What have the USSR, Biafra and the Munich Council Republic in common? Well, very little probably except of course that as countries none of them exist anymore, the first after a relatively long and eventful life, the second strangled in early childhood and the last what might be called a still-born baby in national terms. However all three were an attempt in some way to forge a national identity expressed through borders, self-government, a flag, and of course an appeal to the rest of the world to accept it on those terms.

The number of "dead" countries now exceeds the present number of "live" ones many times over. Some of these deaths could be classed as "murder by neighbour", some "suicide", some "assisted dying", and some countries - like the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg Gotha - seemed simply to wander off one day, never to be seen again. That the latter was absorbed into a unified Germany is an historical fact. That its transition from autonomy to federation was already long in progress however seems to suggest a country which used every available means at its disposal to divest itself of autonomy using whatever adjacent polity happened along into which it might be absorbed.

While many of these demises could be considered historically fortunate, if only for their neighbours' sake, some still strike one as very unfortunate indeed and their resurgence, on those rare occasions that it occurs, can be deemed a matter of general celebration. One is reminded of Rousseau's advice to the Poles as they stood poised to be carved up by belligerent and avaricious neighbours in the 18th century, just as they again were to be in the 1930s, "You are likely to be swallowed whole, hence you must take care to ensure that you are not digested". The Poles apparently (and repeatedly) took his advice and, like their Baltic cousins in the lyrical phrase of historian Norman Davies, "... years later, like the biblical Jonah, they re-emerged from the belly of the whale, gasping but intact."

However, others (many others) have not been so lucky. Are there any (my own favourite is the gloriously anti-Trumpist "Republic of the Rio Grande") which, even if for nothing other than their flag design, would be readmitted like a shot and with a warm welcome into one's own personal atlas?

I remember perusing a large atlas in a public library reference section in the 1980s which still clearly marking Hyderabad out as an independent state which it had been from 1948 until absorbed by India in 1956.

Well the move these days seems to be towards more and smaller independent states. So how about resurrecting the Republic of Cospaia, a tiny autonomous republic between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States, which existed from 1440 until 1826.

According to wiki: "It unexpectedly gained independence in 1440 after Pope Eugene IV, embroiled in a struggle with the Council of Basel, made a sale of territory to the Republic of Florence. By error, a small strip of land went unmentioned in the sale treaty and its inhabitants promptly declared themselves independent. An early centre in Italy for tobacco production, Cospaia eventually evolved into a commerce haven which, in 1826, was divided between Tuscany and the Papal States. Each citizen was awarded a silver coin by the church to help convince them to continue farming tobacco. The Republic of Cospaia was almost completely anachist in its government and criminal justice system, or lack thereof. There were no jails and there was no standing army or police force within the tiny nation. There was a council of elders and a chief's family who governed at one point. They met in the Church of Annunciation for councils."

Vizzer wrote:

I remember perusing a large atlas in a public library reference section in the 1980s which still clearly marking Hyderabad out as an independent state which it had been from 1948 until absorbed by India in 1956.

Yes, there were a number of the "princely states" which remained independent until taken over by India or Pakistan. It might have been a Good Thing if Kashmir had stayed that way.

Of course, there's always this one :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZvLqZ4-8-M

One of the best films ever made, Gil, its genius advertised almost in the very first frame of the movie and the caption "This film is dedicated to the memory of ..." while a giant ration book is projected on to the cinema screen. The genius of course is that it was made in 1949 - a fantastic example of that which the British once took for granted as part of their personality and culture, the ability to simultaneously laugh at themselves and at life in general through a deceptively simple "gag", the point of which in other cultures would have taken a tome to communicate. It is something that has been lost, alas.

And it had Margaret Rutherford!

The film makes much of an ancient link with the Duchy of Burgundy, which actually fits the the theme of the thread quite nicely. Not the Duchy as much as the ancient Kingdom of the Burgundians, the remnants of which the Duchy would later be carved out from. A Germanic people in a Germanic Kingdom, speaking German, writing German, thinking German, and in a territory almost equivalent in size to the West Germany that we know from recent history. Then defeated by another Germanic Kingdom, the Franks. And almost entirely in what we now call France. You'd never even guess that such a history applied to the area were you to visit it today. Had the kingdom not succumbed when it did (the early 6th century) one wonders just how the cultural, political and even the religious history of Western Europe would have panned out.

I couldn't get Gil's youtube to play but from Nord's comments I assume it was 'Passport to Pimlico' ... which immediately made me think of that other sadly lost little country, the Grand Duchy of Fenwick.

In 'The Mouse that Roared' it was Peter Sellars that played Fenwick's Grand Duchess Gloriana XIII, but in the follow up film 'The Mouse on the Moon' it's a gloriously baroque Margaret Rutherford  ... alongside Ron Moody, Bernard Cribbins, Terry Thomas, John Le Mesurier, Peter Sallis, Clive Dunn, Hugh Lloyd and a host of other great British comedy actors:

Similar to your comments about Burgundy is the situation of Brittany. Brittany (Bretagne, Breizh, Lesser Britain) was absorbed into Roman Gaul but the region regained its independence with the decline of Rome and managed to remain independent from both the Gauls and Franks. Furthermore its mostly celtic population was boosted in the 5th century by the immigration of Britons from Wales and Cornwall. In the middle ages it was an independent kingdom of celtic people speaking a celtic language, and courted as a powerful potential ally by both England and France. But gradually it moved to being more pro-France, the language at court changed, and eventually the state became fully unified with the Kingdom of France in the early 16th century. With the French revolution the Duchy of Brittany was abolished and the region split into five administrative departments. In the 19th century the use of the Breton language was heavily suppressed. But the long period of independence and relatively late union with France still means that Brittany is quite culturally distinct from the rest of France and in many ways (such as language) is often more akin to Wales and Cornwall than to neighbouring Normandy and the Loire region. There is an independence movement but it is still nowhere close to the situation in Wales or Scotland.

A quick interested browse for ideas, I was astonished by the number of changes in modern times, let alone the ancient. The list I saw somehow left out Israel; perhaps that was a pragmatic omission.

The way things may be headed, if the United Kingdom disunites, England itself may then  split into Wessex and Mercia - and other assorted bits round the edges. As I see it small places joined through weakness to form larger entities, willingly or by force. Now that these larger identities are found to be wanting, it's back to smaller ones..... which in turn will probably find themselves or others wanting to join together for strength. This fusion and diffusion is fascinating. I guess I am too close/thick to be able to  see a Darwinian pattern  for species survival in all of this but there probably is one.

Israel is a country which vanished and reappeared, even if many of its immediate neighbours seemingly hanker after the former state of affairs again. In any case it is something of a special exception in the normal scheme of things when a people lose their autonomy and then reassert it. In Israel's case they also went on extreme walkabout in the interim.

One area of England which I have always thought would make sense as a separate state is Yorkshire. What surprises me however is that this has never been reflected in the historical kingdoms of England. In pre-Viking times modern Yorkshire straddled two kingdoms between which there was never much love lost. After the Vikings arrived an independent Yorkshire of sorts was established, but still only covering portions of the modern "state", along with some bits that modern Yorkshiremen would shudder to contemplate as compatriots. And yet you'd be hard put to find a denizen these days who did not assume "Yorkshire" as a fundamental part of their communal identity - for many superseding "English" or "British" by a long shot.

One vanished kingdom in England which would be fun to see re-emerge is Magonæte. I wonder how the rest of England would react if Herefordshire suddenly declared UDI? Or for that matter Herefordians, who are probably unaware for the most part that their county has a border predating not only other counties in England but even many of the other kingdoms which united to form England in the first place.

I did not know of this either. Do not discount it happening, either. Such is the mode of thought these days. 
Whereas I can see Kent becoming Kentos again with ease ( could be migrant dominated if Calais falls) but am a tad bothered that Wessex may not accept Essex again. An independent Essex  would see me moving house, I fear. My ancestors - year dot - hail from Shropshire seems a nice quite sort of place....

If we all had to hike hack to the place of our origins (Joseph and Mary-like) to pay taxes, what an upheaval there would be, Just a thought. Ireland might make a packet! Sorry, off topic. I have a wandering sort of mind.

I am doing the Hwiccans a disservice, dropping their "S". The kingdom was of course Magonsæte.

It is probably no coincidence that it was Mercia that provided much of the impetus towards unification, even if it was a Wessex king who got the ultimate credit. Not only did it find itself at the cutting edge of anti-Danish infiltration which in itself forged a common identity in opposition to the "new" newcomers, but Mercia itself - as we discussed before - derived its character and indeed its name from the fact that it itself originated as a nebulous mass of "march" lands which served as a buffer zone between established realms, in England at the time therefore a landlocked hodge podge of communities who suddenly discovered that this placed them in quite a strong position nevertheless once they got their act together both administration-wise and identity-wise, and then started getting bolshy with the neighbours, success in this venture further bolstering this development. Magonsæte was simply the first victim of this policy, it seems. Its definition was revamped to "sub kingdom" through Mercian interventions but remained intact a while longer due to the same arrangement. Northumbrian identity was re-forged and bolstered in opposition to this new big player on the scene.

The telling thing about Mercia, and one that is graphically visible if one views a series of maps indicating its extent throughout the dark ages and into the early medieval period, is that by galvanising its opponents into equally strong centralised government, its borders from that point on became malleable and elastic as it sought to hold its own in, and even dominate, the English polity. It is perhaps a worthwhile notion to bear in mind that the kingdom which probably did most to contribute to what would become an "England" is the one which at no point itself had a settled shape or size. It helps to affirm the fact that borders are secondary in terms of polity to national self-perception. As long as the latter remains galvanised the former can wax and wane, and even sometimes temporarily disappear.

