East and Central European History Writing in Exile 1939-1989 [1 ed.] 9789004299696, 9789004299627

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East and Central European History Writing in Exile 1939–1989

On the Boundary of Two Worlds Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics Founding Editor Leonidas Donskis (Professor and Vice-President for Research at ism University of Management and Economics, Lithuania) Associate Editor Martyn Housden (University of Bradford) Editorial and Advisory Board Timo Airaksinen (University of Helsinki) Egidijus Aleksandravicius (Lithuanian Emigration Institute, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas) Aukse Balcytiene (Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas) Stefano Bianchini (University of Bologna, Forlì Campus) Endre Bojtar (Institute of Literary Studies, Budapest) Ineta Dabasinskiene (Vytautas Magnus University) Pietro U. Dini (University of Pisa) Robert Ginsberg (Pennsylvania State University) Andres Kasekamp (University of Tartu) Andreas Lawaty (Nordost-Institute, Lüneburg) Olli Loukola, (University of Helsinki) Bernard Marchadier, (Institut d’études slaves, Paris) Silviu Miloiu (Valahia University, Targoviste) Valdis Muktupavels (University of Latvia, Riga) Hannu Niemi (University of Helsinki) Irina Novikova (University of Latvia, Riga) Yves Plasseraud (Paris) Rein Raud (Tallinn University) Alfred Erich Senn (University of Wisconsin-Madison/Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas) André Skogström-Filler (University Paris viii-Saint-Denis) David Smith (University of Glasgow) Saulius Suziedelis (Millersville University) Joachim Tauber (Nordost-Institut, Lüneburg) Tomas Venclova (Yale University) Tonu Viik (Tallinn University)

VOLUME 39 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/btw

East and Central European History Writing in Exile 1939–1989 Edited by

Maria Zadencka Andrejs Plakans Andreas Lawaty

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Library of Congress reading room - Pixabay Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data East and Central European history writing in exile 1939-1989 / edited by Maria Zadencka, Andrejs Plakans, Andreas Lawaty. pages cm. -- (On the boundary of two worlds) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-29962-7 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-29969-6 (e-book) 1. Europe, Eastern--Historiography--History--20th century. 2. Europe, Central--Historiography--History--20th century. 3. Historians--Europe, Eastern--History--20th century. 4. Historians--Europe, Central--History--20th century. 5. Exiles--Europe, Eastern--History--20th century. 6. Exiles--Europe, Central--History--20th century. I. Zadencka, Maria, editor, author. II. Plakans, Andrejs, editor, author. III. Lawaty, Andreas, 1953- editor, author. DJK32.E26 2015 943.00072--dc23 2015018514

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-7121 isbn 978-90-04-29962-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29969-6 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Notes on Contributors IX Introduction 1

PART 1 Constituting Exile Estonian Historians in Exile: Organisation and Publication 13 Olavi Arens Transnational Contacts and Cross-Fertilization among Baltic Historians in Exile, 1968–1991 30 Toivo Raun Baltic Historiography in West German Exile 46 Jörg Hackmann Remaining Loyal: Latvian Historians in Exile 1945–1991 68 Andrejs Plakans Ukrainian Historical Writing in North America during the Cold War: Striving for “Normalcy” 93 Volodymyr Kravchenko Belarusian Historians in Exile: New Circumstances, Old Problems 120 Oleg Łatyszonek Fr. Prof. Walerian Meysztowicz and the Polish Historical Institute in Rome 131 Mirosław A. Supruniuk Polish Exile Historians at the International Historical Congresses 156 Maria Zadencka To Be a Polish Historian in Exile: Semantic and Methodological Remarks 190 Rafał Stobiecki

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PART 2 Transfer of Knowledge Homeland Livland and “Exile” in the German Fatherland: Reinhard Wittram (1902–1973) and his Attitudes towards Baltic History, 1925–1964 205 Gert von Pistohlkors How To Become A Perfect Danish-Estonian Historian: Homage to Vello Helk 236 Jaan Undusk Polish Historiography in Exile: On Selected Works and Ideas of Oskar Halecki, Henryk Paszkiewicz and Marian Kukiel 249 Mirosław Filipowicz The Shape of Europe in the Works of Oskar Halecki, Józef Mackiewicz, and Marian Kukiel 263 Maria Zadencka Polish Exile Periodicals as a Dialogue Forum: Teki Historyczne, Polish Review, Zeszyty Historyczne 282 Rafał Stobiecki

PART 3 New Styles of Thought Generations in Baltic German Historical Writing, 1919–2009 297 Gert von Pistohlkors History Writing in Exile and in the Homeland after World War II: Some Comparative Aspects 322 Jaan Undusk In Whose Name is the Story Told? The Émigré Critique of Method in the Historiography of the Polish People’s Republic 343 Artur Mękarski

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The Figure of “Antemurale” in the Historiography at Home and in Exile 360 Andreas Lawaty A “Polish Connection” in American Sovietology Or the Old Homeland Enmities in the New Host Country Humanities 375 Andrzej Nowak The Idea of Latvian National History in Exile: Continuity and Discontinuity Iveta Leitāne 396 Name Index 425

Notes on Contributors Olavi Arens Professor in the Department of History, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah/Georgia, usa. Academic Executive Director of the Association of Advancement of Baltic Studies (aabs). Author of numerous articles and book chapters on Estonia during the 1917 Russian Revolution, on twentieth century Estonian history, and on study programmes to the former Soviet Union, especially Estonia. Mirosław Filipowicz Director of the Institute of East-Central Europe and Professor of the John Paul ii Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. Research areas: history of historiography, methodology of history, the history of culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Author of the books on Polish historiography concerning Russian history and emigrant historians of Russian, Polish and Ukrainian origins in the us. Recent publications: Churches, States, Nations in the Enlightenment and in the Nineteenth Century (Lublin, 2000) and Émigrés and Yankees: About American Historians of Russia (in Polish, Lublin 2007). Jörg Hackmann Professor of East European history at the University of Szczecin, Poland. Author of numerous articles on modern Baltic and Polish history, on German Ostforschung 1918–45, and Polish and Baltic historiography in the 20th century as well as on the history of civil society. Recent publication: (ed.) Associational Culture and Civil Society in North Eastern Europe. Regional Features and the European Context (Wien: Böhlau, 2012). Volodymyr Kravchenko Professor in the Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Fields of interest include the history of Ukrainian historical writing from the 19th to the 21st century, and regional and border studies. Andreas Lawaty Researcher at the Nordost-Institut/IKGN, Lüneburg, Germany, formerly at Deutsches Polen-Institut, Darmstadt, Germany. Research interests: history of Polish-German relations, Polish history, culture and literature, comparative history of East Central Europe and history of Russian culture. Recent pub­ lication: Intellectual Visions and Revisions in the History of Polish-German Relationship of 19th to 21st Centuries (in Polish, Kraków: Universitas, 2015).

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Iveta Leitāne Research Associate at the Department of Theology, University of Latvia, Riga. Fields of interest: the Bible and related literature, history of the Jewish people, Jewish thought and philosophy, history writing and nationalism. Recent publication: (ed. with Yvonne Luven) Das nationale Erwachen in Baltikum: elf Beitrage zum 17. Baltischen Seminar (Lüneburg, 2009). Oleg Łatyszonek Professor in the Department of History at the University of Białystok, Poland; chairman of the Belarusian Historical Society in Poland. Fields of interest: history of Belarusian national identity, the struggle for an independent Belarus, history of Belarusians in Poland and geopolitics of Belarus. His collected works were translated into Belarusian and published in 2009–2010. Recent publications: (with Eugeniusz Mironowicz) From White Ruthenian to Belarusian. Sources of the Belarusian national idea (in Polish, Białystok, 2006) and History of Belorusia 18.–21. Century (in Belorusian, Vilnius, 2010). Artur Mękarski Historian (PhD) and translator, with scholarly interests in the history of ­historiography and the philosophy of history and with a research focus on the history of Polish historiography in the twentieth century. Recent publication: Between Philosophy of History and Politics: Historiography of the Polish People’s Republic (1945–1989) From the Viewpoint of Polish Historians and Publicists Living in Exile (in Polish, Warsaw, 2011). Andrzej Nowak Professor at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, and Chair of Russian and Soviet studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw; for many years editor in chief of Arcana, a periodical dedicated to historical, political, and social issues. Main field of interest: history of Russia, history of Polish-Russian relations, history of Poland. Among many recent publications: From Empire to Empire: Views on History of Eastern Europe (in Polish, Kraków, 2004). Imperiological studies: a Polish perspective (Kraków, 2011). Gert von Pistohlkors Retired Academic Director of the Department of History at the University of Göttingen and long-standing chairman of The Baltic Historical Commission (Baltische Historische Kommission). Author of numerous books and articles on Baltic German politics of the 19th and 20th centuries; editor of several volumes on  Baltic history. Recent publication: (ed. with others): Staatliche Einheit und

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nationale Vielfalt im Baltikum: Festschrift für Prof. Dr. Michael Garleff zum 65. Geburtstag (München, 2005). Andrejs Plakans Professor emeritus of the Department of History, Iowa State University, with research interests in the population and family history in Baltic countries, particularly of Latvia; and most recently the author of A Concise History of the Baltic States (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Toivo Raun Professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies and Adjunct Professor in the Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington. Has published widely on various aspects of modern Baltic and Finnish history, including: Estonia and the Estonians, (Hoover Institution Press, 2nd updated ed., 2001); and (co-ed. with Kristi Kukk) Soviet Deportations in Estonia: Impact and Legacy (Tartu University Press, 2007). Rafał Stobiecki Professor at Lodz University, Poland, and Head of History of Historiography and Auxiliary Historical Sciences Department. Field of interest: the history of modern historical thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Author of numerous books and articles on Polish and general historiography. Among recent publications: Klio in Exile. About the Polish History Writing in the Exile in Great Britain after 1945 (in Polish, Poznań, 2005) and Polish Historians Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century (in Polish, Poznań, 2014). Mirosław A. Supruniuk Historian (Dr. phil. habil.), archivist, librarian, and editor; from 2004 to 2010 head of the Nicolaus Copernicus University Library. Currently in charge of the Archives of Polish Emigration and the University Museum in Toruń. Founder and editor of the magazine Archiwum emigracji (The Archives of Polish and East European Emigration), and author of nearly 30 books and over 400 articles on the history of science, culture, and art of Polish emigrants in the 20th century. Jaan Undusk Research Professor (PhD) and Director of the Under and Tuglas Literature Centre, Tallinn, and member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Fields of  interest: culture and society, philology and linguistics (Estonian and ­Baltic-German literature and historiography, philosophy and theory of literature, rhetorical models of European and Estonian textual traditions). Author

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of several books on the history of Estonian and Baltic-German literature and culture. Maria Zadencka Professor of Polish Language and Literature in the Department of Slavic Studies at Stockholm University. Her research interest includes the history of ‘national projects’ in Poland, Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic countries. Recent publications: Political imagery in the Polish literature of 19th and 20th centuries (in Polish, Warsaw: IBL, 2007) and Divided Heritages: National Differentiations in the Lands of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Baltic Provinces and the Kingdom of Sweden (Stockholm Slavic Papers 24, 2014).

Introduction Studies on East and Central European History Writing in Exile have grown into a wide-ranging field. They now include inquiries belonging to such areas as history and historiography, the history of ideas, sociology, migration studies, history/theory of culture, and political sciences. Uniting these efforts is the comprehensive question of how the experience of exile influenced and still influences history writing and the historical consciousness in the countries hosting exile historians, as well as in the home countries which these historians left. The significance of this research lies in three domains. (1) It expands understanding in the west of continuing revisions of the historical knowledge about eastern and east-central European countries. (2) It reshapes the historical knowledge in the former communist countries then and now. Finally, (3) it provides general explanatory models of the mechanisms that matter for intellectuals living in exile: the ways they work and operate in foreign milieus, their networking, their production of ideas and thoughts, their capacity for solving conflicts, and the ways of re-establishing contact with the home countries. East and Central European History Writing in Exile has been for a long time an unexplored topic. One reason for that may have been the difficulties of getting quick results—one had to localise and gather usually extremely scattered source material in order to interpret them in at least four different contexts: the situation in the host country, in the home country, in the respective exile community and in the global community, the latter being the background for the constructions of international networks so typical for the intellectuals scattered all over the world. The proposed volume documents the range of research already done and the potential of the subject. It gathers research results presented at the December 2009 conference devoted to the topic of history writing in exile. The conference was the first large meeting of historians who have been pursuing the subject in recent years. The volume contains as well several contributions to previous smaller seminars and workshops that have been arranged since 2004 in order to establish the field and foster the research milieu: Sigtuna (Sweden 2004), Rapperswil (Switzerland 2006), Lüneburg (Germany 2007) and Bloomington (usa 2008). Some articles have been elaborated recently. * The politically conditioned migration of intellectuals from East and Central Europe during the communist era drew attention to the political,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_002

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Introduction

intellectual and the identity problems inherent in the exile experience. Also, there was the preserving function of history writing that was inevitably present in the national agendas of the exiles. The greatest emphasis of the contributions to this volume, however, is on the processes of “internationalization” and deals with innovative responses to the condition of exile. The questions addressed concern both social and epistemic aspects of the production of knowledge: the fostering of institutions and transnational organizations in exile and the acceptance of increasingly differentiated perspectives in national history writing; the involvement of intellectuals in their new milieus as well as the transfer of knowledge; the problems of acculturations and new styles of thought; the international encounters between historians and the resolution of conflicts produced by the entangled histories being discussed in exile. The contributions have been grouped under three headings: “Constituting Exile,” “Transfer of Knowledge,” and “New Styles of Thought.” 1. “Constituting Exile.” The contributions in the first part concern the place the exile historians assumed and roles they played in exile community, the ways they organized / re-established professional life and linked it to the exile agenda, the mobility created by exile, the capacity for formation of formal and informal networks over many borders, and institutionalisation. Characteristic of exiles from communist countries in this epoch was the very high percentage of intelligentsia (in the case of the Baltic countries, half of the population with higher education went in exile). Exile intellectuals often served as pioneers in the internationalization of the research networks and opening attitudes of nationally organized scientific milieus. The contributions in this part discuss the optimal ways of organizing the exile intellectual milieu so that, on the one hand, it would continue its own national tradition, and, on the other, establish credible historical research in the new environment in the host countries. The authors of the essays attempt to assess who was most effective in facilitating / conveying historical information and ideas in the new environments. The question about the political engagement of exile historians is a continuous motif in this context. Olavi Arens (Armstrong Atlantic State University) presents results from his research about Estonian historians in Sweden, and particularly the activities of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden, and compares them with the similar society founded in New York. In Sweden, pre-World War ii contacts were important for exile historians in finding professional roles, and many of them became employed at Swedish universities and archives. Re-established contacts with Baltic-German historians active in the Baltic Historical

Introduction

3

Commission (founded 1951) in Göttingen resulted in decades-long discussions and a revaluation of the German presence in the Baltic. The personal interactions between the exile historians of the first generation were substantially more extensive in Sweden then in the usa. Toivo Raun (Indiana University, Bloomington) follows the development of institutional contacts between Baltic historians within the Association for Advancement of Baltic Studies (founded 1968 in the usa), their cooperation with similar institutions and with German colleagues from the Baltic Historical Commission (bhk), and, gradually even with historians residing in Nordic countries. Cooperation with bhk resulted in, among other things, the so-called Marburger Symposia (1971, 1981, and 1985) that opened the door somewhat for the participation of historians from behind the iron curtain. Jörg Hackmann (University of Szczecin) describes the activities of Baltic historians in Germany. He looks at the creation and work of the “Baltic University” in Pinneberg that became a learned forum for Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian researchers; the Baltic Research Institute and its journal Commentatione Balticae; and the Lithuanian Cultural Institute. Interestingly enough, the intellectuals involved in the work of these institutions tended to act within their national groupings, and remained relatively isolated from each other. The chapter also summarizes the work of the bhk, with its research focused on German history in the Baltic region. Andrejs Plakans (Iowa State University) investigates processes of integration and the achievements of three generations of Latvian exile historians spread over usa, Australia and Scandinavia (Sweden). Only the second and third generation participated in a process that could be called the “transfer of knowledge” about Latvian history. The first generation was too traumatized after its experiences of flight and time in the “displaced persons” camps, and had difficulties in establishing new professional life, yet remained active within the exile community (as teachers, publishers, etc.). Plakans discusses the question of the extent to which the historians of the second and third generation, educated and brought up in the West, could be labelled as “exile historians.” The answer should be sought in the “surprising amount of loyalty” to the continuities in Latvian historiography, their engagement in the organising of Baltic academic societies, and in the effort to perfect language skills. Volodymyr Kravchenko (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton) analyzes the ways of furthering national history used in the third wave (post-wwii) of Ukrainian exile in the North America and their establishment of “more or less stable” communications with the outside world. The first years after wwii were marked by mistrust towards the Western scholarship “under Russian influence.” In the first two decades, Ukrainian studies

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Introduction

c­ ontinued to develop and remained under the strong influence of American Slavic studies overall. During the “social turn” in American academia, a new ­generation of Western scholars emerged that specialized in the history of Ukrainian modern nationalism. The change of paradigm affected the younger Ukrainian historians as well and caused generational conflict with the “perennialists.” Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (huri), founded in 1973 by Omeljan Pritsak was the result of this current of reform, as well as the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (cius) established in 1973. In this time Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky launched the territorial approach to Ukrainian history that prompted the studies of the whole new generation of researchers and facilitated a new perception of Ukraine as a multi-ethnic realm, where the cultures of various peoples—including Russians, Poles, Jews, and Crimean Tatars— evolved and interacted. This development went on along dialogues with the Polish, Russian and Jewish intellectuals and historians through a network of professional institutions at American and Canadian universities. Oleg Łatyszoneks (University of Białystok) paper reflects on the meaning of emigration and exile for a nation without its own state and about the most important topics touched upon in the works of professionally schooled and amateur Byelorussian historians. The Exile in the West begins with the periodical Bac’kauščyna edited by Stanislaŭ Stankievič in Munich. Western educated scholars took their degree mostly at the University of Louvain. Some of them emigrated to America. The institutions and periodicals both in Europe and America generated many works that opposed the Soviet version of history of Byelorussia and of the Soviet Byelorussian Republic in the pre-war time. Author states that Belarusian exiles did not manage to establish a scholarly center matching in importance the Ukrainian centers at Harvard University in the usa or at the University of Alberta in Canada. Mirosław A. Supruniuk (University of Toruń) gives a detailed account on the efforts of the scholars from Vilnius University to keep up the connection with the colleagues from the same scholarly milieu, uphold the continuity of schooling of the students and of research. The article describes the engagement of Fr.  Prof. Walerian Meysztowicz in the work of Historical Institute in Rome and Polish University Abroad in London, also the editorial work of sources for Polish and East European History hold in Italian archives and in Vatican. Maria Zadencka (Stockholm University) examines the role the International Historical Congresses have played for these exile historians who since the time before World War ii were involved in the work of the Comité International des  Sciences Historique. Zadencka shows the history of this engagement and examines the way the émigré historians prepared and commented on the four meetings after World War ii (Paris 1950, Rome 1955, Stockholm 1960 and

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Vienna 1965). The congresses gave opportunity to confirm the re-established professional life on the international stage, to assess the state of affairs of the historical sciences in general, to fine-tune arguments in discussions even with the representatives of different methodological and ideological options and to directly oppose the most abusive use of Marxist ideology. The meetings should apparently also verify possibility for the some kind of dialogue with the scholars from the home country. This section closes with Rafał Stobieckis (University of Łódź) article where he tries to “bind Proteus” reflecting on the very term of (Polish) exile historian. It shows a range of attitudes concerning the sense of professionalism, the meaning of the institutionalisation of the discipline, the way of engagement in the character of own displacement, of participation in the exile community. The article demonstrates shifting of these attitudes between different generations of emigrant historians. 2. “Transfer of Knowledge.” The second part of the book evaluates the impact on exiled historians of the new professional milieus as well as the new institutional frameworks and new political and cultural contexts of work. These ­contributions concentrate on the modifications of historical thought and the morphology of changes. They consider the significance of displacement in  historical work and the changes in nuanced knowledge “from within” as it was reset by an “outside” perspective. They ask questions about the practical  skills (language choices), individual strategies for mediation of knowledge, and differences between the generations, all in the context of national historiography. Gert von Pistohlkors (Baltic Historical Commission, Göttingen) in his chapter examines the career and concepts of a preeminent Baltic German historian—Reinhard Wittram—and his reaction to the “changing condition that constitute historical thinking and writing,” his reinterpretations of the history of German in Baltikum in terms of “historical self-consciousness and inner autonomy, not in terms of status-bound, dead legal notions.” Jaan Undusk (Under and Tuglas Literature Centre, Tallinn) describes the Estonian historian Vello Helk who lived in Denmark, his work and his successful strategy for establishing himself professionally in the new country: his choice of topics, of professional language and his nearly apolitical stance that draw a line between himself and the exile community. Mirosław Filipowicz (Catholic University, Lublin) examines three Polish exile historians: Oskar Halecki, Marian Kukiel, and Henryk Paszkiewicz. He describes their “optimistic view on Poland’s past” as characteristic of exile history writing. The wider, international context of their topics clearly developed

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Introduction

in exile and was due to access to extended source materials. They were interested in creating a historically motivated stance with respect to political and ideological circumstances. Both Halecki’s and Paszkiewicz’s works were at odds with the nationally-focused historiography, especially Paszkiewicz’s trilogy concerning Russia’s origins. The concept of “East Central Europe” was developed in the interwar period (Halecki, Handelsman, Bidlo) but conceptualized during the Cold War, mainly in the works of Oskar Halecki. It was during Halecki’s exile when the notion of “East Central Europe” changed its shape, became productive and celebrated. It is an interesting question for discussion (posed by Stefan Troebst) whether Halecki’s concept of four regions of Europe in fact prepared the development of area studies in historical sciences. Anywhere, it is possible to assume that the new thinking about the national entanglements inspired by the situation of exile and new professional environments—was not without impact on the maturing and advance of thoughts that eventually formed Spatial Turn in history. Maria Zadencka concentrates on Polish discussions in exile about the borders of Europe, and especially on Oskar Halecki’s concept of “East Central Europe” based on his studies of the late medieval period conducted both in the pre-war time and later on as well as on his cherished idea of federation. In the chapter, Halecki’s thought is placed in the context of the tradition of American medievalism and of the federative institutions, on the one hand, and of similar ideas evolved by the conservative German intellectuals in American exile (Arendt, Strauss, and Voegelin), on the other. Professional and popular publications were important products of the work of exile historians and the exile institutions during the whole post-war period. They played an integrating role within the exile community; they reached the home countries and contributed to a better visibility of exile historical studies in host countries, creating acceptance in the mainstream of academic life. The chapter by Rafał Stobiecki discusses the different profiles of Polish historical periodicals in exile. He examines the question how they managed in building bridges between local scholarly life, that is, the scholarship of the country of the residence of the émigré historians, and the scholarly life of the Polish emigration. 3. “New Styles of Thought.” The third section discusses novelty in historical thinking in exile: if and how the new ideas and new “styles of thought” were generated. There is a dialectical relationship between individual and collective thought in the area of innovative thinking: the dependence of the individual

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on the “collective thought” of different milieus and, at the same time, the creative potentiality of the individual to cope dynamically with different collective accounts of knowledge. Taking as a starting point one of the main themes of the Baltic German historiography since 19th century—the Baltic German nobility’s attitude toward the necessity of reforms—Gert von Pistohlkors interprets the handling of this question by Baltic German historians up to World War ii and after the exilelike displacement of Baltic German society during the post-war years. He takes up the most important arguments in the discussions at the end of 19th century, in the 1930s, and the later impact of nationalistic ideas (Volksgeschichte); and analyses the three subsequent generations of historians who were occupied with this theme topic in post-war Germany. Jaan Undusk’s chapter in this section deals with themes that connected the work of exile Estonian historians and Soviet Estonian historiography: the two communities developed competitively (political history), with some intersection points (anti-German stance); they were similar in some omissions (Estonian soldiers in Czech captivity at the end of World War ii) or in a kind of cooperation (economic history). Sometimes the work of the exile historians exercised a hidden influence on the homeland. What distinguished the exile historiography from the Soviet and what brought the former forward was, according to Undusk, the “moral ambivalence” in interpreting history. A quite different assessment of the critical responses in exile to the Marxist interpretations of facts of Polish history is conducted by Artur Mękarski (Łódź). Mękarski illustrates his point with examples of early disregard between émigré and domestic historiography. He argues that the Polish exile historians, who strongly reacted on the first wave of politically crafted Marxist reinterpretation the Polish history, were later not able to see positively the changes of the way the Marxist methodology was applied in domestic historiography after 1956. Mękarski states even the lack of acceptance of the direction “in which Western historiography was evolving” and the reluctance towards demographic and sociological methods by émigré scholars, and ascribes these attitudes to the same disrespect towards ideological function of the methodological turn. Andreas Lawaty (Nordost-Institut/ikgn, Lüneburg) examines the ideas associated with the notion of “the shape of Europe,” developed in exile—and the defence thereof. The use of the historical metaphor of antemurale christianitatis (meaning a mission of defence on religious/civilisation borders—­ originally against Muslims) is an example of a common motif in German Baltic and Polish exile historiographies as directed against Russia and Soviet Union; it was used for the purpose of strengthening a sense of danger. Lawaty compares the criteria needed to define “writing Polish history in exile” in the

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­ ost-war period with those of the so-called Great Emigration after the 1830 p uprising in the Russian-occupied part of Poland. The exiles after World War ii established a conscious linkage with the era of Romanticism and with the idea of Antemurale, the latter itself being a part of the legacy of 17th century rooted in eschatological images. Andrzej Nowak’s (Jagiellonian University, Kraków) chapter shows how the tradition of interpreting the Soviet system as a product of Russian history and political culture, common to Polish historiography, became widely used in the work of American historians of Jewish origins (Adam Bruno Ulam, Richard Pipes, Leopold Labedz), who were born in Poland and grew up in the Polish historical tradition. The chapter by Iveta Leitāne (University of Riga/Princeton University) takes up, among other matters, the religious, theological, and confessional entanglements of historical thinking in the Latvian nation, the need of the Latvians to stabilize their own identity as well as their thoughts about exile, all in order to place themselves in general Western tradition. The focus is on Latvian historiography and its “metaphorical” modifications in exile, ranging from a vision of prehistory recovering “its primordial power” and history seen as a process of salvation and liberation of the “national church” from slavery and occupation. * It is not possible to draw some joint conclusion for the development of exile historiographies. As Mirosław Filipowicz stated—“emigration certainly did not lead to some kind of common intellectual or methodological approach that would have had been the key to constructing a paradigm for émigré historiography.” Nonetheless, one can still identify some common research features in new source materials, in a more or less accentuated split in response to the social turn of the historical sciences in the West, in a differently orchestrated concern for the moral responsibility of historical sciences, and in attempts to regain the audience in the home countries. There were other conditions for establishing institutional life in Europe and in North America and Australia respectively. Here, the common differences between three generations are easy to trace. The tendency for strengthening professionalism went together with the opening up of amateur history writing. There was also a genuine attempt to get into contact and dialogue with the historical disciplines from other countries of the region. This was not an easy process but once started, it exerted a perceptible influence on the real development of the relations across the borders in this part of Europe after 1990—and on the history writing in this area.

9

Introduction

The authors of the present volume were aware of the dominating national perspective in describing exile historians and their work, but this shouldn’t be misleading. The texts show the efforts of émigré historians—even in the first generation—to break out from the grip of traditional national frame. The regional, global perspectives and comparative methods opened the national sphere, lifted some of its components and rearranged the main traditional currents. Exile history writing seems to “abandon and strengthen” the national view on history at the same time. It still cherishes the national idea but it is also transformed by new sources, theories and methods and inspired by cross border cooperation. All these documented facts question the general theoretical assumption of “national” and “global” as being in deep-rooted opposition to each other, quite often encountered in historical, social and political sciences. The experience of “writing history in exile” reflects rather the process of methodologically and politically based change through transnational rapprochement of a profession being part of the changing world that it tries to describe, or even to explain. * We have benefitted from the advice of colleagues, especially those who ­participated in the discussions and helped to elaborate the frame of research, and besides those who delivered the papers for this volume: Egidijus Aleksandravičius, Stefan Berger, Ragnar Björk, Jānis Krēsliņš, Anu Mai Köll, Rebecka Lettevall, Monika Mandelíčková and Katrin Steffen. We are grateful for their ideas and their cooperativeness, what can be said also about Leonidas Donskis and Martyn Housden balancing the series “On the Boundary of (at least) Two Worlds.” We also would like to express our gratitude to the institutions which gave the project financial and organisational support and helped us to conduct research and to organise workshops and conferences: the Wenner-Gren Found­ ation in Stockholm, Nordost-Institut/ikgn in Lüneburg, the Slavic Department of Stockholm University, cbees at Södertorn University in Stockholm, the Polish Museum in Rapperswil/Switzerland, and the Museum of Polish History in Warsaw.

Part 1 Constituting Exile

∵

Estonian Historians in Exile: Organisation and Publication* Olavi Arens While there had been political emigrations from Estonia that predated 1944— the one following the 1905 revolution to Europe, the one after 1918 to Russia, and perhaps the 1941 to Soviet Russia, it is the Great Flight of 1944 that engendered the best example in Estonian history of the creation of an intellectual community, including historians, in exile with a political mission. In 1944 with the approach of the Soviet army, a substantial segment of Estonian intellectuals fled across the Baltic Sea to either Sweden or Germany. In Sweden shortly after their arrival a number of scholars, including historians, met in Stockholm in January 1945 to discuss the idea of establishing a learned society. Officially, the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden was established in February 1945, thus, before the end of the war.1 In its statutes, the aims of the Society were described as: “encourage scholarship…. especially of Estonia and its people…. and become for Estonian scholars an organization for maintaining contact.”2 We do not find any mention of exile in the original statutes. Yet five years later we can read a different, a more mission-oriented, statement of the aims of the Society in the English-language summary published in the first Yearbook of the Society:3 The Estonian Learned Society in Sweden (Eesti Teaduslik Selts Rootsis) was founded by Estonian scientists in Stockholm on Feb. 15, 1945. They were former teachers at the Tartu University and the Tallinn Polytechnical Institute, as well as persons working at archives, museums and other scientific institutions, who had arrived in Sweden as political refugees from Estonia mainly during the previous summer and autumn. The aim of the Society is the continuation of this free research work in exile which had been made practically impossible by the communist regime in Estonia…. * A shorter, abridged version of this chapter in Estonian appeared in Acta Historica (2010), 15, 191–199. 1 For a short overview of the activity of the Society see Anderson, 2009. 2 See the discussion on the writing of the by-laws of the Society in F 176, s. 1. The archives of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden (elss) are located at the University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. Many thanks to the members of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of Tartu University and the Center for Estonian Exile Literature of the Tallinn University Library for their helpfulness and courtesy. 3 Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in Svecia, i: 1945–1949. Stockholm, 1952, 127.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_003

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The by-laws of the Society were fully in accordance with Swedish laws on organizing such societies in a civil society of a democratic political system. However, the organizational form and activity of the society drew on the experience of academic learned societies that had existed in Estonia and had been connected to Tartu University. In fact, if we go back in history to the 19th century we can find a forerunner in the Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft. Of greater relevance were the numerous learned societies that had been created in Estonia in the 1920s and 1930s—to name a few: The Academic History Society, The Academic Swedish-Estonian Society, The Mother-Language Society, etc. These societies held meetings (usually in Tartu) at which scholarly papers were presented; they collected membership fees and solicited additional funds; and they published either a scholarly journal or a yearbook. We can call them “learned societies of place.” Most of the societies existed in Tartu and were tied in some way to Tartu University. As we know, all learned societies were disbanded in the sovietization of higher education and scholarly activity in Estonia in 1940.4 The founding members of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden had been members of such societies in Estonia. One of the first tasks the Estonian scholars in exile set for themselves was to provide an account of what had happened to faculty members at higher institutions of learning in Estonia, in particular to the faculty members of Tartu University during World War ii. A former professor of history, Evald Blumfeldt, summarized the data on the fate of the faculty of Tartu University, the major university in Estonia, as: 90 in exile, 37 dead or deported, 42 remaining in Estonia, and 22 whose fate was unknown.5 This meant that approximately one half (47%), and well over fifty percent of those alive, of the faculty members (professors and docents) of Tartu University found themselves in exile at the end of the war. Of this number, we can place approximately one-half in Sweden, and the other half in the western occupation zones of Germany. In February 1944, President Roosevelt established a War Refugee Board to deal with refugees in Europe. This Board provided some of the financing to help members of the Estonian intelligentsia to flee to Sweden. In this activity university faculty were regarded as a high priority group.6 However, the author has not discovered any specific information on the number of university faculty who were aided in this way. Apparently, most intellectuals fled to Sweden on their own, as did most of the refugees fleeing to Germany.

4 Kivimäe and Rosenberg, 1985, 134–143; Tamul, 1993, 64–74. 5 Blumfeldt, 1949, xvi. 6 Andrae, 2005, 78–81.

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What became the dominant paradigm of later scholarly activity—organizing on a Baltic basis with Latvian and Lithuanian émigré scholars—was relatively weak during the first two decades of exile activity. Perhaps the major example of cooperation was the Baltic University at Hamburg/Pinneburg in the British Zone of Germany in 1946–49.7 The Baltic University included faculty members from Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian universities and served refugee Baltic students. The university came to an end when most of its faculty emigrated to North America, Australia, or Britain in 1949. Why had such a large percentage of the faculty chosen exile to remaining in Estonia? The deans of the different schools of Tartu University wrote reports in 1947–48 detailing what had happened in their schools during 1940–44. Gustav Ränk, a former professor of ethnography, noted in his report on the Soviet period:8 In nominal terms Tartu university remained with its departments (except for the department of theology) …. but the administration and spirit that now was imposed was directly opposed to that what had been in operation during the Estonian Republic…the first three years were filled with Marxist dialectics, philosophy of historical materialism, Bolshevik party history, etc. …the various disciplines had to immediately be reincarnated in a new spirit dictated from Moscow. The lectures of professors were controlled publicly by administrative officials; in secret, control was exercised by organs of the Communist Party…. What was especially depressing was the knowledge that direct contact with the Western scholarly world was cut off for the faculty of Tartu University. Ränk was equally critical of the German occupation policy toward Tartu University, as he noted: We cannot say that German pressure on the philosophy department was less harsh than that of the Russians…. [but] German occupation authorities never reached the goal of actually controlling teaching activity… He concluded: Taking all of the above into consideration, it is understandable that a greater part of the faculty of the philosophy department has preferred 7 Järvesoo, 1991. 8 Ränk in elss, F 176, 68. In his memoirs written in 1988, Ränk discusses his arrest by the Soviet authorities in July 1941: Ränk, 1988, 96–110. See also Arens, 2010, 15, 193.

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the uncertainty of life as refugees to the spiritual pressure that has ­prevailed at Tartu University during recent years and that still prevails  there…. At present the professors from the department faculty (Philosophy) who are living abroad as refugees include the professors of: Estonian and World Literature, Estonian language, Uralic languages, Western Finnish languages, English philology, one of the historians, art history, folklore and ethnography… The Learned Society that was established in Sweden in 1945 was to be selffinancing and considered its aims as:9 sponsoring scholarly lectures, building a library, supporting research by financial support and publication of scholarship. As we read accounts of the activity of the Society in the early years—the late 1940s and the 1950s, we see that the Society also performed a necessary social function for its members, since besides scholarly activities, it organized excursions for its members to historical sites and museums in Sweden. One of the conclusions of a recent study of scholars in the United States by the American Council of Learned Societies about why scholars in fact join learned societies is to meet and socialize with others with similar interests. The experience of the Estonian Learned Society was thus no different from other scholarly organizations elsewhere in the world. The Society was fortunate, for the sake of stability, to have the leadership of Evald Blumfeldt, previously its secretary, as its president from 1955 to 1976 and Jakob Koit as its secretary also from 1955 to 1976. Besides scholarly activity, the Society maintained contact with the wider exile community by organizing annual commemorations on the anniversary (the first of December 1919) of the establishment of an Estonian Tartu University.10 The Society also provided a service in judging graduate student papers on topics in Estonian history for prizes funded by other Estonian exile organizations, typically student societies. Members of the Society felt that this was their contribution to encouraging the next generation of Estonians in exile to continue a tradition of scholarly study of Estonian history, language, and culture. The finances of the Society were based on memberhip dues initially set at 10 Swedish krona a year and on donations. Dues, even though small (raised from 10 to 15 krona only in 1962) provided less than 10% of the Society’s revenue. 9 10

Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in Svecia, i: 1945–1949. Stockholm, 1952, 118. The attendance at the annual commemorations of the establishment of Tartu University averaged around one hundred.

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Many members (perhaps one-half) did not pay even the modest membership fee. The culture of a totally self-supporting membership society was apparently weak among the members. Donations (perhaps some members gave donations rather than pay dues), which made up a greater share of income than dues, were received from individuals, other Estonian exile organziations, and at times also Swedish organizations. No direct subsidies by the Swedish state were provided. The publications of the society did not prove to be a money-making venture, and in fact the cost had to be covered by outside donations. In the early days of the society members actually loaned money to the organization to cover up-front publication costs.11 Gradually some surpluses were passed along from one year to the next, and the assets and the budgets in the society grew.12 Still, the shortage of funds for activities was a constant issue in discussions over the annual budgets. The Society had to struggle to publish, first the commemorative volume on Tartu University in 1949, and then the Yearbooks that appeared at five-year intervals. Financial resources were lacking to publish the Yearbook more frequently. Eventually the library and archives of the Society, which had grown considerably since the foundation of the Society, began to receive support from the Swedish state as the librarian who was hired was paid a half-salary of the Swedish state; in 1969 the position was converted to a full-salaried one.13 The Society, however, continued to pay rent for the rooms in which the library was housed, and rental expenses continued to be a major finacial burden on the Society throughout the period. The library was forced to relocate to new quarters a number of times, because of increases in rent, or because the building in which the library was located was to be renovated. Members of the society, however, clearly felt that it was worth the time, energy, and resources of the Society to maintain and indeed expand the library as a unique resource for Estonian studies outside Estonia. In 1955, the Estonian folklorist, Oskar Loorits, published a work entitled Basic Problems of Estonian History, in which he critiqued existing writing of Estonian history and endeavored to define the mission for the next generation of Estonian intellectuals during a time period when most members of the exile community felt that the continued existence of an Estonian nation and culture  was under threat.14 Loorits adopted a conceptual framework based on 11 12 13 14

See the protocols of the executive board of the Society for 28 March 1955: elss, F 176, s.9. Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in Svecia, v: 1965–1969, 142. Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in Svecia, iii: 1955–1959, 151. In 1976 the library held approximately 9,000 books. Loorits, 1955.

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generations in analyzing Estonian intellectual history. According to him, the active Estonian generation in exile could be identified with those born circa 1900 (in fact Loorits himself had been born in 1900) and represented only the fourth generation of educated Estonians.15 This generation had begun their education in Tsarist Russia and had reached adulthood as Estonia became an independent state. They had attended Tartu University in the 1920s and studied under Swedish and Finnish professors who held the professorships in history and archeology during the time.16 A number of them had received fellowships for study outside of Estonia at other European universities. They were active in the scholarly societies that had existed in Tartu in the 1920s and 1930s. Their professional careers had begun in the 1930s with work in archives or as lecturers, docents, and professors at Tartu University.17 They were the first ethnic Estonians to hold such positions. Their scholarly careers lay ahead of them. Then came World War ii. Throughout the thirty-year period under discussion, the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden scheduled lectures on historical topics, as well as on topics in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. In 1947 a southern branch of the society was established at Lund University. The combined membership of the two branches of the Society in 1949 came to 87; membership climbed to 138 in 1954 and remained fairly steady for the next 15 years (in 1969 it reached 158 with 25 members outside of Sweden).18 While attendance for lectures was never high (typically between 12 to 20 persons), the Society provided an audience and a discussion setting for the presenters that helped perpetuate an atmosphere that was one of continuity with the traditions of Tartu University, which in turn meant the setting of a European university in academic discourse and research activity. Summaries of the lectures and discussions were written up by the secretary of the Society.19 In the time period from 1945 to 1970, 304 lectures in all were sponsored by the main branch of the Society in Stockholm and its southern affiliate; 106 (or one-third) could be classified as history, if one stretches the definition to include art history, archeology, and folklore.20 The majority of the history lectures (56) were by thirteen 15

16 17 18 19 20

We may note the following year of birth of a number of active members of the society: Arnold Soom 1900, Gustav Ränk 1902, Evald Blumfeldt 1902, Armin Tuulse 1907, Richard Indreko 1900, Jakob Koit 1906. Raun, 1999, 338–351. See Künnapas, 1984. The membership figures may be found in the Yearbooks. Protocol summaries of most of the lectures and discussions were recorded by the longtime secretary of the Society, Jakob Koit. elss, F 176, s. 60–67. The Yearbooks include a complete listing of the titles of the lectures.

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individuals who gave two or more presentations. In fact 26 of the presentations (approximately one quarter of the history lectures) were by three historians— Armin Tuulse, Evald Blumfeldt, and Arnold Soom. Many of the history presentations were based on research in the Swedish archives and were on themes related to Estonia in the Middle Ages or the Swedish rule of the 16th and 17th centuries. Most of the lectures were later published. A question we may pose in a study of exile historians is the extent of their contact with the historians of the host country and then with historians of the larger scholarly community. The historians who were most active in the Society were employed either by Swedish universities or by Swedish state archives. They had been members of the Academic Swedish-Estonian society that had been organized in the 1930ʼs and hence had previous ties with the Swedish academic community. The Academic Swedish-Estonian Society began publishing a journal, Svio-Estonica, in 1934 that continued to appear in Sweden after World War ii with Swedish state support.21 A number of Swedish scholars remained devoted to maintaining a cultural tie to Estonian culture by means of cooperation with Estonian exile scholars. Several of them were named honorary members of the Estonian Learned Society.22 The Estonian Learned Society also made efforts to establish contacts with Estonian Swedes who had been evacuated to Sweden in 1943. This is a theme that merits further study. A new significant relationship for Estonian historians began to develop in the early 1950s when contact was established with another group of exile historians, the Baltic Germans. The key initial event was the visit of Georg von Rauch to Stockholm and his presentation before the Estonian Learned Society on the 8th of October 1953 on the state of East European studies in Germany since World War ii. Von Rauch had received his master’s degree from Tartu University in 1927 and had been a teacher at the German gymnasium in Tartu in the 1930s.23 He knew many of the members of the Society personally. Besides summarizing the state of research on Eastern Europe in West Germany, von Rauch made a plea for greater cooperation and the overcoming of past differences between Baltic German and Estonian and Latvian historians in their treatment of common historical themes. He criticized what he described as nationalistic historical writing in Estonia during the 1930s and called for a discussion of common historical issues and themes by Estonian and Baltic 21 The Svio-Estonica Yearbook for 1944–48 (Lund, 1948), included seven articles by Estonian exile scholars. 22 Among them: Sven Karling, Per Wieselgren, Sigurd Curman, Sigurd Erixon, and Birger Nerman. 23 The Yearbooks include a complete listing of the titles of the lectures.

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German historians with greater awareness of and sensitivity to the historical points of view of the other. A lively discussion ensued, as not everyone present agreed with von Rauch’s characterization of the writing of Estonian history. In particular, Armin Tuulse argued that when it came to art and architectural history, the University of Tartu faculty had dealt objectively with medieval art and architecture in the 1930s.24 In the following years invitations from Göttingen were received for members of the Society to attend the annual meetings of Baltic German historians. Several members of the Society (Arnold Soom and Gustav Ränk among others) attended.25 Personal contacts continued (Reinhard Wittram made a presentation on Peter the Great in Stockholm on 9 September 1957) and references to each otherʼs work increased. A common exile experience allowed a thawing of the previous hostile relationship between BalticGerman and Estonian historians. A teaching institution, the Estonian Scientific Institute, was founded alongside the Society in 1951.26 The Institute began to teach university-level courses in fourteen subjects, including lectures by Evald Blumfeldt and Arnold Soom in Estonian history. It functioned as a teaching institution throughout the decade of the 1950s, but in the 1960s its major function shifted to the publication of a series of bibliographies of works published by Estonian exile scholars. The series of bibliographies included No. 2 by Aino Ränk entitled: A Bibliography of Works Published by Estonian Historians in Exile, 1945–1969.27 In 1985 a followup volume appeared: Archaeology, History, Art, Music and Religion by Meemo Mäelo.28 Only once did the Society take an overt political position on a Cold War issue. In 1956, following the failure of the Hungarian Revolution, members of the Society participated in adopting a resolution at a Tartu University Commemora­ tion meeting that expressed solidarity with the fate of the Hungarian colleagues at the annual Tartu University Commemoration meeting.29 Having gathered here on 30 November 1956 on the initiative of the Estonian Learned Society of Sweden, we, 92 educators, condemn the 24 25 26 27 28 29

The protocol of the meeting (lecture and discussion) of 8 October 1953 was written up by Jakob Koit, then assistant secretary. elss, F176, s.62. For Gustav Ränk’s report, see the protocol of the executive committee meeting of 25 September 1958. elss, F 176, s. 10. Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in Svecia, ii: 1950–1953, 134–135. Ränk, 1969. Mäelo, 1985. Protocol of 30 November 1956. elss, F 176, s. 63.

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repression of our Hungarian colleagues, and feeling deep concern about their fate, we demand that they be free to pursue their scholarly research and be free to interact with scholars from other countries. Psychologically, the failure of the Hungarian Revolution represented a watershed for probably the majority of the members. Prior to 1956, the hope continued to be expressed that the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, including that over Estonia could be overturned. Following a collapse of Soviet rule, it had been the expectation that many of the refugees, including scholars, would return to Estonia (the homeland) and that national culture, including the teaching and writing of national history, would again flourish in Estonia. After 1956 the realization sunk in that exile was going to be long-term. We see the changed attitude reflected in the annual 1961 meeting commemorating Tartu University. Evald Blumfeldt, the long-time president of the Society noted:30 The establishment of the university occurred during a time period of optimism in Estonia. At that moment the Estonian people was realizing its right of self-determination. We now have to fight in a situation that seems bleak. The commemoration was ended by Arnold Soom: Scholarly work is one means of expressing our national culture. It is to be wished that at the commemoration of the anniversary of the Estonian Republicʼs Tartu University we would see more of musicians, artists, and writers…. Still a pattern of scholarly activity had been established by the exiles in Sweden, and Society meetings, discussions, and publishing continued. By the late 1950s and early 1960s we see the beginning of a recovery of ­historical writing in Estonia, this time in Soviet Estonia. This posed a challenge for some of the interpretations of Estonian history held by members of the Society. Paul Vihalem’s work caused a reaction and was greeted negatively, since it brought into question the understanding of exile historians about the  formation of the Estonian state in 1917–1920.31 Ea Jansenʼs work on the Estonian national movement in the 19th century received, however, a positive 30 31

Protocol of 1 December 1961. elss, F 176, s. 63. Vihalem, 1960.

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­reception.32 While the awareness of history writing in Soviet Estonia did not lead to any changes in research themes or methods among exile historians, an understanding grew among them that, while they could continue to contribute to scholarship and the writing of Estonian history, they could no longer claim to represent the sole voice of surviving Estonian national culture. At the same time, an increasing concern began to be voiced in the 1960s about the need to draw the next generation of Estonians in exile into the life of scholarship on Estonian history and culture.33 As we have mentioned above, encouraging the writing of seminar papers by graduate students on topics in Estonian history became part of the activity of the society. Great care was given to reading and commenting on papers submitted for honorariums. A similar society to the one in Sweden was established in the United States in New York City on 16 December 1950—The Estonian Learned Society in America. The purpose of the society was: “to organize Estonian refugee scholars and scientists in the United States, to support their research activities and to assist them in publishing their articles in the Society’s Yearbook.”34 Of the fifty members listed in the first 1951–53 Yearbook, twenty-seven held their final degrees from Tartu University; twelve had received their advanced degrees from German universities and only three from institutions in the United States. All of them had only recently (1949–1950) entered the United States as refugees from West Germany. Some of the members had participated as faculty or students in the Baltic University project of 1945–49 that functioned for a time in Hamburg-Pinneburg, in the British zone of Germany. By 1968–1975 Society membership had grown to 162.35 While the Society also sponsored lectures in New York City, the number was far below that of the Learned Society in Sweden, because the membership of the Estonian Learned Society in America was scattered throughout the United States. The continuous personal interaction that existed among the key members of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden was lacking in the one in the United States. Like the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden which produced five Yearbooks in twenty-five years from 1945–1970, the Society in America also published five 32

33 34 35

See the presentation of Teodor Künnapas on 22 April 1965, “Tartu ülikool tänäpäeval” (Tartu University Today). elss, F 176, s. 64. By 1973 the executive committee approved establishing an official exchange of publications with the F.R. Kreutzwald library in Soviet Estonia. (elss, Protocol of 27 Feb. 1973), F 176, s. 11. See also: E. Blumfeldtʼs presentation of 24 April 1972 on “Carl Robert Jakobson ja ʽSakalaʼ Nõukogude Eesti ajaloouurimuses.” E. Blumfeldt voiced a need to: “recruit new members, especially those who have dedicated themselves to scholarly careers.” elss, F 176, s. 11. Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in America, i: 1951–1953. New York, nd., 60. Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in America, v: 1968–1975. 120–124.

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Yearbooks in its first twenty-five years of existence that covered the years 1951–1975. While publication of the Yearbooks represented only a part of the publishing record of the members of the societies, they do serve as an indicator of the research interests of the members. A simple comparison of the themes of articles published in the Yearbooks of the two societies is therefore instructive. Of the twenty-eight articles published in the Yearbooks of the American society, fourteen (or one-half) were on historical subjects: ten were on 20th century history and politics, one on the 18th century and two on the Middle Ages. Twentieth-century history was not a central theme in the publications of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden. The first five Yearbooks included forty-three articles. Of the eighteen articles on history, five were on Estonian medieval history, five on the Swedish period in the 17th century, and only two were on the 20th century. Both (the Swedish and the American) Yearbooks published articles on Estonian literature, linguistics, and folklore as well as non-humanistic subject areas, ranging from forestry to chemistry. As has been noted, most of the publishing by the exile historians occurred outside of the Yearbooks of the societies. A substantial number of articles and books was published in journals and by presses operated by the Estonian exile community.36 Besides the learned societies, narrower, discipline-oriented ­societies had been established in exile, for example, the Estonian Society of Theologians in Exile, the Society of Estonian Law, etc. The Estonian cultural journals Tulimuld and to a lesser extent Mana, also served as venues for publication. The publications of the Estonian Society of University Students and other fraternities included some scholarly articles in their publications. Journals published in West Germany, in particular, Acta Baltica, and Com­ mentationes Balticae, provided outlets for publishing scholarly articles. Impor­ tantly, special collaborative books around specific themes were published by the exile presses. The most important collaborative effort proved to be a tenvolume work on Estonia during the Second World War.37 This was followed by continuation volumes on the post-war Soviet period.38 The volumes in these series were edited in part by members of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden, and many of the articles were written by its members. At the time of publication these works provided a comprehensive treatment of the World War ii and post-war periods in Estonia. Besides the above publication outlets, we find articles by the leading scholars of the Society in Sweden in German and Swedish academic journals. A number of full-length scholarly monographs 36 37 38

Valmas, 2003. Maasing et al. (eds.), 1954–1962. Maasing et al. (eds.), 1963–1972.

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were produced. In short the exile historians were quite productive and did not have a problem in finding outlets for publishing their work and in joining other colleagues in cooperative efforts. Oskar Loorits provocatively asked if his generation of educated Estonians, including the historians, held any clear and deep set of moral values, since he argued that at least some of the Estonian educated elite had exhibited vacillations in loyalty to the Estonian national cause and to academic freedom that led some to orient themselves toward Soviet authority in 1940 and others toward Nazi rule in 1941–44. In particular, he singled out for criticism the ­faculty of Tartu University.39 A test for the next generation, according to Loorits, would be an ability to overcome this weakness and develop a stronger sense of moral commitment to the value of Estonian cultural and national development. The activity of the Estonian historians in exile does not support Loorits. It was precisely this generation of Estonian intellectuals in exile that exhibited a strong commitment to maintaining the value and traditions of Estonian national culture. The mission of the Estonian exile historians and other intellectuals in the learned societies showed a strong sense of commitment to both the values of Estonian national culture and that of scholarly work in the post-World War ii period in exile. Did they contribute to a better understanding of Estonian history? A case can be made that, yes, they did by furthering a better understanding of the modern cultural, economic, and social history of Estonia and of the conditions of ethnic Estonians in the Middle Ages and the early modern period of the 17th century.40 Furthermore, they provided a basic overview of Estonia and Estonians during the Soviet and German occupation in Second World War. Finally, they proved able to expand the horizons of their historical view by showing a greater openness and historical understanding of the role of the Baltic Germans in the history of Estonia and were able to continue a tradition established in the 1930s of viewing the history of Estonia in the context of a wider, Baltic Sea region. In these ways they pointed toward a future direction of viewing Estonian history. It is extremely unlikely that most of them would have been able to continue their scholarly activity in Soviet Estonia of the post-Second World War period. Many of them, however, were able to continue the scholarly activity that they began in the 1930ʼs in exile. Their lengthy lists of publications attest to their perseverance and diligence in pursuit of their scholarly ambitions.41 39 40 41

Loorits, 1955, 176–191. See the positive evaluation of their activity by Rebas, 1988. See also Undusk, 2007, 4–26. Bibliographies of published works by the leading scholars of the Society were published as “In Memoriam” articles in the Yearbooks.

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To now introduce another variable to our discussion—the issue of generational change and generational conflict. The Estonian ethnographer, Oskar Loorits, raised the question in 1957 if indeed there will be a fifth generation as a continuation to what he identified as the fourth generation (his generation) of Estonian intellectuals. It was the fourth generation, that is those born between 1890 and 1910 and receiving their university education in Estonia, that established the organizational patterns for scholarship in exile. Would the following generation adhere to these organizational structures? Would there in fact be a following fifth generation? The answer to the latter questions was in the affirmative. The answer to the first question on organizational forms was largely no. The members of the next generation, while born in Estonia, received their university education outside of Estonia, whether in West Germany, Sweden, or North America. They came to the fore in the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s at a time when their generational peers, especially at universities, in North America and Europe, were engaged in a generational revolt. Hence, the generational change in exile was in part linked to generational issues that were part of the wider European and North American society in which they were living. In North America, the major organizational form that emerged with the new generation was the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, or the aabs, in 1968.42 The founding conference of the aabs in 1968 was a combined Baltic conference, hence reviving a pattern of cooperation that had developed in the western zones of Germany, of which the Baltic University is the best example. Indeed, a number of the founding members had participated in the work of the Baltic University and remembered the cooperation it engendered. Others remembered other examples of Baltic cooperation in refugee activities in post-war Germany. Still, the organizational pattern was North American.43 The aabs was founded as an area studies organization at a time when a number of area studies learned societies were established in the United States. Major examples are: Middle Eastern Studies Association (1966), African Studies Association (1957), German Studies Association (1976), Association for the Advancement of Jewish Studies (1969), and Latin American Studies Association (1966). It is true that the Association for Asian Studies (1954) and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1948) were older. The oldest, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies, is unique in that it was established in 1911. Still, it was in the 1960s when area studies associations took their 42 43

See the chapter by Toivo Raun in the present volume. Arens, 2006.

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place with the discipline-organized associations in holding large-sized association meetings at different locations in North America and in publishing one or more scholarly journals. Indeed, the period between 1985 and 1995 saw the acceptance into the American Council of Learned Societies (acls) of seven area studies associations. The aabs was accepted into membership in 1991. At present, the acls consists of 70 learned societies—discipline-centered associations like the American Historical Association, are studies societies, multidisiplinary ones like the Society for the History of Technology and societies specializing in periods of history like the Renaissance Society of America; there are large societies with more than 10,000 members, medium ones, and small societies with fewer than 1000 members. Currently, the aabs is one of the 10 area studies associations in the acls and its membership shows the acceptance by the North American world of scholarly associations that the area of study of the aabs and the scholarly credentials of the association are acceptable to other member associations of the organization. In short, the exile community was able to make the transition to establishing a learned society in Baltic Studies that was accepted by other learned societies in North America. The achievement in Sweden was just as noteworthy. The change of generations in the Learned Society in Sweden also involved tension and friction in the early 1970s. One of my surprises in reading the archives of the protocols of the Society was to discover a similar pattern in Sweden to what I had seen in the United States at approximately the same time period. It was a period of questioning of basic assumptions, among them organizational forms and ­patterns—were old organizational forms adequate? What was questioned in Sweden were membership requirements for the Estonian Learned Society and whether or not the society had been too exclusive. The end result though was that the Society in Sweden survived, whereas the one in the United States did not. Still, at the same time a new form of organization and activity emerged in Sweden that in some ways paralleled developments in North America. A Center for Baltic Studies was established at Stockholm University and began to organize biennial conferences in Baltic Studies. The organizational form was different from what was developing in North America at the same time period—the organizer was an institution and not an association. Yet the conferences were Baltic area studies conferences that encompassed panels in a variety of disciplines in which history was strongly represented. Apparently this was also the time period in Sweden and in Europe when an area studies approach to organizing learning made sense and was able to secure funding. Like the aabs in North America, the Stockholm conferences were Baltic—that is, Estonian,

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Latvian, and Lithuanian. Like the conferences of the aabs, papers came to be presented by scholars who were not of Baltic origin. Unlike the aabs which published a journal, the Stockholm University Baltic Center published collections of papers on selected themes. Both conferences encouraged international participation—and scholars from a variety of countries did participate. Following a final 1989 conference, the Stockholm pattern of organizing conferences was resuscitated in 1995 with a conference in Riga, Latvia, that set the pattern for the Baltic Studies Conferences in Europe to the present. There is no association: the conferences are hosted by universities and Baltic Studies centers around the Baltic Sea. They alternate with the ones in North America; conferences have been organized in each of the Baltic States; participants are international. Aside from a gap in the early 1990s, this is the pattern that has prevailed since the early 1970s. If we place this activity into a historical perspective, it is the organizational form of Baltic Studies that have their origins among Baltic exile scholars, a large number of whom were historians. The interest of the North American and European scholarly world in the area studies organizational model coincided with the activity of Baltic scholars who took advantage of the moment to respond and gain acceptance for the concept of Baltic-area study. Alongside their scholarly publications, this is the lasting legacy of Baltic scholars in exile. References Anderson, A. (2009). “Eesti Teadusliku Seltsi Rootsis tegevusest.” [The Activity of the Estonian Learned Society in Sweden] in: V. Mägi (ed.), Eesti teadlased paguluses [Estonian Scholars in Exile]. Tallinn. Andrae, C.G. (2005). Rootsi ja suur põgenemine Eestist 1943–1944 [Sweden and the Great Flight from Estonia 1943–1944]. Trans. by V. Beekman. Tallinn. Arens, O. (2006). “The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies: The Activity of a Learned Society in America” in C. Schymik (ed.), Go North! Baltic Sea Region Studies: Past-Present-and Future. Berlin. 67–74. Arens, O. (2010). “Ajalookirjutus eksiilis: Eesti Teaduslik Selts Rootsis.” Acta Historica 15: 193. Blumfeldt, E. (1949). “Introduction: The University of Tartu, An Historical Survey” in Apophoreta Tartuensia: Pühendusteos Eesti vabariigi Tartu ülikoolile tema avamise /1.  detsember 1919/ kolmekümnendaks mälestuspäevaks paguluses viibivate õppejõudude ja kasvandikkude poolt [A Presentation to Tartu: A Volume Dedicated to Commemorate the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Opening of the the Estonian

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Republic’s Tartu University on 2 December 1919 by the Faculty and Alumni Living in Exile], ed. by J.O. Jensen. Stockholm: Eesti Teaduslik Selts Rootsis. Järvesoo, E. (ed.) (1991). Balti Ülikool Saksamaal, 1945–1949 [The Baltic University in Germany, 1945–1949]. Toronto. Kettunen L. (1948). “Tartust ja sealses ülikoolist.” [Tartu and its University]. Mälestusi Tartu Ülikoolist, 230–251. (Trans. by H. Heinsoo, from the memoir of Lauri Kettunen, Tieteen matkamiehen uusia elämysksiä [New Experiences of a Scholar’s Journey]. Helsinki, 1948. 70–104). Kivimäe, J. and T. Rosenberg (1985) “Akadeemilise ajaloo seltsi tegevusest (1920–1941).” [The Activity of the Academic History Society (1920–1940)]. Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi 16, 134–143. Kruus, H. (1992). “Alma Materi uuestisünnipäevilt.” [The Rebirth of the Alma Mater]. In Mälestusi Tartu Ülikoolist [Memories of Tartu University], compiled by S. Issakov and H. Palamets. Tallinn: Olion, 420. Künnapas, T. (ed.) (1984). Eesti teadlased väljaspool kodumaad: Biograafiline teatmik [Estonian Scholars and Scientists Abroad: Biographical Directory]. Stockholm. Loorits, O. (1955). Eesti ajaloo põhiprobleemid [Basic Problems of Estonian History]. n.p., Sweden. Maasing, R. et al. (eds.) (1954–1962). Eesti riik ja rahvas teises maailmasõjas [The Estonian State and People in the Second World War]. Vols. 1–10. Stockholm. Maasing, R. et al. (eds.) (1963–1972), Eesti saatusaastad, 1945–1960 [The Fateful Years of Estonia, 1945–1960] Vols. 1–6. Stockholm. Mäelo, M. (comp.) (1985). A Bibliography of Works Published by Estonian Scholars in in Exile: History. Stockholm. Niinivaara, E. (1988) “Tartu Ülikoolis.” [At Tartu University]. Mälestusi [Memories], 251–261. (Trans. by H. Heinsoo, from the memoir of E. Niinivaara, Yhä paista sama aurinko [Still the Same Sun Shines]. Keuruu, 1988, 89–101). Ränk, A. (comp.) (1969). A Bibliography of Works Published by Estonian Historians in Exile, 1945–1969. Stockholm. Ränk, G. (1988). Laiemasse maailma [To the Wider World]. Stockholm, 96–110. Raun, T. (1999). “The Image of the Baltic German Elites in Twentieth-Century Estonian Historiography: the 1930s vs. the 1970s.” Journal of Baltic Studies, xxx, 4 (Winter), 338–351. Rebas, H. (1988) “Historiograafilisi aspekte Rootsi aja kohta Baltikumis (1561–1721).” [Historiographic Aspects of the Swedish Era in Balticum (1561–1721)]. Annales Societatis Litterarum Estonicae in Svecia X, 44–78. Tamul, S. (1993). “Tartu Ülikooli välissuunitlusega akadeemilistest ühendustest ja nende sulgemisest 1940–1941.” [The Closing of Tartu University’s Academic Societies with Foreign Contacts]. Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi 27, 64–74.

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Undusk, J. (2007). “Ajalookirjutusest Eestis ja eksiilis Teise maailmasõja järel.” [Historical Writing in Estonia and in Exile Following the Second World War]. Tuna, 1, 4–26. Valmas, A. (2003). Eestlaste kirjastustegevus välismaal 1944–2000 [Estonian Publishing Abroad 1944–2000], i and ii. Tallinn. Vihalem, P. (1960). Eesti kodanlus imperialistide teenistuses (1917–1920) [The Estonian Bourgeoisie in the Service of Imperialism 1917–1920]. Tallinn.

Transnational Contacts and Cross-Fertilization among Baltic Historians in Exile, 1968–1991* Toivo Raun This chapter focuses on the impact of growing transnational contacts among Baltic historians in exile in the Western world in the 1970s and 1980s, especially the role of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (aabs). The aabs quickly developed strong ties to Baltic scholars in Western Europe, and working together, this transnational network played a key role in establishing Baltic studies as a recognized field of academic inquiry in the West. The methodology of area studies encouraged a broader and more comparative approach to Baltic history, which came to be increasingly practiced in these two decades. Baltic studies and a comparative approach to the investigation of Baltic history in the West came of age in the little more than two decades from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The period begins with the holding of the First Conference on Baltic Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park at the end of November 1968, which led to the establishment of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (aabs) at the conclusion of the conference. It culminates in 1991 with the acceptance of the aabs into the ranks of the prestigious American Council of Learned Societies as a bona fide scholarly organization as well as the re-establishment of Baltic independence, thus ending the overt political divisions between Baltic scholars east and west. This article will assess the impact of transnational contacts among Baltic historians in exile during these two decades, focusing especially on those who were members of the aabs and based in the United States and Canada, but also including their rapidly developing connections with colleagues in Sweden, West Germany, and elsewhere in Western Europe. The period in question can be conveniently divided into two halves: (1) the 1970s, which constituted a search for self-definition and a struggle for survival for Baltic studies and its emerging practitioners in the West, and (2) the 1980s, which witnessed a stronger institutional base for Baltic studies outside the Baltic as well as an intensification of * The editors of the present volume gratefully acknowledge republication permission from the Taylor & Francis Group, publisher of the Journal of Baltic Studies in which an earlier version of this chapter appeared in Volume 43, Number 3, September 2012. An earlier version of this chapter was presented as a paper at the following conference: East and Central European History Writing in Exile–International Dissemination of Knowledge, held at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University, 3–5 December 2009.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_004

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international contacts, especially with scholars in the Baltic states themselves. The mainly triangular configuration (North America—Sweden—West Germany) that had quickly developed in the 1970s now became a considerably broader one with the increasing involvement of scholars from the Soviet Baltic republics in transnational connections. The development of a considerable exile community of Baltic intellectuals was a direct result of the loss of independence in World War ii. Forced annexation and repression during the first year of Soviet rule—especially the brutal deportations in June 1941—and the very real prospect of even more massive repression as the Soviets returned in 1944–45 contributed to a substantial flight to the West from all three Baltic states. Although the barriers to an in-depth study of this process were removed with the collapse of the Soviet regime, we will likely never have very reliable or exact figures on the numbers of refugees because of the chaotic conditions in which the flight from their homelands took place. In particular, the number of Baltic refugees who perished en route, e.g., in small boats on the Baltic Sea or in bombing raids in Germany in the latter part of the war, will remain unquantifiable to a large extent.1 It is clear, however, that the Latvian emigration was the largest, probably about the twice the size of the Estonian and Lithuanian ones. At the end of the war about 120,000 Latvians were counted in what became West Germany while the figure for Estonians in the same location was about 50,000, to which should be added over 21,000 who had fled to Sweden. A standard estimate for Lithuanian refugees in all of Western Europe in 1945 is 63,000.2 Among this wave of emigration the urban intelligentsia was disproportionately represented. For example, perhaps as few as 10% of the Latvian refugees had gained their livelihood in agriculture. Roughly half of all Balts with a higher education joined the flight to the West, and nearly half of the teaching faculty at Tartu University in Estonia and at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania was included in their numbers. The creative elite also played a strikingly prominent role in the emigration. For all three Baltic states it is estimated that among the refugees were one-half to two-thirds of the established authors of belletristic literature from the independence era.3 At first glance it may appear that this division of the already small-numbered Baltic peoples constituted an ominous fragmentation of their meager demographic resources. In fact, however, the Baltic intelligentsia in exile proved strong 1 Kumer-Haukanõmm, 2009, 17. 2 Kangeris, 2006, 47; Saldukas, 2006, 52; Kumer-Haukanõmm, 2009, 17; Reinans, 2006, 126. 3 Kangeris, 2006, 47–48; Saldukas, 2006, 53; Raun, 2001, 167; Misiunas and Taagepera, 1993, 113–16.

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enough to maintain a vibrant cultural output for decades in the West, leading the Soviet authorities to treat cultural policy with considerable circumspection in the occupied Baltic countries, at least in the post-Stalin years. In assessing the condition of exile Edward Said emphasizes its agony: ‘the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home’. In his view exile’s ‘essential sadness can never be surmounted’, and this description no doubt applies to many Balts who fled as mature adults.4 Some, however, like the Estonian writer Peeter Lindsaar, were buoyed by a sense of mission, i.e., the perceived moral duty to take full advantage of the right to free creativity outside the occupied homeland in order to insure their nation’s place among the world’s Kulturvölker.5 For succeeding generations in the Baltic communities in the West, especially for those with no living memory of the home country, the concept of exile became increasingly problematic. The connection with the homeland became more and more abstract, and for younger individuals the formative years were strongly shaped by a clearly contrasting environment from the one known by their parents or grandparents. Even for members of the generations that had reached maturity in the Baltic states, philosophical differences and the passage of time created varying attitudes toward their condition. Some became increasingly cosmopolitan in outlook while others came to emphasize the essential cultural unity of all of their co-nationals wherever they might reside in the world. The latter view buttressed, for example, the increasingly popular concept of ‘the external Estonian’ (väliseestlane), who did not consider him- or herself an exile as such.6 Psychologically, the cultural approach had the advantage of not being dependent on the restoration of independence in the immediate future for at least the partial realization of its goals. It is also important to bear in mind that the prospects for renewed Baltic independence were not propitious throughout most of the Cold War, especially after the failure of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Turning now to the role of historians in the aabs, I choose to define that term broadly to include closely related social scientists such as those in political science and sociology. With that qualification it is clear that the most active role played by historians in the evolution of the aabs in the 1970s and 1980s was by those born in the 1930s and 1940s. The number of established Baltic historians who went into exile (born before about 1905) was relatively small, and those who did tended to go to Sweden. Moreover, in order to obtain academic employment in North America, an historian typically needed to have 4 Said, 2000, 173. 5 Lindsaar, 1964, 154–55. 6 Undusk, 2008, 2260–62, 2269–70.

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had graduate training in the West. For historians of Baltic origin, born during the late independence era or in World War ii and who ended up in the United States or Canada, several important factors facilitated their entry into the academic world. The early post-war period, especially the decade of the 1960s, witnessed an unprecedented expansion of higher education in North America, including very favorable opportunities for obtaining academic employment for recent Ph.D’s. As noted above, the Baltic immigrants to North America tended to be of urban origin and relatively well-educated, themselves a product of the high value placed on education by the Baltic national movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This commitment to education as the key to upward social mobility and self-realization was clearly passed on to their children, the generation of the 1930s and 1940s.7 As they obtained graduate degrees in the North American setting, these young Baltic scholars were also socialized by their parents’ (and sometimes grandparents’) generation to retain a typically strong cultural connection to their country of origin. Thus, this new generation of Baltic historians operated with reasonable ease in two different cultural worlds, a potentially strong advantage for their academic careers. Overall, however, it should be noted that most young Baltic immigrants in post-war North America chose to go into science and technical fields such as engineering rather than the humanities or social sciences. The founding of the aabs in 1968, more than twenty years after the beginning of exile in the West, reflected a clearly perceived need for transnational cooperation among Baltic intellectuals in order to compensate for their relatively small numbers and achieve a critical mass of active members. Important experience in collaboration had already taken place in post-war occupied Germany with the successful functioning of the Baltic University in exile, first in Hamburg and then in nearby Pinneberg in the British Zone, during the years 1946–1949. At its peak in late 1946–early 1947 this institution served some 1,200 Baltic university students with 100 faculty members in residence.8 In May 1946 Professor Edgars Dunsdorfs, the Latvian Rector of the Baltic University at that time, stressed that the first major challenge facing members of the three Baltic nationalities at the newly formed institution was to get to know each other better and to learn how to cooperate, something that had been largely missing in their previous interaction throughout history.9 This initial period of cooperation, however, only lasted a short time, and as the great majority of Baltic exiles left war-torn Germany for more promising 7 Lejiņš, 1969, 14. 8 Järvesoo, 1991, 485–87. 9 Dunsdorfs, 1991, 402.

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locations by the end of the 1940s, they faced another period of acculturation and adaptation in their new homes. Thus, it is understandable that it took some time for Baltic immigrants to North America, nearly all of whom arrived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, to master English and to adjust to life in American and Canadian society. Particularly important—in the 1950s and 1960s—was the emergence of a solid base of younger scholars of Baltic origin who had received their graduate training in North American or other Western universities. When the initiative for a Baltic scholarly organization appeared in the mid-1960s, it is not surprising that it came from the Latvian community, which was by far the strongest in numbers of post-war immigrants. In 1966, the Committee for Sciences of the Association of Latvian Fraternities in the United States reached out to Estonian and Lithuanian academic groups with a proposal to hold a jointly sponsored Baltic studies conference.10 The response was highly positive, and the aabs has organized biennial conferences in the United States and Canada since its founding in 1968. In the larger context of the American academic world the time was also ripe for the establishment of the aabs in the 1960s as the concept of area studies became more firmly rooted during this decade, reflecting an increased recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity in American society and a greater awareness of the outside world. It is hardly coincidental that major area studies organizations such as the Latin American Studies Association and the Middle East Studies Association, both established in 1966, were founded at almost the same time. The leaders of the aabs viewed their organization as a broadly based undertaking modelled on existing American scholarly societies with a regional studies focus such as the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies (founded in 1911) and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (founded in 1948). The major goals of the aabs were to promote scholarship in Baltic studies through sponsoring periodic conferences, facilitating research and publications, and encouraging the introduction of Baltic area studies courses at the university level.11 From the beginning the aabs proclaimed its scholarly and non-political nature, but it also had to struggle against the widespread perception in the United States that any Baltic organization had a primarily political aim.12 Thus, the first years of the aabs were in large part devoted to establishing the scholarly legitimacy of the organization, a challenge that it met with considerable success in its first decade. At times leading voices in the aabs enunciated the goal of establishing a Baltic Research 10 11 12

Gaigulis, 1978, 259. Anderson, 1970, 3–4; Vardys, 1970, 3–4. Anderson, 1970, 4.

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Center that could serve as a strong stimulus for scholarship in Baltic studies, but the financial resources for such an undertaking in the United States could not be found.13 It should be noted that during the two decades under review here the administrative work of the aabs was performed entirely on a volunteer basis under the energetic leadership of the organization’s founding Executive Director, Jānis Gaigulis. Starting with the 48 scholars who assembled at the University of Maryland to establish the aabs in 1968, membership in the organization grew at a steady pace of about 100 per year throughout the first decade of its existence and reached 880 members in 1978. During the 1980s membership stabilized at around 1,000, as a steady trickle of new recruits covered the minor losses from attrition.14 On a geographical basis about two-thirds of the members resided in the United States in both 1978 and 1985 with another 16–18% hailing from Canada. In 1978, there were 100 European members (11%), a figure which declined somewhat to 80 (9%) in 1985. Data on language facility in 1985 indicate that the proportion of members with a knowledge of Latvian (46%) was more than twice the size of the Lithuanian (21%) and Estonian (20%) shares combined.15 The majority of the rank-and-file members of the aabs were not scholars, but typically belonged to one of the Baltic exile communities and provided financial and moral support to the organization. The dominant Latvian role would be expected in view of the large post-war Latvian immigration to the United States, but the Lithuanian share (especially if one bears in mind the size of the pre-war Lithuanian community in the us) was seen as low by contemporaries and suggested a reluctance to join the aabs.16 The most significant achievements of the aabs in its first 20 years were the organization of regularly held biennial conferences and the publication of a peer-reviewed scholarly journal of recognized quality in the global academic world, the Journal of Baltic Studies. While the First Conference on Baltic Studies could be termed experimental and was limited in participation and the range of topics covered, all subsequent aabs conferences proved to be broad international meetings with an increasingly multi-disciplinary scope that attracted scholars from all over the West and, beginning in 1982, from the Soviet Baltic republics as well. Also important at these conferences was the growing 13

14 15 16

Gaigulis, 1978, 4. Such a research center did transpire in Sweden in 1981 as the Centre for Baltic Studies at the University of Stockholm, funded by the Swedish state. See ‘Research Center’, 1980, 9. Gaigulis, 1978, 266; Taagepera, 1988a, 3. Gaigulis, 1978 (‘aabs Membership Drive’ 1985, p. 7). Taagepera, 1988b, 1.

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visibility of North American and other scholars who had no Baltic background, ­suggesting the increasing acceptance of Baltic studies into the academic mainstream. At the Seventh Conference on Baltic Studies in Minneapolis in 1982, for example, fully one half of the participants in the program were non-Balts.17 From the mid-1970s the Journal of Baltic Studies published articles in both English and German (and occasionally in French as well), helping it to attract a wider range of international authors. In 1978, the journal’s circulation was 1,300 copies, including about 160 university libraries and other institutions.18 Although many papers from the Third Conference on Baltic Studies in 1972 appeared in three separate volumes in 1973–1974,19 the aabs chose not to continue the unwieldy practice of publishing large numbers of papers from its biennial conferences in collected volumes. Instead, the strongest presentations were sought for inclusion in the Journal of Baltic Studies, thus also helping to insure a flow of high-quality manuscripts for publication. One of the most important consequences of the founding of the aabs in 1968 was the stimulus it provided for increased contacts and fruitful cross-­ fertilization among Baltic historians and other scholars in the Western world. In the felicitous term suggested by the Baltic German historian Georg von Rauch, the aabs conferences fostered a new approach to scholarship on the Baltic region that could be called gesamtbaltisch or pan-Baltic.20 Not surprisingly and in part because of the absence of any language barrier in their new  homeland, Baltic German historians in West Germany had taken the lead in scholarly organization with the holding of annual meetings (Baltische Historikertreffen) since 1947 and the establishment of the Baltische Historische Kommission in 1951. As early as 1956, they also recruited two ethnic Estonian scholars (Otto Alexander Webermann and Jakob Aunver) for participation  in  the important volume titled Baltische Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), and von Rauch helped define post-war Baltic historical studies with his groundbreaking survey Geschichte der baltischen Staaten published in 1970 (Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer), covering all three Baltic states during the interwar period.21

17 18 19 20 21

Gaigulis, 1978, 261; Grava, 1982, 2; Raun, 1988b, 3–5. Gaigulis, 1978, 265. See Ziedonis, 1973a; Ziedonis, 1973b, Ziedonis, 1974. Rauch, 1986, 405. Pistohlkors, 1997, 9–11. In the 1970s several Latvian and Estonian exile historians were tapped for inclusion in a major two-volume work on the origins and consolidation of Baltic independence: Hehn et al., 1971–1977; Rimscha & Weiss, 1977.

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Nevertheless, it seems clear that the aabs conferences, beginning with the Second Conference on Baltic Studies in San Jose, California in 1970, played a particularly strong role in fostering growing contacts among the international community of scholars interested in Baltic affairs. For example, between 1970 and 1986 an average of four members of the Baltische Historische Kommission presented papers at each of the nine aabs conferences held in North America in those years.22 It is also instructive that the Baltiska Institutet, based in Stockholm, was founded in March 1970 and that its much expanded Second Conference on Baltic Studies in Scandinavia in June 1973 was co-sponsored by the aabs.23 Of the 70 papers delivered at this meeting more than half (37) were presented by North American members of the aabs, and scholars associated with the aabs continued to play a major role in future Stockholm conferences as well.24 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s a clear pattern of annual Baltic studies conferences was established with the aabs meetings in North America held in even-numbered years and those in Stockholm in odd-numbered years. It can be argued that one of the most significant results of the growing collaboration among Baltic historians in the West was the three Marburg Symposia (June 1979, October 1981, and June 1985). Gert von Pistohlkors is correct in terming the First Marburg Symposium a ‘breakthrough’ since it marked the first time that Baltic historians from West Germany, North America, and one of the Soviet Baltic republics (in this case, Latvia) met together in a scholarly setting, and it helped to open the door for other Soviet scholars to begin attending Baltic studies conferences in the West.25 In the case of the Stockholm meetings, two scholars based in Estonia presented papers at the Fifth Conference on Baltic Studies later in June 1979, and in the aabs context, two presenters from Latvia appeared at the Eighth Conference on Baltic Studies in Minneapolis in June 1982. The format of the Marburg Symposia, each focused on a specific theme in a seminar-like setting, proved to be especially fruitful for encouraging candid discussion among scholars from east and west. In each case revised versions of the papers (with a few additions) were later published in collected volumes in Germany.26 The initiative for the Marburg meetings came from the aabs in June 1977, as then President Valters Nollendorfs and Executive Director 22 23 24 25 26

Kaegbein and Lenz, 1987, 65–69. The First Conference on Baltic Studies in Scandinavia was held in June 1973 in Stockholm. ‘Introduction’ 1973, 5; Gaigulis, 1978, 262. Beginning with the Third Conference on Baltic Studies in 1975, the aabs did not formally co-sponsor the later meetings in Stockholm. Pistohlkors, 1997, 12. See Ezergailis & Pistohlkors, 1982; Pistohlkors, Raun & Kaegbein, 1987; and Pistohlkors, Plakans & Kaegbein, 1995.

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Jānis Gaigulis proposed the idea to Roderich Schmidt, Director of the HerderInstitut.27 It was probably not an accident that this first meeting of Baltic historians across the political divide of the Cold War took place in West Germany, a suitably neutral location from the point of view of the Soviet authorities. In this context the Baltische Historische Kommission, particularly its Baltic German members, should be recognized for successfully coming to grips during the post-war decades with what Reinhard Wittram called ‘the existential crisis, the definitive separation from any hope of returning home [to the Baltic]’ by re-evaluating and broadening its conception of Baltic history.28 By doing so it played a key role in the opening of scholarly doors to the Baltic states. Despite the successes noted above (or in part because of them), the aabs became the object of criticism from two diametrically opposed political directions. On the one hand, the main Baltic exile organizations in the United States and Canada tended to view their mission in strictly political terms and were suspicious of Western or Baltic exile scholarship that took a nuanced approach to developments in the Soviet Baltic republics or that recognized the possibility of progress in certain areas. In the official exile conception, by definition, the lives of the Baltic peoples under Soviet occupation could not improve, and according to this view any published scholarly work that acknowledged some positive development under the Soviet regime would only serve to weaken the cause of Baltic liberation. It is also possible that this prevailing attitude in North American Baltic communities discouraged at least some members of the younger generations from pursuing a career in Baltic studies.29 In fact, as noted by Peter Lejiņš, one of the two general chairs of the first aabs conference in 1968, these issues and concerns were present from the very beginning of the aabs as an organization. He clearly pointed out the clashing agendas of a scholarly approach to Baltic affairs versus a movement for political liberation as well as the dilemmas associated with ‘contacts of the immigrant academic circles with their compatriots behind the Iron Curtain’.30 Tensions with the North American Baltic communities also flared when controversial topics were treated at the aabs conferences, especially for the first time, e.g., the Jewish question in World War ii at the Sixth Conference on Baltic Studies in 1978 in Toronto.

27 28 29 30

Gaigulis, 1978, 262; Rauch, 1986, 422. Pistohlkors, 1997, 11; Rauch, 1976, 105–06. Taagepera, 2008, 456; Taagepera, 1987, 1–4. Lejiņš, 1969, 15–16.

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On the other hand, as the aabs evolved and expanded its activities in the 1970s and 1980s, it was also subjected to periodic attacks from the Soviet side. Three such critiques, which happened to occur at five-year intervals during this period, can be cited here. In an article in Izvestiya in April 1974, Valentīns Šteinbergs, Director of the Institute of History in Riga, claimed that the individuals associated with the aabs were nothing more than ‘reactionary bourgeois nationalists’ of Baltic background who were now hiding behind the ‘mask of scholarship’.31 By 1979, the aabs had presumably become dangerous enough to warrant a longer denunciation in a book titled Pribaltiiskaya reaktsionnaya emigratsiya segodnya (The reactionary emigration today), for which Šteinbergs was the main editor. Here it was asserted that the aabs was founded ‘on the initiative of anti-communist centers in the usa’ and operated under the direct supervision of ‘Sovietological centers’ such as the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as well as the ‘Russian institutes’ at Columbia University, New York University, and the University of California.32 Finally, in 1984, a book with an all-Union scope and published in Moscow once again attacked members of the aabs, this time for ‘falsifying’ Soviet nationalities policy in the Baltic republics.33 These denunciations were all similar, but as we have seen, by 1979 the Soviet authorities had decided that the members of the aabs and other Western Baltic studies organizations had to be engaged in face-toface scholarly debate. Wrongly, as it turned out, the Soviets clearly thought they could win such an engagement. In many ways this new Soviet initiative could be seen as an extension of the policy, begun under Khrushchev, that encouraged cultural contacts with the Baltic exile communities as a means to  divide them and weaken their opposition to Soviet rule in their homelands.34 Finally, let us take a closer look at the role of historians in the aabs in the first two decades of its existence. With regard to disciplinary focus in research and active participation in the biennial conferences through presentation of papers, there is ample evidence that historians dominated in the organization. The results of a survey on Baltic research materials, conducted by the aabs at the end of the 1970s and covering Baltic studies scholars in North America in the main, indicated that modern history (24.1%) was by far the most common research and teaching discipline among the respondents. If early and medieval history were included, the figure became 27.4%. In second place literature 31 32 33 34

Shteinberg, 1974. Shteinberg et al., 1979, 61. Mchedlov et al., 1984, 393–94. Zake, 2008, 56, 63.

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trailed considerably farther behind with 11.4%, and political science came in third at 7.7%.35 In the aabs conferences as well, history sessions were consistently the most numerous among the various disciplines. At the Second Conference on Baltic Studies in 1970 about one-third of the papers read were in the field of history. Nearly two decades later, at the Eleventh Conference on Baltic Studies in 1988 history still led the way with 12 sessions out of a total of 51, although its overall share had declined somewhat due to the inclusion of new disciplines or special topics on the program, e.g., musicology and Baltic amber.36 The most important impact that the aabs had on historians among its members was to foster a regional and comparative approach that was much broader than the traditional focus on national history that had dominated in the previous historiography produced by each nationality. The same process was taking place in the Baltische Historische Kommission, many of whose members broadened the focus of their historical research to include the majority peoples of Estonia and Latvia as well as, for the first time, Lithuania.37 Indeed, it can be argued that in the 1970s and 1980s a new consensus emerged among those working in Baltic history in the West regardless of their ethnic origin: every attempt should be made to treat the Baltic past, and its constituent parts, in as broad a context as possible. Such an approach was first of all an intellectual choice, but it also had a pragmatic aspect. In the new host countries in which historians of Baltic origin lived, including the United States and Canada, a comparative and regional focus, as opposed to a more limited national one, was much more likely to gain notice in the larger academic world. To be sure, not every historian was capable of or wanted to follow such an approach, but at aabs conferences it increasingly became the norm for the history sessions to treat more than one Baltic country or people. Linguistically, however, the basis for a comparative treatment was mainly limited to sources in English, German, and Russian. At the end of the 1970s very few Baltic historians could command more than one Baltic language.38 Among a number of historians and political scientists in the aabs a twofold approach to research developed in this period. On the one hand, they continued to publish specialized studies that focused on the history and recent past of the one Baltic nationality with which they were most familiar. On the other hand, they also devoted some of their research energy to applying the 35 36 37 38

Nollendorfs & Zeps, 1980, 286–88. Ziedonis, 1971, 40–41; Raun, 1988a. Pistohlkors, 1997, 11; Rauch, 1976, 106. Nollendorfs & Zeps, 1980, 290–91.

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broader Baltic studies and comparative approach alluded to above. Two early pioneers from the generation of the 1920s, Edgar Anderson (1920–1989) and V. Stanley Vardys (1924–1993), helped to set the tone in this regard. Anderson, a specialist on foreign policy, produced a series of articles and chapters on the Crimean War in the Baltic region and the Baltic Entente in the interwar era.39 Vardys focused on 20th-century political history, elucidating the failure of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism in the interwar Baltic states as well as Baltic dissent and nationalism under Soviet rule.40 Rein Taagepera (b. 1933) applied his quantitative skills to compare Baltic population shifts and farm sizes,41 and he and Romuald J. Misiunas (b. 1945) used joint-authorship as an effective solution to the challenge of writing an in-depth study of recent Baltic history. Together they produced what became the standard work on the Baltic states under Soviet rule.42 Andrejs Plakans (b. 1940) and Toivo Raun (b. 1943) collaborated with three colleagues in a different form of co-authorship in a collective volume on Russification in the late tsarist era.43 Misiunas also published on Russian and Soviet views of the Baltic region and authored a comparative overview of the late Soviet Baltic republics.44 Among his comparative studies Plakans evaluated the demographic transition in the Baltic region and Finland as well as the role of Baltic nationalism in the recent past in historical perspective,45 while Raun offered assessments of the Revolution of 1905 in Finland and the Baltic provinces, the Latvian and Estonian national movements in the late tsarist era, and Estonian-Finnish relations in the interwar period.46 The emergence of Baltic studies as a recognized field of academic inquiry in the West took place mainly in the 1970s and 1980s through the collective efforts of a wide range of scholars in North America and Western Europe. As an important part of this process, the approach to Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian history broadened from a purely national focus to include a more regional conceptualization and the application of a comparative methodology. Expanding transnational contacts among Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Baltic German historians in exile as well as interaction with increasing numbers 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

See, for example, Anderson, 1974; and Anderson, 1978. Vardys, 1979a; Vardys, 1979b; Vardys, 1981. Taagepera, 1980; Taagepera, 1972. See Misiunas & Taagepera, 1993. The first edition of this work, covering the years 1940– 1980, appeared in 1983. Thaden, 1981. Misiunas, 1979; Misiunas, 1985; Misiunas, 1990. Plakans, 1984; Plakans, 1990. Raun, 1984; Raun, 1986; Raun, 1987.

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of non-Baltic colleagues in the West, especially through such venues as the biennial aabs and Stockholm conferences on Baltic studies, the annual Baltische Historikertreffen in Göttingen, and the three Marburg Symposia in the years 1979–1985, provided a cross-fertilizing experience for these scholars and a powerful stimulus for a fruitful re-examination of approaches to Baltic history. The cooperation among Baltic historians in exile (and those in closely related fields such as political science) proved to be strikingly smooth, in part, it seems, because of the similarity of their and their families’ experiences in losing their homelands and the perceived need to find intellectual allies in the new environments in which they now found themselves. References Anderson, E. (1970). “The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (Motivation, Plans).” Bulletin of Baltic Studies, no. 1. Anderson, E. (1974). “The Crimean War in the Baltic Area.” Journal of Baltic Studies 5, 339–61. Anderson, E. (1978). “The Baltic Entente: Phantom or Reality?” in: V.S. Vardys and R.J.  Misiunas (eds.), The Baltic States in Peace and War 1917–1945. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Dunsdorfs, E. (1991). “Meie Dariuse silmad,” in: Balti Ülikool Saksamaal 1945–1949. (Toronto: n.p.), 402–03. Reprinted from the Baltic University’s journal Scientiae et Artibus, May 25, 1946. Ezergailis, A. and G. von Pistohlkors (eds.) (1982). Die baltischen Provinzen Russlands zwischen den Revolutionen von 1905 und 1917. (Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte 4.) Köln: Böhlau. Gaigulis, J. (1978). “Ten Years of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies.” Journal of Baltic Studies 9. Grava, S. (1982). “The 8th Conference on Baltic Studies: In Retrospect.” aabs Newsletter 6, no. 3. Hehn, J. von et al. (eds.) (1971–1977). Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten. Vol. 1–2. Marburg/Lahn: J.G. Herder-Institut. “Introduction,” (1973), in: Papers Presented at the Second Conference on Baltic Studies in Scandinavia (Stockholm: Baltiska Institutet,), vol. i, p. 5. Järvesoo, E. (1991). “The Baltic University in Germany 1945–1949,” in Balti Ülikool Saksamaal 1945–1949. (Toronto: n.p.). Kaegbein, P. and W. Lenz (eds.) (1987). Vier Jahrzehnte baltische Geschichtsforschung. Göttingen: Baltische Historische Kommission. Kangeris, K. (2006). “German Plans for Retreat from the Baltics: The Latvian Case,” in: K. Kumer-Haukanõmm et al. (eds.), Suur põgenemine 1944: Eestlaste lahkumine läände ja selle mõjud. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastu.

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Kumer-Haukanõmm, K. (2009). “Eestlaste põgenemine Saksamaale.” [The flight of Estonians to Germany], in: Eestlaste põgenemine Läände Teise maailmasõja ajal [The flight of Estonians to the West during the Second World War]. Tartu: Korp! Filiae Patriae. Lejiņš, P. (1969). “The First Conference on Baltic Studies,” in: I. Ivask (ed.), First Conference on Baltic Studies: Summary of Proceedings. Tacoma: aabs. Lindsaar, Peeter (1964). “Paguluse mõte.” [The meaning of exile]. Tulimuld. Mchedlov, M.P. et al. (eds.) (1984). Kritika fal’sifikatsii national’nykh otnoshenii v sssr  [Criticism of the falsification of national relations in the ussr]. Moscow: Politizdat. Misiunas, R.J. (1979). “Soviet Historiography on World War ii and the Baltic States, 1944–1974,” in: V.S. Vardys and R.J. Misiunas (eds.), The Baltic States in Peace and War 1917–1945. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Misiunas R.J. and Taagepera, R. (1983). The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940–1980. Berkeley: University of California Press. Misiunas R.J. (1985). “The Russian Liberals and the Baltic Lands, 1861–1917,” in A. Loit (ed.), National Movements in the Baltic Countries During the 19th Century. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Misiunas, R.J. (1990). “The Baltic Republics: Stagnation and Strivings for Sovereignty,” in L. Hajda and M. Beissinger (eds.), The Nationalities Factor in Soviet Politics and Society. Boulder: Westview Press. 204–27. Misiunas R.J. and R. Taagepera (1993). The Baltic States: The Years of Dependence 1940– 1990 [expanded and updated ed.]. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nollendorfs, V. and B.S. Zeps (1980). “Research Materials in Baltic Studies: A Survey of Availability and Need.” Journal of Baltic Studies 11. Pistohlkors, G. von, T.U. Raun, and P. Kaegbeinl (eds.) (1987). Die Universitäten Dorpat/ Tartu, Riga und Wilna/Vilnius 1579–1979. (Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte, 9). Köln: Böhlau. Pistohlkors, G. von, A. Plakans and P. Kaegbein (eds.) (1995). Bevölkerungsverschiebungen und sozialer Wandel in den baltischen Provinzen Russlands 1855–1914. (Schriften der Baltischen Historischen Kommission, 6). Lüneburg: Insititut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk. Pistohlkors, G. von (1997). “Zum 50. Jubiläum der Baltischen Historikertreffen in Göttingen: Einführende Bemerkungen,” in P. Kaegbein and W. Lenz (eds.), Fünfzig Jahre baltische Geschichtsforschung. Cologne: Mare Balticum. Plakans, A. (1984), “The Demographic Transition in the Baltic Provinces and Finland: Prospects for a Comparative Study.” Journal of Baltic Studies 15, 171–84. Plakans, A. (1990), “The Return of the Past: Baltic Area Nationalism of the Perestroika Period.” Armenian Review 43, 109–26. Rauch, G. von (1986). “Deutschbaltische Geschichtsschreibung nach 1945,” in G. von Rauch (ed.), Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. Köln: Böhlau.

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Rauch, G. von (1976). “Die Baltische Historische Kommission in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” Journal of Baltic Studies 7. Raun, T. (1984). “The Revolution of 1905 in the Baltic Provinces and Finland.” Slavic Review 43, 453–67. Raun, T. (1986). “The Latvian and Estonian National Movements, 1860–1914.” Slavonic and East European Review 64, 66–80. Raun, T. (1987). “Finland and Estonia: Cultural and Political Relations, 1917–1940.” Journal of Baltic Studies 18, 5–20. Raun, T. (1988a), “11th Conference on Baltic Studies.” Lituanus 17, no. 4. Raun, T. (1988b). “11th Conference on Baltic Studies: Program Chair’s Report.” aabs Newsletter 12, no. 3. Raun, T.U. (2001). Estonia and the Estonians [updated 2nd ed.]. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press. Reinans, A. (2006). “Eesti põgenikud Rootsi statistikas [Estonian refugees in Swedish statistics]” in K. Kumer-Haukanõmm et al. (eds.), Suur põgenemine 1944: Eestlaste lahkumine läände ja selle mõjud [The great flight 1944. The Departure of Estonians to the west and its impact]. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastu. “Research Center for Baltic Studies at the University of Stockholm.” (1980). aabs Newsletter, 4, no. 1. Rimscha, H. von and H. Weiss (1977). Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten 1918–1920. J. G. Herder-Institut. Said, E. (2000). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Saldukas, L. (2006). “Lithuanians in dp Camps in Germany,” in: K. Kumer-Haukanõmm et al. (eds.), Suur põgenemine 1944: Eestlaste lahkumine läände ja selle mõjud. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus. Shteinberg, V. (1974). “Pod maskoi uchenosti.” Izvestiia, 6 April. Shteinberg, V. et al. (eds.) (1979), Pribaltiiskaia reaktsionnaia emigratsiia segodnia: Litovskaia, latyshskaia i estonskaia antisovetskaia emigratsiia na sluzhbe imperializma [The reactionary Baltic emigration today: The Lithuanian, Latvia, and Estonian anti-Soviet emigration in the service of imperialism]. Riga: Zinatne. Taagapera, R. (1972). “Inequality Indices of Baltic Farm Size Distribution, 1929–1940.” Journal of Baltic Studies 3, 26–34. Taagapera, R. (1980). “Baltic Population Changes, 1950–1980.” Journal of Baltic Studies , 12, 35–57. Taagepera, R. (1987). “Scholarly Needs and Responsibilities of Baltic Communities in North America.” aabs Newsletter, 11, no. 1. Taagepera, R. (1988a). “Opening Remarks at the 11th Conference on Baltic Studies.” aabs Newsletter, 12, no. 3. [Taagepera, R.] (1988b). “Interview with Rein Taagapera by the Lithuanian Monthly Akiračiai.” aabs Newsletter, 12, no. 2.

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Taagepera, R. (2008) “Heitlus Balti ajaloo pärast.” [The struggle over Baltic history]. Akadeemia, 20. Thaden, E.C. (ed.) (1981). Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914. Co-Authors: Thaden, E.C.; Haltzel, M.; Lundin, L.; Plakans, A. and T.U. Raun. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Undusk, J. (2008). “Eesti, eksiil ja Välis-Eesti: Väike mentaliteedilugu.” [Estonia, exile and Estonia abroad]. Akadeemia 20, no. 10. Vardys, V.S. (1970). “Some Thoughts About What We Should Do in 1970/71.” Bulletin of Baltic Studies, no. 3. Vardys, V.S. (1979a). “The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Baltic States,” in V.S. Vardys and R.J. Misiunas (eds.), The Baltic States in Peace and War 1917–1945. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Vardys, V.S. (1979b). “Democracy in the Baltic States, 1918–1934.” Journal of Baltic Studies 10, no. 4, 320–36. Vardys, V.S. (1981). “Human Rights Issues in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.” Journal of Baltic Studies 12. Zake, I. (2008). “Controversies of the US-USSR Cultural Contacts During the Cold War: The Perspective of Latvian Refugees.” Journal of Historical Sociology, 21, 55–81. Ziedonis, A. Jr. (1971). “On the Advancement of Baltic Studies by the aabs.” Lituanus 17, no. 4. Ziedonis, A. Jr. et al (ed.) (1973a). Problems of mininations: baltic perspectives. (Publications of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies; [3]). San José, Calif., 1973. Ziedonis, A. Jr. et al (ed.) (1973b). Baltic Literature and Linguistics. (Publications of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, 4). Columbus, Ochio: the Ochio State University. Ziedonis, A. Jr. et al (ed.) (1974). Baltic history. (Publications of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, 5). Columbus, Ohio : Ass. for the advancement of Baltic Studies.

Baltic Historiography in West German Exile Jörg Hackmann

Baltic Exile

Exile is usually understood historically as the forced leaving of one’s home country because of first religious, and later political and also ethnic reasons. The notion of exile comprises the wish of those, who have left their homeland by force, to return to it, once circumstances have changed. Furthermore, such an attitude may lead to the formation of émigrés or the expelled as an exclusive social group in new surroundings, based on the wish to preserve  their identity, traditions, culture, and language, and pass it on to the following generations; hence, there is usually a critical attitude towards assimilation. Looking at émigrés from the Baltic States, one might understand Baltic exile consisting primarily of members of the titular nations—Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians—who had left their countries after the Soviet annexation in 1940 and the re-occupation in 1944. In addition, there are two other groups from that region whose inclusion into this survey of historiography may be discussed as well. Firstly, there are the Jews from the Baltic, who developed a commemorative historiography with regard to Latvia and Lithuania.1 Secondly, one may also discuss whether Baltic Germans, too, should be incorporated into the notion of Baltic exile. The inclusion of Jews and Germans could be reinforced with the argument that they were also forced to leave the region, but, contrariwise, one might also argue against the inclusion of both groups because they were integrated into a (new) national homeland, and hence the wish of return to the home country faded away. This argument, however, seems to follow traditional ethnicist discourses according to which Germans and Jews allegedly were foreigners to the region. Of course, one could add further reflections on these and other groups and their relation to the Baltic region. As our focus is directed on West Germany after 1945, the groups and their historiographical production to be regarded here clearly refer to Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, who will be addressed as the “national exile”, on the one hand, and the Baltic Germans on the other. If one were to focus on historiography solely, the production of the Baltic German historians would without any doubt occupy most space. As this

1 See for instance Šteimans, 2002.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_005

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­literature is already relatively well known,2 and in order to map the whole Baltic exile in Germany, I shall start with an outline on the institutional development of the national exile, and will then deal with the Baltic Historical Commission, founded by Baltic German historians. Finally, I will look at the interactions between national Baltic émigrés and the Baltic Germans. This text is limited to developments and publications before 1991, as one faces a totally different situation after the renewed independence of the Baltic States.

The Baltic University

Right after World War ii had ended, émigrés—or “displaced persons” in contemporary terms—from the Baltic States organized university teaching in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian in Hamburg.3 The British military administration supported these activities, but made clear rather quickly that such a “Baltic University” would not be steadily maintained outside the system of German universities and in fact referred to it only as a “study center”. Thus it was regarded by the British authorities as a cluster of temporary activities of the DPs, and was supported only until the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949. After its beginnings at the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte in 1946, the Baltic University moved from Hamburg to former German barracks in Pinneberg in January 1947, where after the war a camp for Displaced Persons had been erected; besides it also accommodated a chewing gum production facility for the allied forces. The University was divided in eight faculties with 17 departments. In June 1947, the Faculty of Philosophy consisted of eight Estonians, 22 Latvians and twelve Lithuanians. Although the university had a board of three rectors, one of each Baltic nation, and a similar structure on the faculty level, commemoration of the Baltic University seems to have had pronounced national division in it. The  extensive Estonian commemorative publication of 1991 concentrates on the Estonians and pays less attention to Latvians and Lithuanians. Although the Estonian share among students and teachers was the smallest one, there are only minor publications dealing with Latvians or Lithuanians at the University.4 2 Cf. Neitmann, 1998; Hackmann, 1996; and the contributions to a special issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies in 1999: Mühle, 1999; Pistohlkors, 1999; Hackmann, 1999. See also the contribution by Gert von Pistohlkors to this volume. 3 Harding, 1997. The initiative was launched by a group of Latvian professors in July 1945. Cf. also Wagner, 1997, and Eder, 1997. On Displaced Persons from the Baltics in Germany see: Pletzing, 2007. On the situation at German universities cf. Hannemann, 2008. 4 Järvesoo, 1991; there is a collection of archival material from the Baltic University at the Library of the University of Tartu, among these materials see: Who is who? at the Baltic University.

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With regard to historians among the teaching staff, one may point to Edgars Dunsdorfs (1904–2002).5 As Latvian Rector of the Baltic University, he was, however, teaching in the economics department. Besides, the Estonian Erik Tender was teaching history.6 The scope of historical coverage becomes somewhat broader if one includes scholars from other humanities, such as, for instance, the linguist Alo Raun (1905–2004) and the Latvian archaeologist Eduards Šturms (1895–1959), more about whom later. There is, so far, only scarce information about contacts with German scholars. Ernst Fraenkel (1881–1957), a professor of Indo-Germanic linguistics and expert of Baltic languages in Hamburg, has been mentioned in retrospect,7 but one may assume that there were others as well. The publication series of the University—Contributions of Baltic University8— comprises 66 volumes published between 1946 and 1948. Individual titles in the series were mostly booklets for teaching purposes, of which only a few may be subsumed under the category of history in a broad sense: Eduards Šturms’ texts on pre-historical topics9 and Edgars Dunsdorfs’ publications on a Swedish cadastre of Kurland and on shipping in the 17th century.10 Some others of these brochures could be related to the field of history, also,11 but one can hardly speak of a coherent notion of historiography, or specific traits of history writing, as a feature of Baltic exile in Germany in those early years.

The Baltic Research Institute

Even before the Baltic University ceased to exist in September 1949, the scientific activities of Baltic emigrants were taken over by the Baltisches Forschungsinstitut (Baltic Research Institute), which had been initiated in March 1949 within the framework of the Baltic University. The Baltic Research Institute also took over the library of the Baltic University with its approximately 10,000 volumes, but was not able to organize them and make them

5

6 7 8 9 10 11

Biographies of the Professors and Teachers [Pinneberg, 1948?]. For Latvia see: Grāmatiņš, 1989, and for Lithuania: Saldukas, 2002. Dunsdorf went to Australia in 1948 and was later involved on the multi-volume History of Latvia, published in Sweden: Latvijas vēsture (Latvijas vēstures sērija, 1–10). Uppsala: Daugava, 1958–1987. Alvre, 2005. Commentationes Balticae (further: cb) 1–16, 1953–1971, here 4/5, 1958, 331–334. Contributions of Baltic University (further cbu) 1–67, 1946–1948; no. 63 was not released. Šturms, 1946a; Šturms, 1946b; Šturms, 1947a; Šturms, 1947b; Šturms, 1947c. Dunsdorfs, 1947a; Dunsdorfs, 1947b. Balys, 1946; Biržiška, 1947.

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accessible until 1958.12 The Institute’s official statutes were approved in Bonn in March 1952 and they stated as the Institute’s mission: the support of research by Baltic scholars, the support of Baltic students, and the publication of works by Baltic scholars.13 The founding initiative for the Institute in Bonn evidently emerged from contacts between the Estonian geographer Edgar Kant14 (1902– 1978) and the German historian Walther Hubatsch (1915–1984). Kant had acted as rector of the University of Tartu during the German occupation of Estonia in the Second World War, and since 1945 had been teaching at the University of Lund in Sweden. Hubatsch, a historian of Prussian and North European history, had been teaching after the war at the university in Göttingen and was involved in the political activities of the Göttinger Arbeitskreis (Goettingen Study Group), a group of former East German scholars and politicians who were formulating arguments for a possible restitution of East Prussia to Germany. In 1956, Hubatsch became professor at the University of Bonn.15 Also involved in the foundation of the Bonn Research Union was Gunther Ipsen (1899–1984), a sociologist and one of the prominent figures of German Ostforschung in Königsberg and Vienna. The end of the Third Reich had terminated his university career, and he was working with an institute for social research in Dortmund after the war.16 The Baltic Research Institute ceased to exist in 1972, after Zenonas Ivinskis (1908–1971), who had been the director since 1959, died on Christmas 1971.17 Thus information on the Institute is available mainly in what is presented in the Institute’s journal Commentationes Balticae.18 The first volume was published in 1954 with a clear focus on humanities, in contrast to the publications of the Baltic University in Pinneberg. Full members of the institute in 1953 were the Latvian archaeologist Eduards Šturms, the Estonian linguist Mihkel Toomse (1905–1986), and from Lithuania 12 13 14

15 16 17 18

cb 6/7, 1961, 404. Cf. also Hannemann, 2008, 299–300. According to her, the books do not exist any more. cb 1, 1953, 225. On Kant see the contributions to Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography 87, 2005, No. 3: Raagmaa, 2005; Buttimer, 2005. Kant published e.g.: Kant, 1935. Material on the initiatives to found a follow-up institution of the Baltic University as well as on the activities of the Research Institute is preserved in the files of Walther Hubatsch at the archive of the University of Bonn. On Hubatsch see Hackmann, 1995. And from his publications covering the Baltic Sea Region, see Hubatsch, 1948. Petersen, 2007; several traces of contacts to Ipsen may be found in the Commentationes Balticae. On Ivinskis in Bonn see Niendorf (2009). The volumes of Commentationes Balticae (cb) were not published regularly. Information about the institute at the archive of the University of Bonn is also sparse, see pa 14830 Personalakte Zenonas Ivinskis, and Senatsprotokolle 1959–1964; cf. Hannemann, 2008, 299–300.

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the philosopher and theologian Antanas Maceina (1908–1987) and the already mentioned historian Zenonas Ivinskis.19 Furthermore, six scholars were affiliated on the basis of (short-term) research grants: among them, Otto Webermann (1914–1971) working on Estonian cultural history, Georg / Juris Vīgrābs (1881– 1958) on the Baltic States between Germany and Russia and Povilas Reklaitis (1922–1999) on Lithuanian art history.20 In 1956 Edgar Kant (from the University of Lund) and in 1963 the Latvian linguist Ernests Blesse (1892–1964) were mentioned as full members also.21 In 1964, both of the latter appeared as editors of the Commentationes; in the following years, Valdemārs Ginters (1899–1979), Zenonas Ivinskis, and Andrejs Johansons (1922–1983) were listed as editors, too. Additional information is available in the obituaries published in the Commentationes. In 1956, three obituaries on corresponding members were published: on the Lithuanian linguist and writer (and the first Foreign Minister of Soviet Lithuania in 1940) Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius (1882–1954), on the Lithuanian historian and ethnographer Vaclovas Biržiška (1884–1956) and on the Finnish geographer Johannes Granö (1882–1956).22 The list of corresponding members can be extended with the obituaries in the later volumes, which honoured among others the Estonian writer Gustav Suits (1883–1956), the Estonian geographer August Tammekann (1894–1959), the Latvian historian Arveds Švābe (1888–1959) and the Latvian architecture historian Paul Campe / Kampe (1885– 1960).23 Among other corresponding members the Lithuanian geographer Kazys Pakštas (1893–1960) was listed also. There is, however, no evidence, about how close the contacts between these scholars and the Institute in Bonn had been in fact, as none of the mentioned lived in Germany but in Sweden and the United States. Most likely, they were chosen corresponding members primarily because they were well-known as Baltic scholars in exile. Besides members from the Baltic states, there was at least one German corresponding member, Ernst Fraenkel, who was mentioned earlier in the context of the Baltic University.24 In the first years of the Baltic Research Institute, the directorate alternated every year among the three Baltic nations, Šturms being the first director (1953/54, 1956/57, 1958/59), followed by Toomse (1954/55, 1957/58), and Ivinskis (1955/56); the latter, after Šturms’ death, became a continuous director of the institute in 1959, and enacted the nominal duties of this position despite a 19 20 21 22 23 24

cb 1, 1953, 225–227, cf. also Niendorf, 2009. cb 1, 1953, 227–228. Cf. the commemorative text on the occasion of his 70th birthday in cb 8/9, 1963, 411–412. cb 3, 1958, 279–285. cb 6/7, 1961, 414–426; 8/9, 1963, 417–429. He had been in contact with Lithuanian and Latvian scholars already in the inter-war period, see cb 4/5, 1958, 331–334.

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materially unrewarding position in the Faculty of Philosophy. After his death 1971, Jēkabs Ozols (1922–2013) apparently took over the director’s duties, but already in 1972 the Institute disappeared from the scene. A last report of the Institute was published in 1960,25 which might be explainable with a decrease of the Institute’s activities. In the reports, we find frequent complaints about materials lost during the war or left behind in the homeland, as well as about missing sources and literature in Germany.26 An analysis of the contents of the Commentationes with regard to historical topics suggests that history should not be segregated from its adjunct disciplines such as art history, ethnology, folklore, and others. If one uses such an inclusive perspective, the emerging picture is more accurate. The first volume contained four historical articles: one by Dunsdorfs on Baltic agrarian history, two by Ivinskis on Lithuanian church history, and one by Šturms on prehistoric amber trade.27 In the second volume there was one historical contribution by Ilmar Talve,28 but in the following volumes of the Commentationes historical contributions assumed a major place: there were usually two to four historical con­ tributions in each volume. Among the authors were Evald Blumfeldt, Arnold Soom, Kazys Pakštas, Gottlieb Ney, Arnolds Aizsilnieks and Ilmar Arens.29 25

26 27

28 29

cb 8/9, 1963, 406–410. According to the files in the Universitätsarchiv Bonn, discussions about an integration into the university lasted from 1960 until 1963. From 1963 until 1972, the institute appeared in the university catalogue. See for instance cb 6/7, 1961, 402. Edgars Dunsdorfs: Zum Hakenproblem (cb 1,1); Zenonas Ivinskis: Die Druckerei der Jesuiten in Vilnius und die ersten litauischen katholischen Bücher (cb 1,2); Zenonas Ivinskis: Kirchengesang in Litauen im xvi.–xvii. Jahrhundert (cb 1,3); Eduards Šturms: Der ostbaltische Bernsteinhandel in der vorchristlichen Zeit (cb 1,6). Ilmar Talve: Georgius Franciscus Holyk: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der landwirtschaftlichen Literatur des Baltikums im 17. Jahrhundert (cb 2,5). Vol. 3, 1957: Evald Blumfeldt: Über die Freibauern in Jerwen zur Ordens- und Schwedenzeit (cb 3,1); Arnold Soom: Die Landhandwerker in Estland im 17. Jahrhundert (cb 3,5). Vol 4/5, 1958: Benno Ābers: Zur päpstlichen Missionspolitik in Lettland und Estland zur Zeit Innozenzʼ iii (cb 4/5,1); Kajetonas J. Žeginskas: Die Polonisierung des litauischen Adels im 19. Jahrhundert (cb 4/5,2); Vladas Literskis: Der Memeler Hafen unter litauischer Verwaltung (1923–1938) (cb 4/5,4); Kazys Pakštas: Earliest statistics of nationalities and religions in the territories of Old Lithuania, 1861 (cb 4/5,6). Vol. 6/7, 1959: Kajetonas J. Žeginskas: Die Russifizierung und ihre Folgen in Litauen unter zaristischer Herrschaft (cb 6/7,2); Juozas Jakštas: Das Baltikum in der Kreuzzugsbewegung des 14. Jahrhunderts : die Nachrichten Philipps de Mézières über die baltischen Gebiete (cb, 6/7,3); Gottlieb Ney: Zur Ethnogenese des estnischen Volkes (hauptsächlich im Lichte der neueren estnischen Forschung) (cb 6/7,4); Lothar Schultz: Die Verfassungsentwicklung der baltischen Staaten seit 1940 (cb 6/7,7). Vol. 8/9, 1962: Arnolds P. Aizsilnieks: The co-operative movement in Latvia (cb 8/9,1); Edgars Dunsdorfs: Die finnische Militärkolonie von Wolmar: ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte

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The amount of history writing in the Commentationes and by the scholars involved directly in the work of the Baltic Research Institute was not very large, especially if one also differentiates between contributions from Baltic scholars living in West-Germany and those who were residing in other countries. Of the six authors in the first volume, only two were residing in Germany: Eduards Šturms and Otto Webermann. Among the six authors of the second volume, however, five were living in Germany. An analysis of the later issues reveals that contributions up to 1970 from scholars residing in Germany never comprised more than 50 percent of the contributors.30 Moreover, German authors were very sparse, only two could be identified: the ethnologist Henn Pohlhausen from Hamburg in vol. 3, and the expert of East European law Lothar Schultz from Göttingen in vol. 6/7. Among the staff or the stipendiaries, Otto Webermann, Georg Vīgrābs, and Jēkabs Ozols were historians. In general, one may conclude that the each of the historical texts in the Commentationes was based on single research project without a general research design. Therefore it is not easy to provide a brief and comprehensive description. In part, there were clearly individual research interests, as in the contributions by Dunsdorfs or Soom. One might also discuss whether a national focus on each of the three Baltic nations underlay the majority of texts. Such a focus prevailed in the ethnographic and linguistic contributions and also in the publications on prehistory, but texts dealing with art history cannot in general be subsumed under such national rubrics.

Institutum Balticum and Lithuanian Cultural Institute

After the dissolution of the Institute in Bonn, other institutions connected to Baltic exile remained active. Among them, the Institutum Balticum in

30

der Hörigkeit (cb 8/9,2); Uno Kaur: Wirtschaftsstruktur und Wirtschaftspolitik des Freistaates Estland 1918–1940 (cb 8/9,3). Vol. 10/11, 1964: Ilmar Arens: Die estnische Rußlandkolonisation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und die Trans-Peipus-Esten unter dem Zarenund Sowjetregime 1861–1941. Teil 1 (cb 10/11,1); Edgars Dunsdorfs: Rigaer Roggenpreise im 16. Jahrhundert: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Preisrevolution (cb 10/11,3); vol. 12/13, 1967: Ilmar Arens: Die estnische Rußlandkolonisation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und die Trans-Peipus-Esten unter dem Zaren- und Sowjetregime 1861–1941. Teil 2 (cb 12/13,1); Ebba Žeginskas: Die Baltische Frage in den Großmächteverhandlungen 1939 (cb, 12/13,2). Vol. 14/15, 1971: Ilmar Arens: Die estnische Rußlandkolonisation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und die Trans-Peipus-Esten unter dem Zaren- und Sowjetregime 1861–1941. Teil 3 (cb, 14/15,1). Vol. 16, 1971: Andrejs Johansons: Die Lage der lettischen Schulen im Herzogtum Kurland im 18. Jahrhundert. (cb, 16,1). Vol. 3: 4 out of 8, vol. 4/5: 2 out of 7, vol. 6/7: 4 of 9, vol. 8/9: 1 out of 6, vol. 10/11 2 out of 5, vol. 12/13 1 out of 5, vol. 14/15 1 of 3, vol. 16 2 out of 2.

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Königstein and the Lithuanian Cultural Institute (Litauisches Kulturinstitut) in  Lampertheim-Hüttenfeld deserve to be mentioned.31 The Institutum Balticum appeared in May 1960, founded by the diocese of Limburg within the Catholic Haus der Begegnung in Königstein, which focused on German expellees and Eastern Europe.32 The focus of the Institutum Balticum was on the contemporary history of the Baltic states, in contrast with the Baltic Research Institute in Bonn, where such topics were addressed rather sparsely. The main intention of the Institutum Balticum was to show to the “free world” “the brutal suppression” of the Baltic nations. The Institute was first directed until 1985 by the Latvian geographer Andrīvs Namsons (1912–1990) and subsequently by the German historian Ernst Benz. The list of the contributors to the Institute’s journal, Acta Baltica, reveals some parallels to the publications of the Institute in Bonn: thus, for example, the first volume of Acta Baltica (1, 1960/61) started with Gottlieb Ney on the “Lebensraum” of the Baltic Nations.33 Until 1969, Acta Baltica included only articles from Baltic scholars and from politicians in exile such as Oskar Angelus from Estonia. During the mid-1960s, the volumes of the Acta were divided into sections for each of the Baltic nations. In 1970 Seppo Zetterberg, and, since 1977, also Boris Meissner were among the authors.34 From the late 1970s on some (Baltic) German authors contributed regularly to the journal, but the overall image of the Acta as a Baltic exile publication (with some inclination toward the Catholic parts of the region) remained unchanged. The Institute and its journal disappeared, due to the dissolution of its host organisation, the Catholic Albertus-Magnus-Kolleg, in 1997. The last volume of the journal was no. 35 in 1997. The Lithuanian Cultural Institute in Lampertheim-Hüttenfeld emerged from the Lithuanian gymnasium in 1981. Since 1985 it has been organizing annual conferences focussing on Lithuanian history, language and literature as well as on political issues connected to Lithuania.35 In the first years Lithuanians from the exile community as well as Germans predominated among the

31

Another Institution in Bonn, the Haus Annaberg of the Baltic Christian Students’ Union, might be briefly mentioned. It has published a baltisches jahrbuch 1–6, 1984–1989, and Annaberger Annalen since 1993, see www.annaberger-annalen.de/. 32 Acta Baltica. Liber Annalis Instituti Baltici 1–37, 1960–1997, here 1, 1960, 8–9. There are materials of the Institutum within the collections of the Albertus Magnus Kolleg, Königstein, in the archive of the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte in Bonn. 33 Ney, 1961. Among the further contributors were: Edgars Dunsdorfs and Povilas Reklaitis. 34 Zetterberg, 1970; Meissner, 1977. Furthermore, Dov Levin published two articles about Jews in the Baltics during the Second World War, in 1976 and 1977. 35 See www.litauischeskulturinstitut.de/, there is also a list of publications from the annual conferences until 2010.

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­ resenters, but since 1988 participants from Lithuania also have attended the p conferences.

The Baltic Historical Commission

As mentioned earlier, the inclusion of the scholarly organizations of Baltic Germans among the heading of “historians in exile” needs to be based on a wider notion of exile. Closer to the vernacular understanding of the concept, however, is the question of whether there were historians from the national Baltic exile included among the members of the Historical Commission or whether at least some of them were present at the Commission’s annual meetings in Göttingen. The Baltic Historical Commission emerged after an initial meeting of Baltic German historians in Göttingen in October 1946. From 1947 onwards—with the exception of 1948—“Baltische Historikertreffen” have been held in Göttingen until the present. In 1951 they were provided with a permanent organisational structure entitled the “Baltic Historical Commission”, which functioned in close cooperation with the Johann Gottfried Herder-Forschungsrat (Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council) in Marburg.36 As the Commission’s name suggests, it was formed by historians and focuses solely on history. The adjective “Baltic” clearly denoted “Baltic German,” and referred not only to the scholarly focus, but for many decades first of all to the origin of the members of this association. This also explains why it did not focus on the three Baltic states, but on the territory of the Russian Baltic provinces; therefore Lithuania was included as an object of interest only since the 1990s. The Commission was chaired by Reinhard Wittram (1902–1973) from 1951 until 1973, who was followed by Georg von Rauch (1904–1991) and Gert von Pistohlkors (born in 1935). In the beginning, the Commission referred to itself as a “refugees’ community”,37 but at the meeting in 1952 a discussion about “the notion and tasks of Baltic historiography today” addressed the commitment of Baltic Germans to National Socialism and how to conceptualize Baltic history after World War ii.38 On the one hand, a focus on German history as it unfolded on the territories of Estonia and Latvia clearly dominated, but, on the other, 36

37 38

On the beginnings of the commission see: Neitmann, 1998, and Hackmann, 1996, 254. Furthermore see Pistohlkors, 1996; Pistohlkors, 2000. For members and annual meeting see the basic information in: Kaegbein and Lenz, 1987. Neitmann, 1998, 15. Pistohlkors, 1996.

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the question emerged of whether to realign the focus toward the region as a whole instead of solely toward the German population. This need for a widening of the focus was underlined by Wittram, who insisted that “research continues with intensive new approaches, in order to gain firm ground for a historical notion that involves the whole multiethnic history of the Baltic countries and its tensions”.39 As a result of this debate a volume entitled Baltische Kirchenge­ schichte, published in 1956, sought explicitly to include the views of the “non-­ Germans” and incorporated a contribution by Otto Webermann.40 Such an opening towards issues of concern to the Estonians and Latvians and towards the national Baltic exile, however, implied the need for a critical analysis of all nationalist perspectives, including the Baltic German own. Although some of the Commission’s leading members such as, for instance, Reinhard Wittram, Arved von Taube (1905–1978) and Paul Johansen (1901–1965) were aware of this connection, it took decades until such a stance became undisputed in the Commission’s activities. At the same time, the leading postwar German historians who were active on the field of Baltic history before 1945, generally refrained from East European topics: Werner Conze (1910–1986), although a member of  the Commission since 1951 and a participant in the discussion of 1952, returned to Baltic issues only in the 1980s; and Hans Rothfels, who was elected honorary member in 1963, did not actively participate in the Commission’s meetings.41 Without any doubt, the Baltic German association has been the most active in terms of publications among the associations examined here. The Com­ mission’s historiographical activities are reflected in its publication series Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte,42 Schriften der Baltischen Historischen Kommission43 and Das Baltikum in Geschichte und Gegenwart.44 In addition, separately edited volumes as well as the publications of the Herder Research Council were based on contributions from the Commission and its scholarly environment. Publications collectively edited by the Commission comprised the already mentioned Baltic church history of 1956, two volumes on the change from the Tsarist provinces to independent states after World 39 40 41 42 43 44

Wittram, 1954a, cf. Pistohlkors in this volume. Wittram, 1956. Cf. Pistohlkors, 1996. On Conze see Etzemüller, 2001; Wauker, 2003; and also Zernack, 1992. On Rothfels see Eckel, 2005. Further: QSbG. See Kaegbein and Lenz, 1987. The series comprises 24 volumes until 2014, see www.balt-hiko.de/. 18 volumes until 2014, see www.balt-hiko.de. 5 volumes until 2014, see www.balt-hiko.de.

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War I,45 a volume on Baltic (German) historiography,46 a biographical lexicon,47 and finally a collective synthesis of Baltic history.48 The main lines of interest visible in monographs are dealing primarily with  Baltic German history, with a major accent on the medieval and early modern periods. Here, studies on Tallinn / Reval have to be mentioned in particular.49 Further publications dealt with the loss of political and social impact of the Baltic German elites,50 the adaptation to minority status in the inter-war Baltic states,51 and finally to the resettlement organized by Himmler in 1939.52 Other volumes resembled commemorative publications.53 Starting in the 1980s, the Baltic Historical Commission also published collective volumes based on three international conferences in Marburg between 1979 and 1985,54 as well as on a first joint conference in Soviet Estonia.55 The question that requires closer analysis is the inclusion of and the cooperation with Estonian and Latvian exile historians. Three Estonian exile scholars were elected full members of the Historical Commission before 1991.56 The first was Walter Anderson (1885–1962), an ethnologist, who held the chair of Estonian and comparative folk literature in Tartu from 1928 until 1939. During the war, he was professor of ethnology in Königsberg, and since 1945 a lecturer in the same field at the University of Kiel. He was elected as an ordinary member in 1951. The second was Vello Helk (1923–2014), who had been working at the Riksarchivet in Copenhagen. He was elected as a corresponding member in 1971 and as full member in 1984. Finally, Hain Rebas (born in 1943), Professor of Nordic History in Kiel from 1980 until 2008, was elected as a corresponding member in 1980 and as a full member three years later. In addition, one Latvian and one Estonian legal scholar Egils Levits (born in 1955) and Henn-Jüri 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Hehn, Rimscha and Weiss, 1971; Hehn, Rimscha and Weiss, 1977. Rauch, 1986. Lenz, 1970, also online: www.bbl-digital.de/. Pistohlkors, 1994. Hartmann, 1973; Johansen und von zur Mühlen, 1973; Elias, 1978; Hehn and Kenéz, 1980; von Zur Mühlen, 1985. Lenz, 1953; Lenz, 1954; Schlingensiepen, 1959; Haltzel, 1977; Garve, 1978; Pistohlkors, 1978. Garleff, 1976. Hehn, 1984. Engelhardt and Neuschäffer, 1983. Ezergailis and von Pistohlkors, 1982. Pistohlkors, Raun and Kaegbein, 1987. Pistohlkors, Plakans and Kaegbein, 1995. Elias, Jürjo, Kivimäe, and Pistohlkors, 1996. Information based on: Kaegbein and Lenz, 1987, and Mitgliederverzeichnis 1997 (www .balt-hiko.de/app/download/174147706/Kaegbein-Lenz.pdf).

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Uibopuu (1929–2012), both living in exile, were elected as full members in 1992, thus after restored independence of the Baltic states. Uibopuu has been a professor in international law at the University of Salzburg, and Levits had been working at the University of Kiel and the Göttinger Arbeitskreis until 1992, when he became the first ambassador of independent Latvia to Germany. Since 1995 he has been a judge at the Court of the European Communities in Strasburg. Furthermore, twelve exile scholars were elected as corresponding members, which in most cases implied that they were not residing in Germany but mainly in North America, Sweden or Australia. In 1959 the Estonians Evald Blumfeldt (1902–1981), Arnold Soom (1900–1977), Otto Webermann and the Latvians Paul Campe and Nikolajs Valters (1900–1979) became corresponding members. In the following years more Latvian and one Estonian scholar were elected: In 1963 Edgars Dunsdorfs, in 1965 Jēkabs Ozols, Edgar(s) Anderson(s) (1920–1989) and Uldis Ģērmanis (1915–1997) in 1971, and in 1972 Armin Tuulse (1907–1977). A decade later Valters Nollendorfs (born in 1931) and Toivo Ülo Raun (born in 1943) also became corresponding members, as well as Andrejs Plakans (born in 1940) in 1985 and Aleksander Loit (born in 1925) in 1989.57 The pattern of election demonstrates an opening towards Baltic national exile starting as early as 1959, and this has to be seen in connection with the reorientation exhibited in “Baltische Kirchengeschichte” mentioned earlier. Interest­ingly, this early opening as well as the relative standstill in the 1970s and 1980s, does not quite fit with the great shifts in West German attitudes towards the Soviet region. The changes of 1991, finally, led to the inclusion of a larger number of historians from the Baltic states: Vasilij V. Dorošenko (1921–1992), Jüri Kivimäe (born in 1947), Helmut Piirimäe (born in 1930), Jānis Stradiņš (born in 1933), Enn Tarvel (born in 1932), and Sulev Vahtre (1926–2007) were elected as corresponding members in that year, even though none of them had been part of the exile. The historiographical productivity of the Baltic émigrés among the full members,58 similar to the previous findings, was not very high: Anderson had no publications listed after his election; Helk published his book on Jesuits in  Dorpat 1583–1625 in 1977.59 Levits and Uibopuu were publishing on legal aspects of Estonia and Latvia as well as on other issues connected to the contemporary situation, but did not contribute to history writing sensu stricto. To broaden the analysis, one should also ask to what extent Baltic exile scholars participated with presentations in the annual meetings of the Baltic Historical Commission. Looking first at the corresponding exile members,60 57 58 59 60

Kaegbein and Lenz, 1987. Data until 1986 based on ibid. Helk, 1977; Helk, 1989. Kaegbein and Lenz, 1987.

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we see that in 1955 Otto Webermann gave a presentation on Schultz-Bertram’s letters; and in the following year there were presentations by Georg Vīgrābs and Evald Blumfeldt that dealt with the foreign policy of the Baltic States in 1939 and with the Estonian nation and Russification. Arnold Soom spoke on 17th trade history in 1957, and Nikolajs Valters in 1958 on the founding of the Latvian state. In 1959, Webermann gave a talk on Baltic-German literature and Valters on Soviet-Latvian historiography. In 1962 and 1963 Valters gave two more talks on legal continuity and on Latvian state-building; Helk dealt with the Jesuits the same year. In 1964 Ozols spoke about early fortifications and Webermann about enlightenment. More presentations by corresponding members from the Baltic exile followed only after 1970, when Ģērmanis dealt with Latvians in the Russian Revolution. Edgar Anderson gave three lectures, on the Crimean war in the North (1971), on the Baltic entente (1973), and on British Baltic policy during World War ii (1981). Further talks included Hain Rebas on 15th century Livonia in 1977, and Valters Nollendorfs with three contributions on the Latvian historical novel (1977), on Baltic Studies (1981) and on German-Latvian translations as weapons in the national conflict (1983). In 1983 Aleksander Loit dealt with Baltic national movements. Besides, there were a few presentations by Baltic scholars from exile who were not members of the Historical Commission: in 1973 by Romuald Misiunas on 18th century Sweden, in 1976 by Sten Karling on art and artists in late medieval Reval, in 1987 by Rein Taagepera on contemporary Baltic history, and in 1988 by Jānis Krēsliņš on Georgius Mancelius. Thus exile scholars were frequently present at the meetings since the mid-1950s, and then more or less regularly since 1970, but, interestingly, to a lesser degree in the 1980s. Since 1989 scholars from the Baltic region itself also have had presentations at the conferences. There is more to be said about contacts of the Commission’s members with the national Baltic exile. In particular, one has to mention three international conferences co-organized by the Baltic Historical Commission in Marburg between 1979 and 1985.61 There, (Baltic) German historians met with Baltic scholars from the exile (such as Tõnu Parming, Toivo Raun, Andrew Ezergailis, Olavi Arens, and Andrejs Plakans) and, for the first time, with scholars from the Baltic Soviet republics (such as Sirje Kivimäe, Peteris Krupnikovs, Karl Siilivask, Maksim Duchanov, and Toomas Karjahärm). These conferences have been described as real turning points in overcoming barriers between the individual groups of historians from the national exile and the Soviet Union and the (Baltic) Germans.62 Besides, a closer look at personal correspondence and 61 Ibid. 62 See for instance Pistohlkors, 2000.

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obituaries could reveal additional contacts—at least academic ones—between Baltic German historians and Baltic exile historians, even before the Marburg conferences: Wittram, for instance, presented an obituary for the Latvian ­historian Arvēds Švābe, who was not a member of the Baltic Historical Commission, at the meeting in 1960. If we seek to analyze the Baltic Historical Commission itself as an exile organization, one should look at the places of birth of its members. Such an analysis clearly shows that about two-thirds of those who were elected to ordinary members and were born until 1945 came from the Baltic States and Russia (see Table 1 below). If the audience at the annual conventions in Göttingen is included, these meetings can be said to have formed gatherings of people from the Baltic region, and evidenced a kind of exclusiveness that was not connected to the scholarly orientation. Even for members without Baltic German roots a rite of introduction (for instance, through the PhD supervisor) was important, and this permitted them to call themselves true members of the Commission not only in the sense of professional interests but also as part of the Baltic German community. Just as in the case of the institutions of the Baltic national exile in Germany, there were other Baltic German institutions in the field as well that have to be included into this analytical framework, as, for example, Göttinger Arbeitskreis (noted earlier) and the Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk and Nordostdeutsche Akademie in Lüneburg.63 The Göttinger Arbeitskreis of 1946 focused its work closely on Baltic topics only since the 1990s; before that, it was mainly a kind of a publishing office dealing with all territories of the former German East. Both Lüneburg institutions were founded by Max Hildebert Boehm (1891–1968) in 1951 and initially organized workshops without a strictly scholarly orientation. Besides these two institutions in Lüneburg, which split in 1965, one may also mention Table 1

Members of the Baltic Historical Commission until 1987, born before 1946 (n = 88)

Baltic region (Estonia and Latvia) Russia Posen / Poznań (Poland) Scandinavia (incl. Finland) Germany Hungary

50 8 2 (1 before 1939) 3 24 1

63 The Kulturwerk has transformed into the Nordost-Institut in 2002, the Academy, which had been renamed in Ost-Akademie, ceased to exist in 2005. Cf. Prehn, 2003/2004 and Prehn, 2013.

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the closely related Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft,64 which was actually a German Baltic exile association founded in 1932 to commemorate Carl Schirren, who had left the University of Dorpat/Tartu as a result of accusations against him by official Russian politics in the Baltic provinces in the 1860s.

Concluding Remarks

If we compare the foregoing institutional developments, it is clear that the Baltic Historical Commission—and in part also the Lüneburg institutions— were the only ones that were in existence throughout the entire postwar period. The Baltic University was short-lived and the later Baltic Research Institute operated with very limited capacities. The Institutum Balticum, which was maintained by the Catholic Church, had a primarily political profile and was dissolved after the changes of 1991. The dominance of institutions connected to Baltic Germans is visible also to public activities. Placed beside the Baltic Historical Commission with its annual meetings on Baltic (German) history, there was no comparable activity by the Baltic national exile, although the Institutum Balticum was organizing “Studientage” until the mid-1990s. Both of these observations coincide with a third: a clear dominance by Baltic German topics in publications. Until Georg von Rauch, who was president of Baltic Historical Commission from 1973 to 1979, published his history of the Baltic states in 1977,65 there was no comprehensive book in German on the whole region, whereas Reinhard Wittram’s Baltische Geschichte66 covered primarily the Baltic German history, as did Gert von Pistohlkors’ Baltische Länder.67 Since the publications of the other Baltic exile institutions provided nothing comparable to these works, we can describe the features of their historiographical production only in a general way. The picture that emerges confirms the earlier characterizations: the main foci of the national exile were clearly on early history and topics related to national cultures (as languages and folklore), with the inter-war period being a third. In general, issues related to the early modern period and the pre-1914 era, were present to a lesser degree. Topics related to the Baltic Germans were obviously of no special interest for the national exile scholars. For the Baltic Historical Commission the opposite was true: medieval Livonia as well as early modern period and also pre-1914 topics 64 65 66 67

The association publishes the Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums since 1954. Rauch, 1977. Wittram, 1954b; on the previous issues of that book see Hackmann, 1999. Pistohlkors, 1994.

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evidenced a lively interest if they were connected to aspects of the Baltic German past. A common interest, however, obtained in discussions of the inter-war period, since until the 1980s many of discussants had been personal eyewitnesses of that era. Our conclusion that the national Baltic exile in Germany was rather weak may be underlined by the observation that many of the historiographical contributions published by the analyzed institutions in West Germany originated predominantly in Sweden, North America and Australia. Such transnational contacts are a common feature of exile, of course, but in the German case the comparison reveals not only relative weakness compared to the Baltic German historians, but also to the major Baltic émigré circles in Sweden and North America. Notwithstanding these differences, all institutions and associations that have been mentioned here, were at least until the 1970s dominated by persons who left the Baltic region involuntarily, and in their exclusiveness demonstrated an expected feature of exile organisations. The most interesting remaining question has to do with the relations between Baltic Germans and the national exile. As mentioned above, there had been contacts at least since end of the 1950s between scholars, as well as politicians, who were involved in the state building processes of the inter-war period and in German occupation politics during World War ii. After the founding of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (aabs) in North America in 1968, contacts between Baltic German historians and Baltic historians from North America increased during at the biannual aabs conventions, which paved the way for the conferences in Marburg between 1979 and 1985. Such cross-group contacts, however, have not always been smoothly accomplished. In the obituary in the Commentationes Balticae on Ernst Fraenkel, it is highlighted that he supported also those persons who had a hostile attitude towards him between 1933 and 1945.68 The question of national or political hostility can also be found in more prominent circles, as, for example, in the controversial relations between Hans von Rimscha and Miķelis Valters in the  1920s,69 or within the Baltic Historical Commission itself after Erhard Kroeger the leader of the Nazi movement among the Germans in Latvia, had published his view of the “Umsiedlung”.70 About the relations among the ­individual national exile groups in Germany, however, little information has 68 69 70

Fraenkel lost his chair as a professor in 1936 due to the Nuremberg Laws, the addressees, however, are not clear, cf. In memoriam Prof. Dr. Ernst Fraenkel, in: cb 4/5, 1958, 331–334. See Valters, 1926; Rimscha, 1927. Kroeger, 1967; Schröder, 2001.

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become available. The commemorative volume on the Baltic University is a  predominantly Estonian one, with not more than marginal remarks on Latvians and Lithuanians. All in all, the changes outlined here, marked first by the 1949 end of the Baltic University, second by the decline of the Bonn Institute in 1971, and third the revolutionary change after 1990, coincide with the general lines of development in West German research connected to Eastern Europe.71 The situation of the Baltic institutions in Germany, therefore, was far from being exceptional. The major advances in research on Baltic issues outside Germany was linked, first, to the rise of aabs in Northern America around 1970, and, second, to the emergence of the Center of Baltic Studies in Stockholm and its Baltic Conferences since 1985, with both of these institutions broadening the research horizons for the Baltic Historical Commission. Another significant marker was the opening towards Lithuania starting in the 1990s. Since 1991, however, the Baltic national exile as well as the Baltic Germans have been increasingly challenged in maintaining an historiography of their own and a national ­perspective on Baltic history in general. References Alvre, P. (2005). “In memoriam Alo Raun.” Linguistica Uralica 41, 74–78. Balys, J. (1946). Litauische Hochzeitsbräuche (Contributions of Baltic University, 9). Hamburg: Baltic University. Biržiška, V. (1947). Abraham Kulvietis. The first Lithuanian humanist (Contributions of Baltic University, 47). Pinneberg: Baltic University. Buttimer, A. (2005). “Edgar Kant (1902–1978)—A Baltic pioneer.” Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography, 87, No. 3, 175–192. Dunsdorfs, E. (1947a). Merchant shipping in the Baltic during the 17th century (Contributions of Baltic University, 40). Pinneberg: Baltic University. Dunsdorfs, E. (1947b). Die Bevölkerungszahl in Kurzeme (Kurland) im 16. Jahrhundert (Contributions of Baltic University, 49). Pinneberg: Baltic University. Eckel, J. (2005). Hans Rothfels: eine intellektuelle Biographie im 20. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein. Eder, A. (1997). “Die baltische Universität 1946 bis 1949.” Baltica 10, 9–27. Elias, O.-H. (1978). Reval in der Reformpolitik Katharinas ii: die Statthalterschaftszeit 1783–1796 (QSbG, 3). Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Wissenschaftliches Archiv.

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Elias, O.-H., I. Jürjo, S. Kivimäe, and G. von Pistohlkors (eds.) (1996). Aufklärung in den baltischen Provinzen Russlands: Ideologie und soziale Wirklichkeit. (QSbG, 15). Köln: Böhlau. Engelhardt, H. D. von and H. Neuschäffer (1983). Die Livländische Gemeinnützige und Ökonomische Sozietät (1792–1939): ein Beitrag zur Agrargeschichte des Ostseeraums (QSbG, 5). Köln: Böhlau. Etzemüller, T. (2001). Sozialgeschichte als politische Geschichte. Werner Conze und die Neuorientierung der westdeutschen Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (Ordnungssys­ teme. Studien zur Ideengeschichte der Neuzeit, 9). München: Oldenbourg. Ezergailis, A. and G. von Pistohlkors (eds.) (1982). Die baltischen Provinzen Russlands zwischen den Revolutionen von 1905 und 1917/The Russian Baltic provinces between the 1905/1917 revolutions. (QSbG, 4). Köln: Böhlau. Garleff, M. (1976). Deutschbaltische Politik zwischen den Weltkriegen: die parlamentarische Tätigkeit der deutschbaltischen Parteien in Lettland und Estland (QSbG, 2). Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Verlag Wissenschaftliches Archiv. Garve, H. (1978) Konfession und Nationalität. Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Kirche und  Gesellschaft im Livland im 19. Jahrhundert (Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas, 110). Marburg: J. G. Herder-­Institut. Grāmatiņš, Arnolds (ed.) (1989). Baltijas Universitāte 1946–1949. Minstere. Hackmann, J. (1995). “Mare germanicum? Anmerkungen zur deutschen Geschichts­ schreibung über den Ostseeraum.” Mare Balticum, 31–40. Hackmann, J. (1996). “‘An einem neuen Anfang der Ostforschungʼ. Bruch und Kontinuität in der ostdeutschen Landeshistorie nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.” Westfälische Forschungen, 46, 232–258. Hackmann, J. (1999). “Contemporary Baltic History and German Ostforschung 1918– 1945. Concepts, Images and Notions.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, 322–337. Haltzel, M. (1977). Der Abbau der deutschen ständischen Selbstverwaltung in den Ostseeprovinzen Rußlands. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der russischen Unifizierungspoli­ tik 1855–1905 (Marburger Ostforschungen, 37). Marburg: J.-G.-Herder-­Institut. Hannemann, L. (2008). “‘Sehr fleißig und im Examen recht gutʼ. Displaced Persons an der Universität Bonn 1945–1950” in Thomas Becker (ed.). Zwischen Diktatur und Neubeginn. Die Universität Bonn im “Dritten Reich” und in der Nachkriegszeit. Göttingen: Bonn University Press, 273–300. Harding, H. (1997). Displaced Persons (DPs) in Schleswig-Holstein 1945–1953 (Kieler Werkstücke Reihe A: Beiträge zur schleswig-holsteinischen und skandinavischen Geschichte, 16). Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 159–164. Hartmann, S. (1973). Reval im nordischen Krieg (QSbG, 1). Bonn-Bad Godesberg: Verlag Wissenschaftliches Archiv. Hehn, J. von (1984). Die Umsiedlung der baltischen Deutschen—das letzte Kapitel baltischdeutscher Geschichte (Marburger Ostforschungen, 40). Marburg: J.G. HerderInstitut.

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Hehn, J. von and C.J. Kenéz (eds.) (1980). Reval und die baltischen Länder. Festschrift für Hellmuth Weiss zum 80. Geburtstag. Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut. Hehn, J. von, H. von Rimscha and H. Weiss (eds.) (1971). Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten. Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Republiken Estland und Lettland 1917–1918. Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut, 1971. Hehn, J. von, H. von Rimscha and H. Weiss (eds.) (1977). Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten. Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Republiken Estland und Lettland 1918–1920. Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut. Helk, Vello (1977). Die Jesuiten in Dorpat 1583–1625: ein Vorposten der Gegenreformation in Nordosteuropa (Odense University studies in history and social sciences, 44). Odense: Odense University Press. Helk, V. (1989). Die Stadtschule in Arensburg auf Ösel in dänischer und schwedischer Zeit (1559–1710) (Beiträge zur Schulgeschichte, 1). Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk. Hubatsch, W. (1948). Im Bannkreis der Ostsee. Grundriss einer Geschichte der Ostseeländer in ihren gegenseitigen Beziehungen. Marburg: Elwert-Gräfe & Unzer. Järvesoo, E. (ed.) (1991). Balti Ülikool Saksamaal. 1945–1949; koguteos = Baltic University in Germany. Toronto. Johansen, P. and H. von zur Mühlen, (1973). Deutsch und undeutsch im mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Reval (Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 15). Köln, Wien: Böhlau. Kaegbein, P. and W. Lenz (eds.) (1987). Vier Jahrzehnte baltische Geschichtsforschung. Die baltischen Historikertreffen in Göttingen 1947–1986 und die Baltische Historische Kommission. Vorträge, Veröffentlichungen, Mitglieder. Göttingen: Baltische Historische Kommission. Kant, E. (1935). Bevölkerung und Lebensraum Estlands. Ein anthropoökologischer Beitrag zur Kunde Baltoskandias. Tartu: Akadeemiline Kooperatiiv. Kroeger, E. (1967). Der Auszug aus der alten Heimat. Die Umsiedlung der Balten­ deutschen. Tübingen: Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung. Lenz, W. (1953). Der baltische Literatenstand (Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas, 7). Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut. Lenz, W. (1954). Die Entwicklung Rigas zur Großstadt (Marburger Ostforschungen, 2). Kitzingen: Holzner. Lenz, W. (ed.) (1970). Deutschbaltisches biographisches Lexikon 1710–1960. Köln: Böhlau. Meissner, B. (1977). “Die baltische Frage in der Weltpolitik.” Acta Baltica, 16. Mühle, E. (1999). “Deutschbaltische Geschichtsschreibung zum livländischen Mittelalter im Kontext der politischen Entwicklungen der 1920er bis 1950er Jahre. Zwei werkorientierte Fallstudien.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, 352–90. Mühlen, H. von zur (1985). Reval vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert: Gestalten und Generationen eines Ratsgeschlechts (QSbG, 6). Köln: Böhlau.

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Neitmann, K. (1998). “Reinhard Wittram und der Wiederbeginn der baltischen historischen Studien in Göttingen nach 1945.” Nordost-Archiv N.F. 7, 11–32. Ney, G. (1961). “Lebensraum und Schicksalswandlungen der Völker des Baltikums.” Acta Baltica 1. Niendorf, M. (2009). “Zenonas Ivinskis (1908–1971) – historyk na emigracji.” In Potašenko, G., and A. Bumblauskas (eds.). Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštijos. Tradicija ir tautiniai naratyvai (Lietuvos istorijos studijos, 7). Vilnius: Vilniaus Universitetas, 237–251. Oberländer, E. (ed.) (1992). Geschichte Osteuropas: zur Entwicklung einer historischen Disziplin in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1945–1990 (Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa, 35). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Petersen, H.-Ch. (2007). Bevölkerungsökonomie, Ostforschung, Politik: eine biographische Studie zu Peter-Heinz Seraphim (1902–1979) (Einzelveröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau, 17). Osnabrück: fibre. Pistohlkors, G. von (1978). Ritterschaftliche Reformpolitik zwischen Russifizierung und Revolution. Historische Studien zum Problem der politischen Selbsteinschätzung der deutschen Oberschicht in den Ostseeprovinzen Rußlands im Krisenjahr 1905 (Bausteine zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 48). Göttingen: Musterschmidt. Pistohlkors, G. von, T.U. Raun, and P. Kaegbein (eds.) (1987). Die Universitäten Dorpat/ Tartu, Riga und Wilna/Vilnius 1579–1979: Beiträge zur ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Wirkung im Grenzbereich zwischen West und Ost. (QSbG, 9). Köln: Böhlau. Pistohlkors, G. von (1994). Baltische Länder (Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas). Berlin: Siedler. Pistohlkors, G. von, A. Plakans, and P. Kaegbein, (eds.) (1995). Bevölkerungsverschiebun­ gen und sozialer Wandel in den baltischen Provinzen Russlands 1850–1914/Population Shifts and Social Change in Russiaʼs Baltic Provinces 1850–1914. (Schriften der Baltischen Historischen Kommission, 6). Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk. Pistohlkors, G. von (1996). “Fünfzig Jahre Baltische Historikertreffen in Göttingen. Die Arbeit der Baltischen Historischen Kommission e.V.” ahf Jahrbuch. (www .ahf-muenchen.de/Forschungsberichte/Jahrbuch1996/Pistohlkors.shtml). Pistohlkors, G. von (1999). “Images and Notions of Baltic German Ostforschung Concerning Baltic History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, 307–321. Pistohlkors, G. von (2000). “Die Geschichte der Deutschen in den baltischen Ländern und die westdeutsche Historiographie nach 1945” in Kłoczowski, J., W. Matwiejczyk and E. Mühle (eds.), Doświadczenia przeszłości. Niemcy w Europie ŚrodkowoWschodniej w historiografii po 1945 roku/Erfahrungen der Vergangenheit. Deutsche in Ostmitteleuropa im Spiegel der Historiographie nach 1945 (Tagungen zur Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 9). Lublin, Marburg: Instytut Środkowo-Wschodniej Europy, Herder-Institut, 153–165.

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Pletzing, Ch. and M. (eds.) (2007). Displaced Persons. Flüchtlinge aus den baltischen Staaten in Deutschland (Colloquia Baltica, 12). München: Meidenbauer. Prehn, U. (2003/2004). “‘An der schmalen Grenze zwischen Wissenschaft und Politikʼ: Max Hildebert Boehm und die Gründungsgeschichte der (Nord-)Ostdeutschen Akademie.” Deutsche Studien 39, 27–51. Prehn, U. (2013). Max Hildebert Boehm: Radikales Ordnungsdenken vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis in die Bundesrepublik (Hamburger Beiträge zur Sozial- und Zeitgeschichte, 51). Göttingen: Wallstein. Raagmaa, G. (2005). “Preface: The heritage of Edgar Kant and Johannes Gabriel Granö.” Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography, 87, No. 3, 165–166. Rauch, G. von (1977). Geschichte der baltischen Staaten. München: dtv. Rauch (ed.) (1986). Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung (Ostmit­ teleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 20). Köln, Wien: Böhlau. Rimscha, H.v. (1927). “Die Methode des Herrn Dr. Walters.” Baltische Monatsschrift 58, 111–122. Saldukas, L. (2002). “Iš Vilniaus baroko? Hamburgo barakus arba Pabaltijo universitetas Vokietijoje.” In Aleksandravičius, E. (ed.), Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas: Mokslas ir visuomen 1922–2002. Kaunas: vdu, 366–81. Schlingensiepen, G.H. (1959). Der Strukturwandel des baltischen Adels in der Zeit vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas, 41). Marburg: J.G. Herder-Institut. Schröder, M. (2001). Deutschbaltische SS-Führer und Andrej Vlasov 1942–1945. Russland “kann nur von Russen besiegt werden”: Erhard Kroeger, Friedrich Buchardt und die “Russische Befreiungsarmee.” Paderborn: Schöningh. Šteimans, J. (2002). History of Latvian Jews. (East European monographs, 595). Boulder: East European Monographs. Šturms, E. (1946a). Die Alkstätten in Litauen (Contributions of Baltic University, 3). Hamburg. Šturms, E. (1946b). Die erste schnurkeramische Siedlung in Lettland (Contributions of Baltic University, 17). Hamburg: Broschek. Šturms, E. (1947a). Die ethnische Deutung der “masurgermanischen” Kultur (Contributions of Baltic University, 31). Pinneberg: Baltic University. Šturms, E. (1947b). Die Lage von Gercike und einigen anderen frühgeschichtlichen Burgen Lettlands (Contributions of Baltic University, 48). Pinneberg: Baltic University. Šturms, E. (1947c). Regionale Unterschiede in den Beziehungen zwischen dem Ostbaltikum und Skandinavien in der Bronzezeit (Contributions of Baltic University, 53). Pinneberg: Baltic University. Valters, M. (1926). Baltengedanken und Baltenpolitik. Paris. Wagner, P. (1997). Displaced persons in Hamburg: Stationen einer halbherzigen Integration 1945 bis 1958. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz.

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Remaining Loyal: Latvian Historians in Exile 1945–1991 Andrejs Plakans In theory, it was precisely in the history profession that [émigré] Latvians could remain loyal to the study of Latvian and Baltic history, but they soon discovered that this was not opportune.1 Introduction Neither the perception of being “exiled” nor intellectual activities during “exile” was an unusual aspect of the history of Latvians during the twentieth century. Indeed, the outflow of university-educated Latvians from the Latvianpopulated Russian western borderlands—the Baltic provinces of Livonia and Courland (Livland and Kurland) and from the Latvian districts of the adjoining province of Vitebsk—began in the last decades of the nineteenth century and continued until the founding of the first Latvian republic in 1918, at levels that led one contemporary demographer to estimate that at the turn of the twentieth century some ten percent of all Latvian-speakers were living, studying, and working outside the Latvian-language territory, mostly in other regions of the Russian Empire.2 This percentage included many professionals such as engineers and post office managers but also a handful of academic specialists such as Jānis Krodznieks, the first ethnic Latvian with a university degree (Moscow University) in the historical discipline.3 The 1905 Revolution increased that outflow, with social democrats and others sympathetic to radical changes fleeing to western countries, some with the intention of returning and others, as it turned out, finding more permanent refuge there. Kārlis Ulmanis, probably the most prominent and controversial Latvian political leader of the interwar years, spent seven years (1906–1913) in the United States, and the Latvian canonic poet and playwright Jānis Rainis (pseud. for Jānis Pliekšāns) and his equally gifted wife, the poet and playwright Aspāzija (pseud. for Elza Rozenberga), lived in Switzerland for about thirteen years, during which time Rainis wrote some of his best and most inspiring literary creations. A double exodus took place during the First World War: in 1915–1916 an estimated 750,000 1 Andersons, 1981, 68. 2 Skujeneeks, 1922, 290–91. 3 Nazarova, 2012. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_006

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refugees left Courland and southern Livonia, fleeing from the rapidly advancing German army into the Russian interior; and after 1918–1919 and the founding of the Latvian state, an estimated 250,000 Latvians left for and remained in the new Soviet Union, having sympathy toward the Bolshevik cause or being unable to return when they changed their minds. Thousands of refugees of all kinds returned to Latvia in the early 1920s, but other thousands did not, so that the first Latvian national census of 1920 showed that the Latvian territories had lost, seemingly permanently, about third of their pre-war population. The University of Latvia, founded in the 1919, had to issue a call to Latvians with academic training, wherever they were, to return to their homeland to help form a teaching faculty for this brand new national “castle of light.”4 Another wave of refugees/exiles—an estimated 250,000—fled Latvia during the 1944– 45 months as the Soviet Army returned, bringing with it the determination to continue the job of sovietization that had been started in 1940–41 but had been interrupted by the German occupation of the country from 1941 to 1945. Each of these waves of departure was unique in its internal history and duration, of course, but they were all links in a longer chain of outward movement that made the words “exile” (Latv. trimda), “exiles” (Latv. trimdnieki), and “refugees” (Latv. bēgļi) seem almost normal components of the politico-socio-­ cultural vocabulary of Latvian history since the 1890s. In the present survey of Latvian history-writing in exile, however, it is the World War ii flight that will be the focus, and, within it, the handful of intellectuals who were already recognized historians before they left or became historians later in life after their settlement in such new homelands as the United States, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. The composition of this World War ii refugee population was heavily weighted toward the intelligentsia—professionals of all kinds, government employees, artists, journalists, and writers—who had already experienced Soviet life during 1940–41 and had no wish to repeat the experience. Virtually all these professionals, the historians among them, initially found themselves—as refugees—without institutional moorings and had to adapt to uncertain conditions, some in Sweden and others in post-war Germany. The historians left behind former colleagues, who in the post-1945 decades resumed their work in history-focused academic and research institutions monitored by the Latvian Communist Party and, in the larger framework, by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. For the Party, history was a supremely important discipline since its practitioners had the task of explaining the “historical inevitability” of Soviet dominance, thus legitimizing Party control over virtually all aspects of society at large. 4 Bolin, 2012.

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Disentangling the Exile Generations

In reviewing the historical writings of Latvian exile authors we can choose to look at their work as a single entity and identify its main intellectual themes; or we can take a socio-historical approach, put aside for the moment its ideacontent, and examine the on-the-ground differences that shaped its emergence. Both approaches are useful, but in the present analysis, the latter will be emphasized. A significant differentiating variable among the exile historians is date of birth, which places each historian into a particular subgroup—a “generation”— and opens the entire grouping to generational analysis. Karl Mannheim’s definition of a “generation” can serve as a good starting point—a “generation” is a group of persons whose attitudes are shaped (even if not determined) by an overwhelming historical event in which they all participate—and it is this definition that has been used for compiling Table 1.5 As it happens, it is not very difficult to correlate the life histories of the exile Latvian historians with several potentially very significant life-shaping experiences: flight from the old homeland, a half decade in refugee camps, adaptation to new homeland, and, for the youngest, intellectual maturation entirely in the new homelands. The usable individual-level biographies of Latvian exile historians are relatively well known and need not be repeated here, but what has been less well examined is the differentiating effect the timing of these experiences had on the work of the entire group as a collectivity. The present analysis will argue that the “generational effect” on the professional work of Latvian exile historians was strong, and that the idea-content and forms of that work cannot be properly understood without reference to the turbulent socio-historical context of the people involved. This line of reasoning is not meant to be some variant of socio-economic determinism nor an effort to reduce ideas to the status of mere reflections of “underlying circumstances.” It is meant to suggest, however, that the examination of the realm of “pure ideas” by itself cannot provide satisfactory historical explanations of why different ideas or idea-clusters appeared and replaced each other in real historical time. One very significant characteristic of this entire grouping of historians is its relatively small size (see Table 1), which corresponded to Latvia’s moderate population—about 1.9 million in 1935. In addition, who is to be counted as an “historian” depends on the definition of the term, but whether the definition is inclusive or exclusive the total number of exile historians is not likely to 5 Mannheim, 1997; Townsend, 2001. The information in Table 1 is derived from the following sources: Andersons, 1981; Švābe, 1950–1951; Andersons, 1983–2008; Latvijas Enciklopēdija, 2002–2009.

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Remaining Loyal Table 1

Latvian Émigré Historians: Three Generations

Name

Birth/death

Primary residence

Age 1944

Age 1950

Age 1991

Age at death

Generation 1 Spekke, Arnolds Bīlmanis, Alfrēds Švābe, Arvēds Vīksniņš, Nikolajs Dunsdorfs, Edgars Šilde, Adolfs Biezais, Haralds Ābers, Benno

1887/1972 1887/1948 1888/1959 1893/1976 1904/2002 1907/1990 1909/1995 1909/1990

us us Sweden us Australia Germany Sweden us

57 57 56 51 48 37 35 35

63 d. 1948 62 57 54 43 41 41

dec. dec. dec. dec. 87 dec. 82 dec.

85 61 71 83 96 83 86 81

Generation 2 Ģērmanis, Uldis Šterns, Indriķis Andersons, Edgars Johansons, Andrejs

1915/1997 1918/2005 1920/1989 1922/1983

Sweden us us Sweden

29 26 24 22

35 32 30 28

76 73 dec. dec.

83 87 69 61

Generation 3 (selection) Ezergailis, Andrievs Lazda, Paulis Trapāns, Jānis Plakans, Andrejs Lumans, Valdis Ekšteins, Modris Vinovskis, Māris Kangeris, Karlis

1930 1938 1938 1940 1944 1943 1943 1948

14 6 6 4 1 1 1 -

20 12 12 10 6 7 7 2

61 53 53 51 47 46 46 43

Latkovskis, Leon.

1943

us us us us us Canada us Sweden/ Latvia us

1

7

46

exceed by much the number of tenured faculty in a large American university. In principle, a small starting population and thus even smaller subgroups renders generalizations problematic because smallness enhances the importance of the characteristics of individual cases and depresses the importance of shared characteristics. This methodological problem has to be kept in

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mind because in most studies of “generations” in social science literature the aggregate size of the generations being dealt with normally is in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Proceeding carefully, however, a closer look at the subgroupings of Table 1 will reveal that general differences did exist in how each subgroup (generation) viewed itself; how each was viewed by the rest of the Latvian exile population and what was expected from them; and how their professional labors were received by their co-professionals in their new homelands. It should also be remembered that “generations” are not closed entities succeeding each other serially in real time. They are to a great extent overlapping and remain in communication with each other. In the case of the exile Latvian historians, most of the Generation 1 historians were  still alive by the time Generation 2 began its work, and the oldest in Generation 1 even remained aware of the researches of Generation 3. Even if for analytical purposes we examine each generation separately, this methodological necessity should not be based on the assumption of generational non-communication. The authors listed in Table 1 as “Generation 1” were born between 1887 and 1909. Among them, when the time came after 1944, the consciousness of being in exile was pronounced since they were already adults when they began a half decade as refugees in Sweden or as “displaced person” (dp) in camps in post-war Germany. Most already possessed professional identities as historians, and some—such as Arvēds Švābe—had already achieved considerable prominence. After leaving the old homeland, they continued to view themselves as stewards of the Latvian historical experience and were thought of as such by the Latvian exile population. They tended to have a proprietary attitude toward Latvian history, as evidenced by the frequent use of the collective pronoun “our” (Latv. mūsu) in their writings—“our history”, “our nation” (Latv. tauta), “our homeland”. Correlatively, when writing about these scholars, the popular exile press routinely referred to them as “our historians” (Latv. mūsu vēsturnieki). They enjoyed high esteem in the Latvian exile world while remaining, with some exceptions, on the peripheries of the active new-­ homeland historical professions. Their published work, however, did not remain unused or uncited among non-Latvian colleagues, since knowledge of Latvian history remained shallow in most western countries and in a number of cases their monographs had been or eventually became translated into the main western languages. The authors listed for “Generation 2” were born between 1915 and 1922 and entered post-World War ii exile as young adults, with professional identities as historians yet to be established. Several—such as Andersons and Ģērmanis— achieved and retained name recognition in the world of exile publications for

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more than their professional historical work.6 The consciousness of “exile” remained pronounced and identifiable among them, but for reasons of age they did not have to deal with the debilitating effects of an interrupted career or the loss of high professional status. Their success at becoming published historians was substantial, but in two cases—Andersons and Šterns, who eventually settled in the us—success came in part from finding permanent (tenured) teaching jobs in us universities. These provided them with a base of operations to continue their scholarly work as they chose. The published results of their research tended to be divided between one (or more) major languages and a minor language (Latvian), even though in opting for this division they were risking having their work in the minor language discounted by new homeland co-professionals who could not read it and therefore could not review it. Considered as “exiles,” the authors listed as “Generation 3” in Table 1 are the most problematic insofar as they left Latvia as adolescents or young children, received most of their primary and secondary education and their professional training in their new homelands, and entered the new-homeland historical professions on an equal footing with their generational non-Latvian peers. Their involvement with the Latvian émigré community differed substantially from individual to individual, and in some cases it remains an open question whether they should be included in any listing of “Latvian historians in exile.” Their names, as indicated, are a “selection” and other historians of Latvian history-writing might well compile a different list. The list in Table 1 has also excluded Latvian-language writers in exile who wrote about the Latvian past but were trained in other professions, those who wrote history books for exile supplementary schools, and those who eventually shifted to other line of work after undergraduate (or even graduate) degrees in the history profession. The authors in Table 1 were all were connected, usually through personal and family experience, to the Latvian exile world, but their use of such connections for professional purposes varied widely. Judging by the documentation in their published work, all retained a reading knowledge of the Latvian language. In some cases, however, active involvement in post-1991 Latvian life was intense and in some relatively tenuous. 6 The indefatigable Edgars Andersons, for example, prepared and published an anthology of North American prose writers (Andersons, 1949) as early as 1949 when he was still in his twenties and living in German dp camps; later, after emigration to the us, he organized tourist excursion to the island of Tobago, a small seventeenth-century Carribean colony of Duke Jacob of Courland. Ģērmanis was a prominent feuilletonist in the Latvian exile press and a popular lecturer in European, Australian, and North American exile communities.

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The Relocated Professionals: Generation 1

Specialists of Baltic-area history will easily recognize many of the names listed as Generation 1 in Table 1. The oldest of them—especially Švābe—were in fact among the interwar founders of the Latvian historical profession; the others, the next cohort within Generation 1, were students and younger colleagues of the senior group at the University of Latvia (founded 1919) and the Institute of Latvian History (founded 1936). The efforts of the interwar professionals to institutionalize a uniquely “Latvian” view of the past, however, remained uneven, due in part to the limited employment opportunities for historians. There were relatively few permanent university positions available to those who wished to make a living through researching of and writing about the past, though dozent positions were more numerous. Outlets for publications were also few: thus, the most important specialized scholarly journal for historians’ work—the Journal of the Institute of History—did not appear until 1936. Thus researchers had to publish in a variety of other history-interested periodicals such as Izlglītības Ministrijas Mēnešraksts (the monthly of the Ministry of Education), Senātne un Māksla (History and the Arts) and even newspapers. Another feature of interwar Latvian intellectual life kept most historians from becoming “ivory tower” scholars: as members of a small “national” elite of university-educated persons, historians were under constant pressure to become what later in the western world would be called “public intellectuals.” They were drawn into editorial work, journalism, language study, secondaryschool teaching, diplomacy, parliamentary politics, administrative work of various kinds and government service, all of which subtracted from the time they could devote to research in their principal profession. Remaining above the fray of the numerous nation-building tasks interwar Latvia faced and escaping into the intellectual delights of “pure history” remained a luxury. At the same time, as best and when they could, this generation pursued its work as “national” historians vigorously. The collective goal was the creation of a “master narrative” written by Latvians (generally in opposition to earlier and contemporary Baltic German historians), and the refutation of what were argued to be Baltic German falsifications of the Latvian past. The Latvian reading public needed a version of the past they could identify with and claim ­possession of. The work of the interwar historians was heavy with teleology: the long-term trajectory of Latvian history had been pointing toward the creation of the Latvian national state, and therefore the 1918 Republic of Latvia symbolized the Latvian nation (Latv. tauta) finally having become a “subject” of historical development, no longer the victim of predatory neighbors or of the underlings of the regional German-speaking elites.

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The first years of exile—dp camps in Germany and civilian refugee life in Sweden—reinforced the interwar sense of mission while adding to it the need to explain in countless venues the injustices of the Soviet absorption of Latvia. Being prominent among the active adults in the refugee population, Generation 1 historians also took on the task of keeping alive a Latvian national consciousness through popularization of Latvian history among the Latvians themselves.7 Even though in the interwar years, most of the Generation 1 historians had developed special fields of expertise, in exile their specialized training grew increasingly less relevant to this expanded view of their mission. Spekke had been associated primarily with the late medieval and early modern period, Dundorfs with the seventeenth century, Vīksniņš with the eighteenth, Ābers with the Latvians peasantry of the nineteenth century, and Biezais—an ordained Lutheran minister—with the history of Latvia religious beliefs. Švabe had been a polymath, at home with medieval as well as nineteenth century sources and a noted poet as well. Yet in later decades within the Latvian exile community they grew into the roles of generic “Latvian historians” and were as likely to author examinations of contemporary Latvian problems as to stay within the “narrow” specialties in which they had been trained. Thus the reputations of both Spekke and Bīlmanis—in the “exile” years—were enhanced by their single-volume and English-language broad surveys of all of Latvian his­ tory;8 Švābe invested countless hours editing a three-volume Latvian encyclopedia;9 Dunsdorfs launched an annual publication meant to document the Latvian exile life;10 Biezais critiqued Latvian activities during the German occupation of the country;11 Šilde transformed himself from a pre-1940 publicist into a careful interpreter of twentieth-century Latvian history;12 and Vīksniņš began to aim his pedagogical historical publications at the Latvian exile supplementary schools.13 Moreover, the post-war revival of a cadre of 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

A small conference of Latvian exile historians in January, 1948, organized by Švābe in Pinneberg, Germany (British zone of occupation) featured not only presentations of antiquarian interest but also resolved to found a “Latvian Association of Humanistic Science” to continue the research traditions laid out by the Science Committee of the Riga Latvian Association and the Ulmanis-created Institute of History of Latvia (Bērziņš, 1971, 198– 199). The latter, of course, had been reconstituted by the Soviet Latvian government in 1946, now under strict Party guidance. Spekke, 1957; Bīlmanis, 1951. Švabe, 1950–1951. Dunsdorfs, 1960–1992. Biezais, 1992. Šilde, 1982. Vīksniņš, 1968.

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active historians in the Latvian ssr meant for their exile co-professionals the continuing need to refute Marxist-Leninist orthodoxies in the Party-controlled old-homeland publications that were frequently send cost-free to western libraries. Both “sides” had become engagé historians within the Cold War framework. Taken together, these post-1950 activities—when the Generation 1 exile historians had emigrated to and settled in new homelands—were an extension of the role of public intellectuals they had begun to develop in the brief halfdecade (1945–1950) when they had been defined by the authorities in Sweden and Germany merely as “refugees.” Some then had become teachers in secondary-schools in the dp camps in Germany; Dunsdorfs taught in and administered in the short-lived “Baltic University” in British zone of occupation in Germany;14 Švābe had been a respected figure in the dp efforts at self-­ governance. On the other side of the Atlantic, Bīlmanis, who in 1940 had been the Latvian ambassador to the us when Latvia was occupied, continued to publish about occupied Latvia in newspapers, newsletters, and pamphlets, since his diplomatic status provided a platform for keeping alive in Englishlanguage media the entire question of annexation. As much as each was able in the new circumstances, all worked to generate information (including historical information) about Latvia and Latvians for the western world. They though themselves to be creating a data base in multiple major languages, unattached to particular individuals or institutions but available in all libraries and other repositories, and containing the non-Soviet version of the Latvian experience. This effort, however, was time- consuming and demanding, having to be sustained without a “national” infrastructure and generally through unremunerated labor. Only after 1950 when the Generation 1 scholars had dispersed to and settled in new western homelands did possibilities open for some of them to return history as professionals. By the mid-1950s, one of the two oldest of these historians (Bīlmanis) had already died, two had passed their fiftieth and three their sixtieth birthdays, and the youngest were in the age group 40–50. Only a few among them were in a strong position to establish new careers, and two— Dunsdorfs and Biezais—did so. Dunsdorfs emigrated from Germany to Australia in 1948 and worked until retirement at the University of Melbourne; he died in 2002. Biezais eventually secured a position at Abo Academy in Finland, eventually dying in 1995. Šilde (d. 1990) remained in Germany and became a prolific chronicler of post-1945 Soviet Latvian life. Viksniņš (d. 1976) and Ābers (d. 1990) did not continue historical research, the former turning his 14

Grāmatiņš, 1989.

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attention to pedagogical questions and the latter to administrative work in the Latvian section of the Voice of America. Of the other members of Generation 1, Švābe had died in 1959 and Spekke (who died in 1972) eventually became the charge d’affaires of the Latvian Legation in Washington. With reference to age at death, Bīlmanis and Dunsdorfs were outliers, the former being the earliest of Generation 1 to die, at age 61; the latter living until age 96. Dunsdorfs continued to publish cartographic studies15 until he was well into the ninth decade of life. The other historians of Generation 1 began to exit from public life and active publication when they reached their seventies and eighties, that is, well into the third and fourth decades after Latvian western exile had begun. Among them, possibly only Dunsdorfs had achieved a position from which he was able to directly train new Latvian historians. But their writings continued to dominate the reading lists of all those who subsequently developed an interest in Baltic-area and/or Latvian history and had the necessary language skills to pursue the field in the west professionally. The presence of their work in printed Latvian historical literature had to be reckoned with by the next generation of historians, which began to make an appearance in the literature of Latvian exile history at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s.

A Balancing Act: Generation 2

Generation 2 was relatively small, the size difference attributable perhaps to the fact that younger Latvian refugees, in new homelands after 1950, tended to receive terminal degrees in more practical professions than history. The principal difference between the Generations 1 and 2 lay in the kind of historical training each received. Generation 2 entered serious career preparation in lands where the steps toward final professional readiness were well-established and seriously regarded. They required fluency (including formal writing ability) in the national language and reading ability of several other (usually modern) languages, credible demonstrations in coursework and graduate seminars of the ability to use primary sources, a good record of participation with papers in scholarly conferences, creditable list of early (usually article-length) publications, and, prominently, proof that by the time of the terminal degree (PhD) the candidate has begun to specialize. The intellectual origins of the four individuals listed in Generation 2 were as diverse as was their choice of specialties. At some juncture they had to make choices whether to remain “loyal” (in Andersons’ words) to Latvian history in the same way Generation 1 had been 15

Dunsdorfs, 1974.

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and continued to be, or to divide their attention between Latvian history and those of other geographic areas and cultures. The four—Ģērmanis, Šterns, Andersons, and Johansons—in fact sought some kind of combination of these concentrations and eventually settled into a pattern of writing for two parallel and sometimes overlapping audiences: one decidedly academic, consisting of co-professionals in the new homelands, the other the Latvian-reading public in the exile population. They eventually became as prolific in terms of output as the historians of Generation 1 but the two audiences for which they wrote continued to impose different demands. Their new-homeland academic audience did not read the Latvian language yet presided over credentialization and advancement, and therefore it had to be presented with publications in English, Swedish, or German, depending on the country of residence. The popular Latvian audience was differentiated but did include many for whom even in exile the history of their old homeland remained important. This audience too had to be satisfied, resulting in Generation 2 historians producing many populärwissenschaftliche works. In Generation 2 the theme of historianas-public-intellectual remained quite prominent, particularly in the life’s work of Andersons, Johansons, and Ģērmanis. All of them became widely known to Latvian refugee audiences as lecturers and writers for the Latvian periodical press, or, in other words, as worthy of being included in the rubric of “our historians.” The work of all four eventually came to be anchored in institutions of higher learning (Andersons—San Jose State University; Šterns—Muhlenberg College; Ģērmanis and Johansons—Stockholm University). Three of the group (Andersons, Johansons, Šterns) contributed massive volumes to the Latvian history series published by the émigré publisher Daugava in Stockholm (see below). Their choice of specialties could not have been more different. Ģērmanis established his academic credentials by writing about the prominent Latvian-Bolshevik military leader Jukums Vācietis and Latvian military history in the World War I period,16 Šterns became the best-known Latvian medievalist (a rarity among the exile historians),17 Johansons produced several serious historical studies of Latvian folk and religious beliefs,18 and Andersons, among his many fields of historical expertise, contributed several still-cited volumes on the history of Latvian foreign policy and international relations.19 Generation 2 was a bridge generation in the sense that the timing of the birth of its members allowed them a childhood, adolescence, and young 16 17 18 19

Ģērmanis, 1974. Šterns, 1982. Johansons, 1964, Johansons, 1968. Andersons, 1984.

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a­ dulthood in pre-Soviet Latvia, and confronted them with exile while they still possessed the energy of youth and the pliability to adapt to the trying circumstances of professional development in countries in which they were initially outsiders. They were old enough to appreciate the injustices fate had perpetrated on them and the old homeland, but young enough not to surrender to that fate despairingly or fatalistically. Their published writings in all languages leave no room for doubt that questions of personal national identity had been resolved: they saw themselves as Latvian historians deploying their talents in circumstances not of their choosing but in national contexts that allowed for an immense amount of freedom of choice and that provided adequate financial support for their endeavors. They also came into professional adulthood in the decades when the entire Latvian exile population—now scattered over some five continents and a dozen countries—was energetically laying the groundwork for cultural and socio-political institutions for the purpose of maintaining a Latvian national consciousness outside Latvia and for ensuring that their offspring would remain acquainted with the basic facts about the Latvian past.

Reformulating Exile: Generation 3

The main question about Generation 3 has to be the extent to which the term “exile” is meaningful in describing the historians included in it. They had arrived in their new homelands as children or teenagers (Ezergailis was somewhat older), having been born in the last years of World War ii in Latvia or during the German dp camp period. Absolutely fluent in the language of their new homelands (English for most) while retaining considerable knowledge of Latvian as well, they became credentialed historians and began to publish as full-fledged new-homeland historical professionals during the later 1960s and 1970s, but not necessarily about subjects dealing with Latvian history. All on the Table 1 list held university appointments in the United States, Canada, and Sweden. In time, their total oeuvre was undistinguishable in form from that of their new-homeland fellow professionals, and their choice of specializations was equally varied. In some cases the focus was entirely on the new homelands (e.g. Vinovskis20), in others it  was on general European topics (e.g. Lumans,21 Eksteins22), while several made  an effort to use the history of Latvians as case studies in transnational 20 21 22

Vinovskis, 1981, Vinovskis, 2005. Lumans, 1993. Ekšteins, 1989.

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c­ omparative studies (e.g. Ezergailis,23 Plakans24). Thus their relationship to a specifically Latvian history was tenuous in some cases and close in others, with universal professional values rather than political commitments dominating their historical output. Some, such as Ezergailis and Trapāns, acquired the status of “public intellectuals” in the Latvian émigré cultural world, perhaps unintentionally, while the work of others remained largely unknown in Latvian circles, save among specialists. The overwhelming majority of their professional publications were written in the languages of their new homelands (some were translated into the Latvian language in the post-1991 period). Judging by references in their writings about the Latvian past, Generation 3 historians were thoroughly familiar with the Latvian-language writings of their senior colleagues and cited their works extensively. Since the decades of their professional lives overlapped both the Soviet and the post-1991 period in their old homeland, they were in the fortunate position of being able to engage the writings of the post-1991 historians there, first as exemplars of “western” ways of “doing history” and later as partners in collaborative working relationships. It is also abundantly clear that in their professional work most historians in Generation 3 exhibit at best a fading consciousness of “being in exile.” The sense that they should dedicate their research to some larger “national” cause—the idea of a mission that was so pronounced and indeed programmatic in Generation 1 and was still vibrant in Generation 2—is subdued and may have played no role in professional development (while perhaps remaining active at the personal level).

Western Reception of Émigré Historians

By the mid-1950s when their refugee status had been supplanted by other legitimizing categories (citizen, resident alien, etc.), the émigré historians were and continued to be enveloped by successful western democratic societies (West Germany had recovered) and the characteristic diversity and self-­ organization of their private sectors. Unlike in pre-1940 Latvia, historians and “the government” comprised separate universes, and the three Generations of Table 1 had to adjust to that fact. In addition, all three also retained connections to the Latvian émigré populations through personal origin, family ties, and organizational involvements. The process of fitting themselves to these two significant milieux stretched over the next four decades and became increasingly complicated as the milieux themselves changed, individual 23 24

Ezergailis, 1983. Plakans, 1984.

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­ istorians grew older, and new generations came onto the stage. We shall deal h first with the larger milieu and its effects on the writing of Latvian history. As they sought the opportunity to become working professionals in the west, the Latvian historians of these three generations were knocking on the doors of a discipline that in the immediate post-war decades was beginning to change internally in all the new homelands. It went without saying that to in order to make a mark, the Latvians had to demonstrate to western colleagues that they knew the basics of the craft: how to analyze and interpret primary sources, conceptualize historical problems, and produce complex narratives. Generally speaking, Generation 1 historians had had such training in Latvia, but a tightening of the western history professions still made entry difficult. At its center stood an increasing sense of professionalism: the emergence of national organizations that sought guild-like standards for all historians, and, correspondingly, the acceptance by the primary employers of historians—universities and colleges—of the standards articulated by the professions. The line between “amateur” and “professional” was being drawn increasingly rigorously, with “professional” historian needing recognized specializations, relevant academic degrees, and a clear record of accomplishment. The era of the independently wealthy gentleman-scholar—common in the nineteenth century, and even in the first half of the twentieth—was ending, to be replaced by the historian as a credentialed specialist employed by institutions of higher learning and, in Europe, also by research institutes. The Latvian exile historians of Generation 1 fell short in some respects, having arrived with a sometimes impenetrable (in language terms) publication record, an employment history in their old homeland that left western universities puzzled, and, because of the war and the refugee years, a decade of low or absent productivity. In short, being at middle and late middle age, Generation 1 historians faced the prospect of “retraining,” which for some was demeaning and for others difficult. The younger historians of Generation 2, by contrast, “fitted in” more easily since their professional preparation had generally taken place in the same type of new-homeland institutions at which they now sought employment. The Generation 3 historians were from the outset “westerners” professionally speaking, since they had internalized a “sense” of the field while acquiring undergraduate and graduate degrees in their new places of residence. Moreover, the increasing pressure on historians to present themselves to the field as specialists (rather than generalists), was also problematic if they remained wedded to the idea of being historians of the specifically Latvian experience. In no western employing institution was there a demand for a Latvian specialization or even a consensus within faculties or departments that such a field existed and  should be represented in the teaching curriculum. Specialization was

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­ ecessary but over-specialization—which Latvian history was taken to be— n was hazardous to practitioner and institution alike. This was particularly true of academic institutions in the English-using new homelands, where Latvian, or even Baltic, history—focused as it was on a small corner of Europe—seemed exotic and an unnecessary luxury in teaching programs. For a normal institution of higher learning, specialization was ultimately an economic issue. In the new homelands where accomplished Latvian historians and those still in training were seeking a niche, financial support for the history discipline (and other humanistic fields) was already in stiff competition with more “scientific” and technical fields, forcing history-oriented units to seek balance between general and specialized history. In North America and Australia, where the Generation 2 and 3 historians were receiving their training, “Latvian” history properly belonged to “European” history, and, within that broad designation, it was the history of the large European national states (England, Germany, France, Russia, Italy) that always took precedence in departmental planning. In the universities of the new homelands, most resources allocated to history units were earmarked for the work of historians who specialized in the history of the particular homeland, with specialties in “external” fields being supported as opportunities or student interest warranted. Even in the larger and relatively wealthy overseas countries such as the United States and Canada the immediate post-World War ii decades did not witness the proliferation of “foreign” specializations, let alone those that focused on small national states such as Latvia. In addition, Latvia was arguably not even a recognizable country any longer, having become one of the fifteen republics of the ussr. Where did Latvia really belong—in Imperial Russian history, Soviet history, German history, Eastern European history? In this context, the historians of Generation 1 were from the outset disadvantaged, being, it seemed, overspecialized; moreover, their commitment to writing history in the Latvian language compounded the problem. Intellectually, a somewhat more hospitable reception for Generation 1 historians existed in the continental European countries with historic ties to the Baltic region— Western Germany and Sweden—but even in these new homelands anchoring oneself in an institution of higher learning proved to be exceedingly difficult. Beneficial to the Generation 2 historians was the emergence in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the western academic world of a new approach to the European past and that other continents, namely, “area studies.” This approach had its own internal history dating back to the immediate post-World War ii years and manifesting itself differently in different universities. Essentially, an “areas studies” program sought to gather under one organizational roof specialists from various academic fields—history, languages, economy, literature,

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culture—who were well informed about differing aspects of a particular large region of the world. This was an effort to resist overspecialization, and the approach was by no means uncontroversial. Still, by the 1960s and 1970s many larger degree-granting western universities had institutionalized such “fields” as Germanic studies, Slavic studies, Scandinavian and Latin American studies and had come to sponsor professional publications in these fields. This development came too late to affect the status of Generation 1 Latvian historians, but it widened the choices open by the professionals-in-training in Generations 2 and 3. The signal events for historians interested in Latvia was the founding in 1968 of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (aabs) in New York.25 Even though unconnected to a particular institution of higher learning, the aabs provided a venue for Baltic-area specialists to present their ongoing work. Though the aabs and its scholarly publication—the Journal of Baltic Studies—gradually became one of the legitimizing organizations for historians focused on the Latvian past, the Association did not succeed at the outset in persuading established institutions to incorporate “Baltic Studies” into their permanent academic structures. That step came much later in the 1980s and even then affected very few institutions. Thus a search for place by historians of the Latvian experience continued over the next decades. The absence of academic recognition for researchers with Baltic (and Latvian) interests was not true in all disciplines—linguistics being a good example where a Baltic-language specialization had equal standing with others—but in the discipline of history no major changes were evident. Baltic, not to mention Latvian, history could not be presented as a “field” in graduatestudent preparation or as a convincing credential in the search for university employment after the PhD degree had been received. For the scholars in Generations 2 and 3 there did exist several ways of rendering themselves employable. They could research Latvian history as a “case study” or an “aspect” of some larger topic: e.g. the Marxist movement in Latvia as an aspect of the broader history of Marxism, Latvian diplomacy as a case study of the interwar diplomacy of small European states, the nineteenth-century Latvian national awakening as a case study of the larger nationalist movement of the period. Reviews of manuscripts on Latvian-area events submitted to journals or publishers would frequently contain the request by reviewers that the subject be placed “into the larger context” and be shown to be connected to events in the history of the Russian Empire, the ussr, Germany, or some other regional great power.

25

Ivask, 1969. The essays by P.P. Lejiņš and V.S. Vardys in this volume discuss the rationale for the aabs.

