Category: Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective

Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective: 1919-2020 and Beyond

On By Alessandro AmbrosinoIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives Monthly Series comes to an end. Thanks to all our authors for their insightful contributions and to our readers for their attention.

In these days of looming confined holidays and mass vaccination campaigns, majority-minority relations might not strike as the topic of the day. However, several posts in our Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series suggest that cultural, linguistic and national differences in modern societies can still be a source of contention and often require setting up specific political arrangements to further positive inter-group relations. The first part of our series privileges an historical approach inquiring into the origins of minority questions and dissecting long-term trends in majority-minority relations.

Laura Robson starts off our discussion with a lucid piece about the establishment of the first minority protection regime by the League of Nations in 1919. Robson argues that, behind the smokescreen of minority rights, Great Power interest and colonial exploitation could be pursued under a veneer of international respectability. Hence, ‘new forms of informal authority and friendly client states’ were created at Versailles, which would eventually undermine the legitimacy of the League of Nations regime. In the Middle East, as well as in Eastern Europe, the transition from imperial sovereignties to the nationalist system sanctioned at the Paris Peace Conference unleashed strong homogenising dynamics. Focusing on the case of Christian minorities in French-Occupied Syria, Joel Veldkamp examines the ‘nationalist dilemma’ confronted by Syrian nation-builders. After having tried, unsuccessfully, to include Christian minorities in their nation-state-in-the-making project, these elites moved from persuasion to coercion, thus shattering any chance to build a cohesive Syrian nation (and generating a substantial amount of violence in the process).

As Yoav Peled shows, in Eastern Europe, Polish elites followed similar assimilationist templates. Confronted with a highly diverse country and willing to forge a cohesive nation-state, both dominant Polish parties (Endecja and Sanacja) ‘were determined to make Poland a homogeneous state in the shortest time possible’. Jewish and German minorities, among others, bore the brunt of this political programme, but ‘while assimilation of the Germans into Polish society was seen as unlikely, assimilation of the Jews was seen as undesirable’. Assimilation failed, but between 1939 and 1945 the linguistic and national heterogeneity of Polish society changed dramatically because of war, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Albeit much less diverse than in the previous two decades, at the end of the Second World War, Poland also acquired new territories formerly under German rule. John Kulczycki tells us how, in these putative ‘Recovered Lands’, Polish authorities set out to sort ‘true Poles’ from ‘Germans’. Recovering ‘Polish souls’ became a national priority, albeit one for which officers tasked with inquiring into the ethnic nature of the inhabitants of these regions received few guidelines. After about two years of mass expulsion, the Polish Ministry of the Recovered Lands had to recognise ‘the impossibility of creating an objective criterion that would differentiate a German from an autochthon’. As the Polish case suggests, in interwar Europe minorities became an ‘issue’ mostly because majorities felt insecure about the latter’s loyalty to the institutions of the state, which these majorities felt as their own. Chris Davis then historicises the minority question in interwar Romanian Transylvania as a ‘majority problem’, ‘namely that there were too few Romanians, living too far apart, in a region far too important’. To solve this problem, Romanian anthropologists and historians found a creative solution. Armed with presumably scientific data, they asserted that the sizable Hungarian-speaking population of Transylvania ‘possessed a Romanian ethnogenesis’ and had simply been ‘denationalised’ during centuries of Hungarian rule. Against the background of these theories, assimilation in fact became ‘renationalisation’ and minority rights could be all too easily ignored.

The second half of our series moves from historical analysis to contemporary affairs. Ferran Requejo illuminates the old and recent causes of the considerable rise of demands for independence in Catalonia since 2010. Discussing different factors, ranging from economic to identity variables, Requejo concludes that ‘lack of national recognition and accommodation shown by the Spanish state has played a decisive role in causing the predominant Catalan demands to shift from being regionalist or pro-autonomy towards secessionism’. Whatever the outcome of the current tensions between the Catalan and Spanish executive, the Catalan case constitutes an unavoidable reference for the study of self-determination processes in Europe. Adopting a similar mix of historical and political science analysis, Brian Girvin dissects 100 years of majority-minority relations in Northern Ireland. Girvin explains how, by undermining the very concepts of majority and minority, the Good Friday Agreement promoted consensus and cooperation between the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. It created a ‘consociational model for power sharing, political cooperation and conflict resolution’ that put the two nationalities on equal terms. Despite its remarkable success, however, demographic changes and Brexit risk unsettling the balance achieved at the end of the 1990s.

Our series concludes with three blogs stemming from a very fruitful collaboration with the Centre on Constitutional Change. Writing about Scotland, Michael Keating argues that Scots are not usually seen as a national minority identifying with a kin-state elsewhere but as a minority nation within a plurinational union. Keating explains that ‘Scottish politics have become more self-referential and detached from the British level’, with the COVID-19 crisis allowing the Scottish Government to occupy the main political space. Yet, Scottish independence is not inevitable. Even in the event of independence, Scotland would remain a small nation nested in larger systems of regulation and policy-making. Judith Sijstermans details how dominant strands of Flemish nationalism have incorporated populist narratives and how this populist turn has led to the adoption of an identitarian approach.  Sijstermans explains how, in Vlaams Belang’s rhetoric, ‘Flemish autonomy from the Belgian state is interwoven with an anti-elite search for autonomy from broader local and international “elite” who are portrayed as corrupt, anti-democratic, and in opposition to the Flemish volk (people)’. Finally, Patrick Utz dissects the complex and multi-layered nature of national identities in South Tyrol, suggesting that they underpin the success of its consociational institutional design. Utz explains that new forms of regionalism are allowing for a patchwork of identities that combine reinterpretations of historic elements with newly emerging alliances. The SVP offers an illuminating example: the party has become more vocal in portraying both Austria and South Tyrol as ‘motherland’ while promoting a ‘European Region of Tyrol’ as part of the European Union’s cross-border initiatives.

We hope that you have enjoyed the series and we encourage you to continue the discussion commenting on our posts. You will find a full list here.

We thank all our authors for their inspiring contributions; the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Centre on Constitutional Change, and the Swiss National Science Foundation for their support; H-Nationalism, in particular David Prior, for giving us the opportunity to run the series on their platform; and all our readers for their attention. A special thanks also goes to Mona Bieling, Alessandro Ambrosino and Davide Rodogno for their fundamental help.

Hoping that 2021 will be a less eventful and more cheerful year, we wish you all the best!

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle and Daniel Cetrà

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and the Centre on Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh.

For more information, please visit:

https://themythofhomogeneity.org/

https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/

South Tyrol: Minority Identities beyond Linguistic Divisions

On By Alessandro AmbrosinoIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment
Photo by Patrick Utz

H-Nationalism is proud to publish here the tenth post of its “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations from a multi-disciplinary and diachronic angle. Today’s contribution, by Patrick Utz (University of Edinburgh), examines the fluid identities of German-speakers in South Tyrol in the 20th and 21st century.

South Tyrol or Alto Adige is Italy’s northernmost province. Mainly populated by German-speakers, the province became part of Italy after the breakup of Austria-Hungary in 1919. Today, far-reaching autonomous competencies and a mandatory power-sharing system includes both German and Italian-speakers. This has assured the peaceful cohabitation of the province’s diverse population. But while contemporary institutions are modelled around linguistic identities, South Tyrol has always been shaped by a multitude of overlapping and frequently ambiguous allegiances. Unpacking this complexity allows for important insights beyond South Tyrol: it sheds new light on how national minorities relate to culturally akin, neighbouring countries without raising fears of historical revanchism and irredentism.

Traditionalist regionalism

When South Tyrol became part of Italy, regional identities tended to be stronger than the linguistic-nationalist divisions that surfaced later in the twentieth century. Allegiances lay with the former Habsburg Crownland of Tyrol that included German-speakers and Italian-speakers between the river Inn in the North and the Lake Garda in the South. This identity built on Catholic conservativism and the collective memory of the resistance against Napoleonic troops in this mainly agrarian region. Clearly, these tenets were at odds with the liberal ideas that inspired the Risorgimento and shaped the Italian state into which South Tyrol was incorporated.

This alienation was not exclusive to the German-speaking minority that found itself in a new nation-state. It was shared by many Italian-speaking Tyroleans in what is now the Province of Trento. Indeed, Trento’s Catholic tradition would become influential within Italy’s powerful Christian democratic movement after 1945. Additionally, in the Austrian part of Tyrol, notions of the wider multilingual region never entirely faded. North Tyrol’s main university, for instance, has continued to offer Italian-language courses and hosts a faculty of Italian law.

By the middle of the twentieth century, however, increasingly aggressive forms of nationalism on both sides of the linguistic divide superseded patterns of pre-modern, regional identification.

Nationalist excesses and their remnants

National identities based on linguistic differences had taken shape over the course of the nineteenth century but were exacerbated with the rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. While the Italian Fascists aimed to forcefully assimilate German-speaking South Tyroleans, many among the latter hoped for South Tyrol to be incorporated into Hitler’s Reich. As part of their political rapprochement in the 1930s, the Italian and German regimes sought to resolve the issue of South Tyrol through population resettlement. German-speakers should decide whether they wanted to stay in South Tyrol, with the prospect of being forcefully assimilated; or whether they wanted to be resettled to the Reich. The plebiscite on resettlement deeply dived Italy’s German-speaking minority. The two sides accused each other of betraying their German national heritage or their Tyrolean homeland, respectively.

Large-scale resettlement never materialized amidst the devastation of the Second World War. Yet, the plans to do so revealed the deep-seated tension between those South Tyroleans who subscribed to German nationalism; and those, who maintained a regional identity where local allegiances trumped linguistic divisions.

After the Second World War, South Tyrol’s political elites aimed to reconcile these two camps within a common political structure for the whole German-speaking minority. This led to the creation of the South Tyrolean People’s Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei, SVP) in 1945. The SVP was highly successful in bringing together the different segments of the German-speaking minority and obtained over 90 percent of German-speakers’ votes. Yet, the defining characteristics of the minority remained contested. One wing considered the German-speaking South Tyroleans to be a linguistic-cultural group within the wider region of Tyrol that was now split between Austria and Italy. The other wing emphasized South Tyroleans’ membership within a larger German nation.

None of the resulting political aspirations put forth by either wing could feasibly be pursued in South Tyrol’s post-war environment. The aggressive nationalisms had irreversibly politicized the linguistic differences in South Tyrol. Thus, multilingual regionalism was no longer an option. At the same time, Western Europe’s emerging security structure solidified state borders and discredited all forms of pan-Germanism, which precluded the option of secession.

Re-interpreting regionalism

The SVP’s compromise was to demand autonomy for German-speakers within the Italian state, and a neat separation of South Tyrol’s language groups in public institutions. The reinstated Republic of Austria and the Austrian Tyrol were crucial in supporting this cause, despite Austria’s eagerness to differentiate itself from its own infamous German nationalist heritage.

The SVP and Austria’s negotiations with the Italian government succeeded in 1969. Since then, robust mechanisms for territorial autonomy and minority self-government have gradually been put in place.  The autonomous institutions have substantially contributed to South Tyrol’s political stability and economic success. This has turned the institutions themselves into a reference point for collective identification. In 2014, more than 80 percent of German-speakers in the province identified as “South Tyroleans”. Allegiances with pan-Germanic and wider Tyrolean identities have markedly weakened.

At the same time, new forms of regionalism are allowing for a patchwork of identities that straddle linguistic and political borders. Oftentimes the resulting identities combine reinterpretations of historic elements with newly emerging allegiances. The SVP, for example, has become more vocal in portraying Austria as South Tyrol’s “motherland”. This stands in sharp contrast to the party’s previous commitments to the broader German cultural heritage. Simultaneously, the party promotes a “European Region of Tyrol” as part of the European Union’s cross-border initiatives. This embryonic entity resembles the historic Crownland of Tyrol and includes Italian and Germanic-dominated regions. Voters, too, have shown appetite for more political diversity. Votes still tend to be overwhelmingly cast to candidates from one’s own linguistic group. Yet, the once hegemonic conservative SVP now is in fierce competition with liberals, Greens and the populist right; with each challenger presenting their own vision of a South Tyrolean identity.

