;

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Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov -,. INTRODUCTION-

FROM GENDER TO NATION

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The gender/sex difference, as the oldest known difference inscribed into language, is.seen as basic, unquestionable and unproblematic-a condition of life. It symbolically permeates all other dichotomies of thinking, all differences within the sphere of the historically consensual and, thus, permeates the historic legitimacy of hierarchies that thrive on binary differences'. The global patriarchal consensus about the submission of women to men, accordingly, justifies other subjugations using the mechanism of symbolic "analogy". The depiction of this state of affairs2 as natural, which naturalizes and essentializes patriarchy, is itself historic. This history of the social relations of genders is often obscured by replacement of social and historic relations with biological ones. Thus, when the "national difference" surfaces historically, it appears in terms of gender difference, "justifying" hierarchies that are set by an assumed natural gender hierarchy. Given our increasing awareness of this mechanism, any serious study of the national "issue" must look at the gendering of political discourse and the sexualizing of concepts related to the complex of nation and nationalism, state- and nation-building, citizenship and membership, and community and society. Gender and nation are social and historic constructions, which intimately parDifference "in itself is historically and concretely determined as the hierarchy/domination/ injustice/ social inequality that is "theoretically" based on it. ''Long live the difference", "Vive la difference" is the slogan of both possible, but not necessary just social claims and possible, but not necessary racist claims. As shown by Balibar (in E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein (eels.), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, London, Verso, 1996), new racism is "differeneialist". 2 That is, the domination of all w o m e n by all men Guillaumin, Scxc, Race et Pratique du pouvoir. L'Ide'e de nature, Paris, Cote-Femmes, 1992.
1

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Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov

ticipate in the formation of one anothennations are gendered; and the topography of the nation is mapped in gendered terms (feminized soil, landscapes, and boundaries and rriasculine movement-over these spaces). National mythologies draw on traditional gender roles and the^ationalistnarrative is filled with images of the nation as mother,- wife; arid maiden.- Practices of nation-building employ social co'nstructions of 'masculinity'arid femininity'that support a division of labor in which women reproduce the nation physically and symbolically and men protect,defend, and avenge the nation. : ' ' ' ' 1. Borders Gender identities and women's bodies become symbolic and spatial boundaries of the nation. Women's bodies serve as symbol.s.of the fecundity of the nation and vessels for its reproduction,, as.well-as.territorial markers. Mothers, wives, and daughters designate the space of the nation and are, at the same time, the property of the nation. As markers and as property, mothers, daughters, and wives require the defense and protection of patriotic sons.. Border fantasies develop with this gendering of boundaries and spaces (landscapes, farmlands, and battlefields) and with the collectivizing of "our women" and "their women" (Mostov, 1995). Masculine actors invade (or fill) feminine spaces. The nation is adored and adorned, made strong and bountiful or loathed, raped and defiled, its limbs torn apart, its womb invaded. The vulnerability and seduction of women/borders (space/nation) require the vigilance of border guards. [Tjhe "essential women" [raced or not] becomes the national iconic signifier for the material, the passive, and the corporeal, to be worshipped, protected, and controlled by those with the power to remember, and to forget, to guard, to define, and redefine (Alcaron, Kaplan and Moallem, 1999, p. 10)3. Variations of struggles for power by new or would-be guardians of the nation are played out over the feminine body: over the feminine space of the nation battlefields, farmlands, and homes - and actual female bodies; in claims to terri-

This theme has been explored eloquently by a number of feminist theorists, including: Butalia, The Other Side of Silence. Voices from tlie Partition of India, New Delhi, Viking, 1998; Das, Critical Events. An Anthropological Perspective in Contemporary India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1995; Hasan (ed.), Invented Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000; Kumar, Divide and Fall? Bosnia in the Annals of Partition, London, Verso, 1998; Menon, Interventions. International Journal of Post-Colonial Studies, Special Topic: The Partition of the Indian Sub-Continent, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1999; R. Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries. Women in India' Partition, New Brunswick, (N.J.), Rutgers University Press, 1998; and Sangari and Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, New Brunswick (N.J.), Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Introduction - From Gender to Nation

11'

tory and sovereignty based; on demographic and reproductive policies; and over the nation as an idea - mother, lover, home, and collective (receptive) body. These variations parallel gender roles that reinforce, sexual imagery and stereotypes. The feminine is passive, and the masculine is active. The Motherland provides a passive, receptive,; and vulnerable image in contrast to the active image of the Fatherland, which is the force behind government and military action-invasion, conquest,-and defense. - : . ; . This imagery recognizes women as a symbolic collective. The nation as mother produces an image of the allegorical mother whose offspring are the country's guardians, heroes and martyrs. Individual mothers are celebrated as instances of this image: their pain and suffering, their sacrifices are recognized as part of the nation's sacrifice; their individual plights are relevant only to this extent. Women as reproducers are recognized as belonging to the majority or minority nations, though, as we shall see, not as members of the collective in the same, way as men. The rape and violation of individual women becomes symbolically significant in nationalist discourse and the politics of national identity as a violation of the nation and an act against the collective men of the enemy nation. It is the plight of "our" women that threatens or offends the nation;In the" acts of war/ national ist/communa;lis't rape, women are. the instruments of .communicationbetwee.n'two groups of men. And the subsequent discourse on these rapes follows/ to a iarge extent, the same logic serving as a vehicle for hate speech and a weapon of war4. Women as mothers are reproducers of the nation; but they are also thought of as potential enemies of the nation, traitors to it, and collaborators in its death. The "other's" women are enemies as reproducers, multiplying the number of outsiders, conspiring to dilute and destroy the nation with their numerous offspring. Thus, while "our" women are to be revered as mothers, all women's bodies must be controlled. This is articulated in terms of "state fatherhood": the nation is defined as a family, motherhood and reproduction are supervised by the "father", or in terms of political jurisdiction: reproduction and sexual relations are political acts and must be put firmly under the control of the state and its. moral and cultural institutions (church and family). This is the naturalized hierarchy of patriarchy. The instrumentalization of national body politics facilitates consolidation of the nation-state through regulatory practices rooted in the sexualization of women and their vulnerability to sexual assault. The sexuality of individual women presents a potential threat to the nation, as an "entry" point for invasion. Individual women are potential suspects in border transgressions. Elias Canetti. writes, in a slightly different context, that men who
's This sometimes includes some well-intended scholarly work. The ethnicization of research, whether by local or by foreign scholars, often follows after great political conflict, see Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers. Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press, 2001.

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Rada Ivekovic and Julie- Mostov

disdain a warning about danger are threatened only in their.personal capacity. But, women who pay no heed to a warning or an interdiction about such danger put.the whole community in peril (Canetti., 1966, p. 138). Sexual;fantasi.es follow ,this threat to the community and, at the same time, collectivize the identity of women: the enemy male wants to invade the national space and abduct "our" women, to steal our identity, to dilute our culture. Each side fantasizes about ."invading the space ?of the other,.robbing the alien society and.installing its own culture. The "Others's" men are collectively seen as.sexual aggressors,."our" women.are objects of their temptation.. "Their" women are forbidden prizes, and as such,..a potential site for warfare,, both .symbolically and literally. It is -the .collective'"our", women.that;represents the potential national tragedy;:it is as a collective, victim, .that "our" women.gain the;sympathy .of.the^eople and suffer. : ; Women's; bodies mark the vulnerability of borders and, .in another sense,-women embody the borders: they are "signifiers of ethnic or national difference". (Menon and Bhasin, 1998, p. 252; Yuval-Davis and Anthias, 1989) and the boundaries of the State. Mass rapes in civil wars point to the same fact: according to the patriarchal consensus, the community's women should be defended as borders, or the other's-women should be violated as the other's borders/territories. In a ;way, coinmunal.violence against women, seen as violence against the male other is part of the group-identity building.: The production of nations/states produces borders and, then, naturally, their violation... For borders separate as much as they invite transgression and produce no (wo)man's land. Violence against women is a constitutive part of these processes. Its softest aspect is the subjugation of women to a men's (state, communal, social) hierarchy. Its extreme case is rape. "In many villages writes Urvashi Butalia where negotiations had taken place, often women were traded for freedom" (Butalia, 1998, p. 159). Her research clearly shows that women were considered belonging to the community as property, but not really constituting the community as autonomous subjects or as any essential part of it. For women cannot claim identity with(in) the nation, or when they do so, they risk disloyalty to the higher gender/national principle which proscribes roles and hierarchies. Identity is claimed, group solidarity played-out and the identity principle maintained where power is at stake and in the function of power. The woman/feminine signifier serves as such as an alibi in fraternal struggles for control of the nation-state and national projects (Alarcon et al., 1999, p. 6). However, as we shall see in a number of texts in this volume, the feminine signifier also serves as a figure of resistance in these struggles. 2. Community vs. Society , In the study of gender/sex and nation, it is essential to keep in mind the distinction between community and society. A community is a vertical patriarchal construction claiming a self-referential genealogy in identity and re-configurating

Introductidn: - From Gender to Nation

one whenever needed..It is hierarchical and npnrdemocratic, arid does not r;ec-: ognize tirne,,.It;is a transmission of commands; inthe immediate mode; In a eQmrnur nitjf;(and.thiis,. within thenatipn), the communication betweenindi-Yiduals is al-, ways indirect and goes through a higher office.or principle (hegemonic idea,, or colonizing universal) with which some (the hegemonic group) can identify directly, but to which the. others can only be subjected. Those who,are not identical with/similar to the ruling subject have only dispersion, diversity and discontinuity at their disposal (threatening to transform the community into a society). They bring discontinuity into the picture by interrupting the established community selfidentity, both of the individual genealogical line (father's name) and of the Nation/State. This discontinuity is itself forced to affirm, through a symbolic twist, a symbolic continuity within and for the natural discontinuity of the masculine genealogy. The patriarchal system wants the masculine genealogy to be self-sufficient in reproducing the same, which of course it is not (because no exclusive genealogy is), but which it can pretend to,be thanks toits. dominant position. Society, on the other hand, is made up of individuals, (who can also,; but need not, be members of.vari.ous communities) who.are.in direct.contact witbeach. other and who recognize and accept each other's- differences. It is society,-not community that ;can open a public and.politica! space.. :..:,.!;; '.- ;. ': , r :;; ':;:; Identity and "ethnic" or "national" identity, in particular,:produce difference as inequality and are a result of inequality. States reproduce citizens and outsiders (Mostov, 1996a; Bose and Manchanda, 1997). Borders, meant to seal territories and identities, produce refugees and trans-border migrations. The Nation produces the borders (and vice versa), the non-nation and the marginal nation. Gender hierarchies among other things, as Ranabir Samaddar illustrates (1999), have an important role in the reconfiguration of the marginal nation in these processes of change. In the case of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, gender hierarchies and deeply anchored patriarchies at different levels sustained all of the post-socialist nationalisms. Gender and patriarchal hierarchies facilitated the reshuffling of the social structure, communal order and the state. These hierarchies were particularly welcome, as the previously existing social and political institutions collapsed along with the Yugoslav state. The patriarchal order represented the only continuity between the old regime and the new one and the main framework for transition, facilitating a basic and unproblematic consensus between the old and the new elites (often the same groups under new names, and even less democratically inclined). This consensus and passation de pouvoirs seemed necessary since there was no state, no civil society, no framework, nothing to hold things together, and a state of war. The patriarchal social order (which is far from concerning only women: it is the general social order) was readily available as a mechanism for social/political "reconstruction" (Ivekovic, 1999). A.common fate of .women as members .of the community, butnotequar political subjects in (ethno) national contexts is that while being held responsible for

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Radci Ivekovic and Julie Mostuv

viduajs into a maternal community (which can be a fraternity, group, secret society,'party, sect etc). The virile soldier desires revenge for injuries to the maternal l b6dy (NationY territory, borders, etc.), but also for vengeance against the "mother" vulnerable to violation. This maternal metaphor discloses the "unquestioned hierarchy", expressed as the hierarchy of the fraternity or of the community..The maternal body to which thefascist1 or simply the member of some intolerant group surrenders (paramilitary unit, army, organization, even in some .instances a sports club) is a' body/entity within which he is just 'apart as any other. Each of the members identifies with and interiorize's the vertical principle in order to be able to communicate with the others through that higher office (the leader; the idea; god etc.). He takes refuge in community (belonging) with others. According to Theweleit, the nation brings these units together, that is, the members find themselves yearning for union through the nation, as soldiers in the trenches found each other in "the unique-the nation" (Theweleit, 1989, Vol. 2, p. 79). In this context, the nation has in the first instance nothing to do with questions of national borders, forms of government, or so-called nationality. The concept refers to a quite specific form of male community, one that is "yearned for" for many a long year, that rises from the "call of the blood" like sexual characteristics, its essential features are incapable of being "learned" or "forgotten". The nation is a community of soldiers. (Theweleil, 1989, Vol. 2, pp. 79-31). This pattern of community is different for women, because they have a different genealogy. Women are born from the same sex and are oriented towards the other for their socialization (given the hierarchy of social values which is male - in patriarchy), while men are born of the other sex and are directed toward their own. What counts here is the identity principle, i.e. the principle of maintenance and reproduction of the same by the same within a controlled configuration of power. The ideal would be to not have to pass through the other in order to reproduce oneself. This is not yet feasible (short of cloning). Thus, as noted above "our" women are not excluded, but seen as internal others. As reproducers they cannot be excluded from the nation, but their birth-giving faculty must be controlled. 4. The Identity Principle Following this identity principle, men who choose to be nationalists (of course, not all men are nationalists) and who thereby choose to separate their own from other nations, claiming for it a special status, subordinate the other within. This involves the idea of rejecting one's own origin in difference (from the mother) and yearning, retrospectively, for self-made descent - the impossible self-birth, from the same sex/gender. Women, on the other hand, who choose the national-

