Feeling, Speaking, and Living Czech 140 Years after Leaving the Czech Lands. Czechs in Bosnia: Shift of Individual and Collective Identity
Abstract
They have not seen the land of their ancestors for almost one and a half centuries. They were widely forgotten by their ancient homeland.
They survived totalitarian regimes and difficult historical periods in an unstable multinational region, suffering from several cruel conflicts (with often four armies crossing their homes daily). Despite the possibility that numbers of ethnic Czechs in Bosnia are declining, assimilation is strong, and young people have left the country due to wars and high unemployment.
Czech heritage is still present in a few villages in the rural areas of Northern Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Based on the analysis of transcriptions from extensive semi-structured autobiographical interviews with the oldest generation of the last Czech speaking persons of Bohemian and Moravian descent, as well as documents (archives, periodicals) and personal experience from living and teaching in the Balkans, the work focuses on the shift of identity, language and culture of individuals and whole local communities in villages with a formerly ethnic Czech majority in rural areas near the Sava River.
This socio-economic migration from an overpopulated Central European area that led first to the Volhynia Region in Tsarist Russia (current Ukraine), at the same time belongs to the religiously motivated secondary migration after Russian officials forced immigrants to accept Orthodoxy. Since the second half of the 19th century, Czech diasporas have developed independently, having almost no contact with the land of their ancestors.
Some aspects will be compared to the situations of other ethnic Czech minorities in the Balkan areas (Croatia, Serbia, Romania).