Category: Croatia

Croatia is a country on the Balkan Peninsula, bathed by the Adriatic Sea. There are 4.2 million residents. The capital is Zagreb. The lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War. In 1918, Croats, Serbs and Slovenians formed a kingdom, known after 1929, as Yugoslavia. After World War II, Yugoslavia became an independent federal communist state ruled by Marshal Tito. Croatia declared independence in 1991, but it took four years of sporadic fighting before Serbian occupation armies left Croatian territory. Under UN supervision, the last Serbian enclave in eastern Slavonia was returned to Croatia in 1998.