PROBLEM NACIONALNOG OPREDJELJENJA BOSANSKOHERCEGOVAČKIH MUSLIMANA 1945–1954: IZMEĐU POLITIKE KPJ/SKJ I OSJEĆAJA PRIPADNOSTI „TURSKOJ VJERI“

Although the CPY advocated the existence and equality of the three peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the liberation and revolutionary struggles, at the end of the Second World War a change of political course on the status of Muslims and a renunciation of the affirmation of their national identity followed. Despite the fact that the “people’s government” took a position on the “free” national expression of the Bosnian population of the Islamic religion, the political circumstances and relations established after the liberation, to some extent, guided the national “evolutionary path” of Muslims. Serbs were the main force of the national liberation struggle, so after the war they were considered the most reliable element of the new state and order, which encouraged the communists of the Islamic faith to identify with the nation of the informal war victor and the leading people in power in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The result was that the predominant number of the leadership and the Muslim party membership accepted the Serbian national name, which profiled the further policy of the CPY towards this Slavic people. However, contrary to the national orientation of the Muslim party membership and the political affinities and efforts of the CPY, the Muslim masses did not accept the Serbian, and especially the Croatian national nomination, but “kept” their ethnic identity, declaring themselves undecided. This generated a paradoxical situation and political contrast, which was one of the complicating factors of the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Poorly developed national consciousness, faced in the past with different orientations of their own intelligentsia, the Bosnian Muslim masses found themselves in a “gap” between the unprincipled policy of the CPY towards their position and national nomination, and the legacy of the Turkish tradition with which they identified. They often called themselves Turks, implying affiliation with the Islamic faith, and such tendencies persisted until the second half of the twentieth century. The communists suppressed the use of the Turkish name to denote local Muslims, and allowed and promoted the expression of negative attitudes towards the Ottoman imperial past, for which there were two reasons. Such an appointment clashed with the current policy of shaping the national “evolutionary path” of Muslims and the fight against the “backward influence of religion”, because the Turkish nomination meant the equivalent of belonging to the Islamic faith. Considering that Islam was a basic element of identity and social being for Bosnian Muslims, such a policy of the Party was also a significant factor in complicating political relations in the republic.