Miroslav Hroch Research Articles

Vmeste i vroz. Metamorfozy obraza Tarasa Shevchenko v gody Pervoy mirovoy i Grazhdanskoy voyn

The article delves into the exploration of the formation of the Ukrainian nation within the backdrop of competing ideologies: imperial and socialist. The theoretical framework adopted for this study is Miroslav Hroch’s concept of nation-building phases, which centers around the generational shift from a limited national intelligentsia to a broader educated class, and eventually to a mass movement. Among the myriad factors influencing the propagation of the notion of nationhood, a relatively unexamined one is selected for analysis — the utilization of literature, specifically the works and image of Taras Shevchenko, by various political and public actors. This study draws on sources such as speeches, articles, political symbols, and accounts of visitors to Shevchenko’s grave. During the early 20th century in the Russian Empire, multiple attempts were made to integrate the image of the Ukrainian poet into various discourses. Firstly, he was portrayed as the progenitor of the nation, a supporter of Ukrainian emancipation. Secondly, within the realm of social discourse, Shevchenko was depicted as a political fighter against the monarchical regime. Thirdly, his works were viewed as a component of broader imperial culture. Interestingly, these interpretations could coexist even within the dialogues of political adversaries. The battle for the “appropriation” of Shevchenko’s image came to the fore during the tumultuous period of the First World War and the 1917 Revolution, being transformed into integral elements of the political strife. This symbol was harnessed for political mobilization by advocates of a unified state, proponents of national autonomy, and separatists alike.

Being a Historian of Central Europe

The main goal of Historical Studies on Central Europe is to provide an interdisciplinary and international platform for disseminating new findings on Central Europe and enhancing the dialog on it. In this spirit, the editors have decided to launch a series asking prominent scholars of the region: their personal motivations for choosing Central Europe as their field; their view on central questions of methodology, trends, and definition, as well as their opinion on the status of the field. Miroslav Hroch is professor emeritus at Charles University (Prague), where he founded a Seminar in Comparative History in 1994. He wrote pioneering comparative works on the question of nation formation, most notably Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (1985; originally published in German in 1968). With his comparative researches on national movements, Professor Hroch earned international recognition, in 1997 he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden. His other significant books include In the National Interest. Demands and Goals of European National Movements of the Nineteenth Century: a Comparative Perspective (2000); European Nations. Explaining their Formation (2015, originally published in German in 2005).

Three-stage periodization of the history of nationalism of Miroslav Hroch as an "ideal model" and the prospects for its application to Iranian historical studies

Three-stage periodization of the history of nationalism of Miroslav Hroch as an "ideal model" and the prospects for its application to Iranian historical studies

Adoption/adaptation of universal principles and mutual influences of organizational models among ethno-nationally biased cooperative networks inside inter-war Romania

This paper identifies those elements that were common in all cooperative networks around the world by presenting the process of adoption of universal cooperative principles inside the provinces that were reunited in interwar Romania, while observing the mutual adaptation of organizational models among different ethno-cultural entities defined as minorities and the actual ethnic national majority. We operate methodologically according to a methodic circle that helped us to distinguish the historical sources of nationalist/nation-building rhetoric and the pragmatically achieved goals (balances). In case of cooperatives, we observed that constructive/interactive community-building goals and routine overwhelmed negative, reactive or even destructive nationalist goals. The latter did not reach the cooperative sector effectively or only remained dead letter on political manifestos and propaganda (boycott or sabotage) both in the prewar constituent period and the interwar era. Nevertheless, there was a continuous mutual (incongruent) influence among the neighboring networks, both in strategies, technics, architecture and organizational forms. This study tries to contribute to the research of the economic institutionalization and mobilization phase of nation-building as theorized by Anthony D. Smith and Miroslav Hroch by identifying those modern institutions, including savings banks and cooperative networks that assembled ethno-national entities into modern economic and market economy framework, while verifying the legitimacy or anachronism of using national ‘bias’ in case of these modern financial-economic institutions and cooperative networks.

Interview with Miroslav Hroch

Miroslav Hroch has recently celebrated his 90th birthday. A reason for SNM to ask this pioneer and elder statesman in the comparative study of national movements for a brief interview. The questions and answers were exchanged by e-mail in late 2022/early 2023 in a mixture of English and German.

