Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Rybak
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East Central ◽  
German Army ◽  
Nation States ◽  
To Come

Everyday Zionism in East-Central Europe examines Zionist activism during the years of war, occupation, revolution, the collapse of empires and the formation of nation states in the years 1914 to 1920. Before the background of the Great War, its brutal aftermath and consequent violence, the day-to-day encounters between Zionist activists and the Jewish communities in the region gave the movement credibility, allowed it to win support, and to establish itself as a leading force in Jewish political and social life for decades to come. Through activists’ efforts, Zionism came to mean something new. Rather than being concerned with debates over Jewish nationhood and pioneering efforts in Palestine, it came to be about aiding starving populations, organizing soup-kitchens, establishing orphanages, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals, negotiating with the authorities, and organizing self-defence against violence. It was in this context that the Zionist movement evolved from often marginalized, predominantly bourgeois groups into a mass movement that attracted and inspired tens of thousands of Jews throughout the region. The book approaches the major European events of the period from the dual perspectives of Jewish communities and the Zionist activists on the ground, demonstrating how war, revolution, empire and nation held very different meanings to people, depending on their local circumstances. During the war and its aftermath, the territories of the Habsburg Empire and formerly Russian-ruled regions conquered by the German army saw a large-scale nation-building project by Zionist activists who fought to lead their communities and shape for them a national future.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jan Rybak
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Zionist Movement ◽  
First World

During the First World War and its aftermath, the Zionist movement in many regions managed to evolve from relatively small groups, primarily of bourgeois intellectuals, to become a mass movement that in many cases came to dominate Jewish political and social life. This meteoric rise can be attributed to the hard, everyday work of Zionist activists in the communities of East-Central Europe. The introduction identifies the key questions at the heart of this development and anticipates the main problems and themes of the book. In order to situate the events of 1914–20 in a wider regional and historical context, central aspects of Jewish life in East-Central Europe before the outbreak of the First World War are explained. The different legal, economic, and cultural conditions under which the actors of the book lived produced conflicting responses to many of the main challenges posed by modernity—nationalism, antisemitism, economic transformation, and mass migration. One of these responses was Zionism, which from Lithuania to Austria presented itself in many different forms. The introduction discusses the various trends in the Zionist movement, the role of Palestine in activists’ thinking, and their engagement in their local communities––questions that would be central in the years of war and revolution.

scholarly journals State of Exception: The Birthplace of Kafka’s Narrative Authority

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Biti
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Narrative Authority ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
European Nation ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Collateral Effects

Across the postimperial East Central Europe, whose geopolitical space was reconfigured on the model of West European nation-states, unprocessed human residues proliferated as the collateral effects of politically guided national homogenizations. These positional outsiders, who were prevented from becoming legible within the newly established political spaces, take center stage in Kafka’s narratives, not only in the form of their characters but also their narrators and ultimate authority. They passionately attach themselves to the zones of indistinction, which the modern societies’ “egalitarian discrimination” has doomed them to, thus trying to turn their enforced dispossession into a chosen self-dispossession. I argue that Kafka’s narratives owe their elusive ultimate authority precisely to this persistent translation of the political state of exception of his agencies into their literary state of exemption. They are at constant pains to transfigure the imposed state of exception through its peculiar fictional adoption, but Kafka’s ultimate narrative authority nevertheless takes care to keep an edge over their efforts. It is precisely this never-ending gradation of subversive mimicry in Kafka’s works that his postcolonial successor J. M. Coetzee most admired.

