Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography: Eastern European Perspectives

Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions ISSN: 1469-0764 (Print) 1743-9647 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftmp20 Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography: Eastern European Perspectives Marius Turda To cite this article: Marius Turda (2008) Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography: Eastern European Perspectives, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 9:1, 129-136, DOI: 10.1080/14690760701859618 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760701859618 Published online: 18 Mar 2008. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 75 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ftmp20 Download by: [University of London] Date: 29 December 2017, At: 02:52 Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 9, No. 1, 129–136, March 2008 Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography: Eastern European Perspectives MARIUS TURDA Oxford Brookes University Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 Tmpr_reviews@yahoo.co.uk TudorGeorgescu Taylor Totalitarian 1469-0764 Original 9102008 00000March & Article Francis (print)/1743-9647 Movements 2008Ltd and Political (online)Religions 10.1080/14690760701859618 FTMP_A_286126.sgm and Francis John R. Lampe, Balkans into Southeastern Europe: a Century of War and Transition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. pp. 338, £16.99, ISBN 0333793471. Iván Zoltán Dénes (ed.), Liberty and the Search for Identity: Liberal Nationalisms and the Legacy of Empires. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006. pp. 510, £31.95, ISBN 9789637326448. Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova and Anna Loutfi (eds), A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006. pp. 678, £39.95, ISBN 9789637326394. Sorin Antohi, Balázs Trencsényi and Péter Apor (eds), Narratives Unbound: Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007. pp. 448, £24.95, ISBN 9789637326851. Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, John Fox and Liana Grancea, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. pp. 440, £19.95, ISBN 9780691128344. Introductory Remarks Almost concomitantly with the collapse of the Soviet Empire in eastern Europe, scholars earnestly began to explain the post-communist condition both in terms of every day experience and as an opportunity for the societies in the region to come to terms with their troubled past.1 To the discomfort of many, it soon became obvious that communism was, in fact, more influential in shaping national identity than generally assumed. Moreover, not only was communism difficult to discard from society, culture and politics, but it emerged that, in many ways, it upheld many of the ideas about the nation developed by pre-1945 fascism. Such discoveries gnawed at the intellectual credibility of those scholars in the region who viewed these two totalitarian movements as mutually exclusive as well as foreign to the historical tradition of their countries. Correspondence Address: Department of Arts and Humanities, Oxford Brookes Universtiy, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK. Email: mturda@brookes.ac.uk ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/08/010129-08 © 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14690760701859618 Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 130 M. Turda This was also the moment when the ability to engage in a dialogue on controversial issues gave many the long-awaited prospect of challenging the standardised national narratives. The ensuing critique of communist scholarship and of its post-1989 continuators, stemmed from a number of factors, including access to archives, re-publication of interwar authors, the influx of western scholarship and, most importantly, young eastern European scholars studying abroad. Yet efforts to exploit the opportunity of a fresh start encountered many problems.2 In terms of historical scholarship, the opening of the archives, for instance, was as narrow as it was intense, focusing on the internal analysis of documents, seeking to understand the ‘truth’ behind some of the twentieth century’s key events such as the Second World War, the establishment of communist regimes and anticommunist resistance. While they lacked a precise consensus on the limits of the relevant context of interpretation, supporters of this historiographic trend agreed on the importance of the document itself, hoping retroactively to rescue national history through a therapy of Rankean ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist]’. The opposite trend, namely authors who insisted on a broad reading of texts, sometimes from different historical traditions, promptly materialised. These authors were not only attempting to demystify the past, but they equally considered the matter of historical ‘truth’ to be simply irrelevant. The majority of historical studies published after 1989 in eastern Europe belonged to either of these trends, some authors preferring to publish collections of documents, whilst others chose interpretation of texts instead. To begin to understand some of these studies, we need to raise two questions. Firstly, is there substance in the interpretative claim that historical traditions are ‘invented’ and hence prone to continuous modification and re-construction? Secondly, are historical visions of national uniqueness as sharply opposed to each other as proponents of nationalist historiographies would suggest? This succinct survey of some of the recent scholarship dealing with eastern Europe takes into account developments in general history, history of ideas, gender studies, anthropology and historiography, and hopes to offer some preliminary answers to the above questions. Old Wine in New Bottles Before 1989, reliable accounts