East European Nationalism, Politics and Religion by Peter F. s> Sugar (review)

Abstract

360 SEER, 79, 2, 200 I interestinRussianliterature'(p. 409).ARough Guide toRussia Abroad wouldhave probablybeen a bettertitleforthisstrikingunderachievement. Department ofSlavonic Languages andLiteratures ANDREI ROGACHEVSKII University ofGlasgow Sugar, Peter F. East European Nationalism,Politics and Religion.Variorum Collected Studies Series. Ashgate, Aldershot and Brookfield,VT, I999. xiv + 288 pp. Notes. Index. f52.50. WITHIN a matterof weeks of his death on 5 December I999, PeterF. Sugar's final book, East European Nationalism, PoliticsandReligion,was published by VariorumPress.The book is a fittingcapstone for a scholarwho did as much as any, and more than most, to shapethe fieldof EastEuropeanhistory. Aswith otherbooksin theVariorumseries,EastEuropean Nationalism consists of reprints of previously published essays and articles. This particular collection includes two theoretical discussions of ethnicity and nationalism, three chapters dealing with nationalism in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, two chapterson fascismin the interwarera, and fourchapterswhich explore the relationship between religion and nationalism. Most of the chaptershave a broadlyregional focus, though one chapter deals specifically with multinationalAustria-Hungary,anotherwith Austria-Hungary'srole in the Balkan crisis of the I87os, and a third with Balkan dynamics in the nineteenth century. Professor Sugar understood as well as any the potency of nationalism, though he suggestsin chapter one that there is a global process of reversion from 'acquired' loyalties (acquired through nationalist agendas) to 'natural' loyalties (pp. i, 69). In EasternEurope, as Sugarshows,language and religion have been the two issues around which 'national' identities have been built. His chapteron 'GovernmentandMinoritiesinAustria-Hungary',forexample, showshow languagedifferencesunderlayescalatingquarrelsandcontroversies in both halvesof the empire, even though each halfwas operatingon thebasis of a differentformula:Austriabecame steadilymore democratic,its ministers searchingfor consensus among the disparatenational groups in the Austrian half of the empire, while Hungary grew steadily more autocratic,pushing a programmeof Magyarizationand, in the years i875-191 I, actuallyreducing the numberof Slovakelementaryschools, forexample, from I,92I to 440. Yet for all that, Sugar writes, 'the nationalism of the various people in AustriaHungary was firstof all local-historicaland [the country'sinhabitants]would have been satisfiedwith home rulein a federativelyorganizedstate'(pp. iv, 7). This is vintage Sugar advancing a proposition running against much conventional wisdom, but doing so with such documentation and convincing argumentationasto leave littledoubtof the correctnessof hisanalysis. In a particularlyprovocative essay included in this collection ('Continuity and Change in EasternEuropeanAuthoritarianism:Autocracy,Fascism,and Communism'),Sugaroffersan originaland usefuldefinitionof authoritarianism. In hiswords, Authoritarianismis a political system in which separation of civil society and the political state has not been realized, in which the pluralismof economic, political REVIEWS 36I and ideological power has not been achieved, and in which consequently- all civil and political power and decision-makingis reservedto an individualor group claiming for a variety of reasons- to possess the authorityto act for the entire polity. (pp. vi, 3) Signalling his agreement with Vernon Aspaturian that authoritarianism must be considered an alternative or rival to democracy, rather than a more primitive stage of political development, Sugar notes how technocratic elites in Eastern Europe in the I930S believed that economic modernization could most effectively be realized if those groups associated with the 'old order' (including landlords and bankers) were marginalized and the powers of parliament reduced still further. The volume provides a fine introduction to some of the basic issues relating to nationalism in Eastern Europe, a topic with which Sugar has long been closely identified. East European Nationalism,Politics, andReligion could serve as an ideal supplemental text for upper division classes in East European history, as well as for graduate classes in European nationalism or in East European history. TheHMJ SchoolofInternational Studies SABRINA P. RAMET Universityof Washington Lovell, Stephen. TheRussian Reading Revolution: PrintCulture intheSoviet andPostSoviet Eras.Studies in Russia and East Europe. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 2000. Viii + 215 pp. Notes. Illustrations.Bibliography.Index. (42.50. THISis a very welcome addition to the modest corpusof scholarlytreatments in English of the Russian and Soviet printed media. In scope it is both long and broad, handling the entire period from the October Revolution to the present day (though with varying emphases) and giving a well-merited prominence to the periodicalpressalongsidebook publishing.Stephen Lovell begins with a wide-ranging introductory chapter which includes a short history of reading in Western Europe, then of reading...