FROM "LOVE" TO "HATE"

AIM, BEOGRAD, March 8, 94

Public Opinion on Interethnic Relations

The almost idyllic picture of the "brotherhood and unity" of the Yugoslav nations was protected from any kind of questioning, doubts and reexaminations for over 40 years. In spite of that, interethnic relations were the subject of public opinion polls, in which the Institute for Social Sciences from Belgrade (Pantic 1967, Rot and Havelka 1973, Bacevic 1989, etc.) also took part. The preventing of the expression of basic national feelings, even by repressive means (although not equally in all parts of the country) and only sporadic expressions of interethnic intolerance, were the reason that the so called ethnic distance was most often studied in its "most intimate" aspect - through the readiness of members of different nations of the SFRY to enter into marriage. The basic results of those polls showed that there was no marked ethnic distance among the majority of the citizens; for example, in 3/5 pollees in 1967 and in more than a half in 1989.

Although we can assume that the polls did not manage fully to "catch" the deep and long suppressed interethnic animosities they, nevertheless, indicate a constant deterioration of interethnic relations. In the last poll conducted in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in 1990, before it broke up, interethnic relations in enterprises were assessed as "good" and "satisfactory" by 87% of the pollees, in the place of residence by 85%, within the Republics 57%, and at SFRY level only 9%. Large differences were evident in the assessment of these relations within individual republics and provinces: they were considered good by 80% of the pollees in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 77% in Vojvodina, 74% in Slovenia, 72% in Macedonia, 44% in Croatia, 40% in Serbia and only 5% in Kosovo.

Although final conclusions cannot be made on the basis of polls, their findings indicate that the focus of interethnic conflicts was seen to lie in relations among republican and provincial leaderships, and that the subsequent ideas that different nations could not live together not only in the SFRY, but not even in individual parts of the SFRY (in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance) were not deeply rooted in the minds of "ordinary" people.

The break-up of the SFRY and the war between the "fraternal" republics, have changed the focus of research into interethnic relations in public opinion polls. The refined forms of interethnic distance were generally substituted by direct assessments of nations from the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In the polls of the Center for Political Science Research and Public Opinion of the Institute for Social Sciences, at the end of 1992 and in 1993 pollees from Serbia (excluding Kosovo) assessed all the nations from the territory of the former Yugoslavia, except the Montenegrins, negatively. At the end of 1993, the Albanians were negatively assessed by over 80% of the pollees (11% positive), Moslems by over 75% (16% positive), Croats by over 74% (19%), Slovenians over 63% (to about 26%), Hungarians by 60% (28%) and Macedonians by almost 51% (to something over 38%). Differences in 1992 and 1993 results are negligible. The assessments of the newly formed states in the territory of the former Yugoslavia are even more unfavourable: Croatia is negatively assessed by over 85% of the pollees (a little over 5% positive assessments), Slovenia almost 72% (15% positive) and Macedonia 55% (29% positive).

At the same time, however, 67% of these same pollees in Serbia believed that different nations could live in harmony in one state. The same number does not agree with the stance that Serbia is only for the Serbs. Also, over 75% is for the granting all rights to national minorities in keeping with international conventions and practice. Judging by these results, it is not advisable to treat the negative assessments of other nations primarily as an expression of chauvinism. If pollees through assessments of states generally express stances towards their state policies, behind the almost as negative assessments of the nations in them is the stance on the responsibility of entire nations for the policies pursued by their states.

The outline of the story of how interethnic relations traversed the road from "love" to "hate" in only a few years is generally known. Given the deepening crisis in society, general dissatisfaction is easily translated into the area of interethnic relations. The spreading of the feeling of national imperilment and the awakening of national resentment, as a pretext for severe interethnic conflicts, met with fertile ground. It was prepared above all by the general inefficiency of the old system, i.e. of its regulative formulas and the manner of channelling social flows (and in that context, the particularly inadequate institutional arrangements for the status of provinces within Serbia and relations within the Federation) and then by the break-up of that political and economic system, the collapse of the economy, a situation of elementary existential jeopardy and no prospects generally, the disintegration of the official system of values and past identities, the surfacing of the long and deeply suppressed need for expressing national identity in some parts of nations, and the historic collective traumas of some nations,etc.

Although deep national feelings had been smouldering in some parts of nations, their eruption on the social scene in the form of overt national animosities was possible only when an interference was struck between the futility of the existing reality, the need for finding another meaning of another reality, which was being born on the ruins of the old one, and the need for the new legitimization of national elites in their struggle for preserving or winning power.

But the policy of "great" national ideas, "historic", "fateful" national objectives proved to lead into a blind alley; it created more problems than it solved. The absurdity is that, everything, even the war, was started with the idea of a better life, and the outcome was a general civilizational collapse of the society and general human degradation, even of those fortunate ones who survived.

Solutions to interethnic relations thus must be sought along other general lines of reordering society - such as the change of the ownership structure, the development of a market economy, the democratization of society, and in particular the observance of human rights and freedoms, and similar. That acute problems are in question is seen from the findings in late 1993, according to which over a half - 55% of the pollees in Serbia think that human rights and freedoms are observed not at all or not fully, as compared to one-fourth - 26% of those who think that they are fully or almost fully observed. Can national rights really be recognized and observed if members of all the nations in Serbia feel more or less deprived of their rights as citizens? Or, is it possible to first solve the problem of national rights and only then of civil ones?

Zoran Slavujevic