Language, nation and citizenship: contrast, conflict and convergence in Estonia’s debate with the international community
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun
Department of German, University of Basel, Switzerland
Sue Wright
Centre for European and International Studies Research,University of Portsmouth, UK
This paper investigates the clash of (language) ideologies in Estonia in the post-Communist period. In an analysis of changing Western recommendations and Estonian responses during the transition of Estonia from Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) to independent state, we trace the development of the discourses on language and citizenship rights. Different conceptions of the nation-state and of how citizenship is acquired, together with different approaches to human rights, led to disagreement between Estonian political elites and the political actors attached to international institutions. In particular, the Soviet demographic legacy posed problems.
We use a contextually sensitive approach that takes account of human agency, political intervention, power and authority (Blommaert 1999) in the formation of (national) language ideologies and policies.We find that the complexities of cultural and contextual differences were often ignored and misunderstood by both parties and that in their exchanges the two sides appeared to subscribe to ideal philosophical positions. In the following two decades both sides repositioned themselves and appeared to accommodate to the opposing view. In deconstructing the role of political intervention pressing for social and political inclusion, in documenting the profound feeling of victimhood that remained as a legacy from the Soviet period, and in the bargain that was struck, we hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of the language ideological debates surrounding the post-communist nation-(re-)building process.
Keywords:citizenship;collective memory;language rights; nationalism;nation (re-)building.Introduction
This paper investigates the clash of ideologies between political elites in Estoniaand the political actors attached to various international institutions in the immediate post-Communist period. The transition of Estoniafrom SovietSocialistRepublic to independent state was overshadowed by the legacy of the drastic demographic changes that had taken place there during50 years of occupation[i].As the Estoniansconceived the Soviet era as a period of colonisation and their independent statehood to be a restitution of sovereignty after an illegal appropriation, the position of the ‘newcomers’ was problematic. Should they be required to leave, as colonial masters had been in many countries of Africa and Asia? Would their continued presence in these republics be a threat to national cohesion and an ongoing irredentist threat? The international agencies and organisations that became involved during the period of socio-political transition seemed to take a very clear human rights position on this problem and its resolution. They argued that the right of nearly half a million people in Estoniato have citizenship in the state in which they had lived and worked (and in many cases were born) was clear and non-negotiable.
We look in this paper at how this debate played out in a variety of interchanges between the international institutions and the country’s government and in speeches and articles aimed at the international community and at the Estonians themselves. Framing this debate were a number of ideological positions. To give context and backgroundto the analyses of the texts we start with an overview of the philosophical paradigms that underpinned the various positions taken. The different understandings of what a nation is, how citizenship can be acquired and which human rights are inalienable seemed to fuel the disagreements.
The nation-state as a monolingual public space
In the historical context of Europe, ‘those engaged in nation-building recognised that altering the language landscape was one of the key elements for the successful accomplishment of their ambitions’ (Wright 2004: 19). From the 16th century, application of the concept ofcujus regio, ejus linguabegan the linguistic unification of states[ii]. In the move from feudalism to centralising absolutism, the language of the court and the capital was imposed as the language of bureaucracy and the law without great opposition. Then, as states became democratic and citizens began to participate in the political process, the French revolutionaries’ idea of ‘one state, one people, one language’ gripped the imagination of all those proto-elites hoping to lead their proto-nations to independent statehood. With the rise of nationalism itlargely became axiomatic that a nation needs one language only and that modernization and industrialization and all their benefits require that nation-states support that one language, whether it is termed official or national. In a number of European nation-states a fair degree of linguistic homogeneity wasachieved (and maintained)by embedding the ‘national language’ into state institutions such as the army, the education system and the civil service. In this process, indigenous or long-standing ethno-linguistic minorities wereto a large extent absorbed into a homogeneous national political culture. Followingdecolonisation in the post World War II era and the disappearance of the Soviet Unionand Yugoslaviain the last decades of the 20th century, this political ideology became the norm for almost all(re-)emergent nation-states.A range of commentaries on language, culture and nationalism documents thesehistorical developments (e.g Fishman 1971; Barbour and Carmichael 2000; Wright 2000 & 2004; May 2003; Joseph 2004; etc.).
