[Hansjakob Stehle editorial: "Flight Into Nationalism". Hamburg DIE ZEIT in German 12 Jun 92 p 1]

[Text] There is a great temptation not to want to see it because it is unpleasant. That Fatherland Europe, however, where the nation state would be "abolished"--that is, preserved and overcome--is increasingly proving to be a chimera. The nightmare of nationalism obviously frightens the politically minded less than the allure of a historically embroidered, new patriotic glory tempts them. With it many complexes can be compensated for, both social and national--particularly in the postcommunist East.

Europe? One can try to steer toward it by contributing--like the Germans--the reunited nation state from Mecklenburg to Upper Bavaria with all the skids that result from its problems. One can turn one's back on this Europe in a civil and gentle way, like the Danish; in a brutal way like the Serbs; or in the way that the Slovaks are doing. In their parliamentary elections the majority voted for those parties that are striving for the fastest possible separation from the Czechs. The Czechs, for their part, voted for parties and politicians who are not quite so unhappy about that, because they hope that the Czech Republic might reach "Europe" all the faster on its own because it is economically stronger.

Prague and Bratislava are not Belgrade and Sarajevo. The "Balkanization" that threatens to plague the Europe of the difficult fatherlands has many faces. The socialist "spring" in the Czech Prague under the Slovak Dubcek had a human face--and the anticommunist revolution was made completely "of velvet." Even here, however, the "turn" toward the national aspect strikes the democratic-idealist nerve of all renewal very strongly.

It was no coincidence that Vaclav Havel, the poet who sits in Prague's presidential chair, put his official impartiality at stake on the eve of the elections and on television "pleadingly" asked the people to vote only for those politicians who advocate "the just coexistence of Czechs and Slovaks"; this is the only way in which the CSFR could become a "solid stone in the European building."

Against all expectations, more than 80 percent of those eligible to vote went to the polls, despite widespread apathy. They even resisted the temptation of hopelessly splitting their votes among the 42 parties and small groups. More than was expected, they supported the two main favorites, the Czech conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of liberal economic reformer Vaclav Klaus and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) of Vladimir Meciar, the leftist liberal-nationalist people's tribune. Each won more than one-third of the vote--enough so that both can now pretend to be the masters of the political game, but not enough to put their foot down.

Both Klaus and Meciar basically realize that it has now become possible for each to achieve what he wants in his way: They will agree to disagree without wasting one shot of powder, first probably in a transition government (which will preside over the downfall). Then, after a referendum--which will, if possible, be held separately in the two republics--they will separate. Even if some sort of commune results from the divorce, the CSFR as a marriage of convenience will hardly continue to exist--only in the heaven that is called Europe, some say mockingly.

Regardless of the close relationship between the two peoples, their example shows how the burden of historical fate can continue to hinder common paths in Europe and toward Europe even today. In the 19th century the Czechs landed on the ground of "Austroslavism" after a pan-Slav flight of fancy--in the same Habsburg Empire in which Slovakia felt suppressed as "Upper Hungary." Then, after World War I, Tomas Masaryk's "Czechoslovakism" turned "two tribes into a nation": a state that was finally dominated by the Czechs and where there were more Germans than Slovaks.

Until these Germans returned home to the Reich, thanks to Hitler. Or were they Austrians? No, they are "the fourth Bavarian ethnic group," the Munich government still says today. It threw its "no" to the neighborhood treaty, which healed old wounds, at the feet of the Czechs and Slovaks precisely for election day.

A European spirit? Only disguised as a ghost from the past, if it exists at all. It frightens our neighbors, who are already uncertain anyway. Old fears and new uncertainties have, however, also promoted that tough, yes, radical realism which is represented by a politician like Vaclav Klaus and which led him to victory. His liberalism, his market economy without a social adjective hardly take the weak into consideration but feed them with hopes of tomorrow--in Europe.

No wonder that Klaus is unaffected by the predictable end of the unified Czechoslovak state. He does not want a loose confederation--nor does he want any kind of third path. If the Slovaks want to follow their own path, let them!

The tanks and guns, which are built in Slovakia, can still be used and, in particular, exported, Meciar, for his part, emphasized in the election campaign. Perhaps he was as little serious about that as in his tirades against the privatization of the state economy, which ensured him applause from the communists and the nationalism.

In a serious moment one could consider this dishonest scenario as an unavoidable phenomenon of democratic Westernization. As such it could be watched calmly, if it were not, at the same time, the symptom of a crisis that is seducing everyone in the postcommunist societies to choose a popular but fatal way out: the flight back into the old way of thinking in terms of national states. Or is it not quite so old? Is it contained--forever young--in the idea of the right to self-determination, which threatens to deteriorate into a new ideology?

It is easy to rage against nationalist perversion when it becomes obvious in such a bloody way as it does in the Balkans. However, it should give us food for thought and alarm us if--as in the CSFR--it emerges in countries that are part of the heart of Europe. The times are gone in which--as Masaryk once said--one just had to stand on top of the trash heap and swing one's whip in order to bring the people to "reason."