Eastern Europe Since 1815
Spring 2001

Professor E. Glassheim Email: eglasshe@princeton.edu Phone: 258-6701
Office: G-26 Dickinson Office Hours: Wed. 11-12, Thurs. 10-11, and by appointment.
Preceptor: Dr. E. Bremner (evagiloi@princeton.edu, 258-4171, G-31 Dickinson; off. hrs 11-12 Tu, W, Th)

Course Description:

This course will provide an historical overview of the lands, peoples, and states of Eastern Europe from 1815 to the present. Given the great flux in borders, sovereignties, and the ethnic profile of the region during this period, we will have to continually refine or redefine our concept of Eastern Europe, an area that roughly encompasses the band of countries stretching from today's Poland to the Balkans. In keeping with a convention that is not entirely free of political overtones, I will divide the region into two parts, East Central Europe and Southeastern Europe (the Balkans). Though the latter will appear at key points in our narrative, the class will focus primarily on the Central European territories of the Habsburg Monarchy and its successor states.

The first half of the course will look at how the supra-national Habsburg Empire and its eleven peoples negotiated the rise of nationalism, industrialism, and popular politics. We will analyze the Monarchy's strengths and weaknesses as it responded to serious internal and external challenges from 1848 to 1918. When war and nationalism finally destroyed the Empire in 1918, its unique constitution and ethnic structure would leave an enduring stamp on the region. In the second half of the course, we will turn to the Empire's successor states during the interwar period, as they struggled to consolidate new national states in a decidedly multi-national region. Though this experiment in nation-building collapsed under the Nazi German onslaught, it would return in Communist guise after the Second World War. The course will conclude with a look at dissident movements, Mikhail Gorbachev's renunciation of Soviet hegemony, and the subsequent wave of democratic revolutions in 1989.

Required Texts:

John Mason, The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1997.
Eva Hoffmann, Shtetl, 1997.
Josef Roth. The Radetzky March, 1983 (1932).
Heda Margolius Kovaly. Under a Cruel Star [aka: Prague Farewell], 1997.
Gale Stokes. From Stalinism to Pluralism, 1991.
Gale Stokes. The Walls Came Tumbling Down, 1993.

Readings marked with an asterisk (*) are part of the course reading pack. Some are also available on the Internet. See the end of the syllabus for a list of readings and Internet addresses.

Course Requirements:

2 short essays (2-3 pages) 25% of grade
Discussion responses + precepts participation 20%
Term paper (7-10 pages) 30%
Take-home final exam (6-8 pages) 25%

Course Mechanics:

Discussions are mandatory and will take place weekly. The professor will post questions for discussion via email by the Friday evening of the week preceding a given discussion. Short essays are due at the beginning of class on Feb. 28 and Apr. 4. The term paper is due on May 15. I will hand out a list of suggested topics early in the semester. You may also adopt a topic of your own choosing, though your preceptor must approve it in advance. All students are encouraged to use office hours or make an appointment to discuss their papers.

Course Outline:

  1. What is Eastern Europe?

    2. Week 1 (Feb. 5, 7)

    Reading: *Magocsi 2-4, 76-82; Mason map, 1-22, doc1; *Schöpflin

    1. Introduction The Lands and Peoples of Eastern Europe

    2. Lecture Backwardness, Imagined and Real

  2. The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1815-1867

Week 2 (Feb. 12, 14)

Reading: *Wolff; Kundera in Stokes, ed., From Stalinism, 216-23; *Todorova; *Kohl; *Orton

3. Lecture The Habsburg Empire: State and Society

4. Lecture Defining the Nation: Czechs, Poles, Hungarians

Week 3 (Feb. 19, 21)

Reading: *Magocsi 83-89;*Palacky 1&2; *Deak1; Hungarian Declaration of Independence <http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~habsweb/sourcetexts/hungind.html>; Roth 1st half

Assignment: Map Quiz

5. Lecture Springtime of Peoples: The Revolutions of 1848-49 in Austria and Hungary

6. Lecture Ottoman Decline and the "Balkanization" of Southeastern Europe

  1. Nationalism and the Rise of Mass Politics, 1867-1914

Week 4 (Feb. 26, 28)

Reading: *Magocsi 90-117; Mason 23-45, doc3-7,9,10; 1867 Compromise < http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~habsweb/sourcetexts/auscon.htm>; *Deak2; Roth 2nd half

