Petras Klimas’ Concept of Nationalism
Petras Klimas’ Concept of Nationalism

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the political, cultural and national ideas and concepts of Klimas such as nation, nationalism, nation state, statehood, the role of the language, national consciousness, national ideal, i.e. how he understood nationalism. His concepts and views on national questions are compared with the concepts and theories of some of the most prominent scholars of nationalism of the 20th century. The article’s author point out, that Klimas refers to the ethnic-national law as a universal one, by which one can define the concept of a nation, determine the ethnic territory of a new state, and describe nationalism as the impulse of the nation to build a nation state. As a proponent of historical materialism, P. Klimas regarded the ethnic-national law as a material phenomenon that could be divided into four elements: 1. Language; 2 National consciousness; 3. Culture; 4. The vision of the future – the national ideal. The author is doing conclusion that from the theories of modern researchers on nationalism, who stressed the importance of ‘ethnic factors’ and argued that a population ought to become independent on the basis of such factors, Anthony Smith’s ethnicistic theory is closest to Klimas’ concept of nationalism.

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