MINELRES: Conference: European Fatherlands That Disappeared in the 20th Century

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: Tomasz Kamusella <tkam@loc.gov>


CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN FATHERLANDS THAT DISAPPEARED IN THE 20TH
CENTURY
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
DEADLINE April 30, 2004

Dr Tomasz Kamusella Dr Sergei Zhuk, fellows, John W Kluge Center,
Library of Congress, Washington DC, USA are in the preliminary stages of
organizing a conference on the European Fatherlands that disappeared in
the 20th c. Now we are looking for prospective members of the core group
who will meet for 10 days in May 2005 at Bellagio, Italy before the full
fledged conference is organized in 2006. The contributions will be
published as a book.

We are looking for interested scholars who could contribute:

- opening essay on Joseph Roth and Istvan Bibo concentrating on their
mourning of Austria-Hungary and their criticisim of the successor
'little nation-states';
- Austria-Hungary as a fatherland looking at it from the center of
Vienna and/or Budapest;
- Austria-Hungary as a fatherland but looking at it from the erstwhile
periphery (eg Bukovina, Upper Hungary or Bosnia, for that matter);
- Yugoslavia as a fatherland looking at it from the center of Belgrade;
- Yugoslavia as a fatherland looking at it from the periphery (eg
Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo or Croatia for that matter);
- Czechoslovakia as  a fatherland looking at it from the center of
Prague and Bohemia;
- Czechoslovakia as a fatherland looking at it from the periphery
(especially Slovakia, but also Moravia and Silesia);
- Carpathian Rus as a fatherland that achieved only a week-long
independence in 1939 and used to change hands between Austria-Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Union and Ukraine.

We hope that the contributors may be scholars who besides their
scholarly expertise on the problematic would be able to draw on their
personal/family experiences caused by the disappearance of their
erstwhile fatherland. It is so because we would expect the contributions
to be readable essays that would mix the point of view of the average
man with historiography.

DEADLINE: April 30, 2004, due to the application procedure for the
Bellagio event.

REQUIREMENTS: please include:
- short letter of interest, and
- CV with the list of your publications.

ADDRESS FOR CORESPONDENCE
Dr Tomasz Kamusella, THRU AUG 2004 tkam@loc.gov , AFTER AUG 2004
tomek672@poczta.onet.pl 
Dr Sergei Zhuk, THRU SEPT AUG 2004 szhu@loc.gov 


DETAILED INFORMATION ON THE PROJECT

Conference and Book Project

Title: European Fatherlands That Disappeared in the 20th Century:
Nostalgia or Looking Back in Anger?

Editors: Tomasz Kamusella and Sergei Zhuk

Outline of the problematic: In Europe the 20th century was the age of
colossal changes. In 1918 Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire broke
up. The Russian and German empires collapsed. In their place a plethora
of new nation-states emerged and the Soviet Union. The German Anschlu?
of Austria (1938) commenced the period of dramatic border changes during
World War II. Some states disappeared, some were created, while others
were seriously truncated or enlarged. The danse macabre of frontiers was
frozen upon the Allies' imposition of the Cold War order. The
overhauling of the extant borders started anew with the break-ups of the
Soviet bloc (1989), Yugoslavia (1990-?), the Soviet Union (1991) and
Czechoslovakia (1993).

The post-World War I changes replaced empires with nation-states and the
communist empire that, in vain, hoped to transcend nationalism and
imperialism. The westward expansion of the Soviet Union in 1945 did not
spread communist order but a communist-national order. The geopolitical
transformations of the 1990s made nationalism into the only source of
statehood legitimization. This short 20th century marked by the
transition from the a- or pre-national via the communist-national to the
national constitutes the background against which contributions are
painted.

So far much attention has been devoted to the questions:
why empires and some states disappeared;
why communism engulfed half of Europe;
why nationalism won the ideological struggle with communism;
and what these developments may mean for the future.

What is missing is the reflection on the fate of those inhabitants who
grew up and made their careers in the countries that disappeared. They
were loyal to their states and hoped to live their lives within the
network of stability these states provided. The sudden and completely
unexpected collapse of their fatherlands proved a shock to them. Not
even having left their homes the inhabitants were deserted by their own
states. Many would never come to terms with this loss. They would remain
eternal immigrants with no hope to return to their homelands that were
completely erased not only from the political map but also from the very
social reality. There are not any more Soviet people but the Russians,
the Ukrainians, the Uzbeks, the Georgians and many more. The nations of
the Czechs and the Slovaks replaced the Czechoslovaks. Similarly
Yugoslavs remain homeless their former state partitioned into the
nation-states of the Serbs, the Slovenes, the Croats and others.

Anther problem, which was prominent during 'the age of empires' and
still shapes mentality of small nations, is the relations between a
center and province (periphery) of the states. A legacy of imperial
centralism and cultural condescension of 'central elites' toward
provinces affected a development of national consciousness especially
among small nations for many years to come. New intellectual elites and
entire progress of the new post-imperial small nations still suffer
because of their 'provincialism.' 

The tremendous loss of the world one knew and one expected to last for
centuries is an anathema to the current political elites. Frequently,
they justify the existence of the new states and the current policies in
opposition to the 'disappeared fatherlands'. These new politicians term
the erstwhile countries as 'prisons of nations', 'failed states' or
'rogue countries'. They live for the future and it will always look more
appealing when one denigrates the past. Few could oppose this
future-oriented thrust of events. If displeased with the present they
usually kept their opinions to themselves and muddled through. But in
these disappeared states of the past not everything was wrong even if
they happened to be as oppressive as the Soviet Union or East Germany.
And, above all, if one lived one's childhood, first love and youth in
such a country that is not around any more; what else can one recollect
with fondness natural to these periods of life, but one's fatherland
that is not?

