Im Namen der Nation : Der politische Aufwertungsprozess der Muslime im sozialistischen Jugoslawien (1956–1971)

Sammanfattning: This study analyses the elevation of Muslims to the status of an official state nation of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina alongside Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs. The focus is on the time period between 1956 and 1971 when Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the six republics of Socialist Yugoslavia.The elevation of Muslims to the status of a state nation is viewed here as an open-ended mobilization process. Accordingly, one of the main aims of this study is to investigate the political opportunity structures, the political actors’ framing and the mobilization structures that eventually led to the political redefinition of Muslims within Bosnia and Herzegovina.Using internal documents of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina and League of Communists of Yugoslavia, especially the Ideological Commission, as well as the Commission for Interethnic Relations, the study investigates the political negotiation around and attempts to build a Yugoslav-wide political consensus within the League of Communists on the question of the political elevation of Muslims. As part of this investigation the League of Communists’ political vision in regard to national structure and inter-ethnic relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina is related to social practice at the local level, with a particular focus on popular identification patterns. As the study shows, broad sections of the population refused or resisted the party’s attempts to introduce national categories in political and social life. In addition, by analyzing public debates about Muslim identity, which were mainly performed by intellectuals, the study evaluates the role of intellectuals in Muslim nation-building and in the broader campaigns to encourage popular acceptance of a Muslim national category.The conclusions are that the political elevation of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a strategic choice of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina and served to affirm Bosnian statehood within the Yugoslav federation. The Bosnian political leadership tried to promote Bosnia and Herzegovina as a unique and multinational republic, whose political subjectivity was built around a tripartite national structure (Serbs, Croats and Muslims). This study contributes to a better understanding of when and how the fracturing of Yugoslavia along ethnic and religious lines actually occurred.