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Introduction
Institute on East Central Europe
Columbia University
March, 1996
On March 1-2, 1996, Columbia University's Institute on East Central Europe hosted a conference on "State and Nation Building in East Central Europe: Contemporary Perspectives." Over forty graduate students responded to a call for papers, and the conference organizing committee opted to cast its net very broadly, to include as wide an array of approaches and country studies as possible while maintaining high academic standards and intellectual direction. The committee also made a conscious effort to include representatives of as many disciplines in the social sciences as feasible. Ultimately nineteen young anthropologists, historians, international affairs specialists, legal scholars, and political scientists from twelve universities were invited to present their findings. Even so, not every country in the region or every discipline is represented by the edited papers herein. This volume is meant to promote a better understanding of some of the complex problems and issues that confront politicians, academics, and inhabitants of the region.
One of the most respected authorities in the study of nations and nationalism, Professor Miroslav Hroch of Charles University in Prague, noted in a recently published essay that "Every attempt to describe the historical development of different countries runs the risk of trying to compare the incomparable." 1 And indeed, the monographic studies within this volume run the gamut from studies on the formation of national identity, to ethnic mobilization, to national, ethnic, and religious minorities, to federalism, to citizenship. The essays begin with descriptions and analyses of events and processes in the late nineteenth-century through developments during World War I, the interwar period, World War II, the postwar period, through current developments. And politics, journalism, electoral reform, domestic political and historical discourse, education, and national memory all appear within.
The question remains: are we trying to compare the incomparable? No, and yes, and well, that depends. Our goal was to discuss historical trends, and to deepen and broaden our knowledge of a diverse geographic region, or regions, depending on how one defines the area under discussion. Joseph Rothschild, teacher of several generations of East Central European specialists at Columbia University, aptly coined the phrase "Return to Diversity" in his study of postwar East Central Europe, published in the year of the revolutions, 1989. 2 Following in his footsteps, we set out to explore issues that predated or may have resulted from the dissolution of the Soviet empire, the breakup of federated states, and the processes of nation- and state-building in East and Central Europe. We tried to make the task easier by assembling the papers in panels that made good sense, either by country or by theme. Basically, we discussed what Michael Walzer called "The New Tribalism," 3 which seems an interesting and, to some extent, appropriate analogy. Adoption of part of Walzer's message as a guiding principle in our deliberations -- acceptance of particularism as an essential prerequisite for successful intertribal negotiations -- facilitated comments by peers and assisted authors in preparing their papers for publication. Likewise, the participation of established scholars who have written about empires, states, and nations in the area such as sociologist Karen Barkey, political scientists Jack Snyder and Peter Johnson, and historians István Deák, Anna Procyk, and this author, helped shape the discussion. Their contribution is hereby acknowledged with gratitude.
The first three presentations that follow concern History and National Identity. They begin with Alon Rachamimov's discussion of Diaspora Nationalism, a movement for national minority rights for the Jewish population of 19th-century Eastern Europe within the then-existing large multi-national states. The closest Diaspora Nationalism had ever come to achieving its aims occurred in 1909 in one of the smallest and nationally most heterogeneous provinces of the Habsburg monarchy -- Bukovina. There, an agreement negotiated between representatives of the various local parties recognized the Bukovinian Jewish population as a nationality, alongside the Ruthenians, Romanians, Germans, Poles and Hungarians. Consequently, Jews in Bukovina were to receive their own voting curia and electoral districts were to be designed to ensure representation in the provincial Diet, corresponding to the 15 percent share of Jews in the population of Bukovina. The agreement in Bukovina was a major coup for Diaspora Nationalists, the first instance in which Jews were to be recognized as a nationality in the Austro-Hungarian state and the first time that political rights were to be awarded based on this fact. The agreement, therefore, unleashed a debate among various sections of the Austrian Jewish population regarding its prudence and its underlying assumptions. The debate exposed not only contrasting views regarding what it means to be a Jew in an increasingly secular and nationalistic world, but also exposed the considerable friction existing between the more affluent and acculturated Jews of the western half of the monarchy and their poorer brethren from the east. The agreement was finally vetoed in October 1909 by the Emperor Franz-Joseph and the negotiating sides were instructed to register the Jewish population of Bukovina as "German." The study examines the ensuing debate and discusses whether Diaspora Nationalism could have been a serious option for Jews living in late-imperial Austria-Hungary.
