Discuss the relationship between ethnic nationalism and Communism.

In the present day, among those who usually contemplate world politics, few would deny the role
of ethnic nationalism in the downfall of Communism. The 1989 Revolutions of Eastern and
Central Europe, and, to a lesser extent, the modern history of the Balkan region, stand tall as
vivid examples of the power of the peoples in bringing down dictatorial regimes. Nonetheless, a
quick glance on any history book would reveal periods that witnessed the parallel development,
and even the fusion, of two ideologies. So did ethnic nationalism really contribute to the fall of
various Communist regimes? If so, how did the process come into being?This essay seek to
answer those questions, by presenting the inextricableconnections between the two ideologies,
and the troubles associated with Communism's attempt to manipulate ethnic nationalism, which
eventually led to its downfall.

Popular among scholars is the view of a seemingly intrinsic antagonism between the two
ideologies. George Schopflinwrote:"a communist cannot be a nationalist because the essential
theoretical bases of these two answers to the problem of modernity contradict each other"
(Schopflin, in Kemp 1999: xii). What Communist regimes proclaimed is a purely materialistic
view: since the root cause of all conflicts, namely the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of
the production, had been eliminated, no fundamental conflicts could occur under their rules
(Glenny 1990:5). In that context, a separatist attitude, almost always a feature of

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ethnicallynationalist movements, could only be seen as a decoy of foreign enemies to restore
Capitalism, and must be liquidated. Thus nationalist leaders were frequently labeled as
"deviationists", and punished for revolting against the parties (Smith 1999: 237).

Nonetheless, the national sentiment has never been attacked, but instead glorified under
Communism. From the theories of Marx and Engels, to those of Lenin and his successors,
national sentiment was addressed as anintegralpart of the proletariat’s struggle for liberation. For
instance, in his article On the National Pride of the Great Russians, Lenin defended Communism
from the charge of being unpatriotic, arguing that the 'Great-Russians class-conscious
proletarians[had a full] sense of national pride' (Lenin 1914). A healthy nationalism in Soviet
Russia, Lenin believed, fortified the sense of autonomy and unity of the working class, and thus
contributed to their liberation.

In practice, the fusion of internationalism and national feeling was demonstrated both in the
Soviet Union and elsewhere in the Communist world. In the USSR, the Bolsheviks, while feared
and suppressed nationalist separatism, greatly encouraged national feeling to growth. The party
went as far as promoting a nationalities policy, known as korenizatsiya, to unite Russians, not
only as proletariats, but as citizens of the Russian country. In a speech addressed to students in
1925, Stalin underlined the importance of national feeling:"Proletarian in content, national in
form - such is the universal culture towards which socialism is proceeding" (Stalin 1925). The
defining character of a nation, its citizens' pride for their country, was by no means substituted
by the ideology of Communism. Likewise, in other places, national symbols were encouraged to
be taken up, most notably by the Comintern itself on its Seventh Congress (Jackson 1988: 39-
40). The quest for liberation of the working class, after all, was at first seen as a quest to liberate
the working class' countries, and hence nationalism was often represented as one of the bases of
the proletariat's struggles.

Yet it is essentially this instrumentalist view that contained the seed for later antagonism. In
Marxist theory, the liberation of national minorities was compatible with Marxism as long as it
promoted the proletariat's causes. Protecting the national minorities, on the other hand, was not
the goal, or the duty, of any Communist Revolution. Thus Marx and Engels lauded the national
spirit of the ethnic majorities, such as that of Germans, Poles and Hungarians, but ridiculed the
national questions of smaller peoples (Marx & Engels, in Cummins 1980). The Slavic peoples,
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the Basques, Scots and Bretons were all seen as "deviationists", as obstacles to a great historical
Revolution. Of course, Communist ideology saw and recognized the distinctive cultures of ethnic
minorities. However, there could only be at besta recognition of ethnicity or cultural groups (eg.
Jews, Gypsies), but never one of ethnic nationality (Kurti&Langman 1997: 6, Munck 2010:
46).In facing the resurgence of ethnic tension, the Communists’argument almost always returned
to a theory of Capitalism's mischief. Ethnic tensions were thus never admitted, and ethnic
minorities were greatly homogenized under Communism.

It should be note that, however, ethnic solidarity had not always manifested itself into inter-
ethnic tension, but rather into benign intra-community supports. The ethnic elements before and
for the most part of Communist reignsremained largely un-hostile, and more importantly un-
politicized. Under Communism, it was not directed violently towards the Others, but served
solely as the means for people to survive the disastrous consequences of an economy of
shortage.Almost every country in the Communist bloc went through some periods of extreme
destitution, where goods could only be secured through the arts of 'acquisitionmanship', whereby
hoarding of goods and nepotism became the norms (Verdery 1991). What these resulted in,
naturally, was the tendency for goods to be distributed on the basis of kinship: "when goods were
short, they went preferentially to members of one's own group" (Verdery, in Hann 1993: 175).
Verdery gave a concrete example of this phenomenon in a study of the Transylvania region
under Romanian Communist (ibid: 176). As in anywhere else with a large nationalities mix,
ethnic occupational specializations were the norm in Transylvania, and thus some ethnic groups
held a sort of monopoly over particular types of good and service. Hairdressing, for example,
was almost exclusively a trade of Hungarians. So when hair dye bottles were short, it was
Hungarian beauticians who decided whom should be given access to them. In most cases, the
priorities were given to their Hungarian friends, while Romanians and member of other ethnic
groups were excluded. Such discriminations were not hostile in nature, yet they often created
tensions, or emphasized previously minor antagonism between ethnic groups.

