Yugoslavia Timeline

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.

Image source: Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia

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.

The Yugoslav coup d'état in March 1941 brought Peter II to power as king, declared of-age, ending the regency of Prince Paul shortly before the Axis invasion.

Image source: Yugoslav coup d'état

Hitler decided to attack Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, when German, Italian and Hungarian forces invaded the kingdom, marking the start of World War II in Yugoslavia. The invasion was followed immediately by an attack on Greece where Mussolini had previously been repelled.

Image source: Invasion of Yugoslavia

The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi satellite state, ruled by the fascist Ustaše militia that had come into existence in 1929 but was relatively limited in its activities until 1941.

Image source: Independent State of Croatia

On 25 November 1942, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia was convened in Bihać, modern day Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Image source: Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia

The Communist-led Partisan resistance proclaimed the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia and acquired the backing of the Allies at the Tehran Conference in late November 1943. From the start, the resistance consisted of two factions: the communist-led Partisans and the royalist Chetniks, with the former receiving Allied recognition.

Image source: Tehran Conference

The council reconvened on 29 November 1943, in Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and established the basis for post-war organisation of the country, establishing a federation (this date was celebrated as Republic Day after the war).

The Yugoslav Partisans were able to expel the Axis powers from Serbia in 1944 and from the rest of Yugoslavia in 1945.

Image source: Belgrade offensive

Western attempts to reunite the Partisans with the émigrés loyal to the king led to the Tito-Šubašić Agreement in June 1944; however, Marshal Josip Broz Tito was in control and was determined to lead an independent communist state, starting as prime minister.

Image source: Tito–Šubašić Agreements

In 1944, King Peter II, then living in exile, gave his recognition to the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia as the legitimate government.

Image source: Peter II of Yugoslavia

In May 1945, the Partisans met with Allied forces outside former Yugoslav borders, after also taking over Trieste and parts of the southern Austrian provinces of Styria and Carinthia.

Image source: Josip Broz Tito

The elections were called by the regency council appointed by the King on 2 March 1945. On 11 November 1945, parliamentary elections were held with only the Communist-led People's Front appearing on the ballot, securing all 354 seats in the newly formed Constituent Assembly.

Image source: 1945 Yugoslavian parliamentary election

The Constituent Assembly proclaimed Yugoslavia a federal republic on 29 November 1945, thus abolishing monarchical rule.

Image source: Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The 1946 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.

Image source: 1974 Yugoslav Constitution

In 1947, negotiations between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria led to the Bled agreement, which proposed to form a close relationship between the two Communist countries and enabled Yugoslavia to involve itself in the civil war in Greece, using Albania and Bulgaria as bases.

After all Communist European countries had deferred to Stalin and rejected the Marshall Plan aid in 1947, Tito broke decisively with Stalin in 1948 on other issues, making Yugoslavia an independent communist state distanced from the Soviets.

Image source: Tito–Stalin split

American leaders were internally divided, but finally agreed and began sending money to Yugoslavia on a small scale in 1949, and on a much larger scale during 1950–53.

Tito criticised both Eastern Bloc and NATO nations and, together with India and other countries, started the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, which remained the official affiliation of the country until it dissolved.

Image source: Non-Aligned Movement

On 7 April 1963, the nation changed its official name to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), and Josip Broz Tito was named President for life.

Although Yugoslavia became a de facto atheist state, the Catholic Church maintained an active role in society; the Holy See normalized its relations with Yugoslavia by 1967 and worked together on stopping the Vietnam War. A 1964 survey showed just over 70% of the population still considered themselves religious believers.

First cracks in the tightly governed system surfaced when students in Belgrade and several other cities joined the worldwide protests of 1968.

Image source: 1968 student demonstrations in Yugoslavia

A more severe sign of disobedience was the 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.

Image source: Croatian Spring

On 20 June 1972, the Bugojno group attempted to infiltrate SFR Yugoslavia with the aim of inciting a rebellion against the socialist Yugoslav government. In 1985, they were arrested and imprisoned for attempted terrorism.

As a result of unrest, a new Constitution was ratified in 1974, which gave more rights to the individual republics in Yugoslavia and provinces in Serbia. Serbia's influence was significantly reduced while its autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo were granted greater autonomy. This created tensions among Serb officials who viewed it as jeopardizing the unity of the country.

Image source: 1974 Yugoslav Constitution

Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito ruled the country from 1944 until his death on 4 May 1980, first as prime minister and later as president. After his death, ethnic tensions grew, and a collective Presidency governed the country.

