[PHOTO] Three photos of Toronto in the full flush of winter

Yonge just north of Eglinton, looking north, 1:30 on 29 December.

Snowy night, looking south at Yonge and Eglinton.

The snowy expanse of the southwest corner of Dupont and Dufferin extends out before the lens.

[PHOTO] Three photos of Toronto in the full flush of winter

Yonge just north of Eglinton, looking north, 1:30 on 29 December.

Snowy night, looking south at Yonge and Eglinton.

The snowy expanse of the southwest corner of Dupont and Dufferin extends out before the lens.

[DM] “A note on ethnic conflict and demographics: the Czech Republic”

I’ve a post up at Demography Matters where I examine the ways in which the demographics of the Czech Republic have been shaped by ethnic conflict, specifically by the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in 1945. How has it changed? And why haven’t I looked at the impact of ethnic conflict on demographics before? (More to come.)

[BRIEF NOTE] On how there never really was much of a Czechoslovakia

The recent death of Václav Havel, first Czechoslovakia then its largest successor state the Czech Republic, was the occasion for a post at the Economist‘s Eastern approaches blog describing how Havel and the dissident movement that he led never really took off in Slovakia.

Havel’s struggle against the communist Leviathan earned him stature abroad but puzzled most Slovaks at the time. The eastern part of communist Czechoslovakia suffered considerably less repression following the Soviet invasion in 1968. During this so-called “normalisation” era official propaganda, which portrayed Havel as a traitor, built a wall of misinformation between the two parts of the country.

For the Slovaks the 1970s were less about politics than they were about improving living standards. A booming arms industry brought jobs and other perks to this former agricultural backwater, effectively vaccinating Slovakia against the gloom and defeatism that gripped Bohemia and Moravia to the west.

There were, of course, “islands of positive deviation”, the phrase coined to describe Slovakian groups that engaged in anti-communist resistance, either actively or simply by “living within the truth”, as Havel put it in “The Power of the Powerless”. Many of them went on to advise Havel on Slovak matters after the wall came down.

But they were few. Only about 40 of the nearly 2,000 people that signed Charter 77, Czechoslovakia’s showcase human-rights manifesto, were Slovaks. Most of them were reformist communists expelled from the party after 1968 or intellectuals, among them Dominik Tatarka, author of the acclaimed anti-Stalinist novel “Demon of Conformity” who was described by some as the Slovaks’ Milan Kundera or Czesław Miłosz.

The “secret church”, the pillar of anti-communist opposition in Catholic Slovakia, eschewed Charter 77 as too political. Alexander Dubček, the Slovakian communist leader of the “Prague Spring“, also opted out.

As one would expect, the comments do contain a fair amount of to-and-fro between Slovaks and their opponents, thankfully with only a couple of disparaging references being made (as one would expect) to the Nazi satellite state of Slovakia reflecting Slovakian illiberalism, etc. Constructive comments predominate–the signal-to-noise ratio is actually fairly good–and they amplify on the reality that in Communist Czechoslovakia, Czechs and Slovaks had fundamentally different experiences. Nostalgia for Communist Czechoslovakia is stronger in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic because of Slovakia’s greater difficulties in transition, but that speaks to circumstances not underlying illiberalism. Slovaks didn’t sign Charter 77 en masse not because of a disinterest in democracy but rather because the networks of Czech dissidents didn’t extend into Slovakia. Overt post-1968 dissidence in Czechoslovakia arguably started off first in Slovakia, with the Bratislava Candle Demonstration of 25 March 1988 demanding religious freedom. And to a non-trivial extent, Havel and post-Communist Czechs didn’t pick up on the various both major and minor–everything from the impact of economic reform on Slovakia’s heavy industry to insulting names for neighbourhoods–that made the dissolution of Czechoslovakia possible.

It’s an irony, but in Czechoslovakia Czechs and Slovaks didn’t build a particularly intense relationship. A look at what happened to Czechoslovakia’s southern peer, Yugoslavia, shows that this is a good thing. Both countries were post-First World War formations, Hapsburg successor states (in whole or in part) assembling different Slavic groups into what was imagined to be a new national community (West Slavs in Czechoslovakia, South Slavs in Yugoslavia), eventually coming to grief because of a lack of rapport between the two largest groups. Yugoslavia was substantially an extension of the kingdom of Serbia into the South Slav-populated lands of Austria-Hungary where fears of Italy prevailed; Czechoslovakia was a product of Czech initiatives with the Slovaks, one of the more peripheral nationalities in the Kingdom of Hungary, who aligning with the more developed Czechs for want of more attractive partners.

