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The Polish Understanding Of A Nation
In the Polish language the word "nation" has a very particular meaning, unknown in other languages. In the languages of Western Europe "nation" is equivalent to citizenship, to the passport held. It is also understood in the ethnographic sense, as of people using a certain language. However for us Poles the word "nation" contains both an intellectual and a sentimental content. It encompasses something more than language or citizenship. For several generations we did not have a state, we did not have Polish citizenship, but we remained the Polish nation. Foreign citizenship was imposed upon us, but we did not accept a foreign nationality.
What binds us is a common legal consciousness, a common social structure, a common ethic, a common civilisation. We represent a separate culture within the Latin civilisation.
One could ask the question: Do Gipsies belong to the Polish nation? We use the same language, we belong to the same religion and we are citizens of the same country. However I am sure that most Poles, as well as most Polish Gipsies, will say that we do not. We govern our lives by different laws, we have a different social structure and we have a different attitude to ethics. For these reasons we include the Gipsies and they so include themselves, under the notion of an ethnic or a cultural minority.
When Roman Dmowski sent to the printers his "Mysli nowoczesnego Polaka" (Thoughts of a modern Pole) in 1904 he demanded that the word "Zyd" (Jew) be written with a capital letter. He was accused of anti-Semitism for this. At that time Jews were treated as a religious group and for this reason "zyd" (Jew) was written with a small letter as we do for all religious denominations in the Polish language. However for Dmowski Jews represented a separate nation. Today Jews themselves wish that in Polish they be written about with a capital letter (Zyd) feeling more a nation than a religion.
On the other hand no one would ever consider treating the Polish evangelicals as a separate nation. Even about the Ruthenians we spoke of as gente Ruthenus natione Polonus (of Ruthenian origin yet Polish nation). This refers to all those who accept the same legal notions, social structure and civilisation.
One of the important features linking a nation together is the common historical consciousness, or historicism as Koneczny called it. This refers to the tradition of common public life (as distinct from dynastic and family memory), to the cult of the common past and to the common responsibility for the past and the future. According to Koneczny the national consciousness appeared in Poland during the reign of Wladyslaw Lokietek. It was then that the public desire to link up principalities with a common history and common language into a single state first appeared. In France this consciousness appeared with Joan of Arc. In England it appeared in the XVI c. in view of the danger from the Spanish Armada. Germans started to think of themselves as a nation when defending against Napoleon. In Italy this occurred as late as the second part of the XIX c. This national consciousness does not arise against anybody, but it may arise in defence against somebody. It must arise from a feeling of having something in common that is worth defending.
In forming a nation a great role is played by literature. The English came together around Shakespeare and the Italians around Dante - interestingly enough, 500 years after he died. The love of one's language is a constant feature of a nation. One can know many languages, but each man has only a single language which is his own, his mother tongue. It happens that the knowledge of one's own language is poor, as is common among various ?migr?s, especially in later generations, but the sole fact of having a language that is cherished as one's own, not in a utilitarian sense but emotionally, indicates one's belonging to a particular nation.
The notion of a nation is also connected with the love of a particular place on earth, of some region which is treated as one's own, as the fatherland.
A nation is a great family, a fatherland, a common patrimony. However a nation will not form while a clan system persists. The nuclear family must be free, must be emancipated from the clan. There must be a respect for private property. People should feel free. They should function organically, from below and not in a mechanistic arrangement regulated entirely from above. Only then can a nation form as the fruit of a common will and consciousness that is free and under no compulsion to come together.
Thus a nation is not an anthropological or biological consequence of using a certain language or occupying a certain place. It is a product of human will. It is a product of the work of many generations. It forms as a merger because its members want to merge. It is nation that makes a state. A state never makes a nation. Thus all these post-colonial countries, all these Nigerias, Tanzanias, Rwandas and Angolas will never produce a nation. Never has anything such as a Yugoslav or Soviet nation formed. There will also never be a European nation.
However new nations do form, as for example the USA, composed primarily of immigrants from Europe. Those immigrants on entering North America usually consider themselves members of their nations of origin, sometimes for several generations. But the recognition of the freedoms, tolerance, rule of law and way of life as something valuable and worth defending and exporting leads to national consciousness. This comes only after acceptance of the language, history and laws as one's own. This process is possible only in the Latin civilisation. It often happens in all Latin civilisation countries that immigrants integrate and accept the nationality of the adopted state as their own.
It is not possible to form a nation artificially. A nation forms from the consciousness of a civic freedom, of a common will that develops from below towards a common organisation in conformity with a specific tradition.
Koneczny defines a nation as a civilisational association that is personalistic, has a common fatherland and a mother tongue.
Everyone is born in some specific social, ethnic, religious and civilisational situation. One inherits certain values. Should one inherit a nation, a national consciousness, then there will be a tendency to enrich it, to increase its value. One will try to leave behind more than one has received. This is because national consciousness transgresses generations. There is no nation without a history, without a need to preserve and enrich the heritage for future generations. This need is referred to as patriotism.
Patriotism is the tendency to enrich a nation through one's work and intellectual efforts and one's readiness to make sacrifices in defence of the national legacy. So defined, patriotism is never a danger to neighbouring nations. Neighbouring patriotisms imply eternal peace. When one tries to enrich oneself at the cost of others, at the cost of neighbours, at the cost of subjugated or disenfranchised peoples, then it is not patriotism but its pathology. This is a pathological understanding of national consciousness. Similarly love of one's family and care for its needs does not create problems for neighbours. On the other hand nepotism, family egoism, the stealing from neighbours is a contradiction of family virtues.
Our Polish patriotism has never been a danger to our neighbours. We recognize their rights in spite of the fact that they have often violated ours. They have been violating our rights because they have no national consciousness or it is immature.
The Polish understanding of the notion of a nation is a value worth preserving. It is something very concrete, very positive and very noble that we would like to propose to all peoples of the world, as an idea worth exporting. It is something very, very different from nationalism understood as hatred of what is foreign. Our glorification of national virtues is often misunderstood in the West, through faulty translations, as nationalism. It is nothing of the sort.
Koneczny considered the Latin civilisation as the highest because it is most demanding on its members. When it is not defended, when no efforts are made to promote it, lower civilisations will take over, lower meaning ones that are less demanding. Attempts at combining civilisations, at synthesizing them, lead to an uncivilised state and eventually to the victory of the lowest one. For a demanding civilisation to survive it must be consciously defended and promoted. An effort must be made to make others accept its values. It requires an evangelical zeal.
He also considered that the idea of a nation was most strongly developed among the Polish people and he proposed that we Poles should spread its understanding to others.