The intangible concept that gives countries power
Zaria Gorvett
A strong national identity is essential for any country's survival – and the easiest route to acquiring one is to unite behind a common enemy.
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A strong national identity is essential for any country's survival – and the easiest route to acquiring one is to unite behind a common enemy.

Silently, they slid across the forest floor.

Clad in silver-white cloaks, three ghostly hooded figures approached a Russian camp on skis, carrying rucksacks heavy with Molotov cocktails. Their target? A hut containing essential equipment, which they soon set alight. Then something unexpected happened – the targets of this sabotage cheered.

It was the dead of night in December 1939. Just 27 days earlier, Finland had been invaded by Soviet Russia, in a much-discussed echo of what is happening in Ukraine today.

The faction, a Finnish ski patrol, were operating by Lake Ladoga in the vast taiga forest, then in the south-east of the country on the border (now part of Russia) – a place that's several feet deep in sparkling snow from November to April, in a region where winter temperatures regularly dip to -10C (14F). In this subarctic snowscape, it's so cold even the trees freeze, taking on strange sculptural forms that tower over the powdery blanket like alien ice-monsters.

Operating in such an unforgiving environment was extremely perilous. The 160,000 Finnish soldiers were vastly outnumbered by the Russian army, which consisted of around 460,000 troops and 2,000 sophisticated T2 tanks, while they themselves mostly relied on horses and reindeer. But the defending side had one big advantage: the strength of its population's national identity.

Though Finland was a relatively new country at the time – having only gained independence from Russia just 22 years earlier – its people were already proud of their nation. And during the Winter War, as it became known, the Finnish people rallied around their common enemy to become more patriotic than ever. In letters from the time, they spoke of the country as their fatherland, and emphasised sentiments like duty and sacrifice. This young state was so determinedly Finnish, its population was prepared to die to defend their freedom. They called this collective strength "the spirit of the Winter War".

"They [the Russians] certainly underestimated the national identity of the Finns," says Paul Readman, a professor of modern British history at King's College London, in the UK. He has written several books on national identity, including Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity.

Even Finland's tactics were steeped in a deep sense of their own culture and an intimate knowledge of their land. For one thing, their troops got about on skis – a skill most people in the country learn as children to this day – which are better suited to a snowy environment than trudging on foot, as the Soviets mostly did (they largely couldn't ski).

The Finns also used more appropriate clothing – camouflaging themselves against the ever-present snow with cosy white cloaks, rather than thin khaki uniforms. Their use of hoof-power over tanks provided another left-field advantage, because there were few roads in the main areas of battle and vehicles were noisy and easily thwarted by the terrain. When times got tough, they could always turn to "sisu" – a local form of resilience that involves stoic determination.

At Lake Ladoga, the Soviets were particularly demoralised – many were frostbitten, and they didn't have the same sense of protecting their own land and people. So, when the Finnish troops turned up and lit up the sky with a bonfire of their belongings, they… did nothing. According to a contemporary report in the New York Times, instead of attacking back, the Russian troops ran towards the flames to warm their hands. Later, the captured prisoners strangled one of their own officers – explaining that he had previously shot at them from behind, to force them forwards in battle.

Within just three months of the first incursion into its territory, Finland had deterred its invaders and managed to hold onto the vast majority of its land, though the nation did cede 11%, and later went on to ally itself with Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Contrast this show of patriotic determination with modern Britain, a country with over three centuries of continuous nationhood, which now has some of the lowest rates of love from its population on the planet.

Today just 15% of 18-24 year-olds in the UK describe themselves as "very" patriotic, according to one government survey. Meanwhile in another, 51% of young people failed the controversial "Life in the UK" exam, which is designed to assess a person's knowledge of British values, traditions, culture, politics, history and laws – many of the things that set the country apart from any other. A pass is required for immigrants applying for citizenship.

This raises some interesting questions. How do populations get their national identities? Why are some countries so much more patriotic than others? And are these feelings healthy, or harmful?

An abstract concept

One reason national identities are so important is the nature of countries themselves.