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From the prevailing professional vantage point in large countries, Latvian history pursued by itself was local history: the Latvian historical experience had hardly any resonance in the larger world. The discomfort such professional pressures created, however, did not keep Latvian historians in Generations 2 and 3 from experiencing a certain “westernization” of their approach to the Latvian past that resulted in differentiating their work from that of Generation 1. This was not a generational conflict: the total number of “exile” historians was too small for such internal cleavages. The differences lay more in the realms of conceptualization of the subject matter and in the basic understanding of the craft of history itself. The historians of a particular generation at times disagreed with their colleagues in the other two, but these disputes stayed well within the bounds of a polite exchange of views and seldom became polemical. The Latvian specialists in the later generations recognized the hardships those of the first generation had faced and cited their works. But the differences in training and in methodological starting points were too great for the Generation 1 historians to serve as role models for their younger colleagues. It was difficult, in a word, for younger historians in the new homelands to remain “loyal” (in Andersons’ sense) to Latvian (or even Baltic) history if by that was meant continuing research and writing in the same manner that Generation 1 historians had carried out of the old homeland.

The Eroding Émigré Context

In the new homelands, an audience for written Latvian history was becoming increasingly less reachable during the 1970s and early 1980s. Even in the 1960s, Latvian émigré publishers were estimating that their books and newspapers were reaching perhaps one-tenth of the total Latvian population in the west: the rest were maintaining their ties to Latvianness mainly through organizational activities. Moreover, the small universe of Latvian historians with a persisting interest in Latvian history was gradually losing internal coherence, in part because of fading of common personal professional experience and in  part by a growing importance professional individualism that permitted maximal choice in research topics and methodologies. Concern for the ­interests of the general audience was retreating while the concern of the individual historian advanced to the forefront. In the Latvian ssr, of course, historians did not need to worry about the receptivity of reading public audience, but for the exile Latvians the audience question was important. It was, after all, the Latvian consciousness of this audience that émigré history writing was supposed to enhance, and a Latvian-reading public was the sine quo non of the

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continuing efforts of Generation 1 (by the end of the 1950s Dunsdorfs, Šilde, and Biezais) and to a great extent for the historians in Generation 2. The Generation 1 historians continued to follow its sense of mission, writing nearly all of its history in the Latvian language. Absent the supportive framework of a national state and a national education system, Generation 1 historians concentrated on what they perceived to be the needs of the émigré community: broad surveys of all of Latvian history; specialized accounts of the twentieth century, especially the World War ii period; and primary and secondary school texts meant for Latvian supplementary schools. The chronicling of the émigré experience itself was also becoming an increasingly prominent part of their work. But public and university libraries in the new homelands normally did not have standing orders for Latvian-language books of any kind, and western Latvian history books sent to Soviet Latvian were consigned to specfondi or simply composted. Latvian publishers in the west could not expect to profit from publishing academic books about the Latvian past, even though, by comparison, sales of belletristic works, especially poetry, remained at high levels during the decades in question. For non-fiction books, Latvian publishers often resorted to the traditional practice of subscriptions, listing those who had paid in advance in a special section of the published book. Some publisher complained about stocks of unsold non-fiction books and lowered prices in special mail-order sales. The historians of Generation 2 needed to satisfy both an academic and a “popular” (Latvian-reading) audience and therefore published their works in at least two languages: Latvian, Swedish and/or German in the case of Ģērmanis and Johansons (both in Sweden), and Latvian and English in the case of Šterns and Andersons (both in the usa eventually). The voluminous work of Andersons in both English and Latvian (somewhat favoring the latter) was a signal that a shift was occurring toward English as the most significant “large” professional language, but also that ties were being maintained with the Latvian audience. This shift—marked differently in different historians—correlated with changes in language use within the larger Latvian exile community. By the 1960s all Latvians educated in the west were perfectly conversant with the languages of their new homelands, and in their various professions where writing was essential were in fact using the new homeland languages exclusively. The Generation 2 historians were still free to make choices since they could easily write in Latvian, but the hard fact remained that, in the new homelands, credentialization and advancement in the organized history profession (and other professions) and in institutions of higher learning generally required that they use and refine the languages their new-homeland colleagues could read. Among historians, professional credit could perhaps be negotiated

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for published work in little-known other languages, but reliance on the goodwill of colleagues was always a risky proposition. The increasing use of the “large” professional languages in the published work of Latvian historians, of course, placed at risk the older émigré Latvian-reading public that for years had been able to read about the history of their homeland only in the language of that homeland and wanted to continue to do so. Whether this particular readership would follow Generation 2 scholars into Latvian history written in German, English, or Swedish remained something of an open question, and in all likelihood few did so. The reputation of Generation 2 scholars thus rested on two rather unstable bases: a diminishing Latvian readership for their work in Latvian; and among professional colleagues work in the “large” languages that was never as voluminous as it could have been had all their productivity been invested in English- ,German- , or Swedish- language publication. This two-track publication strategy remained in force as long as both the Generation 1 and 2 scholars pursed active professional lives. A retrospective assessment of the relative significance of the works this strategy produced, however, suggests strongly that Latvian-language publication retained an important place for both Generations. The most important contribution to exile Latvian history of these two generations was the Latvian-language Latvijas vēsture (History of Latvia) series launched in 1958 with the publication of Švābe’s Latvijas vēsture 1800–1914.26 Published by the Latvian émigré publishing house Daugava in Stockholm and edited by Edgars Dunsdorfs at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the twelve volumes of the series continued to appear sporadically over the next forty-three years until 2002, when the last volume (ironically, dealing with the thirteenth century27 and therefore chronologically the first of the series) appeared with the imprint of the renewed post-1991 Institute of Latvian History in Riga. The Daugava series was the crown jewel of Latvian-language history writing in exile for the entire émigré period. The earlier volumes ( by reference to publication dates) involved the most prominent historians of Generation 1—Švābe, Dunsdorfs, Spekke, Šilde—but Dunsdorfs, the general editor, recruited authors from Generation 2 as well—Andersons, Johansons, Šterns—and even reached out to a prominent Latvian economist living in Sweden—Arnolds Aizsilnieks28—to author a substantial volume on the Latvian economy from 1914–1945. Fortunately, the longlived and energetic Dunsdorfs remained involved in this complicated project from the beginning to almost the end, and under his guidance the series 26 27 28

Švabe, 1958. Šterns, 2002. Aizsilnieks, 1968.

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became something like an “official” émigré history of Latvia, rivaling in depth of coverage the “official” histories produced by the Institute of History in the Latvian ssr.29 That all the thick volumes of the Daugava series were published in the Latvian language and none were translated into any other symbolized continued Latvian “ownership” of Latvian history. Nonetheless, this signal accomplishment did not alter at all the general and persisting language pressures experienced by younger western Latvian scholars (Generation 3)—many themselves technically “émigrés”—when they sought to establish themselves in the history profession of their new homelands.

The End of Exile History-Writing

Four of the historians in Generations 1 and 2—Dunsdorfs, Biezais, Ģērmanis, and Šterns—lived into the post-1991 years when Latvia regained independence and the historical professionals in the old homeland began the process of reorganization. By 1991, however, all four were seniors in the age range between 74 and 87 and retired or semi-retired. They experienced the transition in Latvia more as spectators than as direct participants, choosing to remain in the western countries where had been living during the long Soviet period. Their written work, however, did participate—in a figurative sense—in the reshaping of historical thinking in Latvia. Some of their writings—such as Ģērmanis’ Latviešu tautas piedzīvojumi30—sold well in the new Latvian popular market, reprints of some of Šilde’s and Spekke’s books appeared in Riga, as did some of Švābe’s works. These works did not have to be translated, having been written in Latvian. By contrast, the western Latvian historians of Generation 3 were drawn into the post-Soviet decades of Latvian life in several different ways, including translations of their original English-language monographs. Ekšteins’ Walking Since Daybreak was translated from English into Latvian in 2000,31 as was Ezergailis’ principal work on the Holocaust in Latvia.32 Several Generation 3 scholars connected to the old homeland in other ways. Trapāns for a brief period served as Minister of Defense (1994–95). From his position at the University of Stockholm, Kangeris was a frequent contributor to various historical publications in Latvia, writing mostly about the wwii period and establishing himself as a specialist on the German occupation years. He took up 29 30 31 32

E.g. Drīzulis, 1986. Ģērmanis, 1990. Ekšteins, 2000. Ezergailis, 1999.

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residence in Latvia in 2007—the only one of the Generation 3 historians to “move back”—and subsequently joined the research staff of the Institute of History. Both Ezergailis and Plakans received appointments as Foreign Members of the Academy of Sciences and joined the editorial board of the Journal of the Institute of History. Lazda was actively involved in founding the Museum of the Occupation in Riga; Latkovskis retained a strong interest in the Lettgallian side of Latvian history; Vinovskis was able to use his specialized knowledge of American educational history to deliver in Latvia several sets of lectures on the subject; and Lumans in 2006 published the most exhaustive study of Latvian during wwii in the English language.33 Except for Kangeris, the other Generation 3 historians continued living in their overseas homelands (the us and Canada), taking advantage of the fact that with the emergence of cyber-communication the exact physical location of the members of a network of collaborative scholars became less important. Through a diversity of involvements as well as frequent visits they were able to follow closely developments among their co-professionals in Latvia into the new millennium as they themselves approached the retirement years. If in the immediate pre-1991 decade there were still reasons to talk about some Latvian history being written “in exile,” during the post-1991 decades those reasons were quickly falling by the wayside. The critical mass of writing about the Latvian past now originated among the professionals of the renewed Latvian Republic, with a diminishing number of “westerners” assuming supportive roles. The post-wwii “exile” component of Latvian history writing has yet to be explored at the depth it deserves, and its position in the totality of twentiethcentury written accounts about Latvians and Latvia still needs to be described precisely.34 This task will fall to younger Latvian historians who live and work in Latvia, and the results no doubt will be analogous the recently published and well-researched accounts of the position of exile belles lettres in the totality of Latvian-language literature.35 The task is a formidable one. The “exile” component of Latvian history writing had a Nachlass that from 1945 onward accumulated in western academic libraries in a vast variety of forms: individual monographs and monographic series; long runs of periodicals such as the now rarely cited Commentationes Balticae, Baltische Hefte, Acta Letgallica; 33 34

35

Lumans, 2006. For an interesting survey of post-wwii Latvian history-writing that deliberately seeks to transcend all divisions among Latvian historians regardless of origin see Šteimans (1997), a work produced in post-Soviet Latvia. Among the historians examined here, Šteimans explicates the writings of Dunsdorfs, Spekke, Andersons, Švābe, Ezergailis, and Šilde. E.g. Daukšte-Silasproģe, 2007.

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countless endless scholarly and semi-scholarly articles, some written with Cold War purposes in mind; and polemical writings of various kinds, written by exile historians in their role as public intellectuals, that had the intention was not to analyze but to persuade. These works, in Latvian but also, increasingly, in the “large” western languages, took their place in the same western libraries and depositories as other studies, often in the Russian language, sent to these institutions by Party-controlled “structures” in the Latvian ssr. By the end of the 1980s there had come into being in the western historical professional world and in both Latvian and western languages a distinct body of knowledge about the history of Latvians and Latvia that easily exceeded in volume the publications of the pre-wwii period. Most of this historical literature, regardless of origin, conceptualized Latvian history as “national” history even though some of its authors found it more useful to use the regional— Baltic—framework. The “exile” component of this literature, especially that produced by the Generation 1 historians, was particularly interested in maintaining a focus on the recent travails of the Latvian national state, such a focus having become part of that Generation’s self-assigned mission. Their unifying philosophy, exhibited in major works primarily in the Latvian language, separated out the Latvian component of the population of the eastern Baltic littoral, demonstrated how this component developed a national consciousness, how in 1918 the Latvian Republic came into being, and how in 1940 it was unjustly occupied and integrated with the ussr. Roughly the same focus and the same principal communication language continued to be used in Generation 2 as well, but the corpus of its publications evidenced an appreciable proportion of publications in western languages, necessitated by adaption to western professional demands. The scholarly interests of Generation 3 eventually became substantially more varied and individualistic, and its publications were written largely in English, German, and Swedish. The post-1991 decades continued to produce Latvia-focused histories but now these were written by a much wider range of scholars: some with personal connections to Latvia but many with no such connections, by scholars living and working in Latvia and others residing elsewhere. At some point within these changes and unaccompanied by announcements or fanfare, the writing of Latvian history “in exile” came to an end. References Aizsilnieks, A. (1968). Latvijas saimniecības vēsture 1914–1945. [History of the Economy of Latvia 1914–1945.] Stockholm: Daugava.

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Andersons, E. (1949). Rietumu pasaule: ziemeļamerikas prozas antoloģija. [The Western World: An Anthology of North American Prose]. Hanau: Gaismas Pils. Andersons, E. (1981). “Latviešu vēsturnieku darbs.” [The Work of Latvian Historians.] Archīvs No. 21, 57–76. Andersons, E. (ed.) (1983–2008). Latvju Enciklopēdija 1962–1982. [Latvian Encyclopedia]. Five Volumes. Washington dc: ala Latviešu institūts. Andersons, E. (1984). Latvijas vēsture 1920–1940: Ārpolitika [The History of Latvia 1920– 1940: Foreign Policy]. Stockholm: Daugava. Two volumes. Bērziņš, A. (1971). Tāls ir ceļš atpakaļ uz dzimteni [The Road to the Homeland is Long]. New York: Grāmatu Draugs. Biezais, H. (1992). Latvija kāškrusta varā [Latvia Under the Swastika]. n.p.: Gauja. Bīlmanis, A. (1951). A History of Latvia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bolin, P. (2012). Between National and Academic Agendas: Ethnic Politics and “National Disciplines” at the University of Latvia 1919–1940. Sődertorn: Sődertorn hőgskola. Daukste-Silasproģe, I. (2007). Latviešu literara dzīve un literatūra asv un Kanādā 1950–1965. [Latvian Literature and Literary Life in the usa and Canada 1950–1965]. Riga: Valters un Rapa. Drīzulis, A. (ed.) (1986). Latvijas psr vēsture no vissenākajiem laikiem līdz mūsdienām [The History of the Latvian ssr from Ancient Times to the Present]. Riga: Zinātne. Two volumes. Dunsdorfs, E. (ed.) (1960–1992). Archīvs: raksti par latviskām problēmām [Archive: Writings about Latvian Problems]. Melbourne: Kārļa Zariņa fonds. Dunsdorfs, E. (1991). Latgales vesturiskās kartes [ Historical Maps of Latgale]. Melbourne: Kārļa Zarina fonds. Eksteins, M. (1989). Rites of Spring : The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1989. Ekšteins, M. (2000). Ceļā kopš rītausmas: stāsts par Austrumeiropu, Otro pasaules karu, un 20. gadsimta sirdi. Riga: Atēna. [Original: Walking Since Daybreak : A Story of Eastern Europe, World War ii, and the Heart of our Century. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999] Ezergailis, A. (1983). The Latvian Impact on the Bolshevik Revolution: The First Phase, September 1917 to April 1918. Boulder Colo.: East European Monographs. Ezergailis, A. (1999). Holocausts vācu okupētajā Latvijā 1941–1944. Riga: Latvijas Vēstures Institūta Apgāds. [Original: The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944: The Missing Center. Riga and Washington dc: Historical Institute of Latvia and the us Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1996]. Ģērmanis, U. (1974). Oberst Vacietis und die lettischen Schützen im Weltkrieg und in der  Oktoberrevolution. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis No. 20. Ģērmanis, U. (1990). Latviešu tautas piedzīvojumi [The Adventures of the Latvian Nation]. Riga: Jāņa Sēta.

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Grāmatiņš, A. (ed.) (1989). Baltijas universitāte 1946–1949 [The Baltic University 1946– 1949]. Muenster: Latvija. Ivask, I. (ed.) (1969). First Conference on Baltic Studies: Summary of Proceedings. Tacoma, Wash.: aabs. Johansons, A. (1964). Der Schrimherr des Hofes im Volksglauben der Letten: Studien über Orts-, Hof- und Hausgeister. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion No. 5. Johansons, A. (1968). Der Wassergeist und der Sumpfgeist: Untersuchungen volkstümlicher Glaubensvorstellungen bei den Völkern des ostbaltischen Raumes und bei den Ostslaven. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion No. 20. Latvijas Enciklopedija [Latvian Encyclopedia]. (2002–2009). Five Volumes. Riga: Valerija Belokona izdevnieciba. Lumans, V. (1993). Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. Lumans, V. (2006). Latvia in World War ii. New York: Fordham University Press. Mannheim, K. (1997). “The Problem of Generations.” In: M. Hardy (ed.), Studying Aging and Social Change: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage. Nazarova, E.L. (2012). “Latvians in the Service Class of the Russian Empire.” In: K Brüggemann and B.D Woodworth (eds.), Russland an der Ostsee: Imperiale Strategien der Macht und kulturelle Wahrnehmungsmuster (16. bis 20. Jahrhundert). Wien: Bohlau Verlag, 331–343. Plakans A. (1984). Kinship in the Past : An Anthropology of European Family Life, 1500–1900. Oxford and New York: B. Blackwell. Skujeneeks, M. (1922). Latvija: zeme un iedzīvotāji. [Latvia: The Land and Its Inhabitants]. Riga: Valsts statistiskā pārvalde. Spekke, A. (1957). History of Latvia: An Outline. Stockholm: Zelta Ābele. Šilde, A. (1982). Pirmā republika: esejas par Latvijas valsti [The First Republic: Essays on Latvia]. New York: Grāmatu Draugs. Šteimans, J. (1997). Latvijas vēstures pētnieki [Historians of Latvia]. Daugavpils: Daugavpils Pedgoģiskā Universitāte. Šterns, I. (ed.) (1982). The Greater Medieval Historians : A Reader. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America. Šterns, I. (2002). Latvijas vēsture 1180–1290: Krustakari. [History of Latvia 1180–1290: The Crusades] Riga: Latvijas vēstures institūta apgāds. Švābe, A., (ed.) (1950–1951). Latvju Enciklopedija. [Latvian Encyclopedia]. Three Volumes. Stockholm: Trīs Zvaigznes. Švābe, A. (1958). Latvijas vēsture 1800–1914 [History of Latvia 1800–1914]. Stockholm: Daugava. Townsend, E. (2001). “Generations and Generational Conflict.” In: P.N. Stearns (ed.), Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), Vol. 4, 231–240.

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Vīksniņš, N. (1968). Latvijas vēsture jaunā gaismā [Latvian History in a New Light]. Chicago: O. Krolls. Vinovskis, M. (1981). Fertility in Massachusetts from the Revolution to the Civil War. New York: Academic Press. Vinovskis, M. (2005). The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ukrainian Historical Writing in North America during the Cold War: Striving for “Normalcy” Volodymyr Kravchenko In this essay I am trying to identify the main intellectual trends in Ukrainian historical studies in North America in the second half of the 20th century.1 Attention is focused mainly on the paradigm shift that occurred in the process of the academic “legitimization” or integration of Ukrainian historical studies in exile into the academic environment of us and Canada.2 I touch upon issues of the institutional and conceptual innovations in Ukrainian historical studies in an attempt to identify their supposed impact on the respective academic disciplines in American and Canadian universities, such as East European, Russian and Soviet studies. Generally, this article is not only about the “exile historiography,” but rather also about the process of transcending this type of historical writing.3 The concept of “exile historiography” applies mainly to historians who have emigrated.4 It is used in this article as an equivalent to the category of the “émigré historiography.” Some scholars differentiate between the categories “émigré historiography” (as being written by the émigrés, who consider their residency abroad to be temporary) and “diaspora historiography” that has been institutionalized in the framework of an ethnic community in it corresponding country.5 For the purpose of this article, such a difference, if it exists, is not relevant. Both of the categories mentioned above represent a certain type of history-writing directly connected to the identity of certain, in this case ethnic Ukrainian, diaspora. It is aimed, on the one hand, at rethinking of a national history in the light of traumatic experience and on the other hand, at fulfilling the functions of preserving and protecting the collective identity of the diaspora along with its historical heritage.6 1 I would like to express my gratitude to Frank Sysyn and Zenon Kohut who provided me with their insightful comments and suggestions on the some important issues, facts and events. Of course, I am taking responsibility for all errors and shortcomings of the article. 2 Atamanenko, 2010; Kasianov and Ther, 2009; Stryjek, 2007; Kuzio, 2000; Ias’, 2000; Subtelny, 1993; Ilnytzkyj, 1992; Saunders, 1988; Saunders, 1991; Mackiw, 1984 and others. 3 The article is based on the relevant scholarly texts issued separately as well as in academic journals that indicated how Ukrainian studies were faring in North America—namely, the Slavic Review, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Nationalities Papers, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, and some others. 4 Stobiecki, 2005; Burrell, Panayi, 2006; Ballinger, 2003. 5 Atamanenko, 2010, 15–16; Wynar, 1988; Wynar, 1992. 6 Kostantaras, 2008, 700–720. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_007

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The ‘protective’ kind of the exile historical writing, connected with the Ukrainian community, was based on the idea of a primordial “thousand-yearold” Ukrainian nation, which struggled heroically against predator neighbours for its own independent statehood and unique identity, but constantly fell victim to their unprovoked aggressiveness. According to such a scheme, all the long-time historical intervals between the different “Ukrainian” states, from Kiev (Kyiv in Ukrainian) Rus’ to the Ukrainian National Republic of 1917–1920, were filled with the process of recurrent “national renaissance”. This kind of Ukrainian national historical narrative, consisted of intermittent periods of  Ukrainian statehood and national renaissances, has acquired teleological character and was coloured with distinct semi-religious overtones. In the post-war North America, the exile type of Ukrainian historiography was directly connected to the quality of the third wave of immigration.7 Between 1945 and 1955, about 250,000 émigrés from Ukraine and various parts of eastern and central parts of Europe arrived in North and South America, Australia, and some other Western countries.8 To the cultural heritage of the descendants of the first two waves of immigrants, who were already integrated into the local communities, these arrivals contributed their new experience of modern integral nationalism and National-Communism, as well as the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of the first half of the 20th century. According to the Cohen’s diaspora typology (‘victim’, ‘imperial’, ‘labour’, ‘trade’), the Ukrainian American diaspora, in spite of its regional, social, religious, and political diversity, meets the characteristics of a victim diaspora.9 The third wave of Ukrainian immigrants is considered to be the most intellectual, politically matured, and diverse one, compared with the two previous waves of labour (peasant) immigrants from the western regions of the AustroHungarian Empire before the World War I and its successor states, first of all from Poland in the inter-war period. No wonder they actively supported publishing, educating, and research projects related to the history of Ukraine. However, as Satzevich put it, “Fundraising by ethnic communities for academic chairs, institutes and programs can be a mixed blessing.”10 The controversies between the “exile” and the “normal” or “academic” types of historical writings grew even more acute in the process of integration of Ukrainian historians into the professional, American University milieu.

7 8 9 10

Merfi, 2007; Satzewich, 2002; Stril’tchuk, 1999; Dyczok, 1995; Pawliczko, 1994. Satzewich, 2002, 86. Satzewich, 2002, 85; Holmes, 2007, 133–154. Satzevich, 2002, 127.

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The Ukrainian émigré historians’ professional cohort was composed of two groups: interwar émigrés from the Central-Eastern European countries, Poland included, and those from the Russian/Soviet Empire. Some of the newcomers had acquired university diploma in Austria, Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; others were educated in the American universities and made their reputation in the different field of humanities. All of them were certain that Ukrainian history became a legitimized field of academic specialization. The fully fledged network of Ukrainian historical knowledge production included specialized research and teaching institutions, chairs, archives, libraries, ngos, publishing houses and periodic developed in Europe and Russia/ussr.11 The Ukrainian émigrés strove to ensure the continuity with the previous epoch, to preserve historical intellectual heritage and, at the same time, to combine their scholarly activity with the “protective” function of maintaining collective identity in the Diaspora. This applies particularly to the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) and the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences (uvan) and their publications, imported from Europe.12 The Ukrainian Quarterly journal, founded in the us in 1944, for a long time remained the only English-language periodical fully dedicated to Ukrainian issues. It was soon followed by the major Ukrainian academic journal of the 1950s, The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, which played a prominent role in shaping the next generation of Ukrainian diaspora scholars. These and some other related Ukrainian institutions in the North America kept strong connections with the internationally established network of Ukrainian scholarly studies in the Western Europe, particularly in the Western Germany (Munich), Italy, France, and Great Britain. A dialogue commenced between Ukrainian “exile historiography” and academic historical disciplines in the us and Canada after the wwii, appeared to be difficult.13 Ukrainians represented a nation without state or with a “façade” (Soviet) state. For that reason Ukrainians were considered a stateless and, therefore, “non-historical” nation hidden in the shadow of the Russian/Soviet or Polish history.14 Any knowledge about Ukraine in America was sparse: the fundamental texts of Ukrainian national historiography, beginning with Hrushevsky’s Istoriia, were hardly known for most American scholars.15 No 11 12 13 14 15

Narizhnyi, 1942. Dombrovsky, 1965, 7–8; Dombrovsky, 2000. Prymak, 2009, 53–76; Prymak, 2003, 455–476; Buyniak, 2000, 230–244 (in Ukrainian); Prymak, 1988, 52–66; Prymak, 2003a, 272–285. See Rudnytsky, 1980, 234. Sysyn, 2013, ix-xii; Sysyn, 2005, 513–529.

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wonder Western faculty were able—in the best case—only to profess wonder, as did Arnold Toynbee, at “a nation of thirty millions, and we have never heard its name!,” and—in the worst case—to consider its existence as a “propagandistic invention.”16 The main task of Ukrainian émigré historians was to prove the Ukrainian studies’ academic credentials in the American academy, dominated by the Anglo-Saxons who represented the most powerful states-winners in World War ii. To be able to fulfil their task, Ukrainian émigré should endeavour to influence the American university professional milieu. The leading émigré historians—Olexander Ohloblyn, Mykola Chubatyi, Mykola Andrusiak and some others attempted to break through the isolationist tradition of the American Academia, to make it more open and flexible both on the institutional and conceptual levels. The national paradigm of Ukrainian historiography before the World War ii was represented in the three main academic versions: populist (narodnytc’ka), statist (derzhavnyts’ka), and Marxist (Soviet and non-Soviet) ones. The last one appeared to be the weakest one: after its main adept, Matvii Yavorsky, who represented the national-Communist political doctrine of the 1920s in the Soviet Union, was repressed by the Stalin regime, the trend gradually degenerated into the local branch of the Russian-Soviet official historiography. The populist school of historical writing, was manifested most fully in the oeuvre of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, including particularly his multi-volume Istoriia Ukraïny-Rusy (History of Rusʼ-Ukraine), which emphasized ethnic-cultural and social values of Ukrainian peasants and low classes (narod).17 The statist school, attributed to the historian-sociologist of Polish origin, Vyacheslav Lypynsky, was based upon the bitter experience of the short-lived Ukrainian independent state of 1918-20s; it stressed the need to develop a territorial and multi-ethnic approach to Ukrainian history, as well as to rehabilitate the creative role of the social elites in the history.18 The political-ideological split between the populist and the statist schools of Ukrainian historical writing appeared to be deep enough to persist throughout the short twentieth century well into the post-Soviet epoch.19 National issue remained the main topic in Ukrainian studies in North America. After the World War ii, Ukrainians were presented as a captive or submerged nation, similar to other peoples in the “socialist camp,” who desired 16 17 18 19

Toynbee, 1976, 157; Manning, 1947. Plokhy, 2005. Tereshchenko, 2010–2013. Hyrych, 2000; Hyrych 1999; Masnenko 2000.

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the resurrection of their sovereign state and a return to the “family of Europe.” Topics such as the Communist terror and heroic opposition to it in modern times predominated. The Soviet Union appeared as a direct successor of the Russian Empire, whose expansionist policy was, and continued to be, a constant threat to democratic countries. Correspondingly, the Russian Empire was depicted as the “prison of nations” and an aggressive Asiatic despotism—the political spawn of the Golden Horde and a spiritual heir to the Byzantine Empire claiming the exalted status of the “Third Rome.”20 In terms of methodology, Ukrainian exile historiography was mostly associated with the conservative “totalitarianist” school in American historical writings and political sciences represented by such prominent figures as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Pipes and Adam Ulam (all were refugees, natives of Poland) whose works could hardly be considered marginal in American academia.21 These scholars were wholly negative in their attitudes towards the Soviet Union. They believed it was a direct heir to the Russian Empire and emphasized the specificity of Russian historical evolution compared to that in the West. The “totalitarianists” attempted to address the heterogeneous character of both states, as well as the separate historical paths taken by the nations incorporated therein—in particular, the Ukrainians. Ukrainian studies contributed to further development of the “totalitarianist” school by providing new materials on the Soviet Communist crimes, especially those connected to the Stalinism. Individual scholars among American faculty did their part to bring Ukraine to the attention of the world, especially during and immediately after the wwii, when Ukraine appeared in the center of the epic clash between Nazi Germany and Communist ussr; Ukrainian guerrilla-war on the Soviet-Polish borderland which lasted long after the end of the wwii and Ukrainian membership in the newly created oun also contributed to the growing interest in the history of the “most numerous people in Europe without a sovereign state”, as William H. Chamberlin put it.22 American Clarence Manning published concise overviews of Ukrainian history and current affairs.23 Canadian G.W. Simpson popularised the life and works of the leading Ukrainian historians, Doroshenko and Hrushevsky24 and 20

21 22 23 24

Hunchak, 1974; Pelenski, 1974; Slavic Review, vol. 26, no.4 (1967) (articles on the Moscow policy); Polons’ka-Vasylenko, 1951; Ševčenko, 1954, 141–180. See also Toumanoff, 1955, 445–448; Agurski, 1987. Semenov, 2004, 614. Chamberlin, 1944, 1. Manning, 1957; Manning, 1949; Manning, 1947. Simpson, 1939; Simpson, 1944, 34–57.

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Philip Mosely, a co-founder of the Russian Institute at Columbia University, provided constant assistance to Ukrainian scholars and émigré publications. It was exactly this generation of scholars who strongly believed that “The Ukrainian national problem is closely linked with the triumph of democracy and individual liberty in the Soviet Union as a whole” and that “A free Ukraine… is an indispensable element in a free Europe and in a free world.”25 However, for the majority of American scholars, Ukrainian studies were a-priori regarded as biased in an extremely nationalistic manner. As Arthur E. Adams, one of the most devoted critics of Ukrainian nationalistic “biases,” put it sarcastically in his review of one of the issues of Ukrainian exile historian, “this is nationalist history written by émigré Ukrainian patriots who see the Soviet Union as the enemy and who consider Western scholars of Slavic history to have been so brainwashed and bemused by Russian and Soviet historical writing that they need awakening to the truth about the Ukraine.”26 In other words, Ukrainian professional historians sometimes were depicted as being unable to meet academic standards. No wonder analytical surveys of Ukrainian studies in North America, compiled by Ukrainian scholars, are often full of complaints against the Western academic establishment—primarily for ignoring, misunderstanding, and overtly deriding the subject.27 The Ukrainian intellectuals indeed considered American academia to be deeply influenced by Russian national and Soviet historiographies, along with their stereotypes, phobias and prejudices toward Ukraine.28 In most cases, the Ukrainian scholars’ complaints were affirmed, at least in part, by the observations of contemporary non-Ukrainian writers.29 The changes in the relevant fields of the American Humanities and social sciences began during the sixties, when American Slavic studies were reaching the heyday of its modern history. * As Henry R. Cooper put it, “In October 1957, the Soviets sent into space that little beeping grapefruit-sized thing called Sputnik, and Slavic studies in the

25 26 27 28 29

Chamberlin, 1944, 85. Adams, 1975, 623–624. Chubatyĭ, 1971, 37–40; Sydorenko, 1976, 99–112; Ilnytzkyj, 1992, 445–458; Kuzio, 2001, 109–132. Chubatyĭ, 1971, 42. Skilling, 1966, 6; Pech, 1968, 16.

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United States skyrocketed with it.”30 The 1960s were to see a dramatic rise in association membership in the American Association for Advanced Slavic Studies, from about 600 at its creation to 2,260 by 1969.31 At this time approximately 200 professors of Ukrainian heritage taught at American universities during the 1960s.32 Ukrainian scholars were employed in various fields of the social sciences and humanities. Some of the Ukrainian professors established and headed university Slavic studies departments, as, for example, Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj and George S.N. Luckyj; Bohdan R. Bociurkiw headed the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. Ukrainian scholars were active members of their professional scholarly associations—as, for example, political scientists Dr. Peter Potichnyj, who chaired the Canadian Association of Slavists in 1977–78, and Dr. Bohdan Harasymiw, who served as secretary.33 Dr. Stepan Horak initiated and chaired the Association for the Study of Nationalities and its journal, Nationalities Papers, in 1972.34 Last but not least—“Ukrainian history,” according to Theodore Mackiw, “has been recognized as a discipline at major universities such as Harvard, Edmonton, and Toronto. There, topics on Ukrainian history have been accepted for dissertations and essays…”35 During the 1950s and early ’70s a new generation of Western scholars emerged that specialized in Ukrainian modern history—namely, the phenomena of Ukrainian modern nationalism (John A. Armstrong, Kenneth C. Farmer), Communist politics (Robert S. Sullivant), and national-Communism (James E.  Mace). Leading American and Canadian Slavic studies journals began to regularly include articles on Ukrainian topics. In 1963, the Slavic Review journal hosted a discussion between Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, Omeljan Pritsak, and John Reshetar regarding the national framework of Ukrainian history that played a significant role in the process of integrating Ukrainian studies into Western scholarship.36 In the course of the 1960s and ’70s, the Slavic Review published 49 items (11 articles and 38 reviews) on Ukrainian topics. In the same period, the Canadian Slavonic Papers published 67 items on Ukrainian topics (29 articles and 38

30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Cooper, 1998, 25–27. Fischer, 2008, 57–62. Atamanenko, 2010, 230. Atamanenko, 2010, 354. Rudnytzky, 2012, 829–832. Mackiw, 1984, 269–288. Mackiw, 1984, 80–81; Potul’nytsky, 2002, 325–334.

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reviews).37 As far as number of articles, the Canadian Slavonic Papers greatly exceeded the number for the American Slavic Review, but the latter journal contained more issues written by non-Ukrainian authors. In terms of topics and chronological division, both journals are comparable—and in both, items on the history and current conditions of Ukraine dominated over those about other materials. The 1960s epoch coincided with the start of several intellectual revolutions, the triumph of iconoclasts, and a symbolic drawing of the line between generations.38 As a result of the “social turn” in the humanities, new “revisionist” school emerged in American historiography, challenging the former dominant “totalitarianist” school.39 Leading representatives of this new school called for an understanding of the “organic nature” of the Soviet state, and for the study of the social underpinnings and grass-roots support of the Communist system that ensured its victory after the collapse of the Russian Empire as well as in the Second World War. During the 1960s and ’70s the so-called “modernist” paradigm in historical studies took hold. The modernists influenced by Ernest Gellner, Shmuel Eisenstadt, and some others—were interested in social communication and urbanization, as well as the demography, the civic and territorial-political aspects of national communities and their elites. In addition, significant changes had occurred in the understanding of nations and nationality issues. Contradicting the perennialists, it asserted the constructivist functional nature of nations, and their connection to modernization processes.40 The fundamental changes in the academic and political climate in the usa could not but affect Ukrainian historiography in the diaspora. A long-lasted split between the populist and the state schools of historical writing became apparent, manifested not only in increased tension between various scholars and institutions as well in the generational conflict41 but also in calls for changes within Ukrainian studies both on the institutional and conceptual level. This, in turn, led to the reconsideration of the mutual relations between Ukrainian Academia and Community (Hromada in Ukrainian): they became more strained and publicly pronounced addressing the issues of the academic autonomy, from the one side, and the community service, from the other. 37 38 39 40 41

Calculated by the author—KV. Rojas, 2004, 197–218; Vail’ and Genis, 1996, 262–274; Kelli and Kalinin, 2009, 3–9. See Fitzpatrick, 2008, 682–704 and Fitzpatrick, 2007, 77–91; Suny, 2007, 5–19; Suny, 2010, 707–711. See Smith, 1998. Atamanenko, 2010, 232, 273.

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One of the attempts to respond to the new challenges was the Ukrainian Historical Society (uit) and its periodical, Ukrains'kyi istoryk (Ukrainian Historian).42 The conception for the uit was underpinned by the ideas of continuity and consolidation of the representatives of various institutions and groups in Ukrainian exile historiography under the banner of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, whose historical legacy was enthusiastically propagated by the founder of the uit, Dr. Lubomyr Wynar. However, a programmatic article written for the first issue of the Ukrains'kyi istoryk journal by the former Soviet scholar Oleksander Ohloblyn—one of the leading representatives of exile/ émigré Ukrainian historiography—appeared to be outdated; it emphasized the obligations of scholars more to the Hromada than to Academia.43 Contrary to the program of uit, Omeljan Pritsak called for more radical changes in Ukrainian academia. His article, marking the centenary of the founder of Ukrainian national historiography, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, in 1966 could be perceived as heralding the era of changing milestones in Ukrainian studies.44 Unusually for publications of this type, the article was critical in tone and included grievous accusations against the honouree. Nonetheless, Pritsak’s main message consisted not so much in his criticism of predecessors and contemporaries, but rather in his recognition of the need for an academic autonomy for Ukrainian historiography. Somewhat later, Pritsak also expressed strong criticism of Ukrainian studies “in exile,” accusing them of intellectual conservatism, lack of scope, and dilettantism.45 In fact, Pritsak was speaking out in favour of an academic, “normal” scholarship, for which the chief objective would not be to protect the collective national identity of an ethnic community, but to conduct persistent intellectual seeking as well as revision of already existing concepts. In other words, Pritsak strove to “secularize” the field which was deeply penetrated by the spirit of sacralization of national history. Pritsak’s views on the need for continued professionalization and academic “normalization” of Ukrainian studies were shared by his colleague, Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, another prominent representative of the Ukrainian historiography and a strong adherent of “free, critical thought, untrammelled by dogmas of any kind, whether Marxist or nationalist,”

42 43

44 45

Atamanenko, 2010; Sakada, 1999. Ohloblyn, 1963 (ch.1, r.1) 1–3. Characteristically, Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky expressed his skepticism about the professional level of the journal and considered it dilettantish (Berdychowska, 2004, 608). Pritsak, 1966. Pritsak, 1972, 139–152.

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predisposed to critical scrutinizing of any “preconceptions, biases and favourite myths even of one’s own community.”46 Pritsak’s invectives, particularly the article about Hrushevsky, provoked a veritable uproar in the substantial part of Ukrainian Hromada and Academia.47 When Pritsak put forward an initiative to establish new Ukrainian studies institutions at leading American universities—in that case, at Harvard,48 his opponents responded with the concerns that the “Harvard project” would be susceptible to “Russification” under the influence of the faculty of Russian background.49 The fact that Pritsak himself became eventually the first newly established Hrushevsky Chair of Ukrainian History at Harvard in 1968 and the founding Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (huri) in 1973 can be considered a testament not only to his organizational talent but also to the growing intellectual maturity both of a good part of the Ukrainian American community and the American Academia as well. The establishment of a Chair of Ukrainian history in parallel with the further establishing of the Dmytro Chyzevs’kyj Chair in Ukrainian literature and the Olexander Potebnia Chair in Ukrainian philology in the leading American university legitimized the field of Ukrainian studies within American academia. The discussion around huri, however, was followed with another conflict between Ukrainian Hromada and Academia which flamed up around the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto in 1980.50 The conflict began when the University accepted money from the Hromada in order to establish a Chair in Ukrainian history. The History Department, however, refused to acknowledge Ukrainian history as a legitimate field of study. The conflict was further exacerbated when the Department, being finally reconciled with the idea, decided to give preference to Paul Robert Magocsi over several other candidates of Ukrainian ethnic origin. The fact that Magocsi, in addition, expressed certain “heretical” thoughts on the Ruthenian (Rusyn) identity of the Trans-Carpathians as being separated from the Ukrainian national identity, agitated the Ukrainian Hromada even more. The latter reserved its acceptance of the Chair for over a quarter-century until recently, when all those involved into the conflict finally appeared to be satisfied. Compared to the above, the history of the founding in 1976 of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (cius) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton 46 47 48 49 50

Rudnytsky, 1981, ix. Atamanenko, 2010, 302, 304, 521–526; Satzevich, 127–128. Pritsak, 1973. Atamanenko, 2010, 270–279; Satzevich, 127. Arel, 2011, 125–126; Satzevich, 128–129.

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seems downright peaceable.51 From its inception, cius was the result of a compromise between various players—the “old-timers” and the “newcomers,” the Hromada and the Academia, the “Diaspora” and the “Exiled” representatives of Ukrainian historical writing. The compromise was achieved in the favorable climate of the Canadian policy of multiculturalism in which Canadian Ukrainians played very active role from its inception. The provincial government of Alberta, together with the Ukrainian diaspora, became one of the main actors in the process of establishing the Institute within the University of Alberta. It is hardly surprising then that the first director of cius became Dr. Manoly Lupul, an activist of the multiculturalism policy and a representative of the third generation of Ukrainian-Canadians, well integrated into the Canadian society. Dr. Bohdan Krawchenko, political scientist, another Canadian social leftist activist, became his successor in 1986. Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, mentioned earlier, joined the project of cius on its initial stage and became the first Professor of Ukrainian history in the University of Alberta. Subsequently, however, cius, even under the new American-Ukrainian, Harvard-styled directorship, was not able to avoid criticism from the Ukrainian Hromada. In this case it was provoked by the other intellectual “challenger”, American born John-Paul Himka, a UofA Professor and cius religious program director, who had been a student of Roman Szporluk (refugee historian of Ukrainian origin from Poland), collaborator of Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky and who recently turned to study some controversial aspects of Ukrainian recent history.52 Both institutions—huri and cius—provided the possibility of training a new generation of professional scholars, regardless of their ethnic origin or connections with the Ukrainian community. The new Ukrainian academic institutes in the usa and Canada became harbingers of and main players at a new stage in the process of academic legitimization of Ukrainian studies in the Western university milieu. Both institutions were practically overwhelmed by the graduates of elite us universities. Ironically enough, huri under Pritsak appeared to be rather more traditional in its searching for research priorities than cius; while Ukrainian history and archeography dominated at the former, the latter immediately showed more openness towards the social sciences and Diaspora studies. * 51 52

Lupul, 1994, 88–111. See Shymko, 2013, 13; (http://www.istpravda.com.ua/columns/2013/01/13/108055/); Himka, 2012, 230–233.

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The institutional innovations were accompanied by substantial intellectual changes in the further development of American-Ukrainian historical studies. They could be examined in the context of the long-lasted polemics between the populist, community-oriented school of historical writing associated with Mykhailo Hrushevsky, and the state, territorial-oriented school which goes back to Vyacheslav Lypynsky. It seems like the latter gradually prevailed over the former in terms of an intellectual impact and a research potential. In this context several events should be taking into account: the establishment of the Lypynsky East European Research Institute in Philadelphia in 1963, especially after the well-known historian, Professor at the University of Iowa, Yaroslav Pelensky became its Director in 1986; Omeljan Pritsak’s Professorship and Directorship in the Harvard University; and Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky’s Professorship at the University of Alberta. All of the three well-known scholars were in favour of the territory-oriented paradigm in the art of Ukrainian historical writing. In Pritsak’s words, “The history of Ukraine is not the history of the Ukrainian ethnic mass…but the objective view, measured in linear time, of all types of states and communities which existed on the present territory of Ukraine in the past.”53 Later on the territorial approach to Ukrainian history facilitated a new perception of Ukraine as a multi-ethnic realm, where the cultures of various peoples—including Russians, Poles, Jews, and Crimean Tatars—evolved and interacted. Ivan LysiakRudnytsky, a specialist in the field of intellectual history, which became quite popular among the émigrés scholars in America after the World War ii, exerted the most important influence on his contemporary fellows in searching for new paradigms in Ukrainian historiography. Lysiak-Rudnytsky did not create an integrated national synthesis of monographic extent; instead, he contributed enormously to the updating and reinterpretation of the Ukrainian national historical narrative.54 His articles, notes, and reviews, written “between history and politics”, as the title of the collection of his articles suggests, appeared to be quite innovative as regards Ukrainian national-building process.55 To put it briefly, Lysiak-Rudnytsky championed the idea of a “normalcy” of Ukrainian history, using a comparative approach and tracking down a social dynamic of the local society. This applies in particular to the dialectics of continuity and discontinuity of Ukrainian history, as well as to the role of non-Ukrainian elites in it. Lysiak also rejected the usefulness of the classical colonial model in defining Ukraine’s 53 54 55

Keenan, 2006, 935–936. See Himka, 2014, 4–8; Hrytsak 1994, 73–96. Lysiak-Rudnytsky, 1976.

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status within the Russian Empire,56 argued for the necessity of revising perceptions on the very phenomena of Russification. Orientalist Pritsak, historians Rudnytsky and Pelensky, byzantinist Shevchenko,—all of them emphasized the importance of regional, geopolitical dimensions of and comparative approach to the Ukrainian studies by putting them into the broadest political, cultural, civilizational context of the Eastern European and Eurasian studies. Re-thinking of Ukrainian geopolitical identity in terms of a synthesis of the “eastern” and “western” civilizational components furthered the process of re-conceptualization of the whole East Slavic history and its symbolic boundaries in American historical writing. The discussions regarding periodization, terminology, and borders in Eastern European history, in which Ukrainian scholars took an active part, also influenced the gradual re-conceptualization and re-contextualization of American Slavic and Eastern European studies.57 * Ukrainian émigré historians endeavoured to establish direct dialogue with their Polish, Russian, Jewish, and German fellows in an attempt to re-­ conceptualize the basic interpretations of the historical phenomenon of “Europe” and “Russia”. Those who initiated this contact were interested not only in clearly delineating Ukrainian national space versus non-Ukrainian macrocosms, but also in the role of non-Ukrainian factors in their national history. The most successful of these was the Ukrainian-Polish dialogue, in which a positive role was played by the several factors: a principled position of some Polish and Ukrainian intellectual émigrés in Europe and usa; the new geopolitical realities of the mid-twentieth century; and the similar circumstances and challenges Ukrainian and Polish studies faced in America. The role of the Lypynsky’s state school in Ukrainian historical writing in this case as well as the intellectual origin of those Ukrainian émigré historians who was educated in the Polish schools and universities also can be hardly overestimated. A huge volume of the recently issued intensive correspondence between Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor-in-chief of the Polish, Paris-based intellectual journal Kultura, and Ukrainian émigré scholars in usa, reveals that at least part of the intellectuals from the both sides clearly understood the need for normalization of Ukrainian-Polish mutual relations to be able to overcome the burden of the recent and more distant past, to join efforts on order to withstand 56 57

Lysiak-Rudnytsky, 1994, 149. Keennan, 2006, 936.

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nationalist resistance as well as the domination of the Russian/Soviet paradigm in American Slavic and European studies. Both sides realized the need to transform the Western academia into friendlier intellectual environment, open to innovations.58 Scholarly contacts between Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Pipes, Jerzy Giedroyc, from the one side and Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky, Taras Hunchak, Borys Lewycky, Roman Szporluk, Omeljan Pritsak, contributed to the scholarly projects as well as the development of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Lysiak-Rudnytsky highly praised the monographs of Oskar Halecki on the new concept of Eastern and Central-Eastern Europe. Yaroslaw Pelensky and Petro Potichnyj were instrumental in organizing several important Ukrainian-Polish conferences in usa and Canada and publishing their proceedings.59 Their contribution to the further re-conceptualization of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ukrainian-Polish relations in a more favourable light became visible in some issues of the new generation of Ukrainian scholars. In contrast, the dialogue between Ukrainian and Jewish historians met with great difficulties, which have not been overcome to this day.60 The reasons for this were varied, but basically rooted in negative national stereotypes on both sides that had accumulated for hundreds of years. Another factor to be reckoned with was the similarity of the Ukrainian and Jewish national narratives: both of them grew up from the long tradition of statelessness; both of them developed contested visions of the same territory of the Polish-RussianUkrainian borderland; both evolved in the diaspora, were founded on the idea of victimization, and even overlapped in their lexicon. Interestingly enough that they bear a great resemblance with the Polish-Jewish relationship in the us permeated with “ignorance, prejudice, and bad faith.”61 Ukrainian-Russian dialogue of scholars appeared to be even more complicated, bearing in mind the current political circumstances and the ongoing struggle between the two for the Rus’ historical legacy.62 Russian studies were at the time the most influential component of the nascent American Slavic studies—a kind of locomotive for the growing field. Ukrainian scholars were less innovative in their interpretation of Russian history: they emphasized the specific, non-European character of the Russian Empire as well as its direct connections with the so called Tatar-Mongol Commonwealth (Pritsak, Pelensky, 58 59 60 61 62

Berdychowska, 2004; Giedroyc, 2004. Potichnyj, 1980, Poland… Potichnyj, 1980, Ukrainian… Biskupski, 2007. Pelenski, 1998; Demkovych-Dobrianskyi, 1989; Holubenko, 1987; Kononenko, 1969.

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Hunchak). Nevertheless, Ukrainian historiography contributed to the better understanding of the complexity of the “Rus’”-based denominations, such as, for example, the differences between “Rus’” and “Russia”.63 Finally, a couple of words must be said about the dialog between Ukrainian Diaspora and Soviet Ukrainian scholars. In the 1960s the rhetoric of the Cold War times was abandoned, at least for a while, and ideas about the convergence of two political systems developed in the politically relaxed conditions of the détente. The political thaw in the Ukrainian ssr was accompanied with an attempt to revive at least some elements of the National-Communism policy of the 1920s as well a renewal of the contacts with the outside world. The Ukrainian diaspora then faced the question of whether to establish contacts with the Soviet side—knowing in advance that they are closely watched by the kgb, or to avoid them and remain in the struggle against the Soviet regime. Some of the nationalistically minded diaspora rejected the possibility of any kind of contact with the Soviet side.64 On the other hand, many Ukrainian intellectuals in the Diaspora belonged to the liberal minority of “realitetnyky” (realists) who, in contrast to the so-called nationalist establishment, was in favour of contacts with the Soviet side, in the hope that the Soviet regime would gradually evolve towards democracy and national freedoms. In 1967 Ukrainian professors from several American universities, including Lysiak-Rudnytsky, publicized “Declaration 35” about the current situation in Ukraine. The declaration included demands of the Soviet government that were aimed at reinstating Ukraine’s sovereignty as a part of the ussr. Not surprisingly, this document provoked a stormy discussion in the Ukrainian community, and criticism from the part of Ukrainian Hromada and Academy including the American branch of NTSh, who accused the authors of legitimizing the Soviet regime in Ukraine.65 On the other hand, the program formulated in “Declaration 35” turned out to be compatible with the attitudes of Ukrainian Soviet dissidents. Official contacts between Ukrainians on the both sides became possible. The irex Program enabled visiting Soviet Union for some Ukrainian American scholars. At this time, attempts were made to reconcile part of the Soviet historical legacy (in a broad sense of the word) with the Ukrainian national historical narrative.66 The question of whether the Soviet era was an organic part of the national history, or whether it was a foreign, extraneous thing, imposed from 63 64 65 66

Lysiak-Rudnytsky, 1981, 233–268; Horak, 1975, 5–24; Horak, 1972, 853–862. Neduzhko, 2005, 43–48. Hrytsak, 1996, 888-889; Atamanenko, 2010, 9. Hrytsak, 1996, 114–125.

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the outside by occupiers, acquired a paramount importance. For example, Lysiak-Rudnytsky’s attitude to the Soviet phenomenon was influenced by the motifs of realpolitik and historical optimism, as he proposed to assess the Soviet era from the perspective of its achievements—seeing the potential that Soviet statehood unlocked for Ukraine’s future development. This kind of position created the conditions for dialogue with Soviet Ukrainian historiography, which at that same time was beginning to demonstrate positive developments.67 However, in practice the public, professional dialogue between them remained impossible. In the ussr, Soviet Ukrainian historiography continued to be strictly monitored, while the main symbols and elements of the Ukrainian national-state narrative were meticulously passed through a triple-screen of censorship (state, professional, and personal). In addition, the professional level of Ukrainian historiography in the diaspora was incomparably higher than that in the Soviet Union, which had halted its theoretical development at the level of classical positivism and the Soviet kraevedenie. The two sides were truly speaking different languages, in both the direct and indirect meanings of the word. Be that as it may, they did watch one another carefully, and even the slightest movement or event in the field of Ukrainian studies was noticed.68 They could not be unaware of one another, and even more, they sometimes mirrored each other. It seems like, for example, the journal Ukrains'kyi istoryk, which was published in the us, began in response to the appearance in the ussr of the Ukrains'kyi istorychnyi zhurnal in 1957.69 And to a certain extent, the Ukrains'ka Radians'ka Entsyklopediia (Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia) was reacting to the publication of émigré historian Volodymyr Kubijovyč’s Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva.70 The Soviet authorities issued even more Ukrainian encyclopaedias in the course of some twenty years, and a network of departments of Ukrainian history established at Soviet Ukrainian universities in the late 1950s was a reaction to the Ukrainian diaspora’s activity at American and Canadian universities. When the Soviet authorities launched an ideological campaign against Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalists” at the beginning of the ’70s, cutting the period of political thaw, they used contacts with the Ukrainian diaspora as a pretext to institute formal charges. 67 68 69 70

Atamanenko, 2010, 240–259; Hrytsak, 1996, 875–903. Wynar, 1979, 1–23; Serbyn, 1969, 169–182; Horak, 1965, 258–272; Ohloblyn, 1963; Krupnytskyi, 1957. Sakada, 1999, 13. See, for example, Lysiak-Rudnytsky’s review of the “Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia” Lysiak-Rudnytsky, 1967, 358.

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After the end of the “thaw” in the ussr, development of Soviet Ukrainian historiography was blocked once again. This phase of bureaucratization, provincialization, and ideologization lasted for nearly 20 years. Political changes in the ussr were accompanied by a growing influence of neo-Stalinist and nationalist forces within the Russian political and cultural elites. In turn, these circumstances engendered disillusion with the Soviet experiment in the West, a weakening of the left, and strengthening of conservative ideologies and attitudes.71 Regardless, Ukrainian studies continued to develop and under the strong influence of American Slavic studies overall. * The younger generation of Ukrainian studies scholars—particularly those schooled at the Harvard and the University of Alberta—has fully adopted their supervisors’ openness to intellectual innovations and demonstrated the next stage of the integration of Ukrainian studies into the American scholarship in the course of ’70s–’80s. Methodologically, the new stream of Ukrainian studies in North America was influenced by the “revisionist” school in American Soviet and Slavic studies. Along with the national aspects of the history of Ukraine, the scope of their research interests includes modernization issues and the concomitant socio-demographic, economic, and urbanization processes of the postwar era which became evident in the publications of Bohdan Krawchenko, Roman Szporluk, George Lieber, Orest Subtelny. The “iconoclastic” trend of Ukrainian studies fully manifested itself in the issues of George Grabowicz and John-Paul Himka: the former criticized the Lysiak-Rudnytsky’s attitude to the question of the so-called “non-historical” nations and offered a new, innovative interpretation of the legacy of the founding father of Ukrainian nation, Taras Shevchenko while the latter attacked the Lysiak’s main thesis about the centrality of the national theme in the modern Ukrainian history proposing instead the neo-Marxist approach. Furthermore, the national aspects of Ukrainian early modern history were given more sophisticated and nuanced treatment in research by Orest Subtelny, Zenon Kohut, and Frank Sysyn; the dialectic of regional and national aspects of Ukrainian history was championed by Paul Robert Magocsi while Roman Szporluk offered new conceptualization of the Russian and Western aspects of the Ukrainian nationbuilding process; last but not least—women studies for the first time emerged as a new sub-discipline within Ukrainian studies (Marta Bohachevska-Chomiak). 71

Kolasky, 1979.

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It is not incidentally that precisely this generation managed to achieve a long-lasted dream of Ukrainian intellectual Diaspora to produce a new, modern synthesis of Ukrainian history according to the standards of the Western scholarship. Orest Subtelny’s narrative published in 1988 in English and translated into Ukrainian was based on the idea of modernization and its specific role in Ukrainian national history. Paul Robert Magocsi applied territorial and multicultural concepts to Ukrainian historical process. Both of them demonstrated how the intellectual innovations in the Western humanities can be applicable to Ukrainian historiography. No wonder both of the narratives mentioned above gradually replaced all the previously written textbooks of Ukrainian history in the American universities. Conclusions During the 1960s–1980s, the Ukrainian national historical narrative of glorification and victimization was revised in all of its main components. This is rightly considered the foremost achievement of Ukrainian historiography in the American Diaspora. Breaking the boundaries of exile historiography, as well as openness to innovations and professional dialogue, overcame the tendencies to isolationism and a lack of precision in this field.72 In this sense, Ukrainian émigré historiography was a ‘blessing in disguise’: it was proven capable of making an intellectual horizon vaster, overcoming a parochialism and preconceptions regarding Ukrainian topics. Ukrainian studies provided much new material towards an understanding of the very phenomenon of modern nationalism and also of modernization processes in the region of Eastern Europe. It would be fair to say that the dialogue between Ukrainian historiography and its American counterpart improved constantly during this period, with gradually increasing numbers of us scholars specializing in Ukrainian history. Moreover, experts in the theory and history of nationalism and in Russian, Soviet and Eastern European studies increasingly referred to works issued by Ukrainian authors. Finally, academic exchanges focused on specific problems rather than debating the very existence of Ukrainian history as a separate discipline. At least some Western scholars began to comprehend that studying the history of Russia, Poland, and the ussr would be problematic without taking into consideration the Ukrainian question.73 Accordingly, to find a proper

72 73

Saunders, 1991, 84. See interview with Larry Wolf: http://polit.ua/analitika/2014/03/14/wulf.html.

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place for Ukrainian, what were needed were new concepts of the “Eastern Europe” and “Russia.” The academic “normalization” of Ukrainian studies in the West is by and large a success story—one which prompted John A. Armstrong to speak of “the amazing improvement in Ukrainian historiography which had taken place during the past forty years.”74 Thus, I would disagree with the assertion that diaspora Ukrainian historiography emerged from being an ethnically isolated intellectual field only in the post-Soviet period and began to influence important development trends in the rejuvenated Russian studies;75 from my observations this happened much earlier, around the early 1980s. At the same time, David Saunders was quite correct when he wrote in 1988 that the increasing number of works on Ukrainian topics published in the West, even in English, as well as the unquestionable successes achieved by Ukrainian studies in the latter twentieth century, did not yet mean that this field had entered the mainstream of Western Slavic studies.76 The academic milieu, and particularly the historian’s world, is generally rather conservative in its prejudices and preferences. Significantly, it was only in the mid-1990s—5 years after the declaration of Ukraine’s independence that the Slavic Review, one of the leading American journals in the field, organized the public forum on Ukrainian history, its integrity, and its place among other socio-humanities disciplines.77 Besides, both Western and “Eastern” Ukrainian studies remain greatly dependent on current political circumstances. Olexander Ohloblyn had believed that the interpretation of Ukraine’s historical process in Western historiography would change only upon the emergence of an independent Ukraine.78 In fact, these changes transpired even earlier than Ohloblyn had predicted, but the progress in this case has been inconsistent and fragmentary—not unlike the situation in Ukrainian recent politics. And it must be said that the Ukrainian studies in us and Canada, in spite of their overall high level of professionalism, did not affect the current politics as perhaps it should have. Socio-cultural and political realities of life in post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia continue to influence historical thinking on both sides of the Atlantic, Western Europe and North America. Thereby has been nurtured the following stereotypes of Ukraine, starting long before the dissolution of the Soviet Union: the 74 75 76 77 78

Saunders, 1988, 473. Semenov, 2004, 614. Saunders, 1988, 473. Slavic Review, vol. 54, no. 3, autumn, 1995, 658–719. Atamanenko, 2010, 90.

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Ukrainians still have no “true” nation-state; it exists only as a besieged fortress whose dimensions extend only as far as Galicia—the Ukrainian Piedmont— and which needs outside help to survive. Given this motif, any venture by academic historiography outside the symbolic boundaries of the nation-state paradigm—including “experiments” with regional studies, border studies, entangled histories, and cultural anthropology—only widen the gap between the academic and the exile type of historical writing. Conflicts between the two are certain to continue, but neither side will be able to avoid seeking compromise. Another factor to be considered is the state of arts in American Russian, East European, and Slavic studies. Twenty years ago Oleh Ilnytzkyj came to the conclusion that, “For Westerners, Ukraine’s arrival on the international scene is almost as disorienting as for Russians, perhaps because the store of knowledge the West has about this region offers no logical explanation for current events.”79 Today, in the course of the recent unpredictable, tragic events on the Russian-Ukrainian border, another scholar only re-affirm this conclusion: “The events of the past year in Ukraine have been unprecedented, and therefore not easily comprehensible as a single yet complex phenomenon.… We simply lack a ready analytical language and explanatory models to describe the birth of the new Ukraine as a unique and—yes—unprecedented phenomenon.”80 It seems like the intellectual crisis of Russian studies in America in light of the recent events can be possibly explained by their ignorance in Ukrainian topics. References Adams, A.E. (1975). (rev.) [Ukraine and the European Turmoil, 1917–1919. Vol. 1 by Matthew Stachiw; Peter G. Stercho; Nicholas L.F. Chirovskyy; Ukraine and the European Turmoil, 1917–1919. Vol. 2. by Matthew Stachiw; Nicholas L.F. Chirovskyy. New York: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1973] Slavic Review, vol. 34, no. 3 (September), 623–624. Agursky, M. (1987). The Third Rome. National Bolshevism in the ussr, London: Boulder. Arel, D. (2011). “The Scholar, Historian, and public advocate: the contributions of Paul Robert Magocsi to our understanding of Ukraine and Central Europe.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 39, no. 1, 125–26.

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Atamanenko, A. (2010). Ukrains’ke Istorychne Tovarystvo: idei, postati, dialnist’ (1965– 1991) [Ukrainian Historical Society: Ideas, Persons, Activities (1965–1991)]. Ostroh: Natcional’nyj Universytet “Ostroz’ka Akademia.” Ballinger, P. (2003). History In Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Biskupski, M.B.B. (2007). “Is Polish-Jewish Reconciliation in North America Inevi­ table?  An Incautious Consideration.” Polish American Studies 64, no. 1 (Spring), 79–87. Burrell, K. and P. Panayi (eds.) (2006). Histories and Memories: Migrants and Their History in Britain, New York: I.B.Tauris. Buyniak, V. (2000). “Professor George Simpson—A Friend of Ukrainians.” Collected Papers on Ukrainian Settlers in Western Canada, Part Four. Edmonton: Shevchenko Scientific Society in Canada, vol. 38, 230–44 (in Ukrainian). Chamberlin, W.H. (1944). The Ukraine. A Submerged Nation. New York: The Macmillan Company. Chubatyĭ, M. (1971). Ukraïns’ka istorychna nauka (ĭĭ rozvytok ta dosîahnennîa). [Ukrainian historical writing (its development and achievements)], Philadelphia: “Amerika.” Cooper H.R. Jr. (1998). “The Tense Situation of Slavic: Past, Present, Future.” adfl Bulletin 29, no. 2 (Winter), 25–27. Demkovych-Dobrianskyĭ, M. (1989). Ukraïna i Rosiia: istorychni narysy na temy rosilskoho imperializmu [Ukraine and Russia: historical essays on the theme of Russian imperialism]. Roma: Ukraïnsˈkyĭ Katolytskyi Universytet sv. Klymenta Papy. Dombrovsky, O. (1965). “Ukrains’ka Vil’na Akademia Nauk u ssha (1945–1950–1965).” [Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in usa (1945–1950–1965)], in Ukrains’kyj Istoryk, Vol. ii, parts 3–4 (7–8). Dombrovsky, O. (2000). “Do istorii vidnosyn mizh uvan, uit i NTSh.” [Towards the history of mutual relations between uvan, uit and NTSh], Visti uvan, part 2. Dyczok, M. (1995). Ukrainian refugees and displaced people at the end of World War ii. D.Phil. thesis. Oxford. Fischer, R. (2008). “Launching AAASS. A Conversation with Ralph Fisher.” Problems of Post-Communism 55, no. 3, May/June, 57–62. Fitzpatrick, S. (2007). “Revisionism in Soviet History.” History and Theory 46, no. 4 December 2007, 77–91. Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). “Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View,” Slavic Review, Vol. 67, no. 3 Fall, 682–704. Gerasimov, I. (2014). “Ukraine 2014: The First Postcolonial Revolution. Introduction to the forum “Ukraine and the Crisis of “Russian Studies”: Participant Observation of History in the Making,” Ab Imperio, no. 3, 22–24.

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Giedroyc, J. (2004). Emigracja Ukraińska. Listy 1950–1982 [Ukrainian Emigration. Letters 1950–1982]. Ed. By B. Berdychowska, Transl. Ola Hnatiuk, Warszawa: Czytelnik. Himka, I. (2014). “Nash istoryk, nasha epokha: Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyj.” Krytyka 3–4 (197–198), 4–8. Himka, J.-P. (2012). “Interventions: Challenging the Myths of Twentieth-Century Ukrainian History” in Miller, A. and M. Lipman (eds.), The Convolutions of Historical Politics, New York: Central European University Press, 230–233. Holmes, M. (2007). “Culture without the state? Reinvigorating Ukrainian Culture with Diasporic Efforts.” Review of Policy Research 24, no.2, 133–154. Holubenko, P. (1987). Ukraïna i Rosiîa: u svitli kul'turnykh vzaîemyn. [Ukraine and Russia in the light of their cultural relations]. New York-Paris-Toronto: Naukovodoslidnyĭ inst. Horak S. (1965). “Ukrainian Historiography 1953–1963.” Slavic Review 24, no. 2, June, 258–272. Horak, S. (1972). “Periodization and Terminology of the History of Eastern Slavs: Observations and Analyses.” Slavic Review 31, no. 4 (Dec.), 853–62. Horak, S. (1975). “Problems of Periodization and terminology in Ukrainian historiography.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 3, no. 2, 5–24. Hrytsak, Y. (1996). “‘… Kholodnu vijnu rozkholodyty…’ (Z istorii sprob naviazannia kontaktiv mizh Ukrains’kymy intelektualamy zi SSHa na ursr u 1965–1971 rr.).” [‘…To warm up the Cold War…’ (from the history of attempts in establishing contacts between Ukrainian intellectuals)], in Mappa mundi = Studia in honorem Jaroslavi Daškevyč septuagenario dedicata: zbirnyk naukovykh praʦ‘ na poshanu Iaroslava Dashkevycha z nahody ĭoho 70-richchiia, Vyd-vo M.P. Kot’s, 888–89. Hrytsak, Y. (1996). “Strasti za Natcionalismom…” [Nationalism Passion], in Mappa mundi = Studia in honorem Jaroslavi Daškevyč septuagenario dedicata: zbirnyk naukovykh praʦˈ na poshanu Iaroslava Dashkevycha z nahody ĭoho 70-richchia, Vyd-vo M.P. Kot’s, 114–25. Hrytsak, Y. (1994). “Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytskyj (Narys intelektual’noi biohrafii)” Suchasnist’, no. 11, 73–96. Hunchak, T. (1974). Russian Imperialism from Ivan the Great to the Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press). Hyrych, I. (1999). “Derzhavnyts’kyj napriam i narodnyts’ka shkola v Ukrains’kij istoriohrafii.” [The statehood direction and the populist school in Ukrainian historical writing], in: Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyj i Ukrains’ka istorytchna nauka [Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Ukrainian historical writing]. Lviv. Hyrych, I. (2000) “‘Narodnytctvo’ ta ‘derzhavnytctvo’ v Ukrains’kij istoriohrafii: problema zmistovnoho napovnennia poniat.” [Populist and Statehood schools in Ukrainian historical writing: the problem with the definitions]. Moloda Natcia, no. 4.

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Ias’, O. (2000). Derzhavnyts’ka tradytcia v ukrains’kii zarubizhnii istorytchnii nautci 1945–1991. Avtoreferat dysertatcii..kandydata istorytchnyx nauk. [Statehood paradigm of Ukrainian historical writing abroad 1945–1991. PhD thesis Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy nan Ukrainy]. Ilnytzkyj, O.S. (1992). “Russian and Ukrainian Studies and the New World Order,” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 34, no. 4 (December), 445–458. Kasianov, G. and Ph. Ther (eds.) (2009). A laboratory of transnational history: Ukraine and recent Ukrainian historiography, Budapest, New York: Central European University Press. Keenan, E.L. (2006). “Omeljan Pritsak (1919–2006),” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 7, no. 4 (Fall), (New Series), 935–936. Kelli, K. and I. Kalinin (2009). “Sovetskaia pamiat’/pamiat’ o sovetskom = Soviet ­memory/memory on the Soviet.” Neprikosnovennyj Zapas, no. 2, 3–9. Kolasky, J. (1979). The shattered illusion: A history of Ukrainian pro-Communist organizations in Canada, pma Books. Kononenko, K.C. (1969). Ukraina i Rosia. Sotcialno-ekonomitchni pidstavy Ukrains’koi natcional’noi idei, 1917–1960. [Ukraine and Russia. Socio-economic foundations of Ukrainian National idea, 1917–1960]. München. Kostantaras, D.J. (2008). “Idealisations of self and nation in the thought of diaspora intellectuals.” Nations and Nationalism 14 (4), 700–20. Krupnytskyi, B. (1957). Ukrains’ka istorytchna nauka pid Sovetamy, 1920–1950 [Ukrainian Historical Science under the Soviet Rule, 1920–1950]. Munich. Kuzio, T. (2000) “Pluralist Debates Within Contemporary Ukrainian Studies.” Krytyka (Kyiv) 2000. Kuzio, T. (2001). “Historiography and National Identity among the Eastern Slavs: Towards a New Framework.” National Identities 3 (2) (July), 109–32. Lupul, M.R. (1994). “The establishment of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta: A Personal memoir.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 26, Issue 2, 88–111. Lysiak-Rudnytsky, I. (1967). [Review of the “Ukrainiant Soviet Encyclopedia”]. Slavic Review 29, no. 2 (Jun.), 358. Lysiak-Rudnytsky, I. (1976) Mizh Istoriieiu i Politykoiu [Between History and Politics]. Munich: Suchasnist’. Lysiak-Rudnytsky, I. (1994), Istorytchni ese, I [Historical Essays]. Kyiv: Osnovy. Mackiw, Th. (1984). “Ukrainian Historiography Past and Present.” The Ukrainian Quarterly. A Journal of East European and Asian Affairs xl, no. 3, 269–288. Manning, C.A. (1947). The Story of the Ukraine. ny: Philosophical Library. Manning, C.A. (1949). Outline of Ukrainian History. Winnipeg: ucc.

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Manning, C.A. (1957). Hetman of Ukraine: Ivan Mazepa. New York: Bookman Associates Publishers. Masnenko, V.V. (2000). Istorytchni kontceptcii M.S. Hrushevs’koho ta V.K. Lypyns’koho: metodolohitchnyj i suspil’no-politytchnyj vymiry ukrains’koi istorytchnoi dumky 1920-ch rokiv [Historical concepts of M.S. Hrushevsky and V.K. Lypynsky: methodological and socio-political dimensions of Ukrainian historical thought of 1920s]. Kyiv-Tchernihiv. Merfi, N.H. (2007). Ukrains’ka Diaspora v ssha: zbereznennia tradytcii natcional’noi kul’tury [Ukrainian Diaspora in usa: preservation of the national tradition in culture]. Donets’k. Narizhnyi, S. (1942). Ukrainska emigratsiia: Kulturna pratsia ukrainskoi emigratsii mizh dvoma svitomymy viinamy [Ukrainian emigration: Cultural activities of the Ukrainian Emigration between the two World Wars]. Prague: Muzei vyzvolnoi borotby Ukrainy. Neduzhko, Y.V. (2005). “Borot‘ba ukrains’koi diaspory Kanady za prava liudyny ta nezalezhnist’ Ukrainy (kin.60-kh-potch. 80-kh rr. xx st.)” [Ukrainian Canadian Diaspora struggle for human rights and Ukrainian independency (end of ’60s–beg. of ’80s of the 20th century)]. Nauka, relihia, suspil’stvo, no. 2, 43–48. Ohloblyn, O. (1963). “Zavdannia Ukrains’koi istoriohrafii na emigratcii.” [The tasks for Ukrainian historical writing in exile]. Ukrains’kyj Istoryk, (ch.1, r.1,), 1–3. Ohloblyn, O. (1963). Dumky pro sutchasnu ukrains’ku sovets’ku istoriohrafiiu [Thoughts on the Present Ukrainian Soviet Historical Writing]. New York: oochsu. Pawliczko, A.L. (ed.) (1994). Ukraine and Ukrainians throughout the world. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pech, S.Z. (1968). “New Avenues in Eastern European History.” Canadian Slavonic Papers/ Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 10, no.1 (Spring), 16. Pelenski, J. (1998). The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'. Boulder: Columbia University Press. Pelenski, J. (1974), Russia and Kazan: Conquest and Imperial Ideology (1438–1560s), The Hague: Mouton. Polons’ka-Vasylenko, N. (1951). Teoriia iii Rymu v Rosiï protiahom xviii ta xix stol. [The Third Rome theory in Russia during 18th and 19th centuries]. Munich: Tserkovnoarkheohrafichna komisiia Apostolˈskoho visytatora dlia ukraïntsiv u Zakhidniĭ Evropi. Plokhy, S. (2005). Unmaking Imperial Russia. Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Potichnyj, P.J. (ed.) (1980). Poland, Ukraine: Past and Present. Edmonton-Toronto: cius Press. Potichnyj, P.J. (ed.) (1980). Ukrainian-Jewish relations in historical perspective. Edmonton: cius Press.

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Potul’nytsky, V.A. (2002). Ukraina i vsesvitnia istoriia. Istoriosofia svitovoi ta ukrains’koi istorii xvii–xx st. [Ukraine and the world history. Historiosophy of the world and Ukrainian histories 17th-20th centuries]. K.: Dnipro. Pritsak, O. (1966). “U stolittia narodyn M.Hrushevs’koho.” [In the centenary of M. Hrushevsky]. Lysty do pryiateliv = Letters to friends, no. 157–159, 1–19. Pritsak, O. (1972). “The Present State of Ukrainian Studies.” Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 14, no. 2 (Summer,), 139–52. Pritsak, O. (1973). Tchomu katedry ukrainoznavstva v Harvardi? Vybir statej na temy nashoi kul’turnoi polityky (1967–1973) [Why Endowed Chairs in Ukrainian Studies at Harvard? A selection of articles concerning Ukrainian cultural policy (1967–1973)]. Cambridge-New York. Prymak, T.M. (1988). “George Simpson, the Ukrainian Canadians and the ‘Pre-History’ of Slavic Studies in Canada.” Saskatchewan History 41 (2), 52–66. Prymak, T.M. (2003a). “General Histories of Ukraine Published in English during the Second World War.” Ab Imperio, no. 2, 455–76. Prymak T.M. (2003b). “Ukrainian Scholarship in the West during the ‘Long Cold war’”, Rossiiskaia istoricheskaia mozaika [Russian Historical Mosaic], ed. by A.L. Litvin. Kazan: Izdatelstvo Kazanskogo matematicheskogo obshchestva. Prymak, T.M. (2009). “Inveterate Voyager: J.B. Rudnyckyj on Ukrainian Culture, Books, and Libraries in the West During the ‘Long Cold War’.” Canadian Slavonic Papers/ Revue Canadienne des Slavistes 51, no. 1 (March), 53–76. Rojas, C.A.A. (2004). “1968 as a Turning Point in Historical Thinking: Changes in Western Historiography.” História, no. 1/2 (San Paulo), 197–218. Rudnytsky, I.L. (ed.) (1981). Rethinking Ukrainian history, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. Rudnytzky, L. (2012), “The founders of the Association for the study of nationalities: the case of Stepan Horak (1920–1986) and the Shevchenko Scientific Society, usa.” Nationalities Papers 40, no.6, 829–32. Sakada, L. (1999). “‘Ukraïnsˈkyĭ istoryk’—Zhurnal Ukrains’koh Istorytchnoho Tovarystva.” [‘Ukrainian Historian’—The Journal of the Ukrainian Historical Society]. Ukrains’kyj Istoryk 1, (140), 13. Saunders, D. (1988). (Review article:) “Modern Ukrainian History.” European History Quarterly 18, 473–79. Saunders, D. (1991). “Review article: Modern Ukrainian History (ii).” European History Quarterly 21, 81–95. Satzewich, V. (2002). The Ukrainian diaspora. New York: Routledge. Semenov, A. (2004). “Anglo-Amerikanskie issledovania po istorii Rossiiskoi imperii i sssr.” [English-American studies on the history of the Russian empire and ussr] in Gerasimov, I., Glebov, S., Kaplunovskii, A. and M. Mogilner (eds.). Novaia imperskaia istoria postsovetskoho prostranstva [New Imperial history of the post-Soviet space]. Kazan.

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Toumanoff, C. (1955). “Moscow the Third Rome.” The Catholic Historical Review, no. 4. Toynbee, A. (1976). “The Ukraine—a problem in nationality.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 4, no. 2. Vail’, P. and A Genis (1996). 60-e: mir sovetskogo tcheloveka [The ’60s: the world of Soviet People]. M.: Ardis. Wynar, L. (1979). “The Present State of Ukrainian Historiography in Soviet Ukraine: A Brief Overview.” Nationalities Papers vii, no. 1, 1–23. Wynar L. (1988). “Ukrainian Scholarship in Exile: The dp Period, 1945–1952.” Ethnic Forum 8 (1), 40–72. Wynar, L. (1992). “Ukrainian Scholarship in Postwar Germany, 1945–52” in V. Isajiw, Y. Boshyk and R. Senkus (eds.), The Refugee Experience: Ukrainian Displaced Persons after World War ii. Edmonton: cius Press.

Belarusian Historians in Exile: New Circumstances, Old Problems Oleg Łatyszonek To the memory of Ivan S. Lubachko Exile is a common experience for Belarusian historians. It could be said they almost always live in exile, even when in Belarus, because in their motherland they are often treated like strangers, even like enemies. This never-being-at home state has lasted for the entire period in which Belarus has existed as a modern nation. Belarusian national historiography was formed late, but not as late as is commonly held even by Belarusian historians themselves. A fundamental text, entitled Who Were Our Most Ancient Grandparents, appeared in 1863 in a school handbook, published by the Tsarist administration in Vilnius.1 The author of this text constructed a model of Belarusian history that is currently used today. First, he considered Belarus within its contemporary borders (earlier, only its  eastern part was regarded as Belarus proper). Second, he regarded the ancient Krivichi tribe to be the direct ancestor of the Belarusians. In his view, ancient Belarus was a separate country from Kyivan Rus’. The author described Belarusian-­Lithuanian relations as being akin to long-term cohabitation. In his opinion, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the common state of the Lithuanians and Belarusians in which, however, the Belarusian language, culture and the Orthodox confession predominated. This situation lasted until the union with Poland in 1569 and the religious union in 1596, when the Orthodox Church was subordinated to Catholicism. Consequently, this text contains all the questions important for modern Belarusian historiography. And, last but not least, the author understands “Belarusians” as meaning “we, Belarusians”, not “they”. What is interesting is that this text was written in the Western-Palessian ­dialect which differed significantly from the central dialect spoken between Vilna and Minsk that eventually became the basis of the Belarusian literary language. It also still seems very strange that the founder of Belarusian historiography remains anonymous, although contemporary Belarusian historians have pointed to several possible authors. 1 Rasskazy na belorusskom narečii. [Stories in Belarusian dialect]. Vilno, 1863.

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Belarus had no university until the end of the Tsarist regime, and that meant that Belarus remained in relative obscurity and also that Belarusian historians were educated outside Belarus and spent a considerable part of their lives abroad. Is this sufficient reason to consider them émigré historians? It would seem not. As long as they remained within the borders of the Russian Empire, they were within the borders of the same civilization and culture. Of course, studying and working in St. Petersburg or Moscow naturally brought Belarusians closer to the Russians and their culture, in the same way as staying in Kyiv or Kharkiv entailed closeness to Ukrainian culture. Contact with Poles would have been even easier in St. Petersburg than in Warsaw, since Belarusians often appeared as representatives of the Tsarist regime, as for example the eminent Belarusian linguist, ethnographer and literary historian, Jaŭchim Karski, who was chancellor of the Russian University there. Until the end of the Russian Empire, no Belarusian historian emigrated beyond Imperial borders for any reason; they did not visit even Lviv or Kraków for any length of time. The year 1910 saw the publication of Vaclaŭ Lastoŭski’s A Brief History of Belarus2 a book that marked the next important step in the development of Belarusian historiography. The work was only a compilation, but as it was written in Belarusian and edited several times; moreover, it was a popular historical work among the Belarusian people. Lastoŭski also became the head of the first Belarusian government in exile. In 1918–20 the Belarusians failed to establish an independent state. The fact that the occupants of Belarus changed frequently— the Bolsheviks, Germans, Poles and then, yet again, the Bolsheviks—hindered the consolidation of a Belarusian political movement. In 1919 there was a fatal split in the Council of the Belarusian People’s Republic (henceforth bpr) which had its seat in Polish-occupied Minsk. Those willing to fight against the Poles had to emigrate to Kaunas, where they appointed a government with Lastoŭski as its head. Later this government relocated to Germany. Following its split in  1925, part of the government together with the Deputy Prime Minister, Aliaksandr Ćvikievič, decided to move to Soviet Belarus, while the President Piotra Krečeŭski and his successor Vasil Zacharka took up residence in Prague. Curiously enough, all these political leaders dabbled in history, although it is difficult to ascertain which one of the two—Lastoŭski or Ćvikievič—was the more illustrious historian. Lastoŭski was first to offer the hypothesis that the term Rus’ had a religious character and that its spread across Eastern Europe was connected to the advancements of Christianity of the Byzantine Rite. Later, this hypothesis was used and popularized by a Polish émigré historian 2 Vlast [V. Lastoŭski]: Lastoŭski, 1910.

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Henryk Paszkiewicz.3 Lastoŭski cannot be considered a historian in the strict meaning of the term, and not only because he was not formally educated as an historian. For him, history was a mere ideological tool which he often diluted with literary fiction—not to say fabrications. The periodical Kryvič,4 which received financial backing from the Lithuanian government, served as the primary outlet for his views. The title of the periodical derived from the name of an ancient tribe for which Lastoŭski insisted using the name Krivččyna rather than Belarus, believing that the latter had been imposed with the introduction of Christianity. In 1927 Lastoŭski also moved to Soviet Belarus. While exiled in Berlin, Ćvikievič wrote a book titled The Revival of Belarus and Poland,5 in which he applied a Marxist analysis to Polish–Belarusian relations during the post-partition period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Ćvikievič wrote his major publication—West-Russianism6—upon his return to his homeland in 1925. The politicians who remained in exile were not as talented as the first two— Lastoŭski and Ćvikievič. In Prague, Piotra Krečeŭski edited and published in 1926 a book on the history, culture and economics of Belarus, entitled Belarus Abroad.7 He also authored the historical poem Rahnieda, devoted to the legendary Polack princess. Also in Prague, Vasil Zacharka wrote The Main Episodes in the Belarusian Movement, although this work remained in manuscript form until the late 1990s.8 The bpr activists did not establish any lasting research institutions abroad nor did they produce any original ideas relating to the study of Belarusian history. Even Lastoŭski’s ideas were merely variations on his earlier themes. The Belarusian historians who did remain abroad did not see the situation as being in any way exceptional, and viewed it as temporary. And temporary it was. Belarusian culture benefited from the situation in Belarusian ssr for quite a long time. During the wave of repressions, however, many of the Belarusian activists who found themselves within the borders of the ussr were murdered, as were both Lastoŭski and Ćvikievič. This significantly hindered the development in exile of creative scholarly research into Belarusian history.

3 4 5 6 7 8

Sienkievič, 1984, 8–11. Kryvič (Kaunas, 1923–1927). Ćvikievič, 1921. Ćvikievič, 1993. Krečeŭskij, 1926. “Galoŭnyja momanty belaruskaga ruchu.” [The Main Episodes in the Belarusian Movement]. Zapisy Belaruskaha instytutu navuki i mastactva 24, 1999.

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The next wave of emigration from the Belarusian ssr (which since 1939 had come to include most Belarusian ethnic territories) came following World War ii as a result of the mass deportations to labor camps under German occupation, the flight to the west of hundreds of thousands of Belarusians active in the nationalist movement, and the exile of those who wanted to escape persecution as class enemies. The eastern fringe of the Białystok region, populated mostly with Belarusians, remained beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. At the end of the twentieth century, the local Belarusian historians would establish their own school of history. But they always had a strong feeling of being on native soil and so it is impossible to consider them as being exiles or a part of a diaspora. The same seems to apply to those who were born before World War ii in the Belarusian territory of Poland and who after the war withdrew more deeply into Poland. Nonetheless, they were in exile in fact. This can be confirmed by the example of the present writer’s own family. To my grandparents and father, the city of Elbląg, where I was born, was a completely strange place. Until 1945 it had been the German city of Elbing. My father continued to dream about returning to Belarus until his death. Thus for people from western Belarus being in post-war Poland was like being in exile. Sometimes they had to hide their real identity, as did Jazep Najdziuk, the author of a school handbook Belarus Yesterday and Today,9 published in Lithuanian Vilnius and later in Minsk under German occupation. Najdziuk spent all his post-war life as Józef Aleksandrowicz in the Polish city of Inowrocław, becoming an eminent local historian. Toward the end of his life he wrote a handbook entitled Let’s Master the History of Belarus,10 which was re-edited many years later by the Belarusian Historical Society in Poland. Another activist from Vilnius in the interwar period was Viktar Jarmalkovič, who also prepared a book, A Brief Outline of the History of Belarus until 1914.11 The most prominent historian of this group is  Jurka Turonak (Jerzy Turonek in Polish), the author of many works on ­twentieth-century Belarusian history, which include his dissertation Belarus Under German Occupation,12 written in the 1980s. This work was very important at the time because it presented a diametrically different viewpoint on this subject from the Soviet interpretation. These historians, however, were 9

10 11 12

Najdziuk, 1940; Najdziuk, 1944 [in fact 1943]. This work was reedited in Minsk in 1993 with a second part (World War ii and after-war period) written by another exile (who lived in the usa), Ivan Kasiak: (Najdziuk & Kasiak, 1993). Najdziuk [Aleksandrowicz], 2010. Jarmołkowicz, 1997. Turonek, 1989.

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educated in pre-war Poland and thus their remaining inside Poland did not move them into a different cultural environment. For them, staying in Poland was not a strange émigré experience. The true émigré experience entered the lives of those Belarusians who found themselves in Germany or in other countries farther away. For them, Belarusian history was a very important part of their identity, and they did much to preserve it and develop it in the hard circumstances of exile. The writing of Belarusian history in dp camps was intensive, if less academic; it took the form of numerous papers, booklets, and leaflets. In the early post wwiiyears, the main center of Belarusian emigration was Munich, apparently because that city housed the headquarters of “Radio Liberty” where some of the Belarusian activists worked. In Munich, Stanislaŭ Stankievič launched the publication of Bac’kauščyna13 a publication that featured popular articles dealing with historical topics. But for the majority of Belarusian exiles, Germany was only a provisional stop. Most of the DPs moved to the usa and other overseas countries. The Institute of Belarusian Culture and Arts was founded in New York in 1951, and in 1952 it launched the publication of the academic journal Zapisy.14 Zapisy used a fundamental approach that was distinct from the Soviet approach to Belarusian history. Regular contributors to the publication included Vitaŭt Tumaš, a doctor by education (pen-name: Symon Braha)15 and Leŭ Akinševič. They were later joined by a group of young Western-educated historians such as Janka Zaprudnik, Paŭla Urban, Vitaŭt and Zora Kipel, and Viktar Sienkievič. The Catholic University of Louvain was especially helpful to Belarusian emigrants in the post-wwii years.16 Its graduates included many of the abovementioned historians who then later continued their education at other universities. Janka Zaprudnik, for example, graduated from the Catholic University of Louvain in 1954, and in 1969 he defended his PhD thesis—The Political Struggle for Belarus in the State Duma, 1906–1917 at the New York University. He later held the position of lecturer in the history of Russia and the ussr at Queens College in New York. Zaprudnik’s most important publication is Belarus: At a Crossroads in History (1993). In this book he originated an organizing concept for the complete history of Belarus, including the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which he interprets as being mostly 13 14 15 16

Bac’kaŭščyna (Munich, 1947–1966). Zapisy Belaruskaha instytutu navuki i mastactva. (New York, 1952–1954; Munich, 1962– 1970; New York 1974–1999. From 2002 the magazine is the joint New York–Minsk project). His selected works were published in Minsk: Tumaš, 2002. See: Zaprudnik, 2002.

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positive in contrast with the prevailing view in Belarusian historiography as a whole. Paradoxically, the historian who rethought the history of Belarus in exile in a modern manner, failed to be recognized in his former homeland.17 Paŭla Urban also studied history at the University of Louvain, where he defended his dissertation, entitled The Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Reign of the Grand Duke Alexander (1492–1506). In the years between 1955 and 1974 he worked at the Institute for Soviet Studies in Munich, and later until his retirement was employed by Radio Liberty. Paŭla Urban published numerous works dealing with Belarusian history, but his book The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic: A Brief Historical Outline (1959) deserves special mention. In this work Urban frequently pointed out the attempts in Soviet historiography to tamper with historical facts, thus misconstruing Belarusian history. Vitaŭt Kipel also studied at the University of Louvain where he earned his PhD in Geology; later, he went on to graduate from Rutgers University in New Jersey. His wife also studied at these universities. For many years, the Kipels worked at the New York Public Library. They published jointly, among others things, a collection of selected materials on the development of Belarusian political views, an overview of the historical background of Belarusian statehood and the establishment of the modern independent Belarusian state.18 Ivan S. Lubachko was the only Belarusian historian of that generation to have lived in America without having studied at Louvain. He graduated from the University of Columbia and later received his PhD from Indiana University. He later taught at Bloomington University, and held the post of Head of the History Department at Murray State University. Lubachko’s major work was devoted to Belarus under Soviet rule.19 Despite its title, the book also discusses briefly the earlier history of Belarus. Unfortunately, a manuscript of his handbook on the complete history of Belarus was left unfinished. In accordance with his testament, the Ivan S. Lubachko Fund was established in 1983, with an  endowment of approximately $65,000. This was the amount that Ivan Lubachko had bequeathed, left following his death six years earlier, to the Belarusian American Youth Organization for the primary purpose of providing young Belarusian students with scholarships. Younger Belarusian historians found themselves in other countries as well and not only the usa. Viktar Sienkievič, for example, graduated from the 17

18 19

His book was quickly translated into Belarusian and edited in Minsk: Zaprudnik, 1996. Nevertheless, it seems that Zaprudnik is known in his native country as an émigré activist than as an historian. Kipel and Kipel, 1988. Lubachko, 1972.

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University of Madrid. He defended a dissertation on the seals of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1958–61 he worked in the Belarusian section of Radio Spain, and afterwards edited the Belarusian Historical Calendar for Radio Liberty. Sienkievič was the main contributor to the military-historical magazine “To Attention,”20 edited in Toronto by Kanstantyn Akula, a World War ii veteran. Jan Sadoŭski graduated both from the University of London and University of Rome in the field of Slavonic studies. He worked in Canada as a Professor of Russian language and literature at Queens College in Kingston, Ontario. He was the author of many works devoted to the history of Belarus and Belarusian literature. An impressive center of Belarusian culture—The Anglo-Belarusian Society—was established in Great Britain in 1954 with the goal of promoting the knowledge of and publishing, exchanging and spreading information about the Belarusian people, their land, history and culture. To advance this goal, in 1965 the Society launched a periodical in English called The Journal of Byelorussian Studies. Each issue of the journal included articles on Belarusian culture, linguistics, history and art, with sections for reviews, a chronicle of current events and a comprehensive bibliography for the previous year. The journal became a forum for intellectual exchange not only for Belarusian but also western, especially British, scholars such as Jim Dingley, Peter Mayo, and Arnold MacMillin, the latter a literary critic and the journalʼs long-time editor-in-chief. Unfortunately, the Journal ceased publication in the middle of the 1980s. To this day no periodical has been able to fill the void left by the Journal as a venue for studies of Belarusian history that was truly international in scope.21 Furthermore, in 1971 the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum was established in London. This institution was linked with the Mission of Belarusian Greek Catholics. Bishop Česlaŭ Sipovič’s and Leŭ Haroška’s private book collections formed the core around which the library’s collection would be built. This center, however, did not produced any notable émigré historian.22 The scholars mentioned so far belong to what could be called a guild of professional historians. Each of these historians worked at a different level of 20 21 22

Zvažaj (Toronto, 1974–1998). In 2013 the magazine was revived under the name The Journal of Belarusian Studies. But it is important to note that the librarian many years’, Father Alexander Nadson, was an author of some works on a history of the Greek-Catholic Church in Belarus.

