THE ASSESSMENT OF HUNGARY IN GREAT-BRITAIN (1848-1956) - SPECIALIZATION

Peter, Laszlo: Central Europe and Its Reading Into The Past

'The spectre of Central Europe haunts the lands of "real socialism". From Prague to Budapest, from Warsaw to Zagreb (and evoking powerful echoes in Vienna and Berlin), the rediscovery of Central Europe reflects the major intellectual and political trends of the post-Solidarity era.'[sup1] As Jacques Rupnik's classic announcement of 1988 suggested, 'Central Europe' is something rather special whose existence cannot be left unquestioned and taken for granted. The term is filled with emotional charge; 'You don't need to explain it to a Central European, and you can't explain to anybody else what Central Europe is', wrote Emil Brix perceptively.[sup2] Central Europe, in this sense, is certainly not a natural unit of geography; it overlaps with Eastern Europe which, again, is not regarded as something easily definable.[sup3] But why the difficulty? Surely Europe must have a middle somewhere.[sup4] Last summer on the road outside Rahov I passed a monument which claimed to mark Europe's centre. (Others place the centre of Europe further up near the border of Lithuania.) I am not concerned with the veracity of the claim. The point, however, is that Rahov is in Ukraine (formerly the Soviet Union) rather than in any of the countries in which Rupnik's spectre appeared in the 1980s. Central Europe has been predicated on such a diverse set of countries on the European continent over the years that the facts of geography do not even start to explain it. It is not, as Timothy Garton Ash pointed out, 'a region whose boundaries you can trace on the map like, say, Central America. It is a kingdom of the spirit'.[sup5] This may be an overstatement, for 'Central Europe' and 'East-Central Europe' are frequently used in ordinary language denotatively.[sup6] The terms are assigned as a common name to a certain part of Europe for the sake of brevity rather than used analytically (which may help political causes rather than scholarship). Denotative definitions are not problematic and are not my particular concern here. My interest is primarily in what intellectuals and political commentators have made of 'Central Europe'.

A spectre or apparition belongs to an imagined world rather than to the world as it is; hence its indefinability by reference to known facts. Whenever it has lifted its pretty head above the political parapet over the last hundred and fifty years (unlike the 'Balkans' or 'Eastern Europe' it is invariably claimed to possess desirable qualities), 'Central Europe' has belonged to the realm of imagination.[sup7] In its moderate form it is a claim to cultural affinities or the mentalite of intellectuals living in some of the countries on the western side of Russia, which confers on them a cultural identity of sorts, and which distinguishes them from the world of autocratic Orthodox Russia. This claim has been frequently used to underpin radical political aspirations or dreams. For 'Central Europe' is essentially a catalyst for visionary plans and specific programmes for the establishment (somewhere between France and Russia) of a set of independent states that closely cooperate with one another, nay confederate to lend formal recognition to a region in a political sense. 'Central Europe' as an idea (rather than merely a collective name for some countries), has invariably been used prescriptively; it refers to something that has yet to be created. Whenever the idea has emerged, 'Central Europe' has involved the rejection of some condition--the existing state of European affairs--and has been bound up with the idea of creating a new European order. The 1848 revolutions, the First World War and the decline of the Soviet Union in the 1980s provided the settings for the Central European idea. Each of these will now be considered briefly. Central Europe, in the form of Mitteleuropa, appeared in the Frankfurt National Assembly as a hypothetical political agenda during the 1848 revolutions.[sup8] The grossdeutsch plan of German unification over-arching Prussia and Austria was to be combined with a scheme to surround a new united Germany with the friendly satellite states of the 'historic' nations: Poland, Hungary and Italy. The conflict was, however, never resolved: should Germany be a republic (the position of the Left) into which Prussia and Austria (with its German lands) would merge?; should Germany be a confederation that would include the whole of the Austrian Monarchy under Prussian leadership (the Radowitz plan)?; or should the smaller nationalities be tied closely to a united Germany as Johann Ritter yon Perthaler, a Tirolean deputy at Frankfurt, envisaged?[sup9] The restored powers of the monarchs of the eastern half of the Continent in 1849 put paid to all these plans.

The survival of Austria as a Great Power in the form of Austria-Hungary from 1867 and the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 made 'Central Europe' redundant for nearly half a century. Political aspirations centred on the creation of independent national states rather than on schemes to create a supra-national Central Europed.[sup10] But Mitteleuropa returned, this time in the form of a specific plan during the First World War. Against the background of the Central Powers' military successes in the first two years of the war and the aspirations of Germany's political leaders, Friedrich Naumann in his renowned book Mitteleuropa (1915) discussed the 'growing unity of those nations which belong neither to the Anglo-French western alliance nor to the Russian Empire ... more particularly my subject is the welding together of the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy ...'[sup11] This was a plan to create a customs union and an integrated military for the two Empires in a new Central European union which a restored Poland[sup12] and other states might join. Mitteleuropa was to consolidate German leadership in the region and was contingent on the victory of the Central Powers. Their defeat in 1918 put an end to the grand designs of German expansionism for a few years.

