Этносы и «нации» в Западной Европе в Средние века и раннее Новое время

Consolidation played the role of the determinant mean to overcome particularism as the characteristic feature of medieval society and signed the general trend towards «national» unity. The author argues that the most significant factors of this process are the following: potential of small production realized by the owner of the instruments of labor; division of social labor which multiplied social relations and enlarged the sphere of their activities (overcoming the limits of patrimonial estate, town, province); overcoming the personal aspect in social relations and in the interconnections between power and society; leveling (within the frames of the state) the social status of peasants and townspeople; growth of their social activity (self-organization of corporations and estates); social dynamics; estates representation as a prehistory of civil society; formation of the institute of citizenship as representation of gradual overcoming of polycentricism.

Noted organizational and often initiative role of supreme power and state institutions in the emergence of ethno-national and – further – «national» states, the author underlines the importance of society as the source of strength or weakness of political factor.

I.II. MEDIEVAL STUDIES AND NATIONAL QUESTION (ON INDEFINITE DEFINITIONS)

The key problem of modern scholarly discussion on the «national question» is that of proportion between the subjective and the objective. With respect to history there is a great variety of opinions: somebody consider ethnicity as an everlasting parameter, or speaks about nations referring even to the X–XI centuries; others call these communities «imaginary» and affirm that the national membership is the matter of free choice.

To resolve this problem in the end we need to decide what is for us the meaning of the concepts of «nation», «ethnic identity», «people» and similar. But still above understanding of the meaning of words is the more important question: in which way ethnic understanding of oneself and of others (identification and self-identification) influenced the human behavior, how much ethnic membership determined the human history?

Historically the people always in one or another way conceived their belonging to land and to their kin, and these bounds to some extent were entangled with the others: faith, citizenship (or political rights), estate or professional membership. With the development of social institutions corresponding identities entered into competition with biological ones, and cultural resources (language, history, education) became increasingly more ponderable from the point of view of ethnical identification.

In medieval Europe the concepts of «nation» and «people» had very large spectrum of meaning, sometimes not ethnic at all. From the point of view of collective identity the faith was more important.

The idea of nation («people») as the chief collective subject of the history was shaped only towards the end of Middle Ages, when the feeling of confessional community somewhat weakened and in general the static predefinition was being washed out by the dynamic model of development. Today the idea of the unity of human culture is «politically correct», but politico-biological views on the substance of nations fully maintain their significance on the level of ideologies and mass consciousness.

I.III. SOME NOTES ON THE BYZANTINE MODEL OF «ETHNIC» IDENTITY