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Introduction -From Gender to Nation

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ist camp and reject other nations must, at the same time, be oriented .towards the other socially (that is, the other sex/gender). The natural difference between the sexes is not seen as symmetrical or one of equivalence and potential equality-indifference, because this difference is informed by the historic dimension of gendering. Social hierarchies are projected onto a biological .difference, which-is essentialized. This naturalization allows gender hierarchies to operate very efficiently on the imaginary, symbolic and social levels in the way of globalized "universal".values, whereby the masculine is seen to be-both neutral and universal. This gender asymmetry marks patriarchal culture very strongly, and because of its cross-cultural dimension and its antiquity, its historicity has been lost sight of. Like any human institution,.it is also constructed, historic, social; imagined - but
r e a l . . : , .' . : . . .
:

: In the nation as. a community, women, subjugated within a hierarchy insuring power to some (to those. who; manage to impose their interest .as universal),- are paradoxically-invited :ljke anyone else to adhere to the pattern. For those men who accept the hierarchy (the brothers), it is easy to adhere to it-because they can identify, they find themselves naturally resembling'their ideal. For women (thoseAvhq choose;to:adhere, of course), this identification.is both necessary and impossible. Women dp notresemble the ideal. However hard they-identify,; they will never satisfy it, ;So-.they;h.ave to choose between being true ;to thenation (which amounts to being true to the father-figure) and being true to their own sex/gender. The nation itself involves contradiction as its constitutive condition, in that it assigns it (the contradiction) to its subalterns in general ("minorities", "ethnicities", etc.) and to women in particular- through the imposition of a double bind obligation. The double-bind situation makes one necessarily a traitor to one half of her double identity, and thus untrue to the common and "universal" ideal within the established hegemony. Men can never find themselves in this doublebind situation (in their capacity as men; though they can, as members of a minority group); for men the national and the sexual/gender identities coincide, and never appear as split. It is the masculine (patriarchal) "same" which is being reproduced. In this sense, man is "complete" and identical to himself only in his unity with the maternal body of the nation. Women cannot take part in the reproduction of this (patriarchal) sameness, unless they erase their own presence and role as individual, sex and gender: they will therefore be treated as matter, sheer body, or instrument, and will have to be silent in the way "Mother Nation" or "the Virgin" are: giving birth to nation-and-narration (i.e. to identity through language), or to logos - the word of God. Women's attachment to this national mythology is therefore a denial of their sexuality, alienation of pleasure (imagining herself as male or imagining the pleasure of male guardians/warriors), or sublimation of pleasure in the acts of reproducing and nurturing the nation's sons, tending to its wounded, remaining faithful to its protectors. While the "nation" or the "race" is the woman, its fantasized

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'' R a d a Ive-kc

"cleanliness", (lineage) is guaranteed only by masculine control .doon.qt be!png:to the.nation in. the same way .men ;do, beca active bearers or representatives. Moreover, as noted above . trust its women (andresents their vulnerability to sed.vaction/i J.atory ]policieS;Of the national-state;define the terms.of belons proper roles in the. national.hierarchy and the dynamic of pal :the-conditions of exclusion.; Trapped; within the boundarie : insider, the '.'disloyal"; or questionable Qt:h;er.(woman/ethnic sider, and risks the normative and legal consequences of this st; attachment to the nation is based as much on penalties of e; national myths of inclusion.

 I n t r o d u c t i o n - F r o m G e n d e r to N a t i o n

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seek to empty the public space of political subjects, to reduce the categories of political subjectivity, and to limit access to institutions of social power. The ethno national model of belonging (and exclusion) is based on acceptance of "natural" bonds and-roles (as:iii "natural'-' gender:-roles;in:sexuaI;reproduction) defined by traditiortiand interpreted by national.elites..This model:cannot;countenance ties based oiimutual.recognitibn among participants as competent choosers' drpolitic a l s u b j e c t s , i . e . d e m o c r a t i c c i t i z e n s . . ;..! : ; .; ;-.:; ; . : : ..,' '

On the otherhand, the historically, concurrent process of building "fortress Europe" on a "seciiritarian:corisensus"9presents another iteration.of this model: inclusion and^democratic. citizenship for member's.of the-European community; exclusion and forced belonging (to ethnic/refugee/racial communities of otherness) for "extra-communitarians". Any border defining activity sets up a process of inclusion and exclusion. The very logic of the modern construction of political agents in the liberal state offers the opportunity fore'xclusion and distortion in.-the-hands, of -those! who'rejeet its democratic potential as too uncertain/ 'uncontrolled,- egalitarian,: and 'open.-The desire to exclude and to reconfigure power as communal threatens to replace existing relationships of reciprocity and equality with ethnicized, hierarchical, sexualized relationships of belonging, in which patriarchs/elites .define the right, to citizenship in ethnic/gendered terms. - Thus, the nationalisms in the former Yugoslavia and other post communist countries parallel right wing movements in Europe and the U.S. and communalisms in South Asia. 5. Narration The ethno-national story is a closed narrative. It is a story in which the contents of the identity in question are given through the official version of a unique and absolute truth/event. All of the multiple possibilities of the event (which could have happened) are discarded and reduced to one sole interpretation, which fixes the official interpretation of the event into a "unique truth". The hope for a democratic alternative to this story remains in recognizing our histories, that is, our origins in alterity. Opening the past to multiplicity offers a chance for women to break the old patterns and create emancipatory practices and institutions for both women and men. The papers in this volume are a move in this direction, away from history as fatality to history as possibility; from hierarchical (gender/sexed/ethncized) community to complex, diverse society. The essays in this volume consider the significance of nation and gender in the context of post 1989 transitions in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and in

Balibar, Nous, citoyens d'Eitrope?Lesfmntiercs. i'Etat, lepeuple, Paris, la Decouverle, 2001; Brossat, L'Animal dempcratiqite. Notes sur la post-politique, Paris, Farrago, 2000.

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Rada lvekovic and 'Julie- Mostov

,the context,of post partition India, ;The;tex.ts engage in various; critiques of:the naturalization and essentialization of nation .and woman and explore the.uses of sexualized/gendered imagery in.defining the space of the nation (e.g.. feminized landscapes and battlefields) and sexualized/gendered metaphors of state fatherhood and motherhood in defining the distribution of power within that space. The particular histories of nationalism and partition are each different (Kumar, 20002001), but commonalities in narrative structures, state and nation-building strategies, patriarchal patterns of control, and mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are striking, particularly,,with respect to the ways inwhich exclusive national identities .are constituted through:gendered representations^hie.rarchies, and nar7 ratives. Indeed, all of the authors in.this anthology investigate, thepolitieal instrumentalization of this gendering in the service of a particular appropriation
of n a t i o n a l i d e n t i t y . .. . .-::,,' ..
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The essay.by Biljana Kasic explores the divergence between women's given and inherited roles in the context of the* predominant nationalistic discourse in Croatia, afte.r'the. breakdown -of Yugoslavia.; 'She,: asothersin the1 Volume, links representations of wornenhood to the identification of nationhood with; manhood. Kasic, Vesna Kesic, and. Tea Skokic all. detail .ways.-in which; idealized motherhood is involved.in,the;promotion:of national:herosi,mothers are.first celebrated for protecting-.them sons from the Yugoslav Army, then,; for sending them off to defend the Croatian homeland, and finally, for sacrificing them to the national interest. Urvashi Butalia, follows on this theme focusing on the Indian nationalist context, but tells us of a Kashmiri woman, Rajai Zameen, who unlike many others never accepted violence in the name of the Fatherland or of the Nation, to the point of not mourning the memory of her son killed as an extremist and terrorist. This woman resists both violence and a history given as destiny. Elena Gapova's essay on gender identities reinvented within the Belarusian national project highlights the complexity of gender construction as it intersects and serves in ethno(national) identity formation. In Belarus during the Soviet era, Russians represented the highest authority and, accordingly, the standard of "manhood". In comparison to this "true" manhood, Belarus manhood (the "weaker" manhood of a subaltern nation) was feminized. The new Belarus nationalist project sought to (re)construct its own manhood against this old notion and through new/ old gender stereotypes for the Belarus women. The national project, however, in defining itself in opposition to Russian domination has had to reconcile its recovery of traditional values with Western/European culture. Gender stereotypes have proved critical in these negotiations. Kumkum Sangari clearly outlines the contractions in affirming national identity through a mix of association and distancing from the Western ("modernizing projects") in her lucid study of reformulations of patriarchy in nationalist transactions around beauty contests and nuclear weapons. Vesna Kesic, recognizes identitiesas processes and tries to locate them within post-communist transition, itself an ongoing process. She clearly distinguishes

Introduction - From Gender to Nation

21

between the disintegration of the (Yugoslav) identity and the construction of new ,ones:(Croatian, in her example); She situates these processes in a comparison of gender-constructions in Yugoslavia-considering the "flattening" of gender differences in the.ideology of "brotherhood and unity" and self-management and the sharpening of gender differences, in the.Croatjan.transition tp ethnocracy/In the latter, we see again how nationalists.rely on reconstructed:national, myths; determinist.cultural projects, and demographic threats in the processes of identity formation, Tatjana Pavlovic examines the cultural stereotypes in the creation of pew state/national literature,and explores acts of resistance to .constricted cultural spaces, and dominant ethnicized/gendered constructions, of the national , .In her .essay ;O,n Latvia, Irina Novikova writes aboutthe clash between a once dominant .nationality (Russian) and the newly, emerging dominant nationality (Latvian) in the .process of "post-Soviet nationalization". Like. Gapova, she examines how the.fprces of exclusion and marginalization,have shaped national identities and. hpw^tbe historical context (Soviet, and post:Soviet) has affected the modalities of women's subordination and identification as" members of the new, majority or minority nationalities. In the.process of identifying with "their" collectivity, \y.qmen. are .identified as "other" by the dominant male discourse and practice. Tea Skokic.looks at a similar scheme in her essay, through interviews with women displaced by the "homeland" war in Croatia. In state and nationbuilding projects, women may be "liberated" from the Other, to be dominated from within. Or, in displacement women may find some autonomy and then risk new exclusions in a newly configured community, at the hands of new national guardians. Ritu Menon's paper goes to the heart of the question: do women have a country? Women are included in the nation as subaltern. The Indian examples are telling: after partition which included a wide range of atrocities, "ethnic" and religious cleansing, large scale deportations, mass rapes, and abductions of women, India and Pakistan divided or shared their goods, and women were among those goods, as property of the nation. After the violence, the two countries agreed that no one would be taken away against her/his will. Yet, at the same time the two countries came to another agreement that violated this fundamental rale:-, wpmen (and minors under 16) were to be forcefully returned to their families (even when they didn't want to be or when their relatives rejected them), that is, returned to their "proper" religious community. Thus, the category of "abducted" women was created, to include women who had ended up in the "wrong" community even as a result of their own will. According to Menon, "Belonging" for women is also - and uniquely - linked to sexuality, honor, chastity; family, community and country must agree on both their acceptability and legitimacy, and their membership within the fold.

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Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mosto\

:The.JNation - the community - decides whether one of its parts belongs.; It is the masculine nation, thought as nation.tout court. Elisabeth List approaches these complex issues of subordinated inclusion from an analysis of the dominant theoretical paradigm of the modern nation-state. She derives the inferior condition of women from the same conditions, which govern (modern) rationality and: links the individual self to'the collective identities (ethnicities/nationalities) within a historic framework.,It is this situation,in which a dominant identity is built on the exclusion of the other (as in the subordination of women to men) that produces cultures of violence: The way put of .this dilemmais acceptance of .heterogeneity, :that is, acceptance of a civilizational choice distinctly different.than the one, which has so far prevailed: in the world;., ; , , ,.i . Dasa Duhacek takes a similar approach, applying it to the Serbian/Yugoslav case. Duhacekrecognizes that "the very discourse of political subjectivity which women and feminists'have adopted is unavoidably and necessarily a part-of the installation of the model they oppose - the model of the nation-state". While national/political citizenship is a site of patriarchal regulatory policies, she notes that it can also be a site of subversion. Recounting the activities of feminist groups and anti-war activities, she alert us to ways-in which "nation" and "state" can be contested through women's locaf networks and feminist interventions in the dominant male discourse. Women can and do create social spaces for contestations and resistance. In theorizing the interdependence of nation/gender/ sexuality, each of the essays in this volume suggests - implicitly or explicitly alternative emanicipatory paths for women in the context of nation and state building, or the very transformation of these activities. 6. Perspectives We have tried in this book to analyze the relationship between two important identity constructions, which are obviously interlinked. The construction of gender has a much longer history, indeed, and is generally used as a pattern for all social hierarchies. It has a very special relationship with nation building because this is the identity, among others, to which gender has lent most explicitly and directly its terminology and its conceptual framework. Since the common terminology is so widely shared and highly sexuated and gendered (consider, for example, birth, origin, sex, woman, father, mother, brothers, sons, family, commu-, nity, body, sacrifice, virtue, honour, and love) it is difficult to separate the two orders (nation and gender). Thus, they appear as naturally related. This volume offers specific cases of this historic relationship and, at the same time, suggests a resolution of patriarchy in favor of full equality, liberation and emancipation for women. That would have, of course, an immediate bearing on the construction of the nation and of the state, intolerable for patriarchy. If the nation and gender are historically interrelated, and if patriarchy is maintained through nation build-