The collapse of the Habsburg and Russian multinational empires and the creation of smaller independent states left a power vacuum between Germany and Soviet Russia, hence the need for some collective shorthand label which terms such as 'Eastern Europe', 'Central Europe', 'EastCentral Europe' and 'Central-Eastern Europe' met depending on the user's political perspective. The highly influential weekly The New Europe, launched by R. W. Seton-Watson with the help of Thomas Masaryk in October 1916, was to be a rallying ground for 'European reconstruction on the basis of nationality'.[sup13] The paper was to be 'our answer to the Pangerman project of "Central Europe" and "Berlin-Bagdad"'[sup14] in the name of Europe's small nations.[sup15] Clearly, the new European political order established after the War was rooted in ideological enmity towards any idea of Central Europe.[sup16] The Versailles peace treaties were not conducive to the settlement of geopolitical terminology. In the inter-war years, a period of robust national rivalries on the eastern half of the Continent, the only consistency in the use of the appellations 'central' and 'eastern' was the speaker's preference of the former for his own nation. Proximity to 'western' Europe, widely considered from the Enlightenment onwards as the seat of European civilisation[sup17], was put at a premium. The tag 'Central Europe' was also attached to various supra-national federalistic plans worked out in the French and British chancelleries in order to weaken German and/or Soviet influence.

The Second World War ending with Germany's defeat seemed to settle terminology. The partition of Europe, questionably attributed to the notorious 'percentage deals' of the Great Powers and the Yalta Conference of February 1945[sup18], between liberal democracies and Soviet dominated peoples' democracies, separated by the Iron Curtain, produced, for the first time in history, an unambiguous political border between 'western' and 'eastern' Europe. The division was not merely political. The largely agricultural and poor Eastern Europe differed socially from its largely industrialised and richer western neighbours even before the communist takeover. Indeed, the Elba-Saale-Leitha line had long been recognized by social historians as a border of structural differences in the social development of the two halves of the Continent; moreover, the structural features east of the Elbe helped the communist takeovers. The gaps widened rapidly in the 1950s. The political and cultural isolation of the Soviet satellites--the unprecedented imposition on them of an alien social system--exacerbated the contrast between the spectacular economic progress of the prosperous West and the economic stagnation of the East. From the fashionable perspective of 'modernisation' theory the satellites were seen in the West as one of the many 'backward' regions of the world. Even ten years after the collapse of communism there is a staggering gap in GDP between the two sides of Europe, although the western rim of the eastern side is in a markedly better economic position than the rest of this half.

Yet even in the 1950s the term Central Europe did not disappear from use. Czech, Hungarian and other political emigres as well as some scholars in the west never abandoned the claim that within a seemingly uniform Stalinist political straightjacket a Central European cultural identity (which was markedly different from either Russian or South-East European) was preserved.[sup19] The political upheaval in Poland, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968 brought home the truth to politicians and commentators in the West that the Czechs, the Hungarians and the Poles were unlikely to settle down for long as Soviet satellites. Many of them saw 'Central Europe' as a danger zone.[sup20] Moreover, governments of some of the satellites began to refer to Central Europe as well.[sup21] When the Soviet Union, unable to coalesce its East-European empire into a coherent region, entered into what turned out to be its terminal crisis, the idea of Central Europe was back with a vengeance. The ever-changing protean character of the idea has since been in full display. In his recent book on Central Europe and its history, Lonnie R. Johnson distinguished at least three different trends born in the early 1980s.[sup22] First, the ecological-pacifist movement of the Left in West Germany envisaged a 'third way' between capitalism and communism. Central Europe could emerge, it was argued, through a convergence of the two opposing social systems. Second, internationally neutral Austria became another source of Central Europe's revival. Notwithstanding the Iron Curtain, the non-aligned country claimed to be able to mediate between the two rival blocks by promoting regional cooperation. The 'working group' set up by Austria and Italy for common Alpine-Adriatic problems for three Austrian provinces, Northern Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Western Hungary, which Czechoslovakia and Poland later joined, was a small practical measure hung on the memories of Habsburg Mitteleuropa, ecological concerns and the cultural affinities felt by the cosmopolitan urban groups of the former Empire. Finally, Central Europe became the focus of political dissent, indeed the rallying cry of the Czech, Hungarian and Polish intelligentsia in opposition to the communist regime.

Of these three trends the last acquired political significance and the other two remained footnotes in the history of modem Europe. German and Austrian politics (for largely similar reasons) evacuated 'Central Europe'. By the end of the 1980s, history walked all over the ideas of the German Left. Instead of any 'convergence' between the two opposing social systems, the communist order spectacularly collapsed and the two Germanies were, without any trace of ambiguity, formally reunited in Western Europe. Then the Soviet Union disintegrated, inducing Austria to abandon gradually its mediating position, and it too joined the 'West' in 1995 as a full member of the European Union.[sup23] Here some ambiguities remained. While Austria's turn to preside over the EU Ministerial Council was celebrated in London by the 'Festival of Central European Culture' in the summer of 1998[sup24], Viktor Klima, the Austrian Chancellor, expressed his strong reservations about the admission of the countries of 'Eastern Europe' (meaning the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia) into the Union.[sup25]

