Vojvodina

an autonomous region in the Socialist Republic of Serbia, in Yugoslavia. Area, 21,500 sq km. Population, 1,930,000 (1968), mainly Serbs and Croats (62 percent), as well as Hungarians (23 percent), Slovaks (4 percent), Rumanians (3 percent), and other nationalities. About one-third of the population lives in cities. Administrative center, Novi Sad.

Vojvodina is located in the southern, weakly dissected part of the Central Danube Plain (altitude 70-250 m). The isolated Fruska Gora Ridge (altitude, up to 539 m) is in the southwest and the spurs of the Southern Carpathians (altitude, up to 641 m) in the southeast. The region has a temperate continental climate. The average July temperature is 22-24° C and the average January temperature is −1.2° to 2.6° C. Average precipitation is 550-750 mm a year. The major rivers of the region are the Danube, Tisa, and Tamis. Chernozem steppe landscapes predominate.

In the sixth century Slavs settled in the territory of Vojvodina. In the late ninth century it was settled by Hungarians and later became part of the kingdom of Hungary; it was under the rule of the Hapsburg monarchy from 1526 until 1918. During the Revolution of 1848-49 in Hungary there were antifeudal manifestations by Serbian peasants in Vojvodina. In May 1848 the national skupština (council) of several comitats of southern Hungary inhabited by Serbs proclaimed the autonomy of Vojvodina; the Hungarian revolutionary government refused to recognize it. In the middle of the 19th century the merger of Srem, Banat, and Backa resulted in the establishment of a separate duchy (hence the name in Serbian, Vojvodina; in German, Herzogtum—duchy) that existed until 1860. In 1918 Vojvodina became part of the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which became Yugoslavia in 1929.

Vojvodina is the main breadbasket of Yugoslavia. More than 55 percent of its gainfully employed population work in agriculture, and 13 percent in industry. Vojvodina produces about one-fourth of the total Yugoslavian output of wheat, about two-fifths of the corn, two-thirds of the hemp, threefourths of the sunflowers, and one-half of the sugar beets. Horticulture, viticulture, and meat and dairy animal husbandry are also practiced. Oil and gas are extracted in the eastern part of Vojvodina. The province has a large-scale food industry, primarily processing of local agricultural raw materials (flour, butter, sugar, hemp); a textile industry; agricultural and electrotechnical machine-building in Novi Sad and Subotica; petrochemistry in Pancevo; the production of mineral fertilizers in Pancevo and Subotica; and cement production in Beocin. There is navigation on the Danube.