The three renowned critics of the new, who sang qualified praises of the
disappeared European empires, were Joseph Roth, Istvan Bibo, and
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The first one attained posthumous worldwide fame
only in the 1990s. Suddenly, his elegiac stories and novels on
Austria-Hungary began to make sense to millions of readers all over the
globe. Bibo wrote his seminal 1946 essay 'The Poverty of East European
Small States', having observed petty but murderous nationalisms that
followed the destruction of Austria-Hungary. Not surprisingly, these
small and constantly bickering nation-states had no necessary strength
or willingness to oppose together the two totalitarian juggernauts of
national socialism and communism that engulfed Central and Eastern
Europe from 1939 to 1989.

Solzhenitsyn, the bitterest critic of the Soviet Empire, contrasted the
positive moments of the Russian Empire before 1917 with the catastrophic
and anti-humane developments in post-Soviet Russia. 

This partial redress of the black legend of Austria-Hungary and imperial
Russia was achieved during the 1990s. Similar analysis of other
disappeared states are still due though it is obvious that some black
legends do not veer much away from how life looked like in disappeared
states. But legends conveniently write out jarring details from the
grand picture they propagate. 

Truth is better to a simplistic stereotype. Hence, this collection of
essays expedites this process of looking into the ironies and aspects
that official history and received opinion swept under the carpet of the
established view on the past. The standpoint from which the authors of
the contributions look at their disappeared fatherlands, is that of the
average man who had to shoulder the cost and burden of changes. The
average man knows best how the past compares to his current life and
remembers these details that never made it to textbooks and newspapers.
Often his memories are crucial for understanding what happened.

It is high time for the sustained reflection on the disappeared European
states of the 20th century, when the European Union enlarges with 10 new
members in May 2004. Small nation-states realized they have no chance of
going it alone in the new brave world of globalization. Size matters. On
the other hand, people do not wish their travels, thoughts, desires and
dreams to be limited by the national borders any more. Although
there is no end of the nation-state in sight, as some predicted in the
1990s, but the national is gradually subjected to the supranational of
the European Union. A new quality is born. It is too early to say what
it will be, but one principle of the coming changes is clear. The new
will not be obliterating the past. The past in the form of the member
nation-states is incorporated into the European Union in an evolutionary
manner.

Let us hope that no more states, fatherlands will suffer sudden,
unexpected and unexplained deaths that leave millions flabbergasted and
without homelands.

Contributions:

Scholars and thinkers who stem from or do research on the European
fatherlands that disappeared during the 20th century will write the
essays. They deftly combine the personal reflection with the scholarly
approach, their own experience of every-day life with theoretical
analysis. This allows preserving the academic value of these
contributions, while providing the reader with the picture of the past
to which he or she can relate at the level of everyday human experience. 

Essays on the times and writings of Joseph Roth, Istvan Bibo and
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn open the volume, while the conclusion is naturally
devoted to the European Union as a new fatherland, which arose without
the necessity of destroying other fatherlands. Beyond the exclusivist
logic of nationalism, it turned out that one can enjoy several (often
spatially overlapping) fatherlands. At last, with the hindsight of two
World Wars, the Holocaust and numerous ethnic cleansings politicians
espoused this view too.

Other essays are devoted to the following fatherlands that disappeared:

Austria-Hungary (demise: 1918) - a view from the center
(Vienna/Budapest).
Austria-Hungary (demise: 1918) - a view from the periphery (some distant
region [e.g. Bukovina] or a minority group [e.g. Jews, Roma]).
The Ottoman Empire (demise: 1923) - a view from the center
(Constantinople/Ankara).
The Ottoman Empire (demise: 1923) - a view from the periphery (the
Balkan provinces and/or opinions of the Turkish/Muslim minorities left
behind).
Carpathian Rus (birth and demise: 1939).
Prussia (demise: 1947 - dissolved by the Allies, its territory
incorporated into Poland and the Soviet Union, the population -
expelled).
East Germany (demise: 1990 - incorporation into the Federal Republic of
Germany).
Yugoslavia (demise: 1990-?) - a view from the center (Belgrade).
Yugoslavia (demise: 1990-?) - a view from the periphery (e.g.
Macedonia).
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union (demise: 1991) - a view from the center
(Moscow and Saint Petersburg).
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union (demise: 1991) - a view from the
European periphery (Ukraine).
The Russian Empire/Soviet Union (demise: 1991) - a view from the
Eurasian periphery (Kazakhstan and/or Uzbekistan).
Czechoslovakia (demise: 1993) - a view from the center (Prague).
Czechoslovakia (demise: 1993) - a view from the periphery (Bratislava).

The total of 15 or 16 contributions of around 10-15 pages each, together
with the introduction and index, adds up to 250 - 300 pages.

Contributors:

Scholars and thinkers who stem from or do research on the
above-mentioned disappeared fatherlands. Appropriate contributors will
be approached via the institutional networks available to the Editors as
well as through posting a call for papers via the Internet. Preferably
the contributors will write in English. But in few cases it may be
necessary to commission translation of some crucial essays. The authors
will meet during the special international conference where they discuss
their papers and select an appropriate material for a publication.