Yugoslavs in Serbia

Yugoslavs in Serbia 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 in a broader sens. However, the latter group does not consider itself to be part of a Yugoslav ethnicity, which is the way the first group identifies itself. According to data from the 2022 census, 27,143 people or 0.4% of population of Serbia (excluding Kosovo) declared their ethnicity as exclusively Yugoslav.^[1]

Yugoslavs in Serbia

Југословени у Србији Jugosloveni u Srbiji
Total population
27,143 (2022 census)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Vojvodina	12,438[2]
Belgrade	10,499[2]
Languages
Serbo-Croatian
Religion
Atheism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Islam

Ahead of the 2022 census, a newly formed organization called National Movement "Yugoslavs" (Narodni pokret “Jugosloveni”)^[3] began campaigning to citizens of Serbia to freely self-identify as Yugoslavs, an initiative joined by a number of public figures. One of them is a radio host Daško Milinović, who also announced that work is underway for establishing the National Council of Yugoslavs in Serbia for self-identifying Yugoslavs to enjoy equal ethnic minority rights.^[4][5] According to Milinović, Yugoslavs are a community not in an ethnic sense but a community of common values.^[5] 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.^[6]

Demographics

People declaring themselves as Yugoslavs are largely concentrated in Vojvodina and Belgrade, where some 85% of all Yugoslavs in Serbia are to be found.

Year	Population	Share
1971[7]	123,824	1.4%
1981[8]	441,941	4.7%
1991[9][10]	323,643	3.3%
1991 (excl. Kosovo)[11][12]	320,186	4.1%
2002 (excl. Kosovo)[13]	80,721	1.1%
2011 (excl. Kosovo)[14]	23,303	0.3%
2022 (excl. Kosovo)[1]	27,143	0.4%

Region	Population	Share
Vojvodina	12,438	0.7%
Belgrade	10,499	0.6%
Šumadija and Western Serbia	2,327	0.1%
Southern and Eastern Serbia	1,879	0.1%

Notable people

• Lepa Brena^[15] (born 1960), singer, Bosnian Muslim parentage
• Oliver Dulić^[16] (born 1975), politician, of mixed Serb and Bunjevac parentage^[17]
• Predrag Ejdus, actor, of mixed Jewish and Serb parentage