The third branch of the Central European idea brought real political dividends. This vision of Central Europe was predicated primarily on the lands of the former Habsburg Monarchy and Poland by Czech and Hungarian independent intellectuals and activists (some in exile) and later by others. It was built on the ever-closer links with the West, particularly Vienna, from the end of the 1970s. It was, however, essentially the product of home-spun illegal movements under communist rule, like Charter '77 and the Polish underground. 'Central Europe' turned out to be a political wedge, one of the effective forces which drove Europe to the termination of its post-war division. Milan Kundera's influential essay on 'The Tragedy of Central Europe'(1983) characterised the middle zone of the Continent as being 'culturally in the West, and politically in the East'.[sup26] The revolutionary implications of the statement are not apparent at first glance, but the import of the dictum was that Central Europeans were different from Russians. It was an appeal to 'the West' that the division of Europe after the Second World War was the source of a great injustice because the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles in the past had never belonged to Eastern Europe and that they should be reunited with the West where they had always belonged. 'What is central Europe?' became the magic theme that created a discourse through which the hitherto isolated dissident intellectuals living in different countries addressed each other, over the heads of their governments, and began to cooperate. Central Europe became an icon; it gave comfort and inspiration to intellectuals. Take, for instance, Gyorgy Konrad who in his essay on 'The Central European Dream'(1984)[sup27] described Central Europe as a 'cultural counterhypothesis' of a minority (for the majority in most countries still thought in purely national terms). The status quo was artificial, and therefore provisional. Central Europe did not yet exist, but it could, in a confederation in which the diversity of the various nationalities was rediscovered and preserved.

In contrast to the Mitteleuropa plans of 1848 and 1915 which presumed German leadership, the vision of Central Europe of the 1980s was emphatically based on the equality of nations. This implied a willingness to enter into a dialogue about the national conflicts of the past--a noble idea which, even if it failed to lead to agreements on practical questions, greatly eased tension. Another common feature of the new Central Europeans was their lack of any interest in economic questions. They were writers, historians, philosophers, and opposition activists rather than economists. In a sympathetic critical essay, Timothy Garton Ash examined their ideas more closely.[sup28] The independent intellectuals, he observed, discussed power in moral rather than in overtly political terms. They were concerned with truth and rejected ideology. They were liberal individualists rather than collectivists who asserted the principles of respect for human rights and civil liberties. Garton Ash pointed out that the three leading intellectuals whose ideas he reviewed, Vaclav Havel, Gyorgy Konrad and Adam Michnik, were all concerned with the autonomous sphere of culture and the creation of a new consciousness, the promise of civil society: 'people's organising themselves outside the structures of the Party-state'. They were men of peace who emphatically rejected violence. Peace, however, could be genuine and lasting only by overcoming the division of Europe which required transformation as much in the internal as the external world based on the post-Yalta European order.

The rapid collapse of the communist system in Russia's satellites in 1989, the formal absorption of East Germany into West Germany in the following year and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc put Central Europe on the agenda. 'But once again', as Timothy Garton Ash observed, 'the Central European question bid fair to be the d central European one'.[sup29] With the unexpected upheaval of events, contradictory trends for the Central European idea set in. On the one hand, the changes removed the obstacles to close cooperation among the new democracies established between Germany and Russia. On the other hand, the very same changes largely obliterated the appeal of a regional organisation. The intellectuals who had for years dreamed about ever-closer cooperation among the Central Europeans were now either in power or close to it. Hic Rhodus hic salta--the outsider could politely entreat. Lonnie Johnson described the 'grand plans' for regional cooperation and confederations that were mooted in the immediate aftermath of 1989.[sup30] Moreover, there was now, as a by-product of German unification into 'the West' and growing Austrian interest in becoming a full member of the EU, a subtle shift in the use of terminology. Hitherto 'East-Central Europe' and 'Central Europe' had been used interchangeably. The former was now dropped from use by the political class of the reformed regimes, a change that was largely accepted by the western media. The new Central Europeans, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Polish leaders established the 'Visegrad group' in 1990. West European diplomats also urged the Central Europeans to cooperate closely. Yet these efforts came to only little more than declarations without closer cooperation in common organisations. The intellectuals woke up from their dreams.

It is true that today relations among the neighbours are better than they have been for a long time, and this is a significant change. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, which diminished insecurity in the region (which was not really offset by the tragic civil war that flared up in former Yugoslavia), the Central European idea of close regional cooperation fizzled out. It was not surprising that, after long subjection to an alien Power, the appeal of national sovereignty proved far stronger than the assumed advantages of economic or any other kind of organised cooperation among the 'Visegrad countries' or others. Journalists were soon burying the idea of Central European union.[sup31] At a deeper level, the reason why the Central European idea became outdated in the 1990s was, of course, the common aspiration of all the new democracies to become soon full members of the European Union. The reformed states were all eager to demonstrate their good European credentials in order to follow East Germany and Austria and to be accepted as unambiguous parts of 'the West' rather than being left outside in an enclave sandwiched between Russia and the EU. In pursuing this policy the five states, with which the EU has recently decided to start negotiations, cooperate as well as compete with each other to obtain full membership.

Central Europe could of course still come into being--by default. In the 1980s the two parts of Europe, as passing ships, headed in opposite directions. While any semblance of political cohesion was crumbling in the east, economic and political integration, after the eurosclerosis of the 1970s, was getting its second wind in the west. The process of integration after Maastricht has reached such a high (or deep) level that the admission of even the best-prepared candidates from the east is far from being ensured. If the selected candidates, the new Central Europeans, are left to wait for long years outside the gates of the Union, they may start cooperating earnestly (unless, of course, they are picked off one by one). Alternatively, they may be able to negotiate entry in some limited form, making up a separate bottom layer in a hierarchy of positions, which the process of integration might generate inside the EU for a variety of reasons, and which we need not discuss here. One can only hope that these scenarios are too pessimistic and this kind of Central Europe, the anti-utopian obverse of the 1980s intellectuals' utopia, will never come about.

