MICHELE NORRIS, host:

There was a time when it seemed like a good idea to have a single state on the Balkan Peninsula for Europe's South Slavic people. Yugoslavia, literally land of the South Slavs, was formed after World War I. It brought together six ethnic groups. They spoke a common language, Servo-Croatian, but they had different histories, different beliefs, and distinct identities. After World War II, Yugoslavia was subdivided along ethnic lines into six republics and forcibly held together by Tito under communist rule. But when Tito died and communism fell, those republics pulled apart.

In 1991, Slovenia and Croatia each declared complete independence from Yugoslavia. A bloody war then broke out in Croatia where Serbs tried to create their own state. A year later, Macedonia formed its own state with little conflict. Next to go was the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But Bosnian Serbs wanted to stay with what was left of the Yugoslav Federation and that led to three years of war.

The last of the Yugoslav republics, Serbia and Montenegro, held together until 2006. And that brings us to this weekend, when Kosovo declared it's independence from Serbia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.