The special something which characterizes most of the history of the [Habsburg] monarchy compared with the history of other states is the fact that we do not find a single common ideal or sentiment which could have united the peoples and nations of the monarchy in any political solidarity whatsoever.' This was the judgment of one of the best known historians of the Habsburg state, Oszkar Jaszi. This statement directs our attention to the central issue of the history of the Habsburg state and of the peoples who lived in it. They had very little in common. Robert A. Kann considered the multinational character2 of the Habsburg empire the chief problem of the many it faced and devoted his ver.y able study to the conflict of nationalities within the Habsburg state. Jaszi, Kann, and other scholars3 believed that the monarchy's ills could have been cured by its reorganization into a democratic federation along ethnic lines. Most of those who wrote after 1920 were somewhat regretful that this reorganization never took place, seeming to rephrase Francis Palacky's famous dictum to read: If the Austrian Empire had to disappear after an existence of many centuries, it ought to be recre-