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Yugoslavia Serbs
The demographic distribution and ethnic outlook of the Serbs
exerted paramount influence on the shape of the modern Yugoslav
state from the very beginning. The Serbs were Yugoslavia's most
populous and most dispersed nationality. Although concentrated in
Serbia proper, in 1981 they also accounted for substantial
portions of the population of Kosovo (13.2 percent), Vojvodina
(54.1 percent), Croatia (11.5 percent), and Bosnia and
Hercegovina (32.2 percent). Historically, the first cause of this
scattering was the severe oppression of Serbs under Ottoman
occupation, which led to migration to the unoccupied territory to
the west. After World War II, Yugoslavia's first communist
government tried to define the country's postwar federal units to
limit the Serbian domination believed largely responsible for the
political turmoil of the interwar period. This meant reducing
Serbia proper to achieve political recognition of Macedonian and
Montenegrin ethnic individuality and the mixed populations of
Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Hercegovina
(see Formation of the South Slav State
, ch. 1).
The Serbs' forefathers built a rich kingdom during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, then suffered under Ottoman
occupation for 370 years (1459-1829). During the Ottoman era, the
Serbian Orthodox Church preserved the Serbs' sense of nationhood
and reinforced the collective memory of past glory. The church
canonized medieval Serbian kings; fresco painters preserved their
images; and priests recited a litany of their names at daily
masses. Until the nineteenth century, virtually all Serbs were
peasants; the small percentage that lived in towns as traders and
craftsmen wore Turkish costume and lived a Turkish lifestyle.
Until the twentieth century, peasant Serbs lived mainly in
extended families, with four or five nuclear families residing in
the same house. An elder managed the household and property
(see The Family
, this ch.).
The independence movement of the nineteenth century brought
significant cultural changes to the Serbs. During that century,
the scholars Dositej Obradovic and Vuk Karadzic overcame stiff
opposition from the Orthodox Church to foster creation of the
modern Serbian literary language, which is based on the speech of
the ordinary people. Karadzic adapted the Cyrillic alphabet to
the form still used in Yugoslavia.
After World War I, the Serbs considered themselves the
liberators of Croatia and Slovenia--nations whose loyalty the
Serbs found suspect because they had seemed unwilling or unable
to rise against Austria-Hungary in the independence struggles
that preceded World War I. The Serbian political elite of the
interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia was extremely centralist and
accustomed to wielding unshared power. On the eve of World War
II, the Yugoslav Army officer corps and the civilian bureaucracy
were dominated by Serbs (two Croats and two Slovenes were
generals; the other 161 generals were either Serbs or
Montenegrins). Serbian hegemony in interwar Yugoslavia triggered
a militant backlash in Croatia, Macedonia, and Kosovo; during
World War II, Croatian nationalist fanatics butchered Serbs,
Jews, and Gypsies with a brutality that appalled even the Nazis
(see Communist Takeover and Consolidation
, ch. 1).
The Serbs' memories of their medieval kingdom, their 1389
defeat by the Ottoman Turks, their nineteenth century uprisings,
and their heavy sacrifices during twentieth century wars
contributed significantly to their feeling that they had
sacrificed much for Yugoslavia and received relatively little in
return. In the late 1980s, a passionate Serbian nationalist
revival arose from this sense of unfulfilled expectation, from
the postwar distribution of the Serbs among various Yugoslav
political entities, and from perceived discrimination against the
Serbs in Kosovo in the 1970s and 1980s
(see Serbia
, ch. 4). In
this process, the Serbian Orthodox Church reemerged as a strong
cultural influence, and the government of Serbia renewed
celebrations of the memories of Serbian heroes and deeds. These
events caused leaders in Slovenia and Croatia to fear a
resurgence of the Serbian hegemony that had disrupted interwar
Yugoslavia
(see Regional Political Issues
, ch. 4).
The Serbian-Albanian struggle for Kosovo, the heartland of
Serbia's medieval kingdom, dominated Serbia's political life and
café conversation in the 1980s. Between 1948 and 1990, the
Serbian share of Kosovo's population dropped from 23.6 percent to
less than 10 percent, while the ethnic Albanian share increased
in proportion because of a high birth rate and immigration from
Albania. The demographic change was also the result of political
and economic conditions; the postwar Serbian exodus from Kosovo
accelerated in 1966 after ethnic Albanian communist leaders
gained control of the province, and Kosovo remained the most
poverty-stricken region of Yugoslavia in spite of huge government
investments
(see Kosovo
, ch. 4;
Regional Disparities
, ch. 3).
After reasserting political control over Kosovo in 1989, the
Serbian government announced an ambitious program to resettle
Serbs in Kosovo, but the plan attracted scant interest among
Serbian émigrés from the region.
In the republics of Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, the
Serbs' situation was more complex and potentially more explosive
than in Kosovo. Despite denials from the governments of both
republics, Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina complained
bitterly in the late 1980s about ethnically based discrimination
and threats. The Serbian government reacted with published
exposés of World War II atrocities against Serbs and the Croatian
chauvinism that had inspired them.
Data as of December 1990
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