The Political Languages of Anti-Modernism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1945

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Level: 
Master's
CEU credits: 
4
Academic year: 
2009/2010
Semester: 
Winter
Start and end dates: 
4 Jan 2010 - 30 Mar 2010
Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]: 
Department of History
Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area: 
Social and Political History in a Comparative Perspective
CEU Instructor(s): 
Balázs Trencsényi
Additional information: 
The course will focus on the various manifestations of radical identity-politics and criticism of modernity, which became prominent in the interwar period in Europe. All this can be described as the emergence of an anti-modernist discourse. Obviously, anti-modernism cannot be equated with a-modernity. It was rather an internal critique of modernity, often drawing on par excellence modernist cultural resources, albeit assuming an extremely conflicting stance towards some of the phenomena associated with political modernity. The classes will analyze both the Western intellectual traditions and the ways these themes became appropriated by East-Central European intellectuals. While traditionally this analytical framework was used to describe predominantly rightist projects (Konservative Revolution, etc.), the scope of the class makes it possible to link the neo-conservative and fascist ideological projects to some of the left-wing subcultures of the period, which also formulated a rather ambiguous vision of the institutions and discourses of political modernity. The primary and secondary literature are selected to provide representative case studies for comparative purposes.
Learning Outcomes: 
The goal of the course is to develop a comprehensive and critical understanding of political modernity and the intellectual traditions challenging it. Bringing together the more encompassing models of interpretation with a context-sensitive approach of situating the texts in their cultural-political setting, the participants will develop their skills of doing comparative research in the East-Central European setting based on textual and contextual analysis. Apart from the methodological gains of getting a deeper insight into the ways history of modern political thought is written in Western and East-Central Europe, the main expected result of the course is providing an overview of East-European intellectual history between the turn of the century and the end of WWII, placing it in a broader European framework, and developing a framework of interpreting the discourses of nationalism, historiographical and literary canon-building, and the transformation of political culture in our region.
Assessment : 
Progress in the course will be evaluated as follows: Seminar Presentation 30% of the overall grade Term Paper 50% Class Participation 20% In each class, one of the students will be invited to present (in 10-15 minutes) a chosen original excerpt in the context of other available primary sources and also using the relevant secondary literature. The term paper is a fifteen-page piece on a topic suggested by the student and accepted by the instructor, based on the comparative analysis of at least two national contexts. Class participation means regular attendance, in-class comments and questions related to the weekly topics and readings.
Full description: 

Course Agenda

One: History of Political Ideas: Strategies of interpretation

The class is introducing various national and “transnational” traditions of writing intellectual history

Readings:

• Michael Freeden, Ideologies and political theory: a conceptual approach (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1996), 47-91. [save pdf]

• Michael Freeden, “Concepts, ideology and political theory,” in Carsten Dutt ed., Herausforderungen der Begriffsgeschichte (Heidelberg: Winter, 2003), 51-63.[save pdf]

• Iain Hamphsher-Monk, “The History of Political Thought and the political history of thought,” in: Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk, eds., The history of political thought in national context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001),159-174. [save pdf]

• Stefan Collini, “Disciplines, Canons and Publics: The History of ‘The History of Political Thought’ in Comparative Perspective,” in: Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk, eds., The history of political thought in national context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 281-302. (optional) [save pdf]

Two: The Conceptual Framework: Modernism, Reactionary Modernism, Konservative Revolution, Anti-Modernism

An overview of the main paradigms of interpretation of radical political ideologies of the interwar period

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Roger Griffin, “Tunnel Visions and Mysterious Trees: Modernist Projects of National and Racial regeneration, 1880-1939,” in Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling eds., Blood and Homeland. Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007), 417-456. [save pdf]

• Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 31-90. [save pdf]

• Emilio Gentile, The struggle for modernity: nationalism, futurism, and fascism (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003), 1-10, 41-77 [save pdf]

• Emilio Gentile, The sacralization of politics in fascist Italy (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1996), 153-162. [save pdf]

• Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary modernism: technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-49. [save pdf]

Three: Politics in a New Key

An analysis of the roots of radical identity politics in the context of the turn-of-the-century rise of anti-liberalism, mainly focusing on Central Europe

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Carl Schorske, “Politics in a new key” in Fin-de-siecle Vienna: politics and culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 116-180.[save pdf]

• Marius Turda, The idea of national superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 37-66.

• Michel Winock, Nationalism, anti-semitism, and fascism in France (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1998), 85-102, 111-130.[save pdf]

• Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German right : radical nationalism and political change after Bismarck (Ann Arbor, 1980), 160-206. [save pdf]

• Fritz Stern, The politics of cultural despair: a study in the rise of the Germanic ideology (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974, c1961), 267-298.[save pdf]

• Kevin Repp, Reformers, critics, and the paths of German modernity : anti-politics and the search for alternatives, 1890-1914 (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2000), 19-66.[save pdf]

• Excerpts by Gustave Le Bon in The French right (from de Maistre to Maurras), edited and introduced by J. S. McClelland ; translation of Maurras (New York : Harper & Row, 1971), 134-145. [save pdf]

Four: The New Vision of History and Tradition

An overview of the emerging new paradigms of anti-evolutionist historical thinking, which had a decisive impact on the new anti-modernist discourse in a Western European context

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Michael Sutton, Nationalism, positivism, and Catholicism: the politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics, 1890-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 46-76. [save pdf]

• David Gross, The past in ruins : tradition and the critique of modernity (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 92-106.[save pdf]

• Herman Lebovics, True France: the wars over cultural identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1992), 135-189.[save pdf]

• Roger Woods, The conservative revolution in the Weimar Republic (London: Macmillan, c1996), 59-110.[save pdf]; [save pdf]

• T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in Conservative texts: an anthology, edited with an introduction by Roger Scruton (New York : St. Martin's Press, 1991), 85-93. [save pdf]

• Excerpts by Charles Maurras in The French right (from de Maistre to Maurras), edited and introduced by J. S. McClelland ; translation of Maurras (New York : Harper & Row, 1971), 239-263.[save pdf]

Five: Totalitarianism and Bio-politics

The relationship of radical identity-politics and anthropological-biological paradigms

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• George L. Mosse, “Fascism and the Intellectuals,” in: The fascist revolution: toward a general theory of fascism (New York : H. Fertig, 1999), 95-116. [save pdf]

• Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and antihumanism in imperial Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2001), 135-146. [save pdf]

• Benoit Massin, “From Virchow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and Modern race Theories in Wilhelmine Germany,” in: George W. Stocking, Volksgeist as method and Ethic (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 79-154. [save pdf]

• Martin Travers, Critics of modernity: the literature of the conservative revolution in Germany, 1890-1933 (New York : P. Lang, 2001), 87-110. [save pdf]

• Zeev Sternhell, Neither right nor left: fascist ideology in France (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996), 213-265. [save pdf]

• Ingo Haar, “German Ostforschung and Anti-Semitism,” in: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch eds., German scholars and ethnic cleansing (1920-1945) (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 1-27. [save pdf]

Six: (first half:) Left-wing projects of contesting and redefining modernity

Overview of left-wing ideological experiments trying to incorporate the anti-modernist challenge

Mid-Term Overview – The Emergence of Radical Identity Politics in Interwar Europe

Open discussion of the main themes raised in the trans-European contextualization and an overview of interpretative paradigms involving Eastern Europe

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Richard Wolin, The seduction of unreason : the intellectual romance with fascism: from Nietzsche to postmodernism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), Ch. IV, “Left Fascism: Georges Bataille and German Ideology,” 153-186. [save pdf]

• The College of Sociology (1937-39) / [texts by Georges Bataille ... [et al.] ; edited by Denis Hollier (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 43-46, 73-84, 143-156. [save pdf]

