The Making of Eastern Europe Quotes

“Yet in the aftermath of World War Two Communism had been much more popular in the region than is commonly admitted. Its doctrinal certainty, its promise to refashion society in favour of the common man, its collectivism, its stress on huge projects, its idealism, even the discipline which the Party represented, were all highly appealing. Nor should the clouds of dust arising from its collapse be allowed to obscure the old regime’s achievements any more than its evils and its failures; for the Communist order did succeed in overcoming some serious longstanding problems.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“But Ivan IV could stand his ground in disputation with a Jesuit[31] just as he did against Protestants, despite his fondness of the Protestant English; and after the Polish intervention during the Time of Troubles chances of winning Russia over became even slimmer. In fact the triumph of Brest was to mark the limit of Catholic penetration of Eastern Europe; and this limit constituted a cultural as well as a religious frontier. It was not quite an impervious Iron Curtain. Nevertheless it impeded acceptance of humanism, Latin culture and Western ideas, confirming an ideological divide that would be recalled by, and contribute to, the Cold War of the twentieth century.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“Alexis was well aware that a political order would be all the firmer for being underpinned by a moral order. As soon as he acceded to the throne he endorsed a movement of religious zealotry (a Russian echo of the counter-Reformation). So religion was encouraged as a means of promoting loyalty to the crown and respect for its wishes; a means of breaking down the old loyalties to clan, locality, tradition and, not least to pagan practices which were often associated with rebellion.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“The Romantic movement encouraged respect for primitive and popular culture; it also gave rise to cultural nationalism. J.G. Herder, one of the more ardent followers of the late eighteenth-century enthusiasm for collecting folk songs, popularized the view that nations express themselves in ballads, folk-tales, customs, and traditions, and that every particular language embodied a unique spirit, without which the world would be impoverished. On a visit to Riga, he had formed the view that Latvian folklore might be drowned in the prevailing sea of German. Herder’s enthusiasm for conservation caught on to become an influential source of modern nationalism.[25] But there were others, including the work of enlightened educational reformers. Czechs benefiting from new educational opportunities learned German, for example, and were thus able to devour the classics of German Romanticism. The University of Buda Press, founded in 1777, not only printed the first good Hungarian grammars but soon began to publish in Serbian, Slovak and Romanian. A grammar was vital to the definition of a single, literary language on which a sense of linguistic nationhood could be based (a collection of contrasting dialects could form no such basis). Furthermore, publication in a variety of emerging literary languages was to help spread a consciousness of a linguistic identity.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“Literacy, then, was a key factor in the rise of nationalism, and in particular the literacy of the ‘middle class’ of poorer nobles (the magnates still tended to be cosmopolitan), junior civil servants, officers, seminarists and poorer clergy. Jacobinism had attracted elements of the same groups. Indeed Ferenc Kazinczy, one of Martinovics’s co-conspirators, was to assume a pioneering role in the creation of a Hungarian literary language once he was released from gaol.[29] The size of this nascent intelligentsia continued to increase, for the Emperor Francis, determined though he was to keep revolutionary forces at bay, continued to promote education.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“The Poles, however, constituted a special case, a nation which could not only recall an independent statehood in the relatively recent past but was homogenous in religion. The Ukrainians possessed neither of these advantages, nor even, as yet, much of a national literature, and the rise of mass nationalism there was to take much longer, though the Austrian government encouraged it in Galicia (western Ukraine) as an insurance policy against the local Poles, and to undermine Russia’s hold over the Ukrainian population across the frontier.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“The rise of nationalism everywhere was closely associated with both religion and the rise of elementary education (in which the churches often assumed leading roles).”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism

“Yet however grotesque Stalinism may seem in retrospect, it also represented an heroic attempt to break the bonds of structural economic backwardness. And its failure stemmed as much from human frailty and folly and from the sheer weight of the problems bequeathed by the past, as from any moral flaws in the Stalinist vision.”
― Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism