Re-contextualising East Central European History

Nation, Culture and Minority Groups

Robert Pyrah

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351193412
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Social Sciences

"Twenty years after the fall of Communism, scholarship on East-Central Europe has adopted mainstream western methodologies, but remains preoccupied with a narrow range of themes. Nationalism, identity, fin- de-siecle art and culture, and revisionist historiography dominate the field to the detriment of other subjects. Using a variety of lenses - literary, political, linguistic, medical - the authors address a conspectus of original themes, including Jewish literary life in interwar Romania; the Galician 'Alphabet War'; and Saxon eugenics in Transylvania. These case studies transcend their East-Central European context by engaging with conceptually broad questions. This volume additionally contains a comprehensive Introduction and topical Bibliography of use to students and teachers, resulting in one of the most creative collections of studies dealing with East-Central Europe to date. This volume has its roots in an interdisciplinary seminar at the University of Oxford, bringing together emerging and established scholars, with the explicit aim of broadening the study of this region, its history and culture beyond the established paradigms. Robert Pyrah is a Research Fellow at St Antony's College and an authority on theatre and cultural politics in Austria and post- Habsburg central Europe; Marius Turda is founder of the International Working Group on the History of Race and Eugenics based at Oxford Brookes University."

PART I
Religion and Education

CHAPTER 1
Clerical Agency and the Politics of Scriptural Translation

The ‘Canonization’ of the Gagauz Language in Southern Bessarabia

James A. Kapalo

The status of scripture within Christianity is a complex matter. Things are further complicated by the politics of language that surround sacred texts. The history of Christianity around the globe is full of instances of local languages being elevated, through scriptural translation, to literary status. Christianity is somewhat unique amongst religions in this regard. Acts of translation by Christian clerical elites and missionaries have helped set many ethnic groups on the road to nationhood.¹ Ethno-religious forms of minority identity abound in Central and Eastern Europe and these identities often have a strong linguistic component. Religious institutions and hierarchies, and particularly Christian Churches, have historically played an instrumental role in increasing the linguistic capital of local and regional communities through the translation of sacred scripture into the vernacular. The Gagauz community of southern Bessarabia presents one such case.

This chapter aims to highlight the political implications of the translation of Christian scripture and liturgy into the languages of minority peoples. I will focus on the agency of the clergy and trace developments in the religious field that contributed to the emergence of an ethno-national movement amongst the Gagauz with a powerful religious symbolic base. The production, and the subsequent reception in the community, of vernacular language scripture and liturgy, I will argue, was the critical formative step towards the ethno-religious form of national identity that we find amongst the Gagauz of southern Bessarabia.

First, I will speak more generally about the ‘canonization’ of vernacular languages in the history of Orthodox Christianity and the relationship between sacred languages and linguistic capital.² I will then go on to describe the linguistic context within which a canonical Gagauz scripture and liturgy emerged. Finally, I will discuss how the Gagauz language today represents a symbolic augmentation of Gagauz religious and political identity rather than a practical promotion of the local idiom. I highlight how the Gagauz language operates within the hierarchy of languages in the complex local milieu and how the various languages of Orthodoxy in southern Moldova, Russian, Church Slavonic, Romanian, and Gagauz each possess differing qualities and quantities of religious ‘capital’, as a result of the historically contested status of the Orthodox Churches in the region.

Sacred Language and Linguistic Capital

The translation of religious materials from the classical sacred languages of early Christianity, Greek and Latin, into local vernaculars was already widespread by the fourth century. Scriptural translations into Coptic, as far as we know, formed the first major literary achievement in that language and the translations of the books of the Bible elevated it from the vernacular of the illiterate masses to the sacred language of the Coptic Church. The Armenian script was devised around the year 400 CE and was first used to translate scripture from both Greek and Syriac with the aim of elevating Armenian to a similar status.³

Later, in the Orthodox East, translation was used as a tool by missionaries in their efforts to convert non-Christian peoples on the periphery of empire. In the ninth century, Cyril and Methodius devised the Glagolitic script (from which Cyrillic was soon developed) in order to translate the gospels and liturgy into Slavonic. Despite Pope Hadrian II’s endorsement of Cyril and Methodius’ Slavonic mission, attitudes within the Western and Eastern branches of the Church had begun to diverge with regard to the language of scripture and liturgy. Latin clerics argued that only Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were suitable languages for the liturgy, a view that later became official Church dogma. This would seem to mark out an essential difference between Roman Catholic attitudes and Orthodox practice with regard to language. However, things were not so clear-cut. When Russian-language Bibles first began to appear in the 1820s under the supervision of the Imperial Russian Bible Society, there was much resistance to their introduction as many senior clergy and monastics felt that Church Slavonic was the only (Slavonic) language ‘consecrated by ancient usage’. In much the same way as Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, Church Slavonic came to take on the characteristics of a sacred language, a status that it retains to this day.

Work on the Russian Bible was only resumed when a less conservative Tsar, Alexander II, ascended the throne in 1855. Significantly, the Russian Church hierarchy did not object to the continued publication of sacred scriptures in other languages of the empire.⁴ As early as the fourteenth century, the Russian Church had engaged in scriptural translation as part of its missionary work amongst the Finno-Ugric and Turkic peoples of the Russian North and East. Stephen of Perm (1340–96) devised a Zyrian alphabet and translated scripture and liturgy into the vernacular. From the sixteenth century on, in the wake of the Russian conquest of the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, the Russian Church also turned its attention to the conversion of Muslim peoples. These efforts involved a combination of enforced conversion, economic coercion, and persuasive tactics, such as the granting of special privileges. Under Peter the Great (1682–1725) education became one of the principal tools of conversion and a programme to train a native Orthodox priesthood was initiated.⁵ Coercive methods were never abandoned fully, but by the nineteenth century an emphasis was placed on education in the native languages of converts. For example, a catechism had appeared in the Tartar language as early as 1803.⁶ By 1812 the Imperial Russian Bible society had been founded in association with the British and Foreign Bible Society, with the aim of building on earlier efforts and making the scriptures available in all the various languages of the empire. Despite these moves, the inherent conservatism within some powerful quarters in the Russian Orthodox Church ensured that the Church Slavonic liturgy was not threatened or displaced by vernacular languages.

It is not my intention here to discuss the situation in the Latin Church, where, despite numerous pressures, the Church resisted the use of languages other than Latin and Greek in liturgical life until the 1960s.⁷ The Protestant Reformation of course brought to much of Europe an entirely new attitude towards the Bible and a complete reassessment of its place within the Christian tradition. Bible-centred forms of Christianity that have their roots in the Reformation, such as the Baptist churches, Adventists, and more recently Pentecostal churches, developed a far more open and flexible approach to the translation, dissemination, and use of scripture. Catherine Wanner, in her study of evangelical missions in Ukraine, has suggested that ‘The strong emphasis on Scripture and its interpretation provides an authentic historical tradition and possibilities for local adaptation’.⁸ Increased contact and competition between the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and transnational Evangelical Protestant Christian groups has highlighted the considerable sociolinguistic and religious consequences of maintaining the use of languages with a sacred status. Whereas evangelical Christianity can be characterized by its adaptability in the linguistic sphere, Orthodoxy appears inherently conservative with regard to language. As we shall see below, the case of the Gagauz serves well to illustrate this point.

In order for a language to have sacred status its use has to be legitimized by a religious institution or community. I use the term ‘canonization’ to refer to this process of bringing languages within the ‘rule’ of the Church; that is, through the process of translating scripture and liturgy into a vernacular language, an authorized and sacred form of that language, with appropriate script, terminology, and mode of expression, comes into being. Sanctified by the Church, this form of the language takes on symbolic meaning within the religious community.

The notion that a language can generate ‘capital’ for a speech community originates with Pierre Bourdieu.⁹ He draws attention to the complex processes that result in a language or set of linguistic practices emerging as dominant in a particular historical context. In European history this has often been linked to the formation of nation-states.¹⁰ The knowledge and deployment of the dominant or legitimate language in situations gives the speaker authority and power. As holders of linguistic capital, agents have the chance to amass material or symbolic profit.¹¹ Religious institutions and elites play an important role in defining the legitimate use of language, both within and beyond the confines of the religious sphere. In this sense, the translation of scripture and liturgy invariably becomes a political as well as religious act. Translating scripture, therefore, can be socially and politically transformative or even subversive. The particular kind of linguistic capital that arises from the canonization of vernacular languages, I will argue, results in a language carrying a status and resonance beyond the speech community and results in the accumulation of what I term, following Bourdieu, ‘symbolic linguistic capital’.

As the title of this chapter suggests, I am also concerned here with the agency of clerical elites and their ability, through acts of translation of scripture and the performance of liturgical rites, to shape broader political and social changes. I aim to highlight how, through religiously motivated and formulated acts, members of the clergy produce symbolic capital that aids the emergence of national movements and the political mobilization of minority groups.

The Gagauz and Orthodoxy

The Gagauz of Bessarabia are a Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christian population that settled in their present home in the Budjak steppe region of what is today the Republic of Moldova during the Russo-Turkish wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.¹² They arrived as part of a major colonization programme initiated by the Russian imperial authorities intended permanently to secure the region from Ottoman control. Settlers arrived in the region from all over the eastern Balkans between 1776 and 1840. In the course of the twentieth century in their new homeland, which they shared with an extremely diverse array of other ethnic groups including Bulgarians, Germans, Ukrainians, Romanians, and Albanians, the Gagauz emerged as a distinct ethno-religious component. By the 1930s, a Gagauz national consciousness was being articulated by an educated elite, principally the result of initiatives taken within the religious sphere. Following the Second World War, Bessarabia was incorporated into the Soviet Union, with the Gagauz communities falling mainly within the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Gagauz resisted incorporation within the newly independent Republic of Moldova. Following a brief armed confrontation between Moldovan and Gagauz militias, they were eventually granted wide-ranging territorial, cultural, and political autonomy in 1994. The Gagauz Autonomous region, officially referred to as Unitatea Teritorială Autonomă Găgăuzia or UTAG for short, also commonly referred to as Gagauziya, is home to a population of 155,646 according to the 2004 Moldovan census, of whom 127,835 are recorded as ethnic Gagauz.

The Gagauz initially attracted much interest from historians and ethnographers owing to the combination of a Christian Orthodox religious heritage and a Turkish linguistic identity. Whilst they remained within the Ottoman Empire their Christian identity tied them legally and administratively to their Orthodox Romanian, Greek and Bulgarian neighbours. The Gagauz, however, are Turkish-speaking; their language is closest to the Turkish of modern Turkey and the colloquial Turkish spoken in the Balkans during the Ottoman Empire. This dual identity has led to much speculation regarding their origins, not least amongst the Gagauz themselves. Gagauz historiography has therefore traditionally concentrated on the ethno-genesis of the Gagauz, with special concern shown for the possible time and place of conversion of the Gagauz to Christianity, key to which is a complicated history of migrations and settlement.¹³

Mihail Çakir (1864–1938), the principal figure to whom I will refer in this chapter, is considered the founder of the Gagauz national movement and the father of Gagauz letters. From the early years of the twentieth century, as a priest in the Orthodox Church, he embarked on translating the entire Orthodox canon into the Gagauz language. Alongside his translation and publication activity, he became a central figurehead for the Gagauz community during the interwar period in Greater Romania when, through publications on Gagauz history and traditions (he was the first to attempt to synthesize the various stra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on the Contributors
• PART I: RELIGION AND EDUCATION
• PART II: MINORITIES
• PART III: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
• PART IV: TRADITION AND MEMORY
• Afterword
• Select Bibliography
• Index