjevic and Obrenovic clans marred Serbian political life from its beginning. After the sultan began allowing foreign governments to send diplomats to Serbia in the 1830s, foreign intervention further complicated the situation. Despite these obstacles and his autocratic manner, however, Milos Obrenovic stimulated trade, opened schools, and guided development of peasant lands. He abdicated in 1838 when Turkey imposed a constitution to limit his powers.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Serbian culture made significant strides. Dositej Obradovic, Vuk Karadzic, and other scholars accelerated a national renaissance. Through his translations and autobiography, Obradovic spread the Enlightenment to the Serbs. Collections of Serbian folk songs and poems edited by Karadzic awoke pride in national history and traditions. Karadzic also overcame clerical opposition to reform the Cyrillic alphabet and the Serbian literary language, and he translated the New Testament. His work widened the concept of Serbian nationhood to include language as well as religious and regional identifications.

The European revolution of 1848 brought more ferment in relations between the Serbs and their neighbors. As part of their revolutionary program, the Hungarians threatened to Magyarize the Serbs in Vojvodina. Some Serbs there declared their independence from Hungary and proclaimed an autonomous Vojvodina; others rallied behind the Austrian-Croatian invasion of Hungary. The Serbs nearly declared war, but Russians and Turkish diplomacy restrained them. The Serbs in Hungary gained nothing from helping Austria to crush the revolution. Vienna ruled Vojvodina harshly after 1850 and silenced Serbian irredentists there. When Austria joined Hungary to form the Dual Monarchy in 1867, Vienna returned Vojvodina and its Serbs to Hungary. Meanwhile, Peter II Njegos of Montenegro (1830-51), who was also a first-rate poet, reformed his administration, battled the Turks, and struggled to obtain a seaport from the Austrians. His successor Danilo II (1851-60) abolished the Montenegrin theocracy.

Prince Mihajlo Obrenovic (1860-68), son of Milos, was an effective ruler who further loosened the Turkish grip on Serbia. Western-educated and autocratic, Mihajlo liberalized the constitution and in 1867 secured the withdrawal of Turkish garrisons from Serbian cities. Industrial development began at this time, although 80 percent of Serbia's 1.25 million people remained illiterate peasants. Mihajlo sought to create a South Slav confederation, and he organized a regular army to prepare for liberation of Turkish-held Serbian territory. Scandal undermined Mihajlo's popularity, however, and he was eventually assassinated.

Political parties emerged in Serbia after 1868, and aspects of Western culture began to appear. A widespread uprising in the Ottoman Empire prompted an unsuccessful attack by Serbia and Montenegro in 1876, and a year later those countries allied with Russia, Romania, and Bulgarian rebels to defeat the Turks. The subsequent treaties of San Stefano and Berlin (1878) made Serbia an independent state and added to its territory, while Montenegro gained a seacoast. Alarmed at Russian gains, the growing stature of Serbia, and irredentism among Vojvodina's Serbs, Austria-Hungary pressed for and won the right to occupy Bosnia, Hercegovina, and the Novi Pazar in 1878. Serbia's Prince Milan Obrenovic (1868-89), a cousin of Mihajlo, became disillusioned with Russia and fearful of the newly created Bulgaria. He therefore signed a commercial agreement in 1880 that made Serbia a virtual client state of Austria-Hungary. Milan became the first king of modern Serbia in 1882, but his pro-Austro-Hungarian policies undermined his popularity, and he abdicated in 1889.

A regency ruled Serbia until 1893, when Milan's teenage son, Aleksandar (1889-1903), pronounced himself of age and nullified the constitution. Aleksandar was widely unpopular in Serbia because of scandals, arbitrary rule, and his position favoring Austria-Hungary. In 1903 military officers, including Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijevic, brutally murdered Aleksandar and his wife. Europe condemned the killings, which were celebrated in Belgrade. Petar Karadjordjevic (1903-14), who knew of the conspiracy, returned from exile to take the throne, restored and liberalized the constitution, put Serbian finances in order, and improved trade and education. Petar turned Serbia away from Austria-Hungary and toward Russia, and in 1905 Serbia negotiated a tariff agreement with Bulgaria hoping to break the Austro-Hungarian monopoly of its exports. In response to a diplomatic disagreement, Vienna placed a punitive tariff on livestock, Serbia's most important export. Serbia, however, refused to bend, found new trade routes and began seeking an outlet to the sea. In 1908 Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Hercegovina, frustrating Serbian designs on those regions and precipitating an international crisis. The Serbs mobilized, but under German pressure Russia persuaded Belgrade to cease its protests. Thereafter, Belgrade maintained strict official propriety in its relations with Vienna; but government and military factions prepared for a war to liberate the Serbs still living under the Turkish yoke in Kosovo, Macedonia, and other regions.

