Zebrzydowski's Rokosz and the Struggle of Estates Against Rulers in East-Central Europe

Language and Area Studies: East Central and Southeastern Europe, A Survey. Edited by Charles Jelavich. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969. xix, 483 pp. $11.50. - East Central Europe: A Guide to Basic Publications. Edited, with a preface, by Paul L. Horecky. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970. xxv, 956 pp. $27.50. - Southeastern Europe: A Guide To Basic Publications. Edited, with a preface, by Paul L. Horecky. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970. xxiv, 755 pp. $25.00. - Volume 30 Issue 2

This article assesses and compares Land Use changes in eastern regions of Europe: East Central Europe (ECE ) and South East Europe (SEE ). This part of the continent has to a certain extent common historical experience: multinational empires, ethic nationalism, peripheral position to markets and the communist experiment within 1940s–1980s. All these developments, complemented by specific environmental characteristics, different from each other, have affected the evolution of Land Use structure over the last fifty years. Considerable differences in LU structure of SEE and ECE had existed undoubtedly already in pre-war period. Here we try to on the basis of FAO LU database reveal how geographical and historical contexts shaped Land Use structural changes in both regions and led to important distinctions. <b>LUCC v post-komunistických zemích střední a východní Evropy v letech 1960–2000 a jeho historickogeografické kořeny</b> Předkládaný článek zachycuje v komparativní perspektivě změny ve využití půdy v regionech jihovýchodní (SEE ) a středovýchodní (ECE ) Evropy. Část kontinentu, dnes vnímaná především jako postkomunistická, má mnohem širší společné novověké dějiny: periferní pozici vůči světovému trhu, opožděný nástup industrializace, mnohonárodnostní impéria před a nevelké národní státy v době meziválečné. Zatímco tyto historickogeografické faktory vytvořily předpoklady pro analogický vývoj využití půd v obou regionech, rozdílné fyzickogeografické podmínky naopak posilovaly jeho specifické stránky. Na základě statistik Organizace OSN pro výživu a zemědělství (FAO) jsou v článku sledovány a zhodnoceny hlavní trendy ve využití půdy v obou regionech a jejich dominantní příčiny

The period from the sixteenth to the mid eighteenth centuries in east-central and eastern Europe saw the emergence of three major land Empires: the Ottomans, the Austrian Habsburgs, and Romanov Russia. Military historians of east-central Europe have long been preoccupied with the profound changes in warfare observed during this period in certain parts of western Europe, commonly referred to as the ‘European military revolution’, and have tried to measure military developments in east-central Europe against those in western Europe. However, while comparing military developments in east-central and western Europe may reveal interesting parallels and differences, comparing and contrasting military developments in the three eastern Empires helps better to assess the changing military capabilities of the Ottomans, Habsburgs, and Romanovs, and thus to understand the shifts in the military fortunes of these Empires. Since Russia emerged as an important military power and as the Ottomans' main rival only in the mid eighteenth century – that is, towards the end of the period covered in this volume – the chapter focuses on the Ottomans and their Austrian Habsburg rivals. The main thesis of this chapter is that Ottoman expansion and military superiority in the sixteenth century played an important role in Habsburg military, fiscal, and bureaucratic modernisation and in the creation of what came to be known as the Austrian Habsburg monarchy or ‘Habsburg central Europe’.