All in all, the political usefulness of the Central European idea in the 1980s was, as we have seen, considerable. 'Central Europe' was the lever that helped the satellites to split away from the Soviet Union and it has become an accepted label for 'the big regional winners of the former Eastern block'.[sup32] Hungary, which as a defeated country was from 1945 bracketed with Bulgaria and Romania, particularly benefited from entering into a common category with the Czech Republic and Poland. More accurately, Hungary is labelled Central European by western journalists when they discuss the present. When, however, journalists cast a glance at the past, the country's classification is still doubtful.[sup33] Whether or not historians, in general, invent history to suit their own times is a question we have, of course, to leave entirely unanswered. It appears from what has already been discussed that 'Central Europe', as a political aspiration, was intimately related to a claim about the past. The core of the 'idea' was that Central Europe should not be kept cut off from the West because throughout its long history it had always been a part of it. What we should now do is explore the attitude of historians to this claim.

We should begin with the obvious. While the terms used to describe Europe's regions were changing, historians were either the pace-setters or followed public trends with astonishing promptness. At the same time, they frequently bemoaned the uncertainty created by the overlapping labels. But, of course, neither the abundance of terms for the regions of Europe which flooded writings after the collapse of tsarist Russia, the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy and the creation of the 'New Europe' of small states, nor the lack of consensus in their use among scholars led to an unaccountable jungle that is sometimes claimed. The contradictory terms merely particularised conflicting historical perspectives which reflected the vigorous national rivalries and the different political aspirations prevalent in the inter-war years and beyond.[sup34] To mention a few examples, Oskar Halecki's influential distinction between (Germanic) 'West' Central Europe and (Catholic) 'East' Central Europe obviously reflected a Polish perspective. Equally plausibly, C. A. Macartney, who was sympathetic to the Austrians and the Hungarians, used 'Central Europe' in his books in the inter-war years.[sup35]

In contrast, Hugh Seton-Watson, who started to publish when the Second World War was about to break out, consistently used 'Eastern Europe' for analysis.[sup36] Later he turned away from the simple division of Europe into two parts.[sup37] What he now called 'The problem of the Danubian Lands'[sup38] (to which all the small nations between Russia and Germany belonged) already reflected a change. After the emergence of the intellectual dissident movements in Russia's backyard, Seton-Watson became a passionate advocate for the unity of Europe on which 'Bolshevism turned its back'.[sup39] Europe was, for centuries, above all 'a cultural and moral concept'; it possessed a mystique. There was, he insisted, a 'need for a positive common cause'. For European unity could not be restricted to questions about the price of butter and the allocation of defence contracts; above all it should not be confined to the territory of the existing EEC (that of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire).[sup40] The countries east of the EEC borders were, they had always been, part of the European cultural heritage and could not be permanently excluded from it.[sup41] As I recall, Seton-Watson in the 1980s was concerned that Romania too should be regarded as belonging to 'Central Europe' (and today he would probably insist that post-communist Russia formed a part of the European tradition).

The upsurge of the Central European idea in the countries of the Soviet bloc and the influence of their supporters among academics in many West European countries have spawned a respectable number of general historical works in western languages in recent years.[sup42] This new literature has to an extent made up for the neglect that the history of the countries between Germany and Russia suffered for the greater part of this century. By and large, works written before the German unification, like Joseph Rothschild's[sup43] and Piotr S. Wandycz's[sup44] predicated the subject on 'East-Central' Europe, whereas those written after, like Lonnie R. Johnson's, on 'Central' Europe.[sup45] In its general outlook scholarship in the west was greatly influenced by what was written and talked about in the east; in the west historians discussed Europe's historical regions and the whereabouts of East and Central Europe. The debates among Hungarian historians have probably been more intense and have lasted longer than anywhere else. As they illuminate well the relationship between the (political) idea of Central Europe and the reading of this idea into the past, they merit some attention. How far historians are aware of their reading the present into the past is a most interesting and largely unanswerable question. The explorations of the Hungarian historians go back to 1956; the shock effect of Hungary's revolution on the communist leaders and historians generated debates on nationalism in the late fifties.[sup46] The leading Marxist theoretician, Erik Molnar, Director of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy, challenged the received orthodoxy of the so-called 'revolutionary progress' school which explained Hungarian history as a long struggle by the people (the oppressed classes) for national independence. This view, argued Molnar, was anti-Marxist and 'Hungarocentric'. History should be understood in strictly class terms and Hungarian history placed in its wider 'East European' context. In the 1960s economic historians rediscovered the Elbe as an important dividing line between the capitalist West and Eastern Europe which in the sixteenth century, explained Zsigmond P. Pach, Molnar's successor in the Institute, 'turned away' from the West and experienced 'the second serfdom'. More debates followed, particularly among economic historians. In the 1970s Pach's disciples, Ivan Berend and Gyorgy Ranki, split the region into East-Central Europe and Eastern Europe (Russia).[sup47] Significantly, they were, within the party, firm supporters of the country's economic reform. The debate was given a new twist by the active dissidents of the regime who, influenced by the Czech opposition, revived the Central European idea. Central Europe was already a hot subject among independent intellectuals and historians when Jeno Szucs's 'Outline on the Three Historical Regions of Europe' appeared as samizdat in 1981. It was immediately republished in an academic periodical to legalise it[sup48] and was translated into English and French. In this very influential essay Szucs argued on the basis of a wide range of sources that from the Middle Ages to modern times 'Central Europe' always combined elements found in Western Europe and the Orthodox world of Eastern Europe. Although the argument supported the political aspirations of the Hungarian opposition intelligentsia, 'Central Europe' here had little to do with the 'idea'. It was a mixture of social structural elements found in the other two regions rather than a region with an identity of its own. Indeed, the Central European idea did not become de rigeur among leading practitioners. In his 'Unity and Diversity in East European Developments'[sup49] Emil Niederhauser reasserted the view that Europe had two rather than three regions: West and East. He argued, however, that the common features of the latter were weaker than what separated its three sub-regions from each other: Eastern Europe proper (Russia), the Balkans and what he termed, with due apology for the expression, 'Western East-Europe' (i.e., Szfics's Central Europe).