The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal-External Linkages in Soviet Policy Making (Part 1)

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Soviet Policy ◽  
External Events ◽  
The Impact

The death of Josif Stalin was followed by momentous changes in the Soviet bloc. Part 1 of this two-part article considers how and why these changes came about, looking at the interaction between domestic and external events. It explores the nature of Soviet decision making, the impact of events in East-Central Europe, the implementation of Moscow's new policy, and the use of Soviet troops to put down a large-scale uprising in East Germany. Politics, Power, and U.S. Policy in Iran, 1950–1953

scholarly journals Long-term ice phenology records from East Central Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katalin Takács ◽  
Zoltán Kern ◽  
László Pásztor
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Temporal Trends ◽  
Lake Balaton ◽  
Data Set ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Freshwater Ice ◽  
Break Up ◽  
Ice Phenology

Abstract. A data set of annual freshwater ice phenology was compiled for the largest river (Danube) and the largest lake (Lake Balaton) in East Central Europe, extending regular river and lake ice monitoring data through the use of historical observations and documentary records dating back to 1774 AD and 1885 AD, respectively. What becomes clear is that the dates of the first appearance of ice and freeze-up have shifted, arriving 12–30 and 4–13 days later respectively per 100 years. Break-up and ice-off have shifted to earlier dates by 7–13 and 9–27 days/100 years, except on Lake Balaton, where the date of break-up has not changed significantly. The data sets represent a great potential resource for (paleo)climatological research thanks to the strong, physically determined link between water and air temperature and the occurrence of freshwater ice phenomena. The derived centennial records of freshwater cryophenology for Danube and Balaton are readily available for detailed analysis of the temporal trends, large-scale spatial comparison or other climatological purposes. The derived dataset is publicly available via PANGAEA at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.881056.

Ezra Mendelsohn. The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1983. Pp. xvi, 300.

2004 ◽  
pp. 379-382
Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East Central ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Governmental Politics ◽  
Comparative Manner

This chapter looks at Ezra Mendelsohn's The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (1983). The book is divided into chapters dedicated to the individual countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Lithuania, with a single chapter on Latvia and Estonia. This does not mean that it is a collection of separate studies that could equally well stand alone. To the book's great advantage, Mendelsohn often approaches his subject — Jewish communities in these countries, governmental politics, and patterns of change — in a comparative manner. As a result, and despite the initial impression, the book constitutes a logical whole and is thus all the more useful. The author's interest lies mainly in the area of specifically Jewish history.

“Double transformations:” nation formation and democratization in interwar East Central Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 745-758
Author(s):  
Heidi Hein-Kircher ◽  
Steffen Kailitz
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation Formation ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Nation States ◽  
New States ◽  
Almost All ◽  
East Central European

Following the collapse of empires and the subsequent founding of self-determined nation-states, East Central Europe experienced a turning point after World War I. The new states had to transform themselves from branches of a multi-ethnic empire to independent nation-states, as well as from a system of monarchy to democracy at the same time. We argue that one cannot really understand why democracy failed in almost all East Central European states after World War I if one does not take into account the extreme challenges of this “double transformation” consisting of the interactions of the two tightly interwoven processes of nation formation and democratization. Therefore, we deem it necessary to develop a broader research program that addresses the complex interlacement of these two fundamental transformations of politics and society.

Post-imperial Europe: Integration through Disintegration

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-75
Author(s):  
Vladimir Biti
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Nation State ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Nation States ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Cross National

In the post-imperial East Central Europe after the dissolution of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires, disappointment was commonplace. The imperial successor states were involved in revengeful animosities with neighbouring states, torn by their majority population’s hatred of domestic minorities, bereft of tens of millions of their co-nationals who had remained in now foreign nation-states, exposed to huge influxes of refugees, and embittered by the territorial concessions that they were forced to make. By contrast, the newly established nation-states were plagued by miserable social and economic conditions, poor infrastructures, unemployment, inflation, rigid and immobile social stratification, and corrupt and inefficient administrations. Such developments gave rise to huge and traumatic deportations and migrations of populations, which, paradoxically, simultaneously immensely increased the mobility of their imagination. Using the technique of ‘subversive mimicry’, these nationally indistinct elements established cross-national transborder communities as the zones of ‘national indifference’ within the new nation-states. Carried by the energy of their longing, these communities introduced imbalances, fissures, and divisions into the nation-state communities, which determined their belonging.