Nordmann,

"The film makes much of an ancient link with the Duchy of Burgundy, which actually fits the the theme of the thread quite nicely. Not the Duchy as much as the ancient Kingdom of the Burgundians, the remnants of which the Duchy would later be carved out from. A Germanic people in a Germanic Kingdom, speaking German, writing German, thinking German, and in a territory almost equivalent in size to the West Germany that we know from recent history. Then defeated by another Germanic Kingdom, the Franks. And almost entirely in what we now call France. You'd never even guess that such a history applied to the area were you to visit it today. Had the kingdom not succumbed when it did (the early 6th century) one wonders just how the cultural, political and even the religious history of Western Europe would have panned out."

Yes Burgundy...Some one of the Lorraine tudesque (Isleifson/Laumesfeld) and I are both on Historum and on the French Passion Histoire...we many times joke as we "from the borderland" meaning we as from the borderland between the French Kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation...on the borders of two cultural entities in both of which we are embedded....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Burgundy



How if you look to the history of our region: The county of Flanders: what changes in half a millenium.
That Flanders don't exist anymore. It was put together under the Burgundians with the Duchy of Brabant to later form the 17 provinces of the Low Countries under Charles V. During the Dutch Revolt it was together with his neighbours separated from the North into the Spanish Southern Netherlands. Later Louis XIV carved a large chunk around Calais from the former Duchy of Flanders. And so it remained under the later Austrian rule. After the intermezzo of the French occupation it became again included in the larger entity of The Netherlands to separate again after a mere 15 years to become again an entity as the former Spanish Netherlands from 400 years before. And then after a while in that new Belgium, some in the North called it Flanders, an entity composed by the former County of Flanders depending from France, the South of the former  Duchy of Brabant depending from the HRE and the North of the former Prince Bishopric of Liège. Perhaps it is like The Netherlands calling Holland...?
What I mean by all this that some especially in the 19th century "constructed" a national narrative to support their nationalistic claims...and at the end some start to believe that they have a national feeling...the same with the Belgians, who have after all nevertheless an entity starting already under Albert and Isabella...a 420 years instead of a 130 years for the nowadays Flanders...(hope that some Flemish nationalists don't read my prose )

Kind regards, Paul.

But what foments a sense of national identity? Is it language related, cultural ties in common  or following leadership that appeals? Or is it  more about a  struggle among those who have inherited power - including the muscle to sustain it?

Ernest Gellner has written several books examining that question and his conclusion, made repeatedly for different reasons and which makes perfect sense to me, is that there is no one answer. At different times and in wildly different circumstances all of the things you mention, plus others such as a special focus on ethnicity (for whatever reason) or an historical bond between people equally subjugated by another people etc, have played what appear to be a predominant role in forging a sense of nationality or nationhood. Most often it is probably better to cite a mixture of these, but again never quite to the same degree in each individual case.

In the case of kingdoms it is sometimes easier - diverse monarchies develop into roughly similar institutions but often from wildly divergent root causes, and indeed sometimes that cause is simply the political ambition of an increasingly powerful person (who naturally assumes the role of king in the process). We see that explicitly in the bigger states forged in that manner - such as under Attila or Genghis Khan - but in fact it happened historically on umpteen occasions with less spectacular leaders forging less imperial or huge states, which in fact also historically showed a greater propensity to be perpetuated dynastically once founded in that manner.

Where it is harder to find detectable patterns, let alone common reasons, is in the demise of states and the reason so many of them disappear compared to how many survive in the very long term. You would think that having found a common cause or a common attribute strong enough for a community to define itself as such that this should in some way at least increase the resultant state's bid for longevity. But historically this is not borne out by the evidence. Some states are founded on extremely strong bonds between their citizens but fizzle out even within the same people's lifetimes. Others, such as Switzerland for example or even Belgium for that matter as Paul referred to, are born almost completely out of happenstance or others' own political expediency and yet survive through generations, often for many centuries or even longer.

Gellner refers to the state often as a "perpetual illusion" of unity - the ones lasting longest not being the ones which retain throughout the same sense of identity, but which can successfully attribute the same notion of unity to what is in effect a long process of social evolutionary change. Whether Britain survives what are now increasingly likely moves towards dissolution or not, I think you can still see Gellner's point in relation to England. In your own lifetime you have seen the character, politics and constitution in terms of its citizenry of what is "England" change radically, and this has happened throughout the country's by now lengthy existence, but throughout it has remained a recognisable entity with the name "England". Any attempt to therefore define what it is to be "English" at this point in time really can only be answered in this point of time. Once you try to retrospectively assign that identity to those who went before you find yourself immediately contradicted by the many historically distinct variants which preceded the current one. When you ask therefore what has fomented a sense of national identity in England you must ask also what fomented it in the past, and before that, and before that again, and so on back to the state's foundation. Each point in time you stop at will yield different answers. And so it is with all countries.

Hereendentthedissertation.

Dissertation understood - this time. So it's somewhat like a community perpetuating a myth?

The media have a hand in this in more modern times but in small communities until universal communication, a concept of identity would crystallize, I suppose. 

Until about 60 years ago, the Kaffir people in a remote vale of the Hindu Khush who believe they are descended from  Alexander's followers met very few outsiders. They still speak of Alexander (Iskander) as if it all happened within living memory. Not that any claimed any interest in joining up with Greece as far as I know.

Priscilla wrote:

So it's somewhat like a community perpetuating a myth?

It is tempting to think so - nationalist ideology certainly often employs the aspect of myth in which a consciously constructed intrinsic logic is made apply in order to prosecute particular theories or notions which, when examined against the actual data empirically ascertained, often reveal themselves to be fictions or artificial constructs with little substance outside of their equally meticulously constructed context. And, as with pervasive myth, personal investment in at least portions of that ideology is almost unavoidable as one navigates normal discourse and day-to-day existence, where one is repeatedly obliged to at least acknowledge its existence and role, even if one intellectually opposes both. The moment you declare your nationality, even as a passing remark for simplicity's sake in a conversation for example, you provoke - whether you appreciate it or not - the recipient of the information to deduce what they will from an entire package of suppositions which can accompany the term and which have been constructed often largely outside your or even your nation's control by many others, often over many generations, and for a myriad different reasons.

Like the Kaffirs you mention in the remote valley of the Hindu Khush, we all like to think that we exercise some basic control and ownership of the communal identity with which we associate ourselves, sufficient at least to allow us to define it and explain it to others on our own terms. What Gellen and others point out is that this in itself is a reaction to the deeper realisation that this identity is fluctuationary, contingent, unstable, and - if truth be told - often not only outside our control but firmly within the control of the "outsider".

This is most obvious when analysing racism and xenophobia (the Irish, to use an example with which I am very familar, struggled for centuries in the face of an imposed national identity that worked against them but which was by a long shot more globally prevalent and presumed definitive than any they could generate themselves). However that is just using extreme examples to highlight what is actually an inescapable dynamic when communicating national identity anyway, and occurs regardless of whether the perceived identity is negative or positive in character.

In relation to "dead" states, one would think therefore that this investment in resisting faulty perception and asserting control over positive and well-defined national identities should show a corollary with the associated political states' potential for longevity. However this is so often not the case that it is questionable whether such obsession with communal identity plays any role at all in maintaining a polity expressed in terms of a national identity. In fact it more likely explains or at least corollates with that other very familiar phenomenon - the citizen of such a state associating much more with an extremely localised identity than with that suggested by their passport.

The Kaffirs of your example also exemplify this phenomenon rather well. Politically subsumed into a nation which implies and encourages one version of communal identity, they therefore exaggerate the assumed cause and character which distinguishes them from that identity and favours their own local version. But the point I am making is that this apparent "dissent" within the construction of a nation's identity plays almost no role at all in determining the success or failure in political terms of either the larger state in which they currently reside, or even of any proposed state in the future based on their own geographical location and common self-perception. History seems to demonstrate that national identity, however strongly it is expressed or widely believed, is no guarantee that a state will survive politically.

Not that you would know this from listening to politicians ...

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Yes, there were a number of the "princely states" which remained independent until taken over by India or Pakistan. It might have been a Good Thing if Kashmir had stayed that way.

It's quite a complex issue. The Indian invasion (of Hyderabad) actually took place in the atmosphere of heightened sectarian tensions following partition in 1947 and neither was it a bloodless or uncontested invasion. Tens of thousands died. The official annexation in 1956, therefore, was only a de jure confirmation of Hyderabad's de facto status during its 9 years of 'independence'.

What had prompted the invasion was the fact that the nizam, his government and the ruling class were generally Moslem while the peasantry was generally Hindu. The Communist Party of India was leading an armed rebellion against the nizam's regime who looked like he could well lose to them. The Congress Party government in Delhi looked on with concern at the prospect of a huge (albeit landlocked) state falling to its arch-rivals and located right in the heart of the subcontinent. Intervention was almost inevitable.

In short, Hyderabad's actual independence (and that's ignoring the princely state's existing self-governing status which it had previously enjoyed during 150 years of British suzerainty) only lasted 1 year and 1 month from August 1947 to September 1948.

Nordmann,

"The moment you declare your nationality, even as a passing remark for simplicity's sake in a conversation for example, you provoke - whether you appreciate it or not - the recipient of the information to deduce what they will from an entire package of suppositions which can accompany the term and which have been constructed often largely outside your or even your nation's control by many others, often over many generations, and for a myriad of different reasons."