Szucs's essay produced an avalanche of debates in Hungary with strong echoes from abroad, near and far.[sup50] While a large number of those who were engaged in or knew about the debate probably agreed with Gyula Borbandi that Central Europe was 'one of the noblest Hungarian political ideas', his contribution appeared in a volume that bore the teasing title 'Do we need Central Europe?'[sup51] This was not a rhetorical question, and some contributors, like Csaha Gombar, did not mince words in saying 'No'.[sup52] The volume also contained the translation of Timothy Garton Ash's essay, 'Does Central Europe Exist?', in which the author deplored 'the inclination to attribute to the Central European past what you hope will characterise the Central European future, the confusion of what should be with what was'.[sup53] He also warned against the attempt to 'treat the new Central European idea as an assertion about a common Central European past in the centuries down to 1945 ... Every attempt to distil some common "essence" of Central European history is either absurdly reductionist or invincibly vague.'[sup54]

Indeed, it is one thing to use Central Europe as a label (or even a heuristic device) under which the histories of Austria, Bohemia and other countries, as they impinge on each other, are discussed together. It is quite another matter to presume a common identity for a selected set of countries and then use it as a tool of historical analysis. The distinction between the former treatment (which is justified) and the latter (which is debatable) leads us to the heart of the matter: the historian's likely attitude to the past once he or she has firmly embraced the Central European idea. Peter Hanak was, for many years before his untimely death in 1997, the leading exponent of the Central European idea among Hungarian historians. He argued in 1983 that until the nineteenth century, the formation of regions was a spontaneous process. People then became conscious about their place and politicians and historians began to articulate 'where they belong or wish to belong'. And this process 'could contribute to the definition of the whereabouts, the regional identity and future-planning of a particular society, a nation'.[sup55] A few years later and with some resignation, he noted in a lecture introducing the 1988 Salzburg Festival that there was so much controversy over Central Europe, 'a region that had either vanished or never existed'. If he were a philosopher or a writer, he would without hesitation have accepted that a subject, even if purely imaginary, which attracted so much interest and concern 'existed as a mental reality' had to be considered important. The methods of his profession, however, required that he produce evidence. After some hesitation and qualification he found it in the structural, social and cultural similarities prevalent in the past of the Central European region.[sup56]

A historian would, of course, find structural similarities among any set of societies that coexist and influence each other. The comparative study of institutions has been a well-established branch of the discipline. The problem of a regional division of Europe, however, is that the distinguishable structural elements overlap each other in such an intricate manner that they stubbornly resist any attempt at squeezing them into 'regions' in the required general sense. It is not at all difficult to illustrate the problem with examples. There are large numbers of all European structural features, like Christianity, the use of the plough in tillage, the alphabet, the early royal organisation and a great many others. Moving from the west to the east and discounting the Channel it is easy to pick as many regional borders as one would like. Civil society in the early modem age and the parliamentary system before 1945 appeared largely on the western side of the Rhine. In moving back to the Middle Ages we may find the Elbe, the Saale and the Leitha, or in some respect the St. Petersburg-Trieste line the divider as regards the beneficiary system, the growth of towns, types of property inheritance, the legal position of the villein and peasant communities and other aspects of social life.[sup57] Moving further to the east (and in this respect there is wide agreement among historians), the border of Western and Eastem Orthodox Christianity marked another division.[sup58] Church autonomy, high monastic culture, the fundamental rights of the nobility and towns, the Renaissance, the Reformation and much else developed on the territory of the former rather than the latter.

So far we have distinguished with three borders (the Rhine, the Elbe and the religious) four zones. We could discover many others[sup59] among which the state borders may be the most significant. In the early modem age the rulers of the three landlocked military bureaucratic states, Russia, Austria and Prussia (in contrast to the kings of France and Sweden for instance) introduced many similar (autocratic) arrangements.[sup60] Each of these states, as one would expect, developed even more structural features of its own.[sup61] Believers in the Central European idea rightly point out that the countries of the former Habsburg Monarchy inherited common institutional procedures, cultural habits and mental attitudes. However, if the argument for a common Central European identity in the past is reduced to this point we have undermined the need for postulating Central Europe (Occam would cut it off immediately) on top of the Habsburg Monarchy. Further, we need not point out that the territory of the presumed Central Europe does not square with that of the deceased monarchy.