Czechs and Slovaks didn’t have much shared history, in contrast to Serbs and Croats. The modern boundary between the Czech Republic and Slovakia dates back centuries; ethnic Slovaks in the Czech Republic weren’t a problematic minority at all, just post-war immigrants to a Czech Republic needing labour. (Post-war Roma migrants from Slovakia to the Czech Republic were and are seen as problems, but they are primarily unpopular because of their ethnicity not because of their ancestral geography.) There were resentments between Czechs and Slovaks, the latter resenting Czech assumptions that Slovak difference was solely the product of backwardness and without merit, but nothing to compare to the much greater tensions between Serbs and Croats, or–inside Czechoslovakia–between Czechs and Germans. Czechoslovakia fell apart in the early 1990s without the violence that marked Yugoslavia, but that was possible only because of unrestrained ethnic violence that of the 1940s, dominated by the expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s Germans–a population comparable in size to that of the Slovaks–after the Second World War. Germans, as I noted in my 2008 review of a book on the expulsion, were seen as a perennial threat to Czech identity; Slovaks, at most, were an economic burden.

And so, with just enough negative associations to make a split sound desirable to Czech and Slovak leaders, and not enough sentiment for Czechs and Slovaks to want to prevent their country’s dissolution or to make life difficult for people and ethnic groups they didn’t care much about for good and for ill, Czechoslovakia split.

[DM] “A note on ethnic conflict and demographics: the Czech Republic”

I’ve a post up at Demography Matters where I examine the ways in which the demographics of the Czech Republic have been shaped by ethnic conflict, specifically by the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in 1945. How has it changed? And why haven’t I looked at the impact of ethnic conflict on demographics before? (More to come.)

[BRIEF NOTE] Is devo-max a strategy for the eventual independence of Scotland?

Reading Jonathan Freedland’s latest Comment is Free essay, this one on the success and charisma of Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond who may yet lead his country to independence, I wondered if I caught onto his strategy.

Intriguingly, the only possible obstacle Scottish political hands can see in Salmond’s way is his cherished dream of independence. No matter how high the SNP climbs in the polls, public support for a Scottish break from the UK remains stubbornly pegged at about 38% or lower. If Scotland votes no, that could surely break the Salmond spell. It would certainly cause restlessness among those SNP activists who have so far accepted the leader’s gradualism.

Salmond has seen the risk, of course, and plans a second question of his own, offering independence-minus, or “devo-max”, a supercharged form of autonomy that stops short of a full rupture. That would surely pass. Such an outcome might even suit Salmond better than independence, for his appeal rests, in part, on his status as the underdog, the plucky (Scottish) man against the mighty (London) machine. All-powerful first minister he may be but, as long as he is campaigning for independence, rather than achieving it, this appeal remains intact. For Salmond, truly the journey is as important as the destination.

The 1980 and 1995 Québec referenda on independence offered two choices, continued federalism or a shift to independence. Put in such stark terms, the moderate middle–the elements of the electorate that were not sure about independence but didn’t want the status quo–tended to vote against independence. By offering three options, including two laying clim to greater autonomy for Scotland, Salmond would manage to separate that portion of the Scottish elecotrate wanting a change in the British-Scottish relationship from the ranks of the “No” vote.

If a Scottish referendum produced a substantial majority of Scottish voters demanding greater autonomy, whether outright independence and devo-max, that majority against the existing constitutional structure in Scotland would itself be a victory. If Westminister chose to negotiate devo-max, then he’d clearly have a continued mandate. And if Westminister chose not to negotiate, then conceivably many of the Scottish voters who voted in favour of a changed constitutuional relationship might shift wholesale to the ranks of Scottish separatism, again with Salmond as leader. Either way, Salmond and the SNP would be well-positioned to take advantage of future political shifts.

Thoughts?

[BRIEF NOTE] On how there never really was much of a Czechoslovakia

The recent death of Václav Havel, first Czechoslovakia then its largest successor state the Czech Republic, was the occasion for a post at the Economist‘s Eastern approaches blog describing how Havel and the dissident movement that he led never really took off in Slovakia.

Havel’s struggle against the communist Leviathan earned him stature abroad but puzzled most Slovaks at the time. The eastern part of communist Czechoslovakia suffered considerably less repression following the Soviet invasion in 1968. During this so-called “normalisation” era official propaganda, which portrayed Havel as a traitor, built a wall of misinformation between the two parts of the country.

For the Slovaks the 1970s were less about politics than they were about improving living standards. A booming arms industry brought jobs and other perks to this former agricultural backwater, effectively vaccinating Slovakia against the gloom and defeatism that gripped Bohemia and Moravia to the west.

There were, of course, “islands of positive deviation”, the phrase coined to describe Slovakian groups that engaged in anti-communist resistance, either actively or simply by “living within the truth”, as Havel put it in “The Power of the Powerless”. Many of them went on to advise Havel on Slovak matters after the wall came down.

But they were few. Only about 40 of the nearly 2,000 people that signed Charter 77, Czechoslovakia’s showcase human-rights manifesto, were Slovaks. Most of them were reformist communists expelled from the party after 1968 or intellectuals, among them Dominik Tatarka, author of the acclaimed anti-Stalinist novel “Demon of Conformity” who was described by some as the Slovaks’ Milan Kundera or Czesław Miłosz.

The “secret church”, the pillar of anti-communist opposition in Catholic Slovakia, eschewed Charter 77 as too political. Alexander Dubček, the Slovakian communist leader of the “Prague Spring“, also opted out.

As one would expect, the comments do contain a fair amount of to-and-fro between Slovaks and their opponents, thankfully with only a couple of disparaging references being made (as one would expect) to the Nazi satellite state of Slovakia reflecting Slovakian illiberalism, etc. Constructive comments predominate–the signal-to-noise ratio is actually fairly good–and they amplify on the reality that in Communist Czechoslovakia, Czechs and Slovaks had fundamentally different experiences. Nostalgia for Communist Czechoslovakia is stronger in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic because of Slovakia’s greater difficulties in transition, but that speaks to circumstances not underlying illiberalism. Slovaks didn’t sign Charter 77 en masse not because of a disinterest in democracy but rather because the networks of Czech dissidents didn’t extend into Slovakia. Overt post-1968 dissidence in Czechoslovakia arguably started off first in Slovakia, with the Bratislava Candle Demonstration of 25 March 1988 demanding religious freedom. And to a non-trivial extent, Havel and post-Communist Czechs didn’t pick up on the various both major and minor–everything from the impact of economic reform on Slovakia’s heavy industry to insulting names for neighbourhoods–that made the dissolution of Czechoslovakia possible.

It’s an irony, but in Czechoslovakia Czechs and Slovaks didn’t build a particularly intense relationship. A look at what happened to Czechoslovakia’s southern peer, Yugoslavia, shows that this is a good thing. Both countries were post-First World War formations, Hapsburg successor states (in whole or in part) assembling different Slavic groups into what was imagined to be a new national community (West Slavs in Czechoslovakia, South Slavs in Yugoslavia), eventually coming to grief because of a lack of rapport between the two largest groups. Yugoslavia was substantially an extension of the kingdom of Serbia into the South Slav-populated lands of Austria-Hungary where fears of Italy prevailed; Czechoslovakia was a product of Czech initiatives with the Slovaks, one of the more peripheral nationalities in the Kingdom of Hungary, who aligning with the more developed Czechs for want of more attractive partners.

Czechs and Slovaks didn’t have much shared history, in contrast to Serbs and Croats. The modern boundary between the Czech Republic and Slovakia dates back centuries; ethnic Slovaks in the Czech Republic weren’t a problematic minority at all, just post-war immigrants to a Czech Republic needing labour. (Post-war Roma migrants from Slovakia to the Czech Republic were and are seen as problems, but they are primarily unpopular because of their ethnicity not because of their ancestral geography.) There were resentments between Czechs and Slovaks, the latter resenting Czech assumptions that Slovak difference was solely the product of backwardness and without merit, but nothing to compare to the much greater tensions between Serbs and Croats, or–inside Czechoslovakia–between Czechs and Germans. Czechoslovakia fell apart in the early 1990s without the violence that marked Yugoslavia, but that was possible only because of unrestrained ethnic violence that of the 1940s, dominated by the expulsion of Czechoslovakia’s Germans–a population comparable in size to that of the Slovaks–after the Second World War. Germans, as I noted in my 2008 review of a book on the expulsion, were seen as a perennial threat to Czech identity; Slovaks, at most, were an economic burden.

And so, with just enough negative associations to make a split sound desirable to Czech and Slovak leaders, and not enough sentiment for Czechs and Slovaks to want to prevent their country’s dissolution or to make life difficult for people and ethnic groups they didn’t care much about for good and for ill, Czechoslovakia split.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Scandinavian traces in Great Britain

British writer Mark Simpson’s post “Bring Back the Danelaw!” starts by observing that the Scottish National Party, in the run-up to a referendum on independence, promises to establish closer ties between Scotland and its North Sea neighbours in Scandinavia. Why not?

[C]loser ties with its Scandinavian neighbours seems to me a perfectly sensible move for Scotland. The Scots have much in common with their Scandinavian neighbours. Many are descended from them. Scotland and Scandinavia are oil-producing, socialist-leaning regions which also tend to produce very similar hard-drinking morose TV detectives.

England, Simpson suggests, could also lay claim to a shared history with Scandinavia, especially his own native north of England.

But then, England, when it isn’t tuning into the latest series of The Killing is in denial about its own Scandinavian heritage. By rights, we should talk not about ‘Anglo-Saxon’ but about ‘Anglo-Saxon-Danish’. As a result of large-scale settlement by Vikings the English language has been greatly enriched by a host of rather useful Danish words, such as ‘law’, ‘sky’, ‘window’, ‘knife’, ‘husband’, ‘call’, ‘egg’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’. Without the Danish contribution to English our TV soap opera scripts would be very difficult to write indeed.

As a measure of the influx of Danish blood, any of today’s English patronymics ending in ‘son’– e.g. ‘Clarkson’ or ‘Simpson’— is likely to be Danish in origin. And under the Danelaw in the 8th and 9th Century, half of England was occupied and run by the Danes, from my hometown of York (then Jorvik), which was at the centre of a thriving trade network stretching from Iceland and Dublin to the Black Sea.

In the early 10th Century the Danish King Cnut the Great managed to preside over a kingdom that included Norway, Denmark, all of England and much of Sweden. His reign in England was said to have been maintained in part through ‘bonds of wealth and custom’ rather than sheer might. In other words, a shared trade and culture. A wise and popular king, it was only the Cnut’s failure to produce a lasting heir that brought the collapse of his Anglo-Scandinavian kingdom (and single currency) which would have changed the history of these islands, and perhaps Europe itself.

This kingdom failed, and the Norman conquest reoriented England (and eventually the rest of the British Isles) towards western Europe, but, still, Simpson romantically claims, something may yet come of it.

So as a ‘-son’ of York who dwelled in London for a decade or so but has since returned to his ancestral stomping grounds to become a provincial lesbian, I say good luck to Scotland with its dreams of a future safe in Scandinavia’s arms. And if a newly single England still won’t acknowledge its own Scandinavian heritage, or the south keeps inflicting a London/Norman/Tory government on the rest of us, maybe the east and north, where valleys are Danish ‘dales’ and streets Danish ‘gates’, should just bring back the Danelaw.

It is worth noting that this romance is quite unrealistic. In referendums in 2004 on limited regional autonomy, the region of northeastern England that was the core of the Danelaw voted massively against devolution. Scotland may yet have a quasi-Scandinavian future, if it becomes independent and its government decides to try to plug the country into another community; England, whole or entire, has left this in the past, not seeing any particular reason to try to activate that ancient connection.

[BRIEF NOTE] Is devo-max a strategy for the eventual independence of Scotland?

Reading Jonathan Freedland’s latest Comment is Free essay, this one on the success and charisma of Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond who may yet lead his country to independence, I wondered if I caught onto his strategy.

Intriguingly, the only possible obstacle Scottish political hands can see in Salmond’s way is his cherished dream of independence. No matter how high the SNP climbs in the polls, public support for a Scottish break from the UK remains stubbornly pegged at about 38% or lower. If Scotland votes no, that could surely break the Salmond spell. It would certainly cause restlessness among those SNP activists who have so far accepted the leader’s gradualism.

