3
The emergence of the nation-state
in East-Central Europe and the Balkans
in historical perspective
RENÉO LUKIC
The “longue dure´e” of political history
The emergence of the nation-state appeared as a political process of “longue
durée” in the political history of East-Central Europe and the Balkans. Alongside
this, the multinational states1
constituted by the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and
Yugoslavia, seem to have taken historical detours, lasting seventy-four years for
the Soviet Union (1917–91), seventy-five years for Czechoslovakia (1918–93),
and seventy-three years for Yugoslavia (1918–91).2
Much as the division of
politics into two camps (left and right) harkens back to the French Revolution
and represents the “longue durée” of European political history, the appearance of
civic nationalism in France and ethnic nationalism in Germany, more or less at
the same time (the nineteenth century), represents the ideological source that
nourished the creation of new states of East-Central Europe. In this sense, I
consider the formation of these nation-states, spread over several centuries, to be
of the “longue durée,” even if this concept is rarely used in political history.3
At this point in time it is somewhat surprising that the emergence of nationstates
in East-Central Europe and the Balkans, after the fall of the communist
regimes, appeared as both extraordinary and undesirable to Western democracies,
despite the fact that the nation-state, as François Furet has justly noted,
‘‘is the principal form within which modern societies live and the basis upon
which they think they should evolve.”4
Jean-Baptiste Duroselle says the same in
writing that, in the twentieth century, “every political entity seeks to become a
nation-state.”5
Continent-wide revolution in 1848 signaled the emergence of
two universal ideologies – nationalism6
and proletarian internationalism –
accompanied by their respective social movements: the movement of nationalities
and the first attempts to federalize the socialist revolutionary groups into
a single organization called the “First International.” The almost simultaneous
entrance of both these ideologies into European history left a lasting mark on
the relationship between the governed and governing during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Proletarian internationalism and nationalism, to use
the expression of the French historian Pierre Renouvin, belong to “the deep
currents of history,” and have profoundly shaped the political mentality of
West European citizens. It was in the middle of the nineteenth century that
both of these universal ideologies began their political and intellectual migration
from Western European politics, where they had been thought out and
theorized, to pre-modern Central and Eastern Europe. On the other hand,
these politico-ideological transfers to East-Central Europe were made without
implementing the rule of law that had been constructed in Western Europe
alongside state-building since the advent of the French and English revolutions.
The democratic deficit that accompanied these transfers favored the rise
of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans which was influenced by its corollary, the
“German model” of an ethnic nation, whereas the civic nationalism (or
patriotism) of the “French model” of a civic nation had limited influence in
Central Europe (being founded chiefly in Hungary). This ideological penetration
resulted in the formation of cultural nations in the Balkans where the
identifying beacons were ethnic origin, orthodox religion, and language (the
famous nineteenth-century Serbian orthographer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić).
The emancipation of nationalities in Europe and their quest for statehood
gained momentum with the “Spring of Nations” in 1848. The publication of the
brochure, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, brought to new prominence the revolutionary ideology supposed to
liberate the proletariat, the class carrying the torch of universal history. As the
proletariat is set free by the advent of the socialist revolution, it should liberate
all of humanity at the same time. The establishment of the dictatorship of the
proletariat on a worldwide scale would make the category of nation obsolete.
For a long time it was believed that the advent of socialism and the creation of
an international communist movement with global influence would lead to the
gradual withering away of the nation.
The French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle noted, with regards to national
claims, that “national sentiment renders all forms of foreign domination
unbearable and arouses the will of the dominated people to acquire independence,
using all means available, such as subversion, violence and war.”7
European enlightenment and modernity fed national movements in EastCentral
Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, entering
the political scene every time the international state system was transforming
itself, such as between 1917 and 1920, 1939 and 1945, and in 1989. However, the
implementation of the Yalta System constitutes an exception. The international
conferences of Moscow (1944), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945), which
formed the bipolar Yalta System, did not give significant momentum to
national movements for two reasons: first, a certain number of these national
movements (such as in Croatia and Slovakia) were seriously compromised by
their past alignment with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy; second, by rapidly
establishing its sphere of influence, the USSR – its sphere of influence coincided
with the deployment of the Red Army in East-Central Europe (1944–5) –
quickly put down all political action aiming to restore national independence.
The case of the three Baltic countries, annexed to the USSR in 1940, is
particularly instructive here.
40 Rene´o Lukic
Keeping in mind these initial observations, I argue that by observing the
evolution of the international system since the nineteenth century in Europe it
can be demonstrated that, during the great historical accelerations, the continent
found itself profoundly altered on four occasions, to the point where it is
preferable to speak of a succession of four distinct European state systems. The
international system dominated by European empires and implemented at
the Congress of Vienna (1815), was gradually replaced starting in 1917, due
to the Bolshevik Revolution and the Versailles System (1919–20).8
The First
World War dismantled and put an end to the multinational empires (AustriaHungary,
the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire), which crumbled in
1917–18 under the weight of military defeats and revolutions, such as the
February and October Revolutions in Russia. The Bolshevik leader, Vladimir
Ilych Lenin, and the American president, Woodrow Wilson, addressing the
issue separately, insisted that the right of peoples to decide their own future
applied to the nationalities of the empires in ruins. President Wilson, through
his “new diplomacy,” thus gave explicit legitimacy to the “principle of nationalities,”
which served as a basis for the creation of numerous new states. Other
great powers (France, Great Britain) acquiesced in Wilson’s policy of creating
national and multinational states in East-Central Europe. The second modification
of the European state system occurred between 1933 and 1945 with the
formation of the “New Order” (the Nazi System); the third led to the establishment
of the Yalta System (1947–89) in which communist systems took hold in
Central and Southeastern Europe; and the fourth is the post-communist system
that began in 1989 and still continues today. The formation of each one of these
international systems was accompanied by the proliferation of new states. If the
great wars seem to have created a historical context favorable to new state
formation (as in the past, such as in 1914 and 1939), with the exception of
Yugoslavia, the emergence of new states since 1989 has been rather peaceful,
unlike the twentieth century’s past where diplomatic conferences structured the
international system alongside the conquerors and the conquered.
From a geopolitical point of view, East-Central Europe found itself, after 1989,
in a similar historical situation to that which had prevailed in 1917–18 when the
Bolshevik Revolution and the Peace Conference led to the creation of multiple
national and multinational states in East-Central Europe. In 1989, the East–West
confrontation ended with the “Tocquevillian” revolution – the revolution of civil
society – in East-Central Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union. This
context favored the creation of nation-states from the Balkans to the mountains
of the Urals. In East-Central Europe in 1989, the European Community (EC) and
the United States assumed the role of hegemonic powers charged with establishing
the rules and conditions as a basis for the emergence of new states (in 1919–20
this role was played by the Entente, the United States, and the League of Nations).
On 16 December 1991, several days after the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht,
the EC, under the pressure of the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, outlined the rules
for recognizing the successor states of the communist federations.9
41 The emergence of the nation-state
In the pages that follow, I will attempt to illustrate this process of European
political history’s “longue durée,” which consists of nationalism and nationstate
formation. My goal here is not to chronologically reconstruct the history
of nationalism and the emergence of the nation-state in East-Central Europe,
but rather to trace the general lines of this evolution through the five international
state systems that have succeeded each other since the nineteenth
century.
