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Q: Some Muslim Slav nationalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina claim that the language they speak is totally distinct from any other language used in the former Yugoslavia. Do the Bosnian Muslims have their own separate language?
A: Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs all speak variants of a single language, which most international linguists still refer to as Serbo-Croatian. As is the case with the differences between the Serbian and Croatian variants, there are specific accents and vocabulary items that are unique to the variant that the Bosnian Muslims speak. Bosnian Muslims are more likely than Serbs and Croats to use words drawn originally from Turkish, reflecting their country's history under the Ottoman Empire. In addition, Bosnian Muslims have a distinct literary tradition.
Americans might consider the differences among the variants of English spoken by native Texans, native Kentuckians, people in Boston, and people in Buffalo, New York. The upstate New York variant spoken in Buffalo is actually closer to the variant spoken in Toronto, Canada, than it is to the others. Yet all these variants are recognizably English. And, of course, Canadians don’t yet claim to have a “Canadian” language different from “American.” If Canadians were to follow the lead of many Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Serbs, perhaps they would wind up with a distinct language, but the distinction would be political rather than linguistic.
Q: What influences did the Byzantine Empire have on the Balkan Slavs?
A: The Orthodox Christian Slavs of the Balkans have long regarded the Byzantine Empire as the source of their high culture in art and music, as well as the center of Orthodox Christianity. However, the states they had in the Middle Ages did not always acknowledge the supremacy of the empire. Sometimes these peoples even tried to maintain total independence from the empire.
Not all the Slavs of the Balkans are Orthodox Christians. For example, the Croats adopted Roman Catholicism rather than Orthodox Christianity. And even before the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463 there was a separate Bosnian church, neither Roman Catholic nor Orthodox.
Thus it could be said that while the Balkan Slavs did not always support the Byzantine Empire, those who are now predominantly Orthodox Christians—Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonian Slavs, and Montenegrins—see the Byzantine heritage as crucial to their cultural and religious identities.
Q: Why did Czechoslovakia split into separate Czech and Slovak states?
A: Ilya Prizel, Research Professor of East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, helped answer this question.
The breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993 ended an uneasy relationship that had existed between the Czechs and the Slovaks virtually from the creation of the country in 1918. The Czechs and the Slovaks are Slavic peoples with mutually understandable languages. However, the two peoples have different histories and a different social, cultural, and economic development.
Before World War I (1914-1918) both the Czechs and the Slovaks were under the rule of Austria-Hungary. The Czech lands were governed by relatively liberal Austria, but Slovakia was a part of more conservative and repressive Hungary. Rapid economic growth from 1867 to 1914 created a large Czech middle class. In contrast, the Hungarian regime maintained Slovakia as a rural backwater.
The new state of Czechoslovakia was dominated by the Czechs. Many Slovak political activists concluded that Slovakia had merely traded Hungarian domination for rule by Czechs. During World War II (1939-1945), the Czech lands were occupied by Nazi Germany, while Slovakia was a puppet state of the Germans. The wartime experiences of the Czechs and Slovaks deepened the rift between them.
Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime (1948-1989) attempted to lessen Slovak resentment. Investments in Slovakia's industry led to an improvement in its economic and social conditions. However, following the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989, Slovak politicians used the appeal of an independent Slovakia to gain votes. At the same time, Czech politicians argued that a Czech republic freed from the less-developed Slovakia would have better possibilities for rapid economic growth.
Essentially, these Czech politicians took advantage of demands for Slovak independence and agreed to those demands. In this way, they gained a relatively prosperous and ethnically homogenous Czech Republic. The split was probably opposed by majorities of both Slovaks and Czechs, but it was agreed to by political leaders on both sides without being submitted to a popular vote.
Q: How many different ethnic groups exist in the Russian Federation?
A: Ilya Prizel, Research Professor of East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, answered this question.
According to the 1999 census the approximately 146 million people in the Russian Federation included well over 100 identifiable ethnic groups.
Ethnic Russians are by far the largest group, 120 million, representing 82 percent of the population. Second are the Tatars, whose 5.5 million represent nearly 4 percent of the population. They are followed by 4.3 million Ukrainians and 1.7 million Chuvash. The other groups, ranging from Germans to Buryats to Jews, are small in number, each representing less than 1 percent of the population. The smallest ethnic groups are concentrated in the northern parts of Siberia and are often referred to collectively as the Small Peoples of the North. The two smallest ethnic groups are the Entsi and the Oroki, with 200 people in each group.
The political status of the ethnic groups varies. Some, such as Germans, Jews, and Ukrainians, are viewed as minorities within Russia itself. Other groups, such as the Tatars, Chuvash, Yakuts (Sakha), and Buryats, are citizens of autonomous republics bearing their names. In each autonomous republic the titular ethnic group has cultural autonomy as well as broad control over political life and economic resources.
It is noteworthy that in all autonomous republics other than Chechnya, ethnic Russians constitute either an outright majority or a plurality. Hence, the preferences granted to the titular ethnic group often cause resentment among the Russians.
Q: How did the Ottoman Empire manage to conquer all those peoples in the Balkans?
A: The Ottoman Empire ruled not only in the Balkans but also throughout much of the Middle East. The Ottomans were an efficient military power, and they also practiced skillful diplomacy. In the Balkans they benefited from religious and cultural divisions among the various peoples.
In some regions that the Ottoman Empire conquered, many members of the local population converted to Islam, the religion of their conquerors. Conversion won them some economic and social benefits. In the Balkans this kind of conversion was especially notable in Bosnia.
The Ottoman conquests in the Balkans during the 14th and 15th centuries came at the end of a period of rapid expansion of Islam. Historians do not agree on the reasons for the rapid expansion. However, in Europe the divisions between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians clearly benefited the Islamic invaders.
Q: What was the Russian Empire's policy of pan-Slavism, and how receptive to it were the Slavs of the Balkans?
A: Pan-Slavism was not just a policy of the Russian Empire. In Europe in the 19th century, nations were defined in terms mainly of language and religion. The idea that peoples as different as Bavarians and Prussians were both members of one German nation had a counterpart in the idea that speakers of all Slavic languages were members of one Slavic nation. This idea was popular among the elites of the Slavic peoples who were subjugated in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
Pan-Slavism was encouraged by the Russian Empire as a way of weakening its opponents. Russian leaders argued that Slavic peoples subjugated by rival empires were distinct nations and thus entitled to self-determination and independence from those empires.
In the Balkans, Pan-Slavic ideas were important in the 19th century. In fact, the idea that “Yugoslavs” were a single nation was grounded in the belief that these speakers of South Slavic languages were closely related. (Yugoslav means “South Slav.”)
By the mid-20th century the Pan-Slavic idea was essentially dead. All Slavic peoples recognize their historical relationship, but they do not regard themselves as members of a single nation.
Q: Will peacekeeping efforts in former Yugoslavia create a lasting solution, or do you expect that tensions are bound to explode again into widespread conflict?
A: Whether peacekeeping efforts will succeed depends on what the peacekeeping efforts are. The idea of promoting multi-ethnic democracies seems unlikely to work. The former Yugoslavia was multi-ethnic, and that concept was rejected decisively in free and fair elections by the Yugoslavs. The idea was also rejected by the international community after it recognized the legitimacy of republics that seceded in order to form countries in which one ethnicity (Slovenes, or Croats, or Serbs) is not only dominant, but also sovereign.
The wars since have been aimed at homogenizing regions that were ethnically mixed—that is what ethnic cleansing does. As abhorrent as this process is, no workable alternative to ethnic dominance has been found for constructing states in Europe. Thus if "peacekeeping" is aimed at stabilizing the new, ethnic states, it may well succeed. If it is aimed at recreating mixed regions that were forcibly homogenized, it will probably fail.
Q: Some Croatian nationalists claim that “Croatian” and “Serbian” are totally separate languages. Are there any significant differences between the Serbian and Croatian versions of Serbo-Croatian?
A: The differences between the Serbian and Croatian versions of Serbo-Croatian are much like those between British English and American English. There are easily noticeable differences in pronunciation and some differences in vocabulary and grammatical structure.
There are separate Serbian and Croatian literary traditions. Serbs usually write in the Cyrillic alphabet, but Croats use the Latin alphabet exclusively. Thus there are indeed significant differences between “Serbian” and “Croatian,” but the claim that they are totally separate languages cannot be sustained.
The situation may be different in another generation, however. The government of independent Croatia has made a substantial investment in changing the language used in that country so that it becomes quite different from “Serbian.” Thus the language taught in Croatian schools is very different from what was taught in the schools when Croatia was part of Yugoslavia. At present, however, people who speak “Croatian” and those who speak “Serbian” understand one another as well as do people from London speaking with people from New York.
Q: Who are the Sorbs?
A: The Sorbs are a Slavic-speaking people who live in eastern Germany. Their major centers are the towns of Bautzen, in the state of Saxony (in a region called Upper Lusatia), and Cottbus, in the state of Brandenburg (in a region called Lower Lusatia). Germans call the Sorbs Wends.
The Sorbs number only about 150,000 and have been called the smallest Slavic nation. Nevertheless, they claim to have been mentioned in historical documents going back to the 6th century AD, when Slavic peoples first moved into central Europe.
The Sorbian language, also known as Wendish or Lusatian, is a distinct Slavic language with two dialects. These dialects are Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian.
The Sorbs have lived under German domination for centuries. However, they have been able to preserve their language and customs and to have their status recognized by successive German governments. In 1991 the government of reunified Germany pledged to protect the language and culture of the Sorbs.
Q: What was the Yugoslav idea, and why did it fail?
A: The Slavic peoples of the Balkans—Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Bosnian Muslims, Macedonian Slavs, and Bulgarians—speak closely related languages or dialects of the same language. Thus, they could be said to be members of a single “nation,” the South Slavs (Yugoslav means “South Slav”). By the early 19th century the Serbs and the Montenegrins had become free of the Ottoman Empire, but the other South Slavic peoples were still under foreign rule.
The Yugoslav idea was developed by Croatian intellectuals in the 1860s. They argued that these peoples, as one nation, should unite to form one independent state. The idea originally included the Bulgarians, but the Bulgarians got their own state in 1878.
Serbia annexed the area inhabited mainly by Macedonian Slavs in 1913. After World War I (1914-1918) the Yugoslav idea was used to justify joining Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the areas inhabited mainly by Slovenes and by Croats with Serbia in a single state, later called Yugoslavia. The idea was logical because all of these peoples were actually quite intermingled. They had to live together peacefully or face civil war.
Ultimately, the Yugoslav idea failed, because the idea of creating separate independent states for each of these peoples became stronger than the idea of living together in one state. Since the Yugoslav peoples were so intermingled, the separation was destined to be violent. Much of the violence in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s was aimed at unmixing regions of mixed population.
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