Who is against Milosevic?
President Clinton has stated that his one aim in bombing the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia is to dislodge President Milosevic. In this he is
backed up with more or less enthusiasm by other NATO member countries. But
what is the support for Slobodan Milosevic and what is the opposition
inside Serbia? To what extent can this bombing succeed in dislodging
Milosevic?
To answer this question we can turn to the results of an academic and
representative sample survey of 1000 respondents carried out last year in
Spring 1998 in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprising Serbia and
Montenegro) by a Serbian research organisation called Argument in
partnership with the authors . The survey formed part of a comparative
study of 11 post-Communist Eastern and Central European countries which has
been carried out on a regular basis since 1991. The countries are: Poland,
Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, FRY, Bulgaria,
Romania, Belarus and Ukraine.
For this analysis we chose four questions as indicators of support or
opposition to the Milosevic regime. They were:
a. Trust in the government
b. Trust in the President
c. Trust in the Prime Minister
d. Rating of the current political system (on a scale from +100 to -100)
Responses to each question formed part of a scale which we collapsed
together to make the data more manageable. Here we have shown the results
for Yugoslavia in contrast with the other 10 countries in the survey so
that readers can see how typical or untypical these results are. The
results are as follows:
Trust in Government FRY NDB mean
Those distrusting the government 69% 55%
Those neutral 11% 20%
Those trusting the government 20% 25%
Trust in the President
Those distrusting the President 62% 37%
Those neutral 9% 18%
Those trusting the President 29% 45%
Trust in the Prime Minister
Those distrusting the Prime Minister 67% 46%
Those neutral 10% 21%
Those trusting the Prime Minister 22% 33%
Rating of the current political system
Negative 57% 38%
Neutral 7% 12%
Positive 36% 49%
These results would seem to indicate quite conclusively that at least
before the war broke out, the majority of Serbians and Montenegrins (around
two thirds) did not support the President or the regime in their country.
At that time at least, potential opposition was quite high. The distrust of
the government, the President, the Prime Minister and negative rating of
the regime was far higher in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia than in the
other NDB countries so this was a higher anti-government stance than was
usual in Central and Eastern Europe.
How pro-Western are the Serbs?
During this war there has been some mention of the idea of Pan-Slavism and
the anti-Western stance of the Serbs. This is echoed in the influential
book by Samuel Huntington "The Clash of Civilisations" which has allegedly
influenced the White house thinking. However, we found in Spring 1998
that by far the majority of Serbians and Montenegrins were pro-Western in
their outlook. Altogether 86% wanted to join the European Union, both in
order to ensure political and to ensure economic stability and 53% even
wanted to join NATO. When asked whether they thought their country should
develop according to local traditions or according to the western model,
63% chose the western model. Therefore at least before the war, the
majority of the Serbs looked towards the west and saw themselves as part of
the west (even if their leader did not). Indeed, the majority of them
wanted to join the very institutions which have now turned against them.
Perhaps encouraging the integration of the FRY into Europe would have been
a better strategy for encouraging opposition to Milosevic, as the Germans
and others have suggested.
How nationalist are the Serbs?
It is often claimed that the Serbs and Montenegrins are nationalistic and
anti-democratic in their outlook and that this is responsible for many of
the problems in their country. Again, we would need to distinguish
perhaps the rhetoric of the politicians from the opinions of the people,
thus differentiating between the level of the political elite and the
Serbian mass public. Our survey found that the citizens of the FRY were
not at all the most nationalistic amongst the East European countries- in
fact they were among the least nationalistic, as measured by the variables
we were using. Below we can see various attitudes to their country
comparing the people of FRY with the other countries of Central and Eastern
Europe. The people of FRY were much more negative about their country as
measured on all questions than were the other inhabitants of Central and
Eastern Europe. One quarter of them indeed wished that they had been born
elsewhere.
FRY NDB mean
I prefer this country to any other 53% 77%
I dislike many things about this country 81% 53%
My life would have been better if I had been
born elsewhere 26% 18%
Who were the opposition?
Next we did an analysis to find out who were the opponents of the Milosevic
regime - at least in their attitudes. We took the four indicators
mentioned at the beginning - trust in the government, in the President and
in the Prime Minister along with the rating of the current regime and we
divided the sample according to those who scored positively on two, three
or four of those indictors and those who scored negatively on all four.
Another group were in the middle. In fact the population of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia was quite polarised: 43% were negative towards the
regime in the sense that they were negative on all four indicators - the
core opponents. 21% scored positively on all four indicators - the core
supporter as it were. The hard core negative opponents of Milosevic were
by far the largest group. Next we looked at some of the characteristics of
these opponents. They are set out below:
Opponents of the Milosevic regime - those who scored negatively on all four
indicators
% of males who opposed the regime 46 %
females 40 %
% of those living in big cities who opposed the regime 54 %
% living in villages 34 %
% of those with higher education who opposed the regime 49 %
with minimum education 25 %
% of those aged 18-29 52 %
30-39 49 %
40-49 45 %
50-59 29 %
60 plus 28 %
% of those who strongly supported EU membership 49%
% of those who strongly opposed EU membership 39%
It seems from this analysis that the majority the opposition was likely to
be composed of urban dwellers, people with higher education, men more than
women and younger people. Those who opposed the Milosevic regime were also
pro-European in their attitudes. This group (of young, educated, urban
dwellers) are the ones most likely to support reforms in all Eastern and
Central European countries. They are the most likely opposition and they
are the future generation. To destroy or threaten this group would
undermine the opposition.
Contrary to all the negative imagery of the Serbs as being the natural
supporters of Milosevic, a breakdown by nationality and region showed a
very different picture. The Montenegrins were the strongest supporters of
Milosevic with only 21% being in the most opposed group as compared with
54% of people in Belgrade and 51% in Voyvodina (and 46% in Central Serbia).
Furthermore, of all the named nationalities in FRY, Serbians were most
likely to be in the core opponents group (49% of Serbs, 21% of
Montenegrins, 30% of Hungarians, 20% of Albanians, 19% of Muslims and 20%
of those calling themselves "Yugoslavs").
Conclusions
We can tentatively conclude from this analysis that a large number of
people did not support Milosevic before the war and this group was
strongest among the young, urban intellectuals. There had in fact been a
strong pro-western, pro EU and pro NATO feeling in FRY before the war.
Furthermore, the people of FRY were among the least nationalist in Central
and Eastern Europe, at least as measured in their attitudes to their
country. Moreover, it is not the case that the Serbs are the strongest
supporters of Milosevic - they are the strongest opponents among the
various national groups who were questioned.
The question remaining however, is what effect the bombing might have had
on these attitudes. Colleagues in FRY inform us that it has had the effect
of destroying the opposition and of rallying support around Milosevic which
as we see from these data, was formerly lacking.
This raises the question of whether the further bombing of FRY can possibly
succeed in removing Milosevic. It is certainly succeeding in destroying
the fragile economic infrastructure of this small country, an
infrastructure which would be necessary for building peaceful alternatives
and would benefit the kinds of people who support the opposition.
An historical parallel is perhaps instructive. Towards the end of the
Second World War there was put forward in the USA something called the
"Morgenthau Plan". This argued that the best way to ensure the future
submission of Germany would be to destroy every kind of economic and
industrial resource by bombing - to force Germany back into a
pre-industrial era. A rival plan which was later put forward after the end
of the Second World War was the "Marshall Plan", which aimed to
reconstruct Europe through economic aid, used in association with the
people of Europe. Luckily, for us, this plan won over the other one. In
Yugoslavia, the opposite seems to be the case as the new version of the
"Morgenthau Plan" is seen as the way to destroy the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.
Claire Wallace & Christian Haerpfer
Institute for Advanced Studies
Vienna, Austria
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Claire Wallace
Department of Sociology
Institute for Advanced Studies
Stumpergasse 56,
1060-Vienna
Austria
Tel: +431 59991 ext. 213
Fax: +431 59991-191
email: [log in to unmask]
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