Conclusion

South Tyrol’s autonomous institutions may correctly be commended as “one of the most successful cases of consociational conflict regulation in the world”. The reasons for their success lie as much in their institutional design as they do in the complex and multi-layered identities of the province’s population. The nationalist excesses of the twentieth century have essentialized individual traits of these identities (in this case, language). However, the recognition of multiple, simultaneously held allegiances can dilute national antagonisms. The future success of South Tyrol’s institutions and of those with the aim to replicate its model depends on giving voice to this diversity.

Sources

Alber, Elisabeth, and Carolin Zwilling. “Continuity and Change in South Tyrol’s Ethnic Governance.” In Autonomy Arrangements around the World: A Collection of Well and Lesser Known Cases, edited by Levente Salat, Sergiu Constantin, Alexander Osipov and István Gergő Székely, 33-66. Cluj-Napoca: Editura Institutului pentru Studierea Problemelor Minorităţilor Naţionale, 2014.

Carlà, Andrea. “Peace in South Tyrol and the Limits of Consociationalism.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 24, no. 3 (2018): 251-75.

Grote, Georg. The South Tyrol Question, 1866–2010: From National Rage to Regional State. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012.

Pallaver, Günther. “The Südtiroler Volkspartei: Success through Conflict, Failure through Consensus.” In Regionalist Parties in Western Europe: Dimensions of Success, edited by Oscar Mazzoleni and Sean Mueller, 107-34. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Steurer, Leopold. “Südtirol 1918-1945.” In Handbuch Zu Neueren Geschichte Tirols. Band 2: Zeitgeschichte. 1. Teil: Politische Geschichte, 179-312. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1993.

Patrick Utz is a PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. His research focusses on minority nationalism, irredentism and kin-state politics. It has been published in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and the Centre on Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh.

For more information, please visit:

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and the Centre on Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh.

For more information, please visit:

https://themythofhomogeneity.org/

https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/

The Populism and Sub-State Nationalism Nexus in Flanders

On By Alessandro AmbrosinoIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment
Photo: Tijl Vercaemer

H-Nationalism is proud to publish here the ninth post of its “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations from a multi- disciplinary and diachronic angle. Today’s contribution, by Judith Sijstermans (University of Birmingham), examines the intermixing of populism and nationalism in today’s Flemish politics.

When Flemish nationalism emerged in the 19 th century, despite comprising approximately 60% of the Belgian population, the Flemish people and language were excluded from public administration, the military, politics, law, education and the media. Flanders was dominated by an agrarian way of life, while Wallonia grew through industrialisation. This period of history engendered a feeling of minoritisation, due to Flemish alienation from the centres of Belgian power at the time. This ‘minoritised majority’ mindset forms the foundation of Flemish nationalist ideology today.

However, in practical terms, Flemish fortunes shifted significantly after the Second World War. The Flemish economy now outperforms Wallonia’s following the decline of the Walloon coal and ‘heavy’ industries. The Flemish nationalist message shifted from ‘poor Flanders’ to a ‘nationalism of the rich’ in which Flanders is portrayed as Wallonia’s ‘milk cow’ (Dalle Mulle, 2017). The Belgian state has decentralized, with significant powers
devolved to the Flemish and Walloon governments.

Flemish sub-state nationalism is now also characterized by a populist turn, driven by the populist radical right and independence-seeking party the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest). In Belgium’s 2019 elections, the VB’s proportion of the vote rose more than 8% at the federal level and 12% in Flemish Parliament elections. The VB’s sub-state nationalist competitor, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA, New Flemish Alliance), remains the largest party in Flanders. However, while it is predominantly a conservative sub-state nationalist party, the N-VA also incorporates populist messaging, particularly directed at Belgian government elites (Van Haute, Pauwels and Sinardet, 2018).

Flanders is not a prototypical case of a minority nationalist movement. It does not represent a minority (demographically or economically) and is increasingly identified by populist rather than autonomist viewpoints. In this blog, I further detail how the Flemish sub-state nationalist approach has incorporated populist narratives and delve into how this populist turn has also led to the adoption of an identitarian approach. In these ways, the Flemish nationalist movement is typical of other emerging patterns of European politics.

Adopting a Populist Sub-state Nationalist Narrative

Populism, academically and politically, has become an inescapable part of the political zeitgeist. For the sake of space and time, I adopt the dominant understanding of the term of populism from political scientist Cas Mudde: populism is a thin-centred ideology concerned with the division between the ‘pure people’ and ‘corrupt elite.’ Populist rhetoric, precisely because of its thin centred nature, fits smoothly in with nationalist ideologies.

Statements from both the N-VA and the VB show how advocating for territorial autonomy can be supported by populist rhetoric. For example, in response to the latest Belgian government formation, which kept both Flemish nationalists parties out, the N-VA placed themselves on the side of the ‘people’: “The N-VA will do everything we can from ourpolitical position during the coming legislature to protect the Flemish people as much as we can from the disastrous plans of this government.” While they raised issues around the legitimacy of the government, the party ultimately stuck to its conservative critique, particularly emphasizing opposition to new taxation.

The Vlaams Belang’s language has been more explicitly populist. The party called the new government an “undemocratic monster coalition” and critiqued the government for increasing the number of jobs, rather than being ‘among the people.’ They emphasized that the government lacked a Flemish majority and that this was seen as a betrayal from ‘traditional parties’ who ‘allowed themselves to be bribed for jobs.’ For both the N-VA and the VB, one elite enemy is the Belgian state. However, for the Vlaams Belang, the Belgian state is not the only enemy of the ‘pure people.’ The VB has also critiqued academics, teachers, journalists and other media professionals as antagonistic to the people (De Cleen, 2016).

Globalization and global elites are also a target. For example, in the party’s membership magazine, VB leader Tom van Grieken critiqued the UN’s Migration Pact. He argued that this was indicative of a wider problem:

“These disconnected globalist elite do not stand alone. Because ivory towers don’t only stand in New York. They also stand in Europe. They also stand in Brussels…The one group is the left side—who eagerly welcome all these new foreign voters—and the other group are the neo-liberals who see this new wave of immigrants as an army of new cheap workers. These two groups get along so well that a clear new political ault line has been created. Namely on one side, left multiculturalists and liberal globalists (united in a coalition against our people) and on the other side patriots, the nationalists that defend ordinary people” (VB Magazine, January 2019)”.

With the increasing electoral power of the Vlaams Belang, sub-state nationalism becomes one part of the movement. However, it is clear that Flemish autonomy from the Belgian state is interwoven with an anti-elite search for autonomy from broader local and international ‘elite’ who are portrayed as corrupt, anti-democratic, and in opposition to the Flemish volk (people).

An Identitarian Evolution for Flemish Cultural Nationalism

Just as the Flemish people are pitted against these elites, Flemish culture is pitted against a ‘liberal’ or ‘left wing’ culture which is seen as being diffused through the media and education. The Vlaams Belang and the N-VA have both, for example, advocated for cutting cultural subsidies, particularly for new or emerging projects. The parties were accused by left wing Flemish parties of targeting funding that would support artists not engaging in ‘traditional’ Flemish art or working with Flanders’ migrant communities. One VB Parliamentarian, Klaas Slootmans, was quoted in Politico as saying: “We back the [N-VA led] government if it wants to cut back on experimental art that is good at spitting in the face of the Flemish.”

The Flemish Movement emerged initially in defence of the Dutch language. Early Flemish nationalists were middle class intellectuals concerned with promoting the use of the Dutch language and using that language to defend the ‘spirit’ of the Flemish people (Dewulf, 2012). In 2020, this linguistic nationalism is only one part of a wider nativist ‘defence’ of Flemish culture.

The Vlaams Belang’s cultural nationalism has been supported by identitarian messages. The identitarian movement is concerned with the defence of a particular ‘European’ identity based on an imagined historical cultural landscape, which was homogenous. Identitarian groups describe migration as a ‘replacement’ of white Europeans with migrants and particularly criticise Muslim migrants. The movement is characterized by the use of social media and YouTube, and a purposeful ambiguity about its goals.

The identitarian approach to Flemish nationalism has been spearheaded by VB MP Dries van Langenhove, who founded the Flemish and right wing youth group Schild en Vrienden (Shield and Friends). Van Langenhove was quoted in the March 2019 Vlaams Belang members magazine promoting a nostalgic nationalism: “The feeling of guilt that has been fed to us since May 1968, and that every European has been carrying since World War Two may well push Europe into the abyss definitively…it ensures that citizens everywhere in Western Europe no longer put their country and people first.” Like the language of putting Flanders first, Vlaams Belang politicians use the language of ‘making Flanders great again’ and supported Donald Trump. Party leader Tom van Grieken tweeted: “The rise of Trump is not
an isolated phenomenon. In Europe too, more and more voters want real change.”

In his work on ‘master frames’, Rydgren (2005) showed that radical right messaging in the 1970s and 1980s did not emerge independently in each European country. Rather, it diffused transnationally, particularly from France’s Front National. The VB’s founding members had a close relationship with the Front National and adopted this master frame. The current identitarian messages and outreach to the Trump movement shows that transnational diffusion of radical right nationalist narratives continues today.

However, ultimately, it is the Vlaams Belang’s particular brand of nationalism which is now on the rise in Flanders. In an October 2020 poll, the VB gained 27.1% of the support compared to the N-VA’s 22.2%. The party’s populist narratives link Flemish autonomy with a wider search for autonomy from globalization. The expanded scope of Flemish nationalism can also be seen in the way that the Flemish Movement has begun to promote different forms of cultural nationalism, and nativism.

The Flemish Movement is not prototypical of sub-state nationalism. However, examining the evolution of the Flemish Movement provides an insight into complex intersections between nationalism, populism, and nativism which are increasingly relevant beyond Flanders as well.

Alternative transnational narratives about Flemish sub-state nationalism also emerge. The N- VA, for example, has continued to ally itself with sub-state nationalists in Catalonia, showing support during and after the Catalan independence referendum. Most recently, the N-VA’s Flemish Minister President Jan Jambon spoke out against sanctions made against Catalonia’s President Quim Torra. The Vlaams Belang also looks to other sub-state nationalist movements, with representatives expressing interest in the Scottish independence process, for example.

Sources

Dalle Mulle, E. (2017). The nationalism of the rich: discourses and strategies of separatist parties in Catalonia, Flanders, Northern Italy and Scotland. Routledge.

De Cleen, B. (2016). Representing the People: The Articulation of Nationalism and Populism in the Rhetoric of the Vlaams Belang. In J. Jamin (Ed.), L’Extrême Droite en Europe (pp. 223-242). Brussels: Éditions Bruylant.

Rydgren, J. (2005). Is extreme right‐wing populism contagious? Explaining the emergence of a new party family. European journal of political research, 44(3), 413-437.

Van Haute, E., Pauwels, T., & Sinardet, D. (2018). Sub-state nationalism and populism: the cases of Vlaams Belang, New Flemish Alliance and DéFI in Belgium. Comparative European Politics, 16(6), 954-975.

Judith Sijstermans is a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLSIS) in the University of Birmingham. She is currently working on an ESRC funded project ‘The survival of the mass party: Evaluating activism and participation among populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in Europe’ (aka “Populism In Action”) (ES/R011540/1).

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and the Centre on Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh.


For more information, please visit:

https://themythofhomogeneity.org/

https://www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/

Scotland as a Permanent Minority

On By Alessandro AmbrosinoIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment

H-Nationalism is proud to publish here the eighth post of its “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations from a multi-disciplinary and diachronic angle. Today’s contribution, by Michael Keating (University of Aberdeen), examines Scotland’s position as a minority nation within the UK political union. The series is a collaboration with the Centre on Constitutional Change and H-Nationalism.

Scotland is not usually seen as a ‘national minority’ in the sense of a people living within a nation-state but not identifying with it. Certainly, Scots are not a minority identifying with a kin-state elsewhere. Scotland, rather, is seen as a self-recognizing nation within a plurinational union. As in any nation, the criteria for membership are multiple but the exercise of political rights is defined by territorial criteria, as shown in the franchise for Scottish Parliament and local elections and the independence referendum of 2014. This means UK, Commonwealth and (until Brexit) European citizens over the age of 16 and resident in Scotland.

It would, however, be accurate to call Scotland a minority nation since it accounts for only some eight per cent of the population of the United Kingdom. Scottish votes have rarely decided the outcome of a UK election and the first-past-the-post electoral system usually produces enough seats for the winning party in England to guarantee a majority across the UK as a whole.

Historically, Scotland was managed as a distinct part of the union, without conceding legislative power. Important domains for the reproduction of the nation, including established religion and education, were governed by local institutions. A dedicated government department, the Scottish Office, with its own minister in the UK government, administered domestic policy outside of taxation and welfare. UK regional policies and the distribution of public expenditure were handled with a view to Scotland. The British political parties dominated political representation but took care to present a Scottish image and cultivate their local roots. Patronage networks in the cities (dominated by Labour) and the rural areas (the Unionists, as Conservatives were known) bolstered support both for the parties and for the union.

For long periods of the twentieth century, the Labour and Conservative parties largely monopolized the Scottish vote, while performing there more or less as well as they did in England. There were two exceptions. One was the late nineteenth century, when Conservative dominance in England co-existed with Liberal hegemony in Scotland. This was one factor in sparking demands for legislative autonomy or Home Rule, the other factor being the example of Ireland. From the 1960s, the gap opened again as the Unionists/ Conservatives (dominant in the 1950s) went into long-term decline. Labour gained a plurality of votes and a majority seats and at every election between 1964 and 2010. The Home Rule movement revived although it was not until 1999 that Scotland gained a devolved Parliament.

Scottish devolution has been interpreted in different ways. For some, it represents an adjustment of policy roles in a unitary state. Westminster has lent powers to Scotland, which can be taken back at any time. There has been no reform of the central state to take account to devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Rather, they remain exceptions to the norm of majoritarian Westminster politics. Under the principle of ‘devolve and forget’ they have been allowed to make policy within their own domains, representing a significant extension of the sphere of local autonomy but not a break in principle.

For others, devolution represents a measure of self-determination, affirmed in the referendum of 1997 setting up the new Parliament. This builds on early ideas about the union as a partnership of nations in which the principle of parliamentary sovereignty was never resolved. The two interpretations have coexisted ever since. Strangely enough, even the independence referendum of 2014 barely touched on this issue, since that was about whether Scotland should become a separate, sovereign state, not about what devolution meant.  Only at the end of the campaign did the unionist parties agree on a package of measures that were vaguely linked to federal understandings. What the referendum did, however, was establish a rather clear division within Scotland between those who believe that the logical consequence of Scottish nationhood is an independent state and those who give primacy to the British nation and UK state.

The division was deepened by the results of the Brexit referendum when Scotland voted by a majority of 62 per cent to remain in the UK while England and the UK as a whole voted narrowly to leave. While the various formulas of autonomy, devolution, Home Rule and federalism can be managed to map out ‘middle ways’ between the unitary state and independence, membership of the EU is a clear cut choice of ‘in’ or ‘out’. This was reinforced by the turn on the part of the UK Government to a ‘hard’ Brexit, excluding membership of the EU single market or customs union, and by the refusal to allow a differentiated Brexit for Scotland.

This has been accompanied by a more muscular unionism within the UK Government, determined to assert its presence in Scotland. Powers coming back from Europe have been taken back to the centre rather than devolved, although not as comprehensively as originally proposed. The UK Government has started to spend in Scotland in both reserved and devolved matters. The language of ‘unitary state’ has been revived (for example in the Internal Market White Paper).

At the same time, the old model of territorial management through the party system has broken down. The Scottish National Party (helped by the electoral system) has won a large majority of Scottish seats at the last three UK General Elections. Labour, the main party of territorial management since the 1960s, has been reduced twice to only one seat. The Conservative ‘revival’ has been limited.

In many ways, Scottish politics have become more self-referential and detached from the British level. The UK Government is barely visible except to collect taxes and distribute payments from a welfare system that itself has been stigmatized and no longer underpinned by a concept of social citizenship. The Covid crisis has allowed the Scottish Government to occupy the main political space as it takes the lead in responding – even if the substantive policies are not so different from those south of the border.

Support for independence, which was 45 per cent in the referendum of 2014, has held up and even increased in response to Brexit and Covid.

A return to the managed union would require a revival of the fortunes of the British parties in Scotland. This looks unlikely. Indeed, their retreat has deprived them of troops on the ground and contacts with Scottish opinion, making it ever more difficult to know how to respond to the new politics. Alternatively, they could accept the new party panorama and seek to accommodate Scottish nationalism within UK politics at the centre, the way the Gladstonian Liberals did with the Irish Party in the late nineteenth century. That, however, risks alienating support in England. In any case, Scottish nationalism is now associated with independence and not with the gamut of formulas from Home Rule to devolution-max, which have served to blur the issue in the past. It is also linked with a commitment to Europe which neither of the main UK parties would countenance.

There is no teleological rule that nations must become states. Scottish independence is not inevitable and support for it, while over 50 per cent, is not overwhelming. The meaning of independence itself is in question in the modern world. In the independence referendum campaign of 2014, SNP leader Alex Salmond promised that Scotland would remain within five ‘unions’ – monarchical, monetary, defence, European and social – and withdraw only from the political one.  The independence prospectus is now closely linked to membership of the European Union – or perhaps the European Economic Area. There are multiple other external reference points, including the United Nations, the Commonwealth, the world trading system, the Council of Europe and NATO. Scotland will remain, as before, a small nation nested in larger systems of regulation and policy-making but can no longer be understood just as a minority within the United Kingdom.

Michael Keating is Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen. His new book, State and Nation in the United Kingdom: The Fragmented Union, will appear from Oxford University Press in the Spring of 2021.

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and the Centre on Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh.

Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective Series: Summer Break!

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Our Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective Series will go on holidays until the beginning of the next academic year. In September, we will resume posting content on topics related to majorities and minorities in collaboration with the Centre on Constitutional Change based at the University of Edinburgh.

In the meantime, please feel free to comment on the previous posts, which you can find below or at: https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/pages/5740772/minorities-contemporary-and-historical-perspectives-monthly-series

We seize the occasion to thank all scholars who have contributed to the series so far!

We wish you a nice summer and all the best,

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle and Mona Bieling

The Nature of the Minority Question in Northern Ireland: 100 Years of Ethnic Conflict

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H-Nationalism is proud to publish here the seventh post of its “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations from a multi-disciplinary and diachronic angle. Today’s contribution, by Brian Girvin (University of Glasgow), takes a look at a hundred years of majority-minority relations in Northern Ireland. The series is a collaboration with H-Nationalism.

It is 100 years since Northern Ireland was established as a devolved region of the United Kingdom under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. It was never an independent state, but was able to act like one because the British government refused to intervene in its internal affairs. Britain retained sovereign rights but choose not to apply them. Thus, despite the long-term stability of Britain, Northern Ireland has been a zone of confrontation, conflict and violence throughout that period. The Northern Ireland experience provides an important comparative case study of how a majority addresses the ‘minority question’ within its territory. Why was the situation so intractable?[1]

At face value there is little difference between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. However, religion, national identity and the constitutional future of the region have been the main features of political conflict and competition since 1920. Protestant unionists comprised two thirds of the population, while Catholic nationalists accounted for one third. Irish nationalism considers Irish unionists to be part of the Irish nation, while unionists insist that their primary loyalty is to Britain and that their identity is British. Polling has consistently found that Protestants consider their national identity to be British, while Catholics identify most closely with an Irish identity.[2] Furthermore, Protestants vote overwhelmingly for unionist parties while Catholics provide similar levels of support for Irish nationalist parties. There has been little middle ground for moderate parties at any time over the past 100 years, though the Alliance Party and the Green Party have more recently offered non-confessional options.[3]

Governments have a wide range of options available to address ‘minority’ issues, ranging from accommodationist and conciliatory policies to active repression of minorities. What is surprising is how few governments seek out accommodationist policies, especially when addressing national minorities. Northern Ireland was born in violence and conflict. While the unionist leadership promised to govern in an even-handed fashion, the reality was radically different. The nationalist minority refused to recognise the new government and abstained from parliament at first in protest at the partition of the island. The Unionist party used its political success to exclude nationalists from political influence. Northern Ireland was never a ‘normal’ democratic polity nor was it liberal. Unionists won every election and successfully maintained its vote within the unionist block, despite occasional left-wing and progressive challenges. In effect, Northern Ireland became an ethnic democracy on majoritarian grounds, with one-party rule and permanent exclusion of the minority.

The new government abolished proportional representation in local government elections in 1922 and gerrymandered constituencies where nationalists were in the majority. Proportional representation was also abolished in elections to the Northern Ireland parliament, reinforcing the majoritarian message that the government would not share power. The new government remained deeply suspicious of nationalists and Catholics. Indeed, it has been said of Sir Richard Dawson Bates, the Minister for Home Affairs (1921-43), that he considered all Catholics to be nationalists and all nationalists as traitors and not simply political enemies.[4] While unionism should not be seen as an undifferentiated movement, fears concerning the nationalist minority and insecurities in respect of the irredentist demands of the Irish state allowed hard line positions to be maintained.

Equilibrium was established during the 1920s between the majority and minority in Northern Ireland, but it was one that reinforced and perpetuated the political divisions between unionists and nationalists. Northern Ireland was not a normal democracy in terms of policing or judicial matters. The Royal Ulster Constabulary was a para-military armed force, dominated by Protestants; it was supplemented by a paramilitary reserve force, the B-Specials who were seen by nationalists as particularly sectarian in their operations. The primary focus of policing was the defence of the constitutional status quo. This focus was reinforced by special emergency legislation, which at first was renewed annually but later made permanent. The legislation was permissive and repressive. Emergency rule became the norm, reflecting the majority view that Northern Ireland was always under ‘siege’.

The judiciary and the civil service were also dominated by Protestants and the labour market was deeply segmented. Indeed unionist leaders encouraged employers to hire Protestants rather than Catholics in their firms. These and other features created two distinct communities (nations?), which were accordingly ‘socialized into conflict’ as Rose put it.[5] Majority and minority have very different historic memories and in Northern Ireland they have been conflictual. Successive generations have been socialised by inter-community conflict, political violence and repression. The two communities also inhabit distinct residential spheres, work separately and engage with different media outlets. Inter-community marriage has been rare, the communities are educated separately and they worship in different churches.

This status quo remained in place for fifty years. Unionists were convinced that successive UK governments would not intervene and they could ignore pressure to reform what had become a deeply divided sectarian society. Sharing power was never considered an option by unionists. A poll in 1978 reported that two thirds of Protestants agreed that ‘since Protestants are a majority, they should have the last word in how Northern Ireland is governed’, whereas Catholics were far less likely to adopt this position.

As a consequence the unionist government was ill prepared for the challenge to its dominance that the Civil Rights movement posed in the 1960s. By concentrating on reform and equality issues, the Civil Rights movement sought to by-pass the constitutional question. This appealed to liberal elements within unionism, who favoured reform and accommodation. These efforts were thwarted by hard-line unionists who perceived the challenge as an existential threat to the existence of Northern Ireland.

The protests and violence of the late 1960s brought the UK state directly back into Northern Ireland for the first time since 1920, deploying the British army in 1969 and taking increased responsibility for governing the area. During the crucial three years after 1969, the unionist leadership failed to address the demands for inclusion made by moderate nationalist leaders. They maintained that reforms had been put in place and that what remained were security issues to be dealt with as previously. Successive investigations and commissions revealed the deep sectarian disparities in the society and the one sided nature of the regime, undermining any residual unionist legitimacy.

The violence and intransigence of a significant section of unionism also provided the impetus for a new and extremely successful military campaign by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It was to take nearly thirty years and over 3,000 deaths in the conflict that followed to achieve an outcome that was satisfactory to nationalists and tolerable to a majority of unionists. The British and Irish governments sought to establish a political framework for reconciling majority and minority interests within Northern Ireland. The power-sharing executive established in 1973 and the Sunningdale Agreement (December 1973) appeared to achieve this. However, a majority of unionists became disillusioned with the Agreement and the Ulster Workers Council strike in May 1974 led to the collapse of the executive. Notwithstanding this, the British government acknowledged that its commitment to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland was conditional, urging the unionist majority to compromise.

Yet unionists remained in the majority electorally and demographically into the 1990s. Moreover, their interests could not be ignored, but neither could they have a majoritarian veto over possible agreements. Negotiations to achieve a settlement had to achieve agreement between the two sovereign governments, between the two communities in Northern Ireland and within each of the communities. The Good Friday Agreement (1998) achieved the first and second of these objectives, but the unionist community split on the issue. In a referendum to ratify the agreement in May 1998, seventy-one per cent voted in favour, while twenty-nine per cent voted against. It is estimated that ninety-nine per cent of Catholics voted in favour, while just fifty-one per cent of Protestants did so. In elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly, parties that supported the Agreement received seventy-five per cent of the vote. This was also the first election when a nationalist party became the largest party.

The Good Friday Agreement is a sophisticated arrangement to achieve consensus and cooperation between the two communities in Northern Ireland. It effectively undermines the concept of majority and minority for the purposes of governing, by providing a consociational model for power sharing, political cooperation and conflict resolution. The two nationalities are considered equal; eschewing majoritarianism to decide outcomes. Each nationality has an effective veto over legislation and outcomes. Consent and consensus building is at the heart of the Agreement, while power sharing at the executive level is mandatory. Decisions within the Assembly must reflect cross-community agreement. There must be a majority among both nationalist and unionist members for a simple majority to apply. Otherwise, a decision can be taken with the support of forty per cent of both unionists and nationalists, but only if the overall vote equals sixty per cent. All parties to the Agreement recognise Northern Ireland’s existing constitutional status, but the agreement also provides for a referendum on this question under specified circumstances. Other important features include a strong North-South Ministerial Council, improved human rights and legislation to enhance equality between the two communities. Institutions were also established to address issues related to policing, the judiciary and related matters.

The Agreement and its subsequent iterations have had a profound impact on Northern Irish politics and the relationships between majority and minority. The most immediate impact was the decline in violence and the ‘normalisation’ of policing and security. Co-operation between the unionist and nationalist parties at the Assembly and in the Executive, though often difficult, provided an opportunity for political and social change without violence. Ironically, one unintended consequence of the Agreement was that the more intransigent Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein now dominate the Assembly and the Executive due to their electoral success. However, this has shown the strength of the Agreement rather than its weakness, as cooperation between these two parties would have been considered unthinkable without the institutions in place. Critics have emphasised that the Agreement institutionalises the divisions between unionists and nationalists, privileging their interests over those of others. There is some truth in this, but it ignores the continuing importance of the division itself and the Agreement’s success in managing the relationship.

 In the twenty years since the Agreement was signed, Northern Ireland has changed in many ways. Nevertheless, politics continues to reflect the deeply segmented nature of the society. Denomination and national identity continue to determine how people vote. The unionist and nationalist blocks attract over eighty per cent of the votes at each election, while non-aligned parties remain marginal to this division. Furthermore, each denomination/nationality remains loyal to its respective national block. What has changed is the balance between the two blocks. At the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, each block captured the same number of seats, though unionists received more votes. Furthermore the question of majority or minority has not gone away but the context has changed. For the past hundred years Protestants were in the majority but this has been eroded. There is evidence that Catholics will be in the majority for the first time after the 2021 census and may already be so.[6] Demographic change may already be having a political impact. In a 2019 poll the united Ireland option was favoured by forty-six per cent over forty-five for staying in the UK.  This opens up the prospect of new majorities and minorities within the island of Ireland.

Brian Girvin is Professor of Comparative Politics (Emeritus) and Honorary Professor in Politics at the University of Glasgow. Brian’s research interests focus on the inter-relationship between democracy, nationalism and religion in a comparative context. He has published on conservatism in the twentieth century, majority nationalism in India and Ireland, the history of reproductive politics in Ireland and on political culture and modernization in the 19th and 20th centuries. Brian is completing a book length study, ‘Political Independence, Nationalism and Democracy since the French Revolution’.

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

For previous posts published in this series go to: https://networks.h-net.org/node/3911/pages/5740772/minorities-contemporary-and-historical-perspectives-monthly-series

Scholars interested in contributing to the series can contact:

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle: emmanuel.dallemulle-at-graduateinstitute.ch

Mona Bieling: mona.bieling-at-graduateinstitute.ch

[1] There is a considerable literature on Northern Ireland, partition and ethnic conflict in Ireland: Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); David W. Miller, Queen’s Rebels: Ulster Loyalism in Historical Perspective (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1978); Brendan O’Leary, A Treatise on Northern Ireland: Volume I-III, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) provide different perspectives on the complex issues involved.

[2] Richard Rose, Governing Without Consensus: An Irish Perspective (London: Faber and Faber, 1971) and Edward Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed in Northern Ireland (Aldershot: Gower, 1983); https://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2018/Political_Attitudes/IRBRIT.html

[3] See Paul Mitchell and Rick Wilford (Eds.), Politics in Northern Ireland (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999) for a detailed discussion of these voting patterns and cleavages.

[4] Patrick Buckland, A History of Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981), 33.

[5] Rose, Governing Without Consensus, 327-55.

[6] href=”http://www.progressivepulse.org/ireland/are-there-are-more-cultural-catholics-or-protestants-in-northern-ireland”>http://www.progressivepulse.org/ireland/are-there-are-more-cultural-catholics-or-protestants-in-northern-ireland

The “Majority Question” in Interwar Romania: Making Majorities from Minorities in a Heterogeneous State

On By MoH TeamIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment

We are proud to publish here the sixth post of our “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations from a multi-disciplinary and diachronic angle. Today’s contribution, by R. Chris Davis (Lone Star College–Kingwood), examines the efforts of Romanian nation-builders to make Romanians during the interwar period. The series is a collaboration with H-Nationalism.

Heterogeneity in Interwar Romania

While the situation of ethnic minorities in Romania has been examined extensively within the scholarship on the interwar period, far too little consideration is given into the making of the Romanian ethnic majority itself. My reframing of the “minority question” into its corollary, the “majority question,” in this blogpost draws on my recently published book examining the contested identity of the Moldavian Csangos, an ethnically fluid community of Romanian- and Hungarian-speaking Roman Catholics in eastern Romania.[1] While investigating this case study of a putative ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority, I was constantly reminded that not only minorities but also majorities are socially constructed, crafted from regional, religious, and linguistic bodies and identities. Transylvanians, Bessarabians, and Bănățeni (people from the Banat region) and Regațeni (inhabitants of Romania’s Old Kingdom), for example, were rendered into something more broadly and collectively dubbed “Romanian.” What also became clear is that definitions and dynamics of majoritarian identities could be contested as much as minority ones, especially when we consider that the very concept of minorities (and thus majorities) is the relatively recent invention of the nation state.[2]

What became the Romanian majority by the 1920s and 30s emerged not only from the inhabitants of the newly appended territories but also from a heterogeneous mix of ethnic and national communities long present in the Romanian national space. Greater Romania during the interwar period was formed from newly unified territories that were home to large populations that were either non-Romanian-speaking or non-Romanian Orthodox or both. From these new frontiers emerged large, complex multi-ethnic border zones: in the Banat region lived Swabians, Hungarians, Serbians, Catholic Bulgarians and Krashovani, and Czechs; in Transylvania were Hungarians, Szeklers, Saxons, Swabians, Jews, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, and Armenians; in Bukovina were Poles and more Germans, Hungarians, and Ukrainians; in Moldova and Bessarabia, still more Germans, Jews, and Ukrainians, as well as Csangos and Russians; and in Dobrudja and Muntenia dwelt Greeks, Turks, Tatars, Gagauz, Aromanians, and Lipovans. Spread throughout the country was Europe’s largest contingent of Roma. The capital Bucharest was also home to many of these same communities, including relatively large numbers of Albanians, Macedonians, Italians, and French. After World War I, the city became the destination for thousands of Hungarians emigrating from eastern Transylvania. Historically, many of Romania’s national elites came from these groups, be they Greek Phanariots in the Old Kingdom (or Regat), Armenian and Aromanian merchants in Moldova and Transylvania, or Hungarian and German noblemen in Transylvania.

The monumental task of Romania’s nation builders (i.e. its majority makers) during the interwar period was, therefore, to break down the country’s regionalisms and local identities and to instill a semblance of ethno-national identity, one easily professed as well as measured, however ill-defined it might be. Eager to take stock of the new territories – and the presumptive ethnic Romanians inhabiting them – historians, ethnographers, anthropologists, sociographers, and demographers from urban centers such as Bucharest and Iași journeyed to the country’s periphery, especially to Transylvania. For Romanian historians and social scientists from Transylvania, new avenues for research and publication were opened in a Greater Romanian nation eager to document the character and plight of ethnic Romanians who had long survived foreign dominion. Romania’s foremost geographer Gheorghe Vâlsan called on a new generation of professional and amateur historians, scientists, and writers to take stock of the nation:

In every corner of the Romanian land there needs to be found a priest, a teacher, an enlightened man, to attempt to draw upon the unknown ways distinctive to the life of his region. Gradually, research on the regions will multiply and fill gaps. We are at the most significant moment of our national history, and a faithful image of the land and people of Romania in this epoch will be uniquely documented. For our efforts, future researchers will acknowledge us.[3]

A vanguard of Romanian historians and scientists, including those of the famed Gusti School of Sociology, now sought to locate, quantify, and record the varieties of Romanian-ness within the newly enlarged country. What they discovered in the Romanian countryside often shocked them.

Romanianize the Romanians

These majority makers soon realized that the Romanians were, in many areas of the country, actually a hodgepodge of languages, patois, cultures, customs, and religions, with little sense of the national identity being debated and refined in Bucharest, Iași, and Cluj. Allegiances in rural Romania were principally to family, Church, neighbor, and village, and not to some modern notion of a larger ethno-national community. In this respect, the Romanian peasantry – especially in the heterogeneous borderlands in Transylvania and Moldova – was no different than the vast majority of the rural, disparate communities that populated the rest of central and eastern Europe. As Kate Brown has discussed in her influential work on the multi-ethnic Kresy region in Ukraine – a region that could just as easily stand for Transylvania, Bukovina, or Dobrudja – the peasantries who eked out lives for themselves naturally incorporated the complexities of the hybrid cultures in which they lived; their identities were tied to locality, class, profession, and social status rather than to nationality, a designation few villagers in such a milieu would have understood. To the extent that they did characterize something akin to a national identity, it was, for them, something mutable – something that could change with marriage, education, or military service.[4]

Convincing these Romanian peasants – at the very least, those who spoke Romanian and were Orthodox – they were actually something called “Romanian” was no small feat. In many ways, Romania’s nation builders had to Romanianize the Romanians. This is not to say that the majority of the Romanian-speaking peasantry did not intuit or even profess a sense of Romanian national belonging; only that most would not have articulated or actualized it as did Romania’s nation builders in interwar years. A modern national consciousness – one that could be mobilized and enacted for nation-building – had to be impressed upon the vast rural population. It probably rarely occurred to the Romanian-speaking peasants from the marshes of the Danbue Delta that they shared a common origin, homeland, and destiny with, say, the highlanders around the Western Carpathian’s Bihor Massif, nearly 1000km away.

One way to achieve this was to fix nationality and ethnicity in space. Censuses and especially ethnographic and demographic maps affixed identities to particular territories, making visible (or invisible) one community or another and creating national taxonomies into which peoples could be neatly segregated. Beginning in April 1924, a series of statutes under the rubric The Regulations on Establishing Romanian Nationality aimed not only to establish the procedure for acquiring Romanian nationality but also to facilitate the recording and cataloging of the various populations in the new Romanian territories. Thus was created an inventory and topology of the Romanian nation using nationality lists, nationality registers, and nationality certificates (certificate de naţionalitate). In the process, not only minority but also a majoritarian national identity became codified and then inscribed in the legitimizing documents of state bureaucracies. Homogenizing projects and legislation generated an epistemological knowledge of the nation – quantifying and objectifying the nation, from something abstract to something real, something living – with the aim, ultimately, to create a nation-state that was unitary, stable. The Romanian equivalent of Germany’s Ostforschung created a veritable database of the nation’s people, utilizing statisticians, demographers, sociologists, historians, cartographers, and, by the 1930s, racial anthropologists and eugenicists. Research on Romania’s vast populations was coordinated by ominous-sounding centers or bureaucracies such as the Institute of Biopolitics, the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene, and later the State Undersecretariat of Romanianization, Colonization, and Inventory. By the late 1930s, the policy of Romanianizaiton (românizare) became an organizing policy of the Romanian state, a policy that segued into deportations, resettlements, repatriations, and ultimately genocide.

If you can’t beat ‘em… force ‘em to join you

The inherent difficulty of segregating large swathes of the country’s population into neat ethnic categories, especially into categories that would show a preponderance of ethnic Romanians (and thus an indominable ethnic majority) circumscribed by state borders, led to the targeting of particular minorities for redefinition as majorities. Looming over this entire enterprise remained the “Hungarian problem” in Transylvania, namely that within Romania’s new borders there were too many Hungarians, living too close together, in a region far too important; conversely, we could historicize the situation as a “majority problem,” namely that there were too few Romanians, living too far apart, in a region far too important. It was therefore no coincidence that Romanian historians and scientists who undertook research in eastern Transylvania began to question the ethnic composition of the region and the ethnic origins of its Hungarian-speaking Calvinist and Roman-Catholic inhabitants, known as the Szeklers, who had lived there for centuries.[5] Throughout the interwar period and into the 1940s, a number of studies and monographs promoted the idea that most if not all of the Szeklers possessed a separate ethnic genealogy or “ethnogenesis” from the body of Hungarians who entered Europe from Asia. According to this reinterpretation of the settlement and presence of Hungarian speakers in eastern Transylvania, the modern-day Szeklers were in point of fact denationalized Romanians from Transylvania, having been subjected to centuries of forced assimilation by Hungarian overlords, Hungarian administrative policies, and especially the Hungarian churches.

Geographer Sabin Opreanu, a mentee of the aforementioned Vâlsan, was among the first to suggest that the mass of Szeklers were none other than denationalized Romanians. He characterized the Szekler land as a “stratified space of confessions,” in which younger Hungarian ethnic and religious elements lay atop much older Romanian Orthodox ones.[6] These older Romanian elements formed the basis of this population, making it Romanian, not Hungarian. By peeling away these linguistic and confessional layers, he claimed, one could uncover the latent existence of a Romanian ethnic and racial continuity within the region. Noted Romanian philologist and classicist Gheorghe Popa-Lisseanu subsequently claimed that the bloc of Szeklers was created through systematic Hungarianization policies directed from Budapest since the 18th century. The Szekler was simply a “stray Romanian,” on the wrong path of history:

Those who will come voluntarily back to the bosom of their mother are welcome; for those who will linger in their situation of today, we consider them rightfully consanguineous with us but of Hungarian language and law. We seek to show them in every way their true ethnic origin and to convince them of this.[7]

Eventually, “denationalization” (desnaționalizare) theories speculated that the entire body of Hungarians in eastern Transylvania possessed a Romanian ethnogenesis. These theories helped solve a statistical dilemma that had bedeviled Romania’s nation builders since the country’s postwar acquisition of Transylvania. Romania’s majority makers used many of these theories – and extensive, state-sponsored research and fieldwork conducted in Romania’s new territories – to deconstruct the ethnic genealogy of minority communities, attempting to prove that a lost Romanian ethnos lay buried beneath their otherwise foreign customs, languages, and history. Other communities in peripheral regions such as the Timoc valley, Bukovina, parts of Moldavia, and Bessarabia soon became the object of similar questions and studies. As the threat of denationalization became part of a national cause linked to the very health and survival of the nation, the theories and discourses on the problem soon became invested with racial and biopolitical tropes. Denationalization theories, supported by serological work undertaken by Romanian racial anthropologists, proved useful tools for the recovery of populations that could now be labeled “lost Romanians.” By the late 1930s and early 40s, the growing body of studies on the Transylvanian Hungarians and Szeklers would provide a template for new studies on other ethnic minority communities, such as the Hungarian-speaking Csangos of Moldova. In the case of the Csangos, such works proved to have significant, lasting impacts both on and within the community, leading to new, alternative historical narratives based in no small part on the purported scientific demonstrability of ethnic origins.

To acknowledge the phenomenon of denationalization was the first step toward legitimizing Romanianization projects as renationalization projects, especially in regions where putative non-Romanians represented statistical majorities. The emphasis on ethnic origins was crucial: Romanian political and scientific elites decried the forced assimilation of ethnic Romanians in the past yet simultaneously introduced a series of homogenization projects targeting the country’s ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. Rebranding Romanianization as a process of national recovery also mitigated the country’s obligation to ensure minority rights, which the Romanian government had agreed to as part of the post–World War I settlement. In other words, the rights of minorities need not be upheld if those communities were, in essence, members of the ethnic Romanian majority, unwittingly and unjustly concealed as ethnic minorities. This process of national induction would have major implications for the ethnic majority-minority dynamic in Greater Romania, determining cultural and education policies, redrawing county and regional lines, influencing land reform and appropriation of churches, and recategorizing populations in national censuses. Majority-making contributed to the political radicalization of the interwar period and informed the thinking and policies that would lead to some of the worst atrocities perpetrated against minorities in wartime Romania. This was certainly the case with the influence that race-based conceptions of the nation had on Antonescu’s population policies – including sterilization, deportations, internal colonization, and population transfers – enacted during World War II.

Like race, ethnicity, and nationality, the terms “minority” and “majority” are fluid concepts with a tendency to reify. One is necessarily constructed against the other. When modified by adjectives ethnic, national, religious, or linguistic, these terms become overlapping and even more reflexive. Postulating the “majority question,” retrospectively, is yet another way to examine national and ethnic imagining as a multi-way process and to challenge the “myth of homogeneity” in east-central Europe.

R. Chris Davis is Professor of History at Lone Star College–Kingwood, where he is founder and coordinator of the LSC Center for Local & Oral History. He teaches US, European, and World History, as well as oral history and film studies. Chris researches and writes on minorities and religion in twentieth century east-central Europe. Currently, he serves as a book-reviews editor for H-Romania and as a board member for the Society for Romanian Studies. He recently published his first book, Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2019).

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

Scholars interested in contributing to the series can contact:

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle: emmanuel.dallemulle-at-graduateinstitute.ch

Mona Bieling: mona.bieling-at-graduateinstitute.ch

[1] R. Chris Davis, Hungarian Religion, Romanian Blood: A Minority’s Struggle for National Belonging (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2019)

[2] See Eric D. Weitz, A World Divided: The Global Struggle for Human Rights in the Age of Nation-States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019),160–163.

[3] Gheorghe Vâlsan, forward to Sabin Opreanu, Săcuizarea Românilor prin religie (Cluj: Institutul de Arte Grafice “Ardealul,” 1927), ii.

[4] Kate Brown, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003), 40. See also Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2008).

[5] Szekler(s) (Hu. székely [sing.]/székelyek [ pl.]; Ro. secui) is the Anglicized (via German) ethnonym for the Catholic and Protestant ethnolinguistic subgroup of Hungarians in eastern Transylvania, a region historically part of the Kingdom of Hungary but part of Romania since World War I (Northern Transylvania, including the Szekler-inhabited region, was ceded back to Hungary from 1940 to 1944). It is generally held that the Szeklers colonized the area around the eleventh century, though some theories place them in the Carpathian basin much earlier. Historically, the Szeklers were among the ruling nations of Transylvania, the Unio trium nationum, alongside the Saxons and Hungarians (and excluding the Romanians).

[6] Opreanu, Săcuizarea Românilor prin religie (Cluj: Institutul de Arte Grafice Ardealul, 1927), 16–17.

[7] Popa-Lisseanu, Secuii și secuizarea românilor (Bucharest: Tipografia ziarului “Universul,” 1937), 62.

Secession in Liberal Democracies: the Catalan case

On By MoH TeamIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment

We are proud to publish here the fifth post of our “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations in a multi-disciplinary and diachronic perspective. Today’s contribution, by Ferran Requejo (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), examines the reasons for the rise of demands for independence in Catalonia in the last decade. The series is a collaboration with H-Nationalism.

History matters. Current political conflicts display historical roots. Perhaps with history we do not explain everything, but without history we do not explain anything.

Having lived through a bloody civil war in the 1930s followed by four decades of General Franco’s dictatorship, the Spanish state carried out a transition to a democratic system at the end of the 1970s. The 1978 Constitution was the legal outcome of this transition process. Among other things, it established a territorial model – the so-called “Estado de las Autonomías” (State of Autonomous Communities) – which was in principle designed to satisfy the historical demands for recognition and self-government of, above all, the citizens and institutions of two minority nations: Catalonia and the Basque Country. This territorial model occupies an intermediate position between the classic federal and regional models of comparative politics, but has more regional than federal features[1]. Forty years later, many Catalan and Basque citizens and political and social actors show a deep disappointment regarding the development of this territorial model in terms of collective rights, political recognition and self-government.

In recent years support for independence has increased in Catalonia. Different indicators show that pro-independence demands are endorsed by a majority of its citizens, political parties and civil society organizations. This is a new phenomenon. Those in favour of independence had been in the minority throughout the 20th century. Nowadays, however, demands of a pro-autonomy and pro-federalist nature, which until recently had been dominant, have gradually lost public support in favour of demands for self-determination and secession

What has happened?

The reasons for this change are to be found in Catalonia’s political evolution over the past fifteen years, especially in the shortcomings with regard to constitutional recognition and political and economic accommodation displayed by the Spanish political system. The latter have been exacerbated by the reform process of Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy (Constitutional Law) (2006) and the subsequent judgement of Spain’s Constitutional Court regarding this Law (2010).

Before going into this case study, it is important to point out two theoretical elements that are behind the current political debates about secessionist processes in current liberal democracies:

  1. Like Canada, Belgium or the UK, Spain is a plurinational country. At the beginning of this century, the United Nations clearly established that a politics of recognition is an integral part of the struggle for human dignity (Human Development Report, 2004). Moreover, it established that national and cultural freedoms, which include both individual and collective dimensions, are an essential part of the democratic quality of a plurinational society. As a result, values such as dignity, freedom, equality and pluralism become more complex in plurinational contexts than in those of a uninational nature. In this sense, the overall challenge of plurinational democracies can be summed up in the phrase “one polity, several demoi”
  2. An established academic typology divides theories of secession into two basic groups:  Remedial Right Theories, which link secession with a “just cause”, in other words, they regard secession as a remedy for specific “injustices”; and Primary Right Theories, which regard secession as a right belonging to certain collectives that fulfil a number of conditions. These latter theories are subdivided into those of an adscriptive or nationalist nature and those of an associative or plebiscitary nature. A third group of theories consist of a revision of traditional political liberalism that tries to establish a formal and deep recognition of national minorities and their accommodation in the constitutional and political rules of present-day democracies.

Launching the reform of the Catalan Statute (2003-2006)

As laid down in the Spanish Constitution, the reform process of the Statute of Catalonia had to be carried out in three stages: it had to be passed by the Catalan parliament (majority of 2/3), by an absolute majority of the members of the Spanish parliament, and finally it had to be approved in referendum by the Catalan citizens. After a rather baroque process, finally a referendum was held (2006) to approve the new Catalan Statute in which it received the support of 73.9% of the Catalan electorate, although the turnout was really low (48,8%). Its final content disappointed many Catalan citizens. Two important parties, the secessionist Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and the Spanish People’s Party (PP) recommended the “no” vote, although for opposite reasons. This referendum should have marked the end of the reform process by closing a legislature devoted to this issue. However, the appeal of unconstitutionality lodged by the PP caused the controversy to drag on and ended up hindering the deployment of the powers contained in the new text.

The judgement of the Constitutional Court (2006-2010)

The judges of the Constitutional Court (appointed by the Spanish parliament, central Government and the General Council of the Judiciary) took nearly four years to deal with the appeal, generating constant uncertainty regarding the final outcome. Over these four years, the process became increasingly convoluted and politically convulsive. The Court’s impartiality was questioned, seriously damaging the institution’s legitimacy. Finally, the Court published its ruling in July 2010. It affected the constitutionality of 14 articles of the Catalan Statute and “interpreted” 27 others. The aspects revised by the Court can be divided into three areas:

  1. Recognition: the judgement states that the Preamble (in which Catalonia was defined as a nation) had no legal value. Regarding the Catalan language, the wish to make it the preferred language within the administration and the media, and the duty to know it were eliminated; the linguistic rights of consumers and users and its role as the primary language in the education system were limited.
  2. Powers: in this area the Statute’s regulation limiting the scope of “base laws” (the central government’s main way of invading Catalonia’s autonomous powers) was cancelled. Moreover, the concepts of exclusive powers, executive powers and spheres such as international relations, culture, civil law or immigration were reinterpreted.
  3. Finance: in this area, two articles referring to the levelling of incomes taking into account similarity of fiscal effort and legislation on local taxes were declared unconstitutional. The interpretative part affected regulations regarding the ordinal principle and state investments according to GDP, among others.

In short, the process resulted in a clear watering down of the objectives of recognition, self-government and political accommodation that had been established at the beginning of the reform process. This new practical content of the Catalan Statute has never been approved by Catalan citizens in a referendum. This is a key element to understand the subsequent emergence of secessionist demands in Catalonia. First of all, the reform had demanded the legally binding recognition of the national reality of Catalonia within the framework of the Spanish Constitution. This demand had been stripped of all legal value by the end of the process. Secondly, greater depth and protection for self-government had been sought so that the Catalan government could further develop its own distinct powers, but this demand resulted in extremely modest gains. Thirdly, it was not possible to attain a finance model which ended a system regarded as unjust (quantified as between 7% and 9% of Catalonia’s GDP and described by some commentators as “fiscal despoliation” in political debates), nor respect for the “ordinal principle” once the territorial transfers have been made.

The combination of the extremely long-drawn-out process to reform the Statute (7 years) and its final disappointing outcome generated a widespread feeling in a large part of the Catalan citizenry of a lack of institutional legitimacy.

Increased support to secession (2010-2019)

Since the Constitutional Court ruling on the Catalan Statute events speeded up. Catalan elections (2012) established a new minority government (led brecognition, a center-right nationalist federation of two parties) which sought stability through a “Agreement of Government” with ERC. This Agreement included aspects connected with the economic crisis as well as three aspects pertaining to the “right to decide” the Catalan constitutional future: 1) a “Declaration of Sovereignty” (2013) in the Catalan Parliament; 2) the creation of the Advisory Council for National Transition (CATN, 2013-2014) which was tasked with advising the Catalan government on the different scenarios, procedures, legal frameworks, international experiences, institutions, etc., relating to the exercise of the right to decide and secession—most of its 14 members were university professors, mainly from the areas of political science, economics, and constitutional and international law; and 3) the calling of a referendum on the constitutional future of Catalonia which was suspended by the Spanish Constitutional Court, although a “participative process” was finally organized (November 2014). This “process” was based on civil society “volunteers” who counted on legal protection and some infrastructures of the Catalan government. It had no legal consequences, but mobilized more than 2,3 million voters and around 80% of them voted “yes” to secession.

After a new electoral period (2015-2017) a pro-independence coalition (Junts pel Sí – Together for Yes) obtained an absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament (72 seats out of 135). The main point of the programme was to call for a referendum of independence, ideally established in agreement with the Spanish central government, following the Scottish experience in the UK (September 2014) and the Quebec experience in Canada (1980, 1995). Finally, after the rejection of the Spanish Government to enter in negotiations regarding this referendum and the subsequent rulings of the Spanish Constitutional Court, a referendum was celebrated organized basically by civil society organizations. All the practical difficulties notwithstanding, which included a strong and violent repression by Spanish police forces, the referendum was held on October 1st, 2017. The results (source: Catalan Government) were as follows:

 Support (%)Number of Votes
Yes90.182,044,038
No7.83177,547
Blank1.9844,913
Turnout43.032,286,217

With regard to the legitimising positions put forward by the different political actors, there is a clear contrast not only between the values and objectives they defend, but also between the different language and theoretical frameworks they employ. On the one hand, the central government and the main Spanish political parties put forward reasons of a legal-constitutional nature: in the Spanish case, they say, it is not legally possible to enter into a dynamic similar to that which occurred in the case of Canada or the United Kingdom (based on negotiation and bilateralism). Moreover, a number of actors have employed arguments relating to the potential economic decadence of an independent Catalonia or its automatic exclusion from the European Union (in contrast with empirical evidence and the Scottish debate). In practical terms, macroeconomic decisions remain in the hands of the central government, as do decisions relating to the management of the main taxes and fiscal transfers which enable the Catalan government to pay everything from the salaries of its employees to its suppliers. The economy is currently one of the key instruments used by the central government to put pressure on Catalan institutions.

On the other hand, the Catalan actors put forward two kinds of legitimizing argument depending on whether the aim is to justify the holding of a referendum on secession, or to defend the soundness of Catalonia becoming an independent state. The fundamental reason used to justify an independence referendum is its democratic nature. The prior assumption is that Catalonia is a specific demos that has the right to decide about its future according to liberal-democratic values and rules. The differentiating roots of this demos are of a historical and national-cultural nature (Catalonia was an independent state some centuries ago; Catalans have their own language and culture). Thus the legitimizing arguments for the right to decide usually combine the perspective of adscriptive or national theories of secession with the perspective of democratic and plebiscitary theories. Moreover, the legitimizing arguments in favour of independence add to these two avenues those associated with theories of just-cause secession. In this case, “injustice” is present both in relation to the systematic mistreatment at the economic and fiscal levels that Catalonia receives from the Spanish government—Catalonia’s fiscal deficit with regard to the state is in the order of 15,000 million euros a year, according to a number of economic and fiscal studies; lack of infrastructures, centralism with regard to Barcelona’s airport and other infrastructures, lack of recognition of the distinct national reality of Catalan society, linguistic policies (absence of linguistic pluralism in state institutions and practices, etc.), marginalization of Catalonia from the European and international spheres, shortcomings in the use of political symbols, etc.

A formal but rather “symbolic” and non-implemented Declaration of Independence followed the referendum in the Catalan Parliament (October 27, 2017). As it is well known, the Spanish central government reacted immediately applying article 155 of the Spanish Constitution which implies the control of Catalan institutions by the Spanish central government, which also called for new elections in Catalonia (December 2017). The results did not change the previous situation, with an outright majority obtained by secessionist parties (70 out of 135 seats). This elected a new president, Joaquim Torra, who acts in accordance with former president Carles Puigdemont who lives in Belgium. In 2018, a Spanish euro order to arrest Puigdemont was refused by the Court of the German land of Schleswig-Holstein, where he was provisionally arrested. In parallel, a political trial in the Spanish Supreme Court has emerged against members of the former Catalan government and the President of the Catalan parliament that remained in Catalonia. In contrast, other members of the Catalan government and MP’s, including the president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, preferred to live “in exile” in different countries (Belgium, UK, Switzerland) in order to avoid being judged in Spain. Although the “autonomous government” in Catalonia has been formally reinstituted the practical situation is far from being “normalized” in political and democratic terms. In October 2019 a new central government was built by the Socialist Party (PSOE) and a leftish party born in the last decade (Podemos). A “table for dialogue” has been created in February 2020 between the Spanish and Catalan governments. However, the programme and calendar are undefined and a clear scepticism is present about its potential as a way to solve the deep historical, national and political problems that are at stake. Not to mention that the fact that Catalan leaders remain in jail or must live in “exile” is not the best framework to obtain a realistic solution. There is a deep divergence between the objectives, language, values and procedural rules shared by the different actors on either side of the “dialogue table”.

To sum up, the future prospects of Catalan and Spanish politics regarding the territorial-national question remain open. Spanish opposition to a referendum in Catalonia, in contrast with the agreement between the British and Scottish governments, leads the current political process into unknown territory. There are a number of different possible scenarios: either through agreements within the context of the Spanish state—which currently seem unlikely—, through agreements with European or international mediation (following, for example, the procedural rules established by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1998 in relation to the relationship between Quebec and Canada, or through the mobilization of Catalan citizenry in a reinforced new secessionist institutional attempt at disconnection).

The lack of national recognition and accommodation shown by the Spanish state has played a decisive role in causing the predominant Catalan demands to shift from being regionalist or pro-autonomy towards secessionism. The Catalan case constitutes a clear empirical point of reference within the sphere of comparative politics on secessionist processes in liberal democracies, and constitutes a dynamic element in the European Union in an increasingly globalized world.

Ferran Requejo is Professor of Political Science at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where he is director of the Research Group on Political Theory. His main fields of research are theories of democracy, federalism, multinational democracies, political theory and political liberalism after World War II. In 1997 he was awarded the Rudolf Wildenmann Prize (ECPR), in 2002 he received the Ramon Trias Fargas Prize, and in 2006 the Spanish Political Science Association Prize to the best book (Multinational Federalism and Value Pluralism, Routledge 2005). He has been furthermore member of the Spanish Electoral Board (Junta Electoral Central, 2004-2008), of the executive committee of the European Consortium of Political Research and of the Comparative Federalism Research Committee (International Political Science Association). He is currently a regular contributor to the newspapers “La Vanguardia” and “Ara” (Barcelona) and other Catalan, Spanish and international media.

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

Scholars interested in contributing to the series can contact:

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle: emmanuel.dallemulle-at-graduateinstitute.ch

Mona Bieling: mona.bieling-at-graduateinstitute.ch

[1] See Ferran Requejo, “Is Spain a Federal Country?”, http://50shadesoffederalism.com/case-studies/spain-federal-country/. See also K.J. Nagel-F.Requejo, “Democracy and Borders: External and Internal Secession in the European Union” inJ.Jordana-M.Keating-A.Marx-J.Wouters (eds), Changing Borders in Europe, Routledge, 2019: 146-162.

The Pursuit of Polish Homogeneity following World War II

On By MoH TeamIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment

We are proud to publish here the fourth post of our “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations in a multi-disciplinary and diachronic perspective. Today’s contribution, by John Kulczycki (University of Illinois at Chicago), looks at the efforts of post-WW II Poland to homogenize the population of the so-called Recovered Lands in the west of the country. The series is a collaboration with H-Nationalism.

At the Potsdam Conference in 1945, the three Great Powers had the task of demarking Poland’s western border. During the plenary session on 21 July, President Harry Truman decried that the Soviets had already handed over eastern Germany to the Poles.[1] On his insistence, the conference communiqué stated that “the final delimitation of the western frontier of Poland should await the peace settlement.” Yet, a provision approving “the transfer to Germany of German populations” undermined this caveat.[2]

Polish nationalists claimed eastern Germany on historical grounds as part of the Polish kingdom during the tenth to fourteenth centuries.[3] Government officials referred to the territories collectively as the Recovered Lands (Ziemie Odzyskane), an unconscious part of ordinary speech even after the fall of communism.[4] Polish nationalists also claimed the area on ethnic grounds. As the Polish ambassador in Moscow informed his British and American colleagues on 10 July 1945, “Fairly large territories with a preponderating Polish element were not included within the boundaries of Poland in the years 1918-1939.” “[S]he has to return to her primordial lands, and to continue the old political tradition . . . as a national state.”[5] Integration of the Recovered Lands required the “transfer” of Germans, but the retention of “autochthons,” i.e., indigenous German citizens of Polish origin.

Identifying Autochthons

 How to recognize Polish elements who lived under German rule and cultural influence for centuries? Many residents of the Recovered Lands identified primarily with their religion and region and were nationally indifferent or without an irrevocable attachment to a nationality despite the nationalizing efforts of the Nazi regime during the war, when national or ethnic identity could mean the difference between life and death.[6]

 On 19 February 1945 an organization of enthusiasts of westward expansion, the Polish Western Union (Polski Związek Zachodni), advocated “nationality verification” based on a variety of criteria: active participation in the struggle for Polishness and membership in a Polish organization, knowledge of the Polish language and its usage in daily life, and evidence of Polish origin, such as a Polish-sounding surname and Polish family ties and traditions.[7]         

Lacking guidelines from the central government, regional authorities pursued their own approaches.[8] On 22 March 1945 Silesian Governor Aleksander Zawadzki directed officials to protect “Polish souls” by issuing provisional affidavits of Polishness to applicants who “unquestionably belong to the Polish nationality.”[9] These “Polish souls” had to present a document certifying membership in a Polish organization or the testimony of three individuals of unquestioned Polish nationality. A further directive on 7 April 1945 added the use of Polish in the home and in prayer as well as the ability to read and write in Polish and ordered the formation of special commissions of local individuals “of undoubtedly Polish nationality” to decide who should receive Polish citizenship.[10]

In Mazuria, however, Plenipotentiary Jakub Prawin on 24 April 1945 called on Poles of local origin to register for provisional affidavits of membership in the Polish nation.[11] On 26 May 1945 his deputy instructed officials that a lack of documentation of Polish origin, such as a Polish-sounding surname, or an absence of Polish national consciousness, as when applicants declared themselves to be Mazurs, should not prevent certification as members of the Polish nation. Officials could also waive the requirement of a minimal knowledge of Polish in exceptional cases for individuals connected to the Polish nation. Nevertheless, officials were to examine an applicant’s past so as not to protect “foreign elements, enemies of the Polish Nation, or those encumbered with anti-Polish activity.”[12] If approved by a local Polish Nationality Committee, the applicant received a permanent affidavit of Polishness.

