The Civil War in Yugoslavia: Do Ostensibly High Rates of Intermarriage Obviate Ethnic Hatreds As a Cause? Andrei Simic, University of Southern California

The Civil War in Yugoslavia: Do Ostensibly High Rates of Intermarriage Obviate Ethnic Hatreds as a Cause? Andrei Simic, University of Southern California

To the Editor: In a letter appearing in the Spring 1994 issue of AEER, V. P. Gagnon, commenting on an article by Botev and Wagner in the special issue "War among the Yugoslavs" (Spring and Fall 1993), disputes the authors' contention that an overall low rate of intermarriage in Yugoslavia as a whole can be interpreted as indicating a lack of social integration. Faulting their methodology, he holds that if we were to consider the percentages of possible cases of intermarriage in given regions typified by ethnically heterogeneous populations, then the incidence of such unions would be quite high. He points out that during the 1980s this was, in fact, the case in the parts of Bosnia and Croatia where the heaviest fighting had taken place. Thus, he concludes that the root of the conflict cannot be "some preexisting hatred, discrimination, or lack of integration," and, therefore, "the causes must be sought elsewhere." While I can readily agree that external forces have significantly contributed to the current chaos, nevertheless, it seems absolutely clear from a preponderance of evidence that interethnic antagonisms have been the primary, if not exclusive, catalyst. The problem with Gagnon's thesis lies not in the statistics he cites, but in their interpretation . There are a number of ways Gagnon's data on intermarriage can be analyzed other than his hypothesis regarding social integration. For instance, he notes that 25% of Croatia's population was comprised of ethnic minorities, and that 16.9% of all marriages were mixed. Of course, this also means that 83.1% of all unions were homogeneous. Therefore, we can presume that some specific selective variables influenced those who opted for ethnically exogamous marriage. As Gagnon suggests, proximity was surely one of those factors. However, it would not be unreasonable to assume that a significant number of those who married out may have harbored relatively low levels of hostility toward the ethnic group to which their spouses belonged, that is, they were atypical of the population as a whole. Also, since the Yugoslav census does not recognize hyphenated ethnicity as a category, many of those contracting

47 interethnic marriages may have been of mixed origins, that is, they may have had similar ethnic backgrounds. There are still other ways that data regarding mixed marriages in Yugoslavia can be very misleading. For example, according to figures from 1970 (Petrovic 1985), Montenegrins had the highest rate of out-marriage of any nationality. While this might suggest a lessening of ethnic distance between Montenegrins and others, in reality, the majority of these unions was with Serbs. Since most Montenegrins regard themselves as Serbs (although they are listed in the census as a separate category), these were for all practical purposes ethnically endogamous marriages. Similarly, in our paper on postwar Montenegrin "colonists" in Vojvodina (Petrovic and Simic 1990), it was shown that marriage constituted a double-edged sword in terms of social integration. On the one hand, it could diminish ethnic distance, while, on the other, it often simply provided a mechanism for recruiting women into the group. In this respect, the Serbs and Montenegrins are generally, like most South Slavs, patrilineal and patrilocal, especially in rural settings. Thus, foreign women are easily assimilated into family and community life, with the children of such marriages usually assuming the ethnic, religious, and kinship identities of their fathers. This process brings to mind Barth's (1969:21) contention that "examples of stable and persisting ethnic boundaries that are crossed by a flow of personnel are clearly far more common than the ethnographic literature would lead us to believe." It is also instructive to note the contrast in Latin between inimicus (personal enemy) and hostes (political, public, or categorical enemy). After all, many a crusader took a Saracen bride without dampening his ardor in the fight against Islam. One of the indicators of the Yugoslav Marxist government's failure to reduce interethnic tensions is the relatively small number of census respondents who have declared themselves as nonspecific "Yugoslavs": in 1961, 1.7%; in 1971, 1.3%, and in 1981, 5.4% (SFRJ 1990:129). The significantly larger percentage in 1981 can probably be attributed in part to Bosnian and Croatian Serbs who did not wish to officially declare their nationality fearing discrimination. For example, this appears to have been the case in Croatia where those categorized as "Yugoslavs" increased from 84,118 in 1971 to 379, 057 in 1981, and those shown as Serbs decreased from 626, 789 in 1971 to 531, 502 in 1981 (Republika Hrvatska 1990:89). Another demographic sign of the lack of ethnic integration is the failure of Yugoslavia's various regions to become more heterogeneous over time. In actuality, the reverse has been true as evidenced by an increase

during the 1970s and early 1980s of migration by individuals into the republics dominated by their own ethnic groups (Spasojevic 1984). While there is not ample space here to review the plethora of journalistic and academic evidence regarding the abysmal relations which have characterized the constituent ethnic groups of Yugoslavia since its incipiency, I would like to cite my own personal experience there dating from 1961 periodically through 1988. What I encountered was a pervasive negative ethnic stereotyping as well as widespread and overt expressions of distrust, antipathy, and hostility. Moreover, on visits to several Hercegovinian and Montenegrin villages, I was aware that the peasants had stockpiled large quantities of weapons which they explained were to be used in defense against their local non-Serbian neighbors (in the Hercegovinian case, Croats and Muslims; and in the Montenegrin one, Albanians). Similarly, while visiting a peasant household near Bugojno in Bosnia in 1988, I was cautioned to be "careful" with whom I associated because the local "ustaše" were "very dangerous." While such contacts were exclusively with Serbs who perceived our relationship as one of trust due to my ethnic background, I have no reason to believe Croatian or Muslim attitudes were any different. Significantly, counter to Gagnon's mixed-marriage hypothesis, expressions of interethnic disaffection were far more pronounced in heterogeneous areas such as Lika and Hercegovina than in more homogeneous Serbia proper. Moreover, this phenomenon was so common that it could not simply be dismissed as idiosyncratic in a society were public expressions of chauvinism were severely punished by law. While Gagnon's data on intermarriage provide an evocative perspective quite different from that of Botev and Wagner, they should not be taken at face value. When contextualized in the framework of Yugoslav culture and society, they do not seem to validate the commonly held sociological axiom that rates of intermarriage are necessarily "very accurate indicators of social acceptance and lack of discrimination."

References Cited

Barth, Fredrik, 1969, "Introduction." In Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic groups and boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Pp. 9-38.

Botev, Nikolai and Richard Wagner 1993 "Seeing past the barricades: Ethnic intermarriage in Yugoslavia during the last three decades." In David E. Kideckel and Joel M. Halpern (eds.), Special issue: War among the Yugoslavs. The Anthropology of East Europe Review, Spring and Fall: 29-38.

Gagnon, V. P. Jr.,. 1994, "Reaction to the special issue of AEER War among the Yugoslavs." The Anthropology of East Europe Review 12 (1): 50-51.

Petrovic, Edit and Andrei Simic 1990 "Montenegrin Colonists in Vojvodina: Objective and subjective measures of ethnicity." Serbian Studies 5 (4): 5-20.

Petrovic, Ru(a 1985 Etnicvki mešoviti brakovi u Tugoslaviji (Ethnically mixed marriages in Yugoslavia). Belgrade: Institut za Sociološka Istracivanja Filozofskog Fakulteta.

Republika Hrvatska 1990 Statisticki godišvnjak Republike Hrvatske (Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Croatia). Zagreb: Zavod za Statistiku.

SFRJ (Socijalisti(ka Federativna Republika Jugoslavije), 1990, Statisticki godišnjak Jugoslavije (The statistical yearbook of Yugoslavia). Belgrade: Savezni Zavod za Statistiku.