Yugoslav Wars in the context of "Breakup of Yugoslavia"

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (commonly abbreviated as SFRY or SFR Yugoslavia), known from 1945 to 1963 as the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as Socialist Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It was established in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, dissolving amid the onset of the Yugoslav Wars. Spanning an area of 255,804 square kilometres (98,766 sq mi) in the Balkans, Yugoslavia was bordered by the Adriatic Sea and Italy to the west, Austria and Hungary to the north, Bulgaria and Romania to the east, and Albania and Greece to the south. It was a one-party socialist state and federation governed by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and had six constituent republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Within Serbia was the Yugoslav capital city of Belgrade as well as two autonomous Yugoslav provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina.

The country emerged as Democratic Federal Yugoslavia on 29 November 1943, during the second session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia midst World War II in Yugoslavia. Recognised by the Allies of World War II at the Tehran Conference as the legal successor state to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it was a provisionally governed state formed to unite the Yugoslav resistance movement. Following the country's liberation, King Peter II was deposed, the monarchical rule was ended, and on 29 November 1945, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the new communist government sided with the Eastern Bloc at the beginning of the Cold War but pursued a policy of neutrality following the 1948 Tito–Stalin split; it became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, and transitioned from a command economy to market-based socialism. The country was renamed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963.

The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR; also known by its French acronym FORPRONU: Force de Protection des Nations Unies) was the first United Nations peacekeeping force in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav Wars. The force was formed in February 1992 and its mandate ended in March 1995, with the peacekeeping mission restructuring into three other forces (the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) in the Republic of Macedonia, and the United Nations Confidence Restoration Operation in Croatia (UNCRO) in Croatia, with restructured UNPROFOR operations ongoing in Bosnia and Herzegovina until their replacement by NATO and EU missions in December 1995).

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group, or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide.

Although scholars do not agree on which events constitute ethnic cleansing, many instances have occurred throughout history. The term was first used to describe Albanian nationalist treatment of the Kosovo Serbs in the 1980s, and entered widespread use during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. Since then, the term has gained widespread acceptance due to journalism. Although research originally focused on deep-rooted animosities as an explanation for ethnic cleansing events, more recent studies depict ethnic cleansing as "a natural extension of the homogenizing tendencies of nation states" or emphasize security concerns and the effects of democratization, portraying ethnic tensions as a contributing factor. Research has also focused on the role of war as a causative or potentiating factor in ethnic cleansing. However, states in a similar strategic situation can have widely varying policies towards minority ethnic groups perceived as a security threat.

Nationalism studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of nationalism and related issues. While nationalism has been the subject of scholarly discussion since at least the late eighteenth century, it is only since the early 1990s that it has received enough attention for a distinct field to emerge.

Authors such as Eric Hobsbawm, Carlton J. H. Hayes, Hans Kohn, Elie Kedourie, John Hutchinson, Ernest Gellner, Karl Deutsch, Walker Connor, Anthony D. Smith, and Benedict Anderson laid the foundation for nationalism studies in the post-war period. In the early 1990s their ideas were enthusiastically taken up by academics, journalists, and others looking to understand and explain the apparent resurgence of nationalism marked by events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Rwanda genocide, and the Yugoslav Wars.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords (Serbo-Croatian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum / Дејтонски мировни споразум), and colloquially known as the Dayton (Bosnian: Dejton; Serbian: Дејтон / Dejton), is the peace agreement ending the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, an armed conflict part of the larger Yugoslav Wars. It was signed on 21 November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was re-signed ceremonially in Paris, France on 14 December 1995.

The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into the related arms control treaty, the Florence Agreement, in 1996 under the Accords. The Dayton followed the Washington Agreement, signed the year prior, in collective efforts to delineate the country's geography.

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and after its initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed. It remained an illegal underground group until World War II when, after the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the military arm of the party, the Yugoslav Partisans, became embroiled in a bloody civil war and defeated the Axis powers and their local auxiliaries. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party state, which existed in that form of government until 1990, a year prior to the start of the Yugoslav Wars and breakup of Yugoslavia.

Led by Josip Broz Tito from 1937 to 1980, it was the first communist party in power to defy the Soviet hegemony in the Eastern Bloc and thus was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 in what is known as the Tito–Stalin split. After internal purges of pro-Soviet members, the party renamed itself the League of Communists in 1952 and adopted the politics of workers' self-management and an independent path to achieving socialism, known as Titoism.

Slobodan Milošević (Serbian Cyrillic: Слободан Милошевић, pronounced [slobǒdan milǒːʃevitɕ] , 20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the President of Serbia between 1989 and 1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 until his overthrow in 2000. Milošević played a major role in the Yugoslav Wars and became the first sitting head of state charged with war crimes.

Born in Požarevac, he studied law at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law during which he joined the League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia. From the 1960s, he was advisor to the mayor of Belgrade, and in the 1970s he was a chairman of large companies as the protégé of Serbian leader Ivan Stambolić. Milošević was a high-ranking member of the League of Communists of Serbia (SKS) during the 1980s; he came to power in 1987 after he ousted opponents, including Stambolić. He was elected president of the Socialist Republic of Serbia in 1989 and led the anti-bureaucratic revolution, reforming Serbia's constitution and transitioning the state into a multi-party system, reducing the power of autonomous provinces. He led the Socialist Party of Serbia from its foundation in 1990 until his death. Following the 1990 general elections, Milošević enacted dominant-party rule while his party retained control over economic resources of the state. During his presidency, anti-government and anti-war protests took place, and hundreds of thousands deserted the Milošević-controlled Yugoslav People's Army, leading to mass emigration from Serbia.