The formation of nation-states in the age
of empires: the European concert
In 1814–15, as the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close, the reconstruction of
Europe began. Even if the great powers wanted a return to the Europe before
1789, the national claims that took off throughout the continent following the
French Revolution made this idea difficult if not impossible to achieve.
However, when the Congress of Vienna opened on 1 November 1814, the
representatives of the diverse monarchies had three goals in mind: restoring
the political order that had existed before 1789, assuring the legitimacy of
hereditary princes, and developing a monarchical solidarity to counter the
revolutionary movements. Even though the majority of states controlling
European territory were present in Vienna, with the exception of the
Ottoman Empire, the majority of the decisions were made by the Great
Powers: the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire,
Prussia, and, to a lesser extent, France. Keeping in mind the way in which the
discussions were carried out, the Congress of Vienna can be considered to have
been “the first great meeting of European diplomacy, this concert of nations,
which from that point on would gather together to put an end to tensions and
conflicts each time a serious crisis occurred.”10
Even though the Congress of
Vienna can be seen as the meeting of those nostalgic for the Old Order, all
understood well that Europe could not really return to the past and completely
ignore the aspirations that were being expressed following the French
Revolution. This is why territorial division, even though it certainly had the
objective of containing France, also aimed to put an end to the nascent national
claims. The method of remodeling Europe at the Congress of Vienna rested on
the principle of establishing a balance of power between the Great Powers and
the confirmation of the legitimacy of princes to the detriment of revolutionary
ideals. For the most part, the Congress of Vienna achieved stability. The Great
Powers kept the peace for nearly forty years.11
As for national uprisings, they
were not really able to come to any sort of fruition until 1848.
Nevertheless, as the “principle of nationalities”12
continued to progress and
attract national movements in the second half of the nineteenth century, the
idea of the nation-state13
made inroads in East-Central Europe. From that
moment on, feelings of regional belonging were transformed into national
consciousness by political and cultural elites; the nation-state became the
42 Rene´o Lukic
main force bringing imperial legitimacy into question. The national movements
stemming from the revolutions of 1848 erected “the principle of nationalities”
in Europe as a political doctrine questioning the cohesion and legitimacy of
the Empires. The Habsburg multinational empire was saved in extremis during
the 1848 Hungarian national revolution by the intervention of the Russian
Imperial Army aided by Croatian troops under the command of Colonel Josip
Jelačić. Despite this temporary set-back, national claims inside the Austrian
Empire continued to be expressed. In 1867, Hungarians were emancipated
from Vienna by signing the “Compromise” (Ausgleich), yet without becoming
completely independent. From that point on, the Habsburgs were at the head
of a dual monarchy, the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, each
one possessing its own institutions, administrations, and laws (and having
only three common ministries). The following year Croats obtained their
own autonomy from Budapest, also called the “Compromise” (Nagodba). The
“Compromise” between Hungary and the Triune Kingdom (Croatia, Slavonia,
Dalmatia) created a new sort of political community. The position of the Triune
Kingdom was similar to that of a province within a federal state, for the most
part, except that it did not possess the same judiciary functions. The political
autonomy of the Triune Kingdom was guaranteed a national autonomous
government through the Sabor (Diet), as well as through the recognition of
Croatian as an official language and the office of a ban (governor). One thing led
to another and the Habsburg Empire was dismantled just like the Ottoman
Empire. However, the dynamic of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire was quite different from the progressive weakening of the Ottoman
Empire through successive military defeats.
By the first half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire’s military
defeats in southeastern Europe had already allowed the creation of nation-states
on territory stretching from the Black Sea in the east and the Adriatic Sea in the
west. It is yet again the disintegration caused by nationalism that explains the
end of the Ottoman Empire in Europe.14
By declaring their secession from
the weakened Ottoman Empire, the people of the Balkans were ready to create
new states to the former’s detriment. In order to justify the creation of new
states, national leaders in the Balkans most often invoked their refusal to be
governed by an Empire whose state religion was Islam and their desire to be
self-governing because they considered the institution of the millet (an autonomous
confessional community) to be historically outdated. For the moment,
let us note that the type of state formed in southeastern Europe was directly
imported from the West, which is particularly true for Greece and Serbia whose
state models were inspired by France. The Serbian and Greek national leaders
imposed the Jacobin state model upon these ethnically heterogeneous
collectives.
The domination of the Ottoman Empire over the Balkans was thus contested
by diverse national uprisings at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since
the Ottoman Empire had not been represented at the Congress of Vienna, the
43 The emergence of the nation-state
principles drawn from it, that allowed other European empires to arm themselves
in advance against nationalist uprisings, did not apply to the Empire,
notably the legitimacy of hereditary monarchs. Moreover, the Ottoman Empire
had also been distanced from the Holy Alliance, created on 26 September 1815
on the initiative of Tsar Alexander I. The Holy Alliance brought together the
Empires of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. The monarchies of the three empires
were joined together through the precepts of the Holy Scriptures and promised
mutual solidarity in order to eradicate all nationalist uprisings. If, from the
beginning, the Holy Alliance aimed for an “embryonic system of European
organization” destined to keep France (still considered the state most likely
to upset the European balance of power) in check, it was also a pact among
the representatives of Christianity – Catholic emperor, Orthodox tsar, and
Lutheran king – aimed at curbing the Muslim Ottoman Empire.15
France
later joined the Holy Alliance in 1818, leaving the Ottoman Empire relatively
isolated. The exclusion of the Ottoman Empire from the Holy Alliance explains
in part why the Alliance’s members did not intervene in the Greek insurrection
of 1829–30, which resulted in the creation of the first nation-state in the
Balkans – Greece.16
During the Congress of Vienna, Tsar Alexander I had
even encouraged the Greek national movement which at the time was trying to
gain independence from the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, at the time of
the Hungarian insurrection in 1848, which followed the same objectives as the
Greek insurrection of 1829–30, the ideological and political solidarity of the
Russian and Austrian Empires was shown. As I have emphasized, the Russian
Empire aided Austria in putting down the Hungarian revolution whose credo
was the self-determination of its people and national sovereignty.
The ideological solidarity of the founding members of the Holy Alliance,
based upon a respect for the principle of the legitimacy of the hereditary right of
monarchs, did not, however, have to encroach upon another pillar upon which
the stability of the international system of the Congress of Vienna rested,
specifically “the balance of power,” the only true guarantee, in the eyes of
Metternich, for avoiding a new international disorder similar to the one created
by Napoleon I. It was in the name of this principle that England opposed the
expulsion of the Ottoman Empire from Europe after Greek independence,
fearing that Russia and Austria would profit from it by splitting the Balkans
and controlling its straits (a Russian ambition). As a maritime power, England
considered Russian control of the straits an unacceptable geopolitical alteration
encroaching upon its commercial interests as well as its maritime capacities.
This aside, the principle of nationality in southeastern Europe also benefited
from the favorable opinion of Napoleon III who, as we know, gave considerable
support to the Italian unification movement. As René Girault explains, due to
his cosmopolitan education and his past as a conspirator, Napoleon III understood
well the “revolutionary” force of the principle of nationality and the
usefulness of nationalist sentiment in altering the European order established
at the Congress of Vienna, which remained one of his principal objectives.
