Questions of Identity

Questions of Identity PDF Author: Robert B. Pynsent
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Questions of Identity treats four varieties of conceptions of individual and social identity. This interdisciplinary book describes and analyzes four trends of thought that have prevailed at one time in most of Europe over the last two centuries: the idea of the responsible citizen, the concept of patriotism or nationalism, the loss of self, and "suffering" as a formative element in the "national character." In a section devoted to Václav Havel, Pynsent treats Havel's notion of personal identity as expressed in personal responsibility. Another section concerning national identity looks in particular at two early nineteenth-century Slovaks who rejected Slovak nationalism and whose ideas ultimately had a profound impact on East European thinking on nationality up to the fall of communism. A third section deals with the beginnings of Modernism and the apparent disintegration of the self in West European and Czech writers. The final section addresses Vladimír Páral's expositions of the Czech cult of national martyrs since St. Wenceslas and the extent to which the "martyr" complex remains part of Czech self-identification.

Questions of Identity

Questions of Identity PDF Author: Robert B. Pynsent
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
Questions of Identity treats four varieties of conceptions of individual and social identity. This interdisciplinary book describes and analyzes four trends of thought that have prevailed at one time in most of Europe over the last two centuries: the idea of the responsible citizen, the concept of patriotism or nationalism, the loss of self, and "suffering" as a formative element in the "national character." In a section devoted to Václav Havel, Pynsent treats Havel's notion of personal identity as expressed in personal responsibility. Another section concerning national identity looks in particular at two early nineteenth-century Slovaks who rejected Slovak nationalism and whose ideas ultimately had a profound impact on East European thinking on nationality up to the fall of communism. A third section deals with the beginnings of Modernism and the apparent disintegration of the self in West European and Czech writers. The final section addresses Vladimír Páral's expositions of the Czech cult of national martyrs since St. Wenceslas and the extent to which the "martyr" complex remains part of Czech self-identification.

The Slovak Question

The Slovak Question PDF Author: Michael R. Cude
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822988666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The so-called Slovak question asked what place Slovaks held—or should have held—in the former state of Czechoslovakia. Formed in 1918 at the end of World War I from the remains of the Hungarian Empire, and reformed after ceasing to exist during World War II, the country would eventually split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia after the “Velvet Divorce” in 1993. In the meantime, the minority Slovaks often clashed with the majority Czechs over their role in the nation. The Slovak Question examines this debate from a transatlantic perspective. Explored through the relationship between Slovaks, Americans of Slovak heritage, and United States and Czechoslovakian policymakers, it shows how Slovak national activism in America helped the Slovaks establish a sense of independent identity and national political assertion after World War I. It also shows how Slovak American leaders influenced US policy by conceptualizing the United States and Slovakia as natural allies due to their connections through immigration. This process played a critical role in undermining attempts to establish a united Czechoslovakian identity and instead caused a divide between the two groups, which was exploited by Nazi Germany and then by other actors during the Cold War, and proved ultimately to be insurmountable.

Slovakia in History

Slovakia in History PDF Author: Mikuláš Teich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139494945
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435

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Book Description
Until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Slovakia's identity seemed inextricably linked with that of the former state. This book explores the key moments and themes in the history of Slovakia from the Duchy of Nitra's ninth-century origins to the establishment of independent Slovakia at midnight 1992–3. Leading scholars chart the gradual ethnic awakening of the Slovaks during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and examine how Slovak national identity took shape with the codification of standard literary Slovak in 1843 and the subsequent development of the Slovak national movement. They show how, after a thousand years of Magyar-Slovak coexistence, Slovakia became part of the new Czechoslovak state from 1918–39, and shed new light on its role as a Nazi client state as well as on the postwar developments leading up to full statehood in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in 1989. There is no comparable book in English on the subject.

Czecho/Slovakia

Czecho/Slovakia PDF Author: Eric Stein
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472086283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
DIVDescribes the peaceful breakup of the Czechoslovak Federation /div

A History of Slovakia

A History of Slovakia PDF Author: Stanislav J. Kirschbaum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780333681022
Category : Slovakia
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, Stanislav Kirschbaum examines the Slovak contribution to European civilization in the Middle Ages, the development of a specifically Slovak consciousness in the nineteenth century, the Slovak struggle for autonomy in Czech-dominated Czechoslovakia created by the Treaty of Versailles, the problems that the first Slovak Republic faced in a Nazi-controlled Europe, and the Slovak reaction to the communist regime. Kirschbaum completes this fascinating history by examining the debate about the future of Slovakia and the events that led to independence.

National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements

National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements PDF Author: Balazs Trencsenyi
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 963732660X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
This is the second in a series of four volumes, presenting the most important texts that triggered and shaped the processes of nation-building in Central and Southeast Europe. The series aims to integrate the history of these cultures with that of general European civilization. Thus it counteracts the habit whereby European intellectual phenomena and historical movements are generally analyzed where they originated and experienced their earliest and most intensive development, while the peculiar manifestations of these currents in the 'Other Europe' are neglected.

Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States

Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States PDF Author: Ahmet Ersoy
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9637326618
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Notwithstanding the advantages of physical power, the struggle for survival among societies is not merely a matter of serial armed clashes but of the nation's spiritual resources that in the end always decide upon the victory. In Europe, there indeed exist independent countries, insignificant from the point of view of the entire civilization, and born by sheer coincidence, yet, this coincidence, this fancy, or diplomatic ploy that created them can just as easily bring them to an end---the nations that count in the political calculations are only the enlightened ones. Therefore, our nation should not merely grow in power, strengthen its character, and foster in people the feeling of love for homeland, but also---inasmuch as it is possible---breath the fresh breeze of humanity's general progress, feed it to the nation, absorb its creative energy. Until now, we have trusted and lived only in the weary conditions, conditions devoid of health-giving elements---now, as a result the nation's heart beats too slowly and its mind works too tediously. We ought to open our windows to Europe, to the wind of continental change and allow it to air our sultry home, since as not all health comes from the inside, not all disease comes from the outside.

Priest, Politician, Collaborator

Priest, Politician, Collaborator PDF Author: James Mace Ward
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801468124
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In Priest, Politician, Collaborator, James Mace Ward offers the first comprehensive and scholarly English-language biography of the Catholic priest and Slovak nationalist Jozef Tiso (1887–1947). The first president of an independent Slovakia, established as a satellite of Nazi Germany, Tiso was ultimately hanged for treason and (in effect) crimes against humanity by a postwar reunified Czechoslovakia. Drawing on extensive archival research, Ward portrays Tiso as a devoutly religious man who came to privilege the maintenance of a Slovak state over all other concerns, helping thus to condemn Slovak Jewry to destruction. Ward, however, refuses to reduce Tiso to a mere opportunist, portraying him also as a man of principle and a victim of international circumstances. This potent mix, combined with an almost epic ability to deny the consequences of his own actions, ultimately led to Tiso’s undoing. Tiso began his career as a fervent priest seeking to defend the church and pursue social justice within the Kingdom of Hungary. With the breakup of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the creation of a Czechoslovak Republic, these missions then fused with a parochial Slovak nationalist agenda, a complex process that is the core narrative of the book. Ward presents the strongest case yet for Tiso’s heavy responsibility in the Holocaust, crimes that he investigates as an outcome of the interplay between Tiso’s lifelong pattern of collaboration and the murderous international politics of Hitler’s Europe. To this day memories of Tiso divide opinion within Slovakia, burdening the country’s efforts to come to terms with its own history. As portrayed in this masterful biography, Tiso’s life not only illuminates the history of a small state but also supplies a missing piece of the larger puzzle that was interwar and wartime Europe.

Anti-modernism

Anti-modernism PDF Author: Diana Mishkova
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860954
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
The last volume of the Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945 series presents 46 texts under the heading of "antimodernism". In a dynamic relationship with modernism, from the 1880s to the 1940s, and especially during the interwar period, the antimodernist political discourse in the region offered complex ideological constructions of national identification. These texts rejected the linear vision of progress and instead offered alternative models of temporality, such as the cyclical one as well as various narratives of decline. This shift was closely connected to the rejection of liberal democratic institutionalism, and the preference for organicist models of social existence, emphasizing the role of the elites (and charismatic leaders) shaping the whole body politic. Along these lines, antimodernist authors also formulated alternative visions of symbolic geography: rejecting the symbolic hierarchies that focused on the normativity of Western European models, they stressed the cultural and political autarchy of their own national community, which in some cases was also coupled with the reevaluation of the Orient. At the same time, this antimodernist turn should not be confused with rightwing radicalism—in fact, the dialogue with the modernist tradition was often very subtle and the anthology also contains texts which offered a criticism of 'modern' totalitarianism in an antimodernist key.

Czechoslovakism

Czechoslovakism PDF Author: Adam Hudek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000451216
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This collection systematically approaches the concept of Czechoslovakism and its historical progression, covering the time span from the mid-nineteenth century to Czechoslovakia’s dissolution in 1992/1993, while also providing the most recent research on the subject. "Czechoslovakism" was a foundational concept of the interwar Czechoslovak Republic and it remained an important ideological, political and cultural phenomenon throughout the twentieth century. As such, it is one of the most controversial terms in Czech, Slovak and Central European history. While Czechoslovakism was perceived by some as an effort to assert Czech domination in Slovakia, for others it represented a symbol of the struggle for the Republic’s survival during the interwar and Second World War periods. The authors take care to analyze Czechoslovakism’s various emotional connotations, however their primary objective is to consider Czechoslovakism as an important historical concept and follow its changes through the various cultural-political contexts spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Including the work of many of the most eminent Czech and Slovak historians, this volume is an insightful study for academic and postgraduate student audiences interested in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe, nationality studies, as well as intellectual history, political science and sociology.