Victims and Heroes Between Ethnic Values and Construction of Identity

The a n t. h ropolo!{i ca l co ncept.H ment.a l i t.y and nat. i o n : d cha rader a re br ie lly cl i H­ C l iHHt'd . l{eHearch ol' n a t i on a l cha rader in Sout. h S l a v i c eth no l ogies is preHen t. ed along w i t.h the cont.rast. ing m od e l s produced by the Serbian and Croat. et. h n o­ ant. h ropologists i n the fi rst. p a rt. of t h i s centu ry. Conseq uent.ly heroi s m as t.lw d o m i n a nt. v a l u e and it. s rol e in contem porary n a t ional pol i tics and in the const ruc­ t ion ol ' ident. i t.y has been q uestioned.

My aim is to discuss th o dominant val ues and mentality on two levels: with respect to previ ous studios of those phenomena and regarding their role in everyday life and politics. The location is: contemporary Croatia.
A preliminary remark I have doubts whether it would be indispensa ble to start with a polite 'apology', in the fa shion of postmodern ethnography. I should namely 'confess' that I am writing as a native anthro pologist, an elderly Croat lady who has had living experiences in two wars (1941-1944 and 1991-1992) and that my information and my views necessarily are biased.
Skepticism is due to my recent reading of texts published in the special issue of The Anthropology of East Europe Review (1993) on "War among the Yugoslavs" (as if ever Yu go slavs have been a nation.1 The papers have been written by non-Yu goslavs, mostly Ameri can anthropologists who did considerable re search in fo rmer Yu goslavia. Some of those writings have been partial (not to say preju diced). What is common to all ofthem is the lack of the presumption that their authors, non native anthropologists, might be biased too. Reading some of those texts the native anthro pologist has an impression that the authors have boon confused and shared tho same or even greater difficulties as we, the natives have, when discerning between fa cts and political propaganda of the parts in conflict.
Actual discourse (political, by the media or the academic one) about character and reasons or causes of the war in fo rmer Yu goslavia often begins and/or ends with the conclusion that the conflict and the ways it was dealt with should be ascribed to the Balkan mentality. To many European andAmerican politicians, and to some political scientists, philosophers as well as an thropologists, we, the inharmonious nations in this historically notorious turbulent area -are the others, ethnicities with: a. an ugly value orientation turning us into warriors, resulting in ethnic cleansing, although; b. we used to have a beautiful fo lklore fr om the times of Vuk Karadzic to the fo lklore ensembles of the fo rmer communist state ... Unfortunately the two in terpretations seldom meet.

What is mentality?
A contemporary definition refers to mentality in this way (Mucchielli 1985:5): "Une mentalite est le systeme de reference implicite d'un groupe social, homogene du point de vue de cet etat d'esprit commun, ce systeme de reference lui permet de voir les choses cl 'une certuine lllUniCre et cl one cl 'avoir doH reactionS et condu ites en accord avec cette perception du monde." Accordi n g to the above author mentality is shaped by education and by experi en ces ac qu i red duri n g the life of individuals in their social environment. Jn complex societies there may exist vari ous , contradictory and conflict ing m ental i ties .
An th ropological appro ach to the research of mentality was strongly influenced by the theo ry of culture a n d personality. Culture as a complex whole, cu ltural values and transmis sion of tradition as well as Gestalt psycho logy have been milestones in the study of mentality and national character immediately before and during the Second World War. Mentality and national character studies in the 1940s and 50s usually resulted in the construction of more or less ingenious patterns of national character.� It is significant to have in m i nd that those studies did appear in specific political circum stances. For example Margaret Mead opens her text on National character in A. Kroeber's An thropology To day (1953) explaining that this kind of study has been an answer to the needs" of the world political situation after 1939.
Another type of approach to mentality has been developed by French historians. "C'est un probleme qui ne peut se traiter que dans une perspective historique", writes Michel Vo velle (1982:12). In his words, mentality as a concept combines motivations on the unconscious level: what has not been fo rmu lated and what appears as insignificant. In his rethinking of relationship between ideologies and mentalities in a historical perspective Vo velle suggests that mentalities might be treat ed as fo rmer ideologies, dead ideologies of the past which have been remembered due to the powerful inertia of mental structures ("la fo rce d'inertie des structures mentales").
Contrary to previous anthropological con struction of national character patterns mod ern historical study meticulously describes and reconstructs mentality of specific populations 62 in fixed secti ons of time. Research i s usually founded in historical and archival material, wh ich is ethnographic by its nature: everyday life, fa mily, ritual and cw;toms, fe stivals, popu lar piety, death .
In differen t areas offormer Yugoslavia there exist quite a long tradi tion of mental ity studies accom pan ied by perhaps an even lon ger tradi tion of non-academic thinking and writing on this topic. Here a question may be raised. Name ly, should para-scientific writing be ignored by the academic discourse or should it be taken into consideration? I will try to answer this later.
The fi rst and for a long time the most influ ential theory on Balkan mentality was promo ted by Jovan Cv�jic , anthropoge ographer, founder of the Serbian ethnology and sociol ogy and an influential Serbian political personality and statesman before and after the foundation ofYugoslavia in 1918.
CvijiC's argumentation of South-Slav cultur al patterns starts with a geographic configura tion of the Balkan peninsula, where he distin guishes two dominant cultural areas: a) a patri archal regime fr om Albania to Braila and the Danube river mouth in the Black Sea in the East and to Istria, Gorizia and Klagenfurt in the West, b) a modification of Byzantine civili zation spreading in Greece and Bulgaria.
According to Cvijic, fr om Braila to Gorizia the population belongs to one nation -the Serbian, and they share a dominant patriar chal culture. The most important psychological type by which the Balkan patriarchal culture and mentality are defined is the 'Dinaric' per sonality.4 Cvijic describes 'Dinaric' people as violent and intrepid. Their dominant values are heroism, soldier's morality code (cojs tuo ijunas tuo), national pride, the idea of (Great) Serbian statehood. The above mentioned mentality orig inates in wars against the Turks. The Serbian people, according to Cvijic, cannot fo rget the Kosovo battle in 1389, where Serbian military fo rces had been defeated; they still lament over this downfall, memory of which has been main tained by Serbian fo lk poetry.
Notwithstanding the population in the Di naric area was mixed (Serbian-Orthodox, Croat Catholics, Moslems of Croat and Serbian de-scent), Cv ij i c did not distin gu i s h Croats and Serbs neither u::; two different nation::; nor as specific cultures or language::;. In the best of cases he wa::; addre::;::;ing Croat::; as Serbo-Croat::; . His model of' cultural pattern an d personality type has been partly modified by the introduc tion of various 'in flue nces' lacking ethnic char acter.
I will not discuss his political concepts and aspirations here. 1 am intrigued by his descrip tion of the Dinaric mentality which is patri archal, violent but heroic. His source for the explanation of the hero ic cultural pattern and personality type is Serbian heroic oral poetry, collected, edited and sometimes rewritten by Vuk Karadzic.r' Heroism as a value and patri archalism have been confirmed by CvijiC's own field research. His undiscussed reputation as field researcher still fu nctions as a definite verification of his accounts, although indubita bly they have been created in the frame of his political statements.
A modern anthropological opposition to CvijiC's pattern was expressed by the first Croatian cultural anthropologist, Dinko To masic . To masic was a professor at the Za greb University. He shared political orientation of the very influential oppositional Croatian Peasant Party between two world wars. Before and after the Second World War he was teach ing at various universities in the USA, includ ing Indiana University. In exile after the Sec ond World War he assisted Dr. Vladko Macek, leader of the Croatian Peasant party.
To masic was acquainted with culture and personality studies. He also had a good knowl edge of Croatian popular culture and Croatian ethnography. To masic argued that in Croatia opposite to patriarchal, authoritarian cultural pattern there existed also the democratic 'za druga' mentality.6 His understanding of the patriarchal model offers insight into the hidden side of heroism and soldier's morality, i.e. rob bery, violence, getting rich without working, authoritarian personalities and political arriv isme. CvijiC's model is situated in the Dinaric mountains; To masic locates his model in north western Croatia, mainly in the region of Za go:rje, in the immediate vicinity of Zagreb. Ac cording to Tomasic, contrary to collectivistic Dinari c cul tural pattern, the main values in the Zagor:ic family organ i zati on arc individuali::;m and lack of dominant, strong authority.
To masic treated both patterns (Cvijits and his own) as intermingling. He also suggested that continuous wars in the Balkan area were steadily bringing to the fo re personalities and groups which share authoritarian (heroic) val ues, gain economic profit in war and successive ly political promotion.
In this connection let me report his definition of the Ustasa Croatian state 1941-1945 which is purely anthropological (Tomasic 1942:76): "The Ustasa state is conceived as an enlarged fa mily of the patriarchal type in which the whole authority is vested in the hand of the patriarch and in which all members are sup posed to work under his direction for the benefi t of the whole. On the other hand everybody is responsible for the physical and moral well being of each one of its members. The leaders and the ideologists ofthe U stasa state of Croatia themselves come mostly fr om villages in the Dinaric parts of Croatia, where peasants still live in large fa milies of the old patriarchal type".7 Unlike Cvijic To masic lacked the charisma of a proven field researcher (although he did some field research). In pre-and postwar political circumstances he acted independently and was attacked by the political left and right. Promi nent Croat and American historian Jozo Toma sevich (1955: 195-197) criticized TomasiC's model for its political invectives, fo rgetting at the same time CvijiC's political engagement.

Heroism after the Second World War
Marxist ideology was treating mentality either as evil, belonging to the past, or a blessing, if projects were made for the 'bright' socialist fu ture. Both presumptions inhibited serious studies.
In the mid-60s academic circles a text ofVera St. Ehrlich (1965) was greeted. Her discourse about contact of cultures and dominant values was an innovation in the newborn discipline of sociology and cultural anthropology at the Za-f,'Teb U niver>�iiy and a prci:ieniaiion ofKroeber's anth ropology. V. Ehrlich also had ihc charii:in1<1 ofihe research er. She accom plished an inquiry on the irunRfiJrmuiion of fa mily in varioui:i re gions of Yu goslavia and of"f" e red ihe a n thropo logical approach io the cultural and social change.
In her study on cultural values she reaf� firmed hcroii:im and Dinaric ethos (1965:42): "In Yugoslav ia in ihe interwar years a domi nant val ue seem io have emerged under ihe surface of internecine struggles : national inde pendence, or phrased negativ ely, intolerance of fo reign rule and dom ination. The tribal's , Di naric, heroic tendencies seem io have gained as an overall trend." To the interpretation of 'heroism' and Dinaric values in CvijiC's terms and without To masiC's criticism the idea was added that Dinaric peo ple during partisan war fought and sacrificed their own lives fo r national pride and that therefore Yu goslavia had considerably greater losses than other nations in the antifascist war. Nowadays, when on one side we have positive knowledge of atrocities by fa scists as well as by antifascists during the Second World War, and on the other there are serious indications about a misconstruction of the total number of the Second World War victims in ex-Yugoslavia, this hypothesis may seem dubious.

Political discourse on mentality and heroism
The writings ofMiroslav Krleza, the most influ ential leftist Croatian writer of this century, could be located somewhere between science, literature and politics. In an interview in 1971, during the so-called Croatian Spring,8 he was speaking about mentality in the context of a debate on 'unity of language' promoted by the centralist circles who tended to hamper specific traits of the Croatian language and minimize the historical and literary differences between Serbian and Croatian linguistic expressions and culture (Krleza 1971): "Mentalities divide people and nations, which has been demonstrated by so many wars within a common l i ngu i stic sphere. li ii:i well -known thai menia l iiici:i arc noi idealistic consta n cies and thai they appear as a response io social structures or infrastru ciurei:i by which they are conditioned . But history has iaughi us that certain mental ities persist ibr ages as ancient survivals and fo llow the laws of spiri tu a l idle ness, although the infrastructure on which they repose in many ofi ts elemen is has been changed ior a long time." Krleza's thinking sounds as a bridge between hard Marxist ideology and Vo velle's soft Marx ist historical approach. His interview appeared in a turbulent political moment when Croatian national movement once again emerged on po litical scene and was brutally defeated.
It was in the 80s that in fo rmer Yu goslavia the rediscovery of KaradZiC's and CvijiC's mod els of Serbian popular culture, mentality and folklore occurred. Strong tendencies to project integralistic cultural and language models of one nation to the whole Yu goslav territory and other nations have been supported by the dom inant ideology and politics. The promotion of 'heroic' mentality was fu nctional to the most powerful institution in the country: the Yu go slav Army. Heroism was treated as a primordial value, it was reinforced by integralistic nation al ideology.

Ethnology/anthropology and paraliterature
During the last fifteen years extensive academ ic and para-academic literature has been pro duced rediscovering and revaluating the work ofVuk Karadzic and Jovan Cvijic, and lately (in 1993) of Dinko To masic.
The occasion does not permit to analyze all those writings . I will only remark that along with heroism as national quality the value of 'sacrifice' and 'victim' reappeared. The view was introduced that Serbia was victor in war and looser in peacetime. On the opposite side, the nineteenth century discourse of Croatia as Antemurale Christianitatis and as perennial victim has been turning up again. Anthropolog ical or ethnologic and ethnographic 'arguments', theories such as ethnogenesis" turned up most ly as para-sc i en ti fic literature in various m edia, to argue in fiwour or the actual politics.
Once more menta lity was invited to be an argument in tho pol i ti ca l dispute . As I do dis pose on ly with the knowl edge of the Croat situation and media, 1 m ay quote one of the newest a nd quite harm less cases: The Serbian population in the mountainous region of Gorski Koiar (between Karl ovac and Rij eka) avoided conflict with the new govern ment and did not participate in the rebellion against Croatia in 1991/1 992. Recently they explained that it was due to, as they said, their 'civilized mentality' (Vieic 1994:6).
Lately the well-known Zagreb sociologist Josip Z upanov analyzed value orientations of the Croats ( Z upanov 1993). Impressed by the re sistance of'Croatian populaiion in the war 1991/ 1992 Z upanov suggested heroism as the domi nant value of the contemporary Croatian socie ty. Contrary to the people of Gorski Kotar who showed reticence apropos nationalistic discourse on heroism and war, and paradoxically enough, the sociological understanding has been sup porting Ve ra Erlich's interpretation of CvijiC's theories once more.

What do we really know about domi nant values and mentality?
If we do agree that culture and personality studies as well as national character studies with the construction of ethnic values cannot be satisfactory any more, we have to admit that there is no anthropological or ethnological meth odology available for researching mentality. Rethinking national character Alex Inkeles is criticizing "the tendency to sketch national char acter in unimodal terms" (1988:98). He propos es to use statistical data and comparative meth od in evaluating e.g. the differences between the national characters of Danes and Dutch men. I am prone to turn to historians and adopt Vovelle's suggestion that the study of mentality has to be fo unded on what 'appears as insignif icant' and on 'less noble' sources (1985:13). In our times one of' those less noble sources might be newspaper death notices. Along with some other anthropologists (I van C olovic, Enrica Del i tala, Klaus Roth) I carried out research pn�jeciH on newspaper death notices in 1 978, 1988, 1992. During the war in Croatia in 1991 and 1 992 the newspapers I am reading every day suddenly confronted us with deaths of mostly young peo ple, possibly our neighbours, fallen on the bat tlefields and with the mourning of their fa mi lies and fr iends. Many of those death notices have not beenj usi conventional. It seemed thai the bereaved needed to express their grief and tended to publish more extensive texis than usual.
My research of obituaries published in Za greb daily Ve cernji list from summer 1991 to spring 1992 shows the twofold character of the discourse on 'heroic' death. It was possible to fo llow the line of cultura egemonica, in Gram sci's terms: chronicle of eminent war events, the most important, bloody battlefields and fierce battles as well as controversies on the Croatian political scene. On the level of cultura subalter na death notices revealed individual and fa mily attitudes towards war, namely how fa milies of Croat soldiers, just ordinary people, did per ceive and fe el their deaths.
