Beautypically

Slavic population, the Serbs appeared in the Balkans between the 6th and 7th centuries, pushed and dominated by the Avars. The Serbia, heir and continuer of the Rascia, emerged in the 12th century, when the small state of Stefano di Nemanja (1151-95) expanded and joined Venice against Byzantium. After a period of crisis due to frequent dynastic struggles, Stefano Dušan (1331-55) laid the foundations of the Great Serbia; anointed and crowned “emperor of the Serbs and the Greeks” (1346), he conquered Epirus and Thessaly. In 1389, in Kosovo the Turks defeated the Serbs, who lost their autonomy in 1459. From then until the formation of the Principality of Serbia (1830), the country remained subject to the Turks. However, Serbian society retained its national individuality, the Orthodox religion and, at the same time, an archaic structure with persistent survivals of the ancient tribal order. The reconstruction of the Serbian patriarchate of Peć (Kosovo, 1557) by the grand vizier Moḥammed Soqolli (Serbian Sokolović) had a profound significance of national conservation.

From the early nineteenth century the Serbs rebelled against the sultan’s authority, under the alternate leadership of the Karađorđević and Obrenović families. In 1830 the country gained a certain autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, and in 1878 under Milan Obrenović it became completely independent, acquiring a growing power in the region between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After the Balkan wars of 1912-13 (which allowed the Serbia to annex Kosovo and a large part of Macedonia and Sangiaccato), the First World War created the conditions favorable to the birth (1918) of the Kingdom of the Serbs, the Croats and the Slovenes who, under the Karađorđević dynasty, in 1929 took the name of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This was dissolved, however, during the World War II, from the Italian-German invasion (1941), which established a collaborationist government in Serbia In this context, the communist resistance movement developed, led by Tito. After driving out the Nazis (end of 1944) and winning the elections (1945), the Communists came to power and transformed the Kingdom into a Socialist Federal Republic, of which the Serbia became a member.

In the new federal Yugoslavia, the Holy was the only republic to include in its territory two regions with ample autonomy, Kosovo and Vojvodina. The administrative division of the Yugoslav federation had also left a large part of the Serbian population outside the Serbian republic, in particular, in the republics of Croatia and Bosnia.. After the death of Tito (1980), growing tensions began to emerge which exploded in the early 1990s when the hegemonic aims of Serbia Milošević (since 1986 general secretary of the Serbian Communist Party and president of the Republic since 1989) collided with the independence forces of the other regions of Yugoslavia. The war began in 1992 following the proclamation of independence of Slovenia and Croatia, almost immediately recognized by the international community. After Macedonia also declared itself independent, the epicenter of the conflict shifted to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The war in Bosnia, marked by terrible violence, ended in 1995 with the Dayton accords, under which Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided into two parts: a Muslim-Croatian federation and a Serbian republic. In 1998-99 a new crisis began in Kosovo, an autonomous region populated mostly by Albanians and crossed by strong separatist pressures, which became the object of a policy of systematic repression by Milošević. This eventually resulted in NATO military intervention and a series of heavy aerial bombardments between March and June 1999, which ended with the humiliation of the Serbia and the recognition of the autonomy of the Kosovo region, placed under the UN administration.

The military defeat favored the fall of Milošević and the victory of the democratic opposition in the 2000 elections. The agreements of March 2002 marked the end of Yugoslavia and the return to an independent Serbian state after more than 80 years. In 2003 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia officially took the name of Union of Serbia and Montenegro, but in 2006 a referendum sanctioned the detachment of Montenegro from Serbia, which thus came to be configured as a single state entity. In February 2008, Serbia tried unsuccessfully to oppose Kosovo’s unilateral proclamation of independence. To comply with the requests of the European Union, which required the country to recognize war crimes committed in the conflicts following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, in March 2010 the Serbian Parliament passed a self-indictment resolution for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which thousands of Muslim Bosnians were killed, and indicted various political and military members for crimes committed against ethnic Albanian civilians in 1999; following this conciliation policy, on 1 March 2012, Serbia obtained the status of candidate country for entry into the European Union, which in 2009 it had applied for membership. In the general elections held in May 2012, the President of the Republic and leader of the Democratic Party B. Tadić, in office since 2004, obtained 26.8% of the votes, against 25.6% of the challenger T. Nikolić, of the Serbian Party progress (SNS); not having reached 50% of the votes in the first round, the two politicians confronted each other in the ballot, from which Nikolić came out as the winner, who registered 49.55% of preferences. In the parliamentary elections Nikolić’s progressive coalition won 73 seats, compared to 67 for the Democratic Party, and formed a coalition with the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), the United Regions of Serbia (URS) and others, appointing as premier the leader of the SPS I. Dačić. The anticipated legislative consultations, held in March 2014 after the resignation of the ruling coalition led by Dačić, saw a sharp change of course, with the overwhelming victory of the Serbian Progress Party of Deputy Prime Minister A. Vučić, who obtained an absolute majority of the seats clearly exceeding the SPS (14% of preferences) of the former premier, who took over the office, and the Democratic Party (5%). In the political elections called by Vučić, also in advance and held in April 2016, the premier’s SNS obtained about 50% of the votes, winning an absolute majority in Parliament (150 out of 200 seats), while the SPS of Dačić was confirmed second force in the country. As a candidate for the presidential elections in April 2017, Prime Minister Vučić was elected president of the country in the first round, winning 55% of the votes and taking over from Nikolić; in the following June the politician appointed A. Brnabić as prime minister. In the political elections held in June 2020, Vučić’s SNS clearly established itself with 63.4% of the votes, winning 189 out of 250 seats. In September 2020, President Vučić and Kosovo Prime Minister A.

Serbian-Bulgarian War Following the insurrection in Eastern Rumelia and the proclamation of its union with Bulgaria, the Serbia, on November 13, 1885, declared war on Sofia. However, the Bulgarian army managed to quickly defeat the Serbs, invading the Serbian territory itself. Fearful of an annihilation of the Serbia, Austria threatened its entry into the war alongside the Serbs and demanded that the Bulgarian army cease the advance. Bulgaria was forced to sign the armistice (10 December) and, after long negotiations, the peace treaty of Bucharest (3 March 1886), which re-established the Serbian-Bulgarian borders before the war, while maintaining the union of Eastern Rumelia to Bulgaria.

Serbo-Turkish War In the summer of 1875, the revolt of the Christians of Herzegovina and then of Bosnia against the local Muslim patriciate and the Ottoman domination provoked a wave of national and anti-Turkish enthusiasm in the autonomous principality of Serbia Failed the attempt to resolve the crisis through diplomatic channels, on 1 July 1876 the Serbia declared war on Turkey. However, he failed in an attempt to occupy Bosnia, while his ally Montenegro was able to advance into Herzegovina. In September the Turkish army was forced to accept a truce, imposed on it by the European powers. The conflict reopened in early October, the Turks achieved decisive victories, but a Russian ultimatum forced them to conclude an armistice (October 31). On March 1, 1877, Serbia and Turkey signed the peace treaty. The hostilities were however resumed in the following December, with the participation of the Serbia in the Russo-Turkish war. Berlin (1878), the Serbia obtained territorial increases and independence from the Ottoman Empire.