scholarly journals In search of civil society: From peasant populism to postpeasant illiberalism in provincial Hungary

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-483
Author(s):  
Chris Hann
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Life ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Late Socialism ◽  
National Bourgeoisie ◽  
Opening Up

The need to rebuild civil society was a prominent theme in dissident writings in East-Central Europe in late socialism, but the revival of this concept deserves close scrutiny and local contextualization. This article identifies two currents in Hungarian debates, one focused on addressing problems of backwardness by opening up paths of material embourgeoisement and the other on abstract liberal notions of associational freedom. It then outlines successive transformations of economic and social life in a small Hungarian town where no industry existed prior to socialism and the dominant political forces were populist in the sense of ‘peasantism’. The agrarian and industrial transformations of the socialist decades were undone in the 1990s. In the 2010s, under governments led by Viktor Orbán, it is argued that norms of civility have been threatened by postpeasant illiberalism. If civil society was the gauntlet laid down to social theorists by East-Central Europe in 1989, the challenge posed by this region nowadays is the theorization of incivility and a new brand of populism. It is suggested that these political processes are driven by the collapse of socialist embourgeoisement and the emergence of a new national bourgeoisie under peripheral capitalism, and that some of the moral responsibility for these developments lies with the unwavering intellectual enthusiasts of abstract liberalism.

Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Wank
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Positive Statements ◽  
History Of ◽  
East Central European

The startling events of the last five years in Eastern Europe have led to a surprising nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and Emperor Francis Joseph in the lands of the former Habsburg Empire. Politicians and journalists in Europe and America now compare the old empire to the disoriented East Central Europe of today and hold up the former as a positive model for a supranational organization. The current wave of nostalgia has been helped along by some recent historical works that certainly were not written for that purpose, but that contain generous assessments of the monarchy's positive qualities. For example, István Deák, in his highly acclaimed book,Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918, strongly recommends that the “Habsburg experiment” in supranational organization be reexamined: “I am convinced that we can find here a positive lesson while the post-1918 history of the central and east central European nation-states can only show US what to avoid.” Similar positive statements can be found in the recently published works of Alan Sked, Barbara Jelavich, and F. R. Bridge.

scholarly journals Stable isotopes in cave ice suggest summer temperatures in east-central Europe are linked to Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation variability

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 2445-2458
Author(s):  
Carmen-Andreea Bădăluţă ◽  
Aurel Perșoiu ◽  
Monica Ionita ◽  
Natalia Piotrowska
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Isotope Composition ◽  
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation ◽  
Summer Temperature ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central

Abstract. The climate of east-central Europe (ECE) is the result of a combination of influences originating in the wider North Atlantic realm, the Mediterranean Sea, and the western Asian and Siberian regions. Previous studies have shown that the complex interplay between the large-scale atmospheric patterns across the region results in strongly dissimilar summer and winter conditions on timescales ranging from decades to millennia. To put these into a wider context, long-term climate reconstructions are required, but, largely due to historical reasons, these are lacking in ECE. We address these issues by presenting a high-resolution, radiocarbon-dated record of summer temperature variations during the last millennium in ECE, based on stable isotope analysis of a 4.84 m long ice core extracted from Focul Viu Ice Cave (Western Carpathians, Romania). Comparisons with both instrumental and proxy-based data indicate that the stable isotope composition of cave ice records the changes in summer air temperature and has a similar temporal evolution to that of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation on decadal to multidecadal timescales, suggesting that changes in the North Atlantic are transferred, likely via atmospheric processes towards the wider Northern Hemisphere. On centennial timescales, the data show little summer temperature differences between the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) in eastern Europe. These findings are contrary to those that show a marked contrast between the two periods in terms of both winter and annual air temperatures, suggesting that cooling during the LIA was primarily the result of wintertime climatic changes.

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