NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

organisations, including the Church. They stress the importance of national sovereignty, even at the risk of international isolation. 22 I support neither the constructivist nor the primordialist definition. I rather conceptualise nationalism to be an ideology that holds the nation, and the nation-state, as crucial values and which manages to mobilise the political will of large segments of the population. 23 I agree an argument that nationalism is characterised by a dual identity – a peculiar and explosive combination of interests and an affective relationship – is appropriate to be made. National identity can be therefore described as a mixture of expressive relations and feelings, which exist side by side with instrumental and calculated political interests. 24 Each generation forms its cognitive map of the nation, but it does this in the midst of inherited notions surrounding a series of specific sets of myths and symbols. Using these raw materials, the nationalists proceed to ‘rediscover’ and ‘reinterpret’ their national ideological capital in accordance with the diverse political requirements and urgencies of each moment. 25 The adherents to either definition of nationalism would probably agree on the role played by traditions, stories, myths and symbols as powerful generators of feelings of affinity or exclusion, and of proximity or hatred among groups. They are manipulated and reproduced over time by the political elite in order to build the dichotomy between an insider and outsider, indigenous versus alien – or even a friend and a foe. 26 Regardless of its definition, nationalism represents one of the serious challenges faced by Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of communism. The transition periods from one political regime to another, which are typically accompanied by political and economic instability and social insecurity, create favourable conditions for the different kinds of nationalism to occur. This was proven in the case of the CEE countries. Moreover, the process of transition has been accompanied by the instrumental use of myths, which utilised to legitimise 22 This definition was applied by S. Fisher, in order to find similarities between the nationalist movements in Slovakia and Croatia. See Sharon Fisher, “The Rise and Fall of National Movements in Slovakia and Croatia”, Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs , Vol. 1, No. II (Autumn 2000), also Political Change in Post-Communist Slovakia and Croatia: From Nationalist to Europeanist. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 23 P. Alter Nationalism . (London: Edward Arnold, 1991). 24 See J. Rothschild Ethnopolitics. (New York: Columbia University Press 1981). 25 See A. D. Smith The Ethnic Origins of Nations. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986); A. D. Smith Nationalism and Modernism. (London: Routledge 1998); and also R. Máiz, “Politics and the nation: nationalist mobilisation of ethnic differences,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 9, Part 2 (April 2003). 26 See R. Máiz, “Politics and the nation: nationalist mobilisation of ethnic differences,” Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 9, Part 2 (April 2003), pp. 199–200.

16