Yugoslavia, Federal Republic of, federation of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, located in southeastern Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. From 1945 to 1991 Yugoslavia was a larger Communist federal state, called the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) beginning in 1963, consisting of six republics.
2 republics (republike, singular - republika); and 2 nominally autonomous provinces* (autonomn pokrajine, singular - autonomna pokrajina); Kosovo*, Montenegro, Serbia, Vojvodina*
59 percent of the population of the FRY lived in urban areas. The largest cities are Belgrade, the federal capital and the capital of Serbia; Novi Sad, a commercial center; Niš, a transportation and industrial center; Kragujevac, a manufacturing center; and Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.
As a result of the wars following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, about 646,000 refugees fled to Serbia and Montenegro from Croatia and Bosnia. Many settled in Belgrade or Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina.
Cleavages among southern Slav tribes developed over time, particularly after the establishment in the 4th century AD of the north-south “Theodosian Line” demarcating the eastern and western segments of the Roman Empire. Organization of the Christian church subsequently was based on this division. Missionaries from Rome converted Slavic tribes in the west to Roman Catholicism (these tribal groups becoming progenitors of the Slovenes and Croatians), while missionaries from Constantinople converted ancestors of Serbs and Montenegrins to Eastern Orthodoxy.
World War II (1939-1945) until 1990, Yugoslavia was a Communist-ruled federal state—in its later years almost a confederation—of six republics (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia) and two autonomous provinces within Serbia (Kosovo and Vojvodina). By 1990 federal institutions, which had proved incapable of coping with ten years of deepening economic crisis, were almost entirely paralyzed by disputes among the republics and a rising tide of divisive ethnic conflicts and separatist movements. Popular support for the regime and the unified state was rapidly declining.
scattered evidence of human occupation in the central Balkan Peninsula reaching back some 35,000 years, dense settlement does not appear to have taken place until about 7000–3500 BC, during the Neolithic Period. There are indications of Neolithic settlement in the Pannonian Basin, along the Sava and Danube rivers, and spreading northward into modern Hungary along the Tisa River, and southward down the Morava-Vardar corridor. Food production, based on the domestication of both plants (especially emmer wheat) and animals, developed by the end of this period and eventually reached a point at which it was possible to support some craft specialization, including pottery making and copper smelting. Small towns formed; several sites in Serbia provide insights into late Neolithic culture, particularly those at Starcevo and Vinca, near Belgrade, and at Lepenski Vir, on the Danube above the Iron Gate gorge.
May 1992 the United Nations (UN) imposed economic sanctions on the FRY in an attempt to halt Serbian support of Bosnian Serb offensives and atrocities in Bosnia. The sanctions dealt a further blow to an already crippled economy, and living standards in Serbia and Montenegro declined significantly. By the following year an estimated 750,000 people in the FRY had lost their jobs. Miloševic and his allies aroused further discontent by personally acquiring many state companies in the name of privatization. In 1994 the UN lifted non-trade sanctions against the FRY—those affecting travel, sport, and cultural contacts—partly on the condition that the FRY would cut off aid to Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, which did not happen.
Serbian society has a strong peasant patriarchal tradition that evolved under Ottoman domination and is still reflected in family and government structures. A distinctive feature is the zadruga, a corporate family group of 100 or more individuals that originally worked the land under the direction of family elders. The zadruga functioned as a rural tradition well into the communist era after World War II. The advent of modern public services took a toll, however. Even as elders lived to increasingly older ages, younger adults educated in an expanding school system chafed at patriarchal authority. By the 1970s the zadruga system evolved into a less onerous system of cooperative extended family groups. Nevertheless, family loyalties continue to play a major role in Serbia, where job nepotism is a recurring phenomenon.
The Orthodox Church had a major influence on the early development of the arts of Serbia and Montenegro. Both states emerged from the Byzantine Empire, for which Orthodox Christianity was the state religion, and Byzantine influences appear in the country’s many beautiful monasteries, including some that hold magnificent frescoes and icons. Serbian and Montenegrin art suffered when the Ottomans annexed Serbia and reduced Montenegro to a collection of mountain strongholds from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Western artistic movements began influencing artists and architects in Serbia and Montenegro during 19th and 20th century. Socialist Realism was also a force after Yugoslavia emerged from World War II in 1945 as a Communist state.