Data as of December 1990

And there is a lot of interesting staff there like :
    *  Yugoslavia
    * Foreword
    * Acknowledgments
    * Preface
    * Country Profile
          o Country
          o Geography
          o Society
          o Economy
          o Transportation and Telecommunications
          o Government and Politics
          o National Security
    * Introduction

    * Chapter 1 - Historical Setting (Charles Sudetic)
          o Pre-Slav History
          o Histories of the Yugoslav People to World War I
                + The Slovenes
                + The Croats and Their Territories
                + The Serbs and Serbia, Vojvodina, and Montenegro
                + Bosnia and Hercegovina
                + Macedonia
          o The Balkan War, World War I, and the Formation of Yugoslavia (1912-1918)
                + The Balkan Wars and World War I
                + Formation of the South Slav State
                + The Kingdom of Yugoslavia
                + Political Life in the 1920s
                + Economic Life and Foreign Policy in the 1920s
                + The Royal Dictatorship
                + The Regency
                + The Sporazum, Tripartitate Pact, and Outbreak of World War II
          o Yugoslavia in World War II (1941-45)
                + Partition and Terror
                + The Resistance Movement
          o Postwar Yugoslavia
                + Communist Takeover and Consolidation
                + The Yugoslav-Soviet Rift
                + Introduction of Socialist Self-Management
                + Nonalignment and Yugoslav-Soviet Rapprochement
                + Reforms of the 1960s
                + Unrest in Croatia and Its Consequences in the 1970s
                + The 1974 Constitution

    * Chapter 2 - The Society and Its Environment (Charles Sudetic)
          o Geography and Population
                + Topography
                + Drainage Systems
                + Climate
                + Pollution
                + Population
          o Yugoslavia's People
                + Ethnographic History
                + Ethnic Composition
                + Languages
                + The Yugoslav Nations
                      # Serbs
                      # Montenegrins
                      # Croats
                      # Slovenes
                      # Muslim Slavs
                      # Macedonians
                      # Albanians
                      # Gypsies
          o Social Groups
                + The Peasantry
                + The Workers
                + The Political Elite and Intellectuals
                + The Family
                      # The Role of Women
                      # Students and Youth
                      # Pensioners
          o Urbanization and Housing
                + Housing
                + Urban Problems
                + Guest Workers
          o Religion
                + Demography and Distribution
                + Eastern Orthodoxy
                + Roman Catholicism
                + Islam
                + Other Faiths
          o Education
                + History of Yugoslav Education
                + Primary Schools
                + Secondary Education
                + Higher Education
          o Health Care and Social Welfare
                + Disease and Mortality
                + Development of the Health Care System
                + The Contemporary Health and Welfare Systems

    * Chapter 3 - The Economy (Malinda K. Goodrich)
          o Economic History
                + World War II and Recovery
                + Application of Stalinist Economics
                + The First Five-Year Plan
                + Launching Self-Management
                + The "Perspective" Five-Year Plan
                + Overhaul in the 1960s
                + The Economic Reform of 1965
                + Adjustments in the 1970s
          o The Economic Management Mechanism
                + Socialist Self-Management
                + Capital Ownership and the Market
                + Planning and Pricing
                + Trade Unions
                + Government Revenue and Spending
                + Banking
          o Structure of the Economy
                + Labor and Unemployment
                + Industry
                      # Postwar Policy
                      # Shipbuilding
                      # Metallurgy
                      # Automotive
                      # Chemicals
                      # The Industrial Structure in 1990
                + Agriculture
                + Energy and Mineral Resources
                + Transportation and Communications
          o Foreign Trade
                + Historical Background
                + Exports and Imports
                + Trading Partners
                      # The Industrialized West
                      # The Soviet Bloc
                      # The Third World
                + Guest Workers and Tourism
                + Foreign Exchange
          o Managing the Crisis of the 1980's
                + Inflation and the Foreign Debt
                + Unemployment and Living Standards
                + Regional Disparities
          o The Reforms of 1990