Ivelin Sardamov argues in his essay that the most influential theories of ethnic conflict have so far adopted an instrumentalist perspective, presenting intercommunal violence almost exclusively as the result of calculated manipulation by elites aspiring to material gain, increased power, and status. While this approach illuminates an important aspect of most ethnic conflicts, it cannot fully account for their frequently excessive ferocity and intractability. As the Serbian rebellions in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina have demonstrated, we cannot fully understand the dynamics of the ethnic rivalries in the region without considering the abiding power of historical myths and memories to provide lasting standards for legitimate political action. These standards can be seen as a peculiar "mandate of history" which has evolved over a long period of time and by virtue of which national leaders have commanded authority. This is a central characteristic especially of Serbian national identity, which has remained historically anchored, referring to a continuous "we" of yesterday, today and tomorrow as a historical communal subject. The recent conflict in the former Yugoslavia is only the latest in a series of instances in which Serbian leaders have been cast in historically-inherited roles which they have been only partially free to reinterpret. As during the two world wars, they have defied rational-choice expectations and pursued a core of "national ideals" to the point of self-destruction, impervious to compromise and mutual accommodation and unimpeded by significant domestic opposition. An appreciation of this tragic aspect of Serbian history is crucial to understanding an important aspect of the ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the limited applicability of traditional conflict-resolution measures there.
Tanya Dunlap investigates the efforts of early 19th-century Transylvanian intellectuals to document historical texts in order to demand political rights within the Habsburg Empire. Dominated by Austrians, Hungarians and Saxons, Romanian intellectuals asserted their Latin ancestry in order to claim political rights on the grounds that they had been first to settle the region. The work of this Transylvanian School established the basis for future historiographic argumentation and laid the foundation for 19th-century national movements in Romania. Dunlap's study of the creation and politicization of a Romanian identity, intrinsically integrated with history, explores the nature of constructed identities and national memories. She argues that the texts provided the Transylvanian Romanians with a historically founded official collective memory with a historical foundation. In doing so, the texts defined a national identity, shaped by political and social circumstances, to serve as an instrument of power. The study combines an analysis of historical texts with theories of the relationship between history, collective memory, and national identity.
The second set of issues explored by our authors was Discourse, Identity and Politics. Aimee Wielechowski analyzes the trial of Alija Izetbegovic in its historical context, examining the early 1970s, when Muslims were first granted national status in Yugoslavia. The "Islamic Declaration," written by Izetbegovic in 1970, is frequently cited by Serbian and Croatian nationalists as evidence of a dangerous Islamic fundamentalist movement in Bosnia. In the early 1980s the Yugoslav government accused and 12 others of attempting to create an Islamic fundamentalist Bosnia. After the death of Tito in 1980, any element perceived to be antagonistic to a unified Yugoslavia was repressed. The Izetbegovic trial unleashed a virulent campaign against Islam. Although both Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch determined that Izetbegovic neither used or advocated violence, the defendants were skewered in the media as Islamic terrorists. Linking Bosnia's Islamic renaissance with the larger Islamic movement (particularly the Iranian Revolution), the Yugoslav press published thousands of articles throughout the 1980s warning of the dangerous spread of Islam. Interestingly, Western media also reported similarly on the trial. The highly contested definition of Muslim identity contributed to the violent media attacks waged against Islam in the 1980s, which have had an effect on the definition of the enemy in the current war.
In his article, Richard Wallace considers how journalists shape, and are shaped by, the new ideological field of discourse in recently independent Slovakia. While the country's most listened-to radio program, Rádio_urnal, had not been dominated by nationalism before or after independence, but its journalists have now accepted the hegemony of cultural nationalism, and have varied responses to overt forms of political nationalism. Wallace examines the journalistic goal of objectivity relative to ideational and practical considerations. The still-emerging yet inexorable national identity of the Slovak people exists alongside the undecided ideological and economic objectives of their nascent state. During Wallace's time in Slovakia, the coalition government began pressuring journalists to practice self-censorship in state-controlled institutions like Slovak Public Radio. The objective was, ostensibly, to "protect the good name of Slovakia" and to "maintain objectivity," which could also be read as an effort to protect the ruling political parties and maintain a political agenda. The author considers these journalists as both independent and as manipulated tools in the creation of the new Slovak nation-state.
