scholarly journals Progressive Paternalism: Civic Indentity Construction in Red Vienna

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Eisler

Much of the extant literature assessing the Austrian Socialist Party's (SDAP) social welfare programs in post-First World War Vienna tends to interpret these as the product of a paternalistic and conservative 'Germanophile' party. Many scholars claim the Socialists suppressed spontaneous working-class political activism, dulling the consciousness of soldiers and workers to the imminent danger to the Republic posed by Austrian fascists. This essay instead proposes that there was a more complex relationship between the SDAP elite and its rank and file than has previously been thought. In attempting to engineer a new socialist society, the party combined progressive and traditional aspects in its welfare programs in an effort to both control and strengthen proletarian political consciousness. The ambiguous results of this program belie claims that the Viennese working class was supine either in the face of the SDAP's 'cultural offensive' or the right-wing reaction.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Oliver Brown

This thesis investigates the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the British right-wing between the years of 1918 and 1930. It aims to redress the imbalance of studies on interwar British right-wing anti-Semitism that are skewed towards the 1930s, Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. This thesis is the first to focus exclusively on the immediate aftermath of the First World War and the rest of the 1920s, to demonstrate how interwar British right-wing anti-Semitism was not an isolated product of the 1930s. This work shows that anti-Semitism was endemic throughout much of the right-wing in early interwar Britain but became pushed further away from the mainstream as the decade progressed. This thesis adopts a comparative approach of comparing the actions and ideology of different sections of the British right-wing. The three sections that it is investigating are the “mainstream”, the “anti-alien/anti-Bolshevik” right and the “Jewish-obsessive” fringe. This comparative approach illustrates the types of anti-Semitism that were widespread throughout the British right-wing. Furthermore, it demonstrates which variants of anti-Semitism remained on the fringes. This thesis will steer away from only focusing on the virulently anti-Semitic, fringe organisations. The overemphasis on peripheral figures and openly fascistic groups when historians have glanced back at the 1920s helped lead to an exaggerated view that Britain was a tolerant haven in historiographical pieces, at least up until the 1980s. This thesis is using a wide range of primary sources, that are representative of the different sections of the British right-wing.


2020 ◽  
pp. 334-339

It is common wisdom, both in scholarly historiography and in hagiography, that Ze’ev Jabotinsky was the founding father of the Israeli Right. In fact, as Colin Shindler’s excellent book proves, Jabotinsky adopted a right-wing world view only in the 1920s. Prior to the First World War, while undoubtedly a Zionist, he was also a man of cosmopolitan views. It was during a sojourn in Italy that he was caught up in the spirit of nationalism; Garibaldi’s influence was prior to Herzl’s. Moreover, whereas Jabotinsky’s heirs, Menachem Begin most prominently, paid lip service to his heritage, they were not entirely his disciples. Jabotinsky’s thinking largely lost its relevance in the face of the changing historical circumstances in which Begin and others operated. And so, with the passage of years following Jabotinsky’s death in 1940, there was an ever-lessened sense of obligation to the leader and his legacy....


2019 ◽  
pp. 115-168
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen

This chapter describes the ways in which right-wing Jews, whether they described themselves as “royalist,” “nationally minded” (nationalgesinnt), or “conservative,” attempted to make sense of the political and social changes around them following Germany’s defeat in the First World War and amid revolution at home. None of them were mere bystanders but active participants in their environment. The extent to which they could remain integrated into the Right in the years between 1918/1919 and 1924, on what terms, and in which parts of it, reflects the wider development of social and political circles they moved in, and thus the development of the wider Right, in the first five years of the Weimar Republic. It traces the rise of new concepts of belonging, namely the community of the trenches and the people’s community.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Promitzer

AbstractThe article treats the historical appearance of eugenic thinking in Bulgaria within debates on the notion of degeneration and on Darwinism since the early 1890s. Due to the marginal role of industry and urbanity in a widely rural country, such eugenic ideas initially only attracted a minority among Bulgarian intellectuals who followed similar debates in Russia. In the wake of Bulgaria's defeat in the First World War the focus of eugenic thinking shifted from the left to the right wing of the political specter with German racial hygiene as a new landmark. The article ends with the Bulgarian health legislation of 1929 which introduced voluntary prenuptial health certification.


Author(s):  
Connal Parr

St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a leg in the First World War, are all discussed. Carnduff’s own tumultuous life is reflected through his complicated Orange affiliation, gut class-consciousness, poetry, unpublished work, contempt for the local (and gentrified) Ulster artistic scene, and veneration of socially conscious United Irishman James Hope. It concludes with an assessment of their respective legacies and continuing import.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (08) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Джамиля Яшар гызы Рустамова ◽  

The article is dedicated to the matter of Turkish prisoners on the Nargin Island in the Caspian Sea during the First World War. According to approximate computations, there were about 50-60 thousand people of Turkish captives in Russia. Some of them were sent to Baku because of the close location to the Caucasus Front and from there they were sent to the Nargin Island in the Caspian Sea. As time showed it was not the right choise. The Island had no decent conditions for living and turned the life of prisoners into the hell camp. Hastily built barracks contravene meet elementary standards, were poorly heated and by the end of the war they were not heated at all, water supply was unsatisfactory, sometimes water was not brought to the prisoner's several days. Bread was given in 100 grams per person per day, and then this rate redused by half. Knowing the plight of the prisoners, many citizens of Baku as well as the Baku Muslim Charitable Society and other charitable societies provided moral and material support to prisoners, they often went to the camp, brought food, clothes, medicines Key words: World War I, prisoners of war, Nargin Island, refugees, incarceration conditions, starvation, charity


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-298
Author(s):  
Thomas Raithel

Abstract The interwar period was a phase of the formation of new states and of democratic awakening, but also a time of crises and the failure of democracies as well as the establishment of authoritarian and dictatorial systems. Until recently, it was largely overlooked by research and the general public. Given the recent increase of right-wing populist currents and authoritarian tendencies in Europe, interest has once again grown. The second “Contemporary History Podium” is thus dedicated to the question of how akin we are to the interwar period. How is it perceived in different countries which constituted themselves as democracies at the end of the First World War after the fall of the Romanov, Habsburg and Hohenzollern Empires? Also what is the relevance of this history for the present? Ota Konrád (Charles University Prague), Ekaterina Makhotina (University of Bonn), Anton Pelinka (Central European University Budapest), Thomas Raithel (Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin) und Krzysztof Ruchniewicz (Willy Brandt Center, Wrocław University) look into these questions utilising the examples of Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Austria, Germany and Poland.


1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Melling

SUMMARYRecent studies of industrial conflict during the First World War have challenged earlier interpretations of working-class politics in Britain. The debate has focussed on the events in west Scotland during the years when the legend of “Red Clydeside” was made. It is now commonplace to emphasise the limited progress of revolutionary politics and the presence of a powerful craft sectionalism in the industrial workforce. This essay discusses the recent research on workplace unrest, popular politics and the wartime state. Although the “new revisionism” provides an important corrective to earlier scholarship, there remain important questions which require a serious reappraisal of the forces behind the different forms of collective action which took place and their implications for the politics of socialism. It is argued that the struggles of skilled workers made an important contribution to the growth of Labour politics on the Clyde.


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