Where you have learned that excellent prose is beyond me...


And yes we discussed the theme already overhere:
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t921-what-is-nationalism

And in that thread I mentioned the two discussions on Historum, where there was also no consensus, while as you said the national feelings are so difficult to explore in the concepts of ethny, nation, region, nation state, "volk"...:
"And about my earlier take on "nationalism" see also:
http://historum.com/general-history/64570-early-nationalism.html
http://historum.com/general-history/88389-concept-nationhood.html"

I have the impression, Nordmann that you have even deepened your thoughts since that thread and I can only be enthusiast by that, as I completely agree with all what you said. Thanks again for these two interesting dissertations.

PS: If yo want to correct my mistake that I made in my hurry here in my message about Flanders, on the third or fourth line I wrote Duchy of Flanders, of course it has to be County of Flanders...And in the other cases I wrote it right...

PPS: (the Temperance way)
You wrote: "Hereendentthedissertation" Has that not to be "Hereendsthedissertation"?

PPS: If I once have the opportunity to correct, be it on a tiny way,your for ages excellent prose, it is normal that you appreciate that I couldn't resist...

Kind regards, Paul.

So who's going to explain about 'eth' to Paul? One of you non-church goers - go on!. Te He.

Oh no - not me. I'll leave that thorny problem to those who can pin a tael on a z. I'm just going to rune for cover.

Suppose Paul is almost right - by analogy with "here endeth the first lesson". Always preferred "here endeth the second lesson" myself, FWIW. Especially on a Wednesday. That meant we had survived double maths and reached break.

Priscilla wrote:

So who's going to explain about 'eth' to Paul? One of you non-church goers - go on!. Te He.

Paul, I refer you to Chapter 22, Verse 3 of the Book of Asterix ...

The Bible

PS. I see I spelt (in Norwegian the past tense of "to play") it wrong anyway, and it should have been "Hereendeththelesson". Enda et spill jeg har spelt helt feilt, igjen ...

PPS. (It takes a little while to download but it's worth the wait)

Nordmann, Gil and Priscilla,

now I see...and I found it myself on the internet!!
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/endeth

And has it something to do with the Dutch: "En hier eind-igt de eerste les" or even in German: "Und hier end-et die erste Stunde"

Kind regards from Paul.

I'd like to enter a plea for the return of Doggerland.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/archaeology/11836627/British-Atlantis-archaeologists-begin-exploring-lost-world-of-Doggerland.html

If only to confound Brexiteers and other Euroseptics.

Apparently you can blame Norway for losing Doggerland:

The 6,100 BCE Tsunami

We may be about to lose the first country to seas rising due to climate change. A Tuvalu resident recently was denied refugee status into New Zealand when he asked for it on those grounds.  I think the time is fast approaching when NZ will need to take in all the residents of Tuvalu, just over 10,000.

nordmann wrote:

Priscilla wrote:

So who's going to explain about 'eth' to Paul? One of you non-church goers - go on!. Te He.

Paul, I refer you to Chapter 22, Verse 3 of the Book of Asterix ...

The Bible

PS. I see I spelt (in Norwegian the past tense of "to play") it wrong anyway, and it should have been "Hereendeththelesson". Enda et spill jeg har spelt helt feilt, igjen ...

PPS. (It takes a little while to download but it's worth the wait)

Thank you for this reference [ought this here - according to Priscilla - to be spelled 'reverence'?] to this Asterician Bible, much appreciated.

A comparison of the Danish editions of 'Asterix in Britain', show the sentence 'Here's a toast to our Gallic friends/brothers' [I don't recall which, and am presently too lazy to check] 1st ed. with the meaning of 'toast' as the greeting - a raised cup - and in the 2nd a raised piece of bread.

Priscilla wrote:

As I see it small places joined through weakness to form larger entities, willingly or by force. Now that these larger identities are found to be wanting, it's back to smaller ones..... which in turn will probably find themselves or others wanting to join together for strength. This fusion and diffusion is fascinating.

The current conflict in Ukraine has prompted many to revisit the history of that country and particularly the era of Kievan Rus. This refers to the state which existed between the 9th and 13th centuries and which held sway over much of today’s Ukraine as well as much of Russia and beyond. This was at a time when Moscow was an obscure timber trading post in the principality of Smolensk, itself a vassal of Kiev. One Ukrainean commenter recently on the radio suggested that for Russia to invade Ukraine claiming it to be part of Russia based on historical ties would be akin to America invading Britain on the same premise.

This prompted a memory in me of playing board games with my brother when I was growing up. I particularly liked International Go (sometimes called TravelGo) whereby one would depart from London and cross the globe via its major cities (Paris, Rome, Cairo, Cape Town, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles etc) collecting postcards along the way while hoping to avoid a booby card sending one to remote Heard Island in the Southern Ocean and thus missing several goes. My brother, on the other hand, preferred Risk. Devised in 1957 by the French film maker Albert-Emmanuel Lamorisse and originally called La Conquête du Monde, it consisted of a map of the world split up into strategic blocs. The object of the game was to diplomatically or militarily acquire as many blocs as possible while avoiding the pitfalls associated with outright aggression and thus having other players form alliances against one. The map on the board often did not correspond to actual international frontiers. North America, for instance, was divided into 7 countries rather than just 3 (the United States, Canada and Mexico) while the then Soviet Union was also divided up into 7 parts. These were European Russia & the Caucasus, Kazakstan, Oural, Siberie, Irkutsk, Yakoutie and Kamchatka. In the English-language version, however, European Russia & the Caucasus were simply called – Ukraine:


 
Invented in the aftermath of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, which saw the world look on helplessly as Hungary was crushed by the Red Army, one can only imagine the factors which prompted Lamorisse in devising the game.

The downside of Nationalism is that if every nationalist had their own way the world would become a patchwork quilt of tiny nations. Yugoslavia was/is a good example. The breakup has resulted into more smaller and smaller countries springing out of the ashes - in 1992 we had Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and a rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) which has since fractured into Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. So now we have seven countries when there was once one. There's still tension over a possible further fracturing of the Republika Srpska within Bosnia.
Having said that I love looking at maps of Germany pre-1870 with dozens of little States with amazing names and zig-zag borders.

Vizzer wrote:

My brother, on the other hand, preferred Risk. Devised in 1957 by the French film maker Albert-Emmanuel Lamorisse and originally called La Conquête du Monde, it consisted of a map of the world split up into strategic blocs. The object of the game was to diplomatically or militarily acquire as many blocs as possible while avoiding the pitfalls associated with outright aggression and thus having other players form alliances against one.

And then there was 'Diplomacy', which apart from how you physically moved armies and navies during the movement phase, famously said that there were no rules at all especially during the phase of diplomatic negociation: one could lie, form secret alliances, or betray friends and foes alike. The gameplay started in Spring 1900 with a map of Europe divided between the Great Powers: GB, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire ... and like MarkUK I liked the names of all the old provinces: Burgundy, Gascony, Alsace, Apulia, Piedmont, Silesia, Galicia, Prussia, Livonia, Ukraine etc. (although they don't seem to be there on this version of the board).



The only trouble with 'Diplomacy' was that you ideally needed six friends to play with. But of course these days one can play the same or similar games against a computer's artificial intelligence, such as with the strategy game 'Europa Universalis', again with all the lovely old province names: Castile, Aragon, Aquitaine, Savoy, Liguria, Tuscany, Lombardy, Bohemia, Moravia, Wallachia, Bosnia, Ruthenia, Anatolia etc.

MarkUK wrote:

The downside of Nationalism is that if every nationalist had their own way the world would become a patchwork quilt of tiny nations. Yugoslavia was/is a good example. The breakup has resulted into more smaller and smaller countries springing out of the ashes - in 1992 we had Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and a rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) which has since fractured into Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. So now we have seven countries when there was once one. There's still tension over a possible further fracturing of the Republika Srpska within Bosnia.
Having said that I love looking at maps of Germany pre-1870 with dozens of little States with amazing names and zig-zag borders.

Conversely, Mark, this shows the unwisdom of creating "states" which aren't effective nations. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had little besides the removal of the Austro-Hungarian hegemony to hold it together.

I'm not in favor of breaking up any existing nations in order to create new ones, even if the new ones are based on old historical precedents.

But I do think it's nice if, especially in large nations, people have a chance to identify with a smaller region, province, district, county etc. that has its own unique cultural and historic traditions and customs . That doesn't take anything away from loyalty to the nation. If anything, it reinforces a sense of national solidarity. But it does give people a more local community with its own distinct identity. It gives people a sense of community and fellowship within the larger national identity.

For example, in Britain, there used to be the local county governments, but these don't appear nowadays to hold much weight. Their administrative functions have been taken over by newer entities that don't have much historical or cultural tradition. It would be nice to see the old counties restored to some official recognition, along with some administrative functions.

The violent breakup of Yugoslavia (old Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes ) was a tragedy for the families who lost loved ones in those brutal localized wars. For most of them, the creation of the new nations wasn't worth losing family members. Yugoslavia did have a common language, and all of the people were Southern Slavs, who couldn't be told apart by any physical characteristics. But they did have different cultures, religions, and traditions. But they also had plenty of commonalities. It was an excess of violent nationalism, which is different from patriotism. But I don't see how it could have been prevented. That's what happens when people listen to powerful self-centered demagogues who have their own agendas, and become caught up in a whirl of mistaken, glorious nationalism.

Windemere wrote:

I'm not in favor of breaking up any existing nations in order to create new ones, even if the new ones are based on old historical precedents.

