VI.

History

Serbia was at one time part of the ancient country of Illyria. The Romans conquered it in ad 44 and governed it as the province of Moesia. The Goths began attacking the area in the 3rd century, but after ad 395 it was part of the Byzantine Empire. During the 7th century, Serbs settled in the area west of the Morava River and subsequently gave allegiance to the Byzantines.

A.

Turkish Control

The Serbs were united by Stephen Nemanya, who established the first kingdom of Serbia (Rascia) about 1168. Serbia gradually expanded until, under Stephen Dushan (reigned 1331-1355), it controlled most of what is now Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece. During his reign, the law was codified, the status of serfs regularized, and the country was stabilized. At the same time, however, the Ottoman Empire was also expanding. At Kosovo in 1389 the Serbs were defeated by the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Kosovo Polje. Sporadic fighting, however, continued until 1459, when the Turks captured Smederevo, south of Belgrade. Serbia then came under direct Turkish rule.

Finally the Serbs, after 345 years of subjugation, were reunited under the revolutionary leader George Petroviç (the son of a peasant), known as Karadjordje. Beginning in 1804, they waged a nine-year revolt, but Turkey regained control in 1813. Two years later a second revolt was led by Miloš Obrenović, a cattle drover. Within a few months most of Serbia was free of Turkish domination. Obrenović was recognized as hereditary prince in 1817, and Serbia was granted limited self-government under the suzerainty of the sultan. Under the Treaty of Adrianople, which followed the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, Serbia gained greater autonomy, and the number of Turkish garrisons was reduced.

Obrenović had been implicated in the 1817 assassination of Karadjordje. This led to an intense rivalry between the two dynasties. An arbitrary ruler, Obrenović was forced to abdicate in 1839. He was succeeded by two of his sons. In 1842 Karadjordje’s son, Alexander, acceded to the throne, but he was deposed in 1858, and the Obrenović dynasty was restored. Michael Obrenović, son of Miloš, engineered a total Turkish withdrawal from Serbia in 1867. In 1868, however, he was assassinated, and his young cousin Milan gained the throne.

B.

Austro-Hungarian Control

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Serbia and Russia allied themselves within the pan-Slavic movement to defeat Turkey in the Balkans. The 1878 Congress of Berlin recognized Serbian independence, but in effect made the country subservient to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1882 Milan, with Austrian support, proclaimed himself king, and in 1885 he declared war on Bulgaria, which he sought to subjugate, along with Eastern Rumelia. The Serbs were quickly routed but saved from conquest by Austrian intervention. The Bulgarian fiasco antagonized the powerful Radical Party, a liberal reform group, which in 1889 wrote a more liberal constitution and forced Milan to abdicate.

Milan’s son, Alexander I Obrenović, first proclaimed king under a regency, assumed the throne in 1893. The reactionary bent and general corruption of his regime, however, made him extremely unpopular, and he was assassinated in 1903. The Serbian legislature then selected Peter (Karadjordjević) as king. He liberalized the government, and his friend Nikola Pašić, founder of the Radical Party, took control of foreign policy as premier.

Serbian relations with Austria deteriorated badly during the so-called Pig War of 1905-1907, a customs dispute, and worsened after 1908 when Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1912 and 1913 Serbia took an active part in the Balkan Wars, which gained it both prestige and territory in Macedonia; it also received the sanjak, or district, of Novi Pazar and Kosovo-Mitohiyan. Austria now became alarmed by the growing strength of Serbia in the Balkans.

C.

World War I

Tension was already extremely high on June 28, 1914, when the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, at Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Sarajevo Incident. The Austrian government, holding Serbia responsible, declared war and in August invaded the country, thus precipitating World War I. The Serbs repelled the invaders until October 1915, when Bulgaria also invaded. By December, the country had been occupied by the Central Powers; the Serbian army and government fled to the Greek island of Corfu in 1916.

D.

Union with Yugoslavia, and After

The government in exile agreed to the terms of the Corfu Declaration calling for Slavic unity. After the war, in 1918, the leaders of Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro proclaimed the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929.

During World War II, in 1941, the Germans invaded Serbia and established a puppet state. After the defeat of the Axis Powers, a Yugoslav republic was declared, and Serbia became a constituent republic with limited powers of self-government.

As Yugoslavia began to splinter in 1991, in the face of waning Communist power and rising nationalism, Serbia sought to hold the federation together. Its aim was to maintain its dominant position and to protect the minorities of ethnic Serbs in the other republics. By mid-1991 full-scale civil war had broken out, with Serbia (through the Serb-dominated federal Yugoslavian People’s Army) supporting Croatian and Bosnian Serbs seeking the creation of a “Greater Serbia”. Finally, following 13 abortive ceasefires and the imposition of limited European Community (now European Union) sanctions on Serbia, a ceasefire was signed between Serbia and Croatia on 23 November; Serbia, however, continued to support the Bosnian Serbs. By the end of April 1992, however, the secession of four of the other republics was complete—Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina had been recognized by the international community earlier in the year; the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was effectively independent, but had to wait another year for formal recognition pending the settlement of a dispute over its name.

Serbia and Montenegro, the only republics remaining within the former Yugoslavia, on April 27 announced the formation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which they declared to be the legal successor to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On September 22, almost four months after imposing wide-ranging sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro, the United Nations General Assembly voted by 127 to 6 (with 26 abstentions) that their self-proclaimed federation could not automatically assume the seat of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and excluded it from the General Assembly. It was, however, given the option of reapplying for membership in it own right, but a move in October by then federal Prime Minister Milan Panić to follow up on this option led to a political crisis in the federation and to his ultimate political downfall. There was no further formal attempt by the federation to gain formal UN recognition. The UN termed the federation the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The international community overwhelmingly followed the UN’s lead; the main exception was China, although Russia retained close links with the federation and gave it considerable de facto if not de jure recognition.

On May 30, 1992, because of Serbia’s continuing support of the Bosnian Serbs, economic sanctions were imposed upon the federation. A few days earlier, on May 27, 1992, nationalist leaders of the predominantly ethnic Albania population of Kosovo had organized an illegal election to a Kosovan assembly. This was won by the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, and the new assembly immediately declared the foundation of a republic of Kosovo, with Ibrahim Rugova as president. The Albanian nationalists proved to be relatively weak, and Serbia was able to maintain control over the province without the outbreak of civil war.

Milošević won the December 1992 elections with a substantial majority, although his main opponent, Panić declared there had been widespread irregularities. Although opposition groups equally contested the validity of the legislative elections, they were too divided generally to offer a serious challenge to Milošević. In October 1993 there were serious clashes between Milošević and his erstwhile protegee and ally, Vojislav Seselj, leader of the neo-fascist Serbian Radical Party, over policy in Bosnia and especially Milošević’s moves to distance Serbia from the Bosnian Serbs as a prelude to the easing of sanctions. Milošević dissolved the assembly and called elections, which were held in December 1993. He failed to win an outright majority, and formed a coalition with the Democratic Opposition of Serbia.

In September 1994 a blockade of Bosnian Serbs was instituted by the federal government, and the following month some international sanctions were lifted. During the year, there were also crackdowns by Serbia on the nationalist groups in Kosovo, with waves of arrests of alleged nationalist leaders. During November and December, some 30,000 ethnic Albanians were reported to have fled the province to escape Serbian violence, and poverty.

The killing of an Albanian by a Serb in April 1996 led to mass protests and a government crackdown in the province of Kosovo. In November 1996 municipal elections gave victory to the opposition coalition Zajedno. Court and electoral commission decisions nullifying the results led to mass demonstrations from November until February 1997, when Milošević announced that he would respect the results. In April 1997 the Serbian Deputy Interior Minister, Radovan Stojicic, was assassinated in the latest of a series of killings linked to Serbian criminal gangs.

By the late spring of 1997 the opposition coalition Zajedno was collapsing through internal strife, and Milošević’s election to the federal presidency of Yugoslavia in June passed off successfully. (The Serbian constitution barred him from a third term as Serbian President.) Elections in September 1997 returned his Joint List coalition led by the Socialist Party as the largest group in the National Assembly, but inconclusive presidential elections held simultaneously led to a repeat poll in December, which returned his ally Milan Milutinovic as Serbian president. Serbian support for the new moderate leadership in the breakaway Serbian republic inside Bosnia and Herzegovina led to an easing of international sanctions on Serbia in February 1998. From March 1998 the Serbian government launched a low-intensity but continuous campaign of armed suppression of Albanian separatists in Kosovo, despite international condemnation. By May, NATO was planning an intervention force for the region.