Introduction - From'Gender to Nation ing;: the prqbjejn of patriarchy cannot be splYedvyithoutundermining theco;nrstiri;ition of the nation. It.is,;aftenall, ;both jts.principal, instrument:and its building material, and .$Q its junction and condition, -.;..: ,-i ..,:....:;.' .].:]-.'. ,:' : ;;. That is, maintaining patriarchy is not only the: willful activity of (some) men, but also, and more fundamentally, the -fruit- of a larger system of hierarchies and dominance,.whichiiises the subordination of.women to mentis its cornerstone. Sexual analogies and gendered language serve to transform the consensually accepted global subordination of women to men into other hierarchies (based on age, class, race, international relations, etc.). A gender sensitive analysis of the mechanism of nation and state building is, thus, also an analysis of the mechanism of-patriarchy, Feminist critiques of the nation offer ;a. particularly critical and far-reaching analysis of the relationships of power involved in the state and nation-building projects. The critique is, at the same time;:a"dismantling of these power relations. When; the nation can no longer rely upon the hierarchy of gender, its identity principle and claim for continuity will be shattered, and with it, a powerful form of domination. The two processes, however, are not identical and move at different rates of speed. The transformation.of genderrelations is much .:s!ower(or rnore:-s!*Qwly perceived because of patriarchal resistance and obfuscation of symbolic values) than the transformation of nation, which is,: after ally a modern formation. This is one reason why the twoiprocesses.are not transparent to each other and why they may clash with one another. The recent events of 1989 and also those of the end of the colonial era exemplify these conflicts. The authors of this volume confront these clashes and see the entanglement of these processes not as a deadlock, but rather as a challenge for theory and practice. A general abdication of the dominant schools of psychoanalysis and philosophy has accompanied attempts to come to terms with capitalist globalization after 1989 (starting an era of post-socialism and a new phase of revised postcolonialism) and renouncements of the dominant schools of political thought have followed the supposed triumph of the neo-liberal option and the obvious failure of the Welfare State, the Socialist State, and of the first (secular) Post-Colonial State (these three being parallel and linked). But such abdication or renouncement is not the affair of our authors. ' State-building theories, nationalist ideas, and hierarchical ideologies preoccupied with maintaining power have been proposed as replacements for these "failures" of the 20"1 Century, offering up various "new traditional" proposals and temporary ad hoc solutions which lead to ethnocracies, populist governments, and discard for any social concerns, regardless of the human price (just a war here and there, at the peripheries). The authors in this book; however, are not to be duped. It is clear to them that they can neither adhere to the abdication of one philosophy or another taking up no project at all, nor accept the seemingly single (re)emergent "project" - the nationalist project. Instead, they take an active attitude of resistance rejecting

24

Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov

the idea that we are condemned to the basically unjust situation imposed on us. They transcend the ethnic and nationalist view. Together with other authors working on these topics (many of whom for good reasons are women), they contribute elements to a new conceptual framework for rethinking gender relations within the process of reconfiguring and redefining the gender relationship underlying'other hierarchies.It is extremely difficult to think from within an ongoing process, this is why the authors deserve credit for their daring, which'is heavily based in the field of women's and gender studies, as well as on the study of transitions (post-colonial and post-socialist). Being able to think about these processes will soon be one of the crucial instruments not merely of understanding our. times, but also of actively projecting a just and democratic future for everyone.

REFERENCES

N. Alarcon, C. Kaplan and M. Moallem, introduction: Between Woman and Nation, in C, Kaplair, N. Alcaron and M. Moallem (eds.), Between.Wo.man and Nation: Natiqiialr ism, Transnational Feminism, and the State, Durham (NC), Duke University Press, 1999. E: Balibxirand I; Wal'lerstein (eds;), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, London, Verso, 1996. . E. Balibar, Nous, citoyens d'Europe? Lesfrontieres, I'Etat, lepeuple, Paris, la Decouverte,
2001.

i> ;
s

'

%[

T. K. Bose and R. Manchanda (eds.), States, Citizens and Outsiders. The Uprooted People of South Asia, Kathmandu-Calcutta, SAFHR (South Asia Forum for Human Rights), J977. A. Brossat, L'Animal democratique. Notes sur la post-politique, Paris, Farrago, 2001. U. Butalia, The Other Side of Silence. Voices from the Partition of India, New Delhi, Viking, 1998. E. Canetti, Masse et puissance, (trans. R. Roving), Paris, Gallimard, 1966, p. 138. V. Das, Critical Events. An Anthropological Perspective in Contemporary India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1995. C. Guiliaumin, Sexe, Race et Pratique dupouvoir. L'Ide'e de nature, Paris, Cote-Femmes, 1992. M. Hasan (ed.), Invented Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2000. R. Ivekovic, Autopsia dei Balcani. Saggio di psico-politica, Milan, Raffaello .Cortina, 1999. German edition Auwpsie des Balkans. Ein psycho-politischer Essay, (trans, from French by liona Seidel), Graz, Literaturverlag Droschl, 2001 a.

U ^ 'J
x' *".

i
" Jf?

Introduction - From Gender to Nation

"

25

R : Ivekovic, Geschleehterdifferenz und nationale-Differenz, in Chantal Mouffe and Jiirgen Trinks (eds.), Fein'mistischeperspektiven, Wien, Turia-Kant, 2001b, pp. J40-58. D. Kandiyoti (ed.), Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 6, Part 4, special issue on "Gender and
Nationalism",October2000. ' '' -:-.

R.Konstantinqvic, Filozofyapalanke, Belgrade, Nolit, 1981 (first ed. 1969). R. Kumar, Divideand Fall?- Bosnia in the Annahof Partition, London, Verso, 1998. :R. Kumar,. Setrjing-Partition Hostilities: Lessons Learnt,, -the. Options .-Aheady-an TransEuropeennes, Nos. 19-20,2001; pp. 9-25..- ,
:

M::lylaxndimi, When Victims Become Killers, Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton : (NJ.); Princeton University Press, 2001.

R. Menpn (ed,), Interventions. International Journal of Post- Colonial Studies, Special Topic: The Partition of the Indian Sub-Continent, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1999. R. Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries. Women in India' Partition, New Brunswick, (N.J.), Rutgers University Press, 1998. G. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe, New York, Howard Fertig, 1985. J. Mostov, "Our Woinen'V'Their Women": Symbolic Boundaries, Territorial Markers and Violence in the Balkans*, in Peace and Change, Vol. 20, No. 4, October 1995, J. Mostov, ndangered Citizenship*, in M, Kraus and R. Liebowitz (eds.), Russia and Eastern Europe After Communism, New York, Westview, 1996a. J. Mostov, La formation de i'ethnocratie*, in TransEuropeennes, No. 8, 1996b, pp. 35-44. J. Mostov, Sexing the nation/Desexing the body, in T. Mayer (ed.), Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, New York, Routledge, 2000. R. Samaddar, The Marginal Nation. Transformer Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, New Delhi-London, Sage Publication, 1999. K. Sangari and S. Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, New Brunswick (N.J.), Rutgers University Press, 1990. K. Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Vol. -2, (trans. Erica Carter and Chris Turner), Minneapolis (MN), Minnesota University Press, 1989. N. Yuval-DavisandF. Anthias (eds.), Woman-Nation-State, London, Macmilian, 1989.

Peace & Change

Volume 20 Number 4, October 1995

Contents
A )()! Tt,W.' Of PFJCH RBIMPt

Peace and War Issues: Gender,.Race, and Ethnicity in Historical Perspective

CO-EXECUTIVE EDITORS SCOTT L. BILLS
Stephen E Austin State University David Lukowitz Hamline University

Editors'Introduction
,

: : . : HARRIETHYMANALONSO
;;

Christopher M o o r e CDR Associates, Boulder, CO ' Meivin Small Wayne State Uniwrsity E. Timothy Smith Barry University Metla Spencer University of Toronto Carolyn Stephenson University of Hawaii Peter van d e n Dungren University of Bradford .-..'. ....:..

JOHN WHITECLAY CHAMBERS II

403,

SUDARSHAN KAPOOR
California Stale University, Fresno

MANAGING EDITOR K. MICHELE SPARKS

Stephen F Austin Slate University

BOARD OF EDITORS
Chadwick AIg*er ' Ohio Slate University Barton Bernstein Stanford University Donald Birn SUMY, Albany Clise Boulding ' inlcrnalional Peace Research Association Sandi Cooper City University of New York Lloyd Dumas University of Texas, Dallas Frances Early Mount Saint Vincent University Karl Roll University of Bremen Herbert Kelman Harvard University Louis Kriesberg Syracuse University Lester Kurtz University of Texas, Austin George Lopez University of Noire Dame Nadine Lubekki-Bemard Free University of Brussels ' .

Feminist Inventions in the Art of Peacemaking: A Century Overview . ELISE BOULDING . : Foreshadowings: Jane Addariis, Emily Greene Balch, and the EcQfeminJsm/Pacifist Feminism of the 1980s
ANNE MARIE POIS

408

...... 439

Lawrence Wittner SUhK, Albany ' .'...'. Beverly Woodward International Nonviolent Initiatives Waltfiam, MA -

"Binding Themselves the Closer to Their Own Peculiar Duties": Gender and Women's Work for Peace, 1818-1860
!i

WENDY E. CIIMIELEVSKI'

'

....

466

German Pacifist Womenrini^ Exile, 1933-1945 BOARD EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

M a r y Alice Budge Ymmgsloam State University H e i d i A. Burgess University of Colorado J e f f r e y P. K i m b a l l Miami University Robbie Lieberman Southern Illinois Universtiy Cynthia Maude-Gembler Syracuse University ;
:

,-KARLHOLL

.491

' - ' ; ..:..-. ::.:. .: : :

;1

Trafficking in Women's Bodies, Then and Now: The Issue of Military "Comfort Women" >
.-.-: KAZUKO WATANABE 501

.-

"pur Women"/"Their Women": Symbolic Boundaries, Territorial Markers, and Violence in'the Balkans
. : 'JULIE MOSTOV . . . . . . ...515

A m b a s s a d o r J o h n W. M c D o n a l d ( C h a i r ) ' Institute for Multi-Trflck.Diplomacy i: : James R. Scarritt University of Colorado . Geoffrey S. Smith Queen's University, Ontario Michael True AssurnjHhtt College '." '

Notes on Authors Index

^0 532

For SAGE Periodicals Press: D. J. Peck, Mary Williams, and Palrick Harbula

Sage Periodicals Press

A Division of SAGE Publications, Inc. Thousand Oaks London New Delhi

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PEACE & CHANGE / October 1995

8. Kim Yonja's speech was given at the Human Rights World Conference in Vienna in 1992; see also Women's Human Rights Committee of Japan, ed., Joseino Jinken Ajia Hotei [Women's Human Rights Asian Tribunal] (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 1994), 123. ; 9. Many books on this subject are available in Japanese. This article is based mostly on Suzuki Yuko's books as well as herspeeches.SeeSuzukiYuko./tt^un/an/K/oA'awenXejtion [Military Comfort Women and Marriage between Japanese and Koreans] (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1992); idem, Chosenjin Jugun lanfu; and Suzuki Yuko, "Jugun lanfu" Mondai to Sei Bouryoku [ "Military Comfort Women " Issues and Sexual Violence] (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1994).. 10. "Women's Human Rights, Committee of Japan," ed., "Tokyo Declaration of: Women's Human Rights Asian Tribunal," in Women's Human Rights Asian Tribunal(Tokyo:; Akashishoten, 1994), 234-41. 11. Lisa Go's speech was given at the symposium on "Violence against Women and Women's Human Rights" held at the Kyoto YWCA in March 1994. :, 12. Abe Yuko, "Struggle with Trafficking in Women: From Activities of 'Mizura'," in : Josei/Bouryolai/Jinken [Women/Violence/Human Rights], ed. Kazuko Watanabe (Tokyo:; ; Gakuyo shobo, 1994), 156-66. 13. Asian Tribunal: International Public Hearing on Traffic in Women and War Crimes; / against Asian Women, proceedings compiled by the Women's Human Rights Committee of; Japan, March 1994. ' ' 14. Ibid. ~ 15. Fukushima Mizuho, interview with the author, April 1992. 16. Yuko, "Struggle with Trafficking in Women." 17. Zainippon Chousenminshu Josei Dome! [People's Republic of Korea Resident in Japan Women's Association], ed., Chosenjin "lanfu" [Korean "Comfort Women"] (Tokyo: Zainippon Chousenminshu Josei Domei Chuqjonin Jinkai,1992). 18. Yun Chung-ok, "Chosenjin Jugun lanfu" ["Korean Military Comfort Women"], in Chosenjin Jugun lanfu Mondai Shiryoshu [Collection of Papers on Korean Military Comfort Women], vol. 3: 194-202 (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1992); 'Teishintai Shuzaiki" ["Survey of Teishintai"], in Chosenjin Josei ga mita "lanfu Mondai" [Korean Women's View of "Comfort Women" Issue] (Tokyo: Sanichi shobo, 1992), 11-94. 19. Shukan Post [The Weekly Post] survey, February 28, 1992. A well-known essayist, Kamisaka Fuyuko, wrote that the institution of comfort women was a necessary evil to protect respectable women from sexual abuse by Japanese soldiers. ; 20. Kim Puja, "Korean Comfort Women Issues Seen from Women's Movement in Korea," in Chosenjin Josei ga mita "lanfu Mondai," 194-202. 21. Watanabe, "Militarism, Colonialism and Trafficking of Women." 22. Union Purple Fighting against Sexual Harassment, ed., "Totugeki Ichiban" wa Ikiteita! Okamoto Kyudan ["Attack Champion" Alive! Protest against Okamoto Manufacturer] (pamphlet, 1993). : 23. Takasato Suzuyo, "Military Bases: Violence against Women," in Josei/Bouryoku/ Jinken, 178-93; Takasato SuzUyo, "Okinawa in the Military Base," in Joseino Jinken Ajia . Hotei, 95-103. 24. Ibid.; see also "Foreign News: Okinawa Forgotten Island," Time, November 28,1949, 20-21. 25. Suzuyo, "Military Bases," 178. . ' 26. United Nations, "Vienna Declaration and Program of Action," para. 9 (June 1993).

