The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia

The Use of History in Political Disputes

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10073927
AutoresAndrew Wilson (0000-0002-9814-5966, autor de correspondencia)
Año1995
Volumen30
Número2
Páginas265-289
Fecha de publicación1995-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/002200949503000204
OpenAlexW2029410157
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas24
Referencias citadas2

Historical myths play a particularly important role in the mobilization of ethno-national movements. Elites or 'political entrepreneurs', that is the potential leaders of ethno-nationalist movements and their ideologues, often find that potential members of their target group are politically passive, isolated from one another, and/or more interested in private goals, and therefore difficult to mobilize politically.' Historical myths, however, are an extremely effective means of firming up a target group's collective identity, encouraging group coalescence, and stimulating political mobilization.2 The more effective historical myths help to provide an ethnic group with a sense of its own identity as a historical and political subject, to connect a given group with a sense of its own past (imparting powerful emotional appeal by linking the fate of present generations with that of both ancestors and descendants), and, by relating to the individual's own sense of identity, time and space, helping to make sense of the present. In recent times Serbs have been inspired by the myth of heroic defeat at Kosovo Field as an obvious analogy with their current state of isolation, Balts have idealized their interwar 'democracies', while Belarus'ian nationalists have sought to compensate for their lack of a tradition of statehood by propagating the notion that the Lithuanian kingdom of the Middle Ages was really a Belarus'ian state in disguise (as its court language was Belarus'ian). The power of a historical myth, however, has little to do with actual historical truth, whatever that may be; 'it is historicism, rather than ethnic history itself, which is the essential base for nationalist movements'.3 A given group's historical memory is a secondary phenomenon shaped by how the past is constantly being reinterpreted in the present, as much as by what 'actually happened' in the past.4 Moreover, the academics, politicians and poets

Aesthetics · Collective identity · Identity (music · Ideology · Mythology · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · European Politics and Security · History · Law · Philosophy