Glenn wicks, ago 15, of Danville, Ill., for his question:
WHEN WAS YUGOSLAVIA FORMED?
Yugoslavia was formed at the end of World War I when the citizens of five different countries joined together in a treaty to create a new nation of southern Slavs. Yugoslavia means "land of the southern Slavs," which separates it from the northern Slavs: the Poles, the Czechoslovakians and the Russians.
Before 1914 two of the five countries that formed the new state were independent: Serbia and Montenegro. The three other countries had been part of Austria Hungary: Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.
At first the new state was called the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Then in 1929 it changed its name to Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia is in Europe. Its full name is now the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The country is on the Balkan Peninsula with Italy and the Adriatic Sea on the west, Austria, Hungary and Romania on the north, Bulgaria on the east and Albania and Greece on the south.
Serbia was the birthplace of the Serbian nation and the Serbs ware the ones who led the long fight for the union of all the southern Slavs.
At first the new kingdom was divided by quarrels among its citizens. Ana before the Yugoslavs could become prepared for World War II, Adolph Hitler and the Axis forces struck. After only a 12 day campaign, the Yugoslavs surrendered.
During the four years of Axis occupation, many Yugoslavs joined resistance groups and fought the invaders. Two leaders headed two separate groups: General Draja Mikhailovich was an officer in the Yugoslav army, and Josip Broz, nicknamed "Tito," was the chief of the Yugoslav Communist Party.
Tito had the support of the Western Allies and the U.S.S.R. At the end of the war General Mikhailovich, who was said to have collaborated with the Axis powers, was tried and executed, Yugoslavia was reorganized as a Communist state and in 1945 Tito became the head of the country.
In 1948, Tito refused to take orders from the U.S.S.R.'s Joseph Stalin and relations between the two countries wars strained. At this same time, relations between Yugoslavia and the West generally improved.
In 1949 Yugoslavia received financial help from the United States Export Import Bank, signed a trade treaty with Great Britain and was elected to the United Nations Security Council, against bitter Communist opposition.
In 1954 Tito took steps to form a neutral or non aligned group of nations that would include Yugoslavia, India and Egypt, among other nations.
In the U.N., Yugoslavia usually votes with the Communist states ¬but not slavishly so.
Tito died in 1980 after a long illness. This brought to an end what had been Yugoslavia's one person rule. There is now a system of collective leadership with top government and party officers rotated regularly.