Serbia

Republic of Serbia (Република Србија)

Latin: Serbia; English: Serbia; French: Serbie; Spanish: Serbia; Russian: Сербия

The name of the country derives from the name of its inhabitants, the Serbs (Serbian: Srbi). However, the etymology of the word ‘Serbe’ is unclear and disputed. There are various theories regarding the word’s origin: 1. from the Caucasian root ‘Ser’ (= man/human being), 2. from the Indo-European root ‘Ser’, as in the Latin word ‘servare’, 3. from the Old Slavic word for ‘the same’.

Serbia is a landlocked country in south-eastern Europe with an area of 77,470 km². The country is centrally situated on the Balkan Peninsula and shares borders with eight neighbouring countries: Hungary to the north, Romania and Bulgaria to the east, North Macedonia and Kosovo to the south, Montenegro to the south-west, and Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to the west.

In the autonomous province of Vojvodina in the north, the terrain is flat, apart from a few isolated hilly outcrops (including Fruška Gora and Vrsačke Gore). The regions of Vojvodina – Bačka (Serbian: Bačka), Srem (Serbian: Srem) and the south-western Banat (Serbian: Banat) – lie within the Pannonian Plain. The Sava and Danube rivers separate the lowlands from the densely forested and mountainous landscape of central Serbia. The Southern and Western Morava rivers, known collectively as the Great Morava after they join, flow through the mountainous region. The Morava river system forms Serbia’s most important transport corridor. The country’s highest mountain ranges are the Kopaonik Mountains (max. 2,017 m above sea level) south of the Western Morava, the Serbian Ore Mountains, the Dinaric Alps and the Western Balkans (max. 2,169 m above sea level) on the border with Bulgaria.

Under the Nemanjić dynasty, medieval Serbia reached its greatest extent. It stretched from the present-day capital, Belgrade/Beograd, in the north as far as Central Greece in the south. Its western border ran along the Dalmatian coast (excluding Ragusa/Dubrovnik) through present-day Montenegro and Albania as far as Greece. To the east, it encompassed the territory of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and extended south-eastwards as far as northern Greece. The empire disintegrated following the death of Tsar Stefan Dušan due to dynastic conflicts. As a result of the first (1389) and second (1448) defeats at the Field of Blackbirds (Serbian: Kosovo Polje), Serbia came under Ottoman rule.

It was not until the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that Serbia was declared an independent state. It was able to significantly expand its territory at that time: the regions of Vranje (German: Wragl), Pirot, Leskovac and Niš (German: Nisch) were awarded to the Principality of Serbia. Following the Second Balkan War (1913), the Kingdom of Serbia (from 1882) was granted Kosovo, northern Macedonia and parts of the Sandžak of Novi Pazar under the Treaty of Bucharest. After the First World War, Serbia became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929: the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Serbia was expanded to include Vojvodina, which had previously belonged to Hungary, as well as smaller areas on the border with Bulgaria.

From 1945 to 1992, Serbia was a constituent republic of socialist Yugoslavia. Vojvodina and Kosovo attained the status of autonomous provinces within Serbia following the constitutional amendments of 1974. When the Second Yugoslavia broke up in the early 1990s, only the former constituent republics of Serbia and Montenegro remained within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. From 2003 until Montenegro’s independence in 2006, the loose confederation of Serbia and Montenegro (Srbija i Crna Gora) existed. Since 2006, the official name has been the Republic of Serbia. In February 2008, Kosovo declared its independence. To this day, the Republic of Serbia does not recognise Kosovo’s independence.

Batschka, Syrmia, Vojvodina, Banat

The region around Raszia (Serbian: Raška) became the heartland of medieval Serbia.^[1] After 1180, Prince (Grand Župan) Stefan Nemanja (1168–1196) put an end to Bulgarian rule over Raška and united it with Zeta (now Montenegro). His son Stefan Prvovenćani (1196–1227) was granted the title of king by Pope Honorius III in 1217. In 1219, the Serbian Church became autonomous and was declared an archdiocese independent of Constantinople. Stefan Prvovenćani’s brother Sava became the first Serbian archbishop. Under Tsar Stefan IV Dušan, the Nemanjić Empire reached its greatest extent and period of splendour. At that time, Dušan’s empire even posed a serious threat to Byzantium.^[2] Following the death of Tsar Stefan IV Dušan, the Nemanjić Empire broke up into smaller principalities, as his son and successor, Stefan Uroš V, failed to hold the empire together. Weakened by their internal strife, the Serbian princes were unable to halt the advance of the Ottomans. In 1371, an army comprising several Balkan princes was defeated by the Ottomans on the Maritsa in Thrace. Following the subjugation of the southern Balkans, the Ottomans launched another attack in the summer of 1389 to conquer the central Balkan regions as well. On 28 June 1389, the Christian allied army of the Serbian prince Lazar Hrebeljanović faced the troops of Murad I on the legendary Field of Blackbirds. As a result of the defeat, parts of Serbia initially came under loose Ottoman control. It was not until the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448 that direct Ottoman rule was established in the Balkans. For four centuries, Serbia became part of the Ottoman Empire.

