Yugoslavia is a term casually used for three separate political entities. The name is interpreted to mean Land of South Slavs (jug in Jugoslavija means south).
The first was a kingdom formed in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was re-named the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929 and existed under that name until it was invaded in 1941 by the Axis powers.
The second was a Communist state established immediately after World War II in 1945 as Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, which in 1946 became the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia and in 1963 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which it was called until 1991-1992, when four of its six constituent republics Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina separated.
As a result, a federation called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed between the remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro, which in 2003 remade its internal structure into a loose commonwealth and changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro.
Country code: YU
See also History of Yugoslavia