Serbia (Serbo-Croatian - SRBIJA), constituent republic of Yugoslavia, consisting of that nation's entire territory except for the republic of Montenegro in the southwest. Serbia is bounded by Croatia (northwest), Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro (west), Albania (southwest), Macedonia (south), Bulgaria and Romania (east), and Hungary (north). The autonomous province of Vojvodina in the north and that of Kosovo in the south are within the republic of Serbia. Belgrade, the capital of the republic, is also the capital of Yugoslavia.
Serbia is mostly mountainous, being ringed by the Dinaric Alps on the west, the Sar Mountains and the North Albanian Alps (Prokletije) on the south, and the Balkan and Carpathian mountains on the east. Many peaks in these ranges surpass 6,000 feet (1,800 m) in elevation. The highest relief in Serbia is in the south, where the intermontane Kosovo and Metohija basins contain the province of Kosovo. In central Serbia are the hills of the Sumadija ("forested area"), and in the north are the low-lying plains of Vojvodina, where the Danube River is joined by two of its major tributaries, the Sava and Tisa rivers. The Danube enters Vojvodina from Hungary and flows southeastward to form eventually the border between Yugoslavia and Romania. Mountainous central and southern Serbia are drained by the Morava River and its tributaries; the Morava flows northward to join the Danube east of Belgrade.
The climate of Serbia is on the whole continental, with cold, dry winters and warm, humid summers. In Vojvodina July temperatures average 70F (21C), and temperatures in January average about 32 F (0 C). Precipitation in Serbia ranges from 22 to 75 inches (560 to 1,900 mm), depending on elevation and exposure.
Approximately one-quarter of the Serb people live outside the Serbian republic. Within Serbia proper, excluding Vojvodina and Kosovo, Serbs account for more than four-fifths of the population. In Vojvodina, slightly more than half the people are Serbs, but a large minority population of Hungarians and a smaller group of Croats also reside there. Albanians account for more than three-quarters of the population of Kosovo. The high birth rate of the Albanians and their rising nationalism have conflicted with the Serbs' desire to retain Kosovo as a part of Serbia.
Serbia proper and Vojvodina are the most developed regions of Serbia, whereas Kosovo is one of the poorest regions in Europe. The fertile plains of Vojvodina supply much of the nation's grain and sugar beets, while the hilly central areas of Serbia specialize in dairy, fruit, and livestock. But mining and manufacturing are actually the largest contributors to the economy of Serbia. The republic's industries produce metal products, automobiles and trucks textiles, and foodstuffs. Coal reserves and deposits of lead and zinc are located in Kosovo, iron and copper deposits are found in central Serbia, and oil reserves are located in Vojvodina. Most of the republic's railroad network is in Serbia proper and Vojvodina; an important line links Belgrade with the Adriatic Sea at Bar, in Montenegro.
Under the constitution of 1990, Serbia has a directly elected president and a 250-member national assembly. The constitution grants both Kosovo and Vojvodina the status of autonomous provinces, with elected provincial assemblies. Because it has more than 90 percent of the population of Yugoslavia, Serbia elects the vast majority of deputies to the Yugoslav federal assembly.
Ancestors of the Serbs settled in southern Serbia during the South Slavic migrations into the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries AD. They did not at first form a united state; rather, related clans occupied territory under the political and military leadership of a zupan. One such zupan, Vlastimir, acknowledged the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire, thus opening the Serb lands for conversion to Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the zupan Mutimir was converted about 879. In 1169 Stefan Nemanja became zupan of Raska (around present-day Novi Pazar); he and his successors steadily expanded into neighbouring lands in modern-day Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and central Serbia. Stefan's son, later canonized as St. Sava, became (1219) the first archbishop of a newly autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church.
Serbia began to seize Macedonian territory from the Byzantines under King Milutin (reigned 1282-1321). Under his son, Stefan Dusan (reigned 1331-55), the Nemanjic dynasty reached its peak, ruling from the Danube to central Greece and presiding over what modern Serbs consider their "Golden Age" of culture and political power. After Stefan's death in 1355, however, Serbian power waned, and in the Battle of Kosovo (June 15, 1389) the Serbs were catastrophically defeated by the Turks. The Turkish conquest of the Serb lands was completed in 1459.
For more than three centuries thereafter, the Serbs lived as virtual bondslaves of the Ottoman sultans. Mass migrations out of their ancestral homeland (present-day Kosovo and southern Serbia) shifted the Serb population northward into the Sumadija and northward across the Danube and Sava rivers into what is now Vojvodina and Croatia. In 1699 the Ottomans were pushed south of the Danube by Austrian Habsburg armies, but Serb lands to the south remained under Turkish rule.
The movement for Serbian independence began in the Sumadija, with uprisings under the Serbian patriots Karageorge (1804-13) and Milos Obrenovic (1815-17). After the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, Serbia became an internationally recognized autonomous principality under Turkish suzerainty and Russian protection, and the state expanded steadily southward. After an insurrection in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1875, Serbia and Montenegro went to war against Turkey in 1876-78 in support of the Bosnian rebels. With Russian assistance, Serbia gained more territory as well as formal independence in 1878, though Bosnia was placed under Austrian administration.
In 1908 Austria-Hungary directly annexed Bosnia, determining the Serbs to seek the aid of Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece in seizing the last Ottoman-ruled lands in Europe. In the ensuing Balkan Wars of 1912-13, Serbia obtained northern and central Macedonia, but Austria compelled it to yield Albanian lands that would have given it access to the sea. Serb animosity against the Habsburgs reached a climax on June 28, 1914, when the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip--an act that precipitated World War I.
Despite the initial brilliant successes of its army, Serbia was occupied by Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian forces. Upon the collapse of Austria-Hungary at war's end in 1918, Vojvodina and Montenegro united with Serbia, and former South Slav subjects of the Habsburgs sought the protection of the Serbian crown within a Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Serbia was the dominant partner in this state, which in 1929 adopted the name Yugoslavia.
The new kingdom was soon polarized by Croatian resistance to control from Belgrade; this prompted King Alexander I to split the traditional regions among nine new banovine, or administrative provinces. During World War II Serbia was dismembered and occupied by Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy. Royal army soldiers, calling themselves Cetnici (Chetniks), formed a Serbian resistance movement, but a more determined communist resistance under the Partisans, with Soviet and Anglo-American help, liberated all of Yugoslavia by 1944. In order to prevent renewed Serbian domination, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro were given separate and equal republican status within the new socialist federation of Yugoslavia; Kosovo and Vojvodina were made autonomous provinces within Serbia. Nevertheless, Serbian communists played a leading role in Yugoslavia's political life for four decades after World War II. Under communist rule, Serbia was transformed from an agrarian to an industrial society, but, as the economy began to fail in the 1980s, Albanians in Kosovo agitated for separation from the republic, and Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina moved toward secession from Yugoslavia. In 1989 Serbia reimposed direct rule over the provinces. After an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Slovenia's secession in 1991, Serb elements of the Yugoslav armed forces went to the defense of autonomous krajine, or regions, established by Serbs in Croatia. The following year Serbia began assisting Bosnian Serbs in their campaign to sweep Muslims and Croats from eastern and northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in April 1992 Serbia and Montenegro formed a new, ethnically Serb Yugoslav federation.
Area Serbia, 34,116 square miles (88,361 square km); Serbia excluding Kosovo and Vojvodina, 21,609 square miles (55,968 square km). Pop. (1991) Serbia, 9,721,177; Serbia excluding Kosovo and Vojvodina, 5,753,825.