    * Chapter 4 - Government and Politics (Glenn E. Curtis)
          o Political Evolution After 1945
                + Breaking with the Soviet Union
                + The 1963 Constitution
                + Post-Rankovic Diversification
                + Political Innovation and the 1974 Constitution
                + The Early Post-Tito Years
                + Reform in the 1980s
                + The Leadership Crisis
          o Government Structure
                + Federal Assembly
                + Federal Executive Council
                + State Presidency
                + Court System
                + Local Government and the Communes
          o Nongovernmental Political Institutions
                + League of Communists of Yugoslavia
                + Socialist Alliance of Workers
                + Trade Unions
                + National Youth Federation
                + Veterans' Association
          o Regional Political Issues
                + Slovenia
                + Serbia
                + Kosovo
                + Vojvodina
                + Croatia
                + Montenegro
                + Bosnia and Hercegovina
                + Macedonia
          o Public and Political Decision Making
                + Djilas, Praxis, and Intellectual Repression
                + Intellectual Opposition Groups
                + The Media
                + Censorship
          o Foreign Policy
                + The Government Foreign Policy Mechanism
                + Nonalignment
                + The Soviet Union
                + The United States
                + European Neighbors
                + The Middle East and Western Europe
          o The Political Agenda for the 1990's

    * Chapter 5 - National Security (Karl Wheeler Soper)
          o Development of the Armed Forces
                + Early Development
                + World War II
                + Postwar Development
          o National Defense
                + Threat Perception
                + Military Doctrine
                + Strategy and Tactics
          o Defense Organization
                + Government Organization for Defense
                + The Military and the Party
                + Armed Services
                      # Ground Forces
                      # Air Force
                      # Naval Forces
                + Territorial Defense Forces
          o Military Manpower
                + The Military and Society
                + Recruitment and Service Obligations
                + Military Training and Education
                      # Officer Education
                      # Reserve Training
                + Military Life
                + Ranks, Insignia, and Uniforms
          o Defense and the National Economy
                + Military Budget
                + Arms Procurement
                      # Arms Imports
                      # Domestic Arms Production
          o Foreign Military Relations
                + Warship Visits
                + Arms Sales
                + Military Exchanges
          o Internal Security
                + Dissidence
                + Courts, Detention, and Punishment
                + Internal Security Forces
                + Organization for Internal Security
                + The Military in Domestic Peacekeeping

    * Bibliography
    * Glossary

----
but of course I can't cioy everything and I am not sure what and for how long you can read there...

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein

The Slovenes, a Slavic people, migrated southwestward across present-day Romania in about the sixth century A.D., and settled in the Julian Alps. They apparently enjoyed broad autonomy in the seventh century, after escaping Avar domination. The Franks overran the Slovenes in the late eighth century; during the rule of the Frankish king Charlemagne, German nobles began enserfing the Slovenes and German missionaries baptized them in the Latin rite. Emperor Otto I incorporated most of the Slovenian lands into the duchy of Carantania in 952; later rulers split the duchy into Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria (see fig. 2). In 1278 the Slovenian lands fell to the Austrian Habsburgs, who controlled them until 1918.

Turkish marauders plagued Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Slovenes abandoned lands vulnerable to attack and raised bulwarks around churches to protect themselves. The Turkish conquest of the Balkans and Hungary also disrupted the Slovenian economy; to compensate, the nobles stiffened feudal obligations and crushed peasant revolts between 1478 and 1573.

In the tumult of the sixteenth century, German nobles in the three Slovenian provinces clamored for greater autonomy, embraced the Protestant Reformation, and drew many Slovenes away from the Catholic Church. The Reformation sparked the Slovenes' first cultural awakening. In 1550 Primoz Trubar published the first Slovenian-language book, a catechism. He later produced a translation of the New Testament and printed other Slovenian religious books in the Latin and Cyrillic (see Glossary) scripts. Ljubljana had a printing press by 1575, but the authorities closed it when Jurij Dalmatin tried to publish a translation of the Bible. Slovenian publishing activity then shifted to Germany, where Dalmatin published his Bible with a glossary enabling Croats to read it. The Counterreformation accelerated in Austria in the early seventeenth century, and in 1628 the emperor forced Protestants to choose between Catholicism and exile. Jesuit counterreformers burned Slovenian Protestant literature and took other measures that retarded diversification of Slovenian culture but failed to stifle it completely. Some Jesuits preached and composed hymns in Slovenian, opened schools, taught from an expurgated edition of Dalmatin's Bible, and sent Slovenian students to Austrian universities. Nonetheless Slovenian remained a peasant idiom and the higher social classes spoke German or Italian.

The Slovenian economic links with Germany and Italy strengthened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and living conditions improved. The Vienna-Trieste trade route crossed through the Slovenian cities of Maribor and Ljubljana. Agricultural products and raw materials were exported over this trade route, and exotic goods were imported from the East. Despite his campaign to Germanize the Austrian Empire, Emperor Joseph II (1780-90) encouraged translation of educational materials into Slovenian. He also distributed monastic lands, workshops, and fisheries to Slovenian entrepreneurs.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Slovenian prosperity had yielded a self-reliant middle class that sent its sons to study in Vienna and Paris. They returned steeped in the views of the Enlightenment and bent on rational examination of their own culture. Slovenian intellectuals began writing in Slovenian rather than German, and they introduced the idea of a Slovenian nation. Between 1788 and 1791, Anton Linhart wrote an antifeudal, anticlerical history of the Slovenes that depicted them for the first time as a single people. In 1797 Father Valentin Vodnik composed Slovenian poetry and founded the first Slovenian newspaper.

After several victories over Austria, Napoleon incorporated the Slovenian regions and other Austrian lands into the French Empire as the Illyrian Provinces, with the capital at Ljubljana. Despite unpopular new tax and conscription laws, Slovenian intellectuals welcomed the French, who issued proclamations in Slovenian as well as in German and French, built roads, reformed the government, appointed Slovenes to official posts, and opened Slovenian-language schools for both sexes. France strengthened the national self-awareness of the Slovenes and other South Slavs in the Illyrian Provinces by promoting the concept of Illyria as a common link among Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. This concept later evolved into the idea of uniting the South Slavs in an independent state.

Austria reasserted its dominance of the Slovenes in 1813 and rescinded the French reforms. Slovenian intellectuals, however, continued refining the Slovenian language and national identity, while Austria strove to confine their activities to the cultural sphere. The pro-Austrian philologist and linguist Jernej Kopitar pioneered comparative Slavic linguistics and created a Slovenian literary language from numerous local dialects, hoping to strengthen the monarchy and Catholicism. France Preseren, perhaps the greatest Slovenian poet, worked to transform the Slovenian peasant idiom into a language as refined as German. In the 1840s, Slovenian audiences heard the first official public speech delivered in Slovenian and the first Slovenian songs sung in a theater. In 1843 Janez Blajvajs founded a practical journal for peasants and craftsmen that carried the cultural movement beyond the upper class to the masses.

Revolution convulsed Europe in 1848, and demonstrators in cities throughout the Austrian Empire called for constitutional monarchy. Crowds in Ljubljana cheered the apparent downfall of the old order. Intellectual groups drafted the Slovenes' first political platforms. Some programs called for an autonomous "Unified Slovenia" within the empire; others supported unification of the South Slavs into an Illyrian state linked with Austria or Germany. The 1848 revolution swept away serfdom, but the political movement of the Slovenes made little headway before the Austrian government regained control and imposed absolutist rule. In the 1850s and early 1860s, the campaigns of Slovenian leaders were again restricted to the cultural sphere.

Military defeats in 1859 and 1866 exposed the internal weakness of the Austrian Empire, and in 1867 Austria attempted to revitalize itself by joining with Hungary to form the Dual Monarchy (see Glossary). In the late 1860s, Slovenian leaders, convinced of the empire's imminent collapse, resurrected the dream of a United Slovenia. They staged mass rallies, agitated for use of the Slovenian language in schools and local government, and sought support from the Croats and other South Slavs. When the threat to the survival of Austria-Hungary waned after 1871, the Slovenes withdrew their support for a South Slav union and adapted themselves to political life within the Dual Monarchy. The conservative coalition that ruled Austria from 1879 to 1893 made minor cultural concessions to the Slovenes, including use of Slovenian in schools and local administration in some areas. Slovenes controlled the local assembly of Carniola after 1883, and Ljubljana had a Slovenian mayor after 1888.

