Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs or Yugoslavians (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslaveni/Jugosloveni, Југославени/Југословени;[b] Slovene: Jugoslovani; Macedonian: Југословени, romanized: Jugosloveni) is an identity that was originally designed to refer to a united South Slavic people. It has been used in two connotations: the first in a sense of common shared ethnic descent, i.e. panethnic or supraethnic connotation for ethnic South Slavs,[c] and the second as a term for all citizens of former Yugoslavia regardless of ethnicity.[d] Cultural and political advocates of Yugoslav identity have historically ascribed the identity to be applicable to all people of South Slav heritage, including those of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. Although Bulgarians are a South Slavic group, attempts at uniting Bulgaria into Yugoslavia were unsuccessful, and therefore Bulgarians were not included in the panethnic identification. Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the establishment of South Slavic nation states, the term ethnic Yugoslavs has been used to refer to those who exclusively view themselves as Yugoslavs with no other ethnic self-identification, many of these being of mixed ancestry.[11]
For other uses, see Yugoslavs (disambiguation).Regions with significant populations
210,395 (2021)
(Yugoslav Americans)[1]
38,480 (2016)
(Yugoslav Canadians)[2]
27,143 (2022)
(Yugoslavs in Serbia)[3]
26,883 (2011)[4]
2,570 (2013)[5]
1,154 (2011)[6]
942 (2021)[7]
527 (2002)[8]
344 (2021)[9]
60 (2021)[10]
In the former Yugoslavia, the official designation for those who declared themselves simply as Yugoslav was with quotation marks, "Yugoslavs" (introduced in census 1971). The quotation marks were originally meant to distinguish Yugoslav ethnicity from Yugoslav citizenship, which was written without quotation marks. The majority of those who had once identified as ethnic "Yugoslavs" reverted to or adopted traditional ethnic and national identities, sometimes due to social pressure, intimidation, disadvantageous consequences, or prevention to continue identifying as Yugoslav by new political authorities.[12][13] Some also decided to turn to sub-national regional identifications, especially in multi-ethnic historical regions like Istria, Vojvodina, or Bosnia (hence Bosnians). The Yugoslav designation, however, continues to be used by many, especially in the United States, Canada, and Australia by the descendants of Yugoslav migrants who emigrated while the country still existed.
The probably most frequently used symbol of the Yugoslavs to express their identity and to which they are most often associated with is the blue-white-red tricolor flag with a yellow-bordered red star in the flag's center,[57] which also served as the national flag of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1991.
Prior to World War II, the symbol of Yugoslavism was a plain tricolor flag of blue, white, and red, which was also the national flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav state in the interwar period.