The Evolution of Čisti Hrvatski

The Herderian belief that a nation requires its own language grew deep roots in the post-Yugoslav linguistic sphere, dating back to the flourishing of the “Croatian” and “Serbian” literary languages in the 19th century. This conviction culminated in the signing of the Vienna Literary Agreement by Serb and Croat elites in 1850, which established, for the first time, the notion of one people, South Slavs, and one single language in the region: Serbo-Croatian (Greenberg Reference Greenberg2004). The legitimacy of a shared language by Southern Slavs would ebb and flow throughout the subsequent century, mirroring the popularity of the Yugoslav national project itself, which was constantly at odds with the competing Croatian and Serbian national projects.

The establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (hereafter NDH) by the fascist Ustaša regime in 1941 marks an important juncture in the sociolinguistic history of the region. A series of purist language laws were enacted by the regime, led by an ideology which prioritised a “departure from Serbian and the cleansing of Croatian from ‘Serbianism’” (Kordić Reference Kordić2010, 16). The Ustaša built their purist laws on existent 19th century discourses of racial purity, institutionalising racist trends which helped to produce national identity and the dominance of the majority population. In fact, anthropologists and critical race theorists have highlighted that notions of (im)purity are central to the formation of social identity, associating it with categories of social classification such as race, class, gender, and sexuality (Douglas Reference Douglas1970; Lugones Reference Lugones1994; Berthold Reference Berthold2010). Ustaša purist language laws focused on the negation of Serb-ness in ‘Croat lands,’ a constitutive pillar of the Ustaša ideological project (Matijević Reference Matijević2024), culminating in systematic expulsion, campaigns of forced assimilation through conversions to Catholicism, Islam, or “Croatian Orthodoxy,” and physical annihilation. Building on nationalist claims of language corruption by Belgrade dating back to the 1920s, the Ustaša regime launched a campaign of language purification in the hopes of imposing a standardised čisti hrvatski for all Croats, cleansed of all foreign elements and all forms of swearing. According to Yeomans (Reference Yeomans2013, 263), “language purification was part of a wider mechanism of cultural politics aimed at the eradication of all traces of a Serb presence – and, from the point of view of the Ustasha movement, Serb contamination – in the state.” It is also important to note that, while the genocides enacted by the NDH against its Jewish and Roma populations are recognized as such by the current Croatian government, the ideologies that made them possible are represented as foreign Nazi imports to Croatia (Subotić Reference Subotić2019). However, the Ustaša genocide against Serbs continues to be negated by the state, fuelling the increasingly mainstream trend of historical revisionism (Kasapović Reference Kasapović2018).Footnote ²

In the wake of WWII, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established – enshrining the multinational values of “brotherhood and unity” – and once again rendering hegemonic the notion of a unified “Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian” language. Greenberg (Reference Greenberg2004, 23) remarks “that this unity was achieved through compromise and tolerance of local language varieties, which enjoyed the same level of prestige throughout the country.” In fact, the state was divided between two linguistic centres, Belgrade, and Zagreb; this feature made Serbo-Croatian pluri-centric, characterised by competing standard norms. However, Bugarski (Reference Bugarski1997) argues that the unified language had a “weak internal identity,” and claims of uniqueness of local varieties continuously grew louder. By the mid-1960s, disputes between Serb and Croat academics over a dictionary project instigated the beginning of the Croatian Spring, a nationalist revival movement which extended far beyond linguistics and into civil rights and national memory.

By 1990, as the socialist regime collapsed, linguistic purism re-emerged as a manifestation of Croatian nationalism. In what Ugrešić (Reference Ugrešić1998, 61) dubbed “the spirit of Mr Clean Croatian Air,” the newly independent state was actively cleansing itself of symbolic representations of the Serbs; inanimate representations such as monuments, curriculum, books, speech, and eventually Serbs themselves. The concept of čisti hrvatski (re)emerged as a linguistic form and gained popularity in everyday life as a measuring stick for authentic Croatian-ness. Once again, archaic, and newly coined words (re)surfaced, accompanied by countless prescriptive grammar manuals, all of which aimed to discredit dialectic forms in favour of čisti hrvatski and forge national authenticity. In other words, not only were ‘Serbisms’ targeted but the immense linguistic diversity among ethnic Croats themselves was also remoulded in favour of the national centre – Zagreb. Kordić (Reference Kordić2010, 10) has criticised Croatian linguistic purism used to set social boundaries, denouncing it as “a tool which serves racist and nationalistic ideology.” These trends continue today, as a new law on the “Croatian” language has been adopted in 2024, which outlines the official characteristics of the “Croatian” language and prescribes its use in public spaces.Footnote ³