Whereas elsewhere the initial directives meant that whoever is not Polish is German, in Mazuria the authorities recognized as Polish all who were not German, requiring little more than a declaration of loyalty. This took into account the region’s unusual character. Mazurs spoke an archaic form of Polish, but unlike most Poles, they were overwhelmingly Protestant. The Nazis classified them as “racial Germans” without a process of individual verification. Indeed, Mazuria was a hotbed of Nazi support. Therefore, Polish activists in Mazuria favored a preemptive collective recognition of Mazurs as Polish citizens instead of individual verification, excluding solely those individuals unquestionably German.[13]

Because of a rigid definition of Polishness as well as the perception of Mazurs as Germans, officials balked at carrying out the directives. On 7 June 1945 Prawin threatened officials with sanctions, admonishing them:

Let the Polish citizen remember that the Kashub, Pomeranian, Warmiak, Mazur—we all, despite these or other religious, political, or social beliefs, are children of one blood of fraternal clans and Polish tribes, and this without regard to whether our closer or more distant compatriots are today conscious of their Polish origin or not. . . . I categorically direct you to register as Poles . . . all individuals identifying themselves as Kashubs, Pomeranians, Warmiaks, Mazurs without demanding of them additional declarations in this regard and to recognize those so registered as Polish citizens.

Revocation of citizenship could only occur after its bestowal: if “it is proven in an administrative and legal way that someone himself consciously of his own criminal instinct acted against Poles and Poland, then of course the Polish citizenship granted him will be withdrawn.”[14]­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

On 20 June 1945 the Minister of Public Administration, who had jurisdiction over the Recovered Lands, addressed the issue of nationality verification, authorizing governors and plenipotentiaries to issue provisional three-month affidavits of citizenship pending verification to those who inhabited the territory before the war and “belong to the Polish nationality” following a declaration of loyalty. But he did not define the criteria for membership in the Polish nation, except for specifically excluding former members of the Nazi party and “fascist-Nazi criminals.” On 23 June 1945 the director of the Legal Department of the provisional parliament, argued that the criteria should be left to administrative and public security organs, which had the necessary information to separate Poles from Germans, and any regulation should await the peace treaty between Germany and the Allied powers.[15]

Obstacles to Differentiating Germans from Poles

Initially, Governor Zawadzki advocated recognizing only those who “unquestionably belong to the Polish nationality.” By October 1945 he admitted, “No paragraphs and no directives clearly reveal who should be regarded as a Pole and who as a German—in such cases the Polish conscience must decide.”[16] But the officials responsible for verification came mostly from prewar Poland and had no knowledge of conditions under German rule. Furthermore, their competence and integrity frequently declined the lower one went down the administrative hierarchy. Many simply regarded the autochthons as Germans and often targeted for expulsion those with homes and farms that officials could confiscate for themselves or others from prewar Poland. As a result, the mass expulsion from the Recovered Lands that reached its apogee in 1946 included many who qualified for Polish citizenship.

A report on 2 June 1947 of the Department of Inspection of the Ministry of Recovered Lands went to the heart of the matter: “The greatest difficulty in asserting whether a given individual is of Polish origin or not is the lack, or even the impossibility of creating an objective criterion that would differentiate a German from an autochthon.” Furthermore, the decisions concerning verification varied widely. “For some the fact of having a Polish name is enough, and for the authorities to acknowledge the Polishness of others, knowledge of the Polish language and, say, one witness confirming the applicant’s Polish origins is not enough.” “Especially dangerous is the fact that at times individuals already verified are suddenly deprived of their certification of Polish nationality because of a denunciation that the autochthon speaks German at home or has postal contact with Germany and therefore is a German, not a Pole.” Many autochthons “prefer to leave as Germans bearing their Polishness in secret rather than as spurned to whom the right to Polishness was denied and to whom is pinned the mark of treason in the eyes of their fellow Germans.” In addition, “unregulated matters of property” prevent an autochthon deprived of his property from applying for verification: “in practice the greatest number of denunciations is inspired or directed by the current Polish occupants, who in case the autochthon is verified would have to return this property.”[17]

The End of Mass Expulsion

In July 1947 the British refused to accept the last 50,000 Germans that the Poles wanted to expel to the British zone of occupied Germany. In October 1947 the Soviets announced that mass resettlement to their zone would end in November 1947.[18] The imminent halt to mass expulsion focused attention on autochthons who refused to apply for nationality verification. 

In 1947 Silesia, with the largest concentration of autochthons, saw the most vigorous campaign of “re-Polonization,” based on the assumption that autochthons were essentially Polish. Yet, troubling signs of German influence and incomplete re-Polonization persisted. The Ministry of Public Affairs blamed primarily German machinations and falsifications during verification.[19] In the last months of 1947 nationality commissions reversed 1,062 decisions affecting individuals verified as Polish, and 14,650 cases were pending. Contrary to the law, the commissions revoked citizenship without the approval of local officials. The governor, however, saw the expulsion of Germans as more important.[20]

With the end of mass expulsion, the authorities faced the problem of thousands of autochthons not yet verified as Polish. In Olsztyn province, formerly Mazuria, Governor Mieczysław Moczar resorted to repressive measures in the so-called “Great Verification.” On 8 January 1949, he declared, “We desire with all our strength not to lose a single Pole, but we must be very severe in relation to those who are espousing pro-Nazi propaganda,” a reference to those defending Mazurs or resisting verification.[21] The administration mobilized local cadre together with the militia and security forces to target over 20,000 autochthons with various forms of pressure, including physical force.[22] Indeed, on 30 March 1949 the International Committee of the Red Cross informed the Ministry of Public Administration of an increasing number of complaints, mainly from Mazuria, of German citizens forced to request Polish citizenship.[23]

Superficially, Moczar made progress. A report on 1 April 1949 claimed that nearly 19,000 natives were verified in the previous three months.[24] But the use of force and repression strengthened the aversion of Mazurs to Polish officialdom and their existing situation, and they generally continued to identify as Germans.[25]

The Epilogue

Too late for most Mazurs, declarations of regional and national identities became officially possible when the 2011 census allowed inhabitants to indicate one or two national-ethnic identities. No Mazurs identified themselves as such, but 44.4 percent of those who declared a Silesian identity gave it as their sole identity as did 30.4 percent of Germans. Superficially, the postwar nationality policies succeeded: 94.8 percent of Poland’s population declared Polish as its sole identity.[26] This success came in part through the more or less forced departure and alienation of many who could have been loyal citizens contributing to Poland’s reconstruction after the war had these policies and their implementation been different.

John J. Kulczycki is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he taught East European history and the history of nationalism. His research and publications have focused on Polish-German relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. His most recent publication is Belonging to the Nation: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Polish-German Borderlands, 1939-1951 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), which was awarded “Honorable Mention” as the best book in Polish Studies by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in 2017.

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

Scholars interested in contributing to the series can contact:

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle: emmanuel.dallemulle-at-graduateinstitute.ch

Mona Bieling: mona.bieling-at-graduateinstitute.ch

[1] United States, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers [hereafter cited as FRUS]: The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 2 vols.(Washington, D.C: United States Government Printing Office, 1960), 2:208-213, 216-221.

[2] Ibid., 357, 480, 1151. The Polish nationalist leader Stanisław Grabski credited Stalin and Molotov with Poland receiving “fully that what we sought,” repr. in Stanisław Kirkor, “Listy Stanisława Grabskiego (1941-1949),” Zeszyty Historyczne 19 (1971): 70.

[3] FRUS, The Conference of Berlin, 1:757-777.

[4] A young Polish historian at the International Congress of Historical Sciences, Montreal, 1995, admitted that he used the term as a matter of habit without being conscious of its political implications.

[5] FRUS, The Conference of Berlin, 1:762, 766.

[6] Recent studies on Central Europe question a natural, progressive nationalization of a people. Most relevant is James E. Bjork, Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008). Tara Zahra lists other studies, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 94n2.

[7] Tadeusz Baryła, Warmiacy i Mazurzy w PRL: wbόr dokumentόw: rok 1945 (Olsztyn : Ośrodek Badań Naukowych Im. Wojciecha Ke̜trzyńskiego, 1994), 4-6; Czesław Osękowski, Społeczeństwo Polski zachodniej i północnej w latach 1945-1956: procesy integracji i dezintegracji (Zielona Góra : Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna im. Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego, 1994), 90; Grzegorz Strauchold, Polska ludność rodzima ziem zachodnich i północnych. Opinie nie tylko publiczne lat 1944-1948 (Olsztyn: Ośrodek Badań Naukowych im. Wojciecha Kętrzyńskiego, 1995), 17, 19, 34; Zenon Romanow, “Kształtowanie się polityki władz polskich wobec ludności rodzimej ziem zachodnich i północnych w latach 1945-1946,” unpublished paper [1996?], 1-2.

[8] Grzegorz Strauchold, Autochtoni polscy, niemieccy, czy–od nacjonalizmu do komunizmu (1945-1949) (Toruń : Wydawn. Adam Marszałek, 2001), 37, 45.

[9] Quoted in Romanow, “Kształtowanie się,” 3.

[10] Ibid.; Jan Misztal, Weryfikacja narodowosciowa na Ziemiach Odzyskanych (Warszawa : Panstwowe Wydawn. Nauk., 1990), 192-193, 201; the quote is on 201.

[11] Wojciech Wrzesiński, “Proces zasiedlania województwa olsztyńskiego w latach 1945-1949,” in Problemy rozwoju gospodarczego i demograficznego Ziem Zachodnich w latach 1945-1958, ed. Bohdan Gruchman and Janusz Ziólkowski (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1960),” 177.

[12] Baryła, Warmiacy, 36.

[13] Quoted in Leszek Belzyt, Między Polską a Niemcami: Weryfikacja narodowościowa i jej następstwa na Warmii, Mazurach i Powiślu w latach 1945-1960 (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 1998), 83.

[14] Baryła, Warmiacy, 37-38.

[15] Ibid., 42-44; the quote is on 42.

[16] Quoted in Ingo Eser, “Niemcy na Górnym Śląsku,” in Niemcy, ed. Borodziej and Lemberg, 2 324.

[17] Excerpt, Boćkowski, Niemcy, 403-404.

[18] Włodzimerz Borodziej, “Wstęp: sprawa polska i przemieszczenia ludności w czasie II wojny światowej,” in Niemcy, 1:97-98.

[19] Excerpts, Borodziej and Lemberg, Niemcy, 2:501-503.

[20] Piotr Madajczyk, Przyłączenie Śląska Opolskiego do Polski, 1945-1948 (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych  PAN, 1996), 216-217.

[21] Quoted in Belzyt, Między Polską a Niemcami, 163.

[22] Strauchold, Autochtoni, 168; Belzyt, Między Polską a Niemcami, 163-164.

[23] Borodziej and Lemberg, Niemcy, 1:346-347.

[24] Belzyt, Między Polską a Niemcami, 163-168; Claudia Kraft, “Wojewodschaft Allenstein,” in Die Deutschen, ed.Włodzimierz Borodziej and Hans Lemberg, vol. 1, Zentrale Behörden. Wojewodschaft Allenstein, ed. Borodziej and Kraft (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2000), 475-476.