This essay explores the ways in which traditional gender roles and patriarchal culture play a part in the violent map-making of ethnonationalism. With special reference to the former Yugoslavia, it looks at how boundaries designed to protect can, at the same time, be barriers to peace and security and tools of exclusion and aggression as women's bodies themselves become boundaries of the nation. Not only are women's bodies symbols cfthefecundicity cf the nation and the vessels for its reproduction, but they are also territorial markers. The feminization of territorial and symbolic space, however, also suggests a subversive role for women in resisting the imposed boundaries of ethnonationalism and creating alternative , identities and spaces.

"OUR WOMEN'V'THEIR WOMEN" Symbolic Boundaries, Territorial Markers, and Violence in the Balkans by Julie Mostov Boundaries form indispensable protections against violation and ;, violence; but the divisions they sustain in doing so also carry cruelty and violence..... Boundaries both foster and inhibit freedom, they ; both protect and violate life.1 In the Balkans and, particularly, in the former Yugoslavia, activities aimed at securing, contesting, or expanding existing territorial boundaries comprise an important part of ethnonational programs. Competing for political power, would-be national leaders embellish; the wrongs and bemoan the hardships suffered by "their" people against a historical backdrop of disputed borders and conflicting claims to territories "won or lost" in past wars. They redraw contested borders and promise to secure proper ones, by force if necessary. Or they point to the plight of co-nationals living outside, of the existing borders. They warn of possible losses of territory or tantalize with possible gains. The redrawing of territorial boundaries to realize the congruence of nation and state,2 particularly when the presumed boundaries of the nation are the myths and memories of the dominant ethnic
PEACE & CHANGE, Vol. 20 No. 4, October 1995 515-529 i 995 Peace History Society and Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development 515

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PEACE & CHANGE / October 1995 Mostov/VIOLENCE IN THE BALKANS 517

group,3 involves what Katherine Verdery calls a "homogenizing, differentiating, or classifying discourse."4 It involves a kind of map-making that draws boundaries among people, either separating them from one another or pulling them together under one roof. It corrals people into newly constructed and constricting boundaries, inevitably stripping them of attachments and identities and imposing new ones.5 Thus boundaries designed to protect can, at the same time, be barriers to peace and security. They can be tools of violent exclusion and aggression. This essay explores the ways in which traditional gender roles and patriarchal culture play a part in the construction of such barriers and the violent map-making of ethnonationalisms. References are primarily to the former Yugoslavia, but the arguments apply to other countries in the region as well. Symbolically, religion, language, gender, and in particular proper gender roles become boundaries in the national iconography. Women's bodies themselves become boundaries of the nation. Not only are women's bodies symbols of the fecundity of the nation and the vessels for its reproduction, but they are also territorial markers. Mothers, wives, and daughters designate the space of the nation and are, at the same time, the property of the nation. As markers and as property, mothers, daughters, and wives require the defense andprotection of patriotic sons.

MYTH-MAKING AT BORDERS

The desire to make boundaries irreversible and to reiterate their "naturalness," which is part of the double process of state- and nation-building, makes recourse to the storehouse of national mythologies particularly appealing. Images drawn from epic tales and folklore, popularized in newly composed songs and in political speeches, trace the primordial, eternal nature of the nation and its battle against enemies. These images transfer the conflicts with "others" from the sphere of mere politics, economics, and history to the otherworldly sphere of myth. For example, Serbian warriors are portrayed as epic heroes fighting for sacred national values. But

there is more to it. They are also waging a war for humanity against the "infidel." They are of epic proportion, and their adversaries are less than human, even monsters.6 . The role of boundaries in national mythology (in songs, poetry, and literature) has often served to demarcate differences and to extend them to the symbolic realm as well as to erase geographic borders separating members of the nation.7 The mythology of border areas in which members of the nation are constantly faced with the threat of physical or rrioral(cultural) attacks by outsiders has figured significantly in the inflammatory politics of nationalist leaders in the borderlands (Krajina), populated by Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.8 According to one of the leading politicians among Bosnian Serb nationalists, Biljana Plavsic, the inhabitants of these borderlands have "developed and sharpened a highly sensitized ability to perceive threats to the nation and to develop protective mechanisms." Noting that it has always been said in her family that Serbs in Bosnia were better Serbs than were those in Serbia, she added that, as with all living organisms, those species that live near and are threatened by others are best able to adapt and survive.9 . Tales and songs about border spaces are filled with warnings of external threats, bravery and bravado, and illicit crossings or transgressions. Popular among these tales are those that tell of the abduction of young girlswhisked away, seduced, or violently torn from their homelands. Such stories reveal the vulnerability or porousness of national boundaries. These stories highlight danger and opportunities for heroism and appeal to fantasies about the enemy. The erotic image of the enemy is tied to the transgression of borders: physical boundaries arid cultural boundaries. Crossing the border, the "alien" bandit attempts to take something away or to invade the "national" space.10 At the same time, each side fantasizes about invading the space of the other, stealing the identity of the alien society and installing its own culture. Border fantasies develop with the gendering of boundaries" and spaces (landscapes, farmlands, and battlefields)12 and with the collectivizing of "our women" and "their women." Feminine spaces are invaded (or filled) by masculine actors. The nation is adored and adorned, made strong and bountiful or raped and

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Mostov/VIOLENCE IN THE BALKANS

519

^rr

defiled, its limbs torn apart, its womb invaded. The vulnerahm* andseductxvenessofwomer^ordersrequirethevigiWoT^^ guards they also entice combatants into battle. It if S ^ S

medconflic

REPRODUCING THE NATION: PRESERVING ITS NUMBERS Women are biological reproducers of group members, of the ethnonation. They bear sons to fight and daughters to care for the motherland. Women who resist this role are deemed selfish, unwomanly, and unpatriotic; women who have abortions are, above all, traitors. Given the importance of demographic renewal in the struggles among contending ethnonational groups in the region, abortion is presented as a serious threat to the nation. Warnings of the symbolic and demographic consequences of such action abound in the rhetoric of national spokespersons (and are rarely publicly contested by male members of civic opposition groups).13 According to the Croatian ruling party, for example, "A fetus is also Croat"an innocent member of Mother Croatia.14 Croatian President Franjo Tudjman blamed the tragedy of the Croatian nation on "women, pornography, and abortion." Women who have abortions are "mortal enemies of the nation," and their gynecologists are "traitors." Their acts are appalling as they act to hinder "the birth of little Croats, that sacred thing which God has given society and the homeland." Women who have not given birth to at least four children are scolded as "female exhibitionists" who have not fulfilled their "unique sacred duty."15 The Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle, in his widely broadcast Christmas message of 1995, warned that the low birthrate among Serbs was a "plague" visited on the nation. He also declared that women were too interested in enjoying themselves and not willing to bear and raise children because it might threaten their comfortable lives. He went on to say that "many mothers who had not wanted to have more than one child were now pulling out their hair

and bitterly weeping over the loss of their only children in the war, often cursing God and others for that but forgetting to blame themselves for not bearing more children who could remain to comfort them. When they come before the final judgment, those mothers who didn't allow their children to be born will meet these children up above and they will then ask them: Why did you kill us, why didn't you give birth to us?"16 He added that if the birthrate did not increase significantly in 10 years, Serbs would be a national minority in their own country and then would have nothing to say about their own fate. Hungarian nationalists have also: tied abortion to the "death of the nation." Abortion is described as a "national catastrophe." According to one article, "Four million Hungarians . . . had been killed by abortion in the thirty-five years of the liberal abortion policies of the Communists," more than had been killed at the famous battle of Mohacs against theTurks in 1526. Susan Gal, who cites this article, notes the choice of words: "not fetuses or even people, but Hungarians."17---' :: :;i :c n; Women as mothers are reproducers of the nation, but they are also potential enemies of and traitors to their nation, collaborators in its death. The other's women are enemies as reproducers, multiplying the number of outsiders, conspiring to dilute and destroy the nation with their numerous offspring. (Both Croats and Serbs warn of the rapid increase inBirthrates of local Muslims and Albanians.)18 Thus, while "our" women are to be revered as mothers, all women's bodies must be controlled. Because the ethnonational concept of nation defines the community as a family*motherhood and reproduction must be supervised by the guardians of thenation. Women's bodies as incubators are instrumental to the maintenance of the external and internal boundaries of the nation.

NURTURING THE NATION: PRESERVING ITS DISTINCTTVENESS Women serve as custodians of national values, as signifiers of the boundaries of group identity, marking its difference from alien

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Mostov / VIOLENCE IN THE BALKANS 521

others." Women preserve traditions in the home, observe dietary and other rituals, and, through their chastity and modesty, reflect the virtue of the nation. Proper roles for women are dictated by the situation: wife, mother, long-suffering victim; nurse and comforter; woman-warrior. Women are to be warm, tender, sensitive, sympathetic, and caring; yet, in the absence of males, they must be ready to protect the nation. A women's battalion that fought at the front in Krajina is said to have been formed by women ashamed that able-bodied men were resisting mobilization, dodging the war like traitors (much like the legendary traitor of Serbian folklore, Vuk Brankbvic, who is said to have fled the battlefield and left Serbian King Lazar to fight alone against the Turks in the battle of Kosovo, 1389).20 Paired with epic heroes are brave mothers who sacrifice their sons and husbands for the nation and tend the wounds of the fallen warriors and faithful wives who keep the hearth burning and who bear the future generation of heroes. Women in mourning, peasant women forced out of their homes, women refugees packed into trucks with crying children, on the other hand, are symbols of the national tragedy and reasons for national revenge. Women professionals and other modern urban residents are left out of the nati onal imagery of womanhood. The healthy outdoor girls, portrayed as the admiring girlfriends of the patriotic soldiers or paramilitary forces, are not "feminists," or weak city girls, but rather are physically and morally strong symbols of the purity and vitality of the nation".21 The "healthy" girls sitting in Pale (once a resort village on the outskirts of Sarajevo, now Bosnian Serb headquarters), or peasant mothers tied to the hearthrather than those women who once sat in the offices, libraries, cafes, and clubs in Sarajevorepresent the primordial roots and natural character of the nation.22 City life holds too many temptations and too many opportunities for boundary crossings. Women who fail to observe the borders, who transgress them through mixed marriages and other personal relationships or who engage in activities that otherwise push them to the margins of the community, are castigated. Women critical of ethnonational leaders or active in the peace movements in the former Yugoslavia and

feminist organizations are good examples. They are dehumani^ in public discourse because they lack a national identity, w h i d y v the essence of one's being. For example, an article in the ZagV*1S daily, Globus, labeled as "witches" five women who dared to critical of the policies of the ruling party in Croatia and publi, questioned its censorship policies. The headline stated, "Croatj? y Feminists Rape Croatia!" The author of the article was careful ian point out their "failures" to marry Croatians, to remain many to or to have children. Clearly, they were women with idenj. ' y problems.23 ; On the other hand, women become national heroines throh suicide or martyrdom. A Belgrade magazine reported the story1^ Dragana, a mother of two who "acted like a real hero at a torh chamber in Bbsanski Brodshe shot herself in the mouth."24 re

WOMEN AS BATTLEGROUND

Since 1989; a common complaint of ethnonational leaders . Eastern Europe has been that communism Jmposed an artifi^ ^ identity on members of the nation, degrading or denying the tf ticular genius of their respective nations and encouraging a kin^ ^r" ethnic blending. In the former Yugoslavia, many have playecj this theme, arguing that an artificial "Yugoslav" identity robl n many of them of their real identities, Serbs and Croats neea recover their links to their own cultures and revive the uni^ qualities of their respective peoples. New Serbs or Croats or R^ue niahs would have to learn to imagine themselves not as YugosJ os~ avs but as members of a recovered nation. ^ This process of national recovery and "self-determination^ understood in such a way that it appears inevitably linked to arj is ned conflict. Claims to territory and sovereignty tied to redefined' tional identities are successfully asserted only by joining in na ~ ancient battles of one's ancestors. Through warfare, members oj, nation reconstitute their identity by brutally drawing the bound^ v e between themselves and others. Blood defines the boundary n e s each community and seals the borders..

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Confirming the naturalness of these new-old divisions and the continuity of the national struggle, contemporary warriors are said to fight alongside their noble "ancestors." Thus today's soldiers are described as "links" in a genetic chain, inheritors of battlegrounds and enemies. Serbian mythology, for example, stresses this notion of the intimate link between the living and the dead. This relationship is tied to the idea of sacred places where the blood of ancestors has been spilled and their bodies have been laid to rest. Ancestral soilearth mixed with the bones of previous warriorsor the graves and the remains of fallen heroes become symbolic as well as territorial markers. The ethnonational leader draws from this mythology and the ritual reuniting of soil and bones. Thus, in 1989, the bones of King Lazar, a famous Serbian hero who died in the fourteenth-century battle of Kosovo against the Turks, were carried around to the Orthodox, monasteries and finally brought to rest in Kosovo, retracing the territory of the Serbian national community and asserting the " 'fact' that Kosovo has always been the cradle of 'that which is Serbian.'"25 The "being" or essence of the nation is carried by male warriors, planted in the soil through their bones, and is passed to new generations through their semen. (Under the inspiration of a patriotic program at a refugee camp, one author went so far as to say that a feeling for the traditional metric verse of epic poems is "inborn" in the Serbian genetic code.26) Nationalist ideology thus assigns active roles, "subject positions," to men who will wage war, protecting and expanding their territory and possessions. It is over and through the feminine body that they pursue these goals. They forge their identities as males, as agents of the nation, over the symbolic and physical territory of the feminine "homeland." The latter must be secured and protected from transgression, for it holds the seeds and blood of past and future warriors. Over and through the actual bodies of women who , reproduce the nation, men define its physical limits and preserve its sanctity. Over the battleground of women's bodies, borders are transgressed and redrawn.