Serbia has a long theatre tradition, with numerous professional theatres operating in the republic. The Serbian National Theatre building in Belgrade dates from 1868. Serbia also has a noteworthy cinematic tradition. Before the outbreak of World War II, Belgrade motion picture companies had produced a dozen feature films. The most spectacular was The Battle of Kosovo, produced in 1939 by Mihail Popovic. Belgrade hosts an annual film festival.
Serbia's first television transmissions began in 1958 in Belgrade. Serbian television productions are noted for an original approach to the medium. There are television studios in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Priština. Also, several dozen radio stations are in operation.
population of Serbia and Montenegro, then republics of the larger Yugoslavia, was 10,394,026. In 1998 the total population of the FRY was estimated to be 11,206,039. Serbs are the largest ethnic group, constituting 63 percent of the population in 1991, followed by Albanians (17 percent), Montenegrins (5 percent), Yugoslavs (3 percent), Hungarians (3 percent), and Muslims (3 percent). Serbia’s population is nearly 16 times greater than that of Montenegro: 10,003,309 to 673,981 (2001).
The landforms of Serbia fall into three regional groupings that roughly parallel the republic's major political divisions. The plains of the northern Vojvodina region generally lie at elevations between 200 and 350 feet (60 to 100 metres) above sea level. The Fruška Gora hills interrupt these plains on the west, stretching along a triangle of land between the Danube and Sava rivers. Their highest point is 1,765 feet (540 metres). Much of the Vojvodina is blanketed by portions of a former plateau that rose up to 100 feet (30 metres) above the territory's floodplains; the remnants are composed of fine particles of loess deposited by winds during the last glacial period in Europe.
Yugoslavia’s plant and animal life is diverse. The Pannonian Plain is naturally a grassland, although cultivated crops now cover almost all of it. Forests cover 28 percent of Yugoslavia, mainly in the mountains. Deciduous forests cover the Balkan and Carpathian ranges, and mixed coniferous (evergreen) and deciduous forests appear at lower elevations of the eastern Dinaric Alps. Forests also once covered the southern and western portions of the Dinaric Alps, but most trees have been cleared and the soil has eroded. The deciduous forests are predominantly oak at lower elevations and beech at higher elevations, but also include elm, maple, chestnut, poplar, walnut, ash, linden, and willow. The Montenegrin coastal area contains Mediterranean vegetation that has adapted to the long, hot dry summers. This vegetation includes scrub evergreen, cypress, palm, olive, fig, cherry, almond, orange, and lemon trees.
Yugoslav state in the early 1990s and the ensuing Wars of Yugoslav Succession seriously debilitated the economy of Serbia and Montenegro. Economic sanctions imposed on the FRY by the United Nations (UN) due to the country’s involvement in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia intensified the economic damage. During the early 1990s the FRY experienced runaway inflation, a high rate of unemployment (more than 60 percent in 1993), and a collapse in production. Tough measures designed to reduce public spending and increase productivity, along with the introduction of a new currency linked to the German currency in early 1994, began to bring inflation under control, and gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of about 5 to 6 percent in 1994 and by a similar rate in 1995. Following a peace agreement bringing the war in Bosnia to an end, the UN lifted the sanctions against the FRY in October 1996. This boosted economic performance, accelerating GDP growth to 7.4 percent in 1997.
