60 free Yugoslavia trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Yugoslavia trivia quiz covers the South Slav state from its birth after the First World War to its violent end in the 1990s. The easy questions are the ones any history reader knows: what the name means, who ruled it for 35 years, how many republics it had, where the 1984 Winter Olympics were held, and which little hatchback became a punchline in America. From there it moves into the kingdom years, the assassination in Marseille, the 1941 coup and invasion, the Partisans and Chetniks, and the 1948 split with Stalin that made it the odd one out of the communist world. The hard end covers the machinery of Titoism: the 1974 constitution, the eight-member presidency, the prison island for Cominformists, the Blue Train and the yacht Galeb, the Relay of Youth, worker self-management, the 500-billion-dinar banknote, and the sequence of declarations that ended the federation. There are also questions on football, the Non-Aligned Movement and Yugo-nostalgia. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Yugoslavia, its kingdom, its socialist republic, Tito and the Yugoslav Wars, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the name Yugoslavia literally mean?
Land of the South Slavs
It combines the Slavic words jug, meaning south, and Slaveni, the Slavs.
Q 02Under what name was the country founded in 1918?
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
It was commonly called a "Versailles state" and was later renamed by King Alexander.
Q 03In which year was the kingdom officially renamed Yugoslavia?
1929
King Alexander I did it on 3 October, months after suspending the constitution in his 6 January Dictatorship.
Q 04Which royal dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Yugoslavia?
Karađorđević
Peter I, previously King of Serbia, was the first sovereign; his son Alexander I was the longest-reigning of the three monarchs.
Q 05King Alexander I was assassinated in 1934 during an official visit to which city?
Marseille
The gunman, Vlado Chernozemski of the IMRO, acted with the cooperation of the Croatian Ustaše.
Q 06In 1928 a Serb deputy opened fire inside the National Assembly, fatally wounding which Croatian Peasant Party leader?
Stjepan Radić
Puniša Račić killed two deputies on the spot; Radić died weeks later, and the crisis led to royal dictatorship.
Q 07Alexander I redrew the kingdom's internal boundaries into provinces called banovinas, named after what?
Rivers
The aim was to erase the historic regions and their separatist associations.
Q 08Who headed the regency after Alexander's assassination, on behalf of the boy-king Peter II?
Prince Paul
He signed a pact with the Axis in March 1941, triggering the coup that ended his regency.
Q 09What did the regency sign in Vienna on 25 March 1941 that provoked a military coup two days later?
The Tripartite Pact
General Dušan Simović seized power and gave the 17-year-old King Peter full powers; Hitler ordered the invasion.
Q 10On what date in 1941 did German, Italian and Hungarian forces invade Yugoslavia?
6 April
The Luftwaffe bombed the capital at dawn; an armistice followed after eleven days and 300,000 troops were taken prisoner.
Q 11The royalist Chetnik resistance was led by which officer?
Draža Mihailović
Initially backed by the exiled government and the Allies, the movement drifted into collaboration and lost Allied support to the Partisans in 1943.
Q 12At which 1943 conference did the Allies switch their backing to Tito's Partisans?
Tehran
Churchill had already parachuted Fitzroy Maclean in as liaison to Partisan headquarters that September.
Q 13The second session of the Partisans' anti-fascist council, which laid the basis for a post-war federation, met in late November 1943 in which Bosnian town?
Jajce
The date was celebrated as Republic Day for the rest of the country's existence.
Q 21After the split with Stalin, suspected pro-Soviet communists were sent to a prison camp on which uninhabited Adriatic island?
Goli Otok
Women were held on the neighbouring island of Sveti Grgur.
Q 22Rather than democratic centralism, Yugoslav socialism became known for which distinctive economic principle?
Workers' self-management
Factories ran as worker cooperatives, and the party renamed itself the League of Communists.
Q 23The Non-Aligned Movement was formally established in 1961 at a summit in which city?
Belgrade
Tito founded it with Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah and Sukarno, and Yugoslavia stayed non-aligned until it dissolved.
Q 14Which two battles are named as the most notable Partisan victories over the occupying forces?
Neretva and Sutjeska
Both were fought against major Axis offensives in 1943 and both became epic Yugoslav war films.
Q 15In May 1944 Tito escaped a German airborne assault on his headquarters, the Raid on Drvar. The date, 25 May, later became which national holiday?
Youth Day
It doubled as Tito's official birthday and ended with the Relay of Youth handing him a baton.
Q 16On which date did the Constituent Assembly abolish the monarchy and proclaim a republic?
29 November 1945
The Communist-led People's Front had won all 354 seats in an election with no other party on the ballot.
Q 17How many constituent republics made up socialist Yugoslavia?
Six
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, plus two autonomous provinces inside Serbia.
Q 18Which two autonomous provinces lay within Serbia and gained near-republic status under the 1974 constitution?
Kosovo and Vojvodina
They had votes in the federal presidency but, unlike republics, no legal right to secede.
Q 19Which territories did the new federal republic acquire from Italy after the Second World War?
Istria, Rijeka and Zadar
The Partisans had also taken Trieste in May 1945 but withdrew in June under pressure from Stalin.
Q 20Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union and was expelled from which communist organisation in 1948?
The Cominform
The rupture pushed the country toward its own path to socialism and, eventually, American aid outside the Marshall Plan.
Q 24Where was the 1956 declaration that laid the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement signed?
The Brijuni islands
Tito, Nehru and Nasser signed it on 19 July 1956 at Tito's island retreat.
Q 25In which year did the country take its final name, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with Tito named president for life?
1963
Each republic and province had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament and president.
Q 26Tito was born in 1892 in the village of Kumrovec, in which region of northern Croatia?
Zagorje
By the time he started school he reportedly spoke Slovene better than Croatian.
Q 27Tito died on 4 May 1980 in a medical centre in which city?
Ljubljana
He had refused an amputation until it was too late; he died of gangrene-related infection three days short of 88.
Q 28Tito is buried in a mausoleum in the capital known by what name?
The House of Flowers
His state funeral was, by number of attending delegations, the largest in history until Pope John Paul II's in 2005.
Q 29Tito toured the country in a luxury railway carriage known as what?
The Blue Train
He also had 32 residences, a Boeing 727 and a presidential yacht.
Q 30What was the name of Tito's presidential yacht?
Galeb
The name means "seagull"; after his death it sat docked in a Montenegrin port for years.