Sandra Pralong discusses the dilemma that Romania finds itself in and the behavior of Romania's nationalist parties since 1989. On the one hand, Romania needs to assert the doctrine of immutability and inviolability of international borders, in order to prevent potential Hungarian claims over Transylvania. On the other hand, if Romania is to recover Moldova it must espouse an overtly revisionist doctrine maintaining that the border with Moldova is illegitimate. Pralong examines whether Romania's nationalist claims can accommodate two mutually exclusive doctrines. She finds that the much-discussed Romanian nationalism is constructed, that the national movement has relatively little popular support and, in the long-run, is not credible. Romanian nationalism, if not an outright oxymoron, is at least counter-intuitive in its manifestation.
State and Nation Building in the Hungarian Context is the third theme. Stephen Deets argues that development projects and environmental issues have long been imbued with a great deal of political symbolism. His article examines the changing symbolism of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dam complex on the Hungarian-Slovak border. Designed as more than a hydro-electric project, the dam was also meant as a testament to the brotherly socialist relations between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. However, by the late 1980s, the symbolism of the dam complex began to shift in both countries, reflecting the growing economic and political crises. The Hungarian government viewed the dam as a symbol of an "outdated economic model and dysfunctional decision-making process," while prominent Slovaks defended the dam as a "shining proof of our national culture" and belittled dam opponents. Deets details the politics of the dams at the domestic and international levels, and examines how and why the dam controversy became enmeshed in the debates on the Hungarian and Slovak nations.
Evelyn Farkas examines the implications of acknowledging collective minority rights for ethnic groups in Central and Eastern Europe, with special reference to the Hungarian diaspora communities in Slovakia and Romania. Most minority groups veer away from secessionist demands, but they all call for increased cultural and educational rights, as well as rights to local self-government and representation at the national level. Their demands, often described as autonomy, have been met with distrust, fear of irredentism, bitterness and reactions ranging from repression to denial (of ordinary democratic access). Farkas outlines the current international legal approach to ethnic minorities, tracing the movement from an international regime based strictly on individual rights (as defined by classic liberal democratic theory) to the adoption of the recent political approach embodied by multiculturalism. The Hungarian case provides a point of reference and a basis for drawing some conclusions about the challenges ethnic minorities pose to classic liberal-democratic theory. The author argues that in the long-run, political and legal concepts need to be re-examined and re-defined, that the relationship between ethnicity, democracy and majorities/minorities may need to be restructured.
Sherrill Stroschein proposes an approach to the study of ethnic conflict that focuses on the social dynamics between groups in multi-ethnic cities, towns, and villages, where different groups make contact with each other. She posits that communities with higher levels of heterogeneity, or diversity, among different groups should exhibit lower levels of ethnic conflict than communities with lower levels of heterogeneity, because higher levels of heterogeneity increase the probability that information will be exchanged between individuals of different groups. Stroschein evaluates community heterogeneity in two forms: 1) simple heterogeneity, or the diversity among ethnic groups, and 2) multiform heterogeneity, or the degree of cross-cutting cleavages between ethnic and religious groups. Heterogeneity provides increased opportunities for individuals of different groups to form acquaintance ties with each other, ties that serve as bridges between different groups through which information may be exchanged. Communities with extensive networks of acquaintance ties between groups should be more likely to resist external influences toward divisive nationalism than those without such networks. She applies this proposition to a study of multi-ethnic communities containing Hungarian minority populations in Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Timothy Waters and Rachel Guglielmo address Hungary's recent law on minority rights, evaluating the extent of its implementation in Hungary. The 1993 Act LXXVII on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities contains some of the most sweeping and extensive provisions for minorities found in Europe -- on paper. It expands the existing definition of human rights by including both individual and collective rights. The collective right of minority autonomy is enshrined as an integral element of the state. Waters and Guglielmo conclude, however, that the practical application of this law has not approached its own standards. The Hungarian state and its local governments have not only disregarded the provisions of their own law, but have also -- most especially where Gypsies are involved -- actively worked to undermine those rights. The state thus denies Gypsies even those basic human rights which Hungarian law accords to all its citizens, whether minority or not. The resistance of the Hungarian political system to any real implementation of LXXVII/1993 has rendered it an empty promise.
