Postwar Continuity and New Challenges in Central Europe, 1918–1923

Over the past two years, international attention has been drawn to war-torn Ukraine and the ongoing humanitarian crisis wrought by the Russian invasion. As scholars, journalists and policymakers seek to explain the current conflict within broader temporal and geographical contexts, the world wars of the twentieth century are frequently referenced. In this timely volume, the contributing scholars collectively add to our understanding of the impact of World War I on the lands of the former Habsburg Empire. The volume includes an introduction by the editors and twenty scholarly articles dealing with various aspects of continuity and change in Central Europe after World War I. Intended primarily for an academic audience, the articles are arranged into five sections: “New Challenges—New Orders,” “Postimperial Legacies, Legitimism and Memory,” “Long-Lasting Violence,” “Shaping Postimperial Space: Administration and Society,” and “In the Service of Nation and/or State.”In their introduction, Pudłocki and Ruszała clearly establish the boundaries for a collection of essays about “The War That Never Ended.” The lands of the old Habsburg Monarchy are the focal point, and the editors astutely posit that a “change of perspective and a more profound look at the problems of the world and Europe from the centre of the continent” rather than the usual perspectives from “Paris, Berlin, London, Rome or Moscow” (p. 1) will provide readers with an enriched understanding of the legacy of World War I. In particular, the contributors were tasked with explaining the “extent the solutions applied in the Habsburg Monarchy were still practiced in the newly created nation states and to what extent these new political organisms went their own ways” (p. 5). The authors met this challenge very well, and I will draw special attention to several contributions.In Part I (“New Challenges—New Orders”), Leonard V. Smith analyzes “The Politics of Recognition at the Paris Peace Conference.” Smith points out that scholars have generally explained recognition according to two theoretical frameworks. The “constitutive theory” holds that new states are fully actualized primarily as a result of recognition by “the international system.” According to the “declarative theory,” the international system “reacts rather than creates. It simply recognizes state sovereignty that already exists. States thus create themselves” (p. 9). With a particular focus on the cases of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, Scott argues that in the aftermath of World War I there was a great deal of “blending” (p. 13) of the constitutive and declarative theories of recognition, including at the Paris Peace Conference. The politics of recognition had winners and losers, and while many new states emerged there were no easy solutions to myriad territorial disputes. Smith's essay sets the stage for other case studies presented by contributors to this volume that explore the complex issues of identity and autonomy after World War I. For example, in his interesting essay (“Montenegro 1918–1921 in the Context of the Adriatic Question”), Peter Bagarić explains how Montenegro became “the only country among the Entente that lost its statehood and freedom after the First World War” (p. 60).While Part I primarily focuses on changes after World War I, the essays in Part II (“Postimperial Legacies, Legitimism and Memory”) present narratives highlighting continuity in Central Europe. In his essay on the lingering impact of the Habsburg Empire (“The Leftover Empire? Imperial Legacies and Statehood in the Successor States of Austria-Hungary”), Gábor Egry argues that “despite the noisy rejection of the empire, and its stigmatization as the prison of the people, its legacy was often surprisingly positive for the successor states” (p. 82). Using the seemingly dissimilar examples of Czechoslovakia and Romania, Egry concludes that “both states relied on traditions of their elites” and that “it was essential for the new states to rely on imperial legacies more often than it was presumed or alluded to in the era of dominant nationalist political discourse” (p. 93). In his essay, (“Hoch den Kaiser!” The Legitimist Cause in Early Postwar Austria”), Christopher Brennan explores continuity in the form of ongoing support for the Habsburgs among old elites in Austria after the war to show how “the break between the old and the new in the former lands of the monarchy was neither clean nor immediate” (p. 114). Brennan acknowledges that the legitimist cause was a minority movement in interwar Austria and was undoubtedly “an impossible proposition” (p. 150). But he finds that a “romantic view” of legitimism continues to influence modern Austria's collective memory of the Habsburg Empire.Parts III (“Long-Lasting Violence”) and IV (“Shaping Postimperial Space: Administration and Society”) of the volume include case studies that more directly focus on Polish history. In her essay—“Polish and Ukrainian Propaganda of Violence During and Shortly after the War for Eastern Galicia (1918–1919)”—Jagoda Wierzejska presents “discursive analyses of Polish and Ukrainian propagandist campaigns, which sought to specifically exaggerate and interpret in a specific manner, mutual acts of violence committed by each national group” (p. 175). She finds that propaganda campaigns were crucial parts of the conflict. Fitting for the theme of this volume, she concludes that “the restoration of mutual Polish and Ukrainian accusations, stereotypes, and biases known from previous centuries with new discursive strategies—especially the ethno-psychological one—transformed the Polish- Ukrainian propagandist campaign in the wake of the war for Eastern Galicia” in ways that heralded the triumphant “principle of nationality” (p. 188). Similar forces can also be detected at play in Kamil Ruszała's essay “Three Nations at the Crossroads: Poles, Jews and Lemkos Between 1918 and 1919.” Ruszała gives a “bottom-up perspective” (p. 235) from the Gorlice district in Western Galicia, which was incorporated into the new Polish state after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. He explains how the “ethnicization” of this “microregion” (p. 249) complicated its postwar recovery and development.An elaborate matrix of conflicting identities is also the focus of Edina Gál (“The Denationalized Children of Transylvania: The State Children's Asylum in Cluj after 1918”). She explores a child protection system in flux that sought to provide help, while also engaging in an “ongoing battle for the nationality of children” (p. 339). Pre-war Magyarization was replaced by postwar Romanianization, as medical professionals sought to help the children in their care while also representing the “interests of the state” and pursuing the “nationalist agenda” of the day (p. 339).The potential for conflict between professional and state interests is also the focus of Tomasz Pudłocki's chapter in Part V (“In Service of Nation and/or State”). In his essay (“Serving Science versus Serving the Country: University Professors of Western Neophilologies in Poland, 1918–1923”), Pudłocki analyzes a small cadre of perhaps twenty language specialists at universities in Kraków and Lviv in the reborn Polish state. He finds that their “knowledge of languages and familiarity with cultures of foreign nations, crucial from the point of view of interests of the state, constantly clashed with the idea of freedom of conducting academic research” (p. 412). As an example of a scholar who grappled with dynamic crosscurrents of interests, Pudłocki highlights the actions of Stanisław Stroński, who “abandoned his promising academic career and grew to be one of the leaders of the National Democracy” (p. 412). According to Pudłocki, Stroński later questioned some of his actions outside the realm of academics and the ways in which they inflamed political passions in the young Polish state.Contributors to this volume have illuminated many other aspects of the political, social, and cultural tensions that beset Central Europe after World War I. This volume thus enriches our understanding of this region after the demise of the Habsburg Empire and provides students of history—and observers of contemporary events—with a better understanding of matters of war and peace in this region.