Raymond Pearson. National Minorities in Eastern Europe, 1848-1945. London: Macmillan Press. 1983. Pp. x, 249.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two books on Eastern European national minorities. The first is Stephen Horak's comprehensive handbook of national minorities in Eastern Europe between 1919 and 1980. Arranged by ‘state-nation’, the studies contained in the handbook offer a brief historical survey of the overall position of minorities in each state, followed by sections on each minority, together with a valuable bibliography arranged by national minority within each state. In these respects, the handbook, by compiling and presenting so much scattered information in a single volume and indicating what is being done in Eastern Europe in the way of further research, performs an invaluable service. A similar demographic emphasis is apparent in the general account of Eastern European minorities by Raymond Pearson. Here the time-scale stops at 1945 but extends back to 1848, a date which by his own admission possesses symbolic rather than real significance in Eastern Europe. Pearson's account presents the effects of the World Wars, especially the Second, on political boundaries and demographic patterns — notably of ethnic Germans, Russians, Gypsies, and Jews — in a concise, but balanced, manner.