Yugoslavia adopted an avowedly socialist economic system modeled on institutions in the Soviet Union, but, following its break with the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) in 1948, a system evolved that allowed increasing opportunity for individual enterprise. Although most farmers were gathered into collective farms, this unpopular policy was abandoned after 1953. In Serbia the institution continued mainly in former German estates in the Vojvodina, where the regime had resettled migrants from mountainous regions of Serbia and Montenegro. The communist regime also nationalized existing industrial enterprises and embarked on an ambitious policy of rapidly creating more. Using funds derived from the profits of manufacturing plants in the long-developed industrial regions of Slovenia and Croatia
The swift collapse of the Yugoslav federation in 1991 was followed by highly destructive warfare, the destabilization of republic boundaries, and the breakup of important interrepublic trade flows. Output in Yugoslavia dropped by half in 1992-93. Like the other former Yugoslav republics, it had depended on its sister republics for large amounts of energy and manufactures. Wide differences in climate, mineral resources, and levels of technology among the republics accentuated this interdependence, as did the communist practice of concentrating much industrial output in a small number of giant plants. The breakup of many of the trade links, the sharp drop in output as industrial plants lost suppliers and markets, and the destruction of physical assets in the fighting all have contributed to the economic difficulties of the republics. Hyperinflation ended with the establishment of a new currency unit in June 1993; prices were relatively stable from 1995 through 1997, but inflationary pressures resurged in 1998. Reliable statistics continue to be hard to come by, and the GDP estimate is extremely rough. The economic boom anticipated by the government after the suspension of UN sanctions in December 1995 has failed to materialize. Government mismanagement of the economy is largely to blame, but the damage to Yugoslavia's infrastructure and industry by the NATO bombing during the war in Kosovo have added to problems. All sanctions now have been lifted. Yugoslavia is in the first stage of economic reform. Severe electricity shortages are chronic, the result of lack of investment by former regimes, depleted hydropower reservoirs due to extended drought, and lack of funds. GDP growth in 2000 was perhaps 15%, which made up for a large part of the 20% decline of 1999.
general assessment: NA
domestic: NA
international: satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean)
Muslims speak Serbo-Croatian but prefer to write it with the Latin alphabet. They form the majority in the Sandžak region, an area that straddles the southwestern border between Serbia and Montenegro and abuts Bosnia. Ethnic Albanians speak Albanian, which is written with the Latin alphabet. Most Albanians are Sunni Muslims (see Sunnites), but there are also Orthodox Christian and Roman Catholic Albanians, particularly in Montenegro. The great majority of ethnic Albanians in the FRY live in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where they make up about 90 percent of the population. There is also a small population of ethnic Albanians in Montenegro, concentrated in areas bordering Albania and Kosovo. Hungarians in the FRY speak Hungarian as well as Serbo-Croatian, and are concentrated in the northern part of the Serbian province of Vojvodina, bordering Hungary.
Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians or SVM [Jozsef KASZA]; Civic Alliance of Serbia or GSS [Vesna PESIC]; Coalition Sandzak [Rasim JAJIC]; Coalition Sumadija [Branislav KOVACEVIC]; Democratic Alternative of DA [Nebojsa COVIC]; Democratic Center or DC [Dragoljub MICUNOVIC]; Democratic Christian Party of Serbia of DHSS [Vladan BATIC]; Democratic League of Kosovo or LDK [Dr. Ibrahim RUGOVA, president]; Democratic Opposition of Serbia or DOS [leader NA]; Democratic Party or DS [Zoran DJINDJIC]; Democratic Party of Serbia or DSS [Vojislav KOSTUNICA]; Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro or DPS [Milo DJUKANOVIC]; Movement for a Democratic Serbia or PDS [Momcilo PERISIC]; New Democracy or ND [Dusan MIHAJLOVIC]; New Serbia [Velimir ILIC and Milan St. PROTIC]; People's Party of Montenegro or NS [Dragan SOC]; Serb People's Party or SNS [leader NA]; Serbian Radical Party or SRS [Vojislav SESELJ]; Serbian Renewal Movement or SPO [Vuk DRASKOVIC, president]; Serbian Socialist Party or SPS (former Communist Party) [Slobodan MILOSEVIC]; Social Democracy or SD [Vuk OBRADOVIC]; Social Democratic Union or SDU [Zarko KORAC]; Socialist People's Party of Montenegro or SNP [Momir BULATOVIC]; Yugoslav United Left or JUL [Ljubisa RISTIC]
Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro established the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) on April 27, 1992, under a new constitution. The constitution provides for a democratic form of government, with a president and a Federal Assembly. All citizens 18 and older (16 and older if employed) can vote. The two constituent republics each officially have a great deal of autonomy, with their own presidents and assemblies. Before 2001 the constitutional structure of the federation’s government bore little relation to the way the country was actually governed. The formal institutions of government served primarily as tools for the personal rule of Slobodan Miloševic, the federation president from 1997 to 2000. Prior to becoming federation president Miloševic was president of Serbia, and that republic’s government had more power in the FRY than the federal government had.
