Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene: Jugoslavija, Југославија) was a country in Southeast Europe during most of the 20th century. It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (itself formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) with the formerly independent Kingdom of Serbia. The Serbian royal House of Karađorđević became the Yugoslav royal dynasty. Yugoslavia gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The country was named after the South Slavic peoples and constituted their first union, following centuries in which the territories had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary.

The constituent six republics that made up the country were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia. Serbia contained two Autonomous Provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, which after 1974 were largely equal to the other members of the federation. After an economic and political crisis in the 1980s and the rise of nationalism, Yugoslavia broke up along its republics' borders, leading to the Yugoslav Wars, which ended in the 1990s.

Links To Peel
According to Margrave Of The Marshes, Peel and Sheila went to the former Yugoslavia on a road journey in 1975 with the youth club, which was established by the couple for kids living in their area. There are no details on which part of the former Yugoslavia they visited.

During the 80's, Yugoslav music started to get prominence on Peel's show, especially artists such as Laibach from Slovenia, who did two sessions for his show in the mid 80's. At the Eurovision Song Contest in 1987, Peel mentioned putting a bet on his favourite entry, the Yugoslav act Novi Fosili from Croatia, winning the competition, but sadly for him, the group only reached 4th place.

In the 90's, Yugoslav journalists started become interested in interviewing Peel and would often give him records from the country. According to Serbian cartoonist, Aleksandar Zograf in an interview with the Foreign Policy In Focus journal, Peel was interviewed by his journalist friend for a Yugoslav magazine in 1991, where he predicted Yugoslavia descending into war:

''"I have a friend who did an interview with the British music deejay John Peel, a very interesting personality, a very clever man. This was in 1991 just shortly after the first incidents in Croatia with the Serbian minority there opposing the Croatian government, which would eventually lead to the war in ex-Yugoslavia. When the interview was over, my friend was asked by John Peel, of all people, “Okay, can I ask you one question?” My friend said, “Yeah sure.” John Peel said, “What is going on in your country? It seems like there’s going to be a war over there. ” And my friend said, “War? No, no. They quarrel all the time over some stupid thing. But in the end they eventually end up in a bar getting drunk. It will be like an affair that lasts a few days and everything will be fine after that.” My friend never mentioned this in the article he wrote for a paper here. I remember this incident years after the interview because I was just like my friend. I thought everything would stop after a few days. So, I was thinking how was it possible that a disk jockey understood what was going to happen in Yugoslavia? But we the people living here couldn’t understand."''

On his 26 September 2002 show, before Peel played a band from Serbia called Obojeni Program, he mentioned how his wife Sheila travelled to the Serbian city of Novi Sad, where a German man gave her a lift, whilst hitchhiking and exposed his penis to her.

After Peel's death in 2004, Serbian radio station, Studio B paid tribute to Peel by having their Pop Depresija (Pop Depression) programme allocate a two hour show to the man, whose music included many artists from the former Yugoslavia.