Finally, a single example may well illustrate that the concept of Central Europe which, by its rejection of the post-war legitimacy of Eastern Europe was so serviceable to politics in understanding the longue duree processes of history, is a reductionist device whose analytical value is far overstretched. The regional classification of Hungary towards the end of the nineteenth century will depend on which arbitrarily selected structural elements we should consider defining. Hungary's agrarian system (grain yields, land distribution, 'work-out system', labour conditions, land hunger) was different from German, Austrian or Bohemian systems and was rather 'East-European' (and not unlike Russia's). The same may be said about the structure of industry which combined a small number of large enterprises, set up with state help and the influx of foreign capital, and a very high number of small-scale producers (while there were only a few factory-owners). Likewise, the social ascendancy of the noble landowners in contrast to the experience of the business classes, which remained political outsiders, was yet another East rather than Central European feature. On the other hand, as regards property law, personal security and professional state administration the country reached Central European standards. It differed once again, however, from the German and Austrian territories concerning the institutions of the Rechtsstaat, which were in fits and starts established fragmentarily; ministers possessed a wide remit to govern by decree, and the discretionary powers of officials were rather East-European. But Hungary, with its robust parliamentary tradition, was more 'western' than either Germany or Austria. As a unique feature east of the Rhine the parliament in Budapest was, in its dealings with the crown, an independent force.

When we turn to education and culture, the picture is again mixed. The country was without doubt Central European (indeed 'western') in its system of secondary and higher education at the turn of the century, in the quality of teaching and the growth of high culture in the capital. On the other hand, its rudimentary elementary schools in villages and its high level of illiteracy dragged it far below the German, Austrian and Czech levels of attainment. The social ideals of the political and the cultural elites and the urban middle classes were unambiguously 'western', and there was no trace of any social ideal or aspiration predicated on Central Europe. Yet again, looking at the cultural sub-systems one finds, for instance, that the ferocious habits of dog-keeping in Hungary were (and are still) South-East European.

In conclusion, Central Europe, which does not exist in any form in the present and is unlikely to come to life in the future, does not seem to have a past either. The claim that it existed once upon a time dissolves on closer examination. Believers in the Central European idea, rather arbitrarily select from a large number of possible borders a single frontier and read a regional identity into the past. Perhaps the idea has run its natural course. Perhaps, having lost its genuine political function, it will subside (as it did twice on earlier occasions). Ideas, of course, never completely disappear, and it is unlikely that Central Europe ever will. As a ghost it may have lingered on long enough, however, to induce historians to allow it to rest.

