A nation is a complex concept with many aspects, and these
even vary between civilizations. Several errors and crimes in domestic and international
politics during the last two centuries have their origin in misunderstandings and
deliberate distortions of what a nation is.
A nation is not simply a group of people characterised by
a certain language. To take an example, even though right wing politicians often
deny it, Austria and Germany are two different nations. And Switzerland with it’s
four different languages is one nation. Belgium has never reached this level
and still contains two nations. Nations have
even less to do with genetic ethnicity. Except for the Oriental civilisation
neither religion is a defining characteristic of a nation, at least not in modernities.
This is not to say that religion, language and ethnicity are irrelevant. They
do play smaller or bigger roles for the distinction of nations, and they can be
imposed and used to increase or create distinctions which gradually can become real
parts of the characteristics of nations.
In some civilisations we see an increased focus on the
importance of nationality in their modernity. This was the case both in Europe
from 1800 and in China during the Song Dynasty where the earlier tolerance of
other nations was strongly reduced. At the same time the concept of a national state
changed. In Europe the importance of language increased immensely. These two changes
in strength and content of nationality often necessitated changes in countries
which deviated strongly from this strengthened and changed concept.
We saw this after WW 1, where the multinational empires
Austria-Hungary and to a lesser degree Germany had become untenable. But here the
politicians made the error of assuming that ethnicity measured as language was
the only important sign characterising nations. Therefore the chimeric state of
Yugoslavia was created on the basis of common language. The result emerged not
least in the nineties.
With such unclear and changing definitions how can we then
understand a nation? A very broad, but useable definition is that a nation is
a large group of people living in a large delimited
territory, a group of people which is shaped and united by common experiences.
The word “large” is broadly understood as several
thousand people in several thousand square kilometres or several thousand
square miles. These criteria of number and size are included to distinguish a
nation from any other smaller group with shared experiences. Language and religion
can also become parts of common experiences, but they are not the only factors.
The Russian worries over the expansion of NATO and the EU moving
closer and closer to Moscow are very understandable. This expansion has without
doubt contributed to the conflicts between Russia and the West.
But from this it certainly does not follow that Russia and
Ukraine together constitute one nation because they both belong to the East Slavonic
language group. This would be repeating the error after WW 1. The assumption was
correct for some eastern Russian speaking parts of Ukraine, but with the definition
above; a large group of people living in a large delimited territory, a group
of people which is shaped and united by common experiences, Ukraine as a whole was
not a nation immediately after it's independence three decades ago. During Soviet
times it had not melted completely together with Russia. But neither had
Ukraine unified culturally with itself. It’s people had different languages in the
western an eastern parts and above all, combined with this they had quite
different experiences both in the remote and more recent past. But gradually life
together in the newly independent country reinforced the weak common national
feelings. And since 2014 Putin has with great skill worked to create a fully
fledged Ukrainian nation. Now with the invasion he is completing this work. No common
experience is so strong as a war being waged against all members of the population.
If any Russian speakers still leaned towards Russia, bombing them in their
cities will embed them thoroughly in the Ukrainian nation.
The result of the Russian invasion will be a coherent and
strong Ukrainian national identity. Because they have been attacked from the
East by an authoritarian power, the Ukrainian nation - occupied or not - will
be oriented towards the West and towards Western democracy. Ukraine may be militarily
conquered, but with it’s strengthened national feeling and anger it will not be
easily pacified, and it will strongly resist assimilation.
For the Russian civilisation Putin’s invasion may turn out
to be a major defeat also if it succeeds. It could Westernize East Europe for a
very long time. In this sense the invasion could be defining for the future.
Hawks in NATO must be pleased.
