Persistence of traditionalist value orientations in Serbia

Systematic failures in attempts to modernize Serbian society during the past two centuries have led to the survival of traditionalist value orientations. The long period of Ottoman rule allowed patriarchal, warrior-tribal cultural patterns to persist and shape the basis for national and overall cultural identity. Extreme poverty, autarkical agricultural production, the slow penetration of capitalism and a market economy, an undifferentiated social structure with majority of rural population, patriarchal organization of both the private and public sphere and the authoritarian character of authority, were characteristics of Serbian pre-modern society, which inhibited its development and contributed to the persistence of traditionalism. Although the socialist period was modernizing in many respects, homology between socialist and pre-modern collectivist, egalitarian and authoritarian orientation, made it easy for nationalism to penetrate and consequently led to decomposition of the state in civil wars. Delayed post-socialist transformation, characterized by civil war, economic collapse, extreme impoverishment, and international isolation, has only strengthened the orientation towards pre-modern patterns of identification. This paper examines the persistence of collectivism, authoritarianism and patriarchal orientation in the period of unhindered post-socialist transformation, based on the data obtained in the "South-East European Social Survey Project" (SEESSP), conducted from December 2003 to January 2004. These results are compared with those obtained in the research project "Changes in the Class Structure and Mobility in Serbia", conducted in 1989