of eastern Europe were generally produced by western scholars.3 These general synopses resisted dogmatic reductionism and transcended immediate local nationalist interests, thus initiating a particular style of history writing, one which proposed an eclectic methodology informed by a detached narration of the most important historical facts. Moreover, this historiographic trend distilled and interpreted not only the key texts produced by eastern European academics, but it also opened up to new scholarship from collateral disciplines like political sciences, historical sociology and cultural anthropology.4 Not surprisingly, then, after the collapse of communism these scholars were amongst the first to extend their expertise into the transition period, clearly competing with the emerging local historians. To be sure, gradually, the more the latter consolidated their position, the more the former lost their pre-eminence. Yet, western scholars are not completely eclipsed by their eastern European counterparts, as proven by John R. Lampe’s latest book, Balkans into Southeast Europe. This is a comprehensive survey of political movements and ideas in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia it its many forms, from the conservative, Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography 131 nationalist, populist and fascist movements of the interwar period to communist and post-communist regimes between 1945 and 1989 and after 1990, respectively. It is also is an excellent introduction to the history of the Balkan states of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the last century. Essentially, Lampe demonstrates how traditional narratives of political events and quantitative techniques may still be used as tools to access the history of a region convulsed by wars and a prolonged conversion from democratic to fascist and communist regimes, and whose recent history has been dominated by revolutions, independence movements and the EU enlargement. Utilising general histories of the region written by western and local scholars alike, this new book exemplifies the excellent uses to which the enumeration of political events and a macro-perspective on political history can be put in the history of this region, and the need to cautiously balance well-known facts with qualitative analysis. Qualified confirmation is given to the thesis that this region’s history was one of ‘unstable juxtaposition of nation-states and empires with lagging economic development and overwhelmingly rural societies’ (p.9), but this claim is neither original nor sufficiently explored. Lampe examines two fundamental questions pertaining to this region: why is war such a recurrent feature? How did it shape the history of the region? The explanations provided are not necessarily original as they have been already developed by a plethora of books on the Balkans since 1990.5 The book does, however, convey the troubled history of the region, and as such it contains several interesting generalisations, culminating in the conclusion that ‘[i]n appraising the full twentieth century, however, let us remember the region’s considerable European steps, false as well as true, along the hard, war-torn way that this volume has tried to trace’ (p.295). This book will be of great use to undergraduate students interested in the general political events of the last century in southeast Europe; unfortunately, there is little in terms of new research approaches for a specialised audience and there is nothing there to be furthered investigated. If Lampe may be seen to represent the category of scholars favouring general histories of the region, a more specialised but no less passionate tendency, which attracts western and eastern European scholars alike, is equally important. This is not only a growing area of research but at present benefits from the contribution of some of the most gifted scholars working on and from eastern Europe. One illustrative example is the volume edited by Iván Z. Dénes on the Liberal Nationalisms and the Legacy of Empires. Liberalism and National Mythopoeia In his foreword to this volume, Michael Freeden explains the need for such a collaborative enterprise thus: ‘A view of liberalism as a complex and mutating set of beliefs has emerged, in which universal aspirations jostle against the furtherance of particular preferences and differences, while ideologies – rather than perceived as dogmatic and doctrinaires – are understood to be in a continuous state of flux and reconfiguration’ (p.ix). Such flexibility is remarkably well expressed in diverse historic traditions against which the contributors discuss liberal ideas and their association with nationalism since the mid-nineteenth century. In retrospect, the general verdict has been to situate liberalism in eastern Europe at the confluence between modernity and tradition, therefore considering it as the expression of western cosmopolitan civilization which other cultures Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 132 M. Turda imitate and adopt. This volume critically engages with this historiographic stereotype, and aims at dispelling it. Thus, each chapter should be treated as an independent contribution on the history of political liberalism in its broadest sense, rather than as a coherent whole. Periods and subjects addressed range widely: from liberalism and nationalism in Britain to the Dutch and Belgian liberalism and regionalism in the nineteenth century; from German and Austrian liberalism to Polish, Hungarian and Czech liberalism to Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish liberalisms. While emphasising the highly individualised and moralistic nature of liberalism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, clear connections with more recent developments in eastern Europe are nevertheless established. The book also raises questions as to the links between national