Possibility of Survey Research of the Role of Religion in Disintegration of Yugoslavia (original) (raw)

1996, Religija, crkva, nacija (Religion, Church, Nation) [Niš, YUNIR]

About the role of religion in the wars in general and in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in particular, up until early nineteen nineties was most often debated on the abstract theoretical level, with occasional use of isolated empirical data as illustration for particular hypotheses (Vratuša-Žunjić Vera, 1995, Religion, war, Peace, Institut za sociološka istraživanja FF, Beograd). The aim of this paper is to examine to which degree is it possible to learn about the role of religion in the disintegration of Yugoslavia on the basis of secondary analysis of the answers to the questions concerning the attitudes to religion and nation state collected in former Yugoslavia less than two years before the outbreak of the war of 1991. It was established that the religious contents predominantly influenced the acceptance of the statement that every nation must have its state in Croatia (in lesser degree in Slovenia), both among members of Catholic majority, as well as among the members of Orthodox minority. Predominantly secular contents, on the contrary, molded the nation state orientation in Montenegro and Macedonia, but only among the members of local Orthodox majority. Religious inspiration of the political determination for national state was more influential among members of Albanian minority of Muslim confession. It was found that the fight for the hegemony between the sacred and the secular ideology was in progress among Serbs in Serbia, Voivodina, and in lesser degree in Kosovo and Metohia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as among Albanians in K&M and among Muslims in B&H. Taking into account the study findings as well as the deeper historic background and wider constellation of social power relations on Balkan, European and world level, the prediction is formulated that the fight for the establishment or the preservation of national states, that is for the improvement of the subordinated or maintenance of privileged status in the local and international division of labor, in the medium range perspective will be articulated in the terms of not only secular ideologies, but also in the terms of respective world religions. This pertains to Islam and Catholicism first of all, but also to other confessions inside of which the process of approaching to the religion of forefathers is in progress, as the expression of national identity in the conditions of the social crisis sharpening.