The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Serbia, in addition, included two autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija.

Initially siding with the Eastern bloc under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito at the beginning of the Cold War, Yugoslavia pursued a policy of neutrality after the Tito-Stalin split of 1948, and became one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement. After the death of Tito in 1980, rising ethnic nationalism in the late 1980s led to dissidence among the multiple ethnicities within the constituent republics, followed by collapse of inter-republic talks on transformation of the country and recognition of their independence by some European states in 1991. This led to the country collapsing on ethnic lines, followed by wars fraught with ethnic discrimination and human rights violations.

Yugoslavia (Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, Macedonian: Jugoslavija; Cyrillic: Југославија) was a country in the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century which was established three times under differing forms of government.

The first country to be known by this name was the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which before 3 October 1929 was known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It was established on 1 December 1918 by the union of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and the Kingdom of Serbia (the Kingdom of Montenegro was annexed on 13 November 1918, and the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris gave international recognition to the union on 13 July 1922). The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers in 1941, and because of the events that followed, was officially abolished in 1943 and 1945.

The second country with this name was the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, proclaimed in 1943 by the Yugoslav Partisans resistance movement during World War II. It was renamed to the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, when a communist government was established. In 1963, it was renamed again to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). This was the largest Yugoslav state, as Istria, Rijeka and Zadar were added to the new Yugoslavia after the end of World War II.