Nation and Memory in Eastern Europe (19th and 20th century) Christoph Mick

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Nation and Memory in Eastern Europe (19th and
20th century)Christoph Mick
Lecture 1 Nation and Nation Building I Week 2
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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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Johann Gottfried Herder, 1744-1803
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Nature brings forth families the most natural
state therefore is also one people, with a
national character of its own. For thousands of
years this character preserves itself within the
people and, if the native princes concern
themselves with it, it can be cultivated in the
most natural way for a people is as much a plant
of nature as is a family, except that it has more
branches... As the mineral water derives its
component parts, its operative power, and its
flavour from the soil through which it flows, so
the ancient character of peoples arose from the
family features, the climate, the way of life and
education, the early action and employments, that
were peculiar to them. The manners of the fathers
took deep root and became the internal prototype
of the descendants... No greater injury can be
inflicted on a nation than to be robbed of her
national character, the peculiarity of her spirit
and her language.
Johann Gottfried von Herder Materials for the
Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784
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Ernest Renan, 1823-1892
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• Man is a slave
• neither of his race
• nor his language,
• nor of his religion,
• nor of the course of rivers nor of the direction
  taken by mountain chains.
• Ernest Renan

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A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two
things, which in truth are but one, constitute
this soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the
past, one in the present. One is the possession
in common of a rich legacy of memories the other
is present-day consent, the desire to live
together, the will to perpetuate the value of the
heritage that one has received in an undivided
form Ernest Renan
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Where national memories are concerned, griefs
are of more value than triumphs, for they impose
duties, and require a common effort.Ernest
Renan
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A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity,
constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that
one has made in the past and of those that one is
prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a
past it is summarized, however, in the present
by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly
expressed desire to continue a common life. A
nations existence is, if you will pardon the
metaphor, a daily plebiscite Ernest Renan
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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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Primordialist view Key assumptionsNations
are real process National sentiment is no
constructIt is rooted in a feeling of
kinshipNations are eternal or at least go back
to ancient times
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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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Modernist view
Nation as a natural, God-given way of
classifying men, as an inherent political
destiny, are a myth nationalism, which sometimes
takes preexisting cultures and turns them into
nations, sometimes invents them, and often
obliterates preexisting cultures that is a
reality. (Ernest Gellner)
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Nations do not make states and nationalisms but
the other way round. (Eric Hobsbawm)
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Ernest Gellner

• Nations accompany the transition from agrarian
  societies to modern industrial societies
• Nations are functional for modern industrial
  society.
• The most important tool in forming nations is
  the modern education system
• The replacement of low by high cultures
  marks industrial society and nation building.
• Nationalism imposes the new high culture on the
  population and uses material from old low
  cultures as raw material see also The
  invention of tradition (Eric Hobsbawm)
• Nations are necessary, every single nation is
  contingent
• Ernest Gellner, Nation and Nationalism

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Modernist view Key assumptionsNations are a
product of modernityNations are constructed by
elitesNationalists created nations
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Critics of the modernist position For the
diffusion of national ideas could only occur in
specific social settings. Nation-building was
never a mere project of ambitious or narcissistic
intellectuals Intellectuals can invent
national communities only if certain objective
preconditions for the formation of a nation
already exist. Miroslav Hroch, From National
Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation, p. 61
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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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Ethno-Symbolism

• ethnies are constituted, not by lines of
  physical descent, but by the sense of continuity,
  shared memory and collective destiny, i.e. by
  lines of cultural affinity embodied in myths,
  memories, symbols and values retained by a given
  cultural unit of population.
• A.D. Smith, National Identity, p. 29

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Ethno-Symbolism

• Modern nations and pre-modern ethnies are linked
• Ethnies are crucial for the formation of nations
• Myths, symbols, folk tales, histories, memories,
  cultural traditions play important roles in
  transforming ethnies in nations
• They are the basis for social cohesion

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The point at issue is how far the modern, mass
public culture of the national state is a modern
version of the premodern elite high culture of
the dominant ethnie, or how far it simply uses
materials from that culture for its own quite
different, and novel, purposes. Anthony D.
Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, p. 42
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Intermediary position (Anthony D. Smith) Key
assumptionsNations are a modern phenomenon, but
have roots in pre-modern eras and
culturesModern nations are directly or
indirectly related to older ethnies with their
distinctive mythology, symbolism and
cultureNations are expression of the need for
collective immortality through posterity Nation
s are both construct and real process
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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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• A nation can therefore be defined as
• a named human population
• sharing an historic territory,
• common myths and historical memories,
• a mass public culture,
• a common economy
• and common legal rights and duties for all
  members.
• Anthony D. Smith National Identity. Reno, Las
  Vegas, London 1991, p. 14.

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• Ethnic communities or ethnies (characteristics)
• a common name
• a set of myths of common origins and descent
• some common historical memories of things
  experienced together
• a common historic territory or homeland, or
  an association with one
• one or more elements of common culture
  language, customs, religion
• a sense of solidarity among most members of the
  community.
• Anthony D. Smith The Origins of Nations, pp.
  109-110

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Ethnicity (Fredrik Barth)

• Ethnicity is a social product
• Importance of interaction
• Ascribed and self-ascribed
• Categorical ascription
• To the extent actors use ethnic identities to
  categorise themselves and others for the purposes
  of interaction, they form ethnic groups in this
  organisational sense.
• The critical focus of investigation from this
  point of view becomes the ethnic boundary that
  defines the group, not the cultural stuff it
  encloses.
• Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries
  (Boston, 1969), pp. 14-15

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• Lateral Ethnies
• Aristocratic type of ethnie
• Incorporation of different demotic vertical
  communities
• Bureaucratic incorporation incorporation of
  other strata of the population
• Accommodation between the upper-class culture and
  the culture of lower strata and peripheral
  regions
• The state unified, standardized and culturally
  homogenized
• Importance of royal administration, taxation,
  mobilization sense of corporate loyalty and
  identity
• Examples England, France, Spain

• Vertical Ethnies
• Demotic ethnies - bases for nations
• Common myths, symbols
• Religious traditions can be extremely important
• Crucial role of the intelligentsia in the 19th
  and 20th centuries
• Discovery and realization of the community
• Politicization of the community
• Movement towards a homeland
• Economic unification
• Transformation of ethnic members into legal
  citizens
• Placing the people at the centre of moral and
  political concerns Role of education
• Examples Ukraine, Czechia, Latvia, Slovakia,
  Estonia

Anthony D. Smith The Origins of Nations, pp.
109-123
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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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Nationalism Identical movement for attaining and
maintaining the autonomy, unity and identity of
an existing or potential nation. (Anthony D.
Smith, The Origins of Nations, p. 108)
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Nationalism A theory of political
legitimacy which requires that ethnic
boundaries should not cut across political ones,
and in particular, that ethnic boundaries within
a given state should not separate the
power-holders from the rest. Ernest Gellner,
Nation and Nationalism, p. 1
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Ernest Gellner

• Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to
  self-consciousness it invents nations where they
  do not exist.

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Two types of nationalism (Hobsbawm)
Mass, civic and democratic political nationalism Ethno-linguistic nationalism
After the French Revolution, esp. 1830- 1870 Dominant in Europe 1870-1914
Nations claim self-determination as sovereign, independent states Secessionist and state building
Large in territory and population Smaller groups
Top-down and elite based From below and community based
Germany, Italy, Hungary modelled after France and Britain Ukrainians, Czechs, Estonians, Serbs
Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780
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• A nationalist argument is a political doctrine
  built upon three basic assertions
• There exists a nation with an explicit and
  peculiar character.
• The interests and values of this nation take
  priority over all other interests and values.
• The nation must be as independent as possible.
  This usually requires at least the attainment of
  political sovereignty.
• John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State
  (Chicago, 1985), p. 3

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Types of Nationalism (Michael Hechter)

• State-building nationalism England, France
• Peripheral nationalism Quebec, Scotland,
  Catalonia
• Irredentist nationalism Sudeten Germans,
  Hungarians in Romania
• Unification nationalism Germany, Italy
• Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford,
  New York, 2000), pp. 15-17

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• Outline
• What is a nation? Classical definitions
• 2. Primordialist view
• 3. Modernist view
• 4. Intermediary position
• 5. Nations and ethnies
• 6. Nationalism
• 7. Conclusion

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• Problems and Questions
• The connection between early modern states,
  societies, cultures, ethnies and modern nations.
• The transition from cultures or ethnies to
  nations.
• Are nations really contingent (occur by chance)?
• Why do some low cultures succeed in
  transforming themselves into a high culture and
  why do some not?
• National mass education is only possible after
  having a nation state, it does not explain the
  nationalism before.
• Strength of nationalism and national movements
  in backward agrarian and agroliterate
  societies.
• Why do the elites of some ethnies choose
  assimilation to an existing high culture and
  why do some elites choose the path of
  differentiation?
• The emotional impact of nations and nationalism
  Why did the identification with the nation have a
  greater impact on behaviour than religious,
  regional, class or gender identifications?