Polylingual Nationalism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans : reviving a forgotten history

Maxwell, Alexander (author), Stergar, Rok (author)

Polylingual nationalism refers to national concepts that imagine more than one language asintegral to the titular national community. In East-Central Europe and the Balkans, polylingualnationalism has not been a focus of comparative or theoretical research, since nationalist his-toriographies have instead emphasized the link between nations and languages, conflatinglinguistic 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 conceptsso that the nation encompassed speakers of different languages. This article traces key devel-opments in the history of polylingual nationalism in the region. It suggests that the success ofethnolinguistic nationalism was contingent. Writing polylingual nationalism back into theregion’s history offers a fuller picture of how competing loyalties interacted and why today’snationalisms ultimately took the forms that they did.

• Language: English
• Keywords: nationalism, languages, multilingualism, Central Europe, Balkans
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.02 - Review Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 10.08.2026
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 1-20
• Numbering: Vol.
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-185671
• UDC: 323.1(4-191.2)"18"
• ISSN on article: 1557-2986
• DOI: 10.1080/13537113.2026.2690751
• COBISS.SI-ID: 287959299
• Publication date in RUL: 17.08.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nationalism and ethnic politics
• Publisher: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• ISSN: 1557-2986
• COBISS.SI-ID: 521643801

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: nacionalizmi, jeziki, večjezičnost, Srednja Evropa, Balkan

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P6-0235-2022
• Name: Slovenska zgodovina