Geoffrey Hosking - Myths and Nationhood

MYTHS AND NATIONHOOD

GEOFFREY HOSKING

GEORGE SCHPFLIN

editors

Myths and Nationhood

First published by Garland Publishing, Inc

This edition by Routledge:

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

270 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10016

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

2 Park Square, Milton Park

Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Geoffrey Hosking and George Schpflin, 1997

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBNs

0-415-91974-6 (casebound)

0-415-91973-9 (paperback)

Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress

The stormy end of the twentieth century, both in Europe and elsewhere, has once again confirmed what the rest of the century demonstrated in ample measure: that the beliefs a people holds about its shared fate represent one of the fundamental driving forces of modern society. National myths are crucial to understanding the world we live in.

Yet strangely, although they are constantly being evoked, little concerted work has been done on the nature and functions of myths concerning nationhood. For that reason, during 19956 the History and Social Science Departments of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies jointly organized a seminar series to investigate the subject. The sessions were exceptionally well attended and the discussions they generated extremely stimulating and revealing. We soon found ourselves wandering far beyond Central and Eastern Europe, and accepted that as a positive advantage. We also found contrary to what many of us had expected that democratic civil societies appeared to rely on myths just as much as authoritarian ethnic ones.

In the mean time the School was moving towards the establishment of a Centre for the Study of Nationalism in Europe, and it was decided that its first venture should be the running of a two-day international conference on Myths and Nationhood. This was held in October 1996, and the present volume makes available, in revised and updated form, the papers delivered then.

We are grateful to the Humanities Research Board of the British Academy for contributing financially towards the conference, and to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies for providing us with a forum and organizational back-up.

CONTENTS

Chapters

Joanna Overing

George Schpflin

Anthony Smith

Sonja Puntscher Riekmann

Mary Fulbrook

Susan-Mary Grant

Bruce Cauthen

Kieran Williams

Norman Davies

Agita Misne and Aija Priedte

John D. Klier

Andrew Wilson

Geoffrey Hosking

BRUCE CAUTHEN, who is completing his doctorate at the London School of Economics, is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and an editor of Nations and Nationalism.

NORMAN DAVIES is Emeritus Professor of Polish History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and his two studies of Polish history, Gods Playground (2 vols, 1982) and The Heart of Europe (1984), have been internationally acclaimed. His most recent work, Europe: A History, was published in 1996.

MARY FULBROOK is Professor of German History at University College London. Her publications include A Concise History of Germany (1990), The Divided Nation: Germany 19181990 (1991), Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 19491989 (1995) and The Two Germanies 19451990: Problems of Interpretation (1992). She also edited National Histories and European History (1993) and German History since 1800 (1997), and was joint editor, with David Cesarini, of Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe (1996).

SUSAN-MARY GRANT is Lecturer in United States History at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Her doctorate, on the growth of nationalism in the north-eastern United States in the early to mid-19th century, will be published in 1998. She is currently writing books on the American Civil War and on the emancipation process between 1850 and 1880.

GEOFFREY HOSKING is Professor of Russian History and Deputy Director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. His research interests include nation-building and state-building in the Soviet Union. He is the author of A History of the Soviet Union (1992), Beyond Socialist Realism (1980) and Russia: People and Empire, 15521917 (1997).

JOHN D. KLIER is Corob Professor of Modern Jewish History at University College London. His specialization is the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and he is the author of Imperial Russias Jewish Question, 18551881 (1995).

AGITA MISNE is a Research Associate at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, concerned with the phenomenology of religion, pre-Christian beliefs and traditional cultures in the north-east Baltic region. She has edited a collection of essays on sacrifice, Upuris: Reliiju zintne. Filozoja. Krisg Prakse (1995).

JOANNA OVERING, now a Professor at the School of Philosophical and Anthropological Studies at the University of St Andrews, was previously at the London School of Economics in the Department of Social Anthropology. Her research interests focus on the philosophy of power, equality and materiality expressed by the Piaroa, an indigenous people of the Venezuelan Amazon Territory.

AIJA PRIEDITE is a Research Associate at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, concerned with the history of ideas in Latvia, particularly the development of the identity discourse in Latvia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has published many articles on the history of ideas, and since 1991 has lectured at the University of Riga.

SONJA PUNTSCHER RIEKMANN is a Senior Research Fellow in the Research Unit for Socio-Economics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and teaches at the University of Vienna. A former member of parliament, she is often invited to lecture on Europe in political fora. She is a board member of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Working and Living Conditions (Dublin), and has published widely on questions of European unification and international integration.

GEORGE SCHPFLIN lectures in politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and is a regular guest lecturer in Britain and abroad. He is the author of numerous articles on the politics of Central and Eastern Europe and the nature of ethnicity, and of the book Politics in Eastern Europe 19451992 (1993).

ANTHONY SMITH is Professor of Studies in Nationalism in the European Institute at the London School of Economics. His books include The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1986), National Identity (1991) and Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (1995); he has co-edited, with John Hutchinson, Nationalism (1994) and Ethnicity (1996). He is a founder and former President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, and chief editor of its journal