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professional competence, yet all were aware of the principles of the historian’s craft or with the obligation to establish the objective truth. Such approach to writing history was all the more important, since their polemical writings often addressed historians of the Soviet school who had a very different sense of what historical truth is all about. A unique approach was adopted by Jan Stankievič, Doctor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Prague, who turned to writing history in 1930 when he himself was in his late thirties. Together with Mikola Škialonak and Jazep Najdziuk, who popularized their ideas, Jan Stankievič established a school of historical thinking whose central idea was that old Lithuania was essentially the same as what he considered to be the ethnic territories of Belarus, while the country’s name was forced upon it by the Russian Tsarina Catherine ii and was therefore a leftover from the days of the reigning colonial power. In 1944 Stankievič renewed the activities of the Francis Skaryna Kryvian (Belarusian) Academic Society. In 1949 he moved to the usa, where he published the periodical Vieda. His historical writings were addressed not to professional historians, but to the everyday Belarusians whom he thought had been deprived of their national consciousness and a separate historical identity. The historian Stankievič was close to being a national ideologist, because he was far more interested in nation-building than in looking for the scientific truth.23 In fact, he did not undertake his own historical research or even read historians in foreign languages. He mostly reiterated arguments that had been formed by Paŭla Urban concerning the Slavonic character of medieval Lithuania. On his own, he argued against the Ukrainian point of view on the ethnicity of the people of the Western Palessie region. In his opinion, not only Western Palessie but also Southern Palessie (Ukrainian Polissia) was ethnically Belarusian. Vaclaŭ Panucevič’s position on the question of Lithuania proper was similar to that of Stankievič. Panucevič studied law at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius before World War ii, and after the war settled in Chicago where he published many books and articles on the history of Belarus, including the history of Christianity in that country. His view is exemplified by the title of one of his books: A History of Belarus or Kriviččyna-Lithuania.24 He was also the editor of the magazine Litva.25 Although he did not have a professional historical education, he was a talented researcher and writer. 23 24 25

Bulhakaŭ // Stankevič, 2003. Panucevič, 1965. Litva. Navukovy Časapis (Chicago 1967–1973).

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The point of view used by this group of history writers, absolutely separated it from the Soviet counterpart, and also made dialogue with Lithuanian historians impossible. In fact, none of the Belarusians was looking for such dialogue. Paradoxically, Stankievičʼs mythological interpretation was in fact the only proposition that wound favor in the old homeland after the arrival independence in the 1990s. The viewpoint arrived into a society deprived of knowledge about its history and traumatized by an inferiority complex. In addition, the influence of the Stankievič school was expandedd by its domestic representative, Mikola Jermalovič. Even so, this school of thought had already been formed in the 1930s in Western Belarus, so it could not be regarded as an achievement of émigré historiography. Some Belarusian emigrants had no ambitions as historians—they simply tried to inform the inhabitants of countries where they had settled about Belarusians and their history. One of them was Liavon Rydleŭski, an engineer, who was active in France in the interwar period and who in Paris in 1948 published a booklet entitled Biélorussie aperçu sommaire de lʼHistoire de la Nation biélorussienne et du Mouvement de Libération Nationale (with maps drawn by Uladzimir Šymaniec, also an engineer).26 Next, the Belarusian Association in Argentina published a booklet in 1953 titled Bielorrusia i los Bielorrusos en la Republica Argentina.27 Much later, dissertations by professional historians appeared: Jan Sadoŭski published A History of the Byelorussians in Canada,28 and Vitaǔt Kipel Belarusians in the usa, which was originally written in English but was published only in a Belarusian translation in Minsk.29 It would not be out of place to mention sever other authors and their work. Aŭhien Kalubovič, an eminent politician of both the Belarusian Central Council in Germanoccupied Minsk and the Council of the Belarusian People’s Republic in exile, was the author of several works devoted to the twentieth-century history of Belarus, as well as of a short but very important dissertation ‘Fathers’ of the B.S.S.R. and Their Fate.30 Jurka Vićbič, a writer and journalist, published some articles on the history of anti-Bolshevik military resistance in Belarus. His book on that theme appeared only in 1996.31 A handbook written by Jurka Stankievič under the pen-name P. Rahač in 1968 and entitled A Brief Survey of the History

26 27 28 29 30 31

Rydlevsky, 1948. Bielorrusia y los Bielorrusos en la Republica Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1953). Sadoŭski, 1981. Kipel, 1993. Kalubovič, 1985. Vićbič, 1996.

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of Belarus for Belarusian Supplementary Schools was twice reprinted in 1990, in Białystok and Tallinn.32 In conclusion, post-war Belarusian emigration saw the appearance of a group of historians as well as institutions that helped to organize their work. In  general, Belarusian historians in exile tried to defend a Belarusian point of view on the history of ancient Rusʼ (which meant negation of the ancient ethnic unity with Russians and Ukrainians), insisted on the deep roots of Belarusian statehood (in the early medieval Polack Principality), and defended the dual Belarusian-Lithuanian national character of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, thus emphasizing the self-determination of Belarusians in establishing their own independent state. In the late 1980s, emigration played both the role of a guardian of a national heritage and seerved as the first contact with the West for Belarusian historians from the East, initially from Poland and after that, in the early 1990s, from Belarus. For example, the author of the present essay first travelled to the west as a guest of The Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum in London and was later granted a scholarship from the Ivan S. Lubachko Fund. On the other hand, Belarusian exiles did not manage to establish a scholarly center matching in importance the Ukrainian centers at Harvard University in the usa or at the University of Alberta in Canada. Such centers of Ukrainian studies not only helped to sustain a group of historians and political scientists in the west, but also taught numerous younger researchers from Ukraine how to discuss the problems of the history of their homeland in terms of western historiography. Unfortunately, there was no such transfer of western methodology to the writing of Belarusian history. Nevertheless, it is impossible to discuss in full the history of Belarus and the main problems of Belarusian historiography without taking cognizance of the output of the historians in exile. References Bulhakaŭ, V. (2003). Ad ukladal’nika // Stankevič, J. (2003), Histaryčnyja tvory. [Historical Works]. Mensk. Ćvikievič, A. (1921). Adradženne Belarusi i Pol’šča. [The Revival of Belarus and Poland]. Mensk, Vilnja, Berlin. Ćvikievič, A. (1993). Zapadno–russizm. Narysy z historyi hramadzkaj mys’li ŭ xix i pačatku xx v. [West-Russianism. Drafts about History of Social Thought in the 19th and in the Beginning of the 20th Century]. Mensk. 32

Rahač, 1968.

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Jarmołkowicz, W. (1997). Zarys historii Bialorusi do 1914 [A Brief Outline of the History of Belarus until 1914]. Białystok. Kalubovič, A. (1985). ‘Ajcy’ bssr i ich ljos. Klyŭlend. [‘Fathers’ of the B.S.S.R. and Their Fate]. Diss. Kipel, V. and Z. Kipel (1988). Byelorussian Statehood: Reader and Bibliography. Byelorussian Institute of Arts and Sciences, New York. Kipel, V. (1993). Belarusy ŭ ZŠA. [Belorusians in the usa]. Mensk. Krečeŭskij, P.A. (ed.) (1926). Zamežnaja Belarus’ [Belarus Abroad]. Praga. Lastoŭski, V. [Vlast] (1910). Karotkaja historyja Belarusi z rysunkami. [A Brief History of Belarus, with Illustrations]. Vil’nja. Lubachko, I.S. (1972), Byelorussia under Soviet Rule, 1917–1953. Lexington, Ken. Najdziuk, J. (1940). Bielarus’ učora i siahon’nja. [Belarus Yesterday and Today]. Vil’nja. Najdziuk, J. (1944 [1943]). Belarus’ učora i sjan’nja. [Belarus Yesterday and Today]. Mensk. Najdziuk, J. & Kasiak, I. (1993). Belarus’ učora i sjan’nja. [Belarus Yesterday and Today]. Mensk. Najdziuk,  J. [J. Aleksandrowicz] (2010). Paznavajma historyju Biełarusi. Skrypt-dapamožnik. [Let’s Master the History of Belarus. A Handbook]. Bielastok-­Inaŭrocłaŭ. Panucevič, V. (1965). Z historyi Belarusi abo Kryviččyny-Litvy. [A History of Belarus or Kriviččyna-Lithuania]. Chicago. Rahač, P. [Stankevič] (1968). Karotki ahljad historyi Belarusi dlja belaruskich dapaŭnjal’nych školaŭ. [A Brief Survey of the History of Belarus for Belarusian Supplementary Schools]. Klyŭlend–N’ju-Jork: Belaruskae Kul’turnae Tavarystva “Hrunval’d”. Rydlevsky, L. (1948). Biélorussie aperçu sommaire de l’Histoire de la Nation biélorussienne et du Mouvement de Libération Nationale. Paris. Sadouski, J. (1981). A History of the Byelorussians in Canada. Belleville, Ont. Sienkievič, V., (1984). “Łastoŭski the Historian and his Historical Views.” The Journal of Byelorussian Studies v, no. 3–4, Years xix–xx, London, 8–11. Tumaš, V. (2002), Vybranyja pracy [Selected Works]. Ed. by H. Sahanovič. Mensk. Turonek, J (1989). Białoruś pod okupacją niemiecką. [Belarus Under German Occupation]. Wrocław. Urban, P. (1959). The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic: A Brief Historical Outline. Vićbič, J. (1996), Antybal’šavickija paŭstan’ni i partyzanckaja barac’ba na Belarusi. [AntiBolshevik Military Resistance in Belarus]. New York. Zaprudnik, J. (1996), Belarus’ na histaryčnych skryžavannjach. [Belarus: At a Crossroads in History]. Minsk. Zaprudnik, J. (2002), Dvanaccatka. [The Twelve]. N’ju-Jork–Belastok.

Fr. Prof. Walerian Meysztowicz and the Polish Historical Institute in Rome Mirosław A. Supruniuk The Polish Stephen Báthory University (Pol. Uniwersytet Stefana Batorego, henceforth usb) was founded in 1919 in Vilnius, on the northern border of the Second Polish Republic, as a continuation of the long tradition of Vilnius University (1579–1832). It was one of five Polish state universities in the interwar years, and the only one providing education in nearly all fields of science, including the most important Kremlinology Institute in Europe.1 In September 1939 Vilnius was captured by the Soviet army and by the end of October turned over to the Republic of Lithuania. In December of the same year, the Lithuanian government closed the usb and established a Lithuanian university in its place. The employees of the Polish institution had lost their jobs, often along with their freedom, when the Soviet army entered Vilnius once again in the spring of 1940. The leading professors of Almae Matris Vilnensis were subjected to arrests and deportation deep into the Soviet Union. Many of those who survived never returned to Poland.

Usb Scholarship in Post-War Poland: Current State of Research

The lives of the professors, staff and students of Stephen Báthory University who during World War ii were forced to emigrate have not been subjects of research and detailed academic publications. Czesław Miłosz, who was a student of Vilnius University and became a well-known literary figure, is an exception. There is an extensive amount of publication devoted to the poet, who after his decision to stay in exile, became a professor of Russian and Polish Literature at Berkeley University in California. Apart from a few biographies of several members of the Vilnius University (in exile often referred to as “usbs”2) in 1 The University had four Faculties: Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Faculty of Mathematical and Natural Sciences. The Kremlinology Institute was founded 1930 as The Eastern Europe Research Institute (Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy Europy Wschodniej) and was associated with the University. 2 The list of the scholars originating from Vilnius who stayed in exile is long. Among them one must note: Stanisław Kościałkowski (historian), Fr. Walerian Meysztowicz (theologian and historian), Manfred Kridl (literary critic), Wacław Komarnicki (legal historian), Wiktor Sukiennicki (historian), Cezaria Jędrzejewiczowa (ethnologist), Stanisław Swianiewicz (historian, political scientist), Lucjan Turkowski (ethnologist), Józef Bujnowski (literature critic), © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_009

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b­ iographical dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopedias;3 and articles dealing with organizations, associations and political events, only a few publications deserve mention. Some publications are of special significance, e.g. Czesław Miłosz’s correspondence with Manfred Kridl, English literature professor at usb;4 a monograph on the achievements of Kridl as a literary critic;5 the biography of Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a painter and student at the University;6 a study on the religiousness of Stanisław Kościałkowski,7 and collected articles about Stanisław Swianiewicz.8 It should also be noted that, among the aforementioned, Kridl is the subject of the most numerous publications, especially concerning his life and work during emigration.9 An important reference work is The Lexicon of Polish Culture Abroad since 1939, the first and only volume published in Lublin, in 2000, and edited by Krzysztof Dybciak and Zdzisław Kudelski.10 Also, there are studies pertaining to the activity of associations that united the staff and students of the usb: The Association of Polish NorthEastern Provinces (Związek Ziem Północno-Wschodnich) and the Academic Society of the usb in London (Społeczność Akademicka usb w Londynie).11 Rafał Stobiecki has described at length the output of Polish historiography in exile without devoting much attention to the publishing and lecturing activity of the Academic Society but still reviewing the publications by its members separately.12 Some articles published in the 1940s in Poland need to be mentioned, e.g. those describing the activities of those often arriving from Vilnius in the Near and Middle East via camps and prisons in the Soviet Union.13 A valuable study of this topic was published much later by Jan Draus.14

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14

Józef Trypućko (linguist, bibliographer), Aleksander Blum (historian), Jan Kruszyński (physician), Halina Sukiennicka (lawyer, painter), Stefan Glaser (lawyer), Zbigniew Folejewski (literary critic and linguist), Bogumił Jasinowski (philosophy historian), Jerzy Aleksandrowicz (biologist), Jan Wilczyński (biologist) and Leopold Kielanowski (theatre expert). See Dopierała (ed.), 2003–2005. Miłosz, 2005. Kitab, 2000. Sienkiewicz, 1996. Stachewicz, 2002/2003. Hofman, 2009. Gaziński (ed.), 2010. Kridl Valkenier, 2002; Kola, 2010; Karcz, 2002/2003; Karcz, 2003. Dybciak and Kudelski (eds.), 2000. Wójtowicz, 2001; Supruniuk, 2006. Following articles deal also with the activities of the usbs: Jaworska, 1992, 425–426; Gotowiecki, 2008; Topolska, 2000. About the fate of the usbs after the war see also: Sławińska, 1996. Stobiecki, 2005, 92–93. Machalski, 1948, 257–262; Zajączkowski, 1948, 91–94; Dunajówna, 1947, 148–149. Draus, 1993.

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The works of the usb professors written in Vilnius were rarely reprinted in Poland, and even more rare were reprints of their writings in exile. Before 1990 this happened only sporadically. This gap was marginally filled by samizdat; books (or parts of them) written by Władysław Wielhorski, Wiktor Sukiennicki and Stanisław Swianiewicz15 came out outside the reach of censorship. Finally, in publications devoted to special events and issued by the post-Vilnius and Kresy (the former eastern parts of Poland) inhabitants associations, fragmentary studies relating to Stephen Báthory University, and memoirs and biographies, but these have not been included in the present survey because of their non-academic nature. It would seem that, besides the memoirs of Stanisław Swianiewicz (W cieniu Katynia [In the shadow of Katyn] and Dzieciństwo i młodość [Childhood and youth]), Walerian Meysztowicz’s (Gawędy o czasach i ludziach [Tales of times and people]) and a few samizdat publications from 1976–1989, we can mention only five academic works published in Poland. Three of them are the work of Wacław Komarnicki, and the authors of the other two are Cezaria Jędrzejewiczowa and Stanisław Kościałkowski, respectively. These works are Wacław Komarnicki On the State System and the Constitution and The Polish Political Law (Origin and System) by Komarnicki; both were published by the Publishing House of the Polish Sejm;16 and The Political System of Modern Poland: Origin and System—also authored by Komarnicki, was reprinted by the Publishing House of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.17 Records of the Vilnius Guilds 1495–1759, collected and edited by Henryk Łowmiański in cooperation with Maria Łowmiańska and Stanisław Kościałkowski was published in 15

16 17

W. Wielhorski, Trzy pytania i trzy odpowiedzi. (Prawda o deportacji Polaków pod panowaniem sowieckim), [Three Questions and Three Answers. (The Truth about the Deportation of the Poles under Soviet Rule).] Kraków: [Publisher] Kraków, 1986, 36, [1] p., copy, A-5; by the same author, Wspomnienia z przeżyć w niewoli sowieckiej, [Memories on the Experiences in the Soviet Slavery.] Łódź, Poznań, Toruń, Wrocław: ton Towarzystwo Oświaty Niezależnej, current year [1985], cardboard cover., skrzydeł., [11], 10–140, [3] p., off. from the original., A-6; S. Swianiewicz, Lenin jako ekonomista, [Lenin as an Economist] Poznań: Wyd[awnictwo] Głosy, 1983, 15, [1] p., off. From the mach., A-6; W. Sukiennicki, Pół wieku sowieckiej ‟rewolucji” [Half a Century of the Soviet ‘Revolution’.],n.p. [Szczecin]: Studencka Agencja Wydawnicza saw im. Uniwersytetu Zachodnio-Pomorskiego, curent year [1981], cover, 45, [1] p., off. from the original., A-6; by the same author, Pół wieku sowieckiej “rewolucji”, [Half a Century of the Soviet ‘Revolution’.] n.p. [Kraków]: Wydawnictwo “V” 1984, [2], 45, [1] p., off. from the original., A-6. A small number of texts were published also in un-censored press, see: Kandziora and Szymańska, 1999. Kilian, 2000; Komarnicki, 2008. Komarnicki, 2006.

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Poznań in 2006;18 and, finally, Chain of Tradition: Selected Texts by Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz- Jędrzejewiczowa, selected by Lech Mroz and Anna Zadrożyńska came out in Warsaw in 2005.19 A full bibliography also has to mention the essays by Marian BohuszSzyszko, reprinted in the volume Polish Art in Great Britain; the short articles by Stanisław Kościałkowski written during the war years and printed in Poles in Iran 1942–1945; and the photographs published in the iconographic monograph of the Vilnius University.20 The case of a usb professor, the renowned mathematician Antoni Zygmunt, who since 1940 was lecturing at the Massachusetts Institute of Techology and other American universities and whose works have been reprinted in Poland, is difficult to describe and requires a separate study. One can note that Manfred Kridl (mentioned earlier), some of whose works were printed in Poland before 1989, was a similarly complex case.

usb Historians in Exile

The academics from Vilnius, especially those coming from the Stephen Báthory University, comprised quite a significant group among Polish historians in exile. Among them, the person perceived by all to be the most outstanding was Stanisław Kościałkowski (1881–1960), an historian, academic teacher, a member of the secret Organizational Committee of Vilnius University in 1918, from 1919 a substitute professor (in later years a professor) of Polish history in the usb, and co-creator of the Vilnius Ateneum (Ateneum Wileńskie). In the years from 1939 to 1941, he took part in secret teaching activities in Vilnius. In 1941 he was arrested and deported deep inside the Soviet Union; freed later as a result of the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement in July 1941, he was evacuated to Iran where he remained until 1945 and co-created a scientific institute called Etudes Iraniennes. He then moved to Beirut, where he became the founder and director of the Polish Scientific Institute. In 1950 he relocated to London to become a lecturer of the Polish University Abroad. Kościałkowski was the author of the 1970/71 published monumental biography on the Treasurer of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Antoni Tyzenhauz, a pioneer of industrialization and agrarian reforms in the eighteenth century; Kościałkowski had been gathering materials for this work since the end of the nineteenth century. He also published, among other works, From Studies on the History of Royal Economics in Lithuania 18 19 20

Łowmiański, 2006. Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa, 2005. Bohusz-Szyszko, 2006; Kościałkowski, 2002; Supruniuk and Supruniuk, 2009.

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(1915); From the History of the Lithuanian Revenue Commission (1924); and History Methodology. An introduction to Historical Studies (1954).21 Professor Władysław Wielhorski (1885–1967), was few years younger, an economist, political scientist, and historian of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Since 1930 he was the director of the Eastern Europe Research Institute in Vilnius that was connected to the usb, and director as well of the School of Political Science in the Institute (since 1931). He was also a member of the Polish Parliament (1935–1939). His research was devoted to Lithuania and Polish-Lithuanian relations. After World War ii while in exile he authored among other works Polska a Litwa. Stosunki wzajemne w biegu dziejów (Poland and Lithuania. Mutual Relations in the Flow of History [1947]) and Ustrój agrarny zsrr (The Agrarian System of the Soviet Union [1949]).22 Among the younger historians, graduates and students of the Vilnius University there was also Stanisław Swianiewicz (1899–1997), a legal historian, Kremlinologist, and economist; in the years 1924–1939 he was a lecturer and professor of historical economy at the usb and the Vilnius School of Political Science (Polska Szkoła Nauk Politycznych w Wilnie). After being freed from a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp in Kozielsk (where he was imprisoned from 1939 to 1941), he worked his way to the Near East and after the war settled in London, working as a lecturer in higher education and delivering lectures in Indonesia, usa and Canada. He published Polityka gospodarcza Niemiec hitlerowskich (The Economic policy of Nazi Gemany) in 1938; Forced Labour and Economic Development in 1965, and W cieniu Katynia (In the Shadow of Katyn) in 1976.23 Wiktor Sukiennicki (1901–1983) was a legal historian, political scientist, and an economist; from 1930 on he was a deputy professor at the usb and chief of the legal-political faculty at the Eastern Europe Research Institute. During the war he participated in secret teachings of students. In mid-June, 1941, he was arrested by the nkvd and imprisoned in a camp in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Released due to an amnesty, from January to September 1942 he worked in the Polish Embassy in Kuybyshev. By the end of 1942 he moved to Teheran, where along with Kościałkowski he founded the institute Etudes Iraniennes and a journal, also called Etudes Iraniennes (1943–1945). In 1943 he made his way to London and until 1947 lectured at the Polish Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. He was a co-founder of the London School of Political and Social Sciences. In 1951 he published Współczesne idee polityczne i społeczne (Modern Political and Social Ideas), and in 1954 Współczesne ruchy polityczne i społeczne (Modern 21 22 23

Filipowicz, 2000. See Mękarski, 1967, 27–28. See: Gaziński, 2010.

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Political and Social Movements). In 1959 he moved to the United States where he began research at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on the history of Eastern Europe. As a result, in 1984 there appeared East Central Europe in War World i. From Foreign Domination to National Freedom. He established a cooperative relationship with the Institut Littéraire in Paris, publishing there, among other things, his memoirs from Vilnius, Legenda i rzeczywistość (The Legend and Reality) in 1967 and the Biała księga (White Papers), which dealt with Soviet policy towards Poland in the years from 1914 to 1941.24 Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay Ehrenkreutzowa Jędrzejewiczowa (1885– 1967) was connected to the same circle of historians. She, however, was an ethnologist, a professor and head of the ethnology faculty at usb in Vilnius (1922–1934) and the School of Political Science. She also worked cooperatively with the anthropology and ethnography commission at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and started the Ethnographic Museum at ubs. Her publications from that period included, in 1929, Ze studiów nad obrzędami weselnymi ludu polskiego (Studies of the Nuptiality Customs of the Polish People). During the war she resided in Palestine, but in 1947 moved to London. She co-­organized the Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad (Polskie Towarzystwo Naukowe na Obczyźnie) and was also one of the originators of the Polish University Abroad, becoming its rector from 1959 to 1967. In addition, she was a member of the Société Historique et Littéraire Polonaise in Paris and of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Her published work during exile included Etnografia ziemi wileńskiej. Grupy etniczne na ziemiach W. Ks. Litewskiego i trzy narody (Etnography of the Vilnius Land. Ethnology of the Vilnius Area. Ethnical Groups in the Great Duchy of Lithuania and Three Nations), which appeared in 1953.25

Fr. Walerian Meysztowicz—between Vilnius and Rome “Theological Studies”

Within the context of the work of Polish historians from Vilnius with connections to usb, the writings of Father Professor Walerian Meysztowicz deserves special attention. He was a graduate of the usb in Vilnius and of the Papal Pontificia Universitá Lateranense (Institutum Utriusque Iuris) in Rome, a professor at the Theological Seminary in Vilnius and a canon law lecturer at the 24 25

See. Habielski, 2000; Kornat, 2008, 396–401. See.: “Śp. Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay Jędrzejewiczowa.” Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie xvii, 1966–67, London 1967, 19–21; Draus, 1999.

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Theological Faculty of the usb. In 1932 he was appointed as solicitor to the Polish Embassy in Vatican, during the time Władysław Skrzyński was the ambassador. Work in the diplomatic service and the opportunity of using church archives, in addition to considerable self-discipline, allowed him to ­finish research on the publication entitled Dobra kościelne jako przedmiot uprawnień w prawie Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego (Church Estates as a Subject of Rights in the Legislation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), which was published in Vilnius in 1935. In 1936, having already become a domestic prelate in 1934, he was appointed professor of canon law at the Theological Faculty of the usb. He did not resign from his job as a solicitor and was able to combine those two positions until December 1939, when the University was closed. In 1940 Meysztowicz returned from Vilnius to Rome, traveling through Kaunas, Sweden and England. During the entire war, he resided together with Ambassador Kazimierz Papée in the Vatican, where he devoted much time to his studies in the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Vatican Archives, at the same time cooperating with Stanisław L. Janikowski, the representative of the Polish Exile Government in Rome, who himself was working on a publication about Nicolaus Copernicus.26 In 1940, Fr. Meysztowicz assumed that the takeover of Vilnius by the Lithuanian authorities and the closing of the usb would be temporary. Wanting to continue university-related research activity, he brought to life a “usb Theology Institute” in exile and carried on with the publication of the series “Theological Studies” (Studia Teologiczne) that earlier had appeared in Vilnius, starting in 1932. In Vilnius, the series had been associated with the Faculty of Theology and had been edited by Fr. Czesław Falkowski; it contained primarily the works of Faculty. Ten volumes had been published before 1939, among them the aforementioned dissertation by Fr. Meysztowicz.27 26 27

Meysztowicz, 1993, 327–328; Supruniuk, M.A., 2011, 9–13; Krahel, 1995, 387–390. Vol. 1: Leon Puciata, Pierworodny w teologii św. Anzelma. [The Firstborn in the Theology of St. Anselm] Vilnius 1932; Vol. 2: Józef Zdanowicz, Sarbiewski na tle kontrowersyj teologicznych swojego wieku. [Sarbiewski and the Theological Controversies of his Century.] Vilnius 1932; Vol. 3: Paweł Nowicki, Wzdłużenie przedakcentowe w języku hebrajskim. [The Prolongation Afore the Accent in the Hebrew Language] Vilnius 1933; Vol. 4: Kazimierz Gieczys, Bractwa trzeźwości w diecezji żmudzkiej w latach 1858–1864.[Soberness Brotherhoods in the Diosese of Shamaiten] Vilnius 1935; Vol. 6: Tadeusz Sieczka, Kult obrazu N. Marji Panny Ostrobramskiej w dziejowym rozwoju. [The Worship of the Holy Mother of Ostrabrama in Vilnius in its Historical Development.] Vilnius 1934; Vol 7: Wiktor Worotyński, Seminarjum Główne w Wilnie: powstanie i pierwszy okres dziejów (1803–1816). [The Main Seminary in Vilnius: The Foundation and the First Period of History (1803–1816).] Vilnius 1935; Vol. 8: Walerian Meysztowicz, Dobra kościelne jako przedmiot

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In continuing the series in exile, Fr. Meysztowicz had to take into account not only war-time conditions and the complete lack of cooperation of those in power in Vilnius, but also the uncertainties surrounding research and the probable future of Vilnius University and theological studies in post-war Poland. Nevertheless, during the time period between 1943 and 1947, he succeeded in publishing in the Vatican the next four volumes of the series (the last volume as a mimeographed script). He retained the Polish name of the series and attached the whole series to the now non-existing usb. He also retained the earlier design of the series, its format, print-face, the light-brown cover, the drawing of the faculty’s emblem at the cover’s center—the torch of faith alit in the darkness—and its motto non exstinguetur (Eng. it shall not go out).28 The first of these four volumes was devoted to the memory of Fr. Leon Puciata, a professor at the Theology Faculty of the usb, who had died during the German occupation of Poland. There was a short introduction in which Fr. Meysztowicz presented the outline of the Polish studies that had been carried out in the Vatican Archives since the sixteenth century. The author noted that the holdings concerning Poland, which were stored in the Archivo Secreto Vaticano are of great importance not only to the history of the Church in Poland, but also to the Church in general and to the countries bordering Poland. In 1945, while reviewing the first two volumes of the “Studies” published in the Vatican, Stanisław Kościałkowski noted: Here are two publications, not too lengthy, but all the more significant in their meaning, because they occupy a special place in the otherwise modest output of our publications abroad that serve not propaganda,

28

uprawnień w prawie W. Ks. Litewskiego. [The Church Property as an Object of Authorization in the Law of the Great Duchy of Lithuania.] Vilnius 1935; Vol. 9: Leonard Pukianiec, Sobieski a Stolica Apostolska na tle wojny z Turcją. (1683–1684) [Sobieski and the Apostolic See at the Time of the War with Turkey (1683–1684)]. Vilnius 1937; Vol. 10: Wiktor Worotyński, Seminarjum Główne w Wilnie: drugi okres dziejów i zniesienie (1816–1833). [Main Seminary in Vilnius: the Second Period of History and its Dissolution] Vilnius 1938. The four new volumes were: Vol. 11: Walerian Meysztowicz, Repertorium bibliographicum pro rebus polonicis Archivi Secreti Vaticani. Vaticani 1943; Vol. 12: Walerian Meysztowicz, De Archivo Nuntiaturae Varsaviensis quod nunc in Archivo Secreto Vaticano servantur. Vaticani 1944; Vol. 13: Petrus Savio, De actis Nuntiaturae Poloniae quae partem Archivi secretariatus status constituunt. Vaticani 1947; Vol. 14: Walerian Meysztowicz, Prospectica descriptio Archivi Secreti Vaticani(Ed. chirotipica) [Vaticani approx.1957]. The information about the 14th volume of the “Studies” may be found in the announcement on the p. iv of the cover of Antemurale 1954 vol. i, and it is noticed again as already published on the cover of vol. iv of Antemurale 1958.

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politics or popularization, but research! Their very appearance in print in excellent but easy to read Latin, the classic academic Esperanto of Universae Reipublicae litterarum, renders them unique but they are not designed for just anybody. The very fact of their coming out in print in a form accessible to the international researcher forum, proves, far better than many other publications, the vivacity of our culture; and their seriousness does a favor not only to research, but also to their Polish substance…The Alma Mater Vilensis along with its Theological Faculty ceased to exist for the second time in history on the 15th of December 1939, and was replaced by an institution foreign in both radition and spirit. Thanks to Fr. Professor Meysztowicz the tradition of the Stephen Báthory University and its Theology remains visible from the Eternal City, in spite of everything and of everybody.29 In the introduction to the thirteenth volume of “Studies,” the publisher has written: “A belli initio, ex quo Studia Theologica Universitatis Bathoreae Vilnensis, e Vilna exsules, Romae eduntur, hoc tertium est volumen a nobis in lucem datum.” A year later, Wiktor Sukiennicki, recalling the editorial work of the “Studies” called it an anticipation of the mission of the academic community and a fulfillment of the most important assignment of its statute, namely, to testify to the world that “the Alma Mater Vilnensis still exists and is expanding its research and cultural activity by many means.”30 Another reviewer of the “Studies,” Walerian Charkiewicz, took notice of the institutional continuity that was not merely symbolic, but was confirmed by the publications appearing with the insignia of the usb. The reviewer acknowledged the fact that Fr. Meysztowicz established the series with his own money. And he added: Today the Stephen Báthory University is once again closed. The Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń is its continuation, though a considerable group of professors from Vilnius have found their way to the University of Łódź. The new conditions created new tasks, and required new forms of functioning. Where are the Humanities of Vilnius University with their journals Ateneum Wileńskie, Prace Polonistyczne, Alma Mater Vilensis…? Where are the Faculties of Law, Natural Sciences, Medicine, etc.? You need a skillful eye and a watchful heart in order to be able to identify the specific Vilnius part in the mainstream of contemporary Poland, that mainstream being foreign to its nature and imposed on this country by its 29 30

Kościałkowski, 1945. Sukiennicki, 1949, 19.

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enemy. At least one Faculty remains visible—the Theological Faculty of the Stephen Báthory University. … A group of theologians from Vilnius, from the usb under the leadership of Fr. Dean professor doctor Czesław Falkowski is still active within the framework of the Metropolitan Seminary in Białystok. The Theological Studies is still being printed… but outside Poland. … The Theological Faculty of the usb, which persists and fights on thanks to the efforts of its professors and students provides an excellent example of a collective action by people who share one heart and will—a pure, noble heart and an unshaken, adamant will.31 In reviewing the three volumes of Theological Studies, Walerian Charkiewicz took the opportunity of characterizing the work of Fr. W. Meysztowicz in general. It should be remembered that the text was published in 1948: The work of Fr. Professor Walerian Meysztowicz constitutes activity of great value to the nation and its culture. It is part of the struggle for freedom of Polish thought and spirit in its noblest form. It is the work of construction during the strongest tempest that is dominated by destruction and attempts to destroy everything that stands on the foundation of Christian culture. It is also an expression of the most exalted and perfect plan of the Polish community in exile: when the country is enslaved, you are expected to help by participating in the struggle, even in a small way and enduring all hardship. The reward for that shall be a sense that one’s duty has been well-executed.32 It is easy to notice that the subject matter of the last three volumes of the series differed from the earlier publications. The ones published in Vilnius were academic dissertations, but the new books, compiled in the Vatican, discussed the sources of the history of the Catholic Church in Poland in the deposits in the Archivo Secreto Vaticano. It appears that at that time Meysztowicz was already pursuing the goal of creating a way of publishing historical sources, a goal that eventually was met in 1960 when he founded the Elementa ad fontium editions.

Polish Students in Italy

Until 1944 Fr. Meysztowicz could count on the help of only his friends in the Polish Embassy and of the Polish priests residing in the Vatican City. But along 31 Charkiewicz, 1948. 32 Ibid.

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with the liberation of Italy and the presence on the peninsula of the Polish army and units of the Polish Government in Exile, many persons from the ii Polish Corps, those newly freed from the prisoners-of-war camps, as well as fugitives from Poland all came to Rome. Among them were many young people. In the short post-war period between the surrender of Italy and the evacuation of Polish troops and the civilian infrastructure of the ii Polish Corps, Italian universities and technical schools, especially in Rome, admitted approximately 1350 Polish students. These were soldiers detailed to university study by the military authorities (as was being done elsewhere, e.g. in Lebanon). The students were under the care of the ii Corps Education Department, headed by Col. Professor doctor Jerzy Aleksandrowicz, who had been associated with the usb. Due to his initiative, the students of the Humanities Faculty (Facoltá di Lettere e Filosofia) of the University in Rome were able to attend lectures on Polish culture by Prof. Henryk Paszkiewicz. The lectures had an audience of approximately thirty enrolled and non-enrolled students and were held in Polish centers and private apartments. The lectures and seminars were led by, among others, Prof. Karolina Lanckorońska (history of Polish art), prof. Giovanni Maver (Polish literature), Fr. Prof. W. Meysztowicz (history of the church in Poland) and Prof. H. Paszkiewicz (history of Poland). The studies of these students in Italian institutions, however, were interrupted in 1946 when the Polish army was moved to Great Britain. Only about 180 students, who had a year left until graduation were permitted to remain by the British military authorities, and were provided with material aid.33 Fr. Meysztowicz was not only part of the team assigned to take care of this remainder, but was personally involved in organizing their stay in the hard post-war years. He looked after the law students, giving seminars about canon law, criminal law and civil law.34 Among the refugees who found themselves on the Italian peninsula after the war were a large number of civilians and soldiers from eastern of Poland— Vilnius and Lviv—who had experienced deportation and the Soviet gulag. It was they who in 1946 in Rome founded an Eastern Borders Association (Związek Ziem Wschodnich) as a branch of the association that had been operating since 1942 in Great Britain and contained two regional groupings— north-eastern and south-eastern. Despite the great number of Poles in Italy, the Italian branch, called Italy, remained undivided.35 During a period of rapid development, these associations had a network of sixty local organizations and circles around the entire world with some thirty-four thousand

33 34 35

Sulimirski, 1955, 9; Supruniuk, A., 2010, 317–321; Lewicki, 1996, 38. Szczepanik, 2000, 88. Gotowiecki, 2008, 79.

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­members.36 Fr. Meysztowicz, who was associated with Vilnius, was one of the founding members of the Italian branch and the signatory of all its documents. He  was also a member of the first board of directors.37 When after the Yalta Conference it became clear that the Polish border would run along the Curzon Line, thus removing the eastern Polish territories from the country, Meysztowicz, together with the Ambassador Kazimierz Papée and friends, among them Stanisław Janikowski, the representative of the government at Quirinal Hill, intended to offer General Władysław Anders, the commander of the ii Polish Corps, support for political actions aimed at the regaining of independence and questioning submission to British authorities.38 During the year from 1945 to 1946 Fr. Meysztowicz published a daily bulletin, Foglietti Verdi, in Italian which was probably aimed at the citizens of Rome.39 He was also the president of the Refugee Care Committee in Italy.40

The Polish Historical Institute in Rome and Its Publications

Meysztowicz was first of all a scholar, and the urge to carry out research ­dictated very much his organizational activities in Rome. On the 10 November 1945, motivated by optimism about the large number of Poles in Italy and by  an  interest in Italian archival documents on the history of Poland, Fr W. Meysztowicz, Karolina Lanckorońska, Stanisław Biegański, Józef Michałowski and Henryk Paszkiewicz, during a meeting at the Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences,41 established in Rome the Polish Historical Institute (Polski Instytut Historyczny, henceforth pih), with its headquarters at Via degli Scipioni 284.42 The actual creator of the Institute was Fr Meysztowicz;43 his

36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43

Wójtowicz, 2001, 510. Gotowiecki, 2008, 80. Meysztowicz, 1993, 347. Kowalik, 1976, 173. Szczepanik, 2000, 249; Szczepanik, 2006. The Polish Library in Rome (Biblioteka Polska w Rzymie, Biblioteca Polacca di Roma) was founded 1927 with count Józef Michałowski as its donator and director, at the same time as the Research Center of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Stacja Naukowa Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, pau). 1957 it came under the auspices of the in the communist Poland newly founded Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk, pan). It later moved to via Virginio Orsini 19. Karolina Lanckorońska emphasized the crucial role of Meysztowicz: Lanckorońska, 1982– 1983, 220.

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central role in its creation and organization stressed by K. Lanckorońska.44 She also authored a short account of the history of the Institute.45 The main task of this new institution was support of studies based on archival sources available in Italy, research work of all kind, and publication of the result. At the start there was also the thought of support for lectures, conferences and activities featuring international cooperation. Lists of lectures in the bulletins of the organization and several issues of Antemurale46 are clear evidence of such intentions. Generally, research, regular meetings and publications coincided with the interests of the Institute’s staff. Some of the lectures, meetings and conferences organized outside the Institute attracted a body of international historians, but the Institute staff consisted mostly of Polish scholars working and living in Italy. The Institute was run by Fr. Meysztowicz, Fr. Józef Warszawski and Piotr Naruszewicz—and his deputies Stanisław Jezierski (a secretary) and Władysław Kujawski (an editor). Fr. Meysztowicz was the head of the Institute from the very beginning until 1981. Thereafter, until his death in May 1982 his title was honorary.47 The Institute’s own publication to appear first was the irregular bulletin, in Latin, entitled Relationes Instituti Historici Polonici Romae, which published information on current events such as pending lectures, conferences and publications and also summarized the theses of the lectures that had taken place. The logo of the Institute—an olive lamp hanging on a chain, and its motto— Non exstinguetur (It shall not go out)—appeared in the heading of the bulletin. Both the logo and the motto were copied from the imagery of the Theological Faculty of the usb (designed by Ferdynand Ruszczyc) and were meant to emphasize the continuity of the non-existing university—the place from which Meysztowicz had come.48 In 1954 the Institute began publishing the academic journal entitled Antemurale, using the same logo and motto. Antemurale reveals the amazing variety of topics with which the Institute was concerned. The dominants subjects concerned the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its relationship to the Christian world, in time frame from the early middle ages 44 45 46 47

48

Lanckorońska, 2006, 110. Kwiatkowska, 2006. Comp. to e.g. Meysztowicz, 1954. Topolska, 1995, 493–497. The names of the members of the Institutes board were printed in Antemurale (since 1954), and also each year in Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie (since 1952), published in London, and also in Rocznik Polonii. See: Supruniuk and Supruniuk, 2009, xx—there a photography of the Rector’s chain with the symbols of the faculties.

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up to the eighteenth century. Studies of more recent history—the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—and subjects not directly concerning history (e.g. linguistics, philosophy and culture) appeared rarely. Fr. Meysztowicz aimed at establishing a close relationship between the Institute and the Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad in London (Polskie Towarzystwo Naukowe na Obczyźnie, henceforth ptno), of which he was a member. When in the early 1960s the Society faced financial problems and was unable to publish the works of its members, he provided them an opportunity to publish in Antemurale, which at that time was financed by the De Brzezie Lanckoroński Foundation. This greatly expanded the journal’s content with literary studies. The tenth issue (1966) of Antemurale 1966 consisted solely of articles on Polish studies submitted by members of the Polish Society.49 This connection, however, resulted in a loss of certain amount of independence. Despite that, the periodical remained the place for detailed reports on the activities of the Institute even when it came to be published jointly with the Polish Society. Antemurale’s editorial staff, led by Meysztowicz, was able to arouse the interest of non-Polish scholars, who supported the small staff of the Institute with the submitted publications of their own.50 Antemurale continued to appear in print until the death of its founder and editor; issues 26 and 27 to 28 were published shortly after his death in 1983 and 1985. Knowledge obtained about the archival and library collections in Italy and elsewhere in Europe led the Institute to plan a series of publications consisting exclusively of editions of primary historical sources. In 1956, in a forum of the Institute, Fr. Meysztowicz delivered a lecture entitled “On the Subject of Publishing Polonica Found Abroad.”51 Four years later in 1960, the Institute initiated the series entitled Elementa ad fontium editiones, consisting of consecutive compilations of heretofore unknown historical sources about the history of the Polish territories dating from the early middle ages until the eighteenth century. Just as the other publications of the Institute, the Elementa were decorated with the familiar motto and emblem, symbolically underlining the ­continuity of the publications of the Theological Faculty. The first volume contained Polonica ex libris “Obligationum et solutinum” Camerae apostolice ab 49 50

Portalski, 2009, 162. E.g. Lájos Pásztor, Luis Ferrand De Almeida, Aloysius L. Tăutu, Johannes B. Bičiūnas, Arnold Spekke, Orest Kupranec’. See also: Danilewicz Zielińska, 1995. 51 “Przegląd działalności naukowej towarzystw naukowych i instytucji, oraz innych placówek polskich na obczyźnie 1956–1957” [A Survey of the Activities of Scientific Associations and other Polish Institutions Abroad 1956–1957]. Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie vii, 1956–57, Londyn 1957, 127–128.

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A. 1373, prepared for print by Jan Lisowski; the second the “Liber disparata antiqua continens”. Alexandro Masoviensi episcopo Tridentino dicatus, edited by Edmund Winkler. In subsequent volumes, readers were given access to sources on Polish history found in the Italian archives in the Vatican, Trento, Parma, Brisighella, Aquilia, and Florence; but also in collections in Great Britain (British Museum), Spain (National Archives), and Denmark (Royal Archives). In the recent years there have appeared sources from Germany, particularly from Berlin where the archives from Königsberg are located. In Rome, starting in 1954, there appeared a yearbook entitled Sacrum Poloniae Millennium, containing, as the subtitle suggested, “Dissertations– sketches–historical materials.” It published articles in Polish as well. The publisher of the yearbook was the Roman Committee (Komitet Rzymski) led by Bishop Józef Gawlina, but among the authors of the yearbook there were also to be found members of the Institute. The range of the subject matters of Sacrum Poloniae was slightly more inclusive than that of Antemurale, covering theological, historical, and literary issues; the latter, however, were dealt with in a religious context. Chronologically, the span of articles reached from the middle ages until the first half of the nineteenth century. Twelve volumes of the yearbook appeared, and the last one, in 1966, included a bibliography of the contents of all the volumes. Fr. Meysztowicz was the author of several sketches in Polish published in Sacrum Poloniae, but, most importantly, he was the chief editor. The main purpose of the Polish Historical Institute in Rome was to deepen knowledge about Poland and disseminate that knowledge among international scholars. The staff and collaborators of the Institute were often hired from institutions and institutes of higher education (Italian, German, British, French and Swiss) and frequently belonged to learned societies that brought scholars together. Fr. Meysztowicz himself remained a participant in various Polish and Polish-British institutions created in exile since 1950. He was an active corresponding member of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in the Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad, located in London.52 He participated in its activities, publications and congresses, such as jointly produced book on Adam Mickiewicz53 and the 1970 Polish Science and Culture Congress Abroad, which took place on the twentieth anniversary of the Polish Society’s founding.54 52 53 54

Portalski, 2009, 21. Adam Mickiewicz. Księga w stulecie zgonu (1855–1955), [Adam Mickiewicz. Commemorative Book due to Hundred Years since his Death (1855–1955).] Londyn 1958, 539. Portalski, 2009, 163.

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The Tenth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome

The most significant event in the first decade of Institute’s existence was its participation in the Tenth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome from September 2 to 11, 1955. Polish historians in exile had already taken part in a Ninth Congress in Paris, but it was the event in Rome that revealed the full organizational and scientific potential of Polish scholars outside Poland. The Institute was responsible for the participation of exile Polish historians at the Rome Congress. Already in 1954, the Institute had been asked by the Polish Historical Society in Exile to represent the Polish historians in negotiations with the Comité International des Sciences Historiques in Paris and the Giunta Centrale per gli Studi Storici in Rome. The biggest obstacle was the need to convince the organizers that Polish science in exile was a significant part of the total scientific achievements of Polish historians and therefore a legitimate claimant of an official invitation to the Congress. The Comité International recognized the official character of the delegates from the Polish Historical Society in Exile and allotted them seven time slots for their papers. Not all of the invited historians attended the congress, however. Papers were delivered by Oskar Halecki (“Rome and the Eastern Europe after the Council of Trent”), Leon Koczy (“The Holy Roman Empire and Poland”), Marian Kukiel (“Probleme des guerres d’insurrection au xix siecle”55) and Fr. W. Meysztowicz (“Les duchess de Turov et l’union de l’église ruthène avec Rome au xi siècle”). In addition, Wacław Lednicki from the University of California, Jakub Sobieski from Brussels56 and Władysław Kujawski from the Polish Historical Institute in Rome57 participated in the event. The Polish delegates also submitted twentytwo interventions in the plenary session. The Institute also issued Relationes— a special booklet for the Polish lecturers and participants, which included a  register of all the Polish lectures and as well as those concerning Poland, the addresses in Rome of the Polish participants, and other essential information. In addition, on the opening day of the Congress a supplementary issue 55 “Przegląd działalności naukowej towarzystw naukowych i instytucji, oraz innych placówek polskich na obczyźnie 1955–1956.” [A Survey of the Activities of Scientific Associations and other Polish Institutions Abroad 1955–1956]. Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie vi, 1955–56, Londyn 1956, 123. 56 Jakub Sobieski was member of staff of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Belgium, author of Jean de Pologne à Louvain, 1253.—Note historique en marge des relations ­flamando-polonaises an Moyen Age. Bruxelles 1950. 57 “De parte quam Societas Polonica Historica in Exteris in X Congressu Internationali Scientiarum Historicarum Romae diebus 2–11 sept. 1955 habuti.” Antemurale iii, 1956, 151–153.

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of  Antemurale appeared with the full texts of the papers of the Polish ­participants—Halecki, Koczy, Kukiel and Meysztowicz—as well as short sketches by Józef Jasnowski (“Problems of the Frontiers with the Steppes of the North Black Sea”), Leon Koczy (“Compte-rendu of Henryk Paszkiewicz The Origin of Russia”), the document Manuscriptum Gertrudae filiae Mesconis ii Regis Poloniae prepared for print by Fr. W. Meysztowicz, and a report on the activities of the Institute for the years 1954–55. The volume was presented to Pope Pius xii during an audience held for the participants of the Congress and also at the plenary session on the opening day of the Congress. The Institute also prepared an exhibit of Polish historical books published in exile, especially those written by the members of the Polish Historical Society Abroad, and this became part of the Congress’ general exhibition of historical books for the time period 1945–1955. The Polish component was accompanied by a catalogue of the exhibited books entitled Elenchus operum quae a Societate Historica Polonica in exteris exhibita sunt in x. Congressu Internationali Scientiarum Historicarum Romae.58 The Institute in Rome also participated in the organization of the next Historical Congress in 1960 in Stockholm, though this time Polish representation was smaller.59 It also needs to be noted that members of the Institute actively participated in all later Historical Congresses.

The Academic Community of the usb in London

The idea of founding a Society that would unite all the expatriates, teaching staff, graduates and for students of the university in Vilnius that had been closed in 1939, and at the same time creating a symbol of continuity of the tradition of the school came from Wiktor Sukiennicki, a distinguished lawyer and economist, during a meeting of the university’s professors and graduates in London in 1947. He invoked the idea that the university consists of people and not of buildings. He observed that: “An institution may be destroyed, 58 “Przegląd działalności naukowej towarzystw naukowych i instytucji, oraz innych placówek polskich na obczyźnie 1955–1956.” [A Survey of the Activities of Scientific Associations and other Polish Institutions Abroad 1955–1956]. Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie vi, 1955–56, Londyn 1956, 123–124. 59 “Przegląd działalności naukowej towarzystw naukowych i instytucji, oraz innych placówek polskich na obczyźnie 1955–1956.” [A Survey of the Activities of Scientific Associations and other Polish Institutions Abroad 1955–1956]. Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie vi, 1955–56, Londyn 1956, 128.

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a library or sanctum plundered, and the people involved may be killed. While they’re still alive, however, the established bonds persist. And as the people back in the [home] country are unable to freely express their thoughts and feelings, we, the ones living in the free world, have a responsibility to reveal the truth.”60 The new association, which was actually a quasi-university with the name “The Academic Community of the usb in London” (Społeczność Akademicka usb w Londynie) was finally created in 1947, and in 1948 it began its lectures and organizational activities. The Academic Community created an administrative body as a stand-in for the erstwhile authorities of the usb: this was named the Academic Community Council and was led by a Senior who was, in a sense, a Rector. The appointment of a Senior (the oldest professor) followed the seniority principle. The first Senior in 1947 was one of the most renowned of the Polish exile historians, professor Stanisław Kościałkowski, who at the time was still residing (until 1950) in Beirut. Because they had had the titles of “professor” or “lecturer” at  the usb, professors Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutzowa Jędrzejewiczowa, Zygmunt Jundziłł,61 Wiktor Sukiennicki, Stanisław Swian­ iewicz and Władysław Wielhorski became a part of the Council. The position of the Senior was a lifelong one. In 1960, after the death of Kościałkowski, the office went to Cezaria Jędrzejewiczowa, and after her, in 1967, to Fr. Prof. W. Meysztowicz. The last Senior and head of the Academic Council was Prof. Stanisław Swianiewicz. The Community was dissolved in 1983. Fr. Meysztowicz was in charge of the association for several years. Because he permanently lived in Rome, he could fulfill his office only by correspondence and rarely visiting London; this, however, appears to have had no influence on the course of association’s development. During the period of his stewardship, the Academic Society mostly manifested its identity and fostered 60

61

Podoski, 1987, 19; Blum, 1987, 15–17. In a sketch by M. B. Piechowiak-Topolska there is an information that the first meetings of the usb pupils and professors took place in 1941; this information could not be confirmed: Piechowiak-Topolska, 2000, 51. Zygmunt Jundziłł (1880–1953), barrister, lawyer, historian, graduate of law—a doctorate at the usb in Vilnius (1925). Associate professor of civil law at the usb. Member of the Polish Parliament (1930–1935) and senator. Since 1947 in London. Member of the Academic Society Council of the usb, member of the Main Council of Association of NorthernEastern Lands in London, member of the Main Revision Commission of National Treasure. He gave lectures as a member of the Academic Society and published studies and articles (e.g. Ustrój polityczny imperium rosyjskiego [The Political System of the Russian Empire], 1949) in exile-press: Wiadomości, Kultura, Od A do Z. He was also teaching at the Polish Academy Abroad. See: Dopierała (ed.) (2003–2005). vol. 2; Kościałkowski, 1953, 386.

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the memory of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and the University in Vilnius, and these activities were correlated with Meysztowicz’s academic interests. His age and research activities precluded the Senior from participating in Society’s ceremonies in the academic year 1969/70 in London, particularly on 11 October 1969, the exact day of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Stephen Báthory University. In his absence, his opening speech was read by Tadeusz Kiersnowski, who in 1919–20 had been head of the Youth Council in Vilnius. Nor was Meysztowicz able to take part in the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Society in 1973, when the participants included the Exile-President of the Republic of Poland Stanisław Ostrowski, the ambassador Edward Raczyński, members of the Government, the Rector Tadeusz Sulimirski, the professors of the Polish University Abroad, and other prominent friends of the institution. This time the text of Meysztowicz’s opening address was read by Bohdan Podoski.62 The most important annual event, used by the Academic Society to mark its presence in the academic world, was the Academic Inauguration (modeled on the inaugurations in Vilnius) and the Inaugural Lecture. During the period from 1948 to 1981 the lectures were given by more than twenty scholars, among them many historians from Vilnius. These included Stanisław Kościałkowski, speaking on “Marian Zdziechowski as a Scholar, Thinker and Human Being”;63 Stanisław Swianiewicz on “The East and the West In Economic Development”;64 Władysław Wielhorski on “The Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Light of Western Culture”;65 Marian Bohusz-Szyszko on “Polish Art in the Nineteenth Century”;66 Bohdan Podoski on “The History of Vilnius University”;67 Kazimierz Okulicz on “The Epilogue of the Heroic Period 1920–1922”;68 Aleksander Blum on “The 62

63 64 65 66 67

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S.P., “Inauguracja Roku Akad. 1973–1974 Wszechnicy Batorowej” [The Inauguration of the Academic Year 1973–1974 at the Stephen Bátory University]. Kwartalnik Kresowy, 1974, issue 70, 71, p. 48–49. The full text of the lecture: Kościałkowski, 1956. It was also published in a slightly changed version in French in Antemurale iii, 1956. Podoski, 1987, 33; full text: Swianiewicz, 1953. Podoski, 1987, 33. Podoski, 1987, 38. Podoski, 1987, 38; a short memoire on the late Marian Zdziechowski was read by Kazimierz Okulicz, see “Przegląd działalności naukowej towarzystw naukowych i instytucji, oraz innych placówek polskich na obczyźnie 1964–1965” [A Survey of the Activities of Scientific Associations and other Polish Institutions Abroad 1964–1965]. Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie, vol. xv, 1964–65, Londyn 1965: 91. Podoski, 1987, 38. The lecture was devoted to the history of the so-called “Middle Lithuania” and the fate of the concept of a Federal Union of the lands of the former Great

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Battle of Piotrków and Its Meaning”69 and Zbigniew S. Siemaszko on “The Vilnius Tempest 1944.”70 Fr. Meysztowicz gave only one inaugural lecture: on 4 September 1970 he spoke on “Sigismund Augustus and Philip ii.”71 Meysztowicz contributed little to the publication activities of the Academic Society, publishing only a single sketch in the non-periodical almanac Alma Mater Vilnensis. At the beginning of 1958, there appeared volume five of the almanac, entitled Collected Works. As the introduction noted, it was being published on the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Hadiach (Hadziacz). Apart from S. Kościałkowski’s contribution, the volume contained the memoirs of the members of the Academic Society and a number of studies on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Some of the other authors included were Zygmunt Jundziłł, Cezaria Jędrzejewiczowa, Władysław Wielhorski, and Zbigniew Folejewski. Meysztowicz’s contribution was entitled “St. Brun in Lithuania in the year 1009”.72 The year 1972 saw the appearance of a book, the financing of which was supported by the fund-raising efforts of the Academic Society. Nowhere in the volume, however, was the Society named as publisher or editor. Nevertheless, this work can be considered as the last publication of Stephen Báthory University Abroad, because of its subject matter and due to the fact that the vast majority of the authors were former staff or graduates of the usb. The volume was titled The Vilnius Diary.73 In addition to contributions dealing specifically with Vilnius, the Diary included historical sketches, memoirs, and commentaries by the staff and graduates of the usb, some of them written earlier and now reprinted. Among these was the piece entitled “Marshall Józef Piłsudski” by W. Meysztowicz.

69

70 71 72 73

Duchy of Lithuania with Poland. See: “Przegląd działalności naukowej towarzystw naukowych i instytucji, oraz innych placówek polskich na obczyźnie 1964–1965” [A Survey of the Activities of Scientific Associations and other Polish Institutions Abroad 1964–1965]. Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie xv, 1964–65, Londyn 1965, 91. Podoski, 1987, 46; “Społeczność Akademicka Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego” [The Academic Community at the Stephen Báthory University]. Kwartalnik Kresowy, 1979, no. 88, 89, 90, 91, p. 126; Bałtycz, “Marzec wileński w Londynie.” [The Vilnaer Month of March in London]. Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, 7.04.1980. Podoski, 1987, 46. Podoski, 1987, 42. W. Meysztowicz, “St. Brun in Lithuania in the Year 1009”, Alma Mater Vilnensis. [Vol. 5]. Londyn 1958, 121–132. “Od Komitetu Redakcyjnego.” [From the Editorial Board]. Pamiętnik Wileński, LondynŁomianki, 2010, 5–6.

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In his memoirs, Meysztowicz often recalled the past of Vilnius and its university. Based on his personal memory of the city, he wrote, for example, an insightful sketch called “Art in Vilnius,” which was devoted almost entirely to the history of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the usb. Numerous memories about his friends can be found in two volumes of Tales of Times and People he published in 1973–74.74 Fr. W. Meysztowicz contributed a great deal to the memory of Vilnius University. After his death, however, the Institute’s interest in Vilnius and the Alma Mater Vilensis decreased. A four-volume History of the Vilnius Academy, beginning with its foundation and taking its history to 1773, had already been prepared in Cracow by Fr. Ludwik Piechnik and was published in Rome during the period 1983 to 1990, though not by the Polish Historical Institute, as could have been expected, but by the Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu.75 References Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa, C. (2005). Łańcuch tradycji: teksty wybrane. [Chain of Tradition: Selected Texts], ed. by. L. Mroz and A. Zadrożyńska Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Blum, A. (1987). “Społeczność Akademicka usb.” [The Academic Community at the Stephen Báthory University in Vilnius]. Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza (Londyn) 19.10.1987; reprint in Kwartalnik Kresowy, issue 117–120, 15–17. Bohusz-Szyszko, M. (2006). Sztuka polska w Wielkiej Brytanii 1940–2000. [Polish Arts in Great Britain 1940–2000] Toruń. Charkiewicz, W. (1948). “Non extinguetur.” Lwów i Wilno 69, 2. Danilewicz Zielińska, M. (1995). “Antemurale’ (1954–1985). Działalność Polskiego Instytutu Historycznego w Rzymie.” [‘Antemurale’ (1954–1985). The Activities of the Polish Historical Institute in Rome]. Zeszyty Historyczne 112, 188–199. Dopierała, K. (ed.) (2003–2005). Encyklopedia polskiej emigracji i Polonii. [Encyclopedia of Polish Exile and of Poles Abroad]. Five Volumes. Toruń: Kucharski. Draus, J. (1993). Oświata i nauka polska na Bliskim i Środkowym Wschodzie 1939–1950, [Polish Education and Science in the Near and the Middle East]. Lublin. Draus, J. (1999). “Życie i działalność Cezarii Baudouin de Courtenay-Jędrzejowiczowej (1885–1967)” [Life and Works of Cezaria Baudouin de Courtenay-Jędrzejowiczowa (1885–1967)], in Judycka, A. and Z. Judycki (eds.), Losy Polek żyjących na obczyźnie i ich wkład w kulturę i naukę świata. Historia i współczesność. Lublin. 74 75

Meysztowicz, 1973–1974. Piechnik, 1983–1990.

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Dunajówna, M. (1947). “Polskie wydawnictwa w Iranie w okresie ostatniej wojny.” [Polish Publications in Iran during the Last War]. Bibliotekarz, 9–10. Dybciak, K. and Z. Kudelski (eds.) (2000). Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939. [Lexicon of Polish Culture Abroad since 1939]. Lublin. Filipowicz, M. (2000). “Kościałkowski Stanisław”, in Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939. Vol. 1. Lublin, 194–195. Gaziński, B. (2010). Stanisław Swianiewicz (1899–1997): ekonomista, sowietolog, historyk. [Stanisław Swianiewicz (1899–1997): Economist, Sovietologist, Historian]. Olsztyn. Gotowiecki, P. (2008). “Działalność żołnierzy ii Korpusu Polskiego w związkach ziem wschodnich i innych środowiskach kresowych na emigracji” [The Engagement of the Soldiers of the Second Polish Corps in the Associations Commited to the Polish  Eastern Borders or in Other Similar Communities], in Smoliński, J. and K. Piwowarska (eds.), ii Korpus Polski w kampanii wrześniowej i losy jego żołnierzy po wojnie. Warszawa. 74–95. Habielski, R. (2000). “Sukiennicki Wiktor” in Dybciak, K. and Z Kudelski (eds.). Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939, vol. 1, Lublin. 420–423. Hofman, I. (2009). “Publicystyka społeczno-polityczna Stanisława Swianiewicza” [Socio-political Journalism of Stanisława Swianiewicz], in Wejs-Milewska, V. and E  Rogalewska (eds.), Powrześniowa emigracja niepodległościowa na mapie kultury nie tylko polskiej: Paryż-Londyn-Monachium-Nowy Jork. Białystok. 373–388. Jaworska, K. (1992). “Wileńszczyzna w wydawnictwach i wspomnieniach żołnierzy Drugiego Korpusu” [The Region of Vilnius in the Publications and Memoirs of the Soldiers of the Second Corps], in Wilno–Wileńszczyzna jako krajobraz i środowisko wielu kultur, vol. iv. Białystok. Kandziora, J. and Z. Szymańska (1999). Bez cenzury 1976–1989: literatura, ruch wydawniczy, teatr: bibliografia. [Without Censorship 1976–1989: Literature, Publishing Houses, Theatre: Bibliography]. Warszawa. Karcz, A. (2002/2003) “Znosić wygnanie w tym pięknym,… ale jakże obcym kraju”—lata amerykańskie Manfreda Kridla [To Bear the Banishment in this Beautiful… but how Strange a Country—the American Years of Manfred Kridl], Archiwum Emigracji 5/6, 23–37. Karcz, A. (2003). Teksty z daleka i bliska: szkice nie tylko o literaturze [Texts from Near and Far: Drafts not only about Literature]. Kielce. Kilian, S. (ed.) (2000). Wacław Komarnicki o ustroju państwa i Konstytucji. [Wacław Komarnicki on the State System and the Constitution] Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe. Kitab, S. (2000). Teoria Manfreda Kridla: próba uzupełnienia metody integralnej. [Theory of Manfred Kridl: An Attempt to Complete the Integral Method]. Toruń 2000. Kola, A.F. (2010). “ʽObdarowuje Pan nas tutaj ciągle…’. Manfreda Kridla pomoc dla Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu.” [‘You present us here unswervingly…’

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The Support of Manfred Kridl to the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń]. Archiwum Emigracji 1–2 (12–13), 103–36. Komarnicki, W. (2006). Ustrój państwowy Polski współczesnej. Geneza i system. [The Political System of the Modern Poland: Origin and System]. Kraków: Wydawnictwo uj. Komarnicki, W. (2008). Polskie prawo polityczne (geneza i system).[Polish Political Law (Origin and System)]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe. Kornat, M. (2008). “Sukiennicki Wiktor (1901–1983)”. Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. xlv/3 issue 186, Warszawa. 396–401. Kościałkowski, S. (1945). “Nie zgaśnie…” [Shall not Extinguish…]. Orzeł Biały, 40 (175): 2–3. Kościałkowski, S. (1953). “Ś.P. Zygmunt Jundziłł”, in Alma Mater Vilnensis. Prace Społeczności Akademickiej Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego na obczyźnie [vol. 3], Londyn 1953. Kościałkowski, S. (1956). “Marian Zdziechowski jako uczony, myśliciel i człowiek” [Marian Zdziechowski as a Scientist, Thinker and Human Being], in Kościałkowski, S., Studia i szkice przygodne z historii i z jej pogranicza z literaturą. Londyn. 136–151. Kościałkowski, S. (2002). Polacy w Iranie 1942–1945 [Poles in Iran 1942–1945],vol. 1, ed. by Andrzej K. Kunert. Warszawa. Kowalik, J. (1976). Bibliografia czasopism polskich wydawanych poza granicami Kraju od września 1939 roku [Bibliography of Polish Periodicals Published Abroad since 1939], vol. 1: A–J, Lublin 1976. Krahel, T. (1995). “Meysztowicz Walerian”, in Fr. J Mandziuka (ed.) Słownik Polskich Teologów Katolickich 1981–1993, vol. 8: A–Z, Warszawa. 387–390. Kridl Valkenier, E. (2002). “Manfred Kridl: uczony, pedagog, działacz polityczny” [Manfred Kridl: Scientist, Educator, Political Activist], in E Feliksiak and M. Leś (eds.) Wilno i świat. Dzieje środowiska intelektualnego, vol. ii. Białystok. 9–27. Kwiatkowska, A. (ed.) (2006). “Polski Instytut Historyczny w Rzymie” [Polish Historical Institute in Rome], in Świadectwa–Testimonianze, vol. iv: Pro publico bono. Polityczna, społeczna i kulturalna działalność Polaków w Rzymie w xx wieku, Rzym. 137–148. Lanckorońska, K. (1982–1983). “Walerian Meysztowicz (1893–1982).” Antemurale xxvi, 220. Lanckorońska, K. (2006). “Wspomnienie o Księdzu Walerianie Meysztowiczu.” [Commemoration of Fr. Walerian Meysztowicz], in Świadectwa–Testimonianze, vol.  iv: Pro publico bono. Polityczna, społeczna i kulturalna działalność Polaków w Rzymie w xx wieku. Rzym. Lewicki, R. (ed.) (1996). Polscy studenci-żołnierze we Włoszech 1945–1947 [Polish Students-Soldiers in Italy 1945–1947]. Londyn. Łowmiański, H. (ed.) (2006). Akty cechów wileńskich 1495–1759. [Records of the Vilnius Guilds 1495–1759]. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.

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Machalski, F. (1948). “Działalność Towarzystwa Studiów Irańskich w Teheranie (1942– 1945) i Instytutu Polskiego w Bejrucie (1945–1947).” [The Activities of the Association of Iranian Studies in Teheran (1942–1945) and the Polish Institute in Beirut (1945– 1947)]. Życie Nauki vii, 33–34. Mękarski, S. (1967). “Ś.p. Władysław Wielhorski.” Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie (London) xvii, 1966–1967. Meysztowicz, W. (1954). “De Instituto Historico Polonico deque eiusdem praesenti edition.” Antemurale i, 6–7. Meysztowicz, W. (1973–1974). Gawędy o czasach i ludziach [Tales of Times and People], vol. 1–2, Londyn. Meysztowicz, W. (1993). Gawędy o czasach i ludziach. [Tales of Times and People]. Fourth edition. Londyn. Miłosz, C. (2005). “ʽMój wileński opiekun’. Listy do Manfreda Kridla (1946–1955).” [‘My Advisor from Vilnius’. Letters to Manfred Kridl (1946–1955)], ed. by A. Karcz. Archiwum Emigracji 19. Piechnik, L. (1983–1990). Dzieje Akademii Wileńskiej. [The History of the Academy of Vilnius]. T. 1–4. Rzym: Inst. Historicum Societatis Jesu. Piechowiak-Topolska, M.B. (2000). “ʽWilno w Londynie’. Dzieje Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego na emigracji po ii wojnie światowej.” [ʽVilnius in London’. The History of the Stephen Báthory University in Exile after wwii.], in W. Hładkiewicz and M. Szczerbiński (eds.) Nauka polska na obczyźnie. Stan i perspektywy badawcze. Gorzów Wielkopolski. Podoski, B. (1987). “Dzieje Społeczności Akademickiej Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego” [The History of the Academic Community at the Stephen Báthory University]. Kwartalnik Kresowy, 117–120. Portalski, S. (2009). Zarys historii Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie. [A Short History of the Polisch Scientific Society Abroad]. Londyn. Sienkiewicz, J.W. (1996). Marian Bohusz-Szyszko: życie i twórczość 1901–1995. [Marian Bohusz-Szyszko: Life and Work 1901–1995]. Lublin 1996. Sławińska, I. (1996). “Uniwersytet Stefana Batorego, wszechnica otwarta i europejska.” [Stephen Báthory University, an Open and European Education], in Piechnik, L. SJ and K. Puchowski (eds.) Z dziejów Almae Matris Vilnensis. Księga pamiątkowa ku czci 400-lecia założenia i 75-lecia wskrzeszenia Uniwersytetu Wileńskiego. Kraków. 248–255. Stachewicz, K. (2002/2003). “Stanisława Kościałkowskiego droga do prawdy. Refleksje inspirowane książką ‘Via lucis’”. [Stanisława Kościałkowski’s Way to Truth. Thoughts Inspired by the Book ‘Via lucis’]. Archiwum Emigracji, 5/6: 7–21. Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu. Z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 r. [Clio in Banishment. About the History of Polish Historiography in Exile]. Poznań. Sukiennicki, W. (1949). Społeczność Akademicka usb [Academic Community at the  Stephen Báthory University]. Alma Mater Vilnensis. Prace Społeczności Akademickiej Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego na obczyźnie [vol. 1], Londyn.

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Sulimirski, T. (1955). “Nauka polska na obczyźnie 1939–954 (Zarys historyczny).” [Polish Science Abroad 1939–1954 (Historical Draft)]. Nauka Polska na Obczyźnie, 1. Supruniuk, A. (2010). “Jerzy Aleksandrowicz (1886–1970).” Archiwum Emigracji, 1–2 (12–13), 317–321. Supruniuk, A. and M.A Supruniuk (2009). Uniwersytet Stefana Batorego w Wilnie 1919– 1939 w fotografiach. [Stephen Báthory University in Vilnius 1919–1939 in Photography]. Toruń. Supruniuk, M.A. (2006). “Losy profesorów Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego po 1945 roku: Społeczność Akademicka U.S.B. na Obczyźnie (1947–1987).” [The Fate of the Professors of the Stephen Báthory University after 1945: Academic Community Abroad (1947–1987)], in C. Łapicz and W. Wróblewski 60-lecie Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu. Toruń: umk. Supruniuk, M.A. (2011). “Stanisław L. Janikowski—człowiek od trudnych misji. Szkic do biografii autora ʽMiscellanea Copernicana’.” [Stanisław L. Janikowski—A Man of Difficult Missions. Contribution to a Biography of the Author of ʽMiscellanea Copernicana’], in S. Janikowski, Miscellanea Copernicana, Toruń. 9–13. Swianiewicz, S. (1953). “Wschód i Zachód w rozwoju gospodarczym.” [The East and the West In Economic Development]. Kultura (Paris) 2–3 (64–65), 15–26. Szczepanik, E. (2000). “Opowieść o młodości i wojnie, Italii i Anglii” [A Story about the Youth and the War, Italy and England], in Świadectwa–Testimonianze, vol. 1: W walce o niepodległość. Rozmowy Ewy Prządki z Polakami we Włoszech. Rzym. Szczepanik, E. (2006). “Ksiądz Prałat.” [The Fr. Prelate], in Świadectwa–Testimonianze, vol. iv: Pro publico bono. Polityczna, społeczna i kulturalna działalność Polaków w Rzymie w xx wieku, Rzym. 116–118. Topolska, M.B. (1995). “Organizacje naukowe poza W. Brytanią.” [Science Organisations Beyond Great Britain], in Kliszewicz, L. (ed.), Mobilizacja uchodźstwa do walki politycznej 1945–1990. Londyn. 493–497. Topolska, M.B. (2000). “Uczeni emigracyjni po 1945 r. jako kontynuatorzy historiografii ziem wschodnich w dziejach Rzeczypospolitej.” [Scientists in Exile after 1945 Preserving the Continuity of Historical Research on the Eastern Borders of Poland], in Judycka, A. and B. Klimaszewski (eds.), Materiały V Sympozjum Biografistyki Polonijnej, Kraków, 22–23 września 2000. Lublin. 259–266. Wójtowicz, P. (2001). “Działalność Związków Ziem Wschodnich w Londynie w latach 1942–1955.” [The Activities of The Association of the Eastern Territories in London 1942–1955], in Szczerbiński, M. and T. Wolsza (eds.), Przeszłość, teraźniejszość i przyszłość Polaków na Wschodzie. Gorzów Wielkopolski. Zajączkowski, W. (1948). “Polska działalność orientalistyczna na Wschodzie w latach 1942–1946.” [The Activities of Polish Orientalists in the east 1942–1946]. Przegląd Orientalistyczny 1.

Polish Exile Historians at the International Historical Congresses Maria Zadencka A Polish émigré historian, Oskar Halecki (1891–1973), described the first meeting of émigré historians and historians from the People’s Republic of Poland at the International Historical Congress in Rome 1955 in the following way: This striking dualism of the representation of Polish historiography was without precedent. … The experience proved both painful and instructive. … In a number of cases former colleagues and even friends who otherwise would have been so happy to see each other again and freely talk after so many years of separation, faced one another in an only too natural embarrassment which on either side of invisible barrier was caused by different considerations. Furthermore, from a national point of view it was more than painful; it was a disgrace that scholar of the same origin found it more difficult to cooperate with one another than with the historians from other lands who witnessed their disagreement, wondering whether it was apparel or real. … Under such conditions the task of those  scholars who represented free Polish historiography abroad was extremely difficult indeed. Without any governmental support, not represented in the International Committee, listed among historians of the countries where they are residing at present, they enjoyed in compensation only one advantage: complete freedom of expression without foreign instruction or control. On many occasions they also had the comfort of feeling the sympathetic understanding of many colleagues from various lands who well remembered their participation, as representatives of independent Poland, in the prewar congresses.1 History writing in exile after 1945 unfolded in many different specific circumstances. International Historical Congresses were perhaps the sites where the changes in the professional condition of exile historians became the most visible. Halecki’s account indicates the complex field of tensions: the rupture in the presumed commonality of the national group of professionals and shortcomings of the exile situation are experienced on different levels; a general anxiety about a national split, real loss of professional and political status, 1 Halecki, 1956b, 5–6, 17–18.

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dependence on unfamiliar milieus and institutions. Nevertheless, his suggestions about taking advantages of the exile situation, “possibility to represent free Polish historiography,” are equally characteristic here. The participation of Polish exile scholars at the International Historical Congresses (Paris 1950, Rome 1955, Stockholm l960 and Vienna 1965) was quite well documented in the reviews published in popular and professional periodicals as well in the collections of papers prepared for the Congresses and published as special issues of historical periodicals. The reviews from the International Congresses were a particular genre that recounted the state of affairs of the historical sciences in general. The papers and text volumes, published on the occasion of respective Congresses, witnessed individual attempt to rethink and readapt topics of interest according to the availability of archive materials, new research results, as well emerging methodological questions. The common tasks for all these publications were traceable in their rhetorical formulations: to appropriately react to the inner development and differentiation of the discipline and appropriately respond to the political and ideological conditions of historical knowledge. The term “appropriately” in this context means that they were being brought into conformance with the alleged demands of real or anticipated “social circles” of the historians.

The Concept of “Social Circle”

The Polish sociologist, Florian Znaniecki (1882–1958) worked in America and Poland before the wwii but chose to stay in America after the outbreak of the war. His name is widely associated with the collaborative work he did with William i. Thomas on Polish rural migrants, published with the title The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Chicago, 1918–1920). He was among the sociologists who developed empirical sociology and sociological thinking in terms of interpretative culturalism. Znaniecki was considered to be one of the fathers of Polish sociology, and his influential books about “social roles” formed the thinking of a whole generation of Polish elites in the prewar time. One of his interests was the sociology of sciences. In 1940 he published The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge in New York and in this work introduced a concept of “social circle.”2 The concept of “social circle” belongs to the large family of notions that conceptualize the social aspects of producing scientific knowledge with help of 2 Thomas and Znaniecki, 1918-1920; Znaniecki, 1940. In the prewar time, Znaniecki was the first Polish chair in sociology at the University in Poznań. After wwii he taught in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne. He was the 44th President of American Sociological Association (1953–1954).

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phenomenology and of pragmatism. Znaniecki’s theory belongs to a rather softer version of the sociology of science and—as it was pointed out—denies many obsolescent claims of this discipline, such as the claim to deliver overall explanations for all kinds human activities.3 The concept of “social circle” can shed light on the way exile historians could have perceived their situation. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences defines the concept in the following way: The “social circle”—the audience or public to which a thinker addresses himself. He [Znaniecki] thus links the sociology of knowledge with research on publics and audiences that was pioneered by the Chicago school of sociology. … Znaniecki shows that thinkers—at least in differentiated societies—are not likely to address their total society but rather only selected segments or publics. The thinker is related to a social circle: and this circle expects him to live up to certain of its demands, in exchange for which it grants him recognition and support. Men of knowledge anticipate the demands of their public; and they tend to form self-images, select data, and seize upon problems in terms of their actual or anticipated audiences. Men of knowledge may thus be classified in regard to their social roles and their publics. Hence it becomes possible to understand the emergence of such special roles as that of sage, technologist, and scholar in terms of the differentiated publics to which they address themselves.4 The notion of social circle pointed to the interaction between scholar and society as well interaction within the professional field, and was thus an important  variable in describing scholarly work. A social circle induces the social roles of a scholar, governs his cognitive situation and directly crystallizes his understanding. The social circle is thus to be seen on two levels: first, as a circle of communication as, for example, in the common practice of exchanging meanings in public discussion so as to demonstrate their applicability to different areas of reality. There is a hint of pragmatism in this model: understanding grows through practice. As Znaniecki observed: “If we want…to understand the rational organization of reality, we must study the way in which rationality is ­created by the activity which constructs systems of objects.”5 3 Szacki, 1984. On the role of phenomenology and of pragmatism in Znanieckis thought see e.g.: McGuir & Tuchanska, 1997; and McGuir & Tuchanska, 2000. 4 Coser, 1968, Vol. 7, 432. 5 Znaniecki, 1983, 154.

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Second, the social circle is to be understood as an imaginary and constructed “intentional public”, a mental room for using the faculty of dialogue, such as the dialogue inherent in hermeneutic tradition; that is, as a fundamental element of the process of understanding itself, “of creating and developing meanings and rules of thought” (Zygmunt Bauman). Many of exile historians most likely were familiar with Znaniecki’s book and the concept of social circle. Thus they could have perceived their situation— the settings of émigré academics—through this lens and could have acted on the basis of this insight. Znaniecki’s sociological thought formed the views of Polish learned circles society during the whole interwar period and continued to have an impact on them after the war as well. It is not certain, but possible, that Znaniecki’s theoretical concept was deliberately coined as a tool for the differentiated understanding of the social roles of scholars who were in the process of accommodation with new circumstances. It would therefore have helped émigré scholars to recognize their new roles and milieus. And it is highly possible that the concept strengthened considerably their motivation to restore their professional milieus.6

Networks of Institutions

Polish exile historians established a sizable network of institutions, organizations and periodicals. Some of them were meant to function as substitutes of their equivalents of the interwar epoch: the first of these was the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (piasa), founded in 1942, and meant to replace the Polish Academy of Sciences (pau) which had been closed by the German occupation. The structure of piasa was similar that of the pau. Several of these institutions were created in connection to or in close cooperation with older Polish exile organizations established in the nineteenth century or Polish appearing abroad during the interwar period. The Polish Library in Paris together with the reopened Polish Historical and Literary Society were among the oldest Polish exile institutions, dating from the 1830s. In the pre-war period, the research institutes the Polish Academy had maintained in Paris and Rome were transformed into Polish libraries and became centers for close contact with French and Italian scholars.7 The Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Rome (renamed The Polish Library in Rome) was established in 1926 with the task of coordinating the search for and editing of documents 6 Znaniecki himself was co-founder of Polish Society of Arts and Sciences in New York. 7 Halecki, 1943, 237–239.

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having a connection to Poland (published in the series Monumenta Poloniae Vaticana), and after the war the Library hosted The Polish Historical Institute in Rome (founded in November, 1945) which continued this work.8 The Polish Historical Society in London was founded in 1946 as a continuation of the Polish Historical Society (founded 1886 in Lwów, Poland, and restored after the war (1945–1947) for its member in exile.9 The umbrella organisation for all the historical institution in London, New York, Paris and Rome was established in 1953 in London with the name Polish Historical Association Abroad.10 These émigré institutions also began to publish long-lived periodicals: the Historical Society launched Teki Historyczne; the piasa The Polish Review; the Polish Institute in Rome Antemurale, a publication series dedicated to the history of the area of East Central Europe, with the financial assistance of the Holy See; and the Instytut Literacki, connected with monthly Kultura, published Zeszyty Historyczne.11 A Polish University in Exile (puno, Polski Uniwersytet na Obczyźnie), founded in 1939 and since 1940 located in London, and the School of Political and Social Sciences in London, established in 1949, provided employment to émigré scholars.12 The Polish Sikorski-Museum with its library was basic for studies of the contemporary history of the twentieth century. The importance accorded to preserving institutions and safeguarding the continuity of their work explains how vital it was for scholars to rebuild their social circles. The social circles were the real audience of colleagues and the professional structures that ensured contacts within society, that is, with those whom the scholars wished to address and to stay in dialogue with, whether politicians, journalists, teachers, artists, and others. The exile communities from other east-central European countries exhibited similar behaviours in their striving to establish institutional life abroad.13 The time of the exile was the time of “institutes,” and this predilection was

8 9

10 11 12 13

For detailed description and analysis of the work of the Institute see the separate article by Mirosław Supruniuk and Andreas Lawaty in this volume. In London, the earlier contacts with English and American scholars were established i.a. at the Anglo-Polish historical conference organized in Cambridge in 1935, which resulted in the publication of the Cambridge History of Poland. Cf. Halecki, 1943, 238. Informative works on the Polish scholarly organisation abroad during and after wwii are: Draus and Terlecki, 1984; Habielski, 1999; Wandycz, 2001; and Stobiecki, 2005. See the separate article on the Polish historical periodicals in exile by Rafał Stobiecki in this volume. Habielski, 1999, 182–186. Mandelíčková and Goddeeris, 2012, 406–407.

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directly related to the way these scholars had been socialized in their home countries before World War ii.14 During the 1950s, the most important features of the situation faced by exiled historians were already quite evident. In their native countries, new academies of sciences had already been created on the model of the Academy of Sciences of the ussr, in Poland this having taken place in 1952. The new Academies of Sciences gradually absorbed all the existing learned societies, imposing on their work a unified form of historical description, interpretation and explanation. The Cold War also brought an expansion of Russian, Soviet and East European studies in Western Europe and the United States. In the us, greater financial support came from the federal government after the Soviet success in launching Sputnik in 1957. One result of this development was a gradual migration of the exiled Polish scholars from Europe to America.15 Increasing migration in search of academic appointments initially had a very disruptive impact on the Polish scholars’ auditoria and contact networks. More importantly, however, there also started a silent process of distortion of the scholars’ real social circles. The learned institutions in their homeland, some of which had been duplicated in the West, were now closed or had changed their structure, and it became obvious that émigré scholars were being left without a real anchor in the form of institutions of a functioning society. Halecki’s observation about the double representation in Polish historiography so evident at the Tenth International Historical Congress in Rome, and “sympathetic understanding” shown by “colleagues from various lands” toward the old participants of the prewar Congresses placed on view the two vitally important social circles that were in real danger of decomposing.

The International Historical Congresses in the Interwar Period

As has been often observed, the interwar period was a time of the professionalization and institutionalization of national historiography not only in Poland but in all the newly established countries in the East Central Europe.16 A less obvious but equally significant fact was that this phenomenon was anchored in the development of a strong international frame of references. The generation of historians who went into exile later but were professionally active in the interwar period was formed (became socialised, educated and initiated 14 15 16

Ibid. 404–408. Atkinson, 1988, 406, 411. Hadler, Middell, and Lindelbach, 2001.

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into the field of science) by the experience of intensified international contacts and the creation of international networks. The social circles formed by activities and dialogue were not limited to the national area but involved real and virtual audiences that were national and international. In the case of the Polish community of historians this characteristics was perhaps more pronounced than in other cases. Many Polish historians were engaged in the organization of international events, and even more participated in them. Many joined international committees and associations. The International Historical Congress in Warszawa and Kraków in 1933 with 600 Polish participants and large number of Congress publications was without doubt the formative experience for a whole generation of professionals. The role of major international congresses in the development of the historical sciences has been seen as one of the most important factors in the creation of an institutional and organizational setting of the discipline.17 The International Committee of Historical Sciences (ichs) was founded in 1926. Its constitution assigned to it two major tasks: to promote the historical sciences  through international cooperation, and to oversee the International Congresses. Above all, the ichs was meant to have a “significant impact on the organisation of the historical disciplines of individual nations.” Since membership in ichs was collective and individual countries were to be represented in it by national committees, the ichs prompted the creation of national historical associations in a number of countries.18 The first international meeting of historians took place in The Hague 1898. It was organized by and brought together both professionals and amateurs, and they were concerned mostly with diplomatic and political issues. But it was the next meeting in 1900 in Paris that was officially counted as the first Congress, and, since then the Congresses were held every five years, producing a series that was interrupted only by two world wars. A shorthand description of the evolution of the overall character of the Congresses would be that they  developed from being cosmopolitan (until the wwi) through being 17

18

The first and until now most extensive work about the International Historical Congresses is the book of Karl Dietrich Erdmann Die Ökumene der Historiker. Geschichte der Internationalen Historikerkongresse und des Comité International des Sciences Historiques (Erdmann, 1987; engl transl. Erdmann, 2005). The book gives rich material for history of historiography, situates the scholarly debates among scholars in their social and political context and sheds light on the methodological and thematic development of historical studies. Cf. reviews by Veit-Brause, 1990; Stelzel, 2006. Additionally cf. Myhre, 2012. Stelzel, 2006.

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­international (until the wwii) to having global ideals. Existing accounts of the history of the International Historical Congresses have gradually transcended lesser commitments and became a truly international organization dedicated to the promotion of the unity of the discipline. The existing accounts of the history of the International Historical Congresses lift up above all the commitment of cish to extend the membership of the international organization and to promote unity of the discipline. The creation of a single world of learning could mean many things: counteracting divisions and segmentation, overcoming ignorance of each other and lack of communication, and working against the fragmentation of the objects of historical study and their one-sided interpretations. It could mean maintaining a basic consensus about the scholarly methods that should undergird dialogue between scholars who address similar topics from different ideological positions.19 In fact, during the whole of the twentieth century the Congresses were used as way to appease contention among rival ideologies and among rival countries and to achieve reconciliation after large worldwide conflicts. There are, however, differing opinions about the long-term tendencies in the development of the Congresses. The competition between nomothetic and idiographic ideas appeared to result in the fading of the former, as the discipline of history moved toward the social sciences with the turning point in this movement coming at the Congress in Paris in 1950. But it has also been observed that the Congresses never managed to develop a fully comparativistic agenda so as to render the historical sciences more general and less particular or individual, and in spite of the fact that the first congresses proposed and presented “comparison” as the most important epistemological concern.20 A much more visible accomplishment was mediatory and conciliatory character of the Congresses, in terms of scholarly methods, ideological stances as well as in terms of political decisions. As Halvdan Koht (1873–1965), the Norwegian historian and the first chairman of the Committee, observed when the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ichs) was founded in 1926: “There appeared a general desire to establish some international authority to decide about controversial matters.”21 There were a number of Polish scholars among these historians who helped to bring this international association into being. In time, they contributed 19 20 21

Cf. Veit-Brause, 1990, 362; Stelzel, 2006. Cf. Kocka, 2005; Myhre, 2012, 271. Myhre, 2012, 272.

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directly to the development of the profile of the Committee and the Congresses, as these evolved in the aftermath of the wwi and the Versailles Treaty. Among them were the medievalist and byzantinist, the first chair and professor of the history of Eastern Europe at the University of Warsaw, Oskar Halecki (1891– 1973); the founder of the school of Polish historical economists, Franciszek Bujak (1875–1953); an expert on ancient history, the archeologist Tadeusz Wałek-Czernecki (1889–1949); and the historian and politician, president of International Federation of League of Nations Societies in 1923, and specialist of modern history, Bronisław Dembiński (1858–1939).22 Dembiński actively participated in all the International Congresses and chaired the organizing committee of the Warszawa/Kraków Congress, supported in these activities by the medievalist Marceli Handelsman (1882–1945) who earlier, together with Oskar Halecki, had founded the Federation of the Historical Societies of Eastern Europe (1927–1939). The dedication to the idea of an international political arena alongside professional scholarly practice was quite apparent in the biographies of these scholars. Halecki and Bujak, for example, were member-experts of the Polish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference 1919; Halecki and Dembiński also chaired the work of various institutions of the League of Nations. All these scholars actively participated in preparing Congresses during the interwar period and in the work of the several sections during the Congress meetings. They were engaged in the diffusion of information about the Congresses: dispersing Congress materials and reviewing and evaluating the progression of the Congresses.23 All the interwar Congresses were well-attended by Polish historians (Brussels 1923—twenty participants, Oslo 1928—forty, Warszawa-Kraków 1933—six hundred, Zurich 1938—ninety-nine).24 The entire effort of organizing and hosting the Congress in Warsaw, with the accompanying publication of reports and reviews, had a profound impact on the whole milieu of the Polish historical discipline. Other international bodies that formed the international landscape of national history included one “particularly fruitful” enterprise, namely, the Federation of the Historical Societies of Eastern Europe (Féderation des Societes Historiques de l’Europe Orientale), founded in 1927.

22 23 24

Halecki, 1955b, 8. The Poles were the first who published all their “rapports” from Brussels and then from Oslo and Warszawa. (Erdmann, 1987, 219). Cf. Erdmann, 1987, 470–471.

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Internationalism, Freedom of Research and Moral Values

As one of the leading historians of the interwar period and a scholar with an international reputation, Oskar Halecki headed the grouping of Polish émigré historians at International Congresses after wwii. In exile circles, he was one of the founders and the first president of the Polish University Abroad in London and of Polish Institute of Art and Sciences in America.25 Halecki was therefore an important “opinion former” among Polish exile scholars, and thus his use of concepts requires a closer look. In Halecki’s thinking, the idea of the “internationalization” of the historical sciences was closely connected to the importance of freedom in conducting research and disseminating knowledge and to the importance of the moral responsibility of historical research conducted in an international framework. One has to remember that these views, at that time, were also connected to the question of what attitudes should be adopted by the learned world when it faced grave political conflicts and the need to reduce the possibility of war. When the re-establishment of Historical Congresses was first discussed after the wwi, Halecki was working as a secretary of the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (Commission Internationale de Coopération Intellectuelle), founded in Geneva in 1922. The Committee was envisaged as the best possible initiator of the re-establishment. The idea of internationalization supported by Halecki and a group of historians that included Valdo G. Leland had a particular reference point, namely, in the aftermath of the world war, it was directed against the demands for the exclusion of German historians.26 Later, at the plenary debates of the Congress in Oslo (1928), Halecki participated in the discussions about the ideal of peace, teaching in schools, and the understanding among nations. Voices were raised against the slogan “education for peace” as an attempt to ideologize the historical profession. Arguments were made that the goal of history was not to instill ideals: that the science of history had to lay aside the notion of moral duties. Halecki articulated another perspective that could be termed “de-idealised moralism.” He introduced into the discussion the distinction between just and unjust war (which was taken from medieval theological jurisprudence) and called for the use of moral judgment in the face of the extreme brutality of modern warfare.27 This view was modeled on the paradoxical coexistence of freedom and discipline in the medieval Christian thought. Internationalization 25 26 27

Draus and Terlecki, 1984. Erdmann, 1987, 113. Erdmann, 1987, 186.

