ABSTRACT
The recent history of East-Central European literatures is framed by two forceful interventions: one immediately after the communist takeover in the mid-1940s, when large numbers of writers were executed, imprisoned, forced into exile or into conformity; the other after 1989, when these literatures were again submitted to a radical re-evaluation that removed old hierarchies and canons, calling into question even some of the dissident writers under communism. In particular, the cultures of the Baltic region and the Balkans lapsed into forms of nationalism or ethnocentrism that undercut their traditional multiculturality, converting them into ‘nationalizing spaces’. The nationalizing state, Rogers Brubaker explains, is
the state of and for a particular ethnocultural ‘core nation’, whose language, culture, demographic position, economic welfare, and political hegemony must be protected and promoted by the state. The key elements here are 1) the sense of ownership of the state by a particular ethnocultural nation that is conceived as distinct from the citizenry or permanent resident population as a whole; and 2) the ‘remedial’ or ‘compensatory’ project of using state power to promote the core nation’s specific (and heretofore inadequately served) interests.1