Legal system: based on civil law system
Suffrage: 16 years of age, if employed; 18 years of age, universal
Executive branch: chief of state: President Vojislav KOSTUNICA (since 7 October 2000)
head of government: Prime Minister Dragisa PESIC (since 24 July 2001); Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub LABUS (since 25 January 2001)
cabinet: Federal Executive Council
elections: president elected by direct popular vote for up to two, four-year terms; election last held 24 September 2000 (next to be held NA 2004); prime minister appointed by the president
election results: Vojislav KOSTUNICA elected president; percent of vote - Vojislav KOSTUNICA 55%, Slobodan MILOSEVIC 35%
Legislative branch: bicameral Federal Assembly or Savezna Skupstina consists of the Chamber of Republics or Vece Republika (40 seats - 20 Serbian, 20 Montenegrin; members distributed on the basis of party representation in the republican assemblies to serve four-year terms; note - the Assembly passed a new constitutional amendment calling for direct elections for the deputies to the upper chamber) and the Chamber of Citizens or Vece Gradjana (138 seats - 108 Serbian with half elected by constituency majorities and half by proportional representation, 30 Montenegrin with six elected by constituency and 24 proportionally; members serve four-year terms)
elections: Chamber of Republics - last held 24 September 2000 (next to be held NA 2004); Chamber of Citizens - last held 24 September 2000 (next to be held NA 2004)
election results: Chamber of Republics - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - SNP 19, DOS 10, SPS/JUL 7, SRS 2, SPO 1, SNS 1; note - seats are filled on a proportional basis to reflect the composition of the legislatures of the republics of Montenegro and Serbia; since 1998 Serbia has effectively barred Montenegro from its constitutional right to delegate deputies to the Chamber of Republics; Chamber of Citizens - percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - DOS 55, SPS/JUL 46, SNP 28, SRS 4, SNS 2, other 3
Judicial branch: Federal Court or Savezni Sud; Constitutional Court; judges for both courts are elected by the Federal Assembly for nine-year terms
International organization Member
BIS, CE (guest), FAO (applicant), G- 9, G-15, G-24, G-77, IAEA, ICAO, ICC, ICFTU, ICRM, IFAD, IFRCS, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, Inmarsat, Intelsat, IOC, IOM (observer), ISO, ITU, NAM, OPCW, OSCE, UN, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTrO
Education is compulsory from ages 7 to 15 and both primary and secondary education are free. However, only 71 percent of children of the relevant ages were enrolled in primary school in 1996, and only 64 percent in secondary school. The overall literacy rate is 93 percent, but the rate is higher for males (98 percent) than it is for females (89 percent). Literacy rates are not uniform among ethnic groups. Albanian girls receive less schooling than girls of other groups, and Albanians in general have lower literacy rates. Schooling has been particularly difficult for ethnic Albanians since 1990.
Military branches: Army (including ground forces with border troops, naval forces, air and air defense forces)
Military manpower - military age: 19 years of age
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 2,600,362 (2001 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 2,088,595 (2001 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually: males: 82,542 (2001 est.)
Albanian majority in Kosovo seeks independence from Yugoslavia; Croatia and Yugoslavia are negotiating the status of the strategically important Prevlaka Peninsula, which is currently under a UN military observer mission (UNMOP); the February 2001 agreement with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia settled alignment of boundary, stipulating implementation within two years
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