Vladimir Ilić Faculty of Philosophy Belgrade

Izvorni naučni članak UDK: 323.15 Primljeno: 15. 07. 2002.

ATTITUDES OF THE ETHNIC ELITES MEMBERS IN VOJVODINA TO MINORITY RIGHTS AND TO INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONS

ABSTRACT A survey was done with 100 distinguished members of cultural and media elite members. The results showed that ethnic elites in Vojvodina had better economic position than ordinary citizens, but that one nineth of them was poor. On inter-personal level they are very open towards the members of other ethnic groups. As for the attitudes, ethnic elites members differed from ordinary citizens mostly by strongly supporting market economy and liberal concept of development. They couldn't differentiate clearly between individual and collective rights. This was understandable since in multi-ethnic surrounding where Serbian ethnic nationalism still prevailed individual rights were to the great extent determined by ethnic origin. Minority ethnic communities elites had clearer understanding of this fact becouse their ethnic groups payed higher price in such circumstances. Members of least numerous ethnic groups mostly favoured individual over collective rights, major cause for this being probably their fear from Serbian-Hungarian deal at the expense of third party. Yet, this survey's findings regarding this topic were substantialy better than any before, since the awareness of need for collective rights to be recognized grew in all ethnic groups, including Serbs.

KEY WORDS ethnic elites, individual and collective rights.