The Story of Yugoslavia, 1914-1990

1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo on June 28, precipitating World War I. 1918: In the aftermath of World War I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is proclaimed. In 1929, it takes the name Yugoslavia. The movements for unification led by Serbia had been a major cause of the war. In 1914 only Serbia (including present-day Macedonia) and Montenegro were independent; Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. 1941: German and Italian forces overrun Yugoslavia and force the royal family into exile. Resistance is split between the Chetniks, or Army of the Fatherland, led by Gen. Draza Mihailovics, and the Partisans led by Tito, the Communist Party leader. The Chetniks operate mainly in Serbia in the name of the exile government; the Partisans are mainly from Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia. 1943: Tito's Partisans form a provisional government in a liberated area after ruthless civil war with the Chetniks, even as the two resistance groups are fighting the Axis occupiers. Efforts to reconcile with the government in exile fail and King Peter II is deposed the following year. 1944: The Soviet Army enters Belgrade. 1945: Communist-controlled elections are held and a Soviet-style Constitution establishes a federation of six republics. Tito becomes Prime Minister. 1948: Yugoslavia's stubborn independence leads to expulsion from Cominform, the Soviet-dominated world organization of Communist parties. 1953: Tito becomes President; he holds the post until his death in 1980. 1955: Relations with Moscow are normalized after Stalin's death in 1953. 1971: Tito establishes a collective leadership system with rotating posts, meant to unite the diverse nationalities and bar careerism. 1979: The rotating leadership system is extended to the Communist Party leadership. 1980: After Tito's death, his authority is invested in a collective state presidency and party presidium. The new leaders reaffirm the policy of nonalignment. 1984: The Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo. 1987: An anti-inflationary wage freeze prompts widespread strikes. Popular resentment of an austerity program is fed with revelations of a financial scandal that endangered scores of banks in four republics. Many high-level officials and politicians are forced to resign and more than 20 are tried. 1988: Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian Communist Party chief, moves to assert authority over the autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo. Albanian-Serbian clashes in Kosovo bring the country's historic ethnic divisions back to center stage. Economic problems mount. December 1989: The violent uprising in Romania, after other Eastern European countries move toward pluralism, prompts fierce debate on political change in Yugoslavia. Fears of ethnic strife grow. Jan. 22, 1990: At the end of a bitterly divided party congress, the Communist Party ''renounces its constitutionally guaranteed leading role in society'' and calls on Parliament to enact ''political pluralism, including a multiparty system.''