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History and Government
History: In 2002, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formally dissolved by its two remaining constituent republics. It is now officially entitled ‘Serbia & Montenegro’. For convenience and ease of understanding, it is still described here as ‘Yugoslavia.
The history of Yugoslavia (and indeed of the Balkan area) is exceedingly complex, as it is a region that has long been prey to the ambitions of its neighbours on every side, from the Ancient Greeks to the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburgs. The occupation of the Balkans by itinerant Slavic peoples was completed by around 650 AD. One of these, the Serbs, came intermittently under the hegemony of the Byzantine Empire. Slovenia and Croatia resisted orthodox Byzantium, maintaining a Roman Catholic identity. Unity amongst the fractious Serbian clans was not achieved until the end of the 11th century, with the Serbian expansion into Montenegro where the independent state of Zeta was established in 1081. The ground for repeated future conflict was laid at this time largely by the region’s significance as a dividing line between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Western Roman Catholic Church.
The 14th century marked the zenith of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which was instrumental in forming national culture and identity. In June 1389, a decisive confrontation took place that would settle the fate of the region for centuries to come and serve as the key symbol in Serbian national consciousness. This was the Battle of Kosovo in southern Serbia, in which an allied force of Serbs and Bosnians was defeated by the advancing Ottoman Turks. Serbia thereafter became an Ottoman vassal state.
In the 15th century, Serbia and Bosnia were definitively conquered by the Turks and incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century, Ottoman power began its long decline in Europe but it was not until the 1860s that Turkish troops left the territory. Serbia then signed a series of secret alliances with Montenegro, Romania and Greece, with the aim of bolstering its own security. The Serbia-Greece pact was particularly important, as it settled the ownership of disputed territories – Bosnia and Herzegovina went to Serbia, while Thessaly and Epirus were taken by the Greeks.
Another insurrection in 1876, followed by a declaration of war on Turkey, led to another Serbian defeat. However, a new player in the region, the Austrians, offered protection to the Serbs and prevented them from falling under Turkish suzerainty again. The Balkan republics now started to assume their modern form. Bosnia and Herzegovina merged in 1876. Two years later, the new republic was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Serbian independence was settled at the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, where Montenegro was also recognised as an independent state and was doubled in size. In the first years of the 1900s, however, the Serbian-Habsburg relationship began to sour and by 1905, Serbian policy had become avowedly nationalist and anti-Austrian.
The next few years leading up to the outbreak of World War I brought a marked and rapid deterioration in the stability of the region, as the main players – including Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece – entered into a series of shifting and short-lived alliances and collapsed into two brief Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913. Several territorial disputes were settled as a result, although one important contention – the future of Albania as an independent country – was not. This issue, plus the Austrian presence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, brought the simmering friction between Serbia and the Habsburgs suddenly to a head in June 1914, with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb revolutionary, Gavrilo Princip, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Austria-Hungary treated the issue as a matter of national honour, as well as seeing an opportunity to deal with the Serbs once and for all.
On 28 July 1914, war was declared. Serbia was occupied by enemy forces for much of the next three years, however, after the end of the war and the political settlement that followed, the Balkan republics concluded that some form of unity would be conducive to their future security. The ‘Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’ was formed in 1918, from the Kingdom of Serbia and the southern Slav states of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire (Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina). The kingdom was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929.
In 1941, the Germans and Italians invaded the country. During the ensuing struggle, which lasted until almost the end of World War II in 1945, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz (known as Tito) gained wide support for its partisan activities and Tito took power in 1945. The country suffered appallingly during World War II – over one million people died, largely in as part of a genocide of Serbs committed by the Croatian clerico-fascist Ustasa in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1946, a Soviet-style constitution was adopted but Yugoslavia was expelled from the Soviet alliance (the Cominform) two years later. New constitutions adopted in 1953, 1963 and 1974 extended this autonomy throughout the social and economic sphere, despite evidence that its results left much to be desired. The amended constitutions also gave considerable autonomy to the country’s constituent republics.
During this period, Yugoslavia’s foreign policy was rigorously non-aligned, which attracted much interest, particularly from countries that sought to escape the influence of one or other superpower. Internally, ethnic divisions were suppressed, although not extinguished. Yugoslavia was a founder and subsequently a prominent member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Following Tito’s death in 1980, however, Yugoslavian foreign policy became irrelevant, as the rotating collective presidency that Tito had designed to replace him became increasingly concerned with holding the country together and preventing chronic economic decline. The disparity between the comparatively richer northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia and the rest of the country became a major source of friction, as the two wealthier republics increasingly questioned the use and distribution of central funds – to which they were the sole net contributors. Friction between the country’s republics and different ethnic groups, suppression of which had been the key to Tito’s longevity, also came to the fore.
The disintegration of Yugoslavia began in the spring of 1990, when Slovenia and Croatia both held multiparty elections, which returned governments committed to the pursuit of outright independence. After 14 months, during which time Slovenia and Croatia became increasingly alienated from Belgrade, Slovenia declared independence. The federal government launched a half-hearted and ineffectual military campaign against the Slovenes. After a few weeks of inconclusive skirmishing, a ceasefire was concluded, under which the Slovenes obtained virtually everything they wanted; this put them on the path to full independence.