Two presentations addressed problems of Federalism. Ann Robertson describes secession as the political equivalent of divorce. It may be mutual or contested, violent or peaceful, and both parties may claim the spoils of the marriage. The de jure circumstances of the divorce are not as important to future viability as the parties' preparations for life on their own. The petitioning party, for example, must have some hope for survival on its own. Federations are marriages without fusion. They provide the political equivalent of separate bank accounts, separate names, and separate friends. Whether originating from love or convenience (as in the Yugoslav and Czecho-Slovak cases), federations are marriages in which neither partner loses its individual identity. Neither Slovaks nor Slovenes were completely happy to join with peoples they had so little in common with, but neither had much choice after the First World War. A federation providing mutual defense and a combined economy again prevailed as the best option after World War II. The unions were not happy ones, and Slovenia began to consider an annulment, Slovakia a divorce. The Slovak and Slovene cases fall somewhere between peaceful and contested secessions; both proceeded largely on constitutional grounds, but resistance from the respective parent state was mitigated by that body's collapse. By holding the process of secession constant, patterns of state configuration influential to secession and new state building can be determined. Robertson draws on Samuel P. Huntington's emphasis on culture, structure, groups, leadership, and policies in order to determine how federalism affected state-building via secession in Slovakia and Slovenia.
Thomas Ambrosio tackles the problem of the Bosnian Federation. After nearly a full year of brutal fighting throughout central Bosnia-Herzegovina, representatives of the Bosnian Muslims and Croats signed an agreement in early March 1994, that transformed the internal structure of the territories held by their respective armies. By utilizing the city of Mostar as a test case, Ambrosio shows that the Federation largely remains a fiction. He argues that this quasi-state's precarious status is due to the failure of substantive military integration and to the position of the Croats. Without any progress on those two fronts, the author concludes, the attempt to rebuild some semblance of a multiethnic Bosnia through the Federation project will most likely fail.
The penultimate conference session dealt with State and Nation Building in Opposition in the Balkans. Thomas Buck reflects on the Republic of Macedonia's struggle to assert itself as an independent nation since its break from Yugoslavia in 1991. Until September 1995, Greece had maintained a stifling economic and diplomatic blockade on its neighbor to the north, due to the conviction that the Macedonian culture and name were an integral part of Greek culture and history. While relations between the two nations have improved and the economic embargo has been lifted, the state of Macedonia still faces an integral internal threat to its stability: the Albanian problem. In their drive to establish Macedonia within the family of nations, Macedonian politicians have often used ethnicity as a basis for statehood. This has raised fears among Macedonian Albanians (who constitute at least 22 percent of the population) that non-Slavs would be excluded from the state-building process. Buck examines the importance of ethnicity for nationhood and citizenship in Macedonia. Without legal and constitutional reform, Macedonia risks a degree of ethnic conflict. Although pragmatic politicians such as President Kiro Gligorov have come to understand that Albanians need to be included in the state-building process, and have made efforts to include representatives of their community in the Macedonian political structure, they have not questioned the ethnic basis to statehood as it has become defined in the Macedonian constitution. The author argues that Macedonia cannot viably exist as an ethnically-based state. The real threat to the security of this Balkan nation thus comes not from external political actors, such as Greece, but from its own internal instability.
