Fwd: Book Review: Lord & Strietska-Ilina (eds.), Parallel Cultures.

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Fwd: Book Review: Lord & Strietska-Ilina (eds.), Parallel
Cultures. Majority/minority relations in the countries of the former
Eastern bloc, reviewed by Ulf Brunnbauer


Balkan Academic News Book Review 5/2002
---------------------------------------

Christopher Lord & Olga Strietska-Ilina (eds.), Parallel Cultures.
Majority/minority relations in the countries of the former Eastern
bloc. Aldershot: Ashgate 2001, 295 pages, ISBN 0754616169, 79.95 USD
(hardcover).

Reviewed by Ulf Brunnbauer (University of Graz, Department of
Southeast European History), Email: [email protected]
----------------------------------------

The study of national/ethnic minorities and ethnic conflict occupies a
prominent place in scholarly interest on Eastern Europe after the end
of Communist rule. However, majority-minority interactions still
remain insufficiently investigated. Therefore, books like this one are
highly welcomed. Christopher Lord gives a long theoretical
introduction (pp. 1-124.), while the other chapters present case
studies: Gavril Flora on Transylvania (pp. 125-146), Madeleine Danova
on the Bulgarian Pomaks (147-176), Kirill Shevchenko on the Poleshuks
in Belarus and the Ukraine (177-208), Kateryna Stadnik on the Donetsk
Region in Ukraine (209-244), and finally Olga Strietska-Ilina on
Russia (245-290).

In the introduction, Lord aims at delineating the modern idea of the
national state and its traditions, and secondly at creating a model
for majority-minority relations. He hopes that �forming a theory of
parallel culture will in the end lead to a politics of parallel
cultures� (p. 64), an aim, which certainly deserves our support.
Lord�s main idea is that the national state is a product of the
amalgamation of Roman and (Western) Christian traditions. Its
particular power results from what Lord calls the �naive
anthropological hypothesis� that nations have always existed and are
part of the natural organisation of society as expressed e.g. by
> Herder. Christianity creates also a �cult of exclusion� that makes nations aim at
homogeneity and regard themselves as mono-cultural (p. 59). However,
in urban centres
parallel cultures develop and nations must find ways to deal with
that. Lord presents two
solutions, both illustrated by medieval examples, that of the Jews on
the one hand, and
Dualist sects on the other. While Jews were, though reluctantly,
tolerated and provided a
certain theological function (as the main �other�), the Dualists
(Cathars in France, Bogumils
in the Balkans) were perceived as rebelling against the existing order
and were consequently
exterminated. While this certainly is an interesting thought, it
remains doubtful whether
nation states really developed only two devices for dealing with
minorities. It seems equally
problematic to speak of national states in the medieval and early
modern period. But what
undermines Ford�s reasoning most, is his almost complete focus on the
Christian tradition.
What about capitalism, the market economy and European imperialism and
their contribution to
the emergence and expansion of the national state? He does not discuss
these issues. His many
interesting and also provoking thoughts are further tarnished by
several incorrect
assertions, such as �Yugoslavia (...) had an Albanian population on
its territory (though
this was not officially recognised� (p. 46)  of course it was.
Slovenian is not a West Slav
language, as assumed on p. 115, but South Slav. To describe the Czech
revolution of 1989 as
�huge crowds of flag-waving nationalists� who �greeted the new
national hero, V�clav Havel,
who would lead them into a new age of Czech greatness� (p. 47) would
at least need further
explanation. To assume that the Russia is now �officially� a national
state �on the Western
pattern� (p. 4) is hardly convincing in view of the fact that Russia
is officially called the
Russian Federation and consists of a complex mosaic of ethnically and
administratively
defined territories.

