Bridging Ethnic and National Chasms

Essay review of Vamik Volkan, Bloodlines, From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. ISBN 0374114471, 280 pp., $24.00.

Most of us who lived through the Cold War remember it less for its ability to contain ethnic diversity than for the threat the Soviet Union seemed to pose. Those of us who traveled in the area of the Soviet empire were naive enough to assume that “nationalism,” as it was called then, was banished forever. The fewer of us who traveled extensively in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s can look back at the few hints of disagreement between Slovenians and Macedonians, Serbs and Croats, but not as harbingers of the horror that was to follow in the 1990s.

Vamik Volkan has been in these areas and many others that he covers in Bloodlines, his latest book. Unlike many other authors, he clearly explains the differences between nationalism and ethnicity. I find particularly useful his explanation

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about the ethnic tent. Even though his first chapter is entitled “Ethnic Tents,” I looked for an even more precise definition of this “tent.” In an interview for Clio’s Psyche (vol. 2, no. 2, August, 1995), he said essentially that the “tent” is located in a specific place, a geographic locale in which an ethnic group has lived and lives and on which it has built its culture over a long period of time. This culture, from music to thoughts, is in a sense positioned, almost like paintings, in the fabric of the tent, its wall. At the same time, the wall of the tent provides the border toward the outside and protects the ethnics living in it from outside storms. The border of the tent, therefore, provides separation, differentiation, and security. The tent is held up by a pole; to Volkan, the pole represents the leadership of the ethnic group. If the pole is rigid, like a poorly designed mast of a sailboat, then it cracks or splinters easily. If the pole is flexible, like a carefully selected tree in the deepest forest of Siberia, then the winds slamming against the ethnic tent will not break it, but simply allow it to bend and recover quickly. One can almost visualize tents standing all across the world and in them ethnic groups, be they Rusians, Ossetes, Uzbeks, Bosnians, Serbs, or members of tribes in Central Africa.

A theme of Bloodlines is the consistency with which the collapse of empires, or states, has caused ethnic violence to become a prevalent condition of late 20th-century life. Several chapters deal with the territories of the former Soviet Union — the Europeans now call them “Reforming Republics” — and how they are responding to the dissolution of that empire. For example, Russians who migrated into areas such as Estonia and Latvia even before the expansion of the Imperial period are lumped together with the more recent arrivals from Russia who are considered occupiers. Now, all of them are perceived as immigrants and as ethnically distinct from Estonians and Latvians.

The way the presence of Russians is handled in different parts of the former Soviet Union varies, depending on the ethnic group they are facing. For example, the way Russians are being pressured to leave an area takes on different forms. In Ossetia, an area at the foot of the Caucasus that Volkan does not discuss, systematic efforts pressure Russians out. It is not the same pressure as that in Chechnya and Ingushetia, but it is still a form of ethnic cleansing. Even if it is not the violent form that Volkan describes for parts of the former Yugoslavia, it takes the form of Russians not attaining jobs, promotions, raises, and parking permits. While Volkan deals with the behaviors in the Balkans to illustrate the extremes to which ethnicity is being carried, these less violent forms of cleansing are felt with great intensity and extreme personal hardship by those whom they affect. These “milder forms” of cleansing are less visible to the Western press but very obvious to the people who have lived in these areas for generations because they undermine their standard of living, lifestyle, and very life.

While these cleansings are taking place in some of the Reforming Republics, in others, as Volkan describes so well, a rapprochement is being articulated — a compromise, by the way, in which he and his Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction at the University of Virginia actively participated. All sections of the book bear close reading, but the one on a cemetery in Riga needs special care; it shows with which wisdom and insight he and his teams have worked in these areas of the world. While some authors see themselves almost as travelers, Volkan came to the task of assisting rapprochement with a profound understanding of psychology and history. One can argue that the presence of his team — with its clear understanding of the intense feelings, the hurt and the abuse — may have done no more than provide a safe place and skilled leadership. But their offering a safe haven and being facilitators is a significant contribution beyond mere analysis of the problem.

One can contrast the experience of some of the states that have emerged from the Soviet Union with other areas of the world that Volkan has studied, for example, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cyprus. Again, one finds here distinct similarities and differences. One of the most cruel and vicious of the efforts at ethnic cleansing took place in Bosnia. By contrast, one may study Cyprus where the conflict simmered and never reached the sort of inhumanity as it did in Bosnia. Volkan does an exceptional job explaining how various ethnic groups reached the point of explosion. One of his unique interpretations is how ethnic groups in this part of the world — but obviously in others as well — selected certain events in the past to characterize as “chosen victories” or “chosen traumas.” For Serbs, the most obvious of these choices is Kosovo. Unlike most authors, he is able to explain this Medieval battle not only from the Serb but also from the Turkish point of view. He provides a

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magnificent illustration of how events over time are interpreted to mean a loss against an aggressor and occupier, and how this loss is used as a way to define and to separate an ethnic group from a neighboring or occupying ethnic group. I am struck by how similar the experience in the former Yugoslavia is to that of the Chechyns, Ingushy, and Ossetes. All of them look back to a similar traumatic experience which defined their ethnic group vis-à-vis outsiders –- the Turks in Bosnia, or the Mongols — later known as the Tatars — in the Caucasus. The defeat of the local ethnic groups by these early outsiders and then their struggle against them was later transferred to the Russians who came into the area in the 18th century. The horrors of the 1920s, the Stalin deportations, and the recent Russian attacks in the area all served to refine the image of the outsiders who are not only different but also evil and must be resisted. When, today, the people of the Caucasus fight against the Russian state, they do so with the same intention as their ancestors because they define themselves by the “outsider.”

Volkan also has been able to resolve the difficulty of defining or separating oneself as a member of one ethnic group from another in an area that for a long period of time has had an ethnic mix. For example, how did one, or does one, know in Bosnia that one is Serb, Croat, or Muslim (Turk)? The bloodlines are intermixed, the language is similar if not the same, and the names are similar — though, yes, the religions are different. Volkan shows that while people in Bosnia knew that they had different ethnic blood(s) flowing in them, they had to decide to which ethnic group they belonged. In the exceptional film, Vukovar, everyone with time had to decide to which group he or she belonged. This selection of one’s bloodline, or “spermline” in the language of the Caucasus, is similar to that area where people have Mongol, Cossack, Russian, and other blood flowing in their veins and must now decide, if there is any doubt on the part of others, to which group they belong.

One of Volkan’s finest insights deals with the Turks on Cyprus. During the years from 1963 to 1974, when they were ghettoized into a small area of the island, many Turkish families kept parakeets, and he provides evidence that they used the birds to sustain their image of themselves as functioning and independent individuals, families, and as a group. As soon as the ghettoes could be abandoned, the parakeets disappeared. I am reminded of the recent American penchant to collect toy towns. Surely the desire to recreate pretty and cute towns with shops and post offices symbolizes the desire of many Americans to live in such pleasant and safe environments, away from the ones in which they actually must live.

Volkan’s Bloodlines is not only the work of a mature scholar but also a warning to everyone who is willing to hear about the excesses of ethnic pride. We ought to heed his warning even in our ethnically “integrated” society. All too many of the other societies he discusses also seemed to be ethnically integrated at some point.

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