Croatian is a part of the South Slavic sub-group of Slavic. The modern Croats are considered a Slavic people, which support anthropological, genetical, and ethnological studies, but the archaeological and other historic evidence on the migration of the Slavic settlers, the character of the native population on the present-day territory of Croatia, and their mutual relationship ….
This suggests their prodigious height can be attributed to genetics. For example, you would be tall in China but short in Russia. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. The exception was Bosnia and Hercegovina, the Muslims were the largest group, followed by Serbs, then Croats, and others.
Until the census, "Muslim" was not one of the categories listed for identification, and Serbs were the nominal majority in Bosnia and Hercegovina. In , however, Muslims could identify themselves as such on the census forms, and from then on, Muslims were the largest national group in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The forty-five years of communist Yugoslavia did not produce "brotherhood and unity.
Whatever central control existed depended on the communist party, and when that fragmented in January of , there was no central authority left in the country. In free elections in , the message that won in all of the republics was one of nationalism, of a distinctly illiberal bent. In each instance, the winning party promised to turn the republic into the national state of the majority "nation," ethnically defined.
In constitutional terms, the ethnic nation became sovereign: the Slovenes in Slovenia, the Croats in Croatia. Minorities were thereby excluded from among the primary bearers of sovereignty. Thus the post-communist transformation was from state socialism, in which the state was dedicated to the rule of that part of the population that formed the "working class," to state chauvinism, in which the state was dedicated to rule by that part of the population that formed the majority nation, ethnically defined.
Others were excluded politically, and soon, in many cases, physically. Empirically this was nonsense, since wherever Yugoslav peoples lived intermingled they intermarried in large numbers, particularly from the s until late into the s. However, the political rhetoric of enmity and partition rapidly overcame that of brotherhood and unity. What succeeded politically within Yugoslavia was the message that joint state of Serbs, Croats and others was not in fact possible, and that the various nations had the right to "self-determination.
One difference between the demise of Yugoslavia in and its creation in was a change in the dominant patterns of serbian nationalism. Where the dominant Serb national ideology had been inclusive of all speakers of Serbo-Croatian in , by the Serbs had accepted a nationalist ideology that was an exclusive as that of the Croats.
The single distinguishing criterium of Serbs, Croats and Muslims became religion, as an inherited characteristic rather than active belief. Thus Serbs did not contest the identities of Croats and Muslims as separate peoples, nor did they contest the rights of the various Yugoslav peoples to "self-determination. From their point of view, the Croats could have their Croatia, but it could not include areas with Serb majorities. Similarly, if the Muslims wanted an independent Bosnia and Hercegovina, that was fine, but it would not include regions with large numbers of Serbs.
In the case of Croatia, the Serbs' suspicion was perhaps justified. It had then immediately taken steps to ensure that the Serbs would be rendered second-class citizens in a Croatia defined constitutionally as the national state of the ethnically Croat people. The partition of Croatia began in August , when Krajina region Serbs, who formed a strong local majority there, resisted attempts by the new nationalist Croatian government to impose upon them purely Croat state symbols, including a flag very much like that of the fascist state that had slaughtered so many Serbs in When Croatia declared independence in June , the Serbs in this region and in some other parts of Croatia announced their own desire to remain in Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav army, rapidly transforming into a Serbian army, supported the Serbs. In the course of the fighting, from August until January , the Serbs took control of about one-third of the territory of Croatia. Some of these regions had a Serbian majority before the war began, but others had not.
The pattern of the war in Croatia was the de facto partition of the regions of the republic that had been most mixed ethnically. In effect, in these six months of war, the mixed areas of Croatia were divided, and the populations forced to divide themselves, rather like the Hindu and Muslim populations of India and Pakistan in , though on a much smaller scale.
The effects of the population transfers have been to render hundreds of thousands of people homeless, refugees, while homogenizing the populations. An index of this homogenization is that by March of , only about , Serbs remained in parts of Croatia under government control, of the more than , in those regions before the war began. The others had fled to Serb-controlled areas of Croatia and Bosnia, or to Serbia itself.
The Bosnian situation was more complicated. Since there was no single majority nation, in independent Bosnia and Hercegovina could not be the nation-state of any single group, unless its citizens chose to define themselves primarily as Bosnians rather than as Muslims, Serbs, and Croats.
This political partition of and by the voters proved fatal to Bosnia as it became increasingly clear that Yugoslavia would disintegrate in the name of the separatist self-determination of the separate Yugoslav peoples. The increasing likelihood that there would be separate, independent Serb and Croat states made an independent Bosnia and Hercegovina an unattractive option for most Serbs and Croats living in that republic, at least outside of Sarajevo.
But the deeper roots lie far back in history. The main rivals are the Serbs and Croats, two Slavic peoples with similar languages - though Serbian is written in Cyrillic and Croatian in Latin script - but whose histories are very different. The Serbs are Orthodox Christians whose religion was crucial in keeping alive their national identity during almost four centuries of Ottoman Turkish occupation.
Of the nations that formed Yugoslavia in , the Serbs were alone in having liberated themselves from foreign rule and set up an independent state in the 19th century.
The Croats spent centuries under the Austro-Hungarian empire and their Catholicism and Central European outlook were equally important in shaping their identity. They resented the fact that the first Yugoslav state, which lasted from , was to a great extent Serbia writ large, with a Serbian king and army and a Serb- dominated political system.
When the Nazis dismembered Yugoslavia in , they created a fascist puppet state of Croatia, which incorporated most of Bosnia. This state slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Jews. From more than a million Yugoslavs died, more than half at the hands of each other. Tito rebuilt Yugoslavia as a Communist federation of six equal republics, but ethnic antagonisms were never far below the surface. The Serbs disliked Tito's recognition of the Macedonians and the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina as distinct nationalities.
Because of this, Serbs regarded themselves as the dominant partners when they joined the Croats and Slovenes in to found the state what would be called Yugoslavia. By in Bosnia, Muslims represented the largest single population group. The Serbs wished to remain part of Yugoslavia and create a nation only for Serbians. The Bosnian War was marked by ethnic cleansing, with thousands of civilians killed and millions displaced. On July 11, , Serbian forces attacked and overwhelmed the city of Srebrenica, a city the U.
The forces separated the Bosniak civilians at Srebrenica, putting the women and girls on buses and sending them away while killing the men and boys on the spot or bussing them off to mass killing sites.
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