- Docente: Stefano Bianchini
- Credits: 4
- SSD: M-STO/03
- Language: English
- Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
- Campus: Forli
- Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Interdisciplinary research and studies on Eastern Europe (cod. 8049)
Learning outcomes
This model is mainly devoted to give an interdisciplinary introduction to the State building process in East Central Europe, Russia/Soviet Union and in the Balkans. Student is expected to make comparisons and have a comprehensive picture of the impact of nationalism, self-determination, and the process of construction/deconstructing State institutions from the crisis of the Great pre-modern Empire to the EU Enlargement Eastwards.
Course contents
This is one of the two modules of the core course of the MIREES program. The main goal of these modules is to investigate two key aspects that have characterized the social development in East Central Europe since the 19th century. These aspects are related to the evolving idea of modernity and the process of nation-state construction. In particular, the present module will concentrate diachronically and synchronically on the processes that have characterized the development of both nationalism as a key ideological framework in East Central Europe and the Balkans, and the nation/state building since the 19th century. The module is aimed to offer to the students a broad and introductory knowledge of the most relevant aspects that have marked politics and history from the crisis of the modern dynastic empires to the collapse of the communist federations. The mechanisms connected to the implementation of the ideas of self-determination and secession will be analysed in their own theoretical and substantial implications, following either the dynamics between civic and ethnic nation-building process or the conflict between the ideas/projects of inclusiveness via federalism, and the attempts of constructing homogeneous cultural and political groups based on the exclusiveness of the otherness. Therefore, students will acquire an interactive picture of the complexity of changes from nationalism to globalization, by discussing the meaning of the terminology, the main academic and policy-makers interpretations of nation and state, as well as the historical developments of the 19th and 20th century in East-Central Europe, Russia and the Balkans. The main topics that will be at the focus of the classes will be as follows:
* Modernity, theories of Nationalism and federalist projects in Eastern Europe
* Cosmopolitism, nationalism and communism
* The Political Cultures in Eastern Europe
* Self-determination, Secession and Patriotism
* Social Changes between patriarchism and new gender relations
Structure of the lectures, and readings
Lesson 1
Theories of Nationalism (1): Primordialists and Voluntarists.
Topics:
The Nation and the philosophy of history:
Nationalism and Primordialism: Herder, Fichte. The poetry and the mission
The Volutarist approach to the nation
Readings:
Herder, Fichte, Rénan, Mazzini
Lesson 2
Theories of Nationalism (2): Constructivists
Modernity, intellectuals and the constructivists: printing press and language
The nation as an invented tradition: myths and memory
Readings: Anderson, Gellner, Hobsbawm, Weber
Lesson 3
Self-Determination in Lenin and Wilson
Nationalism and self-determination in Wilson and Lenin
Readings:
Declaration of the Rights of People of Russia, 1917 (p. 1)
Garushiants, The National Programme of Leninism (pp. 31-47)
Derek Heather, Background to the Fourteen Points (pp. 36-46)
Link, Wilson: The Fourteen Points Address 8 Jan. 1918 (pp. 535-539)
Wilson, President Wilson Speech of Feb. 11, 1918 (pp. 6)
Lesson 4
Soviet federalism
Soviet federalism and Autonomization
Lenin and the indigenization
Communism and the internationalism (Stalin, Werth, pp. 205-217)
Readings
Lenin, On the Question of Nationalities or of “Autonomization”, 30-31 Dec. 1922 (pp. 151-153)
Joseph Stalin, The Nation (pp. 18-21)
The Formation of the USSR: The Union Constitution , Jan. 13, 1924 (pp. 165-167)
Kommunist, The merger of nationalities, n. 12, 1982
Lesson 5
Irredentism, Power Politics, and Nazism
from 1870 to 1991 (from imperialism to the Balkan cooperation in the late 80s)
19th century: panslavism, neoslavism, Czartoryski and Kossuth)
Italian Irredentism and imperialism
Hungarian revisionism and the Trianon trauma
Hitler and racism
Readings:
Kallis, Fascist Expansionism in Practice (pp. 104-121)
Zeidler, Irredentism in Everyday Life in Hungary during the Inter-War period (pp.71-88)
Corni, “Volk”, “Nation”, “Rasse” in the Theory and Practice of the National Socialism (pp. 49-68)
Lesson 6
The Yugoslav federalism
The structure of the Yugoslav federalism
Its relations with self-management and its limits
The categories in use
Readings:
AVNOJ decision on Building Yugoslavia on the Federal Principle (Nov. 29, 1943, pp. 585-586)
Djordjevic, The Forms and Structure of Yugoslav Federalism (pp. 365-392)
Mostov, Politics of National Identities in former Yugoslavia (pp. 58-73
Lesson 7
Nationalism and Sexuality: the Gender Approach to Nationalism
History of respectability
Nationalism, middle class and sexual homogeneity
Gender hierarchical relations
Readings:
Mosse, Nationalism and Respectability (pp. 1-22)
Verdery, From Parent States to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe, (EEPS, pp. 225-255)
Mostov-Ivekovic, From Gender to Nation-Introduction (pp. 9-25)
Duhacek, Gender Perspective of Political Identities in Yugoslavia (pp. 113-126)
Lesson 8
The Nation and the State
States, nations and macrioregions in the changing geopolitics of post-socialist contexts
Readings:
Connor, A nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group, is…, (pp. 36-46)
Kedourie, Nationalism and Self-Determination (pp. 49-55)
Neubauer, What's in the Name? Mitteleuropa, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, East-Central Europe (pp. 1-9)
Lesson 9
Assessing the access to independence: when a new state is legitimized to exist?
Readings:
Conference on Yugoslavia, Opinions of the Arbitration commission, 1992
Constitutional Court of Canada, Reference re Secession of Quebec, 1996
ICJ, Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo (paragraphs 101-122), 2010
Lesson 10
Politics and Cultures under transformation
Globalization and egualitarianism; gender policies and new nomadisms; family organizations, religious prescriptions and new forms of intolerance: Post Nation-State reshaping and democracy
Readings:
Gringrich-Barks, Neonationalism (pp. 2-23)
Vladimir Putin, Address of the President of Russia in Crimea Republic, March 18, 2014 (pp.1-7)
Stephem Krasner, Problematic Sovereignty (pp. 1-21)
Braidotti, Nomadic European Citizenship (pp. 223-247)
Readings/Bibliography
Compulsary Readings:
Stefano Bianchini, Geopolitics and National Self-Determination in Eastern Europe. An Atlas of Nation-State Metamorphosis (lecture notes, MIREES, 2014-2015)
Together with:Henry Huttenbach and Francesco Privitera (eds.), Self-Determination. From Versailles to Dayton. Its Historical Legacy, Longo, Ravenna, 1999.
Stefano Bianchini, Joseph Marko, Robert Craig Nation, Milica Uvalic, Regional Cooperation, Peace Enforcement and the Role of the Treaties in the Balkans, Longo, Ravenna, 2007 (only the chapters of the following authors: Vankovska, Marko, Pajic, Hoxhaj, Craig Nation, and Janjic).
Michael Libal, Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. Some General Considerations, In “Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies”, n. 2, vol. 2, 2002.
Metta Spencer, Separatism. Democracy and disintegration, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 1998.
Other Suggested Readings:
John Hutchinson and Anthony Smyth, Nationalism, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1994
Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995
Michael Hefferman, The Meaning of Europe. Geography and Geopolitics, Arnold, London, 1998.
Stefano Bianchini, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Rada Ivekovic and Ranabir Samaddar, Partitions. Reshaping States and Minds, Frank Cass, London, 2004.
George Schöpflin, Nations, Identity, Power, New York Univ. Press, New York, 2000.
Ladislav Holy, The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.
Betty Miller Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia and the Rise of Czechoslovakia, Texas A&M Univ. Press, College Station, 2000.
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford Univ., Press, New York, 1995
Stefano Bianchini, Craig Nation (eds.), The Yugoslav Conflict and Its Implications for International Relations, Longo Editore, Ravenna, 1998.
Vladimir Kolossov, Ethnic and Political Identities and Territorialities in the Post-Soviet Space, in «GeoJournal», n. 48, 1999, pp. 71-81;
John Hoffman, Sovereignty, Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998;
Krzysztof Michalski (ed.), What hold Europe together?, CEU Press, Budapest, 2006;
Anand Menon and Vincent Wright, From the Nation State to Europe?, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2001;
John O'Loughlin, Vladimir Kolossov e Andrei Tchepalyaga, National Construction, Territorial Separatism and Post-Soviet Geopolitics in the Transdniester Moldovan Republic, in «Post-Soviet Geography and Economics», n. 6, 1998, pp. 332-358
Hugh Poulton, The Balkans. Minorities and States in Conflicts, Minority Rights Publication, London, 1994.
Teaching methods
Teaching methods are basically founded on lectures that include students' short presentations. Students will be therefore invited to deepen different arguments, lecture by lecture, on the basis of specific questions and report by referring to assigned readings, in order to learn how read and interpret them.
Assessment methods
Students are expected to make presentation during classes. These presentations will be based on the selected documents that students will be able to download from a specific distribution list. Instructions in this sense will be delivered at the beginning of the course. Moreover, at the end of the course, students are requested to pass an oral integrated exam for both the modules of the core course on modernity and nationalism. The oral exam is based on the suggested bibliography with clear reference to the discussed documents during classes. In particular, students are expected to demonstrate their achieved analytical skills by comparing social, cultural and political contexts of the debates on modernity and nationalism in 19th and 20th centuries with the most relevant dynamics of historical changes in the East European societies under scrutiny. The ability in presenting arguments and showing a comparative approach will be highly evaluate
Teaching tools
PowerPoint and overhead projector
Links to further information
Office hours
See the website of Stefano Bianchini