Toward a New Central Europe

III

THE NATIONALITY QUESTION

PSEUDO-NATIONAL STATES OR REAL NATIONAL IDENTITIES IN CENTRAL EUROPE

ALEXANDER GALLUS

(Alfred de Vigny )

God may rightly allow the dumb Ocean to
destroy ships, but not Ideas.

IT IS a necessity of life to revise from time to time the semantic contents of our tools of thinking, of our notions and ideas.

During the strong central administration of the absolute monarchies of the 17th century in Europe, the strongest ethnic element of the state progressively assimilated all ethnic enclaves within the boundaries of its area of influence, and thus created the idea of the centralized national state: one language, one administration, one absolute ruler and one religion.

As a consequence, the "minorities" fought a losing battle against the dominant power for an independent language, religion and privileges. France and Spain having reached the final stage of concentration in the 18th century, the question of frontiers and safety of the state-territory became the central core of their strategic thinking. Territory and frontier-lines became important from the point of view of political dominance and military defense. Occupying new territory means also the expansion of central rule, with all its efforts for unification.

In Central Europe a more archaic situation prevailed. The Medieval State was built on correlation and not on central uniformity. The local privileges of cities, barons, settlers were jealously guarded and the unity of the realm depended on personal loyalty to a ruler. The state conserved a certain fluidity, as the boundaries were easily altered by marriages, contracts, inheritance or changes in loyalty. This medieval order of local privileges preserved within the Central European Medieval Hungarian Kingdom of the Arpads the ethnic identity of the Croats, Slovaks, Rumanians, Ruthenians and Germans,

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to mention only the largest groups, whereas in Western Europe the equivalents of these culturally and racially inbreeding ethnic units ( Catalans, Bretons, Burgundians, etc. ) became successfully assimilated. When the medieval state in Central Europe was attacked by the Turks, communication with the West was interrupted and the whole process of 17th-18th century political development in the Western States stopped at the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Osman rule preserved the medieval situation inasmuch as no central pressure for a unified language, religion, education, etc., in Central Europe, was exerted. After liberation from the Osman rule, all the different ethnic units emerged again, only to find themselves now subjected to aggressive actions, stemming from the contemporary ideal of the centralized national state.

The Hungarians, who defended their national identity against the centralized administration of the Habsburg emperors, kept under the cover of the Hungarian State, or even "Nation" ("Nemzet"), as opposite to "People" ("Nep"), the many ethnic units of the Carpathian Basin, who had preserved their ethnic unity under the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom and under Osman Rule: Croats, Slovenes, Ruthenians, Serbs, Rumanians, Germans. During the Hungarian national revival before 1848, and after 1867, a considerable part of the German middle class in the cities was assimilated. But when after 1867, the Hungarian Central Government belatedly stepped up centralization according to current Western ideals of the "National State,' it, of course, caused immense trouble and could not succeed with other nationalities because it attempted to achieve the impossible. The later war cry, however, in and after 1918, of "Hungarian oppression" was more than surprising as it was raised partly by representatives of Western centralized national states, who in the not too distant past had done the same thing, and had done-it successfully.

But the big difference was in the time factor. A process which succeeded in the 17th-18th centuries, could no more be repeated and defended in the 20th century. History and human ideals change.

It was not only the Hungarian statesmen who acted in an anachronistic manner in Central Europe between 1867 and 1914. Learning nothing from the Hungarian failure to establish central national administration; Czechs, Serbs, Rumanians nursed also dreams of national centralization after 1918. The leaders of the new states, created by the victorious Western Powers, attempted to organize their own states according to the same principles of central national administration and assimilation which had been condemned by Western war propaganda in 1918.

The political leaders of Czechoslovakia tried to build up a new centrally administered national state based on the Czech elements and reacted with hostility when Slovaks, Ruthenians, Germans, Hungarians struggled for maintaining their own national and ethnic

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identity. The same was attempted by the dictatorship of King Alexander in Serbia (Yugoslavia) for the benefit of the Serb element; the situation being highlighted by two emotional killings: the Serbs killing the Croatian national leader, Radic and the Croats retaliating by killing King Alexander. The ensuing diplomatic stir in the League of Nations only showed that the Western leaders did not have the slightest understanding of the tensions in Central Europe. In the same way the Rumanians attempted and still attempt to build up a centralized state based on the administration of the privileged Rumanian element.

These tendencies resulted everywhere in a disregard for "minority rights" as formulated in the Peace Treaties after 1918.

The same tendencies culminated in incredible cruelties inflicted on minority ethnic units, amounting to genocide, during and after the Second World War: death camps, shooting of prisoners of war, confiscation of property, expatriation, mass trials, etc.

By now it should be sufficiently clear, that the Western ideal of a centralized national state, which necessarily leads to the penalizing of minority groups, is completely inadequate, and that it cannot assure lasting peace and humane conditions in Cent}al Europe.

But is there any alternative?

These problems and our groping for a satisfactory solution should especially be understood in Great Britain, where human relations developed differently from that of Western Europe. Great Britain is the result of political solutions, aiming at coexistence, rather than assimilation. It seems that the English were never numerous enough to press for full centralization. Now a similar situation exists in Central Europe. There is no single dominant nation in Central Europe, only outside of it. But instead of trying to eliminate each others as in Central Europe, the different ethnic units in the British Isles arrived at a synthesis, not without armed conflict, however.

The vexed question of Ireland was solved after the First World War by granting her total independence.

The Welsh joined England early in the Middle Ages, but preserved their language and separate religion. Scotland after a long and cruel conflict was offered and accepted a political union by "common consent," which was ratified in both parliaments. The Act of Union preserved the local legal system, a separate religion, their own banking system and an autochtonous language where the inhabitants themselves have not abandoned them.

Why then should world opinion tacitly support a situation in Central Europe which still remains opposed to a humane regulation of the same problems which seem to have been satisfactorily solved in Great Britain?

A new Central Europe can only be reconstructed by discarding the ideal of the centralized national state, and by accepting, as a

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regulating force, those instincts of national identity which during centuries in Central Europe succeeded in asserting themselves, in spite of so many attempts to the contrary, thus proving their vitality.

These instinctive forces emanate from peoples and not from states. A state is a conscious organization with boundaries, legal system and central administration. A people, on the other hand, is not a conscious construction. Its cohesion is biologic and not administrative; it is an interesting community with an accumulation of uniform creative, and behavioristic tradition (culture). It does not have solidified boundaries. The flow of its settlements and family units interpenetrates with other flows within a geographic territory.

If we acknowledge the "people" (the "nationality" or "ethnic unit") as the basic unit to be preserved in Central Europe, or better said as the basic value to be safeguarded, then our notions of "state," "state boundaries," and "state organization," must be reshaped and we shall discard the ideal of the "centralized national state."

For a people or ethnic unit, state boundaries are nonexistent. Members of the "Hungarian People" presently live in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, the USSR, Austria, and all over the world.

The first problem thus to be solved in Central Europe is the restoration of free intercommunication, cultural unity and information between members of the same ethnic unit, or people, wherever they live. "Frontiers" must remain nonexistent in relation to communication between members of the same ethnic unit. The notion of "national minority" must disappear and the strife and struggle for state boundaries must become completely irrelevant. Administrative units with boundaries would, of course, still exist, but they would exist under the ideal conditions of a new federated system as envisaged by the opinions and plans presented m this volume.

The practical solutions for coexistence in Central Europe must create a modus vivendi, which makes it possible that the actual site of a particular human group's abode, within or outside the main body of a dense settlement of a particular nationality, is irrelevant. because the full enjoyment of national identity (and not only "individual freedom" ) remains ensured everywhere within the larger area of the federated territory.

What really does matter is the frontier line of the federated territory itself, because the frontiers of the federated territory are real inter-ethnic pressure zones, with different ways of life, history, culture and tradition on both sides of the line. Thus they are organic and natural. They divide Central and Eastern Europe from Western state organizations, immediate neighbors, who have built up successfully a centralized national structure, and thus from our point of view exist on another level of organization, not applicable in Central Europe.

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It is important for historians and politicians alike to perceive that the periods of influence of this alien complex of ideas of organization have been and are the ultimate cause of the deep disturbances in Central Europe.

A new solution in Central Europe must mean a final departing from foreign categories of thinking and the embracing of a train of political thought more congenial to Central European history and to the working of their own minds.

The peoples of Central Europe know ;hat it is not in their power to make this an immediate reality, but I would like to remind the reader once again of De Vigny's prophetic words:

Le vrai Dieu, le Dieu fort, est le Dieu des idees

. . .

Jetons l'oeuvre a la mer, la mer des multitudes.
Dieu le prendra du doigt pour le eonduir au port.

The real God, the strong God, is the God
of ideas... Let us then toss our work to the
ocean of the multitudes. God will take it on his
palm to guide it into port.

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Toward a New Central Europe