'"If you think about it, all states are artificial constructs," says Pippa Catterall, professor of history and policy at the University of Westminster in the UK and founder of the academic journal National Identities. "They only work because people do have some sense of identification with them."

The areas that humanity has designated as states aren't based on any kind of universal logic, though they are often rooted in a cultural legacy of some kind. Most aren't discrete geographical entities either, like a single island. Instead they are cultural constructs, and they exist because their populations – and in many cases, the international community – have agreed that they do.

As the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari points out in his 2011 book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, if a population collectively changes its mind about a country, or disappears itself – such as through war, famine, or migration – its nation vanishes too. "They exist in a different way from physical phenomena such as radioactivity," he writes, "but their impact on the world may still be enormous." He explains that, as well as countries, many of history's most important forces occur in this form, such as the law and money.

Since human civilisation began, countless countries and empires have come and gone because people stopped believing in them, from the Roman Republic to Ancient Egypt, the Papal States, Persia and East Germany. Even the Mali Empire, which was famous in the medieval world for its staggering wealth and produced the richest person who ever lived, eventually dissolved.

The stronger a country's national identity – broadly defined as its population's sense of belonging there and confidence in its political system – the easier it is for it to continue. Patriotism is then layered on top, if people feel a sense of pride in being part of that club.

"It's usually a good idea for regimes to build some kind of sense of identity with the state," says Catterall, "because it leads to them being able to control the territory, control the streets, etc., more effectively." She points out that people usually think of the machinery of government in terms of institutions like parliament, but a national identity is arguably equally important – though intangible, it can lend legitimacy to a political regime.

Nationalism is one step further. It co-opts a person's ideas about what sets their home territory apart and leads them to support it directly as a political entity. As a passionate believer in a particular state, they might want to help with furthering its interests, such as invading somewhere else to acquire resources.

A common enemy

Perhaps the quickest route to feelings of belonging is a foreign threat.

"A lot of historians would say the British national identity was constructed – and it was constructed in the context of war – specifically, long wars with France," says Readman. "And that caused the constituent elements of Britain – England, Scotland, and Wales, and Ireland – to come together against the common enemy."

Among these were the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, back-to-back conflicts between France and a coalition of other European powers including Britain that began in 1792 and ended in 1815.

Centuries of previous wars had already established a number of national caricatures that contributed to Francophobia and Anglophobia. The French in general were often depicted as pompous and effeminate fashion victims, with hideously frilly costumes and a sizeable dose of vanity – egregious crimes at a time when strength, bravery and masculinity were highly valued. On the other hand, the British were often portrayed as fat and poorly dressed by their rivals across the Channel.

This animosity continued into the 18th and 19th centuries. The "othering" of France was helped along by the fact that Britain was predominantly Protestant and France was largely Catholic. According to the British historian Linda Colley, the British identity was less a "blending" of the characteristics of the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish than an extra layer added on top – simply that they were in one tribe and France was in another.

Similarly, before the Winter War in Finland, its population was nationalistic but theirs was a fractured country – divided into those who supported the communist Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, and White Finland, who opposed them. They had fought each other during the Civil War that followed the declaration of independence from Russia decades earlier, and the country had not yet recovered.

Then the Soviets turned up with their tanks – and galvanised both political parties in Finland to work together to achieve a common goal. To this day, the Winter War is considered a central force in its survival as a nation.

This route to a sense of unity has also been at work in Ukraine over the last three decades, ever since the country was founded in 1991 after the break-up of the Soviet Union. It's gradually distinguished itself from its Russian neighbour by becoming more European, as the threats from the Kremlin have increased. "The Russians have helped to create the Ukrainian national identity very quickly," says Catterall.

"And this is, you know, one of the things about national identity," says Readman. "Actually fighting a war – it's quite topical, I suppose – you define yourself in relation to what you're not. You come to understand what you are in relation to what you're not."

An ingenious invention

However, there are plenty of other ways to acquire a national identity in a hurry.

Catterall gives the example of the Middle East.

In the early 20th Century, the region was largely controlled by the Ottoman Empire, which was in decline. But in 1916, six years before it finally collapsed, two diplomats – one from Britain, one from France – got together and made a secret deal about how they'd divide up its remains between their two countries' spheres of influence.

