Before World War I Turks and Albanians in Ottoman Kosovo Vilayet Anti-Serb sentiment in the
Kosovo Vilayet grew in the aftermath of the
Ottoman-Serb and
Ottoman-Greek conflicts during the period between 1877 and 1897. With the
Battle of Vranje in 1878, thousands of
Ottoman-Albanian troops and Albanian civilians were expelled into the Eastern part of Ottoman-held Kosovo Vilayet. These displaced persons, known as
Muhaxir, were highly hostile towards the Serbs in the areas they had retreated to, considering that they had been
expelled from the
Vranje area due to the Ottoman-Serb conflict. This animosity fuelled anti-Serb sentiment, which resulted in Albanians committing widespread
atrocities against Serb civilians, including physical assaults and killings, across the entire territory, including parts of
Pristina and
Bujanovac. Atrocities against Serbs in the region eventually
peaked in 1901 after the region was flooded with weapons that were not handed back to the Ottomans after the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. In May 1901, Albanians pillaged and partially burned the cities of
Novi Pazar,
Sjenica, and Pristina, and massacred Serbs in the area of Kolašin. David Little suggests that the actions of Albanians at the time constituted
ethnic cleansing as they attempted to create a homogeneous area free of Christian Serbs.
Bulgarians in Ottoman Macedonia The
Society Against Serbs was a
Bulgarian nationalist organization established in 1897 in
Thessaloniki,
Ottoman Empire. The organization's activists were both "Centralists" and "Vrhovnists" of the Bulgarian revolutionary committees (the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the
Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee). By 1902, they had murdered at least 43 people and wounded 52 others, including owners of Serbian schools, teachers,
Serbian Orthodox clergy, and other notable Serbs in the
Ottoman Empire. Additionally, Bulgarians used the slur word "
Serbomans" for people of non-Serbian origin, but with Serbian self-determination in Macedonia.
19th and early 20th century in the Habsburg Croatia Anti-Serbian sentiment coalesced in 19th-century Croatia when some of the Croatian intelligentsia planned the creation of a Croatian
nation-state.
Croatia was at the time part of the
Habsburg monarchy, while since 1804, it was part of the
Austrian Empire, although it remained in personal union with the
Kingdom of Hungary. After the
Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, it eventually became part of
Transleithania, while
Dalmatia and
Istria remained separate
Austrian crown lands.
Ante Starčević, the leader of the
Party of Rights between 1851 and 1896, believed Croats should confront their neighbors, including
Serbs. Among others, he wrote that Serbs were an "unclean race" and, with the co-founder of his party,
Eugen Kvaternik, denied the existence of Serbs or Slovenes in Croatia, perceiving their political consciousness as a threat. During the 1850s, Starčević forged the term
Slavoserb () to describe people supposedly ready to serve foreign rulers, initially used to refer to some Serbs and his Croat opponent, and later applied to all Serbs by his followers. The
Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 likely contributed to the development of Starčević's anti-Serb sentiment, as he believed that it significantly increased the chances for the establishment of
Greater Croatia.
David Bruce MacDonald has put forward a thesis that Starčević's theories could only justify
ethnocide but not
genocide because Starčević intended to
assimilate Serbs as "Orthodox Croats", and not to exterminate them. Starčević's ideas formed the basis for the destructive politics of his successor,
Josip Frank, a
Croatian Jewish lawyer and politician who converted to
Catholicism and led numerous anti-Serbian incidents. Josip Frank carried on Starčević's ideology and defined Croat identity "strictly in terms of Serbophobia." Due to his staunch opposition to any cooperation between Croats and Serbs,
Milovan Djilas described him as "a leading anti-Serbian demagogue and the instigator of the
persecution of Serbs in Croatia." His followers, referred to as
Frankovci, would go on to become the most ardent members of
Ustaše. Under Frank's leadership, the Party of Rights became obsessively anti-Serb, and such sentiments dominated Croatian political life in the 1880s. British historian
C. A. Macartney stated that due to the "gross intolerance" toward Serbs who lived in
Slavonia, they had to seek protection from Count
Károly Khuen-Héderváry, the
Ban of Croatia-Slavonia, in 1883. During his reign from 1883 to 1903, Hungarian authorities intentionally exacerbated further division and hatred between Serbs and Croats to further their
Magyarization policy. Carmichael writes that ethnic division between the Croats and the Serbs at the turn of the 20th century was stoked by a nationalist press and was "incubated entirely in the minds of extremists and
fanatics, with little evidence that the areas in which Serbs and Croats had lived for many centuries in close proximity, such as
Krajina, were more prone to
ethnically inspired violence." In 1902 major anti-Serb riots in Croatia were caused by an article written by Serbian nationalist writer
Nikola Stojanović (1880–1964) titled
Do istrage vaše ili naše (
Till the destruction of you or us) which denied the existence of a Croat nation and forecasted the result of an "inevitable" Serbian-Croatian conflict, that was reprinted in the
Serb Independent Party's
Srbobran magazine. Between the mid-19th and early 20th century there were two factions in the
Catholic Church in Croatia: the progressive faction which preferred uniting Croatia with Serbia in a progressive Slavic country, and the conservative faction that opposed this. The conservative faction became dominant by the end of the 19th century: The First Croatian Catholic Congress held in
Zagreb in 1900 was unreservedly Serbophobic and anti-Orthodox.
