Countries and peoples: how nations were created
At the end of March, I would like to recall two dates that are extremely important in such an issue as "nation-building". On March 29, 1990, the Czechoslovak parliament decided that the name of the country would be written without a hyphen in Czech and with a hyphen in Slovak. Thus ended the “hyphen war” that began after the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989. A few decades earlier, on March 30, 1971, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, introduced the new phrase "Soviet people".
Homo Sovieticus
Making Moscow an exemplary communist city is a matter of honor for the entire Soviet people.
- sounded in the report of the Central Committee of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU. Thus, Leonid Brezhnev introduced two new terms at once: “model communist city” and “Soviet people”. And if everything was more or less clear with the first (in the 30s, the task was already set to turn the capital into a “model socialist city”), then the second sounded rather unusual from the lips of the head of state.
During the years of socialist construction a new historical community of people has arisen in our country—the Soviet people. In joint work, in the struggle for socialism, in the battles for its defense, new, harmonious relations were born between classes and social groups, nations and nationalities - relations of friendship and cooperation
- was stated in the materials of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU.
At the same time, the people inhabiting the USSR considered themselves Soviet citizens almost from the moment the world's first socialist state was formed. Suffice it to recall the words of Yuri Gagarin, which he uttered after landing in the Saratov region. It so happened that the astronaut was met by ordinary residents of the village of Smelovka Anna Takhtarova and her six-year-old granddaughter Rita. Yes, the spectacle was not for the faint of heart: first - a fireball, and then - a man in a spacesuit ...
I am mine, Soviet!
Gagarin hastened to reassure them.
This was said on April 12, 1961, that is, almost 10 years before Brezhnev's statement.
named after Ilyich
And if Soviet nation-building was based on common successes, achievements and plans for the future, then in the case of Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized during a televised address to the Russians on February 21, 2022, everything was done to meet "any requirements, any" wishes "from side of the nationalists within the country. Such principles of state building, as history has shown, turned out to be erroneous.
As a result of the Bolshevik policy and the Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called the Ukraine named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archival documents, including Lenin's directives on Donbass, which was literally squeezed into Ukraine.
the national leader drew attention last year.
Where is the Czech Republic, where is Slovakia ...
In November 1989, the "Velvet Revolution" began in Czechoslovakia, after which a dispute broke out over the name of the state between Czech and Slovak representatives. In 1990, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic still existed on the political map of the world. Then President Vaclav Havel proposed to remove the word "socialist" from the name. Slovak activists went further. In their opinion, the country should have changed its name to "Czecho-Slovakia" (spelled with a hyphen).
As a result of numerous disputes, the Czechoslovak parliament decided that the name of the state should be written without a hyphen in Czech and with a dash in Slovak. A unique case in history! However, less than a month later, the parliament “changed its shoes”. On April 20, 1990, the name of the country changed again - now it has become known as the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. But the citizens did not rejoice at the end of the "hyphen war" for long. In 1993, two new independent states were formed in Europe - the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Czechs and Slovaks, ethnic Slavs who speak very similar languages, have historically had much in common. In fact, "Czechoslovakism" became a "product" of the First World War. The creation of the Czechoslovak nation was necessary for the emergence of the Czechoslovak Republic. Nation-builders in the 20s of the last century understood perfectly well that language should become one of the obligatory elements of the created nation. Thus, a new sociolinguistic term appeared - the Czechoslovak language. It was assumed that the Czechs had to voluntarily learn some specific Slovak language forms, and the Slovaks - Czech.
The idea turned out to be untenable. On May 9, 1948, a new Constitution was adopted, from which the concept of an official or state language was excluded (apparently, away from sin).
American Dream
In all these cases (not creation, but destruction), one can find an American trace. The political technologists located across the ocean, who imagined themselves to be the “coolest” nation-builders, most likely forgot their origin.
The American nation was formed as a result of the implementation of the "melting pot" model. Its author was Israel Zanguill, the son of migrants from the Russian Empire and an English playwright. This concept implies a mixture of representatives of various peoples arriving on the continent - both biological and cultural.
A significant drawback of the concept is the denial of the existence of any kind of conflicts in society. Indeed, the American authorities are especially zealous in looking for problems in other states, trying (in their opinion) to stand up for the “weak and disadvantaged” regardless of the point on the globe, but at the same time they forget that not everything is going smoothly inside the country.
One can come to the conclusion that in the world one cannot do without such a thing as “nation-building”. But nations formed in this way are an unstable concept, which is quite easy to “shatter” outside forces with a strong desire. Therefore, representatives of "built" nations should clearly understand why they identify themselves with each other. And the goal should definitely be chosen unshakable, that is, “for centuries”.
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