Another factor contributing to the division of people along the ethnic lines was the lack of public
trust. A pattern of mistrust was built in Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, whereby
everyone, but particularly those attached to separatist ideologies, was potential enemies of the
states. While every proletariat was member of worker league, every one of them could also be a

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spy. This pathological fear of Capitalism and espionage led to the creation of undercover secret
polices, whose foremost, and sometimes only, mission was to suppress dissidents. In Soviet
Russia, it was the notoriousCheka, while it went under the name of Stasi in East Germany, or
Securitate in Communist Romania, to name a few. Their function of supervising citizens, their
ability to falsifying political records, and most importantly their secret nature, created a culture
of mistrust and suspicion in Soviet society (Verdery 1996: 24), and arguably in any other country
where their presence could be felt.Gradually, this culture of mistrust amounted to two things: (i)
the alienation of the states from their citizens, and (ii) the rise of networks of informal, private
support. Kupferberg, in studying the Soviet Union in 1978 (itself being a somewhat extremely
clandestine mission, due to the tendency of Communist regimes to turn down any attempt to
scrutiny their systems), found the thriving of public rumors that he had never seen anywhere else
before (Kupferberg 1999: 22). Practically every doing and non-doing were deemed to be the
products of the states, which had but one purpose: "to keep 'us' down and 'them' in power"
(ibid.). There was an unfathomable distance between the states and their citizens. The states
alienated themselves from the peoples, being suspicious of them while appeared themselves to be
suspicious to their citizens. Thus public trust were channeled back to one's own private network
of support, most likely, in areas with large mixes of nationalities, to be group of people with the
same ethnic background. Furthermore, both Kupferberg and Verdery emphasized on a common
feature of Communist regimes, which further fortified the ethnic lines: the absence of formal
civil societies to voice people's concerns (Kupferberg 1999: 26, Verdery, in Hann 1993: 184).
For conflicts in Communist societies were theoretically not possible, the existence of such
societies was deemed unnecessary and often suppressed. Again, one's own problems circled back
to the group of his or her own people, remaining hidden but imminently destructive.

Indeed, the sense of ethnicity under Communism would have remained hidden and relatively
docile, had it not been employed as the subordinate for political causes. Empirical studies show
that ethnic hatreds were not natural, but rather a consequence of the nation-building process, and
the fortification of political powers (Besirevic 2010). Taking the case ofthe notoriously
troublesome Yugoslavia, Besirevic showed, with empirical statistics, that inter-ethnic relations
were considered acceptable, even good, by regional citizens before the conflicts broke out. What
happened, she argues, was the consolidation of powerand the manipulation of media, carried out

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by the Socialist regimes in the regions, which stirred up minor ethnic strives. What followed was
a quick escalation of ethnic hatreds, and their fusion with political identities.

On the individual level, this amounted to the idea of taking up the forgotten, hostile fantasies
about the Others, and making them the dominant perspective based on which the Others were
conceived (Salecl, in Laclau 1994: 211). In the case of Yugoslavia, prior to the initial conflicts,
though antagonism between Serbians, Albanians, Croats and Muslim Bosnians existed, it was by
no means the dominant language in which one was described by the others.This turned out to be
exactly the case, however, after the rise to power of the Socialist Federations in the regions.
Surmises couched in politicians' speeches hinted at violent past of inter-ethnic conflicts, and
ascribed an intrinsically evil feature to the Others' existence (ibid: 218, 230). The division along
ethnic lines was thus not only underlined under these regimes, but also contaminated by a series
of one-sided characterizations and labelings that had been virtually non-existent hitherto.

Given this analysis of the instrumental role of ethnic nationalism in the Communist quests for
nation-building, why then, one should ask, the outcomes turned out to be fatal to most
Communist regimes by the end of the 20th Century. Certainly this is a broad question, and the
scope of this essay only allows for the venture into one of the most crucial causes, presented in
every such case: the simultaneous waning of Communist powers, and the rise of ethnic
nationalism as their single alternative, particularly in satellite, provincial regions of the parties'
centres. Keen observers could well perceived a familiar pattern in ethnic nationalism's takeover
in the Balkan region: following World War II, the region grew more and more independently
from the USSR, but then succumbed to factionalism, breaking down into smaller entities, which,
in turn, furtherimmerged themselves in ethnic conflicts. There might be differences in how this
process played out in other regions, such as Central and Eastern Europe, but the common factor
was a void of power that the waning authoritarian regimes left behind, and its powerlessness in
reversing the process of politicization of ethnic differences.Communist regimes played the
national card and was successful in mobilizing the mass, yet nothing could stop that force to turn
against them when they grew obsolete and weak. By the end of the 1980s, a robust sense of
nationalism - the sense of taking back the nation of the peoples from the state - was embedded in
the cultures of sub-state regions in most European Communist regimes, thus justifying the
takeoversas a rational response to the fall of Communist powers (McCrone 1998: 153).

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In conclusion, this essay seeks to clear up some myths about the relationship between ethnic
nationalism and Communism, with a focus on regions with high levels of ethnicity mix. It traces
the development of nationalist idea under Communist reigns, chronological in a sense, showing
that they were not always mutually antagonistic, but were companies during the large part of the
20th Century. Nonetheless, the highly instrumental method Communism utilized to nurture
national feeling eventually proves to be destructive to itself, largely due to its ignorance of the
multidimensional character of ethnicity and nationalism. A reference to this instrumental aspect
of the relationship is crucial to the study of any concrete case of ethnic nationalism under
Communism.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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