Central Europe (East-Central Europe) or Extolling Diversity and ComparatisticsThis essay is, on the one hand, historiographic and, on the other hand, politological. In the first part the author analysed ways of using the terms: “Central Europe” and “East-Central Europe” in contemporary multi-volume syntheses of the region’s history, as a rule spanning from the ninth-tenth century to the end the last century. In the second part he shared reflections on the shaping of the common, supra-national identity of Central (East-Central) Europe from the middle of the nineteenth century and the question why at present it is not expressed in the existence of a regional political or economic organisation uniting the interests of itsmembers.The author expressed the conviction that in reference to the past it is possible to apply the concept: “Central (East-Central) Europe” albeit in each epoch phenomena that granted this region its specificity represented a different intensity and range; hence, the boundaries of the region in question were frequently subjected to changes. The second postulate formulated by the author and addressed to historians is the avoidance of identity narration based on a negative reference to “outer” objects. In syntheses of the region such a point of reference is to this very day Russia, treated, predominantly in Polish historiography, as a “civilisation” that does not meet the standards of theWest.The author believes that it is possible to speak about a more permanent East-Central Europe only starting from the mid-nineteenth century, when there came being an outline of the idea of solidarity in the struggle conducted by nations against empires. The experiences of the twentieth century – symbolised by the events of 1918, 1945 and 1989 – also granted an increasing number of joint features to the region from Estonia to Albania and contributed to the establishment of regional supra-nationalidentity.Theendofthe“brieftwentiethcentury”andthepost-1989achievementbythe states of the region of membership in Western structures (NATO, EU) contributed to weakening the feeling of regional bonds. Such contemporary phenomena as: the renationalisation of foreign policies, obsessive memories of events from the 1939–1989 period,growingtensionwithneighbouringcountriesandconcernabouttheidentityofthe“small”nationsinanepochofglobalisationarethereasonwhythepro-communitypotentialofEast-CentralEurope,mouldedintheprevioushalfacentury, iswaning.

Eastern Europe has recently received much attention from scholars irrespective of diverse focus and specialization, and the special section of this distinguished journal is yet another proof that the region remains an extraordinarily interesting place for research and analysis. Scholarly interests have, however, often been related to the emergence, establishment and eventual demise of state socialism in this heterogeneous place, the horrors of World War II and the profound transformations that swept through its many old-new countries during recent decades. The predominance of political, social and intellectual history, as well as sociology and political science, and scholarly interpretations of the condition of modernity in Eastern Europe come therefore as little surprise. This methodological apparatus at hand, significant aspects of the region's development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have sometimes been overlooked, while others appeared teleological. Within the traditions of both Western and Eastern European academia, the region has until recently been perceived as having followed a very distinct, special path to modernity characterized in a variety of ways as arrested development,Sonderwegand backwardness. At the same time, the profound change that occurred in these diverse territories as part of a European and in fact global process of modernization during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries has often not been given its true significance in relation to its later historical development. An array of recent post-colonialist responses that have fundamentally reshaped the history of the modern ‘Third World’ have touched Eastern Europe only in passing, Hence, an occasional intellectual indecisiveness as to how to analyse the region's development in a greater historical context, as is immediately evident in the diversity of names ascribed to its supposedly different geographical areas – Eastern Europe, East Central Europe, Central Europe,Mitteleuropaand South-East Europe, to name but a few – each with their own political and ideological bias.

SUMMARY: This is a Russian version of John-Paul Himka’s contribution to the roundtable “Fascism in East Central and Southeastern Europe: Mainstream Fascism or ‘Mutant’ Phenomenon?” organized by the journal East Central Europe . Drawing on his studies of OUN-UPA, the author elaborates on his understanding of fascism in general and the importance of the situational element in East Central European fascism in particular. Although there are many common features of the East Central European fascist parties, explains Himka, each of them had unique and salient characteristics, and he proceeds to analyze them. One reason for the popularity of fascism in East Central Europe was the widespread dissatisfaction with the results of the Paris Peace Conference. The importance of this situational element in East European fascism is illustrated by the case of the OUN, but Himka does not suggest that dissatisfaction with the results of World War I was an exclusive impetus of regional fascism. The conjunctural attraction of fascism was not limited to East Central Europe, as the case of Walloon nationalists in Belgium shows. Versailles may have motivated Germany’s national socialists, but it did not have any meaning at all for Spain’s Falanga, and so on. He treats in detail another situational element, anti-Semitism, however, he equally refuses to consider it as specific to East Central European fascism. Anticommunism was a factor of tremendous importance in Hungarian, Romanian, and Ukrainian fascism, a reflection of brief experiences with Bolshevism in the aftermath of World War I and their proximity to the Soviet Union. But it was not particularly germane to the Croatian Ustaše, and so on. Stylistically there are no grounds for selecting regional fascism as a specific phenomenon. Himka concludes that he does not see enough coherence among East Central European fascisms to warrant constituting them as a separate category.

