A Response to Robert M. Hayden and Tvrtko Jakovina,

With great interest and pleasure I read the constructive and insightful comments that Robert M. Hayden and Tvrtko Jakovina so generously articulated, starting from the topics I raised in my book and often expanding them to additional, broader considerations. Therefore, I am deeply grateful to both of them – as well as to Southeastern Europe – for the great opportunity they offered me to debate nationalism and state partitions, while elaborating these notions further. Both effectively captured the key narrative of my concern, since I was for years in search of a theoretical framework able to grasp either the transformative character of nationalism or its crucial role in promoting partitions in the modern world, even if partitions are not necessarily, and not always, inspired by nationalist ideas. However, the adaptability of this ideology in the historical perspective and its impact in defining the borders and the collective identities of political communities have shown, in many respects, a unique talent in mobilizing dynamically political strategies, social emotions, and cultural self-perceptions. Nationalism, in fact, has produced a high variety of alternative projects, sometimes inclusive, sometimes divisive, and sometimes even overlapping both these options. Comparatively speaking, the Yugoslav/Serbian and Croatian relationship as well as the Commonwealth/Polish and Lithuanian experience are, in my view, extraordinary examples of the coexisting and, simultaneously, conflicting nationalist narratives, whose interactions require an in-depth analysis. Both my commentators have broadened this aspect with their useful insights, although Robert Hayden seems not convinced about the effectiveness of my reference to the notions of “liquidity” and “fluidity”, because, he says, such an approach suffers from “the limitations of the scope: central Europe in the 20th century”.