Čisti hrvatski as a language ideology of linguistic purism must be understood in its long historical context. The fact that it was mobilised in the 1940s by the Ustaša regime as a tool in its genocidal campaign of destruction and assimilation of Croatian Serbs and, later, in the 1990s in nationalist purges of local Serbs must be emphasised. As such, the performance of čisti hrvatski emerges as a deeply affective experience for my interlocutors, the great majority of whom are the descendants of the survivors of the Ustaša genocide and personally experienced the revival of linguistic purism in the 1990s. It is a compromise and a negotiation, an attempt to minimise discomfort by ‘passing’ while, at the same time, avoiding feeling that one is giving into the pressure of assimilation. Due to this painful history, čisti hrvatski can be understood as a violent language ideology, prompting not only the “pest-controlling action” (Ugrešić Reference Ugrešić1998, 64) of the linguistic field, but also of the national space of imagined and embodied Serb-ness.Footnote ⁴

Hearing Ethnicity

As a result of these violent historical processes and purist linguistic trends, language has become the primary method through which ethnic difference is signalled in contemporary Croatia. But how do linguistic forms become imbued with ethnic meaning and moral weight? Based on Agha’s (Reference Agha2005) concept of linguistic enregisterment, a process through which forms of language are granted cultural value, Rosa and Flores (Reference Rosa and Flores2017, 631) theorise a racio-linguistic perspective in which “linguistic and racial forms are jointly constructed as sets and rendered mutually recognizable as named language/varieties and racial categories.” The processes through which forms of language become affiliated with models of personhood are embedded in the ideologies of the speaking subjects. In the Croatian context, the language ideology of čisti hrvatski governs the linguistic register formation process through which – over time, through repetition, and institutional support – small features of language become emblematic of Serb-ness or Croat-ness.

Studies on the historical, cultural, and social experiences of people in south-eastern Europe centre on the concepts of ethnicity and nationhood, and largely exclude the concept of race. According to Baker (Reference Baker2018, 1), the Yugoslav region has also been “entangled in global ‘raciality,’” which creates “shifting, ambiguous identifications with symbolic histories and geographies of race.” One such association is the perception of Europe as a space of modernity, civilisation, and whiteness, and correlations of “Balkan-ness” with backwardness and inferiority, hierarchical constructions which critical race theorists have identified as racialised logic (Mills Reference Mills1997; Mignolo Reference Mignolo2000). Therefore, while Serbs in Croatia are not racialised subjects, the interactions between the concepts of ethnicity and race in the construction of nationhood ensures that their position in Croatian society is still framed by the global racial order. Baker (Reference Baker2018, 16) explains that this is because conceptualising ‘race’ as a “global structure of power, thought, and feeling,” rather than only an identity category helps scholars understand the geopolitical position of the region. As such, Croatian narratives which frame Croats as ‘European’ and Serbs not only as culturally, historically, and geographically different, but also as belonging to an inferior civilisation (Bellamy Reference Bellamy2003: 68) are deeply embedded in global racial formations. Croats and the “Croatian” language are framed by Croatian nationalists as properly European and superior to the Byzantine Serbs, thus perpetuating Eurocentric understandings of language which have historically discredited and oppressed racialized speakers and their languages. The irredentism of local Serbs and the anti-Croat violence unleashed within the borders of Krajina only cemented the otherness of Serbs in Croatian society, imbuing speech forms not only with ethnic indexicality but also with notions of (im)morality.

In the field, I observed that the notion of a shared language between Croats and Serbs has been mostly erased from social memory, much like other unwanted histories that have been forgotten in post-conflict Vukovar (see Clark Reference Clark2013). In my experience, those who do believe in a shared language are usually older people, born before the Croatian War of Independence. However, even they rarely express this belief publicly, often distinguishing between official views (službeno mišljenje) and personal opinions (lično mišljenje). These more nuanced beliefs were not transferred to members of the next generation – born after the war and educated in divided schools – who deeply believe in the existence of two distinct languages.Footnote ⁵ During my fieldwork, I observed that these schools, which emerged in the wake of war, serve as pedagogical spaces where ethnic nationalism is institutionalised and (re)produced, a finding shared by other scholars of Vukovar (Čorkalo-Biruški et al. Reference Čorkalo, Ajduković, Weinstein, Stover, Djipa, Biro, Stover and Weinstein2004; Čorkalo-Biruški and Ajduković Reference Čorkalo-Biruški and Ajduković2007; Reference Čorkalo-Biruški and Ajduković2008) and elsewhere (Gallagher Reference Gallagher2004; Hromadžić Reference Hromadžić2015; Worden Reference Worden2022).

Most of my interlocutors seem to have forgotten how Vukovarian Serbs and Croats spoke during (or before) the socialist period – a particular Vukovarian dialect dominated by the ekavica variant and peppered with a blend of Croatian and Serbian vocabulary – before the bloodshed of the 1990s calcified such sharp social cleavages. More importantly, most cannot grasp that “languages spill over beyond the borders of peoples, nations, and states, regardless of how neatly its edges try to align and fold within them” (Čolović Reference Čolović2023, 174), despite countless local examples of linguistic diversity. Both Croat and Serb nationalists argue that both groups always spoke distinct languages and that inauthentic homogenisation of the languages was imposed by the Yugoslav national project. However, Greenberg (Reference Greenberg1998, 714) notes that the complex processes of migration and population mixing in this region have led to linguistic assimilation between Serbs and Croats, thus discrediting the notion of “ethnic language” altogether. Kardov (Reference Kardov2002) adds that differences in speech patterns between Croats and Serbs were amplified and exaggerated by the destructive experiences of the 1990s, demonstrating the generative force of violence in identity construction processes (Bergholz Reference Bergholz2016). Many Croats adopted Zagrebian speech forms during their time in exile, pressured to cleanse their linguistic practises and adopt the Croatian literary standard, while some Serbs in Krajina mimicked the Belgradian speech forms to stress their loyalty to the Serbian nation.

In Croatia, one needs an attuned ear for speech subtleties – a practice perfected by locals, to be sure – in order to hear ethnicity. The ekavica variant of the language has become the most common socially recognized register of linguistic forms associated with Serbs and immorality while the ijekavica variant is associated with Croats and morality, despite the historical complexities and geographical diversities of these forms of speech.Footnote ⁶

Other speech forms are even more subtle and difficult to discern.

Along with the ekavica variant, the use of the Cyrillic alphabet has become a leading symbol of Serb-ness and a source of stigma across Croatia, but with particular significance in Vukovar where the issue of signage has been deeply politicised.

According to Rosa and Flores (Reference Rosa and Flores2017), the “racio-linguistic ideologies” which produce a distinction between pure and impure languages are also the ones which produce the racial and linguistic hierarchies of legitimacy which are central to modern subject formation and governance. In the Croatian context, it is more useful to think about “ethno-linguistic ideologies” since Croatian Serbs are ethnically rather than racially defined subjects, even if they are caught up in the global racial order. Research on this phenomenon has mostly focused on post-colonial contexts, but the same processes are at work in nation-states which seek to define certain ethnicized forms of speech as more civilised or moral than others.

To Pass or Not to Pass

Mila, a shy young woman in her early twenties from Vukovar, told me of the countless instances of bullying she was subjected to as a young child due to her ethnic identity.

Mila’s experience of ethnic bullying was but one of the many such stories I heard during my fieldwork. What I found especially interesting was the fact that so many Serbs were confronted with shame of their ethnic identity very early on in life. The need to develop a set of skills to manoeuvre their stigma so early is also reinforced by the indifference – or helplessness – of the adults around them, which implies that the discrimination is perceived as somehow justifiable or tolerable.

According to Goffman (Reference Goffman1963, 5), some stigmatised individuals attempt to negotiate their “spoiled identities” or “undesired differentness” by adopting the management technique of ‘passing’ in order to minimise social tension. Given that these performances are, “socialised, moulded, and modified to fit into the understanding and expectations of the society in which it is presented,” they are often idealised cultural performances (Goffman Reference Goffman1959, 35). It is also important to consider that passing is not only motivated by the desire to rid oneself of an identity of an oppressed group for social or economic gain, making the motives for passing often complex and ambiguous (Ginsberg Reference Ginsberg1996). Nevertheless, it must be emphasised that the “management of undisclosed discrediting information about the self” (Goffman Reference Goffman1963, 42) is most often motivated by a desire to evade the effects of ideologies which rationalise one’s inferiority, making passing an attempt to “be more truly themselves” (Kroeger Reference Kroeger2003, 2) or “a strategy to be a person” (Cutter Reference Cutter and Ginsberg1996, 75).

