Front Matter - Part 02

According to a number of analyses (Mencinger, 1989, Bilandzic, 1985), the differences in production, productivity, profitability in exports and imports, and in employment / unemployment, the average income of the population, etc., between developed and undeveloped regions in the federation, had ratios of 4, 3 or 2:1. It was an objective basis for tension and proved that some were exploiting others or some lived worse than others, or they did not live well enough and did not develop sufficiently as fast as they could. On that basis, especially in the decade before the formal dissolution of the Federation, tensions had risen in politics, the media, in public forums as well as in economy, and in the sciences and culture; about which republic and province profited and which lost in the joint survival of the country. Naturally, because the republics and provinces were national and ethnic-based entities, tensions over development trends, delays or progress, received

primarily ethnic and ethno-political charges or were objective bases on which nationalism and ethnocentrism was generated.

Under normal conditions, in countries with developed markets, with proprietary and open economies and political systems that do not allow political interference in the economy and law and respect civil liberties, developmental discrepancies can be solved through quite different mechanisms, for example, through the market, through the banks, by encouraging investment, lending, etc. But amid the party controlled and distorted federal and socialist systems, the differences lead to nothing more than struggle for redistribution of income and increasing trends of ethno-political control over the reservoir of wealth. But because of this non-uniformity, developmental differences in the population and in selective regions were the immediate reasons for waves of conflict, tension and later wars.

Sociological explanations of interethnic relations and contrasts in a community are much more complex and layered. In multi-ethnic communities, nationalism and ethnocentrism, in fact, appear usually with the predominant and with the smaller groups, in other words, with both the ethno-majority and with the ethno-minorities. They cannot come to this because of correlated action-reaction, nor can they necessarily do this at the same time and in the same way. Nationalism in the predominant nations in the Balkan countries may be the result of dissatisfaction with progress blaming the ethno-minorities for the stagnation, or as a result of fear of change, during which people would supposedly lose their leadership position in their community, or in the international community. With other ethnicities, outside of dissatisfaction with standards and social conditions, it may be a result of feeling repression and hopelessness, loss of social and cultural identity, especially in periods of crisis and change.

In Macedonia’s case, for example, we can surmise that the overall social and economic development after 1945, stimulated different, separate and separated forms and patterns in the development of the Macedonian, Albanian and other ethnic groups. The Macedonian ethnic group increasingly tied itself to urban settlements, industry, government and the public sector. Its mobility and migration was mainly to the other Yugoslav republics or in the form of permanent

overseas migration. The Albanian ethnic group tied itself more to agriculture and farming, to the village, and because of the political and ideological system, it was depressed and neglected. Yet the system fit the demographic boom of the Albanian population, here and in Yugoslavia in general. Namely, the cost of reproduction was paid for by the state regardless of which field, be it agricultural, industrial and so on. But agriculture in each case was suppressed.

That in turn led to the need for more manpower. In the beginning at least, there was some impact on the demographic boom. Moreover, in Macedonia, this ethnic group (Albanian) was tied more to the private sector, ownership, trade, temporary migration to close European countries, etc. It is certain that “family economy and solidarity” had an impact on patterns of reproduction. Along with differences in religion, education, etc., these two and other communities developed in parallel, separately, and to a certain extent in different contrast. This influence on the socio-demographic and developmental differences increased the essential ethno-distance, stereotyping, isolation and communicability between the communities but only on a symbolic level (Savev, 1996 Tasheva and others..., 1998, Petroska-Beshka and others ..., 2000). On a political level, as a means to an end, these differences led to discrepancies and ethno-conflicts, as a basis in Macedonia in 2001.

Hence, the derivative of the sociological analysis of social and developmental discrepancy as an objective basis for the emergence and persistence of nationalism and ethno-centrism, regardless of the ethnic-minorities, regardless of the size of the countries in question, is the commitment to balance the socio-economic development, an accelerated development, in which, as active stakeholders, it will include all the countries in the region, all ethnic groups and communities from which they will all benefit and improve their social conditions. If this accelerated and balanced development coincides with the development of the structures of civil society, the rise of open market economy and entrepreneurship, the processes of global and regional integration and communication, it will cut off or significantly weaken some of the strong roots of ethno-centrism, ethno-aggressiveness and ethno-expansion which has taken place at the expense of other communities. However, we have to admit that

this is only a hypothesis for which there are no real or recognized arguments.

