The Austro-Marxist principle of national cultural autonomy was introduced by Otto Bauer in his 1907 book, National Consciousness and Social Democracy, was seen by him as a way of gathering geographically separated members of the same people in order to “organize it not in territorial bodies, but in a simple association of people,” which turned the nation into a non-territorial association.
Other ideological founders of this concept included yet another Austro-Marxist Karl Renner (essay "The State and the Nation", 1899) and the Jewish Labor thinker Vladimir Medim (essay 1904 "Socio-demographic decomposition").
The essence of the concept
Let's look at an example of a country consisting of several national groups, for example, Poles, Lithuanians and Jews. Each national group will create a separate movement. All citizens belonging to this national group will join a special organization that will hold cultural meetings in each region and in a common cultural assembly for the whole country. If such a practice obtains legal status, then this is national-cultural autonomy. The Assemblies will be provided with their own financial resources: either each national group will have the right to levy taxes from its members, or the state will allocate part of its total budget to each of them. Each citizen of the state belonged to one of the national groups, but the question of which national movement would be included in it was a matter of personal choice, and no authority would control this national-cultural autonomy. National movements will be subject to the general law of the state, but in their own areas of responsibility they will be autonomous, and none of them will have the right to interfere in the affairs of others.
Historical process
This principle was subsequently adopted by various parties, including the Jewish Socialist Workers' Party since its founding in 1906, the Jewish Labor Party at a conference in August 1912 (when the movement "On National Cultural Autonomy" became part of the Bund program), and the Armenian Social democrats. It was also adopted by the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets) at their ninth Congress in June 1917, the first Ottoman, and then the Greek Socialist Workers' Federation of Thessaloniki, the left Zionists (Hashomer Hatzayr) in favor of a bilingual decision in Palestine, the Jewish People's Team (inspired by Simon Dubnov, who developed the concept of Jewish autonomy close to Bauer) and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) after 1989. Like any local public organization, national-cultural autonomy has a certain power in society and politics. State power, as a rule, always takes this into account.
In Bolshevism
The history of federal national-cultural autonomies of Russia did not begin too well. The idea itself was categorically rejected by the Bolsheviks. The Stalinist pamphlet Marxism and the National Question (1913) was their ideological reference to this matter, as well as Lenin's Important Comments on the National Question (December 1913), in particular in the chapter entitled Cultural-National Autonomy. Stalin was later Commissar for Nationalities from 1917 to 1923. Catalan Andre Nin later joined the criticism of the concept of national personal autonomy of Lenin and Stalin in his article “The Austrian School, the National Movement for Liberation” (1935).
Other historical examples
National-cultural autonomy is a strategy that was part of official policy in the short-term Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-1920) and in the inter-war Estonian republic (personal autonomy law, 1925), and was included in the Declaration on the Protection of Minorities in Lithuania by the League of Nations in 1925.
An autonomous representative structure of Palestinian Jews between 1920 and 1949, Asefat HaNivharim can also be seen as the realization of the principle of national-cultural autonomy.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its puppet regimes, national-cultural autonomy has been the principle according to which legislation was adopted regarding ethnic minorities, for example, the Estonian Cultural Autonomy Act in Estonia 1993, the Hungarian Law LXXVII 1993 on national and ethnic rights minorities, the Latvian Law of 1991 on the unlimited development and the right to cultural autonomy of nationalities and ethnic groups of Latvia, the Lithuanian Law on Ethnic Minorities of 1989, the Russian Law of 1996 on the creation of national-cultural autonomies, and the law of Ukraine of 1992 on national minorities.
Ottoman Empire
There were separate courts (milletas) in the Ottoman Empire related to “personal cultural law”, according to which the confessional community (a group that respects the laws of Muslim Sharia, Christian canon law or Jewish halakha) allowed itself to govern its own laws. Despite the often cited “system,” until the 19th century, the organization of what is now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire is far from systematic. Rather, non-Muslims were simply granted a significant degree of autonomy in their own community, without a comprehensive structure for millets in general. The concept of individual milletas corresponding to various religious communities in the empire would not have appeared until the 18th century. Subsequently, the existence of the millet system was justified with the help of numerous myths about the foundation, connecting it with the time of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, although now it is believed that such a system did not exist in the 15th century. Following the reforms of the Ottoman Tanzimat, this term was used for legally protected minority religious groups, just as other countries use the word "nation." The word millet comes from the Arabic word mia (ملة) and literally means “nation”. This system is considered an example of pre-modern religious pluralism.
The millet system is closely related to Islamic rules for the treatment of non-Muslim minorities living under Islamic rule (dhimmi). The Ottoman term specifically refers to individual judicial courts relating to personal law, according to which minorities are allowed to manage their own lives (in cases not related to any Muslim), with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government.
The essence of millet
People were attached to milletas by their religious affiliation (or their confessional communities), rather than ethnic origin, in accordance with the concept of this court. Such courts had great power - they set their own laws, collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was required was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party is applied, but the ruling Islamic majority is of paramount importance, any dispute related to Muslims falls under their Sharia-based law.
Jewish autonomy
Jewish autonomy is a non-Zionist political movement that emerged in Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. One of his main supporters was the historian and activist Simon Dubnov, who also called him ideological populism. These activists sought regional national-cultural autonomy for the Jewish people.
Autonomists believed that the future survival of Jews as a nation depends on their spiritual and cultural strength, the development of “spiritual statehood” and the vitality of the Jewish diaspora, while Jewish communities support self-government and reject assimilation. Autonomists often emphasized the vitality of modern Yiddish culture.
Various concepts of autonomy have been adopted on the platforms of the People’s Party, Sejmists, and socialist Jewish parties such as the Bund.
Some groups mixed autonomy with Zionism: they advocated Jewish self-government in the diaspora, until the diaspora Jews turned Aliyah into their national homeland in Zion.
In 1941, Simon Dubnov was one of thousands of Jews killed in the Rumbula massacre. After the Holocaust, the concept of autonomy almost disappeared from Jewish political philosophy.
It is not connected with modern autonomy as a political movement, but is directly related to local national cultural autonomies in those countries in which Jews lived.
Cahill
Cahill (pl. Kehillot) is a local Jewish community structure, which was restored at the beginning of the 20th century as a modern, secular and religious continuation of Kahal in Central and Eastern Europe, in particular in the Polish second republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukrainian People Republic in the interwar period (1918-1940 gg.).
Unlike the ancient Kahal / Cahill, abolished in the Russian Empire by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844, the modern Council of the Church was elected as a municipal body with lists of candidates submitted by various Jewish parties: Agudat Israel, religious and non-religious Zionists, as well as Marxist Bundists and socialists liberal liberal secular populists, etc.
Kahaly / Cahill in the XX century
The initial draft submitted by Jewish delegations to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was to become the National Jewish Council for each state, from representatives of various community councils, such as the former Council of the Four Lands.
On March 4, 1920, a law on quixote was published in Lithuania, in which the church was defined as a body recognized by public law, with the right to levy taxes and issue decrees regarding religious issues, education and philanthropy.
In 1924, an agudist candidate, Eliagu Kirshbraun, was elected president, and Yagub Trockheim, another agudist, was appointed vice president. The only alternative candidate for president was the Bundist Henrik Erlich. Finally, the community’s executive director assembled the council: 7 Orthodox, 6 Zionists, 1 populist, 1 Bundist. The Bund boycotted the 1931 elections in protest against the introduction by the Polish government of a series of repressive laws. In 1936, the Bund had 15 out of 50 seats, and Erlich was again a presidential candidate, but received 16 votes, Zionist candidate Yitzhak Schipper 10, and Agudist Jacob Trakenheim won the election with a result of 19 votes.
Jewish Assembly at the British Crown
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Jewish community in binding Palestine was elected by the Council of Representatives (Hebrew: אספת הנבחרים, Asefat HaNivarim). It was created on April 19, 1920, and was valid until February 13, 1949, the day before the Knesset elected on January 25 was appointed. The assembly convened once a year to elect an executive body, the Jewish National Council, which was responsible for education, local government, welfare, security and defense. He also voted on the budgets proposed by the Jewish National Council and the Rabbinical Council.
In accordance with the British mandate, Yishuv (the Jewish community) created a network of political and administrative institutions, including the Assembly of Representatives. To ensure proper representation of small groups, a proportional representation system has been introduced. The first election took place on April 19, 1920, and the largest faction, Ahdut Haavoda, won only 70 of the 314 members of the Assembly. The ultra-orthodox community and the ultra-orthodox party, Agudat Israel, boycotted the elections in the Assembly because of their objections to secular Zionism.
Further development
The second election took place in 1925, and after the adoption of the charter of the Organization of Religious Communities in 1926, the Assembly was recognized by the British authorities in 1928. This is the national-cultural autonomy in Palestine, which has become a prototype of the future of Israel.
Further elections were held in 1931 and 1944. In recent elections, some groups, especially Sephardic Jews, boycotted the elections and were not represented. Since 1944, the Assembly has also been boycotted by Hatzoar due to disagreements with elected leaders over politics.
Jewish National-Cultural Autonomy of Russia
The Jewish Autonomous Region is a federal subject of Russia in the Far East, bordering the Khabarovsk Territory and the Amur Region and the Chinese province of Heilongjiang in China. Its administrative center is the city of Birobidzhan.
Federal Law on National Cultural Autonomy
In 1996, the Russian government issued a law guaranteeing the right to exist for such autonomies. This law sets out the concepts and principles that are the basis of national-cultural autonomies. Birobidzhan mentioned above is an example of federal national-cultural autonomy that has become an autonomous region. Today, however, few Jews live in this area. Nevertheless, in the series of national-cultural autonomies of the region and the Far Eastern Federal District, it is most often mentioned.