As a result of the Ottoman conquest, the Serbian nobility disappeared: the princes had either been killed in the war, executed, fled or converted to Islam. To this day, Ottoman rule is perceived in the collective memory of the Serbs as the ‘Turkish yoke’. Ottoman rule was characterised by the fact that it granted the subjugated peoples a degree of local administrative autonomy and allowed their respective customary laws to remain in force to a certain extent. Islam was not forcibly imposed on the people in the conquered territories. Those who converted, however, not only enjoyed privileges such as tax relief; they also had access to higher offices. The Christian Serbian population (Raja), however, was for the most part classified as belonging to the lower class and was obliged to pay taxes to the Islamic upper class. Furthermore, prohibitions (such as on carrying a sabre, riding horses, etc.) were intended to emphasise their social decline in public life.

The Serbian Orthodox Church, on the one hand, on the other hand, customs and the folk and heroic songs passed down orally. Furthermore, the Hajduks – highwaymen, plunderers and later also rebels against the Ottomans – were revered as heroes and ‘liberators of the people’.

Following the failed uprisings against the Ottomans in 1690 and 1737, a section of the Serbian population migrated – estimates range from 80,000 to 300,000 people for the first migration and around 3,000 people for the second Serbian migration^[3] – under the leadership of the Patriarchs of Peć to Habsburg-ruled southern Hungary. The exodus of 1690, in particular, has gone down in the collective memory of the Serbs as the legendary “Great Exodus” (Serbian: Velika Seoba). A large proportion of the Serbian emigrants were settled by Leopold I in the Pannonian Plain as military settlers; in return, the Emperor guaranteed them freedom of religion. During the 18th century, German colonists were settled in Hungary at the instigation of the Habsburgs in order to cultivate the land, which had been devastated during the ‘Turkish Wars’, using Western methods.^[4] For this reason – as the Serbs’ livestock-based economy generated less tax revenue – Hungarian nobles forced the Serbian military settlers back into the territory of present-day Vojvodina and into Slavonia.^[5]

In 1804, Serbian rebels led by Karadjordje Petrović, ‘Black George’, rose up in the First Serbian Uprising (1804–1813) against the Janissaries and Ottoman rule in general. Although Serbia was guaranteed autonomy in the Treaty of Bucharest between the Ottoman Empire and Russia (May 1812), the situation of the Serbs within the Ottoman Empire continued to deteriorate. Consequently, Miloš Obrenović, a rival of Karadjordje, launched the Second Uprising (1815–1817), which proved more successful as it resulted in the establishment of an autonomous, tributary Principality of Serbia. This political success of the Serbian elites was overshadowed by the century-long power struggle between the Kardjordjević and Obrenović dynasties. Both uprisings took the form of peasant rebellions and were not (yet) characterised by nationalist aspirations. The subsequent so-called ‘national revival’ was not championed by the peasant rebels, but was driven by the Serbian middle classes living in Vienna, Budapest and, later, Neusatz/Novi Sad. Serbian newspapers were published and Serbian printing works established in these cities. The work of the language reformer and philologist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864) played a prominent role in the development of national consciousness. He reformed the Serbian written language by standardising the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and codifying the Serbian vernacular. In addition to a Serbian grammar and a Serbian–German dictionary, he published a collection of Serbian folk and heroic songs. Serbian folk poetry was well received by Central European poets and scholars, such as J. W. Goethe, J. G. Herder and J. Grimm.^[6] However, it was not only Vuk Stefanović Karadžić who looked to the past; the Serbian Minister of the Interior, Ilija Garašanin, also drew on Serbian history in his secret draft (Načertanije) on the future of Serbia. His aim was to restore the medieval empire of Stefan IV Dušan. He was convinced that the Ottoman Empire would soon collapse and that either its territory would be divided between Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy, or the Balkan regions would become independent. In the latter case, he claimed a leading role for the Serbs, for ‘of all the Slavs in Turkey, the Serbs were the first to fight for their freedom by their own means and through their own efforts.’^[7] Serbia was therefore to play a pioneering role in the liberation of all South Slavs. Garašanin’s plans for Greater Serbia must be understood against the backdrop of the nation-building process in the 19th century. Nevertheless, his proposal “set the course for Belgrade’s policy right up to the creation of Yugoslavia, and it regained relevance under different circumstances following the break-up of Yugoslavia”.^[8]

At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the European powers recognised the sovereignty of the Principality of Serbia; Montenegro and Romania were also declared independent states. Furthermore, the Principality of Bulgaria, which was autonomous within the Ottoman Empire, was established, whilst Bosnia and Herzegovina were placed under Austrian rule.

