Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires

Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-23

Aviel Roshwald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134682539
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires is a wide-ranging comparative study of the origins of today's ethnic politics in East Central Europe, the former Russian empire and the Middle East.

Centred on the First World War Era, Ethnic Nationalism highlights the roles of historical contingency and the ordeal of total war in shaping the states and institutions that supplanted the great multinational empires after 1918. It explores how the fixing of new political boundaries and the complex interplay of nationalist elites and popular forces set in motion bitter ethnic conflicts and political disputes, many of which are still with us today.

Topics discussed include:

* the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire
* the ethnic dimension of the Russian Revolution and Soviet state building
* Nationality issues in the late Ottoman empire
* the origins of Arab nationalism
* ethnic politics in zones of military occupation
* the construction of Czechoslovak and Yugoslav identities

Ethnic Nationalism is an invaluable survey of the origins of twentieth-century ethnic politics. It is essential reading for those interested in the politics of ethnicity and nationalism in modern European and Middle Eastern history.

1 Introduction

Nationalism and the idea of the nation-state are among the most pervasive political phenomena of our age and among the least well understood. So interwoven are they with contemporary social, cultural, economic, political, and diplomatic institutions, so deeply embedded in political psychology, so broadly influential in the shaping of human identity and socio-political behavior, that it is almost impossible to tease nationalism apart from the sundry elements with which it interacts or of which it forms part and to study it as a thing unto itself. Is it an ideology or an anthropological phenomenon? Is it an outgrowth of liberal democracy or is it inherently intolerant and conducive to authoritarianism? Is it an aspect of modernity or a reaction against it?¹ These are stimulating and productive questions to ask, but ones to which there is no definitive response because each of them can be answered both in the affirmative and in the negative, depending on what historical context and which manifestation or form of nationalism one has in mind.

This book does not approach nationalism with the assumption that it can be made to fit any single framework of analysis or typological category. Rather, it is concerned with exploring how nationalism evolves over time and how its ideological orientations and institutional manifestations are redefined and transformed by historical forces. More specifically, it focusses on a critical watershed in the evolution of a significant number of contemporary nationalisms: the breakup of multinational empires into independent states deriving their domestic and international legitimacy from the principle of national selfdetermination.

The monographic literature on discrete nationalist movements highlights the role of historical contingencies, individual personalities, cultural peculiarities, and geopolitical idiosyncrasies in shaping national identities and nation-states. It tends to focus on certain key events that are seen as having a critical, long-term impact on the subsequent development of national consciousness, political culture, and institutional structures among ethnic majorities and minorities alike.

Much of the theoretical literature on nationalism is, by contrast, absorbed by the analysis of the formative impact on nationalism of impersonal, macrohistorical forces such as industrialization, the growth of the state, and the spread of literacy and mass communication. Such approaches have produced remarkable insights at a very high level of generalization, yet they are also inherently limited insofar as they tend to treat the development of nationalism as though it proceeded at a relatively even, incremental pace, and as though its full manifestation (itself an idealized and problematic concept) were dependent upon the completion of certain material changes that transform the inner workings of society and produce nationalist forms of political identity. Miroslav Hroch’s much-cited study of nationalism among the small nations of Europe, for instance, posits an ideal developmental typology in which the emergence of fullfledged national consciousness is the culmination of a three-stage process of intellectual fermentation, patriotic agitation, and mass mobilization, all linked to a carefully timed sequence of capitalist growth and industrialization. Cases that depart from this paradigm may result in stunted nationalisms or the absence of any well-defined national identity, and, once missed, the opportunity can apparently never be regained.²

I do not dispute the role of deep historical forces in shaping nationalist consciousness and the modern nation-state, nor do I reject the utility of certain developmental paradigms, provided they are taken with a grain of salt. Yet approaches that focus disproportionately on such factors run the risk of lapsing into a historical determinism that is in some ways analogous to the teleological mentality that pervades many nationalist ideologies. In the mythology of nationalism, national identity attains its fullest expression when a movement that may have begun as a small band of activists has succeeded in mobilizing the masses around one common conception of nationhood. The attainment of independent statehood is conceived of either as the culmination of this process, or as a step in its progressive realization. In practice, however (as recent events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union illustrate), the trappings of political sovereignty often come within the reach of nationalists suddenly and unexpectedly, under extraordinary and short-lived circumstances arising from a regional or global crisis rather than from strictly internal developments. If not grasped immediately, the opportunity to establish a separate polity may not recur for generations. But the attainment of political independence under such circumstances cannot be regarded as part of the ineluctable course of history, nor can the specific institutional and territorial forms that independence takes be seen as the inevitable outgrowth of an incremental process of social and political evolution.

In other words, the sudden onset of independence is often the result of shortterm, exogenous factors. Once established under such circumstances, a sovereign nation-state is likely immediately to confront profound internal divisions over how to distribute wealth and power and what political values should animate government and society. In the aftermath of “liberation,” a liberal-nationalist intelligentsia may suddenly find itself marginalized in a polity whose broader public is not receptive to its ideas. The overnight transition in the roles of nationalist leaders from resisting the authority of imperial states to wielding power over nation-states may produce deep contradictions between ideological rhetoric and political practice. Old socio-political elites may try to co-opt nationalist themes and symbols in order to legitimize their own continued hold on power. The flow resources, goods, and services may be drastically disrupted by the drawing of new frontiers across regions that once formed integrated markets; the resultant economic problems are likely to exacerbate political tensions within the new states. Ethnic groups that find themselves unexpectedly reduced to the status of minority communities may react by forming separatist movements of their own. In brief, the particular circumstances of a nation-state’s creation can have a dramatic impact on its subsequent evolution, closing off various potential paths of development for nationalist movements and creating a radical new field for the crystallization of national identities – a point that most historical monographs take for granted and that most theoretical works ignore.³

This book seeks to help bridge the analytical gap between the monographic and theoretical literatures by adopting a broadly comparative approach to the transformative events that shaped nationalist movements and identities in East Central Europe, Russian-dominated Eurasia, and the Middle East during the brief span of years from the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 to the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne and of the ethnofederal constitution of the USSR in 1923.⁴ The collapse of the three (Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman) multinational empires toward the end of the war and the circumstances surrounding the emergence of their successor states set in motion patterns of development that continue to shape national identities in these regions at the turn of the millennium.⁵

Having criticized some of the developmental paradigms that have come to inform the theory of nationalism, I must also acknowledge that I have not been able to do without them. This book’s organizational scheme clearly reflects the notion that most nationalist movements begin as intellectual trends, develop into political organizations that seek to expand their popular base through propaganda and agitation, and in some cases succeed in going on to establish independent nation-states. But the idiosyncrasy of the cases addressed here is that the First World War telescoped some stages of their development into a very brief period of time. The war created unusual opportunities and tremendous pressures that served to catapult the idea of national self-determination toward sudden realization across a wide range of societies. To be sure, the cultural, economic, and political conditions in these various lands were extremely diverse; what these cases all have in common is that their transition to political systems based on the idea of national self-determination was very sudden, rather than the result of a steady, evenly paced process, and that it took place within the framework of a common, external contingency – a war that transformed the shape of global politics. Each chapter accordingly focusses on an evolutionary phase or framework of development that these diverse cases shared in common, while at the same time stressing the differences in their material and cultural environments as well as the variation in social and political responses of nationalist movements to some of the sudden pressures and common dilemmas these peoples faced.

In undertaking this project, it has not been my intention to be encyclopedic in coverage. The geographical range encompassed by this topic is enormous, and it would be impossible to be comprehensive in this account or even to give honorable mention to every one of the hundreds of ethnic groups that occupied the length and breadth of the three empires. Moreover, any attempt to give equal attention to every region and each people would limit my ability to explore and compare individual cases with any degree of analytical depth. The typical chapter section will accordingly include a brief narrative overview of developments throughout a given imperial sphere, and then narrow its focus to selected cases that can serve to illuminate the book’s broad themes. In East Central Europe, for example, this book pays particular attention to the Polish, Czechoslovak, and Yugoslav states and to their pre-1918 political antecedents, for these cases illustrate with particular clarity the strains between supraethnic and ethnonational conceptions of nationhood that all of the movements and polities in the region – and, indeed, in all three imperial or post-imperial spheres – had to contend with.

In general, the emphasis here lies on the empires’ subject nationalities – those populations whose languages, and/or religions, and/or historical and cultural identities, marked them apart from the hegemonic cultures (German and Magyar, Russian, and Turkish, respectively) of the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires, and among whom a desire to seek some form of autonomy or independence within newly drawn territorial boundaries was most likely to take root. By the same token, we cannot altogether disregard political movements among dominant nationalities – e.g. pan-Turkism or Russian pan-Slavism – that had a profound impact on subject peoples, or, indeed, that served to define other groups as subject peoples.

Finally, while I have tried to pay equal attention to the three empires, in places, some empires will appear more equal than others. This is partly because not every theme, issue, or developmental aspect manifested itself as dramatically or clearly in one region as in another. It also reflects the fact that the monographic literature for any given period – especially for the war years themselves – is not nearly as extensive for some areas (notably the Arab world and the Russian empire, 1914–1917) as for others.

This leads me to another disclaimer: I make no pretense here of bringing to light original material on any given ethnic group or nationalist movement. This book is a historical synthesis, and its contribution will, I hope, consist in its bringing a comparative perspective to bear on the events in question. Drawing on secondary literature rather than archival sources, I have tried to bring together this wide variety of cases under a common analytical rubric by focussing on a number of interrelated, overarching issues that most nationalist movements have had to face.

One such problem is how to integrate the masses into movements that are usually initiated and led by intellectual or socio-political elites. This raises the broader question of how ideologies propagated by elites interact with mass consciousness in the crystallization (or, indeed, fragmentation) of national identities.

Another pervasive issue involves the tension between the origin of the modern nation-state as a specifically Western European or Euro-Atlantic ideological and institutional creation, and the role it is supposed to play as an authentic embodiment and guardian of each nation’s particular culture. On the one hand, nationalist movements around the world have modeled themselves on Western political prototypes and aspired to lead their countries on the road to modernization; on the other hand, they are determined to use the nation-state as an instrument for cultivating their own peoples’ heritages and guarding against the erosion of their historical identities. How to reconcile these apparently contradictory roles was an ongoing problem for many of the movements discussed here.

This brings us to the distinction between civic and ethnic forms of nationalism. These are useful typological categories employed by much of the contemporary literature.⁶ The term civic nationalism refers to the assertion of a population’s collective identity and of its right to political-territorial sovereignty based on its adherence to a common set of political values and on its common allegiance to an existing or prospective, territorially defined state. In its historical origins, it is closely associated with the development of West European countries such as Britain or France, where relatively strong, centralized monarchies emerged in pre-modern times, constituting sturdy political-cultural molds within which statewide national identities eventually gelled, under the impact of homogenizing forces such as economic development and commercial integration, the bureaucratization of the state, the growth of public education, and the development of print media, electoral politics, and mass communication.⁷ Because, in principle, civic nationalism is inclusive of all who choose to participate in the common political culture, regardless of their parentage or mother tongue, most authors associate it with liberal, tolerant values and respect for the rights of the individual. ⁸

Ethnic nationalism is a phrase used to denote the assertion of a collective identity centered around a myth of common biological descent – an extension of the kinship principle to a large population – and, as its corollary, a claim to territorial sovereignty. The term can also refer to any movement that focusses on common, objective cultural characteristics (linguistic, religious, folkloric, or any combination thereof) as the foundation of political nationhood. Modern ethnic nationalism originated among intellectual elites in nineteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe, who were alienated from imperial states (or from subnational principalities, as in Germany and Italy) that lagged behind the West European pace of political and economic modernization, and that could not or would not accommodate new elites’ aspirations to political empowerment. In the multiethnic empires, populations were culturally and linguistically so diverse that any assertion of the modern notion of popular (as opposed to dynastic) sovereignty was likely to unleash centrifugal rather than integrative forces (with fragmented Germany and Italy representing the inverse of this pattern). Because of its fascination with the idea of the nation’s organic unity, rooted in common ancestry and/or expressed in specific cultural forms, ethnic nationalism is seen as conducive to intolerant, chauvinistic, and authoritarian forms of government.

In this book, I have taken the liberty of using these terms in reference to a variety of political movements and ideas. It should be understood that this application of recent social science terminology to early twentieth-century movements is anachronistic. I hope it may be excused insofar as it provides a common frame of reference for the comparison of diverse political cultures. At one and the same time, I must stress that I wish to avoid simplistically categorizing entire peoples as belonging to either the ethnic or civic nationalist camps. It is my sense that more interesting questions can be posed about the nature and evolution of nationalist ideologies if one thinks of ethnic and civic elements as cohabiting uneasily, and competing, with one another within any given construction of national identity.⁹ It is indeed one of political liberalism’s greatest challenges to find ways of reconciling the principle of civic equality with the ethno-cultural dimension of collective identity.¹⁰ As will become readily apparent, my interest in this problem, and my frustration with the difficulty of resolving it, lends much of the discussion that follows a distinctly normative edge. For this I make no apologies. The human cost of ethnic nationalism taken to its logical conclusion is all too apparent in our day, as is the futility of pretending that civic identity can be defined in culturally neutral terms. To take a dispassionate interest in the history of this problem is to take no interest in it at all.

A further note on terminology: in this book I will use the terms “ethnic group” and “nationality” interchangeably to denote a population sharing common cultural characteristics and/or seeing itself as being of common descent or sharing a common historical experience. “Nation” will refer to any group that thinks of its common identity (however defined) as a basis for claiming some form of collective, political-territorial self-determination, or any population in its aspect as a group on behalf of which such claims are made. “Nationalism” refers to any ideology based on the articulation of such claims and that serves as the framework for political action designed to further them. “Nation-state” will signify a polity that bases its legitimacy on its claim to embody or represent the identity of a sovereign nation (however controversial such a claim may be). Clearly, there is considerable room for overlap among these various notions.¹¹

2 Ethnicity and Empire

An Historical Introduction

This book focusses on the development of nationalist movements within the three multiethnic empires that were destroyed by the First World War: the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Russian empire, and the Ottoman empire. Each of these enormous and unwieldy political entities had taken shape through a process of gradual territorial accretion and incremental military conquest over the course of hundreds of years. As of 1914, each of them had been ruled continuously for several centuries by a single dynasty. By the same token, all three regimes had recently permitted (or been forced to accept) the creation of elected parliaments, institutions whose very existence could be seen as fundamentally incompatible with the principle of monarchic authority.

The emergence of electoral politics was one of the most visible manifestations of the process of economic and socio-political change that was engulfing these societies. The imperial regimes faced the prospect of modernization with profound ambivalence. On the one hand, they sought to promote industrial and commercial development, educational advancement, technological innovation, and administrative reform as a means of catching up with the spectacular accumulation of material wealth and military power by the world’s major industrial states (Britain, Germany, France, the United States). On the other hand, such changes threatened the authority of existing institutions and undermined the stability of social hierarchies. The exposure of hitherto isolated rural economies to the vagaries of global commodities markets, the social and geographical displacement of economically marginalized populations, the emergence of spirited new social elites eager for a share of power, the growth of cities, the crystallization of an urban working class, the birth of mass movements, broad exposure to Western ideas and values – these characteristic features and sideeffects of modernization were manifest to varying degrees in the three empires. Even in their most embryonic form, such changes were deeply unsettling to established traditions and modes of thought. All three regimes were hard put to find a way of reaping the benefits of modernization without calling into question their own legitimacy.

One of the most universal features of political modernity has been the idea that the state is an expression of popular identity. Such notions were essentially incompatible with the authoritarian monarchism of the three empires. Yet these regimes recognized that the ability fully to mobilize the energies of society was the ultimate test of a modern state’s power. Their dilemma was how to meet this challenge without undermining the dynastic, patrimonial principles that formed the basis of their political legitimacy. The multiethnic composition of the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman empires made this problem particularly daunting: any attempt to stimulate...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Maps
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Ethnicity and Empire
• 3 On the Eve of War
• 4 Straining the Imperial Molds, 1914–1918
• 5 New Arenas of Action
• 6 Defining the Boundaries of the Nation, 1918–1923
• 7 Old Elites and Radical Challengers in the New Nation-States, 1918–1939
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes