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95
Rauf GARAGOZOV
Ph.D. (Psychol.), leading fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the Caucasus
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE GLOBALIZATION ERA (EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF THE AZERI YOUTH)
Abstract
The author, who has posed himself the task of analyzing certain socio-psy-chological aspects of the Azeri national identity and collective memory, asks the following questions: How can collective memory patterns, national and religious identity, and globalization be correlated? What patterns of national and religious self-identity are typical of the young people of different ethnic affiliations? What
makes the collective memory of young people of different ethnic affiliations specific? To what extent are these types of collective memory mutually correlated? The answers are sought in the cultural-historical context of Azerbaijan; they are based on the author’s findings during his experimental studies of the phenomena of collective memory and national identity of the Azeri youth.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
There is a more or less popular opinion that national states are leaving the stage under the pressure of globalization, which brings to the fore transnational corporations and the free movement of capital, labor, goods, and services. Those who think so refer to Europe, which is demonstrating an obvious desire to leave the stage of national states behind. Indeed, national states are parting with a gradually growing number of their prerogatives to delegate them to the supra-state structures: the European Union, the Council of Europe, and other inter-state associations and alliances. The process is driven by the logic of economic advancement; no wonder the European Union spends a lot of money on programs designed to plant a new identity, that of a citizen of Europe, in the minds of those who live in its member states. Life has shown, however, that local nationalisms proved to be more viable than expected while most citizens of the European states will not exchange their national identity for the “trans-European” in a hurry. National culture and collective memory are two, probably most important, stumbling blocks on the road toward supra-national identity. In fact, the globalizing world and culture have so far failed to push collective memory aside, to the backyard of history. According
The empirical studies of the Azeri youth and the present article have been possible thanks to the support of the Diplomatic Academy of Azerbaijan.
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to A. Smith,1 they revive the ethnonational myths, memory, and traditions that throw the deliberate “amnesia” of global culture (which makes it a temporary phenomenon associated with certain places and people) into bolder relief. In many respects, the “explosive” interest in the past and revival of the ethnonational myths and traditions can be interpreted as a response of the ethnonational collectives to the globalized world’s unifying and downgrading challenges.
This is keenly felt by young nations and national states that still have to cover the road of national-state development: the mounting interest in local cultures and ethnic myths consolidates sub-national ethnic entities and slows down their progress toward national identity. The young states, in turn, cannot fully rely on the time-tested European methods of building up national identities. Many of them, in fact, were used to achieve ethnic assimilation and enforce new identities for the sake of the state. This happened at the time when the European states were engaged in solving the “national question” in a world that knew next to nothing about more or less strong international structures designed to stand up for the national minorities. Today their rights and their defense have become almost an idée fixe. The above suggests that building up national identities in the young national states (the Azerbaijan Republic being one of them) can be described as a fairly delicate task that calls for subtlety and taking into account democratic values and methods for dealing with ethnic conflicts, as well as a purposeful advance toward national identity.
I have already written above that collective memory plays an important role in the way ethnic and national communities identify themselves and correlate with each other; this calls for a more detailed discussion of some of the problem’s theoretical aspects.
Collective Memory and National Identity
Anthony Smith has rightly pointed out that to plant the idea of national identity in the mind people should be informed about their origins, their past and their future.2 This is best served by all sorts of stories about the past that are gathered together into narratives; they develop into common stories accepted and shared by the entire population of a given state. The shared histories of a community that learns to recognize itself in the past and, therefore, in its shared present develop the feeling of belonging to a certain entity which can be described as a form of national identity.
At the same time, the shared stories of the past accepted by all members is a form of collective memory, which, in this particular case, can be defined as the sum-total of ideas about the past that dominates in a given society at a given historical moment and develops into something that can be called “common sense”3 the majority has accepted.
The shared histories that serve as the cornerstone of a nation are created by a variety of means, including teaching a unified national history in schools, the media, historical films, historical novels, museum expositions, etc.
We all know that the same history and the same historical fact can be told in a variety of ways that invite opposite conclusions4 depending on the aims of the historical narratives that suggest a corresponding “angle” and point of view. The choice depends on the national elites: it is they, not the “lower classes” or history “per se,” who set the landmarks and tag “the heroes and the villains;”
1 See: A. Smith, “National Identity and the Idea of European Unity,” International Affairs, No. 68, 1992, pp. 55-76.
2 See: A. Smith, Nations & Nationalism in Global Era, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 184.
3 M. Ferretti, “Neprimirimaia pamiat: Rossia i voyna,” in: Pamiat o voyne 60 let spustia, Novoe literaturnoe obizrenie, Moscow, 2005, p. 136.
4 See: W. Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 78, No. 4, 1992, pp. 1372-1386.
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they determine the contents and tone of national histories and, therefore, the content of collective memory.
These landmarks are determined by the elements that the national elites deem to be indispensable for national identity. In other words, this can be described as the “policy of memory” and “policy of identity” the national elites pursue in the process of nation-building. For example, since it is important, for the purpose of nation-building, for “our” nation to look different from others it is highly important for the “nation-forming histories” (that have nothing to do with history as a scientific discipline) to follow not so much facts and historical realities as a certain model of narration geared at nation-building. There is no need to recreate historical realities—it is much more important to present the nation as a unique entity with a historical destiny and homeland of its own.
I have already written that it is a far from easy task to create and preserve the feeling of national identity in polyethnic states; this is an even harder task in the states where ethnic groups have a mutually refutable collective memory and collective narratives. It is important, therefore, to experimentally investigate the correlations of collective memory of the young people of different ethnic origins living in Azerbaijan and the corresponding levels of national identities. This calls for a more detailed description of the experiment’s main theoretical postulates, methodology, and aims.
Aims, Tasks and Theoretical Basis
The experiment was aimed at identifying the levels of correlation between collective memory and national identity typical of the young people of different ethnic groups present in Azerbaijan.
We offered the following questions:
(1) What are the specifics of collective memory typical of young people of various ethnic groups living in Azerbaijan?
(2) How do the types of collective memory correlate among themselves?
(3) What are the national identity patterns typical of the young people living in Azerbaijan and belonging to different ethnic groups?
The collective memory conception put into academic circulation by French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs served as the theoretical starting point of my studies. It should be said that the academic community has not yet arrived at a generally accepted definition of collective memory.5 Maurice Halbwachs, the author of the collective memory conception, looks at it as a memory of the common past preserved by the members of a group, social class, or nation.6 Those who developed the idea believe that we should distinguish collective memory from individual memory and history.7
As distinct from individual memory based on the criteria of exact reproduction, collective memory is perceived as a process contested by the public and widely debated for the sake of creating a “useful” past.8 Collective memory tends to simplify the events and look at them from one generally accepted perspective that does not tolerate ambiguity of any sort,9 so it differs from history that knows how to interpret events from different points of view. In the 1980s the term “collective memory” began to gain in popularity; today it is used as often as the term “collective identity:” most of
5 See: J.V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002.
6 See: M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992.
7 See: J.V. Wertsch, op. cit.
8 See: J.W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, B. Rime, Collective Memory of Political Events, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey, 1997.
9 See: P. Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1999.
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those engaged in studies of all sorts of cultural symbols (texts, images, rituals) are convinced that they contribute both to collective memory and collective identity.10
It is often emphasized that collective identity is a hierarchically arranged and multi-layered phenomenon in which each level (individual, a small social group, or a nation) has its own specific constructs of collective memory.11 The levels are either mutually conforming or mutually contradictory; in the latter case they form opposing constructs.12 This problem has not yet been researched in depth, which means that everything that has been written so far contains no answer to the question of how different constructs of collective memory affect identification with different social groups.
This makes studies of the specifics of collective memory of different ethnic groups within a nation (a large social group) important in the practical as well as theoretical respect: we could gain a better understanding of the correlation between the collective memory constructs and the national identity patterns.
I relied on certain postulates of Henri Tajfel’s theory of social identity13 and John Turner’s theory of self-categorization14 as the starting point for my studies of the ties between the categories of collective memory and identity. I also relied on the postulate of the theory of social identity that each individual, and group, tends to achieve positive self-assessment and a “self-concept.” The latter is achieved by combining identifications or tags. They might form part of one of two subsystems of the “self-concept:”
(a) personal identity made up of a given person’s awareness of his specificity and individuality and
(b) social identity stemming from the realization of one’s membership in a social group (groups) together with the axiological and emotional importance ascribed to this fact.15
Membership in a certain group is not limited to Tajfel’s terms; it can be “imposed” on the individual through common culture, social milieu, the media, and education. Memory retains or revives everything that confirms the individual’s positive self-assessment at the level of his personal and social identity. This means that collective memory is important because it retains in the individual his awareness of belonging to a social group or culture; in our case, it preserves the national identity awareness. It is extremely important to understand what the collective memory of members of different ethnic groups included in a national group contains for the purpose of identifying the prospects and landmarks of national identity.
The above suggests that groups may have either common (harmonized) collective memory or several confused and fairly contradictory ones. In fact, groups may revive the past either to stress their unity or revive what divides them: this depends on the social and political content and suggests the following formula: groups with a mutually harmonized collective memory within one nation demonstrate similar or identical patterns of national identity, while groups with conflicting collective memories might have different identification patterns interfering with the development of a shared national identity.
To verify the above I have developed the experimental methods described below.
) See: R. Poole, “Memory, History and the Claims of the Past,” Memory Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2008, pp. 149-167.
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11 See: H. Tajfel, J. Turner, The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behaviour. The Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Vol. 2, ed. by S. Worchel & W.G. Austin, Nelson Hall, New York, 1986, pp. 23-53.
12 See: J. Assman, Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, available at [URL:http://www.history.ucsb.edu/facul-ty/marcuse/classes/201/articles/95AssmannCollMemNGC.pdf], 2008.
13 See: H. Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981. 328 pp.
14 See: J. Turner, “Social Categorisation and the Self-Concept: A Social Cognitive Theory of Group Behavior,” in: Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 2, JAI Press, Greenwich, Conn., 1985, pp. 77-121.
15 See: H. Tajfel, op. cit., p. 255.
The Methods and Results
A sampling of 100 students (between the ages of 14 and 17 of both sexes) from three ethnic groups (Azeris, Lezghians, and Talyshins) living in three regions of Azerbaijan (Baku, Gusary, and Astara) individually filled in a specially compiled questionnaire. At first they were asked to name the three most important events in the history of their homeland during the last 100 years. As the next step the questionnaire asked the respondents to provide concise comments on certain past events identified either with the names of historical figures or in some other way. The answers reflected the specifics of collective memory and knowledge of history, which were assessed in the following way: 2 points for a correct answer, 1 point for a partially correct answer; 0 for those who failed to answer or gave completely incorrect answers.
There was also a series of questions assessed by a 7-point scale (from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 7):
(1) To what extent do you feel like other citizens of Azerbaijan?
(2) To what extent is it important for you to be a citizen of Azerbaijan?
(3) When you hear a foreigner criticize Azeris do you feel criticized?
(4) To what extent do you feel strong ties with other citizens of Azerbaijan?
(5) To what extent do you feel like all other Muslims?
(6) To what extent is it important for you to be a Muslim?
(7) When you hear a non-Muslim criticizing Muslims do you feel criticized?
(8) To what extent do you feel an affiliation with the Muslims of other ethnic groups living in Azerbaijan?
Table 1
The Frequency of Selection of the Most Important Events by Members of Different Ethnic Groups (%)
Important Events Ethnic Group
Azeris Lezghians Talyshins
20 January 63 52 83
Khojali (Xocali) 22 28 36
Armenian occupation of Azeri territories 18 12 17
Independence of Azerbaijan 16 19 46
Genocide of Azeris in March 1918 9 6 17
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918 6 12 29
World War II 11 3 27
The Contract of the Century 2 3 7
Table 2
Knowledge of the Past Events: Point Distribution
Event Approximate Period Points (%) 0 1 2 Examples of Answers
Black January 1990 36 32 32 “Soviet troops moved into Baku in the small hours of 20 January”
Khojali (Xocali) 1992 25 39 36 “Russians and Armenians destroyed the city of Khojali (Xocali) on 25 February, 1992”
The Contract of the Century 1994 70 8 22 “Oil contract with the West”
Terrorist acts 1994 90 10 0 “Terrorist act in Baku underground in 1994”
Vladimir Lenin 1917 66 30 4 “First ruler of the U.S.S.R.”
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) 1918-1920 68 18 14 “Azerbaijanian state in 1918-1920”
Mamed Emin Rasulzade 1918-1920 67 25 8 “The ADR head”
Sadval 1994 98 2 0 “A terrorist organization”
Joseph Stalin 1925-1953 82 15 3 “Ruler of the U.S.S.R. after Lenin”
Hajji Zeynalabdin Tagiev 1900 53 22 25 “Millionaire, patron of the arts, petroleum industrialist”
Explosion in the Abu-Bakr Mosque 2008 89 8 3 “Terrorist act that took place in 2008”
N o t e: Most 0 points were given for the failure to answer.
Table 3
Comparative Level of Knowledge of Past Events Depending on the Respondents' Ethnic Affiliation
Event Mean Score H-criterion of Kruskall-Wallace
Black January X2 = 40.86 P< .0001
Azeris 191.96
Lezghians 122.11
Talyshins 137.43
Table 3 (continued)
Event Mean Score H-criterion of Kruskall-Wallace
Khojali (Xocali) x2 = 3.114 insignificant
Azeris 140.27
Lezghians 160.64
Talyshins 150.59
The Contract of the Century x2 = 37.85 P< .0001
Azeris 166.75
Lezghians 171.23
Talyshins 113.53
Terrorist acts in the Baku underground x2 = 2.47 insignificant
Azeris 146.0
Lezghians 153.5
Talyshins 152.0
Vladimir Lenin x2 = 68.49 P<.0001
Azeris 168.14
Lezghians 182.34
Talyshins 101.02
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic x2= 57.59 P<.0001
Azeris 161.94
Lezghians 182.74
Talyshins 106.82
Mamed Emin Rasulzade x2= 68.05 P<.0001
Azeris 194.9
Lezghians 151.38
Talyshins 105.22
Sadval x2 = 4.013 insignificant
Azeris 148.0
Lezghians 152.5
Talyshins 148.0
Table 3 (continued)
Event Mean Score H-criterion of Kruskall-Wallace
Joseph Stalin x2 = 47.338 P<.0001
Azeris 148.32
Lezghians 179.68
Talyshins 123.5
Hajji Zeynalabdin Tagiev x2= 63.912 P<.0001
Azeris 202.25
Lezghians 132.62
Talyshins 116.63
Explosion in the Abu-Bakr Mosque x2 = 3.647 insignificant
Azeris 150.15
Lezghians 144.59
Talyshins 156.76
Figure 1
The Level of National Identification (“Azeri”) Depending on the Respondents' Ethnic Affiliation (P < .0001)
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Figure 2
The Level of Religious Identification (“Muslim”) Depending on the Respondents' Ethnic Affiliation (P<.0001)
7.00 _
Azeris Lezghians Talyshins
Ethnic group
N o t e: The level of national and religious identification determined by the Kruskall-Wallace criterion corresponds to the height of the column.
The Results Discussed
Table 1 shows that the respondents belonging to different ethnic groups stressed the same events even though with varying frequency. The sum-total of the events that the respondents identified can be described as a certain shared “volume” of collective memory while the list may serve as proof that the collective memory of the respondents was fairly harmonized.
Table 2 reveals that the Khojali and Black January events invited the largest number of correct answers, which is only natural. As the most tragic and the most painful events of Azerbaijan’s recent history they have become deeply embedded in the respondents’ collective memory. There are any number of studies16 that say that traumatic experience and stress accompanied by strong emotions leave the deepest scars in the collective memory: eyewitnesses tend to share their strong emotions with others. This extends the number of those able to discuss the events with others which, in the final analysis, creates a collective memory of what has happened. School education contributes to the process through teaching and annual commemoration days marked at the state level across the country and, in particular, in all schools. The “Black January” event received a fairly high share of incorrect answers: it was confused with the later Armenian invasion of Azerbaijan. This means that school education and teaching of history (in the countryside in particular) leave much to be desired.
16 See: D. Paez, N. Basabe, J. Gonsales, “Social Processes and Collective Memory: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Remembering Political Events,” in: Collective Memory of Political E-vents, ed. by J.W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, B. Rime, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey, 1997, pp. 147-174.
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The name of Zeynalabdin Tagiev, Azeri petroleum industrialist and patron of the arts who lived in the early 20th century, invited the third largest number of correct answers. Indeed, good deeds are not forgotten in a hurry! The question about the “Contract of the Century” drew the fourth largest number of correct answers probably because the media never tire of pointing to the role and importance of oil contracts for the republic, which obviously registers the event in the respondents’ collective memory.
Table 2 revealed the role of the ethnic factor in the knowledge about the following events: Black January, the Contract of the Century, Lenin, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Mamed Emin Rasulzade, Joseph Stalin and Hajji Zeynalabdin Tagiev. The Azeri respondents were better informed about Black January and Mamed Emin Rasulzade and Zeynalabdin Tagiev; while the Lezghian respondents knew more about Lenin and Stalin, probably because they are educated in Russian and receive more information about the history of Russia and the Soviet Union.
The results suggest that the collective memory of students of different ethnic affiliations is fairly harmonized and includes certain key and tragic events of the history of Azerbaijan connected with the gaining of independence.
On the whole, Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate a high level of national and religious identity. The Taly-shin respondents demonstrated the highest degree of national identity (citizen of Azerbaijan) while the Lezghian respondents showed the highest degree of religious identity. How can this be explained? I have already written that the Azeri respondents came from Baku schools while the Lezghian and Talyshin respondents were from village schools, which inevitably affected the level of national and religious identity. Baku, as the republic’s largest urbanized center, is much more open to the impact of globalization, which explains the lower level of national and religious identity among Azeri schoolchildren and students.
C o n c l u s i o n
The results confirmed our hypothesis that groups inside nations with a mutually harmonized collective memory demonstrate similar or identical national identity patterns.
The results testified that a high level of national identity and harmonized collective memory is typical of Azeris, Lezghians, and Talyshins. At the same time, the teaching of history in schools cannot be described as satisfactory and does not teach the students to analyze information. It is highly important to create textbooks that would reveal each of the historical layers at a high academic level on the basis of contemporary knowledge and ideas about ethnic conflicts, nationalism, nation developments, and creation of national states. The Azerbaijan Republic should acquire a state national policy conducive to national identity and collective memory at a qualitatively higher level in order to bring the ethnic groups of Azerbaijan closer together and promote their acceptance of the Azeri national identity in the future.