In contemporary literature on nationalism and ethnocentrism, i.e. regarding nations and ethnicities, the issue of community development, primarily of socio-economic development, is given considerable attention, although the views are not anywhere near the same. British sociologist Tom Nairn, whose strong views deserve respect and consideration, believes that imperialism and uneven development are the causes of nationalism as a global phenomenon. Nairn largely looks at that reason from the aspect of the larger, more developed entities, which create the context of reaction among the minorities, on which it is based.

That is true. Nationalism, ethnocentrism and disrespect for the rights of ethnic minorities can, among the ethno-majority, be generated as feeling and so can the fact of stagnation, lack of rapid development, or from the low standards compared to others and so on. Furthermore, when we talk about imperialism, we certainly do not think of the one created by Leninism or by Marxist terminology, but of each “imperialism” including the ones of modern times, regional and local. Basically, the problem is in the creation of feelings, which find fertile soil because of uneven development, which is consistent with Ernest Gellner’s findings. Ernest Gellner is a renowned ethno-sociologist. (See Nairn, 1977; Gellner, 1964).

However, with its warnings of the dangers of sociology and lines of social and ethnic grouping that supposedly can distort the image of the roots of nationalism, quoted below by Russian ethnographer Vladimir Tishkov, but even more so as quoted by professor Anthony Smith of the London School of Economics. This rightly suggests that nationalism is found in all socioeconomic backgrounds and contexts, as in all systems; not necessarily only in those that lag or are developmentally different and depressed (Smith, ibid. p.35). Which means that there is no other objective basis that will influence, at the end of the line, the production and operation of nationalism and ethno-centrism, especially in the final and brutal statement of account?

In the case of former Yugoslavia, and Macedonia in general, it was a natural desire and ambition to overcome, during that time, the deep social and economic crisis in the country, and to also harness the aforementioned open energy of national and ethnic emancipation, in order to create new social demands and groups of identities by generating waves of disobedience, rejection and by discrediting the previous socialist system. The key mediator in the changes that were on the threshold were the ethno-political elites. Our study will show that the conditions for the federal and ethnic-based state formations were set to maintain the old elite in power and to preserve the power and position in a legitimate way, the only viable solution that would appeal to their ethnic group as a real existing community which was to provide protection and legitimacy to a government.

In the former Yugoslav Federation, from 1974 to 1990, legitimate resources were moved from the federal top to the republics and to the provinces, in other words, to the ethno-political entities. However, the collapse of communist parties as the only skeleton of federalism in these communities meant that it was not only the end of socialism, but also the beginning of ethno-political centrism and nationalism. That is why, very often, behind the natural and desirable threshold of change in the direction of civil society, ownership, entrepreneurial economy, political democracy, was the national economy, the ethno-centrist state and the old communist elite now in their recycled ethno-elite status. (Mirchev, 1993).

5. Transition tangle

The problems of transition in many of the Eastern European and particularly in the Balkan countries can be understood and explained by the dynamics and the process of mobility of the elite. In that sense Vladimir Goati, in the case of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia as was with the post Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s community, which he has studied, confirms the conversion from the old Communist elite to the new recycled ethno-political elite. Slobodan Antonich, in a remarkable sociological study, has demonstrated the whole social mechanism of the passage of the Communists in Serbia – in Milosevich’s elite: populist, autocratic and nationalist. Antonich has concluded that the underlying reasons for the persistence of the Milosevich regime in

particular lay in the arrangement of power and the personal character of the holder of the regime, who managed to prevent the independence of the ruling elite and bound them to him. (Goati, 1999, Antonich, 2002). Srgian Darmanovich reached a similar conclusion about Montenegro. (Darmanovich, 1995). Sociologically speaking, there were almost no political elite in the transition countries, which, at the threshold of change, had no nationalistic aims, in order to be able to identify, create and legitimize themselves in the ethno-social base.

Researching a little further away from the Balkans, Seleni, Treiman and Vnuk-Lipinski observed similar trends in the formation of the transitional elites in Poland, Russia and Hungary (Szelenyi et all., 1995). V. Tishkov, one of the best scholars of international relations in the former Soviet Union and post-Soviet states, in a wider sense about nationalism in the transition period in these countries, warns about the one-sidedness of the sociological approach to nationalism. Above all, as per the analysis of serious disproportions and correlations between ethnic and social structures, there is no automatic mechanism that provides a basis for nationalism. Second, it is not quite correct that the political and nationalist struggle for sovereignty that took place in Russia should be treated as an inter-ethnic conflict. Conflicts often repeat the same logic of decentralization of large multi-ethnic state formations and this in turn necessarily includes strong ethnic and cultural parameters; this is because most of its initiators and leaders belong to the ethno-titular groups. But as Tishkov wrote: “Russia has striking examples of ‘ethnic camouflage’, by which the political struggle for the powerful interests of local elites in the republics and in the autonomous regions is presented as a struggle for ‘national self-determination.’…” (Tishkov, 2003 ).

Today, under current conditions, the dilemmas about nations and nationalism, ethnicity and ethno-centrism largely boil down to two questions, which at the start were only a theory and then transposed themselves into political and practical issues. The first is a question of social and political structure of the nation and ethnicity, rather the production performance of the nation and ethnicity. The second question is that of mediation of performance and of construction - in policy and action. Both questions can be merged into one: who, with

what, and how one participates in the generation of ethnocentrism, which is expressed not in the form of emancipation, but as a socially intrusive and aggressive act towards the other side?

Putting this confrontation aside, there is a very simple question to ask: is it true that a common man, as part of a mass of citizens in a society or community, or any segment thereof, given his social status, poverty, poor education, envy, short-sightedness and selfishness, will plunge into nationalism and ethno-centrism, without the slightest signal that all this will improve his living situation? It would be very difficult and very unlikely that such a scenario would occur. Sociologically speaking, at this level of review, it raises another issue which is; how much are the citizens of a community even aware of how rich or poor they are. Which raises the question as to why they live like this: less rich, worse, with less freedom, with less rights and responsibilities, especially compared to “others”? Somewhere, in some communities, primary or secondary, even tertiary, people do ask: “Why do we live like this?” Their immediate life experiences are reflected unfavourably first at the primary level and later at higher levels: political, psycho-political, ethno-political, and culture-political. So-called group identities are created at that level, but those identities are always created in relation to another group of identities: class, status, racial, religious and of course ethnic.

Following along this point, Nairi, Brubeiker, Anderson and other contemporary authors see this as the basis for nationalism and ethnocentrism. But of course, this is just a basis, only an example; an instance. However this instance translates into politics, into action, and in some cases into clashes and violence, through a complex social and socio-psychological mechanism, in which the “media” or “intervention” groups play a key role, for example: bureaucracy, the already mentioned political elites, including intellectuals and scientists, and even media circles. It is also not coincidental that all the documents in our collection, and many, many more, are a product of the academies of sciences and of scientific institutes.

Nationalism is a suitable source of legitimization for the political elites, because the nation is a real and powerful community,

especially its identity and the sense of its legitimacy. Bureaucracy, however, does not have such a legitimizing basis. Its legitimacy must be sought of in its profession. But, since profession, especially in countries in transition, means very little, the bureaucracy is forced to turn to ethnicity and nation for its legitimacy. During transitional conditions, however, when intelligentsia, science and the media are mainly materially and professionally dependent on state-party sources, and these in turn are structured ethno-politically, it becomes clear why at least some of these layers are turning to the production of ethno-centric products.

S. Bronner, an American provocative author who has studied the correlation between ideas and actions, regarding nationalism, has concluded that: “Nationalism is still a valid ideology in our time. Nation-state inflexible bureaucracies still have an interest in reproducing it. Outdated understandings of national sovereignty and self-determination, ancestral traditions and customs still have internal drive power.” (Bronner, S. E., 1999, p. 334). It is interesting that German sociologist H. Kon has described the role of the intelligentsia in Eastern European countries in a similar way. Sixty years ago he wrote: “The intelligentsia plays a pivotal role in the periphery, where the petty bourgeoisie lacks faith to choose its way into self-sustaining growth. In place of the bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia needs to secure a mythical sense of a different fate for the community, by forging a national culture that is based on folk elements and mass mobilization. And hence, harness the power of idealistic and subjective components of peripheral nationalism.” (Kohn, H., 1967 ch.7).

And finally, let us say something about the exquisite piece of research conducted by Czech sociologist M. Hroh regarding nationalism in Eastern Europe, in which he revealed a common pattern of development of nationalist movements in the region, starting with a small cluster of intellectuals, writers, actors, who elaborated on the idea “that the nation is in danger”, and then spread that idea to wider circles which included patriots, agitators, teachers, journalists, with aims at creating wide awareness and in the end, a mass movement. (Hroch, M., 1985).

6. A theoretical approach to a nation

There is no single or general theory about nations and ethnicities adopted in the social sciences today which holds true for both the absence of a theory and for many other social groups, categories or processes. There are no unique views for multiple terms, derivative from the nation: a nation-state, nationalism, nation-genesis, nation-centrism, etc. And as such, the more enriched the research fund of knowledge is about the phenomenology of ethnicity and nation today, the more isolated are some latent characteristics of the phenomenon. To the same extent, we get closer to the arguments, favourable and unfavourable, of which nations and ethnicities participate in today’s flows and dynamics of our civilization. When it comes to nationalism and ethno-centrism, be they in the form of doctrine, ideology or politics, it should be said that there is no modern theoretical stream that would justify them or on which they can be based. They can be based, or, again, they themselves can summon ideological and theoretical sources, or, again, meta-theoretical concepts. This, in fact, is a problem of social and scientific projections of past reality and future.

The twentieth century, however, bestowed upon us a few more pronounced and affirmed theoretical views of “nation” and “ethnicity”. At the beginning of this century, particularly during the creation of large statist and imperial works in Europe, ethno-romanticism had a lot of impact, particularly that of German jurist Heinrich von Trichke, French philosopher Ernest Renan and many other modern and otherwise directed thinkers: Kant, Fichte, Arndt, then Durkheim, Weber, Herder. They, with some differences, affirmed the so-called ethnic and ethno-linguistic determinism, emphasizing the alleged primordial and spiritual nature of a given nation and the importance of its historical memory and “organic” political will, in the establishment of primary human culture, spirit and endeavour. A. Smith, who gave a thorough and critical review of this, considers it most essential in the foundation of “voluntary” and “organized” views of nationalism and its projection on modernity. They, Smith said, had the longest history and the most dramatic consequences. The cult of the ancestors, past history and the alleged collective political will are the materials of ethno-

determinism when “forging” the nation, concluded Smith. (Smith, 2001 ch. 2).

Marxism and the Marxist concept of “nation”, in this area, was the second significant unexplored heritage of the last century. In the 19th century, Marx himself and his like minded thinkers, even though they were able to ignore and criticize the concept during their time, they played with it; with the question of expression of nation and nationalism. By definition, Marxism was a cosmopolitan and universal ideology, and at the time when it was taking place, nation and nationalism were already politically harnessed against the liberation of labour and against the then popular “world revolution”.

At the beginning of the XX century, Marxism had to solve the problems of “world revolution” that were taking place in the “nation states”, so that communist politics could succeed in national terms. But unable or unwilling to answer that question, the Second International Conference collapsed. At that time the labour movement was divided on the issue of whether or not to vote for war credits in the parliaments, leading to the First World War. At that time, Marxism also first affirmed the view of the so-called Austro-Marxists, who were based on a, more or less, consistent definition of Otto Bauer’s nation. In his famous treatise “The National Question and Social Democracy”, Bauer wrote that the nation “is the totality of how people with a common destiny and common communication, which is the intermediate language, relate to a cultural community”. (According to: D. Miljovski in- B. Petrovska, 2000, p. 346). This definition is relatively broad but generally not far from today’s understanding by ethno-symbolists. Bauer believed that, at least, European nations had evolved from communities with an ethnic origin, through class differentiation, by shaping “communities by character”; i.e. that the nation is an ethno-cultural community which has its own historical and class basis, but whose evolution can be influenced politically. A nation, Bauer believed, did not get in the way of modern development, nor did it tie itself with a defined political territory. It was able to keep its special historical and cultural significance, but also was able to participate in the wider integration and emancipation.

In the strain of imperial power, Stalinism, 1) became aware of the importance of the nation in modern politics and state, 2) made a decision not to bring it on a collision course with the class struggle, and 3) decided that it looked like a useful tool that could be used to its advantage. Sometime before World War II, Stalin in his “Marxism and the colonial question”, defined a nation as a “historically formed stable community of people, formed on the basis of a community of language, territory, economic life and political constitution, which was manifested in a community of culture.” (ibid. Petrovska p. 347). Understanding Marxism, Stalin meant: it is true that it was formed close to capitalism or in it, but as a compact social community: it had its own economic, territorial, political framework and finally, of course, a culture. Culture or language or destiny, however, were not primary features. The national characteristics created by “capitalism”, namely, the inequalities between nations, or between states, inflexibility, hegemony, etc., were to be solved by socialism and communism through the liberation of labour, and that’s why it was important that national emancipation become a category of freeing labour. This, today, could easily be converted from freeing labour to freeing the citizen, in a Hegelian formulation for raising humans to a level of citizens of the state as an act of emancipation; In this case it is similar to empowering an individual member of an ethnicity and a nation to a constituent fabric of the state.

Hence, political intervention and constitution in the dynamics of nations was a crucial component of Stalinism. Here is how Stalin conducted himself during the time of Soviet hegemony and totalitarianism: relocate, evict, decimate and destroy entire populations and ethnic communities, which were classified according to their loyalty to the system, and the hegemony of the largest nation which was formally secured. This ideology, apart from the calibration of ethnic groups according to the degree of “historical ripeness” was used to deal with: ethnic community, nation and ethnicity! This variant of the Marxist definition of nation, however, was not authentic to Marxism but it was functional and very much used in shaping the national or ethno-political doctrines of the Balkan states, as we shall see in the texts we have published here. Political intervention in these texts simply meant ethno-engineering and assimilation, be it voluntary or forced.

During the time when the biggest debates on the SFRY Constitution were taking place in 1973, Kardelj wrote a new preface to his famous work “The development of the Slovenian national issue”, from 1958, in which he defined the nation as a “specific folk community, based on the division of labor in the age of capitalism, living in a compact territory, using a common language and having close ethnic and cultural similarities in general.” (Kardelj, 1973, p. 47). In other words, Kardelj tied the nation to capitalism and to class based economic reproduction, which means that any discrepancies, deviations and extremism that nations and nationalism might bring would be attributed to capitalism and to the bourgeoisie, and ultimately to a counter revolution. Kardelj also wrote for “a compact territory”, which was a precursor for the right to self-determination aspirations of “a preset” ethnic territory of the nation. Later, even though Kardelj’s popularity dropped, his emphasis became a lightning rod for the fighting in that region of the former Yugoslavia; namely for “ethno-territory” and for each nation to exist on its own, in its compact territory. According to Kardelj, socialism responded to nationalism in the Yugoslav authenticity; with the concept of complete equality of nations (the Yugoslav nations) and then, through a process of freeing its labour, with equalization and homogenization of the nation at some distant time. In Tito’s doctrine, this was the policy of “brotherhood and unity” and consequently the creation of a Yugoslav nation. And thus the term “Yugoslavian” appeared in the census box. Yet, this was not a policy of forced assimilation or of creating nations.

Marxism maintained and still maintains a calibration of ethnic community, people’s community and national community. And as such it plays an interventional role as a political factor in the “design” of international relations, equality, rights, territorial compactness, which in terms of liberal socialism, authoritarian party and person in charge, could maintain the Yugoslav federation as a whole for a long time. The basis for Yugoslav Marxism and the doctrine of the nation, were created, as Hans Cohn has written, by the “intelligentsia at the periphery of the continent”, to mobilize the masses in a mythical feeling of unity and reality of community, based on the idealistic and subjective components of “peripheral nationalism”. This concept has been used and abused by

Macedonia’s neighbours, writers of contemporary national doctrines.

It has already been established that there are two streams of thought in the prevailing theory of the interpretation of a nation, ethnicity and ethno-politics: the modernist and the ethno-symbolic. But then again, they are not prevalent. On the contrary, they exist and highly influence the concepts of primordial-ism and ethno-romanticism somewhat using derivatives from Marxist thinking. Their differences in modern thought of nation and nationalism are formed around the dilemma of whether nations are iconic, eternal and historical works, or works of the modern age, society and political development. The primordial-ists believe that nations are, say, bio-social groups that have links to some primordial ethno-genetic, racial, organic and even blood-birth character. And that, “cultural, linguistic, religious and natural givens” of social existence, are formed on this basis, and that the state and political organizations are mainly a secular and civilian cover for the nation. Shils and Geertz, among other famous bearers of this idea, insist that nations are communities of organic and organic-developmental nature, and that they are eternal and non-circular. (Shils, 1957, Geertz, 1973). This, as we can see, gives a broad sweep to the rise of nationalist ideologies that prove that just some select nations, just “their” nations, as opposed to other nations, are historical, clean, genetic or psychosocially genetically distinct. They, however, have two major problems: 1) The first is empirical, namely how to explain that modern nations are non-disputable, for example, the American, the Swiss, the Indian and many others that have surfaced in recent centuries by mixing several nations, religions, ethnicities, languages; and 2) The second is bio-genetic research which negates the collective genetic code of the nation.

We cannot speak about modernism in the context of a “single view”. Modernists believe that nations are not rooted in the past and don’t have a long-standing history. They are the fruits of modern history and our recent past. Most nations in the world are rounded and full and there are no sociological or cultural records that show that they were “pre-modernist” collectivities. They are not a product of natural or genetic deeply rooted factors. They are, it is believed, the product of ration and planning or at least of similarly orientated

activities, conditions or objectives in our modern era. Some are even “imagined and invented” communities, “inventions that destroy tradition”. Included among the many world-famous authors, sociologists and political figures, who have explored this topic and have argued in this direction, are: R. Bendiks, G. Olmend, L. Pai, K. Deutsch, V. Eisenshtadt, D. Lerner, E. Hobsbawm, E. Gellner, E. Kaduri and B. Anderson. Hobsbawm and Anderson belong to the so-called Western Marxism stream. Some of their works have been translated here.

The knot that ties all these authors together is the idea of “building a modern nation” based on the conditions of modernity and the factors of construction, as well as the proportion of the nation and the state or the political factors involved in the process of construction. In other words, nations are a product of modernity, from the French and other civil revolutions onwards. In that era, not only did markets require a large space for commodity production for exports and investments, for overall mobility and exchange, but also traditional feudal communities and their links with their country, the region, the primary social groups were broken. Civil society had not yet been built, and the state and industry needed instruments of stability, homogeneity, education, communication and so on, and not on the basis of separate groups, such as, for example, classes, races, stratums, linguistic communities, etc. Smith recognized these needs as reflected in the thought and actions of father-founders and thinkers of modern nations: J. J. Rousseau, E. Burke, T. Jefferson G. Macini, J. Herder and others. (Smith, 2001, p. 22).

In short, uneven and contrasting social processes of modernization and necessity for globalization, lead to the necessity of having to create or, at least, produce the nations. The need for growth and social development, required standardization, homogeneity, central support and a high culture in society, a culture that filled and covered the entire population, and not just the one ethnic elite group. Gellner was very convincing in the presentation of this argument. He was just as convincing when he made the argument that a nation is only functional in industrial societies. (Gellner, 1964, 1983).