44 Rene´o Lukic
Nevertheless, it is necessary to explain the nuances of Napoleon III’s role in
emancipating nationalities in the Balkans since the emperor paid much less
attention to Slavic zones than to the Latin and Arabic ones with regard to this
question. This is most likely because the latter two corresponded much more to
Mediterranean politics, which Napoleon III sought to keep in the French sphere
of influence.17
The Serbian revolt of 1804 and the conquest of Belgrade in 1806
mark the beginning of the construction of the Serbian nation-state and the
re-examination of the presence of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Peninsula.
The insurrection against Ottoman power had both a national and a religious
significance. The Serbian Orthodox Church formed the center of resistance to
the Ottoman Empire through its preaching of pan-Serbism, Orthodoxy, and
pan-Slavism. In 1832, Serbia obtained complete independence for its church;
from that point on the Metropolitan was elected by the Serbian clergy rather
than chosen by the patriarch of Constantinople. From one insurrection to
another, Serbian independence was recognized in 1878 at the Congress of
Berlin.18
Little Montenegro, a mountainous country bordering the Adriatic
Sea, itself managed to resist Ottoman dominion throughout the nineteenth
century.19
Other people of southeastern Europe (Romanians, Bulgarians) followed
the Serbs’ lead in the nineteenth century so that they themselves could
become nation-states. Moreover, Greece had regained its independence after
1830 and its territory continued to grow throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries until its modern state was formed in 1947. As for
Romania, the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were able to obtain
their autonomy in 1858; in 1862 they united under a single state to form
Romania, whose independence was also recognized at the Congress of Berlin.
Also, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Bulgaria was defined as a vassal
principality of the Ottoman Empire. At the same meeting, a semi-autonomous
Eastern Rumelia was created. The two territories united in 1885, and in 1908
Bulgaria rid itself of the last symbolic links attaching it to the Ottoman Empire,
thus obtaining its complete independence. In the following years, during the
first war in the Balkans in 1912, Bulgaria was again able to expand its territory at
the expense of the Ottoman Empire.
During the same period, Macedonian attempts to create their own nationstate
were not achieving success, despite their neighbors’ victories. In 1903, the
“St. Elie” people’s insurrection against the Ottomans was violently suppressed,
and following this Macedonia became a battleground of Serbia, Bulgaria, and
Greece which fought to annex its territories. The Balkan regional powers’
competition to conquer Macedonia’s territory culminated during the Second
Balkan War in 1913. Macedonia had to await the creation of communist
Yugoslavia, after the Second World War, in order to acquire its own state and
for Macedonians to be recognized as a nation in the Yugoslav Federation.
The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 signified the end of Ottoman domination in the
peninsula, the Ottomans having been weakened by the Congress of Berlin in
1878 and through the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary
45 The emergence of the nation-state
in 1908. After the end of the First Balkan War in 1912, another nation-state
appeared in the region: Albania. The eviction of the Ottoman Empire from the
Balkans in 1913, consequently, coincided with the end of the first phase of
nation-state formation in the Balkans, which had begun with Greek
independence. Further north, toward the end of the First World War and the
establishment of the Versailles System, the other empires (Russian, German,
and Austro-Hungarian) were able to maintain their rule over the people of
East-Central Europe (table 3.1).
The Versailles State System and the Bolshevik Revolution
The people under the rule of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German
Empires in East-Central Europe had to await the end of the First World War in
order to become nation-states and multinational states. The fall of the AustroHungarian
monarchy led to the creation of the Hungarian and Austrian
nation-states. Furthermore, the Peace Conference gave birth to a multinational
state – the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes founded in 1918 (renamed
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929). Ruled by the Serbian Karađorđević
Dynasty, the Kingdom brought together Serbia (which had acquired Kosovo
and part of Macedonian territory in 1912–13) and Montenegro as well as
Slovenia and Croatia which, up until that point, had been part of the AustroHungarian
Empire. Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had been militarily occupied
by Austria-Hungary since 1878, before being formally annexed to it in 1908,
was also integrated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The same
went for Vojvodina in 1918, a province of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
The political project of uniting the South Slavs, that had been developed
principally in Croatian literary and intellectual circles in the nineteenth
century, was taking form under the Serbian state.
Table 3.1 The age of empires: constitution of nation-states, multinational states, and empires in
Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, 1800–1918
Nation-state
Multinational
states Empire
1800–1918: Age of
empires
6 0 6
Greece (1830) Russian
Romania (1856) German
Serbia (1878) Ottoman
Bulgaria (1878 and
1908)
Austro-
Hungarian
Montenegro (1878) French
Albania (1912) British
46 Rene´o Lukic
However, the Croatian, Slovenian, and Serbian union quickly proved to be
difficult. Whereas Croats and Slovenes wanted a union based upon the equality
of the Kingdom’s people, Serbs ran the state in a manner that favored their
interests because they formed the dominant nation. The Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes was thus led by the Karađorđević Dynasty as a unitary
Serbian nation-state, and not as a multinational state. Serbs ignored, or did not
want to recognize that, by annexing new territories during the creation of the
Kingdom, they had also annexed the peoples who had developed their own
national ideologies and their own corresponding political projects since the
nineteenth century. This evolution was already in the works well before the
unification of South Slavs occurred. Thus, Croats having experienced a certain
form of autonomy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire since the sixteenth century,
quickly opposed the Serbian centralized state administration. The refusal of this
autonomy in the new Kingdom constituted an incommensurable affront.
Relations between Serbs and Croats in the Kingdom reached the point of no
return in 1928 after the assassination by Serbian Deputy Puniša Račić who
opened fire on Croatian deputies in the National Parliament (Skupština), in the
capital of the Kingdom of Belgrade. Stjepan Radić, the most prominent
Croatian politician at the time, was mortally wounded and later died. Even
though Croats began to dream again of an independent Croatian nation-state20
after Radić’s assassination, King Alexander’s proclamation of a royal dictatorship
in January 1929 prolonged the forced marriage between Serbs and Croats
for several years thereafter. Yet this was itself finished in a bloodbath after the
creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941.
Another multinational state, Czechoslovakia, formed by the provinces of
Bohemia–Moravia, Slovakia, and Ruthenia, also came into existence through
the Versailles System. Much as in Yugoslavia, where the royal government was
dominated by Serbs, Czechs reigned over Czechoslovakia’s political destiny as
the most numerous nation, and imposed their own centralizing policy in the
new state, inciting opposition not only from Slovaks, but also from the national
minorities that made up the country, such as the German and Hungarian
minorities that were concentrated, respectively, in the Sudetenland21
region
and the south of Slovakia. Even though Czechoslovakia was a truly multinational
state, Czech politicians considered it to be a nation-state and governed
Czechoslovakia as a unitary state between 1918 and 1938.
I compare the two multinational states stemming from the Versailles
System – Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – in
order to emphasize that they were governed as unitary states after having been
formed. The two dominant nations, Serbs and Czechs, fiercely resisted the
federalization of their respective states. Czechoslovakia, unlike the Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, responded to pressure from its national communities
(Slovaks, Hungarians, and Sudetenland Germans), who sought its
decentralization between 1918 and 1938 more effectively, since it was a state
with a functioning legal system. In addition, Czechoslovakia was a developed
47 The emergence of the nation-state
country between the two world wars, with a quality of life comparable to that of
West European states. At that time, Czechoslovakia was the fifth most developed
state in Europe, even though its wealth was primarily concentrated in
Bohemia–Moravia, whereas Slovakia remained much poorer. On the other
hand, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was a semi-dictatorship
during the 1920s; the following decade it was transformed into a veritable
dictatorship with fascist characteristics. The democratization of the Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes did not begin until the end of the 1930s.
