STUDIES IN RUSSIA AND EAST EUROPE (formerly Studies in Russian and East European History)

Chairman o[ the Editorial Board: M. A. Branch, Director, School of Slavonic and East European Studies

Phyllis Auty and Richard Clogg (editors) BRITISH POLICY TOW ARDS WARTIME RESIST ANCE IN

YUGOSLA VIA AND GREECE

Elisabeth Barker BRITISH POLICY IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE IN THE SECOND WORLD

WAR

Richard Clogg (editor) THE MOVEMENT FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE, 1770-1821: A

Collection of Documents

OIga Crisp STUDIES IN THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY BEFORE 1914

John C. K. Daly RUSSIAN SEAPOWER AND 'THE EASTERN QUESTION', 1827-41

Dennis Deletant and Harry Hanak (editors) HISTORIANS AS NATION-BUILDERS: Central and South-East Europe

Jane Grayson and Faith Wigzell (editors) NIKOLA Y GOGOL: Text and Context

D. G. Kirby (editor) FINLAND AND RUSSIA, 1808-1920: Documents

Martin McCauley COMMUNIST POWER IN EUROPE, 1944-49 (editor) THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC SINCE 1945 KHRUSHCHEV AND KHRUSHCHEVISM (editor) KHRUSHCHEV AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET AGRICULTURE MARXISM-LENINISM IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC:

The Socialist Unity Party (SED) THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SOVIET STATE, 1917-1921:

Documents (editor) THE SOVIET UNION UND ER GORBACHEV (editor)

Martin McCauley and Stephen Carter (editors) LEADERSHIP AND SUCCESSION IN THE SOVIET UNION, EASTERN

EUROPE AND CHINA

Martin McCauley and Peter Waldron THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN RUSSIAN STATE, 1855-81

Evan Mawdsley THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BALTIC FLEET

Lszl6 Peter and Robert B. Pynsent (editors) INTELLECTUALS AND THE FUTURE IN THE HABSBURG

MONARCHY, 1890-1914

J. J. Tomiak (editor) WESTERN PERSPECTIVES ON SOVIET EDUCATION IN THE 1980s

Stephen White and Alex Pravda (editors) IDEOLOGY AND SOVIET POLmCS

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Hugh Seton-Watson 1916-1984

Historians as Nation-Builders Central and South-East Europe

Edited by

DENNIS DELETANT Lecturer in Romanian School o[ Slavonic and East European Studies University o[ London

and

HARRY HANAK Reader in International Relations School o[ Slavonic and East European Studies University o[ London

M MACMILLAN in association with PRESS Palgrave Macmillan

School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1988 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-44504-4

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First published 1988

Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LID Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the worid

Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Historians as nation-builders: Central and South-East Europe.-(Studies in Russia and East Europe). 1. Europe, Eastern-Historiography I. Deletant, Dennis 11. Hanak, Harry III. University of London, Schooloi Slavonic and East European Studies IV. Se ries 947' .0072 DJK32 ISBN 978-1-349-09649-7 ISBN 978-1-349-09647-3 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09647-3

Hugh Seton-Watson was Professor of Russian History at the University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies from 1951 to 1983. He died in Washington, D.C., 19 December 1984.

This collection of papers is dedicated to his memory by friends and colleagues.