David Held and Anthony McGrew, in their famous study of globalization and anti-globalization (Held and McGrew, 2002), fully

developed the theoretical base initiated by Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and especially by Anthony Smith in which the nation was defined as being a historical-cultural community identity, a newly-constructed imaginary objectified community, strongly prompted by the political elites of the modern European states. In the last two centuries the creation of the nation was viewed as a reality, in terms of generating the political state in Europe. “The conditions for the creation of the modern state were often the same conditions that generate a sense of nationality... Because the generators of the state needed centralized political power in the newly acquired territories in order to secure and strengthen their power base. And for that they depended on cooperative forms of social relations with their citizens”. (Held and McGrew, 2002, p. 26). The rulers that ruled the new states were dependent on a centralized government to regulate and govern human and financial resources. Created with the “nation” was a greater reciprocity between the managers and the managed, and the terms of “exchange” became a matter of eligibility. This would add to the gradual development of human rights and democratic institutions. That, however, did not happen in most Balkan countries.

Demands made on the modern state such as military, administrative, education, taxes, employment functions in the civil service, pensions, etc., “politicized” social relationships and daily activities. Gradually, people became aware of their association with a “shared” political community, in which “one” had a common destiny with the “others”. According to Held and McGrew, the nature of this binding identification was initially dubious and questionable, but with time it became more definitive and precise... Their conclusion was that, “The consolidation of the ideas and the story of nation and nationality is related to many factors , including an attempt by the ruling elites and governments to create a new identity that would legitimize and strengthen state power and coordination of public policy... in accordance with its creation and, through general education, the idea of a common framework of understanding the meanings and practices, in order to strengthen the process of state-coordinated modernization... which would significantly facilitate communication between the classes, diffusion of national histories, myths and rituals for the newly thought out community or nation.”

Held and McGrew made these claims by relying on B. Anderson and E. Smith’s research. Using these means they were able to explain the construction, in a historical sense, of a “homeland” and of deep-seated memories and consolidation of ethnic communities -through common and shared public culture and public rights and duties. It was questionable, however, how the so-called nation as a political “project”, as an explicit project driven by elites, was “of complete imagination”? It is likely that the elite and the state shaped by them, did not rely strictly on the generation of sense of nationality and allegiance to the nation, to the “national community of fate”, and did not consider only the nation as a purely social and cultural entity which extended on a territory.

Nations, according to these authors, were “communities of history and culture”, of a separate territory, in which often is found a distinct tradition of rights and duties of its members. But, in that respect many nations were built on the basis of “pre-modernist ethnic cores” whose myths and memories, values and symbols, shaped the nations in a way that modern elites were able to falsify and misuse. Meaning, we have again returned to the ethno-political engineering in the sense that was given to us by A. Smith (Smith, 1990, s.181). The identity that nationalists seek to maintain is largely one that cloaks and exploits “ethno-history” of the community to highlight its diversity in the world of competitive political and cultural values...

Modernists in general believe that there is no historic nation and that nations are the fruit of nationalism which is generated by industrialism and underdeveloped civil society, and that the nation is transformed by the state. Of course, no one disputes that the effective maturity of the nation requires some prerequisites and predispositions: linguistic, religious or cultural homogeneity, ethnic origin etc. And that the states, in general, direct, affirm and complete the process. It is thought that modern nationalist leaders, with effective institutions and norms of a civil state and a “nation state”, can build a nation that has homogenized citizenry that strives towards common goals.

Accordingly, for many of the modernists, as well as for Anthony Giddens and Eric Hobsbawm, nationalism and the nation are bound

to and are dependent on the state and political elites. Without them they have neither sense nor chance. Nationalism, for example, must have a political agenda. Without such a program, without power as a means to an end, it makes no sense. The state provides the structural framework for nationalism and for the nation, and they in turn give the state a socio-psychological sense. (Giddens, 1985, Hobsbawm, 1990). Hobsbawm specifically explored the whole apparatus of rituals, symbols, devices that monitor or assist in the rise of nation states, primarily in Europe in the XIX and XX century as well as to the so-called production process of past national history, full of half-fiction and falsifications when necessary. Nationalism, in this sense, is almost “panem et circences” in the modern era, almost a “substitute for lost dreams”.

