Yugoslavia
From Slavic.info
After Yugoslavia was established as an independent state in 1918, it was given the name of "Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes"—an apparently appropriate description of its ethnic structure. However, in discussing the history and geography of the peoples of Yugoslavia, it is necessary to enlarge upon some of the terms which are used in describing this area.
For example, the ethnological and linguistic origin of the Macedonians is one of the most complex and disputed problems of the entire Balkan Peninsula. Just as a number of different ethnic strains go into the formation of the Macedonian people, i.e., Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, etc., so their language is variously classified, perhaps most accurately as a transitional dialect between Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian. Macedonian folk music shows Bulgarian, Serbian and even Greek characteristics—the natural result of their being divided among three different states. Stoyan Pribichevich says: "The number of Macedonians is unknown for they are considered as Serbs, which many of them resent."
The term Serbo-Croatian, coined in 1852 by Vuk Stef. Karadjitch, creator of the Yugoslav idea, is fully justified, as Serbs and Croats speak the same language, and the only differences between them are found in the alphabet they use and in their religions. The Roman Catholic Croats use the Latin alphabet, while the Greek Orthodox Serbs employ the Cyrillic characters. The name Serbs was applied to the Serbo-Croats living in the territory of Serbia proper, the term Croats for those beyond Serbia.
The Serbo-Croats of Montenegro, the Montenegrins, do not differ from the "Croats" of Herzegovina or the "Serbs" of Serbia. However, because of their own history and independence up to 1918, they had to have their own name. As in the case of Macedonians it is impossible to ascertain correctly the number of Montenegrins.
The name Croatia proper referred to a southwestern section of Hungary before World War I. The Croatians, however, do not only inhabit Croatia but also Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. There is also a number of Croatians in the Austrian provinces of Burgenland which was Hungarian territory before 1918, and in Lower Austria—east of Vienna—where they have lived since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when Austrian emperors began to settle their Croatian soldiers in small communities east and southeast of Vienna as outposts against the Turks.
A name that has only historic significance is "Slavonia", which was applied to the eastern part of Croatia and is not to be confused with Slovenia.
The Serbs were found in the northwestern part of the Byzantine Empire in the middle of the seventh century. It was said that Emperor Heraclius summoned them from eastern Galicia for help against the Avars. For some four centuries they lived in a semi-autonomous state in the Empire where they embraced the Christianity of Byzantium in 879, and with it, of course, the Cyrillic alphabet. Their struggle for independence, initiated by Stephen Boguslav, resulted in the foundation of the first real Serbian state in 1165 under the great Stephen Nemanya.
The Nemanya Dynasty lasted for two hundred years and carried the Serb nation to its apogee in the fourteenth century under Stephen Dushan; at this time it included within its borders Macedonia, Thessaly, northern Greece, Albania and Bulgaria. In 1389 the Serbs suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Kosovo Polye (Blackbird's Field) at the hands of the Ottoman Turks who were to rule over southeastern Europe for some five hundred years. Kosovo Polye and the death of Lazar, the Serbian ruler who fell in the battle, have influenced a large portion of South Slav folklore and even penetrated into that of north Slavic nations.
After the defeat of the Serbs in 1389, the district on the Adriatic known as the Zeta detached itself from Serbia and began a career of independence, which resulted in the principality of Montenegro or Crna Gora (Black Mountain). Its population resisted the pressure of Turkey and Venice, and developed in their wild homeland a way of life peculiarly their own. In 1711 Crna Gora entered into an alliance with Russia which was to last, with interruptions, for some two hundred years. Although theoretically belonging either to Venice or Turkey for alternate periods of time, Montenegro preserved its independence de facto until it became part of Yugoslavia in 1918.
Serbia in turn was able to maintain only a pseudo-independence within the Ottoman Empire until 1459. From then on, her own cultural and political life was gradually weakened by the absorption of Turkish-Mohammedan influences.
The Serbian struggle for independence began in the early years of the nineteenth century led by George Petrovitch—the famous Kara George which in Turkish means "Black George". In 1834 Serbia, aided by Russia, became an autonomous state with Milosh Obrenovitch as hereditary prince. The people, however, were dissatisfied with his politics and personal life and favored Alexander, a son of Kara George, who became regent in 1842.
Under the rule of the Karageorgevitch Dynasty, Turkey gradually lost her influence over the Balkans while antagonism to the Austro-Hungarian Empire increased. During the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) Serbia extended her borders far south, and as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, became the nucleus of the new Yugoslavian Kingdom which was to change into a republic after World War II.
At the time of their southward migration in the seventh century, Croatians, which means "inhabitants of the Carpathians" (The Iranian theory suggests that the Croats are a tribe from Arachosia, this theory is based solely on linguistic evidence and spread of the Old Croatian ethnonym *xъrvatъ, which is almost certainly a borrowing into Slavic.), and Serbs were one nation, as is proved by the identity of their languages. When the Croats settled in the region west of the Serbs between the Drava River and the Adriatic Sea, a small northern part of the new Croat territory became a border province of the Frankish Empire, while the rest remained an autonomous province of the Byzantine Empire.
In 994 the ruler of this northern province, Tomislav, assumed the title King of Croatia. Although the influence of the Byzantine Church was predominant after the acceptance by the Croats of Christianity in the second half of the ninth century, the ultimate adoption by the country of the Western Church and the independence from Byzantium was assured when Demetrius Zvonimir was crowned King of Croatia and Dalmatia in 1076 by the legate of Gregory VII.
In 1102 Croatia was absorbed into the Hungarian Kingdom, and with short interruptions and frequent changes of her borders, remained a part of it until 1918. During this period the Croat territory was the goal of the Republic of Venice which succeeded in establishing strong Italian influence in Dalmatia. When the Turkish Empire extended its power northwestward in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Croatian lands were affected, although to a lesser degree than the neighboring state of Serbia. Only Bosnia-Herzegovina preserved Turkish-Oriental characteristics, even throughout the period of Austro-Hungarian domination (1878-1918).
The Slovenes, the westernmost group of the South Slavs, appear as early as 595, when they were warring against the Bavarian Duke Tassilo. Their attachment to Samo's empire between 627 and 662, the similarity of their language to that of the Czechs, and the fact that they appeared much earlier than the Serbo-Croats give strength to the theory that their migration was connected with that of the northwestern Slavs rather than that of the Serbo-Croats. The Slovenes, who in their westward drive came as far as present day Tyrol, accepted Christianity in the second half of the eighth century, and came under the rule of the Frankish Empire in 788. Their country was made the "Windische Mark" which approximated in area the territory of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. These provinces of the Holy Roman, later the Austrian Empire, were strongly exposed to German influence, while the Slovenes of Istria came under the influence of Italy. After World War I the Slovenes were incorporated into Yugoslavia, although minorities still remained in both Italy and Austria.