Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

198 UNWANTED INDEPENDENCE
above all to the question whether it was permissible to declare oneself a
“Yugoslav”, but it could be understood more generally as well. In 1963, the
Muslims were described as a “people” in the new Bosnian constitution.
The Muslims of Bosnia in fact felt that they were a nation. I have already
indicated in the section dealing with Macedonia that the concept of nationhood is
multifarious and that consciousness is just as important as ostensibly “objective”
indicators. So the Muslims pressed to have their nation once more acknowledged
as it had been before under other auspices. The census of 1971 was the first time
that they were free to declare their nationality as they saw fit. The economic
boom of the 1960s, from which Bosnia had profitted along with other parts of the
country, had given the Muslims, after all their misfortunes, some status, selfconfidence,
and prospects. So they wanted to see themselves as a constituent
factor in their country, on a par with the other peoples of Yugoslavia. Their
ancestral name had national roots; in the Turkish empire, nation and religion had
always been identical. It is therefore false to say that the Muslim nation was
“created” in the 1960s; it was always in the consciousness of the people and had
now merely found its modern form. “Muslim—whether one is comfortable with
the name or not, there is no other designation,” a Professor of Orientalism in
Sarajevo wrote in 1987. 61
While the question about how the Croats came to be in Bosnia-Herzegovina may
be answered rather easily—the Croatian enclaves in central Bosnia may be traced
back to the Franciscan missions, while those in western Herzegovina were
directly connected with Dalmatia—the question as to how the Serbs came to the
area is more complicated. It is hardly probable that the Byzantine influences in
the early Bosnian state had opened the doors for a Serbian Church structure.
More important was the fact that the expanding Bosnian state annexed important
Serbian areas after 1300. At that time, the Church relationships were firmer. No
one demanded that the Serbian Orthodox believers convert. Even territorially,
they did not cross paths with the Bogomils and Catholics, since they were in the
eastern and southeastern parts of Bosnia, while the Bogomils and Catholics were
represented in the central and western parts. 62 The Serbs, to the extent that one
can call them that at that time, retained their Churches and their monasteries.
King Tvrtko I even nurtured Greater Serbian ambitions and used these
institutions in support of those ambitions.
More important for the religio-ethnic picture of Bosnia today than these
relationships from pre-Ottoman times were the migrations which took place
under the Ottomans. The Serbian Orthodox inhabitants, or at least those who
lived in the highlands and were therefore not included in the Turkish feudal
system, were much more involved in these migrations than were the other
peoples. Without wanting to wear out the thesis of these Serbs being Slavicized
Vlachs, it is none the less certain that there were many such elements among
those migrants. We know little about the migrations in Turkish times; but we
know that they took place and that they were generally in the direction of east to
west. Sometimes these were demanded by the Turks, for example, when there