traditions and subsequent liberal ideologies; between western and eastern European forms of liberalism; and between enlarged conceptual frameworks and broader, more centralised and state-sponsored strategies towards social homogenisation and political integration. Liberty and the Search for Identity dispels outdated scholarship on liberalism and its connection with the current democratic culture emerging in central and eastern Europe. It thus carefully examines the historical origins of liberal ideas both in western Europe and in countries like Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria in order to fully contextualise current debates about the role of liberalism in shaping the development of eastern European societies. To this end, the importance of this book lies both in its re-interpretation of historical sources and in emphasising the need for extending this model of analysis to particular case studies. To be sure, fresh examinations of previously expounded topics are always best received when the historiographic field also opens up to alternative interpretations and when traditional readings of the national canons are questioned. The following examples are extracted from three different fields: gender studies, cultural and social anthropology, and historiography. New Fields of Research Whilst an abundance of studies on gender exist elsewhere, these topics have received an appropriate scholarly attention in eastern Europe only since 1989.6 A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms is the most comprehensive collaborative work to date addressing feminist movements in eastern Europe. The dictionary complements previous works such as those by Susan Zimmerman, Karen Offen, Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker,7 not only in its geographical coverage but also in terms in individuals selected. Although concerned fundamentally with biographical details, this dictionary identifies important correlations between the life of women and the secularisation and scientific rationalisation of theories of nation and gender. The dictionary thus provides an excellent overview of long-forgotten feminist activists and the manner in which these figures should be remembered in their national contexts, while also benefiting the broader field of gender studies. To that end, the editors could have engaged with questions of public health, social hygiene and health education, fields in which the feminists in eastern Europe were particularly visible. The discussions of how these numerous women of various social backgrounds tried during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to claim gender equality and social and political recognition is especially illuminating. The dictionary’s principal argument is that women writers and activists were attempting to Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography 133 promote public awareness of the role of women in society, both as a reflection of general European trends of social emancipation and as a response to particular historical and religious traditions in each of these countries. Essentially, the dictionary takes a route little travelled by historians thus far, in seeking to trace the evolution of feminist thinking in eastern Europe. It ultimately delineates the growing preoccupation of social historians, anthropologists and political theorists with marginalised social activists and feminist figures, charting how new gender roles were being carved out in societies undergoing profound changes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perhaps the very fact that A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms generates new understandings of the role played by women and gender in shaping ideologies and social contexts, then, is its most important achievement. Gender, like the nation and ethnicity, is historically and culturally specific, and it ought to be considered anew for each national context, in the way the next book under observation here exemplifies with such dexterity. Anthropology and Ethnic Identity Rogers Brubaker can claim to have written one of the books most cited by the new generation of scholars on nationalism in eastern Europe.8 Recently, he has teamed up with some of them, and put his theory of shifting triadic relations between ‘nationalizing states’, ‘national minorities’ and their ‘external national homelands’ to the test. The result is a refreshing insight into the mechanisms of ethnic interaction in Transylvania. Despite a long and vigorous tradition of anthropological scholarship into the ways in which different cultures have viewed ethnic interaction, only lately have there been attempts to produce major studies, comparative or otherwise, of multi-ethnic urban environments.9 Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town, another example of trans-national collaborative work, explores these recent trends in nationalist studies and applies them to the understanding of factors that contributed to shaping Hungarian and Romanian ethnicities in the town of Cluj/Koloszvár in Romania. According to the authors, the imagery and iconography of the social interaction in the multi-ethnic urban environment of Cluj/Koloszvár, points to a ‘relational, processual, and dynamic understanding of ethnicity and nation’ instead of the overtly ‘substantialist understanding of ethnic groups and nations as bounded entities, collective individuals, and self-conscious actors’ which exists in the general scholarship (p.10). Moreover, the book points to some of the historical foundations of that imagery and chimes in with other recent studies of nationalism and national identity which allude to the problems such ethnic interaction has created for the status of Hungarians and Romanians in the post-1989 context.10 The city of Cluj/Koloszvár has been repeatedly singled out as an example of ethnic radicalism resulting from excessive centralism and dogmatic nationalism. In this analysis the city is defined explicitly as a complex space, where conflicting ethnic, social and gender identities are formed and re-formed, but also as a space where multilingualism and multiple senses of belonging co-exist. Different personal stories are unveiled to consider how far ethnicity, language and history have woven themselves into the social fabric of this city. Key elements include portraits of the city’s dwellers, their daily routines and occupations, education and religion, as well as inter-marriages and migrations. As for 134 M. Turda Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 the resurgence of nationalist views in this Transylvanian city, especially between 1990 and 2000, the authors’ stated intention is ‘not to make the anachronistic claim that contemporary conflicts are grounded in “ancient hatreds”: nationalist conflict in East Central Europe, as elsewhere, is a distinctively modern phenomenon, emerging only in the middle of the nineteenth century’ (p.23). And the undertaking is successful, as the authors convincingly communicate theories of ethnicity and nationalism, from Fredrik Barth to Benedict Anderson, and draw out the recurring motifs of what everyday ethnicity actually represents. All these achievements strongly recommend this book as a welcome addition to the literature on nationalism in contemporary eastern Europe. It will inevitably find its way into specialist debates and graduate reading lists. As such, it is best read in conjunction with Narratives Unbound, a collection of studies dealing with postcommunist historiography. Historiography and the Usable Past The first attempt to map out historiographic developments in eastern Europe after the changes of 1989 was initiated by the American Historical Review in 1992.11 Since then, however, contrary to numerous international projects, individual and collective publications, very little of importance has been published in the field of historiography.12 Narratives Unbound corrects this deficiency by looking at recent historiographic trends in Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Written by young scholars from eastern Europe, these chapters endeavour to set these trends firmly within the context of political and social changes after 1989 as well as within contemporary developments in European and North American historiography. All chapters share a common conceptual platform, namely that national historiography is defined essentially in accordance with, and in endorsement of, pervasive nationalist themes. It is shown, for example, how much more emphasis was placed by historians in eastern Europe on modernisation, nationalism, anti-Semitism and ethnic minorities. The importance of totalitarian movements was therefore – it is argued – articulated as considerably more paramount for the discipline of history than for other ones. Reference is also made to a number of quintessentially particular themes such as revolution, independence, fascism and communism. The types of historical schools and discourses that were developed and continue to be developed in these countries, as well as their subsequent application to emerging academic fields, are also carefully delineated. The discussion of Hungarian historiography is perceptively situated next to the analysis of Polish historiography, followed by general overviews of Czech, Slovak, Romanian and Bulgarian cases. It emerges that the historiographies in eastern Europe have largely experienced a similar conceptual trajectory since 1945. Historians have defined their search for a usable past in opposition either to something external (Europe, the Balkans, the Soviet Union) or internal (ethnic minorities, class enemies, and so on). This common feature notwithstanding, the book suggests that, conceptually, a growing concern with the normative historiographic developments additionally shifted attention towards more multidisciplinary oriented thinking in local historiographies. Methodologically, the book therefore points to both the virtues and the limitations of traditional historiographies which stress continuity rather than disjuncture. Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 Politics, Religion, Gender, and Historiography 135 Additionally, while acknowledging a broadening of western historiographic models in this period – especially as all of the contributors to the volume have studied at western universities – the book also aims to accommodate the growing interests of a new generation of local historians. It is therefore insistent that traditional historians in eastern Europe are still largely operating within the national paradigms of historical continuity and ethnic uniqueness, by contrast to recent work on political ideologies, like Liberty and the Search for Identity, which has underlined the extent to which domestic developments were largely the result of external influences. Furthermore, recent scholarship appears to have witnessed a more marked division between mainstream historical discourse and alternative interpretations of the national canons. In western Europe, by contrast, a better relationship seems to have existed historically between complementary historical discourses than appears to have emerged in eastern Europe after 1989. In Hungary, the Czech lands and Poland, for example, critical historical sociology and revisionist Marxism have enjoyed a sustained appraisal during communism, whilst in Romania and Hungary dogmatic nationalism and orthodox communist thinking have dominated the historical profession. Ultimately, Narratives Unbound highlights the centrality of national identity in shaping historical discourses, while questioning its threatened place within the current historical debates. Like Liberty and the Search for Identity, Antohi and his colleagues believe that coming to terms with a difficult past is a central concern of social and