The concepts of nation and ethnicity, which the ethno-symbolists and modernists develop today, are as influential in sociology, political science and ethnology as they are in social psychology. The differences between them are not so much in that the nation and ethnicity are considered non-historical or historical phenomena that appear to be subject to the dialectic of development: birth, development, twilight. The differences are basically in the understanding of whether and how much influence can be placed through them on social and political action, as long as the nation and ethnicity are historical or non-historical categories, i.e. for as long as they yield results in the objective or development of invention and imagination? Perhaps by using social and political engineering? Perhaps by using ethno-engineering in every direction? Modernists generally respond positively, while the ethno-symbolists mainly retract. But among the ethno-symbolists this is an important specific, the self-determination of nations, the ethnicities, the self-identification, independent of the “other”, it is a basic human right, as much individual as it is collective. No matter how many of them can be influenced by engineering.

Both streams are in agreement about what nations are and are not. Namely, that they are not religious groups, compact social groups, language groups, race groups, etc. J. Guno, political scientist at the University of Paris, in his famous study “The End of Democracy” (Guno, 1997), said that a nation is a unique combination of historical givens, which are never limited to one measure; linguistic, religious,

racial, social . He wrote that the European commitment to “nation” unites people based on what they are, but also based on what “they were”. A nation has no other definition other than historical, and it is a matter of general history, general accident or luck. It is a place of general, common destiny. In Europe this “memory”, according to Guno, refers to some “remembered” territory... where someone claimed a certain property since Roman times by Roman law. (ibid. p. 15-17). This actually applies to all Balkan nations and nationalism, though some do not have such “historical claims”, while others do. The problem with the nation and the nation-state, Guno thinks, in the modern world, in the economic, political and cultural world, is losing its significance, no matter how persistent. The nation-state is in obvious crisis. This very much applies to the Balkans.

However, it is also certain that modernists, in the affirmation of the “nation-state” and in the approach to nationalism as a need for industrialism, for anti-colonialism or as a result of the collapse of a totalitarian state, think of “ethno-engineering” as forced assimilation of nations or creating nations without social and cultural backgrounds. Hence, many of them use the adjectives civic and cultural nationalism (D. Miller), liberal and economic nationalism, political and democratic nationalism (Mann and Hobsbawm) and even “constitutional patriotism”, especially in relation to the modern Euro-integration processes (Habermas) , thus making a clear distinction from neo-nationalism, ethno-nationalism, ethno-populism, ethno-centrism, ethno-secessionism, ethno-linguistic nationalism, etc. Is this a twisted kind of nationalism, Aristotelian logic, the substance of civic nationalism? Is it necessarily aggressive, destructive, isolationist? Whether and how they hinder the development of a civilization and in the end, what kind of social causes and consequences do they have? These are profound questions for discussion. The famous German philosopher, Jan Werner Muller, using Jurgen Habermas’s arguments in 2002, says that the nation states remain necessary despite the processes of globalization and Europeanization, even when they cannot offer a model in which, for example, the European Union should be shaping itself. In the same vein, liberal forms of loyalty to the nation-state are not suppressed but “complemented” with European constitutional patriotism. However, “complement” is probably the

wrong word, because it suggests that “identity” is more or less like a pile of bricks. Habermas, said Muller, asked Europeans to build another floor (a European floor) over their national identities or to raise a “European dimension” (Muller, 2010, p. 166).

The derivative of these analyses is that the civil version of nationalism is more attached to the values of modern civilization, that it has a rational and active component in the participation of all common goals and that it involves a distinctive public culture. This in turn affects the ongoing process of globalization in the world (Habermas, 2002, Held and McGrew, 2002). On top of that nationalism has not only become anachronistic but also is an active obstacle in the development of democracy and human rights; it runs afoul of civic culture and has become incongruent to culture.

Smith and, to a large extent, Phil Barth, John Fine, Loring Danforth and John Breully (Barth, 1969; Fine, 1991; Danforth, 1995; Breully, 1944) offer an intermediary but very relevant paradigm in their explanation of modern nationalism and nation, that of ethno-symbolism and common culture being the cornerstone of national consciousness. That reality may prove to be productive when researching issues of modern nations and nationalism, and their ratios. These authors by right point out some bumps and contrasts in the modernists, primarily that nationalism today occurs in all socio-economic contexts, and that it is not automatically linked to development, and that it is not even necessarily linked to territory or aspirations for “own” state. Nation, in terms of history, Smith said does not always occur without reason, purely by accident.