Читать книгу The Peaks of the Balkans Trail. Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo онлайн

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During the Second World War the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by Hitler’s Germany, Albania by Mussolini and later Germany. In 1945, Montenegro – along with Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia (Kosovo had the status of an autonomous province within Serbia) – became a state within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under Tito. Meanwhile in Albania, the head of the new Communist Party Enver Hoxha became ruler. Tito formally broke ranks with Stalinism in 1948, while Hoxha followed a more isolationist policy, and later turned increasingly towards Communist China.

Recent conflicts

Following the death of Tito in 1980, Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević rose to power in Yugoslavia, fanning nationalist sentiment and reducing the autonomous status of Kosovo within Yugoslavia. Croatia declared its independence from Serbia following a referendum in 1991, and during the ensuing war between Serbia and Croatia (Croatian War of Independence), Montenegro allied itself with Serbia. Following this conflict, Serbia and Montenegro maintained the name Yugoslavia, but from 2002 this confederation was renamed the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. Calls by the Albanian majority in Kosovo for greater autonomy within Yugoslavia led to the Kosovo War in the late 1990s, between Yugoslav forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, prompting a huge exodus of refugees into Albania, and Nato airstrikes on Serbia.