Minority of the majority
Since the beginnings of the construction of modern nation-states in the 18th and 19th centuries, the phenomenon of (numerical) minority of certain groups of the dominant (“titular”) nation in some regions of multi-ethnic states has been formulated as a problem. In Central and Eastern Europe, this included, for example, the Germans (and Austrians) living in the Czech, Polish, Ukrainian and South Slavic-majority provinces of the Habsburg Empire, the Russians living on the periphery of the Russian Empire, the Hungarians in Upper Hungary and Transylvania – even though neither Austria nor Russia defined itself as a nation-state. After WWI, the same situation applied to the Italians of South Tyrol, the Czechs of the Sudetenland, the Slovaks of Southern Slovakia, the Romanians of Szeklerland and the Poles of eastern Galicia and Volhynia. Since the end of WWII, the phenomenon has been observed in Southern Slovakia, in the Szekler region of Romania, in Estonia and Latvia nexto to Russia, and in South Tyrol. Its very existence – as a refutation of the idea of the nation-state – still challenges the nationalising ambitions of dominant national elites. The “minority of the majority” forms specific communities in each region, predominantly populated by some kind of minority: its members, as part of local elites, are generally considered to be the pillars of the state, especially in terms of public administration. However, the idea of the nation-state also influences their coexistence with the local – de facto – majority. Because they see themselves as the majority everywhere, their “homeliness” is inevitably confronted with the “homeliness” of the other community. The invocation of their special status is a recurrent argument in the public: their cause (“defence”) is often instrumentalised, and is an important element of the nation-state discourse against autonomy.