Non-Territorial Autonomy during and after Communism: In the Wrong or Right Place?

Abstract

Paradoxically, the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA) is in relatively high demand in post-Communist countries, although it is at the same time an environment that seems hostile to it. Marxism-Leninism had rejected the idea of NTA for decades. Most countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union continue to seek to keep minorities under control. Some countries are under authoritarian rule or have institutional designs that are unfriendly to civil society activities and all forms of self-governance. Nevertheless, several national legislations contain the notions of non-territorial cultural autonomy and some countries have institutional arrangements including elements of NTA. The NTA concept is increasingly welcomed by governments, academia and minority activists. The author seeks to explain this contradiction. First, the author considers that the vision of ethnic groups as internally coherent social entities is not alien to all currents of Marxism. The Soviet and other Communist regimes resorted in practice to discourse and even institutional arrangements resembling NTA. Second, NTA turns out to be part of symbolic rather than instrumental policies that provide for ideological control over minorities. Third, in several cases (like the Baltic states), the concept of NTA fit their respective restitutional framework or return to the pre-Communist 'golden age'.