Brüderlichkeit und Bruderzwist

Whenever different social strata, religious communities, ethnic groups or nations were to be united in one political movement or in one state in Eastern Europe, the initiators usually appealed to their purported “brotherliness”. Various overarching common traits were invoked, different traditions were called into action: from early Christianity to communism, from secret associations to proletarian alliances and partisan associations, from blood relationships (probratimstvo) to multinational states (Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), from pan-Slavism in all its forms to Tito’s “Third Way”. The rhetoric and media enactments spanned from the commitment to metaphorical brotherly love to enforced affiliations to extortionate “family clans” that asserted their political goals through bio-politics and racism.