Page 259 - Encyclopedia Of World History
P. 259
eastern europe 609
A Communist memorial
in Poland in 1985.
Such memorials were
once common in
Communist Eastern
Europe but many were
torn down after the
demise of the Soviet
Union.
and institutions for education
and culture. From the mid-
nineteenth century, national
movements demanded linguis-
tic and educational rights and
administrative autonomy. Vio-
lent confrontations with impe-
rial authorities erupted in
several areas: Poland (1830, 1846, 1863), Hungary ing victory, accelerated the segregation of national
(1848), Bosnia (1875), Bulgaria (1876), and Macedonia groups. In addition to the 4.5 to 5.4 million Jews of the
(1903). While the Russians suppressed Poland and the region who perished at the hands of the Nazis and their
Austrian Habsburgs granted autonomy to Hungary, the local accomplices, another 9 to 10 million people—
emerging national movements of Southeastern Europe mostly Poles, Belarusans, and Ukrainians—were killed
embroiled the region into the early twentieth century. during the German advance of 1939–1941. The Soviet
Ottoman weakness and the scheming of the independent regime deported some 1.5 million Poles and Ukrainians
states of Greece (independent in 1830), Serbia (1878), to Asia, while 5.5 million people from throughout the
Romania (1878), and Bulgaria (1878) stoked the incen- region were forced into labor in Germany. Following the
diary situation in the region. Bloody wars in 1877– war, over 18 million people were resettled, including over
1878 and 1912–1913 and other economic and diplo- 8 million Germans expelled from Poland, Czechoslova-
matic crises drew the major European powers—Austria- kia, and Hungary. With the collapse of the Communist
Hungary, Britain, and Germany—into a complicated regimes in 1989 and 1991, the efforts at creating nation-
tangle in the region. A Serbian student’s assassination of states have continued, with the establishment of inde-
the Habsburg heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on 28 pendent post-Soviet republics (the Baltic states, Belarus,
June 1914 precipitated the unraveling of that tangle, and Ukraine, Moldova) and the peaceful split of Czechoslo-
led to the start of World War I. vakia in 1993.The conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, and Ko-
World War I brought the creation of new independent sovo, however, have shown that nationalist identities,
states in Eastern Europe (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, when mixed with economic decline and political provo-
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia), but the process cation, remain a deadly force in the region.
of building ethnically homogenous polities out of the for-
mer empires continued throughout the twentieth century. Eastern Europe in the
“Ethnic cleansing,” a term that entered the universal lex- Twenty-First Century
icon during the wars of the former Yugoslavia (1991– Over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in East-
1999), has been a stain on the region’s history since the ern Europe, the region is again a marchland of eco-
wars of 1877–1878 and 1912–1913, when Slav, Ro- nomic, political, and cultural spheres. In spring 2004,
manian, and Greek armies expelled thousands of Mus- eight former communist states join the European Union.
lims. The expansion of Nazi German military power Yet the former Yugoslav republics remain unstable after
into the region, followed by the Soviet Union’s devastat- the wars of the 1990s, and the former Soviet republics of