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could be a genuine process and not just ideological wishful thinking only when an ensemble of nations could guarantee freedom for the search for common elements in diverse interests, and could show a determination in identifying and protecting of the common denominator in judgments about the rights and wrongs in conflicting interests. The role assigned to scholars in this view is close to Znaniecki’s thinking because of the emphasis on the importance of value-oriented realistic judgment. The most important role of the scholar—of man of knowledge—was, as Znaniecki put it later, to articulate images of reality that were valuable for integration and for instrumental necessities, above all for human welfare and security. Another responsibility was to “disenchant the world” among the people who have a decisive role in societies and nations, in other words, to free their imaginative world of myths, magic, and stereotypes.28 The Congresses in Oslo (1928) and Warsaw (1933) were the two meetings that best exemplified the true international spirit of concord and harmony, with wide-ranging and free discussion on controversial topics. This was the tenor of almost all reviews that were published about the two meetings afterward in the different participating countries. In Warsaw, there were colloquies and discussions, formal and informal, about the congresses. It was noted that tensions between the German and French historical organizations had eased just before Congress and a similar mood had prevailed among Polish and German colleagues in relation to the controversies surrounding post-Versailles boundaries and the historical argumentation behind them.29 The Poles and Germans prepared themselves well for this confrontation by writing “summarizing” or “guiding” publications. Although disagreements over the term “nation” and about the nature of the Polish state (“national state” or “state of nationalities”) had not been resolved, both sides had come to the point of appreciating the efforts of the other side to write non-partially and to “acknowledge the universal point of view and thus overcome national contradictions.”30 28

29 30

Halecki, Znaniecki and Wacław Lednicki participated in the series of Columbia university lectures organized with the heading: “Man’s Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof” 1950. These three lectures were published by piasa, Cf.: Znaniecki, Lednicki, and Halecki, 1954. Erdmann, 1987, 195. According to Karl Brandi, quoted by Karl D. Erdmann (Erdmann, 1987), the series Problèmes politiques de la Pologne contemporaine published in Paris was one of the reasons for German reaction in form of the publication edited by Albert Brackmann: Deutschland und Polen. Beiträge zu ihren geschichtlichen Beziehungen (1933). Oskar Halecki reviewed the German book, with several positive assessments on contributions of Hermann Oncken, Gerhard Ritter, Fritz Hartung. He himself published one year before

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In an article published in 1943, Halecki later remembered this meeting differently during the wwii and German occupation of Poland.31 He then accused German historiography of being non-objective and of being largely responsible for the systematic actions of the occupation authorities to destroy every trace of Polish civilization and the Polish historical tradition. His assessment at that moment was influenced by the enormous loss of peoples, archives, and cultural objects that resulted from the German occupation going on at the time. Halecki’s 1943 article is important even if very much influenced by the circumstances of the moment. In more general terms, it reveals the meaning his generation of historians read into the idea of the internationalisation of historical knowledge, the moral responsibility attached to it and to the practice of historical sciences in an international context, and how one was to comprehend the role of the scholar. In other place in the same text the “realistic assessment” of the balance between the “national” and the “international” comes to the fore: “a favourable condition of independence” strengthens the universal theme in historical research and engenders the possibility of overcoming national limitations. In the Polish case, both lines of development are of importance after a long period of neglect and prejudice. Both contain works of high value for general historical studies and together open possibilities for new analyses and assessments within European and general history.32 The extensive neglect and omission jeopardise realistic judgement in ­general history-writing and have a disruptive impact on the “rational organisation of reality” (as Znaniecki would say)—this seems to be Halecki’s ­conclusion when in the 1943 article comes to the problem of the entanglements of Polish- and German-history writing (Ranke) and the impact of the latter on negligent, if not ignorant attitudes, towards Polish historiography and political attitudes that excluded East Central Europe from “Europe proper.” In the article Halecki sought to bring out both the themes of the value of Polish national history-writing and the international anchoring of Polish historiography:

31

32

the Congress La Pologne de 996 à 1914. Essai de synthese historiquè. (Paris 1932). (Cf.  Erdmann, 1987). For the Polish-German controversies during the International Congresses of the interwar period see: Guth, 2005. “But instead of contributing to a better mutual understanding, as could have been expected when a strong German delegation attended the Warsaw Congress, these relations were rather a permanent bellum historicorum, even in the years when the political situation seemed to be improving.” (Halecki, 1943, 238–239). Haleckiʼs article gives extended bibliographical guidance, even to the works on history of Polish historiography containing more detailed surveys and bibliography.

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It certainly appears from all that has been said above that national problems remained the chief concern of Polish historiography. This does not  mean that it was a nationalistic historiography. It simply was a ­necessity—one might even say a duty—for the Polish historians to give to their nation an answer, as clear and definitive as possible, on all questions connected with its own past, since historical tradition had been its strongest comfort under foreign oppression and remained the soundest basis of the restored Republic. Further, they were obliged to reply to foreign conceptions which, profiting by the inadequate or even unfair treatment of her past in general historiography, pretended to consider Poland as a “new nation.” But in spite of such an almost unavoidable national limitation of a great part of Polish historical writing, the genuine interest in universal problems, which had always existed, became more and more conspicuous under the favourable conditions of national independence.33 In the article, Halecki cites authorities on ancient and Byzantine history as well as examples of beneficial research such as Dembiński’s work on Europe during the Council in Trent, studies on the history of conflicts about the Baltic sea (Adam Szelągowski), works dealing with the Huguenots and with the diplomacy of Henry iv of France (Wacław Sobieski), and studies of the Merovigians by Marceli Handelsman and his students. Some of these fields of research were to find their continuation in the studies conducted by the exile scholars and presented to the International Congresses after wwii. Halecki also correctly pointed out the international anchoring of Polish historical research in the pre-war period: the joint conferences such as the AngloPolish conference in Cambridge (1935), the Polish-Estonian meeting in Tartu, the close connection of Polish work to Hungarian historiography (such as a  joint conference held at Cracow in 1938), and several meetings with Czechoslovak historians (“notwithstanding political difficulties between the two governments”). There had also been Polish participation in the 1930 Second Congress of Baltic Archaeologists in Riga and the joint Franco-Polish conference scheduled for 1939 in Paris. Speaking about the International Congress in Warsaw in 1933, Halecki noted the presence of Soviet delegation and of Russian émigré historians, who also participated in the Federation of Eastern European Historical Societies together with Ukrainian historians; and mentioned the creation of the Ukrainian Research Institute, established in Warsaw, and also a 33

Halecki, 1943, 235.

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joint Polish-Ukrainian Committee for Historical Studies with publications in both languages.34

Polish Historians and the Post-war Congresses: Organization

Their experience with the interwar Congresses was an obvious point of departure for exile historians when they decided to participate in them and in the work of the ichs after the wwii. At first, the emigrants together with their former colleagues in Poland sought to revive the older traditions of the Congresses, as suggested in the preserved correspondence between Władysław Konopczyński, a president of the Polish Historical Society in pre-war Poland and immediately after war, and Marian Kukiel and Oskar Halecki on this subject. Konopczyński, who was allowed to travel to Scandinavian archives in 1947, in the letters described the situation among the scholars in the home country, the increasing political and ideological pressure and their research plans. He was happy about his “reunion” with Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) scholars, reported discussions on the importance of continuation of the Congresses as well as on strategies for bringing about their revival, and forwarded the information about this mediating role to his exile colleagues.35 The first International Historical Congress after wwii took place in Paris 1950. A delegation of Polish exile historians attended also the next Congresses in Rome in 1955 and in Stockholm in 1960. Some of the same historians were present in Vienna 1965 as well.36 The Congress in Moscow 1970 ended this sequence. The participation in the four initial congresses, however, was documented by special issues of exile historical periodicals and reviewed in some detail in separate articles. The principal review articles were authored by Oskar Halecki, Marian Kukiel and Leon Koczy. These contained accounts of the changes in the structure of the Congresses and the official attitudes toward the delegations from the communist countries and toward the Polish exile historians; recounted the discussions about the research reports presented by the members of these delegations; and added their own assessments and comments on these presentations, reports on their own topics and activities during 34 35

36

Halecki, 1943, 238. The letters were published by Marek Kornat (Kornat, 2003). Later on, Konopczyński was removed from his posts in the Polish Historical Society and gradually deprived of the possibility to participate in professional life. All basic facts about the participation of Polish émigré historians on the International Historical Congresses after wwii can be found in: Stobiecki, 2005, Chap. iii; Stobiecki 2002.

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the Congress; and described their own attitudes toward the main trends they observed in the discipline. The changing structure of the Congresses and of the published materials they generated corresponded with their growing size (1800 participants in Rome, over 2000 in Stockholm). The main reports (in the language of the Congresses, “rapports”) about the state of the discipline (40 in Rome, 30 in Stockholm) were based on materials compiled earlier by various organisations and sub-commissions, and were printed in the several volumes before the start of a Congress. In addition to the main Congress sessions, which were divided by historical eras (ancient, medieval, modern and present), there were smaller sessions organized by specific commissions, and colloquia on special issues (an innovation in Stockholm). Summaries of selected presentations given at these meetings were printed in separate volume before the start of the Congress as “communications.” The discussions were reported on in another separate volume.37 The size of sessions organized by some commissions was comparable to that of individual conference. The Slavic Section in Uppsala (1960), for example, involved some 250 participants. The exile historians took part in this Section as representatives of their group, but as individuals in other sections and colloquia.38 The representatives of the Polish exile historians participated in negotiations about the right to represent Polish historiography, having as their base the historical societies founded in London, Paris and Rome, and, after 1953, the umbrella Polish Historical Society located in New York. Those most involved in the negotiations included Oskar Halecki, Marian Kukiel, Leon Koczy, Walerian Meysztowicz in Rome, and in Paris Czesław Chowaniec and Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski. Already during the preparation for the first International Historical Congress after wwii in Paris, 1950, the cish tried to bring to the Congress historians from Soviet Union and from the satelite people’s republics. This strategy effected negatively its attitudes towards the exile historians, in spite of the fact that some of the exiles were actively participating as officers in the commissions of the cish (Kukiel as one of the founders in 1938 and later a member of the International Commission of Military History [icmh]; and Halecki since 1952 as vice-president of the International Commission on Comparative Eccle­ siastical History39). The same attitude surfaced during the next Congresses. 37 38 39

Cf. Kukiel, 1955b; The Tenth..., 1955, 83–86; Halecki, 1960. Halecki, 1960. Commission pour histoire militaire, cihm, resp. Commission Internationale dʼHistoire Ecclésiasticque Comparée, cihec.

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The cish repeatedly used the formula that the diplomatic situation of the moment had to be respected.40 This restrictive policy concerning participation in Congresses was linked to the basic structure of the cish, which was based on national representation, i.e. representation of historical organisations from national states. At the first Congress after the war in Paris, the exile historians were denied primarily to participate as a group of Polish (exile) historians and were supposed to represent the lands of their settlement. After negotiations, the 23 persons who participated in Congress managed to get the title des historiens polonais émigrés. Their participation was registered via the International Commission of Slavic Studies, but they didn’t figure in the official statistics as Polish scholars, either in Paris nor at the later Congresses.41 The compromise solutions for this dilemma never did register themselves in the official records of the Congresses. There are almost no traces of the participation of émigrés as a group in the documentation of the Congresses. No publication of presented materials by them was absorbed into the official documentation, and none of exile historians was invited to be among the main referents.42 The only evidence about their presence was the record of their participation in debates which were summarized in the last volumes of the Congress materials. As a matter of fact, the policy of cish reproduced the cultural policy and mode of censorship of the communist regimes. The situation remained the same five years later in Rome in 1955. Exile historians were registered only via the Commission of Slavic Studies, and they presented their papers (“communications”) in various sessions of the Congress. It became possible for the émigrés to join the book exhibition of the Congress only after several negotiations about this issue. At the same time, the Polish American Historical Association was able to display its publications in the American part of the book exhibition.43 The special issue of Antemurale that Meysztowicz offered to the cish was not included in the official materials of the Congress. In Stockholm in 1960 the exile historians were involved mainly in the Session of Slavic Studies that preceded the Congress proper. Halecki’s attempt to officially offer the Organisational Committee the volume of the 40 41 42

43

Erdmann, 1987, 318. As presented by Erdmann, 1987, 471, 473. The list of titles of “communications” delivered at the Congress in Paris, contains bibliographical notes for those presentations which were published as complete texts in advance—including the special issue of Teki Historyczne, London, 1950, no. iv. Erdmann, 1987, 318. Erdmann tells about refusal, but Jeśman accounts about the Polish book exposition organized during the Congress by the Polish Historical Institute (Jeśman, 1955).

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papers presented at the Congress was unsuccessful, although the volume was in great demand among participants during the Congress and afterwards. Between the Stockholm and Vienna Congresses the Commission of Slavic Studies was dissolved, and in Vienna in 1965 the émigré historians presented their papers as historians from their countries of settlement.

Émigré and People’s Republic Historians at the Congresses

There were no Polish historians from People’s Republic of Poland at the meeting in Paris, although two Poles were invited to prepare the basic reports. Marian Małowist and Witold Kula submitted them in writing and the texts were published in the Actes of the Congress.44 Małowist’s report was discussed during the session on Modern History chaired by Eric Hobsbawm, with the discussion centering on the economically defined Marxist concept of “social class.” During this session, Oskar Halecki stated characteristically in Małowist’s report, he (Halecki) could not see any results that could not be achieved with the help of other methods.45 This observation echoed in other reviews of this Congress when attention was turned to the issue of methodological disputes with the scholars from communist countries. The discussions tended to treat such controversies as terminological problems that could be resolved by proper “translation”: A wide gap separates the historians of the ‘marxist’ countries from those of the ‘non-marxist’ ones, in spite of the presence of some marxists in ‘western’ delegations and some non-marxists in ‘eastern’ ones. To some extent this is a gap of terminology. It was instructive, and welcome, to see French and Soviet historians gradually recognize, in the course of a discussion on the Russian peasantry in the eighteenth century, that in spite of their different terminology both were talking about the same things, and in a way which made constructive discussion possible. The ability to ‘translate’ was of the utmost importance. Hence delegations of the East, like the Poles, and of the West, like the French, who were more familiar than the rest with the ‘language’ of the other side, acted as invaluable intermediaries.46

44 Actes, Paris, 1951. 45 Erdmann, 1987: 290. 46 In: The Tenth..., 1955, 84–85.

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Delegations from the communist countries were present for the first time in Rome, after extremely long negotiations. The main report (relazione generale) on the state of Polish historiography was given by Bogusław Leśnodorski (Warsaw). The exile historian Leon Koczy earlier on delivered to the cish an extensive survey with detailed data on both the domestic and exile Polish historiography. Koczy’s survey was used by Gerhard Ritter in his report, but Koczy’s entire report as such was not included in the official documentation of the Congress.47 The absence of the names of the foremost Polish scholars in the report by Leśnodorski occasioned a reaction by Halecki, who pointed out the omissions and protested against exclusion from professional life of scholars such as Władysław Konopczyński, Adam Skałkowski and Józef Feldman.48 This was the only debate that directly concerned the political differences separating the émigrés and historians from People’s Republic of Poland; otherwise the discussions pertained to the specific topics of presented papers. The contention that the historical sciences in Poland were oppressed focused on the freedom to conduct research and at a deeper level the freedom to maintain a moral dimension in the historical studies. In Halecki’s and Kukiel’s reviews, this controversy occasioned reflection on the problem of double representation, i.e. on a discipline now divided into two camps. Nevertheless, both reviewers time and again had been conducting factual discussions searching for grounds for an implicit dialog with some of the historians of the “other” side. Halecki in his review, for example, discussed the theses about the origins of Polish and other Slavic states in the middle ages, as presented in the papers of Kazimierz Tymieniecki, Henryk Łowmiański, and Aleksander Gieysztor. Halecki was critical of the way that the role of the Church and Christianisation had been presented as diminishing—as the “last” factor in the process of state building—but he recognized the value of the comparative approach used in Łowmiański’s studies. He even agreed for the need of the social and economic perspective in his comments on the paper of Stefan Kieniewicz about the revolutionary crisis from 1846 to 1848 in the Austrian part of old Poland (Galicia). But he was opposed the general condemnation of all leading groups as traitors to the national cause, and also Kieniewicz’s thesis that only the peasants and urban proletariat could be the bearers of the fight for national independence, against not only the foreign 47 48

Cf. Kukiel, 1955b. Ibid. Only scholars who newly passed away were mentioned by name. For security reasons, neither Halecki nor Kukiel did use names of those colleagues in Poland who “did not turn Marxist” and were in opposition to the regime.

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governments but also the Polish nobility.49 An account about this particular discussion and others of the same kind could be found in the review by Marian Kukiel.50 Describing the next congress in Stockholm in 1960, Halecki, as other reviewers, observed that Soviet historians, together with historians from the satellite countries, were well prepared and acted purposively, and that the effects of their presence could be seen in the changed profile of the Congress.51 First, their ideological statements weren’t any longer opposed by any strongly crafted theory concerning, for example, periodization of history or any other idea or model which would give a more general framework for historical research other than historical materialism. Second, the attendance of the communist delegations had affected the thematic profile of the Congress by enlarging the amount of issues concerning the problems of eastern Slavic world, mainly Russia. Exile scholars and historians from the communist countries met mainly during the session of International Commission of Slavic Studies which took place before the opening of the Congress in Uppsala, and at other sessions of the Congress proper. Halecki denounced in his review the traditional themes of this approach that, in his view, followed the old Russian nationalistic pattern: e.g. radically diminishing the role of Norman Varangians in the early period of state-building in Rus’; the anachronistic treatment of the Russian “nation” and other peoples such as the Ukrainians and Byelorussians; understating the role of aggression in Russian foreign policy during the eighteenth century. The “western” papers of the Slavic session were in his opinion based almost exclusively on Russian research, old and new.52

Exile Historians at the Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna Congresses

The papers presented by Polish historians in exile were usually published in special issues of historical periodicals. The topics of such papers often took into consideration the venues of the meetings themselves. They all presented new results arising from the use of new sources or new perspectives. New 49 50 51 52

Halecki, 1956b, 11, 14–15. Kukiel, 1955b. Halecki, 1960; Erdmann, 1987. Halecki, 1960.

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perspectives were operationalized within a broad range of regional, international or trans-national frameworks. In Paris in 1950, the Polish historians who participated actively in the Congress were Czesław Chowaniec, Władysław Folkierski, Oskar Halecki, Leon Koczy, Marian Kukiel, Tadeusz Sulimirski and Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski. Henryk Paszkiewicz and Otton Laskowski did not attend the Congress personally but sent in their papers, Paszkiewicz on the early history of Russia and Laskowski on infantry tactics in sixteenth century. Other “communications” presented in the Paris meeting dealt with the genesis of the Crusades (Koczy); the principal ideas originating in the Slavonic world during the Renaissance (Halecki); the Black Sea and modern Polish history (Chowaniec); the activities of Prince Adam Czartoryski one of the main personages of the Polish emigration in nineteenth century (in the paper “The League of the People, The European Union and the Third Coalition” by Kukiel). Two papers dealt with the topics in history of literature: “Dante and Islam,” prepared by Folkierski, and Zygmunt Lubicz-Zaleski’s article on “Henri Balzac’s opinions about Poland and Russia.” The full texts of these “communications” were published in special issue of Teki Historyczne in London.53 The paper by Sulimirski—“The Problem of the Survival of Tripolic Culture”—was published in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in London.54 At the Rome Congress, members of the Polish Historical Society Abroad presented papers that were published in advance as a special issue of Antemurale (No. II). The special issue was reviewed by Halecki in Speculum, a journal of the Medieval Academy of America.55 The scholars who did not publish papers but did attend the Congress were Wacław Lednicki, Jakub Sobieski and Stanisław Kot, the later participated separately. The Congress was reviewed by, among others, Kukiel and Halecki.56 Halecki’s contribution—“Rome and Eastern Europe after the Council of Trent”—harks back to the famous work of Bronisław Dembiński describing political and religious relations in Europe shortly before the Council.57 Halecki’s article deals with the intersection of politics and religion in the 53 54 55

56 57

Teki Historyczne, London, 1950, no. iv. Folkierskiʼs contribution was published as resumé of the intended article. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 1951, Vol. xvi, 45–61. “Antemurale”. Vol. I. (1954). Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum Romae; Societas Polonica Scientiarum et Litterarum in Exteris Londinii; and “Antemurale.” Vol. II (1955); reviewed by Halecki in: Halecki, 1956a. Kukiel, 1955a; Kukiel, 1955b; Halecki, 1955b. Halecki, 1955a; Dembiński, 1891.

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r­ elationships of the Holy See with the eastern part of Europe—Venice, Turkey, Moscow and Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in the time between the Council of Trent and the Union of Brest (1596). The materials used in article were researched by Halecki during his Fulbright scholarship in Italy in 1952–1953.58 Leon Koczy’s paper—“The Holy Roman Empire and Poland”—discussed the conflicting views articulated within German and Polish historiography about Poland’s relationships with the restored Empire between 963 and 1024, the role of the Church in them, and Germanyʼs eastern marches. In the review of Antemurale ii, Halecki praised this contribution for its objectivity and mediating nature: Koczy does not attempt to offer any final solution for these problems, but his objective analysis of the interpretations suggested by both sides and his careful elimination of some hypotheses which obviously go too far, will prove extremely helpful by clarifying the status causae, delimiting the areas of agreement and disagreement, and serving as a sound basis for any future discussion.59 Karolina Lanckorońska’s contribution, published in the first issue of Antemurale summarized her pioneering studies concerning the traces of the CyrilloMethodian liturgy in mediaeval Poland.60 Walerian Meysztowicz’s contribution, intensively discussed during the Congress and entitled “The Duchesses of Turov and the Union of the Ruthenian Church with Rome in the Eleventh Century,” was published in Studi Gregoriani. In Antemurale ii, the conclusions of the paper are used to introduce its main archival source: the Manuscriptum Gertrudianum, the most important part of the Codex Gertrudianus or Psalterium Egberti, “a beautifully illuminated codex, which has attracted the attention of many scholars from various lands, but was never published in its entire text” and incorporates a colorful travel story through Germany, Poland, Kievan Rus’, Hungary and northern Italy. 58 59 60

The article came up in connection with Halecki’s book From Florence to Brest (1439–1596). Halecki, 1955c. Halecki, 1956a. Leon Koczy (1900–1981), former professor at the University of Poznań was Librarian at the General Sikorski Historical Institute in Great Britain. Karolina Lanckorońska, “Le vestigia del culto Cirillo-Metodiano in Polonia.” Antemurale I, 1954, 13–28. Countess Karolina Lanckorońska (1898–2002) was professor at the University of Lvov before wwii. She was one of the founders and sponsors of Polish Historical Institute in Rome.

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In his paper entitled “Problems of the Frontier with the Steppes of the North Black Sea,” Józef Jasnowski described the characteristic features of the moving frontiers of sparsely inhabited or uninhabited lands. It discussed the factors ­making for instability in the region and explained the significant aspects of the eastward expansion of the Polish-Lihuanian Commonwealth.61 The contribution was presented during the session dedicated to the problems of the frontiers in different parts of the world. The paper was briefly summarized in Antemurale ii. Marian Kukiel presented his “Problems of Insurectionist Wars of the Nineteenth Century” in relation to the history of several European countries and combined an analysis of political ideologies with that of methods of ­conducting warfare.62 Antemurale ii published a review by Leon Koczy of the  newly published book of Henryk Paszkiewicz and a bibliography of Paszkiewicz’s most important work. The book—The Origin of Russia (1954)— was one of the core works in twentieth-century discussions about the old problem of the Scandinavian roots of Kievan state.63 Paszkiewicz himself had chosen not to come to the Rome Congress. The papers prepared by Polish émigré historians and accepted at the Eleventh Congress in Stockholm were published in advance in a special issue of The Polish Reviev.64 The volume included extended versions of the papers by Oskar Halecki, Leon Koczy, Józef Jasnowski, Stanisław Bóbr-Tylingo and Marian Kukiel. Two hundred fifty copies of the issue were distributed to participants of the Congress, and the popularity of the publication was attested to by the volume of inquiries about it. Two of the authors decided not to come to Stockholm—Józef Jasnowski and Stanisław Bóbr-Tylingo. Present at the Eleventh Congress, but without papers, were Marian K. Dziewanowski and Zygmunt Gąsiorowski.65 Halecki’s paper in the special issue dealt with the (“still controversial”) idea of federalism in the East Central Europe and discussed the Union of Kalmar of the Scandinavian states, the Union of Poland 61 62

63 64

65

Józef Jasnowski (1906–2009), former professor at the University of Warsaw, teacher at the Polish University Abroad, in London. Marian Kukiel, “Problemes des guerres d’insurrection au XiX siècle”. Lt. General Marian Kukiel (1885–1972), leading military historian in the pre-war Poland, taught at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, co-founder and director of the Polish Historical Society and Polish Historical Museum in London, co-founder of the piasa and of the puno. Paszkiewicz, 1954. On Henryk Paszkiewicz and his involvement in the discussion with Russian historiography see Mirosław Filipowicz’s chapter in this volume. The Polish Review, 1960, vol. v, no. 3. The papers presented by Polish historians from People’s Republic were published in: Poland at the xIth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Stockholm. Warszawa 1960. Cf. Stobiecki, 2005, Chap. iii; Stobiecki, 2002.

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and Lithuania and the dualism inherent in the formation of Austro-Hungary. The idea of federalism was one of important concepts that sustained Halecki’s understanding of East Central Europe as an historical region. During the discussion of the paper, Halecki’s position was supported by the Belgian historian Claude Backvis as well as by émigré Ukrainian scholars, and opposed by such Soviet-Russian and Soviet-Ukrainian scholars Boris Rybakov and Volodimir Golobucky. In another separate session on the history of universities, Halecki presented a paper on the historic role of Vilnius University, the Academy of Zamość and the Kievan-Mohyla Academy and discussed the origin of the University of Lvov.66 Leon Koczy’s contribution—“Jomsborg”—dealt with the Viking stronghold at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea (today’s Pomerania) on the islands of the Oder estuary, a settlement may have existed in the period 960–1043. In this paper, Koczy defended the Scandinavian sagas as historical sources. Marian Kukiel’s paper concerned the connection between the leading personalities of the Polish “great emigration” in nineteenth century—the poet Adam Mickiewicz and historian Joachim Lelewel—with the revolutionary movements (the Carbonari in particular) in Europe. Jasnowski’s paper was an overview of western travelers in Eastern Europe during the heyday of the “Grand Tour.” The paper by Bóbr-Tylingo—“Un congrès européen manqué (1863)”—concerned an international congress planned (but not carried out) by Napoleon iii and reviewed the political and diplomatic state of affairs in Europe of the period. Missing in the volume was Halecki’s paper, presented in Stockholm at the parallel Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Research, on the difficulties in Polish genealogical research created by frequent emigration. In the Vienna Congress in 1965, the Polish exile scholars were not represented as a group but attended only as members of the institutions in which they worked. Their papers were published afterwards in Teki Historyczne.67 Oskar Halecki wrote about the Polish and Austrian millennia, that is, the history of the bilateral relations between the two countries as viewed from their understanding of their membership in the Christian world. Halecki’s other paper related to the concept of East Central Europe and its limits in historical interpretation; Leon Koczy’s presentation concerned the crisis of the late medieval university; and Adam Sawczyński discussed the historical views in Poland on military organisation in the seventeenth century. Marian Kukiel gave a paper on the Austrian plans to eventually restore a Polish state in the  period of the Crimean War; Tytus Komarnicki’s contribution dealt with 66 67

“The Universities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from xiv to the xvii Century. Problems of Cultural Geography.” The Polish Review, 1960, vol. v, no. 3, 21–30. Teki Historyczne, London, 1965, vol. xiv.

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international law in modern and contemporary history. Two other Polish historians attending in Vienna were Jerzy Betley from Nigeria and Janusz Tomiak from Great Britain.68 An important dimension of the presence of the Polish delegations in the locations where Congresses took place were the meetings with local non-­ Congress audiences arranged by the local exile organisations. These meetings were reported on in the main reviews of the Congresses written by Polish historians as well as in the articles in the local press.69 The lectures given by Polish scholars to broader circles of listeners were always attended by the members of the board of cish and many colleagues. The reviews reported about local Polish institutions and persons active in the life of Polish exile community as well as provided some information on certain émigré historians from other communist countries. For example, Halecki in his account mentioned Dimitri Obolensky, Nykola Chubaty and Zenonas Ivinskis. In Stockholm, the Russian emigrant, Prince Obolensky, gave a paper on the history of Novgorod (“so little known in the West”) and participated in the discussion about the baptism of St. Wolodymyr and its importance in the formation process of the state. The Lithuanian historian Zenonas Ivinskis attended Congresses in both Rome and in Stockholm. In Stockholm, just as other exiled historians from communist countries, he presented his paper at the Colloqium of the International Commission of Slavic Studies on the topic “The Relevance of the conflict between Latin and Greek elements in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.” In Rome, he presented a “communication” in the session on modern history on “The Role of the Jesuits in the Counterreformation in Lithuania.” Ivinskis was a member of the Polish Historical Institute in Rome and published in the periodical Antemurale. Halecki also mentioned the presence of two Lithuanian and one Ukrainian émigré scholars in Rome, but no Latvians or Estonians. In Stockholm, he noted the attendance of Lithuanian, Hungarian Ukrainian and Estonian émigrés. Nykola Chubaty was present both in Rome and in Stockholm. In Stockholm, the Estonian exile historian, Arnold Soom, has participated in the discussion of the report of Otto Brunner in the section of modern history. Soom was an archivist in Tartu before wwii and later, in Sweden, he worked at the Riksarkivet in Stockholm and published several books in Sweden and Germany on the economic history of the Baltikum in the seventeenth century.70

68 69 70

Stobiecki, 2005, Chap. iii. Emigrerade, 1960. Halecki, 1960; Halecki, 1956b; Actes, 1960. The history of Jesuits was also a topic of the paper of Estonian émigré historian Vello Helk presented in Stockholm.

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Conclusions The general intent of the International Historical Congresses before wwii has been described as the “institutionalization of national representations on the international level.” The post-war years witnessed the efforts to rebuild the international community by reference to the same intent. But the exile historians who had participated and formed policy in the Congresses before the war, experienced an opposite process after the conflict, namely, a break within the national historiographies of the countries that were now in the communist sphere of influence. “The dualism of representation” of exile historiographies, on the one hand, and the historiographies of the home countries, on the other, was the most visible feature of the participation of the émigré historians at the post-war Congresses. The media at the time, however, focused most of their attention on the discussions with Marxist theory. What followed after the war was a hoped-for reunion of the learned world. The multiple efforts to bring the scholars from communist countries to the International Congresses resulted in a gradually “institutional” marginalization of historians exiled from those countries but working in the west. The very organizational structure of the cihs and of the International Congresses, based on national representations (i.e. of national historical societies based in particular states), contributed substantially to pushing aside groups of historians who viewed themselves as exiles. The successful efforts in rebuilding the main institution of professional life, and, at another level, of institutions of national life in exile, could not fully compensate for the net deficit in the milieus and auditoria these institutions had represented before, in the real life the national state. Broken networks of auditoria and of the social circles from the home country, now dismembered and invalidated, made impossible the continuity in exercising national roles in the manner scholars had initiated earlier. The old demands—“to deliver images of reality valuable for integration, security and welfare” and to “disenchant the world” for the decision-making bodies—could be still articulated but they remained without the same possibilities of realization. The main auditorium concerned with national issues was now mainly an exiled group of national leaders and the political elite, now no longer efficacious, and also a cultural elite and the broader circles of the enlightened citizens who were now divided by the fact of exile. It would be naïve to think that the exile historians were not aware of all such facts. In the reviews of the Congresses, the émigré historians reported accurately the difficulties they encountered, and

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even described the differences of opinion within their own group about the appropriate reaction to the new situation. Nevertheless the exiles did not rest in this unfavourable position. The fact that they decided repeatedly to participate in the Congresses despite of all organisational hindrances testifies to their strong sense of priorities and reveals how important they thought it was for individual scholars and for the institutions they maintained to remain visible in international and national professional networks. Their presence at the Congresses was an attempt to redefine the old connections and forge new opportunities for dialogue. This was to be done in a public way but still with recognition of the shortage of the common professional values that had been staked out along with the internationalizing agenda of the pre-war meetings. This was apparent in the way the émigrés crafted their presentations and the summarizing comments that reviewed the Congresses, but above all in the way they formulated their critique of Communist historiography. This critique drew contrasts between the international perspective with nations/countries/states as subjects of history, and the anti-individualistic understanding of history, depriving history writing of its moral sense, viewing history as a globally collective effort, but often driven by hidden agendas of methodological nationalism. As demonstrated in the reviews of Congresses, the Polish exile historians opposed Communist historiography on different levels and on every of these levels created standards for renewed alignments and for restored social circles. Their campaigns concerned the philosophical foundation of historical studies, the national limits of historical investigations and organisation of the research, in a word, the politics of science. 1. First, their critique was aimed at the philosophical aspect of historical materialism. Marxist methodology was understood as a most ideologized part of the more general tendency that wanted to see historical research as a deindividualized undertaking, intending to generalize and discover “laws” resembling those of the natural sciences, and investigating social, economic and demographic processes. The history of all the Congresses since 1928 is often seen as confirming the movement of historical research toward the social sciences, especially after the “triumph of Annales School” at the Congress in 1950.71 This movement was certainly strong and pervasive but in fact non-linear. It had to face counter-­ tendencies in the Congresses, often in the main reports. In Rome in 1955, for  example, this trend was deplored and criticised in two of four main 71

Myhre, 2012, 272.

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relazioni generali of Gerhard Ritter and of Pierre Renouvin.72 At the Congress in Vienna in 1965, the General Secretary of the French National Committee, Jean Glénisson, underscored the reemergence of the hermeneutic and individualistic approach of the philosophic critique of texts.73 The two main Polish exile reviewers of the Congresses—Kukiel and Halecki—had actively chosen sides in this prolonged controversy: historical research had to analyze individual phenomena and derive values from that activity rather than look for the confirmations of laws of historical development. This stance was correlated with the demarcating and renewing of their social circles among colleagues from other countries. A sign of that this effort was sucessful can be seen in the broad participation of the historians from the cish and of other colleagues in the meetings held by Polish historians outside the Congresses and organized by the local circles of the Polish emigration. Kukiel and Halecki had differing accents in their opposition to nomothetic view. Kukiel wrote about freedom and the conscience of the historian, thus taking a radical hermeneutical position. (In his well-known article “History in the service of the present”, he praised Collingwood and his empathetic understanding of history.74) Halecki pleaded for the philosophical mobilisation of the historical sciences and emphasized the need for syntheses on the basis of models other than those crafted by Marxist historiography. His own position, presented very succinctly in one of discussions in Stockholm, was based on Christian historiosophy that came from his special field, medieval studies.75 He sketched out his position in his paper in Stockholm and developed it fully in his two books—The Limits and Divisions of European History (1950) and Borderlands of Western Civilization. A History of East Central Europe (1952).76 Halecki’s and Kukiel’s clearly enunciated points of view did not mean, however, that they denied the importance of examining economic and social questions. At the same time, they did not develop their critique of socially and economically crafted historical research from the basis of a narrow national position. 72 In: The Tenth..., 1955, 86–87. 73 Erdmann, 1987, 395. 74 Kukiel, 1947. 75 An interesting companion to Haleckiʼs sytheses in this respect is the book of Carl Schmitt Der Nomos der Erde (1950), which harks back among others on medieval political theology—it offers an elaborate answer to the need of other syntheses and takes into consideration the development of law, political institutions and economy in international European and global perspective. 76 Halecki, 1950; Halecki, 1952.

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2. Traditionally, socially-oriented history was in opposition to national history. One of the methodological controversies between German and French historiography as early as the Oslo and Warsaw Congresses concerned precisely an observed, ongoing shift away from national history and the opening to the international conception of a social history that tended to neglect national questions in favour of local and global perspectives (Erdmann). The second area of the exile critique of communist historiography used an altogether interesting starting point. It pointed out the connection between applied historical materialism and methodological nationalism: “non-national” problems were still being addressed within national geographical framework, often neglecting documented facts or deforming the “mediating” discussions of historical problems on the international level. This was the basic accusation by exile historians directed against the marriage of Soviet historiography with the traditional Russian historiography. An example was the presentation at the Stockholm Congress by Boris Porshnev from Moscow, during the session that dealt with the seventeenth century, as the presentation was critically reviewed by Halecki.77 With respect to Polish historiography, Koczy’s critique of the thesis of Gerard Labuda in the paper on “Jomsborg” demonstrated similar features. In his research, Labuda denied the existence of the Viking city, but Koczy argued for its reality, taking exception to Labuda’s mode of using historical research to legitimize the national-political claims of the Communist state, in this case of newly drawn western borders of Communist Poland.78 The Polish scholar pointed that the papers presented by the historians from communist countries generally ignored the existence of genuine national historiographies, for example of the Ukrainians and Lithuanians, and created socially oriented and pro-Russian versions of national histories. These comments aligned the Polish scholars with exile historians from other countries. In their own presentations and writings, the exile historians generally worked with an international perspective that was both regional and European. They often used the comparative method (Halecki, Paszkiewicz, Kukiel), gave recognition to new areas for research (Halecki) and, above all, opened new material for the ongoing discussions of particular problems (Meysztowicz, Koczy). The “nation” and “nationality” were distinctly delineated historical objects of interest for all of them, but the national frame was placed within a larger view and balanced with the comparative approach.

77 78

Halecki, 1960. The method of some of Gerard Labudaʼs works of this period was labelled by Jörg Hackmann as a cognate of “Volksgeschichte”. Cf. Hackmann, 1993.

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3. The third area of dissension concerned the ideological cleansing of the institutions of historical science—their reorganization and the censoring and silencing ideologically independent scholars. For this, the critique by Halecki of the report by Leśnodorski at the Rome meeting was the most informative example. In the reviews of the Rome and Stockholm Congresses, a clear demarcation line was drawn between Marxist “functionaries” who were responsible for destroying the Polish historical sciences, and the other Polish scholars who reported straightforwardly on serious historical research despite ideological pressures. There was an incessant stream of comments on, assessments of and references to the papers of the latter, with factual critique combined with an appreciation of their erudition and competence as exhibited in discussions. The historians from Poland were even praised for their skills in advancing dialogue to the international stage, which was an indirect allusion to the fact that many in the delegation from Poland (Aleksander Gieysztor, Stefan Kieniewicz, Marian Małowist, Tadeusz Manteuffel and the heavily criticized Stanisław Arnold) had been students of a colleague from the pre-war period—Marceli Handelsman—who had died in 1945 but until then had been one of the most active historians in participating in and coordinating international events. The critical attention in the reviews of Congresses to the presentations of younger colleagues from Poland was a way of according recognition to them before the exile audience, of promoting and recommending them to the wider circles of the discipline, as well of seeking to establish indirectly a dialogue and of including them in the own social circle as virtual partners and as part of the audience. References Actes (1951). ix. [Neuvième] congrès international des sciences historiques: Paris, 28 août—3 septembre 1950/Comité International des Sciences Historiques. Vol 2: Actes. Paris. Actes (1960). xi Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, 21–28 Aout 1960. / Comité International des Sciences Historiques / International Committee for Historical Sciences. Göteborg, Stockholm, Uppsala. Atkinson, D. (1988). “Soviet and East European Studies in the United States.” Slavic Review 47, no 3: Fall. Coser, L.A. (1968). “Sociology of Knowledge” in D.L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclo­ pedia of the Social Sciences. New York: The Macmillan Co & The Free Press, Vol. 7, 428–434.

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Dembiński, B. (1891). Rzym i Europa przed rozpoczęciem trzeciego okresu Soboru Trydenckiego [Rome and Europe before the Beginning of the Third Part of the Council of Trent]. Kraków. Draus, J. and R. Terlecki (1984). Polskie szkoły wyższe i instytucje naukowe na emigracji 1939–1945. [Polish Institutions of Higher Education and of Science in Exile 1939– 1945]. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich. Emigrerade (1960). “Emigrerade polacker arbetar för objektiv historieskrivning,” [Émigré Poles are working for the sake of objectivity]. Svenska Dagbladet 24.08.1960, 15. Erdmann, K.D. (1987). Die Ökumene der Historiker. Geschichte der internationalen Historikerkongresse und des Comité International des Sciences Historiques. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 492. Erdmann, K.D. (2005). Toward a global community of historians: the International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences 1898– 2000, ed. by J. Kocka and W.J. Mommsen in collaboration with A. Blänsdorf; transl. by A. Nothnagle. New York: Berghahn Books. 430. [Gieysztor, A. (1960)]. A.G. “xi Kongres Międzynarodowy Nauk Historycznych w Sztokholmie 21–28.viii.1960.” [xith International Congress of Historical Sciences in Stockholm, August 21–28, 1960]. Kwartalnik Historyczny lxvii, no 4, 1188–1194. Guth, S. (2005). “Between Confrontation and Conciliation: German Polish Historiographical Relations and the Historiographical Congresses of Historians in the 1930s.” Storia della Storiografia 47, 113–160. Habielski, R. (1999). Druga Wielka Emigracja 1945–1990. Vol. iii: Życie społeczne i k­ ulturalne emigracji. [The Second Great Exile. Vol. iii: The Social and Cultural Life of the Exile]. Warszawa. Hackmann, J. (1993). “Gerard Labudas Konzeption der Geschichte Pommerns.” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 41, 109–134. Hadler, F., M. Middell, and G. Lingelbach (eds.) (2001). Historische Institute im interna­ tionalen Vergleich. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt. Halas, E. “The Humanistic Approach of Florian Znaniecki.” In http://www.lrz-muenchen .de/~Prof.Helle/znaniecki1.htm. Hałas, E. (2010). Towards the World Culture Society: Florian Znanieckiʼs Culturalism. Frankfurt an Main: Peter Lang. Halecki, O. (1924). “L´histoire de l´Europe Orientale, sa division en époques, son milieu géographique et ses problèmes fondamentaux,” in: La Pologne au ve Congrès International des Sciences Historiques à Bruxelles 1923. Comité National Polonais du ve Congres d’Histoire. Varsovie, 73–94. Halecki, O. (ed.) (1933). La Pologne au viie Congrés International de Sciences Historiques Varsovie 1933, 3 vol, Société Polonaise d’Histoire, Varsovie.

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Halecki, O. (1943). “Problems of Polish Historiography.” Slavonic and East European Review. American Series 2, no. 1 (March), 223–239. Halecki, O. (1950). “Kongres Historyczny w Paryżu.” Teki Historyczne iv. Halecki, O. (1952). The Borderlands of Western Civilization. A History of East Central Europe. New York: Roland Press. Halecki, O. (1955a). “Rome and Eastern Europe after the Council of Trent.” Antemurale ii, 5–29. Halecki, O. (1955b). “Od Rzymu do Paryża.” Teki Historyczne vii. Halecki, O. (1955c), From Florence to Brest (1439–1596). Rome: Sacrae Poloniae Millenium 1955; again in New York: Fordham University Press 1959. Halecki, O. (1956a). [rev. untitled] Antemurale i, and Antemurale ii: Dissertationes in x Internationali Congressu Scientiarum Historicarum Romae A. mcmlv a Sociis Societatis Historicae Polonorum in Exteris Praesentatae Rome, 1955,” in: Speculum 31, no. 1. (Jan.), 128–130. Halecki, O. (1956b). “Poland at the Tenth International Congress of Historical Sciences.” The Polish Review i, no.1, Winter, 5–22. Halecki, O. (1957). “The Moral Laws of History.” The Catholic Historical Review, no 4, 409–440. Halecki, O. (1960). “Po kongresie historyków w Sztokholmie.” [After the Congress of Historians in Stockholm]. Wiadomości (London), no. 761 (44), 30. October. Halecki, O. (1950). The Limits and Divisions of European History. Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press. Handelsman, M. (1933). “Les organisations internationales dans le domaine des sciences historiques.” Pologne Littéraire (Varsovie), 15.8. Jagodziński, Z. (1965). “Kongres Historyków.” [Congress of Historians]. Dzienik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, no. 48. Jeśman, C. (1955). “Wszystkie drogi prowadzą do Rzymu. Międzynarodowy Kongres Historyków.” [All Paths Lead to Rome. International Congress of Historians]. Wiadomości (London), no. 42. Kłoczowski, J. (1993). “Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia w historiografii krajów regionu.” [East Central Europe in the Historiography of the Countaries of the Region]. Materiały Instytutu Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej (Lublin), 5. Kłoczowski, J. (1994). “Oskar Halecki i jego walka o miejsce Polski w Europie.” [O. Halecki and his Struggle for Poland’s Place in Europe], in Z. Wójcik (ed.), Z dziejów polityki i dyplomacji. Studia poświęcone pamięci Edwarda hr. Raczyńskiego, Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej na wychodźstwie. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe. Kłoczowski, J. (1995). East Central Europe in the Historiography of the Countries of the Region, transl. by C. Grabowski, Lublin. See: http://www.mlodszaeuropa.pl/uploads/ publikacje/Kloczowski_Ksiazka_ENG.pdf.

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Kocka J. (2005). Sydney, cish and the Utopia of Universal History: Opening of the International Congress of Historians Sydney, July 3. See: http://www.cish.org/EN/ congres/Opening-speech-Sydney.pdf. Koczy, L. (1950). “Paryski kongres historyków.” [Congress of Historians in Paris]. Teki Historyczne iv. Koczy, L. (1960–1961). “Międzynarodowy Kongres Historyczny.” [International Congress of Historians]. Teki Historyczne xi. Koht, H., Eisenmann, L., Handelsman, M., Oncken, H., Steinacker H., Wałek-Czernecki, T., (1929), “La nationalité et l’histoire. Ensemble d’études.” Bulletin of the International Committee of Historical Sciences 2, Paris, 217–320. Kornat, M. (2003). “Listy Władysława Konopczyńskiego do Mariana Kukiela i Oskara Haleckiego z 1947 roku.” [Letters of Władysław Konopczyński to Marian Kukiel and Oskar Halecki written 1947]. Arcana, no 51–52, 228–248. Kukiel, M. (1947). “Historia w służbie teraźniejszości.” [History in the Service of the Present]. Teki Historyczne i, 2–15. Kukiel, M. (1955a). “Kongres Rzymski.” [Congress in Rome]. Teki Historyczne vii. Kukiel, M. (1955b). “Historyczny Kongres Rzymski.” [Historical Congress in Rome]. Wiadomości (London), no. 48 (504). La Pologne (1924). La Pologne au v-e Congrés International de Sciences Historiques Bruxelles 1923, ed. by Comité national polonais du Ve Congres d’histoire. Varsovie. La Pologne (1930). La Pologne au vi-e Congrés International de Sciences Historiques Oslo 1928, ed. by Société polonaise d´histoire. Varsovie/Lwow. La Pologne (1955). La Pologne au x-e Congrès International des sciences historiques à Rome, ed. Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Laskowski, O. (1951). “ix Międzynarodowy Kongres Historyków.” [ixth International Historical Congress]. Orzeł Biały, no. 2. Mandelíčková, M. and I. Goddeeris (2012). “Living in the Past: Historians in Exile,” in: I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds.), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 394–411. Maciuszko, J.J. (1997). “Pół wieku Polskiego Instytutu Naukowego w Ameryce (1942– 1992).” [Half a Century of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (1942– 1992)]. Pamiętnik Literacki xxii, 10–25. Manteuffel, T. et al. (eds.) (1933). Résumés des Communications présentées au Congrès de Varsovie 1933, 2 vol., Warszawa. McGuir, J.E. and B. Tuchanska (1997). “Sytuacja poznawcza: analiza ontologiczna” [Cognizance-Situation: Ontological Analysis], in: J. Goćkowski and M. Sikora (eds.), Porozumiewanie się i współpraca uczonych. Kraków: Secesja.

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McGuir, J.E. and B. Tuchanska (2000). Science unfettered: a philosophical study in socio­ historical ontology, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Myhre, J.E. (2012). “Wider Connections: International Networks among European Historians.” in I. Porciani and J. Tollebeek (eds.), Setting the Standard: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 266–290. Nowosad, W. (1951). “Z muzą Klio pod ramię.” (Hand by Hand With the Muse Clio). Wiadomości (London), no. 3. Paszkiewicz, H. (1954). The Origin of Russia. New York: Philosophical Library. Stelzel, P. (2006). “Historians between Confrontation and Cooperation.” H-German: Review of: Erdmann, Karl Dietrich, Toward a Global Community of Historians: The International Historical Congresses and the International Commitee of Historical Sciences, 1898–2000. H-German, H-Net Reviews. March, 2006. url: http://www .h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11551. Stobiecki, R. (1993). “Twórczość emigracyjna Oskara Haleckiego (1891–1973). Próba charakterystyki.” [Exile Production of Oskar Halecki (1891–1973). An Attempt of Assesment]. Studia z dziejów Polski i Europy w xix i xx wieku (Lublin). Stobiecki, R. (2002). “Historycy polscy na uchodźstwie na Międzynarodowych Kongresach Nauk Historycznych.” [Polish Historians in Exile Participate in the International Congresses of Historical Sciences]. Dzieje Najnowsze, no 3, 75–93. Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu. Z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 r. [Clio in Exile. Polish Historiography in Exile in Great Britain after 1945]. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. Sulimirski, T. (1955). “Uniwersytet Polski za granicą w Paryżu.” [Polish University Abroad], in T. Sulimirski (ed.), Nauka Polska na Obczyźnie (London) 1, 14–18. Szacki, J. (1984). [Introduction], in: Znaniecki, F. Społeczne role uczonych. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. The Tenth (1955). “The Tenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, Rome 1955,” in: Past and Present, no. 8. (Nov., 1955), 83–90. Thomas, W. I. and F. Znaniecki (1918–1920). The Polish peasant in Europe and America: monograph of an immigrant group. Boston, Mass.: Badger. Veit-Brause, I. (1990). [Review of: Die Ökumene der Historiker. Geschichte der ­internationalen Historikerkongresse und des Comité International des Sciences Historiques. By Karl Dietrich Erdmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987]. History and Theory 29, no 3 (October), 358–375. Wandycz, D.S. (1974). Polski Instytut Naukowy w Ameryce. W trzydziestą rocznicę 1942– 1972. [Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. Thirtieth Anniversary]. Nowy Jork: Polski Instytut Naukowy. Wandycz, P.S. (2001). “Polnische Geschichtsschreibung im Exil.” Comparativ 11, no. 1, 128–137.

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Woroniecka, G. (1997). “Porozumienie i nieporozumienie w socjologii: zróżnicowanie audytoriów i różnica dyskursów.” Understanding and Misunderstanding i Sociology: Differentiating of the Auditorium and Difference in the Discourse], in J. Goćkowski and M. Sikora (eds.) (1997). Porozumiewanie się i współpraca uczonych. Krakow: Secesja. Znaniecki, F. (1940) The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge, New York: Columbia Univ. Press. Znaniecki, F. (1954). “The Creative Evolution and Diffusion of Knowledge,” in F.  Znaniecki, W. Lednicki, O. Halecki, Three Columbia Bicentennial Lectures. New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, 10–18. Znaniecki, F., (1983). Cultural Reality. Houston, Texas: Cap and Gown Press. Znaniecki, F. (1984). Społeczne role uczonych [Social Roles of the Academics], ed. by J. Szacki. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Znaniecki, F., W. Lednicki and O. Halecki (1954). Three Columbia Bicentennial Lectures. New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America.

To Be a Polish Historian in Exile: Semantic and Methodological Remarks Rafał Stobiecki In recent years scholars have been increasingly interested in the subject of the Polish historiography in exile, including leading figures and major institutions of the Polish emigration.1 Yet in so far as the post-war experiences of the Polish historians in exile are concerned, we are still largely in the dark. Furthermore, there is a huge imbalance in the studies devoted to various centers of exile historical thought. Relatively speaking, much has been written on the achievements of Polish scholars in Great Britain, but there are few monographs dealing with other centers of the émigré historiography such as Paris and its two centers: the first having originated in the 19th century and being bound up with the history of the Polish Library and the Historico-Literary Society; and the second having been brought into being by Jerzy Giedroyc and his associates. In addition to the Parisian centers, one also needs to mention those in Rome and in New York, the former represented by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America and the latter by the Józef Piłsudski Institute in America. One of the problems of the scholars working on the historical thought of Polish emigration is of a semantic nature. The very phrase “the Polish historian in exile” is a category of key importance, having methodological implications. The phrase not only raises the question of what should be treated as the object of research but also how the research should be carried out. At first glance, the category appears to be extraordinarily blurred and as a result difficult to analyze. It is especially the first two elements in the phrase that need to be clarified. The view commonly held at least since the nineteenth century is that the title of “historian” may be conferred only upon those who have a degree in history, have acquired a skill in analyzing primary sources and are wellacquainted with all other aspects of the historian’s craft. Any Polish-language dictionary indicates that this is precisely the meaning that the term is meant to convey. Definitions encountered in dictionaries also contain phrases such as “a scholar dealing with history” and “a student of history”. Sometimes “historian” also implies the teaching of history, which brings the term closer to its popular understanding.2 1 For the bibliography of the problem under discussion see my book Stobiecki, 2005. 2 See, for example, Szymczak, 1984, 747.

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Even a superficial knowledge of the Polish historiography in exile is sufficient to indicate that this approach—a very inclusive one, stressing professional skills usually required of historians—does not correspond well with emigration reality. It is really difficult to find a common denominator for such different figures as Marian Kukiel, Jędrzej Giertych or Józef Mackiewicz (the enumeration of these names is not quite random). At the same time, one can hardly deny the fact that the Polish community in exile looked upon all of these three as historians par excellence. The problem of how to differentiate between those in exile who deserve the title “historian” and those who do not remains unresolved, as the present author can attest from personal experience. Some reviewers of the book Clio in Exile. On the History of Polish Émigré Historiography in Great Britain after 1945 (Stobiecki, 2005) were critical of the analysis of Jędrzej Giertych’s historical writing which, it was claimed, was nothing but a worthless journalism. At the same time criticism was expressed for ignoring the writings by Józef Mackiewicz, whose historical novels and other texts to a great extent shaped historical self-knowledge of the émigré communities. It seems that the problem can be viewed from three different but overlapping perspectives. The first stems from the self-identification that is characteristic of both individuals as well as particular groups and is bound up with a sense of belonging in a certain milieu (as explored below). The second places the category in question in the context of the émigré community. Who was regarded as a historian and for what reasons? And from the third perspective the category “the Polish historian in exile” can be viewed simply as the object of historical inquiry. There is no doubt that under the circumstances prevalent in exile, the concept of the “historian” gained a new meaning that was significantly deeper than the term had in ordinary usage. This was so because Polish emigrants accorded a very special place to knowledge of the past. From the very outset such knowledge performed compensatory functions. It was supposed to serve as a justification for steadfast adherence to national imponderables. It aroused nostalgia for the lost homeland. It was also a remedy, rendering everyday problems easier to cope with. Furthermore, with the passage of time other reasons appeared for an interest in the past. The problem was addressed by Maria Danilewicz-Zielińska in an interview in the year 2000: During the 50s in Great Britain there were tens of thousands of the Poles who traveled across the whole Russia to get to England later either from the Middle East or from Italy. They were put in the camps, each of which numbered a thousand or more men. Soon there appeared children who for obvious reasons could not remember Poland. This created a very

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favorable ground for the recollection of the past as the children who grew older began to ask questions…this is why we thought back to the past.3 Viewing the printed word sacrosanct—a characteristic of all Polish groups in exile—was another factor stimulating the turn to history. As pointed out by Tadeusz Wyrwa: “[The] word was often the only advocate of the Polish cause and the only link keeping the Polish refugees scattered all over the world bound both to each other and to their homeland.”4 Karol Zbyszewski voiced the same idea ironically: “Addiction to writing is common among the Poles. With little chance of undertaking some practical activity, everyone launches into writing. Ink becomes a drug offering an illusion of real work. The Poles in Great Britain get poisoned with it en masse.”5 This preoccupation with “the word” had the effect of blurring the boundary between literature and historiography, in both generic and institutional terms (many historians and novelists were at the same time members of the Polish Historical Society in Great Britain and the Association of the Polish Writers in Exile6). Both groups interpenetrated each other, as can be seen in the way they were perceived by the public opinion. In a favorite-writer poll conducted by Wiadomości, readers decided to give first prize to Stanisław Cat-Mackiewicz, but historians such as Michał Sokolnicki, Marian Kukiel, Stanisław Kościałkowski and Wiktor Weintraub also ranked among the best.7 For many years Marian Kukiel and Oskar Halecki sat on a jury of the literary competition organized by Wiadomości. From the very beginning, émigré historians were aware of the close ties between literature and historiography. Emerging from the same soil, both literature and historiography were viewed, especially in conditions of exile, as playing a key role in cementing Polish national identity.8 Hence it is hardly surprising that history was practiced not only by professional scholars but also by quite a large number of amateurs, the latter being deeply convinced that knowledge of the past was of crucial importance for integrating the Polish exile community and providing it with endurance and its own identity. Thus, 3 4 5 6

Danilewiczowa-Zielińska and Bereś, 2000, 78. Wyrwa, 1987, 102. Zbyszewski, 1947, 28. This is best proved by the fact that Marian Kukiel served as an honorary president of the Association of the Polish Writers in Exile. In 1975 another historian, Józef Garliński, was also elected the honorary president of the Association. For more information on this organization see Pamiętnik Literacki 1995, Vol. xx. 7 The results of the poll in Wiadomości (London), 1955, no 42. 8 Wyrwa, 1987, 102.

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in addition to professional scholars—historians in the strict sense, art historians, literary historians with degrees in their specialized fields, considerable academic achievements, and established position in the scholarly world— there is justification for including among the authors of the Polish historiography in exile self-taught students of history, writers, essayists and journalists who dealt with historical topics. This inclusive formula is favored for both formal and practical reasons. It should be remembered that during the meeting at which the Polish Historical Society in exile was being brought into existence it was agreed that the future members of the Society should be both scholars experienced in doing research and simply history-loving persons.9 Representatives of émigré historiography who are still alive at this writing have also declared themselves in favor of such a broad definition of the historical profession. Among others, these include Józef Jasnowski, Jan Ciechanowski or Zbigniew Siemaszko.10 At the same time, within Polish emigrant circles such a “flexible” understanding of the term “historian” was not always accepted. In a conversation with Andrzej Friszke, Lidia Ciołkoszowa recalled that …not everyone used to treat us as scholars. Adam was often looked upon as a journalist, a politician or even a propagandist. A conference was once planned with one of the organizers being a professor of Jagiello­ nian  University—Władysław Folkierski—a distinguished specialist in Romance studies as well as an equally distinguished representatives of the National Democrats. Adam offered to give a paper on Communism or Stalinism. Maria Danilewiczowa, the director of the Polish Library, was also among the participants of the conference. She told Folkierski that Adam should not be allowed to take part in the conference since he was just a journalist and his presentation was highly unlikely to be at a scholarly level. Folkierski tried hard to persuade her that Adam was a great 9

10

Protokół z pierwszego Walnego Zgromadzenia Polskiego Towarzystwa Historycznego w Wielkiej Brytanii z 29. xi. 1946r., Instytut Polski i Muzeum im. Gen. Sikorskiego /IPMS/, Archiwum Polskiego Towarzystwa Historycznego w Wielkij Brytanii /APTHWB/, teczka nr 5. (The Minutes of the First General Meeting of the Polish Historical Society in Great Britain. November, 29, 1946, The Polish Institute and the General Sikorski Museum /IPMS/, The Archive of the Polish Historical Society in Great Britain /APTHWB/, the File No 5.) See the accounts of the conversations held with Jan Ciechanowski on August, 24, 2000, with Zdzisław Jagodziński on September, 8 and 14, 2000, with Józef Jasnowski on September, 18, 2000, with Aleksander Szkuta on September, 18, 2000 and with Andrzej Suchcitz on September, 20, 2000. (All the accounts are in the authors’ collection. The author wishes here to express his thanks to all those mentioned above.)

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expert on the problem, but he failed. Danilewiczowa made it clear that the organizers would have to choose between her and Adam. ‘We have already made a choice’—answered Folkierski, Mr Ciołkosz is going to present a paper.11 Zbigniew Siemaszko has had similar doubts. In a letter to the present writer the author he observed: Am I an historian? I think I am rather someone writing about history. And the second question: am I an émigré historian? “Émigré” is undoubtedly correct in terms of the place of my residence and my resolute ­opposition to identifying with the attitudes adopted by those fellow countrymen who succumbed to Sovietization—which can be said of the majority of the Poles. But I have never had anything to do with “organized” historians grouped around “Historical Papers” which I have held in my hands once or twice. I have also been completely unacquainted with the periodical published by Lanckorońska and Meysztowicz and I do not even remember its title (the title being Antemurale—R.S.). I cooperated with Zeszyty Historyczne, edited by Jerzy Giedroyc whose notion of history was more comprehensive than that held by “organized” historians.12 These comments suggest that a distinction was sometimes drawn in the com­ munity of the émigré historians between academic scholars and historiansamateurs. Among the differences between the two groups that have been ­articulated a few stand out. First of all, there is a different attitude towards the knowledge of the past that, in the case of academic historians, seems to have been more “dogmatized.” This stresses the uniqueness and specificity of historical narrative and the need to pay special attention to the principles of the historians’ craft. Insofar as amateur historians are concerned, their attitude was more open, favoring combination of different forms of history-writing, with an essay-style of presenting history not excluded from the repertoire. Besides, academic historians seldom tried to deal with recent history. In choosing the events to be examined, they believed, the historian had to retain a distance of at least fifty years from the object being studied. This was considered a standard rule in the canon of historical profession. In this connection, it is worth mentioning that until the 1970s no analyses concerning the years after 11 12

Ciołkoszowa and Friszke, 1995, 236. A letter to the author from Z.S. Siemaszko dated March, 10, 2007, in the author’s collection.

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1914 were published in “Historical Papers.” This same could not be said of amateur historians. In their eyes it was inter-war Poland and the period of the Second World War that deserved special attention as objects of historical exploration. They were right in the sense that this recent history was in greatest demand among the Poles in exile. The adjective “Polish” also requires clarification. In this regard, the problem can be approached in two ways. The first—a broad one—rests for the decision to treat someone as a Polish historian on the basis of the historian’s self-­ conception or self-definition. In other words, everyone who thinks of himself/ herself as of a Polish historian is to be recognized as such. The second—a narrower one—relies on criteria that can be made to appear objective. The latter approach includes those scholars and publicists who were involved in academic life of the emigration and published in Polish; or were members of the Polish Learned Societies or lectured in the Polish Schools of Higher Learning operating in the exile community.13 These criteria could also easily be made to apply to participants in the European Centers of the historical thought that came into being in the Polish emigration. But even with regard to the Centers, one is likely to encounter definitional obstacles that are not easy to overcome. The late Zdzisław Jagodziński rather reluctantly acceded to including scholars working at British universities within the community of Polish émigré historians.14 The problem became more complicated when the United States came under scrutiny. There were a number of historians of Polish descent living in the us who, anxious to assimilate into a new national community, remained active, for a variety of reasons but also deliberately, only in the world of English-language historiography. Doubts also could arise over how to treat scholars belonging to Polish-American Historical Association (paha), in which membership included both Poles as well as the historians of the Polish descent.15 The same held true of the persons who after the Second World War worked in the Polish Institute of Sciences and Arts. In the essay entitled “Polish Humanities outside Poland,” Rafał Habielski was willing to number famous sovietologists (Zbigniew Brzeziński, Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam) among the 13

14

15

The community of “The Polish historians in exile” is an ambiguous category. The community includes all those who consider themselves to be Poles. For this question see Tatarkiewicz, 2000, 18–25. The interview given by Z. Jagodziński on September, 8, 2000 (in the author’s collection) was the only exception he made for Wacław H. Zawadzki whom he was inclined to a certain degree to regard as an “apprentice” of Marian Kukiel. For more information, see Jagodziński, 1997, 57; Kaczorowska, 2008, 288–320 (of the Ms.).

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Polish historians in exile.16 The author may have reached too far in regarding Ulam as a Polish émigré historian, but the problem does not lend itself to a simple solution. Piotr S. Wandycz, in turn, drew a clear distinction between émigré historians and “native” Americans working on the history of Poland or on the history of Eastern Central Europe.17 The last element to be dealt with is the phrase “in exile.” Those engaged in creating and stimulating Polish academic life abroad put a great emphasis upon the binary opposition “Communist country/the Polish Diaspora.” This was a deliberate choice made by men who thought of themselves as having a mission that went far beyond scholarly questions. In this conceptualization, émigré scholars resembled a religious order the members of which were bound by high moral standards and the obligation of remaining loyal to their ideals.18 In 1959 Kukiel wrote: If we decided to stay abroad, it was not with a view to finding a better place to live in, since this was the necessity which the fate imposed on us. Our goal was to make the right choice and persist in it. We wanted to serve the cause by working honestly in exile and by speaking up for Poland—well-organized, free and loyal to all its citizens.19 Such an attitude has usually been described as steadfast or indomitable. It was this attitude that made the historians in exile decide to sever all official ties 16

17 18 19

Jakubowska and Myśliński (2006), 314. With regard to the Polish scholars in exile Rafał Habielski applied the following categorization. According to him three groups can be specified. The first one included scholars setting the tone for the Polish academic life abroad (Marian Kukiel, Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski). The second group was made up of those who, while cooperating with the Polish institutions, were also associated with research centers of the countries in which they lived (Oskar Halecki, Piotr Wandycz), and finally the third group consisted of those whose connections with the émigré community were occasional or did not exist at all (Adam Ulam). In a correspondence between Mieczysław Grydzewski and Marian Kukiel I found an interesting opinion concerning Richard Pipes. In the letter dated January 14, 1960, Kukiel wrote: “As far as Pipes is concerned I met him in Rome [Kukiel speaks here about the International Congress of Historical Sciences]. Highly regarded by Halecki, he took part in discussions expressing reasonable views. Halecki considers him to be almost one of ours.” See the archive: Archiwum Emigracji in Toruń/Thorn, there the archives of “Wiadomości (London)”, Marian Kukiel, Listy z lat 1946–1973 [Marian Kukiel, Letters from 1946–1973], signature AE/AW/CLIX/4. Wandycz, 2004a, 170; see also the interview Wandycz, 2004b, 163–168. Terlecki, 1946a; Terlecki, 1946b; see also Habielski, 1991, 78 ff. Kukiel, 1959.

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with the historiography practiced under the Communist regime. It found its symbolic expression in a resolution passed by the Polish Historical Society on April, 26, 1947, on the publication of scholarly works in Communist Poland. The resolution read: “Under no circumstances can we agree to have our works printed in the publishing houses controlled by the Communist regime…And in no way can our names be associated with the regime in Warsaw.”20 In spite of the objections raised by some scholars, the resolution remained in force after 1956. But there were also other motives as well as some shift in emphasis that could be discerned in the attitudes of the historians in question. Z.S. Siemaszko, quoted above, while inclined to accept being referred to as an “émigré” links the term with a place of residence and with the resistance to sovietization of the Polish nation. Others went so far as to entirely reject the category “emigrant.” The opinion expressed by M. Danilewicz can be seen as illustrative of such attitudes. She said: “I have never been a refugee. My case is that of evacuation. Up till 1989 I was a political émigré, and now I am a Pole living outside my country.”21 What did it mean, then, to be an historian in exile? There seems to be no straight answer to such a question. In searching for some synthesizing category, one can invoke here the concept of identity. Dictionaries define identity as a combination of sociological, psychological and cultural factors.22 The French sociologist Pierre Tap has noticed that identity “is doomed to be placed in the in-between zone that involves the individual and the collective, the internal and the external, being and action, assimilation and discrimination, a sense of belonging and migration.”23 The opinions held by the historians discussed here confirm this observation. Tadeusz Wyrwa writes about loneliness that accompanied his work and complains about having no institutional support and no chance of confronting his views with those of others.24 This raises the question of whether it is possible to refer to some kind of group identity, a consciousness that will permit differentiation between the Polish historians in question from other groups of scholars—those living in Poland, other émigré historians or Western historians. 20

21 22 23 24

“Wytyczne w sprawie publikowania prac naukowych w kraju.” [Directives on publishing scholarly works in the country.] mips, Archiwum pthwb, File No 4. The text made an exception for “strictly scientific publications,” free from political yoke of the regime. Danilewiczowa-Zielińska and Bereś, 2000, 78. Kwaśniewski, 1987, 352. Tap, 1980, 12, quotation after Kwaśniewski, 1987, 352. Wyrwa, 1987, 92.

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Elsewhere, the present writer sought to answer the question of whether one was justified in treating the Polish émigré historians living in Great Britain as a group constituting a “separate historical milieu.”25 Four elements were considered in determining the identity of the group. In the first place, the group embraced the historiographic tradition of the Second Republic that expressed itself in the attachment to the part of historical heritage that perished as a result of war or, after 1945, was drawn into the orbit of the Communist rule. This attachment led the historians of the group to establish a number of institutions such as, for example, the Polish Historical Society and initiate one year later the publication of a periodical entitled Historical Papers (meant to be a counterpart of Historical Quarterly). In addition to the Historical Society, the Poles abroad organized the Polish Scientific Society in Exile and the Polish University in Exile. An institutional structure was also provided to the Academic Community of Stefan Batory University in which a leading role was played by Stanisław Kościałkowski, for many years in the inter-war period a professor of this university (then University was in Vilnius). The functioning of these exile institutions contributed to a special bond uniting émigré historians and allowing them to cultivate old and establish new scholarly contacts. In the second place, there were the views on the nature of the historical process and the tasks of the historian shared by émigré scholars—these views that were similar but far from homogenous. Similarity of outlook grounded in the doctrine of individualistic historicism determined their identity as scholars. The doctrine dominated Polish historiography in the inter-war period, forming the methodological basis for historical research. The émigré historians were also adamant about rejecting historical materialism—especially its Stalinist version—that had came to serve as the obligatory theoretical framework for historical studies in all the historiographies of the Soviet Block. In the third place, the Polish historians in Great Britain apparently held similar views on the history of Poland. Their interpretation of the Polish past can be said to have consisted of several interrelated beliefs: the history of Poland as s an inherent part of the history of the Western Civilization, emphasizing the significance of the Christian religion in the Polish history; glorification of the Union between the Poles and Lithuanians; and anti-Russian and anti-Soviet attitudes. In the fourth place, there was the uncompromising stance taken by them on the changes in Europe after 1945. This stance unified the community of Polish historians in exile who refused to resign themselves to the decision taken at Yalta and Potsdam. The Polish emigration—the historians included—wanted 25

Stobiecki, 2005, 25.

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to become the emigration that continued the struggle for independence. It was no accident that Tymon Terlecki in an article entitled “The Emigration of the Fight” quoted the words of Tomasz Teodor Jeż: “…the compasses of the engineer, a chisel of the woodcarver, a brush of the painter, a pen of the writer, even a word of the poet can all be turned into a sword which will help defeat the enemy and set our country free.”26 The ideas of defending freedom of research and of raising topics that for political reasons could not be dealt with in the home country were thus at the core of the institutions of Polish historiography in exile. It can be argued that these observations can in part be applied to the Polish historians living in France, Italy and the United States. Of course, historians in these countries differed in the extent to which they were prepared to accept the described elements of collective identity. They were to a greatest extent internalized by those who were living in Great Britain but to a much lesser extent by scholars in the us. The latter did not work within the framework of the mentioned Polish scholarly institutions and restricted themselves to casual personal contacts. The involvement of particular scholars in general Polish cultural life of the emigration also took different forms, ranging from the membership in the Polish learned societies and publishing in historical periodicals such as Historical Papers, Antemurale, or The Polish Review, to participation in Polish cultural congresses or simply studying Polish history. In each instance, the nature of participation in the cultural life of the Polish emigration depended on individual choices and on the way in which a given person understood the category of “Polishness.” Relevant to this point is the essay by Józef Maria Bocheński, published in 1993 in Kultura, with the title “What does it mean to be a Pole”? This distinguished philosopher who himself had the experience of living abroad, begins by saying that “to admit to being a Pole is to admit to the Polish nation.”27 At the same time he writes that national identification occurs at two levels. The first concerns the ideology the focus of which is only the good of the nation conceived in ethnic terms. The second is bound up with the ideas of tolerance, openness and the commitment to all-European values.28 Polish historians in exile, living among the non-Poles, were naturally more at home with the second level of the identification. It enabled them to better cope with a feeling of loneliness and alienation and to bear separation from their own country.

26 Terlecki, 1946a. 27 Bocheński, 1993, 3. 28 Ibidem.

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Today the category “Polish historian in exile” has become a purely historical concept. This is so for three reasons. In the first place, the generation of scholars that left the greatest mark on the identity of the group in question is passing away. The institutions that for years symbolized the community of the Polish émigré historians are also withering: the fall, 2003, decision to dissolve the Polish Historical Society in Great Britain underscores the point. In the second place, since Poland regained independence, there is no longer justification for maintaining the dyadic division of Poland / the emigration. The works by leading émigré historians such as Anna Cienciała, Zbigniew S. Siemaszko, Piotr S. Wandycz or Tadeusz Wyrwa are published in Poland, and the classical works by Oskar Halecki, Marian Kukiel and Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski have been reissued there. Today, the community of the émigré scholars is willing to accept the opinion expressed by in the mid-1908s by T. Wyrwa: “Unlike fiction writers or novelists who are fond of discussing the problem: one or two literatures— that is to say—the one created in the country and the one created in exile, the historians are not in the habit of speculating on this problem as they share the view that there is only one undivided history of Poland, no matter how it is interpreted or what character it is ascribed to.”29 In the third place, it seems natural that in a globalizing era, old divisions crumble, discourses overlap and the historians’ nationality is marginalized. The changes that are taking place are also of semantic nature. The humanities today, including historiography, do not rely on national criteria or differing methodologies for integrating groups of scholars. Rather, it is the commonality of the problems dealt with by various historians that becomes a uniting force. The First Congress of the Foreign Students of Polish History organized in Kraków in 2007 can serve as a good example of the current changes. The Congress attracted scholars from many different countries and their national origins seemed of minor importance. References Bocheński, J.M. (1993). “Co to znaczy być Polakiem?” [What does it mean to be a Pole?]. Kultura (Paris), no. 4. Ciołkoszowa, L. and A. Friszke (1995). Spojrzenie wstecz. Rozmowy przeprowadził Andrzej Friszke [A Look Back. Lidia Ciołkoszowa in Conversation with Andrzej Friszke]. Paris. 29

Wyrwa, 1987, 91.

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Cisek, J. (2009). Oskar Halecki. Historyk–szermierz wolności. [Oskar Halecki. Historian– Fighter for Freedom]. Warszawa. Dąbrowska, M. (ed.) (2012). Oskar Halecki i jego wizja Europy [Oskar Halecki and his vision of Europe], vol 1. Warszawa, Łódź. Danilewiczowa-Zielińska, M. and S. Bereś (2000). “W tym domu jest Polska. Z Marią Danilewiczową-Zielińską rozmawia Stanisław Bereś.” [Poland lives in this Home. Stanisław Bereś in Conversation with Maria Danilewicz-Zielińska]. Kultura (Paris), no 10, 78. Habielski, R. (1991). Niezłomni. Nieprzejednani. Emigracyjne “Wiadomości” i ich krąg 1940–1981 [The Steadfast and the Uncompromising. The Émigré-“Wiadomości” and their Circle 1940–1981]. Warszawa. Jagodziński, Z. (1997). “Historycy polscy na obczyźnie.” [The Polish Historians In Exile]. Czasopismo Zakładu Narodowego Imienia Ossolińskich 8. Jakubowska, U. and J Myśliński (eds.) (2006). Humanistyka polska w latach 1945–1990. [The Polish Humanities in 1945–1990]. Warszawa. Kaczorowska, T. (2008). Mieczysław Haiman /1888–1949/. Działacz i historyk Polonii amerykańskiej [Mieczysław Haiman /1888–1949/ The Activist and Historian of the Polish Community in the us]. Typescript of doctoral thesis prepared under the supervision of I. Rusinowa. Printed edition: Herodot Polonii amerykańskiej— Mieczysław Haiman (1888–1949). Warszawa: Muzeum Wychodźstwa Polskiego im. Ignacego Jana Paderewskiego, Łazienki Królewskie. Kukiel, M. (1959). “Uchodźstwo wojenne czy wielka emigracja.” [The War Refugees or the Great Emigration]. Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Zołnierza, no 287. Kwaśniewski, K. (1987). “Tożsamość kulturowa” [Cultural Identity], in Słownik etnologiczny. Terminy ogólne, ed. by Z. Staszczak, Warszawa-Poznań. Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu. Z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 [Clio in Exile. On the History of the Polish Émigré Historiography in Great Britain after 1945]. Poznań 2005. Szymczak, M. (ed.) (1984). Słownik języka polskiego [The Polish Language Dictionary], Vol. 1. Tap, P. (1980). “Introduction”, in: Identites colectives et changements sociaux ed. by P. Tap, Tolouse. Tatarkiewicz, K. (2000). “Kto jest polskim uczonym na obczyźnie?” [Who is the Polish Scholar in Exile?], in: Nauka polska na obczyźnie. Stan i Perspektywy badawcze, ed. by W Hładkiewicz and M. Szczerbiński. Gorzów Wielkopolski. Terlecki, T. (1946a). “Emigracja walki.” [The Emigration of the Fight]. Wiadomości (London), no 2. Terlecki, T. (1946b). “O standard moralny emigracji.” [For the Moral Standards of the Emigration]. Wiadomości (London), no 25.

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Wandycz, P.S. (2004a). “Historia Polski i Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej na amerykańskich uniwersytetach.” [The History of Poland and the East-Central Europe in the American Universities]. Przegląd Nauk Historycznych, no 2. Wandycz, P.S. (2004b). [in the interview with S.M. Nowinowski and R. Stobiecki]. Przegląd Nauk Historycznych, no 2. Wyrwa, T. (1987). “Historyk na obczyźnie a najnowsze dzieje Polski.” [The Historian in Exile and the Most Recent History of Poland], in Nowoczesna historia Polski. Prace Kongresu Kultury polskiej na Obczyźnie. Londyn 14–20 września, ed. by J. Jasnowski, London, Vol. iii, p. 102. Zbyszewski, K. (1947). Polacy w Anglii [The Poles in England]. Londyn.

PART 2 Transfer of Knowledge

∵

Homeland Livland and “Exile” in the German Fatherland: Reinhard Wittram (1902–1973) and his Attitudes towards Baltic History, 1925–1964 Gert von Pistohlkors In 1928 in Baltische Blätter (Baltic Journal), the leading post-World War i periodical of the Baltic German émigrés, Axel de Vries (1892–1963), chief editor of the daily Estonian newspaper Revaler Beobachter (Reval Observer), dealt with the subject of émigrés from the Russian Empire after 1919.1 He pointed to the fact that the fate of the Russian émigrés in France and Germany after the First World War had been much harder than that of the Baltic Germans escaping to Germany at the end of 1918. The latter too had lost their homeland, but in his view they could not be called émigrés since they were going to live among fellow Germans. Furthermore, they did not loose their roots altogether, since most of them had the chance of visiting their homelands, Estonia and Latvia, now and again. Yet, in his view, there existed an uneasiness among post-1918 Baltic Germans about the future of their solidarity. Being dispersed among different countries in Europe meant that it was doubtful that they could maintain their traditional political unity as Baltic Germans. There were constant quarrels in Baltic German newspapers how unity could be achieved in the new post-1918 circumstances, when a fairly large number of Baltic Germans lived in Weimar Germany while a majority remained living as legally defined minorities in two different democratic states, Latvia and Estonia.2 Doubtlessly, the educated Baltic Germans who had regarded themselves as the leading socio-political group in Russia’s Baltic Provinces had to reexamine their set of values. Many in the young generation of the 1920s regarded themselves as both victims and heroes of the year 1919, among them the famoushistorian-to-be, Reinhard Wittram (1902–1973), on whose views the present chapter will focus. “The Baltic German manor house, the Baltic German house of a professor in Dorpat, the Baltic German house of a pastor—they were burned, the inhabitants were impoverished, they were isolated. Thus the most  important germ cells of our regional individuality were destroyed,” Wittram wrote in an important 1933 article concerning the psychological

1 The author did all English translations himself. Axel de Vries, BBll. 1928, 50 f. About de Vries: dbbl, 1970/1998, 839 f. 2 Cf. Rauch, 1990, and Garleff, 2008, passim.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_012

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­situation of the Baltic Germans.3 In fact, there were many different occasions in which Reinhard Wittram considered Baltic German attitudes towards their home region and towards Germany as the center of Baltic cultural and political hopes. First, there are autobiographical items to review. Wittram had already experienced alarm as a very young victim of the 1905 revolutionary crisis, when his parents thought of sending their children to Germany because of violent actions of revolutionaries in Riga, especially in December 1905 when even ships from Prussia had been sent to the docks of the River Daugava—the Düna—in Riga in order to save at least the “Reich German” citizens living there. By then, the family Wittram felt lost in Riga, surrounded as they were by a vast number of revolutionaries and Russian workers.4 Wittram also remembered, very precisely and in detail, the visit of Tsar Nicholas ii to Riga during the Emperor’s Days during 3–5 July 1910, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Imperial Russian rule in Livland. Nine years later, Wittram belonged to Baltische Landeswehr, the 1919 Baltic German military organisation in Latvia, when the Bolsheviks occupied Riga in January and instigated a regime of “red terror” that resulted in a large number of Baltic German casualties.5 After the First World War, Wittram was a student in Germany from 1920 to 1925. Unlike members of his father’s generation who had attended Dorpat/ Jur’ev/Tartu—the principal university of the Baltic Provinces in the years between 1802 and 1917—he attended Jena and Tübingen, working there under the direction of Johannes Haller (1865–1947).6 In 1925, the young Doctor of Philosophy returned from Germany, but found it difficult to start a professional life in Riga, the capital of the newly founded Republic of Latvia. Being in financial constraints, he worked as a publicist and later as a professor of modern history at the Baltic German Herder-Institute, which had been founded in 1921. In Riga he also began to study documents from nineteenth-century Baltic history that deal with such important refugees from Riga to Germany as Julius Eckardt (1836–1908) and Woldemar von Bock (1816–1903) and their motives for leaving Russia’s Baltic provinces in the 1860s.7 In 1934, Wittram reviewed Baltic German political traditions in his book written for the 100th anniversary of the most important historical society in Riga, the Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde. He entitled the book Meinungskämpfe im baltischen 3 Wittram, BMh 1933b, 257. 4 Cf. Wittram, 1949, 314–327. 5 About Wittram: Kaegbein and Lenz, 1997, 179f. J.G. Herder-Forschungsrat, 1985, 418 f. Neitmann, 1998, passim. 6 Cf. Volkmann, 1997, 21–46. 7 About J.v. Eckardt and W.v. Bock: dbbl, 1970/1998, 180f. and 80.

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Deutschtum während der Reformepoche des 19. Jahrhunderts (Political Quarrels among Baltic Germans in the Epoch of Reforms during the 19th Century).8 In 1939 he published his widely read Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen (History of the Baltic Germans), which dealt with Baltic German history in the region between 1180 and 1918.9 In these 1930s books, Wittram laid the intellectual groundwork of what he considered to be the conflict between his “homeland Livland” and the 1918 Latvian state. This new state, in Wittram’s view, stood in oppostion to the inclusion of any German historical heritage whatsover in the interpretation of the history of Latvia. He expressed his views on these matters in 98 articles and in 44 reviews in the periodical Baltische Monatsschrift, renamed after 1932 Baltische Monatshefte.10 Finally, after the so called “resettlement” of the Baltic Germans to the Warthegau at the end of 1939, Wittram sought to define the new role Baltic Germans had to play after they had decided to leave their Baltic homeland and become Hitler’s subjects, living in the recently conquered Polish area of Poznań/Posen in the years between the end of 1939 and January 1945.11 For him and other supporters of National Socialist imperialism, 750 years of Baltic German history had definitely come to an end. After January 1945, leaving Poznań/Posen as a refugee and arriving in Göttingen, Wittram felt obliged to reexamine his former views on Baltic history and his role in Riga and Poznań/Posen. This reexamination produced a number of books and articles, culminating in the third enlarged edition of his 1939 book, Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen (History of the Baltic German People). The new edition was published in 1954 in Munich with the title Baltische Geschichte. Geschichte der Ostseelande Estland, Livland, Kurland 1180– 1918 (Baltic History. The Baltic Lands Estland, Livland, Courland 1180–1918).12 His most personal book, dealing with family papers between 1830 and 1914, had already been published in his new place of residence, Göttingen, in 1949.13 Later, in 1964, he published in Göttingen his opus magnum, a two volume history dealing with Peter the Great in the context of his times. In the decades between 1925 and 1964 Wittram witnessed personally transformatory changes in the history of Baltic Germans and of the Baltic region. As 8 9 10 11 12 13

Wittram, 1934, passim. Wittram, 1939, passim. Cf. Wittram-Hoffmann, 1973. Cf. the list of books Wittram published between 1940 and 1945 in references. Cf. Białkowski, 2008, 353–384, and ibid., 2011, passim. Wittram, 1954b. Wittram, 1949

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far as can be judged from recent research, he shifted from a tone of defensive aggressiveness in Latvia between 1925 and 1939 to an attitude of unlimited support of aggressive imperialism (the so-called Ostarbeit) in the years between 1939 and 1945. After 1945, his attitudes turned toward complete political resignation and to philosophical and theological contemplation. In Göttingen, he embarked on a new—to him—field of study—modern Russian history—and published books and articles about Peter the Great, Russia and Europe and the Russian Revolution of 1917.14 Having known Reinhard Wittram for almost twenty years and having worked with him as his last assistant at the University of Göttingen between 1967 and 1970, the present author would argue against a plain and simple description of his attitudes towards his homeland, Livland. Neither can Wittram be described as a pure product of the difficult times he lived through; nor as an extreme nationalist, or even a National Socialist, throughout his career as an historian from 1925 onward. Referring to Wittram’s basic views about what Livland and Germany—home and fatherland—could have meant to a person like him, the Polish author Błażej Białkowski arrived at the conclusion that Livland was at the center of his emotions and that his priorities never had changed. In Białkowski’s view, Wittram had dreamt of a Baltic German national socialism under the strong German leader, Adolf Hitler, ever since 1933. It is doubtful, however, that national socialism in the full meaning of the term could have been at the center of the political goals of a citizen of Latvia and a devoted Baltic German living in Riga. To be sure, Wittram felt uncertain and uneasy about the future of Baltic Germans in Latvia. Already in 1928, furthermore, he had emphasized that the German occupation of Riga in September 1917 and of the Baltic region in 1918, and the common struggle against Russian and Latvian Bolshevism, had altogether changed Baltic German attitudes towards Germany towards a deep feeling of gratitude and comradeship.15 Yet that seems to refer more to his support of extreme right wing currents—völkische Erneuerung—in the Weimar Republic than to an early shift to National Socialism. The extreme loyalty towards Hitler that Wittram and many other Baltic Germans felt after 1939 had much to do with the Umsiedlung, the transfer of the Baltic German population to recently defeated Poland and thus into the German realm, after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August and September 1939.16 In the paragraphs that follow this short chronological overview, closer examination will be made of some aspects of Wittramʼs reflections on home 14 15 16

Wittram, 1964b; ibid. 1973 passim. Pistohlkors, 2007, 2008b, 2009, 2012, passim. Cf. Wittram, 1928, 9–12; 1964a, 232. Cf. Bosse, 2008, 297–387; Gehrke, 2008, 389–426.

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and on “exile” in the German fatherland. Space does not allow a thorough reexamination of all his writings and methodological concerns between 1925 and 1964 and would take the discussion far beyond the intention of this chapter. I When, having studied for five years in Jena and Tübingen under difficult financial conditions, the young 23-year old Dr. Wittram came back to his hometown, Riga, in 1925, he was confronted with a totally new situation in this former capital of Livland. This largest and most important of Russia’s “Baltic provinces” no longer existed. Latvia was by then a well-established nation state, with a 1925 population consisting of Latvians and Letgallians (about 75%) who were the titular nation, and a German minority of 69,855 (3.6%), almost 63.2% of whom lived in Riga (in absolute numbers 44,105), 16% in the rural areas, and 20.8% in small towns.17 The Baltic Germans had lost completely their economically dominant position role in the landed parts of the country as a result of the radical expropriation of the large estates in Estonia and Latvia in 1919/1920. They retained ownership of a maximum of 50 hectares of their former property (among Baltic Germans referred to as Restgut).18 About 50% of the expropriated noble families and many other educated Baltic German citizens of the Baltic provinces—in the aggregate about 30,000 Baltic Germans (formerly Russian citizens)—had left the two new states of Estonia and Latvia and were seeking a better future in the German Weimar Republic. There, no one had awaited them, and their Reich-German peers of similar status had lost almost all their money during the First World War and in its aftermath. Many of the Baltic refugees had returned to the Baltic states by 1923, but about 8000 stayed in Germany for good.19 It was extremely difficult for young historians of the Baltic German minority such as Wittram to earn a living in Latvia in the 1920s. In 1928, the year of his habilitation at the newly founded private Baltic German Herder-Institute in Riga, Wittram managed to become editor-in-chief of the reestablished monthly journal Baltische Monatsschrift (renamed in 1932 Baltische Monatshefte), which rested on the long tradition of the famous Baltische Monatsschrift that had been published regularly in Riga (and at times Reval/Tallinn) between 1859 and 1913 (and later between 1927 and 1931). As the young Latvian historian 17 18 19

These numbers of 1930 are mentioned in Wittram, 1964a, 233. Schlau, 1990, 279–300. Cf. Rauch, 1990, esp. 85–90.

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Māris Skujiņš described in 1992, Wittram strongly opposed Latvian nationalism of the kind that was embodied, for example, in a contemporary motion picture entitled Bärentöter (bear killer; in Latvian Lāčplēsis), which depicted scenes in which a Latvian virgin is captured by the German “black knight” and imprisoned in a dreadful castle: “Attempts like this are not suitable for developing common cultural interests”, Wittram observed in the Baltische Monatsschrift in 1930. “On the contrary: it is more than natural that those Baltic Germans who have not yet lost their self-respect will draw back in anger from such Latvian ideological products. It is not us who wilfully hamper the development of any feelings of partnership.”20 In a 1932 article in the same publication, Wittram turned to the deficiencies of Latvian foreign economic policy and opposed social democratic positions in favour of the Soviet-Latvian Economic Treaty of Commerce of 1927 that had just been revoked by the Soviet Union.21 In the center of his objections, however, stood the Minister of Education, Atis Ķēniņš (1874–1961), and Wittram quoted the moderate Baltic German politician Lothar Schoeler (1881–1945), President of the Baltic German Reform Party since 1932:22 Why do you dare keep in power this person who is full of vanity…this former Imperial Russian censor, this sworn-in Russifier who nowadays has re-orientated himself to become a Latvianizer?…Be careful that all the world does not laugh at you if you let him remain the representative of your culture.23 Opposed to any acceptance of the minority role representatives of the titular Latvian nation sought to impose on the Baltic Germans, Wittram actively took part in discussions about the future of the younger generation of Baltic Germans in Latvia and in the German Reich. During 1926, Reinhard Wittram had occasionally published “Livonian Letters from Latvia” in Baltische Blätter, the leading Baltic German paper in the Reich, edited in Berlin between 1922 and 1930. The overall name of these articles was itself full of irony. “Livonia/Livland” had been at the center of Baltic German historiography and self-respect and had come to an end in 1917, before Latvia was founded as an independent state in November 1918. Most interesting is an article he wrote after revisiting Germany in 1926, six months after he had left Tübingen as a 20 Wittram, bms 1930a, 199–201, quotation: 201. Cf. Skujiņš, 1995, 217–225. 21 Wittram, BMh 1932b, 280–282. 22 About Schoeler: dbbl, 1970/1998, 694. 23 Wittram, BMh 1932b, 282, and BMh 1932c, 427–432. See the list of “overviews” by Wittram and Leo Middendorf (1893–1947) in BMh, 1932.

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young doctor of philosophy. In his view, everything had become worse in Germany. Bolshevism had grown in strength, the national right wing of the political spectrum appeared to be completely splintered into small groups; everybody seemed to be waiting humbly for a strong leader capable of cleansing the German party system. Germany, in his view, needed a new right wing elite that could move heaven and earth for a better Reich in the near future.24 For Baltic Germans, however, it was even more necessary to reconsider their role in an age of small nation states in Eastern Europe, and in the context of a time when the masses played a decisive part in post-war Europe. Wittram thought deeply about the role of tradition in post-war Latvia. He felt that there could not be envisaged any continuity from the nineteenth century to the new situation after 1919. Livonia had been his home; Latvia could not replace it. His reconsiderations culminated in an article devoted to recent Baltic history before 1914 and dealing with the antinomies between conservative and liberal attitudes among Baltic Germans of the 1860s. “Liberal und konservativ als Gestaltungsprinzipien baltischer Politik” (Liberal and Conservative Outlooks as Basic Configurations of Baltic German Policies), published in the Baltische Monatsschrift in 1930 was a remarkable paper for such a young historian.25 His philosophical (one could even say critical) expertise was directed at supporting a new approach to what “history” could mean for a group that apparently had lost almost all of its economic and cultural foundation, and as a result of that loss, its self-reliance as well. In the middle of the nineteenth century, conservatives as well as liberals had found for themselves several convincing answers in battling the Russian bureaucrats; why should not the Baltic Germans of the 1930s be able to do the same in struggling against the omnipotence of a democratic nation state? In Wittram’s view, conservatives believed in continuity, liberals in progress. There is no doubt that Wittram deeply distrusted any argument based on the notion of “progress” in the Latvia of the 1930s in matters of cultural, economic or social perspective change. But was there any sense of continuity left for Baltic Germans after their experience with the Bolshevik occupation in 1919? Wittramʼs answer was negative and positive at the same time. After 1919 Baltic German history in Latvia could not be conceptualized without referring to Germany and the comradeship Baltic Germans had experienced during the months of the Reich-German occupation between 1917 and 1919, and of Courland even since 1915. Anti-Bolshevism was the basis of all Baltic political thinking, a standpoint that possibly included even some of the moderate bourgeois groups 24 Wittram, 1926, 188f. 25 Wittram, bms 1930b, 213–232. Cf also Engelhardt, 1930, 232–241, and Wittram, BBll, 1930, 750–753.

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among the Latvians. The 1930 article demonstrates the hierarchial structure of  Wittram’s political thinking about his homeland: Anti-Bolshevism and ­Anti-Americanism (Americans being regarded as promoters of a mechanical, rational, soulless society) could conceivably have united most of the inhabitants of Latvia. But as a self-confessed right-wing-publicist, he longed for a new corporate persuasion (das Kommen eines neuen Korporationsgeistes) among the Baltic Germans in close association with Germany, whereas a liberal, in Wittram’s view, would have been afraid of loosing his individual freedom.“The right wing group longs for corporative structures in the future; the liberals try to save an individual approach (Ger. Die einen grüßen den gebundenen Menschen der Zukunft, die anderen suchen den freien zu retten).”26 Finally, Wittram enlarged the religious dimension of his argument. The forms of living together may have changed. On the whole, however, final happiness cannot be reached in this world. The 1930 article (and others as well) pleaded for an elite concept based on renovation (Erneuerung) along the lines of a Baltic German sense of right wing innovation and a new sense of historical tradition.27 In the 1964 article (mentioned above), Wittram again referred to his “conservatism” (not so much right-wing beliefs) of the early thirties and tried to explain the thoughts dominating his generation of young Baltic German intellectuals. He repeated that the status-bound values of responsibility and Protestant autonomy prevailed, and yet something completely new began when German troops had occupied Riga in September 1917 and Estland and Livland in 1918. National impulses expanded considerably when German and Baltic German soldiers fought the Red guards side by side. Already in the 1920s, the attitudes of many young Baltic Germans in Estonia and Latvia as well as in Germany were in accordance with right-wing German nationalism (deutsche Erneuerungsbewegung) in the Weimar Republic. After 1933, when the National Socialist Party took over in Germany, the convictions of many members of the young generation did not alter. They had not accepted the role of a minority in a democratic state. National categories achieved a higher dignity than ever before. Baltic Germans feared demographic losses and the dangers of urbanization after the loss of Baltic German large estates. Thought categories such as völkisch pointed to a deep romantic longing for a common German fatherland. Protestant theologians in Riga expected that the concepts of Volk and Volksgemeinschaft would deepen religious feelings.28 26 27 28

Wittram, BMs 1930b, 231. Cf. Wittram’s articles: BMh 1933a, 187–201; ibid. 1933b, 249–261; BMh 1937c, 552–564. Wittram, 1964a, passim, and the important theologian Viktor Grüner (1936), (see dbbl, 1970/1998, 270f.), BMh. 1936, 535–554. See also Wittram’s “remarks”: BMh 1934a, 53–55; BMh 1934d, 236f; BMh 1934e, 302–304.

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In the Baltische Monatshefte Wittram regularly commented on recent events within the Baltic German population. In 1934, pointing to Germany, he dealt interestingly with new methods of political mass struggle that he in the end justified.29 With some feeling of regret, however, he noticed that with the advance of “German socialism,” the manners among quarreling Baltic German groups had declined considerably. Conflicts were conducted as if they were battles in a war. Nowadays, he stated, one had to rely on fighting for a just cause and on militant comradship, and less on modes of aristocratic behaviour. On another occasion, Wittram came out more aggressively against the moderate adherents of the Baltic German minority role.30 He referred to the absence of goals in the young generation of Baltic German students before 1933. For the time being, he stated, everything looked different. Young leaders among the Baltic German students were ready to fight for national socialism (he used the term völkischer Sozialismus because to use the term “national socialism” in a positive sense was inadvisable in Latvia). There existed a new belief, he said, Erhard Kroeger (1905–1987) being the exponent of new strength and a new political movement.31 In the view of the young, the old Baltic German leaders had not achieved any positive changes for their people; but now a new epoch had arisen and a new and powerful Germany seemed to be able to overcome any signs of weariness. The national socialist ideology of the Reich Germans stood at the center of Wittram’s political comments in 1934. Pointing to the history of Jews in the Baltic area, he discussed the Jewish emigrants from Germany to Latvia after 1933.32 Wittram observed that his Latvian fellow citizens (die lettischen Heimatgenossen) as well as the Baltic Germans had changed their minds about racial aliens and their growing number in Riga, and had began to oppose them. Already in 1933, Erhard Kroeger had lit a new beacon with the slogan “What we want.”33 Kroeger once again objected to any recognition of a minority position for Baltic Germans. The older generation, he observed, had deprived the younger generation of the abilty to feel unhappy within the unacceptable state Latvia. The goals of the new movement directed against the “system” should address the situation in Latvia, but the political revival of the Reich Germans 29 30 31

32 33

Wittram, BMh 1934d, 236f. Wittram, BMh 1934e, 302f. Cf. Erhard Kroeger’s articles: BMh 1933a, 91–97, BMh 1933c, 298–302; cf. also the critical answer by the theologian Hans Schultz (1905–1941): “Anti-Machiavell”, ib., 212–218. Important: Kroeger, 1967, passim. Wittram, BMh 1934b, 173–175. Cf. Kroeger, 1933c, 298–300.

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would set the direction for a better future of the Germans in Latvia. Wittram sharply distinguished between Paul Schiemann’s “anational state,” the nationalism of the Latvian state, and German national socialism of 1933, stressing the German determination to acquire power (Wille zur Macht, from Friedrich Nietzsche). Only this third variant would be capable of opposing Soviet Russian imperialism.34

ii

In 1928, Baltische Blätter, then edited by Harald Berens von Rautenfeld (1893– 1975), a leading member of the “Baltic Brethren,” published an article about the goals and growing importance of Baltische Monatsschrift at the time when Wittram became the leading figure of the latter Riga periodical.35 This short article surely was inspired by Wittram himself and by his writings. Rautenfeld emphasized that young Baltic Germans especially, separated as they were from each other in different states, should be united on the basis of their historical traditions and their common values; they were each others’ flesh and blood and kinsfolk in their beliefs (Ger. gesinnungsverwandt). The traditional yet hidden energies of the Baltic German group ought to be strengthened and the “problems Central Europe has had with Northeast Europe” should be thoroughly discussed. What sounded like a neutral proposition was in fact a political programme directed against the small nation-states of Estonia (Eesti) and Latvia (Latvija). Germany, in the very center of European continent, ought to regain a dominant position in the East and especially with respect to the Baltic states in northeastern Europe. The 25-year-old Wittram tried to impose his views of Baltic history on young people of Baltic descent who were living in Germany and attending a June 1928 meeting in the Baltic German bording school (Baltenschule) in Misdroy, Pomerania, on the Isle of Wollin located in the mouth of the river Oder.36 Wittram was in charge of the meeting. Young Baltic German people living in Germany, he asserted, should be in closer touch with those who had remained in Latvia and Estonia. Both groups should feel an obligation to Germany as well as to the Baltic region—to home and fatherland—or, as a later commentator, 34 35 36

Wittram, BMh 1933c, 300. Best interpretation of Paul Schiemann’s “non-national state”: Hiden, 2004, 123–148. About Schiemann: DBBL 1970/1998, 676. Rautenfeld’s articles, BBll. 1928a, 51f., and BBll. 1928b, 83–86. About the Baltic Brethren of 1929–1936 (and their predecessors): Filaretow, 2008. Pistohlkors, 2008a, quotation taken from Worms, F. (1894–1962), JbBD, 1933, 51f.

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maintained: “all of a sudden the Baltic past grew right into the center of the present day and forced its way into the future”. History became an ethical force that was to transform everybody’s attitude and point it towards an orientation that could make all young Baltic Germans feel united. They should regard themselves as members of a group of faithful adherents to the Baltic region, as members of a heimattreue Gesinnungsgemeinschaft, as Harald von Rautenfeld put it. They should regard themselves as a community of Germans of conviction, devoted to their homeland on the Baltic shore and to the German Reich as well. In 1928, Rautenfeld, as a matter of fact, had objected forcefully to any sort of mass movements.37 At that time, these right-wing views about Germans regaining a dominant role in history did not yet have a direct affinity with Hitler’s national socialism, but they could easily be set in motion when Hitler came into power in January 1933. In his Baltische Blätter essay, Harald von Rautenfeld referred to a 1928 article by Wittram in Baltische Monatshefte about the (Baltic German) “generation of 1919” in which this generation was praised as an “ideological starting point” for the common future of young Baltic Germans in the homeland and in the German fatherland. Having fought the Bolsheviks in early 1919, when Riga had been liberated on May 22 by members of the Baltic German Landeswehr together with the members of the remaining Reich German “Iron Division,” the young German generation in Latvia could develop the same fundamental values as the young Reich German soldiers who stayed in Latvia at the end of World War I. In Rautenfeld’s view, Wittram had not yet come to any conclusions about what the common future of both groups might be like, but Rautenfeld felt sure that Wittram’s longing for “new forms” of common striving for a better future would result in a political programme based on the virtues of self-assertion and a enduring common group experience. All these efforts would result in a common Erneuerungsbewegung. At the end of the article, Wittram is portrayed as one of the young publicists who could join the front lines of the German fight for self-fulfillment (Sich-Einreihen in die Front des deutschen Kampfes um Selbstgestaltung).38 Mart Kivimäe, who published in the same book as Skujiņš (see above) a very thoughtful paper on Wittram as a philosopher of history (both papers emerging from a 1992 Oldenburg Symposium), correctly stressed the point that Wittram’s theoretical-historical thinking was closely related to his real historical experience in the Baltic region after 1919.39 “Whoever comes from the Baltic .

37 38 39

Pistohlkors, 2008a, 152–155. Rautenfeld, BBll. 1928b, 86. Wittram, BMs 1928, 9–12. Cf. Kivimäe, 1995.

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region,” Wittram stated at the age of 70, “brings along from his homeland his whole, almost his entire, personal fate.”40 In the 1930s as well as in his more theoretical 1958 book about Das Interesse an der Geschichte (The Interest in History), Wittram kept his attention on the changing conditions that underlay historical thinking and writing.41 He placed emphasis on the scientific impulse as well as on personal attachments and emotions. In his view, there does not exist any logical connection between causes and effects. Lasting results cannot be achieved without the study of thoroughly verified factual findings immersed in solid and detached argumentation. But, on the whole, human beings are to a very large extent victims of their own time. That is their most powerful source of dependence.42 The special situations and circumstances they have lived through always have to be taken into account. Modernity is only one side of the coin, but there always exists a complementary effort to find one’s own place in history. One ought to study the past in concert with fellow researchers who are also trying to ask proper questions and find convincing answers. But the other side of the coin is devotion to personal goals and to group goals that should not be neglected.43 The most recent critic of Wittram’s role in Poznań in the years 1939–1945, Błażej Białkowski, correctly points to the fact that “Baltocentrism”—a deep respect for the role of the Baltic Germans through 750 years of the history of the Baltic region—was in Wittram’s eyes a fundamental commitment.44 As observed earlier, for the young Wittram a small und new republic such as Latvia had hardly achieved sufficient maturity to be regarded as a fully developed nation-state or a civil society deserving deep respect. In his journal Baltische Monatsschrift (1927–1931; later Baltische Monatshefte, 1932–1939), he wrote 98 articles and 44 reviews on very different subjects, objecting in all of them to Latvian chauvinism and nationalism especially in matters of schooling and religious life.45 Wittram was on the official board that objected to the expulsion of the German congregation from the Riga Dome Church in 1931. He fought strenuously against the nationalistic arguments of Latvian politicians and praised the neutrality of the Latvian Bishop Kārlis Irbe (1861–1934), who had defended the rights of the traditional German Lutheran congregation and steadily had condemned the aggressive arguments of the leading nationalists 40 41 42 43 44 45

Wittram, 1972 (unprinted). Wittram, 1958, cf. also Wittram, 1969, passim. Wittram, 1971a, and Kivimäe, 1995, 227. Wittram, 1954a, 51–75. Cf. Białkowski, 2008, esp. 358–363, and ib., 2011, esp. 173–198. Wittram-Hoffmann, 1973, 193–252.

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who used the slogan “Latvia for the Latvians.” “We Germans too stand at the grave of this unusual man with awe and deep mourning”, Wittram wrote in 1934 on the event of Irbe’s death.46 For Wittram “mechanical thinking” stood behind the unreasonable demands embodied in the slogan “Latvia for the Latvians”; it amounted to “state-orientated mechanical unitarism” of the sort that could also be expected in western democracies.47 When the Polish envoy in Riga, Mirosław Arciszewski, had stated that Latvia could only improve by becoming more Latvian and that the new Latvian school system could serve such a purpose, Wittram objected to these observations and held that Polish and Czech nationalism could not serve as examples for Latvia. On the contrary: in his view, the special role of the Baltic Germans throughout Baltic history entitled the Germans in Riga to regard themselves as an indigenous people.48 In the realm of contemporary politics in Latvia, Wittram, along with many other members of the younger generation, was very much opposed to Paul Schiemann, the leader of the German group in the Latvian Parliament (Saeima) and editor of the leading German daily newspaper Rigasche Rundschau. Arguing against Schiemann’s approach to Latvian politics, Wittram objected to any Baltic German readiness to adjust to being a minority. In a legal sense, he wrote, the Baltic Germans in Latvia could doubtlessly be described as a minority, but in an historical sense they belonged to the soil and to the country like any Latvian. In Wittram’s view, the heritage the Germans in Latvia stood for had to be described in terms of historical self-consciousness and inner autonomy, not in terms of erstwhile status-bound or dead legal notions. Abilities developed in the long term enabled them to fight for an aristocratic sense of autonomy against modern materialism, mass culture and the mania of levelling. Throughout his articles, Wittram stated that the number of Latvians who were ready to be fair partners with members of the former leading German group had reached the vanishing point. In his view, only hostile feelings toward Baltic Germans dominated.49

iii

What the years of 1933–1934 meant to members of the younger generation like Wittram is expressed in his reflections about the turn of the tide.“Great people 46 47 48 49

Wittram, BMh 1934c, 234. Wittram, BMh 1932c, 429. Wittram, BMh 1932a-c, 167–177, 280–284, 427–432. About M. Arciszewski: Skujiņš, 1995, 221. Wittram, BMh 1932a, c, esp. 174f., 430f.

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like the Germans who had become tired and old find their way back to the fountains of life through a revolutionary change. Cities full of nigger music, boasting wickedness, Jewish jokes at all street corners and gluttonous class hatred start winning a new face overnight. The nourishing countryside that is ridiculed as provincial and forgotten like a desert is again recognized in its maternal dignity…Rough and stern is the sound of the bells that call.”50 After 1933–1934, an “historical” response to the “national revolution” in Germany seemed to be indispensable in the view of the younger generation of Baltic Germans in Latvia. Wittram tried to contribute to the process of adjustment to the leading role in central Europe of National Socialist Germany by writing the two important books on nineteenth-century Baltic history mentioned before: Meinungskämpfe im baltischen Deutschtums in der Reformepoche des 19. Jahrhunderts (Political Quarrels among Baltic Germans in an Epoch of Reforms during the 19th Century in 1934, and Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen [History of the Baltic Germans] in 1939). Both titles place the Baltic Germans in the center of a regional history. Meinungskämpfe served the purpose of differentiating between the status-bound liberals who believed in reforms and the stubborn defenders of the regional status quo. In 1931 he had already published a short but serious study on the Baltic German literati and the sources of their liberal concepts, in which he argued that the literati—all the universityeducated people of non-noble origin—had formed a well-established group alongside the corporate Ritterschaften, the estate owners of the nobility.51 The literati, he observed, had become important members of the Baltic German upper class even when liberalism finally had faded away under the pressure of russification and the Latvian and Estonian national awakenings.52 In the two later books, Wittram showed himself to be convinced that inner consolidation of the Baltic Germans had been important not only for the group itself but for the whole region, which would have suffered much more if resistance to Imperial Russian attempts at administrative and cultural russification had not had so strong a base among all the self-conscious and educated Germans. History again became an argument that Baltic Germans should not behave like a minority but like a culturally noteworthy group the Baltic region could not ignore. Before 1934, Baltic German historians, with Wittram in the lead, had emphasized their own colonial history from the viewpoint of local history within the framework of the German Landesgeschichte. After 1934, however, in his famous 50 51 52

Wittram, BMh 1934a, 53–55, quotation 53. Wittram, 1931 and 1934. Basic study on Baltic German literati: Lenz sen., 1997, 139–184.

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1936 article entitled Wendung zur Volksgeschichte (Turning toward a History of Kin-related People), Wittram examined the deficiencies of the colonial concept.53 He strongly objected to the title of the 1936 Reich German Handwörterbuch des Grenz- und Auslanddeutschtums (Encyclopedia of Germans and German Settlements outside Germany), maintaining that its contents and its title resulted in a distancing from real experience (Erlebnisferne) and in alienation from history (Geschichtsfremdheit). In his view, the notion Germaness outside Germany (Auslanddeutschtum) reflected “abstract thinking and bookish dullness” and could not explain why, for example, the Germans of the Baltic region had maintained an important and leading role during seven hundred years of history. Wittram wanted to emphasize the point that history as such was a matrix of power (ein Kraftgefüge) and a basis for perseverance and strength. “History as a subject of historiography is in essence political history.” According to him, other German groups in Eastern Europe—such as the Volynians or the Germans of the Banat region in southern Europe—had never reached the maturity necessary to achieve a leading regional role. They had lived rather on a purely local basis (Friedrich Engels would have called this lokalborniert). They had lived their lives without historical tradition (geschichtslos) and they had not developed to the point of historical relevance: they were not geschichtsmächtig.54 Werner Bergengruen (1892–1964), the well-known Baltic German novelist and poet, expressed similar views but somewhat in a less political manner. In an undated, and perhaps naive, political statement the writer said: The years 1918/1919 tore our old Baltic region to pieces, including the provinces Estland, Livland and Courland. The ownership of land, wealth, privileges, the dominant historical role had been taken away from us. But worse than that was the fact that we had lost our historically wellestablished position as Baltic Germans and were reduced to the ranks of Auslandsdeutsche, Volksdeutsche, Grenzdeutsche.55

iv

In his scientific work as an historian, Wittram did not display aggressive and nationalistic conceptualizaion either in the 1931 Liberalismus baltischer Literaten 53 54 55

This article is printed twice: Wittram, BMh 1936a, 566–571, and in: Volkstum und Forschung, 1936, 94–99. Wittram, BMh 1936a, 569, resp. Volkstum und Forschung, 1936, 97. Bergengruen, 1992, 24. Cf. Pistohlkors, 1995, 11–24., esp. 16. About W. Bergengruen: DBBL, 1970/1998, 53f.

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(Liberalism of the Baltic German Literati) or in the 1934 Meinungskämpfe (Political Quarrels among Baltic Germans). These well-researched books make for a certain contrast to the journalistic articles mentioned earlier. A more problematic work is his 1939 Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen (History of the Baltic Germans). To be sure, in this book he mostly dealt with Baltic Germans as the dominant group in Baltic history, but at the same time he always respected the fact that their number was small and that the majority of  Latvians and Estonians felt uneasy under the legal yoke of German self-­ government in the Russian Empire.56 But he certainly did not approve of modern Russian nationalism or Latvian nationalism, insofar as Baltic history was concerned. Somehow he did not realize that to quote himself in 1954 by referring to his introduction of the 1939 work was not at all convincing. “I know that only mutual respect can lead to a common interpretation of history in a country that has gone through long lasting ethnic conflicts…Who loves his own people will be able to understand alien groups…Is there anything more necessary in Europe?” Although he employed the same words in 1954 he had used in 1939, they did not mean the same later. In 1939 he asked the Latvians and other ethnic groups in the Baltic region to temper their nationalism and raise themselves to the moral and self-conscious standards of the Baltic Germans. In 1954, however, he felt that the common pain of the loss of the Baltic homeland should lead to a sensitive reexamination of standards and to a growing tolerance between the ethnically different groups in exile. As a matter of fact, he and other Baltic Germans—mainly of the younger generation—had believed in a policy of confrontation, especially after they were exiled from Latvia in November 1939. After the so-called 1939 “resettlement,” even Wittram’s little 1940/43 brochure, Livland. Schicksal und Erbe der baltischen Deutschen (Livland. Fate and Heritage of the Baltic Germans), sounded like mere propaganda. In a parallel 1943 publication, Deutsche Männer des baltischen Ostens (German Men of the Baltic East), edited by Arved Baron Taube, he was only one of the co-authors. In this work, for example, one can find a number of shocking reinterpretations of Baltic history, such as the description of Wolter von Plettenberg (1450–1535) as the first Herrenmensch in Livland.57 Some parts of Wittram’s introductions to his scientific works, however, point again to his affinity with national socialism, but his research in the 1934 Meinungskämpfe does not suggest a definitive turn toward the concept of Volksgeschichte in practice.

56 57

Cf. the introductions to Wittram, 1939, iiif., and Wittram, 1954b, 8f. Wittram, 1943b; Taube, 1943; and Rimscha, 1940, passim.

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In a well-argued article entitled Ethnos oder Region. Probleme der baltischen Historiographie im 20. Jahrhundert (Ethnicity Studies or Regional Concepts? Problems of Baltic Historiography in the 20th Century), Jörg Hackmann sought to establish whether Wittram in his 1930s writings had become an ideologist of German dominance in the discussion over the relationship of home (Baltic region) and fatherland (Germany).58 Hackmann objected correctly to Wittram’s terminology in the introduction of Meinungskämpfe. On the one hand, Wittram argued that Volksgeschichte was to be regarded as a new kind of kinship history of all Germans. On the other, he stated that in a deeper sense all writing of Baltic history pointed to political historiography. “That does not convey a clear notion of what historical writing is meant to be,” Hackmann stated correctly. Yet there is an explanation for what Wittram intended in this context. Following the line of Carl Schirren (1826–1910), Wittram argued that Baltic history had always been political history because the essence of Baltic history since the Middle Ages—the preservation of autonomy59—had been threatened by the measures of the bureaucratic state, especially by russification emerging from St. Petersburg during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, political history had an inner dimension that became evident when the Latvian and Estonian national associations of Riga, Reval/Tallinn and Dorpat/Tartu began to cooperate with Russian officials such as Senator Nikolaj A. Manasein and others in 1882/83. In order to rid themselves of their German masters and German selfgovernment and autonomy, political confrontation with Baltic German institutions and their representatives gained a decisive role among Latvians, and resulted in Latvians and Russians working together in St. Petersburg.60 It is true that Wittram said in his introduction that “the turn of the tide of our days is a total one,” referring with that to Germany in the year of 1934.61 For Hackmann this provides evidence that Wittram had already turned to a German ­orientation—eine völkische Orientierung—and that he had utilized Volksgeschichte in practice when writing about reform policy in Livland. As observed earlier, this observation cannot be verified from the text of the 1934 Meinungskämpfe, apart from the presence of a few mysterious lines. When reading Wittram’s introductions, one understands what Peter Kornelius, Professor of Modern History in Kiel, meant when he called Wittram a “master of pushing arguments to the very edge (einen Meister der 58 59 60 61

Hackmann, 2001. Wittram, 1949, 5. Modern basic conspects of Baltic history: Raun, 1991; Plakans, 1995; Pistohlkors, 1994; Karjahärm and Rosenberg, 2010, passim. Wittram, 1934f, viii.

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Überhöhung).”62 There are, after all, phrasings in his texts that are almost unintelligible to modern readers. In his first remarks about Hamilcar Baron von Fölkersahm (1811–1856), the leading agrarian reformer of Livland, Wittram states: “[the reasons for] the emergence of a genius out of his people remains a secret.”63 Fölkersahm certainly was an outstanding figure in the history of Livland, but he was not an intellectual giant but a down-to-earth person with rational political goals. On the whole, in his book Wittram analyzed the leading Baltic German political groups in detail and with sympathy. The Liberals— especially the six brothers von Oettingen—three professors at Dorpat university, three leading politicians in Livland province—are characterized as aristocrats with the best education imaginable, and protagonists of German idealism who fought against the Russian enemy—i.e. the Katkov press, the “Russian faction” in St. Petersburg and Muscovy. The young Liberals, personalities such as the academician Alexander von Middendorff (1815–1894), were characterized in detail and with compassion: Middendorff was, according to Wittram, sharp, active, gentle, warm-hearted, extremely well educated, full of ideas, convinced that progress was only a question of time.64 When examining his sources that led to these statements, Wittram was above all a historian, not an ideologue. He was interested in self-interpretations, self-assessments and in attitudes. He adverted to one member of the Reform party, Balthasar Baron CampenhausenOrellen, born in 1843, who in 1879 accused his fellow Baltic Germans of racial arrogance and asked his fellow noblemen to abolish racial privileges. Wittram’s comment is made with sympathy for the turning of the tide: How many good und true thoughts are to be found in these words! And yet: Campenhausen did not realize that nationalism was a new concept that followed its own paths. These old men lived near a borderline of history without knowing what they were doing. They perhaps had a feeling that new times were coming, but they did not have the proper answers for them.65 But the “Conservatives,” he thought, had a concrete desire to preserve power and fought for their privileges at any costs. Status-bound actions and a close affinity with German culture developed a symbiotic relationship within the 62 63 64 65

Personal memories of the author attending a conference in Munich on Hans Rothfels (1891–1976) in July 2003. Wittram, 1934f, 1. About Fölkersahm: dbbl, 1970/1998, 220f. About Middendorff: dbbl, 1970/1998, 521f., Tammiksaar, 2010. Wittram, 1934f, 59.

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conservative German nobility, Wittram said. They behaved according to their recollections of old times, and they adhered to what they had experienced as the virtues of perseverance and steadfastness. This, however, was not yet modern nationalism. And, he continued with a cryptic observation: “compared to modern nationalistic feelings, there is something missing: no swaying back and forth within the space defined by the masses (dazu fehlt die Schwingung in der Weite des Volksganzen).”66 According to Wittram in Meinungskämpfe, modern nationalism was dangerous for the German group in the Baltic region. In this respect he followed the lines of Hans Rothfels (1891–1976), professor of History at the Albertina in Königsberg between 1926 and 1935 (when he was expelled by National Socialist officials because of his Jewish origin). Rothfels had a certain sympathy for loyalties of the pre-nationalistic type and emphasized positively the orientation of the Baltic Germans towards the Russian Empire as represented in the Czar, as against the Russian state and the Russian nation.67 In Wittram’s writings on Baltic history in the nineteenth century, the phrase “swaying within the German masses” may subconsciously express a sympathy for National Socialist Germany. Analytically, however, his interpretations have nothing in common with National Socialist teachings about Volksgemeinschaft. For him, the term simply refers to the fact that the nobility adhered to exclusiveness and that there did not exist a complete set of strata of Germans in the Baltic Provinces. The German peasants were missing, and most of the industrial workers and country labourers appeared to be either Latvian, or Estonian, or Russian. As far as can be seen in the examined works, there was no intellectual turn in Wittram’s monographs about nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Baltic history before and immediately after 1933. It is not true that Wittram wrote Landesgeschichte—regional history—before 1933, and then between 1933 and 1945 turned to writing Volksgeschichte. After 1945 he did not write Landesgeschichte either. But, as a matter of fact, through all these decades his notion of “national” is not clear at all. His overviews of Baltic history written in 1939, 1945 and 1954 are problematic in detail, but on the whole they are consistent in the larger conceptualizations.68 As mentioned earlier, in his non-scientific book finished in 1940—Livland. Schicksal und Erbe der baltischen Deutschen (Livland. Fate and Heritage of the Baltic Germans)—he argued like a National Socialist propagandist: 66 67 68

Ibid., 66. Rothfels, H., 1962, orginally 1930, passim. A synopsis of Wittram’s three surveys of Baltic history—1939, 1945, 1954b—would take too much space.

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Our young people were more and more confronted with the question of whether there was a future for them in the Baltic, because their Lebensraum was continually diminished. If there was anything positive in their lives, then it was to be found in the fact that life based on (German) national interaction (völkisches Gemeinschaftsleben) had become intensified. Our ethnic group, however, came to the conclusion that an adjustment to the majority state—the Latvian state—would diminish our strength in accordance with our fading influence and that our historical attitudes towards Landespolitik and regional policy had lost their basis in an age of nation-states.69 This statement has no empirical merit. Quite the contrary: Wittram took the attitudes of the National Socialist grouping in Riga for those of the whole Baltic German minority in Latvia without mentioning any opponents, such as Paul Schiemann and others, or shadings of attitudinal colour and tone among different generations of Baltic Germans. History in this 1943 survey is an aspect of political propaganda. In his introduction, Wittram stated that he wanted to show what Baltic Germans had achieved during their long history and “what we brought with us to our fatherland when the Führer called us.”70 He again doubtlessly wrote as a propagandist when he concluded that “We are nothing, the German nation is everything.”71 For the exodus of the Baltic Germans in 1939—referred to euphemistically as Umsiedlung or incorrectly even as “re-settlement,” he used even stronger words. Only the Führer had had the right to end the diaspora situation of the Germans in the Baltic States. To Wittram in 1943, all Baltic history was meant to be part of the Reichʼs history for conquering the East (Ostarbeit).72 That Wittram wrote as an historian in his books on Baltic German history in the nineteenth century and in most parts of his 1939 History of the Baltic Germans does not mean that every statement in them, especially in his overviews of 1939, 1945 and 1954, is convincing. The status-bound period of reforms in the first half of the nineteenth century is regarded as the climax of Baltic German existence. The turmoil and excesses of the modern Russian nationstate offered nothing to the loyal Baltic Germans—and to the Latvians and Estonians in the role as local victims. In Wittram’s view, they all suffered through russification, industrialization, and mass movements. Materialism 69 Wittram, 1943b, 90. 70 Ibid., 9. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., 9 and 90.

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and mass mania spoiled the real Baltic history, as he saw it. The aristocratic heritage—here he revealed his profound error and his futile hope—could be amalgamated with the new Europe under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and his followers. This hope is openly expressed in the second edition of his Baltic History, published in 1945. In 1939, Wittram had wanted to recount a history of the Baltic Germans in combination with German history from the Middle Ages until 1918 in the manner of Volksgeschichte. In the second edition of 1945, however, Wittram extended his approach. Now he was not primarily interested in the Baltic German part of German history, but in an imperialistic expansion of Germany: “not a group of Baltic Germans that belongs to the past but a territory that is within the reach of and belongs to German history.”73 For Baltic Germans, Baltic history had come to an end, he stated. Consequently, Wittram was subsuming Baltic history, including the history of the Baltic Germans, to imperialistic German history.

v

Unconditional surrender by Germany as well as the Nuremberg Trials of 1946 became a personal drama for Wittram. He could make use of established connections, however, for himself and his family, and they all arrived in Göttingen in February 1945 as refugees. Wittram was allowed to be part of the Department of History in 1946, and to initiate a lasting career that led to a full professorship in East European History in 1955 and in Medieval, Modern and East European History in 1958. In 1970, he became an emeritus professor. Soon after 1945, a group of Baltic German refugees in Göttingen created a society called Baltenverband and Wittram was deeply involved in it. Göttingen had been familiar to him because during the summer terms from 1935 to 1938 he had been working there as a guest professor, giving lectures mainly on the role of Germans in St. Petersburg and in the Baltic region. One of his 1943 articles, published in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen deals with the fading role of Germans (Entdeutschung) in the elites of St. Petersburg from the middle of the 19th century onward.74 The idea of Entdeutschung refers to the problem that arose in the age of Alexander ii when leading officials in the St. Petersburg administration increasingly had to be Russian for reasons of national pride. Germans, Wittram found out, even when they were civil servants with high qualification, were removed from their positions and replaced 73 74

Wittram, 1945, Preface, 8. Wittram, 1943c, 30–67.

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by genuine Russians. No doubt this piece of research was highly influenced by actual confrontations during the Second World War. In 1943, Wittram became Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. After 1945, Wittram knew that he would face difficulties mainly because of his role as Dean of the Philosophical Faculty at Himmler’s Reichsuniversität Posen between 1941 and the beginning of 1945.75 There exist a few documents in the University Archive of Göttingen in which Wittram tried to explain how he could have believed so deeply in the Führer. Some of the reasons he presented in a letter of the 21 September 1945 to the Professor of Law, Rudolf Smend, the new Rector of Göttingen University, and they conformed well to the beginning of the Cold War, especially when he stated that anticommunism had belonged to the basic experiences and beliefs of any Baltic German (which, of course, is true but also was helpful under these personal circumstances).76 In other relevant matters, he apparently had more difficulties in explaining why he had turned to National Socialism. On the one hand, he maintained that the status-bound conservatism of Baltic Germans did not allow for any positive attitudes towards western democracy. This answer is misleading and is contradicted by the ideas of a number of Baltic German politicians of the inter-war period, such as Paul Schiemann and his friends. Furthermore, he frankly admitted in that letter that in Baltic German understanding history in itself had been a decisive argument against values of democracy and a philosophy of equal rights; he and his generation, he stated, had lost hold of reality when they asserted German superiority with an aggressive defensiveness. He accepted personal guilt only in a religious sense, that is, he did not feel guilty of any crimes or personal offenses. He accepted God’s final judgement over German history. Whether he included Baltic German attitudes as part of German failures is not made clear. This overview of Wittram’s important writings to 1954 does not include all of them. In 1954, however, his famous and widely read collection of articles Das Nationale als europäisches Problem (Nationalism and Nation States as a Problem of European History) was published in Göttingen and became emblematic of the new Wittram. In the same year there appeared the third edition of his Baltic History in the 1180–1918 period, and this now included informations about Latvians and Estonians in the different epochs of Baltic regional history. After 1945, Wittram had had to struggle for the survival of his family and cope with serious health problems, including deep-seated feelings of resignation. Between 1946 and 1955 he was not in the position of a full 75 76

Białkowski, 2008 and 2011, passim. This is only a short compilation from the letter not yet released for print.

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­ rofessor but held poorly paid position of a docent at the Historical p Institute of Göttingen University. In this position, however, he was much better off than most of his friends or his colleagues at the former Poznań/ Posen Reichsuniversität, and many other refugees in the British zone of occupied Germany. Seeking to establish a reputation for himself as a writer and historian, he regularly published a large number of thoughtful articles in wellestablished contemporary cultural journals such as Die Sammlung, Die Neue Sammlung, Die Furche and others. In his 1953 article entitled Das öffentliche Böse und das achte Gebot (Public Evil and the Eighth Commandment), he demonstrated a deep understanding of what the Bible says about guilt, false public accusations and false excuses.77 Mart Kivimäe, an historian in Estonia’s capital Tallinn, came to the conclusion that Wittram’s historical writings after 1945 aimed not only against the creation of any new myths but exemplified the attitudes of piety and humility: “His aesthetics have much to do with a severe and austere imitation of Luther.” Reading Wittram’s historical writings feels like listening to Johann Sebastian Bach, Kivimäe comments, and remind him of sermons of old pastors who, as he puts it, interpreted human culture not as a task but as a gift to the poor abandoned world and as gifts of gratitude from vain human creature to God. There is some truth in these observations, especially when Kivimäe refers to Wittram’s command of the German language.78 Generally speaking, scepticism about any notions of human progress and about scientific insights into the human condition was at the center of Wittram’s thinking in most of his historical writings after 1945. Referring to Wittram, Kivimäe speaks of “diagnostical conservatism.” It may be true that Wittram took Baltic German attitudes towards Baltic history of the late nineteenth century as a guide for his theologically based diagnosis of history as such: no deference to a powerful czar (Führer) and no trust in bureaucrats, but patient fighting for respect and for autonomy especially in small groups and units; he had an absolute admiration for the relative independence of university senates after 1945, and he endured disappointments in that respect with stoic and calm grief. His methodological approach rested on philosophical relativism and led in practice to deep methodological reflections and argumentations that still reflected an earlier historicism. As an historian, he no longer believed in any lasting scientific results but in diligent work and everlasting perseverance, as he emphasised in his 1954 article entitled Über 77 78

Wittram, 1953, 16–26. Cf. Pistohlkors, 2012, esp. 145–151. Kivimäe, 1995, 227–243. Nicolas Berg, 2003, and Ingo Haar, 2002, are much more critical towards Wittram’s contribution as is Roland Gehrke (Gehrke, 2008, passim).

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Maßstäbe und Urteile in der Geschichtsschreibung Ostmitteleuropas (About Standards and Judgements in Historical Writings Dealing with Middle and Eastern Europe), and in his last historical article Methodologische und geschichts­ theoretische Überlegungen zu Problemen der baltischen Geschichtsforschung (Methodological and Theoretical Reflections Referring to Problems of Baltic Historical Research), which appeared in in 1971.79 In these articles he recommended a “universal” approach to even local and regional studies, which is directed against any attempt to revive Landesgeschichte.80

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It is worthwhile to examine Wittram’s post-1945 historical judgements on Baltic history, especially his 1964 article about the Baltic Germans between 1930 and 1939.81 Although his argumentation is extremely cautious, one can see certain priorities. Wittram claimed that Baltic German national socialism had home-grown roots. A deep-seated opposition to the policies of Atis Ķēniņš, the Latvian minister of culture and education from 1930 to 1933, and a fixation on the slogan “Latvia for the Latvians” was at the center of widespread hostile and aggressive feelings. Hitler’s success in January 1933 provided an impetus but was not a decisive marker. The young Baltic German nationalists saw themselves in the tradition of the 1919 Baltische Landeswehr and founded a “National Party” in 1933 in order to oppose Paul Schiemann’s minority policies and all efforts to adjust the Baltic German group in Latvia to the agenda of the titular nation. In Wittram’s view, Erhard Kroeger, the leader of Bewegung in Latvia, and his comrades—among them Reinhard Wittram in the role of a principal ideologist—wanted to promote a group consciousness among all Baltic Germans in Latvia, based on Baltic German history of 750 years. Wittram emphasized that most members of the Baltic German Bewegung in Latvia had belonged to the old educated families. Germany had always been their cultural fatherland, and the Czar and Russia had lost any claim to Baltic German loyalty (deutsche Treue). The Baltic Germans did not want to be regarded in the Reich German view of things as a splinter group (Volkssplitter) living outside the borders of Germany. As noted earlier, in 1936 Wittram had objected sharply to the title of the Handwörterbuch des Grenz- und Auslanddeutschtums. But he admitted in

79 80 81

Wittram, 1954a, 51–75, and Wittram, 1971b. Pistohlkors, 2008b, 11–32; Pistohlkors, 2012, 145–151. Wittram, 1964a.

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1964 that it did not take long for leading members of the national socialist Bewegung, including himself, to become increasingly dominant among Baltic Germans in Latvia and in view of the role the young radicals managed to play between 1933 and 1939. Wittram explained the success of national socialist arguments with the decline of credibility of traditional Baltic German conservatism. At the same time in 1964 he condemned and regretted the methods used to ridicule the older generation of Baltic German leaders. Generally, Wittram followed arguments that spoke of an age of ideologies in Europe and tried to explain their attractiveness during the interwar period. The turn to nationalism and anti-parlamentarism was a principal marker of the epoch, he maintained. For him the “turn of the tide” was exemplified by the idea of strict obedience to the Führer. Men collectively had to function like a well-oiled machine. He argued that subconsciously Baltic Germans who regarded themselves as conservatives with a special historical mission fell victims to the Füherermythos, the “Hiter myth”. After the resettlement October 1939 of Baltic Germans to Poland the hopes for a “homeland Livland” were subordinated to the wish for German victory. In 1964, however, Wittram had arrived at the conclusion that those who had survived the Second World War were obliged to work to replace false ideas with convincing ones. Certainly, the hope of some members of the National Socialist Party that they could develop a Baltic German version of national socialist ideology was full of illusion. Finally, in Wittram’s view, Baltic German group identity turned out to be stronger than the nationalism of national socialism. In that respect he had hope for the future in West Germany. References

Published Primary Sources

Baltische Blätter (BBll.) Wittram, R. (BBll. 1926), “Vier Wochen Muße in Deutschland”, 188f. Vries, A. de (BBll. 1928), “Emigrantenschicksal”, 50f. Rautenfeld, H. von (BBll. 1928a), “Ausbau der Baltischen Monatsschrift”, 51f. Rautenfeld, H. von (BBll. 1928b), “Baltisches Geistesleben und Baltische Monatsschrift”, 83–86. Wittram, R. (BBll. 1930), “Formen deutschen Zusammenschlusses in Estland und Lettland. Ein Rundfunkvortrag”, 750–753. Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums, Riga 1925–1934 (JbBD). Worms, F. (JbBD 1933), “Die baltischen Jugendtage in Misdroy”, 51f.

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Baltische Monatsschrift, 1927–1931 (BMs). Wittram, R. (BMs 1928), “Die Generation von 1919”, 9–12. Wittram, R. (bms 1930a), “Der lettische Freiheitsfilm”, 199–201. Wittram, R. (bms 1930b), “Liberal und konservativ als Gestaltungsprinzipien baltischer Politik”, 213–232. Engelhardt, R. von (bms 1930), “Konservativ-liberal in organologischer Bedeutung”, 232–241. Baltische Monatshefte, 1932–1939 (bmh)

1932

Wittram, R. (BMh 1932a), “Politische Übersichten. Lettland. Riga, 10. März”, 167–177. Wittram, R., (BMh 1932b) “Politische Übersichten, Lettland. Riga, 9. Mai”, 280–284. Middendorff, L. von (BMh 1932a), “Politische Übersichten. Estland. Dorpat, 1. Mai”, 285–291. Wittram, R. (BMh 1932c), “Politische Übersichten. Lettland. Riga, 6. August”, 427–432. Middendorff, L. von (BMh 1932b), “Politische Übersichten. Estland. Dorpat, 5. August”, 433–439.

1933

Kroeger, E. (BMh 1933a), “Über politische Inversion”, 91–97. Wittram, R. (BMh 1933a), “Deutsch und baltisch. Zum Verständnis der deutschbaltischen politischen Tradition”, 187–201. Schultz, H. (BMh 1933), “Anti-Machiavell”, 212–218. Kroeger, E. (BMh 1933b), “Schlusswort”, 218. Wittram, R. (BMh 1933b), “Die geistige Lage des baltischen Deutschtums in historischer Perspektive”, 249–261. Kroeger, E. (BMh 1933c), “Nationalpartei der deutschen Balten. Baltischer Landesdienst. Was wir wollen”, 298–300. Wittram, R. (BMh 1933c), “Dreierlei Nationalgefühl”, 300–302.

1934

Wittram, R. (BMh 1934a), “Umschau. Rückblick und Ausblick”, 53–55. Wittram, R. (BMh 1934b), “Umschau. Zur Geschichte der Juden im Baltikum”, 173–175. Wittram, R. (BMh 1934c), “Bischof D. Irbe. Miszelle”, 234. Wittram, R. (BMh 1934d), “Bemerkungen (über Kampfesweisen: der ʽdeutsche Sozialismus im Anmarschʼ)”, 236f. Wittram, R. (BMh 1934e), “Umschau. Bemerkungen (ʽden völkischen Sozialismus in der Jugend zum Sieg…führenʼ)”. 302–304.

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1935

Wittram, R. (BMh 1935), “Prof. D. Dr h.c. Dr Johannes Haller zum siebzigsten Geburtstag (mit Glückwunschadresse)”, 585–589.

1936

Bosse, H. (BMh 1936), “Um die Rassenlehre”, 481–490. Grüner, V. (BMh 1936), “Volkstumsarbeit im Lichte des Glaubens”, 535–554 Wittram, R. (BMh 1936a), “Die Wendung zur Volksgeschichte”, 566–571. Also in: Volkstum und Forschung. Festschrift für Wilhelm Klumberg zum 70. Geburtstag. Riga: Ernst Plates, 94–99. Wittram, R. (BMh 1936b), “Zu Tag und Stunde. Der Staub an den Füssen”, 689–691.

1937

Wittram, R. (BMh 1937a), “Zu Tag und Stunde. Ruhm der Rückständigkeit?”, 65–67. Wittram, R. (BMh 1937b), “Zu Tag und Stunde. Wer die Heimat liebt”, 481–483. Wittram, R. (BMh 1937c), “Historismus und Geschichtsbewusstsein”, 552–564.

1938

Bosse, H. (BMh 1938), “Zu Tag und Stunde. Eigenwert und Selbstachtung”, 65–67. Wittram, R. (BMh 1938a), “Zu Tag und Stunde. Hinten weit, in der Türkei”, 1–2. Wittram, R. (BMh 1938b), “Arbeit und Opfer”, 29–131. Wittram, R. (BMh 1938c), “Zu Tag und Stunde”, 385–387. Wittram, R. (BMh 1938d), “Bemerkungen über die Kultur, das Volk und den Stil”, 536–539. Wittram, R. (BMh 1938e), “Ostseeprobleme. Betrachtungen zur Zeitgeschichte”, 595–599.

1939

Bosse, H. (BMh 1939a), “Zu Tag und Stunde”, 1–3. Bosse, H. (BMh 1939b), “Zu Tag und Stunde. Rasse”, 65–67. Lenz, W. (BMh 1939), “Familie—Sippe—Volk”, 183f. Anonymus. (H. Bosse?), (BMh 1939), “Blick in die Gegenwart”, 377–381. Anonymus (H. Bosse?), (BMh 1939), “Politische Chronik. Lettland. Nichtangriffspakt Lettland-Deutschland”, 459–469. Middendorff, L. von (BMh 1939), “Estland. Deutsch-estnischer Nichtangriffspakt”, 469–471. Anonymus. (H. Bosse?) (BMh 1939), “Blick in die Gegenwart”, 485–489. Kroeger, E. (BMh 1939), “Gruß an das Reich 10/11 Nov.”, o.S. Intelmann, A. and E. Kroeger (BMh 1939), “Deutsche Volksgenossen! 10/11 Nov.”, O.S.



Secondary Sources

Anonymus (1940). Baltendeutsche Heimkehr. Berichte, Pressestimmen, Chronik. Löcknitz i. Pomm.: Verlag „Baltischer Beobachter” (Artur von Behr). O.J.

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Berg, N. (2003). “Hermann Heimpel, Reinhard Wittram und Fritz Ernst oder ʽdie Demonstration protestantischer Bußfertigkeitʼ im Deutschland der 50er Jahre” in: N. Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung. Göttingen: Wallstein, 220–269. Bergengruen, W. (1992). “Die Bezeichnung ʽBalten’”, in: N.L. Hackelsberger [Bergengruenʼs daughter] (ed.), Von Riga nach anderswo oder Situationen meines Lebens. Zürich: Arche, 24. Białkowski, B. (2008). “Reinhard Wittram an der ʽReichsuniversität Posenʼ. Die Illusion einer baltischen Variante des Nationalsozialismus” in M. Garleff (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 2. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 353–384. Białkowski, B. (2011). Utopie einer Tyrannis. Deutsche Historiker an der Reichsuniversität Posen (1941–1945). Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. Bosse, H. (1941). Der Führer ruft. Erlebnisberichte aus den Tagen der großen Umsiedlung im Osten. Berlin: Zeitgeschichte Verlag. Bosse, L. (2008). “Vom Baltikum in den Reichsgau Wartheland” in M. Garleff (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 1. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau. 2nd. ed., 297–387. dbbl (1970/1998). Lenz, W. sen. (ed.), Deutsch-Baltisches Biographisches Lexikon 1710–1960. Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag 1970. Reprint: Wedemark: von Hirschheydt 1998. Filaretow, B. (2008). “Die Baltische Brüderschaft. Wider den Zeitgeist?” in M. Garleff (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 1. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 2nd. ed. 11–50. Garleff, M. (ed.) (1995). Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiss. Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre. München: Oldenbourg. Garleff, M. (ed.) (2001). Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 1. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau. [2nd. ed. 2008.] Garleff, M. (ed.) (2008). Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 2. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau. Gehrke, R. (2008). “Deutschbalten an der Reichsuniversität Posen,” in M. Garleff (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 1. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 2nd. ed. 389–426. Haar, I. (2002). Historiker im Nationalsozialismus. Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft und der “Volkstumskampf im Osten”. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hackmann, J. (2001). “Ethnos oder Region? Probleme der baltischen Historiographie im 20. Jahrhundert.” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 50, 531–556. Hiden, J. (2004). Defender of Minorities. Paul Schiemann, 1876–1944. London: Hurst. J.G. Herder-Forschungsrat (ed.) (1985). Fünfunddreißig Jahre Forschung über Ostmitteleuropa. Veröffentlichungen der Mitglieder des J.G. Herder-Forschungsrates 1950–1985. Marburg an der Lahn: Herder-Institut. [There: R. Wittram, pp. 418f.].

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Kaegbein, P. and W. Lenz (eds.) (1997). Fünfzig Jahre baltische Geschichtsforschung 1947–1996. Köln: Mare Balticum. [There: R. Wittram, 179–181]. Karjahärm, T. and T. Rosenberg (2010). Eesti ajalugu V (1815–1918). [Estonian History V (1815-1918)]. Tartu: Kirjastus “Ilmamaa”. Kivimäe, M. (1995). “Reinhard Wittram als Geschichtsdenker”, in M. Garleff (ed.), Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiss. Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre. München: Oldenbourg, 227–243. Kroeger, E. (1967). Der Auszug aus der alten Heimat: die Umsiedlung der Baltendeutschen. Tübingen: Verlag der Deutschen Hochschullehrer-Zeitung. Lenz, W. sen. (1997). “Die Literaten,” in: W. Schlau (ed.), Sozialgeschichte der baltischen Deutschen. Köln: Mare Balticum. 139–184. Neitmann, K. (1998). “Reinhard Wittram und der Wiederbeginn der baltischen historischen Studien in Göttingen nach 1945.” Nordost-Archiv N.F. vii, no. 1, 11–32. Pistohlkors, G. von (1973). “Nachruf auf Prof. Dr phil. Reinhard Wittram.” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 22, 698–703. Pistohlkors, G. von (ed.) (1994). Baltische Länder. Berlin: Siedler 1994. [2nd.ed. 2002.] Pistohlkors, G. von (1995). “Ethnos und Geschichtsschreibung der dreißiger und vierziger Jahre in Deutschland und Ostmitteleuropa. Einführende Bemerkungen,” in M. Garleff (ed.), Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiss. Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre. München: Oldenbourg, 11–24. Pistohlkors, G. von (2007). “Sechzig Jahre Baltische Historikertreffen in Göttingen. Rückblick und Bericht des scheidenden Ersten Vorsitzenden der Baltischen Historischen Kommission e.V. vom 1. Juni 2007.” Jahrbuch des baltchen Deutschtums lvi, 2008, 33–52. Pistohlkors, G.von (2008a). “Die Baltenschule und das ʽOstsee-Internat Dünenschloßʼ in Misdroy/Pommern 1919–1945. Zielgruppe und Zentrum einer ʽheimattreuen Gesinnungsgemeinschaftʼ ”, in M. Garleff (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 2. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau, 151–208. Pistohlkors (2008b). “Baltische Regionalgeschichte in universalhistorischer Perspektive: Sechzig Jahre Baltische Historikertreffen in Göttingen.” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 3, 11–32. Pistohlkors, G. von (2009). “Baltische Geschichtsforschung in drei Generationen. Rückblick auf die Baltisdchen Historikertreffen in Göttingen seit 1947 und die Arbeit der Baltischen Historischen Kommission.” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittelund Ostdeutschlands 55, 243–268. Pistohlkors, G. von (2012). “Reinhard Wittram in Riga 1925–1939. Versuch einer Annäherung.” Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums lx, 2013, 122–155. Plakans, A. (1995). The Latvians. A Short History. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Rauch (1990). Geschichte der baltischen Staaten. 3. ed. München: dtv. Raun, T.U. (1991). Estonia and the Estonians. 2. ed., Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.

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Rimscha, H. von (1940). Aufgabe und Leistung der Baltendeutschen. Berlin: Verlag Grenze und Ausland. Rothfels, H. (1962). “Reich, Staat und Nation im deutschbaltischen Denken”, in: H.  Rothfels, Bismarck, der Osten, und das Reich. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1962, 182–204. [First printing in: Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten Gesellschaft. Geisteswissenschaftliche Klasse 7, no. 4. 1930.] Schlau, W. (1990). Gegen den Mahlstrom der Zeit. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur politischen Soziologie und neueren Sozialgeschichte, ed. by H. Brichte et al. Stuttgart: Steiner. Schlau, W. (ed.) (1997). Sozialgeschichte der baltischen Deutschen. Köln: Mare Balticum. Skujiņš, M. (1995). “Aspekte der Rückwirkung interethnischer Beziehungen auf die Geschichtsschreibung bei Reinhard Wittram in den 1930er Jahren”, in: Garleff, M. (ed.), Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiss. Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre. München: Oldenbourg, 217–225. Tammiksaar, E. (2010). “Alexander Theodor von Middendorff und die Entwicklung der livländischen Gesellschaft in den Jahren 1860 bis 1885.” Zeitschrift für OstmitteleuropaForschung 59, 147–185. Taube A. von (ed.) (1943). Deutsche Männer des baltischen Ostens. Berlin, Amsterdam, Prag, Wien: Volk und Reich. Volkmann, H.-E. (1997). “Von Johannes Haller zu Reinhard Wittram. Deutschbaltische Historiker und der Nationalsozialismus.” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 45, 21–46. Volkstum und Forschung (1936). Festschrift der Baltischen Monatshefte und der Rigaschen Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft für Wilhelm Klumberg. Riga: Plates. Wittram, R. (1931). Liberalismus baltischer Literaten. Zur Entstehung der baltischen p­ olitischen Presse. Riga: G. Löffler. Wittram, R. (1934f). Meinungskämpfe im baltischen Deutschtum während der Reformepoche des 19. Jahrhunderts. Riga: E. Bruhns. Wittram, R. (1939). Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen. Grundzüge und Durchblicke. Stuttgart und Berlin: Kohlhammer. Wittram, R. (1942). Rückkehr ins Reich. Vorträge und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1939/1940. Posen: Kluge & Ströhm. Wittram, R. (1943a). “Die deutsche Geschichtsforschung in den baltischen Landen. Wandlungen, Ergebnisse, Aufgaben”, in: H. Aubin et al. (eds.), Deutsche Ostforschung, vol. 2. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 450–460. Wittram, R. (1943b). Livland. Schicksal und Erbe der baltischen Deutschen. Berlin, Amsterdam, Prag, Wien: Volk und Reich.

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Wittram, R. (1943c). “Die Entdeutschung der russischen Staatsführung seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen (Sozietät der Reichsakademie 1942/43), 30–67. Wittram, R. (1945). Geschichte der Ostseelande Livland, Estland, Kurland 1180–1918. Umrisse und Querschnitte. München und Berlin: Oldenbourg. [Almost completely destroyed by bombs, not sold in book stores.] Wittram, R. (1949). Drei Generationen. Deutschland—Livland—Rußland 1830–1914. Gesinnungen und Lebensformen baltisch-deutscher Familien. Göttingen: Deuerlich. Wittram, R. (1953). “Das öffentlich Böse und das achte Gebot.” Die Sammlung, vol. 8. [Also in: Wittram, 1966, 60–75.] Wittram, R. (1954a). Das Nationale als europäisches Problem. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalitätsprinzips vornehmlich im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R. (1954b). Baltische Geschichte: die Ostseelande Livland, Estland, Kurland 1180–1918; Grundzüge und Durchblicke. München: Oldenbourg. [Last reprint (1973): München: Oldenbourg. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.] Wittram, R.(ed.) (1956). Baltische Kirchengeschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R.(1958). Das Interesse an der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. [3rd ed. ib. 1968.] Wittram, R. (1964a). “Rückblick auf den Strukturwandel der deutsch-baltischen Volksgruppen im letzten Jahrzehnt vor der Umsiedlung”, in: Festschrift Percy Ernst Schramm zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag von Schülern und Freunden zugeeignet [P. Classen et al. (eds.)], vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 231–250. Wittram, R. (1964b). Peter I. Czar und Kaiser. 2 vol. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R. (1966). Zukunft in der Geschichte. Zu Grenzfragen der Geschichtswissenschaft und Theologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R. (1969). Anspruch und Fragwürdigkeit der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R. (1971a). “Ideologie und Gesinnung.” Baltische Briefe 24, no. 5. Wittram, R. (1971b). “Methodologische und geschichtstheoretische Überlegungen zu Problemen der baltischen Geschichtsforschung.” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 20, 601–640. Wittram, R. (1972). Der Wiederbeginn der baltischen historischen Studien nach 1945. Ms. Unprinted. Wittram, R. (1973). Russia and Europe, London: Thames and Hudson. Wittram-Hoffmann, R. (ed.) (1973). Baltische Monatsschrift (Baltische Monatshefte). Register 1859–1939. Marburg/Lahn: Herder-Institut.

How to Become a Perfect Danish-Estonian Historian: Homage to Vello Helk Jaan Undusk 1

The Man and His Career

This is a simple story about a Danish historian of Estonian origin, Vello Helk, doctor honoris causa of the University of Tartu (1996). He was born in Varstu village in South Estonia on September 23, 1923 (his original family name being Hintervaldt until 1936), and he attended gymnasium in the local provincial centre, Võru, after which he was taken—like many other Estonians—into the German Army in 1944. After the Nazi capitulation, he left Germany for Denmark in 1945. From that time on he lived in Denmark, almost seventy years of his long life. Although he was nearly deaf for the last twenty-five years, he was still active as a publicist until recently, in the last years mainly as a reviewer and a political columnist in Estonian and Danish newspapers. He died on March 14, 2014, being ninety years old, on the Estonia’s Mother Tongue Day.1 Together with his wife, he is buried in Birkerød, near Copenhagen. Helk’s life story as a humanities scholar is not very typical for an Estonian of his generation abroad; on the other hand, one cannot deny in it some characteristic patterns of behaviour of an exile historian. The result has been, as suggested in the title of this essay, an almost perfect synthesis of Danish and Estonian inspirations. Vello Helk is exceptional also among the Estonian historians because of his memoirs that were published in thirteen parts in the historical journal Tuna (Tallinn) from 2002 to 2005.2 In addition I carried out written interview with him in November 2009, to clarify some details of his biography. After that, we were in electronic correspondence occasionally. Helk’s peculiarity consists in not writing in the published part of memoirs about his childhood in Estonia, about the days of war, and his joys and sorrows as a refugee—about all that which is the very stuff of most of the other autobiographies from that period (though he admits in a private letter, fragments of youth and war memoirs exist at least in manuscript). He informs us almost exclusively about his professional career in the Kingdom of Denmark. Obviously this is the part of his life of which he is proud of and which can be taken as a 1 Pillak, Küng and Ohmann, 2014. 2 Helk, 2002/2005.

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model of person-building in foreign surroundings after World War ii. He composes his life like a Bildungsroman in which the first quarter is absent. The memoirs, entitled programmatically “From student in exile to Danish archivist,” begin with Helk’s matriculating in the University of Århus in 1947, and then practically end when he retired in 1990. We are not given much information about his first years in Denmark as a refugee from the Baltic region. Helk begins with the moment when he steps across the threshold of the new society. His professional career was successful indeed. He became a Danish citizen already in 1954, while studying at the University of Århus. After working in archives in Århus and Odense from 1956 on, Helk became employed in the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen in 1959 and was promoted to one of the head archivists in 1970; during a short period between 1977 and 1978 he even rose to the position of Danish Deputy State Archivist (due to the fact that the elected State Archivist was ill); this made him the first man of his field for a while. He has been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Dannebrog, a very high decoration. Although he did not become a university professor, a goal he did not entertain, he actually achieved much more; there are but a few persons of such an elevated responsibility in every country. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Vello Helk was the man who made a most brilliant official career among the Estonian historians abroad. Of course, the formal career is not the only reason to speak about Vello Helk. He is an almost ideal example of an historian working for several national histories simultaneously. There are people of Estonian origin in the wide world who write on Estonian and Baltic matters. And there are, of course, other historians of Estonian origin who are not professionals in Estonian history, having chosen to write on other historical topic. But there must be only very few among them who have contributed—on a high international level—to several national historiographies. Vello Helk is one of that rare breed. In the Festschrift on the occasion of his 75th birthday, the leading essay is correspondingly entitled “Vello Helk as a Danish and Estonian historian;”3 therein one can find a systematic overview of his life and work.4 In Denmark and for most of the international audience, Helk remains a Danish historian or, as some of his fellow countrymen in Denmark know, a Danish historian of Estonian origin. Helk has never concealed from his closest collaborators that his first homeland was Estonia and his mother tongue is Estonian. Although he had acquired a good command of Danish as a student already at the end of the 1940s, he has always been speaking Danish with a 3 Küng and Tering, 1999. 4 See also Piirimäe, 1996b; Küng and Tering, 1998; Helk, 2002/2005, xii: 116ff.

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f­ oreign accent, as he himself claims. That constituted neither a communications nor an ideological problem, but was still a sign that his roots were elsewhere. Denmark was an old nation state but not a little America, so an alien from the “wild” Eastern Europe was not necessarily accepted there. Woldemar Mettus, an Estonian theatrical director who spent the years from 1945 to 1949 as a refugee in Denmark before leaving it for Argentina, depicted the situation in his memoirs of that period in a book with a meaningful title Unwelcome Guests (1971).5 Helk himself asserts that, with respect to the official viewpoint, negative behaviour towards the refugees was in fact true.6 Of course, the Danes were not very well informed about Estonia, Helk adds, so Estonia (Estland) was sometimes misinterpreted as Iceland (Island), a part of a bigger Scandinavian community. 2

The Work

The most comprehensive study by Helk takes its topic from Danish history and touches as well on the histories of Norway, Iceland and Schleswig-Holstein at the time when all these areas were part of Denmark. This admirable piece of research is entitled Danish-Norwegian Study Trips and covers the years from 1536 to 1813. It was published in three separate books.7 Just as much or even more impressive is a monograph that is closely connected to these three volumes and explains the so-called autograph albums, or travel albums, or books of friends (Latin album amicorum, German Stammbuch) that are one of the most important sources for understanding the study trips of Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Schleswig-Holstein students.8 The album amicorum or “book of friends” originated in Germany in the middle of the sixteenth century and very quickly became fashionable among students moving from one university to another in the course of their academic careers. Professors, as well as fellow students, or simply friends, wrote their contributions in these pages, and sometimes the albums contain inscriptions by major scholars. Vello Helk is considered to be one of the leading experts on this subject in the whole world, and so these four books (together comprising more than 1500 pages) are a significant contribution to the cultural history of Scandinavia in the early modern centuries. This outstanding work by Helk, the completion of which lasted some 35 years and more, is written in Danish. There are only brief German summaries, 5 6 7 8

Mettus, 1971. Helk, 2002/2005, i: 124. Helk, 1987; Helk, 1991. Helk, 2001.

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but not in all four books. At the same time, a good deal of information concerns German, or French, circumstances, and Helk is well-versed in German, being an author of many texts in that language. Why did he choose a language that has a relatively narrow audience as the linguistic vehicle of his main work? There could be several answers to this question but, one can suppose, we touch here upon the central motif that stretches through Helk’s life as a Danish historian. Helk wanted to be a good Dane. And he reached his destination in different ways; one of them was to write his magnum opus in Danish. We will return to this issue later. There is need to mention two other books written by Helk in Danish which had the effect of changing the general view of Danish historiography. The first is his 500-page doctoral dissertation on Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus, a Jesuit of Norwegian origin, who became the leading figure of Scandinavian CounterReformation and fiercely fought to win Scandinavia back to the Roman Catholic faith. In this book, Helk’s first large monograph, due to archival finds, he succeeded in showing that Catholic mentalities and strivings survived in the Nordic lands—partly in secret—much longer than earlier claimed.9 The Reformation did not meant an abrupt revivification of the Christian faith; in some sense it was only the beginning. Helk’s archival discoveries were closely connected with the aforementioned travel albums that offered unexpected information. The third Danish book by Helk is his history of Estonia in one slim volume.10 One thing that bothered Helk considerably in Denmark was the leftist mania of the intellectuals and their enthusiasm for Stalinist and, later, Soviet ideologies.11 In this mode of thinking, the Baltic states were considered to be legitimately a part of the Soviet Union. Helk had witnessed the first Soviet year in Estonia—the deportations included—and that was for him the basis of a convincing argument for the rest of his life. This book in the writing of which Helk did not have to wear a mask and could give his opinions straightforwardly, earned a positive reaction in Danish press and was reprinted a year later. In Estonia, the reviews were also very favorable.12 One of the reasons of the book’s success in Denmark was that Helk was considered to be a good Dane—a motif that needs to be stressed repeatedly. As a translation from the Estonian, for example, this kind of book could hardly be hugely popular. But Helk was a

9 10 11 12

Helk, 1966. Helk, 1993. Helk, 2002/2005, i: 123; iii: 139; iv: 122. Saluäär 1994; Piirimäe 1996a.

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respected head archivist of the Danish National Archives, whose fluent Danish came straight from the heart—and this was quite another thing. At the same time, the book could have been written only by a man who knew both nations well; the historical connection between Estonia and Denmark, especially in the thirteenth to the fourteenth and the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, as well as at the beginning of the twentieth century (Danish military and humanitarian aid in the Estonian War of Liberation in 1918–1919), is one of the foci in this work. The Danish invasion of Estonia had begun in 1219, and until 1346, for more than a hundred years, North Estonia was under Danish dominion; the large island of Saaremaa belonged to Denmark from 1559 to 1645, the period in which Helk is an expert.13 As the legend says, even the Danish national flag (Dannebrog) originated in Tallinn: it fell from heaven in June 1219, at the time when the Danes were in a difficult battle against the nearly triumphant Estonians, and the flag brought Danish victory. All that served as a starting point for a fruitful exchange of ideas. Helk’s two books on the older eras of Estonian and Baltic history were both written in German: The Jesuits in Dorpat (Tartu) 1583–1625. An Outpost of Counter-Reformation in North-East Europe and The Arensburg Town School on the Island of Saaremaa under Danish and Swedish Rule (1559–1710).14 In addition, he also wrote a number of articles in both Estonian and German on Estonian history. The first monograph on the forty-year period of the Jesuits’ enterprise in Southern Estonia during the so-called “Polish time” was a particular milestone in Estonian and Baltic history writing: in the book, for the first time, the cultural presence of the Catholic Church in this northeastern Baltic area during the early modern period was evaluated thoroughly and for the most part positively. This book has remained almost the single large-scale analysis of the Catholic heritage in Estonian territory. And it is the only one of Helk’s books to be translated into Estonian.15 Besides the two monographs, his most innovative essays and articles in Estonian and German deal with the inscriptions in the travel albums. In these, special attention is paid to the educational trip-takers of Baltic origin and to Baltic reminiscences as found in travel albums. Helk examined not only the inscriptions in German or Latin but very carefully counted valuable inscriptions in Estonian and Latvian as well.16 As an historian, Vello Helk is distinctly both Danish and Estonian. What is more, his major contributions to Danish (and Scandinavian) cultural and 13 14 15 16

E.g. Helk, 1989; Helk, 1998. Helk, 1977a; Helk 1989. Helk, 2003. E.g. Helk, 1972; Helk, 1973/1987; Helk 1976; Helk 1977b.

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social history are deliberately written in Danish. As a loyal citizen of Denmark and a high-ranking civil servant, he was consciously repaying a debt to Denmark and the Danish audience—addressing it in its mother tongue—for letting him, a refugee who had started from nothing, work so many years and so successfully in this blessed land. He did not want to address his new homeland in a foreign academic jargon; rather, he wanted to emphasize his sense of belonging to the Danish community and its culture. This ideological choice, or moral constraint, can be felt very strongly, even more so because the historical topics Helk wrote about are as such essentially international. For example, the travel albums depict—in telling fragments—educational journeys through Europe and encounters with various cultures and their representatives. Or consider the activities of the Jesuits, another leading theme in Helk’s work: there is almost nothing “national” in them. Membership of the Society of Jesus was formed on cosmopolitan grounds and its doings were supranational. If Helk wrote his two larger studies on older Estonian history in the German language, this choice also is understandable. To the Danish reader, they were of no primary interest. The Estonian audience was too small in number in exile, or too far removed in the old homeland. In Europe, most of his readers were German. Both books were published in academic series, the first one in Denmark, the other in Germany. In publishing them in German, Vello Helk became a Baltic historian all at once. This was acknowledged by the Baltic Historical Commission in Göttingen, the foremost organ of Baltic studies in Germany, and Helk was elected a corresponding (1971), and then a regular member (1984) of it. This was a mark of honour to a non-German historian, as Helk himself admitted.17 Helk’s contacts with Göttingen were first mediated by Otto A. Webermann, an Estonian literary historian and university lecturer there, and from this grew his closer communication with Baltic German historians, on the personal level especially with Hellmuth Weiss and Arved von Taube, both born in Tallinn. 3

The Logic of Self-assertion

What was the logic of Helk’s personal development as an historian working with several national identities? If we look back on his first years of exile in Denmark right after military service in the German army, we can already notice his individual concerns. His gravest problem as an exile was not how to return to Estonia when it will be 17

Helk, 2002/2005, v: 124–126; ix: 128–131.

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free again, but how to stay on in the West, in Denmark or elsewhere. This internal conflict was not trivial. Most Estonians during the first five years of exile were preoccupied with the idea of going back to Estonia. The younger generation to whom Helk belonged also discussed this possibility passionately in various publications, the question being vital for most of them. Exile was thought to be temporary. Helk did not take part in these discussions, however. He began to write about Estonia and its contemporary problems much later, when his position in the Danish society was secure. It seems in retrospect that he was looking forward and not back, and that his rational disposition helped to overcome emotional longings. There was no trauma of being exiled, he observes, there was no loneliness; he tried to use his time to associate with Danes and to use all opportunities. There was only one bad dream that followed him during the years of Soviet occupation: that he is back in his old homeland and he is not able to flee from it.18 As many others, he also had to do manual labor at the beginning, but when in the library of a South Danish farm where he worked he found the ten volumes of the chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus (the Gesta Danorum) in Danish translation, he began to read it and to learn Danish. In 1947, he had advanced in the language far enough that he could enroll in the Danish University of Århus, his main subjects being history and the German language. Incidentally, in 1958 Helk married Annemarie Japsen from South Denmark, who thought of herself as a representative of German minority in Denmark. By the third year of his studies he was able to freely dispute philosophical problems in Danish, and his written Danish was stylistically often better than that of his Danish fellow students. Later, in the National Archives, he helped younger collaborators express themselves in a more appropriate fashion. Yet at the same time, he himself did not believe that he had special linguistic abilities. Rather, his accomplishments demonstrated a powerful will to adapt to the Danish society. Some years later when Helk was in Italy (1952/53), the same ability was discernible in these new social surroundings. It was not so much the easy capacity of language learning, but rather the capability of easily living among people of the dominant local culture, often side by side as in the students’ hostel in Århus or in the cloister chambers in Rome. Helk did not avoid local people, perhaps he even created situations that offered closer social contact. In these situations, he could get to know the people better and adapt himself to the dominant patterns of behaviour. 18

Helk, 2002/2005, xiii: 141.

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It is not surprising, then, that in his memoirs Helk expresses gratitude for his career, first of all, to his fellow students in Århus.19 The Danish university was the place where to establish connections for life. We suspect a hint of corporative language in this claim, but it really did work. It is no accident that Helk’s exhaustive studies were published in the Odense University’s cultural studies series. This was arranged by Tage Kaarsted, his fellow student and friendly neighbour in the students’ hostel in Århus, and later a professor in Odense.20 Interestingly, Kaarsted has published an article on German refugees in Denmark in which attention was also paid to the Balts.21 Thus receiving one’s education in a national university could also create the basis for a future career in the same segment of society. It made for equality, as Helk observes. Estonians who had been educated in Estonia, be they professors and internationally recognized specialists, were mistrusted, as a general rule, and newcomers who had attended a local university were preferred. Star status was not an advantage—an ideological innocence counted for something. In America, of course, the situation was much more open than in Europe. In Sweden, by contrast, becoming a humanities professor was initially almost impossible for an Estonian. In the other fields of knowledge, such accomplishment was easier. Estonian practitioners of the social sciences and humanities were employed in the archives, but at the universities they reached at best middle-level positions. Some of the most accomplished Estonian historians worked in the Swedish National Archives, as Helk did in Denmark. But they, of course, did not have the slightest chance of becoming a Deputy State Archivist. Was Denmark much more liberal in these respects? Helk is convinced of Danish national superiority over the Swedish. But this is a choice rooted in emotions that we are not obliged to follow. Denmark was conservative as well, and it was the official policy of Danish government to pressure refugees to emigrate to other countries. When Estonian writers from Sweden visited Estonians in a Danish refugee camp in 1948, they were shocked at the astonishingly bad conditions in which the latter had to live.22 Helk himself was the first graduate of the University of Århus to get a job in the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen; earlier, this was the privilege of only Copenhagen students. Perhaps one of the reasons for Danish liberalism in particular cases was the relatively low number of Estonian refugees in Denmark, estimated to have been 1010 at the time of the liberation (May 5, 1945), 761 in November 1946, and 19 20 21 22

Helk, 2002/2005, xiii: 134. Helk, 2002/2005, viii: 124. Kaarsted, 1988; Kyhn, 1998: 369–370. Uibopuu, 1948; Mettus, 1971: 227–231.

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247 at the beginning of 1949; later on, only about 80 Estonian refugees remained in Denmark.23 Estonians in Sweden, by contrast, were a larger and well-­ recognized community, numbering about 22,000 in 1945, as compared to 2800–3500 Latvians.24 Such a number created social strains. The Estonians in Sweden acted as if they were a community, and the Swedish behaviour towards them was an answer to that self-conception. As a community, Estonians in Sweden did not want to become good Swedes at first because of their large population. Together, they were a grouping that was able to establish its own subculture, and they were treated correspondingly. As a rule, the representatives of an alternative subculture do not have easy access to the key positions of an advanced surrounding civilization. In Denmark—in contrast to Latvians, whose number in Denmark was more than three times larger in 1949—the Estonians remained dispersed. They were free to act as individuals without specific national pretensions and they could be perceived as such. Not everybody was fond of behaving individualistically, of course. But as was already suggested, one of the leitmotifs in Helk’s life was to become a good Dane, a loyal citizen working for the prosperity of the Kingdom. Thus, to be small in the numerical sense can be an advantage. Or, as Helk himself put it in one of his letters, the position of a white crow can make things easier. In spite of these contrasts, the preferred country of Estonian refugees in Denmark, when the question of leaving Denmark arose—was still Sweden, and at least 260 persons, or about 28 per cent of them, eventually emigrated or were resettled there.25 Main argument for this choice was, of course, the strength of the Estonian community in Sweden. Helk himself has emphasized that the nearby Swedish city of Lund (about 50 kilometres from Copenhagen), with its leading Estonian publishing house (Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv, run by Bernard Kangro) and an Estonian academic community (Edgar Kant, Artur Taska, Herbert Salu, among others), played a decisive role in his communication with Estonians. Although Helk took part in the activities of the organized Estonian community in Denmark and was the chairman of it for many years, its meetings appeared to be rare and not very productive.26 Vello Helk was an active political publicist for more than twenty years. These were the years of the germination and development of Estonian independence. Before he retired and worked as a head archivist in the Danish National Archives, however, he was careful in political matters. He authored only a few 23 24 25 26

Kyhn, 1998, 375, 376, 388, 408; Helk, 2002/2005, x: 146; xii: 127; Reinans, 2006, 124. Kangro, 1976, 42, 66, 68; Raag, 1999, 70; Reinans, 2006, 126. Kumer-Haukanõmm, 2012, 489, 502, 514. Helk, 2002/2005, vi: 131–132; x: 146–147.

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articles on the role of Danish volunteers in the Estonian War of Liberation. In Estonia, he was almost unknown to the general audience. He did not visit Estonia before he retired, and before Estonia became independent again, because of his relatively high social position and his duties in Denmark, which in part involved confidential matters.27 He was not sure of being able to avoid political provocations and he wanted to be a good Dane with a good reputation. 4

The Estonian Factor

After all that, one could claim that the aim of this essay has been to show that Vello Helk was successful as an historian in Denmark only because he forgot his Estonian origin and his homeland contacts. That is not true, of course. His admirable historical output was due precisely because he combined several national identities. One of them is without doubt Estonian. Some casual and/ or conscious features of his life course helped him to become a part of the Danish Establishment. But this big plan could not have been achieved without the aid of the Estonians. This was the other side of the Moon. Vello Helk’s ma thesis in the University of Århus (1952) dealt with the peasant politics of Charles xi of Sweden in Livonia. He chose this subject because he knew that there were rich materials in the Swedish National Archives in Stockholm and also that some well-informed Estonian historians were working there—Arnold Soom, Evald Blumfeldt, Jakob Koit, and Alvin Isberg, the latter a representative of the so-called coastal Swedes in Estonia.28 While there, he also met the left-wing historian Aleksander Loit from Uppsala, who later was professor of Baltic studies in Stockholm and from whose political ideas Helk distanced himself though he acknowledged Loit’s historical talents.29 Helk went to Stockholm in 1951 and completed his master’s degree, but something more happened. In Stockholm he unexpectedly met young Estonian who was not a historian but was preparing to become a Catholic priest in Rome. The name of this young gentleman—actually his pseudonym—was Vello Salo, a man-to-be of an extraordinary wide cultural profile. Salo was born 1925 in Estonia, then studied and worked in various parts of Europe, Asia and America, and came back to Estonia in 1993. Salo told Helk that he must visit the Vatican Secret Archives to research the activities of Jesuits in South Estonia at the end 27 28 29

Helk, 2002/2005, xiii: 138. Helk, 2002/2005, i: 127–128; v: 125; Helk, 1996. Helk, 2002/2005, viii: 126.

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of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century when the territory was under the Polish rule. And Salo not only gave advice but acted on it as well, resulting in Helk’s winning a Papal scholarship of 300 000 Italian lire (then 3300 Danish crowns) and spending nine months (1952/53) in Rome.30 “All that began with the encounter with Vello Salo in Stockholm in the summer of 1951—this encounter being the cornerstone of my subsequent research work and the whole of my scientific career,” observed Helk in the foreword to the Estonian translation of his book on Jesuits.31 When Stalin died, Helk was doing research in Rome—this was the advantage of being exiled in a free world. And this was also the real beginning of his scientific life. He went to Rome to study the Jesuits’ work in Estonia but he uncovered their heretofore unknown activities in Scandinavia as well. In that material his doctoral thesis began to take shape; in 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, he was in Rome for the second time, and then again in 1961, 1966, and 1968. Connected with his research on the Jesuits was his discovery of the importance of the travel albums which were to be the centerpiece of his magnum opus as an historian. Helk’s research on the albums began in the National Library in Copenhagen, and involved numerous visits to Sweden, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Liechtenstein, and Great Britain, not to mention his correspondences with the archives in East Europe and America.32 As can be seen, not only were Denmark and Estonia closely connected in Helk’s scholarly interests and research subjects. In the logic of his research ­trajectory—and, even more so, in the logistics of his academic career—the two homelands functioned in excellent co-operation with each other. References Helk, V. (1966). Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus S.J. En biografi med bidrag til belysning af romerkirkens forsø på at genvinde Danmark-Norge i tiden fra reformationen til 1622. København. (Kirkehistoriske Studier, ii, 22). Helk, V. (1972). “Einige Stammbucheintragungen aus dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in lettischer Sprache.” Ceļi 15, 16–24. Helk, V. (1973/1987). “Album amicorum. Reisialbumitest ja nende eestikeelsetest sissekannetest.” [Album amicorum. On Travel Albums and the Estonian Entries in

30 31 32

Helk, 2002/2005, i: 128–132; ii. Helk, 2003: 6; see also Helk, 2002/2005, viii: 125; xiii: 134; Helk 2005. Helk, 2002/2005, viii: 120–123; ix 125.

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them]. Tulimuld, 1973, 3, pp. 141–150; 4, 205–211; 1974, 1, pp. 24–29; 1975, 1, pp. 28–31; 1977, 3, pp. 150–154; 1978, 3, pp. 140–143; 1987, 1, pp. 31–32. Helk, V. (1976). “Baltische Stammbücher und Alben mit Eintragungen aus dem Baltenland vor 1800.” Ostdeutsche Familienkunde 7, 265–273, 329–336, 377–385. Helk, V. (1977a). Die Jesuiten in Dorpat 1583–1625. Ein Vorposten der Gegenreformation in Nordosteuropa. Odense: Odense University Press. (Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences, vol. 44). Helk, V. (1977b). “Weitere Stammbucheintragungen aus dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert in lettischer Sprache.” Ceļi 16, 35–50. Helk, V. (1987). Dansk-norske studierejser fra reformationen til enevælden 1536–1660. Med en matrikel over studerende i udlandet. (With an abstract in German, pp. 80–90). Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. (Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences, vol. 101). Helk, V. (1989). Die Stadtschule in Arensburg auf Ösel in dänischer und schwedischer Zeit (1559–1710). Lüneburg: Verlag Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk. (Schriften der Baltischen Historischen Kommission, Bd. 1). Helk, V. (1991). Dansk-norske studierejser 1661–1813. i–ii. (With an abstract in German, i, pp. 321–330). Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. (Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences, vol. 139). Helk, V. (1993). Estlands historie—kort fortalt. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. (Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences, vol. 170). Helk, V. (1996). “Alvin Isbergi elutöö.” [Alvin Isberg’s Life’s Work]. Kleio 4 (18), 41–46. Helk, V. (1998). “Taani kuningas Christian iv Saaremaal 1597. aastal.” Akadeemia 12, 2503–2511. Helk, V. (2001). Stambogsskikken i det danske monarki indtil 1800. Med en fortegnelse over danske, norske, islandske og slesvig-holstenske stambøger samt udlændinges stambøger med indførsler fra ophold i det danske monarki. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag. (Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences, vol. 237). Helk, V. (2002/2005). “Pagulastudengist Taani arhivaariks.” [From Student in Exile to Danish Archivist]. Tuna, 2002, 3, pp. 117–132 (i); 2002, 4, pp. 118–131 (ii); 2003, 1, pp. 134–145 (iii); 2003, 2, pp. 118–130 (iv); 2003, 3, pp. 116–130 (v); 2003, 4, pp. 123–138 (vi); 2004, 1, pp. 109–121 (vii); 2004, 2, pp. 119–129 (viii); 2004, 3, pp. 118–131 (ix); 2004, 4, pp. 141–150 (x); 2005, 1, pp. 116–126 (xi); 2005, 2, pp. 116–129 (xii); 2005, 3, pp. 133–141 (xiii). Helk, V. (2003). Jesuiidid Tartus 1583–1625. Vastureformatsiooni eelpost Põhja-Euroopas. [The Jesuits in Dorpat (Tartu) 1583–1625. An Outpost of Counter-Reformation in North-East Europe]. Trans. Kaarel Piirimäe. Tartu: Ilmamaa. Helk, V. (2005). “Vello Salo 80.” Tuna 4, 149–151. Kaarsted, T. (1988). “De tyske flygtninge i Danmark 1945–49.” [German Refugees in Denmark 1945–49]. Historie. Jyske samlinger 17 (1987–1989), 2, 254–266.

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Kangro, B. (1976). Eesti Rootsis. Ülevaade sõnas ja pildis. [Estonia in Sweden. An Illustrated Overview]. Lund: Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv. Kumer-Haukanõmm, K. (2012). “Eesti põgenikud Taanis 1945–1952 ja nende edasine saatus” (with an abstract in English “Estonian refugees in Denmark 1945–1952”). In T. Tannberg (ed.), Eesti ajaloost 19.–20. sajandil. Uurimusi historiograafiast, allikaõpetusest ja institutsioonidest. Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 472–514. Küng, E. and A. Tering (1998). “Vello Helk taani ja eesti ajaloolasena.” [Vello Helk as a Danish and Estonian Historian]. Tuna 1, 71–78. Küng, E. and A. Tering (1999). “Vello Helk als dänischer und estnischer Historiker.” In E. Küng and H. Tamman (eds.), Festschrift für Vello Helk zum 75. Geburtstag. Beiträge zur Verwaltungs-, Kirchen- und Bildungsgeschichte des Ostseeraumes. Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 7–21. Kyhn, P. (1998). “Unwelcome Guests—Estonian and other Baltic Refugees in Denmark after World War ii.” In E. Küng and H. Tamman (eds.), Festschrift für Vello Helk zum 75. Geburtstag. Beiträge zur Verwaltungs-, Kirchen- und Bildungsgeschichte des Ostseeraumes. Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 369–408. Mettus, W. (1971). Soovimata külalised. Pagulaspõlve mälestusi Saksast ja Taanist. [Unwelcome Guests. The Memories of an Exile from Germany and Denmark]. Lund: Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv. Piirimäe, H. (1996a). “Eesti ajalugu taanlastele.” [Estonian History for the Danes]. Akadeemia 6, 1302–1305. Piirimäe, H. (1996b). “Vello Helk—Tartu Ülikooli audoktor.” [Vello Helk—a Honorary Doctor of the University of Tartu]. Kleio 4 (18), 56–57. Pillak, P., E. Küng and V. Ohmann (2014). “Vello Helk in memoriam.” Tuna 2, 152–155. Raag, R. (1999). Eestlane väljaspool Eestit. Ajalooline ülevaade. [Estonians outside Estonia. A Historical Overview]. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus. Reinans, A. (2006). “Eesti põgenikud Rootsi statistikas.” [Estonian Refugees in Swedish Statistics]. In K. Kumer-Haukanõmm, T. Rosenberg and T. Tammaru (eds.), Suur põgenemine 1944. Eestlaste lahkumine läände ning selle mõjud. [Great Exodus in 1944, the Flight of Estonians to the West and its Influences]. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 122–146. Saluäär, A. (1994). “Eesti ajalugu taanlastele.” [Estonian History for the Danes]. Looming 2, 285–286. Uibopuu, V. (1948). “Taani eestlased ängistuses.” [Estonians in Denmark are Worried]. Välis-Eesti 26, June 27, 12.

Polish Historiography in Exile: On Selected Works and Ideas of Oskar Halecki, Henryk Paszkiewicz and Marian Kukiel Mirosław Filipowicz Emigration has played an important role in the history of Poland since the Partitions, with Paris, not Warsaw or Kraków, becoming the capitals of Polish culture during certain periods. However, this situation never applied to the Polish historiography to any large degree. With the notable exception of Joachim Lelewel, nineteenth-century émigré historians were not the founding fathers of modern Polish historiography. Even Lelewel spent many important creative years in Poland, or rather the former Res Publica: in Wilno and Warsaw. During the Partitions Polish historiography abroad maintained steady ties with historians from Warsaw, Lwów and Kraków. It was these three cities which would become the main centers for historical research at the close of the nineteenth century and during the period between the world wars in an independent Poland. The Second World War brought about an important change in this field.1 Several outstanding Polish historians came to be in the West both before and during the war, and remained where they were. This was the fate of Jan Kucharzewski, Oskar Halecki, Marian Kukiel, Stanisław Kot, Henryk Paszkiewicz, Leon Koczy, Stanisław Kościałkowski, Karolina Lanckorońska, among many others. Some scholars of the younger generation now received their education in the West, for instance Piotr Wandycz, Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, and Adam Ulam. Richard Pipes was another emigrant from Poland. The most important historians who remained in Poland either did not survive the war (Marceli Handelsman), died soon afterwards (Stanisław Kutrzeba and Józef Feldman), or were in the end forced out of research posts after the war (to take Władysław Konopczyński as just one example). But of equal importance is the fact that Poland was among the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence or under Soviet dictatorship whose postwar historiographical contributions were of permanent value and, despite concessions and limitations, were not completely compromised ideologically. This is a simplification of course; there were several periods, notably the beginning of 1 We still miss a general outlook of Polish émigré historiography after the World War ii. Among the most important studies which appeared last years, see a monograph on Polish historians in London: Stobiecki, 2005.

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the 1950s, when Polish domestic historiography was in a less than enviable situation. Even so, it is clear that those historians who were in emigration faced formidable tasks when compared to limitations placed on historiography in Poland. In Poland, certain subjects were completely taboo while others could be written about only from a single viewpoint, officially approved by the Communists. Paradoxically, émigré historiography was not free from limitations either. To take a few examples: for a long time there was no access to the archives in Poland essential for the historian, grant money was hard to come by, and last, emigration meant being on the periphery, being removed from the mainstream of study and research, losing contacts with academic circles in Poland while not necessarily being close to the centers of Western scholarship at the time. Emigration was also not very conducive to continuity. The young scholars who finished their studies in the West exerted their intellectual energies less on Polish historiography and more on the historiography of the countries in which they worked. Among the scholars who found themselves outside of Poland at the beginning of World War ii was Oscar Halecki (1891–1973),2 a leading historian from the interwar period and a professor at the University of Warsaw. He was a Pole by choice. His father, an Austrian general of Polish origins, spoke almost no Polish, while his mother was Croatian. Halecki had already debuted with an important monograph, A History of the Jagiellonian Union (in two volumes) at the beginning of Polandʼs independence in 1919 and 1920. He was also a pioneer in Byzantine studies among Polish scholars. The outbreak of war found him in Switzerland, which he quickly left for Paris, where he organized émigré Polish scholarly research by founding the Polish University Abroad. After the fall of France Halecki left for the United States where he helped create the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences3 to carry on the work of the now paralyzed 2 A solid biography of Halecki has yet to appear. Basic publications on him are: Kłoczowski, 1994; Wandycz, 1975; Rhode, 1976; Bömelburg, 2007; Cisek, 2009. A very interesting characterization of Halecki’s émigré output is to be found by Stobiecki, 2004. Bibliographies: “Bibliografia prac Profesora Oskara Haleckiego [Bibliography of the Publications of Professor Oskar Halecki].” In: Księga ku czci Oskara Haleckiego wydana w xxv lecie Jego pracy naukowej, Warszawa: Nakł. uczniów 1935, 1–18; also Teki Historyczne ix, 1958, 1–4. The Library of Catholic University of Lublin has a fine collection of letters Halecki wrote to his former student, dr Jasnowski between 1944 and 1973 (Sekcja Rękopisów, nr 1794). After delivering this paper to the publisher, some important studies on  Halecki were published, especially:  Dąbrowska, 2012; Dąbrowska, 2014a; Dąbrowska, 2014b. 3 The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America is a Polish-American non-profit organization supported exclusively by the public, its members and friends. Founded in 1942, it has become the leading center of learning and source of information about Polish history and

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Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences.4 From 1942 to 1953 Halecki was the Instituteʼs director and its president until 1962. He also worked on the board of the monthly New Europe, published in America and devoted to the questions of postwar reconstruction in Europe. This monthly, which had Anatol Mühlstein, Aleksander Hertz and Feliks Gross among its authors, examined various political, cultural and historical issues, popularizing ideas of a Central European Postwar Federation, and trying to convince the American political elites of their efficacy.5 Although Halecki lectured at various prestigious American colleges and universities (Columbia in New York, for instance), he gained tenure at a distinguished university not quite in the top league: the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York City. Halecki was widely regarded as a potential catch for the best universities due to his high level of scholarship and knowledge of many languages. It seems, though, that this scholarʼs unapologetic Catholicism proved to be a barrier in landing a permanent post. He was even head of the American Catholic Historical Association in 1956, a position that did not help his career.6 American academic circles still harboured many prejudices against Catholics in the 1940s and 1950s, this climate changing only during President John Kennedyʼs time in office. After retiring from Fordham, Halecki carried on his historical research, lecturing at the Jesuit University of Ignatius Loyola in Rome from 1961 onwards. He also gave radio talks on historical topics on Radio Free culture in the United States. It is also a research center. The leadership of the Institute was in the hands of Polish émigré scholars until 1972. 4 He stayed in contact with some historians who remained behind in Poland. While visiting Sweden, Władysław Konopczyński wrote a letter to Halecki informing him about the situation of historical studies after 1945 (Konopczyński, 2003). Halecki also corresponded sporadically with his student, Prof. Janusz Pajewski, who published Haleckiʼs necrology in Kwartalnik Historyczny after Haleckiʼs death (Pajewski, 1975; Pajewski, 1983). 5 New Europe, published from 1940 to 1945 (under a modified title New Europe and World Reconstruction. A Monthly Review of International Affairs from 1941 onwards), appeared under the auspices of the American Committee of European Reconstruction (acer) and was staffed by émigrés from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria. This organization worked closely with the u.s. State Department, its goal being to consolidate efforts in rebuilding Europe after the war. I am very grateful to Dr. Sławomir Łukasiewicz for sharing information concerning this matter. 6 Wandycz, 2003, 51. A prominent American historian expressed sentiments similar to those of Wandycz, though not in relation to Halecki. He describes a case in which a Harvard professor, Roger B. Merriman, “had twice failed a young man named Frank Nowak in his preliminary examinations for the Ph.D. because Nowak was a Pole and a Catholic and Merriman believed that Poles and Catholics should not enter the academic profession” (Byrnes, 1994, 246).

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Europe from time to time.7 He died alone and impoverished some nine or ten years after his wifeʼs passing in White Plains, near New York City. Haleckiʼs most important books appeared in English after the Second World War, but their Polish versions have for the most part appeared only during the last few recent years. Such a situation precluded this historian from exerting much of an influence on postwar Polish historiography. It is enough to note that even Haleckiʼs prewar History of the Jagiellonian Union was largely difficult to find. The best scholars were familiar with it, but it was not required reading for students. It is a curious fact that of the large number of recently reissued classics of Polish historiography, Haleckiʼs work continues to be left out. The best-known of Haleckiʼs postwar books, An Outline of Polish History, is probably his weakest. First published in English in London in 1942, and later in French in New York in 1945, it was one of the basic overviews of Polish history for Western readers. The book appeared in Italian in 1966, published by Hosanium in Rome as part of the millennial celebrations of Polish Christianity.8 The latest Western edition known to me dates from 1978 and was published by the prestigious firm of Routledge. It is considerably longer than the original version. The 1942 edition numbered 272 pages, while the 1978 version was over 400 pages long. In 1992 the Polish version appeared due to the combined efforts of the Learned Society of the Catholic University of Lublin and the London publishing house Veritas. It met with little interest, however, in the new atmosphere of a free market and uncensored publications. While Marian Kukiel consciously directed his History of Poland after the Partitions to a Polish ­readership, intending his work to cover areas previously circumscribed or left untouched by Polish historians, Halecki basically aimed his overview at Western reader. Unfortunately this Outline was too schematic in outlook, largely ignoring the latest historiographical research, both factually and methodologically. Moreover the label of “Catholic clericalist” was easily applied to Halecki, mainly on the basis of this work. Whether Halecki really was a stereotypical “Catholic Pole” is another question to which I will return later on. His highly interesting monograph The Limits and Divisions of European History9 was addressed to Western readers also. This work was met with great enthusiasm by some Western historians. Christopher Dawson, widely known and esteemed at the time, wrote the introduction, and many top historians,

7 Nowak-Jeziorański, 2000, 79. 8 Halecki, 1966d. 9 Halecki, 1950. Polish translation: Halecki, 1994; there is a German translation, too (Halecki, 1957), where author added an epilogue “Europa—Abendland—Christenheit”.

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Dimitri Obolensky to take just one example, spoke favourably of it.10 Faced with the Iron Curtain and Soviet hegemony over a large part of Europe, Halecki put forth the thesis that the traditional division of Europe into West and East was insufficient. He proposed the concept of Central Europe, which would be further divided into West-Central and East-Central parts. Regardless of its rather controversial details and content, Haleckiʼs work had a clear meaning: Europe is not limited to its western part. Indeed the East, broadly understood (though excluding Russia), was an equally integral part of Europe. It is noteworthy that Halecki included Ukraine in Europe as well, since it had never been cut off from European civilization by the Mongols, as had Russia (or Great Rus) proper. When this work appeared at the beginning of the 1950s, few historians and intellectuals were prepared to accept this aspect of Haleckiʼs conception without reservations. Obolensky, mentioned above, had a different viewpoint on these matters, while Francis Dvornik defined Central and Eastern Europe as separate entities. Finally, the most famous historian engaged in these questions, Arnold Toynbee, took yet another approach. It is interesting that Haleckiʼs somewhat hazy conception, or at least part of it, has met with wider approval only currently, a few decades after his death.11 Two years after the appearance of this monograph interpreting European history in general, Halecki published his pioneering synthesis Borderlands of Western Civilization: A History of East-Central Europe.12 This sizeable tome was published a few years later in German and reviewed in many important historical periodicals. For decades it remained an essential source of information for the history of the region that lay at that time in the shadow of the Soviet Union or, in places, in its sphere of influence. Yet again Halecki gave an optimistic outlook on the history of this part of Europe. Federal relations based on those that had obtained between the nations of the former Res Publica were fundamental in Haleckiʼs view. Regardless of this programmatic optimism, which was likely an expression of the authorʼs wishful thinking, those of Halecki’s works that have been mentioned here undoubtedly played a key role 10

11

12

Obolensky was not uncritical of Haleckiʼs work. He appreciated its significance and recognized its interesting features; but Obolensky also saw weaknesses in Haleckiʼs unclear definition of Eastern Europe, and in Haleckiʼs view of Russian history, which he excluded from European history. (Obolensky, 1950; the same paper reprinted in: Obolensky, 1970, 26–27). I have in mind the many initiatives of Prof. Jerzy Kłoczowski, the founder of the Institute of East-Central Europe in Lublin and author or editor of several important publications devoted to Halecki. To what extent Haleckiʼs ideas were a pretext for Kłoczowski, and to what extent a genuine source of inspiration, is still cause for debate. Halecki, 1952; 2nd ed.: Simon Publications, Safety Harbor 2000.

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in the realization among of Western scholars and readership at large, politicians included, that the part of Europe under Soviet domination was by no means the same as Russia, either historically or culturally. Halecki automatically separated the Baltic States and Finland from Russia, placing them with Poland and the Czech Lands in East Central Europe. Noting the russification of Ukraine and Belarus on the other hand, Halecki suggested, by virtue of their historical connections with East Central Europe, that they could be seen as part of Eastern Europe, once they were free from Soviet domination.13 Halecki, it seems, failed to realize the high degree of russification that Ukraine, and especially Belarus, had undergone. The important motif of Russia winds its way through all of Halecki’s works published in the 1940s and 1950s. As noted, Halecki situated Russia outside of Europe. He held the opinion that Eurasian Russia, cut off in the end from Europe by the Mongol domination, had never been a democratic state, except for a few months between the revolutions of 1917, in contrast to the Res Publica. He stressed the fact that the Soviet Union was a federation in theory only, since all major decisions came from the cpsu Central Committee in Moscow. Such an interpretation of the history of Muscovy, Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union stood in sharp contrast to Haleckiʼs somewhat idealized view of the history of the Res Publica and interwar Poland.14 Catholicism played an important role in Halecki’s outlook. During the war the historian ardently defended Pope Pius xii against some emigre circles (Zygmunt Nowakowski, for example). Halecki argued that Catholicism must join faith in Christian learning with an allegiance to the rock (Polish opoka) on which Christ built His church, in other words, to the Papacy. He continued to defend Pius xii after the war, publishing a large book containing a wide range of documents and papal declarations portraying Pius xii as a defender of peace.15 Halecki turned his attention quite often to problems of church history, devoting one of his principal works written abroad to the history of the Uniate Church.16 He took an active part in the celebration of the Millennium of Polish Christianity, issuing a few syntheses and giving lectures as well.17 The high 13 14 15 16 17

Halecki, 1994, 161. Halecki, 1944; Halecki, 1943; Halecki, 1994, 105–126; Łukasiewicz, 2003. Halecki, 1951a; Second ed.: 1954; Polish edition: Halecki, 1951b. Halecki, 1958; second ed.: 1968; Polish translation: Halecki, 1997. The most important of it The Millenium of Europe (Halecki, 1963, German transl. Halecki, 1966c); small brochure Poland and Christendom (Halecki, 1964); also a brochure of a small size: Il primo millenio della Polonia Christiana (Halecki, 1966a), the same in Polish (Halecki, 1966b).

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point of all this activity was the address given by Halecki in the Palazzo Pio Auditorium on 13 January 1966 in the presence of Pope Paul vi. Its contents may be summed up as follows: Our nation has survived for a thousand years, including many dangerous crises, and will survive the current global crisis as well. Catholic Poland lives on under the leadership of its Church, the only institution which has supported the highest and noblest efforts of the nation and which will direct its future efforts ‘in the light of the Millennium’.18 As may be seen, the position taken by Halecki made him a target not only of the Communist authorities19—Władysław Gomułka himself attacked Halecki publicly, but the latter was also isolated in émigré circles, where his clericalism and continued defence of Pius xii did not make him many friends.20 At the same time Halecki’s fervent Catholicism had no room for nationalism or xenophobia; there is not a single trace of anti-Semitism in his writings. We can venture the thesis that Halecki was potentially one of the most accomplished of all Polish historians, but that he did not find a suitable place for his talents in emigration. He held a chair at Fordham University, not at Harvard, Yale or Columbia, where a Pole of his generation and a Catholic moreover, stood little chance of holding such a prestigious position. His standing in the Polish emigration was not without controversy. His books—finally published in Polish many years after his death—have not had the influence in the present circumstances that they would have exerted a few decades ago. Add to this the fact that if Halecki had remained in Poland, after 1945, and certainly after 1948, there would have been no place for him among active, professional historians thanks to his views, and his influence would be even less than it was. One of Haleckiʼs students from the interwar period was Henryk Paszkiewicz (1897–1979),21 who attracted attention as a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe, especially the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and held professorships at 18 19

20

21

Halecki, 1991, 42–43. Earlier, in the 1950s, Halecki had been brutally attacked in Polandʼs main historical periodical, where a talented young scholar portrayed him as the real personification of evil (Tazbir, 1953). Leaving aside the aforementioned polemic with Zygmunt Nowakowski, Jerzy Giedroyc also kept his distance from Haleckiʼs views, in the opinion of this writer, because of Haleckiʼs conservative Catholicism and tendency to see Polandʼs mission as a civilizing force in the East. Cf. Łukasiewicz, 2003, 13. Basic biographical information: Prosińska-Jackl, 1994, 394; Wyrozumski, 1996, vii–xii; Filipowicz, 2000a, 316–317; Filipowicz, 2000b; see also Filipowicz, 2007, 184–191.

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the University of Warsaw and the Free Polish University (Wolna Wszechnica Polska). His monograph on Jagiellonian-Muscovy relations was among his more important works from the 1930s.22 Although, only a few years younger than Halecki, Paszkiewicz reached intellectual maturity and became an accomplished scholar in interwar Poland. Imprisoned by the Germans during the World War ii, he remained in the West after its end, making his way from Italy to London. While in Rome he cofounded the Polish Historical Institute with Karolina Lanckorońska, and then the Polish University Abroad (pua, in Polish: Polski Uniwersytet na Obczyźnie—puno)23 in London, where he occupied the Chair of Medieval History. He also headed the émigré Polish Historical Society. Paszkiewicz’s three most important books, all originally written in Polish but published in English, were concerned with the beginnings of Rus and the processes which gave rise to the state of Muscovy.24 The Origins of Russia is one of the essential works on the early history of Rus, in which the author shows himself as a firm proponent of the Norman hypothesis. This book also has great polemical value, especially when exposing falsities in Soviet historiography. For instance Paszkiewicz showed how Boris Grekov, the leading Soviet medievalist, changed his outlook on the Norman theory depending on the state of Soviet-German relations from 1939 to 1941.25 Despite the 22 23

24 25

Paszkiewicz, 1933. Polish institution of higher learning, operating in London from 1951 onwards, and, by decree of the President of the Polish Republic Abroad, possessing full credentials of a university from December 1952 onwards. Until 1988 pua was recognized as a bona fide university in many Western countries (the u.s.a., Great Britain, Canada, Federal Republic of Germany, France, for instance), and its diplomas were honored by many Western universities as well. At the beginning only the Faculty of Humanities was active (Polish language and literature, and history, joined later by the Faculty of Technical Sciences from 1962 onwards). Faculty commissions were active in many fields as well: law and political science, economics, mathematics and natural sciences, not offering normal degree programs, but instead enabling students to finish their uncompleted studies and earn their masterʼs and doctoral degrees, as well as taking oral examination on theses presented by scholars to qualify as assistant professors [przewody habilitacyjne—M.F.] and granting professorial titles. They also concerned themselves with nostrification of studies undertaken abroad. By 1980, pua had conferred 23 habilitated doctorates, 76 doctorates, 55 masterʼs degrees, 12 engineering degrees, as well as 33 baccalaureates. Cf. Dybciak, 2000, 354–357. Paszkiewicz, 1954; idem, 1963; idem, 1983. Polish original versions, published by Polska Akademia Umiejętności: Paszkiewicz, 1996; idem, 1998; idem, 2000. “In 1940, Grekov wrote: ‘It is not easy to do away with the evidence of the Normanists. I am convinced that it will never be completely suppressed. All too many facts have been verified by this school’. But in 1942 the same author affirmed that the Normanist thesis was

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excellent research that went into it and the importance of its subject, Paszkiewiczʼs work was often criticized in the West, usually by historians of Russian background, who must have been irritated by Paszkiewicz’s thesis that Muscovy was Asiatic; and by his resolute defence of the Norman theory. Soviet historiography was equally harsh in its attacks on Paszkiewicz, with one of its best-known scholars and finest historians in other fields, Vladimir T. Pashuto, finding traces of “reactionary émigré propaganda” in his writings.26 In Poland, Henryk Łowmiański, who had the thankless task of defending the achievements of Soviet historiography, was critical of Paszkiewicz, but it was a criticism of a rather decent historiographical kind.27 We can say with some certainty that Henryk Paszkiewicz’s classic trilogy devoted to the history of medieval Rus and Muscovy could only have been written abroad. He would not have had the slightest chance of doing such research in Poland, let alone publishing it, especially when it came to engaging in polemics with Soviet historiography. Towards the end of his life Paszkiewicz received the prestigious Jurzykowski Award for his achievements in general, and this trilogy in particular. Yet it took twenty years for his works to appear in Poland, where they are at last easily accessible to historians in their original language. The third eminent historian whose work is the object of our attention is Marian Kukiel (1885–1973),28 a student of Szymon Askenazy, an activist for independence before the First World War and a legionnaire during that conflict. In the interwar period he was promoted to the rank of general, became a prominent military historian and was director of the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow. In the political arena he was allied with General Sikorski in opposition to Piłsudski during this period. During World War ii he was Minister of Military Affairs in various émigré governments from 1942 to 1949, refused an invitation from the rector of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow in 1945, and never returned to Poland. He took an active part in many émigré organizations, among them the Polish Historical Society in Great Britain, which he headed, and the pua where he was a professor. Kukiel was also the editor of the leading

26 27 28

the work of ‘fascist falsifiers of history’. One cannot help remarking that the former opinion was expressed by Grekov while the Soviet-German alliance was in force and the latter during the war between the two states”. (Paszkiewicz, 1954, 111). Cf. Filipowicz, 2000b, 124–125. Pashuto, 1958, 62. Łowmiański, 1957, passim. Cf. Filipowicz, 2000b, 125. Teki Historyczne, vol. 17, 1978–1980 (special issue on Kukiel in memoriam); Zuziak, 1997; R. Habielski on “Kukiel Marian” in Dybciak, 2000, 211–213; Wandycz, 1975; Rhode, 1976.

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émigré Polish periodical Teki Historyczne. It is likely that his postwar research carried greater scholar weight than his work before the war. Two publications are worthy of special attention: first, his overview History of Poland after the Partitions 1795–1921, which for many years filled in the gaps in Polish historiography caused by the censors; second, the monograph devoted to Prince Adam Czartoryski Czartoryski and European Unity 1770–1861, now available in Polish as well.29 In contrast to Halecki and especially Paszkiewicz, whose works were intended for professional historians, Kukiel wrote with other, wider circles of readers in mind. Published in English by a prestigious American firm, this monograph portrayed Adam Czartoryski both as a Polish patriot and a broadminded European: Czartoryski was an ardent patriot, but he never confined himself and his activities to Polish affairs. His outlook was that of a European and a Westerner, his views were worldwide and extended far beyond his own generation. In many respects he seems nearer to us now than ever before. … His ideas of European freedom and unity would in these days meet with more understanding than they did a hundred years ago, and his various political concepts present answers even to essential problems of today.30 Kukiel also showed Czartoryski to be a confirmed Anglophile: He never lost his faith in the greatness of the British nation; …and, like many a Continental liberal statesman, sometimes dreamed of a Pax Britannica in Europe—a peace in liberty, justice and the rule of law. He inspired many motions and debates in the British Parliament.31 This book had a certain aim for Kukiel’s contemporaries: its task was to make Prince Czartoryski a more familiar figure in the West at a time when the Polish emigration once again needed Western support.32 In this chapter I have tried to focus on three accomplished Polish historians who found themselves abroad after 1945. Can one speak of a common paradigm for historical writing in emigration among them? Probably not, although there are notable features that appear in the works of all three writers. One example 29 30 31 32

Kukiel, 1955. Polish: Kukiel, 2008. Kukiel, 1955, viii. Kukiel, 1955, ix. Kukiel wrote: “May this book introduce him once more after many decades to the Englishspeaking world.” Kukiel, 1955, ix.

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is an optimistic view of Poland’s past. This is quite obvious in Halecki’s overglorification of the long gone Jagiellonian Res Publica, but is also present in Kukiel’s “inspirational” vision of partitioned Poland, which would be reborn as an independent state. Such a historical approach did not lend itself to opening national wounds. Another element in common was the search for past points of departure that would provide support for present circumstances. It is noteworthy that both Kukiel and Halecki saw the matter of Poland in wider international context. Halecki promoted the idea of a federated East-Central Europe, while Kukiel portrayed Prince Czartoryski as a European statesman aiming to unite Europe around certain shared values. Finally, the opposition of European Poland to a Eurasian or Asiatic Russia was emphasized many times, especially by Halecki and Paszkiewicz. Both scholars regarded the links between the lands of Western Rus annexed by Russia as binding the region to the world of the West. Hence the theses advanced by these three historians could form a certain ideological basis for a political strategy aimed at breaking down the Russian/ Soviet Empire or at least at defeating Russian supremacy in East-Central Europe. All three of the historians discussed here carried on a kind of dialogue with historiography in Poland. At times they engaged in sharp polemics, at others they simply filled the gaps in those areas forbidden to Polish historians. None of the historians whom we have devoted our attention saw historiographical reality in manichean terms. Each of them saw important accomplishments in Polish domestic historiography, despite limitations of ideology or censorship. Historians abroad were deprived of access to archives in their home country, which had a decided effect, technically speaking: they focused on subjects that were historiographic, or from world history, or from the meeting of Polish and world histories. It is difficult to overrate the work of Polish historiography abroad in this area, especially during the years when Polish historians were unable to travel to the West. Conversely, it is equally difficult to point to a single ideological, or even methodological, viewpoint shared by these three historians. Certainly they were all anti-Communists. But there was no obvious united front in their attitude towards the history of the Church and the role of Catholicism in Polish history, to take just two examples. Halecki would surely have not been enthusiastic over Kukielʼs approval of Prince Adam Czartoryski’s liberal vision. Paszkiewicz steered clear of these kinds of problems, except when analysing early medieval Church history. Methodologically, Kukiel remained an old-­fashioned political historian. Paszkiewicz was an analytical historian and medievalist of the first order. Halecki on the other hand created a synthesizing approach that is hard to classify. Hence emigration certainly did not lead to some kind of common intellectual or methodological approach that would have had been the key to con-

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structing a paradigm for émigré historiography. It is equally difficult to speak of a common vision of a future Poland in their work. But for the most part this kind of vision is not something expected of historians. Summing up, what these historians shared, as well as others living abroad, is not in my opinion enough to formulate a thesis for the existence of a separate paradigm for historical writing by émigrés. References Bömelburg, H.-J. (2007). “Zwischen imperialer Geschichte und Ostmitteleuropa als  Geschichtsregion: Oskar Halecki und die polnische ʽjagiellonische Ideeʼ.” In: Hadler,  F. and M. Mesenhöller (eds.), Vergangene Größe und Ohnmacht in Ostmitteleuropa: Repräsentationen imperialer Erfahrung in der Historiographie seit 1918. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt. Byrnes, R.F. (1994). A History of Russian and East European Studies in the United States. Selected Essays, Lanham, London. Cisek, J. (2009). Oskar Halecki. Historyk. Szermierz wolności [Oskar Halecki. Historian and Champion of Liberty]. Warszawa. Dąbrowska, M. (ed.) (2012). Oskar Halecki i jego wizja Europy, vol. 1 [Oskar Halecki and his vision of Europe], Warszawa – Łódź. Dąbrowska, M. (ed.) (2014a). Oskar Halecki i jego wizja Europy, vol. 2 [Oskar Halecki and his vision of Europe; with updated bibliography of Halecki], Warszawa – Łódź. Dąbrowska, M. (ed.) (2014b). Oskar Halecki i jego wizja Europy, vol. 3, [Oskar Halecki and his vision of Europe with updated bibliography of studies on Halecki]. Warszawa – Łódź. Dybciak, K. (ed.) (2000). Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939 [Lexicon of Polish Culture Outside of the Homeland]. Vol. i. Lublin. Filipowicz, M. (2000a). “Paszkiewicz Henryk.” In: Dybciak, K. and Z. Kudelski (eds.), Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939. Vol. I, Lublin, 316–317. Filipowicz, M. (2000b). “Henryk Paszkiewicz. O polskim wkładzie do teorii normańskiej i badań nad genezą państwa moskiewskiego.” [H. Paszkiewicz. About the Polish Contribution to the Normanist Theory and the Research on the Origins of the Muscovie State].” Roczniki Humanistyczne 48, no. 2, 123–131. Filipowicz, M. (2007). Emigranci i jankesi. O amerykańskich historykach Rosji [Emigres and their Students. First Generations of American Historians of Russia], Lublin. Halecki, O. (1943). “Polish-Russian Relations—Past and Present.” The Review of Politics, no 3, 322–328. Halecki, O. (1944). Poland and Russia. Chicago. Halecki, O. (1950). The Limits and Divisions of European History. London, New York. Halecki, O. (1951a) in collaboration with James F. Murray Jr. Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of peace. New York. [Second ed.: 1954].

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Halecki, O. (1951b). Eugeniusz Pacelli papież pokoju. [Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of peace]. Hosianum. Halecki, O. (1952). Borderlands of Western Civilization. A History of East Central Europe. New York. [2 ed.: Simon Publications, Safety Harbor 2000]. Halecki, O. (1957). Europa—Grenzen und Gliederung seiner Geschichte [The Limits and Divisions of European History]. Darmstadt. Halecki, O. (1958). From Florence to Brest (1439–1596). Roma. [Second ed.: 1968]. Halecki, O. (1963). The Millenium of Europe, with a foreward by Hendrick Brugmans, Notre Dame. Halecki, O. (1964). Poland and Christendom. Houston. Halecki, O. (1966a). Il primo millenio della Polonia Christiana. Roma. Halecki, O. (1966b). Pierwsze tysiąclecie katolickiej Polski [The first Millennium of the Catholic Poland]. Roma. Halecki, O. (1966c). Das europäische Jahrtausend. Salzburg. Halecki, O. (1966d). Storia della Polonia. Roma. Halecki, O. (1991). “Pierwsze tysiąclecie katolickiej Polski.” [The First Thousand Years of Catholic Poland]. In: Tkocz, Z. (ed.) Chrześcijańska myśl społeczna na emigracji. Londyn-Lublin. Halecki, O. (1994). Historia Europy—jej granice i podziały [The Limits and Divisions of European History]. Lublin. Halecki, O. (1997). Od Florencji do Brześcia, przeł. A. Niklewicz osu [From Florence to Brest (1439–1596), translated bei A. Niklewicz osu]. Vol. 1–2. Lublin, Rzym. Kłoczowski, J. (1994). “Oskar Halecki i jego walka o miejsce Polski w Europie.” [O. Halecki and his engagement for the acceptance of Poland in Europe]. In: Wójcik, Z. et.al. (eds.). Z dziejów polityki i dyplomacji polskiej. Studia poświęcone pamięci Edwarda hr Raczyńskiego Prezydenta Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej na Wychodźstwie. Warszawa, 397–406. Konopczyński, W. (2003). „Listy Władysława Konopczyńskiego do Mariana Kukiela i Oskara Haleckiego z 1947 r., oprac. M. Kornat.” [Letters of W. Konopczyński an M. Kukiel and O. Halecki from 1947, ed. by M. Kornat]. Arcana, no. 51–52 (3–4/2003), 228–248. Kukiel, M. (1955). Czartoryski and European unity: 1770–1861. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press. Kukiel, M. (1961). Dzieje Polski porozbiorowe 1795–1921 [History of Poland after the Partitions]. London. Kukiel, M. (2008). Czartoryski a jedność Europy: 1770–1861 [Czartoryski and European unity: 1770–1861]. Transl. by J.M. Kłoczowski. Foreword M. Filipowicz. Lublin: Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej. Łowmiański, H. (1957). Zagadnienie roli Normanów w genezie państw słowiańskich [The Role of the Normans in the Genesis of the Slavic Countries]. Warszawa. Łukasiewicz, S. (2003). “Federalistyczne atrybuty historiografii Oskara Haleckiego.” [The Federalist Attributes of the Historiography of O. Halecki]. Rocznik Instytutu Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, Vol. i, 13–29.

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Nowak-Jeziorański, J. (2000). Wojna w eterze. [Radio-wars] Kraków. Obolensky, D. (1950). “Russia’s Byzantine Heritage.” Oxford Slavonic Papers, vol. i. Obolensky, D. (1970). The Structure of Russian History. Interpretive Essays, ed. by Michael Cherniavsky, New York. Pajewski, J. (1975): “Oskar Halecki (26 v 1891–17 ix 1973).” Kwartalnik Historyczny 72, 915–916. Pajewski, J. (1983). Przeszłość z bliska. Wspomnienia. [The near past. Memories]. Warszawa. Pashuto, V.T. (1958) “Protiv nekotorych buržuaznych koncepcij obrazovanija litovskogo gosudarstva.” [Against some bourgeois concepts of the building of Lithuanian State] Voprosy historii, No 8, 62. Paszkiewicz, H. (1933). Jagiellonowie a Moskwa [The Jagiellonians and Moscow]. Vol. I: Litwa a Moskwa w xiii i xiv w. [Lithuania and Moscow in 13th and 14th Century]. Warszawa. Paszkiewicz, H. (1954): The Origin of Russia. London. Paszkiewicz, H. (1963). The making of the Russian nation. London. Paszkiewicz, H. (1983). The Rise of Moscow’s power. Boulder. Paszkiewicz, H. (1996). Początki Rusi [The Origin of Russia]. Kraków 1996. Paszkiewicz, H. (1998). Powstanie narodu ruskiego [The making of the Russian nation]. Kraków. Paszkiewicz, H. (2000). Wzrost potęgi Moskwy [The Rise of Moscow’s power]. Kraków. Prosińska-Jackl, M. (ed.) (1994). Słownik historyków polskich [Lexicon of Polish Historians], Warszawa. Rhode, G. (1976). “Drei polnische Historiker—drei Persönlichkeiten der Zeitgeschichte. Zum Tode on Marian Kukiel, Oskar Halecki und Stanisław Kot.” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 24, no. 4, 537–546. Stobiecki, R. (2004). “Twórczość emigracyjna Oskara Haleckiego (1891–1973)” [O. Haleckis Work in the Exile], in: Faryś, J., ks. R. Nir and M. Szczerbiński (eds.), Studia z dziejów Polski i Europy w xix i xx w. Księga dedykowana Profesorowi Piotrowi Stefanowi Wandyczowi. Gorzów Wielkopolski: 581–592. Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu. Z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 r. [Klio in Exile. About the Polish History Writing in the Exile in Great Britain after 1945]. Poznań. Tazbir, J. (1953). “Fałsz historyczny i zdrada narodu w pracach O. Haleckiego [The Historical Falsity and the Betrayal of the Nation in the Works of O. Halecki].” Kwartalnik Historyczny 60, no. 3, 172–195. Wandycz, P.S. (1975). “O dwóch historykach.” [About two Historians] Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 32, 61–65. Wandycz, P.S. (2003). O federalizmie i emigracji. Reminiscencje o rzeczach istotnych i błahych. Rozmowy przeprowadził S. Łukasiewicz [About Federalism and Exile. Reminiscences about things important and not so important. Talks conducted by S. Łukasiewicz].” Lublin. Wyrozumski, J. (1996). “Przedmowa.” [Foreword]. In: Paszkiewicz, H. Początki Rusi. Kraków. Zuziak, J. (1997). Generał Marian Kukiel 1885–1973. Żołnierz, historyk, polityk [General M. Kukiel (1885–1973). Soldier, Historian, Politician]. Pruszków.

The Shape of Europe in the Work of Oskar Halecki, Józef Mackiewicz, and Marian Kukiel* Maria Zadencka In his essay on the metamorphoses of territorial power structures in Europe during the Cold War and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ola Tunander uses the medieval city with its walls and masonry as a metaphor for explaining the new organization of societies: the ongoing staking out of new “metaphysical/­ physical” walls, on the one hand, and the crafting of networks free from the territorial bounds, on the other.1 There is also a suggestive image of the role of an exile intellectual in this text. He is placed (along many European intellectuals) on the Berlin Wall and compared with a witch in the early Middle Ages, sitting on the fence or gatepost, facing both sides of the town wall and explaining the chaotic “other” world behind the wall to the citizens within and to those who hold the monopoly of power there. Certainly, the exile intellectuals during the Cold War interpreted/translated the meaning of events behind the Iron Curtain, acquainting the West with the current facts and wakening its memory about the “waste land behind the Wall.” History played an important role in these explanatory models. But the paradoxical nature of being émigrés could even mean that they treated the Wall, as in the old anecdote about Eifel Tower as the only place where one could not see its ugly construction and from which one could have the advantage of having a panoramic view; the question of what Europe is like without the bipolar division and the (historical) conceptions that seemed to naturalize these visions was at the heart of the work of some exile historians. They reformulated their concepts in polemical ways in opposition to political attempts to strengthen or legitimize the division. This chapter presents three conceptions of Europe developed by Polish exile historians and seeks to reconstruct the intellectual history that underpins them. One of them has its roots in the medieval studies, the other in the ideas about modern sovereign state, and the third one concerns the history of 18th * The first version of this article emerged from the project “History writing in Exile” and was published in Polish (Zadencka, 2009). The present text is extended among others with the interpretation of Halecki’s American connection—his praise of the Wilsonian doctrine and characteristic features shared with the German refugees Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. 1 Tunander, 1995, 31–32.

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century. It seems that all three of them are dominated by the spatial character of the imagination of their authors. 1 In the interwar period, Oskar Halecki (1891–1973) was already one of the most influential figures in Polish historiography. His research field included the early modern times, the Middle Ages and the Byzantine world. The springboard for his interests and the central focus of his work was the history of PolishLithuanian Commonwealth and, later on, the question about the possible models for use in historical studies of Eastern Europe. At the very beginning, both concerns were related, as Halecki recounted later, to his early interest in the history of his international (Austrian-Croat-Polish-Ukrainian-HungarianItalian) family, one branch of which (Chalecki) was involved in the “death of the Jagiellonian Union.”2 His habilitation thesis (1915) concerned Polish-Russian relations in the fifteenth century and his habilitation lecture the Lublin Union of 1569. His main work of this early phase of his career was entitled Dzieje Unii Jagiellońskiej (History of Jagiellonian Union) and published 1919–1920.3 Halecki’s early works were of crucial importance in forming the historical knowledge of the Polish political elites that prepared the “territorial program” for the future state. He himself was active as the expert at the Polish delegation at the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. In 1918 Halecki had been appointed to the newly established Chair of the History of Eastern Europe at the University of Warsaw. In his works on Jagiellonian Union, Halecki stressed that the union was brought about on the basis of free will of both states. He wrote about “the astonishing expansion of the Polish state from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century”, which differed from the expansion of other colonial powers due to the “soft character of the Polish mission” and peaceful winning over of Russians by Catholicism.4 His view of the character of the Jagiellonian accord evolved with time from the opinion that it rested on legal and constitutional assimilation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the position that the Commonwealth was an intricate 2 For biographical and bibliographical information on Halecki see Mirosław Filipowicz in this volume. 3 Halecki, 1919–1920. 4 His opinions about the grade of integration changed in some degree in connection to research done by Jan Adamus (1896–1962) on the Union in Krewo 1385.

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state organism that connected territories having different constitutional laws. The concept of Antemurale Christianitatis, i.e. the role in the defence against the powers threatening the universum of Christian countries, was depicted by him as one of the main ideas of the Union. Opinions about how to interpret Halecki’s description of the Union differ considerably. Historians like Jerzy Kłoczowski5 and Rafał Stobiecki6 see it as a purely federal concept, while Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg7 suggests the presence of dynastic-imperial elements in Halecki’s early works and ascribes them to the “imperial thought of the epoch when he went through his early schooling in Vienna and to his elitist lineage.” The works of Halecki continued to have an influence on politics: they became the foundation of the so-called “Jagiellonian idea” and one of the origins of the political concept of “Intermarium,” both developed during interwar Poland. The “Jagiellonian idea” was a new state concept attributed to the emergence of the early modern dynasty of Jagiellonians and the Jagiellonian Union: a multiethnic and above all a federalist concept oriented towards Lithuania and generally towards the East and Southeast. The conception of “Intermarium” was a “supranational programme” of the confederation or federation of states along the axis from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea,8 designed with the goal of improving the security and trade systems of the “small states of Europe” but not very successful due to conflicts and hegemonic rivalry among the participants of the confederation.9 5 6 7 8

Kłoczowski, 1994, 397–406. Stobiecki, 2004, 581–592; Stobiecki, 2005. Bömelburg, 2007. The idea about a region reaching from Sea to the Sea being in natural connection with Polish lands was formulated a hundred years earlier (1815) by Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826), politician, natural scientist, and geologist who grounded it on the “history of the Earth”— “geognostic” theory about the entity of series of geological formation—and partly even on ethnic lineage of the population. Staszic’s ideas were later on built into the concept of the north-south profile of the Polish lands which, updated in the early 20th century served as a geographic foundation of the territory of the new Polish state. A prominent advocate of the idea about North-South profile was Eugeniusz Romer (1871–1954), author of the first Polish atlas Great Statistical and Geographical Atlas of Poland. Romer, like Halecki, served as an expert for the Polish delegation at the Paris conference in 1919. 9 The concept was also present as a political option in exile until 1952: “…the Polish ­government-in-exile was successful in winning over other exiled politicians from East Central Europe for the idea of an ʽIntermariumʼ as a label of confederation schemes.” (Federal Clubs of East and Central Europe in London, Paris, Brussels and Jerusalem). Cf. Troebst, 2003, 293–321, 302.

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As early as 1923, at the International Historical Congress in Brussels, Halecki defined Eastern European space as divided, with two northern parts and two southern parts: the Polish-Lithuanian and the Russian-Euroasiatic region in the North and, in the South, a south-eastern part connected during certain periods to Austria and the Ottoman Empire. The crucial difference between the Polish-Lithuanian parts and Russian Eurasian parts, as well as between the south-eastern part and Ottoman Empire received emphasis in this conception and was explained by differences caused by religions/confessions: Catholicism/ Orthodoxy and Christianity/Islam. The proposition was criticized as introducing an all-too-strong regional differentiation that jeopardized the very ­meaning of the concept of Eastern Europe. A competitive model was presented at the International Historical Congress in Warsaw in 1933 by a Czech historian, Jaroslav Bidlo (1868–1937). Eastern Europe was defined by him by reference mainly to religious and ethnic criteria, as a space of Byzantine-Orthodox-Slavic culture. Halecki (together with Marceli Handelsman) polemicized against this proposition and continued the polemic later on in his works written in exile. Generally, then and later, the criticized shortcomings lay in the arbitrariness of the concept, which appeared to disregard time and diversity: not all Slavs are Orthodox, not all periods in Russian history are counted as European, not all nations of the area can be labelled as Slavic. Halecki’s perspective was different: his criteria were taken from political processes (and philosophy) of the medieval period that saw the formation of a New Europe composed of new nations and states which he understood to be “structures of long duration” lasting in our own day but changing their shape in the interim. Halecki started to use the notion of East Central Europe only in exile in the United States in 1943 in his lectures and in the writings published in the Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, who studied Halecki’s pre-war period and the first years of his exile, notes that he probably avoided the heavily ideologized concept of Ostmitteleuropa used by the German historiography of pre-war time. Halecki grounded his notion own of East Central Europe on his earlier research and earlier positions, confirming the dividing lines proposed in 1923 and opposing the concepts of Eastern Europe and that of Mitteleuropa/Ostmitteleuropa. Halecki divided Europe into an Old Europe, based on the heritage of antiquity, and a New Europe, that once lay outside the borders of the Imperium Romanum. In due course, the former received an overlay of divisions comprising four parts with medieval roots: Western Europe, West Central Europe, East Central Europe and Eastern Europe. East Central Europe was defined as belonging to Western Christianity and placed outside the Carolingian part of

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medieval Europe. It was described as a region of great ethnic, religious, and confessional diversity and often changing political structures. The crucial point of distinction between this part and the neighbouring areas lay in the difference between the imperial and the federative modes of territorial organization, the latter also explaining the diversity and changeability of the region. The main features of the federalism of East Central Europe were self-­ determination, national tolerance and the independently kept but jointly realized organisation of defence. They were most fully developed and most durable in the Jagiellonian system. In the publications of the first years of exile, Halecki developed main lines of his future historical synthesis that would reach into the present. In his view, the federalist system and its long tradition bore fruit in the new European order after wwi. Its positive qualities could be seen in the principle of national self-determination and had the potential of becoming one of the main ingredients of the structure of the new world order. Bömelburg observed that in the early period of exile, references to the dynastic-imperial traits of the Jagiellonian system disappeared from Halecki’s texts both at the factual and rhetorical levels. The references to the idea of federalism were extended considerably, as, for example, in the idea of national self determination; both notions of course were at the heart of the modern American political conceptualization. The American issue remains interesting, especially in the context of Halecki’s main exile works. Halecki summed up his views and developed and popularized them in two celebrated books, The Limits and Divisions of European History (1950)10 and The Borderlands of Western Civilisation (1952).11 These two works succeeded in entrenching the concept of East Central Europe in the modern American and European historiography. In the first work Halecki introduced the notion that European history can be periodized into three epochs: the Mediterranean, the  European and the Atlantic. The European epoch reached from the conquest of Gallia by Ceasar until the revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth century. It reached maturity when Slavic and Scandinavian lands were christianized, and was completed and had its first crisis in the epoch of the Renaissance that began the process of the secularization of politics. The Atlantic epoch, which is to follow the outgoing European will possibly witness the cooperation of Europe—and above all the East Central Europe—and America. Rafał Stobiecki writes about criteria of this division that:

10 11

Halecki, 1950. Halecki, 1952.

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The periodization criteria used by Halecki harks back to processes in and events from the religious-political sphere. Polish exile historian seemed to look at the history of Europe from the perspective of the spiritual values that constituted it, and he reckon among them Christianity and the idea of freedom that through their expansion brought on democratic government and right to national self-determination.12 Actually, Halecki’s historiosophy, sometimes precipitately assessed as anachronistic, was a kind of reflection on the forms manifested by natural law, in its theological version, in course of history. It is even more visible when one considers his division of the European space. One can see it as to some degree parallel to concepts asserting the long duration of the three spheres drawn up in the Middle Ages, a mental map developed in close connection with the History of Redemption. Firstly, the curbed space, the “own” sphere, governed by the Christian princes, Respublica Christiana; secondly, a space related to the Respublica Christiana, religiously uncertain, always endangered from the outside, unstable, called the sphere of the “Christian mission”; and thirdly, the sphere inhabited by the Evil, the Foreign, which threatens annihilation and the end of Christianity (that ultimately will come but has to be perpetually postponed).13 It is in the description of East Central Europe which coincides with the “second sphere” that Halecki presented an interpretation that stood in a polemical relationship with traditional German historiography. Due to the political manifesto of Emperors, the latter tended to describe the “second” part of European space as the sphere of mission, and later on, due to the programmes of German heirs of the Roman Empire, as the sphere of political influence, “some kind of lordship” and civilising work.14 Halecki approaches this version as a mainly theoretical construction of political theology and historiography that never really was followed by successful praxis aimed at fulfilling the universalistic idea of unifying the Christian world in its diversity, but instead rather legitimized often oppressive imperial politics. For Halecki, this area, which we call the second sphere, was thus not so much the “sphere of mission” but the sphere where (pre-modern) nations sought to join the Christian world through direct contact with the Papacy, avoiding mediation and subordination to the Holy 12 13

14

Stobiecki, 2004, 589. This kind of construction based on eschatological understanding of historical development, katechon, was recollected by Carl Schmitt at the same time as Halecki worked on his concepts and published his books. (Schmitt, 1950). Halecki, 1950, 133.

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Roman Empire. Those countries, in the times of a strong Papacy15 and, interestingly, also later on, during the Renaissance,16 have had a tendency to develop an organisational model of federation that combined the hardly reconcilable features of unity and of diversity, the very ideals of freedom cherished by Christendom and by the old Respublica Christiana. But if it had not been for the imperial interpretation given to the idea of an earthly City reconciled with the City of God, the Respublica Christiana could actually have been what its name seemed to imply: a Commonwealth of free and equal Christian states, federated under a freely elected, truly international secular authority. Since no such secular authority was ever planned, it was the ecclesiastic authority which, in addition to the role which it frequently have to play in protecting human rights against violation by governments, stood as the only possible protector of national freedoms and of the smaller states against the encroachment of the Empire. With one country after another placing itself under the immediate authority of the Holy See, there was a trend towards some kind of federation of territories outside the Empire under the leadership of the popes in the time of their greatest power.17 Halecki welcomed a return to the old European idea of universalism, “in an entirely new form,” in the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson. In “the Wilsonian peace programme, which rejected the balance of power idea, replacing it with the idea of national self-determination under an international organization,” Halecki saw a “reinterpretation of the Christian tradition…a plea for individual and national freedom coming from America….” Nevertheless “that constructive programme was the more difficult to put into practice because it was not limited to Europe.”18 The linkage between medieval universalism and the Wilsonian programme of national self-determination, an important fragment in the structure of Halecki’s historical synthesis, is not just historiosophical in character but also relies on the historical conceptual context which generated Wilson’s ideas. Besides a celebrated Kantian inspiration, one needs to consider a strong current of medievalism in American historiography. Its pioneer, Charles H. Haskins (1870–1937), the foremost specialist on medieval institutionalism, was 15 16 17 18

Roughly all countries in the time of pope Innocent iii (1198–1216, born 1160). Swiss Confederation, Jagiellonian Commonwealth, Kalmar Union. Halecki, 1950, 193. Halecki, 1950, 198.

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one of the three experts with the American delegation at the conference in Paris 1919 and 1920 (as well the personal friend of Woodrow Wilson himself).19 Halecki appends the link established between medieval universalism and the Wilsonian programme of national self-determination with different reservations: about obviously different kinds of universalism in the medieval and in the new global times, about error of its idealisation and “mistake of believing that Europe should or could revert to a new Middle Ages.”20 Halecki crafted the summary of his synthesis of European history as an overview of the history of the idea of “organized” freedom—introducing this last chapter of The Limits and Divisions with reference to two authors: Lord Acton and his Essays on Freedom and Power (1948) and the Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski and his last book Freedom and Civilisation (1944). Malinowski’s name as the confirming authority marks Halecki’s general distancing from the national interpretation of the idea of freedom and in particular, possibly, his attitude towards a strong trend of the American anthropology, influencing both social and historical studies and politics. In those decades, it developed an interdisciplinary approach applying social psychology to the anthropological study of “national character” (Gregory Bateson, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Geoffrey Gorer).21 Reservations about ethnic nationalism are frequent in Halecki’s work; in this chapter they occur as a warning against “the effects of racial interpretation and wishful thinking” aimed at that point at a quite harmless version of the racial ideology: the Polish historian of the nineteenth century, Joachim Lelewel and his idealization of Slavic pre-Christian community as an early form of democratic government. The federalist tradition seen as “institutionalized freedom” was for Halecki both a counterweight to the imperial tradition in the nineteenth century modified by the doctrine of the “balance of power”, and the reagent to revolutionary movements of national character. It is true that Halecki in The Limits and Divisions accentuated the danger of Russian, not German, “imperialism”, which point is even more evident in his following book Borderlands of Western Civilization. A History of East Central Europe (1952). We have concentrated here on the motif of the polemic with German historiography, because it is instructive when it is seen, as it was presented in the books, in the context of the history of the implementation of the “idea of freedom” and of different federative concepts developed in the course of history. This complex of issues moves us not only into the centre of the 19 20 21

Freedman and Spiegel, 1998, 683. Halecki, 1950, 192. Cf.: Østergård, 1997, 20–49, 25–30.

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American conceptual tradition but even towards some motifs of reflection developed by other intellectuals, who left Europe in the past two decades and settled in United States. There are some basic similarities in the positions towards America taken by some of those exile intellectuals whose meeting with America was affected by the strain of the “German problem” that opened such questions as that of the relationships between freedom and power, state and government, of democratic institutions, constitution and ways of representation etc.—sets of problems, that is, that were monitored by them through constant comparisons in order to understand and retell both American and German experience. It was Hannah Arendt, who saw the basic difference in American and German traditions of political thinking. She observed that American political philosophy and law sprung out of political activity and practice, “this type of political thinking which she judged to be authentically connected with an experience of political as such” (and have origins in Roman experience),22 — and she opposed it this kind political praxis which originated from political speculation as in Germany.23 A similar standpoint is perceptible in the Halecki’s work e.g. in his assessment of the imperial plans of the Otto iii court and, in general, of German politics through centuries as being based, on “theoretical” idealizing imperial heritage. As is well known, Hannah Arendt was fascinated by “basic texts”, especially the Federalist Papers. She was struck by the absence of the notion of the state in American founding texts and documents, which are occupied with the concept of government instead.24 Similar kinds of preferences can be traced in Halecki’s tendency to neglect the state as a sort of “teleological concept” and his focus on the institutional forms of cooperation between countries as well on the process of the foundation of federations. Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin have been assessed as having insufficiently worked out their theories and having provided a “nearly premodern” i.e. “existential” understanding of politics, seen to some extent as their “Heideggerian heritage”.25 Their theories have elitist and aristocratic features (Arendt), developed a view on democracy which was the Federalist’s democratic republic, corroborating “perfectionist theory of human excellence”

22 23 24 25

Vollrath, 1995, 45–58, 56. Arendt, 1963, 292ff. Vollrath, 1995, 181–182. Cf.: Alfons Söllner’s and Ernst Vollrath’s opinion in roundtable discussion, in Kielmansegg, Mewes, and Glaser-Schmidt, 1995, 188.

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(Strauss).26 The nearly pre-modern character of Halecki’s historiography was due to his personalistic worldview. One can see a generally similar attitude, based on excellence, related to optimal governance, as for example in his Columbia Bicentennial Lecture praising the old current of Polish political thought that safeguarded the “idea of freedom” and its intellectual elite as an aristocracy of merit and spirit.27 The changes that Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg observed in the exile writings of Halecki on the “factual and rhetorical level”—the accentuation of federative and disappearance of dynastic-imperial traits in his assessments of the Jagiellonian system—indicate a certain pragmatization of his ideas. On the other hand, the coherence of his richly differentiated concept built around the “idea of freedom” together with the kind of similarities with the American experience lived by exile intellectuals of other backgrounds and fields of ministry testify to a sort of spiritualization of his concepts. The interesting point is that in spite of both his work proved to be mostly influential. The macro-history crafted by Halecki had shown itself to have considerable potential both in historiography and in politics. In Stefan Troebst’s opinion, the concept of East Central Europe proposed by Halecki and the earlier ideas on Ostmitteleuropa gave birth to the widely used “research design of historical region”, now one of the central categories of “general” historiography.28 It proved itself even as a model that coincides with the development of current political thinking. It was a powerful tool also in forming the plans for a Council on Foreign Relations and in the thinking of Halecki’s “influential student” Zbigniew Brzezinski. His strategy was to take advantage of the existing differences along the eastern borders of the region which divided the Soviet state from its western neighbours. When Ola Tunander wrote in the 1990s about the comeback of the New Middle Ages and the old conflicts between Christian and Muslim world and between Western and Eastern Christianity, he saw them as events being fitted within self-confirming pattern of interpretation, mental maps that created mental walls. East Central Europe has obviously its mental place in the historical and cultural analysis. The same proved to be true also of Halecki’s other, more disputable criteria, contrasting the old spheres of influences as “imperialistic” and “federalist”. In 26 27 28

Cf.: George Kateb and Ernst Vollrath in roundtable discussion in: Kielmansegg, Mewes, Glaser-Schmidt (1995), 183, 189. Halecki, 1954, 40–47. Troebst, 2006.

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this, the federalist tradition meant to him possible and eligible bonds between the East Central Europe and America. The war in Iraq divided the European Union as the discussions on the constitution did, and ultimately, the “new Europe” showed itself to be America-friendly and federalist-minded.29 On the other hand, security problems, Europe’s enlargement and America’s imperial interventions have generated in the last few years a broad discussion about the question of whether Europe should implement the imperial model in its relation towards its neighbour and towards its own peripheries30 —a discussion in which the old concept of Helmut Schmidt regarding “graded borders” is one of the points of departure.31 The most radical formulations accuse the American involvement in the history of Europe in the form of the Wilsonian programme as one of most harmful ideas of 20th century.32 We have every reason to say that Halecki dominated the mainstream of Polish exile history. Józef Mackiewicz and Marian Kukiel, however, have had very different ideas on the shape of European space, but they are still related to Halecki’s synthesis. 2 Józef Mackiewicz (1902–1985) was not a professional historian but a journalist and writer living in Munich and the author of panoramic historical novels about the period 1905–1945 in the history of Russia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, Poland, and Germany. The novels provide the highly elaborated analysis of historical processes of that epoch in Polish literature, and challenge nearly all master narratives of Polish history of this period at the level of facts, ideologies, and literary technique. Mackiewicz was engaged in many historical and political debates, as, for example, one of the participants of the Lindenfels meetings between exile-Polish and West German scholars and journalists who debated Polish history and contemporary history. In 1957 the weekly Wiadomości (London) published extensive discussions between Mackiewicz and Halecki (Halecki, 1957; Mackiewicz, 1957). Mackiewicz opposed the way in which Halecki answered questions about the beginnings of the Jagiellonian Union, asserting that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was endangered 29 Ibid. 30 Münkler, 2007. 31 Schmidt, 2004. 32 Posener, 2006.

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by the Duchy of Moscow when in fact, at the time, there was no reason to try to frighten the Duchy. The details of the discussion are superfluous here; more important are the views of Mackiewicz concerning divisions of European space. He resisted every attempt to theoretically construct any border dividing Eastern Europe from Western Europe. He pointed out that this border historically is of Western origin, an effect of propaganda from the Catholic Church, which, using the rhetoric of division, consistently deprecated its rival in the East. His position in the polemic with Halecki was a warning, as Ola Tunander would say, against “creating self-confirming interpretative patterns and mental bricks for the new walls” and above all for the existing borders between East and West and between the Peoples’ Republics and the Soviet Union, at a time when the situation needed solidarity towards and between the exposed, vulnerable societies. Mackiewicz represented the idiosyncratic view that the religious and ideological divisions of Europe are a “matter of fiction.” In his view, the Russia of the end of the nineteenth century, after reforms, was a country with the same standards as the Western European countries. He was a supporter of the unifying Europe with Russia, after the latter was liberated from the communist system.33 The borders, having ideological origin, just as the borders of the cold war were un-real, imposed in the wrong way. Therefore, he was against the support the exile community gave to the government in Warsaw in its attempt for confirmation of the Western borderline on the Oder-Neisse rivers.34 Boundaries as such, however, were an important element of Mackiewicz’s thought, particularly those of the historical state territories, which he saw as being signs for of an optimal balance between the interests of the population, the natural milieu, and the government. Boundaries are always constructed (but can be stable) and their correct purpose is to stimulate activities of people, not to strengthen enmities and ideological superstitions.35 These views had their roots in the pre-war situation and in the region surrounding Vilnius, at that time paralyzed by the closed northern (towards Lithuania) and Eastern (towards the ussr) borders. At that time, the interest of the country brought him close to the program called “the idea of the country” (idea krajowa) whose aim was the revival of the Lithuanian state on the territory of old Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The “idea of the country” proposed solutions differing from the federative Jagiellonian idea; their premise was two 33 34 35

Mackiewicz, 1958. Mackiewicz, 1956. On the role the concepts of border and territory played in Mackiewicz’s political thought and in the construction of his novels see: Zadencka, 2006.

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separate ­sovereign states, Poland and Lithuania that could eventually achieve amity or union, owing to the geopolitical situation and not the federalist structure itself. These two concepts do not have to be opposed to each other but could be, in certain circumstances. But both sprung from different worldviews, and the exile polemic between Mackiewicz and Halecki mirrored these differences. The “idea of the country”, which was understood by its adherents as above all a sort of regulatory mechanism of internal relations, in Mackiewicz’s thinking became something approaching a program of cardinal rules of foreign policy. His political thought, formed in the pre-war period, rational and pragmatic, and based on analyses of concrete political situations, had its roots in the early modern thought about Europe as a system of separate sovereign territorial states—each other’s equals—perpetually in balance and capable of taming conflicts and wars. European space was not seen to be in need of defence against danger from foreign civilisation, as by Halecki, but as being in a permanent quest for balance in the midst of internal conflicts based on religion/ideologies. In his works, Halecki treated the idea of “balance of powers” as an oppressive programme aimed against weaker states and the emancipatory currents. In Mackiewicz’s view, such a balance created the welfare of the long nineteenth century. 3 Marian Kukiel (1885–1973) was one of the main organizers of the institutional life of the exile community of Polish historians. He was one of the founders of the Polish Historical Association in London, (and for a long time its acting chairman), of the Polish University in Exile in London, and editor in chief of the periodical Teki Historyczne. Before the war, he had been an active politician, making a career in the army and leaving it after political conflict. In 1930, he became Director of the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków while at that time having already been appointed to a chair at the Jagiellonian University.36 Kukiel’s field of research was primarily military history. He authored two extensive works Zarys historii wojskowości w Polsce (Outline for History of the Armed Forces in Poland 1922), and a work on Napoleon’s war Wojna 1812 roku (The War of 1812 1937). He also studied Polish political history of the period

36

On Marian Kukiel’s life and work see, among others: Zuziak, 1997; Habielski, 1994; Habielski and Jabłonowski, 2010.

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after the Partitions of the eighteenth century. In exile, the political history of the nineteenth century became the main focus of his interests. Among the exile works of Marian Kukiel were many popular essays, which won him prizes for being a very good storyteller. In his theoretically oriented work, Kukiel pointed out the importance of the narrative, i.e. the pedagogical, side of historical writing. The narrative function of written history was important to him and the style used in his articles and books was therefore not incidental.37 In Kukiel’s texts, narration is steered by an inherent rhythm, and the rhythm is regulated by movements in space. The naming of space and places serves, in this view, to strengthen the evidence of facts and argumentation, even in the narration of small details. This is a striking feature of his texts, and it plays a role in forming their message. Rafał Habielski, the editor of the exile-period works of Kukiel and a commentator on them, observed that the recurrent issue of many of them is the phenomenon of exile—both in the nineteenth and the twentieth century. It is instructive in reading Kukiel, to look more closely at this self-referential function of his texts, because it, together with the spatial formations, introduce a special meaning concerning the relationship between the spatial and the political. There exists a text by Martin Heidegger that explores this relationship, and it is instructive here. This is a fragment in which Heidegger is considering Sophocles’ Antigone in the Introduction to Metaphysics [paraphrase]: Humans are strangest and uncanniest of all beings. They are underway in all directions, on the way to nothing. “The human is everywhere a path for being but is therefore flung up of all paths, essentially homeless, unfamiliar.” The place where these paths meet is the “polis” from which the “political” is derived. The polis is the historical site, the “there” (Da) in which, out of which and for which history happens. … It is the pole, the vortex (Wirbel) where human actions and destinies meet and interlace, constituting the state, the polis. The historical site is the result of human creation: without them it is nothing, without it they are nothing.38

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Rafał Habielski (Habielski, 1994) and Rafał Stobiecki (Stobiecki, 2010), among others, have written extensively about “the literary style” of Marian Kukiel. M. Heidegger, An introduction to metaphysics. New Haven 1959. Cit. after Elden, 2001, 161–162.

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Philosophers are seen here as guardians, guides to the conduct of the state.39 The political has a location: it is related to the existential centre of a space. It seems that the space of exile in the works of Kukiel is understood in this way: as the crossing or vortex of the paths of wandering people, as one, central, “political” place. To Kukiel, exile is not a place of exclusion or a place “between,” but rather a centre of activities and for gaining power and proficiency. Thus, for example, the point is made in the essay on Tadeusz Kościuszko, where his stay in America is described as decisive in forming him as a leader, strategist, and thinker.40 Exile is also a central place for the realisation of political aims. This depiction of exile as the centre where the wandering about people meet and act is elaborated in the book on Prince Adam Czartoryski, the leader of Polish exiles in the nineteenth century: a diplomat, politician, former friend of Tsar Alexander I, and a Mason. His political activity is described in the concentric space. Its core was his home in Paris—the Hotel Lambert: the crossing point of all the paths of the emigrants. From the 1843 Czartoryski’s activity as the Chief of the Polish state in exile was focused in a miniature capital. The improvements of his material situation allowed him to acquire the old Hotel Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis and the name of the house meant to a generation of the Poles in their country and abroad almost the same as did La Cour des Tuilleries or the Court of St James to the French and British. The house became not only the Home of the Prince’s Family but also the seat of his political offices, of his wife’s charitable activities, and as an educational institution. The court was somewhat austere in its spirit of self-denial rather than any royal splendour. The cabinet was never officially appointed.41 Further on follows a description of co-workers who are sent in all directions throughout Europe on different missions and whose activities interlace. From the Hotel Lambert the Prince conducted and controlled his Eastern politics. The acceleration of wars, revolutions, and diplomatic conflicts are shown through a description of the movements of the Prince’s confidential co-workers, who cross European space with the aim of influencing and controlling the events of east-southern Europe so as to create a political constellation that 39 40 41

Ibid., 69. Marian Kukiel, “O Kościuszkę.” [Claiming Kościuszko], in Kukiel, 1994, 51–80. Kukiel, 1955, 27.

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would change the European situation and help to rebuild the Polish state. Those activities are conducted with the help of two networks described in the book: one of them, the official, handled diplomatic contacts, while the second—halfconspiratorial—provided help for or initiated revolutionary movements. The Prince’s dual network of contacts and influence—diplomatic and halfconspiratorial—belonged to the common arsenal of political techniques of this time. But here, thanks the clarity with which they are described, they also show the condition of Polish politics at that time, which was trapped between two agendas and was in a paradoxical situation: the Nation (or its elite) that had lost its state and its territory, tried to come back to the system of equalamong-equal states (network of diplomatic contacts) and yet forced into revolutionary activities (network of conspiratorial contacts) that could destroy this system. The Europe in this book does not have any border for territories either, a significant feature of the work of an historian whose first schooling was in military history with its meticulous descriptions of movements on the strategic territorial space. If the model of European space evident in Oskar Halecki’s writings mirrored the ideas of the History of Redemption; and the model of Józef Mackiewicz was a rational-legal view of the best way to maintain balance in the closed but elastic system of territorial states, the model of Marian Kukiel, describing the activities of Prince Czartoryski and his plans of shape of future liberal Europe symbolized a politicized revolutionary Europe. This Europe is represented by the exile polis, the crossing point of those who are homeless and, with their conflicting goals on the roads of the world, can meet only in that which is political. In the longer perspective of historical change and from the standpoint of current history, one can make some surprising observations. Halecki’s concepts, having a wide range and sensitivity to large-scale politics, enacted their role without becoming outdated and are holding their place in the continuity of ideas. Mackiewicz’s thinking about politics, being built on elements of modern thought on the right-territory-state system, has lost its immediate topicality because the ideas of sovereignty and of territory themselves have faded. It remains important to the extent that it plays role in reflections on an old imperative of Polish political thinking, i.e. the historical and current relation to Russia. Perhaps the most relevant proves to be the historical narrative of Kukiel, written in the traditional way and covering a relatively shorter period of time. The image of Europe of unconventional politics and unconventional wars, the lack of recognition of borders separating states, the mobility of Czartoryski’s ­co-workers and their “political” existence are reminiscent of

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some features of European life suggested by Tunander’s metaphor about networks References Arendt, H. (1963). Über Revolution. Munich: R. Piper & Co Verl. Bömelburg, H.-J. (2007). “Zwischen imperialer Geschichte und Ostmitteleuropa als Geschichtsregion: Oskar Halecki und die polnische ‘Jagiellonische Idee’”, in F. Hadler and M. Mesenhöller (eds.), Vergangene Größe und Ohnmacht in Ostmitteleuropa: Repräsentationen imperialer Erfahrung in der Historiographie seit 1918. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt. Elden, S. (2001). Mapping the Present. Heidegger, Foucault and the Project of Spatial History. London: Continuum. Freedman, P. and G.M. Spiegel (1998). “Medievalism Old and New: the Rediscovery of Alterity in North-American Medieval Studies.” The American Historical Review 103, no. 3, 677–704. Habielski, R. (1994). “W służbie teraźniejszości. Glosa do twórczości Mariana Kukiela,” [In the service of the present. Comment on the Work of Marian Kukiel], in M. Kukiel, Historia w służbie teraźniejszości i inne pisma emigracyjne. Ed. by R. Habielski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich. Habielski, R. and M. Jabłonowski (eds.) (2010), Marian Kukiel: historyk w świecie polityki. [Marian Kukiel: a Historian in the World of Politics]. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Aspra-jr. Hadler, F. and M. Mesenhöller (eds.) (2007). Vergangene Größe und Ohnmacht in Ostmitteleuropa: Repräsentationen imperialer Erfahrung in der Historiographie seit 1918. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt. Halecki, O. (1919–1920). Dzieje Unii Jagiellońskiej [History of the Jagiellonian Union]. Vol. i–ii. Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności. Nakładem Nestora Bucewicza. Halecki, O. (1950). The Limits and Divisions of European History. New York. Halecki, O. (1952). Borderlands of Western Civilisation. A History of East Central Europe. New York. Halecki, O. (1954). “The Polish Scholar Soldier of Liberty,” in: F. Znaniecki, W. Lednicki and O. Halecki, Three Columbia Bicentennial Lectures. New York: Polish Institute of Art and Sciences, 40–47. Halecki, O. (1957). “Wschód Europejski, Polska a Rosja.” [The European East. Russia and Poland]. Wiadomości (London), no. 600. Kielmansegg, P. Graf, H. Mewes, and E. Glaser-Schmidt (eds.) (1995). Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. German Émigrés and American Political Thought After World War ii. New York: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press.

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Kłoczowski, J. (1994). “Oskar Halecki i jego walka o miejsce Polski w Europie.” [O.  Halecki and his Struggle for Poland’s Place in Europe], in: Z. Wójcik (ed.), Z dziejów polityki i dyplomacji. Studia poświęcone pamięci Edwarda hr. Raczyńskiego, Prezydenta Polski na wychodźstwie. Warszawa, 397–406. Kukiel, M. (1922). Zarys historii wojskowości w Polsce. [Outline for History of the Armed Forces in Poland] Warszawa. Kukiel, M. (1937). Wojna 1912 roku. [The War of 1912]. Vol. i i ii. Kraków: Nakładem Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności. Kukiel, M. (1955). Czartoryski and European Unity 1770–1861. Princeton, n.j.: Princeton University Press. Kukiel, M. (1994). Historia w służbie teraźniejszości i inne pisma emigracyjne. [History in the Service of the Present and other exile publications]. Ed. by R. Habielski. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich. Mackiewicz, J. (1956). “Niemiecki kompleks.” [The German Complex]. Kultura (Paris), no. 99. Mackiewicz, J. (1957). “Tak zwany Wschód europejski” [The so called European East]. Wiadomości (London), no. 581. Mackiewicz, J. (1958). “Gdybym był chanem.” [If I were a Khan]. Kultura (Paris), no. 9 (128), 87–104. Münkler, H. (2007). Empires. The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States. Transl. By Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity. Olsson, J.E., Y. Varpio, and M. Zadencka (eds.) (1997). Literatur und Nationale Identität I. Ausgangspunkte bei der Erforschung des literarischen Nationalismus und der nationalen Literatur im Ostseeraum. (Tamperen Yliopisto Suomen kirjallisuus; 36). Tampere. Østergård, U. (1997). “National and Ethnic Identity”, in: J.E. Olsson, Y. Varpio, and M.  Zadencka (eds.), Literatur und Nationale Identität I. Ausgangspunkte bei der Erforschung des literarischen Nationalismus und der nationalen Literatur im Ostseeraum. (Tamperen Yliopisto Suomen kirjallisuus; 36). Tampere, 20–49. Posener, A. (2006). “The Empire of Europe.” Die Welt: Weblog: Alan Poseners Blattkritik, 17.03. 2006. See: www.welt.de/debatte/weblogs/Alan_Poseners_Blattkritik/­article 6063358/The-Empire-of-Europe.html. Schmidt, H. (2004). “Erweitern? Erst braucht Europa einen Kern.” Die Zeit, No. 39, 16.09.2004. Schmitt, C. (1950). Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des jus publicum Europaeum. Köln: Greven Verlag. Stobiecki, R. (2004). “Twórczość emigracyjna Oskara Haleckiego (1891–1973).” [O. Haleckis Work in the Exile], in: J. Faryś, ks. R. Nir, and M. Szczerbiński (eds.), Studia z dziejów Polski i Europy w xix i xx w. Księga dedykowana Profesorowi Piotrowi Stefanowi Wandyczowi. Gorzów Wielkopolski, 581–592.

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Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu. Z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 r. [Klio in Exile. About the Polish History Writing in the Exile in Great Britain after 1945]. Poznań. Stobiecki, R. (2010). “Miejsce w historiografii polskiej” [A Place in the Polish Historiography], in: R. Habielski, M. Jabłonowski, (eds.), Marian Kukiel: historyk w świecie polityki. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Aspra-jr. Troebst, S. (2003). “‘Intermarium’ and ‘Wedding to the Sea’ Politics of History and Mental Mapping in East Central Europe.” European Review of History 10, no. 2, 293–321. Troebst, S. (2006). “Region und Epoche statt Raum und Zeit—‘Ostmitteleuropa’ als prototypische geschichtsregionale Konzeption.” H-Soz-u-Kult, 29.05.2006. See: . Tunander, O. (ed.) (1995). Europa och Muren. Om “den andre”, gränslandet och historins återkomst i 90-talets Europa. [Europe and the Wall. About the “Other”, borderland and the return of history in Europe during the 1990s]. Ålborg: Nordisk Sommeruniversitet. Vollrath, E. (1995). “Hannah Arendt Views the Unites States.” in: P. Graf Kielmansegg, H. Mewes, and E. Glaser-Schmidt (eds.), Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. German Émigrés and American Political Thought After World War ii. New York: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 45–58. Wójcik, Z. (ed.) (1994). Z dziejów polityki i dyplomacji. Studia poświęcone pamięci Edwarda hr. Raczyńskiego, Prezydenta Polski na wychodźctwie [From History of Politics and Diplomacy. Commemorative Volume for Edward Count Raczyński, the President of the Polish Republic in Exile]. Warszawa. Zadencka, M. (2006). “Historia i Prawo. Dyskusja o współczesności w pisarstwie Józefa Mackiewicza.” [History and Law. Discussion about Modernity in Józef Mackiewicz’s Works]. Arcana, no. 72. Zadencka, M. (2009). “Kształt Europy. O wadze lokalizacji oraz znaczeniu przestrzeni w emigracyjnych dyskusjach historycznych” [Shape of Europe. On Importance of Localisation and On Meaning of Space in the Historical Discussions in Exile], in: V. Wejs-Milewska (red.), Paryż, Londyn, Monachium, Nowy Jork. Miejsce Drugiej Emigracji Niepodległościowej na mapie kultury nie tylko polskiej. Białystok: Wydawnictwo Trans Humana & Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 45–58. Znaniecki, F., W. Lednicki, and O. Halecki (1954). Three Columbia Bicentennial Lectures. New York: Polish Institute of Art and Sciences. Zuziak, J. (1997). Generał Marian Kukiel 1885–1973. Żołnierz, historyk, polityk. [General Marian Kukiel 1885–1973. Soldier, Historian, Politician]. Pruszków.

Polish Exile Periodicals as a Dialogue Forum: Teki Historyczne, Polish Review, Zeszyty Historyczne Rafał Stobiecki Depriving Poland of its sovereignty, the decisions made in 1945 at Yalta led a considerable part of the political and intellectual elites of the Second Polish Republic to remain in exile. This grouping of exiles included also émigré historians and, following the end of World War ii, they were concentrated primarily in four main urban centers: London, Paris, Rome and New York. The centers of Polish culture established in each of the cities differed in appealing to various intellectual traditions and in having to operate with different organizational infrastructures. The creation of such institutions as the Polish Historical Association in Great Britain, the Polish Historical Institute in Rome, the Literary Institute in Paris and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America or Józef Piłsudski Institute of America in New York was accompanied by the launching of periodicals dealing with a wide variety of issues in the field of history. What role did these periodicals play in an intellectual life of the Polish emigration? In the first place, they enhanced the identity of the emigration by serving at the same time as a forum for idea exchanges and as a venue for the confrontation of different viewpoints. They were also intended to legitimize the mission of the exiles, who set themselves the task of representing the Polish cause to the free world. This was demonstrated clearly in Great Britain especially, where the Polish government-in-exile resided and where the majority of Polish cultural and academic agencies carried out a variety of activities relating to the field of history. The attitude adopted by the exiles living in Great Britain has often been referred to as steadfast or uncompromising, since as it was characterized by a total absence of reconciliation with the way “the Polish problem” had been “solved” by the Great Powers at Yalta. According to most Polish leaders, this emigration was meant to become “the emigration of a struggle.” And in that struggle, historical arguments were to be employed as an important weapon. In the second place, the periodicals in question were supposed to integrate the Polish Diaspora. This idea was connected to a tendency to treat “the printed word” as a real object of worship, as was observed by one of the representatives of the Polish exiles in France, Tadeusz Wyrwa: “The Word was often the only advocate of the Polish cause and the only link keeping the Polish refugees

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­scattered all over the world bound both to each other and to their homeland.”1 Karol Zbyszewski clothed the same thought with irony: “Addiction to writing is common among the Poles. With little chance of undertaking some practical  activity, everyone launches into writing. Ink becomes a drug offering an illusion of real work. The Poles in Great Britain have been poisoned with it en masse.”2 It is in part for these reasons that there emerged around the leading émigré periodicals distinct groupings of intellectuals, united by shared themes and concerns espousing similar views of history should be practiced. These groups included editorial staff members, teams of regular collaborators and other contributors who sent in their texts to be published. This is why there is justification in referring to a distinct milieu around Teki Historyczne in London, Zeszyty Historyczne in Paris and The Polish Review in New York. In the third place, as contacts with Poland were made difficult by the Communist regime, the exile periodicals became the only source of information on the changes taking place in the historiography of the homeland. It is in the pages of these journals that homeland historiography came first under devastating scrutiny and later under more approving review. The contributors to the periodicals commented extensively on both the organizational changes to which the historiography in Poland was subject as well as on the methodological foundations (assumptions) on which it was supposed to be based. In the fourth place, one role of these periodicals consisted in building bridges between local scholarly life, that is, the scholarship of the country of the residence of the émigré historians, and the scholarly life of the Polish emigration. Literary historian Tymon Terlecki wrote in 1945 that: More than ever we people devoid of our homeland, disinherited even from the graves of our mothers, we people with no fatherland, need to feel in Europe as if in an enlarged homeland, regarding it as our own legitimate inheritance. This entails the necessity of organizing ourselves in a manner which is in stark contrast to any form of Ghetto and which will enable us to secure maximum cohesiveness in a maximum extensiveness. The role we have been called upon to play with regard to Poland will rest on this cohesiveness, while the role we are supposed to play with regard to Europe will depend on extensiveness—that is, on our ability to absorb the ideas of others and to promote our own ideas. Internalizing 1 Wyrwa, 1987, 102. 2 Zbyszewski, 1947, 28.

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European ideas is the homework we are obliged to do for all the educated segments of the population in Poland that has been enslaved for the second time in the course of the war—having been robbed of the freedom of speech, thought, and action. We need to combine the Polish with the European.3 The purpose of the essay is to attempt to answer the question of the extent to which the periodicals under discussion were able to carry out this latter task. I  will try to achieve this goal by analyzing texts published in three journals which were representative of the Polish historians in exile, namely Teki Historyczne (Historical Papers) published in London, Zeszyty Historyczne (Historical Notebooks) published in Paris and The Polish Review published in New York. Each of these periodicals was unique in its own way. Undoubtedly, it was Teki Historyczne remained for many years the most significant historical journal published by the Polish exiles. Founded in 1947 as an organ of the Polish Historical Association in Great Britain, the journal was designed to become an exile counterpart of The Historical Quarterly, the first Polish scholarly historical journal that began to be published in 1887 in Lwów when the Polish lands were still under foreign rule. The editorial board of Teki Historyczne was headed by one of the most distinguished Polish historians—an expert in the post-Partition period of Polish history—Marian Kukiel. Among Kukiel’s closest co-workers who significantly contributed to creating the journal during the first years of its publication were a married couple, Regina and Edmund Oppman, two historians concerned with the nineteenth century history; Otton Laskowski, a specialist in military history; Henryk Paszkiewicz, an expert in the history of Russia; and Leon Koczy, a scholar dealing with the Middle Ages. After Kukiel’s death and in time, the leading role in preparing the journal’s issues for publication was played by a military historian, Stanisław Biegański; a follower of Kukiel’s approach, Zdzisław Jagodziński; and Stanisław Bóbr-Tylingo, a student of the nineteenth century history who settled after the war in Canada. The journal began as a quarterly, but later this publication schedule became uneven. The last issue was published in 2004 as part of journal’s ­volume 23. Zeszyty Historyczne had a very different structure. It was Jerzy Giedroyc’s original idea to publish a journal consisting of papers on historical topics that could not be fitted into the pages of Kultura (Culture), another exile periodical of which Giedroyc was the editor-in-chief. The first issues of Zeszyty Historyczne appeared in 1962. Giedroyc’s intention was to turn the periodical into a truly 3 Terlecki, 2003. The text was written in March 1945.

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open discussion forum. He did not want it to reserve its pages only for professional scholars, as was the case with Teki Historyczne. In addition, Zeszyty Historyczne was intended to deal with most recent history, a period that until the mid-1970s was outside the purview of the authors of Teki Historyczne. As Giedroyc wrote in his Autobiography playing duets, Zeszyty Historyczne was to be “an exercise in historical education in the national-state version”.4 He managed to gather around his new periodical professional scholars (Piotr S. Wandycz, Anna M. Cienciała, Jan Ciechanowski, Tadeusz Wyrwa) as well as a small group of extraordinary assiduous and diligent amateur-historians (such as Zbigniew Siemaszko). What made Zeszyty Historyczne stand out among other exile periodicals was that its contributors included representatives of different waves of the Polish emigration (those that took place after 1945, after 1968 and after 1981); and historians from Poland as well as representatives of many different émigré circles ranging geographically from the us to Australia. The origins of The Polish Review were still different. It was published from 1956 on as an organ of Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America and was to some extent the continuation of Bulletin of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, which had appeared between the years 1942 and 1946. The first editorial board of the Review encompassed university professors such as Oskar Halecki and Wacław Lednicki, as well as political personages such as Zygmunt Nagórski and Stanisław Strzetelski. The office of editor-in-chief was occupied, in succession, by Stanisław Skrzypek, Ludwik Krzyżanowski, and Joseph Wieczorek (Charles S. Kraszewski is the current chief editor).5 What makes The Polish Review different from the other two periodicals is its willingness to be concerned with themes and topics that go far beyond historical issues and embrace such subjects as poetry, literature and music. Moreover, from the very beginning it was published in English with the intention of attracting as wide a readership as possible. The form which The Polish Review took stemmed from the specific American environment in which this group of Polish historians lived. They were embedded to a much greater degree than their European colleagues in American academic structures and had deep ties to an old Polonia— the emigration that had formed the us Polish population before 1939. What was the place assigned to non-Polish historiographies in the pages of these three periodicals? The first post-war issues of Teki Historyczne show clearly that the authors displayed a great deal of interest in the books published by western scholars. The philosopher Marian Heitzman embarked on a 4 Giedroyc, 1999, 245. For more information on Zeszyty Historyczne see Nowinowski and Stobiecki, 2005. 5 For more information on the periodical see Olszer, 2006.

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polemic with the views held by Robin Collingwood, using positivistic empiricism as a point of departure for his critical remarks. Aleksander Dygnas presented new trends in the American historiography, as exhibited in the works of James Harvey Robinson and Carl Becker. E. Oppman discussed British, Polish and French scholarship on “The Springtime of Nations”.6 In articles that can be regarded as a scholarly manifesto of Polish émigré historians, Marian Kukiel and Edmund Oppman examined post-war discussions about the future of historiography and its status as a distinct discipline. Their analyses included History and the Human Relations by Herbert Butterfield, The Idea of History by R. Collingwood and The Use of History by A.L. Rose.7 Teki Historyczne contained many reviews of mainly British but also German and French historical literature.8 Russian and Soviet historiography was commented upon also. An essay by Wiktor Weintraub on Evgenij V. Tarle’s historical writings portrayed them as an ominous portent of what could be expected from historians living in the Soviet bloc. The life of the Russian historian, who was once a liberal and an ardent critic of Marxism, was looked upon by Weintraub as a metaphor of the changes that took place in Russian historiography after 1917. Weintraub observed with sadness Tarleʼs moral decay in the last years of his life as well as the fact that his historical writings deteriorated into an ideological tool that served the purposes of the Bolshevik party.9 During the post-war years it seemed that this London-based periodical would be able to achieve the goal set by the authors in the first issue: Teki are going to publish papers, dissertations, essays and reviews of history books written by both Polish and foreign authors. We want to inform [readers] of the developments in Polish historical institutions at home and abroad. We also want to have Teki serve as a source of information for scholars and all others interested in history and as a guide to foreign historiography and to foreign archives.10 6 7 8

9 10

Heitzman, 1948; Dygnas, 1950; Oppman, 1949. Kukiel, 1947; Oppman, 1947. For example, in vol. iv, 1947, except for the discussion of a new volume of The Polish Biographical Dictionary, there were only reviews on foreign literature published. Aleksander F. Dygnas wrote about the book by James W. Thompson and Bernard J. Holm, A History of Historical Writing (1937/1942), Wiktor Weintraub discussed the work by Aloys Ruppel, Stanislaus Polonus, ein polnischer Frühdrucker in Spanien (1946) and Marek Wajsblum presented the book by George H. Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius (1947). Weintraub, 1948. “Słowo od Komitetu Redakcyjnego.” [A Word from The Editorial Board]. Teki Historyczne 1, 1947, no. 1.

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The goal, however, was not achieved. From the beginning of the 1950s ­foreign-language-texts were discussed increasingly less and full-length papers dealing with changes in non-Polish historiographies actually disappear. General history was relegated to a review section of the journal and the periodical began to confine itself to questions relating only the history of Poland. One might ask why this was so? There are several answers. In the first place, part of the explanation lies in the conflict between a group of military historians led by Marian Kukiel, on the one hand, and, on the other, “civilian” scholars such as Józef Jasnowski, a specialist in modern history and a follower of Oskar Halecki; Henryk Paszkiewicz, an expert in the history of Russia, and Aleksander Dygnas. The latter group opted for a periodical open to general history, stressing the need to show the history of Poland in a more international context. At the birth of the journal, they proposed publishing it in English or producing at least one issue annually in French or in English. According to Paszkiewicz, enlarging the appeal of the journal would make it possible to apply for subsidies from the sources other than Polish ones. It would also enable the Polish Historical Association in Great Britain and its journal to rise to a truly international status, going beyond the circles of the Polish emigration.11 In practice, however, the direction that prevailed rendered Teki a clearly Poland-centered publication. In the second place, what made the editorial board unwilling to open the journal to non-Polish themes was the direction of European and world historiography in the period following the Second World War. This is clearly evident in the anxious accounts given of the International Historical Congress held in Paris in 1950. A member of the editorial board, a military historian, wrote: It is collective phenomena and mass processes that came to the fore in the conference papers—great individuals and their role in history being pushed into the background. Speakers usually displayed an inclination to discover laws governing history, relying for their points on figures and statistical data which are usually unreliable, and putting forward interpretations that were materialistic in spirit. Even if these interpretations did not adhere to the Marxist dialectic, then they certainly saw the gates open.12 11

12

The question was especially important in view of the efforts the Polish émigré historians made to obtain the right to take part in the International Congresses of Historical Sciences as an official Polish delegation. For more information on the problem see Stobiecki, 2005, 64–66 and 110–139. Laskowski, 1951. Somewhat different views of the Congress were expressed by Koczy, 1950.

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It needs to be emphasized that new ideas about how history should be ­practiced contradicted the views characteristic of Polish inter-war historiography adhered to by the majority of the exile historians. In addition, new trends in historiography drew inspiration from historical materialism, which was looked upon in exile not as a theory of history but as an ideological tool used for enslaving historiography. In the third place, the journal was subject to changes in its thematic scope because of the increasing financial difficulties. The decline in the number of readers and in the number of the members of the  Polish Historical Association forced the editorial board to confront the question of who the audience of the journal was and what themes should ­preferably be dealt with. Among additional attempts aimed at reducing the Poland-centeredness of the journal was the publication in 1963 of the anthology edited by Jerzy Z. Kędzierski, entitled Contemporary British Historians. Selected Writings. This compendium, intended for Polish readers, contained writings by such leading British historians as A.B. Boswell, H. Butterfield, R.G. Collingwood, G.P. Gooch, L. Namier, R.H. Tawney, A.J.P. Taylor, A.J. Toynbee, and Ch. Webster. The historiographic dialogue in the pages of Zeszyty Historyczne should be looked at from a different angle. It is a common knowledge that the writers connected with Zeszyty Historyczne were in favour of an rapprochement with the Eastern neighbours of Poland and with democratic elements in Russia. The conception “Ukraine—Byelorussia—Lithuania” developed by the leading publicist of Zeszyty served as a theoretical framework for the initiatives to forge friendly relations with neighbours and eschew any form of Polish imperialism. Historical resentments on both sides made the realization of these plans rather difficult. In order to overcome past resentments, the editor-inchief invited historians, writers and politicians of the three nations who were willing to participate to join a dialogue about their common past and common present. The intellectuals associated with the Literary Institute attached special importance to good relations with the Ukrainians. In a letter to Bohdan Osadczuk, Jerzy Giedroycʼs closest Ukrainian associate, Giedroyc wrote: “I think [that] regardless of our fights and disputes and no matter what historical and legal arguments can be made use of by both sides, whether we like it or not the fact still remains that we are united by several centuries of common history and now that this history has settled our border disputes the time is ripe for “taking care” of our common past.”13 The cooperation that had already started in 1952 in the pages of Kultura (Culture) in the 13

List J. Giedroycia do B. Osadczuka z 10 lipca 1969 r. [Giedroyc’s letter to B. Osadczuk of 10 July 1969], in Giedroyc, 2004, 367.

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form of a regular “Ukrainian Chronicle” with papers by the sovietologist Borys Lewycki and the historian Iwan Łysiak-Rudnycky was continued in Zeszyty Historyczne.14 Authors published papers elucidating the traditions of the Polish-Ukrainian friendship but at the same time did not shy away from raising painful and controversial issues dividing the two nations. Texts were published discussing the problem of the Polish-Ukrainian alliance entered into in 1919 or portraying well-known personages such as the archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church Andrzej Szeptycki or Ataman Semen Petlura.15 In a series of interviews with R. Szporluk, P.S. Wandycz and F. Sysyn—with the telling title “Talks about Brothers”—the difficult problems of the interwar period and the Second World War were opened.16 According to Andrzej Stępnik, during the years between 1961 and 1991 Zeszyty Historyczne published sixty-two papers dealing with Ukrainian problems.17 Supplementing the papers in Zeszyty Historyczne were full-length books published under the auspices of the Library of Culture. This series included two books by B. Lewycki—Terror and the Revolution and The Nationality Policy in the Soviet Union under Kruschchev—and an historical study dealing with the latter half of the eighteenth century by Stanisław Kot. Polish-Lithuanian and the Polish-Byelorussian relations were debated in a similar fashion. On the one hand, there were texts recalling brotherhood-in-arms during the January uprising, as represented by such analyses as that by Kazimierz Okulicz discussing the lives of a Pole—Zygmunt Sierakowski, a Lithuanian—the priest Antoni Mackiewicz and a Byelorussian—Konstany Kalinowski.18 On the other hand, there were also papers discussing the Polish-Lithuanian disputes over Vilnius that took place right after the First World War.19 Giedroycʼs goal also included informing Polish readers of non-Polish historical writing about Poland and Eastern Europe. The Literary Institute’s publications were among the first to present to the Polish reader such scholars as Norman Davies, Daniel Beauvois and Hans Roos.20 But to realize this goal fully, the editor-in-chief did not have at his disposal a team of co-workers that could be entrusted with the task. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

For more on the problem see Berdychowska, 2004. Wandycz, 1967; Heydenkorn, 1985; Żeleński, 1979. The Interviews conducted by J. Jastrzębowski were published in Zeszyty Historyczne, 1989, No. 88. Stępnik, 2005, 65. Okulicz, 1965. See, for example, Okulicz, 1966; Sukiennicki, 1970; Jędrzejewicz, 1970. See for example, Sikorski, 1984; Bóbr-Tylingo, 1963; Kozłowska, 1985.

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The conclusion can be drawn that with respect to the problem of interest in the present article, the achievements of Giedroycʼs journal appear ambiguous. Some of the journal’s initiatives were not endorsed by its Ukrainians partners and some topics, such as the extermination of the Polish population of the Volyn (Pol. Wołyń) region by upa (The Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army), were surrounded by a real conspiracy of silence. It was only after both Ukraine and Poland had regained their independence that this problem could be raised.21 It is also possible to doubt that the majority of educated Poles shared his effort to diminish the Poland-oriented character of Polish historiography or to pass critical judgment on the achievements of the Second Republic of Poland. The circumstances in which the American quarterly, The Polish Review, functioned were completely different. This is how the members of the editorial board defined their objectives: Now, ten years later, we start a new publication, a quarterly in English, dedicated exclusively to Polish topics. Although many Polish scholars living in the Free Western World frequently enjoy the hospitality of Americans, British and French journals, the lack of a periodical devoted to Polish affairs and published in a world-language is painfully felt. To fill this gap and to become a source of objective information and a rallying point for study of all aspects of the Polish cultural life, past and present— that is the purpose to our new publication. It opens its columns to all Polish scholars and writers in Free World and to scholars of all Free Nations writing on Polish subjects.22 A glance through the various volumes of The Polish Review leaves the impression of thematic eclecticism. The journal has always dealt with various aspects of the Polish culture from the Middle Ages to the present. Although history has been accorded an important place, it certainly is not dominant. Special issues were devoted to Polish writers such as Adam Mickiewicz, Józef Konrad Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad), Czesław Miłosz, Witold Gombrowicz rather than to historians. But there did appear articles covering a variety of fields dealing with the past—political history, intellectual history, military history and history of historical writing. The review section of the journal gave extensive coverage to a variety of publications pertaining to the history of Poland. For the obvious reason, it is precisely the Polish-American relationship that received special attention. There were articles discussing the presidency of 21 22

Berdychowska, 2004, 36. “Foreword” in The Polish Review, 1956, No. 1.

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Woodrow Wilson and his services for Poland, the participation of Poles in the Jamestown settlement, and fragments of the American journal kept by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and the contacts he had with Thomas Jefferson.23 To celebrate the Millennium of Poland the editorial board decided to publish excerpts of the English translation of the chronicle of Gall Anonym.24 Despite announcements that the journal will be open to non-Polish authors writing on Polish subjects, contributions remained dominated by Polish authors and those referred to as Polish-Americans. Among the few non-Polish schol­ ars who did publish in the Review one can mention Richard F. Staar, Otakar Odlozilik, Archibald L. Lewis, Herbert H. Kaplan, Thomas E. Bird, Victor Greene, and Daniel Stone. An important role was played by the Canadian scholar, Peter Brock, who since 1966 was a member of the editorial board. Apart from PolishAmerican relations, problems concerning Poland were only rarely presented in a broader international context. The articles by the Czech medievalist Otakar Odlozilik on  disputes over Eastern and Central Europe in the eleventh, by William L. Blackwell on the Russian Decembrist Views of Poland, and by Józef Jasnowski on the ways in which Poland’s past was viewed in English historiography are examples of the articles that took an international context into account.25 The editorial board of the journal failed to induce the leading American sovietologists of Polish-Jewish decent—Adam Ulam and Richard Pipes—to become members. It was only in the 1980s that Zbigniew Brzezinski and Timothy Garton Ash appeared on the Advisory Board, to be joined later by Leszek Kołakowski, and Tomas Venclova. Then, also two historians at American universities, Anna M. Cienciała and Piotr S. Wandycz, became members of the editorial board. Surprisingly, few articles were published in the Review by such scholars as Wandycz.26 Any answer to the question of the extent to which the émigré periodicals contributed to a dialogue between the historiographies of various countries has to be equivocal. Generally speaking, despite the efforts of the editorial boards all the journals discussed here, these publications failed to attract much of a larger audience beyond Polish circles. In the case of Teki Historyczne and Zeszyty Historyczne this was so because of the language barrier. As for The Polish Review, one might assume that some effect was had by charges of 23 24 25 26

Ciechanowski, 1956; Chandler, 1957; Kusielewicz and Krzyżanowski, 1958; Kusielewicz, 1957. Galli Anonymi Chronicon in The Polish Review, 1966, no. 4, 5–9, translated by Francis D. Lazenby. Odlozilik, 1957; Blackwell, 1958; Jasnowski, 1958. It was only one paper (Wandycz, 1990), and a few reviews.

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Russophobia that at times was directed in America at Polish exile historians, as well as the substantial competition from other journals such as Slavic Review, Journal of Central European Affairs and Russian Review.27 There was also the fact that financial constraints, a small number of international specialists of renown, and the exoticism of the subject rendered extremely difficult the task of promoting the Polish history in the West through bridgebuilding between different historiographies.28 After 1945, in a divided world, there was little room for serious discussion of the history of Eastern and Central Europe and historical experiences of such countries as Poland, Hungary and Ukraine. It was quite clear to Kukiel who, quoting Arnold Toynbee, in an obituary of Sir Lewis Namier ruefully noted: “there was just one English trait which he failed to assimilate—English indifference to the fate of Eastern Europe.”29 Despite the adverse circumstances, however, the Polish historical periodicals did try to provide systematic information about the Western scholarship on the history of Poland, stress the historical distinctiveness of Eastern and Central Europe and, sometimes, as was the case with Zeszyty Historyczne, initiate contacts between exile historians of various countries. These efforts were of importance in light of both the hostility of the Communist regime and the rivalry between various émigré historiographies struggling for the right to exist in a free world. Perhaps it is because of these efforts, and some achievements, that we now in a different world find it easier to overcome national resentments and can reflect on the extent to which the experiences of exile historians are a significant part of the intellectual inheritance of Eastern European countries. References Berdychowska, B. (2004). “Giedroyc i Ukraińcy” [Giedroyc and The Ukrainians], in J.  Giedroyc, Emigracja ukraińska. Listy 1950–1982 [The Ukrainian Emigration. The Letters 1950–1982], ed. by B. Berdychowska. Warszawa: Czytelnik, 5–54. Blackwell, W.L. (1958). “Russian Decembrist Views of Poland.” The Polish Review, No 4, 30–54. Bóbr-Tylingo, S. (1963). “Głos niemieckiego przyjaciela.” [Voice of a German Friend]. Zeszyty Historyczne 3. Chandler, A.D. (1957). “The Poles at Jamestown.” The Polish Review, no 4, 3–7.

27 28 29

See Filipowicz, 2007, 174–195. The problem is dealt with in a paper by Wandycz, 2004. Kukiel, 1960/1961, 261.