However, it was too late by that time. The Second World War spread to
Yugoslav territory in 1941. Also, unlike Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom was an
underdeveloped agricultural country, and the poor living conditions only
aggravated national conflicts.
The peace treaties signed between 1919 and 1920, which established the
international Versailles System, had the goal of creating a “Europe of nationalities.”
The fundamental criterion present in the West European states – that
the political community has to coincide with the cultural community and, if
possible, the ethnic community – was introduced at the Peace Conference
(which had the capacity to remodel post-imperial territory in East-Central
Europe). In other words, the idea that each nation should be endowed with
its own state was omnipresent during the Peace Conference. President
Woodrow Wilson outlined his conception of a post-war Europe in his
Fourteen Points addressed to the United States Congress on 8 January 1918.
The architects of the Versailles System – David Lloyd George, Georges
Clemenceau, and Wilson – all accepted that the borders of the newly created
states should coincide with concentrations of national groups. Points X, XI, and
XIII advocated the “autonomous development” of the peoples of AustriaHungary,
the Balkans (Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro), and Poland. In
situations where “autonomous development” was impossible to apply, he
recommended special status for minorities (the League of Nations). Granting
city-state status to Gdańsk and Rijeka responded to the same need. However,
the “principle of nationalities” was not applied to the states that had lost the
war. For example, a third of the Hungarian population found itself in three
different states (Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats,
and Slovenes) after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. The partiality and the
imperfection of the application of the “principle of nationalities” represented
one of the great faults of the Versailles System. The poor application of the
“principle of nationalities” which was associated with the right of peoples to
govern themselves, in the spirit of President Wilson, does not, however, render
it invalid. This is why the people that were not able to benefit from it in 1919–20
again referred to it in 1989–90.
In this way, the Versailles System gave birth to numerous multinational
states and nation-states at the expense of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian,
Russian, and German Empires. Nevertheless, the multinational states created
on this occasion, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, quickly met with difficulties
48 Rene´o Lukic
due to their inability to manage the national conflicts that existed within them.
In fact, majority rule, a fundamental principle of a nation-state under the rule of
law, was only perceived as legitimate by the dominant nations, Serbs and
Czechs, in these multinational states. This was the source of the dominant
nation’s politicians’ desire to create the “Czechoslovak” and “Yugoslav” nations
(an attempt which was primarily seen in Yugoslavia after 1929 and symbolically
represented by the changing of the Kingdom’s name).
The “principle of nationalities” that was introduced at the Peace Conference
in 1919 allowed for the creation of numerous nation-states and multinational
states in Central Europe and the Balkans during the interval between the two
world wars, to the detriment of the empires that had been defeated during the
First World War. By destroying the Russian Empire, the Bolshevik Revolution
also provoked the emergence of a number of nation-states in Eastern Europe,
but these were almost all annexed to the Soviet Union by 1922. The political
map of Central Europe and the Balkans following from the Versailles System
was, however, quickly threatened by the emergence of the Nazi movement in
Germany and fascism in Italy (table 3.2).
The “New Order”: the Nazi System
Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, carried by widespread protests
within the German population over the Treaty of Versailles, and ushering in
the ascendancy of the Third Reich over its ruins. The establishment of the Nazi
System in Europe initially aimed at getting rid of the multinational states which
were, according to Nazi ideologists, without ethnic foundation (völkisch), thus
Table 3.2 Political entities constituting the Versailles Systema
1918–38
Nation-state Multinational states Empire
1918–38: Versailles
System
8 2 2
Bulgaria (1908)
Greece (1830)
Romania (1856)
Albania (1912)
Austria (1918)
Germany (1918)
Hungary (1918)
Turkey (1923)
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats
and Slovenes (1918)
Czechoslovakia (1918)
French
British
Note:
a
The United States, by refusing to ratify the Versailles Treaty and join the League of
Nations after the First World War, essentially remained outside the international system.
49 The emergence of the nation-state
“against nature.” From this same logic derived the Third Reich’s desire to
acquire Lebensraum (living space) in the east for the “Aryan race.” Not forgetting
geopolitical considerations, the Nazi New Order sought to replace the
“principle of nationalities” as the foundation of the modern state with that of
“racial hierarchy.” “Inferior races,” like Slavs, could have their state removed
from them to allow for the expansion of superior races, particularly the “Aryan
race.”
Starting from 1938, the Nazi System, already consolidated in Germany,
began its expansion into Europe by following this racist ideology and another
principle dear to Hitler, the reunification of “all Germans into the same state”
(the Third Reich), changing the state borders that followed from the Versailles
System. It was in the name of this principle that the Nazi regime sought to
discredit and defeat Versailles and that Alsace–Lorraine and Austria were
annexed. By March 1938, the Anschluss was achieved. One of the first new
nation-states, Austria, disappeared from the map of Central Europe through its
incorporation into the growing Nazi Empire. The same went for the
Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, where approximately 3 million
Germans were living. The Sudetenland territories were annexed to the Reich
after the Munich Conference on 29 and 30 September 1938; six months later,
on 15 March 1939, what was left of Czechoslovakia was dismembered when
German troops entered the country; the creation of the Protectorate of
Bohemia–Moravia and an “independent” Slovakia was announced and a
puppet government under Nazi control, while formally independent, in fact,
directed this new national state. Next, the German Reich set its sight on Poland
which it invaded in September 1939, and in doing so started the Second World
War. Already, in August 1939, the Non-Aggression Pact signed between
Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR had sealed the fate of the Baltic states
and Poland; the latter was further divided between the two powers after its
military defeat against Germany. Two years later, German forces invaded and
carved up of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, creating the “Independent State of
Croatia” without a doubt controlled more by the Third Reich than Slovakia was.
In the grand scheme, Nazi domination in the Balkans marked, in a way, the
return of an empire to the peninsula. Serbia was directly occupied by Germany,
Slovenia partially annexed, and the rest of its territory occupied by Italy.
Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria adhered to the Tripartite Pact and thus
became satellites of Nazi Germany (table 3.3).
The Nazi System, even though it lasted only for a short period of time,
nevertheless had a crucial impact on the formation of the nation-state in
East-Central Europe and the Balkans. Nation-states with exclusively ethnic
foundations were created in Croatia and Slovakia. Even if they corresponded
to the Croatian and Slovak peoples’ desire for independence – this does not
signify at all that Croats and Slovaks gave majority support to the racist policies
practised there – the states were however condemned to disappear after the
defeat of Nazi Germany, their ally and protector.
50 Rene´o Lukic
Analysis of the Nazi system, particularly the annexation of the Sudetenland
by the Reich, is particularly meaningful in understanding the policy of
Milošević’s regime (1991–2000) leading to the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
The events that led to the Reich’s annexation of Sudetenland, provoked by
Hitler’s goal of bringing “all Germans into the same state,” form a surprising
historical analogy with the policies carried out in Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina
by Slobodan Milošević and Serbian politicians, starting at the
end of the 1980s, with the goal of uniting “all Serbs into a single state.”
