Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kathryn Ciancia
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Population ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Ethnic Nationalism ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
Interwar Poland ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
Minority Policies

The story of interwar Poland has traditionally been told within the historiographical framework of national minority policies in the post-1918 eastern European states. And yet, as this introductory chapter argues, it can be understood only within the context of prevailing global discussions about how notions of civilization justified claims to sovereignty. With its Polish minority, Ukrainian majority, and large Jewish population, the borderland province of Volhynia became a testing ground for various attempts to both civilize and nationalize a “backward” region. This chapter offers an introduction to Volhynia’s geography and pre-1918 history, an exploration of the second-tier actors who claimed to be importing Western civilization, and a discussion of the book’s major historiographical interventions. The case of Volhynia allows scholars to reconsider the dichotomy between civic and ethnic nationalism, to reimagine ideas of national indifference, and to trace how Poles engaged with concepts of imperialism and European nationalism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Western Civilization

This introductory chapter first considers the concept of human nature, raising questions such as how human nature and nature as such are related, and how are both related to person. It then turns to what the Jewish tradition says about human nature. It sets out the book's focus, namely a dialogue between contemporary perspectives and traditional Jewish thoughts on human nature. Both sides have something to gain from the dialogue; both have something to lose from shunning it. Judaism risks intellectual irrelevance by failing to engage with the challenges of contemporary thought. Contemporary thought risks attenuating its moral seriousness if it ignores one of the sources of Western civilization. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Delayed Response ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Core ◽  
Hybrid War

This introductory chapter outlines the core argument of the book: that as Russia ramped up its hybrid war on the West starting around 2007, politics in Western countries has become more similar to politics in the vulnerable “lands in between.” Russia’s hybrid war on the West has contributed to political polarization by promoting extremist parties and creating a sense that every election presents voters with a “civilizational choice” between Russia and the West or authoritarianism and democracy. Paradoxically, many of the leaders that rise to the top in these conditions are those who find ways to profit from both sides. They benefit from the sponsorship of pro-Russia and pro-Western interests to enrich themselves in the process. The plan of this book is simple. It starts with exploring the nature of Russia’s hybrid war on the West and the West’s delayed response. Then it shows how this conflict shapes the politics of the lands in between, Central and Eastern European member states of the European Union, and core Western countries.

scholarly journals Tibet and China's ‘National Minority’ Policies

Orbis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Davis
Keyword(s):  
National Minority ◽  
Minority Policies

The Migration of Galician Jews to Vienna, 1857–1880

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 43-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton G. Rabinbach
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Population ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Austrian Capital ◽  
The City

Between 1857 and 1900 the Jewish population of Vienna grew from 6,000 to more than 146,000 as a result of the mass migration of Jews from the eastern provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire to the capital. The largest source of the migration was Galicia, with a vast Jewish population that increased from 448,973 in 1857 to 811,183 at the turn of the century. In 1857 alone, at the outset of the migrations, some 2,000 persons left Galicia, marking the first gradual decline in the high proportion of Jews living in the part of the empire which lay within the eastern European pale of Jewish settlement. Arriving at an estimated rate of 20,000 to 30,000 per decade, these Galician Jews flowed into Vienna's second district, Leopoldstadt, and produced a shift both in the ethnic demography of the city and in that of the empire. Expansion of the Jewish population of Vienna from 1.3 percent of the population in 1857 to 12 percent by 1890 profoundly influenced the social, cultural, and political life of the Austrian capital.

Introduction: The Jews of Galicia under the Habsburgs

1999 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Israel Bartal ◽  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Central European ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

This introductory chapter charts the history of the Galician Jews. It starts from the beginnings of Jewish settlement in Galicia during the eighteenth century and culminates in the outbreak of the Second World War. For centuries the area had a large Jewish population dispersed throughout hundreds of large and small towns, villages, and estates, and the history of this community is inseparable from the history of Polish Jewry. In Galicia, as elsewhere in Poland, the Jews combined the Ashkenazi tradition of study of Mishnah and halakhic literature with mysticism, which played a central role in the Sabbatean movement and the emergence of hasidism. On the other hand, however, several generations of Austrian rule and exposure to the German language and culture left their mark and drew the Jews of the region towards central European culture.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Jewish population of Poland–Lithuania. During the years of its flourishing, it gave rise to a unique religious and secular culture in Hebrew and Yiddish and enjoyed an unprecedented degree of self-government. Even after the upheavals which marked the beginning of the downfall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Jewish community continued to grow and even to recover some of its vitality. In the late eighteenth century these lands saw the birth and development of hasidism, an innovative revivalist movement, which was eventually to win the allegiance of a large proportion of the Jewish population and which remains very much alive in the Jewish world today. The partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century and again in 1815 divided Polish Jewry between the tsarist, Habsburg, and Prussian states. In all these areas, and particularly in the Pale of Settlement, the late nineteenth century saw the appearance and increasing ascendancy of ethnic and national conceptions of Jewish self-identification, in particular Zionism and Jewish autonomism.

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