Читать книгу The Alphabet of Discord - Giustina Selvelli - Страница 12

The collapse of the old multiethnic empires and the emergence of nation-states based on ethno-linguistic criteria, according to the principles of the model proposed by Woodrow Wilson, certainly did not exhaust the identity and ethnicity issues in the new successor countries (Keyder 1997: 41). Among the most important questions that arose after the First World War and the collapse of three multinational and centuries-old empires was certainly that of the status of ethno-linguistic and religious minorities in the new countries. After the First World War, a new legal entity, that of “national minority,” emerged for the first time at the level of international law. It was not by chance that this delicate question became the subject of numerous publications during the period, dealing with it from a juridical and political point of view. One of the most significant is The Protection of Racial, Linguistic and Racial Minorities (La protection de minorités de race, langue et religion) by the French diplomat Jacques Fouques-Duparc, which appeared in Paris in 1922.3 The concept of the new legal subject was difficult to integrate into the ideas of the nation-state that emerged during the independence struggles in the Balkans, and met opposition by the majority population in some countries, who believed that minorities living on their territory were subject only to national laws and should not enjoy concessions at the international level (Andreev Georgov 1926: 132).

In the new legal framework that recognized and established measures for the protection of minorities, special importance was attributed to the role of so-called “cultural rights,” aimed at preserving the cultural features (including language and traditions) of a given minority community, acknowledging the natural instinct of people to pass on to their children the tradition in which they themselves were brought up (cf. Fouques-Duparc 1922: 31-34). In connection with these rights, states had the obligation to fulfill three criteria: guaranteeing minorities the possibility of establishing and maintaining private associations and educational institutions; respecting the use of the minority language in the public schools; and, finally, providing the means of support for the education, ecclesiastical institutions, and charity work of the communities concerned.

A key role in managing the delicate process of transition in the post-war period was played by the League of Nations, the predecessor of today’s United Nations, which was committed to taking effective measures to ensure real protection for minorities in various European countries. This condition was considered necessary and fundamental for the preservation of peace on the old continent (Shishmanov 1926: 3). The League of Nations judged that it would prove extremely problematic to control possible irredentism, which could prove dangerous to the stability of Europe itself, if national minorities were not granted the rights they sought.

In the post-war Balkan states, a problematic process of coming to terms with the Ottoman and Habsburg heritage was underway, requiring a necessary reckoning with the legacy of a multiethnic and multilingual society. However, this process mostly took the form of a denialist attitude, which in a sense embodied the negative counterpart to the positive relationship with modernity identified with the countries of Western Europe. The Balkan countries thus inherited the task of ridding themselves of what they perceived as a kind of “historical plague,” an undertaking that proved extremely difficult (Bjelić 2011: 12). There was an obvious contradiction in this, as Europe itself imposed respect for minorities through its principles, justifying and legitimizing the presence of marginal and heterogeneous identities.

The new forces triggered by the emergence of national movements and nationalism had played a decisive role in the struggle for autonomy within the imperial multiethnic structure. These very often also determined important consequences at the level of religious organization, i.e. in the process of nationalization of the churches of the various states (see Palmieri 1913). Indeed, in the cases in question, the script controversies of the post-imperial period reveal the extent of the disintegration of the old Ottoman Christian Orthodox millet, the Rum millet. As a religious entity in control of ritual and practice, the millet had been in operation during Ottoman rule; later, the development of the Serbian and Greek national movements at the beginning of the nineteenth century encouraged a series of struggles to establish independent ecclesiastical organizations. These gave rise a few decades later to the autocephaly of the Greek Orthodox Church (1850), of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (1870) and of the Serbian Orthodox Church (1879), which were gradually instrumentalized by their respective communities for political and national purposes (cf. Roudometof 2002: 84-85). Consequently, the idea of a commonality between members of Orthodox Christianity was gradually undermined by the emergence of particularist national interests of the new states.4

In this context, it is important to recall the close bond between writing systems and religion that was active in this part of Europe for centuries: more than the language itself, it was the alphabet that was associated with ecclesiastical culture, a fact that in turn led to its being perceived as particularly prestigious and authoritative. Thus, in the Bulgarian context, the Cyrillic alphabet represented a stable and visible element of its culture under foreign rule, expressed according to “ethno-religious” identity criteria. Nevertheless, in the Balkans, after the end of the Ottoman Empire, religion ceased to enjoy sole dominion over local cultures, being replaced by nationalist ideologies and new forms of collective identity construction inspired by the modern principles of the Western nation-state (see Garzaniti 2009). In most cases, the “nationalizing” forces drew their strength precisely from a revaluation and glorification of the (main) national language, which was elevated to the official standard and symbol of national unity (Todorova 2009: 178-179).

Since the second half of the 19th century, numerous script and orthographic reforms had taken place, which often gained strong political significance: the linguistic element hence exercised, for the first time in modern times, a “secular” force and function within a national political program. However, as a consequence of a historical narrative shaped by “mythographic” intentions, both language and its writing system, having assumed this character, were in a sense transformed into “sacralized” elements, i.e. the cornerstone of the new national identity belief. Religious faith thus became political faith (Stantchev 2015: 130-131) and script choices consequently entailed new identity choices, in a process of nation-building that significantly weakened the original religious component of the writing systems in question.