This desire for the congruence of state, people and language has proved immensely powerful, and even as the monolingual nature of states weakens in the face of massive migratory flows and the constant exchanges of globalisation, the majorities within European peoples still tend to conceive of their nation-state as essentially monolingual. We see evidence for this, for example, in the general support that has been given to the introduction of formal language testing as a prerequisite for citizenship (Extra et al2009, Hogan-Brun et al. 2009b; UNESCO 2008; ) or, for example, in attitudes towards the spread of English-medium higher education and research dissemination (Leppänenet al forthcoming; van Parijs 2011).Europe is thus a multilingual continent but with majorities that protect their monolingual public space.
Theories of nationalism and citizenship
Europeans seem to believe in the benefits of a monolingual national community, no matter which of the two main philosophies of nationalism they have been formed by: eithercommunities of ‘putative consent’or of ‘putative descent’ (Kohn 1960: 351). It is generally agreed (see Ozkirimli 2000) that there are two main traditions within nationalism, most commonly described as‘civic’ (‘unions of citizens’) or ‘ethnic’ (‘folk communities’). In determining who may belong to the nation, the distinction is made between jus soli (‘right of soil’) and jus sanguinis (‘right of blood’). According tojus soli, people born within the territory of a given state are citizens by virtue of place of birth; those born outside are not. In jus sanguinisthe criterion for belonging is descent. Through blood ties, individuals ‘inherit’ their place in the nation and their citizenship. Thus in some states, certaincategories of peoplemay beclassed as foreigners,even when they have been born on state territory and lived all their life there (as is the case, for example, in Switzerland). However, it is also generally agreed (again see Ozkirimli 2000) that there are few examples of states that adhere absolutely to jus soli or to jus sanguinis; in most cases nationality law makes provision for citizenship using criteria drawn from both philosophies.
An important aspect of this for the present argument is the way in which the Western democratic political establishment, the institutional agencies concerned with human rights and most of academia tend to ignore this complexity of practice, and construct jus soli and civic nationalism as the respectable and acceptable version of nationalism as opposed to jus sanguinis and ethnic nationalism, the pathological nationalism which can all too easily lead to ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is an important distinction in the following analysis; there was great pressure on Estonians to recognise civic nationalism as the only acceptable form of nationalism. This is interesting giventhe less than clear cut nature of nationality law on the continent and the waning adherence to the stronger forms of civic nationalism that can be noted in many parts of western Europe. For example, the French state, the archetype for jus soli, has wavered in the last two decades over the automatic right of those born on French soil of foreign parents to become French[iii].As has been observed (Extra et al. 2009), the political class in many western European states has responded to populist pressure and the process of naturalisation has become increasingly difficult[iv]. There has in fact been some convergence[v] among states in Europe and anabsolute right to nationality fromjus soli is increasingly rare. We can summarise here by saying that, even though western European elites remain intellectually committed to civic nationalism, its peoplesare increasingly supporting political parties that contest the concept of multiculturalism and the idea of ‘unions of citizens’, with diverse cultural and linguistic practices.
A further point to make about civic and ethnic nationalism in this context is to note thatthe ethnic tradition informed Estonian nationalism and nation-building more clearly than the civic. In this Estonians were in the mainstream of Central and Eastern European practice. Herder’s (1784-1791/1991) idea that a people could only prosper if it inhabited its own homeland was very attractive to those under the rule of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. National activists promoted the ideas that rule by outsiders was unendurable, that the group could only flourish if it managed its own affairs, that its discrete nature was clearly established and had been so since time immemorial, and that it had ancestral rights to the territory on which it found itself. The ‘national awakenings’ of the 19th century were fuelled by historians, archaeologists, linguists, folklorists, musicians, writers and painters, all of whom reinforced the message that their group was an independent nation, bound by blood ties and a unique history. When sovereignty and statehood were granted to a number of groups in the treaties that followed World War I, the victorious powers were happy to apply the principles of self-determination for nations and ethno-nationalism, since this dovetailed agreeably with their desire to punish the vanquished powers and dismantle their empires(Seton-Watson 1977)[vi].
During the Soviet period the nationalisms of Central and Eastern Europe were eclipsed[vii]. Then, when groups sought to reaffirm their independence and identities, after the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Warsaw Pact, ethnic nationalism came to the fore again[viii]. The existence of blood ties can be difficult to establish; language, on the other hand, was an easier way of delineating group membership. Those who had migrated from the Russian heartland to other SSRs had rarely acquired the language of the territory in which they found themselves. Language could thus contribute to distinguishing in and out groups in the new states. In Central and Eastern Europe the discourse portrayed ethno-linguistic understanding of belonging within a political community and was to produce a clash of values during the period of integration with the West.
