Carinthia's nationality struggle has raged more or less unabated since 1848. Until roughly two decades ago there was a relative dearth of secondary materials that one might regard as scholarly in any sense of the word. Polemics—admittedly of some value as a special kind of source material—predominated. Indeed emotional overtones still creep into serious studies. On balance, however, recent work in both Yugoslavia and Austria may be characterized as objective, solid, and methodologically innovative. While articles and books published in the former country are no less significant than those emanating from the latter, only titles that have appeared in German can be reviewed here.

Historiography, as a special historical discipline, is defined as a history of historical scholarship reflecting the development of historical thought. In the context of this definition the study of modern Ukrainian historiography is directly related to the analysis of present historiographical trends, historical concepts, the conditions under which the discipline developed, the role of Ukrainian historical research centers in Ukraine and the West, the nature and scope of historical serials, critical evaluations of contributions of individual historians, as well as the study of characteristics of various historical schools. In my opinion, the older definition of historiography as the history of historical writings is too narrow and sometimes results only in critical or enumerative historical bibliography covering writings of individual historians.

Methodology can be defined as “the principles of organized investigation.” It deals primarily with the question how to arrive at substantive knowledge about the subject under investigation. It is an indispensable tool for scientific work without which the quality of the acquired knowledge would be at the best haphazardous and at worst erroneous.

Western studies of Russian or Soviet Central Asia originated in England, spearheaded by Anglo-Russian rivalry in the area in the second part of the nineteenth century. British research was dominant until after World War II, covering the field from classical academic study (Royal Central Asian Society) to current affairs (Col. Wheeler's Central Asian Research Center).

In the half century from the Russian annexation of eastern Georgia (Kartli-Kakheti) to the outbreak of the Crimean War, Transcaucasian society underwent a deep and irreversible transformation which, in its effects, was as fundamental a metamorphosis for Armenians and Georgians as were the contemporary political and industrial revolutions for “western Europeans. Whether the move into the Russian orbit was “progressive,” as Soviet historians insist, or a fatal perversion of these nations’ natural development, as some nationalists argue, is not really a historical judgement capable of empirical demonstration. What can be shown, however, is that with the Russian occupation a historical process began which rent the fabric of traditional Georgian and Armenian society and produced both new opportunities and loyalties for some and a persistent, if ultimately futile, resistance to centralized bureaucratic rule by others. Responding to that resistance, the tsarist administration enticed the nobility of Georgia into participation in the new order, and at the end of the first fifty years of Russian rule, the once rebellious, semiindependent dynasts of Georgia had been transformed into a service gentry loyal to their new monarch. At the same time, the Armenian merchants and craftsmen of Caucasia's towns benefited from the new security provided by Russian arms and, while competing with privileged Russian traders, oriented themselves away from the Middle East toward Russian and European commerce. In the process they laid the foundation for their own fortunes and future as the leading economic and political element in Russian Georgia. The peasantry of Transcaucasia was forced in the meantime to submit to new exactions as their status became increasingly more similar to that of Russian peasants. And the respective churches of Georgia and Armenia made fundamental and irreversible accommodations to the new political order.

It is no secret to us history instructors that for some years now there has been a growing sense of uneasiness in our discipline on the part of pupils and students and of helplessness on the part of teachers. Pupils and students repeatedly ask what, after all, is history good for, whether what they are learning is really relevant to their lives, and whether the study of history should not be more than memorizing sterile facts for the purpose of getting grades. Paradoxically, teachers can discern a continuing and in fact ever increasing interest in history. At the same time, we cannot help but notice that the mode of questioning by the younger generation has become different as have the problems that have come with social change.

For a long time state socialism in Eastern Europe has had a tendency towards ossification, and this leads to several negative consequences more or less clearly acknowledged by the local leadership. It is in the sociopolitical nature of the rigid Soviet-style system that any far-reaching reforms are difficult to introduce. Therefore, the Polish experiment of the 1970s started by Gierek and his équipe, after taking power in December 1970 from the équipe of Gomulka, should be carefully scrutinized for successes and failures. From the beginning, this has been an attempt to modernize the economy without transforming the power relations within the society. Modern industry and technology have been widely introduced in Poland during the 1970s, and a considerable part of these innovations has been financed by loans from the West. Application of scientific knowledge to production of goods and services, as well as to management and administration, has been generously promoted by the Polish government in order to maximize efficiency. There has also been much more emphasis than before on the rational utilization of human resources. In the first half of the 1970s, this path to modernity was accompanied by the rise of wages and salaries at a much faster rate than in the other countries of eastern Europe, but, on the other hand, the accelerated pressure on the population toward political conformity or at least passivity also occurred. This pressure was treated by many Poles, as well as by several western observers, rightly or wrongly, as the condition imposed by the neighbors of Poland, primarily the USSR, to tolerate any more vigorous contacts of Poland with the West, as well as the relative “secularization” of the Polish people in comparison with the rigid Marxist orthodoxy in which East Germans and Czechs and all Soviet people are constantly kept by their authorities.

The question whether a Slovene cultural historian is warranted and justified to speak of a “Slovene Humanism period,” was in Slovene historiography seriously raised in the thirties. Asked in a dispute over a suggestion that a number of scholars, by provenience Inner Austrian Slovenes, who between 1450 and 1525 paved the way for Italian Renaissance Humanism at the University of Vienna, belong to Slovene cultural tradition, the question was answered with the proposition that in the Slovene lands of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an atmosphere of interests and activities existed which indeed might be understood as a “Slovene Humanism.” In the discussion which followed and which is even today far from terminated, the concept “humanism” has been, of course, understood in very loose and broad terms, so that soon even such Protestant Reformers as Primož Trubar (1508-1586) could be proclaimed “Humanist writers.” What I propose to do in this paper is to reexamine this question; in addition, I hope to be able to show that the proposition I wish to develop in relation to a period in Slovene cultural history, may be applicable to the cultural and social history of Slavic nations in general.

On September 1, 1707, Hetman Ivan Mazepa was granted the title of Prince (Reichsfürst) of the “Holy Roman Empire” by the Emperor Joseph I.

Let me open with two caveats. First, given the very brief length dictated for this treatment of Czech and Slovak humanisms, I have chosen to concentrate on their main lines of development and on their primary — i.e., literary — aspect. Second, domestic humanism has received comparatively little attention from Czech and Slovak historians to date. The former have been occupied primarily with the great national-religious revolt, the Hussite Reformation, with which European humanism coalesces when it reaches Bohemia and Moravia. And Slovak historians are still doing basic research into much of their nation's past.

Perhaps no country in Eastern Europe suffered the human, material, and psychological devastation that Poland experienced during nearly six long years of war and occupation. Caught initially between Soviet Communism and German Nazism, and eventually falling completely under the yoke of the latter, the country became the target of ruthless attempts to impose these totalitarian systems on the hapless vanquished population. Without dismissing the sufferings of the ethnic Poles, this paper will focus on the fortunes of the key ethnoreligious minority groups in prewar Poland — the Germans, Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Jews. It will attempt to portray not only the relationship between the occupying powers and the individual minorities, but also the relationships among those population segments in the face of a concerted challenge to their very existence.

The occupation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union in 1940 failed to extinguish feelings of nationalism and patriotism among the native Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian peoples; on the contrary, foreign occupation strengthened their national spirit. Dwelling on the successes and memories of their former independence, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian nationalists continue to denounce the Soviet occupation and resist the policies of communization and Russification practiced by the Soviet regime.