Assignment: 2-3 pg. essay

7. Lecture The Supra-National Empire: Forces for Unity in the Habsburg Monarchy

8. Lecture Industrialization and the Working Class

Week 5 (Mar. 5, 7)

Reading: *Magocsi 118-120; Mason 46-52, doc2,8,11-13,20; Mark Twain "Stirring Times in Austria" <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~habsweb/sourcetexts/>; *Cohen; *Schorske

9. Lecture Nationalization of Public Life in Bohemia

10. Lecture Twilight and Effervescence: Fin de Siecle Culture in Vienna and Prague

  1. War and Revolution, 1914-1921

Week 6 (Mar. 12, 14)

Reading: *Magocsi 121-129; Mason 53-91, doc14-19,21-23; *Barkey; *Roth

11. Lecture The Great War on the Eastern Front

12. Lecture The End of Empires: National Revolutions and the Treaties of Paris

  1. Interwar East Central Europe: National States and Minorities

Week 7 (Mar. 26, 28)

Reading: *Magocsi 130-148; *Rothschild; *Brubaker; start Hoffman

13. Lecture Stabilization and Democracy

14. Lecture Rise of the "Little Dictators"

Week 8 (Apr. 2, 4)

Reading: Hoffman, entire

Assignment: 2-3 pg. essay

15. Lecture Minorities in East Central Europe: Germans, Jews, Slovaks

16. Lecture Depression and the Shadow of Nazi Germany

  1. War and Ethnic Cleansing, 1939-1947

Week 9 (Apr. 9, 11)

Reading: *Magocsi 152-168; *Capek; *Browning; *Glassheim

Film: Shop on Main Street

17. Lecture The Experience of German Occupation: Czechs, Poles, Jews

18. Lecture National Revolution in Eastern Europe: Ethnic Cleansing 1939-1948

  1. The Curtain Falls: Communism and Stalinism in Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

Week 10 (Apr. 16, 18)

Reading: Kovaly entire; Stokes doc 7, 9-11

1 pg response to Kovaly

19. Lecture National Roads to Socialism

20. Lecture Stalinism and Soviet Hegemony

  1. Reform and Revolution, 1956-1989

Week 11 (Apr. 23, 25)

Reading: *Magocsi 169-172; Stokes2 chpt 1-4; Stokes doc 12, 14-16, 19-21,28-29; *Drakulic

Film: Man of Marble

21. Lecture State and Society under Communism

22. Lecture The Power of the Powerless: Dissidence and Revolt, 1956-88

Week 12 (Apr. 30, May 2)

Reading: *Magocsi 173-176; Stokes chpt 5-8; Stokes doc 45-47

23. Lecture Collapse of the Soviet Empire

24. Lecture Velvet Revolution, Rocky Transition: 1989 and After

Course Reading Pack

  1. George Schöpflin, "The Political Traditions of Eastern Europe," Daedalus 119, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 55-90.
  2. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1-16.
  3. Maria Todorova, "The Balkans and the Myth of Central Europe," in Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 140-60.
    4.
  4. Johann Georg Kohl, Austria (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843), 56-87.
    5.
  5. Lawrence Orton, The Prague Slav Congress of 1848 (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1978), 1-13.
  6. Frantisek Palacky, "Letter to the German National Assembly," [1848], in Hans Kohn, ed., The Habsburg Empire 1804-1918 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1961), 118-24.
  7. Frantisek Palacky, "Manifesto of the First Slavonic Congress to the Nations of Europe, June 12th 1848," The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 26, No. 67: 309-13.
  8. István Deák, "The Revolution and the War of Independence, 1848-1849," in A History of Hungary, Peter Sugar ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 209-34.
  9. István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps 1848-1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3-9.
  10. Gary Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 19-34.
  11. Carl Schorske, "Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio," in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 116-80.
  12. Karen Barkey and Mark Von Hagen, ed., After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building, The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 45-54, 129-39.
  13. Joseph Roth, "The Bust of the Emperor," in Hotel Savoy, John Hoare, trans. (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1986), 157-183.
  14. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1992 [1974]), 3-25.
  15. Rogers Brubaker, "Nationalizing States in the Old 'New Europe'—and the New," in Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 79-106.
  16. Karel Capek, The White Plague, Michael Henry Heim trans. (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988).
  17. Eagle Glassheim, "National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945," Central European History, vol. 33, no. 4, forthcoming, 2000.
  18. Slavenka Drakulic, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 21-32, 76-81.