How to Think of Ethnolinguistic Nationalism in Central Europe?

(or the Normative Isomorphism of Language, Nation and State)

Tomasz KamusellaUniversity of St Andrews

Euro-Visions: IIIS/TLRH Public Lecture SeriesTrinity College Dublin

February 14, 2013, Thur, 18:15-19:45

Nationalism• What is nationalism? (The standard state- and group-building

ideology in the [late] modern world)• Hans Kohn: Western vs the Rest (Eastern) nationalism, 1940s• Absence of nationalism in the West (But > Michael Billig: ‘banal

nationalism,’ 1995)• John Plamenatz: ‘good’ Western vs ‘bad’ Eastern nationalism, 1970s• ‘Ancient hatreds’ in the East vs ‘reason and rationalism’ in the West• Ethnic vs civic nationalism: Is it a dichotomy at all?• What about nationalism across the globe?

- Hans Kohn The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History, 1962

- Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities, 1983• Most books on nationalism draw examples from CE Europe and

generalize on their basis• Is it rational and justified to generalize on nationalism on the basis

of ‘bad ethnic Eastern’ nationalism?

What is Ethnic Nationalism?• What is ethnicity: A difficult question with many answers

(Totality of all the cultural markers employed for distinguishing a group from others?)

• But if CE Europe widely considered home of ethnic nationalism: What are the nationalism’s practices?

• In most cases language is of paramount importance for the region’s nationalisms

• Is it then ‘ethnolinguistic nationalism’?• I propose to define ethnic (ethnolinguistic) nationalism

through the observed practices of state- and people-building steeped in language

• Where is Central Europe? In turn the territorial extant of such practices could define the region

What is a Language? (1)• The distinction between ‘language’ and ‘a language’• ‘Language’ is studied by linguists, but ‘a language’ is a socio-political

phenomenon, more determined by extralinguistic forces than linguistic ones

• Hence, ‘languages’ in plural should be researched more by social scientists

• Leonard Bloomfield’s 1926 linguistic definition of ‘a language’ and dialect (mutual in/comprehensibility)

• But: mutually incomprehensible dialects of Arabic or Chinese are dialects of these languages

• But: exactly the same Moldovan and Romanian, and almost the same Bulgarian and Macedonian are different languages

• But: Low German is NOT a dialect of Dutch with which it is mutually comprehensible, but of German with which it is largely incomprehensible

• What about: asymmetrical incomprehensibility between Spanish and Portuguese, or among Scandinavia’s Germanic languages

What is a Language? (2)• Who decides when a dialect / language is a language?• ‘Imagined language’ ≈ nation as an ‘imagined community’?• Nation = ethnic and/or other human group(s) imagined to be

a nation• A language = dialect(s) imagined (through dictionaries,

grammars, official use, educational system, army, state offices and other state institutions, mass media, enterprises, cyberspace, etc) to be a language in its own right

• Yugoslavia: Serbocroatoslovenian (1921-41) > Croatian, Serbian (41-44) > Serbo-Croatian + Macedonian (44-91)

• Breakup of Yugoslavia (1991-2008)• Breakup of Serbo-Croatian > Bosnian, Croatian, Macedonian,

Serbian

Practices of ‘Really Existing’ Nationalism

1: The speakers of a language constitute a nation (ergo, the language is a national one)2: The territory inhabited by this language’s speakers should be made into the nation’s nation-state3: The nation’s national language cannot be shared with any other nation or polity4: No autonomous regions with official languages other than the national one can exist in the nation’s nation-state5: By the same token, no autonomous regions with the nation’s language can exist in other polities(NB: Disjunction between ideology and reality on the ground)‘Serious’ name for the practice: Normative Isomorphism of Language, Nation and State

All That Began in the Balkans? From Religion to Language

Year Isomorphic States Number of Isomorphic States

1864 Greece 11866 Greece, Romania 21878 Bulgaria, Romania 2 Greece1905 Bulgaria, Norway,

Romania3

1913 Albania, Bulgaria, Norway, Romania

4

WW I: Isomorphism Moves NorthYear Isomorphic States Number of

Isomorphic States1916 Albania, Bulgaria, Norway, Romania 41917 Albania, Bulgaria, Norway, Ukraine 4 Romania

1918 Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland

9 Ukraine

1919 Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Romania

6 Belarus, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland

1920 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Ukraine

9

Central Europe = Isomorphism?Year Isomorphic States Number of

Isomorphic States

1926 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania

9 Ukraine

1929 Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Yugoslavia

10

1938 Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, Yugoslavia

9 Czechoslovakia

1939 Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Yugoslavia

11

NB: Not fully matching with the tables

WW II: Race Trumps Nation?Year Isomorphic States Number of

Isomorphic States

1940 Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Slovakia and Yugoslavia

6 Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland

1940 (occupied polities not included)

Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Yugoslavia

5 Norway

1942 (independent states only)

Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia

4 Yugoslavia

1942 (not fully independent polities included)

Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Slovakia

6

(National) Communism Trumps Nation?Year Isomorphic States Number of

Isomorphic States

1947 Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Romania

6 Croatia, Slovakia

1956 Albania, Bulgaria, Norway, Poland

4 Hungary, Romania

1960 Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Romania

6

1975 Bulgaria, Norway, Poland 3 Albania, Hungary, Romania

NB: Not fully matching with the tables

After Communism: Isomorphism After All?Year Isomorphic States Number of

Isomorphic States

1989 Bulgaria, Norway, Poland 31990 Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway, Poland,

Romania6

1991 Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine

13 Romania

1992 Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway Poland, Slovenia

11 Croatia, Ukraine

1993 Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia

13

1994 Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia

14

1995 Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia

13 Belarus

NB: Not fully matching with the tables

The Complication of the EUYear Isomorphic States Number of

Isomorphic States

2004 Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Norway Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia

13

2004 (European Union treated as a single, non-ethnolinguistic polity)

Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Norway, Romania 5

2007 Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia

14

2007 (European Union treated as a single, non-ethnolinguistic polity)

Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway 3

2008 Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia

13 Albania

2008 (European Union treated as a single, non-ethnolinguistic polity)

Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway 3

2010 Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Slovenia

10 Hungary, Romania, Slovakia

2010 (European Union treated as a single, non-ethnolinguistic polity)

Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway 3

Instruments of Analysis: (Dis)Contents

• Rubbish in, rubbish out• Lies, big lies and statistics• States are not the only unit of

analysis• States being so variable in territory

and populations, are they really comparable?• How to limit the distorting

potential of generated data?• How to nuance the data?

Nuancing the Data: 2007States fulfilling the isomorphism

States aspiring to fulfill the isomorphism

Other ethnolinguistic states

Non-ethnolinguistic states

The total of the analyzed polities

Percentage of the isomorphic states in the total of the analyzed polities

Isomorphic states and the states aspiring to fulfill the isomorphism combined, expressed as a percentage of the total of the analyzed polities

Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia

[14]

Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Moldova, Northern Cyprus, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine

[13]

Austria, Belarus, Denmark, Liechtenstein

[4]

Mount Athos, Russian Federation, Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dheleia, Transnistria

[4]

35 40% 77%

Fine Tuning: Populations in 2007Population of the states fulfilling the isomorphism

Population of the states aspiring to fulfill the isomorphism

Population of other ethnolinguistic states

Population of the non-ethnolinguistic states

Population of all the analyzed polities

Percentage of the population of the isomorphic states out of the total population of the analyzed polities

Population of the isomorphic states and of the states aspiring to fulfill the isomorphism combined, expressed as a percentage of the total population of the analyzed polities

112.53m 245.16m 23.29m 35.07m 416.32m 27% 86%

Isomorphic Languages in 2007Slavic languages

Baltic languages

Finno-Ugric languages (non-Indo-European)

Germanic languages

Romance languages

Isolate Indo-European languages

Bulgarian (C), Czech (L), Macedonian (C), Montenegrin (C & L), Polish (L), Slovak (L), Slovenian (L)

[7]

Latvian (L), Lithuanian (L)

[2]

Estonian (L), Hungarian (L)

[2]

Norwegian (L)

[1]

Romanian (L)[1]

Albanian (L)[1]

[1] The parenthetical remark ‘(C)’ indicates that the language is written in Cyrillic.[2] The parenthetical remark ‘(L)’ indicates that the language is written in Latin characters.

Scope for Wider-Ranging Comparisons: Isomorphic States Outside Central Europe in 2007

• W Europe: Iceland (Icelandic)• C Asia: Turkmenistan (Turkmen) 1• S Asia: Bhutan (Dzongkha), Maldives (Maldivian) 2• SE Asia: Cambodia (Khmer), Indonesia (Indonesian),

Laos (Lao), Myanmar (Myanmar), Thailand (Thai), Vietnam (Vietnamese) 6

• E Asia: Japan (Japanese) 1• Total Outside Central Europe 10Some interesting questions:Why is SE / E Asia similar to C Europe in its ideological-cum-

national makeup?Are C Europe and SE / E Asia comparable?Why are isomorphic states contained to Eurasia only?

Human Costs of Achieving Ethnolinguistic Homogeneity

Will Ethnolinguistic Homogeneity Last in the Borderless EU?

Ethnolinguistic Diversity in Today’s Berlin and London