from the English political vernacular via a direct translation, such as natsional’naya bezopasnost’ (national security), is then understood in the scientific and expert community of national-territorial regions of Russia as the security of the state-forming nation (in fact, the state-forming ethnos) of a certain region, but not as a security of the state in general, as it was in English language.
At the same time, the existence of cultural and linguistic particularities in the interpretation of the term “nation’ only highlights the fact that the term has a stable range of meanings, shared by various cultures, on which, according to the author, the objective existence of nations as social communities is based.
In a historical retrospective, the concept of “nation’ that has entered all European languages cam stemmed from the Latin nasci which meant “birth’ and was contrasted by Roman citizens with “barbaric’ communities based on family and tribal relations and common law.
Thus, the term “nation’ appeared and was used in Ancient Rome attached to a meaning rather close to the contemporary one, especially during the emperors’ Rome with its developed civil society and watered-down Roman ethnos.
After the Western Roman Empire fell, feudal states that appeared on its former territories took on, along with the Latin language as a universal European lingua franca, the dichotomous use of two words, natio and gens (the latter directly translated as “tribe’) to designate civilized (Christian) nations as opposed to barbarians (pagans).
It is especially important that the original natio-gens dichotomy, highlighting the difference between the developed civil society of the empire of Rome and the primitive social institutions of the barbaric periphery of Rome, finding itself at the stage of dissociation of the tribal lifestyle, echoes the modern nation-ethnos dichotomy.
This becomes all the more important in light of the fact that the Greek word ethnos, introduced into the wide scientific vernacular not so long ago, has, in reality, almost the same meaning as the Latin gens, denoting cultural and genetic commonality with undeveloped political institutions (at the pre-state development stage) or taken without consideration of the political component.
It is also important to consider the medieval period in order to differentiate clearly between the concepts of “ethnos’ and “nation’. Characteristically, tribes (to be more precise, tribal nobility, elites) of the former barbaric periphery of Rome that were part of the empire of the Carolingian dynasty which gave names to historical provinces and feudal dukedoms (the Burgundians, the Lotharingians, the Bretons, the Franks, the Bavarians, the Saxons and others), insisted on calling themselves “nations’ for a long time after the Western Roman Empire collapsed.
Obviously, in calling their lands “nations’, feudals did not emphasize the ethnocultural particularities of their subjects. They were raising their political status within the Holy Roman Empire from provincial or even tribal to imperial. Thus, medieval political elites legitimized their political ambitions to subjugate and swallow neighbouring political entities.
Thus, in the early medieval period, the concept of a nation (natio) as a social unity was inseparable from the state and political component, basic institutions of which were directly inherited from Rome, but was at the same time linked to local political entities and historical provinces typical of the Middle Ages.
At the same time, the use of the natio concept was linked to feudal entities’ claims for territorial and political expansion, at the very least a new level of political sovereignty, which is exemplified by the history and titling of the hold-over of the empire of Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, later the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Sacrum Imperium Romanum Nationis Germanicae, Sacrum Imperium Romanum Nationis Teutonicae) or, in German, Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation. This complicated political aggregation of feudal states that existed in 962—1806 and in its most prosperous period included Germany, Northern and Central Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and some of the French regions.
During the late medieval period, nations assumed new social meaning. Although chronicles and documents call certain peoples and the population of historical provinces “nations’, starting from the fifteenth century the term begins to assume yet another meaning, closer to its contemporary use: the concept of the “German nation’ appears, albeit without lower classes included in it.
At the same time, the concept of “nation’ keeps obtaining new meanings. In universities, fraternity-like student corporations were called nations.180 Ex-territorial social and political institutions typical of the Middle Ages, such as cathedrals, religious orders combining knighthood and spirituality (Maltese, in particular), guilds and other corporate organizations were also based on nations. Therefore, nations were territorial entities of corresponding social institutions, linked to certain kingdoms, dukedoms and large historical provinces.
Thus, the use of the concept of “nation’ in the Middle Ages shows that this term’s semantics, albeit different from today, were closely related to the developed and rationally organized political and social institutions inherited from the empire of Rome. These institutions were contrasted with more primitive social structures characteristic of the geopolitical periphery of the Christian world of the time.
Initially used to distinguish the civilized population of the geopolitical nucleus of the empire from tribes on the barbaric periphery with their different cultures, the concept of “nation’ was used during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance to designate rationally organized social groups often corresponding to territorial division into political entities and historical provinces.
According to Ziegler, during the Middle Ages,
Natio is a union with a purpose, a local administratively subgroup, as a faction, a governmental unit, etc. This word does not have the full meaning as a representative political subdivision. It does not mean a predetermined form of the community, does not contain any indication toward the chief line of the social connection or division.181
According to Yury Granin,
…evolution of the meaning of the concept “nation’ in the Middle Ages corresponded to the evolution of the European society of the time, with its typical corporate (guild and estate) social structure and feudal fragmentation, which preserved local communities as they were and prevented large economic and cultural spaces from being created. That is why the next stage of the evolution of understanding of what “nation’ means was historically linked to the transition of the economic sphere to the capitalist (industrialized) method of producing material goods. In terms of politics, this phenomenon was linked to the process of the formation of centralized bourgeois-democratic states in Europe, which in the course of time united their territories’ multiple linguistic and ethnic groups into relatively homogenous communities, culturally and politically.182
In terms of collective consciousness, the objective process of the dissolution of feudalism and the inclusion of village communities and social lower classes into the economic, political and cultural life of the state manifested itself in a steady contrast between the concepts of “nation’ and “people’.
Initially, only nobility and aristocracy by birth, as well as clergy, claimed the right to be part of the “nation’, thus limiting “nation’ to social elites. The third estate’s claims to being part of the nation signified a watershed moment followed by the crisis and fall of the feudalism.
Nikolsky, V. S. University autonomy and academic freedom // Higher Education in Russia, 2008. #6 – Р. 147—155.
Ziegler, H. O. Die moderne Nation. Ein Beitragzur politischen Soziologie. Tubingen, 1931. – Р. 23.
Granin, Y. D. Ethnoses, Nation State and Formation of the Russian Nation. Experience of Philosophical and Methodological Research. – M.: IF RAN, 2007. – p. 11—12.
