Diversity: a Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II
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1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page iii RETURN TO DIVERSITY A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II THIRD EDITION Joseph Rothschild Nancy M. Wingfield New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2000 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page iv Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1989, 1993, 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 http://www.oup-usa.org Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rothschild, Joseph. Return to diversity : a political history of East Central Europe since World War II / Joseph Rothschild, Nancy M. Wingfield. — 3rd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-511993-2 (paper : alk. paper).—ISBN 0-19-511992-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Europe, Eastern—History—1945– I. Wingfield, Nancy Meriwether. II. Title. DJK50.R67 1999 947Ј.0009Ј045—dc21 98-29737 CIP Printing (last digit): 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page v This book is dedicated to Sir William Deakin and to the memories of Henry L. Roberts and Hugh Seton-Watson, teachers who introduced me to the study of East Central Europe. —J. R. 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page vi The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. MILAN KUNDERA 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page vii Contents Preface ix Preface to the Second Edition x Preface to the First Edition xi 1. The Interwar Background 1 2. World War II 23 3. The Communists Come to Power 75 4. The Dialectics of Stalinism and Titoism 125 5. The Revenge of the Repressed: East Central Europe Reasserts Itself 147 6. A Precarious Stalemate 191 7. The Various Endgames 227 8. The Postcommunist Decade 265 Notes 303 Suggested Readings 317 Index 325 vii 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page viii 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page ix Preface In his preface to the second edition of Return to Diversity, Joseph Rothschild envisioned a book on postcommunist East Central Europe to complete a trilogy on the modern history of the region. These plans, however, have fallen victim to his failing health. Because Return to Diversity continues to stand up well to the test of time, Oxford University Press has chosen to pub- lish a third edition. In this edition, I have occasionally updated earlier chap- ters of the book, and there has been some analytical reinterpretation in Chapter 7, “The Various Endgames.” A new chapter, “The Postcommu- nist Era,” replaces the Epilogue of the second edition. It examines the prob- lems of political transition from Communism in the decade since 1989. In addition, I have significantly expanded the Suggested Readings to include some of the important new research on the region. This wealth of recent publications reflects the increased interest in East Central Europe since the fall of Communism. It is a pleasure to recognize the people who have helped me pre- pare the third edition of Return to Diversity: Melissa Bokovoy, Maria Bucur, David Crowe, István Deák, Rick Frucht, Christine Holden, Charlie Ingrao, Mills Kelly, Padraic Kenney, Jim Niessen, Peter Mentzel, Nick Miller, Elaine Spencer, and Teresa Tickle. I would also like to thank Todd Huebner for designing the maps and Stacie Caminos and Gioia Stevens, my editors at Oxford, for their advice. DeKalb, Illinois N. M. W. February 1999 ix 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page x Preface to the Second Edition The first edition of this book was published early in 1989—that annus mirabilis of East Central European political history—the year that saw the effective repudiation of Communism by the peoples of the Soviet bloc. Hence a revision has become appropriate and is presented herewith. Nevertheless, I do permit myself to claim that the book’s first five chapters have stood up very well since 1989, requiring only some gram- matical and occasional factual updating in this edition, but no exten- sive structural revision or analytical reinterpretation. I am also gratified to note that my much criticized decision to omit in-depth coverage of East Germany has been vindicated by history, as that soi-disant state has now vanished from the map of Europe. Chapter 6 has been rethought, recast, and restructured. Chapter 7 (“The Various Endgames”) is entirely new, as is the Epilogue. They relate the termination of Communism in each of the area’s countries, analyze the motors of this process in the area as a whole, and speculate about the problematics of the transition to postcommunism. If granted sufficient longevity and health, I would like, in due course, to write a successor book on postcommunist East Central Eu- rope, as an exercise both in contemporary history and in the political- science specialization of systemic transitions. That book would, in ef- fect, round out a trilogy consisting of my East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (University of Washington Press, 1974), the pres- ent volume, and the contemplated one. New York J. R. January 1993 x 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page xi Preface to the First Edition The main challenge in writing a basic general survey such as I attempt here is distillation. And distillation inevitably entails the omission or condensation of material that specialists would prefer to include or to develop. But a basic book cannot be a comprehensive chronology, nor a heavily footnoted research monograph, nor a deeply searching analy- sis. While I, too, regret the absence from the following pages of many interesting episodes, important personalities, and suggestive arguments that I would have liked to include, I must nevertheless ask the reader to judge this volume by the criteria that are appropriate to its own genre—that of a general survey—and not by standards alien to it. A word is in order as to why this book does not include a consoli- dated analysis of the political history of East Germany comparable to my extended probing into those of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. The (East) German De- mocratic Republic is indeed a state, but it is not a nation and is less than half a country. Before World War II it was not even a state (un- like my other cases), but simply a part of Germany and hence not in East Central Europe. Since I view this book as a continuation of my East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (1974), those are valid reasons for omitting East Germany here. More important, how- ever, is the consideration that East German domestic and foreign pol- itics are so overwhelmingly a part and a function of “the question of divided Germany” on the Great Power agenda, that any serious effort on my part to explore them in this book would have burst its perime- ters and muddied my professional waters. Greece, in turn, is omitted xi 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page xii xii Preface to the First Edition because it is essentially a Mediterranean, not an East Central Euro- pean, country in its cultural, economic, and political perspectives and because it was not subsumed into the Communist orbit after World War II. Analogous reasons account for the omission of Austria. Finally, the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are left out because their brief interwar period of formal independence did not sur- vive World War II. It is conventional for the author of a professional book to list a num- ber of colleagues who have helpfully read all or parts of the prepubli- cation manuscript, to thank them, and to avow a pious acknowledg- ment that any residual flaws and errors are nevertheless the author’s own responsibility and are not to be imputed to these readers. Deem- ing this convention to be saccharine and somewhat hypocritical, I do not abide by it. My expressions of public, and very sincere, gratitude are here reserved for my supportive family; my splendid typist, Audrey McInerney; and the helpful officers of two valued institutions who in- vited, encouraged, and generously subsidized my work: Drs. Enid C. B. Schoettle and Paul Balaran of the International Division of The Ford Foundation and Dr. Jason H. Parker of the American Council of Learned Societies. New York J. R. January 1988 1822_efm1_i-xiv 9/20/99 11:35 AM Page xiii RETURN TO DIVERSITY 1822_e01_p1-21 9/20/99 11:38 AM Page 1 1 The Interwar Background 1 At the close of World War I, the four defeated empires that had dom- inated and ruled East Central Europe—the German, Habsburg, Ot- toman, and Russian empires—were replaced by a dozen new or re- stored or enlarged would-be nation-states, all of which based their asserted legitimation on the then reigning politico-moral principle of national self-determination. Though the territorial arrangements of 1919 to 1921 still left a number of additional nations in East Central Europe stateless and created problems of aggrieved minorities allocated to states toward which they felt little or no affinity (conditions that in- duced revisionist apologists for the territorial losers of World War I to charge that the territorial arrangements were merely a cynical and un- principled victors’ fiat), for all their admitted flaws, they still freed three times as many people from nationally alien rule as they subjected to such rule.