The present study aims at sketching some aspects of the last phase of existence of one mixed Czech-German community (Karlov-Libinsdorf), on the basis of ethnographic and historical sources. It offers a reflection of a more general process from the point of view of a local microlevel, a process that finally resulted in the ethnic homogneization of the Czech lands. The analysis of the controversy fo r national character of the community is being realized, on the one hand, through the study of the competition for the character of national schools in the locality, and, on the other hand, through the symbolical importance that the contesting parties ascribed to the existence of this mixed enclave. As a result of the general ethnic homogneization, the inhabitants of the naturally double-language community were confronted with the necessity of the unequivical declaration of their ethnicity. The nacionalization of the collective identity of the local inhabitants and the necessity of the „actualization“ of this identity according to the political situation of the moment was being imposed through the general social context and through the movement of „ethnic defense“ that was being incited from the outside, by the representants of the „defense associations“ The possible alternatives, however, were in competition one to another and, at the same time, they were inconsistent with the „traditional“ local (i.e. non-ethnic) identity. This dilemma hadbeen „imported“ from the outside, from the makrosocial level, but had to be solved on the level of local everyday life. In the situation of real existence of two different (ethnic) linguistic groups in the community under study, however, didn't exist the need to express the social reality through explicitly ethnical cathegories. If this expression was realized, it was in the direction to the outside, especially as a reaction to the demands from part of the State administration to define unequivocally the ethnic denomination - for example, for the use of the population censuses at the times of the Austria-Hungary and the Czechoslovak Republic or during the Protectorate when asking for the citizenship of the Protectorate or of the Reich - or in connexion with the regular interventions of the nationally outspoken activists. Similarly, also the institutionalized form of the „national struggle“ that seemingly found its possibility for expression in creating theparallel social structures in the community acquired such imposed character. There are many arguments for the assumption that the rivalry of the nationalist associations didn’t stem from the authentic local conditions. The local inhabitants could not be labeled as the ori and ginators of the conflicts with nationalist bacground, even though they have been sometimes perceived as the actors of such conflicts. We can sum up that the nationalization of the social ties didn’t occur spontaneously and represents rather a product of the interventions to the life of the community and a response to the ethnic enunciation imposed from the outside
In the 1991 census, 1 360 000 inhabitants of the Czechoslovak Federative Republic claimed Moravian nationality. Even though the interest of general public in the problem of ethnic Moravian identity had lost strength considerably, it has been disputed until today how to interpret this fact appropriately. The author makes an effort to prove, through historical recapitulation of recent attempts to constitute the new ethnicalnational identity of one part of the Moravian inhabitants, that the making of the specifically Moravian national ideology is related only to the spontaneous unfolding of civic activism since the end of the year 1989. On the basis of the analysis of both specialized studies and works of partakers active in the emancipation movements themselves, he focuses on the historical background of the idea of distinctive nationality of Moravians and the subsequent typology of indentifications of the inhabitants of Moravia. For the first half of the 1990s there could be stated the existence of three dominant tendencies in the ways of collective identification of the population of Moravia. In the first case it is the declaration of the existence of peculiar Moravian nation, in the second one the acknowledgment to the „peculiar cultural and historical branch of the Czech nation“. The adherents of the last, third standpoint have no problems to identify, in spite of their Moravian heritage, as Czechs without further attributes. The effort to constitute a distinctive „Moravian nation“ is in this study being interpreted as an example of the conviction that for the entrenchment of peculiar ethnical conciousness it is not crucial the „objective“ existence of specific cultural patterns, but the implementation of peculiar ideological system. Under conditions of Moravian national identification we are thus confronted with the idea that even in case of the absence of „natural“ aggregates of specific cultural facts it is possible to attempt to construct peculiar national collectiveness. The confidence in the reality of ethnic peculiarity than becomes the matter of the inerpretation of the everyday reality. In the context of other ethnoregional movements the existence of the phenomenon of ethnic Moravian identity can be perceived as the mobilization of identity of peripheral community with many nativist traits. Even though it might seem that the adherents of the idea of the existence of peculiar Moravian nation are seemingly loosing their significance lately, it can be supposed that the efforts in its paradigmatic construction and social establishment will continue also in the future.