Salmond has seen the risk, of course, and plans a second question of his own, offering independence-minus, or “devo-max”, a supercharged form of autonomy that stops short of a full rupture. That would surely pass. Such an outcome might even suit Salmond better than independence, for his appeal rests, in part, on his status as the underdog, the plucky (Scottish) man against the mighty (London) machine. All-powerful first minister he may be but, as long as he is campaigning for independence, rather than achieving it, this appeal remains intact. For Salmond, truly the journey is as important as the destination.

The 1980 and 1995 Québec referenda on independence offered two choices, continued federalism or a shift to independence. Put in such stark terms, the moderate middle–the elements of the electorate that were not sure about independence but didn’t want the status quo–tended to vote against independence. By offering three options, including two laying clim to greater autonomy for Scotland, Salmond would manage to separate that portion of the Scottish elecotrate wanting a change in the British-Scottish relationship from the ranks of the “No” vote.

If a Scottish referendum produced a substantial majority of Scottish voters demanding greater autonomy, whether outright independence and devo-max, that majority against the existing constitutional structure in Scotland would itself be a victory. If Westminister chose to negotiate devo-max, then he’d clearly have a continued mandate. And if Westminister chose not to negotiate, then conceivably many of the Scottish voters who voted in favour of a changed constitutuional relationship might shift wholesale to the ranks of Scottish separatism, again with Salmond as leader. Either way, Salmond and the SNP would be well-positioned to take advantage of future political shifts.

Thoughts?

[BRIEF NOTE] On Scandinavian traces in Great Britain

British writer Mark Simpson’s post “Bring Back the Danelaw!” starts by observing that the Scottish National Party, in the run-up to a referendum on independence, promises to establish closer ties between Scotland and its North Sea neighbours in Scandinavia. Why not?

[C]loser ties with its Scandinavian neighbours seems to me a perfectly sensible move for Scotland. The Scots have much in common with their Scandinavian neighbours. Many are descended from them. Scotland and Scandinavia are oil-producing, socialist-leaning regions which also tend to produce very similar hard-drinking morose TV detectives.

England, Simpson suggests, could also lay claim to a shared history with Scandinavia, especially his own native north of England.

But then, England, when it isn’t tuning into the latest series of The Killing is in denial about its own Scandinavian heritage. By rights, we should talk not about ‘Anglo-Saxon’ but about ‘Anglo-Saxon-Danish’. As a result of large-scale settlement by Vikings the English language has been greatly enriched by a host of rather useful Danish words, such as ‘law’, ‘sky’, ‘window’, ‘knife’, ‘husband’, ‘call’, ‘egg’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’. Without the Danish contribution to English our TV soap opera scripts would be very difficult to write indeed.

As a measure of the influx of Danish blood, any of today’s English patronymics ending in ‘son’– e.g. ‘Clarkson’ or ‘Simpson’— is likely to be Danish in origin. And under the Danelaw in the 8th and 9th Century, half of England was occupied and run by the Danes, from my hometown of York (then Jorvik), which was at the centre of a thriving trade network stretching from Iceland and Dublin to the Black Sea.

In the early 10th Century the Danish King Cnut the Great managed to preside over a kingdom that included Norway, Denmark, all of England and much of Sweden. His reign in England was said to have been maintained in part through ‘bonds of wealth and custom’ rather than sheer might. In other words, a shared trade and culture. A wise and popular king, it was only the Cnut’s failure to produce a lasting heir that brought the collapse of his Anglo-Scandinavian kingdom (and single currency) which would have changed the history of these islands, and perhaps Europe itself.

This kingdom failed, and the Norman conquest reoriented England (and eventually the rest of the British Isles) towards western Europe, but, still, Simpson romantically claims, something may yet come of it.

So as a ‘-son’ of York who dwelled in London for a decade or so but has since returned to his ancestral stomping grounds to become a provincial lesbian, I say good luck to Scotland with its dreams of a future safe in Scandinavia’s arms. And if a newly single England still won’t acknowledge its own Scandinavian heritage, or the south keeps inflicting a London/Norman/Tory government on the rest of us, maybe the east and north, where valleys are Danish ‘dales’ and streets Danish ‘gates’, should just bring back the Danelaw.

It is worth noting that this romance is quite unrealistic. In referendums in 2004 on limited regional autonomy, the region of northeastern England that was the core of the Danelaw voted massively against devolution. Scotland may yet have a quasi-Scandinavian future, if it becomes independent and its government decides to try to plug the country into another community; England, whole or entire, has left this in the past, not seeing any particular reason to try to activate that ancient connection.