NATIONALIST POPULISM AND POST-COMMUNISM

1. Introduction

All across Central and Eastern Europe, local historiographies represented their nations as innocent victims, nearly always victimised by other nations rather than by their own members. 1

1.1. Nationalism and post-communism A wide-spread argument connects the fall of the communist regimes around Central and Eastern Europe with an ideological vacuum. Early in the 1990s, some analysts pointed out that the ideology of nationalism might have filled this vacuum. 2 As Chris Hann rightly noted, after the fall of the communist regimes, the development of Central and Eastern Europe started to figure prominently in global discussions of “ethnicity” and “identity politics”, while a few scholars have used materials from this region to articulate more general frameworks in a comparative analysis. 3 The collapse of communism was accompanied by the need for a redefinition of the national or ethnic identities in Central and Eastern European societies. However, this reconstruction of the collective identity went hand-in-hand with a revival of the historically-based division between the mythical “we” and “others”. Under the authoritarian rule, inter-ethnic hostilities were more or less successfully frozen or were hidden under the surface. The communist system effectively provided the nations in the Soviet bloc with a new collective “other”, against whom some of them could define themselves. 4 It can be therefore argued that in the reality of the Cold War, the threat of the so-called historical enemies, de facto, did not exist. However, there was a certain problem with the reemergence of nationalist attitudes in the CEE. While some academicians underlined only the temporary character of the revival of nationalist ideology, others considered it to be a lasting phenomenon. Although the definition of nationalism and its prevailing forms 1 K. Verdery, “Nationalism and National Sentiment in Post-socialist Romania,” Slavic Review 52, No. 2 (Summer 1993), p. 194. 2 Z. Brzezinski, Post-Communist Nationalism, Foreign Affairs , vol. LXVIII (Winter 1989/90), pp. 1–25. 3 See C. Hann, “Postsocialist Nationalism: Rediscovering the Past in Southeast Poland”, Slavic Review 57(4) . 4 See also M. Todorova, “Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Communist Legacy in Eastern Europe” , East European Societies , Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 1993).

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