ABSTRACT
In literature, the discussion is widespread on the creation of ethnolinguistic nations by activists, who from an outside (etic) perspective can be seen as ethnic entrepreneurs or national activists, while from an internal (emic, or national) perspective as national awakeners. The latter term, rife in national histories of Central Europe’s nations, hinges on the tacit assumption—without any evidence to this end—that nations are near-eternal or near-natural entities. In this view informed by ethnolinguistic nationalism, during the period of non-national polities and empires from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, many of the region’s nations “fell asleep.” This far-fetched hypothesis also assumes that the late medieval period was a nationally happy age (even with no records confirming the existence of any nations then), when Central Europe’s “nations” purportedly had a chance to establish their “national” monarchies, such as Bohemia (equated with today’s Czech Republic), Bulgaria, Croatia, Greater Moravia (equated with today’s Slovakia), the Holy Roman Empire (equated with today’s Germany), Hungary, Rus’ (equated with today’s Belarus, Russia or Ukraine), or Walachia and Moldavia (equated with today’s Romania and Moldova). This meta-national master-narrative continues with the period of “great re-awakening of nations” in the nineteenth century, which from the etic perspective, was the busy age of creating ethno-linguistically defined nations by activists through education, the printing press, societies, and statistics.
