Loyalty, Dissent, and Betrayal: Modern Lithuania and East-Central European Moral Imagination by Leonidas Donskis (review)

Abstract

754 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 explanation of the GDR's collapse is not only eloquendy written, but the combination of historical research and sociological theoryprovides fora high ly original and compelling study,which yields invaluable insight into the unique nature of theGDR's collapse. It is a significantpublication within this field, and one which will doubtless inspire fruitfuldebate. School of Modern Languages AnnaSaunders Universityof Wales, Bangor Donskis, Leonidas. Loyalty, Dissent, andBetrayal: Modern Lithuania andEast-Central EuropeanMoral Imagination.On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics, 4. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, 2005. xiii + 164 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 38.00: $48.00 (paperback). Donskis here offers a positive critique of post-modern or liberal nationalism. The latter is not, of course, to be confused with conservative, blood-and-soil ethnic nationalism which he condemns as militant, doctrinaire and exclusion ary. For the conservative nationalist, loyalty means accepting that nothing can be wrong inwhat the nation did in itspast and, in case of controversy, always being on the side of your country. Dissent from thisposition raises the cry of betrayal and treason. Liberal nationalists, on the other hand, argue that the human individual ethically precedes the nation as a collective individual, and that there are values more important than the nation. It ispossible, they argue, to derive a critique of society and culture from the ethic of nationalism. Moreover, nationalism of this sort offers a potent alternative to global ideologies that reject nationalism as an obstacle tohistorical progress or to 'the creation of a "new human being", free of history, religion and tradition' (p. 84). Donskis argues that the post-Communist experience of East Central Europe illustrates and clarifies this contest in a unique way. He uses the term 'faster than history' to make the point that in this region two centuries of other people's history have been telescoped into a couple of decades. He believes that the area may serve as a laboratory inwhich the struggles still awaiting most of the planet are currently being rehearsed by trial and error. Only where the speed of change reaches itsclimax, he asserts, can history be properly understood. Donskis develops his argument by analysing thewritings of three expatriate Lithuanians, Vytautas Kavolis, Aleksandras Shtromas and Tomas Venclova. It seems that one of his aims is to bring to the attention of aWestern readership the distinction of their contributions, from different disciplinary perspectives, to an understanding of nationalism, and to place them among the world's leading social and cultural critics of the last half century. Their contributions to explicating the ethic of liberal nationalism are both suggestive and persuasive. Kavolis, a philosopher, livedmost of his life in theUnited States, having left Lithuania when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Donskis's discussion of Kavolis's work is, for a non-philosopher, reviews 755 difficult to understand and would have benefited from the author's own rather surprised comment on Venclova's style,namely thathe formulated his thought inan exceptionally clear and understandable way. What does become clear, however, is thatKavolis advocated modernizing nationalism by opening up its liberal and inclusive traitsand by distinguishing it clearly from ethnic nationalism. Shtromas, who was one of the leading human rights activists in the Soviet Union alongside Sakharov, Siniavskii, Daniel' and Bukovskii, was forced to leave in 1973.Though tenacious of the ideals of cosmopolitan tolerance, liberal democracy and ethical universalism, he was generous in his approach to nationalism and identitypolitics. Itwas, he believed, the right of people to have a collective identity and be rooted in their histories and cultures. But this right should be combined with a sympathetic understanding of theOther. This theme of ethical universalism was taken up and furtherdeveloped by Venclova. His cosmopolitanism and internationalism are anathema to most Lithuanians who regard them as a threat toLithuanian identityand culture. It is clear that Venclova refuses to engage in moral compromise for the sake of national culture and its survival. Human rights have preference over national rights.On the other hand he is a supporter of Lithuanian liberal nationalism which, he believes, is compatible with ethical universalism. The acid test for...