The genetic material of the nation is supplied by men while women provide the vessel in which the nation and its treasure grow. This idea of women as containers and nurturers is linked with the spatial imagery of women as landscape over which soldiers march, as fields to harvest, as a natural resource, as territory to protect, as land that could be seized or invaded. The use of women in "symbolically marking the boundary of the group makes them particularly susceptible" to control strategies organized from within to maintain and defend the boundaries and vulnerable to violence from without designed to invade and violate these lines of demarcation.27 The combination of roles assigned to women and patriarchal perceptions of women as susceptible ito seduction heightens the sense of women's vulnerability and thus the vulnerability of "our" land, our possessions, our culture, and our values. At the same time, the positioning of women as objectscontainers, transmitters, and symbols of nationhoodenhances the temptation to contest and degrade the othei'by violating "his" woman. ,

:;:: '- ; "'

-' : --'" ;.. ^ R A P E OF T H E N A T I O N

- The personification of nature as female translates easily to that of nation as woman, that is, as a woman's body that is always in danger of violation by foreign males.28 According to V. Spike Peterson, "Natibh-as-woman expresses a spatial, embodied femaleness: the land's fecundity, upon which the people depend, must be protected by defending the body/nation's boundaries against invasion and violation. But nation-as-woman is also a temporal metaphor: The rape of the body/nation not only violates frontiers but disrupts-by planting alien seed or destroying reproductive viabilr itythe maintenance of the community through time." She adds that in this "patriarchal metaphor is the tacit agreement that men who cannot defend their woman/nation against rape have lost their 'claim'to that body, that land."29 Actual women's bodies are important here as part of a collective body. The nationalist discourse denies the specificity of female

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experience by giving larger symbolic meanings to the signifier of rape; that is, Bosnia (Croatia, Serbia) is being violated by the Serbian (Muslim, Albanian) rapist.30 Because the nation itself is at stake, the crime of rape does not acquire meaning until it is committed by a foreign intruder. Thus women are perceived as victims of oppression and brutality, but only at the hands of other nationalities.31 Within the nation, women are seen as the property of fathers, husbands, or brothers and as national resources or, in Meredith Tax's words, as "fields to be sown,"32 A woman who has been raped is devalued property, and she signals defeat for the man who fails in his role as protector. So, raping the other's women is a violation of territorial integrity, an act of war, a means of establishing jurisdiction and conquest. The territory/property of the "enemy males" is occupied through the "colonization" of female bodies. Rape is an invasion of the other's territory and a sign of his impotency. Men who cannot prevent the rape of "their" women are defeated as on the battlefield. They have failed to protect their borders. The humiliation of men, whose women have been raped, is an important motivating factor. For the ethnonational leaders bound on changing the territory of their nation, rape becomes an instrument for permanently changing the ethnic makeup of the land. Under the much-abused notion of national self-determination, the brutality in "ethnic cleansing" is aimed at ensuring the irreversibiliry of any population changes necessary to majority control.33 Accepting the "tacit agreement" of the patriarchal metaphor, men would not return to the place where "their" women were raped and humiliated. Another way of putting this is that the terrain of women's bodies is seen as a battlefield over which the identities of the other can be destroyed. Rape at once pollutes and occupies the territory of the nation, transgresses its boundaries, defeats its protectors. Degrading the nation's symbol of fertility and purity, it physically blocks its continuity and threatens its existence. Such rape thus promises . to "cleanse" the territory of the other and make it ours. In a war in which major goals are articulated in terms of map-making, it follows a frighteningly logical strategy.

The female body as a spoil of war becomes a territory whose borders spread through the "birth of an enemy son." Given the traditional notions expressed in warrior mythology of the male as the bearer of the genetic "stuff' of the nation and the female as property and a vessel in which sons and daughters of the nation grow, men become owners of the territory/womb as well as owners of the children women carry. This is expressed in the words of a rapist, reported by survivors in Bosnia: "You have an enemy child in your womb. One day my child will kill you ."w In one act, a rapist can defeat the male enemy, invade and conquer the other's territory/nation, and advance his own nation. This does not suggest that the thousands of rapes committed in the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia were directly motivated by such elaborate analysis, but it places them in a context of images familiar to people in the region. The words of perpetrators reported by witnesses and survivors and the public responses of leaders to these accounts lead us to believe that these acts were, to a large extent, undertaken, encouraged, and understood in such terms.35

NATIONAL ROMANCE WITH

As symbols of national tragedy and reasons for national revenge, women who weie brutally raped in the Bosnian war have continued to suffer more abuse in the Service of nationhood. These women, whose suffering was so well documented by the press, became pawns in the power struggles of national politicians and strategists, Collectivized as raped Croatian, Muslim, or Serbian women, their individual stories were merely offered as examples of damage to the nation. Yet, the Croatian press publicized rapes of Muslim women much more than it did those of Croatian women, perhaps to keep the image of "their" women chaste or uncontaminated. It was necessary to portray Muslim women as violated to draw attention to the horror of Serbia's actions.36 After the individual women's tragedies were displayed and counted as part of the nation's, they were publicly ignored. During 1992 and 1993, local

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political activists and journalists went looking for raped women who would tell their stories. Foreign journalists joined in as well. One of the jokes circulating among residents and volunteers in refugee camps in Croatia and Serbia was as follows. "What does a journalist ask when he comes to a camp?" Answer: "Is there anyone here who was raped and speaks English?"37 The everyday emotional and existential struggles of the individual women survivors, while commented on intermittently by government officials, have been primarily the concern of feminist and other independent human rights groups.

ties, and finally in breaking down boundaries and borders It is this last role that holds the prospect for peace in the former Yugoslavia.

NOTES
. 1 . William Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence," Theory, Culture, and Society U (1994): 23. 2. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1983). 3. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 9-13. Accord-. ing to Smith, this "genealogical model" of national identity defines the national community in terms of common culture, history, religion, myth, arid presumed descent. The nation is. understood as a kind of "super family." ( 4. Katherine Verdery, "Whither 'Nation' and 'Nati6nalisrn'?" Daedalus 122 (Summer, 1993): 38. y! r ' 5. Testimonies collected from Serbian refugees from Croatia, by the Fund for Humanitarian Law, for example, indicate that in some cases villagers were encouraged for strategic reasons to leave (heir homes by their own national militias, who did so by spreading the word of atrocities in neighboring towns. See, for example, J. Dulovic, "Papule, 1991" Vreme, February 14,1994, 27. 6. IvanColovic, "The Propaganda of War: Us Strategies," in Yugoslavia: Collapse, War, Crimes, ed. Sonja Biserko (Belgrade: Centre for Anti-War Action/Belgrade Circle, 1993), 115-19. : : . ; 7. Ivan Colovic, "Teme Granice u Politickoj Mitologiji," manuscript in Serbo-Croatian, Belgrade, 1994, copy in author's possession. . 8. The Krajina region of Croatia was an autonomous part of Hungary created as a military frontier region for the Austro-Hungarian armies. Predominantly Serbian, it supplied these armies, as well as later Yugoslav Partisan ones, with a disproportionately large number of officers and soldiers. See Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 9. Translated from Biljana PlavSic, Borba, July 28, 1993; Ivan Colovic, "Politick! mitovi-vreme i prostor," in Pucanje od Zdravlja [Healthy as Hell] (Belgrade: Biblioteka Krug, 1994), 117. (All translations from Serbo-Croatian texts are mine.) 10. For a variation of this, see Renata Salecl, "Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and AntiFeminism in Eastern Europe," New German Critique 57 (Fall 1992): 52. 11. Verdery writes that this "makes boundaries like the skin of the female body, fixed yet violable, in need of armed defense by inevitably masculine militaries"; see Katherine Verdery, "From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Eastern Europe," East European Politics and Societies 8 (Spring 1994): 249. 12; I return to this theme later. For an excellent treatment of it with respect to Romania, see ibid., 225-55. ; .. ._ : V : - ; ; , ; ^ . l , 13. For an example in another country, see Ann Snitdw, 'The Church Wins, Women Lose: Poland's Abortion Law," Nation, April 26, 1993 556^557. 14. Salecl, "Nationalism, Anti-Semitism,and Anti-Feminism," 59. 15. Ibid.

WOMEN BREAKING THE BOUNDARIES The. feminization of territorial and symbolic space in the national-patriarchal metaphors discussed here also suggests a subversive role for women in redefining the notion of boundaries and . nation.;As creators of alternative "identities and spaces," women activists in peace movements and women's groups in the region are resisting the imposed boundaries of ethnonationalisms. (Examples of such groups include Women in Black in Belgrade and the Center for Women Victims of War in Zagreb.38) Through their activities and efforts, they hope to affirm their agency as women, as political actors, and as participants in the economic life of their communities. At the same time, they hope to prevent the instrumentalization of women's bodies in the service of the nation and stop the violence committed in their defense. They question the definition of nationhood produced by ethnonational leaders, the roles assigned them in sustaining and promoting the nation, and the criteria for membership in it. Moreover, they demonstrate that while recognizing the "reality" of international borders, they can reject the "hardness" of these lines. They can find ways to cross them, "soften" them, weaken their seductive enticement to war, and erase their significance as barriers between people. As symbols, actors, and objects, women fill important roles: in constructing borders, solidifying and sundering attachments, perpetuating identities and denying identi-

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16. Vreme, January 16, 1995, 11. 17. Susan Gal, "Gender in the Post-Socialist Transition: The Abortion Debate in Hungary," East European Politics and Societies 8 (Spring 1994): 271. Verdery cites this example and others, such as "Abortion Is Genocide" and references to "seventeen million fetal Polish citizens"; see Verdery, "From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs," 250. See also Snitow, "The Church Wins, Women Lose." 18. Andjelka Mili6, "Women and Nationalism in the Former Yugoslavia," in Gender Politics and Post Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, ed. Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller (New York: Routledge, 1993), 112-13. 19. Women are nurturers of cultural values, "custodians of cultural particularisms," and the "symbolic repository of group identity"; see Deniz Kandiyoti, 'Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation," Millennium 20 (1991): 434. 20. Pogledi, April 16-30,1993,21-25. . 21. The comic strip adventures of Captain Dragan, leader of a Serbia elite paramilitary unit, and his ninja-like warriors were extremely popular during the summer leading up to the war in Croatia. Captain Dragan was a contemporary "hero" fighting for Serbian values and recovering Serbian warrior or heroic traditions going back to the middle ages. He was virile and worshipped by his brave and loyal Serbian girlfriend, also prepared to fight to the death for her nation. See Ivan Colovi6, Bordel Ratnika, 2nd ed. (Belgrade: Biblioteka XX Vek, 1994), 61-70, and idem, 'The Propaganda of War.". 22. In the eyes of some Serbian nationalists, Belgrade is an unfortunate example of the unhealthy, contaminated city, dangerous to the continued vitality of the nation. According to one, "Belgrade is an anti-Serbian [trash] bin" see "Pucanje od zdravlja," p. 39. See Colovifc, "Politicki mitovi-vreme i prostor," 33-39. 23. Globus, December 11,1992,33-34. See Meredith Tax, "Five Women Who Won't Be Silenced," The Nation, May 10, 1993,624-25. 24. DUGA, translated by Julie Mostov, August 16-29, 1992. Indeed, women have participated in the war in a number of roles, including that of soldier; but those roles celebrated in the press are of victim, martyr, patriot, and mother. See Mili6, "Women and Nationalism," 115, and Julie Menus, ".'Woman' in the Service of National Identity," Hastings Women's Law Journal 5 (Winter 1994): 16-17. 25. Salecl, "Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and Anti-Feminism," 55. 26. Colovifc, "Politicki mitovi-vreme i prostor," 112. 27. Jan Jindy Pettman, "Women, Nationalism and the State: Towards an International Feminist Perspective" (Occasional Paper 4 in Gender and Development Studies, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok), cited in V. Spike Peterson, "Gendered Nationalism: Reproducing 'Us' versus 'Them'," Peace Review 6 (March 1994): 5. 28. Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Sovereignty, Identity, Sacrifice," in Gendered States, ed. V. Spike Peterson (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). 29. Peterson, "Gendered Nationalism," 4. 30. Linda Liu, "The Female Body and Nationalist Discourse: The Field of Life and Death Revisited," in Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodemity and Transnational Feminist Practices, ed. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994),
44. ., . . . - , . . . . - . . .

was presented not as an abuse of an individual woman but as one nation's abuse of another, and inter-national abuse as more grievous a crime than interpersonal violence. Contemporary Bosnia lives against this backdrop." See Cornelia Sorabji, "Crimes against Gender or Nation?" War Report 18 (February/March 1993): 16. Stasa Zajovic of Women in Black in Belgrade notes that violence against women as individuals by co-nationals becomes invisible and inconsequential as it is not an attack on the nation and is even understandable, given the pressures of warfare; see StaSa Zajovic, "About 'Cleansing'," in Women for Peace, ed: StaSa Zajovifc (Belgrade: Women in Black, 1994), 64-67: 32. Meredith Tax, "Notes for a Letter to the State Department" (paper presented at the Network of East-West Women's conference on "Gender Nationalism and Democratization," Washington, DC, October 26-27, 1993). : r 33. In what I call a misappropriation of the notion of self-determination, the right to political and economic control of a territory has gone to the majority ethnonattonal group living there; that is, the right to define the nature of political institutions, interests, and way of life belongs to the majority1 ethnonatidnal group as such. The way to secure this right is to make sure that its numerical superiority is riot contested. See Julie Mostov, "Democracy and the Politics of National Identity," Studies in East European Thought 46 (June 1994): 9-31. ' ^ ^ F - : ; - v : : -;;; . / : - : - r . ; - : i : 34. Zajovic, "About'Cleansing,'"67. ''' 35. See Mertus," 'Woman' in the Service," 19-20. : 36. Ibid. " ^ : 37. Stasa Zajovic, "The Abuse of Victims," in Women for Peace, 176; see also ibid. ' 38. The names and addresses of the growing number of women's centers and feminist organizations throughout the former Yugoslavia can be obtained through the Network for East-West Women, 395 Riverside Drive, Suite 2F, New York, NY 10025, e-mail: neww@igc.apc.org, or through the STAR Project, 1090 Vermont Avenue, N.W., 7th Floor, Washington, DC, e-mail: ccc@delphi-int.org.

