SOCIAL DISTANCE AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS ETHNICALLY MIXED MARRIAGES

The paper presents the results of a survey that was designed to examine ethnic distance of some Belgrade′s graduating students towards seven nations from ex-Yugoslavia. The research has been carried out by social distance scale, which makes possible to investigate the readiness for establishing the relationships of various degrees of closeness relative to different religion or nation with special attention to ethnic marriages. It is necessary to emphasize that the phenomenon of heterogeneous marriages has definitely been of exceptional significance for every society because, by living together and accepting elements from another culture, links are created between different groups and nations. It has been shown that ethnic distance is decreasing 11 years after the war if we compare it with the results obtained during the war, although the level of acceptance and confidence that existed before the war was not surveyed. According to obtained results we can expect that by deliberation of mass-media and complete normalization of the economic and cultural relations among the new established states in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, in the future new ethnically mixed marriages in this region will be established. It should be pointed out that those results have a great political importance, because one can conclude that ethnic prejudices, which have appeared during the war, are not deeply rooted.


INTRODUCTION
Ethnic prejudices have always constituted the main obstacle in maintaining cooperation and good relations among people and have always been used as an instrument for aggravating relations and provoking intolerance, conflict and war.Attachment to one's nation may range from the extremes of complete denial of the nation to its transformation into nationalistic, narcissistic and sometimes, in moments of crisis, genocidal behavior.Nationalists usually see their own state as a supreme value what prevents critical insight into one's own nation.They generally appeal to national affiliation and loyalty towards one's own nation and blame members of other nations for certain social crises.This representing form of regressive consciousness has tendency to seek a scapegoat, in the psychological sense, and is often skilfully used for political and manipulative purposes thus preventing identification of the real culprits and real ways of resolving current problems.
It is known that before the disintegration of Yugoslavia many results of the study of the ethnic distance had shown that ethnic prejudices were quite minor and that during and after the war they drastically increased.In this research we investigate the ethnic distance towards some nations of ex-Yugoslavia eleven years after the war, and special attention is paid to social attitudes towards ethnically mixed marriages, because the existence of mixed marriages points out an absence of negative national prejudices and a high degree of proximity, i.e., acceptance of another ethnic group.

Social distance in ex-Yugoslavia
Numerous studies of ethnic distance undertaken in the former Yugoslavia from 1960 -1990, show that distancing from other nations was consistently found to be small, even less than among the populations of much more developed countries.Many results published during the eighties, showed that 2/3 of the persons questioned in ex-Yugoslavia would marry a member of another nation and Yugoslav populations displayed relatively small ethnic distancing.Many young people even considered the national framework too narrow for identification (Fiamengo, 1960;Supek, 1963;Rot & Havelka, 1973;Pantić, 1967;1989;1991).
Pantić has found out, in the global analysis of numerous investigations within the period of 1960 to 1989, that the ethnic distance upon the areas of Yugoslavia even shows the trend of continuing decrease.Over 60% of the persons questioned in ex-Yugoslavia had not formed any ethnic distance in their attitudes, accepting members of other nations in various types of formal and informal relations: neighbour, friend, boss, spouse, and the like.Research carried in 1989 showed that the Croats (71%) had the greatest preference for working with the Serbs and the Yugoslavs, while the Serbs (59%) preferred the Croats as their working partners to members of their own nation (Pantić, 1989).
According to studies on national equality, only 16.2% of the youth in ex-Yugoslavia considered that national equality had not been achieved.Similar research on the inhabitants of Belgrade showed that (86%) declared that the situation in interethnic relations was good and satisfactory.A large percentage of the population in Serbia believed that the nationalism was harmful to the unity of the country.The idea of the national state was not yet dominant among the majority of the population, albeit in 1974 it was underlined as a political ideal by the nationalist political elite circles.In the eve of the "Croatian spring", paradoxically the least ethnic distance was manifested by the Croats (Rot & Havelka, 1973).
A very important study was made in the eve of the war, according to a project of the Consortium of Social Sciences Institutes "Position of Nations and Inter-ethnic Relations in Croatia" in which it was seen that a large majority of the persons polled expressed disagreement with the idea that every nation must have its own state, i.e., over a half of the population rejected the idea that a person can feel safe only if he lives in an environment where the majority belongs to his nation (Vrcan et al. 1986).
Studies by Katunarić in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina had also shown that until the disintegration of the common state and creation of "national states" nationalism was not significantly represented in that region (Katunarić, 1986).
In the eve of conflict, Dugandžić even wrote: "The expectations that national misunderstandings will spread from state affairs to those who are far from power have not proved justified.People still trust their own experiences more than news which comes from the outside; they do not think that their fellow citizens represent a danger for them because they belong to another nation" (Flere, 1989;Dugandžić, 1991).
According to psychological research on ethnic distance in 1989-1990, just before conflict in Bosnia, in Croatia and Herzegovina and Krajina, almost no ethnic distance among the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks was found.There was no national tension and there was belief in the possibility of living together, since (65.8%)Croats and (72%) Serbs considered that inter-ethnic relations were good in the place they lived, and only few members of the individual nations felt their rights were threatened (Pantić, 1991).
Study of Yugoslav youth on the most widespread territorial basis (which certainly has national, political, and cultural connotations) showed that the republics, or provinces were still less important objects of identification compared with Yugoslavia and Europe.The importance of Yugoslav affiliation was indicated by an absolute majority of young people of all nationalities except the Slovenes and Albanians, whose national affiliation was more important and who showed less attachment to Yugoslavia than to their republic.Affiliation with Yugoslavia was more important than with a republic especially among persons who did not live in their mother republic (Vrcan, 1986).
Unfortunately, these predictions did not come true.After the war erupted, ethnic distance among all different nationalities dramatically increased in the short time.In that sense we should not neglect the substantial influence of the media and the systematic political war propaganda organized during the civil war in almost all repub-lics of ex-Yugoslavia.The media at first systematically incited religious and national intolerance by spreading of rumours, which always constitutes an important instrument of psychological war.During the disintegration of Yugoslavia, preparations for war were deliberately accompanied by the incitement of prejudice and hatred for those against whom war is being prepared.Media propaganda systematically promoted attitudes of economic exploitation by other nations and discontent caused by an unsatisfactory level of economic prosperity was deliberately directed against members of other nations.
Many analysts agreed that the growth of mistrust between different ethnic and confessional groups, primarily as the result of intake of chauvinistic, lasting propaganda disseminated through the mass media which proposed various historical, sometimes true but more often false, arguments about centuries-old hatred and hostility.According to Biro (2002) nationalistic and war propaganda contributed to the extension of extreme nationalism: "At first, both print and broadcast media promoted ethnic homogenization, followed by their assuming the shameful role of war mongers.According to many, the media were the main instigators of the Yugoslav wars.We want to emphasize that the media not only rekindled the memories of ethnic conflicts and crimes of the World War II, but also directly misinformed the public in order to spread fear of the 'enemy' nationality".
Certainly, nationalists, who took the power in all territory of ex-Yugoslavia, haven't been able to solve the social and national problems of making a society more democratic and institutionalizing inter-ethnic relations on the basis of equality and human rights and consequently the extension of extreme nationalism toward all nations in the first place (besides war propaganda) appeared on account of the destruction of the state and high fear of economic and social uncertainty in the new abnormal conditions.
Many studies had shown that after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, significant ethnic distancing has developed in the whole territory of ex-Yugoslavia with respect to all nations.Animosity and intolerance are especially manifested towards the Albanians, then between the Serbs and Croats (over half the people questioned show a high level of ethnic distance, which was never the case before) (Golubović et. al. 1995;Lazić et al. 1994;Pečjak, 1994).
The research in Serbia had also shown similar changes: only 25% of the Serbs would accept "blood" relationship with the Croats, 19% with the Bosniaks and 16% with the Albanians (Kuzmanović, 1994).According to the same study, 85% of the Serbs expressed ethnic distance in relation to the Croats, 50% with utmost intensity.The biggest ethnic distance was expressed by farmers, then by retired people and non-qualified workers.It would be worthwhile to stress that the lowest ethnic distance was expressed by educated persons at university level 33%.
Results of research conducted in Croatia in 1994 2 , clearly show that 58% of respondents from Croatia believe that the Serbs have no virtues at all, 47% perceive the Serbs as the greatest enemies of the Croat people, 50% would be opposed to their children marrying the Serbs, 40% would not accept them as superiors at work.The data presented unambiguously illustrate and quantitatively express interethnic intolerance in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
Later investigations of Pečjak (1994) during the critical period of Yugoslav crisis reveal that the students from Slovenia have shown higher readiness to enter into official and personal relations with homosexual people and those infected with AIDS, than with the Serbs.
A study done by Kandido-Jakšić (1996), showed that refugee students virtually changed their attitudes against all nations from ex-Yugoslavia and declared that before the war they used to be naive and incapable of seeing things in their true light.It is important to stress out that 88% questioned students stated that they had no difficulties at the places they had lived before the war due to their ethnic affiliation.Many stated that during their schooling they did not even know the national origins of their best friend with whom they shared a desk.Similar investigation was carried out on Belgrade's graduating students also by Kandido-Jakšić (1999), which had shown great increase in social distance towards "hostile" nations of ex-Yugoslavia.
According to the findings of Šiber, the ethnic distance of the Croats to the Serbs and the Bosniaks (Muslims) significantly increased (in comparison with 1990) in his research from 1995, and then it slightly decreased in the research from 1997.In the answer to the question from the Social (Ethnic) Distance Scale: "Would you accept a member of ..... nationality to be your son or daughter in law?"Only 18% of the Croats would accept "blood" relationship with the Serbs and Bosniaks in 1995, and in 1997, this percentage moves to 21% regarding the Serbs, and 23% regarding the Bosniaks (Šiber, 1997).
According to general findings on the ethnic distance scale, we can conclude that during the war a large increase in exclusively nationalist feelings and national prejudice appeared in the whole territory of ex-Yugoslavia.

Mixed marriages in ex-Yugoslavia
Throughout history, marriage, as the basic framework for the biological reproduction of society, has undergone many basic and institutional changes, although its essential characteristics have remained unchanged.The marriage relationship has always been regulated by social, traditional, moral, religious, and legal norms, and throughout the world most marriages have been entered into by people belonging to the same nation, the same class, race and having a common language and religion.Heterogeneous marriages in many societies were forbidden and condemned.
Ethnic prejudices have a negative effect on entering into mixed marriages and highly correlate with nationalism and authoritarianism.Nationalists have always openly manifested a lack of tolerance and scorn towards ethnically mixed marriages because it is at variance with the ideas of pure national states.Well-known, for exam-ple, is the Nazi law forbidding marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans in order to preserve the purity of the race.
According to Petrović (1985), mixed marriages and especially their offspring are of significant social importance for every society.The spouses from different national origins affect the content of the idea of ethnic affiliation because during living together in an ethnically mixed marriage, the customs and elements of the other culture are adopted and in this way contact is established between different religions, nations, and cultures.By living together and bringing up their children together parents of different national origins create a new type of national identity in the consciousness of their offspring which is definitely not identical to the one that exists among homogeneous marriages and environments.It is not surprising that members of ethnically mixed marriages and their offspring had always represented a major obstacle to political manipulation and successful carrying out of hegemonistic policies.
There is no doubt that ethnically-mixed marriages, like their offspring, have always represented the most natural bridge over incited hatred, intolerance, disagreement, animosity, xenophobia, and the gap created in communication among nations.We can say that ethnic heterogeneous marriages are the only real means of ethnobiological and ethno-cultural homogenization that is in ethno-cultural processes such as ethno-genesis, symbiosis, assimilation, or integration.
From 1918, when Yugoslavia was formed, until the Second World War ethnically mixed marriages were very rare.However, after the war there was a constant tendency of increase of ethnically mixed marriages and a growing intermingling of the population.This phenomenon had happened mostly owing to intensive industrialization, urbanization, and migration of populations.Besides, on account of the development of education, the general cultural level of the population, especially by the separation of church from the state and the weakening influence of tradition and religion mixed marriages were constantly increasing.
According to Petrović (1985) in all republics there were approximately 6 million members of mixed marriages with their children at that time.Ethnic heterogamy in ex-Yugoslavia was mostly present in Vojvodina where every one out of four marriages was heterogamous, and in 1971 in Croatia, one out of six marriages was mixed.Bosnia and Herzegovina was ranked the third where in 1978 the Yugoslav average of 12% was achieved.We should stress out that most marriages in the all territory of ex-Yugoslavia were entered into between Serbs and Croats.
During the war, since great social changes have occurred in the territories of ex-Yugoslavia with a tendency towards creating nationally homogeneous states, ethnically mixed marriages, which do not fit into this conception, have entered a particularly painful period.Despite 70 years of living together, with the disintegration of the country in all the ex-Yugoslav republics, there is a rejection of the existence of a Yugoslav national identity, while former Yugoslavs in almost all the republics are ironically called "Yugo-nostalgics".It should be pointed out that, according to census of the 1991, the most educated group, scattered all over the country, originating mostly from ethnically-mixed marriages, declared itself as Yugoslavs (1.2 million inhabitants), despite the fact that the census did not provide for this category.It should be stressed out that after disintegration of Yugoslavia, members of mixed marriages, like their offspring, have had deep problems of losing their national identity.
The findings of Kandido-Jakšić (1999) presented in table 1 and 2, had shown that offspring from ethnically heterogeneous marriages from former Yugoslavia have mostly not changed their positive attitudes towards different nations during the war (1994).During the fighting in Croatia, Vignjević (1991) wrote of rape, family drama, and tragedies, the forced separations that the war imposed on a nationally heterogeneous population, particularly emphasizing the problems of the wives and children of mixed marriages.Although according to statistical data 25-35% of the youth in Croatia are children of Serbian-Croatian mixed marriages, who daily face numerous difficulties because of different nationalities of their parents, mass media on both opposing sides rarely mention this and even carefully conceal the problem.The negative attitude to mixed marriages was best seen when during the war they were often denied humanitarian aid with the explanation that they should get it from the other side, i.e., where their spouse belonged to ethnically.UNHCR and many other humanitarian organizations were the first to notice the difficult and painful situation in which members of mixed marriages found themselves in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia during and after the war.Therefore, at the very beginning of the fighting in Bosnia many supply points were specially set up for them, and many countries during the war gave priority to them when being in exile to obtain immigration visas without difficulties.Nikolić-Ristanović (1995) in the book "Women, Violence and War" presents numerous cases of women raped by men in wartime in order to humiliate their enemies, and also speaks of many women from mixed marriages, raped by compatriots of their husbands, who were thus punished for not having got rid of them since they belong to the enemy nation.
A particularly difficult situation developed in all nationally mixed environments where rigorous policies and ethnic cleansing were carried out.First they spontaneously started to flee and naturally showed resistance, assuming clearly determined negative attitudes towards such political manipulation.For them the engagement of members of such families in the war had particularly tragic and painful consequences.Many husbands and sons of mixed marriages, in order to demonstrate their patriotism and loyalty to the state they lived in, often had to fight in the front lines and against their own people, their brothers or very close relatives and kinsmen.Many families decided to emigrate, and some fathers of Serbian nationality took their sons with them to Serbia, while their Croatian mothers remained behind or fled with their daughters to Croatia.The main problem for many of these families is that they are still divided because of bad economic situation or communications.
As is known, during the war when communication between the republics was blocked and cut off, bus lines were maintained through Hungary among the former republics, and passengers from a Serbian bus would transfer to a Croatian or Slovenian bus and vice versa, thus reaching their destination.All these people, usually members of mixed marriages (mostly women, children and the aged people) would wait for hours in wintertime, suffering various kinds of humiliation, interrogation, checking and threats from the police or customs officers, while crossing borders to visit an ailing brother or sister, an elderly or dying parent.Since it was not allowed at that time to have dual citizenship, the police often searched them, looking for another passport, obtained from the nation to which they belong by birth, in order to seize it.
Today, many who moved with their family from the mother republic are still living and suffering various kinds of problems like not realized pensions, social insurance, problems of property.Today many of the offspring of mixed marriages who have double citizenships have also problem where to serve one′s military service etc.

SOCIAL DISTANCE AND ATTITUDES TOWARD MIXED MARRIAGES AMONG BELGRADE'S HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AFTER THE WAR
Social distance toward some nations from ex-Yugoslavia will be investigated in this research: Montenegrins, Slovenians, Croats, Macedonians, Muslims, Albanians and Romas.We will pay special attention to those attitudes which are related to nations with which serious conflict and war aroused recently.We have decided to investigate the system of social attitudes denoting concrete forms of one's national attachment and attitudes towards some nations of ex-Yugoslavia 11 years after the war.We will compare them with the results obtained during the war and with the results obtained before the war.The aim of this research is to establish whether and to what extent in the new political circumstances, after the disintegration of the Yugoslav territory and the war propaganda, new peace propaganda has resulted in changes in social distancing from other peoples.

Sample
Adolescents of high school, although they could not be considered typical representatives of broader population, have not been chosen by chance.It is well known that young people of such age usually think much more about the sense of life, of their ideals, and various ethnic and ethic problems.In the tendency to develop their individualities and their own views of the world, they are usually struggling against conservatism and various other social and individual repressions.
The sample framework consisted of relatively homogenous groups of 8 secondary schools from Belgrade's gymnasium (I, III, V, VI, VIII, X, XI, and XIII) randomly selected as the classes from every gymnasium.Sample comprised 255 boys and 268 girls who were of Serbs nationality.Students were tested in their classroom, during regular classes.

Instrument and procedure
Social distance scale or scale of social closeness and acceptance is a modified Social Distance Scale (Bogardus, 1925), which investigates readiness for establishing relationships of various degrees of closeness relative to different individuals, groups or nations.If there is willingness to accept several types of relationships, this scale could be termed the scale of social closeness (or intimacy).The most significant item of this scale, which has been employed to investigate the degree of ethnic closeness, is the kinship through the marriage with some person of different cited nations.Our ethnic distance scale contained seven items -readiness to accept the members of 7 different nationalities: 1) To permanently live in my country, 2) To be living in my neighbourhood, 3) To be my colleague at work, 4) To be my friend and visit each other, 5) To be president of my country, 6) To be my lover 7) To be married to.
The respondents followed the instructions to indicate the relations they eventually could accept with typical representatives of each of the selected nations, as well as the ones they could never accept even with the best member of other nations.The data obtained are processed in such a way that the acceptance of all items are expressed in means acceptance and the responses on item related to mixed marriages are analyzed independently and are expressed in percentage.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
If we compare the results obtained (2007) 11 years after the war, with those obtained during the war (1994), (research was done with very similar sample, instrument and procedure (see Table 1 & 2), and we can see that our last findings show lower ethnic distance scores and greater acceptance of all nations from ex-Yugoslavia.The pronounced reduced actual ethnic distance could be explained mainly by the end of the war and war propaganda and new political events like reestablishing economical and cultural connection.
Obtained data show that ethnic distance is significantly decreased especially towards Slovenes and Croats.According to those results, ethnic distance towards Macedonians is also quite minor, what is comprehensible considering the common religion and the absence of war in that region.However, we can see that the negative attitudes towards Muslims still exist, although in the former Yugoslavia, when the official belief was atheism, it was expressed only in exceptional cases.
The ethnic distance with respect to Romas is also exhibited in high degree.The most expressed prejudices towards Romas for all kind of relationships are consequences of extensively accepted stereotypes about Romas as being primitive, dirty, and non-educated people.Only few respondents can imagine having closer relations with Romas, which tells us how deeply rooted ethnic prejudices towards Romas are.
The biggest ethnic distance today is expressed towards Albanians.It should be pointed out that even in ex-Yugoslavia social acceptance of Albanian people was smaller than other nationalities.Stereotypes about Albanian primitivism and a long period of inter-ethnic lack of trust resulted in rather rare ethnically mixed marriages.We cannot be surprised with these results because of the permanent nationalistic propaganda and actual political occurrences in Kosovo.A lot of young people from Serbia believe that Serbian nationalism against Albanians is justified, since Serbs have been imperilled because of the war and Albanian desire for independence.Nationalistic war propaganda contributed to the extension of extreme nationalism and many young students declared that it would be much easier for them to imagine to be married to black gay or girl than somebody who belongs to Albanian nationality.It is very interesting to stress out that our adolescents accept much easier someone from other nations for marriage than for president of the republic (Table 5).It is obvious that among young people today there is a strong division between the public and the private life, and from those results, we can see that young generations still live under big influence of politics.
We should point out that our young respondents also significantly separate relation "to be married" from "to be lovers" and that they accept relation "to be lovers" than to be married" much easier.These statements had shown that young generation divide private from the public and political life and that they still live under big influence of politics and social sanctions.Significant decrease of ethnic distance among young students 11 years after the war, which had appeared in rather high degree during the war, we can explain with more stable economic situation, freer media and because of re-established economic and cultural relations amongst the new states in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia.We can also suppose that student's parents influenced the decrease of their ethnic prejudices, because they still remember a long period of peaceful and harmonious life among different nations and many of them still keep good relationships and have good friends in all republics of ex Yugoslavia.
This hypothesis corroborates with the research of Biro (2002) who found out that pre-war positive experience and friendships with members of the opposing national group are associated with the continuation of such friendships and an orientation towards reconciliation "One of the most optimistic findings of our research was that pre-war positive experience and friendships with members of the opposing national group are associated with the continuation of such friendships and an orientation towards reconciliation".
According to obtained results we can suppose that ethnocentrism, today, is not widely spread among the young population, albeit it was identified in the public life as a dominant phenomenon during the war.We should stress out that our sample is not representative of broader population, but according to findings, which represent the views of the students at the eighth Belgrade's gymnasium, we could expect new marriages between different ethnic communities in the future.
This assumption is of enormous social importance, because according to many authors, ethnically heterogeneous marriages have a powerful effect on the ethnic affiliation and formation of national consciousness of spouses and their offspring.There is great probability that mixed marriages and their offspring represent the real path to anthropological penetration and unification and that they can contribute by helping to overcome the artificial gap created in communication among nations from ex-Yugoslavia.
There is no doubt that ethnically mixed marriages in the area of ex-Yugoslavia can represent the most natural bridge for overcoming the incited hatred, intolerance, disagreement, animosity and xenophobia which were provoked by the war and contribute to the process of reconciliation.
We cannot make definitive conclusions, but if ethnic distance towards all nationalities continues decreasing rapidly and number of mixed marriages continues to increase in the future in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, we will easier find the answer to the dilemma whether the war was natural consequence of historical conflicts, or artificial war was provoked and induced in this region.