Roumiana Deltcheva analyzes in her article "East Central Europe as a Politically Correct Scapegoat: The Case of Bulgaria" the mechanisms of image construction of East Central Europe in the West, taking Bulgaria as a case study as seen in literary and filmic texts. A historical overview of literary and theoretical texts which deal with the cultural semiosphere of Bulgaria is presented to demonstrate that contrary to widely held perceptions in North American (US and Canada) "politically correct" scholarship, Europe is not a homogeneous cultural unity. In fact, a clear centre/periphery situation is established and delineated along the geographical axis West/East (as well as North/South, etc.). In the post-communist period, preconceived notions from earlier times continue to dominate, sustained by the dominant cultural discourses in (East) Central Europe.

Researchers are beginning to examine the impact of the internet in regions experiencing economic change and struggle. However, broad assumptions about opportunity and access to the internet in these regions still exist. An unproblematised 'global village', where equal opportunity to engage in an open dialogue, is yet to be achieved. This article examines these issues in East Central Europe and the electronic discourses emergent in and about this region. The article questions the empowering capabilities of the internet in East Central Europe. The article will present the voices from this region who assert that only with widespread access, can the internet fulfil its democratic promise. Women's access to the internet will also be discussed. Finally, the article highlights women's organisations in Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic which are creating spaces for collaboration and connectivity, and providing a forum for new voices which have previously been silent.

Scholarly debate about the prospects of democracy have undergone a fundamental change in the last three decades. While the period of the 1990s might be distinguished by extensive optimism, in the 2000s we can observe a distinct change towards a more restrained perception. Furthermore, the last decade might be evaluated as pessimistic in the social sciences on the grounds of economic recession after 2008 as well other crisis in an economic, societal and political senses. The rather distinctive terms used for the expression of doubts about the pro-democratic development and consolidation, such as ‘semi-consolidated’, ‘new’ or ‘young’ democracy, or de-democratisation, were replaced with more dramatic expressions such as illiberal democracy, democratic backsliding, hybrid, regime, soft dictatorship and ‘the light that failed’, as Krastev described the recent image of East-Central Europe in an almost dystopic manner. While in the 1990s the Slovak version of democratura – Mečiarism – was perceived as the exception, in the late 2010s populist neo-illiberal regimes became the dominant shape of regimes in (East)Central Europe. This review essay presents three recent analyses of the democratic backsliding and state capture (not only) in East-Central Europe and frames this presentation into the more extensive literature review.

The concept of ‘historical regions’ as trans-national historical spaces suggests that the nations forming a Geschichtsregion have many similar historical experiences (economic, political, social, or cultural) and that such shared experiences can be observed over the long term. It also implies that the common features in the region's history are much more significant than the experiences which the region, or individual nations within it, might share with other parts of the continent. This chapter examines the debate on whether East Central Europe should be considered a region formed by shared long-term experiences, arguing that the concept of a region is still tied to essentialist premises reminiscent of those involved in traditional notions of national history. The experiences that are supposed to have shaped Central or East Central Europe do not seem to support the continuity and commonality implied by those who insist that the region is a long-term phenomenon. The chapter proposes a more flexible and methodologically controlled approach to the study of trans-national spaces in European history.

This article examines the ways and means by which the German state-controlled concern Reichswerke Hermann Göring expanded into the occupied mining areas in Austria, East Central Europe and Western Europe before and during the Second World War. Only about five years after its foundation in 1937 the Reichswerke had already become the largest industrial conglomeration for heavy industry and armaments in Europe. Despite certain differences in time (before the War and during the War) and region (East Central Europe and Western Europe) the expansion of the Reichswerke is characterized in the first place by blackmail and theft. In this respect it served as a prototype for other state and party controlled enterprises and it acts as a model to partly explain the brutalization of the business practices performed by private businesses in occupied Europe during the Second World War.

This article examines the ways and means by which the German state-controlled concern Reichswerke Hermann Göring expanded into the occupied mining areas in Austria, East Central Europe and Western Europe before and during the Second World War. Only about five years after its foundation in 1937 the Reichswerke had already become the largest industrial conglomeration for heavy industry and armaments in Europe. Despite certain differences in time (before the War and during the War) and region (East Central Europe and Western Europe) the expansion of the Reichswerke is characterized in the first place by blackmail and theft. In this respect it served as a prototype for other state and party controlled enterprises and it acts as a model to partly explain the brutalization of the business practices performed by private businesses in occupied Europe during the Second World War.