Although the emergence of independent states briefly defused the much-cited ‘Balkan powder keg’, it did not bring about lasting peace. New tensions arose between the small ‘Balkan states’, which erupted, for example, in the Serbian–Bulgarian War of 1885. In particular, the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary in 1908 had far-reaching consequences: “Serbian mortal enmity towards the Habsburg Danube Monarchy, the resurgence of […] Russian-Austrian antagonism in South-Eastern Europe […], the formation of the Balkan League and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, the assassination in Sarajevo and the outbreak of the First World War.”^[9]

Austria-Hungary accused Serbia of complicity in the Sarajevo assassination, which was carried out by the Serbian secret society ‘Unity or Death’ (Ujedinjenje ili Smrt), also known as the ‘Black Hand’ (Crna ruka). As a result, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. “Mutual alliance obligations triggered declarations of war by the other European states in rapid succession”.^[10] For Serbia, which was allied with the Triple Entente, the First World War had disastrous consequences: of all the countries involved in the war, Serbia suffered the highest losses relative to its population, with 1.1 million war dead.

Table 1: Population of Serbia by nationality in 1900^[11]

From 1918 to 1992, Serbia was a constituent state of Yugoslavia – initially of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1929) and, from 1945, of Socialist Yugoslavia. When the Yugoslav federation broke up in 1992, two former constituent republics joined together to form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and, from 2003 to 2006, the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (Srbija i Crna Gora). Serbia has been an independent republic since 2006. Kosovo’s independence in 2008 and the associated conflicts, as well as negotiations with the European Union regarding potential EU membership, have been decisive factors in Serbia’s recent domestic and foreign policy. Furthermore, the arrests in 2008 and 2011 of the long-sought-after alleged war criminals Radovan Karađić and Ratko Mladić attracted media attention. Serbia’s image in the eyes of the international community has been shaped by war crimes committed during the post-Yugoslav wars. The process of coming to terms with recent history has so far progressed only slowly.

According to census data, 7,186,862 people lived in the Republic of Serbia in 2011. Serbs made up the largest proportion, numbering 5,988,150 (83.32 per cent). The German minority accounted for 0.06 per cent of the total population – a total of 4,064 people, of whom 3,272 lived in Vojvodina.^[13]

Table 2: Ethnic distribution of the population according to the 2011 census in the Republic of Serbia^[14]

In Serbian commemorative culture, the historical significance of the Battle of Amselfeld is generally overestimated. It did not bring about the downfall of the medieval Serbian Empire, nor did it lead to its definitive subjugation under Ottoman rule. The myth owes its origins and dissemination to both the Serbian Church and folk literature. This has given rise to two distinct dimensions of the myth: on the one hand, the Christian dimension, according to which Prince Lazar is said to have sacrificed himself of his own free will on the Field of Blackbirds for the sake of Christian Europe and thus attained the Kingdom of Heaven. In this way, the earthly defeat was transfigured into a moral victory. In the legend, Prince Lazar’s martyrdom is compared to the Passion of Christ. Like Christ, Lazar is betrayed by one of his allies. His son-in-law Vuk Branković, the ‘Serbian Judas’, is said to have abandoned Lazar during the battle and fled with his troops. At the centre of the secular-heroic dimension, however, stands the supposed assassin of the Sultan, Miloš Obilić, whose existence – unlike that of Lazar and Branković – is not historically attested. Under the pretence of wanting to defect to the Ottomans, Obilić is said to have made his way into their camp. When he was led into the Sultan’s tent to reveal a secret to him, he is said to have stabbed him.

Whilst the myth of sacrifice emerged from the Christian strand of the myth, the aspect of revenge and betrayal arose from the earthly-heroic strand. This perspective branded all those who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule as traitors. Such betrayal could supposedly only be atoned for through revenge. In his poem *Der Bergkranz* (Serbian: *Gorski vijenac*), published in 1847, the Montenegrin Prince-Bishop and poet Petar Petrović Njegoš explores the theme of revenge at length. The poem was a huge success.^[16] During Slobodan Milošević’s regime, the Myth of the Field of Blackbirds was politically exploited and deliberately used as propaganda.^[17]