E.

The End of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Beyond

As the situation in Kosovo worsened, the Western powers used threats of military force to compel Milošević’s representatives to attend peace talks in Rambouillet in France in February 1999. When these ended in failure, the West carried out its threat of punitive air strikes to drive Milošević back into serious negotiation. Milošević countered by accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, while using the crisis to neutralize domestic opposition. Western attacks at first focused on military and political targets, but then spread to the infrastructure of Serbia. On June 3, 72 days after the NATO air strikes began, Milošević finally agreed to accept an international peace plan for Kosovo, and Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo. A NATO-led peacekeeping force was then deployed in Kosovo, and fearing reprisals from returning ethnic Albanians, thousands of Serbs fled the province. With the fall from power of Slobodan Milošević, and the democratic election of Vojislav Koštunica as president of the FRY in October 2000, Montenegro announced that it would not rejoin any federal institution with Serbia unless it was based on consent. The immediate possibility of Montenegrin independence was averted by the ratification of an agreement in May 2002 that would see the end of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The latter would be replaced by a looser union between Serbia and Montenegro, and, under the accord, each country would have independent control of their currency and economy.

The first presidential election was held in September 2002 but in the run-off the following month only 45.6 per cent of voters made their way to the polls, making the election invalid. Most votes were won, however, by Koštunica. In a further election attempt in December the turnout dropped still further. The speaker of the Serbian parliament Nataša Mićić, held the post as an interim head of state.

Prime minister Zoran Djindjic, a key player in the toppling of former president Milošević was assassinated in March 2003 in Belgrade; he was believed to be the victim of organized crime. He was replaced a few days later by Zoran Živković of the Democratic Party of Serbia. New legislative elections were held in December, and resulted in gains for the extreme nationalist Radical Party, led by Vojislav Seselj, who was awaiting trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Koštunica formed a new Serbian government in February 2004, as prime minister of a coalition that included his Democratic Party of Serbia and a number of smaller parties, and had the support of the Socialists (the party of Milošević). In June of the same year Serbia finally elected a president, after the electoral law had been changed to remove the clause requiring a turnout of 50 per cent. Boris Tadić, of the Democratic Party of Serbia, defeated Tomislav Nikolić of the Radical Party, and stated that he wanted Serbia to integrate more closely with the rest of Europe.

F.

Independence Issues

On June 5, 2006, Serbia acknowledged the end of its union with Montenegro after the Montenegrins voted in favour of independence. A referendum was held in October 2006 and resulted in the approval of a new constitution for the country. It also confirmed Kosovo as an integral part of a wider Serbian nation, despite the fact that the future of Kosovo (under UN jurisdiction) was continuing to be debated. The first general election in Serbia following independence was held in January 2007 with the winners being the nationalist far-right Serbian Radical Party with 81 of the 250 seats available. Other wins were made by the Democratic Party (64 seats) and a coalition led by the Democratic Party of Serbia. The poll was largely boycotted in Kosovo, whose future became much clearer the following month when the UN reported on a draft settlement designed to give the province limited independence, fundamentally against the wishes of Serbia. In May a coalition government was finally established in Serbia, with the Democratic Party and Koštunica’s DSS (which had won 17 per cent of the vote) agreeing a deal, with Koštunica once again taking the post of prime minister.

The winner of the presidential election in early 2008 was the incumbent Boris Tadić. He narrowly defeated the challenger, Tomislav Nikolić of the Serbian Radical Party. Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008 threw the government into crisis. Koštunica himself denounced the European Union (EU) for its support of Kosovan independence, which he regarded as illegal. However, his failure to win unanimous support for this position led him to his decision in March to resign as prime minister. New elections were scheduled for May and were won by Tadić’s For a European Serbia. After months of negotiation a new coalition government was formed from the Tadić Bloc and the Socialists. The new prime minister, Mirko Cvetković, was sworn in in July. The coalition reasserted its opposition to Kosovan independence, while also advocating continued pressure for Serbia’s admission to the European Union.