National Romanticism

As a homage to Miroslav Hroch (who turned 90 in 2022), the editorial board of SNM has decided to republish Hroch’s article dedicated to the subject of ‘National Romanticism’ (published by Central European University Press in 2007), thereby promoting readers (as Hroch has stated too in the interview conducted with him) to go beyond his influential work Social Preconditions and also pay attention to his later work which further developed and nuanced his earlier research.

Roma Writings: Romani Literature and Press in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe from the 19th Century until World War II ed. by Raluca Bianca Roman, Sofiya Zahova and Aleksandar G. Marinov

Reviewed by: Roma Writings: Romani Literature and Press in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe from the 19th Century until World War II ed. by Raluca Bianca Roman, Sofiya Zahova and Aleksandar G. Marinov Tomasz Kamusella Roman, Raluca Bianca; Zahova, Sofiya and Marinov, Aleksandar G. (eds). Roma Writings: Romani Literature and Press in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe from the 19th Century until World War II. Brill | Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 2021. xiii + 276 pp. Tables. Figures. Refences. Annexes. £91.82: €109.00: $124.00: open access e-book. The Roma are Europe’s largest stateless minority. Numbering today up to twelve million people, they live across the entire continent, but especially in its eastern half, with most concentrated in the Balkans. Despite having been [End Page 530] part and parcel of European history and culture for a millennium, until the turn of the twenty-first century, the Roma were typically disregarded and marginalized as a ‘non-people’ or a people ‘without culture or history’. In the modern period the Roma have become a target of a variety of state-sponsored ‘civilizing missions’. As a result, they were thoroughly othered and made into paradigmatic ‘foreigners’, ‘non-Europeans’, in essence a ‘colonial population’ that happens to have been ‘misplaced’ in the midst of Europe. Unsurprisingly, the racist sentiment of antitsiganism (antiromism) became the staple of the continent’s politics, on a par with antisemitism. However, this marginalization of the Roma and the erasure of their presence from European history and politics have been more thorough than of the Jews. For instance, it is rarely remembered that Nazi Germany intended to exterminate in their entirety only two peoples, namely, the Jews and Roma. The voluminous Nuremberg Trials proceedings devote just a quarter of a page to the Roma, though during World War Two the Nazis exterminated half of them. Continuing prejudices and stereotypes not only prevent the integration of the Roma, but also hamper rigorous research on them as a European nation. For instance, one would not be able to pass as a legitimate scholar of German history and culture without a working command of German. Yet, this is still a sorry ‘standard’ among specialists of Romani studies. At times, this attitude leads to tragicomic situations. The volume under review is a fruit of the ERC (European Research Council) project, ‘RomaInterbellum: Roma Civic Emancipation Between the Two World Wars’. The project’s leaders, Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov, count among the world’s most renowned researchers in the field of Romani studies. Yet, some scholars opined on an early draft of this project that it should be rejected, because the Roma are illiterate and have no interest in books and writing, so there is nothing to be found in the archives or in the form of publications. The project’s first volume, Roma Voices in History: A Sourcebook (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2021), at over one thousand pages, gives the lie to this widespread prejudice, showcasing a mere tenth of the archival documents that were found during the past five years. As members of the RomaInterbellum team, the three editors of Roma Writings represent a new generation of Romani studies scholars. Following Marushiakova and Popov’s inspiring example, they apply these standards and methods of research that are the norm in other fields of Europe’s social sciences. Just as Roma Voices shows that Roma history is part and parcel of European history, so now Roma Writings proves that the development and uses of Roma literature are in synch with their European counterparts. The volume appropriately and inclusively defines Roma literature as the body of writings by Roma authors in Romani and other European languages, including translations into Romani (p. 4). This broad church approach allows them to show that, as in the case of many other Central, Southeastern and Eastern European (CSEEE) [End Page 531] literatures, Roma literature commenced in the mid-nineteenth century (p. 11). The development is in line with the ‘Herderian turn’ that especially after 1918 yielded the region’s ethnolinguistic nation-states. In 1985, the Czechoslovak historian Miroslav Hroch proposed the now widely accepted phase model of the rise of ethnolinguistic national movements. The editors...