Contents

Hugh Seton-Watson frontispiece

Preface

Notes on the Contributors

1 On Trying to be a Historian of Eastern Europe Hugh Seton-Watson

2 The Greeks and their Past Richard Clogg

3 Some Considerations on the Emergence of the Principality of Moldavia in the Middle of the Fourteenth

ix

xv

1

15

Century 32 Dennis Deletant

4 Stojan Novakovic: Historian, Politician, Diplomat 51 Dimitrije Djordjevic

5 Czech Historians and the End of Austria-Hungary 70 Harry Hanak

6 Mihail Koglniceanu: Historian as Foreign Minister, 1876-8 87 Barbara lelavich

7 Milenko M. Vukicevic: from Serbianism to Yugoslavism 106 Charles lelavich

8 The Idea of a Comparative History of East Central Europe: the Story of a Venture 124 Domokos Kosary

9 East Europeans Studying History in Vienna (1855-1918) 139 Walter Leitsch

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Vlll Contents

10 Nicolae Iorga as Historian and Politician 157 Maurice Pearton

11 Zalud-Vysokomytsky: a Czech Rebel Historian of 1848-9 174 Robert B. Pynsent

12 Henry L. Roberts and the Study of the History and Politics of East Central Europe 206 loseph Rothschild

13 Bibliography of the Works of Hugh Seton-Watson 216 lohn C. K. Daly

Index 238

Preface

Close ties connect the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the University of London with the family of the late Professor Hugh Seton-Watson. It was Hugh's father, R. W. Seton-Watson who, in 1915, together with Ronald Burrows, Principal of King's College, London, was instrumental in the establishment of a Lecture-ship in Slavonic Studies at King's College. The first holder of this post was Professor T. G. Masaryk, thus conferring on this teaching post and the university institution which, after the First World War, emanated from it, both distinction and uniqueness. R. W. Seton-Watson himself became the first holder of the Masaryk chair of Central European History in 1922, a post which he held until 1945. In 1951 his eldest son Hugh was appointed to the chair of Russian History , a post which he held for thirty-two years. Thus Robert William and his son George Hugh Nicholas held the two senior posts of Russian and Central European History for aperiod of some fifty-five years. Hugh's retirement in 1983 was the occasion for an international conference held in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. The subject of the conference was 'History and Historians in Central and South-Eastern Europe' .

Although Hugh Seton-Watson was Professor of Russian History his academic career and interests were not confined to Russian and Soviet history . His earliest work, Eastern Europe between the Wars (1945) followed, naturally enough, the interests of his father, as he acknowledged in the preface. Most of this book was written in Cape Town to which he had been evacuated from wartime service in Cairo. His main source material came from the local public library. Given the fact that he was soon to develop interests outside the field of east European history and politics, the reader may feel that fate had decreed that he should write this analysis of eastern Europe in South Africa. Immediately after the war Hugh concluded - and in this he was surely inftuenced by the prevalent political atmosphere in central and eastern Europe - that one could not learn about eastern Europe without learning about Russia. His next major work, The East European Revolution (1950), amply illustrated this connection between eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In turn, the study of the history of Russia and of central and eastern Europe brought him to the study of politics and of international relations. In the

ix

x Preface

introduction to his analysis of the cold war, Neither War nor Peace (1960), Hugh was to stress the connection. He wrote: 'Of all my travels I think the most enlightening were in the Balkans, whose combinatin of intellectual subtlety and crudity, of tortuous intrigue and honest courage revealed more truths about the political animal man than are to be found in most text books of political science.' Professor Rothschild in his paper on the American historian Henry L. Roberts, which appears in this book, stresses that, like Hugh, Roberts also found that the 'illuminating quality of Balkan politics ... cast light on other areas more than on the Balkans themselves'. Hugh hirnself regarded his works in the field of politics and inter-national relations, and in particular Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (1977), as his most important work. Thus his academic work progressed from one area to another, from the discipline of history to other disciplines all based on the knowledge that these were tools for the solution of problems that interested hirn.

In 1980 he wrote in Reftections of a Learner that since the mid-sixties he had given more attention to the periphery of Russia and had tried to examine comparatively such processes as 'the formation of national consciousness, the decline of multi-national empires, the emergence of revolutionary elites and the attempts to create regimes of total power' (Government and Opposition, 15 (Summer/Autumn 1980) pp. 512-27). The periphery of Russia was, of course, not to be found only in Europe, and national consciousness and revolutionary elites were to be found all over the world, while of the multinational empires only one large one existed in 1980, and that was the Soviet, both in Europe and in Asia. It was to be expected, therefore, that he should turn back again to Europe, especially as his study was devoted to his father's work, whose inftuence he had always acknowledged. Together with his brother Christopher, at that time Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and four scholars all from the Institute of Croatian History at Zagreb - I. Boban, M. Gross, B. Krizman and D. Sepie-he edited R. W. Seton-Watson and the Yugoslavs: Correspondence, 1907-1941 (1976). Following on this came the biography of his father written by Hugh and Christopher, The Making of a New Europe: R. W. Seton-Watson and the Last Years of Austria-Hungary (1981), a book not only of filial devotion but an important and significant study of the Europe which arose out of the Great War.

The conference itself was held from 11 to 14 July 1983 in the School's premises. Thirty-six papers were given by scholars from

Preface xi

Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Hun-gary, Romania, the United States and Yugoslavia. Of the papers given, some have been published in various learned journals. The twelve papers in this volume consist of Professor Seton-Watson's own address and eleven of the papers given at the conference. In addition, this volume includes a bibliography of Professor Seton-Watson's written work, an impressive total of over 400 items. It was prepared by Dr John Daly, a former doctoral student of his.

It had always been intended that the conference should be followed by a publication to serve as a Festschrift for Professor Seton-Watson. His unexpected death on 19 December 1984 in Washington, D.C. -he had been working at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies - means that the volume now appearing must serve as a memorial to Professor Seton-Watson's long career at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. It is also an expression of the admiration that we as 'foreign' historians (to use Hugh's phrase) feIt for our most distinguished colleague. The theme of the conference was the role of the historian in the writing of his tory and also in its making.

The problems of research confronting the historian of eastern and central Europe, whether 'native' or 'foreign', are complex. Even more complex is the relationship between the historian and the politician and the role of the historian in politics. Many, perhaps most of the papers given at the conference dealt with the historian as the builder of nations. The historian's training made hirn an eminently suitable exponent of the national ideal but his role as politician was not invariably successful. The Romanian historian Mihail Koglniceanu became foreign minister of Romania in the crisis years 1876-8. Professor Barbara Jelavich indicates, however, that the two roles, the two tasks, the two professions, did not co-exist easily together. Another historian-politician portrayed in this volume is the Serb Stojan Novakovic. NovakoviC's political promi-nence as diplomat, as minister of education and finally as prime minister rivalled that of Koglniceanu. Unlike his Romanian counter-part, he did not have the same problems of unifying history with politics, but then he was, as Professor Djordjevic shows, unambitious for power. NovakoviC's significance Iay rather in his move from a Serbian patriotic position to one of espousing the cause of Southern SIav unity in the years just before the Great War. Among the Greeks, as Mr Richard Clogg shows, Adamantios Korais and Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos sought to maintain a unity between ancient Greece

XlI Preface

and the Greeks of their day. Indeed, the Greek worship of antiquity remains the most striking example of the use to which history can be put in the manufacture of anational consciousness. Not that any of the historians that appear in the pages of this volume would agree with the description of 'manufacture'. For them, the n&tion or at least their own nation, was an organic growth. Nicolae Iorga, another historian-politician, and surely one of the world's most prolific historians, was significant for his doctrine that history offered lessons to the Romanians and authorised action for the furtherance of the Romanian national cause. The Serbian Milenko Vukicevic, as the writer of text-books used in schools, probably exerted an influence even greater than that of his more academic and inspired historians. Professor Charles Jelavich shows that he too, like Novakovic, moved from a 'Serbian' to a 'Yugoslav' position.

These were alI academic historians trained at universities, and they could be described as the respectable historians. Dr Robert Pynsent, however, writes about a less respectable historian, the Czech Zalud VysokomYtskY. Not for hirn the intelIectual training that was received by, say, the students of the Institute of Austrian Historical Research. His popular, prejudiced and frequently inaccurate account of Czech his tory was widely read and must therefore have reached circles where the name of Palacky was unknown. The phenomenon of popular historian or of the historian-journalist is weIl known in our day. Vysokomytsky may have been an early example of this genre.

Nevertheless while the masses, in the pursuit of a national ideal, would folIow Vysokomytsky and even the intelIectual historical elite, the conference also showed, and two of the papers published he re show, that historians were not invariably radical nationalists, and that for the teaching of national co-operation, or at least co-existence, they were equalIy weIl fitted. Josef Alexander Helfert in Vienna in the middle years of the nineteenth century sought to direct the newly founded Institut fr sterreich ische Geschichtsforschung in the path of creating an aIl-Austrian patriotism, of preparing its students to teach vaterlndische Geschichte. Such a programme was based on the reconciliation of the nationalities of the Habsburg monarchy. Yet, Professor Leitsch shows that the Institute failed to do this and that the careful examination of the sources of medieval history , the teaching of which was its main task, equipped its students with the tools for national and even chauvinistic historical strife and thus for the glorification of their own nations.

More recently, as Professor Kosary shows, in Hungary in the

Preface XIll

extremely difficult years from 1943 to 1948, years of war, defeat and occupation, a group of Hungarian historians ventured the task of trying to interpret history from a non-chauvinistic angle and to call for co-operation among historians of central Europe. But perhaps Hungary was an exception: which other country could continue to publish in war the works of an enemy historian, C. A. Macartney? But then Macartney was a historian exceptionally sympathetic to the Magyar cause. Nevertheless the Budapest East European Institute and its Revue remain a remarkable testimony to the belief in the equal value of nations.

Finally, my co-editor, Dr Dennis Deletant, shows that me die val historians or chroniclers also sought an explanation for the origins of nations.

Historians as craftsmen in the task of nation building have had much success. One suspects, however, that their success has more often been that of men who followed the prevailing political climate rather than as pioneers. True enough, many have been subject to the persecution which totalitarian regimes of our day impose on all their subjects irrespective of their professions. The great Iorga was murdered; but as Dr Maurice Pearton points out, not in his capacity as a historian but in his capacity as a politician. Yet the political configuration of central and eastern Europe is evidence of the phenomenal success of nationality politics in which the historians played an important part. The Treaty of Paris of 1919 and the treaties of St Germain, Trianon and Neuilly associated with it were based upon the necessity of establishing national security for the victors. Never again should the Germans threaten the pe ace and safety of their neighbours. The crushing of 'Prussian militarism' was to be the prelude to peace. The guiding principle in this process was national self -determination.