31. Cornelia Sorabji looks at this practice of recognizing rape as a serious crime only when it is committed against the nation in recent Yugoslav history. "[T]he rapes in Bosnia have at least some roots in Kosovo in 1986 when the press began to carry allegations of Albanians raping Serbs and vice versa. . . . At the same time penalties for rape and other forms of physical assault between members of different nationalities were increased. Rape

Russia and Eastern Europe After Communism

The Search for New Political, Economic, and Security Systems

EDITED BY

Michael Kraus and Ronald D. Liebowitz

WestviewPress
A Division ofHirperCaHinsPublisbers

)$4

Robert Sharlet

:;

iwas then serving as former President Kravchuk's chief of staff for domestic affairs. 72. See "Law of Ukraine: Name, Structure and Composition of the Next Parliament of Ukraine," Ukraine in Documents, No. 21 (10/21/93), p. 3. '-. 73. See ITAR-TASS News Digest of January 20, 1994 in NEXIS, Europe Library, AllEur file, 1/20/94. ; L 74. See David R. Marples, "Ukraine After the Presidential Election," RFE/RL Research Report,Vo\. 3, No. 31 (August 12,1994), pp. 7-10. ..: ,.;-; . 75. "Kravchuk Warns of Chaos If Ukraine Vote Goes Ahead," Reuters World Service (4/28/94), in NEXIS, Europe Library, AllEur file. He said "Any way you look at Ukraine's situation today... there is constitutional chaos...." -: : ..";:-'.:v 76. See Konstitutsiia Ukraini, a draft published October 26, 1993 mGolos ilkrainy and translated in FBIS Report: Central Eurasia (11/22/93), pp:. 10-34. In the first draft Constitution of January 1992, the President was a memberof the ( cabinetsee Art. #187. >:---: 77. Fifth Draft Constitution of 1993, Art.#144. V : ' v 78. Ibid., Art.#139. ; r; :;: ; 79. Cf. first draft Art.#141, sec. 8 and #230 to fifth draft Art. #196. ' 80. Fifth draft, Art;#121. ^ 81. ibid.;Art.#2oo. ' :: 82. Cf. first draft Art#228 to fifth draft Art.#199. . "7. -:; 83. Ibid., Art.#230 to Art.#196. 84. Robert Sharlet, "The New Russian Constitution and Its Political Impact," Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 42, No.l, January-February 1995, pp. 3-7. For; the impact of the Chechen crisis on constitutional implementation in Russia, both in its negative and positive aspects, see Sharlet, "Reinventing the Russian State," in a special issue of The John Marshall Law Review (forthcoming), ; ' 85. Comment by Judge Bohdan A. Futey, U.S. Court oj Federal Claims, at a roundtable "Elections in Ukraine," Embassy of Ukraine, Washington, D.C., May5 17, 1994. For Judge Futey's analysis and critique of the fifth draft of Ukraine's Constitution, see his "The Proposed Constitution of Ukraine" in Demokratizatsiya, Vol. II, No. 4, Fall 1994, pp. 642-50. . :: ".:-

2
Endangered Citizenship
Julie Mostov

With the breakdown of Communist federations and the emergence of new ethnonational states, people are not only being faced with new economic and political realities, but with the prospect of losing their citizenship and having to accept new identities or defend old ones. Some have found that they are no longer automatically eligible for citizenship where they live. Others have discovered that they may be citizens of that country, but have lost their equal standing with those of the majority group. Some will have to accept that even though they still cling to their identity as, say Yugoslavs, they will have to seek citizenship from another slate on what may seem to them irrelevant or unacceptable grounds. As membership in the nation1 becomes a question of ethnicity and not just shared territory, laws, and commitments or a common past and expectations for the future; citizenship becomes increasingly vulnerable to exclusionary politics. Criteria for citizenship are being reestablished by new constitutions and statutes and are often being applied according to arbitrary policies and practices that are legitimized by a politics of national identity. The terms of citizenship are subject to the interests of competing political movements and parries as well as to the prejudices and discretion of local authorities.2 Individuals are forced through demeaning processes to "beg" for what most once took for granted.3 Members of old or new ethnonational minorities are feeling increasingly insecure about the extent or worth of their citizenship rights. In addition, other members of society, such as women who resist traditional roles defined in reconstructed national identities, are feeling similarly uneasy about the value of their membership. In this essay, I try to elucidate the threat today of being left outside of or marginalized within political communities for an increasing number

r
36 Julie Mostov Endangered Citizenship 37'

Understanding this threat is important not only because it is an obstacle to the development of democratic institutions, but also because individuals who are left without or stripped of the rights and protections of citizenship are particularly vulnerable to the excesses of ethnocratic. leaders. Indeed, the politics of ethnocracy thrives on and (re)prpduces this kind of vulnerability. ; : It is important to situate this argument in the current context of ethnocratic politics in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union,4 of: struggles to acquire and maintain power in the name of an ethnonation- ally defined people, in which would-be leaders (ethnocrats) promote themselves as uniquely qualified to define and defend the national inter- ; est and in which the ruled are collectivities defined by common culture, h history, religion, myths, and presumed descent. Ethnocracy involves the use of modern institutions and technologies as well as history, mytholo-r gy, and cultural symbols. It calls for a political landscape that has been emptied of independent social institutions and civic culture, and cultivated for homogeneity. : : :r These power struggles are set in a historical context marked by contested geographical boundaries, foreign domination, the experience of being both occupier and occupied, unresolved and repressed conflicts,;; memories of brutal treatment by members of a different religion, ethnici- I ty, nation, or class, and patriarchal social structures. It is a past rich,in mythology and memories of greatness and full of bitterness about unrec-; ognized cultural achievements and economic backwardness. These historical references and resonances, treasured momertts and scars, together: with the legacies of Communist rule intertwine with a set of cbntempcf-?: rary circumstances defined by ongoing processes of global economic and political integration, and local institutional fragmentation and collapse: : Within the tradition of Western political thought, citizenship signals membership in a political community; it specifies rights and obligations associated with sovereignty and government and identifies the people who enjoy these rights and obligations. It implies certain limits which mark the boundaries for inclusion.5 Thus, we need to look at its boundary-setting practices in order to attempt to understand the ways in which citizenship is endangered. ::c::::: Citizenship constructs external boundaries, separating members: from . nonmembers as well as internal boundaries within the political commu; nity. In the following analysis, I distinguish four tightly intertwined, dynamic, boundary-setting processes in which citizenship: (1) defines rights and obligations, and the terms of political participation; (2) sets ; boundaries in the distribution of social goods, benefits, burdens, and opportunities; (3) establishes models of conduct and avenues of social

these processes there are ways in which full enjoyment of citizenship can be threatened; in which boundaries can be drawn to diminish the worth of citizenship/ to reiterate its precariousness, or simply to revoke it.
Boundaries of Rights and Obligations With the unraveling of federal relations and the creation of new states in the former Yugoslavia and Soviet: Union, members of the old communities have had to reestablish their citizenship. This would pose no particular problem if citizenship were.defined in terms of locality, that is, residence within a territorially defined political community, or if'citizensship w e r e of minimal significance, with respect to social and legal status. 6 But many of the n e w political"entities identify themselves as the national states of particular ethnonational groups. Because of this identification, the ethnic composition of the.inhabitants of these countries significantly affects the criteria for citizenship. A n o w well-known example is Latvia, where ethnic Russians make up a large part of the population and Latvians account for just over 50 percent of the inhabitants. Given the emphasis on the ethnonational character of this Baltic state and the^ belief that its legitimacy and,sovereignty depend on this character, the : citizenship, and therefore the well being, of ethnic Russians living there : : is seriously in question. 7 ; ; -.-;.::,: -.:',._):. ir. The stakes here are high, particularly with respect to the economic, social, and:pplitieal. processes of change in these regions, in which peoples' future standing in their communities and their ability to affect that standing are.being established. Citizenship in this context means more than the right to vote; it could mean the right to remain in one's own home, to work, and to secure protection from physical or financial harm. 8 While; this is a period of liberation and invention as well as flux and uncertainty in these countries, it is the latter rather than the former that defines most peoples' lives: This makes it crucial to have as secure "a public identity, that is, as secure a place in the community as possible. It is not a time= to be a "foreigner" or a iperson whose membership and public identity are contested. As Michael Walzer puts it, nonmembers "have no guaranteed place in the collectivity and are always liable to expulsion. Statelessness is a condition of infinite danger." 9 Ethnic Russians living in Estonia could claim Russian citizenship arid continue, under certain terms, to live in Estonia, However, to those ethnic Russians who joined the Estonian struggle for independence and voted for the break with Moscow, this option may not only seem insulting or : humiliating; but given the historical context in which "Russians" (read representatives of the former Soviet regime) are viewed as former occu-

^tj

Julie Mostov

Endangered Citizenship

39 :

The inclusion of individuals in or their exclusion from the rights and obligations of citizenship, moreover, is significant because of what people have come to understand as the foundations of minimally democratic communities today. That is, the right to an equally weighted vote, related civil rights and duties, equal protection under the law,: and varying degrees of social and economic entitlement are generally recognized as norms governing the relationships of citizens in minimally democratic communities. :,: In social contract theory, which expresses the equality and reciprocity assumed in contemporary notions of citizenship, citizens are sharers in sovereign authority and enjoy a kind of equality: equal rights and obligations. According to Rousseau, "the social compact sets up among citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights."11 This idea, basic to civil or republican constitutionalism,12 provides a basis for respect for the law and acceptance of civic duties. It is the generality of the terms of political association implied in this compact that preserves the equality and independence of citizens. Laws apply to no one in particular. They come from all and apply to all.13 It is this character of generality that preserves access to members14 of the community to the complex of rights and duties that pertain to government and participation in public life. It provides a basis for the rule of law and certain expectations of reciprocity, that is/ mutual respect and fair play. When particular interests define the contours of citizenship, the stage is set for relationships of dependence and differentiated rights and duties. When citizenship is closely linked to identification with a particular ethnonational group and to the realization of its goals, political rights are defined by the particular commitments, values, and interests of the elhnonation. Citizenship loses its general legal character. The criteria for recognition and exclusion become particular judgments. This is a danger posed by the language introduced into the constitutions of many of the new or reestablished countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, language which registers these fundamental laws as the realization of a long-held national dream or goal and a national homeland.15 The insertion of ethnonatiohalist rhetoric into constitutional law is problematic, not because it involves a rejection of liberal theory but because most of the countries in question are at present multi-ethnic. This boundary-setting device undermines an important basis for social consensus, the common status of equal citizens. States in which numbers of the population do not feel secure in their equal rights as citizens or do not enjoy the rights of citizenship are states that are likely candidates for internal conflict and authoritarian government. Indeed, the presence of a large number of people systematically disadvantaged by the terms of

association creates social conditions under which rulers may succeed in justifying the further curtailment of civil liberties and the institution of: a police state.16 < ; :: Theories of citizenship generally include assumptions about political competency. Citizenship registers the "present and future capacity for influencing politics." "It implies involvement in public life."17 A democratic theory of citizenship typically presupposes that all citizens have certain capacities and ought be treated as individuals who are "the best judges of their own interests" and "capable of showing better political and social judgment than they do at any present time."18 The rights and obligations of citizenship assume certain capacities for deliberation or judgment, or "aptitudes." 19 While democratic theories of citizenship: extend the ranks of these capable subjects as broadly as possible, arguments for excluding people from citizenship are concerned with con-: tracting the boundaries of competency. Proponents engage in claims about "innate aptitudes" for citizenship or culturally grounded reasons for diminished capacity. Individuals are excluded based on their deficient aptitude for citizenship, deficiencies of judgments or lack of feeling for shared values and interests. Arguments of this kind are not new, nor are their damaging effects.20 '";:"' ; -;'.'"'-' <::-'': Recognition of competency or capacity for j u d g m e n t provides the institutional status from which individuals address g o v e r n m e n t and other citizens and make claims about rights. Under the past Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, the assumption of autonomous judgment implicit in the notion of citizenship was more or less absent. People enjoyed the status of citizen through membership in a collective, in which sharing in an externally defined set of interests and enjoying certain social rights replaced the enjoyment of civil and political rights. These collective identities were symbolically maintained through increasingly meaningless slogans such as, for exam-: pie, "bratstvo i jedinstvo" (brotherhood and unity) in the former Yugoslavia, and elaborate public celebrations of these slogans. ;:':; In the aftermath of World War II, equal citizenship and solidarity could possibly have been built in the former Yugoslavia under the collective identity expressed by the above slogan, if they had not been regularly imposed from above. Indeed, there were no institutions; through which individuals could deliberate as citizens of Yugoslavia arid actually engage in the building of bonds. 2 1 With the breakdown of these regimes and the construction of new ones, the notion of democratic citizenship has been voiced frequently, but the assumption that individuals have the capacity to make choices and render independent judgments about public life has remained basically at the level of rhetoric. It has come up