• Antonio Gramsci The modern prince and other writings (New York : International Publishers, 1957), 135-165. [save pdf]

• Richard Bellamy and Darrow Schecter eds., Gramsci and the Italian state (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1993), 137-161. [save pdf]

• Excerpts by Georges Sorel in The French right (from de Maistre to Maurras), edited and introduced by J. S. McClelland ; translation of Maurras (New York : Harper & Row, 1971), 117-131. [save pdf]

Seven: Fin-de-siècle and beyond – the Paradigm-Shift of Conservativism in East-Central Europe

The impact of the fin-de-siècle paradigm sift of olitical mobilization and its local contexts

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Marius Turda, The idea of national superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 142-158. [save pdf]

• Brian Porter, When nationalism began to hate: imagining modern politics in nineteenth-century Poland (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000), 189-232. [save pdf]

• Rett R. Ludwikowski, Continuity and change in Poland : conservatism in Polish political thought (Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 197-230. [save pdf]

• William O. Oldson, The historical and nationalistic thought of Nicolae Iorga (Boulder [Colo.]: East European quarterly, 1973), 60-117. [save pdf]

• Alex N. Dragnich, Populism in Serbia,” in: Joseph Held, ed., Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society. (Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, 1996), pp. 219-244. [save pdf]

Excerpts:

1. R. Dmowski, Ideas of the modern Pole (1902)

2. Nicolae Iorga, The National Culture and its Surrogates (1903)

3. A.C. Popovici, At the Crossroads of Two Worlds (1908)

4. Alexandros Papadiamantis, Eastern Chanter, (1893)

5. Nikola Pašić, - Speech of Nikola Pašić at a rally in Zaječar

Eight: Agrarianism, anti-liberalism, ethnic protectionism

The rise of anti-liberal political projects in the region

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• John R. Lampe “Illiberal directions” in: Balkans into Southeastern Europe (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 105-140. [save pdf]

• Dubravka Stojanović, “Rural Against Urban: Anti-Urban Discourse and Ideology in Early Twentieth Century Serbia” in: Ethnologia Balcanica 2005/9, 65-80. [save pdf]

• Philippe Schmitter, “Reflections on Mihail Manoilescu and the National Consequences of Delayed Dependent Development on the Periphery of Western Europe,” in: Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1978), 117–173. [save pdf]

• Miklós Lackó, Populism in Hungary: Yesterday and Today,” in: Joseph Held, Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society. (Boulder, Co, 1996), pp. 107-127. [save pdf]

• James R. Felak, "At the price of the Republic": Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938 (Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 177-208. [save pdf]

Excerpts:

6. Babanzâde Ahmed Naim, On Nationalism and Turkism (1913)

7. Dezső Szabó, Tomorrow’s nationalism (1938)

8. Durych, Jaroslav, The mission of the Czech state (1923)

9. Josef Tiso, Speech on Andrej Hlinka (1930)

Nine: Crisis of Values 1– East and West

Philosophical, political and literary projects seeking to reconsider European civilization and symbolic geography

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Zigu Ornea, The Romanian extreme right: the 1930s (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1999), 75-130. [save pdf]

• Roumen Daskalov, “Populists and Westerners in Bulgarian History and Present.” Central European History Department Yearbook (Budapest: Central European University, 2002) 113-142. [save pdf]

• Mac Linscott Ricketts, Mircea Eliade: the Romanian roots, 1907-1945 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988), 881-930. [save pdf]

• Jerzy Jedlicki, “Polish concepts of national culture,” in: Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery, eds., National character and national ideology in interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven : Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995), 1-22. [save pdf]

Excerpts:

1. Ion Dragoumis, Neo-hellenic Civilisation, (1914)

2. Nichifor Crainic, The Meaning of Tradition (1935)

3. Lucian Blaga, The Mioritic Space (1934)

4. Naiden Sheitanov, Bulgarian Worldview, (1942)

5. Mircea Eliade, The Manifesto of the Young Generation (1927)

6. Nikolaj Velimirović, Serbian nation as servant of God, (1938)

7. László Németh - In minority (1942)

8. Mihály Babits - Mass and nation (1938)

Ten: In Search of a New Left

Leftist projects seeking to transcend the traditional social-democratic agenda and their interference with anti-modernist cultural and political projects

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Daniel Chirot, “Neoliberal and Social Democratic Theories of Development: The Zeletin-Voinea Debate Concerning Romania’s Prospects in the 1920's and Its Contemporary Importance,” in: Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1978), 31–52. [save pdf]

• Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a nation, breaking a nation: literature and cultural politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 67-127. [save pdf]

• James Felak, “Slovak considerations of the Slovak Question: The Ludak, Agrarian, Socialist and Communist Views in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” in John Morison, The Czech and Slovak experience (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 136-62. [save pdf]

• Miklós Molnar, From Béla Kun to János Kádár: seventy years of Hungarian communism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 50-83. [save pdf]

Excerpts:

1. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, The meaning of individual in social progress and the tragedy of mentally handicapped (1936)

2. Ivan Hadjiiski, An Optimistic Theory of the Bulgarian Nation (1937)

3. Vladimir Dvornikovic, Epic man, or are we anachronism in Europe, (1937)

4. Branko Merxhani, Organization of the chaos (1930)

Eleven: Conservative Redefinitions of modernity: In search of a new authority

Overview of attempts to strike a middle way between radical anti-modernism and traditional evolutionary vision of history – also the emergence of an anti-modernist critique of totalitarianism

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Maciej Janowski „Three historians,“ in: Central European University History Department Yearbook 2001-2002, (Budapest 2002), 199-232. [save pdf]

• David Kelly, The Czech fascist movement 1922-1942 (Boulder, Col.: East European Monographs, 1995), 1-35. [save pdf]

• Milos Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People's Party, 1918-1939 / (New York : Social Science Monographs, 1995), 8-20. [save pdf]

• Steven Béla Várdy, Modern Hungarian historiography (Boulder [Colo.]: East European Monographs, 1976), 104-120. [save pdf]

Excerpts:

1. Gyula Szekfű, - Three generations and what follows (First ed.: 1920, Revised ed.: 1934)

2. Heinrich von Srbik, Österreich im Heiligen Reich und im Deutschen Bund, (1936)

3. Petar Mutafchiev. Philosophy of the Bulgarian History, (1931)

4. Karel Kramář, Five lectures about the foreign policy (1922)

5. Živojin Perić, Conservatives

Twelve: The anti-modernist Revolution

The question of the identity politics of authoritarian and semi-totalitarian regimes in the region

Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):

• Ivan T. Berend, Decades of crisis : Central and Eastern Europe before World War II (Berkeley, Cal. : University of California Press, 1998), 300-337. [save pdf]

• Marta Petreu, An infamous past: E.M. Cioran and the rise of fascism in Romania (Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 146-174. [save pdf]

• Leon Volovici, Nationalist ideology and antisemitism: the case of Romanian intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford, England: Published for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Pergamon Press, 1991), 95-150. [save pdf]

• Sandra Prlenda, “Young, Religious and Radical: The Croat Catholic Youth Organizations, 1922-1945,” in John Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and national identities : the case of twentieth-century Southeastern Europe (Budapest : CEU Press, 2003), 82-109. [save pdf]

• Jon V. Kofas, Authoritarianism in Greece: the Metaxas regime (Boulder : East European Monographs, 1983), 52-82. [save pdf]

Excerpts:

1. Manifesto of the Camp of Great Poland (1926)

2. Janko Janev, Philosophy of the Motherland, (1934)

3. Ioannis Metaxas, Speech on the occasion of the inauguration of public works, (1937)

4. Emil Cioran, Transfiguration of Romania (1939)

5. Emanuel Vajtauer , Czech mythos (1943)