Ethnic and political nations in Europe

Ethnic and political nations in Europe

0191~6599192%S.oO+O.oO 9 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd ETHNIC AND POLITICAL NATIONS IN EUROPE V~TEZSLAV VWMsK’i’* Ethnicity is nowadays quite often to b...

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0191~6599192%S.oO+O.oO 9 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd

ETHNIC AND POLITICAL

NATIONS IN EUROPE

V~TEZSLAV VWMsK’i’*

Ethnicity is nowadays quite often to be found in the daily news but very seldom in standard textbooks on human geography. A western school-leaver with good marks in geography can probably Locate the U.S.S.R. or Rumania on the map but is like to have only a scanty idea about the ethno-linguistic groupings so utterly unable to live harmoniously along each other in places such as Osh or Timigoara, and is even less able to explain why (because not only standard textbooks on human geography but also standard textbooks on contemporary history dwell definitely much more on states than on the underlying human groupings). Those blind spots in standard school textbooks propagate themselves as major gaps in knowledge, annoying in case of those who are interested in current world affairs and harmful for those who are expected to have an informed opinion on such affairs (and possibly propose solutions to ethnic confrontations). So whatever is missed in pre-university education has to be caught up later. At this point, facts and situations which in themselves can be explained and understood in a relatively simple and easy language, become obscure and complicated. Scholars feel the need to speak, or rather to write, a ‘scholarly’ language and to single themselves out by bringing about new theories, new hypotheses and very often new terms or new meanings to existing terms. On the other hand, in order to be understood by fellow scholars and/or accepted by publishers they have to keep in step with local usage or local meaning of words, which, in the area of study of ethnicity, may vary from the Soviet usage via the Continental European usage to the Anglo-Saxon one (or rather two, as some terms are often perceived differently by British and American scholars). There appears to be not only local terminology (in fact conditioned by local political parlance) but also local sensitivity to particular issues. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether the objectivity of approach is enhanced by a humanist stance or on the contrary lost through a partisan stance. Suffice it to recall a well-known saying that ‘one man’s freedom-~ghter is another man’s terrorist and vice versa’. A blend of sensitivities may turn out to be the best insurance against a partisan stance and also a safe heuristic bet. In other words, ethnic problems are better understood, explained or even foreseen, if experience can be drawn from a wider area than that of a single scholar’s immediate surroundings, As a commendable example, Salvador Giner and Margaret S. Archer, when bringing together contributions for their Contemporary Europe,’ called upon an “interdisplinary’ scholar, teaching at Lancaster University but having his deep roots in central Moravia, Professor Jaroslav KrejEi, to write a paper on Ethnic Problems in Europe.* *30, Avenue

