Topic summary
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
- ^Serbian and Croatian, highly mutually intelligible standard languages, were officially considered eastern and western varieties of a common language, contemporarily known as Serbo-Croatian. Slovene was considered a dialect of the common language despite low mutual intelligibility with Serbo-Croatian. 'Serbo-Croato-Slovene' was declared the single official language (srbsko-hrvatsko-slovenački or srbsko-hrvatsko-slovenski; also translated "Serbocroatoslovenian"). In practice it functioned as Serbo-Croatian.
- ^Peter II, still underage, was declared an adult by a military coup. Shortly after his assumption of royal authority, Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis and the young King went into exile. In 1944, he accepted the formation of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. He was deposed by the Yugoslav parliament in 1945.
- ^ Unicameral until 1931.
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 until 1941. From 1918 to 1929, it was officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and was colloquially known as "Yugoslavia" (lit.'Land of the South Slavs') due to its origins.
The preliminary kingdom was formed in late 1918 by the unification of the Kingdom of Serbia, which was previously independent, with the Kingdom of Montenegro, and the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, mainly the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (encompassing what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina and most of what are now the states of Croatia and Slovenia) as well as Banat, Bačka and Baranja. The regions of Kosovo and what is today North Macedonia had become parts of Serbia prior to the unification.
The state was ruled by the Serbian dynasty of Karađorđević, which previously ruled the Kingdom of Serbia under Peter I, who became the first king of Yugoslavia, reigning until his death in 1921. He was succeeded by his son Alexander I, who had been regent for his father. In 1929, he established the 6 January Dictatorship, and soon renamed the kingdom "Yugoslavia". In 1934, the king was assassinated in Marseille by Vlado Chernozemski, a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), during his visit to France. The crown passed to his 11-year-old son, Peter. Alexander's cousin Paul ruled as Prince regent until 1941, when Peter II came of age following a coup d'etat that reversed Yugoslavia's accession to the Tripartite Pact. The royal family flew to London the same year, prior to the country being invaded by the Axis powers.
In April 1941, the country was occupied and partitioned by the Axis powers. A royal government-in-exile, recognized by the United Kingdom and, later, by all the Allies, was established in London. In 1944, after pressure from the British Prime MinisterWinston Churchill, the King recognized the government of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia as the legitimate government. This was established on 2 November following the signing of the Treaty of Vis by Ivan Šubašić (on behalf of the Kingdom) and Josip Broz Tito (on behalf of the Yugoslav Partisans).