Inalienable human rights
‘The liberal strand of the Western political and philosophical tradition suggests that the basic rule for society should be that each member of it be permitted to exercise the greatest liberty consistent with doing no harm to others or depriving them of their liberty’ (Wright 2004: 183). This precept is, of course, in direct contradiction to nation-building in which cultural and linguistic convergence is encouraged or enforced. Perhaps the two seem able to coexist, because nation-building is so often the unexamined and unchallenged default in society. However, where language rights are salient this liberal precept predisposes the Western liberal to be against them. Language rights are, of necessity, group rights, and require some enforcement. Individuals do not ask for the right to speak to themselves; they ask for the right to be understood by others. For minority language maintenance (or revitalisation) to be successful minorities need to reinforce internal cohesion and encourage convergence among those on the periphery. It is in part because of this group right dimension that the acceptance for the need for language rights progressed very slowly. In early legislation, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), language rights were negative rights (freedom from persecution if one uses a language) rather than positive rights (the possibility of using the language in state institutions or the public space).
In Europe the move to positive rights came from the Council of Europe. In the 1990sthe Council built on ideas promoted by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) [which later became the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)] and introduced the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1992 and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in 1995 (see Index). These instruments represent an increasing trend to internationalise minority rights. They embody standards of international law and frameworks that are based on Western models of diversity management. However, as Kymlicka observes, it must be borne in mind that Western ideals of multicultural citizenship are quite recent and we could suggest that they were permitted to surface at the very point when ethno-cultural diversity was no longer seen as an existential threat to states in the West. Rights to protect the linguistic and cultural diversity of autochthonous groups ‘have gradually moved out of the security/loyalty framework into that of normal politics’ (2001: 22). So in contradiction to the assimilationist stance increasingly taken towards recent migrants, it has now become habitual for western European governments to recognise the rights of indigenous ‘minority’ groups to maintain some cultural and linguistic distinction, and, in many cases, to accommodate quite considerable degrees of political autonomy for such groups[ix].
The historicalcontext
How then has this complex mix played out in the Baltic region in general, and in Estonia in particular? How do the governments and peoples of these states feel about the traditional aspiration for the nation-state to be monolingualfollowing their reinstated independence? Do they still largely subscribe to the ethno-nationalist principle and see thenation as a group with a long shared past? Are they in a position where they will accept ‘minority’ language rights, and will these be negative or positive rights?
The language question is coloured by the legacy of language policy under the Soviet system. Territorial rights existed for languages in various jurisdictions (republics, autonomous republics, regions, districts, autonomous areas), with Russian having universal rights, i.e. portability. With the decline of the Soviet Union, the peoples of the Baltic SSRs began to reassert their cultural and linguistic independence, even before political sovereignty seemed possible. Culture and language took on the key roles that they had played in the Baltic region in the ‘national awakening’ of the 19th century. After independence, in a deliberate ‘act of will’, the politics of state re-making were largely determined by the politics of language, so as to counteract the effects of former Soviet policies. The language group that had been the majority in the former USSR, where Russian was primus inter pares with portable rights, now found itselfa minority in the independent successor states of the Baltic region andwas expected to learn the titular language of their host country. The language reversal in the changing power constellation confirms once more that language always follows power (Lüdi 2008: 1f).
The official status of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian,re-established in theBaltic states after independence was anchored in their national constitutions.Language legislation (see Index) figured prominently in the early legislation of each republic. It regulated state language use in the main spheres of public lifeand stated the legal implications for violations in a centralist and control-oriented approach (Spolsky 2002). These socio-political developments in the early post-independence periodin the Baltic are covered by Hiden & Salmon (1991),Lieven(1993), Gerner and Hedlund (1993) andSmith (1994). A comparative analysis of the formation, principles and implementation process of Baltic language policies is in Hogan-Brun et al. (2007). Collected cross-Baltic sociolinguistic reviewsare available in Hogan-Brun (2005).
Who was actually to use the national language in national space depended, of course, on the answer to the key question ‘Who are the citizens?’ Could they be all the people who found themselves on Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian territory at the moment of independence, in the conception of ‘people’ that drew from civic nationalism and the concept of jus soli? Or should the Baltic republics only include those who (or whose families) were citizens on their territories at the time of the first Soviet invasion? This would constitute a quasi-ethnic concept of citizenship in the sense of the jus sanguinis principle (bearing in mind that these states were not 100% ethnically homogenous at that point). Whilst Lithuania chose the more inclusive civic option, Estonia and Latviabecame the only two post-Soviet countries initiating restrictive citizenship for Soviet time settlers.