Dalibor Lanik Home Page - Map of Serbian Lands

MAP OF SERBIAN LANDS

Even though a picture is worth a thousand words, still a couple of words might be needed to explain the picture above and the answer to the question "Where is Serbia?". Notice that in following text, words "Serbs" and "Serbians" will be used. Serbian is to indicate people of Serbia, and Serb means any Serb, be it from Serbia or any other Serbian state.

First of all - there's Serbia. Serbia is a "basic" Serb land that is the "motherland" and protector of other Serb lands (same as Greece is "motherland" and protector of Cyprus - Cyprus is independent and has it's own state but that fact doesn't make Cypriots any less Greek).

Next, country which throughout history always had it's independence and state - Montenegro. This brave little country was never conquered in it's history. Montenegro is Serbian state much as Cyprus is a Greek state. Montenegro gave up it's king and kingdom early in the 20th century in order to unite with Serbia.

Then comes Old Serbia (Now unfortunately called Macedonia, after Greek province). Old Serbia and it's capital Skoplje, were center of Serbian Empire during Emperor Dushan of Serbia. Today's "macedonians" as they call themselves, are nothing more than a mix of Serbs and Bulgarians using (totally unjustly) Greek name "Macedonia" and claim to be different nation than Serbs. Even "macedonian" language is only bad Serbian mixed with Bulgarian (much as Australian is bad English). This is all due to communist rule in Yugoslavia and it's president Tito (who was a Croat) and who wanted to destabilize and parcel Serbia into as many states as possible and declared "macedonians" a nation. During the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, most of Macedonians had second-names ending in "ich", which is typical for Serbian second-names. Today, most of them changed their second-name endings to "ski" or "ov" which is typical for Bulgarian second-names.

Bosnia is another Serbian state. Last Bosnian king (while Bosnia was last independent) was a Serb. Afterwards, Bosnia was ruled by the Turks (for approx. 5 centuries) and Austro-Hungaria and it is only during the communist Yugoslavia that Bosnian moslems got a "nation" status from Tito (which was of course just another move in a plot to divide Serbs). All bosnian moslems (or at least 99% of them) are actually Bosnian Serbs that adopted islam during Turkish rule in Bosnia and Serbia. So in reality, in Bosnia You have Orthodox Serbs (those that remained faithful to their heritage) and Muslim Serbs (that betrayed Christianity and adopted Islam). There can be no talk whatsoever about "Bosnians" or "Moslems" as a nation. Bosnian Serbs are no less "Bosnians" than Bosnian moslems. Croats are, as well, in no way constitutional nation in Bosnia and they live in parts of Bosnia that borders Croatia so they can be considered only a minority in Bosnia. Also, there is no "bosnian" language - all Bosnians (meaning both orthodox Serbs and moslem Serbs) speak Serbian or Serbo-Croatian (which is basically the same language differing only in fact that Serbs use Cyrillic letters and Croats use western alphabet because they were "germanized").

Finally, there is Serbian Krajina which is now occupied by Croatia. Serbian Krajina was established several centuries ago when, on invitation of the Austro-hungarian emperor, Serbs came to the eastern borders of Austro-Hungarian Empire to protect it from the Turks. In return, they were proclaimed "free" (didn't have to pay tax to the Emperor) and given land in possession (unlike Croats, that were not free at the time and tad to pay taxes - and that's one of the reasons Croats hate Serbs). Those "Krajina" Serbs have lived there ever since. Since Croatia (almost) never existed as a state (except briefly during 1940-1945 WW2 as a Nazi-state and was last independent in 15th century), it is not just for Krajina to be a part of Croatian state, since it was historically never in Croatia.

BASIC HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

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