In fact, the strategies used by Milošević and Serbian politicians to unite Serbs
in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina into a “Greater Serbia” call to mind, in
several ways, the means employed by Nazis to integrate Sudetenland Germans
into the Reich. During the 1930s, Konrad Henlein, the political leader of the
Sudetenland Germans, supported the policy of the Nazis aiming to carve up
Czechoslovakia. Hitler knew how to exploit the dissatisfaction in this community
and used Henlein and his entourage to stir up revolts against the Prague
government. The policy of dismembering Czechoslovakia was executed by Nazi
Germany in close connection with Sudetenland German leaders. Milošević
used the same strategy in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina where he could
count on the activism of the Serbian community leaders of these republics.
Milošević and his acolytes succeeded in digging up local counterparts of
Henlein in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. These local Serbian leaders,
Milan Babić and Radovan Karadžić, applied the policies decided upon by
politicians in Belgrade, in their respective republics.
The strategies used by Nazis in Sudetenland and later by Serbian leaders in
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina gave comparable results. The Sudetenland
region was incorporated into the Reich in 1938–9, in the same way that the
pseudo-state consisting of Serbs in Croatia (Krajina) was de facto annexed to
Serbia between 1991 and 1995. The Serbian republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina
(Republika Srpska), during the same time, was itself almost transformed into a
province of Serbia and even today they share very close relations. The political
adventure of the Sudetenland Germans and the Krajina Serbs both ended in a
Table 3.3 Nation-states, multinational states, and empires in Central and Eastern Europe and the
Balkans under the Nazi System, 1933–45
Nation-state Multinational states Empire
1933–45: Nazi System 5 0 3
Hungary Third Reich
Bulgaria Italy
Romania USSR
Independent State
of Croatia (1941)
Slovakia (1939)
51 The emergence of the nation-state
similar way. After the Second World War, during 1945 and 1947, between 2.5
and 3 million Germans were expelled from the Sudetenland. In the summer of
1995 between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs fled Croatia following the military
defeat of their pseudo-state in Krajina against the Croatian Army. Nazi
Germany and Milošević’s Serbia both sought to create ethnically pure states
whose borders would correspond to the new power relations between them and
their neighbours.
The Yalta State System
The Yalta System began with two contradictory diplomatic initiatives in
international politics. The first was the restoration of the independence of
states in East-Central Europe (though quickly incorporated into the Soviet
sphere of influence). The second was the adoption of the Charter of the UN,
which for the first time recognized the universal right of a people to selfdetermination.
The Charter of the UN elevated what had simply been a
political principle promised by President Wilson during the Peace
Conference of 1919 to a norm of international law, which was in time raised
to that of jus cogens. This defining leap had immense consequences on
nation-state formation; first, for the colonies in the Third World and,
following this, after 1989, for the states of East-Central Europe, the Soviet
Union included.
After the defeat of the Third Reich and the end of the Second World War,
several nation-states and multinational states, which had been wiped from the
political map in East-Central Europe and the Balkans between 1938 and 1945,
reappeared. At the Conferences of Moscow (October 1944), Yalta (February
1945), and Potsdam (July 1945), the new territorial and political reorganization
of Europe was decided upon by the three great powers: the United States, the
USSR, and Great Britain. The nation-states conquered or dominated by Axis
forces during the war quickly regained their independence: Austria (after
having been militarily occupied by Allied forces between 1945 and 1955),
Poland, and Greece. Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, and Romania, allies of
Germany and Italy, had to renounce their territorial gains of the Second
World War after having been liberated by the Allies. On the other hand, the
continuity of their states was not questioned in the passing from one international
system (Nazi New Order) to another (Yalta). Elsewhere, the two multinational
states that had been carved up, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, were
reborn. In Yugoslavia, resistance to Nazi Germany and to the fascist Ustaša
regime of Ante Pavelić came principally from the Yugoslav Communist Party
led by Josip Broz Tito. At the end of the Second World War, after its victory
over Axis forces, the Yugoslav Communist Party proposed a new multinational
arrangement for South Slavs that would this time be based upon a federal
system that would have to ensure the equality of all the nations of communist
Yugoslavia. As for Czechoslovakia, at the end of the war it regained almost all of
52 Rene´o Lukic
its past borders in their entirety, losing only Ruthenia, which was annexed by
the USSR in 1945. The problem of the German minority in the Sudetenland
region was also dealt with in a radical way; this population was brutally expelled
to Germany.22
But the Yalta System established after the Second World War also allowed
the Soviet Empire to exercise its domination over the countries of East-Central
Europe and the Balkans: over Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania,
Bulgaria, and the GDR for forty years. The Soviet Union’s efforts to assert its
dominance in Yugoslavia and Albania failed, however, because of the successful
resistance by Tito and Enver Hoxha, the respective leaders of these two countries.
Even if these states theoretically preserved their independence, they were
all integrated into the Soviet sphere of influence after national front governments
created between 1944 and 1949 were dissolved.
In 1968, Moscow formulated the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” or doctrine of limited
sovereignty, which openly violated a people’s right to self-determination, in
the same way that the colonial powers had refused this right to the people they
dominated. The doctrine was illegitimate because it directly infringed on
Art. 1, para. 2, of the UN Charter containing the right to self-determination.23
The irony is that the USSR and Yugoslavia had both insisted that the principle
of the self-determination of peoples be included in the UN Charter. However,
the reasons for the pressure exercised by the USSR and Yugoslavia were
purely ideological. They hoped that they would favor communist-inspired
revolutions in the Third World and that the resulting modification of the
balance of power would benefit the communist camp to the detriment of the
colonial powers.
From the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922 to the consolidation of
communist regimes in Yugoslavia in 1945, and Czechoslovakia in 1948, the
peoples constituting these three federations (Czechoslovakia was a federal state
after 1968) were never able to exercise their right to self-determination. Inside
the communist federations, this right was flouted by the communist parties in
power, which never authorized free expression through popular consultations
(referenda), but rather exercised a constant control over their constituent
peoples.
However, the populations of Croatia, Slovakia, the republics of the Soviet
Union, and Yugoslavia definitely constituted peoples in the sense of the UN
Charter. It was only through the first free elections in 1989–90 that these
peoples began to exercise their right to self-determination. These free elections
allowed them to elect their own governments. In the same way, the
referenda on independence gave these peoples the choice to establish nationstates,
to maintain their federations, or to create another type of state (such as
the now-defunct multinational federation of Serbia and Montenegro). The
peoples of each of these three communist federations possessed territories
(republics) and had a political power in place, which qualified them to create
sovereign and independent states, enter freely into union with an independent
53 The emergence of the nation-state
state, or adopt another political status that they would have chosen of their
own free will.24
The form that decolonization took in the Soviet Union and in its external
empire (the Warsaw Pact) had three dimensions. The first dimension aimed for
the Soviet Union to restore the political sovereignty of the states that it had
dominated – as such, the end of the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” This dimension’s
immediate result with regard to decolonization was that the satellite states,
members of the Warsaw Pact, regained the freedom to act independently on the
international stage. The second aspect of decolonization concerned the transferal
of political sovereignty from the center to the republics that had formed
the Soviet Union.25
The third dimension concerned restoring the power confiscated
from the peoples by the respective communist parties during the time
of free elections. With regards to this last point, it was the Soviet Union that
guaranteed perennial power to the party-states. This capacity to support the
party-states globally (from Vietnam to Cuba) gave the USSR the characteristic
of an empire (table 3.4).
