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Yugoslavia Ethnographic History
The South Slavs lived for centuries on two sides of a
disputed border between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires,
between the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches,
between the Islamic crescent and the Christian cross. Those on
the Eastern side (today's Serbs, Montenegrins, Muslim Slavs, and
Macedonians) had lived under Byzantine and Turkish influence;
those on the Western side (the Slovenes and Croats) under the
religious authority of Rome and the secular authority of Vienna,
Budapest, and Venice. Besides the South Slavs, the Yugoslav state
contained a mélange of minority peoples, many of them non-Slavic,
who professed different religions, spoke different languages, and
had different and often conflicting historical assumptions and
desires. With over twenty-five distinct nationalities, Yugoslavia
had one of the most complex ethnic profiles in Europe. Over
seventy years after Yugoslavia's creation, serious doubts
remained that a federation of such disparate elements could
continue as an integrated state.
The Constitution of 1974 divided the country's ethnic groups
into two categories:
nations (see Glossary), or ethnic groups
whose traditional territorial homelands lay within the country's
modern boundaries, and "nationalities," or ethnic groups whose
traditional homelands lay outside those boundaries. The Yugoslav
"nations" were the Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Muslim
Slavs, Serbs, and Slovenes
(see
fig. 7). Yugoslavia's
"nationalities" were the Albanians, Bulgars, Czechoslovak,
Hungarians, Italians, Romanians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Turks, and
Ukrainians (see
table 4, Appendix). Other ethnic groups also
present included the Austrians, Germans, Greeks, Gypsies, Jews,
Poles, Russians, and Vlachs (a Romanian group). The other ethnic
groups totaled less than 0.1 percent of the country's population
and did not enjoy special constitutional status as communities;
as individuals, however, they were entitled to the same rights
and freedoms guaranteed all other Yugoslavs in the national
Constitution.
Data as of December 1990
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