The Obituary
Born from the wreckage of Austria-Hungary as a kingdom of South Slavs, Yugoslavia was rebuilt after World War II as a socialist federation of six republics under Tito, who balanced its rival nationalities and kept Moscow at arm’s length. His death in 1980 removed the keystone. Economic crisis and resurgent nationalism, especially Serbian, fractured the federation. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence in 1991, igniting a decade of wars marked by ethnic cleansing and the massacre at Srebrenica. By 1992 the old federation was gone, replaced by a string of contested new states.
Worth remembering
- Under Josip Broz Tito it broke with Stalin in 1948 and led the Non-Aligned Movement.
- It hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, a city besieged less than a decade later.
Sources
- Yugoslavia formed in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes Wikipedia
- Socialist Federal Republic broke apart in 1991-1992 amid civil war Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.