Kölner Beiträge zur Nationsforschung Historische Nationsforschung im

geteilten Europa 1945®1989

im Auftrag
des Arbeitskreises für Nationalismusforschung
der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln
herausgegeben von
herausgegeben von Pavel Kolär und Milos keznik

Otto Dann
Wolfgang Schieder
Michael Zeuske

Band 10

shVERLAG
 Inhalt
Diese Publikation wurde gefördert von der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Köln.

Pavel Kolär/Milos keznik

LIS . Einleitung
940.55
KOL
1. PARADIGMEN DER NATIONSFORSCHUNG NACH 1945

John Breuilly
Constructing Nationalism as an Historical Subject 15

Siegfried Weichlein
Soziale Kommunikation: Karl W. Deutsch und die Folgen 29

Martin Schulze Wessel

Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis von Nation und Religion bei Klassikern
der Nationalismusforschung 43

Stephanie Zloch
Gibt es einen „osteuropäischen Nationalismus"? Anmerkungen zur
Persistenz einer historischen Interpretationsfigur 51

11. MIROSLAV KROCH UND DAS KONZEPT DER „KLEINEN NATION"

Hans-Jürgen Puhle
Miroslav Hroch im Kontext der Theorien über den Nationalismus 73

Jörg Hackmann
Das Paradigma der „kleinen Nation": Miroslav Hroch und die historische
Nationalismusforschung in Nordosteuropa 87
ISSN 0945-7763
Xosé-Manoel Ntáíiez
ISBN Print 978-3-89498-268-3 Reflections on the model of Miroslav Hroch and historical research
ISBN eBook 978-3-89498-280-5 on Western European ethnonationalism 103

©by shVERLAG 2012

www.sh-verlag.de 111. NATIONSFORSCHUNG IN DEN STAATSSOZIALISTISCHEN DIKTATUREN
UND IM GETEILTEN DEUTSCHLAND
Umschlaggestaltung: Guido Klütsch, Köln
Druck: Druckerei Hubert & Co., Göttingen
Michal Kopecek
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Kein Teil dieses Buchs darf ohne Zustimmung des Verlags Historical Studies of Nation-Building and the Concept of Socialist Patriotism
reproduziert werden. in East Central Europe 1956-1970 121
Maciej Górny
Nation-Building in Marxist Historical Narratives in East Central Europe
Einleitung
in the 1950s 137

Cristina Petrescu Pavel Koláf und Milos keznik

Historiography of Nation-Building in Communist Romania 149

Ulf Brunnbauer Spätestens seit den 1990er-Jahren läuft in den Geschichts- und zunehmend auch anderen
Eine Nation ohne Geschichte oder sechs Nationen mit Geschichte? Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften eine intensive Diskussion über die jeweils eigene Fachge-
Jugoslawische Historiker über die jugoslawische(n) Nationsbildung(en) 169 schichte. Angeregt durch Appelle, sich mit der eigenen Vergangenheit kritisch auseinander-
zusetzen, waren diese Debatten anfangs von Bemühungen um eine moralisch verstandene
Otto Dann „Bewältigung" geprägt. Dennoch gewannen sie mit der Zeit an historisierender Distanz und
Der Begriff Nation im geteilten Deutschland 189 analytisch-interpretativen Zügen. Somit hat sich das Paradigma der „reflexiven Historisie-
rung" etabliert, welches an wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Entwicklungen differenziert und
kontextbezogen herangeht.
DIE KÖLNER BEITRÄGE ZUR NATIONSFORSCHUNG. Die historische Forschung zu Nationsbildung und Nationalismus in Europa, die zwar
EIN NACHWORT 217 keine institutionell verfasste Disziplin, allerdings einen dicht vernetzten Diskussionszusam-
menhang bildet, wurde bislang keiner streng historisierenden Untersuchung unterzogen.
Die Mehrheit der vorgelegten Überblicke und Handbücher zur Nationalismusforschung
Verzeichnis der Autoren 218 enthielt oft die gleichen Mängel, die auch die allgemeine Wissenschaftsgeschichte lange Zeit
aufwies: Oftmals aus der Perspektive des Primats der Methodologie geschrieben, präsen-
tierten sie die Entwicklung der Nationalismusforschung als eine kumulative Vorgeschichte
des gegenwärtigen Zustandes. Die Autoren und ihre Werke wurden daher überwiegend im
Hinblick auf ihren normativ verstandenen „Beitrag" zum siegreichen Kanon des Faches auf-
gefasst, während Abweichungen als „Irrwege" qualifiziert wurden, die höchstens als Bestä-
tigung der Plausibilität des am Ende triumphierenden Modells dienten. Damit tendierte die
bisherige Diskussion dazu, aus der Forschungsgeschichte „Klassiker" herauszugreifen, die
außerhalb der historischen Formierungszusammenhänge stehen, sowohl der institutionellen
Voraussetzungen als auch der allgemeinen politischen, sozialen und kulturellen Rahmenbe-
dingungen.
Mit diesem Band wollen wir einige Ansätze zur Schließung dieser Lücke in der histo-
rischen Einordnung der Nationsforschung nach 1945 anbieten. Zunächst ist es notwendig,
den Titel „Historische Nationsforschung" zu präzisieren, denn seine beiden Bestandteile
sind erklärungsbedürftig. So suggeriert das Adjektiv „historisch", dass hier eine disziplinär
streng definierte geschichtswissenschaftliche Beschäftigung ins Visier genommen wird. Es
ist aber eine bekannte Tatsache, dass viele bedeutende Beiträge zum historischen Studium
der Nationsbildung und des Nationalismus auch von Nicht-Historikern stammen. Den-
noch macht das Adjektiv insoweit Sinn, als hier Autoren, Werke, Schulen und Paradigmen
einbezogen werden, die an die Phänomene „Nation und Nationalismus" aus einer — im brei-
teren Sinne — historischen Perspektive herangingen. Damit ist nicht nur gemeint, dass diese
Forschungen „Nation" als eine historisch entstandene und wandelbare Entität begriffen,
sondern auch, dass sie diese in eine Epochen übergreifende geschichtliche Großerzählung,
wie z.B. die Modernisierung, einbetteten. Es war aber gerade die internationale Forschung
zu Nationsbildung und Nationalismus, in der sich die etablierten Fachgrenzen oft auflös-
ten und manche Autoren eine unklare Fachidentität besaßen. Hier stellt sich die Frage, wie
 Michal Kopecek

Historical Studies of Nation-Building and the

Concept of Socialist Patriotism in East-Central
Europe 1956®1970

The notion of `socialist patriotism' represents one point of departure of this essay. Through-
out the majority of the reign of the communist parties in Eastern Europe, the concept ser-
ved as a ready-made propaganda tool to fight and subdue political opponents, drawing on
various patriotic and nationalist feelings and attitudes.' However, despite the reservations
the notion begets among the current students of the period I am convinced that in a certain
time-period the notion of `socialist patriotism' stood for more than mere political propagan-
da. As a part of an ambitious project of socialist nation-building its prospects did not always
seem as dismal as we tend to think today. The first half of the 1960s was probably the most
optimistic time in Soviet history, the era of bold Khrushchevist integration projects that — in
the upcoming modernisation leap driven by the scientific-technological revolution, overall
progress, sweeping urbanisation, and cultural blossoming — should have led to a new stage
of economic, social, and political unification and national blending, a `new historical com-
munity of people'. As some scholars argue, it was to be a decisive step in the creation of the
Soviet nation as a mixture of all constituent nations and ethnicities under the leadership of
Russians.2 The possible early creation of such a nation was understood as a utopian project
and challenged even in the USSR, especially in its western parts. Yet, some of the optimism
spilled over to the satellite countries of East-Central Europe, where it found rather incom-
patible but not altogether hostile conditions.
The complicated relationship between the politically promoted and ideologically driven
concept of socialist patriotism and the historical studies of nation-building in East-Central
Europe is at the centre of the present essay. It starts with a short overview of the ambi-
guous relationship of radical socialist movements and communist parties in the region to
national or nationality question until the end of WWII that foreshadowed the even more
complicated development during the communist parties` dictatorial rule. The majority of
the essay concentrates on the period between 1956 and 1970. Even though the arguments
involved are drawn from the broader geographical area of East-Central Europe, in detail the
story concentrates primarily on the examples of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The coun-
tries` diverging configurations of the official communist politics and the developing Marxist
historical nation-building studies at that time provide interesting material for comparison.
The direct connection between the concept of socialist patriotism and the reconsideration

