Between Tribes and Nation: The Definition of Yugoslav National Identity in Interwar Yugoslav Elementary School Curricula
Between Tribes and Nation: The Definition of Yugoslav National Identity in Interwar Yugoslav Elementary School Curricula

Summary/Abstract: Although Yugoslav nationalism rose to prominence in the interwar period as an underlying ideological principle of the Yugoslav state, various interpretations of the idea coexisted in the political and cultural spheres. This article examines how Yugoslav national identity was defined in elementary education curricula for language, history and geography. Although linguistic unity was considered one of the fundaments of Yugoslav national unity, no far-reaching measures were enacted to set a uniform Yugoslav standard language. Slovenian was treated as a separate language, and different dialects and alphabets within Serbo-Croatian were accepted. Curricula for history stressed the similarities and parallels between different “tribal” (Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian) histories. These curricula also reinterpreted symbolic resources, which had already been linked to Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian national histories, as common Yugoslav national symbols. Serbian state history provided the core elements around which this Yugoslav synthesis was constructed. Finally, the curricula for geography attempted to replace the traditional historical regions with neutral geographical entities. After some flawed attempts during the 1920s, the geography curriculum of 1933 adopted the new administrative division of Yugoslavia in banovinas. For each of the subjects under scrutiny a different strategy was adopted. In all cases, however, there remained considerable overlap between Yugoslav national identity and established definitions of sub-national collective identities among the South Slavs.

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