Between Dictatorship, Reality, and the Right to Self-Determination: The Right to Self-Determination and the Problem of Frontiers in East Central Europe during the First World War and after its End.

1990 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 866
Author(s):  
Anna M. Cienciala ◽  
Jozef Chlebowczyk
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
First World War ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
First World

Fragmentation in East Central Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Richter
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The First World War ◽  
New States ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
First World

The First World War led to a radical reshaping of Europe’s political borders like hardly any previous event. Nowhere was this transformation more profound than in East Central Europe, where the collapse of imperial rule led to the emergence of a series of new states. New borders intersected centuries-old networks of commercial, cultural, and social exchange. The new states had to face the challenges posed by territorial fragmentation and at the same time establish durable state structures within an international order that viewed them at best as weak and at worst as provisional entities that would sooner or later be reintegrated into their larger neighbours’ territory. Fragmentation in East Central Europe challenges the traditional view that the emergence of these states was the product of a radical rupture that naturally led from defunct empires to nation states. Using the example of Poland and the Baltic States, it retraces the roots of the interwar states of East Central Europe, of their policies, economic developments, and of their conflicts back to deep in the First World War. At the same time, it shows that these states learned to harness the dynamics caused by territorial fragmentation, thus forever changing our understanding of what modern states can do.

Stowaways at Bohemia's Shores: Undocumented Emigration and People-Smuggling Networks in Interwar East Central Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-583
Author(s):  
Allison Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The People ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Migrant Smuggling ◽  
First World

AbstractThis article investigates interwar people-smuggling networks, based in Germany and Czechoslovakia, that transported undocumented emigrants across borders from east-central Europe to northern Europe, where the travelers planned to sail to the United States. Many of the people involved in such networks in the Saxon-Bohemian borderlands had themselves been immigrants from Galicia. They had left a homeland decimated by the First World War and subsequent violence and entered societies with limited avenues to earn a living. The “othering” of these Galician immigrants became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as those on the margins of society then sought illegal ways to supplement their income. This article concludes that the poor economic conditions and threat of ongoing violence that spurred migrant clients to seek undocumented passage had driven their smugglers, who also faced social marginalization, to emigration and the business of migrant smuggling.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jan Rybak
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Zionist Movement ◽  
First World

During the First World War and its aftermath, the Zionist movement in many regions managed to evolve from relatively small groups, primarily of bourgeois intellectuals, to become a mass movement that in many cases came to dominate Jewish political and social life. This meteoric rise can be attributed to the hard, everyday work of Zionist activists in the communities of East-Central Europe. The introduction identifies the key questions at the heart of this development and anticipates the main problems and themes of the book. In order to situate the events of 1914–20 in a wider regional and historical context, central aspects of Jewish life in East-Central Europe before the outbreak of the First World War are explained. The different legal, economic, and cultural conditions under which the actors of the book lived produced conflicting responses to many of the main challenges posed by modernity—nationalism, antisemitism, economic transformation, and mass migration. One of these responses was Zionism, which from Lithuania to Austria presented itself in many different forms. The introduction discusses the various trends in the Zionist movement, the role of Palestine in activists’ thinking, and their engagement in their local communities––questions that would be central in the years of war and revolution.

‘The first of the small nations’: the significance of central European small states in Irish nationalist political rhetoric, 1918–22

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (165) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Lili Zách
Keyword(s):  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
First World War ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Small States ◽  
World War ◽  
Central European ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
First World ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractOffering new insights into Irish links with the wider world, this article explores and contextualises Irish nationalist perceptions of and links with central European small states in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The belief that any small nation like Ireland, oppressed by a dominant neighbour, had the right to self-determination was of key importance in nationalist political rhetoric during the revolutionary years. Given the similarity of circumstances among newly independent small states, Irish commentators were aware of the struggles Ireland shared with the successors of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Personal encounters on the continent, as well as news regarding small nations in central Europe, shaped Irish opinions of the region. Certainly, the images presented by Irish commentators reflected their own political agendas and were therefore often deliberately idealistic. Nonetheless, they served a specific purpose as they were meant to further Ireland's interest on the international stage. Looking beyond Ireland for lessons and examples to follow became a frequent part of Irish nationalist political rhetoric. By directing scholarly attention to a hitherto less explored aspect of Irish historiography, this article aims to highlight the complexity of Ireland's connection with the continent within the framework of small nations, from a transnational perspective.

scholarly journals Death of a Nation? Debating the Great Transatlantic Emigration from Hungary, 1900-1914

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
István Kornél Vida
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Young Males ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
First World

The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century was witness to an unprecedented wave of emigration from East Central Europe, with an estimated 1-1.5 million people leaving for the United States from the territory of Hungary. Such loss of population, mostly young males in their prime, shocked the nation and served as a subject for discussion in various forms and on multiple levels of discourse, from the newspaper reports through literary depictions, to scholarly publications and conferences. In this paper I examine significant monographs as well as conference volumes and proceedings, analyzing the major opinions and debates surrounding the causes and consequences of the Great Transatlantic Emigration. I discuss the most significant publications that appeared before the coming of the First World War, which put an end to mass emigration from Europe. These works in a sense represented the best that Hungarian migration studies had to offer for more than half a century, which makes them particulary worthy of scholarly attention.

Federalism in the Baltic: Interpretations of Self-Determination and Sovereignty in Estonia in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 237-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaarel Piirimäe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Right

The objective of this article is to challenge the widespread interpretation of interwar East Central Europe as a hotbed of excessive nationalism, by establishing a longue durée of federalist thinking in Estonia in the first half of the twentieth century. By focusing on personal continuities from the founding years of the Estonian Republic into the 1940s, it is possible to detect a remarkable persistence of ‘idealist’ visions about intra and interstate federalism that had been internalized by Estonian statesmen before and during the First World War and earlier. Apart from establishing the continuity of federalist thought the article analyzes the political discourse in which the concept of national self-determination was picked up. The primary framework for Estonian thinkers on nationality was the debate that developed within the all-Russian socialist movement in the context of the nationality problems of the multinational Western provinces and Congress Poland. The discourse on territorial and cultural autonomy within a federative Russia, demands that came to the fore in 1905, developed only after the idea of self-determination entered the thinking of Estonian radicals. Until late 1917, asserting the right to self-determination by no means meant separation from Russia. Even after 1917 Estonian politicians imagined the future republic as part of a regional league or union relinquishing part of its sovereignty to a supranational authority, plans that foundered on the incompatibility of national interests by 1920. Although the experience had not been encouraging, Baltic politicians resuscitated federalist concepts in the early period of the Second World War, as they tried to envisage a new structure for a cooperative and autonomous East Central Europe, within a restored Europe.

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