MrWeb's MR-a-thon

From the break-up of Yugoslavia, Serbia retains the capital, Belgrade, and the largest area. The independence of the last state to attempt to break away from Belgrade's control, Kosovo, is disputed - it was declared in 2008.

After Roman, Habsburg and Ottoman rule, and periods of independence and empire in between, the Serbs established an autonomous state ruled by its own dynasty in the nineteenth century, but with continual interference from the great powers including Austria. Famously, it was a Serbian nationalist student, Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand sparked off the First World War - Serbian people fought with the Allied side and estimates suggest more than half Serbia's male population were killed in the conflict.At the end of the Second World War Serbia became the hub of a new communist Yugoslavia under Josip Tito and Aleksandar Rankovi, heavy on repression - the latter reported that in its first five years the regime had arrested five million people. It broke up between 1989 and 1992 as nationalist movements flowered in each of the constituent republics, and horrific wars and genocide followed. The last wholly successful secession from the Federal state was Montenegro, in 2006. Today Serbia's politics remain tense, but it's now an official candidate for membership of the EU.