This collection of studies deals with the evolution and metamorphoses of the political and mainly parliamentary elite in the Habsburg lands and the neighbouring countries, during the long 19th century. It comprises fourteen studies, compiled by both renowned scholars in the field and young researchers from Central and Eastern Europe.

This volume contains three sections of essays which examine the role of commemoration and public celebrations in the creation of a national identity in Habsburg lands. It also seeks to engage historians of culture and of nationalism in other geographic fields as well as colleagues who work on Habsburg Central Europe, but write about nationalism from different vantage points. There is hope that this work will help generate a dialogue, especially with colleagues who live in the regions that were analyzed. Many of the authors consider the commemorations discussed in this volume from very different points of view, as they themselves are strongly rooted in a historical context that remains much closer to the nationalism we critique.

This text presents an introduction to the struggle between democracy and dictatorship in Eastern Europe since 1900. It is broken down into three different parts focusing on those time periods when experiments with democracy threatened to change the established order - the inter-war period, the democratic or semi democratic interlude in the wake of World War II until 1949 and the current experience with the new democracies. In discussing the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, the authors argue that the experience of Eastern Europe reveals the challenges which threaten democracy and the conditions necessary for the survival of democratic government.

The volume discusses the integration of peasants into the nation building project of Greater Romania with a focus on social and cultural practices. Thus, it addresses one of the key questions of the new political system in post-imperial East Central and Southeast Europe. It advocates a shift from a multiple top-down perspective (capital – province, urban political elites – rural voters) to an analysis concentrating on regionally diverse rural societies with a special interest in the predominantly ethnic Romanian population.

"Istvâan Bibâo (1911-1979) was a Hungarian lawyer, political thinker, prolific essayist, and minister of state for the Hungarian national government during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This magisterial compendium of Bibâo's essays introduces English-speaking audiences to the writings of one of the foremost theorists and psychologists of twentieth-century European politics and culture. Elegantly translated by Pâeter Pâasztor and with a scholarly introduction by Ivâan Zoltâan Dâenes, the essays in this volume address the causes and fallout of European political crises, postwar changes in the balance of power among countries, and nation-building processes"--

Social mobility is about climbing the societal ladder, or switching to a better, more promising or rewarding position. But how does this work for those already atop or very close to it? Climbing up the Social Ladder? explores instances of social mobility among different types of positional, decisional and status-defined elites in East-Central Europe during the long 19th century, at individual or group level.

Der vorliegende Sammelband zur historischen Elitenforschung ist das Ergebnis eines internationalen Workshops, der im Frühjahr 2015 in Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg) stattgefunden hat. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, inwieweit philosophische und soziologische Elite-Konzepte auf das Gebiet der historischen Forschung übertragen werden können und inwiefern die Quellenlage aus dem Gebiet der Sozialgeschichte vom 18. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert eine fundierte Erforschung historischer Eliten ermöglicht. Neben dem praktischen Erfahrungsaustausch über die Perspektiven und Grenzen der historischen Elitenforschung am Beispiel eigener Forschungen werden auch die Bemühungen der Geschichtswissenschaft thematisiert sich gegen andere Sozialwissenschaften, im Besonderen der Soziologie, zu öffnen und in einer Debatte über den Begriff der Elite in der historischen Entwicklung der Neuzeit zu engagieren. Damit können theoretische Konzepte aus vielen Feldern der Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften mit empirischen Befunden aus historischen Quellen zu einer neuen interdisziplinären Symbiose verbunden werden.

Recent collection of essays discusses the historical event and the multifarious consequences of the 1867 Compromise (Ausgleich, Settlement), conducted between the Habsburg monarch, Francis Joseph and the Hungarian political ruling class. The whole story has usually been narrated from a plainly Cisleithanian viewpoint. The present volume, the product of Hungarian historians, gives an insight into both the domestic and the international historical discourses about the Dual Monarchy. It also reveals the process of how the 1867 Compromise was conducted, and touches upon several of the key issues brought about by establishing a constitutional dual state in place of the absolutist Habsburg Monarchy. The emphasis is laid not on describing and explaining the path leading to the final and "inevitable" break-up of the Dual Monarchy, but on what actually held it together for half a century. The local outcomes of self-maintaining mechanisms were no less obvious in the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy, despite the many manifestations of an overt adversity toward it. The Creation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy will appeal to historians dealing especially with 19th-century European history, and is also essential reading for university students.

"The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building, and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the "hard work" (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build "national" societies." "The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists, and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one."--BOOK JACKET.