Cultural Autonomy in Contemporary Europe

David J. Smith, Karl Cordell, David J. Smith, Karl Cordell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317968504
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

In this volume, some of the world's leading scholars involved in researching the fields of ethnopolitics, nationalism and ideas of nation and state, have come together to produce a work that is both original and accessible. The volume explores the rich, but sadly neglected tradition of thought on non-territorial cultural autonomy as exemplified by the work of Karl Renner and Otto Bauer and the European Nationalities Congress of the 1920s. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and case study approaches, the authors challenge conventional thinking on how best to reconcile competing claims over territory and cultural expression. Drawing upon a range of examples from countries such as Russia, Romania and Hungary, and by comparing the situation of territorially-based ethnic minorities with those - principally the Roma - who lack identification with a given state or states, the authors of this volume seek to supply answers and question received truths.

Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Cultural Autonomy in Central and Eastern Europe

DAVID J SMITH & KARL CORDELL

The political management of ethno-cultural diversity is an issue that has elicited considerable discussion throughout Europe over the past decade and a half. It has been particularly salient, however, in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which have been required to demonstrate ‘respect for and protection of minorities’ as part of their ongoing engagement with European and transatlantic international organizations. Past instances of instability and conflict in Europe's East have led to a widespread understanding of this region as somehow predisposed to intolerant ‘ethnic’ nationalism, as distinct from the more liberal, ‘civic’ variant deemed characteristic of Western Europe. In this regard one can mention especially the work of Hans Kohn, which continued to set the tone for much of the academic writing on the region in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The image of backwardness already present during the interwar period (Burgess, 1999; Chandler, 1999) has since been reinforced by the wars in former Yugoslavia, which did much to explain Brubaker's (1996) prediction that ‘nationalizing’ states and nationalist conflict were likely to be the norm in Central and Eastern Europe more generally.

More recent works have provided a corrective to such stereotypes. Instead of assuming some kind of predetermined path for the region's development, they have highlighted the common dynamics of nation building and the simultaneous existence of different forms of nationalism—civic/ethnic and inclusive/intolerant—within all European societies, West and East (Kuzio, 2001; Roshwald, 2001; Smith, 2002; in this regard, see also Billig (1995)). Such works invite us to focus upon the struggle of ideas and contested quality of nationhood within Eastern European societies during the interwar period and beyond. In this vein, a number of recent authors have sought to counter the relentless pessimism voiced by Brubaker (1996) by highlighting trends and factors supporting the development of liberal and multicultural nationalism within Central and Eastern Europe (Kymlicka & Opalski, 2001; Batt & Wolczuk, 2002; Auer, 2004; Budryte, 2005).

Recent—and hopefully ongoing—processes of European Union enlargement mean that it is certainly instructive to revisit the oft-neglected traditions of liberal and multicultural political thought that can be found within this part of Europe. This, indeed, is one of the central thrusts of John Hiden and David J Smith's current research on non-territorial cultural autonomy (NCA), which was inspired not least by previous study of some interesting experiments in multicultural democracy in the Baltic republics of the 1920s. The aim of this research project is to trace the theory and practice of cultural autonomy from its origins in late nineteenth Century Austria through the interwar period to the ‘new Europe’ of today.¹

Thanks to some outstanding work by Nimni (2000, 2005), the English-language academic world is now far more familiar with the original ideas of Karl Renner (1870–1950) and Otto Bauer (1881–1938), who first devised the model of NCA as a specific response to political conditions within the late Habsburg Empire.² Given the multifaceted nature of the empire's ethnic composition, the entire area of imperial jurisdiction acted as a laboratory in which such group relations could be studied and examined. Although never actually implemented within this context, Renner and Bauer's ideas directly inspired Estonia's unique 1925 law on cultural autonomy and became the guiding principle behind the 1920s Congress of European Minorities, a transnational organization that lobbied the League of Nations and European governments for the creation of a pan-European guarantee of minority rights based on the NCA principle.

These efforts never came to fruition: however, as the contributions assembled here make clear, NCA has assumed a growing relevance in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and, by extension, is the focus of growing attention on the part of relevant international organizations. Estonia revived its interwar legislation on cultural autonomy in 1993, although the very particular circumstances of the restored Baltic state (particularly with regard to citizenship) mean that this law has been seen as having only limited relevance as far as most of the country's minority groups are concerned (Smith, 2001).³ Of far greater interest in a contemporary setting are the variants of NCA adopted by Hungary (1993) and the Russian Federation (1996), which are discussed by Dobos and Bowring, respectively. As D. Christopher Decker and Ilona Klímová-Alexander demonstrate in their contributions, NCA has also been central to recent debates on the draft minorities law in Romania and has held a particular attraction for minority rights activists amongst the Roma, who see this model as ideally suited to the needs of a territorially dispersed and transnational minority group.

The novelty of NCA lies above all in its non-territorial approach to the issue of national self-determination. This is an important point. Renner and Bauer were acutely aware of the competing nationalist claims in the region and that plans to render hypothesized states and nations coterminous ran the risk of precipitating violence. Therefore, they also recognized that territorially based solutions to issues of self-determination would not necessarily provide desired solutions. Renner and Bauer envisaged the transformation of the Habsburg Empire into a genuine democratic federation of peoples. They also understood, however, that in the broader context of Central and Eastern Europe, too, the ‘national question’ could not be addressed solely on a territorial basis. So complex was the region's ethnic mix that it would never be possible to achieve complete congruence between political and ethnic boundaries. For this reason, they insisted on the need for a separate, nonterritorial means of realizing national self-determination that would act as a complement to a system of territorial federalism and would cater specifically for the cultural needs of persons living as minorities in a national territorial unit other than their ‘own’.

At the heart of the NCA model lies the ‘personality principle’, which holds that “totalities of persons are divisible only according to personal, not territorial characteristics” (Renner, 2005, p. 32). Under Renner and Bauer's scheme, the state would allow representatives of national groups to set up public corporations and elect their own cultural self-governments. Once constituted, these institutions could assume full control over schooling in the relevant language and other issues of specific concern to the group. The jurisdiction of the aforementioned bodies would not be confined to particular territorial subregions of the state, but would extend to all citizens who professed belonging to the relevant nationality, regardless of where they lived.

Renner and Bauer challenged the pervading orthodoxies of the day in another way. During the period in which they were politically active, prevailing orthodoxies with regard to national identity tended towards what we now label as primordial or perennialist perspectives. In other words, it was held that national identity was somehow a matter of either biological or ancient cultural inheritance. By insisting that belonging to a particular national group had to be made a matter of personal choice, Renner and Bauer were implicitly rejecting this prevailing orthodoxy. For them, membership of the public corporations was to be determined on the basis of individuals freely determining their ethnicity and voluntarily enrolling on a national register. Those signing up in this way would be eligible to elect the representatives of the cultural self-government, but would also be liable to pay cultural taxes to the corporation, to supplement funding provided by state and municipal authorities. Anyone unwilling to fulfil this added obligation in return for additional cultural rights would be free to withdraw from the respective national register. Similarly, those who decided that they wanted their children to be educated in another language would be free to withdraw from one register and enrol on another. For Karl Renner, this conception of the national group as ‘daily plebiscite’ was consistent with the spirit of democracy and served to differentiate his proposed national bodies from pre-existing corporate structures based on more organic, exclusivist and hierarchical conceptions of group belonging.

A lawyer by training, Renner believed that, through NCA, the national question could be transformed from a political to a legal issue and, on this basis, a satisfactory settlement achieved. In this way, it would be possible to engineer a shift towards “a more progressive agenda of political action unhampered by nationalist division” (Schwarzmantel, 2005, p. 64). Although devised with specific regard to the Habsburg Empire, Renner and Bauer's ideas quickly attained wide currency amongst liberal and socialist circles within tsarist Russia, where they appealed not least to the territorially dispersed Jewish populations of Poland and Lithuania.

The prospect of building new democratic federations incorporating NCA ultimately vanished during 1914–1920, as the turmoil of war and revolution brought about the disintegration of the great territorial empires. The nature of the Europe that emerged from the First World War, however, did much to confirm Renner and Bauer's contention that it was impossible to regulate the national question solely on the basis of territorial adjustments. The new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that encompassed the bulk of the former tsarist empire may have embraced ethno-federalism, yet it evidently did not correspond to Renner and Bauer's vision of a genuinely democratic federation and was, moreover, conditioned by the Bolsheviks' overtly territorial approach to the nationality question. In fact, the Communist Party possessed a monopoly on political power and demonstrated a predilection for the creation and solidification of subnational territorially based identities. Given this set of circumstances, it is difficult to envisage a set of institutional arrangements in the sphere of interethnic relations more different from those envisaged by Renner and Bauer.

The unitary successor states that emerged in Central and Eastern Europe were construed as vehicles for the national self-determination of several of the region's larger nationalities. However, as Aviel Roshwald observes in his contribution, attempts to graft the western nation-state model onto Central and Eastern Europe were fraught with difficulty. In many ways these new states simply replicated the problems of the old empires in miniature: all contained significant minority populations—indeed, it was estimated that one in four of the region's inhabitants now constituted representatives of a national minority. In an era of rising national consciousness, these minorities were for the most part ill disposed to pursue linguistic and cultural assimilation with the majority nationality. This paved the way for tensions between the new states, their minorities and external national homelands and gave impetus to efforts by the League of Nations to implement a system of protection for national minorities, through treaties and the system of petitions. The League of Nations' procedures, however, enshrined the sanctity of what Nimni describes as the ‘atomistic–centrist’ model of statehood: any suggestion of creating intermediate public-legal institutions between state and individual was firmly eschewed, on the grounds that this might lead to ‘states within states’ and destabilize the post-war territorial settlement. The institutional regime and arrangements so established did not of themselves lead to war. However, it is true to say that they were unable in any way to head off the looming catastrophe. Ironically, this potential for institutional breakdown and resultant violence was recognized from the moment of the inception of both the post-1918 state structure in Eastern Europe and the minority regimes themselves.

However, the NCA model did resurface in the new Baltic States, most notably in Estonia. The country's 1925 law was based firmly on the precepts of Renner and Bauer, stipulating that representatives of a particular minority seeking to implement autonomy had first to enrol at least half of the adult members of the relevant group onto a national register (the right to membership being determined on the basis of a citizen electing to enter the relevant nationality on his/her passport). Once the national register had been drawn up, its members were called upon to elect a 20–60 strong Cultural Council, which could only be constituted if 50% of registered voters participated in the election. If a council could be established, a two-thirds majority vote by its members was then required in order to adopt cultural autonomy formally. Only if these hurdles were overcome could minority representatives proceed to elect the executive organs of cultural self-government at central and local levels.

The law on cultural autonomy was promptly implemented by Estonia's German and Jewish minorities, for which the non-territorial nature of this law was especially significant. Numerically small and territorially dispersed in terms of settlement, these groups were unable to implement minority rights through existing local authorities.⁴ Baltic German delegates went on to champion the Estonian model of NCA within the Nationalities Congress, which in the late 1920s was a thoroughly liberal organization dedicated to the promotion of minority rights on a democratic basis. The leaders of the Nationalities Congress declared their commitment to maintaining the new states within the borders established under the peace settlement: however, instead of pursuing cultural homogenization these states would allow minorities genuine self-government in the sphere of culture. In this way, they believed it would be possible to take culture out of politics, leaving the state to concentrate on matters of concern to all. Constitutional guarantees of cultural autonomy would strengthen minorities' identification with and participation in the wider state communities of which they formed part. Congress leaders regarded cultural autonomy for minorities as one of the pillars of a durable European peace settlement that would in time give rise in time to a ‘United States of Europe’. Within this context, they considered it entirely natural that organized national communities should be allowed to cultivate trans-border ties with kin in neighbouring states, envisaging that a Europe of nationalities would eventually emerge alongside the existing Europe of states.

By 1931, cultural autonomy was widely credited with having brought about a marked improvement in relations between the Estonian majority and the formerly dominant Baltic German population. On the basis of these claims, the leaders of the Nationalities Congress argued that the League of Nations should proceed to a detailed examination of the Estonian experi...