The ability of passers to disrupt the violence they are subjected to is the subject of debate among social scientists. These idealised performances entail trespassing social – even legal – boundaries of identities which are traditionally conceptualised as natural and essentialist, thus engendering political anxieties of their own. However, according to Bhabha (Reference Bhabha1984, 122), passing (or “mimicry,” in his words) is an “ironic compromise” or a “double articulation” because it simultaneously reinforces colonial discourse and challenges it. In fact, “its threat comes from the prodigious and strategic production of conflictual, fantastic, discriminatory ‘identity effects’ in the play of a power that is elusive because it hides no essence, no itself” (Bhabha Reference Bhabha1984, 129). In other words, passing can be perceived as a dangerous transgression because it disrupts the ontology of identity categories, destabilises the assumption that what is visible is an “epistemological guarantee,” and exposes the fragility of status and hierarchy (Ginsberg Reference Ginsberg1996, 4). If differences can be masked or made invisible, then this endangers the legitimacy of the “hegemonic cultural imaginary” of the empowered group (Garber Reference Garber1992).

Given that Serbs’ difference is not defined by an “epidermal schema” (Fanon Reference Fanon1986, 112), passing has become a linguistic performance embedded in racio-linguistic ideologies which produce the positivist belief that language is racially – here, ethnically – embodied (Rosa Reference Rosa2019). These performances are also informed by local purist language ideologies – čisti hrvatski – which imbue moral capital to certain national forms of speech while discrediting others. In other words, if Goffman (Reference Goffman1963: 48) speaks about the visibility of the stigma of others being an important factor, then the case of Croatian Serbs reveals the importance of a particular kind of stigma: one that is audible. Passing then becomes a matter of shifting from one register to another, much like the linguistic practices of women, or “women’s language,” described by Lakoff (Reference Lakoff1975, 7), which “requires special awareness to the nuances of social situations, special alertness to possible disapproval.” It is no wonder then that processes of passing which require so much hypervigilance have been described as “emotionally charged” (Renfrow Reference Renfrow2004, 502) or “very stressful if not traumatic” (Matsunaga Reference Matsunaga2007, 231).

It must be noted that my interlocutors’ decisions to pass (or not to pass) were always anchored in strategic manoeuvring in response to particular locations, situations, or people. This intricate linguistic dance is always informed by a deep sense of “ethnic anxiety” over one’s Serb-ness, one that is difficult to empirically capture but is nevertheless informing everyday life (Golubović Reference Golubović2019). The performance simultaneously destabilises and reinforces the ontology of identity categories, by playing with the porosity of these categories but never truly breaking out of their bind. Importantly, the decision to pass (or not to pass), or adopt some kind of middle-ground approach, lifts the curtain imposed by the dichotomy of “Serbian” and “Croatian” language categories and reveals the power dynamics at play in the process of minority subject formation of Serbs in Vukovar.

Decency, Inconspicuousness, and Formality

On New Year’s Eve, I had decided to accompany Ksenija, a forty-something Serb woman and her group of close friends to Mornar, a well-known Serb-owned restaurant located on the picturesque bank of the Danube. The restaurant was booked solid, indicating the readiness of the Vukovarian Serb community to get back to normal after months of strict COVID regulations which prevented such gatherings. Between countless courses of local delicacies, my party pulled me into endless spirited kolo dances and sang along to popular folk music whose lyrics everyone, apart from me, seemed to know by heart. It was on this occasion that I made the acquaintance of Slobodan, a middle-aged Serb and the husband of one of Ksenija’s closest friends. At the time, he was working for a successful foreign firm, and one of the few people I had spoken with who were satisfied with their income and prospects in Vukovar. After hearing about my research, he proudly told me the following:

In Vukovar, as well as the rest of Croatia, the belief that ethnicity is audible is widespread, making most people highly attuned to listening for linguistic differences. Due to the enormous social pressure to speak the official language of the Croatian state and the stigma associated with indexicalities of Serb-ness, some Vukovarian have opted to alter the way that they speak to accommodate their new life in an independent Croatian state. During my fieldwork, and much like other social scientists researching the concept of ‘passing,’ I found that many of my interlocutors chose to speak čisti hrvatski in order to gain some kind of social or economic advantage, while others did so to avoid a potentially uncomfortable or even dangerous situation with a member of the majority population. Interestingly, however, some individuals have told me that they opted for this linguistic performance because they think it is the decent thing to do (iz pristojnosti).

The pride that Slobodan feels in his grasp of čisti hrvatski and his ability to seamlessly switch registers is evident in the vignette, even more so when he seemingly downplays his linguistic proficiency in “Serbian.” It is clear that, for Slobodan, discursive dexterity is a sign of competence, intelligence, and ability; it is a way to claim a certain kind of superiority in a context that seeks to constantly devalue him and people like him. At the same time, Slobodan’s claim that he is prone to accidentally slipping into ijekavica in the presence of Serbs is an example of what Bauman (Reference Bauman, Hill and Irvine1992, 184) calls “disclaimers of performance,” which are “instances where speakers may not wish to take full responsibility to their audiences for a display of communicative competence”. This is particularly interesting for social scientists seeking to understand the dynamics of performance. It is entirely plausible that Slobodan, who switches registers on a daily basis, makes such errors from time to time. However, instead of highlighting how embarrassing it can be to slip into ijekavica when surrounded by Serbs, he is seemingly proud of the fact that he is more likely to slip into ijekavica and make errors when speaking “Serbian” than to slip into ekavica at work and compromise his perceived fluency in “Croatian.” It is evident that Slobodan is aware of the social capital associated with proficiency in “Croatian” in Vukovar, which is also necessary to access more prestigious job opportunities. Through this kind of metacommentary on his register-switching abilities, Slobodan is formulating a statement on his belonging to the Croatian state; he is actively forging an emblematic link between his discursive practices and his allegiance to an associated national belonging. He is indexing himself as belonging to both the Serb ethnic category and the Croatian citizen category, a dichotomy many Vukovarian Serbs have trouble navigating.

Furthermore, it should be highlighted that Slobodan and many other Serbs who share his discursive dexterity do not believe that they are engaging in ‘passing’, because their ethnicity is only passively or temporarily being concealed or downplayed, and because admitting the active management of one’s ethnic identity would be considered shameful by some conservative members of the Vukovarian Serb community. This type of performance could be described as a practice of “covering” (Goffman Reference Goffman1963). However, in certain situations, engaging in this skilled linguistic performance is considered an acceptable and even moral practice by many in the Serb community of Vukovar. This is particularly the case for Serbs, like Slobodan, who are employed by Croats in the private sector. Many Vukovarian Serbs argued that, since they are a national minority in Croatia and that the official language is “Croatian,” they must abide by these “rules” because it is the decent thing to do. Slava, another friend of Ksenija, stressed that speaking čisti hrvatski in some contexts was what made her an exemplary citizen.

These experiences shed light on one of the disciplinary technologies of the nationalist state which defines the everyday order-of-things in Vukovar. To abide by these unwritten linguistic rules of (what has become a matter of) morality is, according to Slava, what makes her a “good” citizen. The nation-state has become so efficient in disciplining its subjects that it could, through subtle coercion, get away with what Foucault (Reference Foucault1975) calls “an infinitesimal power over the active body” by controlling the subject’s movements, gestures and even attitudes. Both Slobodan and Slava’s stories demonstrate how these nationalist disciplinary mechanisms have created new normative notions of personhood which orbit around the imaginary of the nation. In fact, these mechanisms are so effective that they are no longer required: the citizens now discipline themselves and each other. A national minority is expected to act – here, speak – in a particular way when it is confronted with the institutions of the nation-state. Interestingly, Slava’s story about the incident at the hair salon exemplifies an attempt to regain a certain amount of control over the boundaries of her social categorization and the reach of the power of the state. Slava’s indignance at being policed at a hair salon is contrasted by her readiness to police herself in what she considers state institutions. By asserting that a member of the majority population cannot correct her speech in a hair salon, a commercial locale and not, in her mind, within the bounds of state institutions, she is pushing back against the limited space offered to minorities by the nation-state.

