Interwar Yugoslavia Following the First World War, the new Kingdom was reliant on patronage from the Serb monarchy that resulted in tendencies of centralisation and Serbianisation that other ethnic communities in the country opposed. In Belgrade a new government was formed after the war that quickly Serbianised the gendarmerie and made non-Serbs in the country view the new Kingdom as an extension of the old Kingdom of Serbia.
Vardar Macedonia . The western parts of today Bulgaria and northwestern parts of present-day North Macedonia are shown as populated by Serbs. There are depicted also distinct "Slavic Macedonians". However, in this way he promoted the idea that Macedonian Slavs were in fact
Southern Serbs. The region of present-day
North Macedonia until 1912 was part of the Ottoman Empire. According to
Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 Edition, at the beginning of the 20th century the Slavs constituted the majority of the population in Macedonia. Per Britannica itself the bulk of the Slavs there were regarded as "
Bulgarians". Although the majority of the Slavs did not have a clear sense of national identity, it was purely superficial and imposed by the nationalist
propaganda campaigns. National identity was espoused by small number of educated people, often called intelligentsia, consisting of schoolteachers, priests, and government officials. Immediately after
annexation of
Vardar Macedonia to the
Kingdom of Serbia, the Macedonian Slavs were faced with the policy of forced serbianisation. Those who declared as ethnic
Bulgarians were, harassed or deported to Bulgaria. The high clergymen of the
Bulgarian Exarchate were also deported. Bulgarian schools were closed and teachers expelled. The population of Macedonia was forced to declare as Serbs. Those who refused were beaten and tortured. Prominent people and teachers from
Skopje who refused to declare as Serbs were deported to Bulgaria. then called "Southern Serbia" (unofficially) or "Vardar Banovina" (officially). The
dialects spoken in this region were referred to as dialects of
Serbo-Croatian. Southern dialects were suppressed with regards to education, military and other national activities, and their usage was punishable. Following the
First World War Serbian rule was reinstated over Vardar Macedonia, the local Bulgarian or Macedonian population was not recognised and an attempted Serbianisation occurred. Yugoslavia aimed to incorporate Macedonia through "assimilation" and "nationalisation" through two main goals. Total numbers were 4,200 Serb families with 50,000 Serb gendarmes and troops relocated from Serbia to Vardar Macedonia to advance the Serbianisation of the region and population. A small number of inhabitants did declare themselves as
South Serbs and
Serbs, often done for reasons of opportunism. The same authorities held conflicting views toward the population, whom they told were Serbian, whereas local inhabitants noticed they were treated unequally in relation to their Serb counterparts. The state considered individuals that supported local autonomy, culture or language as a
Bulgaroman and sought their suppression. Regions with pro-Bulgarian sentiments such as
Tikveš and
Bregalnica were violently Serbianised by Serb
četniks that resulted in the population being gathered up for forced labour and local leaders killed. In the 1930s a more homogeneous generation was growing up in Vardar Macedonia, which resisted Serbianisation and increasingly identified itself as
Macedonian, but which also made it clear that the Bulgarian idea was no more the only option for them. A sizable part of the local population nonetheless had undergone a transformation as Serbianised Slavs. The government and its widespread massive Serbianisation campaign was unsuccessful in trying to eliminate the traces of an emerging Macedonian national consciousness among the local population. The failed assimilation of the region was due to Serb policies that were exploitative and colonial and not directed toward integration. The state controlled the local tobacco monopoly and acquired a steady and sizable amount of revenue without investing much in return to raise the living standards of the inhabitants. A high rate of turnover existed among ministers and officials who mainly showed up prior to elections or to advance their own career and often staff in the local administration from other parts of the country were incompetent and corrupt. Locals were excluded from involvement in the sociopolitical system, suppression of elites occurred and state security forces instilled an environment of fear among inhabitants. Local inhabitants were mistrusted by the political elite of Belgrade whom designated them as being pure Serbs or through terms such as the "classical south". During the interwar period Bulgaria resented the Serbianisation policy in Vardar Macedonia. In
World War II, the
Bulgarian Army occupied southern Yugoslavia and their troops were welcomed as liberators from Serbianisation by the local Macedonian Slavs.