As the USSR controlled its sphere of influence militarily and with an iron
fist in East-Central Europe and the Balkans, the question of the states’
territorial unity was virtually ignored during the Yalta System. The end of
the Cold War and national revolts both inside the Soviet Union and on the
periphery of its empire (Warsaw Pact) had to occur before a new wave of
nation-states came into being (after the decolonization of the Soviet Empire).
The end of the Cold War in 1989–90 signified a profound alteration of the
balance of power in East–West relations, to the West’s advantage. The dissolution
of the bipolar international system in Europe was the most important
event in international politics, opening the way for the creation of new states
in East-Central Europe.
Table 3.4 Nation-states, multinational states, and empires in Central and Eastern Europe and
the Balkans under the Yalta System, 1945–89
Nation-State Multinational States Empire
1945–89: Yalta System 9 2 1
Austria (1955) Yugoslavia (SFRY) (1945) USSR
Albania (1945) Czechoslovakia (1945)
GDR (1949)
FGR (1949)
Hungary
Bulgaria
Romania
Greece (1945)
Poland (1945)
54 Rene´o Lukic
The end of the communist regimes and the proliferation
of new nation-states
This new wave touched the Balkans first. The breakup of communist
Yugoslavia was consummated in June 1991, even if it had begun in 1987.
During its first wave, it gave birth to three nation-states: Slovenia, Croatia,
and the Republic of Macedonia.26
During the same process, two multinational
states were also created: the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY)27
and
Bosnia-Herzegovina (formed by three constituent nations: Bosniaks, Serbs,
and Croats).
In Central Europe, Czechoslovakia sought at first to remain a federal state. The
national parliament voted to reaffirm the federal character of Czechoslovakia in
1990. Shortly thereafter, Czechoslovakia disappeared completely, giving rise to
two new states: the Czech Republic and Republic of Slovakia. It was during the
negotiations held in June and August 1992, that the Czech Prime Minister,
Václav Klaus, and the Slovak Prime Minister, Vladimír Mečiar, decided to put
an end to the Czechoslovak Federation. The “Velvet Divorce” between the two
republics became effective on 1 January 1993.
Likewise, in East-Central Europe, the USSR also broke apart into a multitude
of multinational states and nation-states, fifteen in total, at the end of 1991. In
resigning from his post on 25 December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev effectively
signed the death warrant of the Soviet Union, which had found itself in a
terminal phase since the conservatives’ putsch in August. From the ashes of
the USSR emerged, of course, the Russian Federation, a multinational state, but
also, in the European part of the former Soviet Union, the nation-states of
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldavia, and Ukraine. At the same
time, the three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, also regained the
independence that they had lost at the signing of the Nazi–Soviet Pact in 1939,
and which had been followed by Soviet occupation in 1940. Other nation-states
were also created in the same context in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (table 3.5).
The process of state formation in East-Central Europe and the Balkans after
almost two centuries seems to be over. In the Balkans, the FRY, which since
February 2003 had been the Union of Serbia–Montenegro, broke up in 2006.
Two states emerged: Serbia and Montenegro. Kosovo, formerly an autonomous
province of the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), inhabited
primarily by Albanians, became an independent state on 17 February 2008.
During the last decade of the twentieth century in the Balkans, the policies
of the Clinton administration allowed the creation – and, above all, the preservation
– of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Through the 1994 Washington Accords, which
created the Croato-Muslim Federation, the United States was able to assure the
survival of the multinational state, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The preservation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina was sealed through the Dayton Accords and the Paris
Treaty of November and December 1995, where the United States contributed
55 The emergence of the nation-state
more than anybody else. By assuring the survival of Bosnia-Herzegovina within
its present borders, the Dayton Conference and the Accords that came out of it,
played a role similar to the Congress of Berlin in the international system of the
post-Cold War era. In fact, the great powers (the United States, the EU), by
seeking to put an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina while at the same time
trying to guarantee the survival of this multinational state, were able to determine
rules for the configuration of Yugoslav territory for years to come. The essential
rule that came out of the Dayton Accords was that the international community
Table 3.5 Nation-states, multinational states, and empires in Central and Eastern Europe and
the Balkans after the Yalta System, 1989–2008
Nation-state Multinational states Empire
1989–2008:
Post-Yalta
25 2 0
Albania (1945)
Romania
Hungary
Bulgaria
Russian Federation
(1991–2)
Bosnia-Herzegovina
(1992)
Greece
Austria
Poland
Unified Germany (1990)
Slovenia (1991)
Croatia (1991)
Macedonia (1991)
Czech Republic (1993)
Slovakia (1993)
Serbia (2006)
Montenegro (2006)
Kosovo (2008)
Nine successor states in the
European part of the USSR
(1991–92)
Georgia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Ukraine
Belarus
Moldavia
56 Rene´o Lukic
would not accept any forceful border changes in the Balkans. Consequently, the
ideas of a “Greater Serbia,” a “Greater Croatia,” and a “Greater Albania,” which
could threaten the territorial integrity of certain states in the region, particularly
Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Macedonia, were political projects
frowned upon by the international community.
During the twentieth century, the United States played a fundamental role in
this part of Europe, not limited to resolving the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In
1999, Kosovo was seized from the hands of the FRY by the international
community and transformed into a protectorate under the patronage of the
UN Security Council after the decisive intervention of NATO. In 2001, the
United States and its European allies again aided the Balkans by saving the
Macedonian state from Albanian attempts to partition the country.
The influence of the EC and the EU on state formation
in East-Central Europe after 1989
At the beginning of the breakup of states in East-Central Europe, the EC took
an active part in diplomatic negotiations aiming to contain the effects of a
political crisis occurring right at its front door. In this way, the “European
concert” reappeared in European international politics in the twentieth century
as an international organization whose principal mission was not to juggle
political crises – as in the nineteenth century after the Congress of Vienna – but
to promote economic integration into Western Europe. This structural limit of
the EC considerably diminished its diplomatic effectiveness and its capacity to
control the emergence of new states in East-Central Europe.
At first, the EC tried to deter Yugoslav and Czechoslovak leaders from
dissolving their respective states and prevent them from creating new states
in East-Central Europe. Having failed in its attempt to stop the breakups
from happening, the EC next sought to contain the destabilizing effects of
the disintegration of the three post-communist federations. The most visible
aspect of the EC’s activities in 1990–1 was the adoption of rules outlining
the behavior that successor states would have to adhere to if they wanted
to be diplomatically recognized by the EC. The principal document with
which the EC desired to influence the constitutions of the new states was
called “Declaration on the Guidelines on the Recognition of New States
in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union.”28
In this declaration, dated
16 December 1991, the EC and its member states committed themselves to
recognizing “subject to the normal standards of international practice and
the political realities in each case, those new States which, following the
historic changes in the region, have constituted themselves on a democratic
basis, have accepted the appropriate international obligations and have
committed themselves in good faith to a peaceful process and to negotiations.”