Oskar Potiorek, governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, closed many Serb societies and significantly contributed to the anti-Serb mood before the outbreak of
World War I. The
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and
Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in 1914 led to the
Anti-Serb pogrom in Sarajevo.
Ivo Andrić refers to this event as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate." The crowds directed their anger principally at Serb shops, residences of prominent Serbs, the
Serbian Orthodox Church, schools, banks, the Serb cultural society
Prosvjeta, and the
Srpska riječ newspaper offices. Two Serbs were killed that day. That night there were anti-Serb riots in other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire including
Zagreb and
Dubrovnik. In the aftermath of the Sarajevo assassination anti-Serb sentiment ran high throughout the Habsburg Empire. Austria-Hungary imprisoned and extradited around 5,500 prominent Serbs, sentenced 460 to death, and established the predominantly Muslim special militia
Schutzkorps which carried on the persecution of Serbs. The Sarajevo assassination became the
casus belli for World War I. Taking advantage of an international wave of revulsion against this act of "Serbian nationalist terrorism," Austria-Hungary gave Serbia an ultimatum which led to World War I. Although the Serbs of Austria-Hungary were loyal citizens whose majority participated in its forces during the war, anti-Serb sentiment systematically spread and members of the ethnic group were persecuted all over the country. Austria-Hungary soon occupied the territory of the
Kingdom of Serbia, including
Kosovo, boosting already intense anti-Serbian sentiment among Albanians whose volunteer units were established to reduce the number of
Serbs in Kosovo. A cultural example is the
jingle "Alle Serben müssen sterben" ("All Serbs Must Die"), which was popular in
Vienna in 1914. (It was also known as "Serbien muß sterbien"). Orders issued on 3 and 13 October 1914 banned the use of
Serbian Cyrillic in the
Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, limiting it to use in religious instruction. A decree was passed on 3 January 1915, that banned Serbian Cyrillic completely from public use. An imperial order on 25 October 1915, banned the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the
Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, except "within the scope of Serb Orthodox Church authorities."
Interwar period Fascist Italy In the 1920s,
Italian fascists accused Serbs of having "
atavistic impulses" and they claimed that the
Yugoslavs were conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient
masonry and its funds." One
antisemitic claim was that Serbs were part of a "
social-democratic,
masonic Jewish internationalist plot."
Benito Mussolini viewed not just the Serbs but the whole "
Slavic race" as inferior and barbaric. He identified the Yugoslavs as a threat to Italy and he claimed that the threat rallied Italians together at the end of
World War I: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians."
Croats in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia The relations between Croats and Serbs were stressed at the very beginning of the Yugoslav state. Opponents to the
Yugoslav unification in the Croatian elite portrayed Serbs negatively, as hegemonists and exploiters, introducing Serbophobia into Croatian society. It was reported that in Lika, there was serious tension between Croats and Serbs. In post-war Osijek, the
Šajkača hat was banned by the police but the Austro-Hungarian cap was freely worn, and in the school and judicial system the Orthodox Serbs were termed "
Greek-Eastern." There was voluntary segregation in
Knin. A 1993 report of the
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe stated that
Belgrade's centralist policies for the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia led to increased anti-Serbian sentiment in Croatia.
