THE NATIONAL IDENTITY OF THE POPULATION OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
THE NATIONAL IDENTITY OF THE POPULATION OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Summary/Abstract: While reflecting on this issue, I would like to note the important role of the disintegration of language known as Serbo-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian. During the existence of federal Yugoslavian state (from May 1945 to spring 1990), the language "was an instrument of policy, which seeks to create a unified society of internationalist socialist consciousness, rather than ethnic one”. Along with the change of the political situation, a common language ceased to exist, and its place has been taken by three separate national languages: Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian. However, in the case of identity issues, the notions of identity and human identification should be clarified as well as terms of bratstva and jedinstva(“brotherhood and unity”). Multidimensional issues of the identity and ethnic individuality of the only Slavic Muslim nation are proving the old thesis that mythical production is determined by the political reality. Patriotic consolidation, known well from Polish history of the twentieth century, is clearly based on the sequence rooted in the archetypes of freedom, equality, paradise lost, in the golden age of story, in which a man wishing to devote his existence to a great cause, sincerely believes. This phenomenon has permeated the Balkans that were facing an armed conflict. In their anachronistic view, the power of the state was determined by the size of its territory. Their fight to broaden the borders of the homeland as much possible, was supported by a solid ideological foundation. Bosnians became the subject of many myths, but, by Serbs and Croats, they were simultaneously regarded as a segment of their nation. Both in Belgrade and Zagreb, a romantic plot to create a mega nation - the great family gathering all potential members, conscious or not of his/hers Serbian or Croatian affiliation -would have to result in further proliferation of arguments proving affiliation of neighboring peoples.

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