The results of the survey by Ilić and Cvejić detected a tendency towards ethnic introversion on the Serb respondents’ part.88 The relatively increased degree of suspicion towards minority groups became subject to external catalysts such as the contemporary developments in the other parts of the former Yugoslavia (most notably the fall of Krajina) and the gradual radicalization of the Albanians in Kosovo. Serbian fears over their republic’s integrity, as well as their adherence to national solidarity, were subtly communicated in the same survey through the high degree of admiration towards figures associated with the Serbian ethnogenesis (e.g. Saint Sava); the nineteenth-century national awakening (e.g. Vuk Karadžić); and the unification of the Serbian lands (e.g. King Petar I Karađorđević).89
The responses by the Hungarian sample can be interpreted as a reaction to the nationalizing process. This seems to have triggered a counter-nationalistic attitude directed against the dominant nationality, the Serbs. When viewed through the spectrum of Brubaker’s triadic nexus concept, the allegedly marginalized minority’s reaction to the nationalizing policies is to adopt an equally homogenizing attitude within itself. The Hungarian opinion-formers (intellectuals and politically active individuals) avoided to stress any sort of internal cleavages (e.g. political, socio-economic and territorial)
88 Ilić Vladimir and Cvejić Slobodan, Nacionalizam u Vojvodini (Zrenjanin: Ekspres, 1997),
181, 184–5, 188, 191–2 and 193.
and sought to present their group as homogeneous, especially as far as its grievances were concerned. In a somewhat similar fashion to their Serb counterparts, the Hungarian respondents expressed a high admiration for political figures who had defended the national rights of the Hungarians in the past (e.g. Lajos Kossuth, Sandor Petöfy) and the present (e.g. the party leaders Jozsef Kasas and Andras Agoston in Vojvodina).
The high degree of ethnic solidarity and relative introversion encountered among Slovaks can be interpreted in terms of a small group that strives to preserve its cultural identity. Slovak worries over cultural survival might have been prompted by the lack of organized political structures within the community, as well as the geographic distance of their kin-state. The observation that Slovak nationalist resurgence in Vojvodina was of an essentially cultural character is substantiated by the fact that in Ilić and Cvejić’s survey most Slovak respondents expressed particular admiration towards Slovak men of art and literature, quite a few of those originated from Vojvodina.90 As for the Romanians, a low intensity of group consciousness as well as a tendency towards conscious assimilation was observed. This incidence might have been prompted by the desire for socio-economic mobility91 and the long-standing tradition of peaceful cohabitation between Serbs and Romanians in Vojvodina.
Neither Romanians nor Slovaks seemed to approve of the way that the province’s Hungarian elites voiced their grievances.92 On the one hand this was subject to the fear that, always bearing in mind the Hungarian minority’s size and political organization, the minority discourse in Vojvodina might be dominated by the Hungarian side. The second catalyst was possibly the assessment, by the Slovak and Romanian respondents, that the vocal fashion in which the Hungarian
90 Ilić and Cvejić, Nacionalizam u Vojvodini, 100.
91 Some information over this issue was disclosed to the author in the course of his field
research in Vojvodina (Interview with Romanian journalist at RTS Novi Sad; 24 March 2002).
elites were expressing their grievances might, in the long term, generate interethnic friction in Vojvodina. An external factor that might have shaped these two groups’ stance was the simultaneous ethnic Hungarian aspirations in Romania and Slovakia.
At the same time, a notable percentage of respondents opted for an increase in interethnic tolerance and mutual trust among the different communities in Vojvodina. In the smaller survey conducted by Vladimir Ilić in the early 1990s, the majority of respondents stated that they did not put high importance on the ethnicity of their partner or the ethnic composition of their workplace.93 Apart from these, the results of another survey conducted in 1990 demonstrated that the majority of the Serb and Hungarian respondents generally held a positive view of each other.94 One might argue that the observations of the two latter surveys can be understood by the fact that they were carried out at a time when the interethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia had not dramatically escalated. Still, the results of another survey, carried out throughout Serbia in 1995, demonstrate that nationalist orientation in Vojvodina remained lower than it was the case in the rest of Serbia. In addition, the Vojvodinian respondents demonstrated a more cosmopolitan attitude towards other nationalities in comparison to the respondents from Serbia proper.95
These ostensibly conflicting observations lead to the following conclusion. The adequate comprehension of the spectrum of interethnic relations in Vojvodina, throughout that period, consists in the detachment of the monist attitudes, which became manifest primarily on the political level, from the ethno-cultural heterophony
93 Ilić Vladimir and Cvejić Slobodan, ‘Vojvođani i nacionalizam’, Sociologija, vol. XXXV,
1993, 533–47, 538–40.
94 Seventy per cent of the Hungarian and 57 per cent of the Serb respondents stated that
they held a positive view of each other. Liljana Bačević et al., Jugoslavija na kriznoj prekretnici (Belgrade: Institut društvenih nauka, 1991), 180, 236.
95 Nationalist orientation was evident among 21.6 per cent of the Vojvodinian respondents
(Central Serbian respondents: 41.7 per cent) whereas 36.4 per cent of the same sample demonstrated a rather cosmopolitan attitude towards other nationalities (Central Serbian sample: 18.0 per cent). Zagorka Golubović et al., Društveni karakter i društvene promene u svetlu nacionalnih sukoba (Belgrade: Filip Višnjić, 1995), 159, 219, 248, 252.
on the social micro-level. Collective monism manifested through the stress on group homogeneity as well as ethnic introversion and mistrust towards other groups. In regard to the Serbs, a process of political de-radicalization was soon put under way. Nevertheless, the state of crisis continued to foment sociopolitical tensions, thus deepening mistrust of everyone (e.g. politicians, institutions and ‘others’). So the Vojvodinian society became more segmented and Serbs, as well as minority groups, became more introverted as a psychological mechanism of self-protection.
Besides these monist group attitudes, there co-existed a bicultural, or, more precisely, intercultural social practice. Vojvodina’s ethno- cultural heterophony on the grassroots level was a by-product of the province’s long-standing tradition of multiethnic cohabitation. This heterophony became institutionalized during the Communist era and was reinforced through the contraction of ethnically mixed marriages, especially in the 1970s and the ’80s. Despite the inevitable political cleavages, this intercultural practice among individuals coming from different ethnic backgrounds would not radically alter during the 1990s. After all, always bearing in mind that between 1980 and 1985 approximately 27.1 per cent of the marriages in Vojvodina were mixed, it is likely that even quite a few of the respondents who demonstrated an ethno-culturally introverted attitude had relatives of a different ethnic affiliation themselves.
Despite symptoms of ethnic introversion, it would certainly not be precise to categorize the Vojvodinian society of the 1990s as a segregated one. In regard to the Serb majority, the institutional reaffirmation of Vojvodina’s Serbian character did not necessarily imply that minority group identities could not co-exist with the dominant one. In other words, a more ‘inclusive’ version of Serbian nationalism became the case in Vojvodina. The positive grassroots climate among members of different ethnic groups primarily became evident in the more diverse parts of the province. Although the voting patterns in some of these municipalities were conditioned by the ethnic factor, still there would not be many cases that a Hungarian, say, could not understand Serbian
or, vice versa, a Serb or Montenegrin could not understand, at least elementary, Hungarian.96