In 1907 Austria instituted universal male suffrage, which encouraged Slovenian politicians that the empire would eventually fulfill the Slovenes' national aspirations. In October 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and Hercegovina. The annexation sharpened the national self-awareness of the South Slavs and generated rumors of impending war with Serbia. Troop mobilization began. However, the main Slovenian parties welcomed the annexation as a step toward a union of the empire's South Slavs. Tensions eased after six months, but Austria-Hungary, fearing Pan-Slavism (see Glossary), conducted witch hunts for disloyal Slavs. In 1909 Slovenian party leaders criticized Vienna for mistreating the Slavs, but the possibilities of a South Slav union within the empire declined. Demands rose for creation of an independent South Slav nation, and a socialist conference in Ljubljana even called for the cultural unification of all South Slavs. Such appeals began a heated debate on the implications of unification for Slovenian culture.

Data as of December 1990

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein

Quote:
...Because Yugoslavia was already the most open of East European communist nations, large amounts of reliable information about events there have been available throughout the post-Tito period
... all ethnically South Slavs, together constituting over 80 percent of total population) the main ethnic groups. Albanians and Hungarians (7.7 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively, according to 1981 census) the principal minority ethnic groups.
... Literacy estimated at 90 percent in 1990.
... universal citizen rights to health care... Substantial expansion of health care resources beginning in 1960s, but disparities remained significant between rural and urban areas and between richer and poorer regions.
... Fiscal Policy: Governmental system highly decentralized.
... After death of dictator Josip Broz Tito in 1980, head of state began annual rotation among members of eight-member State Presidency.
... Decision making slow, often cumbersome; proposals subject to veto by republics whose interests were threatened.
... Multiparty elections held in all republics in 1990.
... nonaligned international position after breaking with Soviet Union in 1948; remained a leader of world Nonaligned Movement through 1980s. Previously balanced relations with Soviet Union and West tilted toward West after economic and political crises in Soviet Union and Eastern European late 1980s.
... Member of United Nations and most of its specialized agencies
... Estimated 450,000 reservists available in wartime... Paramilitary Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) numbered 1 million to 3 million in 1990; 860,000 in regular training. TDF largely funded by and under peacetime control of republic governments; designated to fight either independently or under YPA command during an invasion.
... between 1945 and 1970. The literacy rate increased steadily, school instruction in the country's several minority languages became widespread, and the university system expanded.
... large numbers of women entered the work force... adopted a unique economic planning system (socialist self-management) and an independent foreign policy (nonalignment)... In these ways, by 1980 Yugoslavia had assumed many of the qualities of a modern European state. In the following decade, as Western Europe moved toward unification in the 1980s, acceptance into the new European community became an important national goal for Yugoslavia.
... the unlikelihood of a union between "Catholic, westward-looking Croatia and Slovenia" and "Orthodox, eastward-looking Serbia" had been viewed as highly unlikely long before secession occurred and civil crisis escalated in 1991, arguments for preserving at least a loose Yugoslav confederation retained much of the logic of earlier decades.
... More important, in modern history only Montenegro and Serbia had existed as independent states, and no republic had been self-sufficient since 1918.
... But separation proved to be no less complex than continued federation.
... Ominously, the intractable fighting of 1991 between Croats and Serbs was in many ways a continuation of their last bitter confrontation in World War II--supporting doubts that the Croats and Serbs could remain together in a single political structure.
... More than three years of Nazi occupation yielded bloody fighting among three Yugoslav factions as well as with the invaders.
... Two results of that war had particular impact on the postwar condition of Yugoslavia. The first was a vivid new set of memories to kindle hostility between Serbs and Croats, the majority of whom had fought on opposite sides in the occupation years; the second was the emergence of the unifying war hero Tito, who became dictator of a nonaligned communist federation.
... giving local worker groups limited control in a self-management system. Although ultimately dominated by the party, this system brought substantial economic growth between the early 1950s and the 1970s and made Yugoslavia a model for the nonaligned world... Two economic policies unknown in orthodox communist countries contributed greatly to this growth. Allowing laborers to emigrate to Western Europe as guest workers brought substantial hard currency (see Glossary) into Yugoslavia and relieved labor surpluses at home. And opening the country's many scenic beaches and mountains to Western tourists provided a second reliable source of hard currency, which proved especially useful when other parts of the economy declined during the 1980s.