Confusion over the ethnic identity of certain groups and peoples compounds the complicated political situation in the Balkans. Mario Apostolov examines the situation of the Pomaks, Bulgarian speakers whose religion is Islam and who have variously been regarded as Bulgarians, as Turks, and as a group with a distinct identity. They have also been compared with another Slavic community, the Bosnian Muslims, but this parallel is misleading as the Pomaks live dispersed in a different part of the peninsula and speak a different language. While the Pomaks are not likely to experience anything akin to the conflict in Bosnia, the political influences on these people in the countries where they live still pose a security problem in the Balkans. The less than half a million Pomaks are spread throughout five Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Albania and Turkey. Contending theories on their identity often reflect the complicated relations among those states. In international politics, identity and human rights are often reduced to the status of elements in the interplay of national security concerns of various states.
Is a "Greater Albania" in the making? That is the question that George Gavrilis tackles in his study, which draws on Stephen Van Evera's work on nationalism and international security. Van Evera asserts that in multi-ethnic states, the probability of ethnic conflict is high if: 1) statehood is unattained yet demographically possible for a certain ethnic group; 2) the so-called captor nation does not respect a captive nation's right to independence; and 3) the captor nation disrespects minority rights. The large tracts of Albanian-inhabited land lying outside Tirana's jurisdiction fall on the war-promoting side of these criteria. Gavrilis, however, argues that conflict involving Albanians is most dependent on Van Evera's fourth criterion, the ethnic core state's attitude towards its ethnic brethren. Albania's diplomacy is of the "diaspora annexing" type, promoting pan-Albanian political union as balance of power constraints permit and functioning as the prime determinant of who will be annexed and when. His hypothesis on nationalism and conflict is coupled with extensive empirical evidence to show the nuances of Tirana's diplomacy, demonstrating a calculated "diasp Turks, and ora annexing" trend that is easy to overlook.
James Krapfl presents a second view of national issues in Macedonia. He lists among the sources of possible conflict there the emergence of a new IMRO as a leading political party in Macedonia, rising tensions between the Macedonian majority and ethnic minorities (particularly Albanians), and the openly irredentist rhetoric of many politicians -- both within and without the republic. He presents a historical view, noting that a recurring feature of all these nationalist contexts is an appeal to "the ideals of Ilinden," referring to an IMRO-led uprising against Turkish rule in the early part of this century. Two parties of ethnic Macedonians in Bulgaria are named after the uprising, and the constitution of Macedonia states that its legitimacy rests "upon the statehood-legal traditions of the Krusevo Republic," a short-lived experiment in autonomous rule which comprised the high-water-mark of Ilinden. Krapfl's article explores how the memory of the Ilinden Uprising has served as a vehicle for nationalism, with particular attention to ways in which the socialist regime cultivated this memory for its own purposes. On the surface, it is commonly assumed that nationalism was "kept under control" in socialist Yugoslavia, and that the central government kept nationalism "out of sight and out of mind." A closer inspection, however, reveals that in Macedonia the socialist system actually stimulated nationalist attitudes as a political expedient. While it is true that the nationalist vocabulary was constrained by the Communist Party, all the elements of post-socialist nationalism thrived in the socialist period. Thus, rather than bringing nationalism out of a deep freeze, the fall of communism merely changed the parameters for its discourse.
The last set of issues concerned contemporary Ukraine. David Meyer investigates why the Crimean Russians have become politically mobilized along the lines of ethnicity while the Russians of the Donbas have mobilized around socio-economic issues. The question is particularly interesting given that the two groups of people compared share many similarities. The Donbas has more native-Russian speakers than Crimea, and these native Russians or Russian speakers and their ancestors have lived in Donbas longer than the Russians of the Crimea. Nevertheless, the Donbas Russians are, counter-intuitively, more quiescent than the Crimean Russians. This author argues that the Donbas Russians are less ethno-politically mobilized than the Crimean Russians because the Donbas Russian elites have fewer demographic and institutional resources with which to carry out ethno-political mobilization. As a result of this fact, the Donbas Russian elites have allowed themselves to be coopted into the multi-ethnic leftist movements of the Donbas. These movements represent virtually all of the Donbas Russians' demands, including, occasionally, the secession or re-establishment of the former Soviet Union. Only an explicitly Russian ethnic appeal is lacking in these parties.
