This question is going to raise an ethnic and racial shitstorm but here goes:
Everytime I watch the news on Kosovo, or when Bosnia was at war, I kept hearing about ethnic conflict between the Serbs and the Bosnians and the Croats and the Slovenes and the Albanians. But, when I watched TV, I could not tell any of them apart! How do they do it in the Balkans?
I kind of can figure out the Serbs: big eyebrows, big foreheads, small pudgy faces. But I’m sure this was not all of them, and I dont want to sterotype!
Is it that the different ethnic groups of the Balkans are so familar with each other, and rarely intermix, thus can figure out each other by subtle facial features easier than I can here in the Great Melting Pot?
Well, under the benevolent communist dictatorship of Marshal Tito, Yugoslavians were… highly encouraged… to intermarry across racial/cultural/creed lines. This, unfortunately, did not stop the violence that erupted after Tito’s death.
The conflict inherent in the Balkans is age-old, going back at least to the um, Magyars, was it? Geographically, according to John Keegan, the terrain of the Balkans has acted as a sort of flypaper for invading or migrating peoples. It consists largely of very defensible valleys which a relatively small number of people can control. So lots of different folks wound up controlling their little spot of God’s green earth. Population increases would naturally incline one valley’s inhabitants to try to take over the territory of the next valley, and it was not unusual for the folks in the next valley to speak a completely different language and have different traditions, starting of course with religion. That’s a recipe for misunderstanding and conflict.
Today, as I understand it, not only do peoples of one valley speak a different dialect from their neighbors, they oftentimes speak a different language entirely. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, and Muslim religions are represented. And any one group can royally screw another by simply blocking transit through their little patch of Hell. It’s probably quite obvious to the people who live there whom is from which camp, either by their language or accent, or by the behavior they display.
I remember a news story from when we first went into Kosovo after the Serbian Army withdrew- some Albanian Kosavars murdered a Bulgarian-American relief worker because they thought he was a Serb.
Serbs, Ethnic Hungarians, Slovenes and Croats are all white. How can we tell each other apart? Geez we just use racial stereotype;)
Most of the ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia use different languages and have different accents. How do Britons differentiate between Irish and Scottish people? They might look alike if we indulge in racial stereotyping but they sound different.
As a last resort, we ask. It is pretty easy to tell from the names too which ethnic derivation, the person comes from.
They’re not prejudiced. They hate everyone equally.
I read that during WWII the Nazi’s had to tell the Yugoslavs to cool it- they were being too mean. Now, when a Nazi is able to tell someone that they are being a bit too excessive…well, you know you’re in a fucked part of the world.
I’m sure that to someone who doesn’t speak English, a New York accent and a Canadian accent sound the same. To and English speaker the difference is pretty obvious.
Same thing for Serbs and Croats for example. They speak the same language but there’s lots of simple expressions that make it obvious to them who the other person is. For example if a New Zealander writes “Good Day” instead of “Hello” you know they’re not American even though you haven’t even heard them speak. That’s one specific example that I know carries over in to Serbo-Croatian.
Of course, this doesn’t alway work because when people have been living together for so long they learn to imitate each other’s speech. For example my grandfather, who grew up in eastern Poland in a region that was mostly Ukranian, not only can speak Ukranian without an accent but speaks Polish with a strong Ukranian accent (which is typical of Poles from that region). And Polish and Ukranian are seperate languages, not just different dialects.
There is a lot of truth i this statement. I remember watching a televised debate with audience participation (ala Donahue) on Austrlian TV a few years ago. The audience was made up of 15-25 year olds of various ethnic groups, all discussing the topic of racial/ethnic intolerance, nationalism, civil war etc. The major Balkan conflict at that time was the one that eventually led to Croatia becoming independent.
A shouting match develop between a group of Greek youths and a similar group of Macedonians. I’m sure that had these two groups been in the street, violence would have ensued.
What stunned and amazed me was the admission from either side that none of the participants had either been born in Greece or Macedonia, or had ever been there. Their hatreds were completely learned from their families and communities, and perpetuated in Australia - the opposite side of the world! What possible benefit is there in fighting a nationalistic battle on neutral soil?
There is no way these youths had anything to gain from their actions.Most of the greater Australian community are ignorant of the historical feud between Greece and Macedonia, and most Australians couldn’t give a shit about it anyway.
All of which supports my argument that hatreds are indeed carefully taught and perpetuated, particularly in the Balkans.
RealityChuck and DVous Means have hit it right on the head. The peoples of the Balkans don’t “know” whom to hate or how to hate them. They get whipped up by propaganda and appeals to their ethnic pride from the people that lead them. Nationalism cards are very easily played in times of economic and political crisis, of which the Countries Formerly Known as Yugoslavia have had more than their fair share over the past decade.
Tito may have gotten people to intermarry and co-exist on a relatively harmonious level but the great fault with it is that he did it from above, by fiat. Ordinary people had no more control over their own lives than anywhere else in Eastern Europe or the rest of the world. So when the shit hit the fan and people looked for answers, men like Milosevic and Tudjman stepped onto the stage and started calling the shots.
Hating the folks next valley over with a purple passion is definitely not some sort of cultural feature of the Balkans. It’s the result of a handful of opportunists at the top playing on nationalisms to further consolidate their own hold on power.
When have the Balkans NOT been a hot spot! Gee, that’s what started the First World War, the assasination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, etc etc…
Let’s see, the Magyars are hungarian (my grandfather was half-Magyar, half Slav-Slovak), the Croats, Montenegrians(sp?), Bulgarians, Serbs and such are Slavs…etc etc.
They’ve been at each others’ throats for centuries.
It’s certainly nothing new.
I seem to recall some media reports c.1992-93, concerning non-Muslim hooligans confirming the ethnic identity of Bosnian Muslim men by pulling down their would-be victim’s pants.
“I seem to recall some media reports c.1992-93, concerning non-Muslim hooligans confirming the ethnic identity of Bosnian Muslim men by pulling down their would-be victim’s pants.”
Ok Labradorian kind of hinted where I was going with this. When Miloslav the Terrible sends in his Serbian goons to round up a village full of Kosovar Albanians, or to lead a family of Bosnians to the local death camp, HOW CAN THEY BE SURE THAT EVERYONE THEY ARE MASSACRING ARE ALBANIANS OR BOSNIANS? What PHYSICAL traits do they have?
It cant be just accents. I mean even those get changed within different groups over geography and time.
I meant to put this in with my previous post. Honest I did.
They really can’t be sure. It’s completely arbitrary who they decide is Albanian or Bosnian or Croat or Christian or Muslim. That’s the horror of ethnic cleansing - you’re at the mercy of whoever’s on the trigger end of the rifle. If they say you’re the scapegoated minority of the hour, you’re history.
Again I want to stress this isn’t something in the Balkan “makeup” that naturally leads to this. The blame lies squarely with the nationalist leaders like Milosevic, Tudjman, and the others.
Just thought I’d mention the following. An (American) friend of mine has been living in Germany for a couple of years, and he has a (German) girlfriend. He told me that whenever he sees people in Europe, all he can identify is “white”, “white”, “white”,… On the other hand, she is able to identify them “Italian”, “French”, “German”, and so on.
I personally can’t vouch for her accuracy, but I don’t necessarily doubt it, either. I’m American, and so I’m quite likely to miss certain distinguishing characteristics. A European might be able to tell the difference relatively easy, I don’t know.
This part of the world has been having these kinds of problems since the 14th or 15th century, at least. I don’t think the current leaders can take all the blame. Responsibility for the current horror, yes. But it seem to me they’re just making use of what’s already there.
