Nationalism has continued to play a major political role in modern European politics, despite its frequent dismissal by both liberal and Marxist ideologies.The explanation for this is not self-evident, but lies in the affective dimension of politics at the group level, which seems best satisfied by nationalism. In the communist-ruled countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, the decay and collapse of Marxism-Leninism revealed that nationalism has survived as a dominant political ideology, primarily because communism failed as an integrative cement. Particular patterns of nationhood and the interaction between nationalism and politics can be observed in the cases of the Soviet Union and of Hungary, each of which has found the perception of its identity modified by this interaction. The Central European idea may further modify these ideologies in the case of the latter. © 1991, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.