It was explained to me that to speak in “Serbian” in state institutions could be considered an attempt to purposely stand out (isticati se) and as a provocation, an accusation that many of my interlocutors who choose to speak čisti hrvatski wanted to avoid. In fact, Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2012, 157) argues that, in the case of racialized minority staff at a university in the United Kingdom, “the need to legitimise your existence can require that you actively reduce rather than increase your visibility.” In the Vukovarian context, the wish to attract the least amount of attention to one’s difference in certain situations is shared and amplified by the particular kind of collective stigma carried by local Serbs. Brubaker et al. (Reference Brubaker, Feischmidt, Fox and Grancea2006) observe a similar phenomenon of self-policing among the Hungarian minority in Romania, arguing, however, that the overemphasis on relatively infrequent instances of policing of minorities’ linguistic practices by the majority population leads to anticipatory self-policing. Indeed, the desire not to provoke and to downplay one’s difference was communicated to me countless times by my interlocutors, regardless of age or gender. Rather than this being the result of the wide circulation of over-embellished stories, I argue that there exists a deep awareness of the stereotypical behaviour that Croatian political elites have associated with Serb-ness as “uncivilised, non-Western and savage” (Zambelli Reference Zambelli2010, 1664), as well as their association with Croatian suffering. In fact, Sokolić (Reference Sokolic2017, 796) finds that the Serb community is often perceived by the majority population as “taking advantage of their unique status in Croatia, granted to them by an open multi-ethnic state.” The decision to police one’s speech is thus often about minimising one’s difference and attempting to mitigate any offence it could bring to members of the majority population who had lost a loved one in the War of Croatian Independence.

Through the semiotic process of “iconization,” defined as “the attribution of cause and immediate necessity to a connection that may only be historical, contingent, or conventional” (Irvine and Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000, 37), čisti hrvatski has also become, as a linguistic form, a social signifier of formality through the recognition and repetition of its use in particular contexts. According to Abercrombie (Reference Abercrombie2018, 755), “the standard is understood as prestigious, not merely uniform, and thus appears neutral and common-sensical.” As a result, it has become inappropriate to employ any minoritized language in formal situations or settings, making spaces such as universities, hospitals, police stations locations where my interlocutors performed exclusively čisti hrvatski. Anxiety over language proficiency and legitimacy was exemplified by Lazar, a twenty-something young Serb from Borovo, who continuously used čisti hrvatski during our meetings, despite my almost exclusive use of ekavica. He explained that he considered my research a formal matter, which required him to speak formally. In the Croatian context, which is defined by its own particularly Herderian political and moral preconceptions about the nexus of language and nation, as well as the production of čisti hrvatski as a particular language ideology, to speak the purified national language is to speak both formally and morally.

It became evident to me that all the mentioned rationales for speaking čisti hrvatski – decency, inconspicuousness, or formality – were still rooted in anxiety over “discreditation” (Goffman Reference Goffman1963), given that Serbs’ difference is not immediately apparent. Fear, however, was not readily acknowledged by my interlocutors. For instance, Milica, a thirty-something Serb woman from Borovo, told me that she does not even switch registers (prešaltati se) to “Serbian” with her Serb colleagues at work, even if they are alone or on break, worrying that she might get confused and end up in an embarrassing situation. Similarly, Ksenija, whom we met earlier, confessed that she had a “cheat sheet” with common “Croatian” words hidden at work, for fear of being rebuked by a customer for making a mistake. Both Milica and Ksenija downplayed their fears, claiming that this was a lifestyle one simply became accustomed to. However, being a partial insider and intimately familiar with the nationalists’ visions of historical destiny, I understood that, for many Serbs, “to have transformed defeat into a source of pride and dignity is a triumph of the human spirit” (Hawkesworth Reference Hawkesworth and Pynsent1996, 223). It was evident to me that underneath this thin layer of poised indifference existed an undeniable anxiety.

