Contrary to the widespread opinion that hatred and mutual dislike among various ethnic groups was a chief characteristic of Yugoslavia and was at the bottom of the country’s destruction, the ethnic distance survey conducted in 1990 indicates that Yugoslav society was a community with a generally low level of ethnic animosities. The results demonstrate the huge discrepancy between what most Yugoslav citizens felt and needed, and what political elites and nationalist intellectuals claimed "their people" wanted and needed in the 1990s. Many scholars have not incorporated or noticed the difference.