Interesting results from a survey about loyalties to newly-established states in former Yugoslavia.
Croatia has broken historical and cultural links with other parts of former Yugoslavia and Croatian citizens are very loyal to the project of building their own separate nation, according to a major regional research “Strategy of Symbolic Nation-Building in Countries of Southeast Europe”. The lead researcher was historian Vjeran Pavlaković, who has 30 years of experience of living and working in America, reports tportal.hr on March 14, 2017.
The results show that Croats and Kosovars feel the highest degree of loyalty to their own nations. In Serbia, as much as 71 percent of population regrets the fact that Yugoslavia does not exist anymore. Serbia is followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (68 percent), Montenegro (63 percent), and Macedonia (45 percent). In Croatia, 18 percent of citizens long for Yugoslavia, while Kosovo is safely at the bottom (or at the top, depending on perspective) of the rankings, with just 5 percent wishing that Yugoslavia still existed.
Three percent of Croatian citizens still feel as Yugoslav. Thirty percent felt that way earlier in their lives, while as much as 66 percent of Croats say they never felt as belonging to the Yugoslav nation.
Among other indicators, results shows that as much as 97 percent of Croats love their national anthem, and 96 percent love the Croatian flag with a “checkerboard” coat of arms. In comparison, the Serbian anthem is loved by 80 percent of Serbia’s population, and the state flag by 93 percent of population. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the national anthem is loved by 44 percent of the population, while about 60 percent of citizens love the national flag.
In Croatia, just 8 percent of urban population and 9 percent of rural population are not proud of their Croatian nationality – 45 percent of urban residents and 56 percent of people from rural areas are “very proud”, while 46 percent of urban and 34 percent of rural population are just “proud” of their nationality.
Similarly, in Serbia, 9 percent of urban and 6 percent of rural population are not proud of the fact that they are of Serbian nationality. On the other hand, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as much as 25 percent of the population from urban areas and 22 percent from other parts of the country are not proud of their nationality.