Croatia was a different matter, especially after a strongly nationalist government led by Franjo Tudjman was elected in May 1990. In October, the Serb minority in the Croatian region of Krajina declared autonomy. Croatian forces tried to quell the secession and the Serb-led federal (i.e. national) army intervened on the side of the Serbs. The other Yugoslav republics staked out their positions: Montenegro backed Serbia; Macedonia pushed for independence; and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the three-way ethnic split (Muslim, Croat, Serb) gave rise to different aspirations for different ethnic groups. Bosnia was to prove the most difficult and tragic of the former Yugoslav republics (see Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia).
In Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, a former Communist Party apparatchik, had assumed effective power and had been consolidating his position by appealing to Serbian nationalist sentiments. This was to have dramatic consequences for the country.
In 1995, a combination of high pressure US diplomacy and a change in fortunes on the battlefield brought about a political settlement in Bosnia. With the Bosnia issue settled, Milosevic’s main priority was now the deteriorating political and economic situation at home. Sanctions and the dearth of reforms undertaken by the Belgrade government, left the rump Yugoslavia – now reduced to the former republics of Serbia and Montenegro – assailed by high inflation, lack of funds (and hence non-payment of wages), a declining currency and other monetary problems.
Federal parliamentary elections fell due in November 1996. Milosevic’s Socialists won comfortably and Milosevic himself won the presidential election by a substantial majority five months later. Elections to the separate assemblies in Montenegro (Yugoslavia’s other autonomous republic) and Vojvodina (an autonomous province of Serbia, with a substantial ethnic Hungarian population) produced the expected results. However, in Kosovo, the other autonomous province of Serbia, which has a 90% ethnic Albania population, Belgrade had abolished its autonomous status along with the regional assembly.
The Kosovan Albanian community was divided between supporters of non-violent political opposition and armed insurrection en route to full independence. Belgrade adopted a hard line, with Milosevic playing the nationalist card once again and appealing to the historic battles between the Serbs and the Ottoman Turks in the 14th century. As a result, the militants gained the support of most Kosovan Albanians through 1996. Then in 1997, the Albanians’ ill-equipped and embryonic Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA) received a fortuitous boost in the form of a small arms bonanza after the collapse of central government authority in Albania itself (see Albania). The response of the Serbian authorities was a policy of ethnic cleansing, which brought down the wrath of the US. After the failure of an attempted political settlement (the Rambouillet accord), the US began a bombing campaign against Serbia. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Kosovan Albanians were driven or over the borders into Albania and Macedonia.
By June 1999, the Serbs had had enough. With much of their infrastructure and key industrial complexes in ruins, they agreed to pull their forces out of Kosovo. They were joined by most Kosovan Serbs who feared the vengeance of the returning Albanian refugees. A NATO peacekeeping force, augmented by a small Russian contingent, moved in to maintain a semblance of order. At present, the Albanian population of Kosovo can rely on UN troops for basic security plus a few minor administrative structures, although it mostly functions through a system of local potentates and an extensive black economy linked to neighbouring Albania.
Meanwhile, in Belgrade, hopes that the war would prove terminal for Milosevic seemed premature, as the political opposition – after initially unifying in a concerted effort to force him from office – fatally failed to coalesce. But Milsosevic had lost crucial allies in the political, military and security establishments; the opposition moved carefully, ensuring that it had the support of key sectors in the state apparatus before taking over. The elections of September 2000 – even allowing for some manipulation by Milosevic supporters – confirmed the massive support it enjoyed among the population. After some desultory attempts to claim the election, Milosevic ceded power amid demonstrations of support throughout the country for the electoral victor, Vojislav Kostunica.
The following year, Milsosevic was arrested and extradited to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, where his trial, which began in February 2002, was still in progress a year later. The Kostunica government has just started the process of reconstruction at home and restoring Yugoslavia’s credibility abroad. The country has joined (or re-joined) the UN and other international bodies. Domestic progress has been more difficult, however. The economy is in poor shape, with both inflation and unemployment at high levels. Promised injections of foreign aid have yet to materialise. The status of Kosovo is still uncertain, while the tiny republic of Montenegro continues to contemplate full independence. Presidential elections in Montenegro in early 2003 were twice annulled, after failing to satisfy the condition that a minimum of half the electorate should vote. This was the result of a boycott organised by pro-independence parties, who believe it the best means of forcing a final split from Serbia. This Balkan saga still has some mileage left in it.
Government: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, was established in April 1992. Under the provisions of the constitution introduced the same year, legislative power rests with the bicameral Federal Assembly comprising the 40-member Chamber of Republics (20 representatives each from Serbia and Montenegro) and the 138-member Chamber of Citizens (directly elected, from Serbia and Montenegro). The Federal Assembly elects the President of the Republic. Both Serbia and Montenegro also have their own assemblies, as does the Serbian province of Vojvodina.
Copyright © 2003 Columbus Publishing Ltd.
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