Central European History and the European Union: The Meaning of Europe. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe by Stanislav J. Kirschbaum (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 579 There are many important details told by the author which are littleknown even to well-informed Hungarians (e.g. that the last Communist boss, K. Gr?sz, planned a coup in late 1988, or that inOctober 1989 the newly formed Socialist Party was more popular than the combined opposition), and such enlightening statements as that the radically transformed Constitution and fundamental laws passed in late 1989Hungary returned to thatparliamentary system founded in 1848-49 (p. 214). Showing themany tricksand semi-legal transactions in theprivatization process, which theAntall government tried to stop, but with at best partial success, is also most welcome. This is how the new capitalist class, typifiedby the present Prime Minister, was born. The reviewer, who was the foreign minister of the Antall government, naturally differs from the author's presentation in a number of cases. The most important ones: the account of the so-called Tan-European Picnic' of 19August 1989, the selling of a small consignment of rifles for the Zagreb police in September 1990 and how Belgrade utilized (orprovoked?) it,or that itwas Antall rather than the Czech leaders who 'invented' the Visegr?d cooperation. But on the whole it is very fortunate that the firstmajor English-language book has appeared about one ofHungary's finest periods. CorvinusUniversityof Budapest G?za Jeszenszky Kirschbaum, Stanislav J. (ed.). Central European History and theEuropean Union: The Meaning ofEurope. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2007. xxii + 258 pp. Chronology. Maps. Tables. Notes. Index. ?50.00. Central European History and the European Union is the outcome of papers presented at a congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies and contributes to the field of European (Union) studies from theperspective ofCentral Europe. The leading expert on Slovak history, Stanislav Kirschbaum, brings together a set of papers thatwould not normally find theirway into one thematical volume. The book connects cultural historical approaches with contributions with solid roots in the social sciences. The volume is organized in three sections: the first a general historical study, followed by twomore elaborate sections devoted to nation states and their national myths and to issues of European integration. Kirschbaum opens the volume with an, at thispoint, slighdy outdated, but no less legitimate claim that 'it is inCentral Europe's historical experience that some answers may be found in the challenges that themeaning of Europe faces' (p. 2). Fortunately, thatmeans in this particular case that the focus is on two complicated components of theCentral European heritage, the nation state and theCommunist or totalitarian legacy. The firstchapters deal with the Slovak place inEuropean history (Stanislav J. Kirschbaum), modern federalist conceptions inCentral Europe (Francesco Leoncini) and the revolutions of 1989 form a civil society angle (Oskar Gruenwald). Particularly the latter offers a good classification, pointing at a 'triple crisis' of socio-economic, institutional and personal elements that has cleared the path for civil society groups. 58o SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20I0 The second section of the volume studies the St Stephen cult inHungary (JulianeBrandt),Wenceslas and theCzechs (Stefan Samerski), the invocations of Prince Stephen the Great inRomania (Krista Zach), Pilsudski and the Polish state (Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski) and lastly the failed attempt at an ethnic national Poland after World War Two (JohnJ. Kulczycki). St Stephen and the Hungarian Crown are quintessential to Hungarian Medieval and modern history, but Brandt's chapter interestingly shifts the focus to Communist and contemporary Hungary. She moves away from the state discourse and includes such examples as a rock opera (King Stephen). Wenceslas and the Czechs go back equally far. Samerski takes a similar approach, now stressing the Interwar year with themassive commemoration of 1929 and post-Communism, when 28 September was reinstalled as a national holiday. Similar to theHungarian situationwas the tension between the saint as a religious and as a state symbol,which is somewhat more com plicated inWenceslas's case because of his alleged sell out to the Germans. Interestingly, Prince Stephen theGreat ofMoldavia had quite the opposite biography as a national hero. At first he was appreciated as a ruler, but was later redefined religiously and became the ideal tool in the Romanian Orthodox Church's effortsto reconcile...