Symposium for Miroslav Hroch

AbstractTwelve historians and social scientists reflect on Miroslav Hroch's contributions to the field of nationalism studies. There are essays on his pioneering comparative historical studies of ‘small nation’ national movements and his distinction between nationalism and national movements. Other essays focus on concepts such as those of protagonist, the three phases of national movements, the small nation and nationally relevant conflict of interest. A further set of essays explores how Hroch's approach can be extended beyond small nations, beyond Europe and into the contemporary period.

Resulzade’de Azerbaycancılık İdealini Küçük Millet Modeli Bağlamında Tartışmak

Nationalism emerged at the end of the eighteenth century as a doctrine which rendered a decisive influence on the maturation of modern order, modern politics and state-governance. Hence, nationalism can be used to explain the process of nation-building of sovereign nations. Because nationalism explains the transformation of an existing state. In contrast, Miroslav Hroch uses the term national movement instead of nationalism to explain the nation-building processes of small nations. In this study, the last phase of the nation-building process in Tsaristruled Azerbaijan is going to be discussed by using Hroch’s A, B, C model of oppressed nations. In this context, I am going to discuss Mehmet Emin Resulzade’s national ideal (mefkure) and his debate of Azerbaijanism. Resulzadeh, has provided to contain political demand for the purpose of independence within the framework of the national ideal of the national movement. For this reason, Resulzadeh’s thought and nationalism have been shaped as Azerbaijan centred. This study argues that the process of nationalism can only be explained by Horch’s A, B, C model, considering the fact that Tsarist-ruled Azerbaijan had no state or national existence before the respective national movement which took place under the Tsarist rule.

Recensie van: Studying nationalism under changing conditions and regimes / Miroslav Hroch

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El Andalucismo de la Asamblea de Ronda a la Guerra Civil (1918-1936): Una Aplicación de las Propuestas de Miroslav Hroch

With this paper, we intend to explain the proposals of the Czech historian and political scientist Miroslav Hroch about the national movements of Eastern Europe and its evolution. We are going to apply them to the case of the Andalusian nationalism, with the intention of verifying if it is possible to use the different models he raises to explain the way in which patriotic agitation develops between national groups in the geographical area of Western Europe. With this objective, we have analyzed the evolution of Andalusian nationalism in its formation process as a political movement, focusing both on its discourse and objectives and on the factors that prevented it from becoming a hegemonic current in Andalusia in the period from 1918 to 1936. In this way, we want to check the validity of the scheme proposed by Hroch and delimit in what kind of evolution we could frame the case that concerns us, which, considering its failure, would be a clear example of a disintegrated type, as it did not consolidate as a mass movement.

A Monolithic “Dead End” or a “Hybrid Exit”? Cultural Hybrids Facing National Image Construction & Their Role in the History of Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication in the context of national construction is often associated exclusively with our era of globalization. But, in fact, it has been present for over 150 years, in reference to multi-ethnic regions, in particular. Therefore, the paper goes back to the origins of cultural hybridity as a historical and intercultural phenomenon, facing the emergence of national image construction, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of intercultural communication and thus shed new light on our socio-cultural problems, with national and post-national backgrounds. The analysis is on one hand focused on Central European borderland, namely Austrian-Silesia, as a crown land of the Habsburg Monarchy, at the end of 19th century, and on the other, based on theories by Homi Bhabha, Wolfgang Welsch, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Martin Buber, Benedict Anderson or Miroslav Hroch.[1]

Four Traumatizations That Created Ukrainian Identity

Four Traumatizations That Created Ukrainian Identity Frank Golczewski George O. Liber, Total Wars and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1914–1954. xxxiv + 453 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. ISBN-13 978-1442627086. $39.95. Are there not already too many books on the history of Ukraine? And has Timothy Snyder not described in sufficient detail the mass killings that occurred in the area between Central Europe and the Ural Mountains?1 Both questions have to be answered in the negative after reading George Liber's book that describes one specific result of the murderous cataclysms that shook the vast lands of Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Liber sets the ambitious goal of providing a new answer to the old question of how nation-states emerged. But rather than entering the dispute between primordialist, perennialist, and modernist theoreticians, he describes on a practical level what happened in and around the area of present-day Ukraine and how this resulted in the formation of a modern nation-state called Ukraine.2 According to Liber, the "total wars" of the first half of the 20th century brought about a "social realignment" in Ukrainian society (279) and made possible the formation of this nation-state. These wars reshaped the multicultural area into one with a Ukrainian identity. But at the same time, they loaded the existence of the Ukrainian state with unsolved burdens of the past—causing phantom pains over disputed territories that had been incorporated into its neighbor states. [End Page 839] The modernist discourse (and Liber is more modernist than anything else) is based on, among other things, Miroslav Hroch's assumption that nations—especially those emerging from "incomplete" nonstate peoples in Eastern Europe—are the creations of intellectuals and activists. The national intellectual elites convince the inhabitants of these lands of their particular cultural quality and forge a political program based on a cultural agenda.3 Although Liber does not refute Hroch's scheme, he advances a different interpretation of the nature of state formation. Instead of the nation building taking place in peaceful times, he concentrates on clashes, mass murder, deportations, and the "social chaos" (279) in deadly times of war and persecution. His bold thesis is that there was no "linear road" to the Ukrainian nation state. Rather, the emerging Ukrainian nationalism was an "interactive response" to wars and violence that in essence created present-day Ukraine (11). Quite in line with Ukrainian integral nationalists of the interwar period,4 but in contrast to most ideologues of modern-day Ukraine, Liber identifies the Ukrainian-speaking population of the pre-1914 period as "an ethnographic mass" (34), lacking most accessories of modern nationhood. After establishing this ground zero, he proceeds to describe in length how—according to his count—four traumatizations (all part of the "total wars") changed the mental and demographic situation in the Ukrainian lands. For Liber, the first traumatization comes not in 1932 (as for Timothy Snyder), but in 1914 (11). Although the military confrontations of World War I were accompanied by mass murder, Liber's focus is rather on the wartime encounters between different groups of Ukrainians as well as between Ukrainians and other peoples. It was in the context of the war that Galician Russophiles were disappointed by the Russians, less nationally conscious Eastern Ukrainians met nationalist Western Ukrainians, and numerous evacuees mixed with locals in whom they suddenly recognized their co-nationals. For Liber, these wartime encounters constituted the first step in the process of replacing loyalty to non-Ukrainian ruling dynasties and imperial identities with a common Ukrainian national identity. Liber's description of what happened after the war differs sharply from the narrative of nationalist writers: he considers Soviet Ukraine, notwithstanding its shortcomings, to have played an important part in shaping Ukrainian national identity. Like [End Page 840] Richard Pipes, he calls Soviet Ukraine a "subversive institution" (78), because it implanted Ukrainian nationhood into the Soviet system, whose declared goal was to overcome nationality.5 In this sense, it was quite similar to Sergei Uvarov's doctrine of "official nationality," which unintentionally introduced a nationalist discourse to the Russian Empire in 1833.6 The second...

“Was de tael gansch het volk?” Comparatief onderzoek naar de Vlaamse en Slowaakse nationale beweging in de 19e eeuw: Een pleidooi om cultuurhistorisch te vergelijken in de neerlandistiek/ “Was the Language Representing the Whole Nation?” A Comparative Approach of the Flemish and Slovak National Movements in the 19th Century: A Plea for Comparative Research in Dutch Studies

Abstract In this ongoing research we are going to have a look at the starting point for the burgeoning national feelings with two smaller nations: the Slovak and the Flemish national movement. Building on the methodological framework of nationalism researcher Miroslav Hroch, one can discern a threefold stage - model in the national movements of the smaller nations in Europe, which is a thesis still needing more empirical evidence. This article attempts to compare at least one aspect of early nineteenth-century nation - building: How were the literary societies functioning in both national movements? We are working in a time scope of the first half of the 19th century and ask ourselves the questions: until which extend reached literary societies? What was their impact? Which people were their readers, their public? Was their language, and their language-spreading aim representative for the whole nation? What similarities and differences can be found in Flanders and Slovakia in this field? Important support can be obtained from the NISE - network, which attempts to create a database on a European scale in order to stimulate and optimize comparative and transnational research on nation building.

