Fraternal Chill -- The Serbo-Croat Conflict Has Strained Relations In A Seattle Dance Group

For two decades a group of young dancers and singers in Seattle symbolized a unity among Yugoslavian ethnic groups.

But now the backlash from a civil war some 6,000 miles away has strained the Junior Tamburitzans - and provoked some anguish in the Puget Sound Serbian and Croatian communities.

What has happened is a disturbing indication of rising Serbo-Croat tensions in America. But it also provides a valuable insight into the turbulent region where an assassin's bullet started World War I.

Fraternal warmth in the Tamburitzans began to cool in June when Croatia declared independence from the rest of Yugoslavia and was attacked by the Serbian-led federal army.

At regular organizational meetings of parents who run the Tamburitzans, according to various accounts, stress grew as war reports became bloodier. The culminating split came one evening this fall while about 30 parents were meeting at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church to plan a program that would have included both Serbian and Croatian dances.

Several Serbian members say that some Croatian mothers, upset over the war in Yugoslavia, declared they didn't want their children wearing Serbian costumes or performing Serbian dances.

Mike Jankovich, a parent of Serbian heritage, says he and others pointed out that "this is America, and the war is in Yugoslavia."

"But your relatives are killing our relatives there," the dissidents replied.

It was then that Jankovich and his wife, Cathy, the group's wardrobe mistress, decided to take a sabbatical from the Tamburitzans. Other Serbs quit attending the group as well.

"There are many good people in the group," says Cathy Jankovich, "but we didn't want that kind of conflict every week with the ones who are definitely anti-Serbian. We don't want our children raised amid the kind of hate expressed at that meeting."

According to Cheryl Stasojevic, wife of a Serb, the group is now almost all Croatians and has been reduced to fewer than half of the original 52 entertainers. Stasojevic, formerly a dance instructor and member of the group's artistic committee, says her sons have joined the Civil Air Patrol instead.

Inga Barteloec, the Tamburitzans' assistant manager, agrees that the group has been "decimated" by events in Yugoslavia.

However, the Tamburitzans' manager, Antonija Mataya, who is also incoming president of the Croatian Fraternal Union's Seattle lodge, says 20 families - one Serbian - are still active. She says remaining Tamburitzans continue to rehearse.

"Even as a smaller group, we still will be able to put on a good show," says Mataya, who attributes the drop in membership to normal seasonal attrition. "We did it when the group was first organized 21 years ago with 16 people, and we can again."

Co-founder Richard Major, a retired fisheries scientist who managed the group for 13 years, admits to being less sanguine about what he calls a "hornets' nest" situation. "All was going well until this thing broke out in Europe," he says. "But some parents were born in the old country, and it's hard to stay dispassionate when your relatives are being killed."

Major says the problem for some first-generation parents is that, if word gets back to Yugoslavia that their children were dancing in the foe's ethnic costume, they'd never again dare revisit the old home village.

In a subsequent interview, Major agreed with Mataya that the group's reduction in size is largely a cyclical matter.

The Junior Taburitzans, named after the tamburitza, an instrument that looks like a mandolin, was founded 21 years ago with assistance from Seattle Lodge 439 of the Croatian Fraternal Union of America. Major says that right from start the Tamburitzans welcomed all Yugoslavians.

In fact, this sense of fraternity extended throughout Seattle's Yugoslavian community. "Seattle was unique," says Jankovich, a lawyer who is also president of Seattle's Serbian Orthodox Church congregation, which on Sunday inaugurated a new building near Issaquah. "Every other Yugoslavian community I've visited, in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, was divided, partly because of enmities left over from World War II. But in Seattle there weren't many of us, and we needed each other. So we supported Croatian functions, and they supported ours."

Through the years, the Tamburitzans strummed and sang at the Seattle Opera House and were regulars at ethnic events such as the city's Folklife Festival. They were a dazzling spectacle, the boys dashing in riding breeches, blue vests and white shirts, the girls comely in multi-colored skirts, white blouses and gold-trimmed red velvet vests.

The Tamburitzans' next public performance will be Dec. 14 at the downtown Nordstrom. The group will decorate a tree in the Croatian tradition, sing Croatian Christmas songs and demonstrate a korso (circle) dance from Posavina, Croatia.

"But no, we won't be doing any Serbian dances or songs," Mataya says. "Our Christmas coincides with the traditional Christian Christmas, but the Serbian Orthodox one is sometime in January."

It's clear that both groups deeply cherish their ethnic heritage.

In Washington, Croats outnumber Serbs, who are the majority in Yugoslavia. According to the 1980 census, the combined Serbo-Croat population in Washington was 926 families.

A major Croat concentration is on Fidalgo Island, where a quarter of the 10,000 population is said to be of Croatian descent. Gig Harbor, Tacoma, Vashon and Bainbridge islands, Aberdeen, Renton and Seattle also have sizable Croatian populations.

Though most Croats have quit attending Serbian functions in Seattle, Jankovich believes that a silent majority have preserved their friendships with Serbs. However, he says, "a more radical Croatian group in Anacortes has had some influence."

Certainly you'll get emphatic opinions from Michael Petrish, 24, an Anacortes fish farmer who studied at Zagreb University.

"Really this war is about Serbian greed for the wealth of Croatia," he says. "It's about Serbian hard-line Communism versus Croatian democracy and free enterprise. That's what this is about, my friend. I am proud to be an American, and I would love to see U.S. forces go in there and drive the Serbs back."

With the fighting continuing despite numerous truces, Seattle's Yugoslavs express gloom about the future of their homeland.

"Croatians blame the Serbs and Serbs blame the Croatians," says Jankovich. "But really, both sides are to blame. We are doing our best to prevent the bitterness and hatred being transplanted from Yugoslavia to America. But it's getting more difficult all the time."

Jankovich says that on Jan. 25 the area's Serbian community will celebrate the festival of St. Sava, Serbian Orthodox patron saint. "It's one of the big days of our year, and in Seattle the Croats have come to be part of it. We hope they will again. My bottom line is, whatever happens over there, we should try to preserve peace here."

---------------------------------- ETHNIC RIFT DATES BACK 1,000 YEARS ----------------------------------

Historians date the Serbo-Croat rift back about 1,000 years, when Serbs joined the Orthodox Church and Croats became Roman Catholics. Yugoslavia's six republics now encompass three major religions, two alphabets and three official languages. One of the official languages even comes in two forms, Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian.

For hundreds of years, Serbians served as Croatia's gatekeepers. Starting in the 16th century, Serbs who fled the brutal occupation of their homeland by Ottoman Turkey were encouraged by Austro-Hungaria to settle in a chain of communities within Croatia to provide a defensive buffer between the Muslim and Christian empires.

By 1918 - when Yugoslavia was formed from Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Bosnians in Balkan states long dominated by Turkey and Austria - nearly a quarter of Croatia's residents were ethnic Serbs. But relations deteriorated between the two world wars as economic hardship fostered ethnic resentment. Many Serbs remember a period during World War II when pro-Nazi Croat extremists called Ustashi brutally murdered several hundred thousand Serbians, and others were forced to wear the letter P - for Pravoslavni, meaning the Orthodox religion.

After the war, the Communist dictator Marshal Tito held the Yugoslavian federation together by force. During his rule the Serbians became heavily dominant in business, the military and the secret police.