[sup1] Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe, London, 1988, p. 4.
[sup2] Central Europe, ed. Dr Emil Brix, Director of the Austrian Cultural Institute (on the occasion of the Festival of Central European Culture, London, 21 June-12 July 1998), p. 1.
[sup3] See for instance Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 1918-1941, 3rd edn, 1962, p. 1. Larry Wolff has recently discussed the concept of Eastern Europe as an arrogant claim invented by the writers of the Enlightenment in Inventing Eastern Europe, Stanford, 1994.
[sup4] The well-known Atlas of Central Europe (a section of the Grosse Bertelsmann Weltatlas republished by John Murray, London, 1963) contains the Benelux countries, the two Germanies (also the former East Prussia), Switzerland and Austria, leaving out altogether what is today commonly referred to as Central Europe or East-Central Europe. The Times Atlas of the World (London, 1980) avoids using regional terms; Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia appear together on a single sheet. The Ruthenlan Paul Robert Magocsi's Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (London, 1993) encompasses the former Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Lithuania, Poland, Belorus, Ukraine, Northern Italy and all the countries down to Greece and Western Turkey. The nationality of the map-maker rather than some principles of geography determine the location of 'Central Europe'.
[sup5] Timothy Ganon Ash, 'Does Central Europe Exist', in The Uses of Adversity, New York, 1989, p. 189.
[sup6] See the definition of 'Romantic' in the literary sense in R. Robinson, Definition, Oxford, 1962, esp. pp. 131 and 175.
[sup7] 'Central Europe', wrote Rupnik, in The Other Europe. 'is today more a state of mind than a scientific concept'.
[sup8] On these plans see Heinrich yon Srbik, Deutsche Einheit, Idee und Wirklichkeit vom Heiligen Reich bis Koniggratz, Miinchen, 1935, vol. I, pp. 372ff and 431ff. Andras Gergely argued that Karl Moering, deputy, was the author of the Mitteleuropa concept, 'A nemet nap es a kisallami bolygok', Holmi, Mar. 1998, pp. 329-37, esp. p. 332.
[sup9] Srbik, Deutsche Einheit, vol. I, pp. 268ff. Sir Lewis Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, Oxford, 1946, p. 99, n 4.
[sup10] As an undercurrent in politics Mitteleuropa never entirely disappeared between the 1850s and 1914; see Karoly Irinyi, Mitteleuropa tervek ar osztrak-magyar politikai kozgondolkodds, Budapest, 1974, pp. 31ff.
[sup11] Friedrich Naumann, Central Europe, transl. and intro. by W. J. Ashley, London, 1916, p. 1. (orig. Mitteleuropa, Berlin, 1915)
[sup12] Naumann, Central Europe, pp. 107ff; and see Maria Ormos, 'Nemetorszag es Ausztria-Magyarorszag viszonya: az uj Mittel-Europa terv, 1917-1918', Szazadok, 1996, pp. 207-28.
[sup13] The New Europe, I. no. 1. (19 Oct. 1916), p. 1; Hugh and Christopher Seton-Watson, The Making of a New Europe, London, 1981, esp. pp. 171ff and 178ff.
[sup14] The New Europe, 19 Oct. 1916, p. 1. In the very first article Masaryk attacked 'the Pangerman "Central Europe" scheme', p. 4. In 1922, however, R. W. Seton-Watson became the first incumbent of the Masaryk Chair in the History of Central Europe in the School of Slavonic Studies, King's College, University of London. 'Central Europe' was used there denotatively.
[sup15] 'The Problem of Small Nations in the European Crisis' was the title of Masaryk's inaugural lecture at Kiug's College, London on 19 Oct. 1915.
[sup16] This point is frequently missed in the literature. R. W. Seton-Watson's 'Europe of the small nations' may not be described as an alternative 'Central European' idea to the German Mitteleuropa, see for instance Rupnik, The Other Europe, p. 46. On Masaryk's use of 'East Central Europe' see Garton Ash, Adversity, p. 207.
[sup17] The central proposition of Larry Wolff's work already referred to.
[sup18] For a proper treatment of the subject see Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War, New York, 1979, pp. 207ff and 248ff.
[sup19] E.g. Stephen Borsody, The Tragedy of Central Europe, 1960; Francis S. Wagner, ed., Toward a New Central Europe, Florida, 1970 (a collection of articles from the periodical Studies for a New Central Europe). See also Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe. Enemies, Neighbours, Friends, Oxford, 1996, pp. 249ff. The book is to my knowledge, the latest work on the theme of Central Europe and its history.
[sup20] Denis Healey said in a speech on 22 Oct. 1959 on the third anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution that 'Central Europe is a very explosive area indeed, and if the military competition between the two blocs continues in Central Europe, another explosion could ignite the whole of the world'. Hungary and the World, Hungarian Writers' Association Abroad, London, 1959, p. 18.
[sup21] It has been largely forgotten that the Hungarian Foreign Ministry under Janos Peter (1961-1973) and the Husak government in Czechoslovakia after 1968 were also flirting with the idea of Central Europe.
[sup22] Johnson, Central Europe, pp. 263-9.
[sup23] In the new departmental division of the British Foreign Office Austria is in the 'West European' Department. The associate members of the EU form the 'Central European', the new states of the former Soviet Union, the 'Eastern' and some of the Balkan states the 'Eastern Adriatic' Department.
[sup24] See no. 2 above.
[sup25] See Charles Bremner's report in The Times, 2 July 1998.
[sup26] The Czech reform movement of the 1960s was already preoccupied with 'Europeanism' and 'in attempting to define Kundera's work', wrote Robert Porter, 'the term "Central European" has far more meaning than "East European'", Milan Kundera--a voice from Central Europe, Aarhus, 1981; and see Ash, Adversity, pp. 180ff and Johnson, Central Europe, pp. 267ff.
[sup27] Brix, ed., Central Europe, pp. 13ff.
[sup28] Ash, Adversity, esp. pp. 188-98.
[sup29] In Europe's Name, Germany and the Divided Continent, London, 1994, p. 409.
[sup30] Johnson, Central Europe, pp. 281ff. He pointed out that after the decision to unite Germany was taken, Russia for a while was still seen to represent a threat.
[sup31] Roger Boyes of The Times reported already in 1990 that 'a Central European confederation is off the agenda'; the idea dissolved 'in a world no longer divided into blocks'. 'Small states awake from grandiose dream', The Times, 23 Mar. 1990.
[sup32] Johnson described as such the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia in Central Europe, p. 293.
