Yugoslavia - SFR Yugoslavia

SFR Yugoslavia

On 29 November 1945, while still in exile, King Peter II was deposed by Yugoslavia's Constituent Assembly. However, he refused to abdicate.

On 31 January 1946, the new constitution of Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, modeled after the Soviet Union, established six republics, an autonomous province, and an autonomous district that were part of SR Serbia. The federal capital was Belgrade. Republics and provinces were (in alphabetical order):

In 1947, negotiations between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were led and finalized with the Bled agreement. The aim of the negotiations was to include Bulgaria in Yugoslavia or to form a new union of two independent countries. After the intervention of Stalin this agreement was never realized.

Yugoslavia solved the national issue of nations and nationalities (national minorities) in a way that all nations and nationalities had the same rights. The flags of the republics used versions of the red flag and/or Slavic tricolor, with a red star in the centre or in the canton.

In 1974, the two provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo-Metohija (for the latter had by then been upgraded to the status of a province), as well as the republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro, were granted greater autonomy to the point that Albanian and Hungarian became nationally recognised minority languages and the Serbo-Croat of Bosnia and Montenegro altered to a form based on the speech of the local people and not on the standards of Zagreb and Belgrade. In Slovenia the recognized minorities were Hungarians and Italians.

Vojvodina and Kosovo-Metohija formed a part of the Republic of Serbia but those provinces also formed part of the federation, which led to the unique situation that Central Serbia did not have its own assembly but a joint assembly with its provinces represented in it. The country distanced itself from the Soviets in 1948 (cf. Cominform and Informbiro) and started to build its own way to socialism under the strong political leadership of Josip Broz Tito. The country criticized both Eastern bloc and NATO nations and, together with other countries, started the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961, which remained the official affiliation of the country until it dissolved.