Polylingual Nationalism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans: Reviving a Forgotten History

Polylingual nationalism refers to national concepts that imagine more than one language as integral to the titular national community. In East-Central Europe and the Balkans, polylingual nationalism has not been a focus of comparative or theoretical research, since nationalist historiographies have instead emphasized the link between nations and languages, conflating linguistic revival efforts with the so-called “national revival” of the 19th century. Nevertheless, patriots in East-Central Europe and the Balkans have also imagined various national concepts so that the nation encompassed speakers of different languages. This article traces key developments in the history of polylingual nationalism in the region. It suggests that the success of ethnolinguistic nationalism was contingent. Writing polylingual nationalism back into the region’s history offers a fuller picture of how competing loyalties interacted and why today’s nationalisms ultimately took the forms that they did.