CrnaStrela's definitions

Bosnia

a country settled by the serbs in the 7th centurie. during the 15th centurie alot of them were converted to Islam. there are also many different ethnic groups from former Yugoslavia living in Bosnia today.

Ethnic groups:
Serb 37.1%, Muslim 48%, Croat 14.3%, other 0.6%

by CrnaStrela September 5, 2005

serbia

a country located in South East Europe that was once big and powerful.

Serbia dates back to the first half of the 9th century. The Kingdom of Serbia was established in the 11th century, Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanjic dynasty, rose to power in 1170 and started renewing the Serbian state in the Raska(south-west Serbia) region. In the 13th century it eventually expanded in land, the Serbian Empire. Medieval Serbia enjoyed a high political, economic and cultural reputation in Medieval Europe, reached its apex in mid-14th century, during the rule of Tzar Stefan Dusan. Tzar Stefan Dusan doubled the size of his kingdom seizing territories to the south, southeast and east. For at least half a mellenium, the serbs occupied lands extending from the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Šar Mountains. The Serbian emipre reached it's peak up to the end of the 14th century until the battle of kosovo where the serbian army was defeated my the turkish muslim army in 1389(Kosovo holds a symbolic place in Serbian History and is regarded as the heart of Serbia which is why the Serbian goverment will not allow is to become an interpentded state to the Albanians). Serbian resistance to Ottoman domination, latent for many decades surfaced at the beginning of 19th century with the First and Second Serbian Uprising in 1804 and 1815. Resulting from the uprisings and subsequent wars against the Ottoman Empire, the independent Principality of Serbia was formed and granted international recognition in 1878. The Balkan wars 1912 - 1913, terminated the Turkish domination in the Balkans(Austria in particular was shocked, five centuries of Turkish rule suddenly ended and Serbia had come out to be the most powerful balken nation). Turkey was pushed back across the channel, and national Balkan states were created in the territories it withdrew from. The assassination of Austrian Crown Prince Franc Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, served as a pretext for the Austrian attack on Serbia that marked the beginning of World War I. The Serbian Army bravely defended its country and won several major victories. Serbia was finally overpowered by joint forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. The Serbian Army returned to combat on the Thessalonike front together with other Entante forces comprising France, England, Russia, Italy and the United States. In world War I Serbia had 1 264 000 casualties - 28% of its population (4 529 000) which also represented 58% of its male population - a loss it never fully recuperated from. This enormous sacrifice was the contribution Serbia gave to the Allied victory and the remodeling of Europe and of the World after World War I. With the end of World War I and the downfall of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire the conditions were met for proclaiming the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians in December of 1918. The new state was to be dominated by the Serbs. Peter Karadjordjevic, who had been King of Serbia since 1903, became Knig of a new state. Belgrade now became the new national capital. Top positions in the army and civil service were filled by Serbs. Croatia , in particular, resented this Serbian dominance. After the war, idealist intellectuals gave way to politicians and the most influential Croatian politicians opposed the new state right from the start. To prevent any further weakening of the country, King Aleksandar I banned national political parties in 1929, assumed executive power and renamed the country Yugoslavia. During King Aleksandar I official visit to France in 1934, the king was assassinated in Marseilles by a member of VMRO - an extreme nationalist organization in Bulgaria that had plans to annex territories along the eastern and southern Yugoslav border - with the cooperation of the Ustashi - a Croatian fascist separatist organization.
At the beginning of the 1940's, Yugoslavia found itself surrounded by hostile countries. Except for Greece, all other neighboring countries had signed agreements with either Germany or Italy. Hitler was strongly pressuring Yugoslavia to join the Axis powers. Following the Nazi example, the Independent State of Croatia established extermination camps and perpetrated an atrocious genocide killing over 750 000 Serbs. This holocaust set the historical and political backdrop for the civil war that broke out fifty years later in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991-1995. The ruthless attitude of the German occupation forces and the genocidal policy of the Croatian Ustasha regime generated a strong Serbian Resistance. There were two main resistance groups - the Chetniks and the partisans. The Chetniks were Serbian and dedicated to the restoration of the Serbian goverment. The partisans were organised by the Communist leader Josip Broz Tito. The Serbs stood up against the Croatian genocidal government and the Nazi disintegration of Yugoslavia. Many joined the Partisan forces (National Liberation Army headed by Josib Broz Tito) in the liberation war and thus helped the Allied victory. By the end of 1944, with the help of the Red Army the Partisans liberated Serbia and by May 1945 the remaining Yugoslav territories, meeting up with the Allied forces in Hungary, Austria and Italy. Serbia and Yugoslavia were among the countries that had the greatest losses in the war: 1 700 000 (10.8% of the population) people were killed and national damages were estimated at 9.1 billion dollars according to the prices of that period. After the second world war, Stalin wanted Yugoslavia to remian dependent on the USSR. Tito objected in 1948 and was expelled from the Communist Bloc. During the 1970s there was increasing economic difficulties in Yugoslavia. Unrest started to rise and Tito agreed in 1974 to a drastic reform of the constitution. The power of the central goverment in Belgrade was drastically cut back and more power given to the six republican goverments - Serbia, Croatia, Slovania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. The Albanians of Kosovo demanded that their region be made a full republic; the constitution of 1974 only served to widen the divisions within the country. In 1980 Tito died. After his death the country began to fall apart.
Between 1991 and 1992, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina forcibly seceded from Yugoslavia, whilst Macedonia did so peacefully. The civil war in Yugoslavia costed over 200 000 lives. Serbia and Montenegro opted to stay on in the federation and at the combined session of the parliaments of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro held on April 27 1992 in Belgrade, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was passed thus reaffirming the continuity of the state first founded on December 1st 1918.

