Yugoslavia's history has been shaped by paradox. Twenty million people share a land area of approximately 96,000 square miles, which includes the mountainous south, with a largely nomadic population, and the flat river plains of the north, the agricultural heartland. Through its long history the people have been divided by unending confrontations between Eastern and Western Europe, between the Byzantine Empire and the Empire of the Francs, between the Moslem and the Christian worlds. Yugoslavia has been everyone's battleground. The imperial ambitions of Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy have all ravaged Yugoslavia.

All this has created a people possessing many important differences and many equally important similarities.