REVIEWS 587 to subversive cultural memory evident in Andrus Kivirähk’s work, with Wulf’s life-story interviews that give us insights into these historians’ minds. Those readers who are curious about the contentious memory politics of contemporary Estonia should not miss this book. UCL SSEES and Johan Skytte Institute of Paris Pin-Yu Chen Political Science, University of Tartu Holzer, Jan and Mareš, Miroslav (eds). Challenges to Democracies in East Central Europe. Routledge Advances in European Politics, 127. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2016. x + 145 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. £90.00. It has become commonplace to observe that democracy in East Central Europe (ECE) is not in rude health. However, despite a plethora of media and think tank commentary on ‘democratic backsliding’ and ‘illiberal democracy’ in the region and a concomitant renewal of academic interest in ‘de-democratization’, ‘de-consolidation’ and ‘democratic regression’, there is little agreement on the nature of ECE democratic malaise — and still less on its causes. This new edited collection by a team of researchers based at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic seeks to address some of these issues. Its key theme, outlined in the editors’ introductory essay, is that the debate on threats to democracy in ECE needs to shift focus from political and constitutional systems to more socially rooted phenomena such as corruption, organized crime, extremism and political populism. While the weakness and subversion of formal institutions are the most obvious ‘backsliding’ symptoms, we need look beyond them to understand how and why this is so. Moreover, as Pavel Dufek and Jan Holzer note in their opening chapter, it is unclear whether ECE is undergoing ‘deconsolidation’ or whether the region’s apparently successful democratic consolidation was always illusory. Tellingly, they argue, ECE publics’ perceptions of democracy — and assessments of its prospects among intellectuals and academics from the region — were always more pessimistic than those of West European and North American academia. The collection then explores these issues through a series of thematic chapters surveying research on populism, extremism, organized crime, corruption, and — perhaps slightly incongruously — the influence of external actors on ECE. The geographical focus is on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Populist parties, taking a variety of forms, have had an important electoral impact in ECE. However, Vlastimil Havlík argues, even when ideologically SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 588 radical, they have posed only an indirect threat, tending to undermine the quality of democratic representation, rather than the democratic regime itself. Surges in support for populist parties can lead to de-stabilizing cycles of protest voting, especially where the initial rise of populist outsiders pushes established parties towards ‘enforced convergence’. Extremist groups (predominantly of the neo-Nazi right) which overtly and aggressively oppose the basic democratic values of pluralism and human rights, by contrast, are self-evidently a threat. However, Petra Vejvodová argues, their existence on some scale is inevitable in any democracy. The key issue, she suggests, is whether (as in most ECE states) they should be subject to a constitutional doctrine of ‘militant democracy’ allowing the early proscription of extremist organizations and the legal sanctioning of hate speech. In practice, she argues — particularly given the infiltration of extreme views into the supposed mainstream — the development of a civic-minded, critical citizenry would be a surer bulwark for democracy. Organized crime groups have established a solid presence in ECE, benefiting both from the region’s geographical location — which makes it a convenient transit route and entrepôt for global criminal networks — and the opportunities opened up by the post-Communist market economy. However, the political impact of organized crime in ECE, Petr Kupka, Miroslav Mareš and Michal Mochťak conclude, has so far been limited and latent. Organized criminal groups maintain a parasitic relationship with normal business and social activities, but have been unable to effect far-reaching state capture. Their greatest threat thus lies in their potential to feed ‘normal’ corrupt relationships between business and politics. Such relationships, as Aneta Pinková notes in her chapter on corruption, although difficult to measure empirically, seem persistent across the region. As they are most concentrated in areas such as public procurement, they are also highly...