de I’Arbre Ballon, Boite 153, B-1090 Brussels,

Belgium. 71

72

VitPzslav Velimsk~

From late seventies (when the above mentioned paper was published) to early eighties, the interest in ethnicity showed no sign of abating (in Europe and elsewhere alike). Besides, things started surprisingly to change, on the constitutional level, in quarters characterised by decades, if not centuries, of previous stubborn immobilism, such as in Spain or Belgium. Elsewhere, conflicts known previously only to specialists and labelled as ‘latent’, e.g. the Albanian grievances against Serbs (in the autonomous province of Kosovo within the Socialist Republic of Serbia, part of Yugoslavia), broke out in the open. including bloodshed, police and judicial repression, party purges etc.3 The fact that the non-Russian periphery of the Soviet Union was full of‘latent malaise’ was widely recognised, but it had to be stressed that ethnicity (and not shortcomings in distribution or other economic factors) was at the roots of this ‘malaise’. Mutandis mutatis, and on a geographically smaller scale, similar forces were (or are) at work in Yugoslavia. An updating (both of the factual background information and of the ensuing generalisations) was urgently needed. For this task, and in order to broaden the ‘geographical sensitivity’ to less well known areas of Europe, Professor KrejZi enlisted the services of a co-author seated in Brussels and tied by his work more to the international associative life than to any strictly academic activity. The enhanced ‘geographical sensitivity’ (and hopefully also objectivity of presentation) may be considered as an asset of their common fruit4 but-willy nilly-it plunged both authors (and probably also the editorial staff of the publishing house) into the well-known and almost inextricable imbroglio around such nebulous notions as ‘the nation’. To make matters worse, this ‘semantic fog’ is thicker in some languages than in others. In the mother tongue of both authors, Professor Krej6 and the undersigned, namely the Czech language, the meanings at hand are relatively clear and not interfering with each other: a country’ is a geographical area with properly defined borders, a people (or a nation-if one wishes to use a more emphatic style) is a set of human beings-intermediary between the family and the mankind-with specific reasons5 for a feeling of belonging together, a state is a set of institutions and among them prominently the coercive institutions for ‘law and order’) at the apex of a hierarchical pyramid of power within a country. In other languages (unfortunately including the present-day lingua franca of the world’s science) the term ‘nation’ is a woolly semantic mix of the three above defined notions which the Czech language (and probably some other languages too) could keep so neatly distinct. Witness the improper usage of the inter-war League of Nations and its post-war successor the United Nations (where not only the noun but also the adjective has a semantically improper flavour). Attempts at clarifying the meaning of words may be felt as welcome and commendable, but any bolder initiative to introduce a standard vocabulary related to ethnicity is bound to fail, not least because interested politicians will always prefer an opportunistic choice of words (such as e.g. the term ‘patois’ for the peripheral ethnic languages or dialects in France). Sadly but realistically, the purpose of the present paper has to be limited to the first and more modest of these twin aims. A good term should belong to the living language, bear no emotional charge (positive or negative), be semantically precise and meaningful, and if possible

Ethnic and Political cations

in Europe

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immune to mishandling in the process of translation. The term ‘tribe’ would seem acceptable on many counts to designate all sorts of ethnic entities, though unfortunately the present-day practice limits its use to ethnic entities which are archaic, numerically small, and primitively structured in the relationship between the rulers and the subjects. In the German and Dutch languages, one might put forward the noun ‘Volk’ as the next hopeful candidate. No semantic mishandling occurs if we choose the noun ‘ethnie’ as its French equivalent. Of course, the noun ‘ethnie’ got into the living language much later than ‘das Volk’, but is already there, alive, well and kicking. Nothing of that sort in the planetary scientific lingua franca, which barely accepts ‘ethnic’ as an adjective.6 Dictionaries would suggest ‘people’ as the nearest best English equivalent, but this word is semantically treacherous. The feeling of closeness and solidarity, of belonging and acting together, while at least implicitly present in both the German ‘Volk’ and the French ‘ethnie’, has evaporated from the English ‘people’. Thence ‘nation’ as the only remaining substitute, loaded to the limit, both emotionally and through secondary meanings. To depict simple ethnicity and for want of a better term, we shall use (as equivalent of the German ‘das Volk’ or the French ‘l’ethnie’) the expression ‘latter-day tribe’ (with any mocking overtone carefully suppressed).7 The key issue for a latter-day tribe is the relationship (going from full ethnic self-determination via limited facilities to no recognition whatsoever of ethnic rights) vis ri vis the state or states where it lives in compact settlement. Reciprocally, one of the key issues for latter-day states is their relationship towards the ethnicity (or several antagonistic ethnicities) rooted in their territory. More often than not, such relationships translate themselves in a crude power struggle dichotomy (strong-weak, ruling-oppressed, not necessarily congruent with other dichotomies, such as populous-tiny or rich-poor). Some such situations appear as complete deadlocks or stalemates, while other (such as those between Flemings and Walloons or between Slovaks and Czechs) may slowly evolve towards a civilised institutional divorce.8 As in any other continent, there is in Europe a host of special situations defying any over-simplified approach to the relationship between a state and a latter-day tribe or nation. Willy-nilIy, scholars concerned with epistemology and taxonomy started to coin composite terms. Well-known is the Herman-language dichotomy ‘Staatsnation-Kulturnation’ coined by F. Meinecke (and developed in our workshop by the distinguished participant Professor Peter Burg). A third German composite term, namely ‘Bewusstseinnation’, was coined by G.L. Schweigler (in relation with a dying-if not already dead-issue, namely that of national consciousness in divided Germany). Professor Krejr3 (in his second contribution to the subject, cf. footnote 4) was a particularly prolific inventor of taxonomy. On pages 58 and 59 of the quoted book we find ‘Full-scale Nations, Political Nations, Ethnic Nations and Special Ethnic Groups’. The two middle terms of this fourfold taxonomy found favour with the editing staff of the publishing house to figure as the title of the book(Ethnic and Political Nations in Europe), yet Professor Krej& regarding again the ethnic landscape of Europe from a slightly different vantage point than that of pp. 58159, added on pp. 7%. 82 two more different taxonomies and one new composite term, namely ‘Ethno-