World War II Nazi Germany |150x150px Serbs, as well as other
Slavs (mainly
Poles and
Russians), as well as non-Slavic peoples (such as
Jews and
Roma), were not considered
Aryans by
Nazi Germany. Instead, they were considered subhumans, inferior races (
Untermenschen), and
foreign races, and as a result, they were not considered part of the Aryan
master race. Serbs, along with the Poles, were at the bottom of the Slavic "racial hierarchy" established by the Nazis. Anti-Serb sentiment increasingly infiltrated German
Nazism after
Adolf Hitler was appointed as Germany's chancellor in 1933. The roots of this sentiment can be found in his early life in Vienna, and when he was informed about the
Yugoslav coup d'état that a group of pro-Western Serb officers conducted in March 1941, he decided to punish all Serbs as the main enemies of his new Nazi order. The propaganda ministry of
Joseph Goebbels, with the support of the Bulgarian, Italian, and Hungarian press, was tasked with stimulating anti-Serb sentiment among the
Croats,
Slovenes, and
Hungarians. The propaganda of the
Axis powers accused the group of persecuting minorities and establishing concentration camps for
ethnic Germans in order to justify an attack on
Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany portrayed itself as a force which would save the Yugoslav people from the threat of Serb nationalism. In 1941,
Yugoslavia was invaded and occupied by the military forces of the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Kingdom of Hungary).
Independent State of Croatia and Ustaše |150x150px The
Axis occupation of Serbia enabled the
Ustaše, a Croatian fascist Its anti-Serb sentiment was
racist and
genocidal. The new government adopted racial laws, similar to
those which existed in Nazi Germany, and it aimed them at
Jews,
Roma people, and Serbs, who were all defined as being "aliens outside the national community" and persecuted throughout the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during
World War II. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 500,000 Serbs were killed in the NDH by the Ustaše and their Axis allies. Overall, the number of Serbs who were killed in Yugoslavia during World War II was about 700,000, the majority of whom were massacred by various fascist forces. Many historians and authors describe the Ustaše regime's mass killings of Serbs as meeting the definition of genocide, including
Raphael Lemkin, who became recognized for coining the word
genocide and initiating the
Genocide Convention. The
Sisak concentration camp was set up on 3 August 1942 by the Ustaše government following the
Kozara Offensive, and it was specially
formed for children. Some priests in the
Croatian Catholic Church actively participated in these Ustaša massacres and the mass conversion of Serbs to Catholicism. During the war, about 250,000 people of the Orthodox faith who were living within the territory of the NDH were either forced or coerced into converting to Catholicism by the Ustaša authorities. One of the reasons for the close cooperation of a part of the Catholic clergy was its anti-Serb position.
Kosovo , circa 1941|203x203px When
Kosovo became part of Serbia after WWI, the Yugoslav authorities expelled 400,000 Albanians from Kosovo in the interwar period and promoted the settlement of
mostly Serb colonists in the region. In WWII, western and central Kosovo became part of Albania, with Kosovo Albanians subsequently enacting brutal reprisals against the colonists. During the Italian occupation of Albania in WWII, between 70,000 and 100,000 Serbs were expelled and thousands massacred in annexed Kosovo by Albanian paramilitaries, mainly by the
Vulnetari and
Balli Kombëtar. The
21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) was formed on 1 May 1944, composed of ethnic Albanians, named after Albanian national hero
Skanderbeg, who fought the Ottomans in the 15th century. The division was better known for murdering, raping, and looting in predominantly Serbian areas than for participating in combat operations on behalf of the German war effort. Deva and his collaborators were anti-Slavic and advocated for an ethnically pure
Greater Albania. By September 1944, with the
Allied victory in the Balkans imminent, Deva and his men attempted to purchase weapons from withdrawing German soldiers in order to organize a "final solution" of the Slavic population of Kosovo. Nothing came of this as the powerful
Yugoslav Partisans prevented any large-scale
ethnic cleansing of Slavs from occurring. However, these conflicts were relatively low-level compared with other areas of Yugoslavia during the war years.
After World War II Nearly four decades later, in the 1986 draft of the
Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, concern was expressed that Serbophobia, together with other things, could provoke the restoration of Serbian nationalism with dangerous consequences. The 1987 Yugoslav economic crisis, and different opinions within Serbia and other republics about what were the best ways to resolve it, exacerbated growing anti-Serbian sentiment among non-Serbs, but also enhanced Serbian support for Serbian nationalism.
Breakup of Yugoslavia During the
Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, anti-Serb sentiment became widespread across Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, and because of its independence and its historical association with Serbophobia, the Independent State of Croatia would sometimes serve as a rallying symbol for people who intended to proclaim aversion towards Serbia. It also worked vice versa. And while the Serbian nationalism of the time is well-known, anti-Serb sentiment was present in all non-Serb republics of Yugoslavia during
its breakup. It is estimated that in the 90s, up to 2.8 million books were written off from Croatian public libraries, with most of them being destroyed under the guise of the regular process of writing off lost and damaged books from the library systems; the targeted books were frequently Serbian or printed in
Cyrillic, along with books ideologically associated with the dissolved Yugoslavian state. In 1997, the
FR Yugoslavia submitted claims to the
International Court of Justice in which it charged that Bosnia and Herzegovina was responsible for the acts of genocide which were committed against the
Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acts which were incited by anti-Serb sentiment and rhetoric which was communicated through all forms of the media. For example, The
Novi Vox, a Muslim youth paper, published a poem titled "Patriotic Song" with the following verses: "Dear mother, I'm going to plant willows; We'll hang Serbs from them; Dear mother, I'm going to sharpen knives; We'll soon fill pits again." The paper
Zmaj od Bosne published an article with a sentence saying "Each Muslim must name a Serb and take an oath to kill him." During the war in Croatia, French writer
Alain Finkielkraut insinuated that Serbs were inherently evil, comparing Serb actions to the Nazis during World War II. During the
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, columnist
Thomas Friedman wrote the following in
The New York Times on 23 April 1999: "Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (the Serbs certainly think so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want
1389? [referring to the
Battle of Kosovo] We can do 1389 too." Friedman urged the US to destroy "in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, bridge [and] road", annex Albania and Macedonia as "U.S. protectorates", "occupy the Balkans for years," and "[g]ive war a chance."
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) labeled Friedman's remarks "war-mongering" and "crude race-hatred and war-crime agitation."
Danon Cadik,
Chief Rabbi of Yugoslavia, condemned what he stated to be the "unrestrained anti-Serbian propaganda, raging during all this war,
following the Nazi model, but much more efficient means and in a much more sophisticated and more expensive way." Outside the Balkans,
Noam Chomsky observed that not just the government of Serbia, but also the people, were reviled and threatened. He described the
jingoism as "a phenomenon I have not seen in my lifetime since the hysteria whipped up about '
the Japs' during World War II." Chomsky made such comments while also
denying some aspects of the
Bosnian genocide.
Criticism Some criticism of Anti-Serb sentiment or Serbophobia purportedly corresponds to its interplay with perceived historical revisionism and myths practiced by some Serbian nationalist writers and the government of Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s. According to political scientist
David Bruce MacDonald, in the 1980s Serbs increasingly began to compare themselves to Jews as fellow victims in world history, which involved tragedizing historic events, from the 1389
Battle of Kosovo to the
1974 Yugoslav Constitution, as every aspect of history was seen as yet another example of persecution and victimisation of Serbs at the hands of external negative forces. Serbophobia was often likened to
antisemitism and expressed itself as a re-analysis of history where every event that had a negative effect on the Serbs was likened to a tragedy, and used to justify territorial expansion into neighbouring regions. According to Christopher Bennett, former director of the
International Crisis Group in the Balkans, the idea of historic Serb martyrdom grew out of the thinking and writing of
Dobrica Ćosić who developed a complex and paradoxical theory of Serb national persecution, which evolved over two decades between the late 1960s and the late 1980s into the
Greater Serbian programme. Additionally, Serbian nationalist politicians have made associations to Serbian "martyrdom" in history (from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 to the genocide during World War II) to justify Serbian politics of the 1980s and 1990s. ==Contemporary and recent issues==