Serbia & Montenegro

Located in southwestern Europe, Serbia and Montenegro features a fertile Danube plain in the north, rising to mountains in the south. The name “Yugoslavia” passed into history on February 4, 2003, replaced by the union of “Serbia and Montenegro.” On that day the Yugoslav parliament ratified a constitutional charter creating a new government and country name. Belgrade is the administrative capital, and Podgorica is the judicial capital.

Yugoslavia, meaning “land of the southern Slavs,” was born in 1929 in an attempt to unify the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, founded in 1918. From the beginning, Serbia, the largest Yugoslav republic in area and population, sought to dominate Yugoslavia. The country was held together by force—first under kings then under a communist government—until 1991-92 when Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army invaded Slovenia and Croatia, and civil war erupted in Croatia and Bosnia. All four countries eventually won their independence.

By 1992, all that was left of Yugoslavia was Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia’s brutal war in Kosovo, starting in 1998, caused Montenegro to distance itself from Slobodan Milosevic and his Yugoslav government. Kosovo, a province of Serbia, has an ethnic Albanian majority that wanted—and still wants—independence. The war in Kosovo ended in 1999 only after NATO bombed Serbia and the UN made Kosovo an international protectorate.

Today Serbia and Montenegro is a democratic union of two republics with a small central government. Both republics agreed to the union because of their desire to join the European Union. However, the constitutional charter allows either Serbia or Montenegro to hold an independence referendum in 2006.