Volume 40, Number 18 · November 4, 1993
Swing Shift in the Baltics
By Czeslaw Milosz
The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence
by Anatol Lieven
Yale University Press, 454 pp., $29.95
Liberal thought of our time has often treated nationalism as a relic of an unenlightened tribal past. No wonder that many are now bewildered by the passions aroused by the question of national identity in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. A much more nuanced approach was elaborated by Leninist doctrine, which was mindful of nationalism's nineteenth-century origins. After all, the great expressions of revolutionary élan of that century blended democratic rhetoric and the national aspirations of peoples struggling against monarchies. That is why the Soviet rulers, instead of denying the existence of 'the national question,' attempted to defuse it and make it serve their purposes. Colonialist in fact, they tolerated the republics' traditional cultures, but only under the condition that they would be 'national in form, socialist in content.' For some of the subject peoples, however, the slogan also lent itself to an interesting reversal—'socialist in form, national in content.' The failure of the Communists to govern from the center while also maintaining the trappings of local autonomy brought about the present explosion of the empire by national entities. It probably proves that the duplicity needed to play such a game is beyond the skill of even the most capable bureaucrats.
Review, 5510 words
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