Exemplary Minority Subjects

The trend of performing čisti hrvatski that I have observed in the field can be understood as an attempt to embody exemplary minority subjectivity – of being a “good Serb.” This minority subjectivity is defined by the liberal virtue of multiculturalism as the ideal form of difference management, in which social recognition is contingent on a tolerable embodiment and performance of difference. In Croatia, being an exemplary minority subject means consistently speaking čisti hrvatski in public spaces while relegating the immoral, provocative, and informal “Serbian” language to the private sphere, behind closed doors. Like Dzenovska (Reference Dzenovska2018: 76), whose research focused in part on Russian-speakers in post-communist Latvia, I was repeatedly unsettled by scenes of minoritized people being made into, “submissive, anxious, and eager subjects” by the newly independent state. This kind of minority subjectivity is encouraged in the Croatian context, where the discourse of multicultural tolerance, perceived as a marker of desirable European-ness, has been embraced by the Brussels-oriented government and its citizens.

However, critiques of the discourse of tolerance as a “form of symbolic violence” (Hage Reference Hage2000, 87), an “ideology and practice of governance” (Povinelli Reference Povinelli2002, 6), as “stranger fetishism” (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2000, 97), or as “civilisational discourse” (Brown Reference Brown2008, 6) are abundant. In other words, the mantra of tolerance solidifies hegemonic structures, locking in the empowerment of the “tolerant” and the subjectification of the “tolerated” into place. In this case, the objects of tolerance are a newly minoritized group, whose political status fluctuated throughout the last century, complicating the typical assumptions about the ‘minority’ category in critiques of tolerance. In the inter-war Yugoslav kingdom, Croatian Serbs enjoyed advantages over local Croats through hegemonic policies stemming from the Belgrade-centred government. From 1941 to 1945, they were the targets of genocide by the fascist Ustaša regime. From 1945 to 1991, they were granted the status of ‘constitutive people’ alongside Croats in Croatia by the socialist regime. From 1991 to 1995, under the banner of Krajina, they were perpetrators of ethnic cleansing and violence against non-Serbs, while those who lived in Croatian-controlled territory were discriminated against and targeted by local Croats. In post-conflict Croatia, Serbs hold the status of national minorities and bear the brunt of collective blame for the 1990s. Their Otherness is politically framed and popularly understood, as a result of these histories, as simultaneously aggressive (Sokolić Reference Sokolić2019) and conniving (Cipek Reference Cipek2017). Given this historical context and the current position of Croatian Serbs in contemporary Croatia, perhaps a term such as enemy minority is particularly useful to capture the complex realities that this social position evokes. It is as ‘enemy minorities,’ not simply national minorities, that Croatian Serbs are being disciplined and governed by discourses of tolerance and multiculturalism.

In an “ethnic democracy” such as Croatia, where the political system is dominated by one ethnic group within a democratic framework (Štiks Reference Štiks2010), the exemplary minority must perform an acceptable liberal minority subjectivity in order to be recognized and tolerated in the national space. In such a context, Jović (Reference Jović2017: 314) argues that the “the public understanding is that other ethnicities do not exist, or if they do, then their public acknowledgement represents a provocation.” The form of acceptable existence is narrow, limited to minorities performing folkloric and apolitical difference which do not disrupt the power relations in place. By performing a form of minority subjectivity that is deemed acceptable, some Vukovarian Serbs are making themselves into exemplary and tolerable subjects, confirming their position as subordinate to the dominant “managers of national space” (Hage Reference Hage2000, 91) and finding a way to minimize their status as ‘enemy minorities’. The depth of the state’s disciplinary power is particularly evident because it is entirely absent in the aforementioned ethnographic vignettes; many Vukovarian Serbs are able to police themselves into behaving like tolerable minorities.

Whatever the motivation for speaking čisti hrvatski, the decision to do so also signals a degree of resignation to one’s minoritised position in Croatian society as well as an important level of agency. The performances I have narrated emerge as a form of exemplary minoritised subjectivity, which contradict the dominant narrative of the far-right in Croatia on Croatian Serbs as continuously disloyal and morally corrupt citizens. Mixed method research by Sokolić (Reference Sokolić2019, 129) reveals that one of the dominant beliefs of the Croatian majority is that Serb minority’s rights ought to be conditional on the country being de-mined and war-time missing persons being found, or on Serbs ceasing to vote based on ethnicity. According to the far-right narrative, irredentism and entitlement in the Vukovarian Serb community has not died with the Erdut Agreement and the process of Peaceful Reintegration (Mirna Reintegracija) of the Danube region at the end of the War of Croatian Independence, which also serves as an excuse to curb the minority rights of the Serb community in Croatia. These performances of tolerable difference challenge these essentialist representations of the Serb minority by the Croatian far-right political parties.