But I do think it's nice if, especially in large nations, people have a chance to identify with a smaller region, province, district, county etc. that has its own unique cultural and historic traditions and customs . That doesn't take anything away from loyalty to the nation. If anything, it reinforces a sense of national solidarity. But it does give people a more local community with its own distinct identity. It gives people a sense of community and fellowship within the larger national identity.

Yes indeed. Here in France people will voice support for the nation's sports teams in international competitions, celebrate the Fête Nationale (Bastille Day) and express pride in their Frenchness, but on a more domestic level they are very often more vocally proud of their more immediate local culture and heritage. In my experience people more readily identify themselves as primarily being from places like Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Flanders, the Loire valley, the Jura mountains, the Auvergne etc. Many of these regional names, still proudy in use, describe medieval sub-divisions of the country, many of which were actually independent from the Kingdom of France, or aligned with foreign states: Brittany retained its soveriegn dukes until 1532; the 14th century Dukes of Burgundy were rivals of the Kings of France and were often allied with the Kings of England against their French cousins; while the County of Roussillon was part of the medieval Kingdom of Majorca, then became part of the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon, until finally being ceded to France in 1659.

I live in the modern French administrative department of the Pyrénées-Orientales (on the Mediterranean coast next to the Spanish border) and while people here are most definitely French, they might nevertheless identify more as being from the Midi (ie generally southern France), being from the Languedoc by virtue of their accent or dialect, or even more specifically as being Catalan and with a culture and language more closely allied with their cousins just over the Pyrenees in the Spanish autonomous region of Catalunya. Others here might see themselves as Franco-Maghrebi, whether that's from being descended from North African French coloninists (the so-called Pieds-noirs), from Algerians forced into exile because of their loyalty to France (the Harkis), or even more recent immigration from North Africa generally. This all of course just reflects people's own feelings about themselves and their local cullture.

Meanwhile the French state has over the past two decades or so made efforts to try and decentralise administrative and political power away from Paris and out to the French regions - with rather mixed success I feel. The system of administrative regions known as départments (there are 96 covering mainland France) arose in 1790 during the Revolution as a move to replace the Provinces and Counties of the Ancien Régime and while it is still very active on a local level, they are really too small to function on a devolved regional-government level. Accordingly départments were grouped together into regional administrative regions each around the size of say Wales, Belgium, Estonia, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland or the island of Sicily. But despite considerable efforts (and no little expense) people still generally identify with the old duchies and counties rather than these new artificial regions.

The department of the Pyrenees-Orientales where I am was originally combined with several other neighbouring departments as the Languedoc-Roussillon region, but with the drive towards more devolved government this grouping was thought (quite correctly) to lack a cohesive identity and so in about 2005 it was renamed the Septimania region (after the old Visigothic kingdom dominated by seven main cities). In turn however this grouping was still thought impractically small and nobody felt any kindred with 5th century Visigoths, and so in 2016 it joined with the region of Midi-Pyrénées to form what is now the region of Occitania (after Occitan, the regional language). But despite all the costly rebranding (flags, logos, glossy magazines distributed several times a year to every household, a new regional council building plus the need to regularly run elections to populate it with councillors) I doubt many people here have much, if any, real affinity with other parts of the region outside of their own immediate department. I'm English/British but while my post code starts with 66 denoting that I live in the Pyrénées-Orientales department (or North Catalunya as it is sometimes informally known) I would often actually say I live in Roussillon; that is the ancient county bounded by the Corbières hills, the Pyrénées mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, and which in the middle ages was part of the Kingdon of Majorca, which then became part of the kingdom of Aragon, before being incorporated into Louis XIV's France. Elsewhere in France, while Brittany and Normany both still exist as top tier administrative regions in their own right, the individually distinctive and historic regions of Angoulême, Perigord, Limousin, Poitou, Charentes and Gascony now all find themselves lumped together into Nouvelle Aquitaine.

Germany, as a federation of largely independent states seems to have managed slightly better than France in combining its first tier of administrative regional subdivisions with old historic regions, many of which were indeed independent states until the creation of the unified German Empire in 1871; hence there are the autonomous Länder of Bavaria, Saxony, Brandenburg, Westphalia, Hesse, Thuringia, Rhineland Palatinate etc, all with their unique cultures and long histories of relative independence. And on a wider scale Europe as a whole does seem to be moving administratively towards becoming a federation of many small states and provinces.

You mention Yugoslavia and the different cultures, religions and traditions across what was once a more-or-less unified country, although again it is history that explains why the commonalities were often rather superficial. Slovenia essentially comprises the old Austrian provinces/duchies of Carinthia, Carniola and Styria. Neighbouring Croatia had a completely separate union with the Habsburg monarchy (as a province of Hungary) but being predominently Catholic both regions were nevertheless long-integrated within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As constituent states of Tito's Yugoslavia these two were the richest and most industrialised parts of the country together generating something like 70% of the nation's wealth.

Serbia, predominantly Orthodox in religion, had of course a long history of independence and of confrontation with Austria-Hungary, while Bosnia-Hertzogovina (plus Kosovo) had large Bosniak (Muslim populations) and their own strong independence movements. Macedonia was culturally more aligned with Bulgaria and at least initially was reluctant to join the Yugoslavian confederation and for some years had a pro-independence movement. Even the Serbo-Croatian language was not really that much of a unifying agent. It was in large part a forced creation made up of four distinct but mutually intelligible standard varieties of a Slavic language; namely Serbian, Slovene/Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. It could be written in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts depending on local practice and since the breakup of Yugoslavia I believe the different ethnic/regional varieties of Serbo-Croatian have once again diverged from one another. In the 1990s when I visited Slovenia on a number of occasions, nearly everyone I encountered said they were very definitely Slovene rather than Yugoslavian and could readily identify Slovenes from other Yugoslavs by their pronunciation and use of the language, although I'm sure there are still some who, as in Russia, hanker for the 'good old days' of a greater Yugoslavia under Communist rule.

I had totally forgotten this thread till MM added to it today. Ukraine (which for some reason I always used to think of as The Ukraine) is still fighting for its survival, and Russia seems to think it needs more territories if only to limit the power of the USA. 
But I see on Vizzer's map of the world that yet again New Zealand/Aotearoa has been left off the map. It seems to be a very common practice. My husband blames it on the use of the Mercator map (but then of course he blames any geographical fault on the Mercator map). 

Parts of NZ have tried to disappear in the recent flooding. So far fortunately without success. But down here in Otago (which weather forecasters like to call the "deep south") we have been crying out for rain not having seen any sign of it for a couple of months, so we have breathed a sigh of relief to see it raining quite steadily today.

Having mentioned the unification of German states in 1871 and all the geo-political fall-out from that ... it's interesting to note that the Saarland - a small territory tucked into the corner where France, Germany and Luxembourg meet - was only 'finally' incorporated into the rest of Germany in 1957. Prior to that it was, at least sometimes, an independent country in its own right.

In the 18th century the region of the Saar river valley was divided into several small territories, which were mostly ruled by the counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken, but with some parts held by other German nobles, and at times - particularly following wars, invasions, annexations and the subsequent treaties - by the kings of France. In 1792 as a consequence of the Revolution at home, France invaded once again and then the whole Saar region remained under the control of the French Republic until Napoleon's final defeat in 1815. With the Congress of Vienna the Saar territories mostly became part of Prussia (part of its Rhine Province) with a small part being allocated to the Kingdom of Bavaria and an even smaller bit coming under the rule of Duke of Oldenburg. Then in 1870 the French Emperor Napoleon III rashly launched yet another invasion into Saarland and so fired the opening shots of the Franco-Prussian War, but this time the French were swiftly repulsed by combined German forces, then forced back into France and eventually resoundingly defeated. Incorporated into the newly-unified German Empire the Saar territory proceeded to enjoy nearly fifty years of peace and prosperity, mostly based on its profitable coalfields and steel industry. Then WW1 intervened.

In 1920 following Germany's defeat and under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, the Territory of the Saar Basin (as it was now called) was occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France with League of Nations mandate. This occupation lasted until 1935 when in accordance with the original mandate the Saarland's population was given a three-way referendum between keeping the current arrangement, unifying with France or reunifying with Germany. In the referendum 90% of the electorate voted to go back to being part of Germany and so the Saarland was once again incorporated into Germany, just in time for WW2 to kick off.

Once again, with Saarland having been part of Germay and on the losing side during the war, in 1945 the French managed to negociate to get the Saarland away from the rest of Allied-occupied Germany and create the separate Saar Protectorate (Protectorat de la Sarre) or in French simply, la Sarre. This was effectively a self-governing independent country but under the military protection of france (presumably to defend it against annexation by the rest of Germany). Saarland elected its own govenment (although pro-German political parties were banned), was financially independent and issued its own currency (albeit a version of the French franc and permanently fixed in value to the French currency but nevertheless with German wording on the notes and coins), produced its own postage stamps, and even got a nice new flag based on the red, white and blue of France to contrast against the black, red and gold used by the rest of Germany.


The post-WW2 flag of the semi-independent Saar Protectorate.

All these pro-French moves were not entirely welcomed but they were tolerated and Saarland functioned well enough as an largely autonomous state. They even entered their own team in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, although they defiantly marched into the stadium out of alphabetic order, with the West German athletes right behind them, thereby pointedly putting the Saar athletes between the two nation's flags.


The athletes from Saarland enter the Helsinki Olympic stadium with those of West Germany immediately behind.