Victor Chudowsky notes that within the body of political science literature on transitions to democracy and party systems in Central and Eastern Europe, there is a debate over whether political party systems in the region are comparable to party systems in Western Europe. Some scholars have asserted that over time, as privatization proceeds, the main cleavage in Central and Eastern European party systems will fall between pro-market and anti-market parties, and that therefore party systems in these countries will begin to resemble party systems in Western Europe. Others, however, argue that a pro- and anti- market cleavage between parties will be weak compared to cleavages among parties due to ethnicity, region, ideology, personality, and the needs of nation-building. Chudowsky supports the latter view and, using biographical data on Ukrainian members of parliament, hypothesizes that the main cleavage in the Ukrainian party system is over what type of cultural, economic, and political relationship Ukraine should have with the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The way that political parties align on this cleavage is determined by ethno-cultural and regional factors. In the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, conflict between formal political parties is dampened and mediated by a large group of pragmatic, independent deputies largely representing the state's bureaucratic elite. Therefore, the power of the bureaucratic elite, along with the electoral law, are institutional factors which shape the party system as well. A pro-market and anti-market cleavage exists, but is very weak due to the small number and disunity of pro-market forces.
Yuri Shevchuk discusses the process of formation of a new citizenship identity in Ukraine, an identity which has been influenced by historical factors and by the present political realities. The most prominent among the former are: the special place of ethnic Russians in the networks of political, economic, and ideological power, due to which they are sometimes described as an "imperial minority"; the virtual absence of a single Ukrainian national identity as a possible reference point for collective association in the process of political mobilization around ethnic slogans; the existence of an "intermediate identity" alongside the Ukrainian and the Russian as a result of Russification; and the persistence of certain historical cultural stereotypes. These identities fall within the complex reality of the survival of the old communist nomenklatura and its successful re-appropriation of a pro-independence agenda, the poor social-eudemonic performance of an independent Ukrainian state. In addition, there is the progressive ethnicization of Ukrainian politics at the regional level (Donbas, the Crimea) and the consistent avoidance of similar strategies by the ruling party in Kyiv. Shevchuk discusses the institutional framework for citizenship acquisition policies in Ukraine and its influence on the discourse of citizenship, economic, political, cultural, and psychological factors. These factors condition attitudes toward single and dual citizenship on the part of the population as well as on the part of central and regional élites in Ukraine.
Readers may note variations in the usage of geographic terms and place names. Rather than impose a unified system, each author's choice of proper names and terms, and use or non-use of diacriticals, has been honored and standardized within each chapter.
The conference at which the papers were delivered was organized by the Institute on East Central Europe's student association, The Other Europe. Generous funding was provided by the President's and Provost's Student Initiative Fund at Columbia University, the School of International and Public Affairs' Student Association (SIPASA), the Harriman Institute, and the Institute on East Central Europe. The organizing committee was led by Ms. Sherrill Stroschein, the spiritus movens of the effort. She was assisted at various points by the following able and talented graduate students: Karen Ballentine, Kestrina Budina, Emilio Carrill, Eliza Johnson, John Lis, Nancy Luxon, Harrison Magun, Mitch Mitchell, Christian Nielsen, Tibor Papp, John Schiemann, Mark Suprun, Gabriel Topor, Dawid Walendowski, Priscilla Warren, and Sarah Wigglesworth. Mr. Frank Bohan and Mr. Kevin E. Laney of the Harriman Institute, and Mrs. Micaela Lee Ordahl were extremely helpful during preparations for the conference. Mr. Kevin Hallinan, the Institute's Program Coordinator, provided superb professional support both during the conference and in the editorial process culminating in this compilation. Both the conference and this volume provide humble evidence of the intellectual attraction that East Central Europe holds for an increasing number of young scholars, which bodes well for the future.
Note 1: Miroslav Hroch, "Language and National Identity," in Richard L. Rudolph and David F. Good, eds., Nationalism and Empire (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), p. 65. Back.
Note 2: Joseph Rothschild, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Back.
Note 3: Michael Walzer, "The New Tribalism: Notes on a Difficult Problem," in Omar Dahbour and Micheline R. Ishay, The Nationalism Reader (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), 322-332. Back.
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