by CrnaStrela September 6, 2005

World War I

world war I was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The Austria-Hungarian goverment accused Serbia of having something to do with the assassination. An ultimatum was presented by the Austrian government to Belgrade on Thursday 23 July 1914 at 6 p.m. A response was demanded within two days, by Saturday 25 July at 6 p.m. Austria-Hungary's expectation was that Serbia would reject the remarkably severe terms of the ultimatum, thereby giving her a pretext for launching a limited war against Serbia.
There were differnt alliances made early in 1914. It was The Triple Entente; Great Britian, France and Russia against the Triple Alliance which was Germany, Austria-Hungray and Italy.
Germany surrendered in 1918 and in January 1919 The Treaty Of Versallies was made to decide the fate of the defeated nations. The majority of the decisions was made by the 'Big Three'- France, USA and Britain.

The Great War went on from 1914-1919. The estimated number of people killed in the war was 17,000,000 people. The heaviest Casualties were;
Allied powers:
Russia- 2,500,000
France- 1,357,000
Serbia- 1,264,000
Britain- 908,000
Central Powers:
Germany- 1,773,000
Austria-Hungary- 1,200,000
Turkey- 325,000

by CrnaStrela September 5, 2005

serbia

A native or inhabitant of Serbia. Or a person of Serbian descent.

Reasons why you should be proud of Serbia and to be Serbian:

You are Orthodox (first Christian faith)
the Adriatic Coast (Serbia & Montenegro)
Even if you were born in any country; you still can say that you are Serbian
Greatest genius of all time Nicola Tesla- inventor of electricity (a Serb born in Croatia)
Famous inventors, doctors, athletes, and singers
Soccer team (Red Star Belgrade, one of the greatest soccer teams in all time)
Handball team
Waterpollo team
Basketball (Basketball champions of the world 2002)
Well-educated people
Christmas
Easter
Slava (saint day, orthodox tradition)
Nice friendly people
good food (healthy)
People that defended their own country and what was theirs
Great music
They aren't racists (even though many people are towards Serbia because they don’t have it’s culture and history)
No matter what they try, they never give up and win in the end
Know every Serb around them
unique Language
Respect their language and traditions
Red, blue, white and the cross with four c’s in the middle (flag)
would die for their family and country
Even if they were born anywhere in the world they are Serbian, they still know the Serbian from language and traditions
Know the the truth and always be proud of where you come from
Serbia and Montenegro have one of the most beautiful cities in the World (Belgrade, Budva)
You are allowed to eat Pork (except for when you are fasting, orthodox tradition)

by CrnaStrela September 6, 2005

Byzantine

The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived for a thousand years after the western half had crumbled into various feudal kingdoms and which finally fell to Ottoman Turkish onslaughts in 1453.
The city of Byzantium grew from an ancient Greek colony founded on the European side of the Bosporus.
In AD 330 the Roman emperor Constantine I, in an attempt to strengthen the empire, refounded Byzantium as Constantinople, the 'New Rome' and capital of the eastern half of the empire.
At his death in 395 Emperor Theodosius I divided the empire between his two sons, and it was never reunited.
Theodosius also made Christianity (Eastern Orthodox) the sole religion of the empire, and Constantinople assumed preeminence over other Christian centers in the East as Rome did in the West.

The fall of Rome to the Ostrogoths in 476 marked the end of the western half of the Roman Empire. The eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as its capital. Constantine the Great wanted this city to be built from scratch as the center of the Christian world. The origional Christianity religion Eastern Orthodox church split into differnent factions, The great schism between Eastern and Western churches was mutually agreed to in 1054.

by CrnaStrela September 6, 2005

Orthodox

Orthodox Christianity begins with the first Pentecost in Jerusalem and the spreading of the Holy Spirit on Christ's small circle of disciples. It is then that the Orthodox Church was born, today the second largest organized body of Christians in the world. The legal recognition of Christianity was by the Emperor Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century (312AD) and its recognition as the official religion of the Byzantium empire by the end, under Theodosius (392AD).

The Eastern Orthodox Faith has over 500,000,000 followers worldwide.

by CrnaStrela September 6, 2005

Ustasha

Ustasha, Radical Fascist movements developed in a few Balkan countries most prominently in Croatia, they were obsessed by an extremist spirit of terroristic violence in a strange way of union with religious fanaticism. fascist regime in Croatia set about a policy of "racial purification" that went beyond even Nazi practices. it was declared that one-third of the Serbian population would be deported, one-third converted to Roman Catholicism, and one third exterminated.

the Ustasha, with the support of many croats,embarked upon
what is called "The Purge of Croatia from Forign elemnets," which had as its main purpose the Eliminating the Serb minority. Serbs have more than a valid historical reason not to trust Croat or Muslim "democracy". The Western press carefully avoids to talk about recent history of the region. It denies the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia the Real Motive for their fear and struggle. This is because it clashes with the claim that, somehow, Serbs of these geographical regions were pushed by Belgrade autocrat Milosevic to "rebel" against "newly born democracies".

by CrnaStrela September 24, 2005