Then two years later the Saar national football team entered the qualifiers for the 1954 World Cup and as luck would have it they were drawn in a three-team group with Norway and West Germany. In their first game they beat the Norwegians 3-2 in Oslo, but after a 3-0 defeat against Germany in Stuttgart and a 0-0 draw at home against Norway, it came down to a final winner-takes-all clash against West Germany in front of a packed home crowd in Saarbrucken. By all accounts the Saar team played brilliantly but were on the wrong end of a couple of questionable refereeing decisions. It finished 3-1 to the Germans  and so Saarland were out of the tournament. Afterwards Saarland's star player, Kurt Clemens, showed just how upset he was by saying, "Ja, I wasn't unhappy with either result. Personally I feel German and I didn't want to stop them [Germany] getting to the World Cup. We would have had no chance anyway." The West German team did indeed go on to win the final against Hungary and cheering them on from the stands were most of the Saarland players. Moreover the manager of Saarland's team, Helmut Schön (who had actually been born in Dresden, East Germany) later went on to become manager of the West German national team and eventually lead them to win the World Cup in 1974.

In 1955 France offered the people of Saarland a referendum on continued independence but in future under the auspices of the Western European Union (a precursor to the EU), or reunification with Germany. Had the vote been for continued independence I wonder if Saarland might have developed into a wealthy tax haven like neighbouring Luxembourg, or maybe into a federal district of the EU, perhaps with some key EU institutions eventually being located there. However in the event 67% of voters rejected independence in favour of reunification and so in 1957 Saarland once again became officially part of (West) Germany as a constituent state within the federation (and it would only be in 1991 that all Germany, both the Eastern and Western states, were finally reunified). Nevertheless while the Saarland is now officially German it retains some Frenchness, particularly in its local dialect and cuisine, and Saarland still has more Michelin-starred restaurants per head of population than any other German state.

An interesting bit of trivia relating to the changing sovereignty of the Saar region concerns Marshal Ney (one of Napoleon's senior commanders) who was born in the the town of Saarlouis in 1769.

Saarlouis is on the west bank of the river Saar and, as its name suggests, was a founded by Louis XIV, following his conquest and annexation of eastern Lorraine in 1680. However while the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick subsequently made most parts of Lorraine independent again, the town of Saarlouis remained as a small French enclave cut off from the rest of France. Although surrounded by German-speaking areas Saarlouis retained its Frenchness under the Bourbon kings, but following the Revolution the whole Saar region was re-invaded and incorporated into the French First Republican Empire. However with Napoleon's defeat and abdication in 1814, and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy, France's borders immediately reverted to how they had been in 1792 (hence Saarlouis remained a part of France albeit once again completely isolated from it) but this was only a temporary solution and with the 1815 Treaty of Paris most of the long-standing German claims to the town were upheld and Saarlouis, along with the wider area around it, then became part of Prussia.

Marshal Ney was of course one of Napoleon's trusted generals who, despite his fairly humble origins as the second son of a cooper in provincial Saarlouis, had risen through the ranks to become one of the highest ranked and most decorated officers in the French army. Napoleon called him "the bravest of the brave" but he also thought he could be "impetuous" and even once called him "a braggart without judgment". But in April 1814, with the French forces largely defeated and allied armies closing in on Paris, it was Ney who acted as the spokesman for the group of senior bonapartist officers that finally persuaded Napoleon to abdicate. Once Napoleon had gone into exile on Elba, Ney and others of the senior command were pardoned and allowed to retain their military ranks and titles in exchange for swearing allegiance to the newly-restored French king Louis XVIII.

But then in February 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba to southern France and set out for Paris, gathering units of the French army as he went. Ney, now a senior general serving under Louis XVIII, put himself forward to the king to be given command of the royalist army marching to intercept the rebels, with Ney personally pledging to bring Napoleon back to Paris "in an iron cage". The two armies met at Auxerre to the west of Paris, however the soldiers under Ney's command refused to open fire on their colleagues nor on their old Emperor and Commander-in-Chief, and promptly defected to Napoleon's side. Ney, seeing how the wind was blowing, then also joined with Napoleon. He thus ended up three months later on 18 June fighting alongside Napoleon at Waterloo, where he commanded the left wing and personally led brave but rather reckless mass cavalry charges against the British infantry squares during which he had five horses shot from under him while somehow remaining completely unscathed. It's been suggested that the poor man was by then suffering such extreme battle fatigue/PTSD, compounded by the shame of his recent betrayals, that his reckless and essentially suicidal cavalry charges at Waterloo were exactly that, an attempt at a glorious suicidal end. But even in that he was thwarted by his uncanny luck for survival.

Following the defeat at Waterloo Ney was arrested on 3 August 1815 and brought back to Paris. He was tried on 4 December by the French Chamber of Peers on charges of treason, not against his beloved France, but against his sovereign, Louis XVIII. At his trial his lawyer attempted to defend him by claiming that as Ney was born in Saarlouis - which was now a part of Prussia, the formal treaty having been signed just two weeks earlier on 20 November - he could not be tried for treason in a French court against the king of France because technically he was a Prussian citizen. It was a fairly desperate ploy but given the damning evidence against his client he probably thought it worth a try. However Ney ruined his lawyer's effort by interrupting him and saying, "Je suis français et je resterai français!" - I am French and I will remain French.

When the Peers were called to give their verdict, 137 voted for the death penalty, 17 for deportation and 5 abstained. Only a single vote, that of the Duc de Broglie who had spoken defiantly in Ney's defence, was for acquittal. On 6 December 1815 Ney was condemned and the following day he was executed by firing squad near the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. He refused to wear a blindfold and was allowed the right to give the order to fire, reportedly saying, "Soldiers, when I give the command to fire, fire straight at my heart. Wait for the order. It will be my last to you. I protest against my condemnation. I have fought a hundred battles for France, and not one against her ... Soldiers, fire!"

He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris while his birthplace in Saarlouis (now in Germany) is currently a restaurant.

MM, it seems to me your knowledge rivals the Encyclopaedia Britannica...so many of the micro-states which formerly existed have disappeared that Anthony Hope might be a little pushed to find a realistic setting for his novel were he writing The Prisoner of Zenda today.  I DID enjoy the old film of TPOZ when I saw it when I was what would nowadays be described as a 'tween'.  I found myself wondering why the few micro-states which still exist have survived managed to do so.  Andorra and Lichtenstein have been able to stay independent; I may do a bit of sleuthing to see if I can find out why (for my own satisfaction, not necessarily to make a comment here).

Caro, I have heard Ukraine referred to as "The Ukraine" in the past.  People used to talk about "The Notting Hill Carnival" and I think possibly those of us living outside London still do but when I worked in London I often heard it referred to as just "Carnival".  I guess it's just things changing.  Back in the 1950s I can remember Kenya being pronounced "Kee-nee-a" but it has been pronounced "Ken-ya" for many years now although the spelling of the country has remained the same.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I found myself wondering why the few micro-states which still exist have managed to do so. 
[How have] Andorra and Lichtenstein been able to stay independent ...?

I've mentioned nearly all the following before, however the details of Andorra's creation and continued existence are so unusual and unique that I think they warrant another airing. Quite frankly the whole saga reads like the background plot for a Ruritanian thriller, a whimsical operetta by Franz Léhar, or an Ealing comedy. If Gilbert and Sullivan had produced a comic opera based on the history and politics of Andorra it would likely have been seen as a far-fetched plot device introduced simply for its comedic value. I mean come on; a tiny little European country ruled by two hereditary but unrelated princes - where one prince is a republican who believes in consensus politics, while the other is a devout theologian who believes in rule by religious theocracy - and yet together they oversee a very wealthy state where the citizens pay negligible taxes while still enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world ... it's satirical comedy, right? But no it's all true: I guess that's history for you!

Andorra dates back to the end of the eighth century when it was one of a number of small feudal regions along the Pyrenees created by Charlemagne to act as a defensive buffer between Islamic Spain and his Frankish empire. After the collapse of the Carolingian empire, Charles the Bald the King of France and a grandson of Charlemagne, in 843 granted the territory of Andorra to the Count of Urgell (in Spain) in gratitude for his assistance in repelling attacks by the moors and doubtless with the hope he would continue to do so. There then followed two centuries of squabbling between local lords on both sides of the Pyrenees for control of all these strategic border lands until in 1133 the Count of Urgell finally gave in to pressure and agreed to swap his lands high up in the Andorran valleys with others that the Bishop of Urgell had that were closer to his (the count's) main territories. The Spanish bishop thus became feudal overlord of what is now Andorra but, lacking an army to defend the area he granted the territory's military control to the noble Caboet family in exchange for their perpetual oath of fidelity, not to him personally but to whoever held the title of Bishop of Urgell (the bishopric of course being a Papal appointment and not something that could be passed on to heirs or beneficiaries).

The Caboet family inter-married several times with the family of the viscounts of Béarn/Castelbon/Cardona (both families were adherents of albigensianism, an heretical anti-Catholic movement widespread in southern France at the time). In 1208 Brunissende, a daughter of Viscount Ramon VIII of Cardona, married Count Roger IV of Foix (another prominent adherent of albigensianism) and their son, Count Roger-Bernard III of Foix, became one of the most powerful landholders in southern France and in particular through his mother's Caboet-Cardona-Castelbon inheritance by which he gained the military control of Andorra - albeit that strictly he still owed fealty for it to the Bishop of Urgell. Eventually however the all-powerful Count Roger simply refused to obey the Urgell bishop and thus began a lengthy and bloody dispute which lasted until the King Peter III of Aragon intervened and was able to force the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix to come to a peaceful agreement in 1278.

By the terms of this peace treaty ("Act-Pareage") suzerainty over Andorra was henceforth to be shared between the bishops of Urgell and the counts of Foix, each of whom would receive an annual payment of tribute. Andorra was made a principality and these co-princes, who both lived beyond the borders of the region, were to administer the territory through appointed local representatives called "vicars". For their part the native Andorrans, while having to cough up for the tribute payments, eventually (1419) gained permission to form their own elective body, "the council of land", with the heads of the five most powerful Andorran families having the right to elect their representatives to this council. By these agreements Andorra had managed to keep its independence from powerful neighbours while benefiting from their protection, and with with no military obligations or payments for itself. Moreover the Andorrans could continue to profit from tax-free transfers of goods through the Pyrenees.

By the 16th century the County of Foix had become one of the lands ruled by the kingdom of Navarre and accordingly in 1589 when King Henri III of Navarre unexpectedly became King Henri IV of France, upon the untimely death of his brother-in-law and distant cousin Henry III of France, he brought with him the title of Count of Foix and Prince of Andorra. Henri IV then issued an edict establishing the principle that in future all kings of France would be co-princes of Andorra alongside the bishops of Urgell, an arrangement that continued until the monarchy was overthrown in the French revolution. In 1793 following the execution of the Louis XVI the revolutionary government in Paris revoked the "Act-Pareage" and for a few years the Bishop of Urgell effectively ruled Andorra alone as its sole head of State. However the Andorrans were worried about losing their independence and of being absorbed into France, so in 1806 they petitioned Napoleon I, now installed as the French Emperor, asking him to formally retrieve the "Act-Pareage". Napoleon agreed, noting that "Andorra is a political curiosity that needs to be preserved". In a special decree he stated that in accordance with the demand of Andorrans themselves, the king of France, or rather now that he was dead his legal successors starting with Napoleon himself, were confirmed as the joint princes of Andorra to rule with whoever was the bishop of Urgell. Thereafter, whether the head of the French state was a king, an emperor or a president, he also held the position of a prince of Andorra.

Hence the current rather unusual situation whereby Andorra has two joint heads of state, both hereditary and both nominated by other countries. The current Bishop of Urgell, Joan Enric Vives i Sicília, holds his position through his 2003 appontment as bishop by the Pope (who is himself the ruling prince of an even smaller sovereign state, the Vatican) while the bishop's co-prince is the President of France, currently Emmanuel Macron. The French President's position is particularly bizarre as this makes him an hereditary prince but only because he is the head of state of France - a neighbouring sovereign state and one that is a republic at that - having been voted into that position solely by French citizens and with Andorrans having no say in the matter, unless they have dual French-Andorran nationality.


The government of Andorra in 2020. Xavier Espot Zamora (front 4th from right) the Prime Minister or Head of Government (Cap de Govern del Principat d'Andorra) and other members of the General Council (Consell General d'Andorra) and the judiciary, with (next to the PM) the two Princes and then the Speaker (Syndic) of the General Council, Roser Suñé Pascuet, the first woman to hold that office. The location is on the steps alongside the old Parliamant building, the Casa de la Vall, which was built in 1580 as a manor house and which housed the Parliament from 1702 until a new Parliament building opened in 2011.

Both princes still appoint their personal representatives ("Vicars") to Andorra but in practical terms it is the Prime Minister of Andorra, who as head of the General Council or Parliament, wields the executive power. Following the adoption of a formal constitution in 1993 the roles of the two co-princes became limited and largely ceremonial (for example neither prince can veto any government act) and Andorra now functions almost like a republic. That said both co-princes have threatened to abdicate in recent years: the bishop over the Andorran parliament proposing to legalise abortion, and the French president over the issue of Andorra's tax-free status and its slow adoption of more stringent banking controls. And of course the Bishop of Urgell - whose diocese encompasses the whole of Andorra along with a much larger swathe of north-western Catalonia - still has general ecclesiastical and pastoral duties in addition to being a head of state. Also with the adoption of the 1993 constitution the Andorrans' obligation to pay annual tribute to each prince finally ended; in that year Andorra paid the then President of France (François Mitterrand) a final 960 French francs, while the then Bishop of Urgell (Joan Martí i Alanis) received 430 Spanish pesetas, plus his traditional six hams, six cheeses and six live chickens!

Andorra, perched high up in the mountains, is still relatively cut off from the rest of Europe; it has no airport and only two main roads access the country, one from France the other from Spain. It is not a member of the EU and is not part of the Schengen Area, but does have observer status at the World Trade Organization and is a member of the International Monetary Fund. Andorra has never had its own currency, being content to use whater French or Spanish currency was in use at the time, and while not part of the EU it now uses the Euro, even having the right to issue its own Euro coins. Andorra also famously has no permanent army (and hasn't fought a war in over 700 years) but it does have a very effective (and armed) police force. In theory all able-bodied adult males can be called up for service in the "Sometent" or militia, with there being a requirement that each 'family' should have access to a suitable firearm. In practice the only active section of the Sometent is a twelve-man, part-time, unpaid, voluntary unit, whose primarily job is to provide the honour guard for any visting dignitaries. In recent years the only general call to the Sometent was in 1982 as an appeal for all to provide whatever assistance was needed to local police and rescue units, who were battling severe flooding throughout the principality.

As Napoleon said, "l’Andorre est une curiosité politique qui doit être préservée",

... or in other words, and now in Catalan, the official language of Andorra, Visca Andorra!"



The words of the anthem are interesting and give quite a concise history of the country, including an acceptance that Andorra owes its security and prosperity to its two far-bigger neighbours. In the opening lines "El Gran Carlemany" is of course Charlemagne, while the reference to "Meritxell" refers to Our Lady of Meritxell who is the patron saint of Andorra. Intiguingly she is known only from a very ancient and long-venerated statue that is located in the parish church of the small Andorran village of Meritxell, in Catholic hagiography she seems to have no personal name or history at all.

I was on a tour of Namibia in 2014 and, except for my wife and I, the group was entirely made up of Germans (Namibia was part of the German Empire and German is still widely spoken - our tour guide was Afrikaans, but also spoke German and English fluently).  Talking to those Germans who spoke English, our German is near non-existent, they said that there are still quite a lot of Germans from the east who have a nostalgia for the GDR.  
Tim

I think that nostalgia for the GDR (East Germany) was probably quite widely felt, maybe not so much in the initial euphoria following reunification but understandably more so once a few years had passed and the reality and consequences became apparent. There is actually a specific German word for it: ostalgie, a portmanteau of the German ost (East) and nostalgie. The same sort of sentiments existed and still exist, to differing degrees in other ex-Soviet Bloc countries and of course in Russia itself. I would think it is most prominently felt by older people, those that had prospered under the old system and those who, for whatever reasons, felt they had lost or otherwise missed out through the end of the communist system. Dislike of change and fear for the future are understandable and it is also common to regard one's own past through rather rose-tinted glasses when considering the times when one was a child, starting a family or just embarking on one's career. For all its failings and repression many East Germans may well have fond memories of their life in the GDR; with its sense of community, idealism and common purpose, full employment, affordable housing, stability and social security. While there might have been censorship, restrictions on travel and shortages of luxury goods, nevertheless basic living costs for a wide range of goods and services were kept low through state subsidies.

It was clear at the time of reunification that West Germany would have to invest heavily in the East to bring it up to comparable standards. Almost all East German highways, railways, sewage systems, telecommunications and public buildings were in a state of disrepair as little had been done to maintain infrastructure in the GDR's last decades. The basis of the country's economy had been coal-mining, steel-making, chemicals, heavy manufacturing and agriculture (plus some specialist manufacturing in high value products like cameras, scientific instruments, binoculars, hunting rifles and wristwatches, mostly for export to earn hard currency) - but in all these sectors too there had been little investment. Inevitably jobs would be lost as inefficient and polluting industries were forced to mechanise and upgrade, or conversely were taken over by western companies, or simply shut down as uneconomic when no longer subsidised by the state.

In the early 1990s I was working for an Anglo-American company and we were doing a lot of work in relation to laser/optical fibre technology with West German glass manufacturers (Schott, Osram, Zeiss), who in turn were closely involved with East German companies, whether as customers, business rivals or as the potential objects of company mergers. I recall talking to these West German business reps and them all saying much the same thing: they were generally fully in favour of reunification, but if they were going to have to pay for it, they expected to be able to benefit, whether personally in terms of their careers or for their companies in terms of business mergers and take-overs. The West Germans often seemed to me to be acting as if they had "won" and East Germans had "lost", and while I'm sure the German government tried to down-play this attitude there was inevitably going to be resentment amongst East Germans. In addition many workers - particularly the young, women and those with better education and skills - left East Germany immediately after reunification, never to return, leaving behind an underclass of predominently poorly-educated, disgruntled, working-age but jobless, men. It should however be noted that emigration from East to West was not a particularly new phenomenom. Throughout its forty-one year history the population of East Germany declined from 19 million in 1948 to 16 million in 1990, most of it through emigration to the West although the birth rate and immigration were also generally low.

But having said all that, full credit is due to GDR's people for their success in rebuilding after WW2.

The East German economy began poorly because of the devastation caused by the war: the utter destruction of a huge amount of industry, housing and infrastructure; the disruption of business, government, telecommunications and transportation; and the loss of so many young men. Unlike West Germany, the East received no Marshall Aid at all from the USA (West Germany received US$1.5 billion, by contrast the UK got US$3.3 billion) meanwhile they received nothing from the USSR and indeed the Russians insisted the GDR pay full war reparations.

