The Myth of Ethnic Conflict: Chap 13 - Diplomatic Institute

478 Maria Todorova
other institutions. Yet this very emphasis on the unifying potential
of language stressed at the same time its exclusiveness and the rigidity
of the ethnic boundaries it delineated. This precluded the integration
(except in the cases of assimilation) of different linguistic
groups into a single nation.
Moreover, not only did groups of different linguistic background
from the dominant ethnic group in the nation-state prove
impossible to integrate; so also did groups of identical ethnic background
and speakers of the same (or dialects of the same) language,
like the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, the Slavic Bosnian Muslims,
the Torbeshi in Macedonia, etc. These cases invoke the general problem
of religion as a political boundary, that of the Balkan Muslims
in particular. Despite the fact that language indeed had become the
nucleus of different ethnic and national identities among the Balkan
Christians (Orthodox for the most part), it could not raze the fundamental
boundary between Muslims and Christians that had been
established during the centuries of Ottoman rule. The reason for this
was not, as the great bulk of Balkan and foreign historiography
maintains, the fact that Orthodoxy played a major and crucial role
in nation-building. 17 In fact, “religion came last in the struggle to
forge new national identities” and in some cases “did not become a
functional element in national definition until the nation-states had
nationalized their churches.” 18 It never could be a sufficient component
of national self-identity, and even in the national struggles its
primary contribution was to strengthen the opposition to the Muslim
rulers. 19 Within the Orthodox ecumene, the process of nation-building
demonstrated “the essential incompatibility between the imagined
community of religion and the imagined community of the
nation.” 20
This does not mean that the religious boundary between Christianity
and Islam was the only divider. Clearly the different Christian
denominations, and particularly the opposition between Orthodoxy
and Catholicism, presented additional frontiers of tension. Yet these
frontiers did not prove as insurmountable. 21 Ironically Balkan nationalism,
which irrevocably destroyed the imagined community of
Orthodox Christianity, managed to preserve a frozen, unchangeable
and stultifyingly uniform image of the Muslim community and consistently
dealt with it in millet terms. In other words, the Christian
populations of the Balkans began speaking, among themselves, the