CROATS, SERBS OR SIMPLY KARAŠEVCI ? THREE ETHNIC/NATIONAL
IDENTITIES WITHIN A SMALL COMMUNITY FROM THE ROMANIAN
BANAT BEFORE AND AFTER 1990
[Ladies and gentlemen, Dear colleagues] Karaševci (Krašovani for their
Serbian and caraşoveni for their Romanian neighbours) is the local ethnonym of the
Catholic South Slavic population that mainly live in seven villages (approximately
6,000 inhabitants) near the river Caraş, in the region of Banat - Romania. Their main
locality is Karaševo (Caraşova), which neighbours upon Nermet, Jabalča, Lupak,
Klokotič, Ravnik, and Vodnik.
I would like to start my paper with a short story about a family of Karaševci:
in the 1992 population census the parents and the eldest son declared themselves
Karashevian, the daughter Serbian and the younger son Croat. Today all of them
consider themselves as Croats. This case is emblematic of the changes in the
ethnic/national identity of the Karaševci that occurred in the period after 1990. In this
paper I will analyze these changes in a historical perspective, trying to assess to what
extent they were related to the war in ex-Yugoslavia and the creation of the
independent Croatian state. The research is based on published data, interviews with
members of the local community, and available literature.
From the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries
Much has been written about this ethnic, linguistic and religious oasis
(community). However, the almost complete absence of documents written prior to
the 17th century as well as the loss of the local tradition related to their national
identity promoted the appearance of various theories in connection with their origin
and language, the region and the period of their migration to the Banat.
These theories were formulated in the 18th through to the 20th century, being
based on a multitude of mostly unreliable and contradictory data. Moreover, a few of
the authors who dealt with the Karaševci throughout this period changed over time
their interpretations in connection with them. The more important of these authors
were linguists, publicists or ethnographers (Hungarian, Austrian, Bulgarian, Serbian,
Romanian, and Croatian). The basis for their theories was mainly the Karashevian
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language, as in the 19th century a language was considered an important component
of the process of the nation's formation and one of the basic characteristics of the
nation. The Karaševci were proclaimed Bulgarians, Serbs, Catholic Bosnians namely
Croats, Slavo-Romanians, something entirely separate from their neighbours, not
specifically defined as Serbo-Croats, descendents of the medieval Slavs who inhabited
ancient Dacia, etc. Those who studied the Karaševci for the most part upheld the
theory that they are Serbs, as their language is an archaic Serbian dialect. Some
authors claimed that they were Orthodox when they came to the region that is today
the Romanian Banat, others that they were already Catholic. Various authors also
expressed contradictory opinions related to the historical period and the reasons they
might have migrated to this region. Nevertheless, the majority of them agreed upon
the theory that this occurred in the 14th or 15th century. Actually, because of the
absence of documents it is hard to say with certainty not only when, but also from
which region or possibly regions and under what conditions they came to the Banat.
But what do the few still preserved historical documents tell us in connection
with their origins and ethnic self-identity? Unfortunately, the information they contain
is not only scarce, but also contradictory. However, in most cases we have to deal
with hypotheses when we speak about ethnicity in the past (understood in the social
and cultural sense rather than the biological one). Material proofs are hard even
impossible to find, because there are no statistics of national/ethnic composition based
on data collected directly from the population itself prior to the nineteenth century not to mention more subtle analyses of the ethnic identities and their changes over
time.
The oldest of them is a document from 1550, in which two or three surnames
which still exist among the Karaševci appear (Worgÿtth, myc, and maybe even
Dmitrowÿtth). Nevertheless, the ethnic origin of these surnames is not very clear, as in
the following centuries they are shown in the documents as "Vorga", "Mikul", and
"Dumitar". At the beginning of the 17th century a Croatian Jesuit who was a
missionary there wrote that they told him that they are Romans, but this probably
referred to their Christian denomination, not to their ethnic origin. Later, in a
Habsburg census from the 18th century (1743) they are registered as Catholic Serbs
(Cath. Raitz., or Catholische Raitzen). However, at the end of the same century and
the beginning of the following one they appear as natio karassoviensis in some local
school and Church documents.
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The Hungarian and Romanian population censuses from the 19th and 20th
centuries did not adopt this special ethnonym. E.g., in a statistical and geographical
work on Hungary from 1839 the Karashevian villages appear as Croatian for the first
time. However, the 19th and 20th century censuses of the Banat population are not
reliable with regards to the problem of the Karashevian ethnic self-identity. Until
World War II, the Karaševci were registered not only as Croats or Serbs, but also as
partly Czechs or Slovaks, which is proof that the data was not collected directly from
the population itself. We can take as an example from the census of 1892, in which
four of the Croatian villages were registered as Croatian and three of them as Czech.
Actually, we do not have any reliable data on ethnic awareness of the
Karaševci before the beginning of the 20th century. Moreover, the authors that
provide us with such data obtained directly from the Karaševci are rare (Romanian,
Serbian, and Bulgarian linguists, publicists, and ethnographers). Although they mainly
considered them as being Serbs, these authors claimed that the Karaševci considered
themselves a “nation” apart (Karašefci) and called their language karašefski. They
argued that the Karaševci have no Serbo-Croatian tradition, probably because of the
Ottoman period (the 16th and 17th centuries). Their only tradition is that they came
from the Ottoman Empire or the Balkan Peninsula and they started at the beginning of
the century to show a Croatian orientation, because of the Church and religious
school. Their folk songs are Serbian, and their religious ones Croatian. When in
contact with Serbs or Croats they adapt their language accordingly. However, it seems
impossible to convince the Karaševci that they are Serbs, because of their
Catholicism, which also preserved them in the midst of the Orthodox Romanian
population.
This double identity, Karashevian in the first place and Croatian in the second,
lasted into the second half of the 20th century, as the authors who dealt with the
Karaševci used almost the same terms for them as earlier in the century. It is a known
fact that once an ethnonym is formed, it has a relatively strong tendency to sustain
itself. Nevertheless, in the Romanian censuses of the communist period there was no
“Karaševci” (caraşoveni) section. Consequently, they were automatically registered
as Croats, and only upon special request could they be declared as Serbs or one of the
other recognized nationalities.
The situation after 1990
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The 1992 Romanian census is the first, which reflects data collected directly
from the Karashevian population itself. From the total population of the seven
Karashevian villages, 39.83% (2697 out of 6771 persons) declared themselves as
Karaševci (caraşoveni), but 48.29% (3270 persons) as Croats. Consequently, in 1992
almost half of the population living in the Karashevian region chose to express a
Croatian national identity, and not a Karashevian local/ethnic one.
Furthermore, by comparing the data of the following 2002 census with that
collected in 1992 we notice that the number of inhabitants of the Karashevian villages
who declared themselves as being Croats significantly increased. In 2002 88.82%
(5581 out of 6283 persons) were registered as Croats and only 2.76% as caraşoveni
(174 persons). Consequently, the number of those having declared themselves as
being Croats increased almost 15 times in comparison with 1992. The reference to the
linguistic idioms spoken by the Karashevian population changed in the 2002 census.
The Croatian language was considered separate from the Serbian one (only SerboCroatian was taken into consideration in 1992), with 5425 registered speakers
(83.34%). Along with Croatian, Karashevian appeared for the first time as the mother
tongue, with 236 speakers (3.75%).
Consequently, it can be argued that, according to the statistical data, full
integration of this small ethnic, linguistic and religious group into the Croatian nation
is close to being finished. It seems that in their case this process lasted quite a long
time, at least from the beginning of the 20th century. This can be explained by the
distance of the Karashevian region from the Croatian homeland and the absence of an
independent Croatian nation-state for most of the century. It can be assumed that what
helped this process, in which the Croatian national identity was chosen over the local
one, was the crisis of the war and break-up of ex-Yugoslavia, which led to the
creation of an independent Croatian state.
Nevertheless, Karashevian authors claim that the Karaševci are generally still
above all attached to their local identity or at least that they consider themselves as
being Croats (Krohati), but their language as karašefski. The significant increase in
number of those who officially declared themselves as Croats was considered by one
of these authors, an university professor in Timişoara (the Romanian Banat), as the
consequence of the material benefits the Karaševci were given by the Croatian state,
which recognized them as a Croatian national minority within the Romanian state
[visits of the Croatian president and prime-minister etc.]. The author argued that the
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main material benefit was the Croatian passport, which allowed them to travel and
work in many of the Western European countries, besides Croatia itself (which was
not the case with the Romanian passport at that time). He tried to explain this by the
Karaševci's own material situation resulting from the overall economic context in
Romania, specifically in the towns neighbouring the Karashevian region, where many
factories closed during the early 1990's, affecting also the Karashevian population. No
scientific research regarding this matter has been yet undertaken, so it is not clear
whether economic advantages or possibly the influence of Croatian nationalism
coming from Croatia increased the tendency of the Karaševci to identify themselves
as Croatian.
The above-mentioned university professor, who considers the Karaševci as
being Serbs because of their language, claims that the increase in the number of those
declaring themselves as Croatian is also due to the disinterest and lack of involvement
of the Serbian state with this group. We cannot possibly know how the Karaševci
would react to "offers" made by the Serbian state, but in the past they did not choose
as Serbian as a second identity, but rather Croatian. However, a very small number of
Serbs were recorded among the population of the Karashevian villages in both 1992
and 2002 censuses: 2.53% (171 persons) in 1992 and 0.27% (17 persons) in 2002. It
can be assumed that the small number of Karaševci who consider(ed) themselves as
Serbs were influenced either by the proximity of the relatively numerous Serbian
minority in the Romanian Banat or by the theory that their language is Serbian, so
therefore they are Serbs. In the first instance, we can take as an example the young
girl mentioned at the beginning of this lecture who declared herself to be Serbian
while studying at the Serbian high school in Timişoara, and in the second the
university professor of Karashevian origin mentioned above.
Conclusion
The group’s identification as being Karaševci as shown from the 18th to the
20th century sources could be expressed freely in the population censuses only
starting in the early 1990's. However, they chose increasingly to officially declare
themselves as being Croatian, which was in the past only the second option after the
Karashevian one, in such a way integrating almost completely with the Croatian
nation. It can be argued that the most important role in the process of reasserting
ethnic/national identity by this small ethnic group was played by the newly created
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independent Croatian state, which gave Karaševci both material and ideological
support. Consequently, the thesis that they are Serbs because they speak an archaic
Serbian dialect has almost no influence on the ethnic/national awareness of
contemporary Karaševci.