Putting Ukraine on the map: the contribution of Stepan Rudnyts'kyi to Ukrainian nation-building

This paper examines the contribution of the founder of modern Ukrainian geography, Stepan Rudnyts'kyi, to Ukrainian nation-building. It demonstrates how Rudnyts'kyi put Ukraine on the mental map of the Ukrainian public before the declaration of Ukraine's independence in 1918. This is done by analyzing his key publications and showing how he formed a vision of Ukraine and delineated its territory to influence the perceptions of the Ukrainian public on the eve of the struggle for Ukraine's independence. Rudnyts'kyi's contribution is also viewed within the context of competition from rival modern nation-building projects in Eastern Europe, most notably Polish and Russian. The developments are also examined within Miroslav Hroch's periodization of national movements. Rudnyts'kyi played an important role in stage B (patriotic agitation) in Ukrainian national revival.

Confession and Nation in Early Modern Central Europe

Amongst historians of early modern Europe, the relation between confession and nation has been largely neglected, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. The dominant discourse on nationhood, in contrast, was established by historians of modern history such as Elie Kedourie, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, and Miroslav Hroch. This article evaluates the contributions of two historiographical debates to the study of early modern Central Europe, which were conducted in parallel, from the 1980s, but have not been assessed in context. It argues for the necessity to combine the perspectives of ‘confessionalization’, developed by early modernists, with the focus of nationalism, championed by students of the nineteenth and twentieth century, in order to achieve a full understanding of the region.

Typologies and phases in nationalism studies: Hroch's A-B-C schema as a basis for comparative terminology

The study of nationalism encompasses so many themes that scholarly communication between different subfields has become difficult. Scholars might facilitate comparison by acknowledging different types of nationalism, but an overview of various taxonomies of nationalism shows that binary taxonomies have a problematic normative subtext, while most non-binary taxonomies have failed to reach a broad audience. Miroslav Hroch, who intended his A-B-C phases to schematize non-state national awakening, also devised a taxonomy of nationalism. Hroch's work has influenced nationalism scholars mostly through its phase theory of how individual national movements develop over time. While other phase theorists have proposed similar schema, Hroch's work has attracted such a wide audience that it provides scholars with a solution to the problem of inter-disciplinary communication: it offers a useful terminology for classifying and describing various sorts of nationalism.

Miroslav Hroch's model of small nation-formation and Begriffsgeschichte

This article focuses on Miroslav Hroch's book titled Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe and it tries to build on Hroch's model of small nation-formation mainly on a methodological level. The aim is to incorporate the “subjective” dimension in Hroch's analysis of the “objective” factors that lead to nation-formation, by opening up the discursive level to investigation. I suggest that the comparative study of nation-formation needs to remain connected to the study of nationalism as a phenomenon, including the investigation of the discursive plane, of the political languages, and histories of concepts. In this sense, the article seeks to link Hroch's work to Begriffsgeschichte and to present a range of interpretations on how these two could work together, on a methodological level. The answers come mainly from Reinhart Koselleck's theorizing on the relation between social history and the history of concepts. This article also addresses compatibility problems that aim to encourage a more integrative type of analysis that would entail an in-depth and critical revisiting of Hroch's model. At the same time, Hroch's model proves to be flexible enough to be situated at the intersection of more types of history writing.

Twenty-five years of A-B-C: Miroslav Hroch's impact on nationalism studies

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Miroslav Horch's 1985Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nationsin English translation. The work first appeared asDie Vorkämpfer der nationalen Bewegungen bei den kleinen Völkern Europasin 1968. The English translator of this famous study, Ben Fowkes, has since established himself as a prolific expert on East European nationalism (1996, 1999, 2000, 2002). Hroch's work has now influenced several generations of scholars interested in many different parts of the world. To examine its influence on the course of nationalism studies, this themed issue ofNationalities Papersoffers both a retrospective on Hroch's work and discussion of its continued relevance for several different branches of nationalism studies.

Nationalism and socialism: “Phase D” in the Belarusian nation-building

This article presents the history of Belarusian national development in the light of Miroslav Hroch's theory and demonstrates how the initial process of national awakening typical for small nations in eastern and central Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century described by M. Hroch continued under Soviet rule after the Bolshevik revolution. Changes which were brought to Belarusian society together with socialist modernization in the Soviet state constituted “Phase D” (a term coined by Terry Martin) in Belarusian nation-building. As the history of Belarusian nation-formation illustrates, Hroch's scheme of three phases of national movements within small nations ignored a specific mode of small nations’ development in a multiethnic state and within the socialist formation. At the same time, the question about the status of the Soviet era's achievements in Belarusian national development appears to be an important issue for understanding the current political development in the country.