Let us briefly examine the two approaches: a. There have been families, fr iends as well as military units (to which the deceased belonged) who have been adopting the pathetic language of politics and national ideology. The sacrifice for an independent, fr ee and sovereign Croatia has been exalted. The victim of a fa mily mem ber has been accepted as heroism.
b. Along with the 'heroic' discourse another type of mourning was constantly present. Many fa m ilies did not even mention that the deceased was a combatant. They have been just lament ing the immense loss. They described their last meeting with the deceased, his joy of life and how they, usually parents or wives, have been left lonely in this world. Immense grief, tragedy and awareness of being victims (both the de ceased heroes and their mourning fa milies and fr iends) are culminating in those newspaper pages giving evidence of something which firm-ly exists on the other side of heroism and na tional rheto ric.
Both dil:lcourses someiimel:l 1neei in the same obituary ; it is therefore that my paper was entitled: "We were proud to live with you, and now immensely sad to have lost you." What is then heroism and how can we speak of mentality?
A tentative hypothesis may be offered. As is well known the heroism as national value could be attributed to the national epics and fo lklore which was discovered and partly invented in the nineteenth century. It has been proved that the so-called heroic Kosovo cycle poetry was a construction ex post and has not very much to do with the original fu nction of oral poetry. A case well-known elsewhere and treated by the critics of the invention of national epic. Proclaiming and promoting heroism as na tional value might be very useful in more or less totalitarian national politics and may frighten (but also provoke aversion in) the international (European) community where this type of rhetor ics has been fo rgotten for at least half a century.
On the other side an actual example may show how politics is paying tribute to the con cept of heroism as dominant national value. Croatian Ministry of Health and some other political authorities have been so confident of the strength of this value that they believed there will be no post-traumatic stress distur bances (PTSD or Vietnam syndrome) among participants ofthe war in Croatia because they have been highly motivated to defend their country. Subsequently health authorities did not provide measures to cope with it.
Although high motivation was present, espe cially during 1991-1992 this interpretation did not prove true. Only recently a PTSD pro gramme in the Rijeka clinic started to help such patients. The clinic reports heavy cases of war traumas10 and rebukes members of the Govern ment who still deny the existence of the syn drome. Every day we are reading and listening to the more than tragic stories (suicide, shoot ing, murder and other accidents) among inva lids and other participants of the war.
The ethnology of the everyday life brings to evidence thai the attitudes towards death op pose the construction of identity which is lean ing on heroism as the dominant value. On the level of cultura subalterna as Antonio Gramsci put it, and on the level of'ordre vecu' suggested by Claude Levi-Strauss 'mentality' appears as an outlook of victims and defeated . Ordinary people (among them maybe also you and me) fe el similarly after any war. Unfortunately this mentality, just because of the strong fe elings of loss and defeat, can be manipulated by politics which is promoting heroism and ethnic hostili ty.
To this an ethnoanthropologicaljudgment or conclusion might be added. The above review of mentality and value-orientation studies has shown how unimodal theories about this topic have been circulating in time and space. It has shown also that mentality requires an accurate study of various sources. Etnoanthropologists, natives and others, might be victims oftheories as well as of political emotions . know n that he eage r ly attributed many poem::; or stories collected among Croats or Moslem:'< to Se r bian popular culture and oral poetry. Since Ka radz iC's times the phenomena of' popular culture of' Croat ::; and all othe r South Slavic nation::; were exposer! to assimil atory proceRses tending to In bel them a:; be l on gi ng to Serbian popular culture. li i::; impo rt a n t to note that this ten rl e ncy has bee n promoted not only by Serbian national ideology but a l so by th e non-Serbian promoter·::; of' the idea of the Yugoslav unity. In contemporary national ideology the theory of the Slavic origin of the Croats fu nctions as a ballast.
10.When arrived here at the psychiatry a doctor asked how did I fe el. Just kill fo ur or five people and you will know how do I fe el", a fo rmer combat ant explained to journalists (Bulic-Mrkobrad 1995).