[sup33] The Times referred to Hungary as one of the 'three Balkan states' that had allied themselves with Hitler, 'Due Compensation' (editorial), 1 Apr. 1998.
[sup34] For a good general bibliography of books in English see Piotr Wandycz, The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present, London, 1992, pp. 298-309; Ignac Romsics reviewed the historians' diverse views in 'Kozop- os/vagy Kelet-Europa?', Rubicon, 5-6/1997, pp. 43-7; Gabor Gyani took stock of the debates among Hungarian historians, 'Torteneszvitak hazank Europan beluli hovatartozasarol', Valosag, April 1988, pp. 76-83. Two useful collections are: Ivan T. Berend and Eva Ring, eds, Helyunk Europaban, Budapest, 1982 (2 vols) and George Schopflin and Nancy Wood, eds, in Search of Central Europe, Cambridge, 1989.
[sup35] See for instance his Hungary, London, 1934, p. 9. and elsewhere. After 1945 Macartney occasionally used Eastern Europe denotatively. He was rather apologetic in the Preface of a book he wrote with A. W. Palmer: 'We admit that the concept of an Eastern Europe which excludes Russia and includes many territories far more 'central' than 'eastern' is, in many ways, an artificial one', Independent Eastern Europe. A History, London, 1962, p. v.
[sup36] See, Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941, London, 1945, and The Eastern European Revolution, London, 1950. He used 'Central Europe' occasionally and denotatively.
[sup37] 'I used to think', he wrote, 'one could divide Europe into West and East on the basis of two rather longer term consideratins than current politics. These two factors were social structures and national or linguistic composition.' He explained what he had meant, adding that these were plausible distinctions in the 1930s before making clear that he had abandoned them in 'Thoughts on the Concept of West and East in Europe', unpublished lecture given at The Great Britain/East Europe Centre on 26 Mar. 1984, p. 2.
[sup38] The subtitle of his The 'Sick Heart' of Modern Europe, Seattle and London, 1975.
[sup39] Although he was professor of Russian history, after having published two major works on Russia, he stopped writing books on it after the 1960s for the rest of his academic career.
[sup40] 'Thoughts on the Concept of West and East in Europe', p. 3; 'What is Europe, Where is Europe? From Mystique to Politique', lecture at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 23 Apr. 1985, pp. 12-13. 'Remember Peguy's aphorism. "Tout commence par la mystique, et finit par la politique." The Brussels Eurocrats' politique may have much to be said for it, but it is a long away from the mystique of Europe', in 'What is Europe?'
[sup41] ' ... the truth is that nowhere in the world is there so widespread belief in the reality and the importance of an European cultural community as in the countries lying between EEC territory and the Soviet Union', H. Seton-Watson, 'What is Europe?', p. 14.
[sup42] See the bibliography of works in Wandycz's work already referred to in n. 34.
[sup43] Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II, Oxford, 1989.
[sup44] See n. 34 for Wandcyz's works.
[sup45] See n. 19. However, Jean W. Sedlar's work East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, Seattle and London, was published in 1994.
[sup46] For the early phases of the de bate (until 1967) on nationalism sec Laszlo Peter, 'New Approaches to Modern Hungarian History', Ungarn Jahrbuch, 1972, pp. 161-71. The debate eventually produced a breakthrough on the subject through Jeno Szucs's influential A nemzet historikuma es a tortenetszemlelet nernzeti latoszoge, Budapest, 1970.
[sup47] See on this point Johnson, Central Europe, pp. 81 and 302, n.9 (Berend and Ranki's publications). NB: Earlier they had used 'Central-Eastern Europe'.
[sup48] The first legal publication: Tortenelmi Szemle, Mar. 1981, pp. 313-59.
[sup49] 'A kelet-europai fejlodes egysege es kulonbozosege', Magyar Tudomany, Sept. 1988, pp. 668-81.
[sup50] Of the many collections of contributions to these debates see Janos Gyurgyak, ed., Kell-e nekunk Kozep-Europa?, special issue of Szazadveg, Budapest, 1989.
[sup51] Gyurgyak, Kell-e nekunk Kozep-Europa?, p. 208.
[sup52] Gyurgyak, Kell-e nekunk Kozep-Europa?, pp. 218-21.
[sup53] Ash, Adversity, p. 184, cf. Kell-e nekunk Kozep-Europa?, p. 89 (in translation, 'the mixing up of sein and sollen').
[sup54] Gyurgyak, Kell-e nekunk Kozep-Europa? p. 188, and cf. p. 91.
[sup55] 'Helyunk Europaban', Jelenkor, May 1983, p. 449.
[sup56] Peter Hanak, 'Alkotoero es pluralitas Kozep-Europa kulturajaban', in Ferenc Glatz, ed., Europa vonzasaban. Emlekkonyv Kosary Domokos 80. szuletesnapjara, Budapest, 1993, pp. 219-30.
[sup57] Martin Rady, 'Core and periphery: Eastern Europe', in Mary Fulbrook, ed., National Histories and European History, London, 1993, pp. 163-82.
[sup58] The religious divide acquired prominence in the debate provoked by Samuel P. Huntington's 'The Clash of Civilizations' (Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993), republished with contributions and rejoinder in The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate, New York, 1996. The author explored further the issues raised in his The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, 1996. His stimulating and reductionist hypothesis elevated, among other 'civilizational clashes', the (real) differences between Western and Eastern Christianity to a fundamental cultural faultline between 'Western' and a separate 'Slavic-Orthodox' civilisation.
[sup59] For instance, the dominant ideology on the continent, modem nationalism, produced yet another dividing line. John Plamenatz contrasted the character of the German and Italian movements with that of the Slavonic and other movements, 'Two Types of Nationalism', in E. Kamenka, ed., Nationalism, London, 1976, pp. 22-36. Again, it would be difficult to argue against the view, particularly after Fernand Brauudel, that the Mediterranean Basin (or Scandinavia) produced a large number of common features. As my colleague Martyn Rady argues, the urban wealth generated west of the Rhine from the Netherlands across Switzerland to northern Italy has made the zone of the Middle Kingdom a crucial region in Europe's social evolution.
[sup60] See W. H. McNeill, Europe's Steppe Frontier, 1500-1800, Chicago, 1964.
[sup61] R. J. W. Evans, for instance, described the common culture, the baroque mentalite and civilisation which enabled the functioning of the institutions and helped to hold the Habsburg Empire together, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700, Oxford, 1979.

Source: European Review of History, Spring99, Vol. 6, Issue 1