Nationalism in the Baltics and the Politics of Recognition

“The best political arrangement is relative to the history and culture of the people whose lives it will arrange” Michael Walzer.

“ Although we live in a particular world, we can still aim toward a juridical ethic that would function as a critical authority against the history which determines us so deeply” Andre Van de Putte .

A common perception is that nationalism is in decline world-wide. It is very easy to list factors that contribute to such an apparent decline, or as some would have it, lead inexorably to it. For instance, we recognize the large role that international corporations play in the world of finance and business; we recognize the interdependence of economic systems, and a virtual free market in certain basic commodities. The effects of the internationals are felt not only in the economic realm but also bleed into the cultural arena – culture follows money or chases money. These effects may be seen in how local talents, whether they are Latvian opera divas or Russian hockey players or Lithuanian basketball stars, follow the dictates of the international market place. In other words, they end up where the money is. Furthermore, cultural creations such as films, recorded music and popular novels are themselves commodities promoted by a world-wide culture industry largely dominated by the United States. (I understand that Latvia used to produce as many as seven or eight films a year and now the industry is on the verge of extinction.) Such factors internationalize culture and threaten the very ground on which national identity may be based. It may also be thought that national cultural identities are to some extent compromised by being subject to international human rights as promoted by the United States, and as embodied in UN doctrines, requirements for membership in the EEC and elsewhere. Issues such as gender relations or sexual mutilation in fundamentalist Moslem states are criticized as are civil liberties and democratic rights violations in China and in Cuba, ethnic relationships in East Timor and in the Balkans, and possibly, human rights issues dealing with language rights in Latvia. The national identities we forged over the past centuries with so much sacrifice are in many ways slipping away from us. Is nationalism a dying phenomenon, or worse, is it, where it rears its head, a force for evil, an excuse for vindictiveness?

When we turn on the television news or look at the political page of our newspapers we are constantly reminded that nationalism is “the refuge of a scoundrel”, that its appeals are “essentially sub-human or primitive in character, a deformity that no civilized person would have anything to do with”.Such a sentiment was expressed by Albert Einstein. The recent events in the Balkans attest to this – Serbian “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo is but the latest event in a troubled world. Who can say that the core of the problem, i.e., that which drives such events lies in nationalism rather than in religious conflicts, or simply in vindictiveness drawing upon a long memory of perceived wrongs inflicted on the people; perhaps a social memory extending back over centuries. But whatever value attaches to being a member of a dominant ethnic community which practices marginalization and demeaning of ethnic minorities, such value is clearly overridden by the suffering inflicted upon the minorities.

However, nationalism represents a range or family of views and need not take such extreme form. Nationalism, if it is to gain acceptance within liberal democratic communities, must recognize human diversity in a number of parameters – religious, cultural, racial, ethnic, and in a more qualified form, linguistic diversity. Such a version of nationalism is defensible within the parameters alluded to above. Indeed, in qualified form, it has found concrete expression in the world today, not in the Balkans, as I think we can surmise, but, to a large extent in Canada and in a more qualified way in the Baltics – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Let me begin my presentation of a defensible version of nationalism by providing an account of the three main forms that nationalism may take. Of the three forms, two are commonly recognized, and the third has recently been advanced in contemporary writings on the subject. I shall discuss, in brief, the two forms and then proceed to a more systematic characterization and evaluation of the third. The three forms are labelled ethnic, civic, and cultural nationalism. We might begin by asking what is it about the three conceptions of nationalism that binds them together, that unifies them as one general type of human social phenomenon. Do they all share common characteristics, or is there, in a sense, a family resemblance; do they answer or address for a people the same deeply felt need? Is nationalism a response to “some kind of deep elemental force outside human control”, or is it a phenomenon which we can shape to our purposes? Let us keep such questions in the back of our minds as we survey the three conceptions.

In essays by Van de Putte, De Wachter, and Schnapperwe find a sustained challenge to the two traditionally recognized forms of nationalism based on the “ethnic” and “civic” conceptions of the nation after Hans Kohn et al. The former is characterized as the “kulturnation”, identified with Eastern nationalism. The latter, based on liberal ideals of a union under a doctrine of human rights and the ideals of the enlightenment, is identified with Western nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is commonly identified with German nationalism which arose in the period of German Romanticism with people like Herder and Goethe, and is “largely based upon language, culture, and tradition.” A nation, according to the ethnic conception, has an identity apart from individual wills; it is an entity that exists as an objective reality through history. One belongs to the nation when one shares the same language, culture, and history. But more so, the tendency has been to see ethnic nationalism as focusing on racial identity, on biological ancestry or in a word, “on blood” as in, we are the same people, we share the same blood-line. While the ethnic conception of nationalism is based on a shared history and language, ethnic nationalism has commonly been identified with racial homogeneity – with racism. Civic nationalism, on the other hand, grows out of the philosophy of Jean Jacque Rousseau with his emphasis on the sovereignty of the people, and is supported by the ideals of the French Revolution with its “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen”. The civic conception of the nation has been conveyed to us through its able exponent, Ernest Renan. As Renan wrote in What is Nation: it is “le plebicite de tous les jours” ( a daily plebiscite) The civic conception of a nation is, in the words of Van de Putte, “constructivistic (an artifact), individualistic, and voluntaristic” Civic nationalism, then, is a political creation through the wills of the people, embodying a legal code and generally a bill of rights. It is, in the Lockean sense, a nation ruled and defined by the “the consent of the people”. Interestingly, the two major historical manifestations of civic nationalism, Revolutionary France and the United States, saw themselves as missionary states with the mandate to bring their particular kind of enlightenment to the world.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The cultural conception of nationalism arises as a result of certain problems that lie at the very heart of both the ethnic and the civic conceptions of the nation. The ethnic conception is simply not acceptable since it may violate basic human rights and has led to extreme repression of minorities. The civic form of the nation, however welcome it may seem at first sight, does not by itself create loyalty to the nation-state, a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the nation and its fellow citizens, sufficient to secure social stability. In this connection, we are all familiar with the communitarian criticism of pure (Rawlsean) constitutional liberalism (Michael Sandel, Alisdair McIntyre, Michael Walzer et al.). Loyalty is not felt to an abstract set of principles. The civic state is an ideal in search of a concrete interpretation. It is not any actual existing state. For instance, the constitutional democratic state is not a mere collection of individuals subscribing to democratic principles and a constitution; it exists, where it exists, as a “democratic culture”. The ideals of democracy are always culturally interpreted.

Accordingly, we have a reason now for positing a new conception of nationalism which does not just take bits and pieces from civic and ethnic nationalism, but forms a new synthesis in which the ideals of a civic state are integrated in a concrete cultural arena. De Wachter’s preferred conceptualization of nationalism as “…the ideology which pursues congruity between both the political and the pre-political”avoids the two stools of the ethnic and civic conceptions. It opens the door to a certain kind of cultural/multicultural nationalism, which recognizes a public sphere in which exists “...the possibility of all forms of attachment by all sorts of people in a multicoloured life-world”to one nation state. Civic nationalism may be seen as transcending itself, giving birth to a “culture of democracy”, viz., to “cultural nationalism”. Such themes are further developed in both Tamir’sand Miller’s work, who both argue for revamping the old conceptual geography.

Should we buy into this new conceptualization of cultural nationalism? It is tempting to answer in the affirmative, but there are questions that we may raise. First, is cultural nationalism, broadly conceived, really different from civic nationalism? In the case of the United States (which, arguably, is a paradigm of civic nationalism) we find a strong sense of loyalty among its citizens, which involves, what is described as, a “quasi-religious worship of the Constitution” (reminiscent of Jurgen Habermas’ “constitutional patriotism”). This suggests that it is not the culture of democracy which promotes loyalty to the civic state, but rather, loyalty is secured through a kind of “constitutional ideology”. On the other hand, we may find that “constitutional patriotism” is not an intelligible notion apart from some cultural expression of it, some practice of democracy at work or, indeed, a variety of practices relative both to geography and time.

Secondly, Martha Nussbaum, in her short but much discussed essay, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism”,raises some issues which may undermine cultural nationalism. Her arguments for cosmopolitanism and “world citizenship” lead us to question whether the ideal of cultural nationalism is internally consistent. Citizens of modern constitutional democratic states which adopt doctrines of human rights based on some conception of natural human rights, find themselves asking Nussbaum’s question: “… are… (we) above all citizens of a world of human beings ?” The political doctrine here, by its very nature, viz., by its commitment to human rights, makes a universal appeal. The liberal multicultural democratic state exercises sovereignty over a geographical region (this after all, is the sine qua non of its very existence as a state), but its commitment to a doctrine of human rights pulls it towards, what Martha Nussbaum calls, “the substantive universal values of justice and right”, in a word, towards “world citizenship”. But what, then, keeps the political state in continued existence; where does the sense of the oneness (unity) come from? As De Wachter has pointed out, loyalty to the state (the totality) must be stronger than that to its “intermediate structures”-- its religions, professions, and in the context of the multicultural state, to the polyglot of its cultural minorities. How does the liberal democratic multi-cultural state (in this context, we may recognize a multiplicity of democratic cultures), which takes seriously its political and social doctrines, preserve its stability and continuity, given its commitment to universal values? What stops it from becoming the global community?

For an answer, we need to turn to David Miller’s On Nationality. Miller believes that a stable nation cannot adopt what he calls, “radical multiculturalism”. A national identity must unite the polyglot of minorities under one unifying conception of the nation. Miller accepts the conservative tenet “that a well-functioning state rests upon a pre-established political sense of common nationality” but he does not believe that nationality should be viewed as something static to be protected and preserved by all means. Rather, he allows that the sense of national identity will be an evolving phenomenon. All that needs to be “asked of immigrants is a willingness to accept current political structures and to engage in dialogue with the host community so that a new common identity can be forged” The view that Miller characterizes as radical multiculturalism reaches far beyond mutual tolerance and the belief that each person should have equal opportunities regardless of minority status and that the purpose of politics is to affirm group differences. Radical multiculturalism, in fact, comes very close to Nussbaum’s “world citizenship”, a perspective which would lead to the rejection of all forms of nationalism.Thus, cultural nationalism when freed from radical multiculturalism is not subject to the above criticism.

It seems to me that cultural nationalism differs in essence from ethnic nationalism, with which it shares a minimal connectedness, in that we find an ideal of inclusion and toleration of minority cultures in cultural nationalism which is ostensively absent in ethnic nationalism. Cultural nationalism implicitly recognizes the ideals of liberal democratic society and preserves a doctrine of human rights. Yet within this broader ideal of toleration, it also recognizes a basic need of humanity for a sense of identity which is shared and communal. Cultural nationalism is a regime of toleration. But, we must not think that toleration follows a formula, a fixed pattern according to set principles. Toleration has to be interpreted in a historical context with due reference to time, place and history. This is the insight that Michael Walzer gives us in his recent valuable book, On Toleration . Walzer writes: “… there are no principles that govern all regimes of toleration or require us to act in all circumstances, in all times and places, on behalf of a particular set of political or constitutional arrangements. Proceduralist arguments wont help us here precisely because they are not differentiated by time and place; they are not properly circumstantial”.

Charles Taylor’s defence of “multiculturalism and the politics of recognition” allows us to anchor our preferred sense of nationalism in a basic human need viz., the need to be recognized. Perhaps the most basic thing Taylor tells us is that there is a fundamental human need to be recognized, that the essence of self identity is a communal/cultural affair. My identity is not something I work out in isolation, in a vacuum as it were, but something that I negotiate in dialogical relations with others.“Who am I?” cannot be adequately answered within the ideology of the civic conception unless it is enriched in ways that go beyond the purely political. That is, my identity is not fully defined within the individual realm but necessarily invokes a social dimension. My worth as a human being is found here, within my culture, and is reflected by the placement of my culture within the political sphere as a whole. Cultural nationalism does precisely this by allowing individuals from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds to find their worth.

Let us see how the situation in the Baltics exemplifies the kind of nationalism I am supporting. The elements we observe in the Baltics are first of all that there is an indigenous majority culture, a literature and national language, in each of the Baltic countries. The three Baltic nations have undergone a tumultuous history, and have been subject to occupation and domination by major powers including at one time or another in their histories by Poland, Germany, Sweden and Russia. All of these periods of occupation with practices of genocide under the Nazis, massive exiles of the native populations and Russian colonization during the Soviet period have left an indelible imprint on these nations. Indigenous cultures that have survived or preserved an identity have done so essentially as peasant cultures, very much distinct from the cultures of the masters. In a curious way, the masters or ruling classes in the Baltics have always been foreigners who preserved their own traditions and language over centuries. In the present post Soviet period with the re-assertion of sovereignty and the rise of nationalism, the question arises for the Baltics: “How far can we assert our national identities without violating basic rights of our “immigrant” minority ethnic groups?” David Miller for one has argued for limiting rights our immigrant groups which threaten national stability. He writes:

(In the) circumstance where the immigrant group is strong and cohesive enough to constitute itself as an independent nation ..(perhaps as a result of ) having been expelled from some other place … the receiving nation may have good reason to guard itself against being turned into bi-national society, particularily where it forces deep conflicts between the two people.

In defending cultural nationalism, we are not arguing against immigration, nor are we arguing for a static ethnic sense of national identity into which the immigrant must be assimilated with a total loss of his/her previous ethnic or national identity. We are arguing for a gradual integration “according to the absorptive capacities of the nation in question”. The process of integrating the immigrant is not a one-way street where the immigrant simply acquires a new cultural identity, but a process where the national identity itself is in constant but gradual flux.

Nationalism in a multicultural setting should present itself under icons or national symbols that are not offensive to minorities and can be comprehensively adopted by all members of the society. National identity must be defined as far as possible “independent of group-specific values”. Although complete cultural neutrality is not feasible in practice since “a national language is the bearer of the culture of the people whose language it originally was” the nation should present itself in a way which is culturally innocuous to the minorities. “Remove the prejudice” which is inherent in an ethnic conception of the nation, and “ensure that each group is shown equal respect and the reluctance to share in a common culture will evaporate”suggests Miller.

Let me provide an account of the situation in Canada, which like the Baltics, has also encountered linguistic and cultural barriers to forming a strong union. In Canada differences exist among the founding peoples, the French and the English, the indigenous people and the more recent immigrant communities. Canada in the recent past has striven to present itself and its symbolic image of itself in culturally neutral terms, incorporating or acknowledging the divergent cultural or ethnic entities that constitute it. It acknowledges the roots of its founding people -- the French, the English, and of course, the Indigenous Peoples in the phrase, “the founding nations of Canada”. One step in creating an image of Canada around which nationhood or nationality may be defined is in terms of its overt public symbols. Symbols which may have stood for colonialism and repression in the past have been replaced; e.g., the old Canadian flag (a version of the Union Jack) has been replaced by the Maple Leaf flag which is neutral to all parties, the previous national anthem “God Save the King/Queen” by the unifying anthem “O Canada”. Our history, another factor on which a nation can divide, in the past was presented in a light that saw the dominant national group, the English, as the victors in a just struggle and the minorities, the Native Peoples or the French Canadians were presented as the vanquished peoples. It is unfortunate that in the past in Canada we operated with at least two different histories, history as taught in French schools in the province of Quebec, and history as it was taught in English Canada. Events in the 18thcentury such as the conquests of Quebec and Louisbourg, the Expulsion of the Acadians etc., were given their own particular slants. John Ralston Saul in Reflections of a Siamese Twin has made a very valuable correction to such a divisive account of Canadian history. The image of the French Canadians as a vanquished or conquered people, a minority which has been forced to succumb to the will of the masters has stood as a barrier to the full acceptance of Canadians as one nation. We recognize that much has been done to remedy the symbols that define our nation in a way that emphasizes our shared identities; we have become aggressive in our task of nation building according to principles which can accommodate our complex history and its diverse cultures and languages. I think it is, in part from such considerations that our past prime minister, Pierre Trudeau introduced policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism to provide for a country in which both the French and English speakers fully belong and with which members of diverse cultural backgrounds can fully identify.

The official Canadian policy of multiculturalism, although seen by many to be destructive of an internal cohesiveness, a sense of shared identity, nonetheless can also be seen as an element in forming a uniquely Canadian consciousness. I think the Canadian experience, with some qualifications, should be a model for nation building in the Baltics and elsewhere.

. The overt symbols of a nation such as the national flag, the anthem, the official or public history, language, culture that apply to nations with linguistically and culturally diverse populations should not apply specifically to any one ethnic group. It may seen that Latvia has failed to observe the need for neutrality of the symbolic elements on which, in part, national solidarity may be built.

Can one honestly argue that Latvia represents in a qualified way an acceptable form of nationalism? I must begin by confessing that Latvian policy has not been wise in all its endeavour of nation building. The fostering of a sense of national identity with which the Russian and other minorities can readily identify seemingly has not been done. However, viewed against the historical background of mass deportations and an aggressive policy of Russification during the occupation period there is, I think, some understanding and even justification of the cultural and linguistic policies followed by the government of Latvia, especially when these policies are seen as arising through a democratic process, and preserving in general individual human rights and basic freedoms including a free press and hence “providing the conditions under which debate can continue.”The Russian press in Latvia is very vocal in expressing its grievances in a public forum, and debate is lively in both formal and informal settings. There remain, however, divergent readings of past history, particularly as it applies to WW II. Latvia does not, and cannot, subscribe to the Russian view that the forceful incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union was an act of liberation since in the case of Latvia and the other Baltic nations the war did not end in liberation but in replacing one type of enslavement (that of the Nazis) by that of another (that of the Soviets). However, Latvia is very clear in its policy of divorcing itself from any aims of the previously occupying powers.

Another aspect that should be borne in mind is that in the case of Latvia it is the Latvian majority which is, in a sense, the vanquished people who have suffered occupiers for 800 years and whose culture and language are very much under threat of disappearance. Latvian speakers total only some 0.5% nearly overwhelmed by its Russia speaking neighbours. Latvia is preserving a culture which is very much under threat, whereas the Russians in Latvia have no such fears. They can draw, and indeed do draw, upon the huge cultural wealth of Russia in the form of newspapers, journals, books, TV, radio, all of which is available to Russian speakers in Latvia. Russian is spoken by virtually all residents of Latvia, in practice, but not in law. Latvia is fully bilingual and the Russian speaker can be at home any where in the country. Wherever I have travelled in Latvia I have not found one incidence where Latvians refused to speak Russian when addressed by Russian speakers. Indeed, anecdotally, when Russians have approached me and spoken to me in Russian and I have replied in Latvian (as I do not speak Russian), they have been very much mystified and somewhat angered by my response.

I have attempted to show that there is a defensible version of nationalism which occupies the ground between the ethnic and civic conceptions of the nation. Our middle ground lies between the one hand, a national identity based on a (presumed) common ethnicity, culture or “blood”, and on the other hand, a national identity based on “the daily plebiscite”, i. e., on the voluntary choice of individual men and women to form a union under some doctrine of human rights and constitutional process. We have suggested that there is a basic human need to have an identity within a cultural milieu, to be identified with a culture and a tradition in which the sense of self emerges and is reinforced. Cultural nationalism represents a social ideal which is consistent with basic democratic political institutions and a doctrine of human rights. When we confront an actual historical situation of a particular state, it becomes manifest that its history will bear upon the form of nationalism which is appropriate to it and whatever limits need to be imposed on the appropriate model. In the case of Canada, the form of nationalism that we find recognizes the historical reality of its “founding nations”, the Indigenous People, the French, and the English, as well as the diverse groups of immigrants which make up the country. I have suggested that this form of nationalism is, and could be, a model for other states. In the Baltics the situation has been somewhat different. They have suffered through a tumultuous history in the 20th century involving periods of military occupation, large scale deportations, forced colonization etc

. The form of nationalism that is found there reflects those historical contingencies. It is with respect to such historical contingencies that Latvia and the other Baltic states represent in a qualified form the ideal of cultural nationalism. Nootens drawing upon the work of Will Kymlicka and others, helps us see that problems such as those that face the Baltics require over and above a purely philosophical analysis also a disinterested historical context.

Cornelius Kampe

Acadia University

(The paper appears in Social Philosophy Today, Vol. 16, pp.66-81)

David Miller, On Nationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.

Ibid., 4.

Jocelyne Couture, Kai Nielsen and Michel Seymour, Rethinking Nationalism (Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 1998)

Ibid., 7

Andre Van de Putte, “Democracy and Nationalism” in Rethinking Nationalism, eds. Jocelyne Couture, Kai Nielsen and Michel Seymour, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1998), 161-195.

Ibid., 167.

Frans De Wachter, “In Search of a Post-National Identity: Who are my People?” Couture, Nielsen and Seymour, 197-217.

Ibid., 214

Yael Tamir, “Theoretical Difficulties in the Study of Nationalism” in Couture, Nielsen and Seymour, 65-92

Martha Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” in ed. Joshua Cohen, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).

Miller, 129

Ibid., 129-30.

Ibid., 132.

Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997), 2-3.

Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition” ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992), 34.

Miller, 129.

Ibid., 137.

Ibid., 138.

Ibid., 128.

Genevieve Nootens, “Liberal Restrictions on Public Arguments: Can Nationalist Claims be Moral Reasons in Liberal Discourse?” in Couture, Nielsen and Seymour, 237-260.