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Quo Vadis, Eastern Europe?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Peter F. Sugar*
Affiliation:
University of Washington (Emeritus)

Extract

As these pages are being written, a fragile cease-fire is holding in Croatia, and the Bosnian legislature is about to declare Bosnia-Hercegovina an independent state despite the strenuous opposition of close to forty percent of the population. When hostilities began in Croatia, the Serb insurgents there called themselves cetniks and referred to their enemies as ustasa, World War II labels which the Serb media promptly adopted. Bosnian Serbs might call themselves cetniks too, should it come to open hostilities in that republic, but they will have trouble finding a label that would be applicable not only to their Croat, but also to their Muslim enemies.

Type
I Eastern Europe Reconsidered
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR 

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Footnotes

*

This essay was written in March, 1992 and reflects the author's views at that time.

*

People living in the area under discussion point out, quite correctly, that Ukraine, Belarus and Russia situated east of them are the true geographic Eastern Europe; they refer to their own lands as Central Europe, East-Central Europe or Southeastern Europe. I will still use the expression Eastern Europe for the lands that were until recently part of the Soviet Empire because this term is a convenient shorthand to denote them collectively.

References

Note

1. See Eminov, Ali, “There are no Turks in Bulgaria; Rewriting History by Administrative Fiat,” International Journal of Turkish Studies, 4/2, pp. 203–22.Google Scholar

2. See, among others, Sugar, Peter F., “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” in Sugar, Peter F. and Lederer, Ivo J. (eds.), Nationalism in Eastern Europe (University of Washington Press; Seattle & London, 1969), pp. 354.Google Scholar

3. I first used the term defensive nationalism in “The Problems of Nationalism in Eastern Europe; Past and Present,” Occasional Papers #13 (The Wilson Center; East European Program; Washington, D.C., 1988).Google Scholar

4. See Banac, Ivo, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Cornell University Press; Ithaca & London, 1984).Google Scholar

5. Komlos, John, The Habsburg Monarchy as a Customs Union (Princeton University Press; Princeton, N.J., 1983) has shown how wrong the popular perception was at least as far as one of the great states is concerned. The best introduction to the economics of Eastern Europe is: Ivan T. Berend and Gyorgy Ranki, Economic Development in East-Central Europe in the 19th & 20th Centuries (Columbia University Press; New York & London, 1974).Google Scholar

6. Economic Bulletin of the Hungarian Observer. 5/1, p. 1, (January, 1992).Google Scholar

8. The information in the following paragraph was gained by listening to a lecture of Professor Ivan T. Berend at the University of Washington in October 1991.Google Scholar

9. These prices were calculated from data supplied by various Hungarian publications.Google Scholar

10. This information was contained in Professor Berend's lecture.Google Scholar

11. Calculated on the Austrian Schilling rates published in all Viennese newspapers.Google Scholar

12. Harden, Blaine, “Warsaw is left with the Runoff of Communism's Despoliation,” The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, December 23–29, 1991, p. 16.Google Scholar