Yugoslavia

10 Pages 2432 Words

Yugoslavia , Serbo-Croatian Jugoslavija, officially Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, federal republic (1995 est. pop. 11,102,000), 39,439 sq mi (102,173 sq km), SE Europe, in the Balkan Peninsula. Yugoslavia is bordered by the Adriatic Sea, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Croatia in the west, Hungary in the north, Romania and Bulgaria in the east, and Macedonia and Albania in the south. Belgrade is the capital and by far the largest city.
Until the early 1990s, the country was a federation of six republics; in descending order of size, they were Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. In the early 1990s, however, the federation violently splintered along ethnic lines. Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Hercegovina attained international recognition as sovereign states, although most of Muslim-dominated Bosnia and Hercegovina was initially seized by Serbs and Croats. Macedonia declared its independence, but was only slowly recognized as an independent state, pending the settlement of a name dispute with Greece. The remnant republics, Serbia and Montenegro, formed (Apr., 1992) a new federation.
Land
Inland from the Adriatic coast of Montenegro, where Kotor, the one remaining seaport of Yugoslavia, is found, is the barren karst region of Montenegro proper, which lies in the southern end of the Dinaric Alps. Lake Scutari, the nation's largest lake, is at the southern end of the karst and forms part of the Albanian border. The karst region is separated by the Zeta River and its plain from the higher, largely mountainous regions of the rest of western and southern Yugoslavia. The northeast, in Serbia, is part of the fertile Danubian plain and is traversed by the Danube and its tributaries—the Drava, the Sava, the Morava, the Timok, and the Tisza (Serb. Tisa). In addition to the two republics of Serbia and Montenegro, there are two provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. The chief cities of Yugoslavia are Belgrad...