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Endangered Citizenship

41

against the old model of citizenship,.or membership in a collective body, which itself is the object, rather than the subject of law.22 Development of the notion of citizens as competent decision makers is complicated by the use of both individual rights and collective rights in defining the enjoyment of citizenship. This is particularly so where the inclusion of collective rights is seen as a protection of cultural expression for peoples in minority positions within multi-ethnic communities. This ambiguity is exploited in the power struggles of ethnocrats. The right to schooling in one's own language for members of the "minority" community, for example, can be exploited by leaders of both the majority and minority ethno-national groups. The former points to language claims as signs of disloyalty and separatist goals; the latter competes for leadership within the group based on the militancy of his demands. Both leaders then rally "their" people around these demands and the majority's rejection of them/leading potentially to demonstrations, arrests, and violence. The 1994 struggles in Tetovo, Macedonia, over the establishment of an Albanian language university are an example. At the same time, issues of concern to individuals based on professional, economic, social or other ties fall off the agenda. The ethnocrat who wants to empty the political spaces of political subjects needs to reduce the categories of political subjectivity and limit access to institutions of social power. Using the notion of collective rights, which ought to serve as a guarantee of the enjoyment of distinct linguistic, literary, religious, and other cultural traditions as well as to facilitate local selfgovernment, power-seeking ethnocrats have instead Sought to remove individual actors from the calculus of power by replacing the collectivity of class with that of nation. Individuals are identified as members of either majority or minority ethnonational groups and publicly recognized only as members of a collective. The rights they enjoy are rights held as members of a collective political subject. The politics of national identity played out under the increasing authority of ethnonational leaders reiterates the permanent minority or majority status of these subjects.23 The participatory aspect of citizenship on this account is impoverished or pacified. The scope of political rights may appear to be extended, but only deceptively so. Obligations are defined in terms of loyalty and identification and not in terms of sound deliberation. The "active" citizen participates in reaffirming ethnonationally defined interests but does not exercise judgment. The kind of citizenship people enjoy, however, ultimately affects their sense of self and their respect for fellow citizens and the law. Under the present conditions, and in the face of what Polish writer Adam Michnik calls the "new nihilism," citizenship that consists merely in ' putting a ballot in a box is not enough for an effective resistance to alterna-

The worth of citizenship rights is diminished by devaluing the activity of public deliberation, constructing practical obstacles to participation, contracting the boundaries of the public sphere and the number of actors by closing off avenues of political influence and by severely reducing the worth of rights. As a result of ethnonational criteria, the enjoyment of these rights is set practically or actually out of bounds for some. Distributive Boundaries Clearly one of the crucial issues threatening the citizenship of individuals today stems from .understandings about the state's obligations to its citizens, particularly its allocation of public resources. Distribution of scarce resources among citizens, puts the question of who counts as a . citizen at the forefront of political concerns. Citizens are not only entitled to certain resources (protections and opportunities, as well a& material goods), but in a democracy they also ought to be involved in how these resources will be distributed. Taking the notion of citizenship as membership in some human community, Walzer argues [hat "what we do with regard to membership structures all, our other distributive choices: it determines with whom we make those Choices, from whom we require obedience and collect taxes, to whom we allocate goods and services."25 Consider this in the light of the limited resources and new distributive patterns that are emerging in . Eastern Europe. New concepts of public goods are emerging. Who defines them and their distribution is a crucial if not central question of any political system. It increases the importance of membership and the dangers of exclusion. The very definition of membership is an exercise of power and the ability to exclude or include is a political resource. In post-Communist societies, with increasing competition over shrinking resources, women, in particular, are increasingly feeling the diminished worth of their citizenship. The dismantling of socialist economic and social systems has constrained reproductive rights and resources for family planning, social benefits, maternity leave, child-care provisions, and job access. Women are disappearing from the public spheres and from political offices26 and appearing as refugees, the poor, the unemployed, targets of elhnonational politics, and carriers of national and: cultural symbolism, but not as definers of national interests. Women have been expected to take up the slack with the dismantling of social welfare benefits and still make ends meet in an increasingly competitive labor market. Privatization and reinstatement of property in Eastern Europe underscore the obstacles for women's full enjoyment of citizenship. In presocialist KDHPHP<; lanri ar>r! nhVipr nrnnerhr wprp tViP niiruipw n'f

42

Julie Moslov

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43

males. Thus, the return of these properties has done little to enhance the value of women's rights.27 The most frequent response by political actors to concerns expressed by women about the worth of their citizenship rights is that given the enormous economic difficulties of unemployment and inflation associated with transition to market economies and the delicate nature of political alliances, women's rights are a luxury that governments or even civic opposition parties cannot afford to promote.28 Restatement of the private/public dichotomy has become very influential in the current transformation. It links the need to decrease the labor force with the search for a new identity untainted by association with state socialism. Thus, the private/public dichotomy gives women a rhetorically central role in the cultivation, nurturance, and transference of national,values in exchange for lost economic, social, and political rights. Women regain their "natural" mission and revered place in the home as wife and mother and in the nation as the modest and: chaste symbol of religious/national values. ;: Under the old regimes the social benefits of equal citizenship were enjoyed by all, if at a minimal level. However, with the collapse of the socialist economies, the state no longer has the resources to provide extensive benefits. All states in Europe are finding it increasingly" difficult to provide the resources necessary for the enjoyment of social entitlements: health care, housing, employment, and welfare benefits: This is particularly the case for those countries struggling in the transition to a market economy. All have also become increasingly uncomfortable about expanding the number of people eligible for -benefits and eligible to make crucial decisions about distribution. In many countriesirt East-, ern Europe and the FSU economic insecurity, frustration over the lack of buying power, and disappointment with the results of capitalism/ democracy have undermined public perceptions of the value of political rights and participation. :.;: :r The boundaries, of citizenship set by distributive politics in Eastern Europe are mainly internal, leaving large numbers of the population outside of the public sphere and marginalized in harsh economic conditions. Disputes over allocations of scarce resources, economic demands imposed by large numbers of refugees and displaced persons, arid significant inequalities in the distribution of political and economic resources add to existing ethnic tensions. An important example of this is the allocation of state resources for schooling, radio and television broadcasts, and public documents in one,'s own language (a language different from that of the majoritynation's). What must a state with minimal resources provide to enable people to express their cultural distinctness or not to feel systematically disadvantaged in exercising civil liberties? Does equal citizenship

require that the state provide funding for full cultural autonomy? Serious disputes over the allocation of funds for these costly services add to the tensions created by collective rights claims. American observers in Eastern Europe are quick to push for cultural autonomy for ethnic minorities, which given the vulnerability of their status in the region seems reasonable. Yet, given bur own rejection of collective rights as discriminatory and expensive (affirmative action barely survives this position), it is curious that we don't see the enormous difficulties this category of rights poses for the impoverished post-Communist states. Without secure individual rights and some creative responses to this aspect of identity politics, this issue could undermine multi-ethnic coalitions of democratically minded citizens, normally supportive of ethnic tolerance and expressions of difference. Establishing Limits of Social Behavior and Social Control While citizenship involves the presumption of independence and the development of decision-makihgcapaeities, loss of citizenship or fear of losing the citizen's minimal rights (e.g., property ownership, free movement, public education, police protection) encourages conformity, the diminution of capacities for choice," and, potentially, violent conflict or flight. When people see that the fruits of citizenship are contingent on their expression of shared interests and values and that their minority status is permanent;, they may feel forced to leave their homes. That is, they may try to leave'if there is a pTace:that will let them in (which, today, is increasingly unlikely):: VK ;.- :" :a~ ; .;-;; Successful ethriocrats use the criteria for citizenship and other legal and political mechanisms to reduce and stifle unwanted political discussion. The tension and fear of being left out is heightened for marginal members of the community, when they see the costs of second-class citizenship. Once people see the implications of being excluded/the incentives for conformity and assimilation or emigration are significant. Assimilation is offered by the dominant nation as a significant benefit, when the numbers are relatively small. When the numbers are more equal, suddenly the cultural differences are insurmountable arid assimilation or coexistenceis not art option^9 In this politics of national identity, pressure to conform is also felt by individuals who reject the social roles assigned to them as members of the community. The aggressive nationalism that has emerged through this politics, for example, in the former Yugoslavia, offers a kind of autonomy and citizenship meant only for "real" men who are guardians of the national interest and warriors on the battlefield of ethnonational values and territorial claims. Others are "traitors" or "cosmopolitans"

ostov

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'A

unworthy of the full protections and benefits of citizenship.30 The politics of national identity curtails women's civic role and citizenship rights. Women are not viewed as mature political subjects, but as reproducers of the nation and national culture, keepers of the home and hearth, property of the nationas symbols of national tragedy or "fields to be sown."31 "Currently resurgent nationalist ideologies are building a concept of citizenship in East Central Europe which is both gendered and more generally exclusionary. Exclusion on grounds of sex, ethnic group, or language defines a national identity which is profoundly undemocratic, and inherently dangerous."32 Women who reject traditional roles assigned to them by ethnonational ideology and leaders are internal "outsiders." Bonds created by excluding those who are not "fit" or who do not belong enervate rather than empower the citizenry. An enfeebled citizenry is then unable to resist authoritarian leaders. De Tocqueville feared that would be the fate of democracies without the independent institutions of American society to counter: the "dangers of despotism."33 The notion of citizenship which entails judgment and reciprocity in the recognition of rights and obligations creates a different set of social bonds; bonds among citizens that empower them as actors and enable them to check the activity of leaders. The bonds of this "civic patriotism" are based on allegiance to laws which bind everyone equally. They are bonds based on mutual recognition of each other's capacity for choice,34 strengthened by a kind of public life that rejects relationships of domination and inequality. ''.'''.-.''-' Ideally, political participation ought to provide the kind of civic idenlitywhich encourages citizens to take an interest in the communty, and the allegiances necessary for political stability and limited political coercion. This civic identity is reinforced through individual engagement in public roles and fostered through the roles themselves.35 Not all public roles, however, support this identity. Indeed, the "spontaneous" awakening of a people to national glory and roles defined by primordial myths or long-held national dreams serve to reinforce a different sense of public self. "The consciousness of common interest is citizenship."36 Without the social bonds of citizenship, according to Rousseau, the corporate spirit of the magistrates would continually assert itself. Thus, would-be national leaders wary of potential opposition must prevent the crowd from becoming a body of citizens.37 They need to prevent the establishment of cl6se social bonds and create boundaries between those with the "aptitude" for citizenship and; those without this capacity. In the politics of national identity this means constructing boundaries based on claims about the "genetic" or cultural deficiencies of some peoples or groups

and their inability or refusal to promote the shared understandings ( the community. Identify and Difference Within the changing landscapes of Eastern Europe and the fornv. Soviet republics new social identities and differences have been draw along with new boundaries between people and groups. The emergenc of new states and the radical restructuring of others has posed addition al questions about the criteria for citizenship. If common ancestry t shared cultural, linguistic, and historical ties define the parameters c the nation and membership in the nation is the primary criteria for cit zenship, then birth or longtime residency in a particular country is n: longer sufficient to-secure enjoyment of citizenship rights for those wh are not members of the dominant nation. At the same time, membershi in the nation may be a sufficient claim to citizenship. Accordingly, sorr argue that the state has an abiding interest in the well-being of peop beyond its borders, citizens or potential citizens of other countries (c potentially independent countries). Indeed, political leaders eager i demonstrate their commitment to the nation and their readiness to pr< mote the welfare of itsmembers address themselves to citizens beyor present state borders, claim to represent the interests of these membe of the diaspora, and even attempt to regain historically contestedterrit< ries currently within the boundaries of other states. The vow to unite ? members of the nation in one state or to protect their right to develc and express their national identity is an important part of a nation leader's program.38 .;: .;; i rr ; : - The role of boundaries in national mythology (in songs, poetry, ar? literature) has oftehserved to demarcate differences and to extend the? to the symbolic realm, as well as to erase geographic borders separatir members of the nation.3^ The mythology of border areas in which men bers of the nation are constantly faced with the threat of physical c moral (cultural) attacks by outsiders has figured significantly in tK inflammatory politics of nationalist leaders in the borderlands (Krajinpopulated by Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.40 This concern fuels argi ments about the,loyalty of citizens with ethnic ties to neighborir national states: Serbs in Croatia, Hungarians in Serbia and Romania, an Russians in the Baltics. To which state do they, should they, or can the turn to enjoy the rights and protections of citizenship? ' The breakdown of former federations and the constitution of ne national states has also left some people without a "legitimate" identic for other reasons. Many of those who identified themselves earlier, f< example, as Yugoslavs or Soviets, have had to find a new identity and

4fi

)ulie Mostov

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47

new place of citizenship. If taking citizenship did not also mean assuming a national identity that carries with it both a range of associations and social consequences, this change might call for little more than gelting a new identity card and passport. However, for many having to (re)qualify for citizenship now on the basis of ethnic origins or loyalty to nationally defined interests involves something close to an act of conversion. Becoming a member means recognizing a kind of identity thai a person might otherwise reject. This dilemma is pervasive in those communities in which individuals are not recognized as political subjects, but only as members of collectivities. The collectivities that count here are nationally or ethnically defined ones, and for the most part, the genealogical model offered by Anthony Smith prevails. In this model, in which emphasis is on one's descent or "presumed descent," individuals do not choose to belong to some nation, they remain "ineluctably, organically a member of the community of birth and are forever stamped by it."41 On the other hand, where citizens are recognized as equal political subjects, they may take their citizenship for granted or not worry about being citizens of one country while living in another. In this case, criteria for citizenship would leave no one "stateless"; competency would not be based on ethnicity, religion, race, gender, class, political philosophy, or sexual orientation; and rights/protections, and opportunities would not be contingent on "good behavior" or acceptance of dictated social roles and national values. Alternatives posed by some visions of the integrative processes in Europe today call for such conditions under which citizenship in a particular country would make little difference, in which all boundaries would be soft. That is, boundaries would serve as cultural markers and administrative divisions rather than barriers; legal protections, economic opportunities, and cultural activities could be enjoyed across borders . regulated by international conventions and basic social norms; and multiple attachments and identities could coexist with local political and material rights and obligations. This alternative, however, is not likely in the near future. - Some democrats would suggest that the above alternative is neither likely nor desirable. Rather, they might advocate a more substantive definition of citizenship as based on shared community understandings, which would strengthen the confidence of citizens, improve the quality pi public participation, and ensure checks on government, political sta, .bility^ and economic security. This approach, however, would most cer^ "tainly involve a series of exclusions.42 Given the potential for restrictive i'r rather than inclusive criteria, it would appear that notions of citizenship ."ought to be constructed as openly and "thinly" as possible, promoting a

civic identity based on allegiance to a republican constitution. This "Western" notion is understandably attacked by ethnonational leaders (or would-be elhnocrats), questioned by Western theorists who reject ils universalism and liberal bias, and desired by opponents of nationalist regimes throughout the region. The desire expressed by the latter is not without scepticism about the possibilities for promoting civic identity and notions of republican citizenship. At present, this remains a starting point from which to press for reforms, to highlight the dangers of a politics of national identity, and to frame political and social criticism.