Kosovo The attempt at the Serbianisation of Kosovo and Albanian reaction toward resisting those efforts has been a factor contributing to conflict among
Albanians and the Serbs. The region was strategically important for the state and its security with the local Albanian population deemed as "unreliable". It was a settlement plan to encourage Serb and Montenegrin settlers from other parts of Yugoslavia to resettle in Kosovo through preferential treatment of financial and land incentives to strengthen the Slavic element. The process involved the construction of new settlements in Kosovo and due to serbianisation efforts some were named Lazarevo,
Obilić, Miloševo after heroes from
Serbian epic poetry. The Albanian population was encouraged to leave the region, as they were perceived to be immigrants in need of repatriation to either Turkey, Albania or expected to assimilate within Yugoslavia. The state closed Albanian schools in 1918 as part of its efforts toward Serbianising the local Albanian population. Between 1918 and 1923, as a result of state policies 30,000 and 40,000 mainly Muslim Albanians migrated to the Turkish regions of
İzmir and
Anatolia. Other parts of the Serbianisation policy in Kosovo included establishing an effective government administration and refusing autonomous Albanian cultural development in the region.
Communist Yugoslavia SR Macedonia After WWII
Marshal Tito formed out
SR Macedonia of a part of 1929–1941
Vardar Banovina, and encouraged the development of Macedonian identity and Macedonian as a separate
South Slavic language. Some researchers have described the process of codifying the Macedonian language during 1945–1950 as 'Serbianization'. Within the period of Macedonian language codification, two tendencies emerged: one language majority, that was pro-Macedonian, with some pro-Bulgarian biases, and one language minority openly pro-Serbian. The language minority, with the help of the Yugoslav political establishment defeated the language majority. Macedonian became a “first” official language in the newly proclaimed
SR Macedonia, where Serbian was declared as “second” language, while Bulgarian was prohibited. The irreversible turning point of Serbianisation of the Macedonian standard took place in the late 1950s. In this way the influence of
Serbo-Croatian arose to such a level, that the colloquial speech of the capital
Skopje has been described as a "
creolized form of Serbian". For Bulgarians,
Macedonian nationalism represents the result of the Serbification process in the region. Bulgarian scholars and politicians maintain that the Macedonian language was Serbified as it adopted words from the Serbian language in the postwar codification process under Yugoslavia that the Bulgarian government has denounced. At that time the
Yugoslav Communists recognized also the existence of a separate Macedonian nation to quiet the fears of the Slavic population that a new Yugoslavia would continue to follow the pre-war policies of serbianization. According to the British academician,
James Pettifer, the pro-Belgrade elite that was built up in Skopje, consisted of hardline communists who were really Serbs, but masked as Macedonians. They justified their hegemony through a manufacturing a local history which was closer to a mythology.
"Western Outlands" Modern-day Serbian municipalities,
Bosilegrad and
Dimitrovgrad, which are called
Western Outlands by Bulgarians, were ceded by
Bulgaria to the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1920 as a result of the
Treaty of Neuilly, after Bulgaria had been one of the
Central Powers defeated in
World War I. All Bulgarian schools and churches there were closed. Serbian primary schools were opened, teaching and learning in Serbian, while Bulgarian was prohibited. In 1920 a Law on the Protection of the State was adopted, which forced the
Bulgarians there to accept Serbian names and surnames. A large part of the population emigrated to Bulgaria. An armed conflict started in 1922 when pro-Bulgarian separatist
IWORO carried out numerous assaults on the Tzaribrod–Belgrade railway. Bulgarians have received the status of a national minority after
WWII. They live in the Dimitrovgrad (previously named Caribrod) and
Bosilegrad municipalities and in several villages in
Pirot,
Babušnica and
Surdulica municipalities. However, in 1948 there was a sharp deterioration for several decades of the Bulgarian-Yugoslav relations, due to the
Tito–Stalin split. The Bulgarian teachers there were expelled again. The population was subjected to humiliation and systematic psychological terror. Bulgarians made the highest percentage among the minorities detained on
Goli Otok labour camp after the
WWII. The decades of geographic isolation of other Bulgarians, and the repressions additionally led this community to inability to build its own minority space for many years.
Yugoslav wars During the 1980s, some Serb intellectuals criticised the
League of Communists and held them responsible for Yugoslavia's political and economic troubles while offering solutions to the "Serbian question" through discussions and explanations of the Serb predicament. One of the narratives that emerged claimed that under communism Serbs had abandoned their old traditions resulting in a loss of Serbian identity and unawareness of Serb interests with looming historical defeat in a process called "de-Serbisation".