This was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and it laid the groundwork for the creation of many Middle Eastern countries over the following decade, including the precursors of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Other nations in the region also sprung up or redrew their boundaries amid the chaos.

Many of these "postcolonial states", as they are sometimes known, were plucked from thin air – Britain and France's meddling ignored existing divisions, such as those based on language, ethnicity and religion, and created brand new countries rooted in what was politically convenient for Europe at the time. Much the same had occurred in large parts of Africa as colonial powers drew largely arbitrary lines on maps to create borders in places where often they had not previously existed. And this presented a problem.

"All the lines on the map in the Middle East were drawn by European powers at some point, as in Africa. So how do you build a sense of 'there is one people' in these states when you're effectively dealing with artificial constructs?," says Catterall.

One answer, it turns out, is you can simply make a national identity up. "Invented traditions" are those that have the appearance of being inherited from previous generations, but in reality were created rapidly and artificially.

"You get simple acts like trooping the colour or the lowering of the flag. They're ceremonies which become ways in which elites concoct how you identify with the political order called a state," says Catterall, who describes them as theatrical performances of nationality.

But invented traditions often go even further, sometimes even turning into a fundamental part of the national character or feeding into stereotypes. One particularly famous example of these imposters is Scottish tartan.

Today many Scottish people – as well as those with somewhat distant links to the country, such as US citizens with Scottish ancestors – wear their tartan kilts at all kinds of events, from weddings to Burns' Night celebrations, Hogmanay (on New Year's Eve) or even football matches, perhaps imagining that they are following in the footsteps of their ancestors.

There are thousands of different tartan patterns, and which one you wear is supposed to depend on which historical clan your ancestors belonged to. But the whole ritual is now widely considered to be a myth.

As the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper pointed out in his ground-breaking 1983 book The Invention of Tradition, tartan has indeed been worn by those living in the highlands for centuries. But it was not an important part of the upland community's identity, and like "traditional" Scottish bagpipe music, it was despised by the majority of the population, who lived in the lowland areas and considered their culture uncivilised and barbaric.

Then in the 18th Century Scotland began to rebrand, first presenting itself as the original Celtic motherland, when in reality much of its population had emigrated from Ireland, and then as culturally distinct from England, which it shared many of its authentic traditions with.

The modern tradition of tartan kilts was promptly invented – using an item of clothing that had never previously existed, and a fabric that did have a genuine history in the region – and later embellished by the novelist Sir Walter Scott, who mistakenly thought each clan had its own pattern. Instead, this diversity was simply down to the resources available in different parts of the country – it was more the case that certain regions had their own tartans, based on which dyes could be found locally.

The bagpipes, which might have originated in Ancient Egypt, have been played for thousands of years around the globe and are thought to have been associated with the English first, where the instrument became popular among rural communities in the Middle Ages. They were appropriated by Scottish culture in the 19th Century, completing the eccentric outfit now considered quintessentially Caledonian – and helping to cement the country's modern national identity as a place with centuries of unique heritage.

In the Middle East, some experts have suggested that camel racing in the United Arab Emirates and falconry in the Gulf Arab States are invented traditions to an extent. For example, though hawking does have a history in the region, today the way it's presented as a "heritage" sport could be seen as a means of resurrecting the region's Bedouin past in a selective and romanticised way – especially because it's now considered a sport for the elite.

Many post-Soviet countries have used a similar approach. In Uzbekistan, which like Ukraine and 13 other states was founded when the empire was dissolved in 1991, there wasn't much of a nationalist movement to begin with – in fact, just beforehand the population voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining Soviet. Afterwards, faced with the prospect of inventing an identity of its own, the state turned to previously obscure historical heroes and even traditional medicine as ways to forge a sense of historical continuity.

And this is the trick – to find something real, however marginal or ancient, that you can build up and add to. "It never works if it's entirely top-down," says Readman. "It has to have traction with, you know, some values or beliefs or folklore or sense of the past, otherwise it doesn't connect."