Notes 1. The term nation in this historical context does not signify the people, rather a people linked by culture, history, and (presumed) descent, e.g., the Croatian or Serbian people. 2. On arbitrariness in the implementation of citizenship law, see Philip Hanson, "Estonia's Narva Problem, Narva's Estonian Problem," RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 18 (April 30, 1993); Lowell W. Barrington, "An Explanation of the Citizenship Policies of. Estonia arid Lithuania," paper prepared for delivery at the 1994 annual'meeting of the APSA, New York Hilton, September 1-4, 1994; also, en. 42, below, r :.;:.; :: ; ;; 3. For example, jobs,; property rights, civil liberties, and even residence in Croatia depend upon the highly coveted "domovnica," which is a precondition for citizenship. The criteria for citizenship in both Croatia and Slovenia include knowledge of the respective languages, national culture, and history. Knowledge is determined by tests administered by commissions with significant discretionary powers. Vreme, July 1992, Aleksahdar Ciric, "Nebeski pasos," Vreme 3 August 1992. See also, interview with Zarko Puhovski "Borba za granice," by Jelena Lovric, Vreme 27 July 1992.' ' 4. Julie Moslov, "Constituting Ethnocracy," paper presented at Tulane University New Orleans, March 26,1994. v r 5. According to Morah and Vogel, different models of citizenship approach these "frontiers" in different ways: a minimalist account identifies citizens by their "engagement in a given language of civil discourse," and the frontiers of ;citizenship as historically contingent; a human rights model, according to which citizenship is "derived from a universal human entitlement to tlic conditions of moral agency;" a communitarian model premised upon the "self-conscious acceptance of frontiers;" and a mutual aid society model, "a model of citizenship with open frontiers..." Ursula yogeland Michael Moran, eds. Vie Frontiers of Citizenship (New York: St Martin's Press, 1991), pp. xix-xx. 6. In most nominally democratic states, citizenship is more or less automatic for "native-born adults." Securing the rights of citizenship involves ensuring the equal application of law and the conditions that support this political equality in practice. The criteria for

48

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Endangered Citizenship

excluding millions of immigrants (long-time residents and taxpayers), and leaving increasing numbers of people without citizenship. See, Maxim Silverman, "Citizenship and the Nation-State in France," Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 1991): 333-349; J. H. Carens, "Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders," Review of Politics, Vol. 49 (1987): 258. 7. See, for example, Vojin Dimitrijevic, Neizvesnost Ljudskih Prava (Sremski Karolovci/Novi Sad: Izdavacka Knjizarnica Zorana Stojanovic'a, 1993), pp. 29-72, 95. According to Ian Bremmer, the demise of the Soviet empire has left a "predicament of 25 million Russians...stranded...in ethnically distinct and often hostile successor states" and "nations without statesethnic groups for whom the Soviet collapse has not meant self-determination but, in many cases, subjugation to a different authority." RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 18, April 3-9, 1993, p. 24. See also, Bremmer, "State-Building and Ethnic Relations in Kazakhstan: Nazerbaev and the North," in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 17, 4 October 1994. - ; . 8. See, for example, Robert M. Hayden, "Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics," Slavic Review, 51,4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 666-668,670-671. 9. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 32 10. Dimitrijevic, Neizvesnost Ljudskih Prava, pp. 69-72. ; , 11. Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (London: Dent, 1973),p.l88. 12. Ibid.; also for example, see Kant, "External (rightful) equality in a" nation... is that relation among citizens whereby no citizen can be bound by a law/unless all are subject to it simultaneously and in the very same way." Immanuel Kaht^ Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Ted Humphrey, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett, . 1992), p. 112. For a contemporary version, see, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice >v (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). t 13. Rousseau, Book 2, Chap. IV. See also Julie Mostov, Power, Process, and Popular Sovereignty (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). pp. 27-51 %''., 14. The question of who is a full member is no small issue. The extension of full membership to all subjects of the law is not a given in the history of Western political thought. Note, for example, John Locke, The Second Treatise on Government, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), pars. 119, 122; or Kant, "On the Proverb: That May be true in Theory, But is of no Practical Use," p. 7376. For democrats the concern has traditionally been to extend membership as . broadly as possible. 15. Dimitrijevic, p. 91; Robert M. Hayden, "Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics," Slavic Review 51, No. 4 (Winter 1992): 663; Mostov, "Democracy and the Politics of National Identity," Studies in East European Thought, No. 1-2,June 1994. 16. Kosovo, in which 90 percent of the population is ethnic Albanian, is a good example. See, Milan Podunavac, "Potrosnja gotovih politickih formula," Republika, no. 95/96, July 31,1994, pp. 15-18. 17. Dennis F. Thompson, The Democratic Citizen: Social Science and Democratic Theory in the 20th Century (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 2. 18. Ibid., p. 10

19. Stephen Howe,-"Citizenship in the New Europe: A Last Chance for IIT Enlightenment?" in Geoff Andrews/ed. Citizenship (London:Lawrence fWishart, 1991), p. 130 ;; : ; 20. Exclusions that are written into founding acts, such as constitutions crealc obstacles to later inclusions, that is, to later democratization. Note Derrick Belr on the ways in which the recognition.of slavery in the U.S. Constitution, despilc amendments which subsequently nullify this status and provide for equal citizenship, continue to plague the civic culture in the United States and inhibit the full enjoyment of citizenship for all. Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Sai'ed (New J ;.'".. York: Basic Books, 1987),; ; ::\y ::;:.:, ;-\v'.vu:r:.'. ; 21. At the same time, a "quota" system was established along republican and, _ ; . thus, to a large extent/iethnonafional linesfor federal positions, including diplomatic posts> international scholarships, and other opportunities. There were no federal elections, rather, federal institutions were filled with delegates from republican bodies. This later proved fatal to attempts at peaceful resolution of _'.:'_' the breakdown of the federation: See Mostov, "Democracy and DecisionmakV ing," in Dennison Rusinow, ed. Yugoslavia-A Fractured Federalism (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 3988): pp. 105-119. 22. See, NebojSa Popoy, Republikanac {Zfenjanin: Gradjanska citaonica-Banat, 1994), pp.9-59!
J ,'-

23. Mostov, "Democracy and the Politics of National Identity," op. cit. ^ 24. "Fear in the face of inew nihilism is slowly occupying Europe. This nihilism attacks democratic institutions', destroys civic and national communi\ . ties, and leads to the breakdown of cultural ties. It wears the face of fundamentalism: ethnic, social, and religious! This fundamentalism leads down the path to chaos and totalitarian dictatorships of a new type." Adam Michnik/'Zirinovski, moja ljubav/'yrCTneSrjanuary 19.94: 43, (my translation from Serbo-Croatian) '.'."., 25. Walzer, p, 31; also, "It is-only as-members somewhere that men and women can hopei to share in all the othefsocial goodssecurity, wealth, honor, ' office, and powerthat communal life makes possible." p. 63 26. "Women's citizenship rights are certainly hot simply co-terminus with increased representation in the formal politicaliristirutions of the state. Nevertheless, the current low Jevels of female representation in the parliaments and governments of East Central Europe make" theirdefence, or indeed the articulation of alternatives, objectively difficult." Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market (London: Verso, 1993), p.: 162; pp. 156-57,r / :.;.. 27.Ibid.,p.l5Q:-. ,.; ;-. ":;-- '.-'-): ^!7; k"--?^.v. 28. (April 26,1993). Nation Ann Snitow, "The Church Wins, Women Ebse: Poland's Abortion Law," 29, Assimilation is problematic: Under certain circumstances, it may be desirable both for the individuals taking on a new language or culture and for the society that benefits from their added contributions. On the other hand, assimilation often carries with it a social or moral stigma and a psychological burden of estrangement. See, Will Kymlicka Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Moreover, assimilation most often includes some element of coercion and exclusion. Some people, in fact, are exrlnHoW ~- "---

W"

50

Julie Mostov

qimilable," (Roma or Gypsies, for example). While, unfortunately, not touched on in this paper, full citizenship for Roma is a serious issue in the regions under discussion. 30. While national identity and ethnic origins are often readily acknowledged by individuals, individuals may reject the majority interpretation of that identity. Persons of Serbian "descent" who reject the national identity crafted by the leaders of the Serbian community are not viewed as presenting an alternative Serbian identity. They are merely traitors to the nation, characterized in the media as self-haters or collaborators with the enemy. Members of the peace movement in Serbia are good examples. Imposed identities are not new to this part of the world. Under the various existing communist regimes there was repression of ethnic identities or expression of religious affiliation as well as corporate organization of ethnic communities and the use of ethnonational quotas. 31. Thus, the rape of women in war such as in Bosnia and Herczegovina is an attack on the men of the other nation, an invasion of their territory, and a sign of their impotency. See Julie Mostov, '"Our Women'/'Their Women': Symbolic Boundaries, Territorial Markers, and Violence in the Balkans," Peace and Change, October 1995, . 32. Einhorn, p. 257. 33. Alexis de Tocqueville, De/rocracy in America, ed. Richard D. Heffner (New York: Mentor, 1956), p. 304, and passim. 34. Rousseau, Book 2; Mostov, Power, Process and Popular Sovereignty. 35. Judith N. Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory (Cambridge Universi ty Press, 1969), p. 19. 36. Ibid, p. 175. 37. The mass meetings engineered by Slobodan Milosevic and his followers in 1988, were crucial in stirring up ethnic passions and support for his regime. See, Predrag Tasic, Kako jeUbijena Druga Jugoslaxrija (Skopje, 1994), pp. 120-127. A recent quote by a Bosnian Serb leader notes the "subversive" character of the notion'of citizenship. For him, being a Serb and a "citizen"(gradjanin) is not possible. 38. See, Mostov, "Democracy and the Politics of National Identity." 39. Ivan Colovic, "Tema Granice u Politigkoj Mitologiji." 40. Biljana Plavgic,Borba, 28 July 1993; Colovic, Ibid. 41. A: D. Smith, National Identity, pp. 11-12. 42. The discretionary power of commissions authorized to apply criteria such as knowledge of history or culture is considerable. Both in Croatia and Slovenia, securing citizenship may require weeks of "begging" at a series of counters in a long and demeaning bureaucratic process. Tanja Topic, "Izmeducekica i nakovnja," Vreme 3 August 1992, pp. 15-16; Aleksandar Ciric, "Nebeski pasos," Ibid., pp. 16-18.

3
Prospects for Democracy in Russia
Robert V. Daniels

Since the collapse of the Communist Party and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, commentators on Russian politics have ranged from naive optimism to dark pessimism about the prospects for democratic political life in that troubled country. Inevitably, judgments have fluctuated with the unfolding of events and the rise and decline of particular personalities. Many observers, hopeful about the prospects for democracy when President Boris Yeltsin dominated the scene in 1992 and 1993, turned pessimistic about Russian politics after Yeltsin dissolved and; shelled the Parliament in the fall of 1993 and went on to impose a constitution with authoritarian presidential prerogatives* The following months suggested a more optimistic alternative from the democratic standpoint, until the Chechnya crisis of late 1994 and early 1995 drove ai hew wedge between the Russian government on the one hand and Russian public opinion together with foreign well-wishers on the other. Predicting the Future Anticipating the political future anywhere is chancy, even under the most stable conditions, and,Russia: hardly meets that criterion. Some methodological distinctions are in order among the various modes of prediction that can be utilized in gauging any country's prospects. There are basically three such approaches, which might be used alone or in combination: (1) the projection of current trends; (2) identifying analogous situations in the country's own past; and (3) finding comparable : processes in the history of other countries. Each method has a certain usefulness as well as definite limitations. Projection of current trends is naturally the easiest and most common
method of DrprlirHnn WmA7o-.ro- n,; .1 >