JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Journal of the Gábor Bálint de ...

January-March 2013 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume V., Issue 1.
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a part of the course for national revival, liberty, and cultural development of the Turkic peoples, became
the followers of the idea independently from each other.
As a result of rigorous repressions pursued by totalitarian regimes in the beginning and the middle of
the 20 th century, Turkism collapsed as an idea. The greatest damage to Turkism was inflicted by
Stalinism, by which particularly the majority of conspicuous Turkism followers had been repressed. It
consisted in discrediting the idea of integration of the Turkic peoples itself and in the total informational
silence regarding the historical and integration potential of Turkic peoples. The absence of awareness
among the Turkic world’s populace about the Turkic world as a community with a vast potential, plus
the negative image of Turkism as a certain destructive movement propagated by Stalinism is a proof of
the state of affairs mentioned briefly earlier.
Ideas played probably a greater role in the history of humanity than material values from the point of
view of amount of wars and conflicts, forced or voluntary expenses of societies. One cannot characterize
ideas by extreme categories, like searching only positive or only negative features. The level of
constructivism or disruptiveness of ideas depends on which character the ideas predominantly acquire,
and accordingly in which forms the ideas are implemented. The idea of integrating ethnically close
groups is constructive from the point of view of consolidating peoples, conflict resolution between them,
merger of regions etc. Though, isolationistic trends initially exist in such ideas, and these trends can
prevail in case of excessive accentuation on ethnicity. And if the interests of an ethnic group are
considered much of much higher value than the interests of other groups, the idea would take an
undisguised aggressive character.
Thus in the 1930s and 1940s the idea of German nationalism containing pragmatic aspiration for
review of the discriminatory Versailles system and for uniting the European Germans in a sole state, as
per the victories of Germany, attained more and more the features of the idea of superiority of Germans
and legitimacy of sacrificing the interests of other groups for the interests of Germans; hence the idea
doomed the German nation to defeat.
The events of World War II are often viewed as a struggle between nations who belonged to
capitalistic, national-socialistic and Bolshevik systems. But it is worth to remember that in the course of
these events two ideas of ethnical integration – Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism – were implemented.
Unification of German-speaking countries of Europe into a sole state was carried out over a period of
centuries, a national aspiration of European Germans. By reason of location of German territories in the
midst of the great powers of Europe, and the antagonism between Prussia and Austria regarding the
hegemony of Germany, Prussia under the rule of Bismarck had to levy three wars and administer a
complicated diplomatic game until achieving the unification of Germany. In 1871 Bismarck managed to
unite Greman states into a German empire except Austria, Luxemburg and Switzerland. After 1871,
annexation of Austria into the Reich turned to be the main goal of Pan-Germanists.
The collapse of Germany in World War I not only led to detachment of several German-populated
regions from Germany and Austria, but also put Germany into the state of limited sovereignty under the
conditions of the Versailles system. Unification of Germany and Austria was deliberately inhibited.
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