[25] Leszek Belzyt, “Zum Verfahren der national Verifikation in den Gebieten des ehemaligen Ostpreussen 1945-1950,” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 39 (1990): 262; Andzrej Sakson, Mazurzy – społeczność pogranicza (Poznań: Instytut Zachodni, 1990), 128-129.

[26] Główny Urząd Statystyczny, “Przynależność narodowo-etniczna ludności—wyniki spisu ludności i mieszkań 2011,” Materiał na konferencję w dniu 29.01.2013 r., 3, http://www.stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/Przynaleznosc_narodowo-etniczna_w_2011_NSP.pdf.

The Jewish Minority in Inter-War Poland

On By MoH TeamIn Minorities in Contemporary and Historical PerspectiveLeave a comment

We are proud to publish here the third post of our “Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives” series, which looks at majority-minority relations in a multi-disciplinary and diachronic perspective. Today’s contribution, by Professor Yoav Peled (Tel Aviv University), discusses the difficult situation of the Jewish minority in interwar Poland. The series is a collaboration with H-Nationalism.

Q – “What is Bolshevism?”

A – “A conspiracy by international Jewry against Christian nations.”

Q – “What have the Bolsheviks given the worker?”

A – “The rule of Jewry.”

Q – “What do the communists want from Poland?”

A – “To turn her into a Russian province ruled by Jews appointed by Moscow.”

                            (“A Bolshevik Cathechism,” Gwiazda Poranna, 1921.)

Since its inception in 1918, the Second Polish Republic had to face two daunting tasks: forging a state and a nation out of disparate ethnic elements and solving the country’s acute economic problems. Catholic ethnic Poles made up only 70% of the population of the newly emergent state, with Ukrainians comprising 14%, Jews 10%, and smaller numbers of Byelorussians and Germans making up the rest.[1]

Its 1921 constitution declared Poland to be the state of the Polish nation, with Polish as the sole official language. But it also established a democratic republic, with universal suffrage, a bicameral legislature, and semi-proportional representation. The constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, with the Roman Catholic faith as first among equals. Ethnic minorities were to enjoy equal citizenship rights and the right to organize autonomous institutions, including their own school systems.

Respect for the rights of ethnic minorities was forced upon Poland by the Minorities Treaty it had to sign as part of the Versailles peace agreements. The Allied Powers insisted on this treaty in view of the widespread anti-Jewish pogroms that accompanied the various battles to determine Poland’s eastern borders in 1918-1919 (and again the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920), and the treaty included two articles relating specifically to Jews: Article 10 guaranteed autonomous Jewish control over Jewish-language primary schools that were to be set up and paid for by the state, and Article 11 guaranteed that Jews would not be forced to violate their Sabbath, and that no elections would be held on that day. The limitation of Polish sovereignty by the treaty, and the role played by Jewish organizations in bringing it about, were a sore point for Polish nationalists. In response, as long as the right-wing National Democrats (Endecja) were in power, the state dragged its feet in regularizing the citizenship status of non-ethnic Poles, particularly Jews, who resided in territories annexed to Poland from Russia, Germany, and Austria. This delaying tactic ended only in 1930. In 1934, after signing a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, Poland unilaterally abrogated the Minorities Treaty.

Polish politics in the inter-war period fell into three main tendencies: the Endecja, headed by Roman Dmowski; the centrist Sanacja (cleansing), led by Marshal Joseph Piłsudski, the founder of modern Poland; and the Left, centered on the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The Endecja advocated an aggressive nationalizing policy towards the ethnic minorities, pressuring the Slavic minorities to assimilate and the Jews and the Germans to emigrate, while the Left favored allowing the minorities to develop their own cultures within the Polish nation-state. As for the Jews, the Endecja advocated exclusionary policies, up to and including physical expulsion from the country, while the Left advocated equal protection and uncoerced assimilation.

Piłsudski assumed state power in a coup d’état in 1926. He and his Sanacja successors (Piłsudski died in 1935), who held state power until 1939, gradually came to adopt the aggressive nationalism of the Endecja.  Thus, whether under the Endecja or under the Sanacja, “the Poles were determined to make Poland a homogeneous state in the shortest time possible.”[2]

Of Poland’s ethnic minorities, only the Jews could neither plan to establish their own state on Polish territory nor wish to unite with any foreign country. (Most of them, however, demanded collective rights within the Polish state.) Still, the Jews were viewed by all political tendencies, except the Left, as most threatening, suspected, inter alia, of being Communist agents. This perception placed the Jews, together with the Germans, in the category of inassimilable minorities. However, while assimilation of the Germans into Polish society was seen as unlikely, assimilation of the Jews was seen as undesirable.

The 19th century Polish national movement included two ideological undercurrents with regard to the Jews: an exclusionist, anti-Semitic undercurrent, and an integrationist undercurrent that considered Jews to be part of the Polish nation. The latter view was captured in the slogan of the nineteenth century uprisings against the Romanov Empire, “our freedom and yours.” Moreover, “the most important post-1863 school of Polish social thought … the Warsaw Positivists, condemned and rejected anti-Jewish beliefs, at least until the first decade of the twentieth century.”[3]  

In the inter-war period, the anti-Jewish stance gradually gained the upper hand. One major reason for that was the stunted development of the Polish economy. Dmowski, the most prominent integral Polish nationalist and anti-Semite, set the tone for the public discussion of the national and Jewish questions. In 1934, he wrote: “Even if Jews were morally angels, mentally geniuses, even if they were people of a higher kind than we are, the very fact of their existence among us … is for our society lethal and they have to be got rid of.”[4] To counter this lethal danger, Dmowski called, already in 1912, for an economic boycott against the Jews, and his political program was centered on the need to Polonize the urban economy and induce the Jews to emigrate.

In 1925, Dmowski stated: “The economic and financial crisis is the axis of our present-day politics …”[5] One indication of the crisis was hyper-inflation. The rate of exchange between the Polish mark (in effect until the introduction of the złoty in 1924) and the US dollar was 1:186 in July 1920 and 1:20,000,000 by the end of January 1924.[6] In most areas of industrial and agricultural production the levels of output reached by the end of the inter-war period were lower, in physical terms, than they had been in 1913.[7]

The crux of Poland’s economic problems was in agriculture, which sustained two-thirds of the population. In 1921, 1% of landowners owned close to 50% of Poland’s arable land while almost two-thirds of all farms had less than the minimum required for subsistence – five hectares. In spite of two land reform bills, passed in 1920 and 1925, by 1939 only 15% of the farmland had been reparcelled. The urban economy was not developing nearly fast enough to absorb the surplus rural population, and emigration became increasingly difficult as the inter-war period progressed.

Poland’s economic policies favored agriculture over trade and industry and large farms over small ones. Since Jews held a prominent position in trade and (small) industry, and, in the countryside, depended on the economic fortunes of the peasants, they suffered disproportionately from those policies. Fewer than 6% of the Jews were engaged in agriculture, while in the cities they numbered between one-quarter and two-thirds of the population. In 1921 over 40% of them were engaged in commerce and 34% were engaged in industry, mostly as artisans and handicraft workers. Jews constituted over 60% of all those engaged in trade and commerce, 56% of the medical doctors in private practice, over 40% of the teachers, and one third of the lawyers.[8]

Independent Poland moved quickly to dismiss Jews from their public sector jobs in the formerly Austrian territories, the only areas where Jews had been employed by the state. By 1929, only 1% of central and local government employees were Jews. In 1928, there were only two Jews among the 4,000 workers of the municipal tram system in Warsaw, a city that was 35% Jewish. In addition, Jews were excluded, as employees, suppliers and distributors, from state enterprises, which enjoyed monopoly status in such traditional Jewish industries as tobacco, alcohol, matches and salt. Moreover, unlike their Polish counterparts, few unemployed Jews received any assistance from the state.

In 1919, Sunday was designated by law as a mandatory day of rest for all businesses. This meant that Jews had to either violate their Sabbath or remain idle two days a week, contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of the Minorities Treaty. Small businesses, which were predominantly in Jewish hands, were discriminated against both by the government’s tax policy (Jews paid between 35% and 40% of Poland’s tax revenue) and by the credit policy of the state-owned banks. These administrative steps were accompanied by a popular economic boycott and occasional bursts of violence against Jewish-owned businesses. Moreover, “ethno-nationalist papers … frequently stressed that ‘eight million Poles are forced to live outside their homeland, while four million Jews occupy Poland’, and that ‘polish peasants, instead of emigrating to foreign countries in search of bread and work, should find such bread and work in towns and cities in their homeland’ [in place of the Jews].”[9]

These measures, however, failed to dislodge the Jews from the urban economy. Between 1921 and 1931, the share of Jews among those active in trade and commerce declined from 62.6% to 52.7%, in industry from 23.5% to 20%, and in public service and the professions from 14% to 13.4%.[10] Jewish petty traders managed to stay competitive throughout the Depression as well, and “apart from a few fanatics, most Polish consumers ignored all other considerations, including pastoral letters instructing them to boycott Jewish traders,” and continued to patronize them.[11]

In 1936, the Sanacja Prime Minister officially endorsed the economic boycott against the Jews, as long as it was carried out without violence. In the same year a bill to outlaw Jewish ritual slaughter (shkhite), modeled after a law initiated by the Nazis in Bavaria in 1930, was introduced in the Sejm. The prohibition of shkhite would have breached the guarantee of the Jews’ religious freedom and undermined their equal status as citizens. For unlike the Sunday rest law, that gave Jews the option to still observe their Sabbath at an economic cost, the shkhite law was intended to forbid them to perform one of the most basic and indispensable rituals of their religion. Incredibly, this issue took up about half of the parliamentary time in the fateful years of 1936-1938, more than any other issue then on the agenda. But the efforts to forbid shkhite were unsuccessful until the German occupation authorities forbade it in October 1939.

In summarizing the dynamics of the Sanacja government (1926-1939) in relation to the Jewish minority, Prof. Jerzy Tomaszewski has concluded that,

The most important changes in the legal status of the Jewish population occurred after the May [1926] coup d’état, when the authoritarian regimes were able to break the resistance of the nationalist right-wing … and purge the local administrative apparatus of its supporters and followers … [However,] at the end of the 1930s the same authoritarian government was able to ignore the democratic opposition and adopt some elements of the nationalist conceptions. Although, before September 1939, Poland avoided the establishment of any openly discriminatory laws, some initiatives born at the beginning of 1939 might well have led in this direction (Tomaszewski 1994:127).[12]

Yoav Peled is Professor Emeritus of political science at Tel Aviv University. He is author of The Challenge of Ethnic Democracy: The State and Minority Groups in Israel, Poland and Northern Ireland (Routledge 2014), co-author, with Horit Herman Peled, of The Religionization of Israeli Society (Routledge 2019), and co-editor, with John Ehrenberg, of Israel and Palestine: Alternative Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman and Littlefield 2016).

The Minorities in Contemporary and Historical Perspective series is organized by the Myth of Homogeneity Research Project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. For more information, please visit: https://themythofhomogeneity.org/

Scholars interested in contributing to the series can contact:

Emmanuel Dalle Mulle: emmanuel.dallemulle-at-graduateinstitute.ch

Mona Bieling: mona.bieling-at-graduateinstitute.ch

[1] For detailed references please see my The Challenge of Ethnic Democracy: The State and Minority Groups in Israel, Poland and Northern Ireland, 2014.

[2] Stephan Horak et al., Eastern European National Minorities 1919-1980: A Handbook, 1985.

[3] Joanna Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present, 2006.

[4] Cited in A. J. Groth, “Dmowski, Piłsudski and Ethnic Conflict in Pre-1939 Poland,” Canadian Slavic Studies 3:69-91, 1969; original emphasis.

[5] Cited in Anthony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 1921-1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government, 1972:97.

[6] F. Zweig, Poland Between Two Wars:A Critical Study of Social and Economic Changes, 1944.

[7] Z. Landau and J. Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy in the Twentieth Century, 1985:121.

[8] Mendelsohn, Ezra, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars, 1983:23-29; R. Mahler, The Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars: Socio-Economic History in Light of Statistics, 1968 (Hebrew).

[9] Michlic, op. cit:88.

[10] Mahler, op. cit:109, 137, 157.

[11] Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939, 1983:245.

[12] J. Tomaszewski, “The Civil Rights of Jews in Poland, 1918-1939,” Polin 8, 1994:115-127.