INVENTION OF TRADITIONS AS “POSTPONED” IMAGINATION OF THE NATION IN SORBIAN NATIONALISM PART 1. THE INVENTION OF THE NATION IN SORBIAN NATIONALISM IN CONTEXTS OF “DELAYED” MODERNIZATION OF A COMMUNITY WITH INCOMPLETE SOCIAL STRUCTURES

Purpose. The author analyses the problems of Sorbian ethnic culture as one of the invented traditions of Sorbian nationalism. The aim of the article is to analyse the strategies used by intellectuals in their attempts to actualise and visualise the ethnic culture of Sorbians as a form of identity and invented tradition in the actual situation. Methods. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles of interdisciplinary historiography of nationalism, including the concepts of the imagination of communities and the invention of traditions. Results. The author analyses the problems of the modern history of Sorbian identity in contexts of the perception of Sorbians as an imagined community and the invention of traditions for the development of their political, cultural and ethnic identity. It is assumed that the political identity of the Sorbians is less developed than ethnic one, including its cultural and linguistic dimensions. The author analyses the cultural, educational and linguistic initiatives of Sorbian nationalists. The author analyses processes of invention of traditions in a “late” modernisation society, where the nation, as a political community, emerged later than in neighboring regions, as well as the contradictions of the dominant majority in its politics of assimilation and integration of minorities. The author presumes that the slow social and cultural dynamics, the lack of complete social structures, assimilation and Germanization became factors that influenced the processes of national consolidation of the Sorbians significantly, determining the peculiarities of their modernization and transformation from the traditional community into a nation. It is assumed that the practices and strategies of Sorbian intellectuals in the invention of traditions as the basis for the functioning of identity became attempts to actualise the “ethnic” in modern globalizing German society. The author analyses the role of various cultural practices of Sorbian intellectuals, which they use to revitalize their identities