Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia, the land of the South Slavs, was a twentieth-century experiment in holding many peoples in one state. It was built twice, first as a kingdom after World War I and then as a socialist federation after World War II, and both times it brought together Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians, Hungarians, and others across Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim traditions. Under Josip Broz Tito it broke with Stalin, opened its borders to travel and Western tourists, and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement. Its breakup in 1991 and 1992, and the wars that followed through 2001, redrew the map of southeastern Europe and led to the first international war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo.

The socialist federation covered about 255,800 square kilometers of the western Balkan Peninsula. Its long Adriatic coastline, fringed by more than a thousand islands, gave way inland to the bare limestone karst of the Dinaric Alps and the forested mountains of Bosnia and Montenegro. In the north, the flat, fertile Pannonian Plain of Vojvodina and Slavonia was crossed by the Danube, Sava, and Drava rivers, and Triglav in the Julian Alps rose to 2,864 meters. The south climbed through Kosovo and Macedonia toward Greece. Its six republics are now independent countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. Kosovo, an autonomous province of Serbia in Yugoslav times, declared independence in 2008 and is recognized by roughly half the world's states, while Serbia regards it as Serbian territory.

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed on December 1, 1918, from Serbia, Montenegro, and South Slav lands of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire, and King Alexander renamed it Yugoslavia in 1929. Axis armies invaded in April 1941, and the war became a brutal civil conflict as well as a fight against occupation. Tito's communist Partisans emerged victorious, abolished the monarchy in 1945, and built a federation of six republics, with two autonomous provinces inside Serbia. After Tito died in 1980, economic crisis and rival nationalisms strained the system. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence in June 1991, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina followed, and on April 27, 1992, Serbia and Montenegro formed a smaller Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ending the socialist federation.

• Serbia and Montenegro
  The last remnant of Yugoslavia, from a 1992 federation to a loose union dissolved in 2006 succeeded by
• Austria-Hungary
  The Habsburg dual monarchy of a dozen nations, dissolved at the end of World War I successor of
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
  A mountainous Balkan crossroads of three peoples and the Ottoman legacy today part of
• Croatia
  A crescent of Adriatic coastline, a thousand islands, and walled stone cities today part of
• Kosovo
  Europe's youngest declared state, recognized by roughly half the world today part of
• Montenegro
  A small Adriatic land of black mountains and a fjord-like bay today part of
• North Macedonia
  A landlocked Balkan land of lakes, mountains, and ancient crossroads today part of
• Serbia
  A landlocked Balkan crossroads on the Danube, between empires and eras today part of
• Slovenia
  Where the Alps meet the Adriatic in a small, green, mountainous land today part of