Teritorinės tapatybės konstravimas formuojantis moderniam Pabaltijo vokiečių ir Suomijos švedų tautiniam sąmoningumui

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to compare the role that territorial identity and its formation played in the history of two national groups; in effect, two ethnosocial and ethnopolitical collectivities: Baltic Germans and Finnish Swedes. These national groups were picked not at random, since for both, their territorial and political identity was a significant condition of their survival. As it turns out, one group did indeed survive and still enjoys a full-fledged existence today; the other is now defunct. The nation and state of Finland consists of Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking citizens; according to Finland’s constitution, both languages have the status of a state language. This is a result of the 19th century Finnish national movement, based in large part on the priority of territorial identity over ethnolinguistic identity. From the middle of the 19th century onwards, Baltic German reformers and writers strove to fashion a territorial Baltic identity, to be shared by all inhabitants of that land. For a time these efforts did influence the Latvian intelligentsia and members of the Latvian national movement. But then differences over social and economic reforms and questions of culture and language caused leaders of the Latvian national movement to accord a clear priority to ethnolinguistic identity and to derive territorial identity from etnolinguistic identity rather than vice versa. Efforts to create a common territorial Baltic identity in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th ended in failure.