INVENTION OF TRADITIONS AS “POSTPONED” IMAGINATION OF THE NATION IN SORBIAN NATIONALISM PART 2. IMAGINATION OF THE SORBIAN ETHNIC AND POLITICAL NATION IN MINORITY NATIONALISM WITH A “NEGATIVE” SOCIAL HERITAGE

• Main Author: Maksym W. Kyrchanoff
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Science and Innovation Center Publishing House 2020-08-01
• Series: Sovremennye Issledovaniâ Socialʹnyh Problem
• Subjects: сорбы; лужица; национализм; изобретение традиций; воображение сообществ; воображаемые / воображенные сообщества
• Online Access: http://journal-s.org/index.php/mrsp/article/view/12757

Purpose. The author analyses the problems of Sorbian ethnic culture as one of the invented traditions of Sorbian nationalism. The aim of the article is to analyse the strategies used by intellectuals in their attempts to actualise and visualise the ethnic culture of Sorbians as a form of identity and invented tradition in the actual situation. Methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinary historiography of nationalism, including the concepts of the imagination of communities and the invention of traditions. Results. Analysing the role and importance of ethnicity and ethnic culture in its systematized and standardized versions, the author believes that these factors in Sorbian nationalism were more important than in other European nationalisms, which lost the potential of ethnicity gradually, reducing and minimizing it to museumized forms. The author believes that several factors, including the threats of Germanization, the lack of complete social structures, and the slow dynamics of political and social transformations became incentives for Sorbian intellectuals to use the potential of traditional culture in its ethnic forms. In general, it is assumed that the current phase in the development of Sorbian cultural nationalism led to its virtualization, changed the forms of ethnic mobilization, and inspired the final transformation of the cultural activities of nationalists into one of the practices of invention of traditions. The article shows that the existence of ethnic culture as an invented tradition is an important factor in the development of Sorbians as an imagined community and political nation.