  The hyperfine splittings in heavy quarkonia are studied in a
model-independent way using the experimental data on di-electron widths.
Relativistic correlations are taken into account together with the smearing of
the spin-spin interaction. The radius of smearing is fixed by the known
$J/\psi-\eta_c(1S)$ and $\psi(2S)-\eta'_c(2S)$ splittings and appears to be
small, $r_{ss} \cong 0.06$ fm. Nevertheless, even with such a small radius an
essential suppression of the hyperfine splittings ($\sim 50%)$ is observed in
bottomonium. For the $nS~ b\bar b$ states $(n=1,2,...,6)$ we predict the values
(in MeV) 28, 12, 10, 6, 6, and 3, respectively. For the $3S$ and $4S$
charmonium states the splittings 16(2) MeV and 12(4) MeV are obtained.
