Minorities and Instabilities in Eastern EuropeMinorities: The New Europe's Old Issue by Ian M. Cuthbertson; Jane Leibowitz; Instabilities inPost-Communist Europe 1994; Minority Rights in Europe: The Scope for a TransnationalRegime by Hugh Miall; Nationalism in Eastern Europe by Peter F. Sugar; Ivo John LedererReview by: Martyn RadyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 95-100Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4211983 .

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SEER, Vol. 74, No. i,januagy I996

Minorities and Instabilities in Eastern Europe MARTYN RADY

Cuthbertson, Ian M. and Leibowitz, Jane (eds). Minorities: The New Europe's Old Issue. Institute for EastWest Studies, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, New York and Atlanta, 1993. Distributed by Westview Press. xii + 322 pp. Notes. Index. [29.50.

Instabilities in Post-Communist Europe I994. Conflict Studies Research Centre, Sandhurst, with Carmichael and Sweet, Portsmouth, 1994. iii + 344 pp. Maps. Appendices. Tables. [i 20.00.

Miall, Hugh (ed.). Minority Rights in Europe: The Scope for a Transnational Regime. Chatham House Papers. The Royal Institute of International Affairs with Pinter, London, I994. 120 pp. Notes. Tables. Maps. [22.50; [s.95.

Sugar, Peter F. and Lederer, Ivo John (eds). Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Second edition. University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1994. xiii + 468 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $25.00

(paperback).

A few years ago, one of the more extremist Romanian political parties dedicated itself to the 'continuing struggle against Hungarian terrorism'. Several of the contributors to the more general sections of Minorities: The New Europe's Old Issue (hereafter The New Europe's Old Issue) pursue a chimera of equal absurdity. We are thus variously told that Eastern Europe is 'racked by numerous ethnically based inter-state, inter-ethnic and religious conflicts' (p. 212); that this 'ongoing ethnic conflict ... seems to be getting out of hand and ... may soon threaten the stability of the entire continent' (p. 2I3); that 'modern-day Europe ... is being consumed by the flames of allegedly "age-old" hatreds' (p. 285); and that 'the new terrorism' emerging from Eastern Europe 'will move across borders into the West' (p. 245). The case-studies given in The New Europe's Old Issue on Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Russia and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union largely fail, however, to support these generalized predictions. Even the account of relations between the federal organs and the Chechen government concludes that 'both sides appear to be well on the way to an accommodation' (p. 195).

Gloomy prognostications are similarly apparent in Instabilities in Post- Communist Europe I994 (hereafter Instabilities). Although intended as a background briefing document, Instabilities must count as one of the

Martyn Rady is Director of Studies of the Centre for the Study of Minorities, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London.

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96 MARTYN RADY

fullest and most up-to-date surveys of political trends in the region. It is arranged country by country with introductory chapters on sources of instability, the problems attending economic transformation, crime, drugs and corruption. Each country section concludes with a chart explaining whether conflict over an issue is 'quiescent', 'stirring', 'quickening' or 'surfaced'. The last of these is defined as 'a conflict in which a government, with generally enthusiastic public and institutional support, is actively pushing its demands by means of serious pressure, including the threat or actual use of force. . .' (pp. 1-2). Of the I29 conflicts analysed in Instabilities (excluding the Caucasus), twenty-five fall into the 'surfaced' category. Among these, however, are included such unlikely cases as the condition of the Hungarian community in Transylva- nia and the Hungarian government's response to discrimination against Hungarians in the Vojvodina. The tendency towards over-exaggeration extends to the text. We are told that 'almost all [the states of post- Communist Europe] have more or less strong ambitions that can only be realised at the expense of their neighbours' (pp. 2-6); that 'populist, xenophobic governments will be the rule' in the region (pp. 2-8); that 'the question of minorities constitutes a major threat of conflict' (pp. 3-6); and, more particularly, that 'the problem of Hungarian minorities in the lost territories has the potential to destabilize the whole central-southern region of Europe' (pp. 17-19).

Minority Rights in Europe is concerned as much with Western as Eastern Europe and includes Northern Ireland and the South Tyrol as case- studies. Nevertheless, even its otherwise measured and uncontroversial account ends with the observation that 'the present situation of minorities in many parts of Europe is bleak' and that 'ethnic cleansing' has opened 'a chapter of forced population movement' in the continent (p. I 9). Written before the opening of direct talks between the British government and Sinn Fein, Tom Hadden's contribution on Northern Ireland is sufficiently pessimistic as to contemplate a new partition.

The time-lag between composition and publication doubtless explains the despondency of individual contributors to the volumes under review, who must have been completing their essays even as Bosnia-Herzegovina dissolved into violence. Nevertheless, the passage of the last few years suggests that East European nationalism is really the dog which did not bark. Despite the forebodings included in Instabilities, there is at the present time little likelihood of any of the Hungarian minorities being at the centre of a fresh round of intercommunal strife. Notwithstanding the provocations of the mayor of Cluj, some foolish legislation on the use of 'foreign' flags, songs and symbols, and petty harassment by local officials, relations between the minority and majority populations in Romania remain reasonably good and the violence of March i 990 has not been repeated. Likewise, the retention of a nationalist government in Slovakia

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MINORITIES AND INSTABILITIES 97

has not prevented signature of a treaty with Hungary which extends quite significant guarantees to the Hungarian minority population. Much the same note of optimism may be struck with regard to other minorities in Eastern Europe. In her own contribution to The New Europe's Old Issue, Ivanka Nedeva reports the 'slow but steady process of rebuilding ethnic relations' in Bulgaria (p. 130). More controversially, Robert Mickey and Adam Smith Albion describe Macedonia as a 'Balkan success story' which by its continued existence 'keeps alive the possibility of multiethnic civil states in the Balkans' (p. 86).

Of course, flashpoints remain. The status of the Serbian minorities in the Balkans remains a persistent source of regional instability. Hugh Poulton indicates in Minority Rights in Europe that the Albanian diaspora, in Kosovo in particular, retains a potential for yet greater destabilization. Within the former Soviet Union, twenty-one of the twenty-three inter- republican borders are disputed, and there are altogether 'i 64 different ethnic territorial disputes troubling the area' (Instabilities, pp. 2-6). It is certainly possible to construct from these circumstances a 'worst-case scenario' and to imagine an 'arc of discord' spreading up through the Balkans and eventually engulfing Moldova, Ukraine and parts of Russia. Nevertheless, with every year of relative peace which passes, it becomes more likely that the different ethnic groups will work out a successful modus vivendi. In this respect, it is encouraging that in Slovakia, Romania and other potential trouble spots, discourse on ethnic rights has over the last few years moved away from the emotive realm of mythology and of historic claims towards the applicability instead of European and international norms.

Nationalism in Eastern Europe was first published in I969. It is now reissued with its original contributions unaltered. A short preface by Peter Sugar establishes .the continued relevance of the volume, while noting the very few places in the text where the passage of the last quarter-century has demonstrated the inadequacy of an individual author's opinions. The contributions to Nationalism in Eastern Europe are primarily historical, charting the progress of the movements of national liberation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The re-publication of this classic textbook on East European nationalism is certainly timely. Nevertheless, it invites the question of why the re-creation of independent nation states in the late twentieth century has not been accompanied by the same sort of violence and warfare as marked their previous incarnation.

The answer may be thought to lie in a number of separate factors. Firstly, the borders of the European states are fixed in a way that was never the case before I 945. Even internal frontiers retain, in the event of state disintegration, a special sanctity. The opportunity for neighbour advancing territorial claims on neighbour is accordingly diminished.

4

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98 MARTYN RADY

Secondly, empires have been superseded by states and many of these states enjoy a high degree of ethnic homogeneity. One of the largest and, historically, most destabilizing minority groups in Eastern Europe, the German, has now largely disappeared on account of policies of ethnic cleansing pursued after the Second World WVar. Thirdly, there is evidence that the raw ethnic-organizing principle in Eastern Europe is being mitigated by more accommodating, citizenship-based notions of group- membership. The old dichotomy of Eastern ethnicity and Western citizenship, developed by Hans Kohn and re-stated by Peter Sugar in NVationalism in Eastern Europe, seems on the way to being replaced in Eastern Europe by an overlapping apprehension of rights, which admits that participation in the political community is not predicated solely on membership of an ethnic group.

The gradual supersession of ethnicity by citizenship as the criterion of membership of the political community may be illustrated by reference to the new constitutions of the East European states. The preambles to these constitutions, although often silly ('the centuries-long struggle of the Slovenes for national liberation', and so forth), frequently stress that the renewed polity belongs not just to the dominant national group but also to the minorities. The result may be, as Zoran Pajic argues (Minority Rights in Europe, p. 64), an ambiguous compromise: hence, from the I 99 I Slovene constitution, 'Slovenia is a state of all its citizens, based on the permanent and inviolable right of the Slovene nation to self determina- tion'. Nevertheless, with respect to Pajic, who argues from their constitutions that the states of the former Yugoslavia are still 'owned by the relevant nation', the texts of the instruments suggest a wi(der possession. The Croatian constitution is thus even more specific in this respect than the Slovene cited above: 'The Republic of Croatia is established as a national state of the Croat nation and a state of other nations and minorities who are its citizens: Serbs, Muslims, Slovenes, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians,Jews and others. . .'.

The most important influence governing relations between ethnic groups in the new Eastern Europe is, however, the international context. A broad consensus has arisen over the last few years on the rights and duties of minorities and of national governments. It is now generally accepted that 'elimination strategies', namely genocide, population transfer and forcible assimilation, are unacceptable policies for any state to promote. Instead, members of national minorities should be entitled to preserve their identity in community with others, and states should facilitate this process. International instruments and organizations may disagree on the most appropriate mechanisms for preserving identity, but the foregoing principles have acquired (except for the French and Greek governments) a largely normative as well as legally binding character.

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MINORITIES AND INSTABILITIES 99

In addition, very much the type of transnational regime recommended by the contributors to Minority Rights in Europe is already in existence. Ever since the 1 975 Helsinki Final Act, an international droit de regard has been claimed with respect to violations of human rights. Since i 989, more elaborate mechanisms have been gradually established, most notably by the CSCE (after 1994, OSCE) and Council of Europe, to ensure that member-states meet their obligations with regard to individual- and minority-rights protection. Member-states must now put up with the monitoring and reporting of their internal affairs by international delegations and offices. A new level of international intrusion into the traditional realm of state sovereignty was reached in I992 with the institution of the CSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. The function of the High Commissioner is one of preventive diplomacy: to provide 'early warning' and, as appropriate, 'early action' with regard to tensions involving national minorities within the CSCE area. As Hugh Poulton indicates, however, the capacity of international organizations to do more than provide early warning and established fora for conflict- resolution is limited (Minority Rights in Europe, p. 84).

The weakness of the existing transnational regime, in the face of what is understood to be endemic ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe, obliges the various contributors to Minority Rights in Europe and 7The New Europe's Old Issue to propose solutions of their own. Although their approaches differ, most seek to achieve a compromise between the rival claims of state sovereignty and national self-determination. On the one hand, therefore, Hugh Miall embraces Hedley Bull's concept of 'a new medievalism', according to which state sovereignties are weakened by the establishment of overarching jurisdictions and divided by the devolution of powers to sub-state organizations (Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London, I977). On the other hand, the two Hungarian contributors to The New Europe's Old Issue advocate the autonomy solution, defined here as 'limited sovereignty/limited self-determination' (p. 276). Ivian Gyurcsik presents the choice starkly, 'Basically, the international community faces two options: either to implicitly accept the "Serbian solution" (by retroac- tively condoning the acquisition of territories through ethnic cleansing and the use of force), or to establish an international system that guarantees the acceptance of peacefully and democratically proposed plans for autonomy' (p. 39).

It would be otiose to discuss the obstacles standing in the way of the re-creation of the Holy Roman Empire. As Richard Dalton indicates with regard to the CSCE, 'participating states will not surrender their right to decide between the range of policies open to them' (Minority Rights in Europe, p. I03). lf the present CSCE founders on the rock of state sovereignty, is an effective pan-European jurisdiction at all likely to be

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100 MARTYN RADY

realized? As Dalton concedes, neither the will, nor the cash, nor even the staff are available. Autonomy, however, is not a hopeless ambition. It is instead a solution now being widely promoted by international institu- tions, academic commentators and at least ten European governments (see T7he New Europe's Old Issue, p. 225), and it merits serious discussion.

There are several successful examples of autonomy in Western Europe, most notably the South Tyrol and the Aaland Islands. Nevertheless, the widespread introduction of auto-administration and 'special status' to other parts of Europe presents a range of difficulties which might actually contribute to the worsening of ethnic relations. As Koen Koch observes, 'The ideology of nationalism, as far as it is embraced by governments and states, is a universal threat to minorities. But when minorities take refuge in the same ideology, the conflict will only be exacerbated and, in a paradoxical way, the legitimacy of the nationalist ideology will be strengthened' (T-he New Europe's Old Issue, p. 265). In addition, the establishment of ethnic autonomies introduces the double-minority phenomenon (there are, for instance, no separate educational or cultural facilities for the tiny Finn minority on the Swedish-run Aaland Islands) and the possibility of a squeezing of minority rights in localities set apart from the main region of autonomous government (as indeed occurred in the 1950S and i 960s in the context of the Hungarian Autonomous District established in Transylvania). Autonomy is not necessarily to the benefit of the groups it is supposed to protect.

Finally, the establishment of separate jurisdictions and autonomies for minority groups in Europe holds the prospect of medievalism with a vengeance. In place of the principle of one and the same citizenship, a society of orders would be established where status depended upon descent and where an identity acquired at birth provided the primary means of access to rights. As W. Kornacki observes with regard to Recommendation 120 I of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (I993), 'Where all citizens share the same rights, the fact of belonging to a minority is subordinated to the fact of citizenship. However, a proposal that minority groups should receive privileges in addition to their rights as citizens, invites allegations of discrimination against the majority . . . It thus stirs up disaffection and emphasises the differences already in existence' (Instabilities, p. 3I6). If indeed, Europe was racked by ethnic terrorism and endemic nationalist violence, then such drastic remedies as autonomy and 'special status' might be worth contemplating. In the present circumstances of a general easing of inter- ethnic tensions in Eastern Europe, however, such solutions are not only unnecessary but are themselves potential sources of instability.

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