Language and Religion of the Former Yugoslavia

Sal teaches us a thing or two about the region formerly known as Yugoslavia, and why this region helped spark World War I.

Understanding the ethnic and religious commonalities and differences

in the state or the region that used to be Yugoslavia can be quite confusing.

But, what I want to do in this video is try to give a primer on it.

It's really key to understanding some of the triggers of World War I

and to, obviously, understand the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was quite ugly

during the fall of communism in the late 80s and early 90s.

So, first of all, it's a good idea to understand

where the word Yugoslavia comes from.

It's literally referring to the southern Slavic states

So, "Yugo" is referring to southern

and "slavia" is talking about the Slavic states.

When people talk about Slavic languages, they're talking about

the languages that are spoken in this region, but also

much of eastern Europe and what is now Russia.

Now, what we have here in blue is we have shaded in where

Serbo-Croation is spoken.

Which is the dominant Slavic language in this region.

And, there are multiple dialects, some people will say

"that's croation, or montenegran, or serbian" or whatever it might be.

But, most linguists say they're pretty close to each other.

And you can kind of categorize them as one language,

as Serbo-Croation.

And you see that it's now spoken in modern day

Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro.

That is the commonality here, the thing that ties together this region.

Now on top of that, the slovenian language is also Slavic

it's closely related to Serbo-Croation.

In Macedonia they also speak a Slavic language.

It's closer to Bulgarian, but it has some close ties,

it's not completely different than Serbo-Croation.

So you have this linguistic connection throughout this area.

Now, what divides this area is really religion and history.

So, this area, if you go back hundreds of years,

it was under the control of various empires.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire.

With the Austro-Hungarian Empire, you're talking about

a Roman Catholic Empire.

When you're talking about the Ottomans,

you're dealing with a Muslim Empire.

And they held different parts of this territory for hundreds of years.

And so what ends up is really a mix of religions,

and that often gets tied to what people percieve as their ethnicity.

And so what I have here is kind of a religious breakdown

of the former state of Yugoslavia.

So, in this pinkish color right over here, I have the areas that are

predominantly Roman Catholic.

And I say predominantly because it really is

all mixed together.

So, Slovenia, Croatia, primarily Roman Catholic.

If you look at Serbia, and Montenegro, primarily Eastern Orthodox.

In Kosovo, you have a strong Muslim majority, right over there.

And Kosovo, before its breakup was kind of part of

Serbia and Montenegro, despite it having this very different religious makeup.

And then Bosnia and Herzegovina is where it gets really really mixed up.

Roughly half of the population, and it's been moving over the centuries,

but the dominant religion there is Islam.

And, in general this is where it can be confusing.

When people talk about a Bosniak, they're talking about

a Bosnian Muslim.

But, Bosnia and Herzgovina also has significant fractions of

Serbs, who are Eastern Orthodox, and that's why

I put the brown here as well, it's about a third of the population

and it also has a pretty sizeable Roman Catholic population

or we can say Bosnian-Croats.

So, just to be clear here - it can be very confusing, even when you hear

a history of it, or you hear it on the news - I remember

in the 90s, hearing the news and getting very confused.

If someone is talking about a Bosnian Muslim, or a Bosniak,

that's a Muslim living in Bosnia, that's what they tend

to be referring to. If they say a

Bosnian-Croat, this would be an ethnically Croat, who is

living in Bosnia. And they would tend to be Roman Catholic.

And then if you have a Bosnian Serb, this is someone who

ethnically identifies themselves as a Serbian, or as a Serb,

who lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but is probably

going to be Eastern Orthodox.

So, you can imagine, you have these strong linguistic

and even ethnic ties, but at some point, because of the religion,

and dialect changes, there's also a significant

amount of differences here, especially when things got ugly,

as you had the fall of Communism.

So, hopefully this lays a groundwork of the commonalities

and the differences here.

And it will help us understand what got us into World War I,

or what triggered World War I, and also some of the

ugliness that was seen in the early 90s.

And just to finish up, with just a little bit of context,

this was not a unified state until World War I was,

to some degree was precipitated by a desire to make this a unified state.

This ethnic grouping, this linguistic grouping, tended to be

broken up with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire,

entering into World War I you have this decline of the

Ottoman Empire which started to allow these people to start

to have more energy behind their desire to form a unified state.

World War I was essentially the catalyst that allowed

the state of Yugoslavia to unify.

And, in different forms, it stayed unified until the fall of Communism.

And, even though it was a socialist state, a communist state,

during the Cold War, it actually always had a strange,

and distant relationship with the Soviet Union.

But, after the fall of Communism, that was kind of holding it together,

especially these religious differences,

and these ethnic and religious differences broke it apart.