Review Author(s): Hugh LeCaine Agnew Review by: Hugh LeCaine Agnew Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 628-629 Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3650147 Accessed: 26-02-2016 17:47 UTC
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Slavic Review
or naval ships, the internationalizing of the waters, and ethnic cleansing on its shores are among the many themes developed in this lively study. Despite the diversity of cultures and religions, there was not a "clash of civilizations" so much as either condominium or contests of peoples who traded, intermarried, allied with one another, and fought with each other, but for reasons other than race or religion. This succinct synthesis of a vast historical literature presents a broad front for criticism. Specialists will carp that the author does not delve into this or that long-debated controversy or has omitted some relevant titles, but no amount of nitpicking can assail this sturdy work of scholarship based on archival materials, ancient histories, literature, monuments, monographs, travelers' accounts, and shrewd analysis. This enlightening, entertaining, exciting, and even enthralling essay is a model of its kind. The Black Sea has found its historian. PATRICIAHERLIHY
Brown University
History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century. By Ivan T. Berend. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xx, 330 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Figures. Photographs. Tables. Maps. $39.95, hard bound. In this generously and effectively illustrated book, Ivan Berend completes a trilogy he began in 1996 with Centraland EasternEurope, 1944-1993: Detourfromthe Peripheryto the Peripheryand continued in 1998 with Decadesof Crisis:Centraland EasternEuropebeforeWorld WarII. Together the three volumes make up a general history of modern central and eastern Europe, and an accomplishment of major significance. This work, like its predecessors, is marked by geographic and disciplinary breadth, covering the entire region and combining economic, political, social, and cultural history. It also sets the story of the region in a wider European and indeed world context. That this is a daunting task to accomplish in just over three hundred pages is the main source of the frustrations to be found in the work, frustrations that do not, in the final analysis, seriously detract from the author's achievement. Berend begins by briefly arguing that central and eastern Europe may rightly be considered separately in spite of distinctions within the region, noting that many nineteenthcentury figures from the region compared their situation to western Europe and viewed it as a model to follow, just as they do today. He then surveys the historical processes that created that acutely felt gap between western and eastern Europe, the responses this perception of "backwardness"engendered, and their development through the "long nineteenth century." Berend follows a thematic, but roughly chronological, organization. Enlightened romanticism, "combining messages of reason and emotion" (42), played a key role in nation building in central and eastern Europe. Because of the strength of their opponents, local nationalisms developed a kind of "romantic-national Weltschmez" feeding a "romantic, deformed, and pathetic national consciousness" that "carriedwithin it the seeds of xenophobic, exclusive, aggressive nationalism" (77-78). The struggle for reform against the regimes in the region convinced romantic nationalists that their goals could only be attained through national independence. Thus nationalism and modernization were linked by a belief in historical progress. The west European economic and political revolution was only partially realized by the end of the century, with the greatest impact in the north and west of the region and hardly any in the east and south. In his discussion of the social aspects of that partial transformation, Berend analyzes the "dual"and "incomplete" societies created by this incomplete modernization. In most of the old Habsburg monarchy, the landed aristocracy coexisted with the new, entrepreneurial bourgeoisie "under the unquestioned political and social leadership of the old elite" (196), creating a "dual"society. In those regions, too, the emergence of the 'Jewish question" and modern political anti-Semitism was related to these processes of incomplete modernization. In the Balkans, the "incomplete" society, lacking a traditional elite but creating a new one via the state bureaucracy, was the norm. In both areas, an autocratic, authoritarian political tradition carried over from the former dominant empires to the newly
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Book Reviews
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emerging nation-states and movements. An additional feature of incomplete modernization was the emergence of radical right- and left-wing populism among the surviving peasantry and the gradually emerging working class, heralding future revolutions. Those revolutions erupted as World War I destroyed the old empires, but did not result in catching up to the west. Overall the work provides a thorough account placed in a convincing interpretive framework. What of the frustrations mentioned above? Each is related to the challenge of dealing with such a broad topic. First, the generalizations are sometimes confusing, as when on one page France swings from third most powerful to most powerful country in Europe and back again (8), or when the text suggests thatJoseph II's urbarial reforms, revoked on his deathbed, were permanent (144). Second, the prose sometimes becomes a formulaic catalog of key figures from each nation and their major works as they relate to the topic the author is discussing. Finally, there are numerous errors in the spelling of personal names, understandable since few scholars are fluent in every language of the region, but correctable with care. The work, while accessible to general readers, would be a welcome text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on the region's history, especially if the press issued a paper-bound version. HUGH LECAINE AGNEW
GeorgeWashingtonUniversity
Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth-CenturySoutheasternEurope. Ed. John Lampe and Mark Mazower. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004. x, 309 pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. $49.95, hard bound. $26.50, paper. Ideologiesand National Identitites:The Caseof Twentieth-CenturySoutheasternEurope,edited by John Lampe and Mark Mazower, is a truly unique and splendid addition to historical writing on southeastern Europe. The editors worked with a select group of young scholars who designed their research projects to connect with current scholarship on European ideologies and national identity. Consciously breaking out of the old ideological straitjacket of seeing twentieth-century history in southeastern Europe only in terms of nationalism, communism, and war, the authors in this volume explore the ways in which the region's people experienced liberalism, fascism, and populist, youth, and religious movements. John Lampe's introduction to the volume emphasizes the necessity of "reconnecting" the histories of southeastern Europe to European history. Unique is the editors' insistence that each author include several translated primary sources at the end of their studies. The diversity of sources-ranging from autobiographies to diary entries describing the sounds and noises of socialist Bulgaria-is unrivaled by any documentary reader available to those of us who teach European, east European, or Balkan history. The chapters are roughly divided between those that examine the social and cultural organizations and movements of nation- and state-building projects, and those that explore political ideologies and their elites in the same projects. Some of the authors cover familiar topics, but these chapters recast their subjects in light of new scholarship on memory and national identity. As a result, Constantin Iordachi's chapter on Romania's Legion of the Archangel Michael focuses on the charismatic leadership of Corneliu Codreanu and suggests implicitly the powerful masculine and gendered appeal of Codreanu. Mark Biondich reworks his excellent work on interwar Croatia to interrogate the claim that the Croatian fascists during World War II were simply defending Croatian national interests. He traces the path of this claim as it traveled through emigr6 circles to its reframing by Franjo Tudjman, Croatia's first president in 1990, and to its use during Croatia's war of independence (1991-1995). The chapters "Greater Albania: The Albanian State and the Question of Kosovo, 1912-2001" and "Strugglingwith Yugoslavism: Dilemmas of Interwar Serb Political Thought," by Robert C. Austin and Marko Bulatovic, respectively, provide summaries of Albanian and Serbian thought on the subject of a multinational Yugoslavia. The efforts of national, religious, or political elites to advance or contest national identity through social and cultural institutions are analyzed in a number of the chapters.
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