Capital : Belgrade (Beograd)
During the first millennium BC, this area was settled by Illyrian
migrants from the Indo-European homeland around the Aegean sea
and came under the sphere of Greek colonisation. The kingdom of
Macedonia strengthened gradually and after the victory of Philip
of Macedon over the Greek city-states at Chaeronea in 338 BC it
became a dominant power under his son, Alexander the Great, although
Illyria in the north was never really part of his empire.
In the centuries before Christ it was plundered and partially
settled by Celtic peoples. Under the Roman Empire it was divided
into the provinces of Illyricum and Macedonia by AD 14. Like the
rest of the Roman world, the area was largely Christian by AD
600. During the Germanic invasions after the fall of Rome, it
was settled by the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Slavs. The southern
part of the area was part of the Byzantine or East Roman Empire.
Several of the South Slav or Yugoslav republics became independent
states at various times but all came under either Ottoman Turkish
or Austro-Hungarian Habsburg control. Napoleonic France planned
to administer the whole Balkan area as one unit, the Province
of Illyria, but this was ended by Napoleon's defeat and the component
territories were returned to their former rulers in 1813.
During the C19th there were increasing nationalist feelings (encouraged
by Russia) in the Balkan peninsula although the Slavs of Bosnia
and Herzegovina passed from Turkish to Austrian rule in 1878.
As the ethnic and linguistic groups were so mixed by this time
it was not possible to use language as a criterion of nationality.
The Great Powers feared Russian domination and, hoping to preserve
the Ottoman Empire as a viable power, tried to pacify the Balkan
states but in 1912 they formed an alliance to expel the Turks
from Macedonia.
After the Serbian led victory in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, old rivalries re-emerged. The Bosnians continued their campaign for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and their assassination of the heir-apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, at Sarajevo in June 1914 helped to spark off the First World War. The Yugoslav Committee, originally based in Paris and formed mainly by Croatian and Slovenian exiles, announced aims to create a South Slav state by the middle of 1915 and moved its headquarters to London. It accepted Serbian financial backing and agreed to support all Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in their demands for an independent Yugoslavia. The Committee held talks with the Serbian Pasic government on Corfu and the somewhat ambiguous Corfu Declaration was signed.
Towards the end of the War, in 1918, the Serbian government convened
a meeting of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Belgrade and proclaimed
the new state of Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes' was ruled by the Serbian king, Peter Karajordjevic,
and consisted of the former independent territories of Serbia
and Montenegro including Slovenia, Dalmatia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Border disputes in all the territories except Macedonia and the
struggles to resolve them helped to create a more unified country
but further divisions were caused by disputes over the constitution
of the new state. Serious problems were caused by the different
economic levels of the various lands and there was controversy
over whether or not to adopt a single currency and central bank.
The Interim National Parliament was convened in December 1918
and sat until Regent Aleksandar disbanded it a month before the
election of the Constituent Assembly in November 1920. The Serbs
were the majority of the population but the main opposition party
was the new Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) although quite
a few of the smaller political parties abstained from voting.
There was no majority party, but eventually the Serbs Nikola Pasic
and Svetozar Pribicevic gained enough support to establish a centralized
constitution based on that put forward by Serbia in 1903. On June
28th, 1921, the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo
when the Serbs were defeated by the Turks in 1389, the new constitutional,
parliamentary and hereditary Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes was officially formed under the new young king, Aleksandar.
There was quite a lot of opposition to the centralised government
and political assassinations were fairly common.
Relations with Italy and other neighbouring countries deteriorated
during the 1920s and,combined with domestic problems, led to the
troubled parliament being banished by the king in 1928. The country
was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the 1921 constitution
was abandoned. The nation state now became a kind of royal dictatorship
until Aleksandar was assassinated by a Macedonian Revolutionary
in 1934. Prince Paul became Regent until Aleksandar's son Petar
reached his eighteenth birthday in September 1941. The Serbian
Milan Stojadinovic held power with a coalition government from
1935-38 but minority rights were not really addressed.
The Serbs staged a coup in March 1941 but this was instantly put
down when the Second World War spilled over into Yugoslavia with
the German invasion of April 1941. Yugoslavia had signed the Axis
Pact on March 25th, two days before the government was overthrown.
Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union led to open resistance from
the KPJ but the country was soon partitioned between Germany,
Italy and Bulgaria. Resistance factions included the loyal monarchist
Chetniks, led by Draza Mikhailovic who were based in Serbia and
the communist Partisans, mostly Serb but led by the Croat, Josip
Broz, later Marshal Tito, who had been head of the CPY since 1937.
Some of the present Yugoslav conflicts appear to date from the
war period with the various factions using the war as a cover
for their own disputes. The civil war involved the Croat nationalists,
Serb partisans and the communists and their differences were exploited
by the Germans.
After 1943, Tito was supported by Britain and the Soviet Union
and he became prime minister of the provisional Anti-Fascist National
Liberation Council (AVNOJ). After the German forces were expelled,
Tito took power. The monarchists did not vote in the autumn 1945
elections, which Tito won. In November, the monarchy was abolished
and the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia was established,
removing the oppostion by executing Mikhailovic and adopting a
Soviet modelled constitution in January 1946. There were six republics:
Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Montenegro, and
two autonomous regions, Kosovo and Vojvodina.
Tito refused to become subjugated to the Soviet communists and
Yugoslavia was expelled from 'Cominform', the successor to 'Comintern'
or Communist International, in 1948. He developed his own style
of communism and successfully negotiated with East and West. The
party was renamed the 'League of Communists in 1952 and the new
constitution of 1953 implemented a more de-centralised Yugoslavian
form of socialism with Tito becoming President. In 1963, the country
was renamed Tthe Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and
Tito became president for life. In 1974, the republics were given
virtual powers of veto over federal decisions.
After Tito's death May 4th 1980 he was replaced by
collective leaderships and his political system appeared to prevent
any internal quarrels for a while although there was some speculation
that without Tito, Yugoslavia would disintegrate. It became clear
that the federation was weakened by Tito's loss as he had helped
to hold the different ethnic groups together. The economic decline
of the 1970s and 80s had led to a revival of nationalism in Croatia
and there were protests against the Serb administration of Slobodan
Milosevic amongst the Albanian majority in Kosovo, an area thought
of by the Serbs as central to their culture. In 1990, Kosovar
Albanians demanding automony, rioted and there were some deaths.
The Serbs wanted a centralised state although accounts differ
as to how much they wished to dominate it, but the Croats and
Slovenes wanted to decentralise.
In 1989, prime minister Branko Mikulic resigned after his economic
reforms were rejected and Ante Markovic, who had been the Croatian
president in 1986-8, was named as his replacement by the collective
presidency. Factors including the weakening central government,
the increased demand for democracy, cultural diversity, nationalism
and the changes in the other communist countries combined towards
the end of the 1980s to make Yugoslavia very unstable.
Slovenia voted to secede in 1989 and despite military intervention
by Yugoslav forces, was independent by the end of 1991. By the
1990 elections, the communists had lost power everywhere except
Serbia and Montenegro. The Croatian parliament adopted a constitution
allowing it to secede in December 1990 and the Croatian Serbs,
who were in the majority in several towns, threatened to secede
themselves. Tension and violence increased and the predominantly
Serb Yugoslav army went in despite some attempts at a diplomatic
solution. In May, Serbia refused to accept the Croat, Stipe Mesic,
as chairman of the collective presidency and on June 25th,
Croatia and Slovenia voted for independence.
The fighting in Croatia between Serb and Croat forces continued despite several cease-fire agreements and old quarrels dating back to the Second World War and beyond were used by both sides to encourage their people to feel hostile towards each other.
.
The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia in September
1991, Slovenia and Croatia seceded October, fighting continued
in Croatia, Macedonia voted to do so and Bosnia-Herzegovina also
expressed a wish to leave the federation. In December, President
Mesic resigned, saying that Yugoslavia no longer existed and the
UN Protection force was deployed early in 1992. War broke out
in Bosnia-Hercegovina in March, with the Serbs attempting to remove
the Muslims.
Montenegro and Serbia remained the only republics left in what was described as the 'rump state' of Yugoslavia but in September 1992, as the war continued, the UN took away Yugoslavia's UN membership as it did not consider these two remaining members to be the heirs to the federation's status and Yugoslavia ceased to exist as a single country.
Despite the religious differences, inter-marriage between the
various races seems to have occurred quite often. Most people
are probably of mixed origin and names seem to be fairly similar,
many of them being Slavic in origin with different religious influences
also apparent. The following lists were compiled before the break-up
of Yugoslavia and contain names from different ethnic groups.
| Burklev? | Csaba | Czyrek | Danijel | Drago | Florek |
| Florin | Haris | Jefta | Jevrem | Kosta | Ladislas |
| Ljubisa | Ljubo | Ljubomir | Miro | Mirsad | Nili |
| Savo | Sven | Sveto | Traian | Vedran | Vojislav |
| Zdenko | Zdravko | Zoran | Zorislav |
| Binasa | Darja | Goranka | Iva | Ljiljana | Marina |
| Sabri | Senada | Stephania | Tomica | Tonka | Triska |
| Velinka | Zlata | Zuhra |
| Adamovic | Alinavec | Andjelkovic | Aremovic | Augustic | Badurina |
| Banovic | Barac | Batez | Beslavic | Bjondic | Bodaroga |
| Boljkovac | Bosnyak | Bourek | Brodovic | Bronkovic | Brychta |
| Buzolic | Cacic | Cackovic | Ceh | Crnogorac | Curevac |
| Danielovic | Divac | Dizdarevic | Djerek | Djuric | Dmitrovic |
| Dracul | Dragojlov | Duplancic | Dziewulski | Ficor | Filipovic |
| Fogec | Gaspar | Georgevic | Gligorijevic | Gluhic | Greif |
| Gribic | Habazin | Hovat | Hren | Hukovic | Huljic |
| Husnjak | Ivanisevic | Jelavich | Kalinowski | Kamesivic | Karoglan |
| Kostulnica | Kovacic | Kriez | Lakovic | Lariani | Lasic |
| Ljubic | Ljubisec | Luter | Madzarevic | Maluta | Marcijus |
| Maretic | Marsic | Mecava | Medvesck | Mester | Mihalic |
| Milatovic | Milinkovic | Mlacnik | Mladvic | Mrksic | Nincic |
| Nola | Ogrisovic | Ondruska | Opacic | Orsanic | Ozbolt |
| Pecanac | Pecur | Pesa | Peterca | Petranovic | Pilic |
| Plecnik | Pogelsek | Poldrugac | Poturak | Premar | Priljaco |
| Primorac | Privsek | Protic | Radul | Rawlev | Rebaca |
| Rendulic | Revic | Roksandic | Rosso | Rozic | Savic |
| Scherr | Seles | Sertic | Sestric | Sijercic | Siladjdzic |
| Siprak | Sipran | Soric | Stoianovich | Strapovic | Svajger |
| Tadej | Taniskovic | Teresak | Terzic | Topic | Topol |
| Trgovec | Tupajic | Vasary | Vragovic | Vucinich | Vujevic |
| Vukmirica | Wjekeslava | Yecmenica | Zavrsan | Zeckovic | Zerec |
| Zivoinovic | Zorman |
This collection of names compiled by Kate Monk. Copyright January
1997, Kate Monk. Last updated November, 97. Copies may be made
for personal use only.