Between Slovakia, Yugoslavia, and Serbia – The image of the Vojvodina Slovak community in Slovak and Serbian political narratives in the 19th – 21st century

Abstract

The article examines the dynamics of the formation of the image of the Slovak community in Vojvodina in Slovak and Serbian political narratives from the 19th century to the present. It focuses on how its differences manifest in the (Czecho-)Slovak and Yugoslav (Serbian) context. The first part of the article explores the nationalising processes among the members of the Slovak community in present-day Vojvodina from the 19th century till the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. The following parts are devoted to the position of the Slovak minority in Vojvodina in the conditions of the Yugoslav state in the interwar period, as well as its relations with the Czechoslovak Republic. The article also deals with the position of this community during the Second World War, in socialist Yugoslavia and after its dissolution in the early 1990s in the context of inter-state relations, but also the dynamics of intra-ethnic interactions. The paper draws on the symbolic interactionism approach, i.e. the shaping of mutual perceptions along and across ethnic boundaries and through intra-ethnic integration and differentiation practices.

Keywords

• vojvodina slovaks
• serbia
• slovakia
• yugoslavia
• identification