national policies. Likewise, although more focused on this issue, namely whether the revolutions of 1989 were ‘enough to introduce a radical break’ in historical theory and historiographic practices (p.xi), the book indicates a growing anxiety on behalf of post-communist elites and their relationship with historiography and political projects such as liberal democracy and modernisation. Scholars will quibble with some of the simplistic judgments encountered in some of the chapters, as one may well wonder whether the treatment of recent scholarship could have been more meticulous, without adding too much to the length of the book. Those caveats aside, this book will soon become compulsory reading for those interested in eastern Europe. Preliminary Conclusions There is much more one could say about recent scholarship on eastern Europe than has been attempted here.13 New studies are published regularly, and some of them are prodigious, both in terms of secondary and primary sources, the writing intelligible and elegant. Most importantly, much of this new scholarship is produced by scholars from eastern Europe. As this review hopefully demonstrated, these authors’ commitment to international scholarship does not blind them to the creativity of their local historiographic traditions, albeit these traditions are sometimes unable to meet standards of analytic distance, and are often encumbered with academic controversy. Moreover, these new eastern European perspectives indicate that they are more than just coruscating reproductions of idioms, trends and styles of writing developed elsewhere. On the contrary, it is clear that after almost two decades of changes and transformation, a new generation of scholars has emerged in eastern Europe, whose expertise has not only critically appraised existing scholarship on totalitarian movements like communism and fascism, or on the history of ideas 136 M. Turda and historiography, but also expanded to include new topics like gender and political religions. It will not be long until this emerging scholarship reaches its mature stage, and announces the disappearance of eastern Europe (and its geographical permutations) as an object of study. Downloaded by [University of London] at 02:52 29 December 2017 Notes 1. To avoid innumerable references to shifting symbolic geographies, in this review article ‘eastern Europe’ includes all former communist states (without Russia) of central, eastern and southeast Europe, and the Balkans (with Greece). 2. One example is the new scholarship on Romanian fascism. See Marius Turda, “New Perspectives on Romanian Fascism: Themes and Options”, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 6/1 (2005), pp.143–50. 3. Some of the most recognisable are: Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1974); Charles and Barbara Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920 (Washington: Washington University Press, 1977); Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and Ivan T. Berend, The Crisis Zone of Europe: an Interpretation of East-Central European History in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 4. The most visible examples probably are: Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Richard J. Crampton, A Short History of Modern Bulgaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). These books have been re-edited a few times and translated into Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek, respectively. 5. See especially Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: a Journey through History (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993); Mark Mazower, The Balkans: a Short History (New York: Random House, 2000); and Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804–1999 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2001). 6. See Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and the Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (London: Verso, 1993); Chris Corrin (ed.), Gender and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1999); and Susan Gal and Gail Kligman (eds), Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life after Socialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 7. Susan Zimmerman, Die bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegung und Frauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918 (Vienna: Promedia Verlag, 1999); Karen M. Offen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950: a Political History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker (eds), Women’s Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: a European Perspective (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 8. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 9. Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848– 1948 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 10. Marius Turda, “Transylvania Revisited: Public Discourse and Historical Representation in Contemporary Romania”, in Balázs Trencsényi et al. (ed.), Nation-Building and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies (Iaşi: Polirom, 1998), pp.197–206; Constantin Iordachi and Marius Turda, “Reconciliere politică versus discurs politic: percepţ ia Ungariei în istoriografia românească , 1989–1999”, Altera 6/14 (2000), pp.153–74. 11. See the special issue of The American Historical Review 97/4 (1992) devoted to the ‘Historiography of the Countries of Eastern Europe’, which contains reports on Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. 12. One such attempt is Karl Kaser, (Re)writing History: Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004). 13. See also Marius Turda, “National Historiographies in the Balkans, 1830–1945”, in Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds), Society and the Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender (forthcoming Palgrave, 2008). sc]ed [li ab e[v re] ab e[v re] cet]d [li