I found most interesting Kirill Shevchenko�s chapter on the Poleshuks
in Belarus (and also in the Ukraine). This emerging ethnic identity in
the region of Palesse is evidence of the growing ethnic heterogeneity
in those parts of Eastern Europe where �official� ascription of
national identities is not sufficiently grounded. Shevchenko describes
how Poleshuk �awakeners� and ethnic engineers are attempting to
establish a Poleshuk nationality. For this purpose they want to create
a literary Poleshuk language as well as a national history 
indispensable features of a self-confident nation. In both cases, they
can draw on some traditions of local dialects and versions of history
which, however, until recently were not organised in a national
narrative. Shevchenko�s case-study presents prima-facie
nation-building. The apparent success of the Poleshuk movement during
the last decade are explained by the weakness of Belarussian national
identity and the Belarussian language, which was based on local
dialects and is thus less inclusive than Russian. Shevchenko�s
strength lies also in his successful attempt to relate the Poleshuk
nation-building campaign to general developments in Belarus: �The
mutual interdependence between the emergence of independent Belarus
and the Poleshuk movement is obvious. It represents one form of public
discontent with the current state of affairs� (p. 206).
 
Another very specific minority is the subject of Madeleine Danova�s
case-study: the Pomaks, a Bulgarian-speaking Muslim population in
Bulgaria. The Pomaks have traditionally been the object of conflicting
claims on their �true� ethnicity. The Pomaks themselves, however, have
not yet created a consistent ethnic or national self-identification.
Unfortunately the author does not really deal with the extensive
recent literature on the Pomaks and gives only a very sketchy overview
of the Pomaks� experience in the Bulgarian national state. She fails,
for example, to treat the �process of rebirth� in the early 1970s,
when all Pomaks were forced to replace their Turkic-Arabic names with
Bulgarian ones. But these experiences of forced assimilation are
highly  relevant for the current state of their identity which forms
the main topic of Danova�s investigation. The realm of politics is
conspicuously absent in her chapter although Pomaks still provoke
fervent debates in Bulgarian politics. The author is certainly right
in her assessment that Pomak identities are in a flux because of the
lack of clear characteristics, which could mark an ethnic boundary to
other groups (p. 167). Danova argues for the acceptance of the
hybridity and heterogeneity that appears to be typical for Pomak
identity in order to allow Pomaks to be the subjects of their own
discourse on identity without the imposition of foreign
interpretations. But perhaps, and this option is not proposed by the
author, identities other than ethnic self-representation are more
important for the Pomaks?

Two traditionally multiethnic regions which now form parts of larger
countries are dealt with by Gavril Flora and Kateryna Stadnik:
Transylvania and the Donetsk Region. Flora in his chapter convincingly
argues against ethnic nationalism which has brought havoc to the
region he examines. He describes how in Transylvania different
ethnic/cultural groups (Germans, Hungarians, Szeklers, Romanians,
Jews) have lived side by side for centuries, developing a specific
institutional arrangement that has given all groups the opportunity to
preserve their specific cultural and religious characteristics. But
Transylvania did not develop into an Eastern European Switzerland
because in the 19th and 20th centuries two mutually exclusive
discourses became prominent first: Hungarian and Rumanian
ethno-nationalist ideologies, which both claimed this multiethnic
territory for themselves. The author�s main aim is to explain why
these discourses became dominant and not, for example, a regionalist
one that would have tolerated cultural heterogeneity. He describes in
detail the 18th, 19th, and finally early 20th centuries when
Transylvania eventually became part of the Romanian state with its
aggressive ethnic nationalism. The Communist period further fostered
the trend toward ethnic homogenisation. The only really weak point of
this contribution is that the author does not discuss the developments
in the region after 1989 but leaves the reader with a general
description of current Romanian attitudes toward minorities,
especially the Hungarian one. These are still determined by
deep-running historical fears, as is also reflected in the ethnic
centrism of the post-Communist Romanian constitution.