Yugoslav army The
Yugoslav army (JNA) prior to the 1990s was a multi-ethnic force consisting of conscripts, regulars, commissioned and non-commissioned officers that for the highest ranks was determined through an ethnic principle of representative proportionality reflected in Yugoslavia's multi-ethnic composition. It transformed from being multi-ethnic into a mainly Serb organisation under the Serbian republic's President
Slobodan Milošević who held control and command over the force. During the period non-Serb personnel defected to the new armies of the new post-Yugoslav republics and others who felt disillusioned yet were unable to defect resigned. As the army became dominated more by Serbs a program has instituted to retire non-Serb personnel that resulted in 24 generals remaining out of 150 on the eve of when the JNA was formally disbanded on 19 May 1992. Following these processes the JNA was impacted due to the realisation that Yugoslavia no longer existed and its priority shifted toward creating the frontiers of a new Serbian state. At the end of May 1992, over 90% of the JNA was composed of Serbs. Seen as reliable by Belgrade,
Ratko Mladić was promoted to general and given command over the
Serbian armed forces in Bosnia while maintaining the fiction of a separate armed force as the old Yugoslav chain of command remained. Mladić and Serb Bosnian forces under his command followed Belgrade's Serbian nationalist aims and objectives.
Serb military forces in Croatia were also under the control of Belgrade. On 25–26 August 1993 at a gathering the Supreme Defense Council of retired generals, Milošević's full control over the Yugoslav army was complete as the few remaining traces of the JNA were done away with. It was succeeded by the
Army of Yugoslavia (Vojska Jugoslavije -VJ). Serbianisation continued during the first few years of the new military force through purges of personnel arising out of a need to ensure the loyalty of the armed forces to Milošević. During the Yugoslav Wars, the Serbianised Yugoslav National Army was involved in the destruction of urban centres such as
Sarajevo,
Mostar and
Vukovar. Territories within Bosnia conquered during the war by Bosnian Serbs were subjected to homogenisation and assimilation through Serbianisation. The processes of Serbianisation of the Yugoslav army resulted in the creation of three Serbian armies under the control of Milošević. Following the conclusion of the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s, the Serbianisation process of the Yugoslav army (JNA) was confirmed at the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) by witnesses.
Kosovo In the late 1980s Milošević promoted a
Serbian nationalist platform that entailed the re-Serbianisation of two autonomous Yugoslav provinces, Kosovo and
Vojvodina. On 23 March 1989, the
autonomy of Kosovo within the Yugoslav federation was revoked by the government of the
Serb Republic and Serbianisation of the province followed. During the 1990s under the government of Milošević the Serbianisation of Kosovo occurred. The Kosovo police force that was newly Serbianised maltreated the Albanian population. At the
University of Pristina similar reforms occurred and lecturers that were not dismissed were required to use Serbian as the medium of instruction, with the level of Albanians at the university declining toward the conclusion of 1991. The parliament of Kosovo repudiated Serbianisation and
made a declaration of the province's independence, established an alternative government and ministry of education. Demonstrations by Albanians were followed by more dismissals and reprisals in the education sector which led to the establishment of an Albanian parallel education system consisting of previously dismissed teachers giving lessons in private homes. Hospitals had their Albanian nurses and physicians dismissed. In 1991 public discourse was Serbianised through a campaign by the government such as targeting signs and government organs that became unfamiliar to many monolingual Albanians. Kosovo media was Serbianised as 1,300 employees of Radio & TV Pristina were dismissed with television coming under Belgrade control and a propaganda tool for the government. Albanian language newspapers were shut down and the most popular newspapers placed under the control of the government while other independent papers allowed to exist were under constant pressure from the state. Albanian municipal officials and industrial workers were also dismissed from their employment. At the time, for Serb nationalists the process of Serbianisation entailed the resettlement of Serbs to Kosovo and limiting the favorable demographic position Albanians held. Following similar themes the parliament of Serbia on 11 January 1995 passed the
Decree for Colonisation of Kosovo of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Few Serbs took up the offer due to the worsening situation in Kosovo at the time. Serbianisation of the Kosovo economy also occurred with areas inhabited by Serbs receiving investment, new infrastructure and employment opportunities, while Albanians overall were either excluded or had limited economic participation. The
Kosovo war began in 1998. In January 1999, the government authorities initiated a planned offensive against Kosovo Albanians that involved the violent liquidation of assets aimed at their displacement and Serbianisation of the region.
Serbian language Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the official language
Serbo-Croatian broke up into separate official languages and the process in relation to Serbian involved the Serbianisation of its lexicon.
Other ethnic groups Voluntary Serbianisation has sometimes been attributed to
Romanians in Serbia since the 19th century. The
Hungarian minority in north Serbia (
Vojvodina) has also been affected by Serbianisation since the aftermath of
World War II. ==21st century==