The Yugoslav War

37.5: The Yugoslav War

37.5.1: Populations of the Former Yugoslavia

Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks were the three largest South Slavic groups that inhabited the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Learning Objective

Describe the similarities and differences between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks

Key Points

  • Until the 19th century, the term Bosniak (Bošnjak) referred to all inhabitants of Bosnia regardless of religious affiliation; over time, a growing sense of Bosnian nationhood was cherished mainly by Muslim Bosnians, associating the Bosniak identity with one faith.
  • After World War I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, or the First Yugoslavia) was formed, recognizing only those three nationalities in its constitution as Serbian and Croatian nationalistsattempted to absorb Bosniak ethnicities into their populations.
  • Following the liberation of Yugoslavia, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia reorganized the country into federal republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.
  • Official state policy prescribed that Yugoslavia’s peoples were equal groups that would coexist peacefully within the federation.
  • Josip Broz Tito, the first president of Yugoslavia, expressed his desire for an undivided Yugoslav ethnicity; however, distinctions among ethnic groups persisted, reinforced by disparate histories of foreign occupation.
  • In 1964, the Fourth Congress of the Bosnian Party assured Bosniaks the right to self-determination, prompting the recognition of Bosnian Muslims as a distinct nation at a meeting of the Bosnian Central Committee in 1968, though not under the Bosniak or Bosnian name.

Key Term

South Slavs
A subgroup of Slavic peoples who speak South Slavic languages. They inhabit a contiguous region in the Balkan Peninsula, southern Pannonian Plain, and eastern Alps, and are geographically separated from the body of West Slavic and East Slavic people by the Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians. The South Slavs include the Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes.

Following the liberation of Yugoslavia, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia reorganized the country into federal republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Further, two autonomous provinces were created within the Serbian republic based on the presence of minorities in the region: Vojvodina (inhabited by a Hungarian minority) and Kosovo and Metohija (inhabited by an Albanian minority). The term “nationality” (narodnost) was used to describe the status of Albanians, Hungarians, and other non-constitutive peoples, distinguishing them from the nations. This combination of historical and ethnic criteria only applied to Serbia and not Italian-inhabited Istria or Serb-inhabited Krajina, for example. The word “nation” (nacija, narod) was used to denote the country’s constitutive peoples (konstitutivne nacije), or residents of the federal republics.

Official state policy prescribed that Yugoslavia’s peoples were equal groups that would coexist peacefully within the federation. This policy was distilled into a slogan: “brotherhood and unity” and provided for in the 1974 Yugoslav constitution.

 

South Slavs

The concept of Yugoslavia as a single state for all South Slavic peoples emerged in the late 17th century and gained prominence through the Illyrian movement of the 19th century. The name Yugoslavia (sometimes spelled Jugoslavia) is a combination of the Slavic words jug (south) and sloveni (Slavs). When the term Yugoslav was first introduced, it was meant to unite a common people of South Slavs. Josip Broz Tito, the first president of Yugoslavia, expressed his desire for an undivided Yugoslav ethnicity; however, distinctions among ethnic groups persisted, reinforced by disparate histories of foreign occupation. As of 1981, Serbs were the largest ethnic population within Yugoslavia, representing 36.3% of the population. Croats comprised the second largest ethnic majority, representing 19.7% of the population, and Muslims, or Bosniaks, comprised 8.9% of the population.

South Slavic Europe

South Slavic Europe: The green area shows countries where a South Slavic language is the national language. The dark gray areas of the map show other Slavic-speaking countries.

 Bosniaks

Until the 19th century, the term Bosniak (Bošnjak) came to refer to all inhabitants of Bosnia regardless of religious affiliation. Terms such as “Boşnak milleti”, “Boşnak kavmi”, and “Boşnak taifesi” (all meaning, roughly, “the Bosnian people”) were used in the Ottoman Empire to describe Bosnians in an ethnic or tribal sense. After the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the Austrian administration officially endorsed Bošnjaštvo (“Bosniakhood”) as the basis of a multi-confessional Bosnian nation. The policy aspired to isolate Bosnia and Herzegovina from its irredentist neighbors (Orthodox Serbia, Catholic Croatia, and the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire) and to negate the concept of Croatian and Serbian nationhood, which had already begun to take ground among Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Catholic and Orthodox communities, respectively. Nevertheless, a sense of Bosnian nationhood was cherished mainly by Muslim Bosnians, but fiercely opposed by nationalists from Serbia and Croatia who were instead opting to claim the Bosnian Muslim population as their own. After World War I, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was formed and recognized only those three nationalities in its constitution.

After World War II, in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnian Muslims continued to be treated as a religious group instead of an ethnic one. In the 1948 census, Bosnia and Herzegovian’s Muslims had three options for self-identification: Serb-Muslim, Croat-Muslim, or ethnically undeclared Muslim. In the 1953 census, the category “Yugoslav, ethnically undeclared” was introduced, and the overwhelming majority of those who declared themselves as such were Muslim. Bosniaks were recognized as an ethnic group in 1961, but not as a nationality. Nevertheless, many Bosniak communist intellectuals argued that the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina were in fact a distinct native Slavic people that should be recognized as a nation.

In 1964, the Fourth Congress of the Bosnian Party assured Bosniaks the right to self-determination, prompting the recognition of Bosnian Muslims as a distinct nation at a meeting of the Bosnian Central Committee in 1968, though not under the Bosniak or the Bosnian name. As a compromise, the Constitution of Yugoslavia was amended to list “Muslims” in a national sense, recognizing a constitutive nation but not the Bosniak name. The use of “Muslim” as an ethnic denomination was criticized early on, however. Sometimes other terms, such as Muslim with a capital “M” were used (that is, “musliman” was a practicing Muslim, while “Musliman” was a member of the Muslim nation; Serbo-Croatian uses capital letters for names of peoples, but small for names of adherents)

Attributions