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Minorities in former Yugoslavia

Last modified: 1997-09-03 by giuseppe bottasini
Keywords: yugoslavia | minority | star | baranya | italy | hungary | turkey |
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National minorities

In Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia there were in use flags of national minorities. Basic template of those was the flag of their respective country with "Yugoslavian star" - five pointed red star bordered with gold.
I don't know if there was any writen evidence of that, but I suppose that it was official, because I don't believe it would be possible to fly them without official approval. The flag most often seen (by me) was probably the flag of Italian minority in Istria.

It is very often seen flying together with Yugoslav (blue-white-red with star), republic (Croat red-white-blue w/star or Slovenian white-blue-red w/star) and socialist-party flags (red with golden hammer,siecle under a star and words "Proleteri svih zemalja, ujedinite se!" - Proleters of all countries, unite!"
Others were used in parts of YU where there were bigger minorities like Hungarian in Baranya (red-white-green w/star),

Bulgarian in eastern Serbia and Macedonia (white-green-red w/star) and Turkish minority mostly in Macedonia (red with whie crescent and golden bounded red star).

The only minority flag being the same as respective country flag was that of Albanians (mostly on Kosovo), the reason, of course, Albanian flag already had such a star.
Other minorities flags I have never seen but I assume that they existed, at least Check and Slovak, Rumunian. If other smaller minorities (Rom (Cygoiners, Gipsies), Rusin, Vlas (names are in Croatian in singular, having no idea of English equivalent)) had any flags I have no knowlege of that.
Percentage of minorities in yu in 1981. was ("Veliki geografski atlas Jugoslavije", SNL, 1987):

Albanian	7.72%
Bulgarian	0.16%
Check		0.07%
Hungarian	1.90%
Rumenian	0.25%
Russinan	0.10%
Slovakian	0.36%
Italian		0.07%
Turkish		0.45%
others 		1.12%

zeljko heimer 24-SEP-1995