...a traditional immigration-receiving region in Europe with an exceptionally heterogeneous ethnic structure of the population. Such a national structure of the population is a result of the overall demographic development of Vojvodina through history and primarily a consequence of migration processes. Series of political developments, such as changes in states' borders and the formation of new states, have rendered Vojvodina a territory of migrations throughout the last century. These migrations have exerted a considerable impact upon Vojvodina's ethnic structure. As a result of planned colonizations in Vojvodina and impromptu migrations, its territory from the end of the 17th century started to be settled by national groups other than Serbs and Hungarians, all of which are present in greater or smaller numbers at the present time. This was followed by a period of mass migrations that were especially pronounced in the second half of the 18th century and in the 1920's (after the First World War), the 1940's (after the Second World War), and the 1990's (refugee migrations from the former Yugoslav republics). The powerful influence of migrations during the given period is further underlined by the fact that contemporary demographic processes on the territory of Vojvodina are in large measure a consequence of these historical events. In the last decade of the 20th century, the break-up of Yugoslavia, accompanied by civil war, caused strong refugee migrations from the other former republics of Yugoslavia into Serbia. The province of Vojvodina received the bulk of this refugee population, in part owing to action of the social migration network that arose as a consequence of the colonization process.

The present work represents an attempt to reconstruct the action exerted by migration processes in Vojvodina during the period of 1919-1948 on demographic development of the region. The time period treated in the paper encompasses two colonizations, one of them occurring between the two world wars (1919-1931), the other taking place after the Second World War (1945-1948). The work makes use of the data of censuses taken before and after the Second World War. In view of the different administrative-territorial divisions of Vojvodina in the censuses, census data are cited in relation to the present-day division of the province for the sake of easier comparison.

Colonization in Vojvodina during the Period of 1919-1931

Up until 1918, the territory of Vojvodina was an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Upon the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, representatives of the Grand National Council of Backa, Banat, Baranja, and Srem voted at a session of the Grand National Parliament held on 25 November 1918 for direct unification with the Kingdom of Serbia.

After 1918 the influence of ethnic, nationalistic, religious, and political push factors became even more evident as the winners of World War I reshaped the political map of Europe. The establishing of new nation states also created large numbers of new ethnic minorities (Mynz, 1995). Major changes of the continental political map during the 20th century resulted from World War I, with the Balkan Wars as a prelude, World War II, and the collapse of the Communist Bloc and some incorporated states after the Cold War (Rugg, 1985). The area of great empires was marked by forced intrastate ethnic integration, often painful for the then numerous minorities. World War I allowed some of them to establish their own states (for example, Poland, Hungary, etc.), but brought even more problems to others (for instance, to Romania and Yugoslavia). Eastern Europe entered the century divided between four empires. Russia and Austria-Hungary were the European leaders in both the number of minorities and their total populations. Austria-Hungary surpassed the Russian Empire in terms of average minority size; the minorities of Austria-Hungary formed over three-quarters of its total population (or 60% if Hungarians were considered as a "co-majority"). Nine new states appeared on the European scene in the 1920's after the first geopolitical shift, notably reducing the percentages of minorities and both their total and average numbers. In 1930 the European part of the USSR retained the largest number of minorities in absolute figures, but it was followed by the new 'collective' Yugoslavian Kingdom (Kolossov and Treivish, 1998).

Vojvodina entered the composition of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1918 and later became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. According to the census of 1921, present-day settlements and municipalities on the territory of Vojvodina belonged to units of the Vukovar-Ilok and Osijek Districts (settlements in Srem) and to Backa, Banat, and Baranja. According to the 1921 census of persons, households, and apartments, 1,529,426 people then lived in Vojvodina (see Table 1). In relation to the census of 1910 the population of Vojvodina showed an increase of 23,671.

During the intercensal period of 1910-1921, natural growth increased the population of Vojvodina by 32,805 inhabitants, while migrations reduced it by 9,134. Although it was expected that the unification of Vojvodina with Serbia and its later annexation to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes would cause mass emigration of groups that obtained independent national states with the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, overall ethnic changes were not great. If we compare the results of the 1910 and 1921 censuses, we notice the growth of all ethnic groups except the Hungarian and Romanian groups, which shrank in that period. Extreme growth was registered in the case of the Croatian ethnic group. This growth was caused by the decision of the Bunjevci to declare themselves as Croats. The number of Hungarians was reduced because members of the intelligentsia and government employees moved to their country of origin. The decrease in the number of Romanians can be explained in a similar way: the border of their country of origin was now nearby (Curcic, 1996; Kicosev and Kovacevic, 2005).

In October of 1929, the name of the state was changed from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The state was on that occasion organized into nine regional units called "banovinas." The 1931 census of persons, households, and apartments in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia included settlements on the territory of present-day Vojvodina within the framework of the Danube Banovina. The administrative center of this banovina was in Novi Sad. In view of the fact that the census planned for the spring of 1941 was never performed due to the outbreak of the Second World War on the territory of Yugoslavia, the 1931 census is used here to analyze population changes during the period between the two world wars. The results of this census indicate an increase of population during the compensation period following the First World War. This period is also characterized by planned resettlement associated with the agrarian reform initiated in 1919.

During the intercensal period of 1921-1931, immigration was greater than emigration in Vojvodina for the first time in the 20th century. In that period population of Vojvodina increased by 93,350 persons (see Table 2).

Natural growth accounted for 56,820 new residents, while the migration balance contributed 36,530 new residents. For estimation of the participation of individual components of population change, we used the data of (Curcic (Curcic, 1996) on the rate of natural growth during the period in question. Our results differ from those, owing to conversion of administrative units to the present-day administrative-territorial division of Vojvodina.

The reproduction compensation in Serbia after the First World War was most weakly expressed in the case...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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