1. Nation and Memory in Russia, Poland, and Ukraine
Lecture 20
Revision
Week 3, Summer Term

2. 2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century 3. Culture and Nation
Outline
1. What is a nation?
2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century
3. Culture and Nation
4. The period of the two world wars
5. Relevance today

3. Primordialist view Modernist view Intermediate view

4. “Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round”.
Modernist view Nations are a product of modernity Nations are constructed by elites Nationalists created nations
“Nation as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent … political destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes preexisting cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates preexisting cultures: that is a reality”.
(Ernest Gellner)
“Nations do not make states and nationalisms but the other way round”.
(Eric Hobsbawm)

5. Intermediate view: Ethno-symbolism (Anthony D. Smith)
Intermediate view: Ethno-symbolism (Anthony D. Smith) Nations are a modern phenomenon, but have roots in pre-modern eras and cultures Modern nations are directly or indirectly related to older ethnies with their distinctive mythology, symbolism and culture Nations are both, construct and real process
“The point at issue is how far the modern, mass public culture of the national state is a modern version of the premodern elite high culture of the dominant ethnie, or how far it simply uses ‘materials’ from that culture for its own quite different, and novel, purposes.”
Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, p. 42

6. Miroslav Hroch and the 3 stages: A, B, C
The nation state often initiates the nation building and only the nation state can complete it
No nation is the result of historic necessity, there is always an element of contingency left

7. Pattern of a successful national movement from below (M. Hroch)
A crisis of legitimacy
A certain amount of vertical social mobility (educated people from the non-dominant group)
High level of social communication (literacy, schooling, market relations)
Nationally relevant conflicts of interest

8. Nation building in non-dominant ethnies
(Phase A) Groups in the ethnic community start to discuss their own ethnicity and conceive of it as a nation-to-be: scholarly enquiry into and dissemination of an awareness of the linguistic, cultural, social and historical attributes of the nation-to-be
(Phase B) A new range of activists try to “awaken” national consciousness and to persuade as many members as possible of the ethnic group – the potential compatriots – that it is important to gain all the attributes of a fully-fledged nation: (1) development of a national culture based on the local language and its use in education, administration and economy, (2) civil rights and self-administration, (3) creation of a complete social structure – beginning of a national movement
(Phase C) A mass movement is formed which pursues these aims: a fully-fledged social structure of the would-be nation comes into being
Miroslav Hroch, From National Movement to the Fully-Fledged Nation, pp

9. 2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century 3. Culture and Nation
Outline
1. What is a nation?
2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century
3. Culture and Nation
4. The period of the two world wars
5. Relevance today

10. Who are we?
What does it mean to be a Pole, a Russian, a Ukrainian
Who can become a member of the nation?
What is more important, objective criteria or subjective identification with the nation?
How to win the peasants (which peasants) for the national project?

11. Nation building in 19th century Eastern Europe
Task: Make peasants into Russians, Poles, Ukrainians
Problem: Serfdom, abolished in Prussia 1807/10, in Austria 1848, in Russia 1861
Gulf between nobility and nationally mobilised urban elite on the one side and peasants on the other side
Problem of literacy: 1850 in Prussia 85%, 1873 in Austrian Galicia 20%, 1897 in Russian Empire 21.1%
Fear of estate owners and conservatives of effect of literacy on behaviour of peasants
National movement: since last third of 19th century challenge by socialism
BUT
Abolition of serfdom precondition for reaching out to peasantry
Reading clubs
Co-operative movement
Often important role of priests but movement let by secular nationalist intelligentsia

12. Key questions - Russia
Kievan Rus’ and Byzantine Heritage – Orthodox faith
Mongolian ‘yoke’
Peter the Great and Westernisation
Westernisers vs. Slavophiles in the 19th century
Official nationality: Autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality (narodnost’)
Challenges of Russian nationalism

13. Russia: Empire and Nation
Pro
Russian language and tradition of literate culture
Living in the Russian empire where members of own ethnic group are the elite
Common present
Orthodox faith
Common history
Cultural bonds: similar traditions, costumes, songs and so on
Contra
Gap between culture of educated elite and peasant population
Late abolition of serfdom (1861)
Low level of political participation (autocracy)
Social conflict between land-owning nobility and peasantry
small middle class
Imperial tradition and ethnic minorities
Ambivalent role of Russian Nationalism

14. Key questions - Poland
Latin (Roman-Catholic) traditions
Conflict with Teutonic Order
The ‘noble republic’
The partitions: reasons
Romantic nationalism, messianism and uprisings
Realists: organic work
Who is a Pole? Different concepts (inclusive, exclusive)

15. Poland: The Partioned Nation
PRO
Polish language and long tradition of literate culture
Influence in Galicia - here dominant-ethnic group since 1867, socially dominant in parts of Russian, German, and Austrian territories (landowners)
Roman-Catholic faith
Common history of most of the territory until the end of the 18th c.
Existence of a numerous, genuinely Polish elite – the nobility
Cultural bonds: similar traditions, costumes, songs and so on
CONTRA
Partitions of Poland
Living in the Russian Empire, Prussia/German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
No common present
Opportunities for educated Poles in the service of the Empires
small middle class
Policy of Russification and Germanization

16. Key questions - Ukraine
Kyivan Rus’- Orthodox
Kingdom of Halych
Uniate Church
Khmel’nits’kyj, the cossack state and the treaty or Pereyaslav
Little Russians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians
The Ukrainian ‘awakening’
East Galicia – Western Ukraine – Eastern Ukraine

17. Ukraine: An unhistoric nation?
CONTRA
Ukrainian language not yet a fully developed “high language”, Russian/Polish available as alternative languages for higher education
Since 1667/1772 Eastern part has common history with Russia, Western part since 1772 with Austria
traditional elites have become Russians or Poles
no Ukrainian state in history
Potential members of the nation live in different empires as non-dominant ethnic groups
Opportunities for educated Ukrainians in Russian Empire
almost no middle class
Different denominations
Politics of Russification/Polonization
PRO
Ukrainian language and literature in the vernacular since 1798
Russian Orthodox faith in Russian Ukraine – Greek-Catholic faith in Galicia a barrier to assimilation by the Polish nation
Common history until the 17th c.
Social antagonism to Polish or Russian/Russified overlords
cossack autonomy in early modern Europe and short period of independence
Cultural bonds: similar traditions, costumes, songs and so on

18. 2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century 3. Culture and Nation
Outline
1. What is a nation?
2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century
3. Culture and Nation
4. The period of the two world wars
5. Relevance today

19. The ‘Jewish question’
Assimilation or no assimilation? Can Jews be Poles, Russians, Ukrainians?
Reasons for anti-Semitism and pogroms:
Zionism
Jewish socialism: BUND

20. 2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century 3. Culture and Nation
Outline
1. What is a nation?
2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century
3. Culture and Nation
4. The period of the two world wars
5. Relevance today

21. Culture and Nation History Painting National literature
National music culture
National symbols
Sites of Memory
Commemoration and Celebration
“High Culture” and “Low Culture”
What makes a national poet, national opera/music, national art?

22. 2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century 3. Culture and Nation
Outline
1. What is a nation?
2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century
3. Culture and Nation
4. The period of the two world wars
5. Relevance today

23.
First World War: precondition for state building in Eastern Europe after 1918
Collapse of Empires: were they reformable?
State building Wars
War and war remembrance: provides heroes and binds nation together
Failure of Ukrainian state building – success of Polish state building: why did Poles succeed where Ukrainians failed?

24. Soviet nationality policy
1920s: different approach to Ukrainians: indigenization,
Affirmative action: national in form, socialist in content
The Ukrainian famine
Changes in 1930s: Greatest Danger Principle
Changes in 1930s: Reduction of Complexity
National operations

25. Polish Nationality Policy
Towards Ruthenians (Ukrainians): assimilation
Towards Jews: exclusion (National Democrats) or assimilation (Pilsudski, Socialists)
Strengthening of the Polish element in the kresy (Eastern borderlands) – Polish settlers
Preferential treatment of ethnic Poles
Closing of Ukrainian schools or transformation into bilingual schools
Polonisation of universities and public space
In Volhynia more flexible than in East Galicia
Pacifications 25

26. The Second World War
Poland: Suffering and heroic fight with tragic outcome, private memory vs. official memory in Communist Poland, Warsaw Uprising
Russia: Suffering and heroic fight with triumphal victory, official memory and private memory coincide (for many), uses of the victory today
Western Ukraine: Suffering and heroic fight with tragic outcome – Ukrainian nationalist fighters are heroes
Eastern Ukraine: Suffering and heroic fight with ambivalent outcome – Ukrainian nationalist fighters are traitors

27. 2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century 3. Culture and Nation
Outline
1. What is a nation?
2. Russia, Poland, Ukraine in the 19th century
3. Culture and Nation
4. The period of the two world wars
5. Relevance today

28. Relevance
Putin and historical justifcations of his policy towards Ukraine – common heritage, Crimea and Russia, Russian speaking minority in Eastern Ukraine
Divided memory – divided nation: Ukraine - Holodomor and WWII
The suffering and heroic nation: Poland – the history policy of the new government, problem of anti-semitism during WWII (Jedwabne)