Eastern European nationalism

Day by day, heart-breaking images of Syrian refugees appear in the newspapers.  Syrian families pour into Europe, reminding us of those photos of immigrant hordes who once passed through Ellis Island.

Why can't today's Europe make room for them, we ask, just as we once made room for refugees from yesterday's Europe?  We understand, of course, that we had (and still have) enormous empty spaces, compared to Europe's far greater population density.  We also are silenced by the noisy opposition expressed by so many Americans to the relatively lesser inflow of Latin American migrants across our own southern border.

But I suspect that Europe has another reason, besides lack of room, for resisting the entry of large numbers of immigrants, especially immigrants pouring in through southeastern and eastern Europe. 

The United States is a nation founded on certain principles:  first, its geographic separation and its fought-for political independence from Britain, and second, self-governance as a democratic republic.  Even in 1776, we were not ethnically homogeneous.  We didn't see ourselves, at least consciously, as a homeland in the western hemisphere for people of British ancestry.

But European nations are all about ethnicity.  Each country's distinct language, customs, religion and/or "blood" are the reasons each nation exists.  A century ago, eastern and southeastern Europe were governed by two cosmopolitan empires -- the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman.  Each granted varying amounts of autonomy to different nations within its empire, but subject to the ultimate sovereignty of the emperor or sultan. 

Beginning at least with the Greek war of independence in 1821, subject nationalities struggled to govern themselves, free of tribute to an imperial government.  "Nationalism" increasingly became the ascendant ideology throughout the nineteenth century, and led eventually to the assassination of an imperial archduke by a Serbian nationalist -- and the beginning of World War I.  At least five of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points dealt with recognition of national sovereignty along ethnic lines.

Yugoslavia was the last entity in Europe to attempt to bridge ethnicities -- and even its ethnicities were all Slavic.  Yugoslavia's breakup in the early 1990s, along with the independence of the three Baltic states, finally accomplished the goal of nation states of single ethnicity throughout the region.

We may not feel that creation of such states is a particularly admirable goal, but -- especially among the more recently created states -- it is a goal for which they had long strived.  Diluting their ethnically uniform populations now with the influx of a large number of new Syrian residents may seem to undo in part that accomplishment.

It's notable that the European nations most certain of their long-time and well-established ethnic unity and sovereignty -- France and Germany -- have been those most willing to accept new residents from Syria.

I have no solution to the Syrian refugee problem.  No one seems to have a solution.  But a feeling for the history of eastern Europe should help us understand fears and emotions of the region's citizens and rulers.  Eastern Europeans are no less caring or empathetic than we in the West; they don't resist helping the suffering Syrians simply out of cruelty or lack of charity.