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Zusatztext "A magisterial account about Eastern Europe that forcefully reminds us of the enduring and adaptable power of national passions in modern history. . . .Connelly is undeniably one of the best experts in regional history of central and eastern Europe, but most of all, he is a comparative historian of nation-states. . . .[B]efore any vast global comparisons can be made, we need rich, rigorous, and authoritative regional histories. From Peoples into Nations delivers just that." ---Malgorzata Mazurek, H-Diplo Informationen zum Autor John Connelly is the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History and director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education and From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews. He lives in Kensington, California. Klappentext "This book is a history of East Central Europe since the late eighteenth century, the region of Europe between German central Europe and Russia in the East. Connelly argues the region, for which it is frequently hard to define exact boundaries and which is sometimes treated country-by-country in a way seemingly separate from the broader trends of European history, was one of shared experience despite most of the peoples being divided by linguistic, geographic, and political barriers. Beginning in the 1780s, an unwitting Habsburg monarch -- Joseph II -- decreed that his subjects would use only German, as he hoped to mould a common nationality using German over the disparate subjects. Instead, he unleashed the energies and struggle for the emergence of new nations that pitted small peoples armed with an idea against empires. The author argues that the underlying national self-assertion which emerged under imperial rule in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries shows deep connections to subsequent histories, to the creation of nation states of the regions after World War I, the failure of democratic rule in these states during the interwar years, the submersion of the region under Nazi then Soviet rule after 1939, and to the reinvention of sovereign states (and then the break up of two of them) after 1989. The book interconnects major themes and country histories for first time, chronicling this diverse region over many generations, from the time of Joseph, through democratic and socialist revolutions, genocide and Stalinism, through civil society movements struggling for liberal democracy, into our own day, when illiberal politicians come to power by exploiting very old fears"--A new history of the rise of nationalism and national self-assertion in East Central Europe during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Zusammenfassung A sweeping narrative history of Eastern Europe from the late eighteenth century to todayIn the 1780s, the Habsburg monarch Joseph II decreed that henceforth German would be the language of his realm. His intention was to forge a unified state from his vast and disparate possessions, but his action had the opposite effect, catalyzing the emergen...
