"Were the Minority Treaties a Failure?"

Carole Fink. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xxvii + 420 pp. $80.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-521-83837-5. Reviewed by Aimee Genell Published on H-German (November, 2005) The breakup of the Soviet Empire in 1989-91 Peace Conference, to its complete demise with the unavoidably invites historical comparison to the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938. period of 1918 when the new Versailles states, As the subtitle suggests, the book examines the in‐ wrought out of the former eastern empires, terrelationships among the diplomacy of the emerged between Germany and Russia. In partic‐ Great Powers, the Jewish minority populations of ular, the demise of the Soviet Union, and later the Eastern Europe and their advocates throughout Bosnian War, generated renewed academic and these years--predominantly Jewish organizations legal interest in the question of national and reli‐ from Western Europe and the United States. gious minority rights and protection in Europe. While broader issues related to minority rights This issue had largely faded from scholarly, diplo‐ protection are addressed, Fink concentrates pri‐ matic and legal debate since the mid-1950s.[1] marily on the minorities question as it relates to While the general narrative of the creation of the the "inassimilable" Ostjuden faced with the rise of minority treaties at the Paris Peace Conference expansionist nationalism in Southern and Eastern and their guarantee by the League of Nations may Europe. In a broader historical context, Fink's be somewhat familiar, Carole Fink's book expands book demonstrates the primary importance of the our understanding of the creation of the treaties question of national and religious minorities to and the era of their partial enforcement. In partic‐ the social and political instability of the interwar ular, Fink's work places the treaties in the broad years. context of the history of minority rights protec‐ The volume concentrates on three periods of tion in Europe that coincided with the rise of ex‐ diplomatic and international history, each repre‐ pansionist nationalism.[2] Defending the Rights of senting a shift or innovation in the practice of Others traces the history of international minority modern European diplomacy: the period of the protection in Eastern Europe from the 1878 Con‐ 1878 Congress of Berlin, the Paris Peace Confer‐ gress of Berlin through the creation of the minori‐ ence and the era of the League of Nations. The ty rights protection system devised at the Paris H-Net Reviews first section examines the period between 1878 in their attempt to secure religious and civic and 1918, focusing attention on the religious mi‐ rights for Jews in the successor states. Fink notes nority protections endorsed at the Congress of that the emergence of growing political divisions Berlin, the Balkan Wars and subsequent treaties, between Zionist and anti-nationalist Jewish advo‐ the reemergence of Poland during World War I, cates for the Ostjuden created insurmountable di‐ and fnally concludes with an analysis of the visions in Jewish diplomacy, where the Zionists pogrom in Lemberg (Lwów/Lviv) which occurred and anti-nationalists increasing had different between the Armistice and the Paris Peace Con‐ plans for aiding their co-religionists in the East. ference. Such a division would ultimately come to a head The 1878 Treaty of Berlin contained a diplo‐ at the Paris Peace Conference over the question of matic innovation that reappeared in modified Palestine. form at the Paris Peace Conference. The treaty The core of the book concentrates on diplo‐ made Great Power recognition of the newly inde‐ macy at the Paris Peace Conference and the future pendent and, in the case of Bulgaria, autonomous shape of Eastern Europe as the Allies attempted to Balkan states contingent upon guarantees of reli‐ deal with the fundamental clash between Wilsoni‐ gious and civic freedoms for the new states' reli‐ an self-determination and its necessary limitation. gious minorities. Additionally, the Great Powers The twin impossibilities of creating viable nation- linked the guarantee of minority rights to territo‐ states for all of Europe's minorities and at the rial gain. As Fink notes "the imposed clauses on same time forming ethnically homogenous na‐ minority rights became requirements not only for tion-states in the lands of former multiethnic em‐ recognition but were also, as in the cases of Ser‐ pires forced the Allies to address the minorities bia, Montenegro, and Romania, conditions for re‐ question. Fink interjects into the story of Ver‐ ceiving specific grants of territory" (p. 37). Fink ar‐ sailles and the creation of the minorities treaties gues that the minority