1 Cf. Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Patriotism
1941-1953, Oxford 2005.
2 Roman Szporluk, Russia, Ukraine and the Breakup of the Soviet Union, Stanford, CA 2000. Cf. Yitzhak M.
Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-1991, Cambridge, Mass/London
1998.
122 MICHAL KOPECEK
of national history and identity that prepared a way for a supposedly new stage of historical
nation-building has been explicitly illustrated only in Hungary. The Czechoslovak example,
nevertheless, examines the intuition that the same potential connection has been tacitly tes-
ted by critical Marxist historians, philosophers, and revisionist intellectuals also elsewhere.
National Question in Radical Socialist Thought and Politics before 1956
The present historical picture of the Stalinist period in post-war East-Central Europe in `na-
tional historiographies' is often characterised by the supposedly anti-national nature of the
communist policies, the thorough Sovietisation of culture and economy, and the break with
the West in all spheres of life. There is of course some truth in this view, however, it tends
to present the whole issue in a rather one-sided way, because nationally oriented interpre-
tations typically depict the communist takeovers as the beginning of an aberration from the
supposedly natural course of national history. This kind of historical narrative is challenged
in many ways, one of them being a view that considers the communist dictatorships, espe-
cially the Stalinist era, as a route towards modernisation rather than divergence, a `moder-
nising dictatorship' that was just another historical attempt for relatively backward Central
and Eastern Europe to catch up with the Western European core.' The other interpretation,
which is of greater interest for us now, derives from studies that scrutinise the picture of anti-
national Stalinist revolutions painted in bold strokes and once again reconsider the complex
relationship between communist ideology and nationalism.4
It is common knowledge today that the ambiguous relationship of the communist ideo-
logy to modern nationalism was encoded already in the teachings of the `founding fathers'.
In general, nationalism was a rival and enemy to revolutionary socialism as it postulated the
formation of the proletariat as a force transcending national and state identities and ope-
rating ideally on a supranational scale. At the same time, however, revolutionary socialists
often used the influence of national identity for their own purposes and not only just in
terms of practice as suggested by Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' division in 1848 of pro-
gressive `historical nations' with the right to independence on the one hand, and reactionary
nationalist movements of `peoples without history' on the other hand.' Lenin's global doc-
trine further nurtured the ambiguity between socialism and nationalism by subverting the
initial Marxist argument. He made a distinction between `exploiting' and `exploited' nations,
encompassing the fight for national liberation in the colonies into the making of the world
socialist revolution. Additionally, Lenin's theory of `socialist culture' that should have been
present — at least in elements — in every national culture provides a clue to the prospective
3 E.g. Ivan T. Berend, Central and Eastern Europe 1944-1993. Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery; Cam-
bridge 2°d ed. 1998; from a different angle Peter Caldwell, Dictatorship, State Planning and Social Theory in the
German Democratic Republic, Cambridge 2003.
4 E.g. Maciej G6rny, Migdzi Marksem a Palackÿm, Warsaw 2001; Idem: Przede wszystkim ma byé nar6d. Marski-
stowskie historiografie w Europie Srdokowo-Wschodniej, Warsaw 2007; Katherine Verdery, National Ideology
under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania, Berkley/Los Angeles/Oxford 1991;
Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legitimizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitimizacja wladzy komunistycz-
nej w Polsce, Warsaw 2001.
5 See esp. Roman Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism. Karl Marx versus Friedrich List, New York 1991;
Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Communist Utopia,
Stanford, CA 1995, pp. 152-167,
HISTORICAL STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 123
concept of the `socialist nation'. As he stated in one of his articles devoted to the national
question, "in every national culture there are elements of democratic and socialist culture,
however underdeveloped, because in every nation there are working and exploited masses,
whose living conditions necessarily breed democratic and socialist ideology."'
Hence, it is not surprising that for the radical leftist ideologues in the new emerging `na-
tion-states' in East-Central Europe after 1918 the national question often represented an in-
surmountable problem and the solutions — provisional as they were — differed substantially.
Within Czechoslovakia and Hungary, one can find directly opposing approaches pursued by
the radical leftist movements in response to the national question in the period immediately
after WWII. The Hungarian Soviet Republic, in an effort to take advantage of the tidal wave
of nationalist sentiment and to use it for the much needed mobilisation of the masses both
in the internal political struggle as well as the external defence of the republic, utilised the
symbolic geography of `Saint Stephen's kingdom' and its progressively interpreted legacy to
legitimate its claims. One can say that Béla Kún in his pragmatic embracement of the `war
of national liberation against the Entente imperialism' and, simultaneously, his intermit-
tent resistance to Lenin's political interventions, could be viewed as the first representative
of `national communism' avant la lettre in East-Central Europe.' On the other hand, the
radical (future communist) branch of the Social Democratic Party in Bohemia represented
by its outstanding theorist Bohumir Smeral leaned towards the Austro-Marxist tradition
preferring the concept of national-cultural autonomy rather than ethnic federation. Before
1914, Smeral stood for consequently internationalist positions within the nationally agitated
environment and opposed the idea of a nation-state as well as the advancing ethnicisation
of Czech socialist politics of the time.' This, in turn, led him to a fairly neutral or centrist
position towards the nationality question in the new-born Czechoslovakia after 1918. The
moderate if not (in some aspects) indifferent position of the leadership of the Communist
Party to national question as represented especially by Smeral and Karl Kreibich got under
fierce criticism after 1924 from both the domestic left-wing radicals within the party and
from the Executive of the Comintern after it adopted a new policy towards the `new small
imperialist states' established after the war such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, or Yugoslavia.
The new Comintern policy prescribed to support the self-determination of national mino-
rities leading up to possible national separation from the multi-national or national states.'
During the 1920s and the 1930s, the adherents of the leftist revolutionary movements in
East-Central Europe showed a considerable discursive as well as strategic variety with res-
pect to the question of national identity and national ideology. Among Czech communist in-
tellectuals, for instance, fairly diverging positions appeared with the avant-garde represented
by artists such as Karel Teige and his decisively modernist and universalist theory of culture,
the radical Proletkult visions of the former anarchist poet S. K. Neumann, or the `bieder-
6 Vladimir I. Lenin, "Kritick6 poznimky k narodnostní otázce", in: Vladimir I. Lenin, O proletiiském interna-
cionalismu a nirodnostní otázce. Prague 1976, p. 131. Cf. Neil Harding, Leninism, Durham 1996, pp. 197-218.
7 Cf. Rudolf L. T6k6s, Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, New York 1967, esp. pp. 123-174.
8 Bernard Wheaton, Radical Socialism in Czechoslovakia. Bohumir Smeral, The Czech Road to Socialism and
the Origins of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (1917-1921), New York 1986. Zdenék Kirnik, Socialist6 na
rozcesti. Habsburg, Masaryk, Smeral, Prague 1968.
9 Ben Fowkes, "Communist Dilemmas in Two Multinational States", in: Norman LaPort/Kevin Morgan/
Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern. Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917-1953,
Houndmills/New York 2008, pp. 206-225.
124 MICHAL KOPECEK
meier communism' of Zdenék Nejedlÿ converging the national movement mythology with
the concept of socialist revolution.10 In Slovakia, among the younger generation of the 19205
leftist intelligentsia concentrated around the journal Dav, the national question was of great
importance. Apart from the social democratic leadership of Ivan Dérer all Slovak socialist
and communists groups and streams were contesting the official Czechoslovakist discourse
on the one hand and the nationalism and autonomism of Andrej Hlinka's populists on the
other." Following the long period of Comintern pro-Soviet internationalism that devastated
their political credentials the Hungarian or Polish communists started to turn in the mid-
1930s towards nationally moderate politics in an effort to find a common language with the
non-communist `progressive forces' enabled by the pragmatic framework of the `Peoples
front'. In Hungary, as the contemporary writings of József Révai prove, there was a strong
attempt to negotiate with the broad left-wing populist (népi) cultural establishment in order
to reach the masses of the country's agrarian workers.12
In general it took the turn of the Comintern strategy towards the so-called Peoples front
in the mid-1930 that relieved the communist parties in East-Central Europe from their ma-
jor task of breaking the bourgeois nation-states into its ethnic components. Instead, it set
them up again in the process of nation-building or unifying that in many ways anticipated
their later (socialist) nation-building endeavours. As a matter of fact, an important com-
ponent of the Stalinist turn in the late 1920s and the early 1930s in the Soviet Union was a
significant reconfiguration in the relationship of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine and natio-
nalism as the scholarly literature indicates. Whereas with Lenin the occasional references
to the Russian past and the national unity were of pragmatic and tactical nature, with Sta-
lin Russian nationalism became an indispensable part of the official Soviet ideology, which
was significantly enhanced during the `Great Patriotic War' against Nazi Germany. In the
view of some historians, the heavy preponderance of the Russian nationalist feelings over
class-consciousness during the late Stalinist years gave birth to a new type of ideology, the
`national Bolshevism'.13
The conciliatory approaches towards the idea of national unification and national culture
stood high, of course, in the communist political agenda in East-Central Europe during the
war against Nazi Germany after the Soviet Union had been attacked in June 1941. The bold
resistance fight along with the nationalisation of communist political propaganda clearly left
traces in the communist parties to such an extent that, for instance, the Czech and Slovak
communist-led anti-Nazi resistance movements might have operated against each other, as
the case of the possible establishment of Soviet Slovakia proves. 14 The plan alone proved to
10 See the chapter „Levi fronta za 1. republiky: komunistická kultura 1918-1938" in: Alexej Kusik, Kultura a
politika v Ceskoslovensku 1945-1956, Prague 1998, pp. 71-140. Cf. also Jacques Rupnik, Déjiny komunistick6
strany Ceskoslovenska. Od pocátkn do pievzeti moci, Prague 2002.
11 Cf. Jin Rozner, "Dav a problematika jeho doby", in: Dav, spomfenky a stúdie, Bratislava 1965, pp. 7-116; Karol
Rosenbaum, "Prins Davu k riesieniu vzeahov Cechov a Slovakov", idem, pp. 171-188.
12 Cf. Janos Gyurgyik, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok. A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története, Budapest
2007, esp. pp. 501-520; Miklós Lackó, Sziget 6s külvilig. Vilogatott tanulminyok, Budapest 1996, pp. 203-259.
13 David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism. Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian Na-
tional Identity, 1931-1956, Cambridge, Mass 2002. It does not mean that the presence of Great Russian natio-
nalism in Soviet state ideology during Stalinist times was neglected earlier. For one of the most critical accounts,
see Frederic C. Barghoorn, Soviet Russian Nationalism, New York 1956.
14 Cf. X6nia S6chovi, "Kominterna, KSC, KSS a komunisti na Slovensku po Mnichove a na zaciatku vojny", in:
Zdenék K6mik/Michal Kopecek (eds.), Bolsevismus, komunismus, radikilní socialismus v Ceskoslovensku, vol.
III, Prague 2004, pp. 75-114.
HISTORICAL STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 125
have fateful consequences for most of the Slovak communist resistance leaders later in the
1950s. The anti-Nazi resistance fight and the coinciding nationalisation gave birth to a per-
sistent schism present in virtually all communist parties in East-Central Europe after WWII
dividing the leadership groups between the Moscovites and the home communists.
At the end of the WWII, generally speaking, the communists in East-Central Europe
were all but indifferent towards the legacies of their respective national histories. The en-
deavour to bring into coexistence if not harmony what they perceived as `progressive na-
tional traditions' with the communist-led cultural revolutions could already be recorded
everywhere in the region during the `semi-democratic' period up to 1947/48. From the very
beginning of the communist domination the party ideologues and intellectuals were at pains
to place communists into a national historical picture depicting them in the best case as the
true `heirs of the progressive national tradition', or at least as a component of the national
patriotic whole. Not surprisingly after the war the patriotic discourse was among the most
important instruments of communist propaganda and an indispensable part of their effort
to increase their credibility with the population. The communist ideologues and politicians
did not depart from the Bolshevik teachings at that time. The universalist revolutionary
doctrine and generally the Marxist-Leninist narrative of allegedly lawful historical develop-
ment culminating eventually in the dissolution of all nations in the global communist society
remained at the heart of their political identity. But the radical rhetoric of the dictatorship
of proletariat and class struggle made way for the commonly accepted `national and social
revolution' and the request for `national unity' in the period of the so-called `specific ways'
to Socialism."
To be sure, the political processes with the `bourgeois-nationalist' deviators within the
communist movement and the strong anti-nationalist rhetoric were pillars of the founding
period of communist dictatorship in the region. Especially after the rift with Yugoslavia
in 1947, every remark about the `specific national' way to Socialism was considered with
the highest suspicion in the Kremlin Yet, it was Stalin himself, who sometimes urged the
other communist leaders to tinge their political campaigns with national phrases even after
1948. The anti-Zionist and anti-Cosmopolitan — read: anti-Semite — campaign from 1949
was strongly supplemented with commonly understandable nationalist tropes in the USSR
as much as in other communist countries.16 As Marcin Zaremba has shown, in the period
of mala odwitz (small thaw) in Poland between 1951/52 the Central Committee under the
leadership of the `Muscovite' Bierut launched a campaign against the enemies of the Po-
lish nation aimed at connecting certain carefully selected national tradition elements to the
Marxist-Leninist philosophy of history.17 Under different circumstances one might see this
phenomenon in the effort of the Hungarian official party historians and ideologues such as
József Révai, Erzsébet Andics, and Ala&r Mód to accommodate the independentist tra-
dition in Hungarian history-writing with the communist project, or similarly Zdenék
Nejedlp's attempt in the Czech case to construct a continuity between the Hussite revo-
15 Regarding the Czech case, see Bradley Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation. Czech Culture and
the Rise of Communism, Lanham 2005; Christiane Brenner, Zwischen Ost und West. Tschechische politische
Diskurse 1945-1948, Munich 2009.
16 Zores a Roj Medvedévovi, Neznimÿ Stalin, Prague 2003, pp. 269-284.
17 Marcin Zaremba, Komunizm, legitimizacja, nacjonalizm, Warsaw 2005, pp. 192-221.
 126 MICHAL KOPF,',
lution, national awaking and the socialist revolution." These are epitomes of the efforts ; ,,
the Stalinist elites — however futile and contradictory they usually were in the end — to creat,-
a moral-political unity openly based on the adoption and internalisation of the comFnunis~
project and col-lectivist morality, but represented and imagined exclusively as a national
community. Not by chance Milovan Djilas, the famous early renegade dissident to Yugos-
lav communism, observed in his well-known analysis of the evolution of the `new class' in
Soviet-type societies that every communist regime must appropriate a national form in one
way or another in order to keep itself alive.'9
National Communism or Socialist Patriotism?
The intention, declared in the early years of the communist rule in East-Central Europe, to
create the `socialist nations,' animated the communist elites in East-Central Europe long into
the 1960s. The projections of such a nation did however change significantly over time. Tl,e
true watershed has been the year of 1956; a real tremor of the communist political systern'r,
legitimacy. The workers' uprising in Poznaii that started with economic demands developell
very soon into national anti-Soviet and anti-Russian demonstration. Similarly, the Hunga-
rian revolution took a course of the `national democratic' resistance against the `alien' re-
gime, though in general it did not challenge the socialist project as a whole. For the new
party leaders in both countries it was a question of life and death to tackle the question of
national allegiance in a more consistent way. The fundamental conflict between the lure of
national communism and the danger of being accused of promoting old bourgeois nationa-
list clichés in socialist disguise made it particularly difficult for the new leaders Wladyslaw
Gomulka and János Kádár to do so.
The theoretical solution should have been provided by two concepts; the socialist patrio-
tism and the proletarian internationalism. Both notions had existed in the communist politi-
cal vocabulary for several decades prominent, for instance, in the Soviet propaganda during
the 1930s. In some cases, such as in Hungary, they were introduced into communist policies
as a substitute concept for the `national roads' to socialism of the immediate post-war pe-
riod.20 Despite their connection with the Stalinist times, however, the leaders of the com-