In her analysis of the multiethnic Donbass in the Ukraine, Kateryna
Stadnik focuses on the legal framework in regard to minorities and how
these stipulations are put into administrative practice. Ukraine is
aware of its ethnic heterogeneity and is seeking ways to peacefully
deal with the situation, e.g. by giving �national-cultural autonomy�
to the national minorities. Unfortunately, it is not quite clear what
this means. Stadnik also highlights the attitudes of the inhabitants
of this region towards minorities and multi-culturality, relying on a
poll from 1997. Donbass represents the most �Russian� region of
Ukraine, but is also host to a number of other ethnic groups. She
describes their history, although somewhat sketchily. However, she
points out some very interesting facts in regard to the ethnic
self-identification of Ukrainians. For many of them, for example,
having Ukrainian as a mother tongue is not crucial for the continuity
of the national tradition (p. 229). Regretfully, Stadnik does not give
the central problem of diaglossia in Ukraine much further discussion.
She concludes that, despite the somewhat artificial character of
Ukrainian national ideology, and fears from the centre that regions
such as Donbass might get of control, the country has maintained a
rather high level of interethnic stability.

In the final chapter, Olga Strietska-Ilina attempts to answer the
question to where Russia is heading. She asks whether the Russian
Federation has the power to integrate all its nations into one
multicultural but civic state, or whether centrifugal forces will
eventually destroy the Federation. In the first part of her
contribution, she describes the mechanisms which held the Czarist
Empire and the Soviet Union together. She discusses the ambiguities of
Soviet nationality policies that on the one hand encouraged the
national affirmation of some ethnic groups, making them titular
nations of republics or other territorial units, while on the other
hand other nationalities faced repression, terror and expulsion. And
above all, Russian was a language with a privileged status throughout
the Union. Today, the Russian Federation�s nationality policies
continue the Soviet practice of institutionalising national and ethnic
groups, ascribing specific territories to them in which they can enjoy
their particular rights as a nation. The author, however, conversely
pleads to reorganise the country on a strictly regional principle
where all people should be citizens with the same rights and duties.
�The principle of a political and territorial organisation of the
Russian state based on the ethnic principle is a dead end� (p. 267).
Not nationalities should be equal, but people, as at the moment people
do not have the same opportunities in the country depending on where
someone is born. Ethnic issues should be confined to the cultural
sphere and not be raised to the political level because, once
radicalised, they appear to be unstoppable (she therefore argues for
the independence of Chechnya, p. 267). Nationhood should be up-graded
to state level and be defined in civic terms, while ethnicity should
be down-graded to the local level. This is certainly an interesting
option, but the author does not mention in how far ethnicity today
determines social stratification on the central level. So we do not
learn about, say, ethnically discriminating recruitment patterns or
about the representation of nationalities in the central state
apparatus. But this would be necessary in order to understand ethnic
claims which are often results of actual or perceived discrimination.
People who because of their ethnicity have fewer life-chances can
hardly be won over for a civic state concept, but will rather demand
collective rights for their ethnic group. Further on, the author
criticises that the central state has not yet developed any idea that
would allow people from all nationalities to become one sort of
citizen. Even the Russians themselves are in a deep identity crisis
after the loss of their dominant position in a great empire and the
loss of the global importance of their country. In such a situation,
religion attracts a growing number of people, and ethno-confessional
communities experience a revival. (It seems quite odd to give the
example of an obscure Lutheran community which in the mid-nineties
counted �already� 300 people as an illustration [p. 277]. Are there no
more convincing examples?). What is mainly unsatisfying in this
chapter is the lack of references to concrete political and economic
developments as well as to regional differences, and a rather unclear
focus.

Summing up, the volume raises many questions, but cannot answer them
all. Some mistakes as well as the lack of a focus in several chapter
reduce its value. But the aim of the contributors must be appreciated
and underlined: to show how �parallel cultures� (unfortunately,
throughout the volume it does not become quite clear what this means)
evolve and develop, and to demonstrate that the national state
paradigm is a threat to them, causing great physical and psychological
suffering. A new Europe can only live in peace with itself if ethnic
grievances are properly addressed, without organising states and
societies according to the ethnic principle.
-----------------------------------------

This an earlier book reviews are available at:
www.seep.ceu.hu/balkans

-----------------------------------------

� 2002 Balkan Academic News. This review may be distributed and
reproduced electronically, if credit is given to Balkan Academic News
and the author.For permission for re-printing, contact Balkan Academic
News.
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