National identity in the anthems of the states emerging from SFR Yugoslavia

This paper explores the texts of the state/national anthems of five states created out of the SFR Yugoslavia: Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. While the lyrics of these anthems offer little if any information about the identity of their singers, the anthems function well as national markers of the singers. While most of them originate in the nineteenth-century poems/songs, from 1989 onwards, they were transformed, through special legislation, into state anthems; their transformation into state anthems was part of the legal preparation for the creation of the new states out of the Communist-ruled federation. The state anthems of Bosnia and Herzegovina and of Kosovo have no lyrics and are consequently not explored in the article.