Any talk about minorities in the Balkans is at the same time also a talk about majorities in at least three aspects and for at least three reasons: A) For the most part, minorities have majority communities of the same ethnic background in neighboring countries. B) After the fall of the Ottoman Empire some ethnic groups that were minorities became a basis for the on-going nation-state formation processes that, especially after the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia, intensified anew. C) It is a rule in the Balkans that the attitudes of majorities define not only the main parameters of the minority situations but in many cases play a decisive role in the processes of the change and consolidation of identities.

Balkans are a small territory where for ages coexisted big communities of Orthodox, Catholics, Muslims, Protestants and Jews. They spoke languages that were and continue to be completely incomprehensible to each other. Shortly before the Second World War five alphabets were in a relatively wide use – Cyrillic, Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew. On this background, when in the 19-th and 20-th century the Balkan people, following the European model, decided to form nation states, the result was predictable. All known methods of solving the "national question" were used repeatedly: genocide, ethnic cleansing, exchange of population, expulsions, forced changes of names and faith. These practices, in different combinations were used against members of every Balkan ethnic community, including those that did not have their own "mother country". All Balkan countries at different times were recipients of big refugee masses which, on its own turn, radicalized societies and politics.

Communism too contributed in its own way to the solution of the "national question". Communism in the Balkans however was something different from the one in Central Europe in a variety of aspects and for a variety of reasons. Its "internationalist" period in the Balkans was shorter and it quickly accepted the ideology of the "nationally specific way". In fact the communist regimes for the most part continued the "national programs" of previous governments and, because of their stronger authoritarianism, were even more successful, especially in their anti-minority policies.

The communist period proved to be crucial for minorities also in their involvement into the processes of their modernization. This period for all Balkan countries that went through it coincided with the period of modernization. Both modernization itself, as well as its specific form of manifestation (including the ongoing nationalistic pressures) encouraged the processes of assimilation of many of the ethnic and religious groups. E.g. migration from the village to the city resulted in many cases in the loss of identity. This process was exacerbated also by secularization although in several cases (e.g. with the Bosniaks in former Yugoslavia) it brought transformation from religious to ethnic identity. In some countries social transformation changed the social status of minorities. While before the Second World War societies in most Balkan countries were peasant, they urbanized quickly afterwards which brought rise in material standard and social status for many citizens. Minorities however were rarely among them. The latter produced, in addition to the ethnic animosities, also social tensions.

The picture of ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity in the Balkans nowadays is much different from the one from 100 years ago. Today a number of nation-states have been established throughout the peninsula, in which the dominant ethnic group prevails decisively in numbers, culture and political power.

At the same time in every Balkan country there exist also ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. The dominant among those three identities everywhere in the Balkans is the ethnicity in both the countries with a low (like Bulgaria) as well as in those with a high (like Greece) religiosity. The minorities are of two main types: those that have their own neighboring "mother country" (e.g. Turks in Greece, Greeks in Albania, Albanians in Macedonia etc.) and those that do not have a "mother country" or if they do, it is not in the Balkans (e.g. Roma, Jews, Armenians etc.). This classification does not have so much a theoretical value but rather a practical value in the context of the Balkan political development. Nowadays, just as in the past, the Balkan politics continues to be very strongly fixed on the protection of the interests of the dominant ethnic group not only at home but also abroad. The main form of minority rights protection is, as has always been, bilateral advocacy between Balkan countries on behalf of the "mutual" minorities (1). Thus minorities in the neighboring countries are always an important factor of the regional politics. They also are, just as they have been in the past, more a factor of discord and conflict than a bridge of cooperation. At the same time minorities that do not have a neighboring "mother country" are excluded from this system of protection. This of course does not mean that because of that they were subjects to more abuses. In fact, the worst abuses in the Balkan minority policy took place against the minorities that had a neighboring "mother country" precisely because of this very fact. The "motherless" minorities however were more often silent victims with no voice risen and no ears to hear their plight.

Without regard to the types of minorities in every Balkan country there exist a hierarchy of attitudes of sympathy and aversion towards minorities, which is amazingly stable. E.g. most hated in Greece are the Albanians who are predominantly immigrants, in Albania – the Serbs, in Bulgaria and Romania – the Roma. The ethnic prejudices and social distances towards minorities in all Balkan countries are significantly stronger than similar attitudes in the advanced countries of the West. According to a survey conducted in a number of Balkan countries in 1994 the prejudices and social distances towards Roma in most of them were at the level of the prejudices and social distances among the white Americans from the southern states of the United States towards the Blacks in the late 50-ies – early 60-ies.

On this general background, one can safely conclude that Balkans are a place where minority rights are badly guaranteed and protected. Indeed, both local and international human rights monitors have repeatedly risen a variety of human rights concerns related to racial discrimination, police brutality, restrictions of religious freedom, violations of freedom of expression, assembly and association, whose victims are predominantly people from minorities. The severest post-Second World War official atrocities in Europe were committed in the Balkans against a minority – that of the Kosovars in rump Yugoslavia.

A closer look however shows that the situation is much more complicated. If we consider the situation of minorities on country by country basis, we will discover an extremely diverse picture, a variety of legislative and administrative practices that is both unique and controversial. In one and the same country we find minority groups whose ethnic and cultural identity is legislatively protected at a very high level as nowhere in Europe, as well as groups whose very existence, although clearly observable in society, is not even recognized officially while their members often live in fear. At the two poles of the official attitude and, respectively, of the legislative protection e.g. in Greece are the Turks and Macedonians; in Bulgaria – Jews and Macedonians; in Macedonia – Albanians and Bulgarians, in Albania – Greeks and Serbs. Of course, when we talk about Balkans we should always bear in mind that the legislative protection is not by itself a real guarantee as these have always been societies where the ru le of law was problematic. Nevertheless, this diversity in the protection of minority identity exists also in the real life no matter what the law says. There are several reasons for that the main one being the different effect on the status of minorities of the basic principle of the Balkan regional politics – the protection by the states of "their own" people abroad. Different situation of minorities is thus a result of the differences in the effect of this complicated power game. But not only – other factors too are in play. Another factor is the economic and social status of the minority with all consequent effects of it on its social interrelations. As a rule, the high economic and social status leads to a high level of legislative standards and administrative practices of the protection of any type of minority identity. And, last but not least is the political significance of the minority in terms of numbers and ability to take part in an organized political action. Here the rule is simple and close to common sense – the bigger the minority’s share in the general population and its capacity to organize, the greater are its chances to have its minority identity protected.

Of course all these as well as related factors should be taken into their constant interplay every time we look into the situation of any Balkan minority. As to the expectations, perhaps the quintessence of it was uttered more than a hundred years ago by a famous Balkan traveler: "The keyword when you go there is patience".

Krassimir Kanev,
President of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, Sofia, Bulgaria

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1 This was the main reason why the NATO action in Kosovo that was justified as a "humanitarian intervention" allegedly devoid of ethnic interest was not understood and accepted by and large in the Balkan countries that were not directly affected by the conflict.