Italy and east-central Europe - the legacy of history, Vojtech Mastny east-central Europe in Italian diplomacy, Sergio Romano Italian communism and east-central Europe, John Barth Urban Italy and ethnic conflict in east-central Europe, Craig Nation Italian business and east-central Europe, Carlo Boffito Italy, east-central Europe and the European Community, Christopher Stevens conclusion, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 792 Nevertheless, the sheer wealth of information and immersion in primary sources make this book an essential companion for any scholar who wishes to take Havel seriously as a thinker, artist and political actor. Northwestern University Andrew Roberts Kopeček, Michal and Wciślik, Piotr (eds). Thinking through Transition: Authoritarian Pasts, and Intellectual History in East Central Europe after 1989. CEU Press, Budapest and New York, 2015. vii + 599 pp. Notes. Index.£49.00: €58.00: $75.00. Pithart, Petr. Po Devětaosmdesátém: rozpomínání a přemítání. Academia, Prague, 2016. 490 pp. Illustrations. Index. Kč450.00. Social science disciplines as diverse as political science and anthropology were quick to incorporate East Central Europe (ECE) into existing international academic agendas following the collapse of Communism in 1989. Mainstream political scientists and liberal economists saw the region through the lens of comparative democratization theory or standard recipes for economic reform. Left-leaning critics in sociology and political economy, while more sensitive to historical context and path dependency, over-emphasized macro-structures and sometimes assimilated ECE too easily — and too abstractly — into global critiques of neo-liberalism. Both groups were, Kopeček and Wciślik suggest in their introduction to Thinking through Transition, burdened by ‘a monist historicalimaginationinwhichpoliticalmodernityhadasinglegoal,acapitalist liberal democracy composed of the advanced post-industrial countries of the West’ (p. 11), differing only in how social-democratic they hoped ECE’s endpoint would be and how optimistic they were that it could be achieved. A side effect of the integration was a loss of interest in home-grown ECE understandings of politics and a rich vein of local political thought. There is, Kopeček and Wciślik argue, space for a ‘possible future intellectual history’ (p. 2) of ECE examining ‘the transfer and circulation of ideas from a bottomup perspective’ (p. 17), focusing on specific contexts but retaining a broad sense of regional commonalties. It is this goal that their collection sets out to address. The book is organized into sections on liberalism, conservatism, populism, the new left and the politics of memory, with most chapters taking the form of country-specific studies. In geographical terms the book focuses on the Visegrad states, although there are chapters on Romanian populism and feminist assessments on democracy in Croatia and Serbia. In many ways, however, the issue that most unites the volume’s contributions is how the pursuit of democracy and liberalism went wrong in a region where REVIEWS 793 the pro-Western post-1989 liberal consensus came increasingly under strain. Indeed, they speculate that post-1989 democracy in ECE may yet come to be seen as an interregnum between periods of authoritarianism, much in the way that the 1920s and 1930s are seen as the ‘interwar’ period. Moreover, many of the debates about liberalism and illiberalism, history and national identity that inform contemporary debates were present, at least embryonically, in the intelligentsia debates of the late Communist period. ECE’s liberal traditions, for example, have always been defined by fear of various forms of authoritarianism, collectivism and populism. As Ferenc Laczó and Piotr Wciślik relate in respective chapters on Hungary and Poland, although diverse in their beliefs, liberals in the late Communist era and the early 1990s were already almost as fearful of the authoritarian (or even ‘totalitarian’) potential of national conservative opposition as they were of the declining, Communist regimes and their successor parties. Even in the Czech Republic, where conservative nationalist traditions were weakest, liberalism, argues Milan Znoj, emerged in diminished and skewed forms: the economistic market-centred neo-liberalism of Václav Klaus and the civil society-focused ‘moral populism’ of Václav Havel. Moreover, as Paul Blokker’s chapter relates, liberal ‘legal constitutionalism’ focusingonentrenchedindividualrightsisfarfromthedominantconstitutional narrative in ECE. An alternative, ‘communitarian’ framing of democratic and market institutions which stresses the underpinning of national community is both intellectually available — and already embodied in aspects of the Romanian and Slovak constitutions, as well as in Hungary’s 2011 constitution passed by the conservative Fidesz in the wake of his landslide election victory in 2010. Conservative traditions also appear problematic. As Rafal Matya’s study of Poland illustrates, by...