The Awaking of Ethnic Consciousness in European Periphery

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Alongside the radical political change in the Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union during the last decade, we have seen various forms of ethnic awaking and the reorganization of ethnic consciousness among these peoples. The present study has aimed to investigate the on-going process of these changes, particularly in relation to the etho-national conflicts and movements raging in such a extent in the Eastern Europe as never since the World War II.Sources were collected mainly through face-to-face interviews with people in order to approach the manifold and dynamic aspects of their ethnic consciousness. The objects of interviews, which were carried out in Russia, the Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania and Canada, fell into three groups : 1) different social and age groups of a target nationality ; 2) peripheral groups and those who are in a close contact with different nationalities and 3) emigrants or exiles segregated long from a main group. In addition, data were also colle … More cted from neighboring nationalities in terms of their attitudes toward a target nationality.On the basis of the data the following interim conclusions have been so far yeilded. The ethnic consciousness of every people under our study has turned out to be far more ununiform and diverse than our expectation that popular generalization in many cases seems inconsistent with the reality. Ethnic consciousness among both different social and age groups reveals diversity in its range and content. In particular, the ethnic consciousness among a people in a close contact with netighbouring peoples has shown a considerable distance from that of the central and ruling portion of a state. The attitude toward the Russian, for example, is such a case with many peoples. It is also to be pointed out that the national movements of these countries that were previously strongly colored by anti-Sovietism and an independence-seeking motivation have now changed in some respects. The gradual transition of these countries from the state of economical and political disorder to that of balance between powers has clearly been followed by the change of the ethnic consciousness of the peoples. The radical ethnic consciousness based on the crisis of existence and rivalry with others has been gradually replaced by the present more realistic one. The ethnic consciousness among emigrants and exiles however, has been strongly influenced by the political relation between their home state and the present host state as wellas by the national minority policy of the latter toward them. Less