In east-central Europe Slovaks seceded from Czechs, and the former Yugoslavs have become five independent states.

ECONOMIST: LITTLE COUNTRIES

Immediately after the war he had been involved, in Carinthia, in the forced repatriation of thousands of Yugoslavs and Cossacks.

ECONOMIST: Obituary

The Yugoslavs made demands for more security from their hosts for officials and players, which the hosts said they could not meet.

BBC: News | Football | Wilko anger at postponement

But numbers at the festival were noticeably down this year, particularly among Serbs and other ex-Yugoslavs, who have been hit hard by the financial crisis.

ECONOMIST: Past and present intertwine in Serbia in unexpected ways

In 1992, in the course of a libel trial, Mr Nicolson was obliged to admit publicly that he, too, had lied to the Yugoslavs about their fate.

ECONOMIST: Obituary

Dozens of books have come out about the Yugoslav wars but there must be plenty of readers who deep down are still baffled as to why Yugoslavs did this to themselves.

ECONOMIST: The Yugoslav war

Alongside lesser numbers of Italians, Yugoslavs and others, the Turks mined coal, forged steel and manned factories, transferring their earnings back to the home country they assumed they would return to.

ECONOMIST: Germany's Turkish minority

Not all Yugoslavs agree.

ECONOMIST: Milosevic��s trial