The obligations defined by the EC with regards to recognition were
the following:
57 The emergence of the nation-state
[R]espect for the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the
commitments subscribed to in the Final Act of Helsinki and in the Charter of
Paris, especially with regard to the rule of law, democracy and human rights;
guarantees for the rights of ethnic and national groups and minorities in accordance
with the commitments subscribed to in the framework of the CSCE; respect
for the inviolability of all frontiers which can only be changed by peaceful means
and by common agreement; acceptance of all relevant commitments with regard
to disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation as well as to security and regional
stability; commitment to settle by agreement … all questions concerning State
succession and regional disputes.29
After the EC adopted the “Guidelines,” it began to consider diplomatic
recognition of the Yugoslav republics which had declared their independence.
An evolution in this direction had already begun through the creation of the
Badinter Commission (after the name of the French judge who presided over it)
in August 1991, an organization parallel to the Peace Conference presided over
by former Foreign Secretary Lord Peter Carrington, whose role was to provide
legal opinions allowing for a political solution to the Yugoslav conflicts. The
Badinter Commission, through its stated opinions, established the rules that
could have allowed all those involved to arrive at an understanding if they had
been respected by all the Yugoslav republics. At first, the Commission ruled that
Yugoslavia had already initiated its dissolution. But above all, it stated that
republic’s borders were inviolable and that only the republics could benefit
from the right to self-determination. The Commission’s opinion here refuted
Serbia’s allegations, notably that the borders between republics were only
“administrative” and could be changed at will to bring all Serbs living outside
Serbia’s borders together into the same state. After this reversal, Serbia refused
to accept the rulings of the Badinter Commission, including all those that Serbia
itself had submitted to the Commission. The work of the Badinter Commission
paved the way to the EC’s diplomatic recognition of Croatia and Slovenia on
15 January 1992.
The EU returned as a peacemaker in the region only after NATO’s military
campaign in Kosovo in 1999. After the transformation of Kosovo into an
international protectorate governed by the UN, the EU dissuaded Montenegro
from separating from Serbia to become an independent state, which would have
put an end to the FRY. In 2006, however, Montenegro gained its independence
and the EU, which supervised the referendum, had to accept the verdict of
Montenegrins, who voted in favor of becoming a completely sovereign state.
Soon after, the EU signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA)
with Montenegro in 2007, the first step toward full membership in the EU.
After the independence of Montenegro, the EU and the United States coordinated
their policies on recognition toward Kosovo. Thus, Kosovo proclaimed its
independence on 17 February 2008. In 1991, the EC was hostile to the creation of
new states in East-Central Europe and this attitude only reluctantly changed after
Montenegro’s independence. However, there is no incompatibility between
58 Rene´o Lukic
enlarging the EU and the emergence of new states, provided that human
and collective rights are respected (as occurred during the division of
Czechoslovakia). Before leaving his position in January 2003, President Havel
declared in his last speech of the New Year that “the separation [of the Czech
Republic and Slovakia] was probably a good thing despite the bitter aftertaste left
over due to the absence of a referendum.”30
The Czech Republic’s example
accurately shows that there is no incompatibility between a civilized divorce
and joining the EU.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have attempted to demonstrate the existence of a long-lasting
tendency towards the creation of nation-states in East-Central Europe and the
Balkans. It suffices to note that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no
nation-states existed in East-Central Europe, whereas today there are more
than twenty. This political process of “longue durée,” stretching out over
approximately three centuries, seemed to come to an end after Kosovo became,
in 2008, an independent state. For the time being there is no new candidate in
East-Central Europe and the Balkans to claim a status of independent state.
Notes
1. The multinational state is characterized by the existence of two or more nations
whose territories are demarcated by internal borders. From a legal standpoint, the
multinational state is subject to international law, but not its constituent parts (federal
units or provinces).
2. Even if Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were dismantled during the Second World
War (between 1939 and 1945 for the former, and between 1941 and 1945 for the
latter), the Allies (the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) never
recognized their disappearance. As such, these governments continued to treat them
in this manner in London during the war.
3. The “longue durée” was associated with the social history of the French school:
“L’école des Annals.”
4. François Furet, L’atelier de l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), p. 12.
5. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, L’Europe: Histoire de ses peuples (Paris: Perrin, 1993), p. 382.
6. In this study, the poly-semantic concept of nationalism assumes a triple meaning. It
represents a political ideology, a social movement, and a primordial identity, the latter
as identified by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz.
7. Duroselle, L’Europe, p. 383.
8. Even though the Peace Conference was organized in Paris, beginning in January 1919,
in this chapter I have opted for the name “Versailles System” in the interest of
simplifying the text. Other treaties were also signed close to the Peace Conference:
the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye with Austria on 10 September 1919, the Treaty
of Neuilly with Bulgaria on 27 November 1919, and the Treaty of Trianon with
Hungary on 4 June 1920.
59 The emergence of the nation-state
9. “Declaration on the Guidelines on the Recognition of New States in Eastern
Europe and in the Soviet Union,” can be consulted in International Legal
Materials, Vol. XXXI, no. 6 (November 1992), pp. 1486–7.
10. Jean-Claude Caren and Michel Vernus, L’Europe au XIXe
siècle: Des nations aux
nationalismes 1815–1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1996), p. 23.
11. On the role of the European concert and its capacity to manage the continental
crises, see Georges Henri-Soutou, “Le Concert européen, de Vienne à Locarno,”
in Georges-Henri Soutou and Jean Bérenger (eds.), L’ordre européen du XVIe
au
XIXe
siècle (Paris: Presses de l’université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1998), pp. 117–36.
12. According to this principle, “people with the same language, culture, and tradition
have the right to political independence if they so desire, provided they occupy a
territory that is clearly defined.” Henry Bogdan, Histoire des pays de l’Est (Paris:
Perrin, 1991), p. 124.
13. The nation-state that I refer to here does not correspond to the “French” model. In
France, the state was actually created towards the end of the Middle Ages, whereas
the French nation appeared much later with the revolution. In this context, the
nation includes all those living inside the borders of the state, such that citizenship
and nationality coincide. In this specific case, as indicated by Paul Garde, “The
nation is based upon the pre-existing borders of the state and every citizen of the
state is ipso facto a member of the nation … [The] relation between citizenship and
nationality is thus innate and given by definition, such that citizens [of national
states of the “French” type] have trouble understanding the distinction between
these notions. Minorities did not as such exist since every citizen of the state was
a member of the nation.” On the other hand, in Central and Eastern Europe and in
the Balkans, the “German” model of the nation was found; that is to say that the
example of Germany in forming nations in these European regions preceded the
creation of modern states. This context that resulted in the national state does not
always coincide with what is understood by nation; as such members of nations
could live outside the borders of the national state which itself encompassed national
minorities. In the national states of the “German” type, the concepts of citizenship
and nationality were thus distinct, nationality being “a quality inherent in the
individual and independent of political vicissitudes [such as citizenship], including
language, religion and skin colour, etc.” Paul Garde, “National State and
Multinational State,” in Marie-Françoise Allain et al., L’ex-Yougoslavie en Europe:
De la faillite des démocraties au processus de paix (Paris and Montreal: L’Harmattan,
1997), pp. 250–1. Here, I understand “nation-state” to be a state that had an
identifiable ethnic majority. This does not mean at all that these states are
homogenous with regards to their ethnic or national composition, with the
exception of Iceland and Portugal. Quite the opposite, the European nation-state
is characterized by the presence of national minorities. For example, Latvia is a
nation-state even though it possesses a Slavic minority (Russian, Belarusian, and
Ukrainian) that totals 42% of the state’s population. I make a distinction between
nation-state and national state. The national state, or nation-state that I consider a
subset of nation-states, is an ethnic state that does not recognize, either
constitutionally or symbolically, the presence of the Other on its “national” territory.
The national state is the product of ethnic nationalism in its racist variant. The
independent state of Croatia, formed during the Second World War between 1941
60 Rene´o Lukic
and 1945, and Slovakia, which existed between 1939 and 1945, can be considered to
be national states.
14. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Tout empire périra (Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), p. 306.
15. Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, L’Europe de 1815 à nos jours, 7th edn. (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1993), p. 105.
16. Jean-Charles Asselain et al., Précis d’histoire européenne, 19e
-20e
siècle (Paris:
Armand Colin, 2000), p. 37.
17. René Girault, Peuples et nations d’Europe au XIXe
siècle (Paris: Hachette supérieur,
1996), pp. 152–3.
18. In the first half of the nineteenth century Russia tried to increase its influence in the
Balkans to the detriment of the Ottoman Empire. Austria-Hungary and England
attentively watched over its actions in the region. In 1875, two revolts broke out in
the territory of the Ottoman Empire, one in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the other in
Bulgaria. The Turks severely crushed both these revolts, but they were quickly
followed by uprisings in Montenegro and Serbia beginning in July 1876. Soon after,
Russia entered into the game and declared war with the Ottoman Empire on
24 April 1877. Russia left this war victorious and signed the Treaty of San Stefano
with the Ottoman Empire on 3 March 1878, which foresaw, amongst other things,
the creation of a Greater Bulgaria obviously under Russian influence. AustriaHungary
and England worried about Russia’s interference in the Balkans. AustriaHungary
demanded a revision of the Treaty of San Stefano and claimed that it was
ready to go to war with Russia to obtain it. Russia, whose armed forces and finances
were exhausted by the war, ceded, and the Congress of Berlin met from 15 June to 15
July 1878, to redefine the Balkan map. Greater Bulgaria was dismembered, AustriaHungary
obtained the right to occupy Bosnia-Herzegovina, and other states such as
Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania gained their independence. See ibid., pp. 140–3;
Bogdan, Histoire des pays de l’Est, pp. 199–202.
19. Between 1878 (Congress of Berlin) and 1918, Montenegro was recognized as an
independent country by the international community. Petar Petrović Njegoš
(1813–51), poet and Prince of Montenegro, released a book in 1847 entitled
Gorski vjenac (Garland of the Mountains) which, due to its anti-Ottoman and
anti-Islamic opinions, became the veritable Bible of Slav (Orthodox) nationalists
during the nineteenth and twenteenth centuries in their fight against the Ottoman
Empire until its expulsion from southeastern Europe.
20. See Renéo Lukic and Allen Lynch, Europe from the Balkans to the Urals: The
Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), principally chapter 4, “Constants in the Yugoslav Polity,
1918–54,” pp. 57–78.
21. According to the census of 1921, Sudetenland Germans numbered 3,124,000 and
counted for 22% of Czechoslovakia’s population. With the disintegration of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Sudetenland Germans, after being incorporated into
Czechoslovakia, passed from the status of an imperial nation to a simple national
minority, which is why they initially rejected a Czechoslovakian state dominated by
Slavs.
22. During the war, the exiled Czechoslovak government often made reference to a
forced expulsion of Sudetenland Germans as necessary to deal with the problem that
this national minority was raising. It used the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 as support,
61 The emergence of the nation-state
which allowed the transferal of Greek and Turkish populations. The Allies
approved this solution, so much so that during the Potsdam Conference in 1945 they
sanctioned this population transferral as long as it was “legitímate and appropriate.”
The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, as well as Hungarians, began
towards the end of the war following the Czechoslovakian government’s decrees
(”the Beneš Decrees”). In the fall of 1947, the quasi-totality of Sudetenland Germans
had been transferred to Germany (around 3 million people). It has been estimated
that between 20,000 and 30,000 Germans perished due to their expulsion from
Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, around 200,000 Germans remained in
Czechoslovakia and integrated themselves into Czech society. See Norman M.
Nairmark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 117–20.
23. Art. 1, para. 2 of the UN Charter defines one of the goals of the organization as:
“to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of
equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate
measures to strengthen universal peace.” Another reference to self-determination is
found in Art. 55 of the Charter. The UN Charter is available on-line at: www.un.org/
aboutun/charter/.
24. “Déclaration relative aux principes de droit international touchant les relations
amicales et la coopération entre États conformément à la Charte des nations unies,”
Annexed to Resolution 2625 (XXV) of the General Assembly of the United Nations,
adopted 24 October 1970, as cited in Nicolas Levrat, “D’une exigence de légalité dans
les relations internationales contemporaines,” in Charles-Albert Morand (ed.), La
Crise des Balkans de 1999: Les dimensions historiques, politiques et juridiques du
conflit du Kosovo (Brussels and Paris: Bruylant/Librairie générale de droit et de
jurisprudence, 2000), pp. 263–4.
25. This transfer resulted in the creation of fifteen successor states to the Soviet Union.
For a good analysis of the breakup of the Soviet Union along a comparative analysis
of the “end of empires,” see Robert Strayer, “Decolonization, Democratization, and
Communist Reform: The Soviet Collapse in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of
World History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall, 2001), particularly pp. 376–83.
26. The Republic of Macedonia was able to avoid the war with Serbia when it gained
its independence, contrary to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was, however,
confronted by Greece’s hostility, which opposed its name under the pretext that
Macedonia was a Greek province and that the name of the new state implied
territorial claims on its national territory. Yet it is certain that Macedonia did not
carry any territorial claims against Greece and the new state was much too weak to
represent any threat to its stability. Nevertheless, due to unjustified incriminations
on Greece’s part, Macedonia had to wait until 8 April 1993, before obtaining its
own seat at the UN under the name of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
(FYROM).
27. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), formed by the republics of Serbia
and Montenegro, was a multinational state, since it was composed of two titular
nations and numerous national minorities such as Roms, Turks, Bosniaks, and
others. Serbs form the titular nation in Serbia, and Montenegrins in Montenegro.
As such, Serbs in Serbia and Montenegrins in Montenegro form the majority in
their respective republics.
62 Rene´o Lukic
28. “Declaration on the Guidelines on the Recognition of New States in Eastern Europe
and in the Soviet Union,” can be consulted in International Legal Materials,
Vol. XXXI, No. 6 (November 1992), pp. 1486–7.
29. “Declaration on the Guidelines,” ibid.
30. Martin Plichta, “Václav Havel met en scène son départ de la présidence tchèque,”
Le Monde (Paris), 1 February 2003, at www.lemonde.fr.
Further reading
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Twentieth Century (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Jelavich, Charles and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States,
1804–1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977; reprinted, 1993)
Lukic, Renéo. L’Agonie yougoslave (1986–2003): Les États-Unis et l’Europe face aux
guerres balkaniques (Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2003)
Lukic, Renéo and Allen Lynch. Europe from the Balkans to the Urals: The Disintegration
of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996)
Roeder, Philip G. Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of
Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007)
Rokkan, Stein. State Formation, Nation Building, and Mass Politics in Europe. The
Theory of Stein Rokkan: Based on his Collected Works, ed. by Peter Flora with
Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986)
Zubok, Vladislav. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to
Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
63 The emergence of the nation-state