munist parties in East-Central Europe continued to utilise these terms in the party ideology
also in the post -Stalinist period. The socialist patriotism combined the love to one's country,
language and culture with allegiance to the socialist socio-economic order. The proletarian
internationalism represented mutual help and friendship between the progressive nations on
their journeys towards socialism and communism. The theory was built on Lenin's legacy,
recognising two basic, dialectically contradictory, tendencies in capitalist nation-building.
The national awakening and the advancement of national movement fight against all forms
18 J6zsef Révai, Marxizmus, Népiesség, Magyársig, Budapest 1948; Erzsébet Andics, Munkásoszdly 6s nemzet,
Budapest 1949; Zdenék Nejedlÿ, Komunisté, dédici velikÿch tradic ceského národa, Prague 1951. Cf. "A Mo-
derately Critical View," in: Tibor Huszár, Nemzetlét — nemzettudat — értelmiség, Budapest 1984, pp. 297-416.
More on the Czech, East German, Polish, and Slovak Stalinist historiographies on the national question, see esp.
Maciej G6rny, Przede wszystkim ma byé nar6d. nar6d. Marskistowskie historiografie w Europie §rodokowo-
Wschodniej, Warsaw 2007.
19 Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, London 1957, pp. 173-190.
20 Martin Mevius, Agents of Moscow: The Hungarian Communist Party and the Origins of Socialist Pa otlsm
1941-1953, Oxford 2005.
HISTORICAL STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 127
of national oppression and, second, the tearing down of all barriers between nations in the
developing system of world economy. According to Lenin, these two tendencies also exist
after the socialist revolution, which is why the party has to support the progressive national
elements (socialist patriotism) leading to the mutual collaboration among the nations (in-
t ernationalism). In capitalist conditions these contradictions - due to inevitable economic
inequalities - end up in domination of certain nations over the others. In socialist conditions,
however, the dialectics of the non-antagonist contradictions enable a synthesis, a new stage
of nation-building in the form of a socialist nation, followed later by the merging of nations
into bigger units and, finally, into a communist society of all people .21
The ambiguity and vagueness of the theory allowed for a significant variety of Marxist
a pproaches in this respect and also created a space for tactical jinks in the particularly sensi-
tive Hungarian situation following the suppression of the 1956 revolution. Soon after star-
ting an anti-revisionist crusade, Kádár launched a campaign against the `remnants of na-
tionalism' that were supposed to display themselves in autumn 1956. The response to the
strong nationalist feelings in the broad strata of population in 1956 was a vigorous promo-
tion of the notion of `socialist patriotism', however vaguely formulated at the beginning. It
reposed on the above mentioned Leninist theory and a schema differentiating between the
bourgeois nationalism, which amounted to treason at this historical stage, and the socialist
patriotism that combined the love of one's own country, culture and language with conse-
quent proletarian or socialist internationalism.22 What was at stake here, initially, was less the
interpretation of Hungarian history and more an effort to come to terms with the Soviet role
in the suppression of the 1956 revolution. When it came to concrete historical questions and
esp. powerful symbolic parallels, such as the one between 1848/49 and the 1956 revolution
and the role of the intervening Russian army, the party propaganda was no match for a cre-
dible explanation. The schema of the alleged historical dialectics evolving to antithetic results
proved to be quite a mockery: in 1849 the Habsburg counterrevolution called the reactio-
nary Tsarist army to crush the progressive Hungarian revolutionary movement, whereas in
1956 the revolutionary internationalists called for help to brotherly Soviet Union against the
counterrevolution supported by international reaction.23
Nevertheless, a few years later the development of Hungarian historical studies saw a
revaluation of the `socialist patriotism' concept, as the so-called `Debate about the nation' or
`Erik Molnár Debate' from the turn of the 1950s and 1960s shows. The major party histo-
rian Erik Molnár came up in an article published in Magyar Tudomány journal in 1960 with
a critique of the acceptance of the `petty-bourgeois nationalist prejudices' into Hungarian
Marxist historiography during the Rákosi era and instead suggested an alternative historical
21 Tatiana J. Burmistrova, Teoria socialisticheskoi natsii, Leningrad 1970; Jan Sindelka, Národnostní otázka
a socialismus, Prague 1966; id.: Národnostní otázka, Prague 1972; cf. also Erwin Stiiber /Helmut Zapf (eds.),
Sozialistischer Patriotismus und proletarischer Internationalismus, Berlin 1981; "Socialist (Proletarian) Inter-
nationalism" [Foreign Relations Series: Communist Area Analysis (Sino-Soviet)], (2/21/62 ), HU OSA 300-8-
3:91-2-159", in: OSA Digital Archives — Background Reports RFE/RL Collection, http://osaarchivum.org/
files/holdings/300/8/ 3/pdf / 91-2-159. On the East-German nation-building, where the notion of socialist pat-
riotism played a prominent role, see Jan Palmowski, Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heirrat and the Politics of
Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945-1990, Cambridge/New York 2009.
22 Cf. Melinda Kalmár, Ennivaló és hozomány. A kora kádirizmus ideol6giája, Budapest 1998, pp. 244-253.
23 See Edmund Gaspar, "Nationalism vs. Internationalism. Hungarian History in the Re-making, RFE Research,
6/11/69 ", in: OSA Digital Archives — Background Reports RFE/RL Collection, HU OSA 300-8-3:34-4-255
http://osaarcbivum.org/files/holdings/ 300/8/3/pdf /34-4-255, p. 6.
 128 MICHAL KoPECFK
logic allowing for the creation of a new kind of socialist patriotic affection. Questioning the
validity of the `independentist' interpretation, he put forward a critical Marxist analysis that
emphasised the role of social-economic factors at the expenses of national independence.
Thus, according to Molnár, the early absolutist policies of the House of Habsburg played a
historically progressive role, since it promoted the capitalist production, whereas the anti-
Habsburg fights based on the principles of estate ideology and represented by Transylvanian
lords such as István Bocskai or Gdbor Bethlen were of a feudal reactionary nature. They
were fighting for the feudal `rights', which were inseparably linked with the exploitation of
serfs. Therefore, in contrast to the 1848/49 revolution, these fights could be understood as
`war of liberation' only if one appropriated the class point of view of nobility.24
Molnár's strong modernisation thesis provided a new conception of history and ac-
counted for the possible reformulation of the concept of nation, which was theoretically
well-suited for the `fight on two fronts': against both nationalism and Stalinist anti-national
dogmatism. Despite this fact it was not adopted by the Kádár leadership, partly because in
the late 1950s and the early 1960s Ká6r considered the fight against the revisionist party
opposition from 1956 more important than that against nationalism. Another reason was
the developing `indifferentist strategy' to certain public questions that characterised the Ká-
ddrist regime in the following years zs The endeavour for a broad societal compromise — the
central tenet of Kd&r's rule — required that the highest level of party leadership remained as
`neutral' as possible on various ideological questions and, as a rule, left them to the `experts'
in the respective fields.
Despite the regime's refusal to accept Molnár's interpretation, his legacy as teacher and
mentor to the younger generation of Marxist historians proved to be long-lasting. His mo-
dernisation-thesis has been elaborated on and complemented by a group of economic and
social historians at the Academy of Sciences, who from the other side took up an older
tradition of Hungarian comparative historical studies from 1945-48 period and investiga-
ted the social-economic backwardness of Eastern Europe prior to WWI. Starting with the
early modern agrarian history and the role of the `second serfdom' (Z. Pal Pach) this course
of study developed towards a well-known pessimistic theory of East European backward-
ness (G. Rdnki, I. Bérend). Inspired by the global economic history schemes of Immanuel
Wallerstein and Alexander Gerschenkron, the economic historians described the recurrent
state-led modernisation efforts as top-down attempt to tackle the ever-growing develop-
mental gap between the European core and its semi-periphery.26
Another, larger group of Hungarian Marxist historians in the 1960s-1970s directly con-
nected to the Molnár Debate and — mostly in critical distance from Molnár's strictly class-
based historical approach — set up a broad research programme of the history of the natio-
nality question in Hungary within a wider Central and East European context (E. Arat6,
E. Kovács E. Niederhauser, E. Palotás, G. Spira, etc.). The early studies of Endre Arat6
providing a comparison of the cultural and language aspects of various national movements
24 Erik Molnár, "A nemzeti kerdés", in: Zsigmond P. Pach (ed.): Vita a magyarorszigi osztályk6zdelmekr6l és
függetlenségi harcokr6l, Budapest 1965, pp. 1-28; cf. also János Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok, A magyar
nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története, Budapest 2007, pp. 526-534.
25 Cf. Miklos Szab6, "Magyar nemzettudat problémák a huszadik század második felében", in: Miklos Szab6,
Politikai kult6ra Magyarorzságon 1896-1986, Budapest 1989, pp. 225-251.
26 G6rgy Rinki/Ivdn T. Bérend, K6z6p-Kelet-Eur6pa gazdasági fejl6d6s a 19.-20. Szizadban, Budapest 1969; id:
Gazdasig és társadalom. Tanulmányok házank és kelet-Európa XIX—XX. századi t6rt6net6r6l, Budapest 1974.
1IISTORICAL STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 129
in historical Hungary are worth mentioning. Also notable is Emil Niederhauser's broadly
conceived comparative history of national awakening in Eastern Europe, which paid special
attention to the social structure and preconditions of the national movements in the region .27
As much as the political project of socialist patriotism and the academic research in natio-
nal past were mostly treated separately, also Molnár's effort to connect them was subsequent-
ly read along two lines, as it were, ideological and historiographical. This was corroborated
in a major public political debate concerning the concepts of homeland and internationalism
in 1967/68, which followed after of survey about the historical and national consciousness of
students (17-18 years old) conducted by a teacher, Vilmos Farag6, and published in the pres-
tigious literary journal Det es Irodalom in January 1967. Most of the reaction to Farag6's
critical comments towards the majority of the students that professed, according to him, an
excessive pride of being Hungarians, concerned the desirability of (socialist) patriotism esp.
with the youth and the progressive or reactionary elements in their consciousness. In con-
trast to the political-educational stream a separate track of the debate appeared among histo-
rians, who were less concerned with the character of the young generation's patriotism but
reacted strongly to two particular, highly critical, accounts of Hungarian history. The first
was a movie entitled Cold Days based on a well-known novel by Tibor Cseres published in
1964 depicting the atrocities committed by the Hungarian occupation army against Serbian
civilians during WWII. The second was a book by historian István Nemeskürty criticising
harshly the failures of the country's ruling elite after the battle at Mohks in 1526.28
Yet there were a few, such as the medievalist Jen6 Sz{ícs, who tried to follow Molnár's
lead and to connect the critical academic historical inquiry into the `national content' of his-
torical development to the desirable new patriotic sensitivity that could potentially replace
the deeply engrained traditional romantic national identity. It was Sz6cs's work in particular
that sought to historicise the concept of `nation' and to elucidate the `national aspects' of
history, which could be understood as the most consequential albeit critical continuation
of the Molnár's initiative. The main extra-academic motive of the historian was the growing
presence of the `national uniqueness' discourse planted into the public debate by the popular
national-populist writers (népi irók). Szíics started a grandiose research into the develop-
ment of the national consciousness and historical forms of patriotism primarily in Hunga-
rian history and published its first results in the form of collection of essays in Hungarian in
1974. Even though the book was just a torso of the planned project, it nevertheless proved
to be of great influence to many Hungarian intellectuals and their understanding of modern
nationalism in Hungary."
The main thrust of Szíics's writing was aimed against the a-historical projection of the
modern national viewpoint onto historical reality. There were, he admitted, both collective ~
national consciousness as well as various forms of patriotism earlier in Hungarian history.
However, the national patriotism connecting these two phenomena into a new mass political
27 Endre Arat6, A nemzetiségi kérdés t6rnt6nete Magyarországon, Budapest 1960; Emil Niederhauser, Nemzetek
születése Kelet-Europában, Budapest 1976, id: A nemzeti megujulisi mozgalmak Kelet-Európában, Budapest
1977; cf. also the collective volume A magyar nacionalizmus kialakulása 6s története, Budapest 1964.
28 For both of the debates, see Edmund Gaspar, Nationalism vs. Internationalism, pp. 10-20; see also Cseres Tibor,
Hideg napok, Budapest 1964 [English translation: Cold Days, Budapest 2003]; István Nemeskürty, Ez t6rt6nt
Mohács után. Tud6shis a magyar torténelem tizenöt esztondej6r6l 1526-1541, Budapest 1968.
29 Jena Szúcs, Nemzet és t6rt6nelem. Tanulmányok, Budapest 1974 [A shorter version in German translation, id:
Nation und Geschichte, Studien, Budapest 1981].
 130 MICHAL KOPEcgK
tool and its preponderance over any other collective bound was a particularly modern phe-
nomenon, a result of the modern national movements. The rich and well-organised histori-
cal material provided the author a solid vantage point for a theoretical reconsideratio n of the
`socialist patriotism' concept. In his understanding, if there was to be a socialist patriotis m
capable to replace the traditional national identity — as he believed there was — it must mirror
the changing conditions of the national community in relation to the state in the socialist era.
In this sense, Sz&s argued, the socialist patriotism was a combination of a state patriotism
expressing the relationship of the whole society to the state and the national patriotism. Thus
it drew from the deep emotional reservoir of modern national traditions, at the same time,
however, it aimed at the reformulation of the bourgeois concept of nation."'
Czechoslovakia's `National Questions' and Historical Studies of
Nation-Building
Post-war Czechoslovakia differed quite significantly from Hungary in terms of public ex-
position as well as internal structure of the national question. In the state of two distinct
nations, the discourse on nation was encoded and in many ways influenced by the awkward
institutional structure. A peculiar political organisation developed after 1945 in reaction to
the Slovak criticism of the interwar official Czechoslovakism. Between the desired autono-
my of the Slovaks and the insistence on a unitary state by most of the Czech political forces
including not only communists, but also President Edvard Benes and his National Socialist
Party, an asymmetric model as a compromise solution came into being. It meant that below
the state-wide level special Slovak institutions — as an `from-above acknowledgment' of the
Slovak national identity — existed without the elaboration of parallel Czech institutions.
The asymmetry model existed until 1969 as a symbol of enduring and politically unfulfilled
nationalist claims and a symptom of a chronic disease of the common state. Yet it was more
complicated. The Slovak political representation, in particular the communists after the 1944
Slovak uprising, came out of the war years as a politically and nationally self-assured force
ready to deal with the Czech exile representation on a peer basis. In contrast, the Czech
communists under the leadership of Klement Gottwald subscribed after the elections of
1946, for both pragmatic and principal reasons, to the `Czechoslovak' centralist conception
that they earlier criticised for its `imperialist' and `bourgeois' character."I
The political development after WWII corroborated the mental borders between the two
nations, which significantly contributed to what has been characterised as a steady existence
of two distinct political cultures within one state. 32 It has found its expression in the sphere
of historical education and consciousness as well. Despite the existence of common history
textbooks (the Czech ones usually treating the Slovak history as an appendix to the Czech
30 See esp. Jend Szfics, "A nemzet historikuma és a történetszemlélet nemzeti Ut6sz6ge. Hozzász6lás egy vitához",
in: id., Nemzet 6s t6rt6nelem, pp. 12-187.
31 Cf. Jan Rychlík: Ce"si a Slováci ve 20. stoleti. Cesko-slovensU vztahy 1945-1992, Bratislava 1998, pp. 11-212;
Karel Kaplan, Povale6n6 Ceskoslovensko, Munich 1985, pp. 159-192.
32 Carol Skalnik-Leff, The National Question in Czechoslovakia 1918-1987, Princeton 1988, pp. 148-177.
HISTORICAL STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 131
developments) there never existed a real common Czech-Slovak historical consciousness
shared by relevant groups of people at any point during the existence of Czechoslovakia .33
On the surface the Czech national question disappeared from the political lexicon after
1948. With the majority of the German population being expelled from Bohemia and Mo-
ravia the Czech national identity as well as the Czechoslovak statehood stood, as it were,
basically unchallenged for the first time since 1918. Nevertheless, the disappearance of the
`Czech question' was more a result of the Stalinist cultural and political predominance of
that period, rather then of its final historical `settlement'. Paradoxically, the communist he-
gemony lead to a coexistence of a sterile power-discourse about the allegedly victorious
proletarian internationalism, which in Czechoslovak circumstances should have implicated
a gradual confluence of Czechs and Slovaks into one socialist community, and of the Zdenék
Nejedlÿ's powerful synthesis of Czech romantic nationalist historical master-narrative and
the communist radical revolutionary rhetoric.
Somewhat later, although initially less intensely than in Hungary, the national question
reappeared in the Czechoslovak cultural and political debate from the late 1950s through
the 1960s. There were basically three main sources of this development that influenced each
other and that only theoretically can be separated. First was an internal differentiation among
the Czech communist intellectuals as result of a cultural and political schism that had already
,_, Fisted in the party for a decade. One of the expressions of the schism was a challenge to the
Nejedlÿ's historical conception made by mostly younger Marxist philosophers such as Karel
Kosik or Robert Kalivoda who came to the fore towards the end of the 1950s. Second, at the
beginning of the 1960s, was the renewed interest in the Slovak question that got a power-
ful impetus by the rehabilitation processes esp. in the so-called Barnabite Commission that
concerned rehabilitation of the Slovak communist leaders sentenced in the trial of `bourgeois
nationalists' in 1953. And lastly, also in terms of chronological sequence, the resurgence of
the German question which in both its foreign-policy and historical dimensions returned to
the forefront of the discussion in the second half of the 1960s.
All this flowed into a renewed interest in nation-building and nationalism studies on
both theoretical as well as empirically historical levels. In theory, the creation of the socialist
nation was the priority. It should have had basically three stages. First, the phase of liquida-
tion of the major antagonisms inside the nation and its external relationship following the
socialist revolution that along with guaranteeing the principle of equality of nations enables
the creation of the socialist nation. Second, the further development of socialist nations re-
sulting in the levelling of their development and third, the final stage of confluence of the
nations leading ultimately to the origins of the world-wide communist society. On the basis
of these assumptions some of the Czech and Slovak Marxist theoreticians made an effort
to restructure the Czechoslovakist idea into a `national political society' project based on
autonomous development of two distinct nations connected, however, by the principles of
the Czechoslovak statehood and socialist patriotism.34 These attempts were grounded in the
Marxist assumptions that the roots of inequality and national tension are to be found mainly
in the economic sphere, even though the active socialist indoctrination and the combat of
33 Cf. Joseph Zacek: "Nationalism in Czechoslovakia", in: Peter F. Sugar/Ivo J. Lederer (eds.), Nationalism in
Eastern Europe, Seattle/London 1969, pp. 166-206.
34 See esp. Jan Sindelka, Národnostni otázka a socialismus, Prague 1966; Erika Kadlecovi, Socialistick6 vlaste-
nectví, Prague 1957. Cf. Juraj Maru"siak, Slovenská literar6ra a moc v druhej polovici päfdesiatych rokov, Brno
2001, pp. 61-87.
132 MICHAL KOPECEIi
the old bourgeois nationalist feelings were an important constituent of the socialist-nation
project.
Interestingly enough, this communist ideological framework for modernisation as a
background for creating a new type of patriotic feeling was not only reminiscent of other
similar attempts, such as the mentioned Molnár's conception in Hungary, but it also shared
common roots with other `Czechoslovak' modernisation project, namely that of the inter-
war liberal democratic republic that had roots in the thought of T. G. Masaryk. The liberal
`Czechoslovakists' were also confident that the progress in social, economic, and cultural
development had the potential to eradicate national boundaries and strong ethnic loyalties
in democratic Czechoslovakia and that the `Czechoslovak nation' as a political community
was a pertinent ideal for the future of both nations.35
The abstract theoretical and ideological considerations of the socialist nation were to
be completed by historical studies of nation-building. The new interest in nationalism and
history of nation-building developed in several fields of historical research that only rarely
referred to the official ideological propaganda of socialist patriotism, albeit it clearly shared
its anti-(bourgeois) nationalist ethos. One such field could be broadly defined as the inte-
rest of Czech and Slovak question in the Austrian Monarchy. Some historians studying this
phenomenon were animated by an attempt to restructure the traditional, nation-defending
narration into a genuine Marxist approach based on social and economic history explicating
the socio-economic preconditions of national resurgence. Already in the 1950s a generous
historical research endeavour had been initiated in the industrial and agrarian changes of
the 19d~ century. The result was a number of studies concerning for instance the industrial
revolution and its social consequences (J. Purs, L. Kárníková, P. Horská), the agrarian deve-
lopment and its connection to national movement (especially in Slovakia, J. Mesáros), or the
social and political consequences of the mass emigration from both the Bohemian lands and
upper Hungary in the second half of the 19`'' century esp. to the USA.36
A direct challenge to the Stalinist neo-romantic Czech historical master-narrative came
from the Marxist revisionist philosophers and historians who were concerned at first with
the so-called national-liberation fight in the past, its economic preconditions, and class struc-
ture. This branch of research resulted in a rethinking of the Czech radical democratic tradi-
tion in a broader European context.37 Somewhat later at the beginning of the 1960s it was sup-
plemented by studies of the Czech-German relationship in the last decades of the Monarchy
U. Kofalka, J. Havránek) as well as by a handful of works devoted to the national question
within the Czech, Slovak and all-Austrian workers movements and the Czechoslavic Social
Democratic Party (Z. Solle, J. Kofalka, O. Urban).38 These studies, mostly implicitly, chal-
35 Cf. Vladimir Bakos, The Question of the Nation in Slovak Thought: Several Chapters on the National-Political
Thought in Modern Slovakia, Bratislava 1999; Carol Skalnik-Leff, The National Question in Czechoslovakia,
pp.236-240.
36 Cf. Josef Koéf /Jiri Kofalka, "The History of the Habsburg Monarchy (1526-1918) in Czechoslovak Historio-
graphy since 1945", in: Austrian History Yearbook, vol. II, 1966, p. 198-223.
37 Karel Kosík, "Knékterÿm otizkim nirodné osvobozeneckého boje ceského lidu", vol. XIX stoleti, in: Nova
Mysl, 1/1954, pp. 37-52; id: Cesti radik0m demokrat6, Prague 1958. Cf. Petr Simal, "Ceska otazka" ve svétle
stalinismu. Karel Kosík a koncept levicového radikalismu", in: Soudobé déjiny, vol. 12, no. 1, 2005, pp. 43-61.
38 Jin Kofalka, Severoéesti Socialisté v éele délnického hnuti ceskÿch a rakouskÿch zemi, Liberec 1963; id:
Vsenémeckÿ svaz a ceski otázka koncem 19. stoleti, Prague 1963; Zdenék Solle, Socialistick6 d6lnick6 hnuti
a Ceska otazka 1848-1918, Prague 1969. See also an interesting attempt at popularising the Marxist historical
portrayal of Czech nationalism in the nineteenth century by Frantisek Cervinka, Ceskÿ nacionalismus v XIX.
HISTORICAL. STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 133
lenged Nejedly's national-communist interpretation. They stressed the class antagonisms
within the national movement while also applying a more sophisticated and differentiating
view of the role and development of national question within the labour movement in the
Bohemian lands and Austria. They more carefully elaborated on the mutual conditioning
of the base and superstructure in Marxist terms. Last but not least, they drew an alternative
line of positive historical traditions; from the liberal nationalists in 1848, through the radical
democrats of the 1860s and 1870s and the workers movement, to social democracy and the
latter's once again appreciated leader Bohumír Smeral.39
These critical historiographical incentives were shared by many Czech and Slovak histo-
rians in the 1960s during which their collaboration reached a high point. At the same time,
the Slovak scholars were much more motivated by a tendency to vindicate the perspective
of their national history against the two hegemonic tendencies, namely the Hungarian and
the Czech. As for the Hungarian influence, crucial was the debate between the first lady of
Hungarian official Marxist historiography Erzsébet Andics and the doyen of Slovak non-
Marxist historiography Daniel Rapant about the validity of Marx and Engels' evaluation
of 1848/49 revolution and its progressive (German, Hungarian national movements) or re-
actionary (Slovak, Czech national movements) features. Not only the Slovak Marxist his-
torians such as J61ius Mesáros, but also his Czech colleagues Jan Novotny or Milan Hiibl
supported the Slovak national-emancipatory view of the non-Marxist Rapant against their
Hungarian Marxist counterpart.40
The emancipation of Slovak historical thinking from the official Czechoslovakist doc-
trine was partially triggered by Gustáv HusXs 1964 book of memoirs of the 1944 Slovak
national uprising. As a communist war-time resistance movement member and later victim
of the process with the `bourgeois nationalists', he claimed that the main aim of the Slovak
national uprising was not a renovation of the pre-Munich Czechoslovakia, but a new de-
velopment of Slovak statehood, which was in the end not realised .4' HusWs memoir was
heavily criticised by Viclav Král, a hard-line communist historian writing on the request of
the conservative party leadership of Antonin Novotny. However, many Slovak and Czech
reform communist historians and intellectuals supported Husák's claims. They saw it as
another step in the overall democratisation of Czechoslovak society, esp. in the sphere of
historical memory and academic research, and had formulated similar conclusions based on
their own historical investigation."
The war-time historical experience and its reflection had particular resonance in the 1960s
reformist era from literature, film and theatre up to historical studies. As the Slovaks utilised
stoleti, Prague 1965; cf. Josef KoWjifi Kofalka, "The History of the Habsburg Monarchy", in: Austrian History
Yearbook, vol. II.
39 For the 1960s renascence of interest in `Smeralism', see e.g. Zdenék Kárnik, Socialisté na rozcesti; Otto Ur-
ban, `Bohumír Smeral a Frantisek ModrRek jako pfedstavitel6 dvou ideologickÿch linii v ceské sociálm demo-
kracii pied prvm svétovou vilkou", in: Ceskoslovenskÿ casopis historick}, vol. XI, no. 4, 1963, pp. 432-444;
Jin Mlynárik, "Dr. Bohumír Smeral a slovenska národnostná otázka v poéiatkoch komunistického hnutia", in:
Ceskoslovenskÿ 6asopis historickÿ, vol. XV, no. 4, 1967, pp. 653-666. ql
40 See Jan Rychlik, Ce"si a Slováci ve 20. Století. Cesko-slovensk6 vztahy 1945-1992, Bratislava 1998, pp. 200-209.
41 Gustav Husak, Svedectvo o Slovenskom národnom povstam, Bratislava 1964.
42 Ferdinand Beer/Antonin Ben6k/Bohuslav Graca/Jan Kfen/Wclav Kural/Jaroslav Solc, Dejinná krizovatka.
Slovensk6 národn6 povstanie — predpoklady a gsledky, Bratislava: 1964. For a general account of Slovak his-
toriography in the first two decades of communist rule, see Adam Hudek, Najpolitickejsia veda. Slovenska
historiografia v rokoch 1948-1968, Bratislava 2010.
134 IVIICHAL KOPFCEK
the 1944 uprising to open debate on the national question in recent history, the Czechs dis-
cussed the Czech-German relationship and its culmination during the so-called Protectorate
and the subsequent expulsion of the Sudeten-German population from Czechoslovakia after
the war. These matters have been previously debated just among exiled Czech politicians and
historians. Some of the issues such as that of transfer/expulsion, could only be discussed in
public during the very short period of 1967-1969.43 Nevertheless, the historians and writers
questioning the Czech stereotypes about the `transfer' shared a fundamental perspective
with other scholars studying contemporary history interested especially in the consequences
of the war experience in shaping the post-war Czech and Slovak societies and creating pre-
conditions for the establishment of Stalinist dictatorship a few years later.
The cultivated sensitivity of the interplay or dialectics of the socio-economic proces-
ses and cultural/ideological development characterised also the broad research project of
Miroslav Hroch who set up at the beginning of the 1960s to investigate into the historical
process of nation-building on the basis of selected small European nations. He considered
the hitherto Marxist historical investigations into bourgeois nation-building insufficient and
showing only a superficial consideration for the general observations of Marxism's founding
fathers. In his programmatic article from 1961, he pleaded for a dynamic understanding of
the category of `nation' and for a corresponding historical research that would provide plain
definitions and enable analysis of the origins of the bourgeois nations in a decidedly histo-
ricising and comparative way.44 This involved the study of the social composition of the
national movements and the groups of patriots, the role and structure of the intelligentsia,
and the corresponding development of the national consciousness as a unity of objective
and subjective factors. The result was a structural analysis of the social preconditions of the
origins and establishment of the small, European nations, an approach informed by Marxist
historical questionnaire as much as the current Western structural sociology and social psy-
chology of communication.45
Hroch's 1968 publication of Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegungen contrasted to many
other historical works of the time, as it did not have direct political agenda. It did not try
to legitimise the reform communist political current by invoking or elaborating on certain
political or cultural traditions. Nevertheless, Hroch's understanding of the modern natio-
nal society and its national and political consciousness as formed and shaped by its social
structure, forms of communication, social mobility but also the complexities of conflicting
interests was in the same line with politically more engaged forms of social scientific research
in the contemporaneous Czechoslovakia. Among the most well-known were the interdis-
ciplinary teams under the famous reform communist economist Ota Sik or the sociologist
Pavel Machonin that portrayed the Czech and Slovak societies as basically modern, socially
differentiated society driven by immensely diverse economic, social, and cultural interests,
43 See Jan Kren, "Odsun N6mcti ve svétle novÿch pramenn", in: Bohumil Cernÿ/Jan KrenN;iclav Kural/Milan
Otähal (eds.), Cesi, N6mci, odsun. Diskuse nezávislÿch historiku, Prague 1990, pp. 6-32, originally published
in the regional cultural political journal Dialog in 1967; or Trialog o rote 1945. Diskuse historika Milana Hiibla,
spisovatele Jana Procházky a redaktora casopisu Host do domu Vladimíra Blaika, idem, pp. 33-43, originally
published in the journal Host do domu in 1968.
44 Miroslav Hroch, "K problematice formování burzoazniho näroda v Evrop6", in: Ceskoslovenskÿ Gasopis histo-
ricky", vol. IX, no. 3, 1961, pp. 374-395.
45 Miroslav Hroch, Die Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegung bei den kleinen Völkern Europas. Eine vergleichen-
de Analyse zur gesellschaftlichen Schichtung der patriotischen Gruppen. Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philoso-
phica et Historica, Monographia XXIV, Prague 1968.
HISTORICAL STUDIES OF NATION-BUILDING AND THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM 135
both collective as well as individual. Their publications represented an important factor and
backing of the nascent communist reform movement .46
Parting the Ways
The hope cherished by the Antonin Novotnÿ communist leadership that along with the
economic progress the Slovak national sentiments start to merge with the morally and poli-
tically higher socialist patriotism based on the Czechoslovak statehood failed. In 1968, the
Slovak self-determination became one of the major themes of the Prague Spring along with
an endeavour towards overall democratisation. At that point the concept of socialist patrio-
tism proved to be an unsuccessful political project in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia as
it was not capable of replacing the deeply engrained national feelings and identifications of
the majority population. Nevertheless, the challenge of the romantic-nationalist understan-
ding of the national history as contrasted with modern Marxist conception that potentially
overcomes the traditional Czech and Slovak particularism and sees national history from a
broader Central European or European perspective reached its climax during the Prague
Spring.47 The political debate of the period gave birth to essentially liberal socialist approach
to `political nation'. It involved a correlation of the class and cultural analysis in the notion
of the `political nation' as well as a reconsideration of the relationship between two distinct
but mutually responsive national societies, Czech and Slovak. Last but not least this ap-
proach represented by some major intellectuals of the Prague Spring such as Karel Kosik
postulated, for the first time after WWII, a broader Central European perspective as a neces-
sary analytical and political dimension for any sensible national political debate."
Many of these individual academic or political projects have been put aside with the
swift accession of the so-called `normalisation' regime and the removal of many reformists
from Czechoslovak public life after 1969. Nevertheless the major intellectual incentives of
the 1960s continued to live on their own, corroborating the definite bifurcation of the ideo-
logical project of socialist patriotism and the (post-)Marxist analytical interest in the history
of nation-building. As a time-proved ideological formula the notion of `socialist patriotism'
became or rather remained a part of the hyper-normalised language of party propaganda
during the late state socialism. In contrast, the concept of national society, its historical ma-
king and the problem of modern nationalism have been — in various forms — further cul-
tivated and discussed in both official as well as dissident writings and publications. In the
samizdat historical discussions and polemics the historical development of modern nations
in Central Europe as well as the nationalist ideologies were treated in a more political and
counter-cultural manner.49 In official historical research in the 1970s and the 1980s the same
46 Cf. H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution, Princeton NJ 1976, esp. pp. 90-133; Michael
Vofisek, The Reform Generation. 1960s' Czechoslovak Sociology in a Comparative Perspective. PhD disserta-
tion, Florence: European University Institute, July 2009.
47 E.g. Frantisek Graus (ed.), Nase iivä i mrtvä minulost. 8 eseji o ceskÿch déjinäch. Prague 1968 with contribu-
tions of F. Graus/E Smahel/D. Trrestik/J. Petrán/M. Hroch/J. Koralka/B. Loewenstein V. Olivová.
48 See JiE Koralka, Co je národ? Prague 1969, pp. 62-69; Karel Kosik, "Nase nynéjsi krize", in: Stoled Mark6ty
Samsov6, Prague 1993, pp. 25-62, originally published in Literärm listy Weekly (April 1968).
49 See Michal Kopecek, "Citizen and Patriot in the Post-Totalitarian Era: Czech Dissidence in Search of the Na-
tion and its Democratic Future", in: Tr@nsit online. Online since December, 2009. http://www.iwm.at/index
php?option=com—content&task=view&id=1688cItemid=231.
t36 MICHAL KOPEOE K

incentives had continued in the less politically loaded investigations of the social, economic, Maciej Górny
political and intellectual preconditions of the origins and establishment of modern national
movements as well as their broader regional preconditions and contexts.','

Nation-Building in Marxist Historical

Narratives in East Central Europe in the 1950s

One of the most interesting characteristics of the history of Marxist historiography of the
last twenty years is its separation from the agenda of the `general' history of historiogra-
phy. It is, on the one hand, a quasi "natural" side effect of the hardly challenged position of
the year 1945 as a turning point in recent history. But it is also, on the other hand, a reflex
of post-1989 historical and political debates, which spread their influence over historical
science. Polish, Slovak, Czech, and German authors decisively distinguish between the his-
toriography of the 19th century and that of the interwar period on the one side, and post-
war Marxist-Leninist historical science on the other. Attempts at unifying both periods are
rare and even if they meet in the same book, the qualitative difference between them is em-
phatically marked. One of the most frequent oppositions discussed after 1989 was embodied
in the contrast: "continuity or discontinuity", whereas the answer seems to be more than
obvious: Marxism of the Soviet type has nothing to do with the `normal' historiography.
It was an attempt — to use the formulation of Polish historian of science Piotr EIiibner — to
decapitate the intellectual elite.'
This post-1989 narrative identifies the Marxist methodology as a part of an external at-
tempt to subordinate and to control the historians' milieu. As soon as the deepest Stalinism
had ended, historians were able to go back to their previous ideals running their business
more or less as usual.' Even when — as it happened after 1968 in Czechoslovakia — there was
a backlash of hard dictatorship and revitalisation of Stalinist narratives, the dichotomised
picture remains dominant: a clear division between historians and functionaries.'
The notion of discontinuity, as it is being used in the post-1989 history of historiography,
refers not only to the scientific policy of the communist regimes, but also to the predomina-
ting historical narratives. As Rafal Stobiecki puts it, the Marxists — rather unwillingly — des-
troyed elemental social ties represented by the need of historical continuity of the state and
of the nation.4 The East-Central European Marxism of the 1950s was thus clearly perceived
as a gap in the development of the historical science. In the historical debates that aroused
immediately after the collapse of Communism in East-Central Europe, the notion of "white

1 Piotr Hübner, "Stalinowskie `czystki' w nauce polskiej", in: Roman Bäcker/Piotr Hübner (eds.), Skryte oblicze
systemu komunistycznego. U zródel zla, Warsaw 1997, p. 220.
2 See Maciej Górny, "`Przelom metodologiczny' na lamach `Przegl4du Historycznego' na tle wybranych czaso-
pism historycznych w Europie Srodkowowschodniej", in: Przegl4d Historyczny, no. 1, 2006, pp. 39-48.
3 See Michal Kopeéek, "In Search of National Memory. The Politics of History, Nostalgia and the Historiography
of Communism in the Czech Republic and East Central Europe", in: Michal Kopecek (ed.), Past in the Making.
Histrical Revisionism in Central Europe after 1989, Budapest 2008, pp. 78-80.
4 Rafal Stobiecki, Historia pod nadzorem. Spory o now model historii w Polsce (II polowa lat czterdziestych —
50 Cf. Maciej Janowski/Constantin Iordachi/Balázs Trencsényi, "Why Bother About Historical Regions? Debates pocz4tek lat pig6dziesi4tych), Lodz 1993, p. 182. See also his article, `Between Continuity and Discontinuity:
Over Central Europe in Hungary, Poland and Romania", in: East Central Europe/I;Europe du centre-est, vol. A Few Comments on the Post-War Development of Polish Historical Research", in: Zeitschrift für Ostmittel-
32, nos. 1-2, 2005, pp. 5-58. europa-Forschung, no. 2, 2001, pp. 214-229.