The Politics of Ethnicization: Political Subjectivities of Nation States in Relation to the Polish Minority in Central Eastern Europe

Abstract

Contemporary processes of globalization, transnational mobility, and diversification of national identities lead to fragmentation of loyalties and belonging to the states and other ‘standing entities’ (Geertz, Cliffford 1994. Primordial loyalties and standing entities. In Public Lectures No7. Collegium Budapest. Institute for Advanced Study. ISSN 1217-5811 ISBN 963846311-2). It could be revealed through the post-socialist change of state borders in Eastern Europe resulting in displacement and stigmatization of some parts of society and social groups, would they be visible minorities (i.e., Caucasus or Central Asian guest workers in Moscow), or ethnically marked as former ‘big brother’ (i.e., Russians in Latvia or Serbs in Kosovo), or just not ‘ethnically pure’ (Poles in Lithuania).

In the latter case the homogenizing power of nationalism (Gellner, The coming of nationalism and its interpretations: The myth of nation and class. In Mapping the nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan, 98–145. London: Verso, 1996) could be seen as forged into the state politics of ethnification. It could be exemplified by the Polish minority in Lithuania that from the 1990s has become monopolized by a majoritarian discourse of this minority inhabiting the ‘historically in-rooted ethnic Lithuanian’ region. In the national politics of cultural heritage ‘traditional’ culture becomes singled out by the monoculturalist law of ‘safeguarding of ethnic culture’ (1991), which defines the ‘national traditional culture’ as ‘the [Lithuanian] ethnic culture’ by silencing all minority cultures and erasing them from the dominant historical memory discourse.

Another example of ethnification comes from kin-state politics of the Polish nation state-issued ‘Polish Card’ which re-enacts ethnic identity and countervailing strategies of Polish minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine to reinforce their claims for linguistic, religious, cultural, rights,

The focus of this chapter is on both patterns of political subjectivity exercised on Polish minority in Lithuania by trying to answer to the question what discourses and legislative practices of political subjectivity this minority is facing, and what are the countervailing strategies and practices enacted in response to that. How people come up to understandings of the places, heritages, histories, memories, and patrimonial bonds so as to empower themselves in their politics of belonging and recognition against explicit or implicit categorization and stigmatization.

Comment on Vytis Čiubrinskas’ ‘The Politics of Ethnicization: Political Subjectivities of Nation States in Relation to the Polish Minority in Central Eastern Europe’

Zdeněk Uherek

Department of Sociology, Charles University and Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

zdenek.uherek@fsv.cuni.cz

Ernest Gellner is not frequently mentioned in the contribution by Čiubrinskas. No wonder. The case addressed by the chapter—the Polish minority in Lithuania—was rather moving away from the themes of modernists and was still being constituted at the time of Gellner’s death. Tensions in the new states, which negated the quasi-futuristic communist ideology of which institutionalized Soviet multinationality was a part and constituted independent nation states—in Gellner’s sense of the word, ‘one nation, one culture’ (Gellner 1997)—face apparent internal tensions. They do not come close to cultural homogeneity, nor is this possible. Large groups of people are native to the regions where they live, but at the same time, they construct their ‘external homelands’ abroad. In such states, minority and national cultures do not become a unifying construct of the state but a diversifying one and, therefore, frequently the element of political struggle.

This situation was described by Rogers Brubaker, who dealt with the topic in more detail, as conflictual and explosive (Brubaker 1996: 57). It was the analyses of political manipulation of diversity that contributed to his position, which he most clearly expressed eight years later, that it is this manipulation that makes particular people into groups ‘as basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts and fundamental units of social analysis’ (Brubaker 2004: 8).

Brubaker is well aware of the historical arguments that always have substantial roles in ethnic interplays. He also uses historical parallels for his explanations. He shows us that there were three occasions during the twentieth century (after WWI, after WWII, and after the fall of the Iron Curtain) when ethno-national arguments played a key role in creating a new image of Europe. The results of such engineering were always conflictual.

Explosive situations were already anticipated by Ernest Gellner when he discussed the constitution of modern political nations in the territory of the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburg dilemma described in Gellner’s Language and solitude indicates processes that have survived the Habsburg monarchy for more than 100 years and exceed its borders. The basic choice of the Habsburg dilemma is very personal. It is a choice between an individualistic, atomistic worldview or an ‘organic vision’ (Gellner 1998: 5) which tends toward the worldview that Brubaker called ‘Groupism’ (Brubaker 2004); in other words, it is particularism.

The concept of the Habsburg dilemma reflects the atmosphere of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and from today’s point of view, it is fascinating that Gellner conceives it in its essence as a free choice. Čiubrinskas’ contribution, from the point of view of the Habsburg dilemma, is an example of the saturation of the needs of people to belong to a collectivity that has a larger dimension than the family, is historically and generationally rooted, has a long-term duration, and is less shaky and insecure than Eastern European states. Gellner did not pay much attention to the Central and Eastern European reality of the twentieth century when states changed and nations survived. However, this gives the Habsburg dilemma a new dimension, one of searching for security.

Another dimension is the matter of free choice. State policies toward nationalities were substantially developed from Habsburgian times. In his text, Čiubrinskas draws attention to the institutionalized ethnic identity which was introduced by the authorities of the Soviet Union. Soviet citizens had their ethnicity ascribed and recorded in official documents (passports). Čiubrinskas shows that individuals take this ascribed identity seriously and renounce their own choices. Although Lithuanian citizens now do not have ethnicity in their new Lithuanian passports, members of minorities refer to old passports as proof that they do not have Lithuanian ethnicity.

It is not very visible in Čiubrinskas’ text, but the Gellnerian Habsburg dilemma results in the politicization of this need to belong somewhere. The politicization of the ethnic self-definition of Poles is partly indicated in the existence of the Polish Card, an external product imported from Poland which codifies belonging to a nation and thus materializes and personifies the nation’s external home. The section about the Polish card highlights that the ethnification of the Polish minority is perceived from the position of the national majority group, that is, Lithuanians, in Gellnerian language Megalomanians (Gellner 1983). However, the process also has a second side. Ethnicization of Polish identity also indicates processes of setting relations toward Poland, where, on the contrary, the declared Polish ethnicity creates a majority. The processes of creating bonds between nation states and diasporas abroad are on the rise worldwide (Délano and Gamlen 2014; Gamlen et al. 2019). It does not firmly indicate a rise of nationalism. It is instead a part of the process of glocalization. Within the global trends, the nation state and the individual are expanding their field of activity, their radius of action, and they are doing so by local or multilocal networking. It is a serious element with significant political implications. Some states have been actively exploiting this bond for a long time, such as the Russians or the Vietnamese. They build strong ties with their diasporas abroad and use them in other countries to promote their interests. On the other hand, other states are cautious in institutionalizing these bonds because their minorities abroad are too numerous, as is the case with the Irish.

Following Gellnerian theory, nations usually also have political demands. In the case of Poles in Lithuania, Čiubrinskas does not speak about the political consequences of the re-ethnization of social relations. He mentions only cultural activities that are characteristic of minority cultural life all over the world.

References

• Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism reframed. Nations and nationhood in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Délano, Alexandra, and Alan Gamlen. 2014. Comparing and theorizing state-diaspora relations. Political Geography 41: 43–53.

• Gamlen, Alan, Michael E. Cummings, and Paul M. Vaaler. 2019. Explaining the rise of diaspora institutions. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45 (4): 492–516.

• Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and nationalism. New perspectives on the past. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

• ———. 1997. Nationalism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

• ———. 1998. Language and solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and Habsburg dilemma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.