• Dušan T. Bataković: History of the Serbian People. Lausanne 2005.
• Florian Bieber: Nationalism in Serbia from the Death of Tito to the End of the Milošević Era. Vienna 2005 (Vienna Studies on Eastern Europe 18).
• Henrik Birnbaum: Reflections on Medieval Serbia. In: Südost-Research 53 (1994), pp. 311–322.
• Katrin Boeckh: Serbia, Montenegro. Past and Present. Regensburg 2009.
• Marie-Janine Čalić: Social History of Serbia 1815–1941. The Slow Progress of Industrialisation. Munich 1994 (South-Eastern European Studies 92).
• Sima M. Cirković: The Serbs. Oxford 2004.
• Wolfgang Libal: The Serbs: Prosperity, Delusion and Catastrophe. Munich, Vienna 1996.
• Stevan K. Pavlowitch: Serbia. The History Behind the Name. London 2002.
• Sabrina B. Ramet, Vjeran Pavlaković (eds.): Serbia since 1989. Politics and Society under Milošević and after. Seattle 2005 (Jackson School Publications in International Studies).
• Holm Sundhaussen: A History of Serbia. 19th–21st Centuries. Vienna et al. 2007.

• www.zikic-stiftung.de/index.html (Michael Zikic Foundation, Bonn, for the promotion of scientific and cultural co-operation between Germany and Serbia).
  

[1] Sundhaussen describes Rascia as the “region between the rivers Toplica and Ibar” – today, Rascia as it was then would encompass north-eastern Montenegro, northern Kosovo and parts of southern Serbia.

[2] See Thomas A. Emmert: Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389. New York 1990 (East European Monographs 278), p. 13.

[3] See Boeckh: Serbia, Montenegro, p. 38ff.; Edgar Hösch, Karl Nehring, Holm Sundhaussen (eds.): Encyclopaedia of the History of South-Eastern Europe. Vienna et al. 2004, p. 610.

[4] Danube Swabian Central Museum Foundation: Spaces, Times, People. A Guide to the Danube Swabian Central Museum. Ulm 2000, p. 20.

[5] Hösch, Nehring, Sundhaussen (eds.): Encyclopaedia (as in note 3), p. 202.

[6] Ulf Brunnbauer: Lecture: ‘Europe’ and the ‘Balkans’: External and Self-Attributions. Institute for Eastern European Studies, Free University of Berlin, 2008. URL: www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=e160c5a2-9020-a457-2f2c-78ee765bb069&groupId=252038 (Accessed 19 August 2021).

[7] Ilija Garašanin: The opening of Garašanin’s ‘Načertanje’. In: Wolfgang Petritsch, Robert Pichler: Kosovo – Kosova: The Long Road to Peace. 2nd, expanded and updated edition. Klagenfurt et al. 2005, p. 70.

[8] Libal: The Serbs, p. 62.

[9] Edgar Hösch: History of the Balkan Countries. From Early Times to the Present. 5th, updated and expanded edition. Munich 2008, p. 182.

[10] Hösch: History of the Balkan Countries (as in note 9), p. 187.

[11] Holm Sundhaussen: Historical Statistics of Serbia 1834–1914. With European Comparative Data. Munich 1989 (Southeast European Studies 87), p. 109.

[12] The category ‘Others’ comprises the following nationalities: “Arnauts (Albanians), Greeks, Magyars, Russians, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Slovenes, Croats, Italians, Turks, Zinzars (Aromanians), etc.” Cf. Sundhaussen: Historical Statistics (as in note 11), p. 111.

[13] Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia: Chapter 4: Religion, Mother Tongue and Ethnicity. In: 2011 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Serbia. Data by municipalities and cities. Belgrade 2013, p. 33, p. 100. URL: pod2.stat.gov.rs/ObjavljenePublikacije/Popis2011/Knjiga4_Veroispovest.pdf (accessed 10 May 2013).

[14] See Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia: Chapter 4 (as in note 13), p. 21.

[15] In the 1961 census, the category ‘Yugoslavs’ encompassed all those individuals who had not provided any information regarding their ethnic affiliation. Ten years later, in the next census, ‘Yugoslavs’ were listed as a separate ethnic group. See Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia: Chapter 4 (as in note 13), p. 21. In the 2001 census, a small percentage (0.32 per cent) of people still identified as “Yugoslavs”.

[16] Sundhaussen: History of Serbia. 19th–21st Centuries, p. 108.

[17] For more on the instrumentalisation of the Amselfeld myth, see: Tanja Popović: The Mythologisation of Everyday Life. Collective Memories, Histories and the Culture of the Past in Serbia and Montenegro since the Mid-1980s. Zurich 2003.

Kathrin Pavic: Serbia. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2013. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32634 (accessed 18 December 2013).