Readman gives the example of modern Italy, which consisted of several disparate states as recently as the early 19th Century. Eventually a nationalist movement sprung up – and in 1861 its constituent parts voted to unify. The snag was that previously they had mostly been under foreign control, and there were many different dialects spoken in the region. So the new nation had to forge a new identity, starting with picking a language.

The Italians settled on Tuscan, which had previously been a literary dialect and was prized for its beauty and clarity. It's sometimes known as "Dante's Italian", after the 14th Century poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1361) who used it for his poems – they weren't translated, so historically being able to understand them was a mark of a person's social status.

"So the idea of Italy might have been articulated by intellectuals in the 1860s and 1870s," says Readman, "But it needs to connect to some kind of some kind of pre-existing understanding of their being a people, otherwise it's not going to work."

A constant battle

In other cases, new countries may already have strong pre-formed ideas about who they are – particularly those that have actively struggled for independence. However, this too can be complicated.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008 (it's not currently recognised by Serbia or Russia). Since then, the state's Albanian majority have continued to build on their ideas about what it means to be Kosovar, but they have struggled to reconcile this with the minority Serbian population, who belong to a different ethnicity with its own distinct language.

However, what it takes to belong to a nation is changing.

In one study by the American think tank Pew Research, around half of respondents from Japan, Hungary and Greece said that having been born in their nation was crucial for being "one of them". At the same time, the majority of people from America, Canada, Europe, and Japan reported that being able to speak the same language was very important for being truly part of their country.

But despite these lingering views, another Pew Research survey suggests that western Europe and the US are becoming gradually more inclusive in their attitudes towards immigrants, with declining concerns about the population sharing the same religion or birthplace. Those from the US, UK, Germany and France also said that they thought their countries would be better off in the long term if they were open to changing their traditions and way of life – fundamental aspects of national identity.

In the UK, football is central to many people's ideas about what it means to be British – with multicultural teams helping to shape a more modern view of the country. But football has only existed in its current form for just over a century – it was invented in the late 19th Century, and even then it was not an instant hit. To begin with, other sports such as racewalking were far more popular (Read more from BBC Future about .)

"I think the thing about sport is it's a very powerful way of seeing yourself as belonging to a community – the members of which you might never meet – but you associate yourself with them," says Readman. He suggests that sport could arguably be considered a form of banal nationalism, a phenomenon that encompasses everyday ways of expressing nationalist sentiment, such as flag-waving.

Even with all these options, it's widely believed that the UK is grappling with a crisis of national identity, leading to speculation about whether the union between the four countries that make it up will survive much longer. Possible reasons include the decline of empire, the absence of any threats to the nation's sovereignty since World War Two, and Brexit – which has reinvigorated Scottish nationalism and increased tensions between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

"I think the balance has tipped away from a kind of encompassing Britishness towards a potentially fragmenting expression," says Readman, explaining that people now feel more English and Scottish, for example, rather than British.

So what could all this mean for Ukraine? If a population's belief in a country helps to determine if it will continue to exist, Ukraine's future may never have been safer in the long-term.

"If you look at bottom-up [factors], the formation of identity is often around things like religion, ethnicity, language," says Catterall. "Now, in all of those instances, Ukraine is arguably a problem. Because you've got the Russian-speaking east and the Ukrainian-speaking west, you've got a problematic history, in that parts of the west have traditionally been much more closely aligned with Poland and Lithuania. The eastern parts tend to be Orthodox and the western parts tend to be Catholic." she says.

On paper, in Catterall's opinion Ukraine doesn't necessarily seem like the most coherent of entities. But that doesn't mean it isn't one, or that these issues won't easily melt away under certain conditions. As happened with Finland in the 1930s and 40s, Russia has created an existential threat – and that's effectively guaranteeing that Ukrainians feel more cohesive and patriotic than ever. (This is backed up by a survey from the fifth day of the invasion, which found that the proportion of people prepared to defend the country jumped to 80% from 59% in 2020).

"If you're invaded by people who are waving very large guns at you, it doesn't matter whether you might speak the same language as them or not," says Catterall.

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Zaria Gorvett is a senior journalist for BBC Future and tweets @ZariaGorvett

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