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linguistic communities’. To communicate in a mult~~~nguai environment, let us make an attempt identify semantically akin (yet not necessariIy fully identical) expressions French and German: French

German

(a) (b) (c)

Kuiturnation Eewuss~se~nna~~on Staatsna~ion and/or

ethnie nation9 &at-nation

to in

Nationaistaat

Krej&‘s ‘Ethno~~~ngu~stic communities’ would more or less coincide with the line ‘a’ of the above glossary but his main fourfold taxonomy is based on the presence or absence of three essential criteria, as presented below in tabular form:

own (generally non shared) language

separate ethnic consciousness

yes yes no

yes no

yes hard to find out

yes

yes

no

no

yes

sovereignty substantial territorial autonomy full-scale nations political nations ethnic nations special ethnic groups

or

The semantically annoying aspect of the above taxonomy is the fact that numerous ‘ethnic nations’ and ‘special ethnic groups’ are in a far more intense state of political awakening (or political mobilisation-for those who prefer a more bellicose terminology) than many other nations hbelled as ‘fuli-scale’ or ‘politicat’. VitEzslav Velimsk? ~~~sse1.s

NOTES 1. Salvador Giner and Margaret Scotford Archer, eds, Clonr~~nporaryEurope: social structures and cultural patterns (London, Henley and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). 2. Jaroslav Krej?i, Ethnic Problems in Europe (in the above quoted collection, pp. 124 to 171). 3. Krejcvi (in the above paper, pp. 158-159)

saw the ‘Albanians living in Yugoslavia [as] a potential rather than actual source of disturbance’ and considered ‘the division of the Albanian nation into two states.. . unlikely to become a major issue’. This view underwent, needless to say, a thorough revision in his later writings on the same subject.

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4. Jaroslav Krejli and Vit&slav Velimsky. Ethnic and Political Nations in Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1981). 5. Lists of such reasons are usually put forward by authors on the subject of nationality or ethnicity, and vary only marginally from one author to another. So there is a basic consensus on the existence of ethnicity as such. The more tricky part of the exercise begins if the scholar focuses his attention to particular areas such as Ulster or to particular communities such as the Gypsies. 6. The American half-substantive half-adjective expression ‘ethnic’ coined by L. Warner for that part of U.S. population which is of no Yankee (or WASP) origin is hardly utilisable in any other context. 7. Let us note that some latter-day tribes of Europe, such as Flemings and Walloons of Belgium, Catalans and Basques (both sitting on both slopes of the Pyrentan ridge, though more numerous in Spain than in France) and potentially a host of others such as Scats and Welsh, Sardinians and Corsicans (and why not the unhappy Ulstermen?) would gladly serve as basic building stones for a post-1992 closely-knit WesternEuropean economic and political community. 8. Similar to the Swedish-Norvegian divorce of 1905 and the Danish-Icelandic divorce of 1944. 9. According to the time-honoured (1882) definition by Ernest Renan.