By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, May 26 2008 (IPS)

Following the parliamentary elections in Serbia earlier this month, many are asking just what it means to be patriotic.

President Boris Tadic and his Democratic Party, that won most of the votes in the May 11 polls, were dubbed “traitors of the nation” by parties that call themselves ‘patriotic’, such as the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) or the nationalist Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).

The labels came because Tadic and his Democrats support Serbia’s membership move towards the European Union (EU). The “high treason”, according to SRS and DSS, arises from the fact that the EU and the United States backed the February independence of the southern Serbian province Kosovo, regarded by many Serbs as key to their identity.

President Tadic answered back that “patriotism in Serbia should be measured by the ability to provide jobs for as many people as possible; and insistence on a European future for Serbia is the only policy to guarantee new jobs and economic improvement. That means dignity, and not empty words or false patriotism.”

Sociologists have joined the debate over just what patriotism is.

“Patriotism means a positive attitude to one’s fatherland, and pride in its achievements and culture,” leading sociologist Prof. Ratko Bozovic said at a recent round table on European Standards for Serbian Society.

The former Yugoslav federation gave birth, through bloody wars in Croatia and Bosnia, to six new states with a more or less mono-ethnic composition. They are Slovenia (population two million), Croatia (4.5 million), Bosnia-Herzegovina (4.2 million), Serbia (7.5 million), Macedonia (two million) and tiny Montenegro (650,000).

There is also Kosovo that has declared independence, with almost two million ethnic Albanians and about 100,000 Serbs.

“The smaller the nation is, the more it tends to turn to patriotism, fearing the loss of its identity,” psychology professor Zarko Trebjesanin told IPS. “That is where the thin line between patriotism and love for one’s country can be crossed, and things turn towards nationalism, which sometimes turns into an ideology.”

It has become common for Serbs who travel to other ex-Yugoslav countries to hear Serbia blamed for all the misfortunes since 1991, when the wars of disintegration began. Harsh anti-Serb feelings are often described as “patriotic”.

In Slovenia, it is official ideology that the nation was resisting “the aggression” of the Belgrade-led former army of Yugoslavia when it fought the ten-day war for independence in June 1991. Secession from Yugoslavia, Slovenes say, was the only way to leave communism to travel into a European future. Slovenia is the only former Yugoslav nation to be an EU member.

Slovenian authorities have also tried hard to build patriotic feelings because it has often been confused abroad with Slovakia or even the Croatian region Slavonija.

Slovenian minister for education Milan Zver recently told local media that special curricula in high schools should promote education.

“We badly need a patriotic dimension in education,” Zver told Slovenian TV. “This will only enhance our national identity in times of globalisation.”

In Croatia Domagoj Buric, new programme director of the national radio and TV station HRT has told staff that their “national accent” should be stronger. This, he said, should go particularly for the summer show “30C in Shade”. The programme is on summer events all over Croatia, particularly on the Adriatic coast.

The show, Buric said in a note to staff, should “change the title, add something Croatian. ’30C in Shade’ can be found anywhere…” For its final show on Aug. 29, he suggested huge fireworks at certain spots bordering Serbia and Montenegro, accompanied by loud playing of the popular song ‘My Homeland’, “so that the guys across the border know what is going on.”

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the picture is quite different. The country comprises two entities – the Republic of Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation – and three ethnic groups (Serbs, Muslims, Croats). This means there are three kinds of patriotism: Serb, Muslim Bosniak and Croat.

“In this country, everything is divided into three,” head of the Organisation for European Security and Cooperation (OSCE) Douglas Davidson recently remarked. There is, he said, “a lack of vision on common values” between the three ethnic groups.

According to Davidson, the education system is to blame, as “studying of separate histories, geographies and languages that have different names (but are similar) became a tool for separation of the three ethnic groups.”

Serbs in the Republic of Srpska regard this entity as their homeland, and have almost no feelings of loyalty to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Croats insist on their connections to neighbouring Croatia. Bosniak Muslims tend to impose “Bosniak patriotism”.

In Macedonia, local experts say the ways of modern society are promoted among the young. But when it comes to real life, the old problems come out. A quarter of the two million Macedonians of Slav origin are ethnic Albanians. Their eyes are turned towards Kosovo and Albania.

The country is flanked by Bulgaria in the east and Greece in the south. Greece still disputes the name of this nation, because its northern province is historically “the only Macedonia.”

With Bulgaria there is a separate problem. “It’s hard to speak about real patriotism in Macedonia,” sociology professor Ilija Acevski recently wrote in Belgrade daily Politika. “Some 200,000 Macedonians took Bulgarian passports a while ago when that country became an EU member. They will spend hours explaining how they did it for pragmatic reasons: to travel visa-free…Macedonia is at the crossroads where issues such as patriotism are concerned,” Acevski said.

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