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PARTISAN REVIEW
now everyone is happy; that is no t the case . So it is di ffic ult
to
turn to
the future from a single, fi xed po int of departure.
Mo reover, th ere is the socio logical aspec t of the problem. W e are
dealing w ith nati o ns that have a very sma ll midd le class, and even this
modest mi ddl e class is heavily dependent on th e state. T he largest sector
of thi s midd le class is educa ted, consisting of the state burea ucracy, the
intellectuals, and the academics in state institu tio ns. T he ma n of the state,
the man owned by the state , the nati o nali zed man - thi s basic personality
- was also very charac teristi c o f o ur life du rin g th e Communist peri od.
Fo r th e man of th e state and fo r th e people , th e mentality and the
cultu re o f th e state was th eir own culture. And if we go a bit further
bac k into th e past , we also have to rea li ze that th e biggest proportion of
j obs at th e tu rn of th e century were state j obs, eve n in th e most
devel oped area of th e H absburg Empire. H alf of the enginee rs, for
exampl e, wo rked fo r th e state, and in Ru ss ia indu striali za ti on was
stro ngly and heavily subsidi zed by state investments.
T his means that th e strongest ca rri ers of th e nati o nal idea we re those
who wo rked in the bureaucracy and those intell ec tu als in whose work
was somehow invested the vitality of th e nati onal languages. It is rather
amusing that the most extreme nati o nalists in th e new states, in the very
new nati o ns, are - I am a bit ashamed to say - th e teac hers of literature,
of the nati onal li teratures. But o f course the bureaucracy tends to create
mo re state j obs and new state o ffi ces in o rder to enh ance its power, so
w he neve r a new state is o n the ho ri zon , many people hope to fi nd
lu crati ve pos iti ons w ithin it. Th erefo re, it is in th e interest of many
peopl e w ithin th e society to crea te a nati o nal sta te. M o reove r, during
th e entire Communi st peri od , people got used to confo rming,
to
bei ng
obedi en t to the state; th ey looked to it fo r instru cti o ns and soluti ons,
for help and subventi ons, fo r messiani c gestures fi·om the government of–
fi ces. Th erefo re, it w ill be quite a lo ng process befo re arrivin g at an in–
dependent, so- ca ll ed civil society with a fin ancially and economi cally in–
dependent bo urgeo isie. Yo u ca n become an academi c in a couple of
years, but you can ' t become a bourgeois in a rea l sense - w ith a culture
of freedom , o f rights, and of beauty - so swiftly. So it may take a whole
generati on befo re we have a stron ge r midd le class in these countries.
D emoc racy is built on a large middl e class: if it is lac kin g, then democ–
racy w ill be a bit shaky, and th e state burea ucracy will te nd towards a
kind o f auth o ritarian , half-bureau crati c, half-democrati c system . It will
have a stro ng te ndency to perpetuate a kind of sys tem within govern–
ment; this tendency requires an ideology. T he most plausibl e ideology is
nati onalism.
I wo uldn ' t confuse the notion o f " th e nati o n " w ith that of nation–
alism , because the con cept o f nations is an in evitable ph enomenon; it
