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Revolution and Nationalism: Two studies on the History of Communism in Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Leonard Bushkoff
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

On March 27,1938, just two days before signing the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia was dismembered, Neville Chamberlain referred to the Czech-German dispute in the Sudetenland as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.” The insularity and outright ignorance displayed in this remark, while surprising in a national leader, were not untypical of the views prevailing before World War II among the English-speaking public regarding not only the Sudeten problem, but much else in Eastern Europe. The accounts of journalists, travelers, and writers in search of sensation did little to counteract, and frequently merely reflected, the shallow and often disdainful opinions held by many Westerners regarding the quarrelsome nationalities of Eastern Europe.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1963

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References

1 See, in particular, Morrow, Ian F. D., The Peace Settlement in the German-Polish Borderlands (London 1936)Google Scholar; Macartney, C. A., Hungary and Her Successors (London 1937)Google Scholar; Wiskemann, Elizabeth, Czechs and Germans (London 1938).Google Scholar

2 The usefulness as reference works of the seven-volume collection, East-Central Europe Under the Communists, published during 1956–1957 under the auspices of the Free Europe Committee, has been sharply impaired by subsequent developments in the Soviet empire.

3 Stavrianos, L. S., The Balkans Since 1453 (New York 1958)Google Scholar, is by far the most outstanding, and provides not only a magnificent bibliography, considerable data on socio-economic developments, and valuable insights on the consequences of Westernization for Balkan society, but also a very useful synthesis of the best recent European and American scholarship on the Balkan region. Halecki, Oscar, Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East Central Europe (New York 1952)Google Scholar, and the recent English work by Macartney, C. A. and Palmer, A. W., Independent Eastern Europe (London 1962)Google Scholar, reflect the views of a scholarly generation whose interests largely focused on political and diplomatic questions.

4 Black, C. E., The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria (Princeton 1943)Google Scholar, and Vucinich, Wayne S., Serbia Between East and West: The Events of 1943–1908 (Stanford, Calif., 1954)Google Scholar, are useful monographs. Hoptner, J. B., Yugoslavia in Crisis, 1934–1941 (New York 1962)Google Scholar, goes beyond the customary limits of diplomatic history to present masterfully the dilemma of a small state caught between conflicting power blocs. Two English accounts that combine extraordinarily meticulous research with shrewd insight and an authoritative tone are Macartney, C. A., October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, 2 vols. (London 1957)Google Scholar, and Leslie, R. F., Polish Politics and the Revolution of November 1830 (London 1956).Google Scholar Leslie apparently is now doing research on the Polish revolution of 1863.

6 Major exceptions are Moore, Wilbert E., The Economic Demography of Eastern and Southern Europe (Geneva 1945)Google Scholar, Warriner, Doreen, The Economics of Peasant Farming (London 1939)Google Scholar, and two important articles by Stoianovich, Traian in the Journal of Economic History: “Land Tenure and Related Sectors of the Balkan Econ omy, 1600–1800,” XIII (Fall 1953), 398411CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and 'The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” XX (June 1960), 234–313. Stoianovich is now doing research on the impact of Westernization on Serbian society during 1800–1914. For a sociologist's account of a caste-ridden society, see two articles by Kosa, John: “Hungarian Society in die Time of the Regency (1920–1944),” Journal of Central European Affairs, XVI (October 1956), 253–65Google Scholar; and “A Century of Hungarian Emigration, 1850–1950,” American Slavic and East European Review, XVI (December 1957), 501–14. Anthropology has been sparsely represented; see Krader, Lawrence, “The Transition from Serf to Peasant in Eastern Europe,” Anthropological Quarterly, XXXIII (January 1960), 7690CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and two books by Sanders, Irwin: Balkan Village (Lexington, Ky., 1949)Google Scholar and Rainbow in the Rock: The People of Rural Greece (Cambridge, Mass., 1962). Halperin, Joel M., A Serbian Village (New York 1958)Google Scholar, is disappointing.

6 Roberts, Henry, Rumania: Political Problems of an Agrarian State (New Haven 1951)Google Scholar, and Tomasevich, Jozo, Peasants, Politics, and Economic Change in Yugoslavia (Stanford, Calif., 1955)Google Scholar, are excellent, as is Blum, Jerome, Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, 1815–1848 (Baltimore 1948).Google ScholarBlum's recent book, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton 1961)Google Scholar, provides a useful model for research on the peasant in Eastern Europe.

7 Exceptions are the excellent Royal Institute of International Affairs studies mentioned above.

8 Barker, Elisabeth, Macedonia: Its Place in Balkan Power Politics (London 1950)Google Scholar, is the only acceptable account.

9 Stickney, Edith, Southern Albania or Northern Epirus in European International Affairs, 1912–1923 (Stanford, Calif., 1926)Google Scholar, while useful, is outdated.

10 The valuable work by Meyer, Peteret al., The Jews in the Soviet Satellites (Syra cuse, N.Y., 1953)Google Scholar, deals largely with the postwar years.