War reparations impoverished East Germany and left lasting damage to the economy. In the 1945–46 period the Soviets confiscated and transported to the USSR approximately 33% of the country's industrial plant (machinery, equipment and vehicles) while in the early 1950s the entire territory of Lower Silesia - with its valuable coal mines and Szczecin, an important port - was simply given to Poland by the decision of Stalin and in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. By the early 1950s the USSR had extracted the equivalent of about US$10 billion of reparations in confiscated machinery together with raw materials, agricultural and industrial products. Meanwhile the poverty of East Germany provoked an exodus of workers, and especially of skilled workers, to West Germany, thus further weakening the GDR's economy and then prompting the complete closure of the border with the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Ultimately though and despite all these problems, the East German economy rose to become, by the time of reunification, the richest by GDP in all of the Soviet Bloc. Moreover the country had forged an identity that, while still based on old German values, culture and traditions, was very much distinct from that of its western sibling. It had also, in its own way, had to come to terms with the horrors of its recent history. Yet despite the persistent ostalgie I do not think there is any widespread willingness or even desire to reverse German reunification and reinstate the GDR.

MM

i was in Poland on work in 1975 and have visited it twice since it stopped being part of the Soviet bloc.  I do not think that there is much in the way of nostalgia for the PPR.  Poland is a vanished country which we have got back.

Concerning the GDR, and I found your post quite interesting), this is from one of my course text books:

'East Germany’s experiences demonstrate the tensions within communist economic policy, for the DDR was both typical and atypical of Warsaw Pact regimes, and its economy’s trajectory reveals the difficulties
historians encounter in assessing economic performance. Superficially, it was the bloc’s showpiece: by the 1960s it ranked in the world’s ten largest economies. East Germany was also the only country not to experience at least one year of economic contraction in the 1979–89 period. It looked the most promising candidate to fulfil Khrushchev’s prophecy of overtaking the west. Yet headline figures sometimes disguise truths. What were the discrepancies between appearance and reality?

Politically, East Germany’s ruling party, the SED (Socialist Unity Party), was one of Moscow’s staunchest allies, and its policies were perhaps even more ‘ideologically correct’ than those of its overseer. Yet, much
like Czechoslovakia, Germany’s eastern territory was industrially developed well before 1945; it was materially unsuited to the forced industrialisation model that the USSR foisted on its satellites. For instance, despite public commitment to the Soviet paradigm, private enterprise proved impossible to eradicate completely. Unlike its fellow communist countries, East Germany remained a ‘mixed economy’, with as much as 16 per cent of its workforce in the private sector as late as 1971 (Pickel, 1992, p. 12.  

Between 1945 and 1953, the Soviet Union dismantled industrial plant wholesale and converted 200 factories into USSR-owned companies. Much of the output increase benefited the Soviets more than the East Germans. Moreover, the plan’s concentration on the basic sector meant that consumer demands were neglected and there was little improvement in living standards.

Another significant way in which East Germany differed from its neighbours was its relationship with West Germany. Immediately after the war, this was often to East Germany’s detriment. Until rigid border control was introduced in 1961, the boundary between the two Germanies through Berlin was relatively porous. This enabled many skilled workers to flee westwards. East Germany’s population fell by two million between 1947 and 1961. Since birth rates exceeded mortality by 4.5 per cent over the same period, this meant an even more serious loss of adult population, and thus human capital (Zwass, 1984, p. 28). For example, during the ‘socialist offensive’ of 1958–60, which attempted (unsuccessfully) to eradicate private enterprise, enforced agricultural collectivisation drove over 15,000 private farmers to the west (Pickel, 1992, p. 53).
On the other hand, trade with West Germany was highly beneficial to the East, especially after the launch of Ostpolitik by the Brandt government Trade relations between Germany’s two halves had been established in the Bizonia period and had survived even the Berlin Wall crisis, but links became far closer in the 1970s. Between 1960 and 1976, intra-German trade rose from DM 2.1 to 8.2 million annually – the greatest rise occurring in the inaugural phase of Ostpolitik (Pohl, 1977, p. 255). The 9.5 per cent of exports that East Germany sent to its neighbour (1971–75 average – Pohl, 1977) made the latter overwhelmingly its largest single non-CMEA customer, but the relationship was more significant still.

The DDR weathered recession in the late 1970s to early 1980s better than other communist states. Although partly that was a consequence of Erich Honecker’s austerity programme, significantly it was also West German credit (almost DM 2 billion in 1983–84 alone) that enabled the East to keep afloat. Karen Dawisha has argued that ‘without massive West German subsidies of the East German economy in the form of credits, visa and toll payments, construction assistance, private transfers [and] trade …, the DDR’s position as the second largest bloc economy and the eighth largest world economy would have been seriously eroded’ (1990, p. 144).

Reciprocal cross-border arrangements also allowed East Germany to export into the EEC without having to surmount its tariff wall. Despite these advantages, in other respects East Germany mirrored fellow CMEA countries’ experience. That is not to say that obstacles to growth were ignored or glossed over. In fact, as the 1970s progressed, its economists and politicians poured out diagnoses of supply bottlenecks, falling productivity and waste.

East Germany’s macroeconomic data emphasise the hazards of bald statistics in economic history. By the late 1970s, East German success was largely illusory. Furthermore, its systemic failures undermined party
claims that it was achieving material plenty in a modern, socially egalitarian society. This generated a body of public complaint which was, arguably, to prove critical in 1989.'

Tim

I agreee with you in that there is likely to be very little nostalgia in Poland for the old Soviet ways. Nevertheless I suspect there will be a few Poles, particularly those who managed to prosper under the Soviet system,and that despise liberal women and gay rights etc, that still mourn its passing. However, surely, they will be getting increasingly fewer in number these days, if not simply because of old age: the Berlin Wall came down over 30 years ago.

Another once-vanished independent state that we've got back is represented by the modern Czech Republic, which since it essentially comprises the old Imperial Austro-Hungarian territories of Bohemia and Moravia, might well be considered a successor state of the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia, albeit now much reduced in size from its medieval peak.

A country that, having appeared for the first time, (I think) and managed not to vanish back into the USSR was Finland.  It declared itself independent from Russia on 6th December 1917 and managed to maintain that independence (unlike Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) after the end of WW2.  It was even allowed not to form part of the Soviet bloc, which was quite surprising considering its relative closeness to Leningrad.
Tim

I agree with what you say mostly, Tim, but didn't Russia keep some Finnish territory?
Geography never was my best subject (thank goodness for atlases) - when I was transcribing entries in the museum (my last full-time job before I retired) I became somewhat confused about "Finnmark" - which a quick google search revealed to be a county, or former county, of Norway (scheduled to become a county again next year I read).

LinR
Yes the USSR did keep some territory that they took during the Winter War.  However, WW2 saw vast changes in borders and population movements.  I am sure that most Finns would have happily kept their freedom rather than becoming once again part of the USSR or a Soviet Bloc country.
When I was in Estonia I was told that the Estonia's would learnt Finnish, which is a closely related language, so they could watch Finnish TV and now about what it was really like outside the USSR.
regards
Tim

At the end of the war Finland was in a rather unusual position. It had gone from being supported, albeit rather ineffectually, by Britain and France in its 1939/40 Winter War against Russia, to in 1944 being allied with Nazi Germany in the continuing fight against the Russians, and so was generally viewed by the USA and Britain as a former Axis state. In Spring 1944 the USA had called for Finland to disassociate itself from Nazi Germany but then the renewed Russian invasion had forced the Finnish government to seek direct military assistance from Germany. Bolstered by German troops and materiel they again managed to fight the Russians to a standstill. The Finnish relationship with Nazi Germany I suspect was much like that of the US and Britain with the Soviets - unpalatable but pragmatic and based on the principal that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". But as 1944 progressed, with Russia now pushing deep into Europe and a large swathe of Eastern Germany coming within their grasp, the war against Finland rapidly became a sideshow which was diverting resources from the Russian fight against the Nazis. Accordingly an armistice between Finland on one side and Russia (plus Britain, as Russia's ally) on the other was finally signed in September 1944. By the terms of this armistice Finland was obliged to forcibly expel or disarm all their former German allies from Finnish territory, which they duly did (German forces largely withdrew in good order). Finland was also forced to cede territory to Russia but was allowed to keep its nominal independence and its own political system so long as it refrained from opposing Russian plans regarding Eastern Europe. 
 
So at the war's end Finland had managed to retain its independence from both Germany and Russia. However it was a small state with limited resources and although it had twice fought off Russian invasions it was clear that it would have to cooperate with its much larger neighbour if it was to maintain any real independence post-war. Accordingly in 1948 Finland signed an "Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union" under which Finland was obliged to resist armed attacks by "Germany or its allies" against Finland, or against the Soviet Union through Finland, and if necessary ask for Soviet military aid to do so. At the same time the agreement recognised Finland's desire to remain outside great power conflicts, allowing the country to adopt a policy of neutrality during the Cold War. As a consequence, Finland did not participate in the Marshall Plan and took neutral positions on Soviet foreign policy and overseas initiatives. But by keeping very cool relations to NATO and western military powers in general, Finland successfully managed to fend off Soviet pressure for affiliation to the Warsaw Pact.

Thanks for the explanation, Meles. In one of the Arne Dahl novels one of the characters finds out that an ancestor had been in alliance with the Nazis in Finland. Then again I've heard that some inhabitants of the Baltic States (before they realised how bad the Nazi Party was) thought that Germany might provide a way of escaping the suzerainty of the USSR.

The Northern Theatre along the Finnish and Norwegian borders with the Soviet Union was one of the lesser known (although possibly crucial) sectors of the Eastern Front during the Second World War. Whereas in the summer of 1941 the Axis forces on the main front had advanced a staggering 600 kilometres in just the first 8 weeks of Operation Barbarossa, in the Northern (Scandinavian) Theatre the gains were much more modest. The main reason for this was that the Finns were by-and-large reluctant to advance beyond their 1939 borders. That said, in the extreme north, on the Norwegian border where mainly German troops were involved, the advance was also negligible. The primary objective there was the port of Murmansk in Russian Lapland which was only 100 kms from Norway. Yet the much-vaunted mountain & arctic cadre of the German army was unable to make barely a 60 km advance (let alone 600 km) from Kirkness in Finnmark (Norwegian Lapland) before being stopped by the Soviets on the banks of the river Litsa. The port of Murmansk lay beyond reach. It was a similar story 200 km further south, where a joint German-Finnish force was tasked with advancing 100 km to sever the Murmansk railway at Kandalaksha. Again, they were stopped well short of their objective and the railway and port remained operational.

A combination of poor intelligence, shockingly bad maps, unfamiliar terrain, an underestimation of the number of Soviet forces in the vicinity all contributed to the Axis failure in that theatre. And this failure convinced the likes of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, British prime minister Winston Churchill and even Finnish commander-in-chief Emil Mannerheim that the spectacular 600 km drives towards Smolensk and Moscow etc could be discounted because in this crucial theatre the Germans had been unable to deliver a decisive blow. And it did indeed prove indicative. The Germans were subsequently unable to take Leningrad (St Petersburg) being stopped outside its southern suburbs, they were unable to take Moscow being stopped west of the capital only 30 miles from the Kremlin and were unable to cross the Volga (and sever that vital link) being stopped at Stalingrad on the river’s western bank. In other words, not one of those five objectives (Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Murmansk or Kandalaksha) was taken. By contrast, the Finns did achieve their objective which was the recovery of the territory lost in 1940 including Finnish Karelia and its capital Viipuri (Vyborg).




(The auditorium of Vyborg Library. Designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in the 1920s it still looks ultra-modern in the 2020s.)

 
Viipuri was the second city of Finland at the time. Following the armistice of 1944 it was again annexed by the Soviet Union and virtually all of its residents and those of the province then became internal refugees in other parts of Finland. The current Russo-Finnish border on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, ignores the obvious natural boundary of the Vyborg inlet but instead straddles the open countryside to the north. It’s widely believed that this was down to Stalin’s guile/spite ensuring that Finland would never again be able to mount the kind of defence it had done during the Winter War of 1939-40. During that war the Finns had been able to pen the invading Soviet forces into the narrow Karelian isthmus (between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga) meaning that Soviet numerical superiority in that sector was negated. Post-1944, and with a much broader border north of the isthmus, any invading Soviet force would then be able to access the heart of southern Finland almost immediately and before the Finns could respond.

That would be the obvious interpretation and it is essentially the case. On inspection, however, it’s worth noting that in 1944 Stalin actually took less Finnish territory north of the Vyborg inlet than had been taken by the Empress Elizabeth in 1743. She chose the Kymi (Kymmene) river, 25 miles further into Finland, as the natural boundary between the then Sweden-Finland and Russia. Elizabeth’s 1743 annexations also included the strategic 15th century Olaf’s Castle at Savonlinna (Nyslott) which in 1944 Stalin was happy to leave on the Finnish side of the border.




(St Olaf's Castle at Savonlinna, which marked the frontier between the catholic West and the orthodox East.)

 
What’s remarkable about the to-ing and fro-ing of the Russo-Finnish border over the centuries (and the border of Russian Scandinavia generally) is just how little it has changed. Russian Scandinavia can be described as basically all that part of Russia which lies north of St Petersburg and west of Archangel (or more specifically all territory north of the river Neva and west of the river Onega). This includes the Kola peninsula (Russian Lapland), Russian Karelia and South Karelia (formerly Finnish Karelia).

The Russo-Norwegian border has barely changed since the 14th century and is believed to mark the point along the Arctic Ocean coast where the warming effect of the Mexican Gulf Stream ended and the sea ice began. In short, the seafaring Norsemen were thought to have bagsied all the ice-free coast west of that point for themselves and left the rest for the Lapps (Sami), the Finns and the Russians. The Little Ice Age (c.1300-1850) tended to reinforce this view. However, the whole of the north coast of the Kola peninsula is ice-free all year round today and glaciological studies have suggested that it has probably been that way for centuries. This begs the question, though, as to why it took until the 20th century for Russia to develop an ice-free port on that coast (namely at Murmansk) when previously they had been dependent upon the port of Archangel which is ice-bound in winter.

The Russo-Finnish border has moved back and forth a bit more than the Russo-Norwegian border, particularly around the southern part of South Karelia and the Karelian isthmus. The isthmus’ southern extremity is bounded by the river Neva which flows from Lake Ladoga, thru the centre of St Petersburg and then out into the Gulf of Finland. Only the most ambitious Finn today, however, would claim this obvious natural boundary as the rightful border between the 2 countries and one would need to go back to the 11th century (i.e. a thousand years ago) to find a time when the southern part of the Karelian isthmus wasn’t claimed as Russian. And by Russian here the reference is to the state known as the Republic of Novgorod. In the 11th century there was no St Petersburg but located 120 miles south of that location was the city of Novgorod. Today known as Veliky Novgorod (Great Novgorod) to distinguish it from other Novgorods such as Nizhny Novgorod (Lower Novgorod) with Novgorod meaning ‘New Town’ it’s one of the most historic cities in Russia.

Founded by Norse Vikings, Novgorod and was ostensibly a vassal (and some say progenitor) of Kievan Rus. By the 12th century Novgorod had prospered enough (mainly through trading in furs) to develop a ruling class sufficiently rich and confident to pick and choose its princes (hence the ‘republic’ moniker). This state of affairs would remain for over 300 years until 1471 when forces from Moscow (a small state emerging from the formerly Mongol-rule principality of Valdimir) would stun the Novgorodians at the battle of Shelon and by defeating them end the republic’s self-confidence and independence. The last ruler of Novgorod was the aging widow of the city’s mayor. The Muscovites claimed that Martha the Mayoress had been conspiring with the catholic king of Poland-Lithuania against Moscow. They also depicted her as a senile and impotent old woman (a metaphor for the Novgorod republic itself) and contrasted her with the 31-year-young and thrusting Ivan III of Moscow who was resisting the Tartars in the east while simultaneously see-off catholic intrigue in the west and in so doing saving Novgorod from itself.     




(A detail from the Millennium of Russia Monument in Novgorod unveiled in 1862 to mark the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of the city by the Varangian viking chieftain Rurik of the Rus, the legendary founder of Russia. A crestfallen Martha Boretskaya contemplates a broken bell symbolising the ruin of Novgorodian political and ecclesiastical independence.)    


Today some see Novgorod as being a potential independent state resuming its place in the world from under Moscow’s shadow. Others, however, suggest that this is just so much wishful-thinking and that any hope of establishing an independent Novgorodian state in the North of Russia would be about as likely of being realised as, say, a wish to see Wessex become independent of the UK.

Going back briefly to Germany;  it has now been over thirty years since German reunification and some eighty years since the original Cold War separation of the country in the aftermath of WW2. However the border between the old East and West can still be clearly seen in a whole range of social measures, for example as shown in these maps:






Predominant religion: red is atheist/no religion, blue is protestant, green is catholic.


Most common foreign citizenship: in the East green is Vietnamese (that surprised me) and pink is Polish, while in the West red is Turkish.

The above are all taken from an article by Vivid Maps: Germany still divided by East and West. which gives several other interesting maps representing a diverse range of measures: voting preferences (greens vs rightwing AfD), the amount of rubbish generated per household, car ownership, levels of education, numbers of police, size of farms, number of mosques, level of flu vaccine takeup etc, all of which show to a greater or lesser degree a difference between East and West.

In 2003 the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague mounted an exhibition of 'pre-revolutionary clothing' from the days of the CSSR, a state that had only effectively ended 14 years earlier.  The exhibition showed shoddily made drab clothing but the curators were taken by surprise for the level of affection shown by many of the older visitors.

Tim

The clothing may have been drab, unfashionable and with little choice available in colour or style, but I doubt all of it was shoddily made. In Britain during wartime and post-war austerity, fabric was in short supply and so clothing was expensive and used up a lot of ration coupons. Accordingly by government directive all manufactured clothing was expected to be hard-wearing and last for many years. My dad's 1948 demob suit lasted decades beyond his first post-war employment - largely because it didn't fit and he hated it - however he continued to wear his grey gabardine demob raincoat well into the 1980s, and even then when it was retired from regular public use it continued to serve as tough gardening wear (of course it also helped that my dad was almost as slim in his 60s as he'd been in his 20s). 

To my mind it makes economic sense for the authorities in the CSSR to have restricted choice and discourage wasteful fripperies (such as different coloured or textured fabrics, plus unnecessary pleats, wide flairs or lapels that all use extra cloth), however to skimp on the overall quality - such that clothing was less durable and more often needed replacement - makes little sense. So while I don't actually know whether Soviet-era clothing was particularly well-made, or not, it certainly would make sense for it to have been functional and long-lasting. Indeed if it was 'durable-but-drab' I can well understand people having affection for sturdy, long-lasting clothes of the type that they'd grown up with and been accustomed to wearing for many years.