Image source: Death and state funeral of Josip Broz Tito

The Albanian majority in Kosovo demanded 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, fueling Serbian nationalism.

In 1989, 248 firms were declared bankrupt or liquidated and 89,400 workers laid off. During the first nine months of 1990, another 889 enterprises with 525,000 workers suffered the same fate. An additional 20% of the work force, or half a million people, were not paid wages during early 1990 as enterprises sought to avoid bankruptcy.

Image source: Breakup of Yugoslavia

As Slobodan Milošević sought to restore pre-1974 Serbian sovereignty, ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo organised the 1989 Kosovo miners' strike, which dovetailed into an ethnic conflict between Albanians and non-Albanians in the province. With Milošević gaining control over Kosovo in 1989, the region's demographics changed drastically.

After an economic and political crisis and the rise of nationalism and ethnic conflicts following Tito's death, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics' borders during the Revolutions of 1989, at first into five countries, leading to the Yugoslav Wars.

Image source: Revolutions of 1989

Following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, each of the republics held multi-party elections in 1990. Slovenia and Croatia subsequently proposed transforming Yugoslavia into a loose confederation of six republics.

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, leading to its effective dissolution.

Image source: League of Communists of Yugoslavia

Serbian uprisings in Croatia began in August 1990 by blocking roads leading from the Dalmatian coast towards the interior, almost a year before Croatian leadership made any move towards independence. When Croatia attempted to replace police in the Serb-populated Krajina by force, the population sought refuge in Yugoslav Army barracks while the army remained passive. The federal army also tried to disarm Slovenia's territorial defence forces in 1990 but was not completely successful.

Image source: Log Revolution

On 9 March 1991, demonstrations were held against Slobodan Milošević in Belgrade, but the police and the military were deployed in the streets to restore order, killing two people.

Image source: 1991 protests in Belgrade

In late March 1991, the Plitvice Lakes incident was one of the first sparks of open war in Croatia between Croatian forces and Serb insurgents.

Image source: Plitvice Lakes incident

On 25 June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia became the first republics to declare independence from Yugoslavia. During the following three months, the Yugoslav Army completed its pull-out from Slovenia after the Ten-Day War, but in Croatia a bloody war broke out in the autumn of 1991.

Image source: Ten-Day War

In September 1991, the Republic of Macedonia also declared independence, becoming the only former republic to gain sovereignty without resistance from the Belgrade-based Yugoslav authorities.

In the fall of 1991, the Bosnian Muslim Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Union drafted a resolution for independence, causing a walkout among Bosnian Serb representatives. A Bosnian Serb referendum held on 9 and 10 November 1991 passed in favor of staying within a common state, and on 21 November the Assembly proclaimed such municipalities would be territory of the federal Yugoslav state.

Image source: Bosnia and Herzegovina

As a result of the conflict, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution 721 on 27 November 1991, which paved the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.

Image source: United Nations Security Council Resolution 721

On 9 January 1992, the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed the 'Republic of the Serbian People in Bosnia-Herzegovina', later known as Republika Srpska.

Image source: Republika Srpska

From 29 February to 1 March 1992, a European Community-backed Bosnian referendum was held in which 99.7 percent voted for independence.

Image source: 1992 Bosnian independence referendum

On 6 April 1992, full recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina's independence by the European Union followed by the United States, escalating the Bosnian War.

As the Yugoslav Wars raged through Bosnia and Croatia, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, which remained relatively untouched by the war, formed a rump state known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in 1992. From 1992 to 2000, some countries, including the United States, referred to the FRY as Serbia and Montenegro as they viewed its claim to Yugoslavia's successorship as illegitimate.

Image source: Serbia and Montenegro

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 the Yugoslav Wars.

Image source: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

In 2000, Milošević was prosecuted for atrocities committed during his ten-year rule in Serbia and the Yugoslav Wars. After his overthrow from power as president of the federation in 2000, the FRY dropped its succession aspirations, accepted the Badinter Arbitration Committee's opinion about shared succession, and gained UN membership on 2 November 2000.

Image source: Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević

In April 2001, the five successor states extant at the time drafted an Agreement on Succession Issues of the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Image source: Agreement on Succession Issues of the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Marking an important transition in its history, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was officially renamed the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003.

In June 2006, Montenegro became an independent nation after the results of a May 2006 referendum, therefore rendering Serbia and Montenegro no longer existent.

Image source: 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum

In February 2008, the Republic of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, leading to an ongoing dispute over whether Kosovo is a legally recognised state.

Image source: 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence