> .... A good way of gauging the amount of ethnic prejudice in a society is
> to look at everyday life behevior - the amount of social interecation,
> especially inter-marriages - instead of folk tales and national
> mythologies (oe even actions of some fringe elements.)
>
> AFAIK, there was great deal of social interaction and intermarriages in
> Eastern Europe among the ethnic grouops living there - Slavs of various
> stripes, Jews, Tartars, Ugro-Fins, Germans, etc. Far greater than the
> level of social interaction between, say, Brits and the peoples they
> colonised (British colonists seemed to be particularly resitant to the
> idea of intermingling with the colonised peoples, far more so than Spanish
> or Portuguese colonists). Or for that matter, greater than the incidence
> inter-racial mariages in the US, including the, oh so enlightened, North.
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Good point. How much of this was due to the fostering of a secular political
culture by the Communist parties and regimes which, whatever it's other
deformations, stressed the responsibility of the "nationalities" to each
other in the common task of forging a new society? Unfortunately, not enough
history passed for subsequent generations to interact and intermarry and to
put behind them these ancient ethnic and religious antagonisms, and they
quickly resurfaced and redivided the groups after the walls came down -
Yugoslavia being the most conspicuous and tragic example.