Thus national states of Finns, Poles, Czechs and Siovaks, Serbs, Croats and Siovenes were created. A great Romanian state including all those who lived in Bessarabia and in Transylvania found its place on the map of Europe. The defeated did not fare so weil. They were regarded as the violators of the principle of nationality and thus their dismemberment served both the interests of security and of Wilsonian self-determination. The fact that so me of the victor powers, with their vast colonial empires, were as vulnerable as Austria-Hungary and Turkey to this principle, was disregarded on the grounds that the principle of nationality was confined to the large nations, to the nations that claimed descent from the great peoples of antiquity and

XIV Preface

to those that had struggled against Turkish oppression. Nevertheless in Europe, in spite of their vicissitudes, in the twenty years after Versailles and their violent disruption by Nazi Germany and their subsequent subjection to Soviet power, all but three of the new states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) survived the Second World War. Today they all show evidence of vigorous nationallife. Paradoxically the post-1945 settlement fuelled the principles enunciated at Versail-les. Frontier changes and rectifications, the brutal method of nation-ality transfers and nationality expulsion, and finally genocide made them, with the exception of Yugoslavia and Romania, nationally more homogeneous. In Yugoslavia, Tito's task had been to combine the Yugoslavism of the founders with a federal structure. The constitution of 1974 speaks of the unity of Yugoslavia as 'proceeding from the right of every nation to self-determination, including the right to secession, on the basis of their will freely expressed in the common struggle of all nations and nationalities in the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution, and in conformity with their historie aspirations'. Even in adversity the national cause has sometimes been advanced. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 had one significant consequence from the national point of view: the federalisation of the state into Czech and Slovak republics. Finally, Mr Richard Clogg reminds us that in Greece the teaching of history even figured in the election manifesto of PASOK in 1980. The unity of national aspirations and of history is thus complete.

The conference in 1983 was made possible by generous support from the Austrian Institute in London, the British Academy, the British Council, the Great Britain/East Europe Centre, and the Nuffield Foundation. The School of Slavonic and East European Studies wishes to acknowledge the help of these bodies.

In addition, Dr Dennis Deletant and I, as convenors of the conference wish to thank colleagues and friends who gave their help. We also wish to thank Dr Mark Wheeler of the School for his help in the editing of one of the chapters in the book and Jane Tomico for producing much of the typescript. Finally, our thanks go to Mrs Mary Seton-Watson for permission to publish Hugh's address. In her person the connection between the School and the Seton-Watson family continues.

HARRY HANAK

Notes on the Contributors

Richard Clogg was educated in Edinburgh and has taught at the Universities of Edinburgh and London, where he is now Reader in Modern Greek History .

John C. K. Daly took a BA in history at Northwestern University in 1973, followed by a Ph.D. (London) in 1986 on the subject of 'The Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Eastern Question, 1827-41'. He is currently working on a two-volume study of Tsarist military/naval history.

Dennis Deletant, BA, Ph.D., Lecturer in Romanian at the University of London, was educated at London. He has published articles and books on aspects of Romanian language, literature and history.

Dimitrije Djordjevic, Ph.D., Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He has published books and articles dealing with the modern history of Serbia, Yugoslavia and the Balkans.

Harry Hanak, MA, is Reader in International Relations at the University of London. He was educated at the Universities of Dublin, Heidelberg and London. He has written on eastern Europe and Soviet foreign policy.

Barbara Jelavich, Ph.D., Professor of History, Indiana University. She has published books and articles, some with her husband, principally on Balkan and Austrian history and on international relations.

Charles Jelavich, Ph.D., Professor f History, Indiana University. He has published books and articles on the Balkans.

Domokos Kosary, Ph.D., Chairman of the Historical Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, scientific adviser of the Institute of Historical Sciences. He has been Professor at the Etvs College and at the University of Budapest. He has published extensivelyon Hungarian history .

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XVI Notes on the Contributors

Walter Leitseh, Professor of East European History at the University of Vienna, was educated at the University of Vienna and at the Institut fr sterreichische Geschichtsforschung. He has published artieies and books about Russian and Polish history and about east European studies in Austria.

Mauriee Pearton, MA, Ph.D., was educated at Oxford and London, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Politieal Science at Richmond College. He has published artieies and books on contemporary history, especially relating to south-east Europe, and on the impact of technology on strategie thinking and practice.

Robert B. Pynsent, MA, Ph.D., Reader in Czech and Slovak at the University of London, was educated at Cambridge. He has published artieies and books mainly on Czech literature.

Joseph Rothsehild, BA, MA, D.Phil. (Oxon), Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science at Columbia University in New York City, where he teaches comparative politics. His research interests focus on east central Europe and polyethnic states.

Hugh Seton-Watson, 1916--84, historian and political scientist, Profes-sor of Russian History at the University of London (1951-83). He was the author of numerous books and artieies on Russian and east European history and international relations.