I recently found Illiteracy Map of Yugoslavia, and was fascinated as to how different illiteracy rates are in different countries that were part of Yugoslavia. Slovenia for example has very low illiteracy percentage on the other hand Bosnia and Kosovo (and some parts of Serbia and Macedonia which have high Albanian population) have very high illiteracy rates. There is another map from 1931 which has the same pattern (although it's written in Serbian and French and I don't exactly understand what it says).
What I'm very curious to find out is why do these clear differences exist in the countries that were part of Yugoslavia. I apologize if this is not suited for this sub, and if this question needs to be deleted, can you please at least redirect somewhere where I can learn more on this. Thank you
This map corresponds very closely to the pre-1918 political map. Regions that belonged to Austria-Hungary (Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Vojvodina) had a much higher literacy since they have introduced compulsory education earlier than other regions. They were also more developed than other regions (although this varied a lot, for example inland Dalmatia was much less developed and had much lower literacy than the coast).
It's known there were parts of inland Dalmatia where village elders were opposed to opening primary schools even in 1930's. Even later, it's known that parents sometimes bribed school officials so that the officials don't report their daughters don't attend schools (there was always a gender gap, parents were much more willing to send sons to school).
Then, you see the difference between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sanjak and today Kosovo. They were parts of the Ottoman Empire up to 1868 (after that, Bosnia-Herzegovina was administered by Austria-Hungary) and the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Ottoman Empire didn't really require people learn to read and write, so in 1868, there was less than 5% literacy rate in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and numbers grew slowly, since people were simply not used to send their children to school, there were no schools, no teachers, and so on. By 1941, literacy levels in Bosnia-Herzegovina grew to just 25%.
You can easily find a map of literacy in Austria-Hungary from 1880, showing how literacy was the greatest in parts of today Austria and Czech lands, and much lower elsewhere.
After the 2nd World War, the new authorities launched a major literacy campaign, which had some success, but a lot of older people remained illiterate.
Sources:
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