Review: Liliya Berezhnaya and Heidi Hein-Kircher. Rampart Nations: Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism (original) (raw)
The reviewer examines a recent anthology on the transformations of the ante-murale myth in the borderlands of Eastern Europe during the age of nationalism. Edited by Lilya Berezhnaya and Heide Kein-Kircher, the volume contains thirteen essays by fourteen international authors. After briefly defining the antemurale myth, its most famous version (the antemurale christianitatis), and the ongoing relevance of the subject, the reviewer discusses the structure of the book and the content of the essays. Praise is offered to the wide number of cases analysed, the decision to open the collection with a contextual essay on the fifteenth-century history of the myth and to close it with discussions about the modern situation, the collective and individual strength of the essays, and the inclusion of numerous pieces discussing the material dimension of the myth and its spread (alongside more traditional evaluations of its discursive formulation). Criticism is largely directed at the peculiar structuring of Parts II and III, which produces a rather confused impression on the reader. On the whole, however, the book is heartily recommended, along with the hope that future scholarship will apply its approach to other geographical areas.
NETSOL: New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences, 2022
John Connelly’s history of Eastern Europe or Eastern Central Europe as he sometimes calls it, is divided into five parts. Part I, “The emergence of national movements”, presents the scope of the book and introduces his thesis about the strength and resilience of ethnic nationalism in the region, linked to linguistic nationalism, indicating that in many cases there was a national consciousness before the dawn of modern nationhood, a notion which challenges the more common idea that links mass national consciousness to modernisation, specially to the advent of print culture. Part II, “The decline of empire and the rise of modern politics”, goes through different moments in nineteenth century European history, which affected the future of the region and its eventual organization into nation-states, such as the 1848 revolutions or the 1878 Berlin Congress. Particularly interesting is chapter nine, on the origins of National Socialism, where Connelly explains the response of ethnic Germans of Austria and Bohemia for being left out of unified German nation-state led by chancellor Otto Von Bismarck. Many Germans of Bohemia and Austria, as Connelly states, saw their natural space in the infamous Lebensraum. Later on, in only three allied states did the Nazi agenda coincide well with the mind-sets of the governing elites: Romania, Croatia, and Slovakia. Not coincidentally, these were the places where nationalists were most insecure about their nationalism.
The year of 1989 marked the beginning of major political and social changes in Eastern and Central Europe. Now, twenty years later, it is a good time to revisit these transformations and rethink the significance of the fall of the socialist system in this region. The collection of articles titled Nation in Formation questions such post-socialist transformations in relation to nationalism. Precisely, this book investigates the complex relationships of exclusion and inclusion in the nationalist discourses of former socialist countries. The issues of inclusion and exclusion occupy a central place in various theories of nationalism: who can and cannot be a part of the new nation?; and who has the right to become a part of national history and memory? This collection rethinks several misconceptions about nationalism, citizenship, human rights, exclusion and marginalization that are often taken for granted. It approaches the current contradictions and orthodoxy of nationalism studies by questioning its fundamental principals and logic in the specific context of Central and Eastern Europe at a time of post-socialist transition.
Jan Fellerer, Robert Pyrah and Marius Turda, eds. Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe (Ser: Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe). London: Routledge, 2019
National studies is a broad field of academic pursuits potentially comprised of all the social sciences and humanities, though its typical core is limited to philology, history and ethnography (also known as folklore studies or ethnology). In Central Europe (also in Japan and southeast Asia), where the ethnolinguistic kind of nationalism predominates for building, legitimizing and maintaining nations and their nation-states, national studies are the main intellectual cornerstone of these processes. As such the ideal of dispassionate and disinterested research open to all is abandoned, and scholarship is harnessed into the service of the state-led national idea. The resultant subservience of research to ideology requires adoption of circular logic among proponents and practitioners of national studies that better serve the national interest. Language, history and culture are nationalized and essentialized. The basic assumption of this development is that a given nation’s language, history and culture are fully accessible and knowable exclusively to the nation’s members. Scholars sticking to this dogma are assured of employment at state-owned and state-approved universities, while those whose research contradicts cherished assumption of the national idea are summarily ostracized in order to bring them into line or make them leave academia.
National Identities, 2021
The normative binary of 'good-progressive' and 'bad-retrograde' nationalism, traceable to the civic and ethnic dichotomy, is alive and well in studies of nationalism and populism today. This article underlines the insufficiency of this approach, firstly by examining three stances on the civic nation in the West, each of which rejects ethnic nationalism and reflect different fundamental concerns. Moving east, in Central Europe the binary is inverted and turned against 'liberal cosmopolitans'; in Russia, the Kremlin's 'state-civilization' project can be viewed as a distinct trend in nation-building for non-Western contemporary great powers.