... The 1974 Constitution gave substantial new power to the republics, which obtained veto power over federal legislation. This tactic also kept Tito's potential rivals within small local fiefdoms, denying them national status... In the meantime, in 1966 the repressive national secret police organization of Aleksandar Rankovic had been dismantled, yielding political liberalization that led to major outbursts of nationalism in Kosovo (1968) and Croatia (1971)... The 1974 Constitution further alarmed the Serbs by giving virtual autonomy to Serbia's provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina.
-----------
vbo:
Did I mention that Tito was Croat? All though I am skeptical that he was even one of us cause he never spoke language very well... (but you know me and my "love" for "conspiracy theories").
------------
... At Tito's death in 1980, the promising Yugoslav economy was in decline... Economic reform, recognized throughout the 1980s as an imperative step, was consistently blocked during that decade by ever more diametrically opposed regional interests... Thus, Slovenia and Croatia, already long separate culturally from the rest of the federation, came to resist the central government policy of redistributing their relatively great wealth to impoverished regions to the south...Meanwhile, in 1989 the Serbian communist Slobodan Milosevic had stepped into the Yugoslav power vacuum, striking a note of Serbian national hegemony that confronted a wide range of newly released nationalist forces in the other republics... By the first republic elections in 1990, some of the new parties had formed coalitions. The largest of these in Croatia, the right-of-center Croatian Democratic Union, gained a solid parliamentary majority in that republic under Franjo Tudjman, who became president.
... Always the poorest region in Yugoslavia (in spite of significant mineral and fuel reserves), Kosovo also led by a wide margin in birth rates and unemployment rates... Sporadic anti- Yugoslav propaganda from neighboring Albania reminded the Kosovo Albanians of their subservient position. Extensive federal economic aid programs throughout the 1970s and 1980s failed to eliminate the economic basis of discontent.
... In February 1989, units of the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) and the federal militia were called in to quell the violence, and the province remained under occupation for the next three years.
-----------
Vbo:
How can anybody call this `occupation" having your own army stopping violence in your own state, is above me...?
--------------
... The autonomy granted to Kosovo in the 1974 Constitution was virtually revoked by 1990.
... Albanians boycotted the multiparty Serbian elections in December 1990, and in 1991 students and workers staged mass demonstrations against Serbianization of education and workplaces. Although Serbia had suspended the province legislature in mid-1990, Albanian delegates and intellectuals adopted a constitution for an independent republic of Kosovo, which was ratified in a referendum in September 1991. In response, Serbia amended its constitution to abolish the remnants of self-rule in Kosovo and in Serbia's second province, Vojvodina. In 1990 drastic political reform in isolationist Albania gave Kosovo Albanians a new political option previously judged undesirable: joining Albania in a union of Greater Albania. Such an eventuality threatened to spark war between Serbia and Albania as well as conflict with Macedonia, where over 25 percent of the population was Albanian in 1991.
... Milosevi used the threat of Albanian irredentism in Kosovo to rally Serbian ethnic pride behind his nationalist faction of the League of Communists of Serbia. In doing so, he won the presidency of Serbia.
... By 1990 this single-issue strategy had made Milosevic the most powerful political figure in post-Tito Yugoslavia. Despite widely held contempt for communism, however, opposition within Serbia remained fragmented and ineffectual until 1991. In the first multiparty elections in postwar Serbia, Milosevic easily won reelection in December 1990. Because he controlled almost all the Serbian media, his campaign was able to ignore the chaotic Serbian economy.
... In October 1990, internal and external conditions caused Slovenia and Croatia to seek independence in some form... Serbia immediately blocked the plan, arguing that the large number of Serbs living in republics other than Serbia would become citizens of foreign countries... By early 1991, large caches of illegally imported arms were held by both Serbs and Croats in multiethnic parts of Croatia, sharpening the threat of full-scale civil war.
... In fact, remaining ethnic patterns blocked a clean break from the federation by any republic except homogeneous Slovenia because large populations would be left behind unless borders were substantially redrawn. Even if Krajina had seceded from Croatia to join Serbia, for example, a substantial number of Serbs would have remained scattered in the Republic of Croatia... In April 1991, Krajina declared itself part of Serbia; the Croats responded by tightening economic pressure on the enclave and by threatening to redraw their own boundaries to include adjacent parts of Bosnia inhabited by a Croatian majority.
...Meanwhile, a major indication of Serbian political diversity appeared in March 1991 when anticommunist Serbs held a mass demonstration in Belgrade against the economic bungling and dictatorial practices of the Milosevic government... More important, the largely peaceful demonstrations set a precedent for public discussion of issues in Serbia, temporarily improving the prospects of a viable multiparty system in that republic.
... Then in June 1991, Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence, which set off a new chain of events

To be continued...

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein