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125-417: Many Muslims were among the wave of internal migrants from other Yugoslav republics who gravitated to Slovenia during the 1960s and 1970s. A permit for the construction of a mosque was first requested in 1969, but was not granted; the effort was revived during the 1990s. The 1990s proposal produced a nationalist backlash, with considerable public opposition to the mosque. The City Council made an attempt to call

250-634: A guerrilla campaign which enjoyed gradually increased levels of success and support of the general populace, and succeeded in controlling large chunks of Yugoslav territory. These were managed via the "People's committees", organized to act as civilian governments in areas of the country controlled by the communists, even limited arms industries were set up. At the very beginning, Partisan forces were relatively small, poorly armed and without any infrastructure. They had two major advantages over other military and paramilitary formations in former Yugoslavia: Occupying and quisling forces, however, were quite aware of

375-537: A new constitution and relinquished his dictatorship in 1931. However, Alexander's policies later encountered opposition from other European powers stemming from developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists and Nazis rose to power, and the Soviet Union , where Joseph Stalin became absolute ruler. None of these three regimes favored the policy pursued by Alexander I. In fact, Italy and Germany wanted to revise

500-580: A Kosovar republic. This angered Serbia's leadership which proceeded to use police force and later, federal police troops to restore civil order. In January 1990, the extraordinary 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was convened, where the Serbian and Slovenian delegations argued over the future of the League of Communists and Yugoslavia. The Serbian delegation, led by Milošević, insisted on

625-455: A close relationship between the two Communist countries, and enable Yugoslavia to start a civil war in Greece and use Albania and Bulgaria as bases. Stalin vetoed this agreement and it was never realised. The break between Belgrade and Moscow was now imminent. Yugoslavia solved the national issue of nations and nationalities (national minorities) in a way that all nations and nationalities had

750-597: A common state for all South Slavic peoples, emerged in the late 17th century and gained prominence through the Illyrian Movement of the 19th century. The name was created by the combination of the Slavic words jug ("south") and Slaveni / Sloveni (Slavs). Moves towards the formal creation of Yugoslavia accelerated after the 1917 Corfu Declaration between the Yugoslav Committee and

875-588: A dubious traffic incident after he started to complain about Tito's politics. Minister of the interior Aleksandar Ranković lost all of his titles and rights after a major disagreement with Tito regarding state politics. Some influential ministers in government, such as Edvard Kardelj or Stane Dolanc , were more important than the Prime Minister. First cracks in the tightly governed system surfaced when students in Belgrade and several other cities joined

1000-533: A federation (this date was celebrated as Republic Day after the war). The Yugoslav Partisans were able to expel the Axis from Serbia in 1944 and the rest of Yugoslavia in 1945. The Red Army provided limited assistance with the liberation of Belgrade and withdrew after the war was over. In May 1945, the Partisans met with Allied forces outside former Yugoslav borders, after also taking over Trieste and parts of

1125-656: A free fall and social programmes collapsed; creating within the population an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness. This was a critical turning point in the events to follow. After Tito's death on 4 May 1980, ethnic tensions grew in Yugoslavia. The legacy of the Constitution of 1974 threw the system of decision-making into a state of paralysis, made all the more hopeless as the conflict of interests became irreconcilable. The Albanian majority in Kosovo demanded

1250-477: A heroic resistance against formidable odds and in doing so you are proving true to your great traditions. Serbs, we know you. You were our allies in the last war and your armies are covered with glory. Croats and Slovenes, we know your military history. For centuries you were the bulwark of Christianity. Your fame as warriors spread far and wide on the Continent. One of the finest incidents in the history of Croatia

1375-723: A joint operation known as the Belgrade Offensive . At the onset of winter, the Partisans effectively controlled the entire eastern half of Yugoslavia – Serbia, Vardar Macedonia and Montenegro , as well as the Dalmatian coast. In 1945, the Partisans, numbering over 800,000 strong defeated the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia and the Wehrmacht , achieving a hard-fought breakthrough in

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1500-542: A minimum: Serbia proper, then-loyal Montenegro, Vojvodina, and Kosovo. As a result of these events, ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo organised the 1989 Kosovo miners' strike , which dovetailed into an ethnic conflict between the Albanians and the non-Albanians in the province. At around 80% of the population of Kosovo in the 1980s , ethnic-Albanians were the majority. With Milošević gaining control over Kosovo in 1989,

1625-590: A mountain village, the Partisans formed the Kopaonik Partisan Detachment Headquarters. The area they controlled, consisting of nearby villages, was called the "Miners Republic" and lasted 42 days. The resistance fighters formally joined the ranks of the Partisans later on. At the September 1941 Stolice conference , the unified name partisans and the red star as an identification symbol were adopted for all fighters led by

1750-549: A municipal referendum to prohibit the construction of the mosque in late 2003. Opposed by Ljubljana mayor Danica Simšič as a "constitutionally-forbidden encroachment on the constitutionally-guaranteed rights of a religious minority", the referendum was rejected by the Constitutional Court in July 2004. In December 2008, city councilor Mihael Jarc began gathering signatures for a second referendum, this time to delete

1875-647: A policy of "one person, one vote" which would empower the plurality population, the Serbs . In turn, the Slovenian delegation, supported by Croats, sought to reform Yugoslavia by devolving even more power to republics, but were voted down. As a result, the Slovene and Croatian delegations left the Congress and the all-Yugoslav Communist party was dissolved. The constitutional crisis that inevitably followed resulted in

2000-513: A revival of greater Serbian hegemonism. Through a series of moves known as the " anti-bureaucratic revolution ", Milošević succeeded in reducing the autonomy of Vojvodina and of Kosovo and Metohija, but both entities retained a vote in the Yugoslav Presidency Council. The very instrument that reduced Serbian influence before was now used to increase it: in the eight-member Council, Serbia could now count on four votes at

2125-530: A rise of nationalism in all republics: Slovenia and Croatia voiced demands for looser ties within the federation. Following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, each of the republics held multi-party elections in 1990. Slovenia and Croatia held the elections in April since their communist parties chose to cede power peacefully. Other Yugoslav republics—especially Serbia—were more or less dissatisfied with

2250-474: Is the one when, in the 16th Century, long before the French Revolution, the peasants rose to defend the rights of man, and fought for those principles which centuries later gave the world democracy. Yugoslavs, you are fighting for those principles today. The British Empire is fighting with you, and behind us is the great democracy of the U.S.A., with its vast and ever-increasing resources. However hard

2375-519: The Chetniks , were the retention of the Yugoslav monarchy , ensuring the safety of ethnic Serb populations, and the establishment of a Greater Serbia through the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from territories they considered rightfully and historically Serbian. Relations between the two movements were uneasy from the start, but from October 1941 they degenerated into full-scale conflict. To

2500-636: The Conference of Ambassadors in Paris . The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929. The kingdom was invaded and occupied by the Axis powers in April 1941. In 1943, Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was proclaimed by the Partisan resistance . In 1944, King Peter II , then living in exile , recognised it as the legitimate government. After a communist government

2625-598: The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers, primarily by German forces, but also including Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian formations. During the invasion, Belgrade was bombed by the Luftwaffe . The invasion lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army on 17 April. Besides being hopelessly ill-equipped when compared to

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2750-526: The Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, which remained the official affiliation of the country until it dissolved. On 7 April 1963, the nation changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Josip Broz Tito was named President for life . In the SFRY, each republic and province had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president and prime minister. At the top of

2875-810: The Syrmian front in late winter, taking Sarajevo in early April, and the rest of the NDH and Slovenia through mid-May. After taking Rijeka and Istria , which were part of Italy before the war, they beat the Allies to Trieste by two days. The "last battle of World War II in Europe", the Battle of Poljana , was fought between the Partisans and retreating Wehrmacht and quisling forces at Poljana, near Prevalje in Carinthia , on 14–15 May 1945. The Axis invasion led to

3000-579: The Ustaše militias and the German army. Amid the relative chaos that ensued, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia moved to organize and unite anti-fascist factions and political forces into a nationwide uprising. The party, led by Josip Broz Tito , was banned after its significant success in the post-World War I Yugoslav elections and operated underground since. Tito, however, could not act openly without

3125-511: The Wehrmacht , the Army attempted to defend all borders but only managed to thinly spread the limited resources available. The terms of the capitulation were extremely severe, as the Axis proceeded to dismember Yugoslavia. Germany occupied the northern part of Drava Banovina (roughly modern-day Slovenia ), while maintaining direct military occupation of a rump Serbian territory with a puppet government. The Independent State of Croatia (NDH)

3250-620: The Yugoslav Wars . From 1993 to 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia tried political and military leaders from the former Yugoslavia for war crimes , genocide, and other crimes committed during those wars. After the breakup, the republics of Montenegro and Serbia formed a reduced federative state, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). This state aspired to

3375-701: The regular armed force of the newly established Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia . One of two objectives of the movement, which was the military arm of the Unitary National Liberation Front (UNOF) coalition, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) and represented by the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), the Yugoslav wartime deliberative assembly ,

3500-457: The "Partisans" (capitalized), and stuck henceforward (the adjective "Yugoslav" is used sometimes in exclusively non- Yugoslav sources to distinguish them from other partisan movements). Between January 1942 and November 1942, the movement's full official name was briefly National Liberation Partisan and Volunteer Army of Yugoslavia ( Narodnooslobodilačka partizanska i dobrovoljačka vojska Jugoslavije, NOP i DVJ). The changes were meant to reflect

3625-536: The 1974 constitution as weakening Serbia's influence and jeopardising the unity of the country by allowing the republics the right to separate. According to official statistics, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, Yugoslavia was among the fastest growing countries, approaching the ranges reported in South Korea and other countries undergoing an economic miracle . The unique socialist system in Yugoslavia, where factories were worker cooperatives and decision-making

3750-567: The Albanians of Kosovo and Hungarians of Vojvodina. Both provinces were afforded much of the same status as the six republics of Yugoslavia, though they could not secede. Vojvodina and Kosovo formed the provinces of the Republic of Serbia but also formed part of the federation, which led to the unique situation in which Central Serbia did not have its own assembly but a joint assembly with its provinces represented in it. Albanian and Hungarian became nationally recognised minority languages, and

3875-473: The Balkans. (... ) Considering that the Partisans had given us such a generous measure of assistance at almost no cost to ourselves, it was of high importance to ensure that their resistance was maintained and not allowed to flag. The partisan army had long since grown into a regular fighting formation comparable to the armies of other small States, and infinitely superior to most of them, and especially to

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4000-575: The Brezovica woods between Sisak and Zagreb, forming the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment . The first uprising led by Tito occurred two weeks later, in Serbia. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia formally decided to launch an armed uprising on 4 July, a date which was later marked as Fighter's Day – a public holiday in the SFR Yugoslavia . One Žikica Jovanović Španac shot the first bullet of

4125-564: The Chetniks from carrying out overt resistance, however the Partisans were not fazed and continued overt resistance which disrupted Axis forces, but led to significant civilian casualties. Later in the conflict the Partisans were able to win the moral, as well as limited material support of the western Allies , who until then had supported General Draža Mihailović 's Chetnik Forces, but were finally convinced of their collaboration fighting by many military missions dispatched to both sides during

4250-535: The Chetniks, Tito's pan-ethnic policies seemed anti-Serbian, whereas the Chetniks' royalism was anathema to the communists. In the early part of the war Partisan forces were predominantly composed of Serbs. In that period names of Muslim and Croat commanders of Partisan forces had to be changed to protect them from their predominantly Serb colleagues. After the German retreat forced by the Soviet-Bulgarian offensive in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo in

4375-642: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia arrived in Belgrade in late May, and this was of great importance for the development of the resistance in Yugoslavia. After their arrival, the Central Committee held conferences with local party officials. The decision for preparing the struggle in Serbia issued on June 23, 1941 at the meeting of the Provincial Committee for Serbia. On July 5, a Communist Party proclamation appeared that called upon

4500-406: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia. In 1941, Partisan forces in Serbia and Montenegro had around 55,000 fighters, but only 4,500 succeeded to escape to Bosnia. On 21 December 1941 they formed the 1st Proletarian Assault Brigade ( 1. Proleterska Udarna Brigada ) – the first regular Partisan military unit, capable of operating outside its local area. In 1942 Partisan detachments officially merged into

4625-732: The Croatian Defence minister Martin Špegelj and two unidentified men. The video, filmed by the Yugoslav counter-intelligence ( KOS, Kontra-obavještajna služba ), showed Špegel announcing that they were at war with the army and giving instructions about arms smuggling as well as methods of dealing with the Yugoslav Army's officers stationed in Croatian cities. Serbia and JNA used this discovery of Croatian rearmament for propaganda purposes. Guns were also fired from army bases through Croatia. Elsewhere, tensions were running high. In

4750-479: The Croatian armed forces ("police") and civilians mark the beginning of the Yugoslav war that inflamed the region. Similarly, the attempt to replace Yugoslav frontier police by Slovene police forces provoked regional armed conflicts which ended with a minimal number of victims. A similar attempt in Bosnia and Herzegovina led to a war that lasted more than three years (see below). The results of all these conflicts were

4875-638: The Dalmatian coast towards the interior almost a year before Croatian leadership made any move towards independence. These uprisings were more or less discreetly backed by the Serb-dominated federal army (JNA). The Serbs in Croatia proclaimed "Serb autonomous areas", which were later united into the Republic of Serb Krajina . The federal army tried to disarm the territorial defence forces of Slovenia (the republics had their local defence forces similar to

5000-459: The Home Guard) in 1990 but was not completely successful. Still, Slovenia began to covertly import arms to replenish its armed forces. Croatia also embarked upon the illegal importation of arms, (following the disarmament of the republics' armed forces by the federal army) mainly from Hungary. These activities were under constant surveillance and produced a video of a secret meeting between

5125-533: The Islamic Community of Slovenia. By late 2008, the location had changed to a plot between Kurilniška and Parmova streets. The design of the center has seen several changes, with the maximum size and height of the structure the subject of debate. A final decision was reached in late 2008. The construction cost is projected to total €12 million. A large donation from Qatar is expected to pay for about 70% of this. The extension of Livarska Street leading to

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5250-538: The Marshall plan. However, in 1948 Tito broke decisively with Stalin on other issues, making Yugoslavia an independent communist state. Yugoslavia requested American aid. American leaders were internally divided, but finally agreed and began sending money on a small scale in 1949, and on a much larger scale 1950–53. The American aid was not part of the Marshall plan. Tito criticised both Eastern Bloc and NATO nations and, together with India and other countries, started

5375-697: The Muslims, with thousands of them killed. A rebellion began in June 1941 in Herzegovina . On 27 July 1941, a Partisan-led uprising began in the area of Drvar and Bosansko Grahovo . It was a coordinated effort from both sides of the Una River in the territory of southeastern Lika and southwestern Bosanska, and succeeded in transferring key NDH territory under rebel control. On 10 August in Stanulović,

5500-637: The National Liberation Army ( Narodnooslobodilačka vojska ). The name change also reflects the fact that the latter superseded in importance the partisan detachments themselves. Shortly before the end of the war, in March 1945, all resistance forces were reorganized into the regular armed force of Yugoslavia and renamed Yugoslav Army. It would keep this name until 1951, when it was renamed the Yugoslav People's Army . On 6 April 1941,

5625-459: The Partisan threat, and attempted to destroy the resistance in what Yugoslav historiographers defined as seven major enemy offensives. These are: It was the nature of partisan resistance that operations against it must either eliminate it altogether or leave it potentially stronger than before. This had been shown by the sequel to each of the previous five offensives from which, one after another,

5750-559: The Partisans. The amnesty would be offered again after German withdrawal from Belgrade on 21 November 1944 and on 15 January 1945. By the middle of 1943 partisan resistance to the Germans and their allies had grown from the dimensions of a mere nuisance to those of a major factor in the general situation. In many parts of occupied Europe the enemy was suffering losses at the hands of partisans that he could ill afford. Nowhere were these losses heavier than in Yugoslavia. The Partisans staged

5875-614: The People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia (NOV i POJ) with an estimated 236,000 soldiers in December 1942. Partisan numbers from Serbia would be diminished until 1943 when the Partisan movement gained upswing by spreading the fight against the axis. Increase of number of Partisans in Serbia, similarly to other republics, came partly in response to Tito's offer of amnesty to all collaborators on 17 August 1944. At that point tens of thousands of Chetniks switched sides to

6000-556: The SFRY were the socialist republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , Macedonia , Montenegro , Serbia , and Slovenia . Within Serbia were the two socialist autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina , which following the adoption of 1974 Yugoslav Constitution were largely equal to the other members of the federation. After an economic and political crisis and the rise of nationalism and ethnic conflicts following Tito's death in 1980, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics' borders, at first into five countries, leading to

6125-571: The Serbian people to struggle against the invaders. Western Serbia was chosen as the base of the uprising , which later spread to other parts of Serbia. A short-lived republic was created in the liberated west, the first liberated territory in Europe. The uprising was suppressed by German forces by 29 November 1941. The Main National Liberation Committee for Serbia is believed to have been founded in Užice on 17 November 1941. It

6250-486: The Serbo-Croat of Bosnia and Montenegro altered to a form based on the speech of the local people and not on the standards of Zagreb and Belgrade. In Slovenia the recognized minorities were Hungarians and Italians. The fact that these autonomous provinces held the same voting power as the republics but unlike other republics could not legally separate from Yugoslavia satisfied Croatia and Slovenia, but in Serbia and in

6375-397: The Serbs (having in mind Croatian Serbs) should also have a right to self-determination. Yugoslav Partisans Former Axis powers: Other Allied factions: Other Allied support: Other Axis collaborators: Other opponents: The Yugoslav Partisans , or the National Liberation Army , officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia ,

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6500-402: The Soviet Union in June. A large-scale uprising was launched in July, later joined by Draža Mihailović 's Chetniks ; this led to the creation of the short-lived Republic of Užice . The Axis mounted a series of offensives in response but failed to completely destroy the highly mobile Partisans and their leadership. By late 1943, the Allies had shifted their support from Mihailović to Tito as

6625-565: The Yugoslav government were the President (Tito), the federal Prime Minister, and the federal Parliament (a collective Presidency was formed after Tito's death in 1980). Also important were the Communist Party general secretaries for each republic and province, and the general secretary of Central Committee of the Communist Party. Tito was the most powerful person in the country, followed by republican and provincial premiers and presidents, and Communist Party presidents. Slobodan Penezić Krcun, Tito's chief of secret police in Serbia, fell victim to

6750-403: The actual number of dead was about 1 million. On 11 November 1945, elections were held with only the Communist-led People's Front appearing on the ballot, securing all 354 seats. On 29 November, while still in exile, King Peter II was deposed by Yugoslavia's Constituent Assembly , and the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was declared. However, he refused to abdicate. Marshal Tito

6875-408: The almost total emigration of the Serbs from all three regions, the massive displacement of the populations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the establishment of the three new independent states. The separation of Macedonia was peaceful, although the Yugoslav Army occupied the peak of the Straža mountain on Macedonian soil. Serbian uprisings in Croatia began in August 1990 by blocking roads leading from

7000-406: The autumn of 1944, the conscription of Serbs, Macedonians, and Kosovar Albanians increased significantly. By late 1944, the total forces of the Partisans numbered 650,000 men and women organized in four field armies and 52 divisions , which engaged in conventional warfare . By April 1945, the Partisans numbered over 800,000. The movement was consistently referred to as the "Partisans" throughout

7125-419: The backing of the USSR , and as the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact was still in force, he was compelled to wait. During the April invasion of Yugoslavia, the leadership of the Communist Party was in Zagreb , together with Josip Broz Tito. After a month, they left for Belgrade . While the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was in effect, the communists refrained from open conflict with

7250-440: The campaign on 7 July in the Bela Crkva incident . The first Zagreb- Sesvete partisan group was formed in Dubrava in July 1941. In August 1941, 7 Partisan Detachments were formed in Dalmatia with the role of spreading the uprising. On 26 August 1941, 21 members of the 1st Split Partisan Detachment were executed by firing squad after being captured by Italian and Ustaše forces. A number of other partisan units were formed in

7375-419: The combined Anglo-American forces were holding in Italy south of Rome. The Germans had been thrown into some confusion after the collapse of Italy and the Patriots had gained control of large stretches of the coast. We had not, however, seized the opportunity. The Germans had recovered and were driving the Partisans out bit by bit. The main reason for this was the artificial line of responsibility which ran through

7500-418: The complex has been renamed " Džamijska ulica, " after the Slovene word for "mosque," a cognate of the Arabic jamaat ("congregation.") Yugoslavia Yugoslavia ( / ˌ j uː ɡ oʊ ˈ s l ɑː v i ə / ; lit.   ' Land of the South Slavs ' ) was a country in Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 to 1992. It came into existence following World War I , under

7625-415: The constitution was heavily amended to replace the emphasis on democratic centralism with workers' self-management and decentralization . The Communist Party was renamed to the League of Communists and adopted Titoism at its congress the previous year . All the Communist European Countries had deferred to Stalin and rejected the Marshall Plan aid in 1947. Tito, at first went along and rejected

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7750-416: The control of the Communist Party, and on recognition of the multiple nationalities. The flags of the republics used versions of the red flag or Slavic tricolor , with a red star in the centre or in the canton. Tito's regional goal was to expand south and take control of Albania and parts of Greece. In 1947, negotiations between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria led to the Bled agreement , which proposed to form

7875-412: The country and responded in a manner to appease both Croats and Serbs: he ordered the arrest of the Croatian Spring protestors while at the same time conceding to some of their demands. Following the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution , Serbia's influence in the country was significantly reduced, while its autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo were granted greater autonomy, along with greater rights for

8000-438: The country were occupied by Bulgaria , Hungary, and Italy. From 1941 to 1945, the Croatian Ustaše regime persecuted and murdered around 300,000 Serbs, along with at least 30,000 Jews and Roma; hundreds of thousands of Serbs were also expelled and another 200,000-300,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism . From the start, the Yugoslav resistance forces consisted of two factions: the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and

8125-488: The course of the war. To gather intelligence , agents of the western Allies were infiltrated into both the Partisans and the Chetniks. The intelligence gathered by liaisons to the resistance groups was crucial to the success of supply missions and was the primary influence on Allied strategy in Yugoslavia . The search for intelligence ultimately resulted in the demise of the Chetniks and their eclipse by Tito's Partisans. In 1942, although supplies were limited, token support

8250-410: The creation of the NDH, Italian governorate of Montenegro and Nedic's Serbia and the annexations of Yugoslav territory by the various Axis countries were incompatible with international law in force at that time. The occupying forces instituted such severe burdens on the local populace that the Partisans came not only to enjoy widespread support but for many were the only option for survival. Early in

8375-524: The decision, while all other republics, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, voted against. The tie delayed an escalation of conflicts, but not for long. Following the first multi-party election results, in the autumn of 1990, the republics of Slovenia and Croatia proposed transforming Yugoslavia into a loose confederation of six republics. By this proposal, republics would have right to self-determination. However Milošević rejected all such proposals, arguing that like Slovenes and Croats,

8500-488: The democratisation in two of the republics and proposed different sanctions (e.g. Serbian "customs tax" for Slovene products) against the two, but as the year progressed, other republics' communist parties saw the inevitability of the democratisation process. In December, as the last member of the federation, Serbia held parliamentary elections confirming the rule of former communists in the republic. Slovenia and Croatia elected governments oriented towards greater autonomy of

8625-404: The division of Yugoslavia between the Axis powers and the Independent State of Croatia . The largest part of Serbia was organized into the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia and as such it was the only example of military regime in occupied Europe. The Military Committee of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party for Serbia was formed in mid-May 1941. The Central Committee of

8750-448: The early stage of the war the initial preponderance of Serbs in the Partisans meant in effect a Serbian civil war had broken out. A similar civil war existed within the Croatian national corpus with the competing national narratives provided by the Ustaše and Partisans. In the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the cause of Serb rebellion was the Ustaše policy of genocide, deportations, forced conversions and mass killings of Serbs , as

8875-542: The exiled royal government and the Allies , but they soon focused increasingly on combating the Partisans rather than the occupying Axis forces. By the end of the war, the Chetnik movement transformed into a collaborationist Serb nationalist militia completely dependent on Axis supplies. The Chetniks also persecuted and killed Muslims and Croats , with an estimated 50,000-68,000 victims (of which 41,000 were civilians). The highly mobile Partisans, however, carried on their guerrilla warfare with great success. Most notable of

9000-539: The extent of Chetnik collaboration became evident, and the Partisans received official recognition at the Tehran Conference . In Autumn 1944, the Partisans and the Soviet Red Army liberated Belgrade following the Belgrade Offensive . By the end of the war, the Partisans had gained control of the entire country as well as Trieste and Carinthia . After the war, the Partisans were reorganized into

9125-755: The fight, our victory is assured. His reports contained two important observations. The first was that the Partisans were courageous and aggressive in battling the German 1st Mountain and 104th Light Division, had suffered significant casualties, and required support. The second observation was that the entire German 1st Mountain Division had traveled from Russia by railway through Chetnik-controlled territory. British intercepts (ULTRA) of German message traffic confirmed Chetnik timidity. All in all, intelligence reports resulted in increased Allied interest in Yugoslavia air operations and shifted policy. In September 1943, at Churchill's request, Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean

9250-551: The government of the Kingdom of Serbia . The country was formed in 1918 immediately after World War I as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by union of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia . It was commonly referred to at the time as a " Versailles state". Later, King Alexander I renamed the country to Yugoslavia in 1929. On 20 June 1928, Serb deputy Puniša Račić shot at five members of

9375-560: The influence and suggestion of Brigadier-General Fitzroy Maclean) with the aim to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Marshal Tito's Partisan forces. During a meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff of 24 November 1943, Winston Churchill pointed out that: It was a lamentable fact that virtually no supplies had been conveyed by sea to the 222,000 followers of Tito. ... These stalwarts were holding as many Germans in Yugoslavia as

9500-574: The international treaties signed after World War I, and the Soviets were determined to regain their positions in Europe and pursue a more active international policy. Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia. He decided to abolish Yugoslavia's historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas. The banovinas were named after rivers. Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance. During his reign, communist movements were restricted. The king

9625-493: The invading German forces. More than 300,000 Yugoslav officers and soldiers were taken prisoner. The Axis Powers occupied Yugoslavia and split it up. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi satellite state, ruled by the fascist militia known as the Ustaše that came into existence in 1929, but was relatively limited in its activities until 1941. German troops occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as part of Serbia and Slovenia , while other parts of

9750-580: The late 1930s was marked by growing intolerance between the principal figures, by the aggressive attitude of the totalitarian regimes, and by the certainty that the order set up after World War I was losing its strongholds and its sponsors their strength. Supported and pressured by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany , Croatian leader Vladko Maček and his party managed the creation of the Banovina of Croatia (Autonomous Region with significant internal self-government) in 1939. The agreement specified that Croatia

9875-580: The matter, while SNS expressed opposition. A ceremony was held at the future site of the complex in September 2013 to lay the foundation stone. Construction is expected to begin in November and last about three years. In February 2020, the mosque was completed and opened to the public. In 2004, a 2800 m site on Cesta dveh cesarjev Road was planned, bought by the municipality from the Lazarite order for 350,000 euros to be made available for purchase by

10000-473: The mosque's proposed 40 m minaret , over the opposition of mayor Zoran Janković . This time the Constitutional Court approved the signature-gathering process; the mayor however vowed to continue to fight it. The reaction among the-then prominent national political parties was mixed; LDS and Zares voiced support for the construction of the mosque; SD , DESUS and SDS remained neutral on

10125-461: The movement's character as a "volunteer army". In November 1942, the movement was renamed into the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia ( Narodnooslobodilačka vojska i partizanski odredi Jugoslavije, NOV i POJ), a name which it held until the end of the war. This last official name is the full name most associated with the Partisans, and reflects the fact that the proletarian brigades and other mobile units were organized into

10250-575: The name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from the merger of the Kingdom of Serbia with the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs , and constituted the first union of South Slavic peoples as a sovereign state , following centuries of foreign rule over the region under the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy . Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign . The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at

10375-507: The new autonomous province of Kosovo, reaction was different. Serbs saw the new constitution as conceding to Croat and ethnic Albanian nationalists. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo saw the creation of an autonomous province as not being enough, and demanded that Kosovo become a constituent republic with the right to separate from Yugoslavia. This created tensions within the Communist leadership, particularly among Communist Serb officials who viewed

10500-525: The new regime of the Independent State of Croatia . In these first two months of occupation, they extended their underground network and began amassing weapons. In early May 1941, a so-called May consultations of Communist Party officials from across the country, who sought to organize the resistance against the occupiers, was held in Zagreb. In June 1941, a meeting of the Central Committee of KPJ

10625-512: The newly created Italian governorate of Montenegro , and was granted the kingship in the Independent State of Croatia, though wielding little real power within it. Hungary dispatched the Hungarian Third Army and occupied and annexed the Yugoslav regions of Baranja, Bačka, Međimurje and Prekmurje . Bulgaria , meanwhile, annexed nearly all of Macedonia , and small areas of eastern Serbia and Kosovo. The dissolution of Yugoslavia,

10750-701: The occupation, German forces would hang or shoot indiscriminately, including women, children and the elderly, up to 100 local inhabitants for every one German soldier killed. While these measures for suppressing communist-led resistance were issued in all German-occupied territory, they were only strictly enforced in Serbia. Two of the most significant atrocities by the German forces were the massacre of 2,000 civilians in Kraljevo and 3,000 in Kragujevac . The formula of 100 hostages shot for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages shot for every wounded German soldier

10875-498: The opposition Croatian Peasant Party in the National Assembly , resulting in the death of two deputies on the spot and that of leader Stjepan Radić a few weeks later. On 6 January 1929, King Alexander I got rid of the constitution , banned national political parties , assumed executive power , and renamed the country Yugoslavia. He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions. He imposed

11000-534: The original residency changed drastically leaving only a minimum number of Serbians in the region. The number of Serbs in Kosovo was quickly declining for several reasons, among them the ever-increasing ethnic tensions and subsequent emigration from the area. Meanwhile, Slovenia , under the presidency of Milan Kučan , and Croatia supported the Albanian miners and their struggle for formal recognition. Initial strikes turned into widespread demonstrations demanding

11125-443: The partisan brigades and divisions had emerged stronger in experience and armament than they had been before, with the backing of a population which had come to see no alternative to resistance but death, imprisonment, or starvation. There could be no half-measures; the Germans left nothing behind them but a trail of ruin. What in other circumstances might possibly have remained the purely ideological war that reactionaries abroad said it

11250-589: The pre-war Jugoslav army, in tactical skill, fieldcraft, leadership, fighting spirit and fire-power. With Allied air support ( Operation Flotsam ) and assistance from the Red Army , in the second half of 1944 the Partisans turned their attention to Serbia, which had seen relatively little fighting since the fall of the Republic of Užice in 1941. On 20 October, the Red Army and the Partisans liberated Belgrade in

11375-553: The public protest and incarcerated the leaders, though many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause. As a result, a new Constitution was ratified in 1974, which gave more rights to the individual republics in Yugoslavia and provinces in Serbia. After the Yugoslav Partisans took over the country at the end of WWII, nationalism was banned from being publicly promoted. Overall relative peace

11500-522: The regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina was reduced by the 1974 Constitution. Because its two autonomous provinces had de facto prerogatives of full-fledged republics, Serbia found that its hands were tied, for the republican government was restricted in making and carrying out decisions that would apply to the provinces. Since the provinces had a vote in the Federal Presidency Council (an eight-member council composed of representatives from

11625-452: The republics (under Milan Kučan and Franjo Tuđman , respectively). Serbia and Montenegro elected candidates who favoured Yugoslav unity. The Croat quest for independence led to large Serb communities within Croatia rebelling and trying to secede from the Croat republic. Serbs in Croatia would not accept the status of a national minority in a sovereign Croatia since they would be demoted from

11750-472: The royalist Chetniks , with the former receiving Allied recognition at the Tehran conference (1943). The heavily pro-Serbian Chetniks were led by Draža Mihajlović , while the pan-Yugoslav oriented Partisans were led by Josip Broz Tito . The Partisans initiated a guerrilla campaign that developed into the largest resistance army in occupied Western and Central Europe. The Chetniks were initially supported by

11875-614: The same fate. In other words, in less than two years "the trigger mechanism" (under the Financial Operations Act) had led to the layoff of more than 600,000 workers out of a total industrial workforce of the order of 2.7 million. An additional 20% of the work force, or half a million people, were not paid wages during the early months of 1990 as enterprises sought to avoid bankruptcy. The largest concentrations of bankrupt firms and lay-offs were in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo. Real earnings were in

12000-492: The same month, the Army leaders met with the Presidency of Yugoslavia in an attempt to get them to declare a state of emergency which would allow for the army to take control of the country. The army was seen as an arm of the Serbian government by that time so the consequence feared by the other republics was to be total Serbian domination of the union. The representatives of Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Vojvodina voted for

12125-460: The same rights. However, most of the German minority of Yugoslavia, most of whom had collaborated during the occupation and had been recruited to German forces, were expelled towards Germany or Austria. The country distanced itself from the Soviets in 1948 (cf. Cominform and Informbiro ) and started to build its own way to socialism under the political leadership of Josip Broz Tito. Accordingly,

12250-484: The same time, Western economies went into recession, decreasing demand for Yugoslav imports thereby creating a large debt problem. In 1989, 248 firms were declared bankrupt or were liquidated and 89,400 workers were laid off according to official sources . During the first nine months of 1990 and directly following the adoption of the IMF programme, another 889 enterprises with a combined work-force of 525,000 workers suffered

12375-569: The six republics and the two autonomous provinces), they sometimes even entered into coalitions with other republics, thus outvoting Serbia. Serbia's political impotence made it possible for others to exert pressure on the 2 million Serbs (20% of the total Serbian population) living outside Serbia. After Tito's death, Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević began making his way toward the pinnacle of Serbian leadership. Milošević sought to restore pre-1974 Serbian sovereignty. Other republics, especially Slovenia and Croatia, denounced his proposal as

12500-579: The southern Austrian provinces of Styria and Carinthia . However, the Partisans withdrew from Trieste in June of the same year under heavy pressure from Stalin, who did not want a confrontation with the other Allies. Western attempts to reunite the Partisans, who denied the supremacy of the old government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , and the émigrés loyal to the king led to the Tito-Šubašić Agreement in June 1944; however, Marshal Josip Broz Tito

12625-578: The status of a constituent nation. The war broke out when the new regimes tried to replace Yugoslav civilian and military forces with secessionist forces. When, in August 1990, Croatia attempted to replace police in the Serb-populated Croat Krajina by force, the population first looked for refuge in the Yugoslav Army barracks, while the army remained passive. The civilians then organised armed resistance. These armed conflicts between

12750-488: The status of a republic in the 1981 protests in Kosovo while Serbian authorities suppressed this sentiment and proceeded to reduce the province's autonomy. In 1986, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts drafted a memorandum addressing some burning issues concerning the position of Serbs as the most numerous people in Yugoslavia. The largest Yugoslav republic in territory and population, Serbia's influence over

12875-581: The status of sole legal successor to the SFRY, but those claims were opposed by the other former republics. Eventually, it accepted the opinion of the Badinter Arbitration Committee about shared succession and in 2003 its official name was changed to Serbia and Montenegro. This state dissolved when Montenegro and Serbia each became independent states in 2006, with Kosovo having an ongoing dispute over its declaration of independence in 2008. The concept of Yugoslavia , as

13000-564: The summer of 1941, including in Moslavina and Kalnik . An uprising occurred in Serbia during the summer, led by Tito, when the Republic of Užice was created, but it was defeated by the Axis forces by December 1941, and support for the Partisans in Serbia thereafter dropped. It was a different story for Serbs in Axis occupied Croatia who turned to the multi-ethnic Partisans, or the Serb royalist Chetniks. The journalist Tim Judah notes that in

13125-786: The treaty and launched a coup d'état when the king returned on 27 March . Army General Dušan Simović seized power, arrested the Vienna delegation, exiled Prince Paul, and ended the regency, giving 17-year-old King Peter full powers. Hitler then decided to attack Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, followed immediately by an invasion of Greece where Mussolini had previously been repelled. At 5:12 a.m. on 6 April 1941, German , Italian and Hungarian forces invaded Yugoslavia . The German Air Force ( Luftwaffe ) bombed Belgrade and other major Yugoslav cities. On 17 April, representatives of Yugoslavia's various regions signed an armistice with Germany in Belgrade, ending eleven days of resistance against

13250-507: The victories against the occupying forces were the battles of Neretva and Sutjeska . On 25 November 1942, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia was convened in Bihać , modern day Bosnia and Herzegovina . The council reconvened on 29 November 1943, in Jajce , also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and established the basis for post-war organisation of the country, establishing

13375-485: The war, numbering around 650,000 in late 1944 and organized in four field armies and 52 divisions . The main stated objectives of the Partisans were the liberation of Yugoslav lands from occupying forces and the creation of a federal, multi-ethnic socialist state in Yugoslavia. The Partisans were organized on the initiative of Tito following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, and began an active guerrilla campaign against occupying forces after Germany invaded

13500-455: The war. However, due to frequent changes in size and structural reorganizations, the Partisans throughout their history held four full official names (translated here from Serbo-Croatian to English): The movement was originally named National Liberation Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia ( Narodnooslobodilački partizanski odredi Jugoslavije, NOPOJ) and held that name from June 1941 to January 1942. Because of this, their short name became simply

13625-593: The worldwide protests of 1968 . President Josip Broz Tito gradually stopped the protests by giving in to some of the students' demands and saying that "students are right" during a televised speech. However, in the following years, he dealt with the leaders of the protests by sacking them from university and Communist party posts. A more severe sign of disobedience was so-called Croatian Spring of 1970 and 1971, when students in Zagreb organised demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy, followed by mass protests across Croatia. The regime stifled

13750-588: Was (and German propaganda did their utmost to support them) became a war for national preservation. So clear was this that no room was left for provincialism; Serbs and Croats and Slovenes, Macedonians, Bosnians, Christian and Moslem, Orthodox and Catholic, sank their differences in the sheer desperation of striving to remain alive. Partisans operated as a regular army that remained highly mobile across occupied Yugoslavia. Partisan units engaged in overt acts of resistance which led to significant reprisals against civilians by Axis forces. The killing of civilians discouraged

13875-518: Was also held, at which it was decided to start preparations for the uprising. Operation Barbarossa , the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, began on 22 June 1941. The extent of support for the Partisan movement varied according to region and nationality, reflecting the existential concerns of the local population and authorities. The first Partisan uprising occurred in Croatia on 22 June 1941, when forty Croatian communists staged an uprising in

14000-502: Was assassinated in Marseille during an official visit to France in 1934 by Vlado Chernozemski , an experienced marksman from Ivan Mihailov 's Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with the cooperation of the Ustaše , a Croatian fascist revolutionary organisation. Alexander was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son Peter II and a regency council headed by his cousin, Prince Paul . The international political scene in

14125-475: Was cut in one-half in February 1943 and removed altogether in the fall of that same year. Furthermore, Yugoslavia experienced a breakdown of law and order, with collaborationist militias roaming the countryside terrorizing the population. The government of the puppet Independent State of Croatia found itself unable to control its territory in the early stages of the occupation, resulting in a severe crackdown by

14250-638: Was elected in November 1945, the monarchy was abolished, and the country was renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. It acquired the territories of Istria , Rijeka , and Zadar from Italy . Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country from 1944 as prime minister and later as president until his death in 1980. In 1963, the country was renamed for the final time, as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). The six constituent republics that made up

14375-538: Was established under German direction, which extended over much of the territory of today's Croatia and as well contained all the area of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and Syrmia region of modern-day Serbia . Mussolini's Italy occupied the remainder of Drava Banovina (annexed and renamed as the Province of Lubiana ), much of Zeta Banovina and large chunks of the coastal Dalmatia region (along with nearly all its Adriatic islands). It also gained control over

14500-419: Was in control and was determined to lead an independent communist state, starting as a prime minister. He had the support of Moscow and London and led by far the strongest Partisan force with 800,000 men. The official Yugoslav post-war estimate of victims in Yugoslavia during World War II is 1,704,000. Subsequent data gathering in the 1980s by historians Vladimir Žerjavić and Bogoljub Kočović showed that

14625-597: Was less centralized than in other socialist countries, may have led to the stronger growth. However, even if the absolute value of the growth rates was not as high as indicated by the official statistics, both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were characterized by surprisingly high growth rates of both income and education during the 1950s. The period of European growth ended after the oil price shock in 1970s. Following that, an economic crisis erupted in Yugoslavia due to disastrous economic policies such as borrowing vast amounts of Western capital to fund growth through exports. At

14750-481: Was now in full control, and all opposition elements were eliminated. On 31 January 1946, the new constitution of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia , modelled after the Constitution of the Soviet Union , established six republics , an autonomous province, and an autonomous district that were a part of Serbia. The federal capital was Belgrade. The policy focused on a strong central government under

14875-488: Was parachuted to Tito's headquarters near Drvar to serve as a permanent, formal liaison to the Partisans. While the Chetniks were still occasionally supplied, the Partisans received the bulk of all future support. Thus, after the Tehran Conference the Partisans received official recognition as the legitimate national liberation force by the Allies, who subsequently set up the RAF Balkan Air Force (under

15000-477: Was retained under Tito's rule, though nationalist protests did occur, but these were usually repressed and nationalist leaders were arrested and some were executed by Yugoslav officials. However, the Croatian Spring protests in the 1970s were backed by large numbers of Croats who complained that Yugoslavia remained a Serb hegemony. Tito, whose home republic was Croatia, was concerned over the stability of

15125-509: Was sent equally to each. The new year would bring a change. The Germans were executing Operation Schwarz (the Fifth anti-Partisan offensive), one of a series of offensives aimed at the resistance fighters, when F.W.D. Deakin was sent by the British to gather information. On April 13, 1941, Winston Churchill sent his greetings to the Yugoslav people. In his greeting he stated: You are making

15250-434: Was the communist -led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers (chiefly Nazi Germany ) in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II . Led by Josip Broz Tito , the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti- Axis resistance movement during World War II. Primarily a guerrilla force at its inception, the Partisans developed into a large fighting force engaging in conventional warfare later in

15375-625: Was the case elsewhere in the NDH. Resistance to communist leadership of the anti-Ustasha rebellion among the Serbs from Bosnia also developed in the form of the Chetnik movement and autonomous bands which were under command of Dragoljub Mihailović. Whereas the Partisans under Serb leadership were open to members of various nationalities, those in the Chetniks were hostile to Muslims and exclusively Serbian. The uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina started by Serbs in many places were acts of retaliation against

15500-477: Was to fight the occupying forces. Until British supplies began to arrive in appreciable quantities in 1944, the occupiers were the only source of arms. The other objective was to create a federal multi-ethnic communist state in Yugoslavia. To this end, the KPJ attempted to appeal to all the various ethnic groups within Yugoslavia, by preserving the rights of each group. The objectives of the rival resistance movement,

15625-467: Was to remain part of Yugoslavia, but it was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations. Prince Paul submitted to fascist pressure and signed the Tripartite Pact in Vienna on 25 March 1941, hoping to continue keeping Yugoslavia out of the war. However, this was at the expense of popular support for Paul's regency. Senior military officers were also opposed to

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