Yugoslavs in Serbia

Yugoslavs in Serbia (Serbo-Croatian: Југословени у Србији, Jugosloveni u Srbiji) refers to a community in Serbia that view themselves as Yugoslavs with no other ethnic self-identification. Additionally, there are also Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosniaks and people of other ethnicities in Serbia who identify themselves as Yugoslavs. However, the latter group does not consider itself to be part of a Yugoslav nation, which is the way the first group identifies itself. People declaring themselves as Yugoslavs are concentrated in multicultural Vojvodina and Belgrade, where slightly over 80% of all Yugoslavs in Serbia are found.

According to the 2022 census, 27,143 people or 0.41% of all inhabitants of Serbia (excluding Kosovo) declared their ethnicity as exclusively Yugoslav, while an unknown number of people self-identify as Yugoslav in addition with other ethnicities.^[1] Ahead of the 2022 census, a newly formed organization called Narodni pokret “Jugosloveni” (National Movement "Yugoslavs")^[2] began encouraging citizens of Serbia to freely self-identificate as Yugoslavs, an initiative joined by an increasing number of public figures. One of them is a radio host Daško Milinović [sh; sr], who also announced that work is underway for establishing the National Council of Yugoslavs in Serbia, following the example of other minority communities, for self-identifying Yugoslavs to enjoy equal minority rights.^[3][4]

Milinović sees all nations as invented and agreed upon, where "the only difference is who did it when". According to him, Yugoslavs are a nation not in an ethnic sense, but as a community of common values.^[4] Among the younger generations who never lived in former Yugoslavia, identifying as Yugoslav tends to be due to their multi-ethnic background but also in protest against nationalism.^[5]