rights provisions of the the complexity, political divisiveness, personali‐ Berlin Treaty were ultimately unenforceable-- ties and contingency involved. Fink argues that both in terms of a mechanism for enforcement as rising violence in Eastern Europe in conjunction well as lack of will on the part of the signatories. with popular outrage and the Allies' inconsistency Fink notes that the United States, which was not towards expansionist Poland fnally forced the party to the convention, was the only country that peacemakers to address the minorities question ever issued a complaint for noncompliance. For directly. After much diplomatic wrangling and Fink, the Congress of Berlin functioned as a prece‐ near misses, the Polish Minority Treaty, which lat‐ dent for the minority treaties implemented dur‐ er became a template for the subsequent treaties ing the interwar years in two important ways. The imposed upon the new and expanded states of results of the Berlin Congress presaged problems Eastern Europe, was signed on June 28, 1919. In which would eventually undermine the potential distinction to the "Berlin precedent," the minority success of the minority treaties during the period treaties created by the peacemakers attempted to of League of Nations enforcement. In particular, embrace a mechanism and procedure for en‐ the tension created by Great Power intervention forced compliance. However, rather like the in the domestic affairs of new states and the limit‐ "Berlin precedent," the treaties imposed minority ed extension of such minority protections to the rights protection on weak but expansionist and ir‐ Ottoman successor states versus universal imple‐ redentist states, rather than implementing such mentation. Here, as throughout the book, Fink ex‐ protection universally. That is to say, the Great amines in great detail the substantial role of West‐ Powers were not bound by similar treaties. Inter‐ ern European and American Jewish diplomatists national recognition of the boarders of the new 2 H-Net Reviews states in Eastern Europe was once again contin‐ nority Treaties came into being. As Fink writes, gent upon successor states agreeing to a limitation "[c]ontrary to the assertions of several historians, of their newly awarded sovereignty. Whereas the the little Versailles [the Polish Minority Treaty] Berlin Treaty was applied to the religious minori‐ represented neither a Jewish victory nor a Polish ties of the Ottoman successor states, the minority defeat, neither a triumph for self-determination treaties of Versailles were to protect national mi‐ nor a totally realist solution, but a hybrid experi‐ norities created by the new map of Eastern Eu‐ ment, balancing the Anglo-American vision of rope. The limited extension of such treaties to de‐ protection against Jewish demands and Franco- feated Central Power countries (excluding Ger‐ Polish opposition. The Great Powers, in their at‐ many) and the new and territorially expanded tempt to remove minorities as pawns in world states had fateful consequences for Europe's mi‐ politics, tried to have it both ways, both by inter‐ nority populations. For Fink, the minority treaties nationalizing the problem and also containing it that came out of the Paris Peace Conference were as best they could, leaving the unborn League the an expression of the limitations of self-determina‐ thankless task of turning confusing words into tion for the new Versailles states: "In a broader purposeful action" (p. 264). sense, the Polish Minority Treaty represented the Fink's arguments are distinctive in a number culmination of almost six months of equivocation of other ways: by placing the minority rights pro‐ over the widespread nonfulfillment of self-deter‐ tection promulgated at Versailles in a broader his‐ mination in Eastern Europe and the political dan‐ torical context and examining the Berlin Treaty gers resulting therefrom" (p. 261). and the minority treaties together, her work links Throughout the text, Fink never fails to re‐ Great Power-imposed minority protection in Eu‐ mind her readers of the limited options for East‐ rope to the concurrent rise of expansionist and ir‐ ern European Jews during the interwar years as redentist nationalism. For Fink, the "quest for in‐ immigration policies in the United States and ternational minority protection in Europe in‐ Britain became increasingly restrictive. Fink links volved the fusing of two powerful opposites: the the minorities question in Eastern Europe to the attainment and maintenance of full national inde‐ fate of the former Ottoman lands in the Middle pendence versus the expansion of outside con‐ East. She notes that "the question of Palestine trol" (p. 360). Though the treaties ultimately failed loomed

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