The main ethnic group of Yugoslavia was the descendants of the Slavic peoples who migrated to the Balkans around the 6th century AD. However, because these southern Slavic ethnic groups were relatively weak compared to the surrounding regimes, they were successively colonized by different neighboring powers for a long time in later history, which also produced completely different histories from each other, and then formed different national identities.
Once Yugoslavia
And if we were to summarize the differences in the simplest language, it can be said that the ethnic group that had integrated with the Bulgars, a nomadic group that had migrated from Asia to the Balkans earlier, became the Bulgarians, and the ethnic groups annexed by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century AD evolved into Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Bosniaks, and the ethnic groups that were influenced by Hungary in the early days and later incorporated into Austria with Hungary evolved into Croats and Slovenes.
Several famous Serbs in history, including the famous scientist Tesla
Among them, the Montenegrins maintained a certain degree of autonomy during the Ottoman rule, while the Macedonians were deeply influenced by Bulgaria in history, so the two also had certain differences from the Serbs. Slovenes mainly refer to the southern Slavic peoples living around the Alps, whose language is somewhat different from that of the Croats.
Tito, who rebuilt Yugoslavia after World War II, is Croat
At the same time, due to the different colonial history, the Bulgarian, Serbian, Montenegro and Macedonian communities mainly believe in the Orthodox Church, while the Croatian and Slovenian communities are Catholic. Bosniaks, on the other hand, were converts to Islam during Ottoman rule. At that time, religious differences were a higher threshold of ethnic separation in Europe than ethnic differences, so in the early 20th century, the differences between ethnic groups in Yugoslavia were still obvious.
However, with the decline of the Ottoman and Austrian empires in the 19th century and the rise of nationalism in Europe, in the second half of the 19th century, movements to establish a unified Yugoslav nation began to emerge in the areas inhabited by the Yugoslav ethnic population. Gavrilo Princip, a Serb who assassinated Grand Duke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in 1914, publicly described himself as a "Yugoslav nationalist" during his later trial.
Bosnian soldiers in Austria-Hungary
So after the defeat and dissolution of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in World War I in 1919, the southern Slavic peoples finally succeeded in forming a unified state (except Bulgaria). However, the existing ethnic differences could not be quickly eliminated, so the unified state established by the southern Slavic peoples still had a very ununified name, namely the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes".
Thus, after the establishment of the country, ethnic differences within it became the cause of many internal conflicts. In this situation, King Alexander of Yugoslavia abolished the original constitutional monarchy on January 6, 1929, took power himself, and renamed the original country the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Alexander, founder of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
After that, Yugoslav officials registered all southern Slavs in the country as ethnic Yugoslavia. But as we have just said, the emergence of the southern Slavic peoples has a long historical background, and the distinction between different ethnic groups at that time was also obvious, so of course it is not so easy to eliminate the differences between the ethnic groups. Just 5 years after King Alexander founded the Yugoslav Nation, he himself was assassinated by the "Revolutionary Organization of the Inter-Macedonian Revolution", a nationalist organization in Macedonia. Since then, the Yugoslav official has ceased to promote the concept of the Yugoslav nation, and the people of the various Slavic ethnic groups in its territory have regained their original national identity.
In World War II, Yugoslavia was occupied by Axis troops, and then divided into six and divided by different Axis powers. It was not until late World War II that the Yugoslav Communist guerrillas, led by the Croatian Tito, liberated most of Yugoslavia and reunited Yugoslavia into one country.
The Yugoslav Communist guerrillas, led by Tito, rebuilt Yugoslavia
But Tito himself was actually interested in integrating the various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, and had long publicly expressed his desire to see the whole of Yugoslavia merge into the same ethnic group while he was alive. Thus, in the 1971 Yugoslav census, Yugoslavia officially added the "Yugoslav nationality" to the officially determined ethnic classification, and indicated that all persons in its territory who identified with the Yugoslav nationality could voluntarily renounce their original national identity and change the ethnic group to the Yugoslav ethnic group. And Tito quickly put it into practice and changed his nationality to the Yugoslav ethnic group.
However, for the reasons we just mentioned, although Yugoslavia was a unified country at that time, the differences between various ethnic groups were really very obvious. So although Tito personally stood on the platform, in the 1971 census, only 273,000 people in Yugoslavia changed their national identity to ethnic Yugoslavia, a figure of only 1.33% of the total Yugoslav population.
Tito founded and joined the Yugoslav Nation
However, the desire to create a unified national identity in Yugoslavia did become a Yugoslav state policy for some time afterwards, so the number of Yugoslavs who identified with the Yugoslav ethnic group also increased significantly in the following 10 years. In just 10 years, the number of Yugoslavs identifying with the Yugoslav ethnic group has more than quadrupled. At the time of the second census in Yugoslavia in 1981, 1.21 million people in Yugoslavia had changed their national identity to ethnic Yugoslavia, accounting for 5.4% of the total population of Yugoslavia, of which Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina Autonomous Province and Montenegro all identified themselves as ethnic Yugoslavia accounted for more than 5% (Croatia exceeded 8%), and Serbia identified as Yugoslav population accounted for 4.8%.
It can be said that if this trend continues, there is a real possibility that the Yugoslav ethnic group will grow into a major ethnic group in Yugoslavia. But by this time, Yugoslavia had ushered in another turning point: one year earlier, in 1980, Tito, who had single-handedly recreated Yugoslavia after World War II and advocated the reconstruction of Yugoslav national identity, had died. Subsequently, the Yugoslav head of government was rotated among the heads of the republics along ethnic lines, and the concept of ethnic Yugoslavs was once again marginalized in a context of the rapid rise of nationalism in the republics.
The Balkan countries of the present
Thus, by the time of the last census in Yugoslavia in 1991, the number of people who chose to be ethnic Yugoslavia plummeted to about 2 per cent. This trend continued for more than two years, and Yugoslavia finally broke out into civil war and moved towards secession. (Image from the Internet)