11 Standing virtually alone are Stoianovich, Traian, “The Pattern of Serbian In tellectual Evolution, 1830–1880,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1 (March 1959), 242–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Milosz, Czeslaw, The Captive Mind (New York 1951)Google Scholar; and Hertz, Alexander, “The Case of an Eastern European Intelligentsia,” Journal of Central European Affairs, XI (January 1951), 1026.Google ScholarSzczepański, Jan, “The Polish Intelligentsia: Past and Present,” World Politics, XIV (April 1962), 406–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describes die changes since 1945. For the effects of an earlier revolution, see two articles in the Journal of Central European Affairs: Sugar, Peter, “The Influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in Eighteenth Century Hungary,” XVII (January 1958), 331355Google Scholar; and Bödy, Paul, “The Hungarian Jacobin Conspiracy of 1794–95,” XXII (April 1962), 326.Google Scholar Western influence on the nascent Rumanian intelligentsia is examined in the unpublished Ph.D. dissertation by Campbell, John C., “French Influence and the Rise of Roumanian Nationalism” (Harvard University, 1940).Google Scholar

12 This characterization is only partially applicable to Beneŝ and especially to Masaryk, whose political training and behavior reflected Czechoslovakia's status as the most Westernized region of Eastern Europe.

13 See especially the attitudes revealed in Pilsudski, Joseph: The Memories of a Polish Revolutionary and Soldier (London 1931).Google Scholar

14 Examine Pilsudski's proposals for Polish leadership of an East European federation, Venizelos' attempts to re-establish a Byzantine Empire astride the Aegean, Stambulov's plans in Macedonia, Paŝic's Aegean and Albanian objectives, and Radic's program for virtual independence within Yugoslavia. For a comprehensive and perspicacious view, see Kolarz, Walter, Myth and Realities in Eastern Europe (London 1946).Google Scholar

15 The biography of Masaryk by Paul Selver, of Beneŝ by Compton Mackenzie, of Pilsudski by W. F. Reddaway, of Venizelos by Doros Alastos, of Stambulov by A. Hulme Beaman, and of Svinhufvud by Erkki Raikkonen, while the best of a handful, are in no way adequate; the various works in English on Kemal Atatürk are even worse.

16 Recognition of these similarities has not been encouraged by the growing replace ment of the appellation “Eastern Europe” by “East Central Europe,” which tacitly suggests that the area shares in the material and cultural modernity of Central Europe, and thus constitutes an integral, organic element in the European community. The political conclusions drawn from this thesis have varied according to the international balance of forces: during both World Wars, German publicists often argued diat Eastern Europe was a “natural” element in their national firmament, while some ideologues of today bolster their proposals for rollback or liberation with references to the purported unity of both halves of Europe. For an illuminating example of the emotions that the entire question stirred up among inhabitants of the area, see Armstrong, Hamilton Fish, Where the East Begins (New York 1929).Google ScholarHalecki, Oscar, The Limits and Divisions of European History (London 1950)Google Scholar, offers some interesting views on this issue, as does Roberts, Henry, “Eastern Europe and the Historian,” Slavic Review, XX (October 1961), 509–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 A history of Czechoslovak communism by H. Gordon Skilling is in preparation. Burks, R. V., The Dynamics of Communism in Eastern Europe (Princeton 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provides a comparative analysis of the appeals of communism to various social and ethnic groups in Eastern Europe.

18 Without minimizing the differences, certain similarities might be noted between the populism of the Bulgarian village—with its egalitarianism, confidence in the general will, fear of metropolitan domination, and hatred of the “overeducated,” the wealthy, and the powerful—and the populism of the American Middle West and South.

19 L. S. Stavrianos is perhaps the most notable.

20 A similar post-liberation disillusionment among a segment of the intelligentsia in the new states of Africa and Asia has been emphasized by Edward Shils.

21 The merger of the SDKP with a Lithuanian socialist group in 1899 involved a change in name; hence SDKPIL.

22 Schmitt, Bernadotte, ed., Poland (Berkeley, Calif., 1945)Google Scholar, and Taylor, Jack, The Economic Development of Poland, 1919–1950 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1952)Google Scholar, are good examples. Sharp, Samuel, Poland: White Eagle on a Red Field (Cambridge, Mass., 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, despite its occasional tendentiousness, provides a stimulating corrective.

23 Isaac Deutscher and certain of his followers left the Communist Party at this time.

24 Frolich, Paul, Rosa Luxemburg (London 1940)Google Scholar, the only biography in English, is both strongly Marxist and completely uncritical.

25 This prophecy was partially fulfilled in 1920–1921, when many Byelorussians and Ukrainians supported the Soviets against Pilsudski.

26 A Polish economist known to the author was labeled unpatriotic by his colleagues for suggesting, in the 1930's, that independence had created difficulties for Polish industry by disrupting its Eastern orientation and forcing it to compete for foreign markets against the superior products of Western industry.

27 See the extraordinary articles by Smogorzewski, Kazimierz, a semi-official publicist: “Poland's Foreign Relations,” Slavonic and East European Review, XVI (April 1938), 558–71Google Scholar, and XVII (July 1938), 105–20.