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Ciechanowski, Jan (1956). “Woodrow Wilson in the Spotlight of Versailles.” The Polish Review, no 2–3, 12–21. Dygnas, A.F. (1950). “Pragmatyzm w historiografii amerykańskiej.” [Pragmatism in American Historiography]. Teki Historyczne iv, 1–29. Filipowicz, M. (2007). Emigranci i Jankesi. O amerykańskich historykach Rosji [The Emigrants and the Yankee. On the American Historians of Russia]. Lublin: kul. Giedroyc, J. (1999). Autobiografia na cztery ręce [Autobiography playing duets], ed. by K. Pomian. Second Edition. Warszawa: Czytelnik. Giedroyc, J. (2004), Emigracja ukraińska. Listy 1950–1982 [The Ukrainian Emigration. The Letters 1950–1982], ed. by B. Berdychowska. Warszawa: Czytelnik. Heitzman, M. (1948). “Collingwooda teoria poznania historycznego.” [Collingwood’s Theory of Historical Cognizance]. Teki Historyczne ii, 233–255. Heydenkorn, B. (1985). “Polityczna działalność metropolity Szeptyckiego.” [Archbishop Szeptycki’s Political Activity]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 72. Jasnowski, J. (1958). “Poland’s Past in English Historiography.” The Polish Review, no. 1–2, 21–37. Jędrzejewicz, W. (1970) „Sprawa Wilna w lipcu 1920 r.” [The Vilnius Problem in July 1920]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 17. Koczy, L. (1950). “Paryski Kongres Historyków.” [Historical Congress in Paris]. Teki Historyczne iv, 141–186. Kozłowska, N. (1985). “Profesor Hans Roos.” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 71. Kukiel, M. (1947). “Historia w służbie teraźniejszości.” [History in the Service of the Present]. Teki Historyczne i, 2–15. Kukiel, M. (1960/1961). “Sir Lewis Namier.” Teki Historyczne xi, 26. Kusielewicz, E. (1957). “The Jefferson Niemcewicz Correspondence.” The Polish Review, no. 4, 7–22. Kusielewicz, E. and L. Krzyżanowski (eds.) (1958). “Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s American Diary.” The Polish Review, no. 3, 83–115. Laskowski, O. (1951). “ix Międzynarodowy Kongres Historyków.” [ix International Congress of Historical Sciences]. Orzeł Biały, no. 2. Nowinowski, S.M. and R. Stobiecki (eds.) (2005). Jerzego Giedroycia rozrachunki z historią i polityką. Studia i szkice w czterdziestą rocznicę „Zeszytów Historycznych” [Jerzy Giedroyc Coming to Terms with the Past and the Politics. Studies on the 40th Anniversary of “Zeszyty Historyczne”]. Łódź: Ibidem. Odlozilik, O. (1957). “The Contest for East Central Europe in the Eleventh Century.” The Polish Review, no. 1, 3–18. Okulicz, K. (1965). “Białorusini, Litwini i Polacy w powstaniu styczniowym na Litwie Historycznej.” [Byelorussians, Lithuanians and Poles in Lithuania in the January Uprising]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 7. Okulicz, K. (1966). “Ostatni akt dramatu Józefa Piłsudskiego, 1920–1922.” [The Last Act of Józef Piłsudski’s Drama, 1920–1922]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 9.

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Olszer, K.S. (2006). “Złote gody ‘The Polish Review.’” [Golden Anniversary of ‘The Polish Review’]. Przegląd Polski, November 17. Oppman, E. (1947). “Fotografia czy koncepcja przeszłości.” [Photography or the Concept of History]. Teki Historyczne i, 50–56. Oppman, E. (1949). “Powojenna historiografia brytyjska, francuska i polska wobec ʽWiosny Ludów.ʼ” [The Polish, British, and French post-war Historiography on the Springtime of Nations]. Teki Historyczne iii, 54–81. Sikorski, R. (1984). “Człowiek z zewnątrz. Z Normanem Daviesem rozmawia Radek Sikorski.” [A Man from Outside. Radek Sikorki interviews Norman Davies]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 68. Stępnik, A. (2005). “Ukraina, Litwa, Białoruś w ‘Zeszytach Historycznych’” [Ukraine, Lithuania and Byelorussia in ‘Zeszyty Historyczne’], in S.M. Nowinowski and R. Stobiecki (eds.). Jerzego Giedroycia rozrachunki z historią i polityką. Studia i szkice w czterdziestą rocznicę “Zeszytów Historycznych” [Jerzy Giedroyc Coming to Terms with the Past and the Politics. Studies on the 40th Anniversary of “Zeszyty Historyczne”]. Łódź. Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu: z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 r. [Clio in Exile. Polish Historiography in Exile in Great Britain after 1945]. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. Sukiennicki, W. (1970). “Polska a Litwa.” [Poland and Lithuania]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 17. Terlecki, T. (2003). “Do emigracji polskiej 1945 roku” [To Polish Emigration of 1945], in T. Terlecki, Emigracja naszego czasu [The Emigration of our Time]. Ed. by N. TaylorTerlecka and J. Święch, Lublin: umcs. Wandycz, P.S. (1967). “Z zagadnień współpracy polsko-ukraińskiej w latach 1919–1920.” [On the Polish Ukrainian Alliance in 1919–1920]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 12. Wandycz, P. (1990), “Poland on the Map of Europe in 1918.” The Polish Review, no. 1, 19–27. Wandycz, P.S. (2004). “Historia Polski i Europy Środkowej Wschodniej na amerykańskich uniwersytetach” [The History of Poland and of the Eastern and Central Europe at the American Universities]. Przegląd Nauk Historycznych iii, 169–175. Weintraub, W. (1948). “Blaski i nędze dziejów życia Prof. Tarlego” [The Ups and Downs in Life of prof. Tarle]. Teki Historyczne ii, 80–137. Wyrwa, T. (1987). “Historyk na obczyźnie a najnowsze dzieje Polski” [The Historian in Exile and the Contemporary History of Poland], in J. Jasnowski (ed.), Nowoczesna historia Polski. Prace Kongresu Kultury Polskiej na Obczyźnie. Londyn 14–15 września 1985. Londyn. Zbyszewski, K. (1947). Polacy w Anglii. [The Poles in England]. Londyn: Biblioteka Polska w W. Brytanii. Żeleński, W. (1979). “W setną rocznicę urodzin Petlury.” [On the Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Ataman Petlura]. Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 49.

PART 3 New Styles of Thought

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Generations in Baltic German Historical Writing 1919–2009 Gert von Pistohlkors Quite a number of Baltic German and a smaller number of Reich German historians wrote books and articles on Baltic history between 1919 and 2009, paying attention to a constantly changing world. As regards their different historical interpretations, examples in the present chapter shall be taken only from the second half of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, and analysis will focus on the very important question of how Baltic German historians of different generations dealt with the problem of the Estonian and Latvian national awakenings of the 1860s, and with the attitudes of Baltic Germans toward the titular nations of the Republics of Estonia and Latvia between 1918 and 1940. These newly founded states had a strong impact on the historians of the German minorities in Estonia and Latvia between 1918 and 1940. Jürgen von Hehn (1912–1983) and Heinrich von zur Mühlen (1914–2005), in dealing with Baltic German historiography between 1919 and 1945, observed that no other topic than the relations between Baltic Germans and the titular nations of Estonia and Latvia were at the core of the interests of Baltic German historians.1 A paper delivered by Arved Freiherr von Taube (1905–1978) in Tallinn/Reval in April 1933 when he was 27 years of age dealt with the relations between the Ritterschaft and the peasants in the province of Estland in the second half of the nineteenth century. Von Taube opened his presentation in a remarkable manner. To speak about German-Estonian relations in Estland, he observed, was not just a matter of historical truth and insight obtained from new archival sources, but was actually a political issue.2 Taube finished his presentation with a surprising note of confrontation. Telling the truth about the reluctant attitudes of his ancestors towards participation rights of Estonian peasants in the nineteenth century might add to the bitterness of the present situation of the German minority in Estonia, he thought. Dealing with the recent past of our political history—especially regarding the most current problem—the reform of Estonia’s constitution—we 1 An earlier version of this article was translated into Estonian: see Pistohlkors, 2010. Cf. Hehn, 1986, 371–398, passim, esp. 377ff.; and Mühlen, 1986, 339–369, esp. 339ff. 2 Taube, 1933, 34.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_017

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shall often arrive at the crossroads between realism and objectivity, on the one side, and a certain tendency of excusing a failure on the other. As a matter of fact, we always must keep in mind that writing history can never be an end in itself but should guarantee that we have always fulfilled our duty towards our homeland, Estonia, and that we have a right to stay in this country and take an active part in her future. Pointing to this special epoch of the history of Estland [Taube is speaking here of the second half of the nineteenth century in the province of Estland—G.v.P.] there will constantly occur the problem of whether we might be furnishing our adversaries with weapons and offering them the chance to further a tendentious cause. This danger is obvious regarding the inevitable interpreation of the attitudes of Ritterschaft towards the Estonian national movement.3 Taube asked his older colleagues for advice about whether he should present the truth as he had derived it from his sources or whether it would be wiser to follow apologetic lines.4 In his books on the agrarian reforms (1899 and 1911) as well as on tsarism and Russian nationalism in Livland (1925 and 1930), Alexander von Tobien (1854– 1929) had justified every step of reform policies and placed the guilt for their failures almost entirely on Russification.5 There is no doubt that especially what was then the young generation of Baltic German historians in Estonia—Arved Freiherr von Taube, Georg von Rauch (1904–1991), Roland Seeberg-Elverfeldt (1909–1993), Helmut Speer (1906–1996)—all of them speakers at the April 10 and 11, 1933, historians’ meeeting in Tallinn and after 1947 all members of Baltische Historische Kommission in Göttingen—felt uncertain about how to deal with the Baltic German tradition of colonial and autonomous self-respect. This insecurity about whether status-bound attitudes could serve as a basis for Baltic German historical self-assessment through the ages or at least up to the end of the nineteenth century remained in play during the ninety years between 1919 and 2009, but with different accentuations of this insecurity at different times and within different generations. The topic of different generations of Baltic German historians will be approached in four steps. 3 Ibid., 55. All English translations in this article by the author. 4 Cf. Taube, 1933, 32–57, passim; Jürjo, 1995, 171–183, passim. 5 About A. von Tobien see dbbl, 1970/1998, 803. Cf. Tobien, 1899/1911; Tobien, 1925/1930, passim.

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First, Alexander von Tobien had painted the achievements of reform friends in the Ritterschaft of Livland and in Baltic history during the nineteenth century in bright colours. Arved Freiherr von Taube, however, found arguments in 1933 that said almost the opposite about the Estland Ritterschaft. The group of historians discussing his results in Tallinn in 1933 did not really decide whether they agreed with Tobien or to von Taube. Second, Reinhard Wittram began his 1934 book on Meinungskämpfe im baltischen Deutschtum während der Reformepoche des 19. Jahrhunderts (Political Quarrels among Baltic Germans in the Epoch of Reforms during the 19th Century) almost at the same starting point as Arved Freiherr von Taube, but with different results.6 He also wanted to be just and cautious, at the same time stressing the point that the conservatives (not the liberals, as Tobien and Taube had pointed out) were more realistic than any reformers when they exercised their reluctant policy of sticking to the status quo. Third, in his 1938 book Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen (History of the Baltic Germans), which was published in Germany in 1939 Wittram turned to Volksgeschichte, stressing the point that most of the Estonian and Latvian historians serving the goals of nationalism and chauvinism had themselves used Volksgeschichte before he and other Baltic German historians had shifted from the concept of Landesgeschichte to a concept of kinship between all Germans inside and outside the German Reich.7 Volksgeschichte became part of the Baltic German political revival—Deutschbaltische Erneuerungsbewegung— from 1919 on and later played a role in national socialist hopes in view of the successes of the foreign policy of the Third Reich in the 1930s.8 Fourth, after the loss of their homelands—Estonia and Latvia—between October and December of 1939 and the immediate resettlement of most Baltic Germans in the newly defeated Poland, many of the Baltic German historians contributed heavily to national-socialist propaganda literature. Then, after they had become refugees like more than twelve million other people of German descent in Eastern Europe in the period 1945–1947, Baltic German historians tried to give up politics altogether. Baltic German and some Reich German historians began anew in Göttingen in 1947 with a reexamination of their traditions.9 The present chapter seeks to interpret the approaches to ­status-bound policies and to nationalism in the writings of three different

6 7 8 9

Wittram, 1934, passim. Wittram, 1939, passim; Wittram, 1936, 94–99, resp. 566–571. Cf. Pistohlkors, 1995, 11–24. As regards “Deutschbaltische Erneuerungsbewegung”: cf. Garleff (ed.), 2008, 2 vols, passim. Kaegbein and Lenz (eds.), 1997, passim; Rauch, 1986, 399–435.

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German generations of historians between 1947 and 2009.10 There were new methodological attempts to rewrite Baltic history after the first meeting of Baltic German historians in Göttingen of 1947 and after the foundation of Baltische Historische Kommission (bhk) in Göttingen on the 8 September, 1951.

i

Alexander von Tobien had examined the district reforms of 1870 in the province of Livland in detail.11 In his view, the majority within the Livländische Ritterschaft, under the leadership of the anti-conservative group led by the family von Oettingen, had realized that participation of peasant representatives at the level of the district (Ger. Kirchspiel; Est. kihelkond; Latv. draudze) was absolutely necessary if the Ritterschaft wanted to remain master of regional political change in an age of reform in tsarist Russia. Tobien praised the spirit of reform in Livland in an emphatic tone. Dealing with the question why there was no district reform in Estland, Taube observed an astonishing level of quietism among the noblemen of Estland, in comparison to those of Livland.12 He arrived at the conclusion that discussions simply did not take place in the province over whether peasants should be asked to take part in disputes over tax matters or not. Although there had been a district reform next door in Livland in 1870, the Ritterschaft in Estland did not even wish to discuss whether it would not be fair to ask those Estonian landed peasants who had to pay taxes what they thought about the existing tax laws. Taube in 1933 objected to the terms “liberal” and “conservative” for describing the different attitudes in the Ritterschaft of Estland. In his view, they all were reactionaries.13 He surmised that there had existed only one truly liberal nobleman in the whole area of Estland in the years between 1870 and 1885, and that was Otto Baron Stackelberg (1823–1887) from the Isle of Worms (Est. Vormsi) who was completely isolated from the rest of his peers in Estland partly because of his constant and annoying quarrrels with his mostly Swedish peasants. Military troops, for instance, had had to be sent to Worms/Vormsi in 1853 because the local disputes could not be settled otherwise. Alexander Baron Stael von Holstein (1798–1868) called him a “nihilist.”14 On the other hand, Stackelberg’s contemporaries in 10 11 12 13 14

Cf. also Pistohlkors, 2007, 33–52; Pistohlkors, 2008b, 11–32; Pistohlkors, 2009, 243–268. Tobien, 1925/1930, vol. 1, 460–469. Taube, 1933, 37. Cf. also Wrangell, 1967, passim, esp. 95–112. Taube, 1933, 35f. Ibid., 56.

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the Estländische Ritterschaft felt embarrassed that he submitted proposals for reform that had to become part of Landtag (Diet) debates of the 1870s and the early 1880s. Nobody could deny, however, that there was some logic in Stackelberg’s argumentations.15 The Ritterschaft in Estland, Stackelberg maintained, had finally abandoned the exclusive right to own farm land. As a consequence, the Ritterschaft should also be prepared to give up the exclusive right of representing all of landed society. Such feudal prerogatives were neither backed any more in general Russian society nor by the Russian government. Just as Woldemar von Bock (1818–1903) in Livland in 1862, Stackelberg proposed the representation of estate owners and of smallholders in equal numbers, on a district level as well as in a newly formed Landtag. He furthermore suggested, like Jégor von Sivers (1823–1879) in Livland in 1866, that the small towns should be included in the Landtag when the Ritterschaft held the meetings of their diet.16 Every owner of a house should be entitled to vote for his chosen candidate. In Stackelbergʼs view, Baltic regionalism had to be developed along the lines of propertied classes; otherwise russification as a “reform” imposed by Russian bureaucrats would endanger the interests of all the different propertied groups in Estland.17 Von Taube definitely was impressed by these arguments. He stressed the point that Stackelberg apparently had foreseen what happened after 1885 when bureaucratic and cultural Russification took place all over the Baltic provinces.18 A programme of participation including borough reform—or Kreisrefom, as it was discussed (and rejected) in Livland—might have evoked positive cooperation among landowners of a different ethnic background, von Taube surmised. If that had worked, bureaucratic Russification would not have had a chance, and furthermore—and this was very important for him—the situation of the German minority in the state of Estonia after 1919 would have been a different one.19 According to him, asking such questions was not a matter of opportunism but of searching for historical truth. von Taube dared not argue in this manner openly, but his entire argumentations in the end led to the idea that the expropriation of mainly Baltic German estate owners in 1919 15 16

17 18 19

Ibid., 38f. About Otto Freiherr von Stackelberg: Stackelberg, 2012, 56–60. About Woldemar von Bock and Jegor von Sivers: dbbl, 1970/1998, 80 and 756f. Their motions forwarded in Livland 1862 resp. 1876 are discussed by Tobien, 1925, 382–389. Taube, 1933, 38f. Cf. Thaden (ed.), 1981, passim. Taube, 1933, 34f.

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and afterwards would not have taken such radical form if liberal reforms had been carried out in Estonia in the 1860s and 1870s. The record of the discussions immediately following von Taube’s presentation suggests that reactions to it appeared to be divided. Most of the s­ peakers— the editor-in-chief of Revalsche Zeitung, Axel de Vries (1892–1963),20 for example, stressed the point that the historical research with which von Taube had started was inevitable. But most participants also defended their ancestors in stating that any institutional change would have encouraged the use of Russian on every level of local administration even before the 1880s. The introduction of the Russian zemstvo institutions especially would have enforced the use of the Russian language immediately. (As we know from Toivo Raun’s book on Estonia and the Estonians,21 this was not true with respect to the township reform of 1866, and it was certainly not true with respect to the use of German in the Landtag records [Landtagsprotokolle] which continued until 1920). The historian from Pernau/Pärnu, Heinrich Laakmann (1892–1955),22 pleaded for a special Baltic German historiography. But he added that in special fields parallel research carried out by Estonian and Baltic German scholars would not be worthwhile. His example was Juhan Vasar (1905–1972) and his 1931 research on Swedish reduction policies in the seventeenth century.23 He furthermore proposed that Latvian historiography on the nineteeenth century was very much indebted to von Tobien’s masterpieces (which is very doubtful). Also interesting is Laakmann’s point that the meaning of certain important concepts of Baltic German historiography—such as Land and Landesstaat— could no longer be conveyed to modern readers without further explanation. Finally, the schoolteacher Hermann von Berg (1894–1943),24 who by then was the director of the German gymnasium in Wesenberg/Rakvere, observed that there did not exist any convincing description of Estland’s nineteenth-century history and that, he feared, young Baltic Germans would soon be snowed under by Estonian attitudes towards the past. On the whole, Arved Freiherr von Taube did not get a clear answer to the question of whether historical truth or opportunism—Neigung zur Apologie25—could be regarded as helpful for the role historians could play in  the Baltic German minority of Estonia. The continuous presence of an 20 21 22 23 24 25

About A. de Vries: dbbl, 1970/1998, 839f. Raun, 1991, 61f. About H. Laakmann: dbbl, 1970/1998, 437; Kaegbein and Lenz (eds.), 1997, 128f. Cf. Vasar, 1930/1931, passim. About H. von Berg: dbbl, 1970/1998, 48f. Taube, 1933, 55.

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i­ ndependent Baltic German historiography in the Republic of Estonia was the focus of von Taube’s efforts to rewrite the provincial history of Estland during the second part of the nineteenth century. His contribution, however, remained unpublished.26 We do not know what decided the issue: politics or perhaps lack of money.

ii

One year later in 1934, Reinhard Wittram (1902–1973)27 published in Riga his best-researched book on Baltic history already mentioned above, namely, Meinungskämpfe im baltischen Deutschtum während der Reformepoche des 19. Jahrhunderts (Political Quarrels among Baltic Germans in the Reform Epoch during the 19th Century) in honour of the centennial of the leading Baltic German historical society in Riga—the Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde der Ostseeprovinzen Rußlands, which was founded in 1834 by Karl Eduard Napiersky (1793–1864) and others. Wittram must have been very proud that at the age of 31 he was asked to become the sole author of the Festschrift for that centennial. Arved Freiherr von Taube did not gauge Wittram’s view on the history of Livland correctly when he insisted that Wittram only wished to defend Baltic German conservatism with respect to the continuing validity of the privileges of 1710.28 It is true: Wittram himself stated in Meinungskämpfe that he had sought to break down the arguments of the friends of provincial reforms—the so-called “liberals”—between 1870 and 1885.29 But, as one can read in his outline of controversies about the right response to the changing conditions of life in Livland, he did stress the rise of the “national question”—die nationale Frage—in relation to the loss of the persuasiveness of status-bound arguments and in relation to the deep distrust in Russia of a German upper class within the borders of the Russian realm. Looking closer into Wittram’s argument, one can find there insights into the political and structural changes and Baltic German reactions towards them that shaped German attitudes towards Baltic history for at least thirty-five 26 27 28 29

Cf. Taube, 1936, 30 pages. About R. Wittram: Kaegbein and Lenz (eds.), 1997, 179f.; Neitmann, 1998, 11–32. About K.E. Napiersky: dbbl, 1970/1998, 540f. Cf. Taube, 1933, 34. Wittram, 1934, viii. In German: “Ich wollte den baltischen Liberalismus in seiner Wurzel begreifen und die Macht seiner Tradition in der Auffassung des 19. Jahrhunderts durch eine kritische Darstellung brechen.”

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years between 1934 and the beginning of the 1970s. Wittram became interested in structural change and the transition period from status-bound to national argumentations. Arved Freiherr von Taube had stressed the quietism of the Estland nobility. Wittram, by contrast, described the impulse among the group of (liberal) friends of reforms that led to reform policy in Livland, but observed that their influence had faded in the early 1880s because they had underestimated the rise of nationalism as a new—revolutionary—sentiment in the Europe of the 1870s and as a forceful political movement in the Russian realm and, most importantly, in the Baltic provinces.30 The friends of provincial reforms had constantly hoped to harmonize disparaties between the different ethnic groups in Livland by fighting for regional autonomy for Baltic Germans and Latvian/Estonian smallholders alike: for a provincial diet open to all the different estates, a gradual increase of participation for non-noblemen and peasants and for the language rights of the indigenous Estonians and Latvians. In 1879, one of the leaders of the friends of reform, Ernst von Mensenkampff (1840–1887), articulated in his programme for the reform friends (liberals) the following thought: “We do not wish to oppose the aspirations of Latvian or Estonian peasants as long as they faithfully stick to the interests of our homeland.” These words include a warning that the representatives of the Livland peasants should not hope that the Russian intellectuals in St. Petersburg would serve their (i.e. the peasantsʼ) interests for their own sake. Wittram quoted from the January 1879 correspondence of another reformer, Balthasar Baron von Campenhausen (1843–1905): “The reforms must result in the abolition of Baltic German race privileges and create the people of Livland [ein livländisches Volk].31 … The only chance to replace leadership for rule lies in the hope that we can come to terms with the propertied classes among the landed Estonian and Latvian people.”32 Wittram’s conclusions are accurate in this context: the liberals “underestimated the strength of Latvian and Estonian nationalism.”33 Their vain hope for harmony in Livland corresponded to their liberal philosophy of progress through reforms. Unaware of their failures, 30 31 32

33

Ibid., esp. 73ff. Ibid., 58f. About E. von Mensenkampff: dbbl, 1970/1998, 507. About Balthasar von Campenhausen: Campenhausen, 2006, 59–111, esp. 73–76. B. Von Campenhausen’s statement in German: “Was wir als Voraussetzung allen weiteren Fortschritts zu erstreben haben, ist der Ausgleich der sozialen Gegensätze innerhalb der deutschen und autochthonen Bevölkerung Livlands—die Abolition der Raceprivilegien und die Neugestaltung ihrer sozialen Verhältnisse”, in: Wittram, 1934, 59. Wittram, 1934, 60.

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Wittram observed, the friends of reforms in Livland were unconsciously prophets of the forthcoming epoch of nationalism. Of most importance is Wittram’s chapter concerning the conservatives and the “conservative turn” among Baltic Germans during the late 1870s and early 1880s.34 His admiration for the stubbornness and perseverance of the conservatives is manifested in many places, but as an historian he has to admit that some of their views should not be misinterpreted as “Realpolitik.” Already in 1842 Ernst Baron Nolcken (1814–1900) from Lunia near Tartu had used the argument that, in the perspective of the Estonians and Latvians, differences of ethnicity and language had been central to their way of thinking and their historical memories for six hundred years. Wittram saw in Nolcken’s words a “very old recollection” of colonists within a Germanic Ritterschaft, including the full measure of self-esteem and pride that could only grow within a selfconscious aristocratic group faithful to “tradition” and “history.” He quoted Carl Schirren (1826–1910) and his phrase “Feststehen und Ausharren (stand fast and prevail)” and stressed the reality of a Germanic Ritterschaft (“eine germanische Ritterschaft war man”).35 Explaining the difference between the conservative “Nolcken party” and the (liberal) “Oettingen party,” Wittram stated: “how pale the liberal notions of citizenship, civil rights and civil claims look compared to the self–esteem of a Germanic Ritterschaft!”36 Almost imperceptible to the reader, there was a shift in Wittram’s argumentation from the tradition and self-respect of a status-bound group to German mastership on ethnic grounds. When interpreting the state of mind of conservatives such as the families of Baron von Nolcken, von Brasch, von Löwis of Menar, and others, Wittram, however, was thinking as an historian. He was interested in the question of why the status-bound system on which Ritterschaften had rested had maintained its strength in Livland until 1885 and beyond. Looking at the arguments of the participants of the 1880 and 1882 Livland diets, he arrived at the conclusion that the conservatives had no confidence in any expansion of the diet to include small landowners (i.e. an Erweiterter Landtag). The conservatives instead proposed a diet of taxpayers that would exist alongside the unchanged diet of the Livländische Ritterschaft. Wittram quoted Landrat Arthur von Richter (1824–1892), a former Livland liberal who had become an exponent of conservatism: “We are a German Ritterschaft and we want to keep the German 34 35 36

Ibid., 62–77. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 66. The citation in German: “Wie blass wirkt gegenüber diesem Selbstgefühl [der germanischen Ritterschaft—G.v.P.] der liberale Begriff vom Staatsbürger, der als solcher Rechte und Ansprüche habe!”

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character of Livland; and we don’t agree to any form of participation whatsoever.”37 Wittram interpreted this stubborn and reactionary phrase in the following way: “The German and the status-bound argumentation were in a state of complete amalgamation.”38 The status-bound view seemed to be fully identified with the national view and needed no further justification, Wittram continued, and, speaking as an historian, he admitted that such an argument contained great and maybe even dangerous temptations. One could easily sidestep any discussion about reforms as long as one could pretend that an autonomous reform was impossible to achieve. In Wittram’s view, the diet of taxpayers, recommended by a group of younger members of Livländische Ritterschaft in 1880, did not reveal any readiness for reforms. Rather, the idea was owed to a dilemma the Russian government had imposed on the organs of self-government in Russia’s Baltic provinces by asking for a complete reorganisation of the tax system—an imposition that became one of the most important sources of inner conflicts among members of Ritterschaften (and not only them) between the end of the 1870s until 1910 when, finally, after a forty-yearlong quarrel a legally acceptable result was achieved in Livland.39 Von Tobien’s and Wittram’s examinations extended primarily over provincial reforms and the corresponding discussions of them in the provincial diets at the end of the nineteenth cenury. It is interesting, however, that in modern Latvian and Estonian books on Latvian or Estonian history (for instance, in the basic works of Andrejs Plakans and Toivo Raun), all these controversies among the German representatives of self-government about the reform of taxation and all the hidden battles “for” and “against” do not play any role.40 In these excellent books, the Baltic Germans are masters in defending and serving their own interests and speak more or less with one voice. On the other hand, Wittram did not advert to even one tiny critical article of any member of the Estonian or Latvian national movement when speaking about institutional 37

38

39 40

Ibid., 73. The Citation in German: “… Halten wir doch daran fest: wir sind eine deutsche Ritterschaft. Den Charakter wollen wir dem Lande erhalten und wir wollen sie nicht teilen, diesen Einfluß und diese Führung, mit anderen Ständen.” About A. von Richter: dbbl, 1970/1998, 629. Wittram, 1934, 74. Wittram’s comment: “Bei Richter ist das ständische Prinzip mit dem nationalen bereits völlig verschmolzen. Das Standesinteresse erschien fortan durch die nationale Idee vollkommen gedeckt und—hielt sich näherer Rechenschaft überhoben. Darin lag eine große Versuchung. Man konnte der reformerischen Fragestellung umso leichter aus dem Wege gehen, je mehr die Undurchführbarkeit einer eigenständigen Reform zum Axiom wurde,” in: Wittram, 1934, 73f. Cf. Tobien, 1930, 77–109. Raun, 1991, esp. 59–80; Plakans, 1995, esp. 92–104.

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reforms in an “epoch of reforms,” the phrase in the title of his book on “political quarrels.” There was a silent splitting of historiographies dealing with the same region—Livland—certainly even earlier than 1919. Wittram, being in favour of status-bound and national argumentations simultaneously, once mentioned favorably Atis Kronvalds’s general statement when this exponent of Latvianess forcefully rejected that any educated Latvian should suppress his national feelings because he no longer fit into a “Bauernvolk”.41 As a matter of fact, Wittram admitted that in many discussions among members of Ritterschaft in Livland differences between friends of institutional reforms and of participation rights, on the one side, and their enemies, on the other, did not really count: decisions were usually unanimous with respect to decisions about financial support to the Protestant church, elementary schools, teachers’ seminaries, road problems, and the building of prisons and of lunatic asylums. Conservatives, in Wittram’s view, had a realistic sense of the value of legally secured institutional power, even when it was seeming to fade away in a state like Russia where everything appeared to be uncertain; they had, however, a feeling for the revolutionary changes that were on the horizon; in his view, the emergence of nationalism in the late nineteenth century was a new and positive historical experience of revolutionary dimensions in Europe.42 On the whole, Wittram thought as a political historian, although he had a certain fondness for status-bound responsibilities and a strong distrust of mod­ ernization, mass movements, materialism and likely dangerous consequences of industrialisation and urbanization. Dealing with Kronvaldsʼ little brochure on the “National Aspirations (Nationale Bestrebungen)” of the Latvians, Wittram expressed deep regret that German journalists in Riga such as the liberal Gustav Keuchel (1832–1910)43 did not realize that Latvians were not looking for harmonious reforms but for new fundamental and explosive forms of self-accomplishment. Kronvalds, after all, gave his brochure to Keuchel with a personal dedication that apparently touched Wittram as an historian: “In our circumstances it is not only important to avoid deceiving oneself too often; it is even more important that the other parties concerned are not troubled with vain visions. The author.”44 Keuchel misunderstood Kronvalds completely and, according to Wittram, exhibited a tragic lack of understanding of the welling 41 42 43 44

Wittram, 1934, 105. Wittram, 1934, 77: “…der Nationalismus, die stärkste der neuen geschichtlichen Kräfte, (habe) längst sein revolutionäres Gesicht enthüllt.” About Gustav Keuchel: dbbl, 1970/1998, 371f. Kronvald’s statement in German: “In unseren Verhältnissen kommt es nicht allein darauf an, sich selbst möglichst wenig zu täuschen; sondern noch mehr darauf, daß wir die

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up of a new Volksgeist—the new spirit of the Latvian people. But if a liberal like Keuchel failed in the sense that Wittram said, one cannot see from the present point of view how the suggestions and answers of the conservatives could have contributed to any solution of the regional problems of Russia’s Baltic provinces. According to Wittram, ethnic differences had had a tragic impact on Baltic history from the very beginning. In his view, nationalism had become a basic new element of history and had reached its peak in the 1930s starting from local beginnings in the 1860s. The Baltic Germans as well as the Estonians and Latvians were adhering to nationalism, especially after 1914. Apparently, there was no other way left, in Wittram’s view, but political confrontation. Proceeding on the basis of a new ideology for the Baltic German younger generation—one based on faithfulness and solidarity among fellow Germans (a “heimattreue Gesinnungsgemeinschaft”) engaged against “the system,” i.e. the Baltic German supporters of the “patient minority” role, such as Paul Schiemann (1876– 1944)—a grouping of young Baltic German nationalists in Riga, including Wittram, opposed any adjustment to the Latvian national state and finally became supporters of National Socialism.45

iii

A special place in explicating Baltic German historical writing should go to Reinhard Wittram’s Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen (History of the Baltic Germans), which was finished in August 1938 and published in 1939 by Kohlhammer in Stuttgart, signifying that it was aimed particularly at the Reich German readers. This book is full of allusions to the the turn of the tide brought about since 1933 by National Socialism: “Great times have forced on us new experiences and approaches and have intensified the challenges for any single person. In the long run, nothing will last that is not true, deeply rooted in our hearts and firmly established in our souls,” Wittram wrote in the introduction.46 This is pure propaganda and conveys an attitude of almost religious submission. On the whole, however, the book rests on the solid research of many generations of Baltic German historians.

45 46

Mitbetheiligten mit eitlen Truggestalten verschonen, der Autor”, in: Wittram, 1934, 104, note. 3. About P. Schiemann: dbbl, 1970/1998, 676. Cf. Pistohlkors, 2008a, 151–208; Garleff (ed.), 2008, 2 vols, passim. Wittram, 1939, v.

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Many of the Baltic German contributions to historiography during the late 1930s and early 1940s have already been discussed at the Oldenburg Symposium of 1992.47 There is no doubt that Wittram’s 1936 “turn to Volksgeschichte” is closely connected with Baltic German political revival— the Erneuerungsbewegung—and with the adjustment to National Socialism in the younger generation, especially after the transfer (Umsiedlung) of Baltic Germans primarily into the district of Poznań/Posen between 1939 and 1945. Apart from some well-researched medieval studies, mostly by Leonid Arbusow (1882–1951) and Paul Johansen (1901–1965), and studies by Helene Dopkewitsch (1904–1979) on Latvia in 1918, Georg von Rauch on The Swedish University in Tartu/Dorpat in 1943 and some studies and doctoral dissertations, such as those by Heinrich Schaudinn and Jürgen von Hehn that originated from the seminar of Hans Rothfels (1891–1976) in Königsberg in the 1930s, the books published during much of this period lack research or rest on old findings.48 Some brochures were even mere propaganda, including Wittram’s 1941 Livland. Schicksal und Erbe der baltischen Deutschen (Livland. Fate and Heritage of the Baltic Germans), which was reprinted in an enlarged version in 1943.49 Wittram was a master of introductions loaded with pathos. This time he wrote sentences of the Nazi sort: We are nothing, the nation is everything. What is not helpful in the life struggle of Germany may disappear. What can serve the German goals will prove true. That we as a group were asked to be part of German Ostarbeit [the “German task” to penetrate and conquer the European East—G.v.P.] is for us a matter of pure happiness. We have never lifted up our eyes to the German flag, the flag of the Führer with more emotion than at the hour when the ship weighed anchor, the German national anthems were played and the shores of our homeland vanished behind us. Nobody will be ashamed of the fact that we felt joy and grief at the same time.50 Another 1943 book, consisting of articles about Deutsche Männer des baltischen Ostens (German Men of the Baltic East) is no less full of disgraceful propaganda, Wolter von Plettenberg in the sixteenth century being portrayed as the 47 48 49 50

See Pistohlkors, 1995, and the articles of Michael Garleff in the same volume. Cf. Dopkewitsch, 1936; Rauch, 1943; Schaudinn, 1937; Hehn, 1938; and others. Wittram, 1941/1943, passim. Ibid., 9.

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first Führer during a “time of German greatness and strength in the Baltic region.”51

iv

Interestingly, Wittram and most of his fellow Baltic German historians put forward completely different answers after 1945. In 1954 Wittram published his sequence of articles on nationalism in a volume called Das Nationale als europäisches Problem (Nationalism and Nation States as a Problem of European History).52 In his view, three major entities of the past had come to a definite end in the flow of history: the status-bound structure of Central and Eastern Europe, excluding Russia (die Ständewelt), monarchism of the Eastern type (the Ostmächte before 1914: the Habsburg Monarchy, the German-Prussian Kaiserreich, and Russian autocracy) and, finally, the nation state (der Nationalstaat).53 He and many other Baltic German historians had never believed in the strength and dignity of small nation states like Eesti and Latvija. Now, he felt that the nationalism of nation states, especially in Germany, and national ideologies had ruined his generation. Nationalism had spoilt notions like Volk, Reich, and Nation. He admitted that it had taken him some time to learn that all these notions had had a beginning in past time and lacked clarity. The notion of Baltic Germans outside the Reich and within the Baltic provinces serving as a “defensive front” (Vormauerstellung der Deutschen in den baltischen Provinzen) served for him as a good example. In 1954 Wittram tried to explain this notion of a “front” position (Vormauerstellung) by observing that there was some truth in it.54 But this concept, based on status, in an age of rising nationalism had turned into an everlasting ideology of cultural supremacy and of a battle on behalf of a just cause, aimed against Russia as an emerging nation state and as a future centre of Bolshevism; in Wittram’s view this interpretation had become absolute and had hampered any chance of realizing how limited the strength of such explanations was. Werner Conze (1910– 1986), another of the founders of the Baltische Historische Kommission in Göttingen in 1951, offered a negative answer to the question of whether the Baltic Germans might have a chance of ever regaining their homes in the Baltic after the Second World War. According to Conze, their position in 51 52 53 54

Taube (ed.), 1943, 34. Wittram, 1954, passim, esp. 33–50, 51–75. Pistohlkors, 2001, 374–393. Cf. Wittram, 1954; Neitmann, 1998; Pistohlkors, 1992.

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the Baltic area had belonged mainly to a status-bound order that was gone for ever. Conze consequently did not even believe in a revival of a legally recognized minority position for Baltic Germans in the Baltic area after they had left their homelands and Germany had lost the war. Finally, Arved von Taube had no difficulty admitting that Baltic German historiography since 1919 (and earlier) had basically been apologetic, and he complained that mainly Baltic Germans had been responsible for the negative image the Baltic nation states had had to struggle against in Germany after 1919. How far can it be traced back to our attitudes that the Reich Germans had such poor knowledge about the Baltic people? Germans were not really conscious of the existence of Baltic states, and that Hitler had sacrificed them to Russia was hardly noticed in Germany, and was not condemned at all. Shouldn’t we reexamine our position during the interwar period and admit that these Baltic states had been able to achieve quite a lot during the short period of their independence?55 The Baltic German historians of that generation did not want to be involved in daily politics any more. They were not prepared to cooperate institutionally with Landsmannschaften, the leading political groups of refugees from the European East, but instead joined the Herder-Forschungsrat in Marburg in 1950, seeing this step as a scientific enterprise. There they met many old “comrades” but kept their distance from the political institutions of the recently founded Bundesrepublik Deutschland.56 After 1945, there have been three generations of Baltic historians in Germany between September 1947 (the first meeting in Göttingen) and June 2012 when the Baltische Historische Kommission (bhk) celebrated its 65th anniversary, also in Göttingen. Twenty-seven of the twenty-nine founders of bhk (8 September, 1951) were Baltic Germans. The two others—Werner Conze, a student of Hans Rothfels in Königsberg; and the leading archivist in Marburg, Kurt Dülfer (1908–1973)—had been close friends of members of Baltic German 55

56

Taube, 1952, 8. Citation in German: “Inwieweit ist es auf unser Verhalten zurückzuführen, daß man auch heute noch in Deutschland von den baltischen Völkern verhältnismäßig wenig weiß? Die Tatsache, daß es selbständige baltische Staaten gegeben hat, ist nur in sehr geringem Maße in das politische Bewußtsein des deutschen Volkes eingegangen; die Preisgabe dieser Staaten an Rußland durch Hitler ist in Deutschland kaum bemerkt, geschweige denn verurteilt worden. Wäre nicht auch hier eine Überprüfung zeitbedingter Anschauungen am Platz, besonders hinsichtlich der Beurteilung der Leistungen der baltischen Völker in der kurzen Zeitspanne ihrer staatlichen Selbständigkeit?” Hackmann, 1996. See also Mühle, 2005, passim.

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learned societies in Riga and Tallinn since the 1930s. There are persuasive descriptions of the difficult times at the beginning because of the shortage of financial resources after a lost war.57 Only a few leading persons had found positions in West German universities: Paul Johansen, Georg von Rauch, Manfred Hellmann (1912–1992), Hans von Rimscha (1899–1987) and Reinhard Wittram. Others started careers as badly-paid teachers or archivists. Without doubt, almost all of them had not belonged to or sympathized with the German resistance movement during their period of resettlement in the Warthegau between 1939/1940 and 1945. The first generation, however, introduced vital impulses into Baltic German historiography. Some of them, such as Erik Amburger (1907–2001), Georg von Krusenstjern (1899–1989), and others, had collected and preserved private materials that could be used for publishing fundamental historical compendia that are in use almost daily even in Tartu or Riga. Good examples are: Deutschbaltisches biographisches Lexikon, edited by Wilhelm Lenz sen. (1906– 1976), published in 1970, and reprinted in 1998; Baltisches Historisches Ortslexikon in two volumes, prepared by Gertrud Westermann (1906–1995), Hans Feldmann (1911–1994) and others, and edited and introduced by Heinz von zur Mühlen (1914–2005) (Estland und Nordlivland [1985], Südlivland und Kurland [1990]).58 Wilhelm Lenz sen. and others also edited a compendium entitled Die evangelischen Prediger Livlands bis 1918 (The Lutheran pastors in Livland till 1918) (that is, from the Reformation until 1937—G.v.P.).59 First-generation members of the bhk published several books that played an important role in the young Federal Republic of Germany, on subjects ranging from the very beginnings of Baltic history until the end of World War ii. All Baltic historians had to enlarge their fields of study and endeavor to become historians of Eastern Europe because nobody could make a living in West Germany solely on the basis of being a narrow Baltic history specialist. Two examples may be enough for the time being: in 1956, Albert Bauer finished editing the Chronicon of Heinrich von Lettland, after the unexpected death of Leonid Arbusow in 1951,60 and Georg von Rauch published his famous Geschichte des bolschewistischen Rußland in 1955.61 In addition, members of Baltische Historische Kommission made efforts to overcome the isolation that had been characteristic of their situation in Eesti 57 58 59 60 61

Cf. Wittram, 1972; Neitmann, 1998. Mühlen (ed.), 1985 and 1990. Published in Köln, Wien: Böhlau 1977. Bauer, 1959. Rauch, 1955, passim.

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and Latvija, when no Baltic German historians were invited to actively participate in the historians’ congresses convened by the titular nations in Riga or Tartu in the 1920s and 1930s.62 The first Latvian representative of exile historians presenting a paper to the Baltisches Historikertreffen, the annual meeting of Baltic historians in Göttingen, was Georg Vīgrābs (1881–1958) in 1956.63 He gave a paper on “Foreign Policy of the Baltic States in Spring and Summer of 1939” which later was published in the well-known German periodical Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte.64 One year later a paper by Arnold Soom (1900–1977) on “Problems of Baltic Trade History in the Seventeenth Century” was read in German by Otto A. Webermann (1915–1971), an Estonian scholar residing in Göttingen.65 Two members of the Estonian exile—Otto A. Webermann and the former provost of East Harju and emigrant pastor in Sweden, Jakob Aunver (1891–1978), participated in a collection of articles published in Göttingen in 1956 on church history: Baltische Kirchengeschichte, edited by Reinhard Wittram.66 Other members of the Latvian and Estonian exile participated in an ambitious publication (in two volumes) entitled Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten (From the Baltic Provinces to the Baltic States) dealing with the decisive events between 1917 and 1920.67 Georg von Rauch, the second chairman of bhk (1973–1979) after Wittram’s death on April 16th, 1973, inspired a major collection of articles (mentioned above): Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung (History of Baltic German Historiography) devoted to German historiography in the Baltic region dealing with the time period between the medieval chronicles and the year of publication of the book, 1986. The authors were fifteen members of bhk.68 With respect to the intersection of nationalism and methodological problems of historical writing, Wittram was again right at the centre of the discussions. He observed that: We had to begin anew, being aware of our critical situation, of the fact that there existed no chance of ever going home again. We admitted that we were cut off from our tradition (Erfahrung des Traditionsbruchs), that 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Cf. Hehn, 1986; Mühlen, 1986. Cf. Kaegbein and Lenz (eds.), 1997, 40. Vīgrābs, 1959. Kaegbein and Lenz (eds.), 1997, 41. Wittram (ed.), 1956. Hehn et al. (eds.), 1971 and 1977. Rauch et al. (eds.), 1986, passim.

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we had to do battle with a group that also used historical evidence and was with us in the same field of study (Soviet Marxists). All these aspects contributed to the fact that we could not just continue where we had left off in 1945, or 1939, or continue in the spirit of the early thirties before 1933 as many of our Reich German colleagues did.69 The second generation—scholars such as Norbert Angermann (b. 1936), Heinrich Bosse (1937), Otto Heinrich Elias (1932), Dirk Erpenbeck (1940), Gottfried Etzold (1936), Gustav Gangnus (1939), Klaus Garber (1937), Michael Garleff (1940), Hans Graubner (1936), Manfred Hagen (1934), Elisabeth HarderGersdorff (1932–2005), Stefan Hartmann (1943), Bernhart Jähnig (1941), Wilhelm Lenz jun. (1939), Klaus Militzer (1940), Hubertus Neuschäffer (1944), Erwin Oberländer (1937), Gert von Pistohlkors (1935, Chairman of bhk, 1979–2007), Hain Rebas (1943), Rex Rexheuser (1933), Alfred Schönfeldt (1935), Robert Schweitzer (1947), Jürgen Baron Ungern-Sternberg (1940), Hans-Erich Volkmann (1938), Henning von Wistinghausen (1936), Heinrich Wittram (1931), Seppo Zetterberg (1945)—became historians of the Baltic area largely through attending courses taught by their colleagues of the first generation. This second generation, with some exceptions, was hampered by being cut off from primary sources, especially if they were working for doctoral degrees in West Germany. Among them, as a matter of course, a command of Estonian or Latvian was poor or non-existent. Many of them wrote dissertations on the history of Reval/ Tallinn, using the primary sources that were partially in Low German; these sources were located in Göttingen between 1953 and 1978 and later on in Koblenz, before they were returned to Tallinn in 1991.70 This generation was not rebellious but studied Baltic German history mainly because it had no access to Estonian and Latvian sources in Soviet archives. Neither did its members, including the present writer, exhibit particular nationalistic pride or sentiments of superiority. It took some time to catch up with the older generation’s huge lead of knowledge about the northeastern region of Europe. High points involved three successful “Marburg Symposia” at the Herder-Institute, orga69

70

Wittram, 1972. Citation in German: “Die Existenzkrise, die endgültige Trennung von jeder Rückkehrhoffnung, die Erfahrung des Traditionsbruchs, der Zwang zu einer Auseinandersetzung mit einem Wahrheitsanspruch anderen Ursprungs auf demselben Arbeitsfeld haben jene Unbefangenheit verloren gehen lassen, die es uns erlaubt hätte, einfach fortzufahren, wo wir aufgehört hatten, vor 1945, oder vor 1939, oder dort anzuknüpfen, wo viele Fachgenossen in Deutschland die Kontinuität abgebrochen sahen, vor 1933.” Cf. Lenz, 1980; Lenz, 1997; Lenz, 2009.

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nized together with leading members of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, (aabs) in 1979, 1981 and 1985; in addition, there was the Oldenburg Symposium of 1992. Contacts were established with colleagues in Soviet Estonia and Latvia starting in 1981, so that after the great changes of 1991, many members of the second generation of Baltic German scholars were regarded there as old colleagues. The conflicts in the varying interpretations of Baltic history during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century can be studied in two articles with almost identical topics: Reinhard Wittram, Methodologische und geschichtstheoretische Überlegungen zu Problemen der baltischen Geschichtsforschung (Methodological and Theoretical Considerations Regarding Problems of Baltic Historical Research),71 and Gert von Pistohlkors, Führende Schicht oder nationale Minderheit? Die Revolution von 1905/06 und die Kennzeichnung der politischen Situation der deutschen Balten zwischen 1840 und 1906 in der zeitgenössischen deutsch-baltischen Geschichtsschreibung (Leading Social Class or National Minority? The Revolution of 1905/06 and Interpretations of the Political Situation of Baltic Germans between 1840 and 1906 in Recent Baltic German Historical Writings).72 Wittram still believed in the reform policy of the German upper classes around 1905; Pistohlkors, however, using almost the same sources with some important additional findings, arrived at an opposite conclusion. In his view, the Baltic Germans depended entirely on the tsar’s military forces and had lost all support and its political future as a leading political group in the region. Another major project, organized by von Pistohlkors, Heinz von zur Mühlen and Michael Garleff was the 1994 volume Baltische Länder (Baltic Countries) (republished in 2002), the third of the tenvolume German History in Eastern Europe.73 Only a few names of the third generation of German historians of the Baltic region, who are also members of bhk, can be mentioned here: Karsten Brüggemann (1965), David Feest (1969), Jörg Hackmann (1962), Cornelius Hasselblatt (1960), Dieter Heckmann (1955), Detlef Henning (1959), Jörg Heyde (1965), Ulrike von Hirschhausen (1964), Martin Klöker (1966), Jan Kusber (1965), Yvonne Luven (1960), Konrad Maier (1958–2013), Olaf Mertelsmann (1969), Klaus Neitmann (1954), Sonja Neitmann (1959), Gertrud Pickhan (1956), Alfred Ritscher (1956), Joachim Tauber (1958), Matthias Thumser (1953; chairman of bhk since 2007), Ralph Tuchtenhagen (1961), and Peter Wörster (1950). These researchers have taken full advantage of the new opportunities since 1991. 71 72 73

Wittram, 1971. Pistohlkors, 1972. Pistohlkors, 1994, passim.

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Almost none of them have personal or kin ties to the Baltic region, but became interested in Baltic history as students or tourists. Some of them have lived in Riga, Tallinn, Tartu or even Narva for years. They read and speak Estonian, and/ or Latvian or Lithuanian (or even all three languages) and are also fluent in Russian and /or Polish and/or Swedish. Some have objected strongly to the “Baltic German perspective” of the first generation and are leery even of the second generation for the same reason. Thus, Jürgen von Hehn’s important 1982 book on Baltic German “resettlement,”74 on the one hand, and the article by David Feest entitled Abgrenzung oder Assimilation. Überlegungen zum Wandel der deutschbaltischen Ideologien anhand der “Baltischen Monatsschrift” (Demarcation or Assimilation. Considerations Regarding the Change in Baltic German Ideologies within “Baltische Monatsschrift”),75 on the other, arrive at different conclusions about the situation of the Baltic German minorities in Eesti and Latvija. Jürgen von Hehn described his impression that the future of Baltic Germans in the Baltic after 1939 would have been doubtful at any rate even if peace had lasted. Different aspects of regionalism in the Baltic area have been discussed, not without controversy, by Gert von Pistohlkors, Jörg Hackmann and Hain Rebas.76 Karsten Brüggemann, professor at Tallinn University and one of the younger board members of bhk, offered in 2008 a critical comment in Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte (Research on Baltic History), the new yearbook from Estonia: “Recent German research on Baltic history is freed from perspectives of the small number of Baltic Germans and their dominating role in the region.”77 In the view of the present writer, for such an observation to have meaning, it needs to be put in the context of proper alternative concepts. The colonial presence of Germans in Livland, the Marienland of the thirtenth century, and the consequences of the conquest of the Baltic area cannot be removed from the centre of historical interest. Every single intellectual movement in the Baltic was influenced by ties between the Reich Germans and Baltic Germans and by German participation: Catholicism, Protestantism, Pietism, rationalism, conservatism, liberalism; even socialism—the history of working-class people—was in the beginning introduced by Germans—such as Karl Kautsky (1854–1938). These movements were in the centre of Baltic history and cannot be marginalized. But Baltic German historians of the second generation also must admit—all of the Baltic Germans among them being 74 75 76 77

Hehn, 1982, esp. 59–74. Feest, 1996. Pistohlkors, 1987; Hackmann, 2001; Rebas, 1998. Brüggermann, 2008, 243 (my translation).

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about one to ten years of age when they left their homeland—that they must look at Baltic history from the western perspective just as any other German expert interested in the history of northeastern Europe. References Bauer, A. (ed.) (1959). Heinrich von Lettland. Livländische Chronik. Neu übersetzt. (Freiherr vom Stein Gedächtnisausgabe; xxiv.) Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Brüggemann, K. (2008). “Russland und das Baltikum. Bestandsaufnahmen eines komplexen Verhältnisses im Nordosten Europas. 60. Baltisches Historikertreffen der Baltischen Historischen Kommission (Göttingen, 2./3. Juni 2007).” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 3, 243–249. Campenhausen, A. Freiherr von (2006). “Orellen und die Familie von Campenhausen. Aus der Geschichte einer livländischen Familie.” Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums liii, 59–111. Conze, W. (1952). “Kann es heute noch eine lebendige Geschichte des Deutschtums in Ostmitteleuropa geben?” Baltische Briefe 5, 46/47, 8/9, 8. dbbl (1970/1998). Lenz, W. sen. et al. (eds.), Deutschbaltisches Biographisches Lexikon 1710–1960. Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag 1970, Reprint Wedemark: von Hirschheydt 1998. Dopkewitsch, H. (1936). Die Entwicklung des lettländischen Staatsgedankens bis 1918. (Volkstheoretische Abhandlungen 3). Berlin. Feest, D. (1996). “Abgrenzung oder Assimilation. Überlegungen zum Wandel der deutschbaltischen Ideologien 1918–1939 anhand der ʽBaltischen Monatsschriftʼ.” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 45, 506–543. Garleff, M. (ed.) (2008). Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, 2 vols. (Das Baltikum in Geschichte und Gegenwart; i 1/2). Köln, Weimar, Wien. Hackmann, J. (1996). “An einem neuen Anfang der Ostforschung. Bruch und Kontinuität in der ostdeutschen Landeshistoriographie.” Westfälische Forschungen 46, 232–258. Hackmann, J. (2001), “Ethnos oder Region? Probleme der baltischen Historiographie im 20. Jahrhundert”, in: Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 50, 531–556. Hehn, J. von (1938). Die lettisch-literärische Gesellschaft und das Lettentum. (Schriften der Albertus-Universität. Geisteswiss. Reihe 21). Königsberg, Berlin: Osteuropa Verlag. Hehn, J. von et al. (eds.) (1971 and 1977). Von den baltischen Provinzen zu den baltischen Staaten, 2 vols. i. 1917–1918; ii. 1918–1920. Marburg/Lahn: Herder-Institut. Hehn, J. von (1982). Die Umsiedlung der baltischen Deutschen—das letzte Kapitel baltisch-deutscher Geschichte. (Marburger Ostforschungen; 40). Marburg/Lahn: Herder-Institut.

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Hehn, J. von (1986). “Die deutschbaltische Geschichtsschreibung in Lettland 1918–1939/45” in G. von Rauch et al. (eds.), Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. (Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart; 20). Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 371–398. Jürjo, I. (1995). “Die Versammlung deutscher Historiker in Reval/Tallinn am 10. u. 11. April 1933—Ergebnisse und Wirkungen” in: M. Garleff (ed.), Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiss. Oldenburger Symposium: Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre. (Schriften des Bundesinstituts für ostdeutsche Kultur und Geschichte; 8). München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 171–183. The unpublished document of A. Freiherr von Taube is to be found in: Eesti Ajaloomuuseum 135, 1, no. 148. Kaegbein, P. and W. Lenz jun. (eds.) (1997). Fünfzig Jahre baltische Geschichtsforschung 1947–1996. (Die Baltische Historische Kommission und die Baltischen Historikertreffen in Göttingen. Veröffentlichungen, Vorträge, Mitglieder.) Köln: Mare Balticum. Lenz, W. jun. (1980). “Das Revaler Stadtarchiv. Bemerkungen zu seiner Geschichte, seinen Archivaren und seinen Beständen” in J. von Hehn and C.J. Kenéz, Reval und die baltischen Länder. Festschrift für Hellmuth Weiss zum 80. Geburtstag. Marburg/ Lahn: Herder-Institut, 233–242. Lenz, W. jun. (1997). “Die Verlagerung des Revaler Stadtarchivs im Rahmen des ‘Archivschutzesʼ während des Zweiten Weltkriegs” in N. Angermann and W. Lenz jun. (eds.), Handel und Wandel in Reval vom 13. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. (Schriften der Baltischen Historischen Kommission; 8). Lüneburg: Verlag Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 397–443. Lenz, W. jun. (2009). “Grasleben, Goslar, Göttingen, Koblenz—Stationen der ausgelagerten Bestände des Revaler Stadtarchivs (1944–1990).” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 4, 259–267. Mühle, E. (2005). „Für Volk und deutschen Osten”. Der Historiker Hermann Aubin und die deutsche Ostforschung. (Schriften des Bundersarchivs; 5). Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag. Mühlen, H. von zur (ed.) (1985 and 1990). Baltisches Historisches Ortslexikon, 2 vols., I Estland und Nordlivland, ed. by G. Westermann. ii. Südlivland and Kurland, ed. by H. Feldmann and H. von zur Mühlen. (Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte; 8 i/ii). Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag. Mühlen, H. von zur (1986). “Die deutschbaltische Geschichtsforschung 1918–1939/45 in Estland” in G. von Rauch et al. (eds.), Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. (Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart; 20). Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 339–369. Neitmann, K. (1998). “Reinhard Wittram und der Wiederbeginn der baltischen historischen Studien in Göttingen nach 1945.” Nordost-Archiv nf 7, no. 1, 11–32. Pistohlkors, G. von (1972). “Führende Schicht oder nationale Minderheit? Die Revolution von 1905/06 und die Kennzeichnung der politischen Situation der

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deutschen Balten zwischen 1840 und 1906 in der zeitgenössischen deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung.” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 21, 601–618. Pistohlkors, G. von (1987). “Regionalism as a Concept of Baltic History.” Journal of Baltic Studies 18, 125–132. Pistohlkors, G. von (1992). “Die Stellung der Deutschen in der Geschichte der Esten, Letten und Litauer.” Nordost-Archiv nf 1, no. 1, 89–122. Pistohlkors, G. von (ed.) (1994). Baltische Länder. (Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas). Contributions by H.von zur Mühlen, M. Garleff and G. von Pistohlkors. Berlin: Siedler. 2nd. ed. 2002. Pistohlkors, G. von (1995). “Ethnos und Geschichtsschreibung der dreißiger und ­vierziger Jahre in Deutschland und Ostmitteleuropa. Einführende Bemerkungen” in M. Garleff (ed.), Zwischen Konfrontation und Kompromiss. Oldenburger Symposium: Interethnische Beziehungen in Ostmitteleuropa als historiographisches Problem der 1930er/1940er Jahre. (Schriften des Bundesinstituts für ostdeutsche Kultur und Geschichte; 8). München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 11–24. Pistohlkors, G. von (2001). “Gedachte Gemeinschaften. Nationalismus und historische Erinnerung” in K. Brüggemann et al (eds.), Kollektivität und Individualität. Der Mensch im östlichen Europa. Festschrift für Norbert Angermann zum 65. Geburtstag. (Studien zur Geschichtsforschung der Neuzeit; 23). Hamburg: Dr. Kovac, 374–393. Pistohlkors, G. von (2007). “Sechzig Jahre Baltische Historikertreffen in Göttingen. Rückblick und Bericht des aussscheidenden Ersten Vorsitzenden der Baltischen Historischen Kommission e.V. (bhk), Göttingen vom 2. Juni 2007.” Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums lv, 2008, 33–52. Pistohlkors, G. von (2008a). “Die ʽBaltenschuleʼ und das ʽOstsee-Internat Dünenschloßʼ in Misdroy/Pommern 1919–1945. Zielgruppe und Zentrum einer ʽheimattreuen Gesinnungsgemeinschaftʼ” in M. Garleff (ed.), Deutschbalten, Weimarer Republik und Drittes Reich, vol. 2. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 151–208. Pistohlkors, G. von (2008b). “Baltische Regionalgeschichte in universalhistorischer Perspektive. Sechzig Jahre Baltische Historikertreffen.” Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 3, 11–32. Pistohlkors, G. von (2009). “Baltische Geschichtsforschung in drei Generationen. Rückblick auf die Baltischen Historikertreffen in Göttingen seit 1947 und die Arbeit der Baltischen Historischen Kommission.” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel-und Ostdeutschlands 55, 243–268. Pistohlkors, G. von (2010). “Pölvkonnad baltisaksa ajalookirjutuses aastail 1919–2009” [Generations in Baltic German Historical Writing, 1919–2009], translated by J. Undusk, in: tuna, no. 2, 34–47. Pistohlkors, G. von (2012). “Reinhard Wittram in Riga 1925–1939.” Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums lx, 2013, 22–55.

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Plakans, A. (1995). The Latvians. A Short History. (Studies in Nationalities). Stanford University: Hoover Institution Press. Rauch, G. von (1943). Die Universität Dorpat und das Eindringen der frühen Aufklärung in Livland 1690–1710. (Schriftenreihe Schweden und Nordeuropa; 5). Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt. Reprint: Hildesheim, New York: Olms 1969. Rauch, G. von (1955). Geschichte des bolschewistischen Rußland. Wiesbaden: Rheinische Verlagsanstalt. Later editions under the title: Geschichte der Sowjetunion. Rauch, G. von (1986). “Die deutschbaltische Geschichtsschreibung nach 1945” in G. von Rauch et al. (eds.), Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. (Ostmit­ teleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart; 20). Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 399–435. Rauch, G. von et al. (eds.) (1986). Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag. Raun, T.U. (1991). Estonia and the Estonians. (Studies of Nationalities in the ussr Series). Stanford University: Hoover Institution Press. 2nd. ed. Rebas, H. (1998). “Barriers to Baltic Cooperation. Opportunities for Surmounting Them” in T. Jundzis (ed.), The Baltic States at Historical Crossroads. Festschrift for Dietrich André Loeber. Riga: Academy of Sciences, 319–335. Schaudinn, H. (1937). Deutsche Bildungsarbeit am lettischen Volkstum des 18. Jahrhunderts. München: Ernst Reinhardt. Stackelberg, W. von (2012). Worms wurde auf der Trommel gewonnen. Die Gutsherrschaft Magnushof auf der Insel Worms/Estland. Weißenhorn: Anton H. Konrad Verlag. Taube, A. Freiherr von (1933). Die Bestrebungen zur Refom der Landesverfassung im Sinne einer Heranziehung des bäuerlichen Elements zur Selbstverwaltung auf dem estländischen Landtage in der 2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Reval/Tallinn 10. April. Unprinted minutes and paper, 32–57. Taube, A. Freiherr von (1936). Landespolitik und Volkwerdung. Betrachtungen zur Entwicklung der nationalen Frage in der Geschichte Estlands. Tallinn: Wassermann. Taube, A. Freiherr von (ed.) (1943). Deutsche Männer des baltischen Ostens, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prag, Wien: Verlag Volk und Reich. Taube, A. Freiherr von (1952). “Vom Sinn der Beschäftigung mit baltischer Geschichte in heutiger Zeit.” Baltische Briefe 5, 46/47, 8/9, 8. Thaden, Edward C. (ed.) (1981). Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855– 1914. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton up. [Contributions of E.C. Thaden, M. Haltzel, A. Plakans, T.U. Raun, and L. Lundin about the Russian Government, the Baltic Germans, the Latvians, the Estonians, and Finland.] Tobien, A. von (1899/1911). Die Agrargesetzgebung Livlands im 19. Jahrhundert, 2 vols., i. Berlin: Puttkammer&Mühlbrecht; ii. Riga: Löffler. Tobien, A. von (1925/1930). Die Livländische Ritterschaft in ihrem Verhältnis zum Zarismus und russischen Nationalismus. 2 vols., i. Riga: Löffler; ii. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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Vasar, J. (1930/1931). Die grosse livländische Güterreduktion: die Entstehung des Konflikts zwischen Karl xi. und der livländischen Ritter- und Landschaft 1678–1684, 2 vols. (Eesti Vabariigi Tartu Ülikooli toimetused: B, Humaniora; 20,2; 22,2). Tartu (Dorpat). Vīgrābs, G. (1959). “Die Stellungnahme der Westmächte und Deutschlands zu den baltischen Staaten im Frühling und Sommer 1939.” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 7, no. 3, 261–279. Wittram, R. (1934). Meinungskämpfe im baltischen Deutschtum während der Reformepoche des 19. Jahrhunderts. (Festschrift der Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Alterumskunde zu Riga zu ihrer Jahrhundertfeier am 6. Dezember 1934). Riga: Bruhns. Wittram, R. (1936). “Die Wendung zur Volksgeschichte” in Volkstum und Forschung. Festschrift für Wilhelm Klumberg. Riga: Ernst Plates, 94–99. Also in Baltische Monatshefte, 1936, 566–571. Wittram, R. (1939). Geschichte der baltischen Deutschen. Grundzüge und Durchblicke. Stuttgart and Berlin: Kohlhammer. Wittram, R. (1941/1943). Livland. Schicksal und Erbe der baltischen Deutschen. Berlin, Amsterdam, Prag, Wien: Verlag Volk und Reich. 2. nd. enlarged ed. 1943 Wittram, R. (1952). “Geschichtswissenschaft und geschichtliche Wahrheit.” Baltische Briefe 5, no. 46/47, 8/9, 7. Wittram, R. (1954). Das Nationale als europäisches Problem. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalitätsprinzips vornehmlich im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R. (ed.) (1956). Baltische Kirchengeschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Wittram, R. (1971). “Methodologische und geschichtstheoretische Überlegungen zu Problemen der baltischen Geschichtsforschung.” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 20, 601–640. Wittram, R. (1972). Der Wiederbeginn der baltischen historschen Studien nach 1945. Unpublished manuscript. Wrangell, W. Baron von (1967). Die Estländische Ritterschaft, ihre Ritterschaftshauptmänner und Landräte. Geschichtlicher Teil. 1–168. Limburg/Lahn: Starke.

History Writing in Exile and in the Homeland after World War ii: Some Comparative Aspects Jaan Undusk 1

‘Being Displaced’ as a Factor of Historical Consciousness

In every exile, at a certain point of time, historical consciousness gains in importance. It is at first due to the spatial factors, which then bring about the analysis of causal connections expressed in time—the sense of history. This is, above all, the new physical and cultural space into which the refugee has been placed, and it needs to be interpreted. To go into exile means in simple language, to change places involuntarily, to become displaced. Therefore, to be exiled equals to be drawn into a complicated play of places (physical and cultural spaces) in several senses. Prose fiction and poetry written in exile provide a good example of the fact that the theme of exile itself, of ‘being displaced,’ becomes exuberantly represented: we are the cast-outs from our original space, and, quite often—the outcast in strange new surroundings. As Joseph P. Strelka has put it: “The most important topos of a literature in exile which is more or less directly connected to all other topoi, is the topos of exile itself.”1 This very special spatial condition of an exile writer, that is, physical involuntary displacement, changes to reflect the passage of time, as well as triggering questions of historical causality. Why are we here, why did not we stay there? How long do we stay here? What shall we do here tomorrow? And so on. In the homeland these questions do not burn so brightly, but in exile they are vital for even everyday activities. Historical reflection becomes compulsive. A displaced person must situate himself anew, and this goes on through history, involving old times. Because the old places are lost, the new are not found yet. There are no ‘places of memory’ the refugee could lean on. Yet the old times are present in memory; they form the only permanent basis for personal orientation. The orientation cannot be spatial in a situation of displacement, especially for the older generation, it must rely on history. Every kind of time-based telling, therefore, becomes vital for an exiled writing. This begins with belletristic works, then come an uninterrupted flow of memoirs, histories, and history writing as well. Subjective temporality makes

1 Strelka, 1983, 52.

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its way towards historiography, that is, more objective temporality. This does not begin at once. First there is political polemic, then comes history. Of course, literature in the homeland as well, particularly in its more philosophical, say existentialist, strain, can take as its theme these general spatial and temporal conditions, e.g. human life as an eternal exile on earth, or in this particular society (why are we here, in this land? who are we here?). Yet for the most part these basics are taken for granted: it is normal that we are here, this is our country, Estonia, for example. The spatial factor itself is not an immediate problem in the homeland. In exile, this theme of ‘ontological topography’ is not only a mark of a highbrow literature, but becomes almost a commonplace, a starting point for telling stories. Being displaced is an everyday reality. Even so, the first and foremost examples of a highbrow interpretation of the ‘displacement of a human being’ in Estonian literature were published in exile: I mean the novels such as All souls’ night (‘Hingede öö’, 1953) by Karl Ristikivi or In no man’s land (‘Eikellegi maal’, 1963) by Ilmar Jaks, both of them written and published in Sweden. In Lithuanian literature, the same happened: the first truly existentialist novel, i.e. a novel whose protagonist is totally and irrecoverably displaced, Antanas Škėma’s The White Shroud (‘Balta drobulė’, 1958), was written in the usa and published in London.2 There remains the problem of the so-called ‘inner exile’. By the way, this notion (innere Emigration in German) was coined by Frank Thiess, an author of Baltic German origin born in Riga, to denote persons who did not left Nazi Germany but were resistant to the regime mentally.3 It is said sometimes that during Soviet rule, all Estonians were politically exiled in their own land. This thought is perhaps surprising nowadays, but the feeling of inner political exile is most intensively present in some novels and plays of the late 1950s, on the still narrow political playground of the first period of ‘Khrushchev’s thaw’, e.g. in the novel by Rudolf Sirge The land and the people (‘Maa ja rahvas’, 1956) depicting the Soviet land reform of 1940 and the deportations of 1941.4 Some politically most vigorous examples of Soviet Russian prose (by V. Nekrasov, A. Solzhenitsyn, etc.) appeared in the same period also. Later, at the end of the 1970s and at the beginning of the 1980s, the motif of inner exile (or the 2 See also Šilbajoris, 2002, 155. 3 Moritz, 2006; Schnell, 2007. 4 A particularly apt description of this case is given by Toivo U. Raun in his short history of Estonia: “…in 1956 it was clear that a new era had begun with the publication of Rudolf Sirge’s Maa ja rahvas (The land and the people) … Sirge’s book was the first Soviet Estonian prose work to avoid stereotyping of ideological adversaries and provide a realistic description of everyday life.” (Raun, 2001, 215).

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need  for  it) became urgent again, as, for example, in the poetry of Hando Runnel. One can find it as well in the internationally acknowledged novel by Jaan Kross, The czar’s madman (‘Keisri hull’, 1978). But in general, the motif of the loss of a living space did not become a factor of historical consciousness in the Estonian homeland. Like Baltic German barons in the earlier times, the Soviets were treated as foreign occupants, as ‘aliens’, as newcomers and parvenus—people who have settled themselves on a land not their own, against the law. According to the historical (and juridical) consciousness of the Estonians, the land still belonged to them, to the Estonians, to the real landlords. The feeling of being banned on their own land was never so strong as to become the grounds for massive historical reflection. So the need for history was stronger in exile because it was precisely history that was the most important connection to the homeland. And this gave rise to various initiatives. The historiographical production in exile—in a broad sense, memoirs included—is remarkable if compared to the relatively modest size of the Estonian exile community. It resembles the output of the Baltic Germans in their Western ‘exile’ after 1939, who also overwhelmingly preferred the historical, and ‘mnemonic’, framework of writing. 2

Politics, Ideology, and History Writing

As observed earlier, historical consciousness in exile gains importance at a certain point in time. What is meant by that? The political refugee has been displaced unwillingly (even if exile is called “voluntary”), and the difference between the places (the original and the new one, homeland and exile) is at first political, or ideological, not historical. That may not concern the academic branches of history writing concentrated on the distant past, but it is essential in the study of recent history. During the approximately first ten years, a politically exiled person from the Baltic region after World War ii thought of his lost homeland not historically, but for the most part politically. The homeland is a place that has been occupied by hostile forces, who reign there for a while, not forever. Almost everybody thinks of going back to the homeland ‘when this is over,’ in a month, in a year, two years, even in five years; then the home will be free again and one can continue his/her work there in an old way, etc. The connection is not yet historical; it is more spatial than temporal and expresses a temporary displacement. The German literary exile during the Nazi regime, if compared to the Estonian one, was only a ‘brief’ lacuna with a duration of some 12–13 years, but the emotions were at first the same:

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Hardly anybody among the exiles was prepared for an absence from the homeland of more than some weeks or months. That it would last twelve and more years and that these years will be the very last ones for many of them seemed to be impossible.5 After some twenty years, we notice that in Estonian writing the predominately political consciousness has given place to the more historical one. Most people do not think any more of going back to the homeland. That does not mean necessarily that the hope of freedom has been given up. But the large part of the exiles feels that if the homeland is freed again, they will still remain where they are now, i.e. abroad (which is not “abroad” any more), in their new home. They will never return to live ‘there’; perhaps they will only visit the ancient homeland. There were many reasons for this change. The exiles became accustomed to the civilized Western world, to the life with social protections, to good jobs and good salaries, and to the fact that their children have made a home there, etc. And, moreover, life is too short to begin living it again for the third time. At this very moment the homeland becomes a historical fact. When the most part of the exiles agree silently on not going back to the homeland then the historical connection with the homeland has been established. Then history begins. In the sovietised homeland, the situation was only partly the same. There, as well, the political-ideological struggle came first, and serious historical monographs began to be published only at the end of the 1950s. But the fact that Soviet rule would continue to last for many long years was recognized very early in the homeland. The death of Stalin and the ‘period of thaw’ were only of temporary value and did not hurt the Soviet system in general; perhaps they only reinforced it. In the 1970s, Soviet rule already seemed to have become everlasting. Thus politico-ideological constraints on the humanities remained rigid, and that was the case for the later times as well. In comparing historiography in exile and in the homeland, one must pay attention to a definite point: the presence or lack of ambivalence in interpreting history. It is not so much the ‘amount’ of ideology, as the potential for ambiguities that became a decisive factor in this regard. Thus later Soviet historiography was not characterised so much by some unseen level of ideological emphasis, or communist pathos, but rather by the 5 Stephan, 1979, 45. Quotation in German: “Kaum einer der Exilanten rechnete anscheinend mit einer Abwesenheit von mehr als einigen Wochen oder Monaten. Daß daraus einmal zwölf und mehr und damit für viele die letzten Jahre ihres Lebens werden würden, hatte fast niemand erwartet.”

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fact that from historiography, which is an academic field of moral discovery, moral discovery itself had been ruled out: the overarching moral conclusions of research were known to every historian from the very start. The morality of history writing was standardized at an official level. Thus, there was not ‘more’ political ideology in the Soviet history writing than there was in exile, but this ideology was prescribed, e.g. principally unambiguous. You could find and work through huge masses of new empirical data in the archives—and empirical analysis was highly advanced in the Soviet Estonian historiography—but your general conclusions could not be changed. It is not likely that one can find the same moral meaning in various historical materials thousands of times. And it is precisely this fact that had an immoral influence, and created an impression of un-history. In the Middle Ages there would not have been such a disparity between moral prescriptions and the truth. Soviet historiography indeed had significant mediaeval characteristics; instead of the Bible, the classical works of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism served as the sacral backing for profane history, although in the early period of Soviet historiography, there were close connections with Biblical phraseology as well. There was a geneticrhetorical connection with high Christian historiography, which in applied terms had reached an anti-Christian level. In the following sections, I try to introduce several leitmotifs that seem to me of value when comparing Estonian history writing in exile and in the homeland.6 3

The Writing of Recent History, or How to Treat the Germans and Russians

The serious study of recent or contemporary Estonian history began in exile, and this was precisely the first success of exile historiography. Several works can be mentioned but there is a landmark: in 1954, the tenth year of exile, a collective study in 10 volumes was initiated: The Estonian State and People in the Second World War (‘Eesti riik ja rahvas Teises maailmasõjas’. Vol. i–x. Stockholm, 1954–1962). The tenth volume of it was published in 1962, and a  year later, a continuation of the series followed, Estonia’s Fateful Years 1945–1960 (‘Eesti saatuseaastad 1945–1960’. Vol. i–vi. Stockholm, 1963–1972), which was a collective study in 6 volumes that ended in 1972. These 16 volumes 6 As to the case of Soviet Estonia, I can rely on my own analyses, particularly Undusk, 2003. See also Undusk, 1999. As far as I know, there exist no special analyses of history writing in Estonian exile; one can mention a brief but informative summary by Kangro, 1976, 207–209.

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cover the period from the 1930s up to the year 1965 and can be called the basis for the study of recent history in these years, i.e. World War ii, its eve and aftermath. At the same time, the series is a vivid example of the exile mind in transition from political to historical consciousness. These 16 volumes are not an academic contribution, but a mixture of rigorous history writing, memoirs, and political pamphleteering, offering not only interpretations but the first results of collecting documentation, and opinions, as well. The formal weakness of the whole series was that it was written in Estonian and for the Estonians; it was meant to be an embodiment of national memory and not a source of information for the West. This character of it led to another large work, actually a one-man study that tried to fill the informational gap, although it presumably missed its aim. An English compilation by a specialist of Syriac language and literature, Arthur Võõbus, entitled Studies in the History of the Estonian People appeared in 15 volumes in Stockholm during the years 1969–1986. This voluminous book with a long and old-fashioned subtitle (which, as such, corresponded well with its style), namely, “With Reference to Aspects of Social Conditions, in Particular Religious and Spiritual Life and Educational Pursuit”, was not an overview of recent history, but of the whole history of Estonia, highly subjective, pointedly conservative and nationalist. The work is uneven, being in many parts only a second-hand interpretation of selected motifs, yet in others, above all in the theological and church history sections, more original and fresh. One can borrow an eloquent chapter heading from the third volume of the book which describes the situation in the 19th century, but illustrates as well the attitude of the author towards contemporary history; it reads “Between Panslavism and German Despotism.”7 “Between Panslavism and German Despotism” is a slogan that can serve as a general indication of the central standpoints of history writing in Estonian exile. There are two large vexations in the recent history of Estonia and its people—Russians and Germans—or more precisely, the military pretensions of their national states. This position differs radically from that mandated for the historians in the sovietised homeland: there was only one single vexation—the Germans, of course. Precisely in this sense one can argue that the serious study of recent Estonian history began only in exile. It was this ambiguity, or at least the potential for this kind of ambiguity in connection to the two big totalitarian powers that provided a  minimal starting point for an adequate historiography. Estonian history ­written in the homeland lacked this potential totally. When in history writing this kind of ‘field of ambiguity’ is absent, there can be no moral discoveries. 7 Võõbus, 1974, 193.

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And where the morality of history is not discovered but prescribed, there can be no serious historiography. It is not possible to claim that this kind of political ambiguity was always realized in exile writing. But the positive influence of its mere existence— somewhere in the background—can be felt even today. Of course, the Soviet Communists were the first to be denounced by exile histories, not the Nazis, because Communists were the actual occupants. During their first occupation that did not last long (1940–41), the Soviets arrested in Estonia approximately 7000 persons of whom more than 6000 were executed or died in imprisonment. Just in the summer and autumn months of 1941 were 2000 civilians killed. On June 14, 1941, more than 10 000 Estonians were deported, among them 7500 women and children; men were separated from the others and sent to prison camps where most of them were executed or died.8 After these crimes of the first Soviet year, the Germans—the Nazis—were awaited, and later treated, as liberators. This cannot be interpreted as a political choice in favour of the Nazi regime; it was condemnation of Soviet criminality. This was the case with Latvia as well, where until 1941 the first historical enemy had always been the Germans; during the first Soviet year, the situation promptly changed: since then, the number one enemy has been Russia.9 Of course, among the historians in exile, there were almost no men who had fought on the side of the Soviet Russia in World War ii, but there were several who had been mobilized into the German army. Still, in good exile historiography, open compliments to Germans were not paid, and Germans were valued mostly as the only effective opponents of the Soviets who had behaved much more cruelly towards Estonia. The distinctions were sometimes made on a rhetorical level only. For example, in the first volume of the Estonia’s Fateful Years, we read: “…most of the men of the best German divisions lie buried in the Hungarian earth.”10 A hint of a somewhat more elevated style can be felt in the English translation as well, but this kind of suggestive expression was used only in connection with German soldiers; it is never present in exile historiography when Soviet troops are the subject. In Soviet Estonia, all the histories were written in a heavy Manichean, i.e. black-and-white, manner: there were no bad deeds on the Soviet conscience ever, Soviet Russia—contrary to the other conquerors—was the champion of absolute light in Estonian history. Germany, especially under the rule of Nazis, represented the dark side of the eschatological forces.

8 9 10

Hiio et. al. (eds.), 2006, xii–xiv. Bleiere et al., 2005, 245. Maasing et. al. (eds.), 1963, i, 18.

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There was a permanent ideological competition between Soviet Estonian and Estonian exile history writing. As a counterpart to The Estonian State and People in the Second World War, a collective two-volume work appeared in Estonia in 1971–1977: The Estonian People in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (‘Eesti rahvas Nõukogude Liidu Suures Isamaasõjas’. i–ii. Tallinn, 1971– 1977). The name of the war is different in this title, although it was the same European and world war seen now from the more limited viewpoint of Soviet Russian chauvinism. Still, there exists a much more curious example. When the ten volumes of The Estonian State and People in the Second World War were finished in Stockholm in 1962, two years later, in 1964, something extraordinary happened: the eleventh volume of the collection was published in Tallinn, in Soviet Estonia. Until 1972, four other volumes of the work followed, edited by an anonymous Soviet group of collaborators (‘Eesti riik ja rahvas Teises maailmasõjas’. xi–xv. Tallinn, 1964–1972). At first, the aim of this enterprise was ambitious: in the first volume, only articles were reprinted which had earlier been published in the exile press, or in books edited abroad, in addition to some archival documents. Yet the titles of the sections, and cynical subtitles of photographs, were written by Soviet historians. This was a kind of counterhistory, using as its weapon the texts of the enemy himself. The project had its interesting side, and in an indirect way it confirmed the thesis that history written in exile was produced in the ‘field of ambiguity’. But the project was not finished, or was not allowed to do so. Already the next, twelfth, volume was a constructed mosaic of texts deliberately sprinkled with political commentary, and so the entire work lost its originality. At the same time, one must not forget that there was a long tradition of Germanophobia in Estonian historiography of which special use was made during the Soviet times. This was an accompaniment to national history writing already in the 19th century and it did not die out in the Western exile histories. A good example is again Arthur Võõbus, talking about “the Baltic German ruling class, with its incurably narrow and egotistic mind.”11 This is reminiscent of the Stalinistic style in Soviet historiography, although the cited lines were published in 1974 in Sweden. There are, therefore, some important points of intersection between the two competing historiographies but these points lie mostly in the older history. The more distant the historical period in time, the more often one can come upon this kind of correspondences.

11

Võõbus, 1974, 241; cf. Saks, 1981, 107.

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The ‘Czech Hell’

Another eloquent—and telling—detail differentiating history writing in exile from its counterpart in the Soviet homeland has to do with the so-called ‘Czech Hell’. There is no mention made of it in Soviet historiography at all; the Czechs are a friendly socialist fraternal nation of the Estonians. The ‘Czech Hell’ is the story of the Estonians who fought in the German Army and who remained on Czech territory after the spring of 1945, after German capitulation, as war prisoners or escapees, who had to find their way to the western Allies. There was no international control over the situation; the Czechs were allowed to do almost everything they wanted to the unarmed prisoners, and they often did. For many of the Estonian soldiers who fought on the German side, this—not the wartime battle—was the most terrible experience in the war. And because of that, the attitude towards the Czechs in general among exiles was fairly sceptical: the Czechs were considered a nation that survived the war relatively intact, and took their revenge only after the war ended and conditions were safe. As mentioned, Soviet historiography did not discuss the topic at all, because it was taboo there, but in exile it was a significant fact of contemporary history. There were special chapters on it in the first two volumes of the Estonia’s Fateful Years 1945–1960, and the subject was treated in several war memoirs, e.g. in Juhan Lindström’s In Czech Hell,12 in Heino Susi’s The Devil’s Servants.13 The discussion of this matter has continued. Much later, a book of memoirs by Lauri Vaska, In the Heart of Europe, was published in Estonia, and in it the whole situation is described anew in detail.14 It is remarkable that in the monumental Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity which appeared in 2006, the ‘Czech Hell’ is only once mentioned in passing and no new information is presented, while the two big photographs published there to illustrate the minimal text, depict the execution of Estonian ss-officers by the Czech partisans.15 This suggests that the ideological battles remain unfinished. But perhaps the most vital problems of recent history were not connected to enemies of any description, but to the situation in Estonia itself on the threshold of World War ii. By this is meant the discussion about authoritarianism and the ‘era of silence’ in Estonia in the 1930s when there were no political parties any more, the parliament had nothing to do, and presidential power 12 13 14 15

Lindström, 1960. Susi, 1985, 181–210. Vaska, 2004. Hiio, 2006, 1019–1020.

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was expanding. This was the problem of self-analysis or self-criticism, and entails future perspectives as well. 5

The Problem of Authoritarianism in the 1930s: ‘The Era of Silence’

From the end of the 1940s up to the end of the 1990s, the problem of authoritarianism in the 1930s was one of the burning issues of history writing in Estonian exile. Political exile understood itself as a juridical form of the stillexisting Estonian Republic,16 or at least as the continuation of it, and therefore the last independent period of the Republic, the so-called ‘Era of Silence’ under the presidency of Konstantin Päts, had to be evaluated. But this ‘had to be’ itself was a problem. Actually, conservative circles were opposed to this kind of evaluation, or the questioning of the situation in general, because they viewed it like playing into the hands of their Communist enemies. As we know, in the Soviet Union, the second half of the 1930s in the Baltic States was interpreted as definitely “pro-fascist.” The younger generation in exile insisted generally on the need of objective analysis of the situation in the 1930s, but at first there was no one to carry out the academic research.17 When such analyses began to be published at the beginning of the 1960s, they were predominantly critical or entwined with subjective memories.18 This critical tradition was continued by younger scholars.19 The non-critical minds, so it seems, simply avoided going beyond the limits of the official interpretation of the 1930s. At the end of the 1980s, some academic studies reached their audience with the aim of synthesizing contrasting opinions and presenting normal view of a normal European state at the end of the 1930s. Alvin Isberg drew a reasonable conclusion from his own monographic study Democracy at Stake: Politicoconstitutional power-play in Estonia in the 1930s: The Estonian form of state at the end of 1930s was similar to the one which was common to other East European states at the time. But ­without 16

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This fact has been marvelously documented in a mammoth work (1720 pp.) on the Estonian exile government during the years 1940–1992. (Tõotan ustavaks jääda… Eesti Vabariigi valitsus 1940–1992. Tartu, 2004). Glimpses of the discussion can be read in a good retrospective collection of essays The Highlights of Free Estonia: Non-censored thought in the years 1948–64. (Vaba Eesti tähistel: Valimik tsensuurivaba mõttelugu aastaist 1948–64. Tallinn, 2000). Tomingas, 1961. Lipping, 1974; Parming, 1975.

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any doubt, it was one of the most liberal among the comparable state orders. National Socialism and fascism influenced practically all state orders in Europe. Among the younger states, being exposed to this pressure at most, Estonia was definitely among those, who came off best.20 In a similar vein Rein Marandi carried out a two-volume detailed study of this period.21 Without doubt, these moderately positive evaluations had a certain, if vague, connection to the strivings for new political independence in the homeland where an historical foundation was desperately needed. And the only real (political, juridical) grounds for the Estonians as state-builders after 1991 were the political result of the 1930s. We still have every reason to speak of the actuality of the topic. If during the Soviet time the ‘Era of Silence’ was unanimously condemned as pro-fascist, and if according to the general view in the 1990s the period was described— even if sometimes ironically—as the most normal Estonian life ever, then at the end of the 1990s, historians began to look for the negative in the political past once more. Like the society at the end of the 1950s in exile, the homeland at the end of the 1990s was already strong enough to allow criticism of itself. In exile, all the analyses of the period remained insufficient in the sense that there was no access to the Soviet/Russian archives. Magnus Ilmjärv, the author of a large monograph on the ‘authoritarian thirties’, Silent submission (2004), takes the critical tradition to an extreme in seeking to show that the non-­ democratic leadership of Estonia at the end of the 1930s in fact prepared the way for the Soviet occupation.22 In Ilmjärv’s treatise, many documents from various Soviet/Russian archives have been used for the first time, and this lends to his work a taste of specificity. For him, Estonian history as reflected in the correspondence of the Soviet secret service, and in the opinions of Soviet officials, is more real than any earlier documentary evidence, which means that the critical—interesting but one-sided—result can be easily foreseen. Comrades Ivanov and Petrov, serving the interests of Stalinist Russia, decide what was wrong and what was right in the Estonian Republic. A Gallup poll among the Estonian schoolchildren in the same year (2004) revealed some surprising tendencies. Almost one third were of the opinion that Estonia joined the Soviet Union voluntarily in 1940.23 There is no reason to  think that a decision of such momentous importance was made under the  influence of Soviet or Russian ideology. These are the fruits of the ‘new 20 21 22 23

Isberg, 1988, 177. Marandi, 1991; Marandi, 1997. Ilmjärv, 2004a; Ilmjärv, 2004b. Hanschmidt, 2004.

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criticism’ with respect to the historical self-determination of Estonia, and they are represented by Ilmjärv’s book as well. 6

Prehistoric Times

A new orientation was needed in exile, and this had to rest on history. It is not surprising, then, that the beginnings of history, the prehistoric times, provided one of the foci in exile historiography. Who were we, and where were we, at the beginning? The mainstream interpretation in exile and at home proved to be somewhat different. In 1952, the first Stalinist history of Soviet Estonia was published, and the first lines of this book are almost of the classical mold: The territory of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was populated much later than the other, southern parts of the Soviet Union. … Only after the last ice cap had receded, did man, step by step, appear in the  northern territory of the today’s Soviet Union, the Baltic region included. … The common ancestors of all these [Finno-Ugric] peoples, a long time ago, probably lived in an area somewhere in the river basins of Volga and Kama, or to the east of it near the Urals.24 Many researchers would accept this formulation factually. But it is the beginning of the first Estonian history published in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, and this beginning is without doubt strictly programmatic, the product of stylistic elaboration. Even though factually unpretentious, in the statement rhetorically the stress is placed in such a way that every reader has to feel foregone conclusion in it, something like ‘man’s first appearance in the Baltic region’: “The territory of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was populated much later than the other…parts of the Soviet Union.” The rhetorical effect is based upon the fusion of the oldest times and the newest (Soviet) political terminology, of the profane and the sacred. It is not an exaggeration to say that the emotional stresses in the text are not accidental, and the aim of this rhetoric was to suggest that a man as a historically progressive force (i.e. as the citizen of the Soviet Union) was in Estonia a belated phenomenon—in contrast to the other parts of the Soviet Union that belonged to the Bolshevist empire much earlier. And this is precisely the prevailing pathos of the whole book. Unfortunately, this was also the prevailing pathos of a great part of the Soviet Estonian history writing. 24

Naan (ed.), 1957, 5, 8–9.

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Soviet Estonian historiography suffered, especially in the 1950s, from the syndromes of ‘only then’ and ‘even then’. All the ‘progressive’ events that took place on Estonian territory were described as historically belated (‘only then’), whereas ‘regressive’ events were traced back to as early a time as possible (‘even then’). Backwardness was emphasised especially in relation to Russian conditions, earliness was seen in the Estonians’ defeat by non-Russian feudalism and in their national inferiority complex (for instance, Estonians did not ‘fight’, they organised ‘uprisings’; a peasants’ work lacked a creative aspect, and was ‘slavery’; peasant ownership was accorded less importance than in Baltic German historiography, etc.). Inferiority complexes that had earlier existed in Estonian historiography were skilfully used—and abused—by Soviet historiography. In the same year (1952), another Estonian history was published, but in England. It was The History of Estonian People by Evald Uustalu, an exile historian. This book, precise and elegant in its formulations, was the only comprehensive survey of Estonian history in English until the publication of Toivo U. Raun’s Estonia and the Estonians in 1987 (19912, updated 2001). In this book prehistoric times are also explained, but in a somewhat different way: Estonia was populated during the last phase of the Glacial period by ‘reindeer-hunters’. These hunters followed the great reindeer herds which always stayed near the edge of the receding inland ice: they arrived in the East Baltic about 7000 b.c., and were the original Europeans—the ‘CroMagnon’ men—who had lived in central and western Europe during the early Stone Age, and who already possessed a highly-developed and many-sided culture. …the peoples in central Russia and Siberia, speaking a Finno-Ugrian language, have come to their present homes from the west—and not from the other way round.25 If we compare the two extracts, we find a certain amount of common ground, and this has to do with the time of the first settlement in Estonia (following the receding ice). But the factual observation is played out in quite different rhetorical contexts. If the Soviet Estonian history emphasizes the belatedness of the settlement in the Soviet geo-cultural context, the exile historian puts the stress on the early (and unquestionably) European origins of this first population. Secondly, the original location of the Finno-Ugrians differs in both interpretations radically. For the Soviet authors, it was in the East, in the territories of present Russia. The opinion of the exile historian is clearly the opposite: the peoples speaking Finno-Ugric languages today have come from the West. 25

Uustalu, 1952, 14.

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These comparisons should not lead to the impression that the study of history was a mere chambermaid of political ideology during the Cold War and afterwards. The phenomenon is universal, and, one can say, paradoxical: history writing is, of course, never a mere ideological statement on history; nevertheless, it loses its cognitive value if there are no moral conclusions in it at all. History writing is always moral philosophy, or it is worthless. And the contrasting viewpoints presented above have both solid scientific evidence behind them; the question is, which does one prefer—and this is the place of moral choice. The ‘Eastern’ theory, supported not only by the Soviet authors but by most scholars in the 20th century world, goes back to the great Finnish linguist Matias Aleksanteri Castrén writing in the mid-19th century. The ‘Western’ theory has its roots in even earlier times, but its relevance grew enormously when in the 1930s new archaeological evidence was found in Estonia. The discoverer of prehistoric dwelling sites at Kunda-Lammasmäe, Richard Indreko, became the leading Estonian archaeologist in exile, and the scientific patron of the ‘Western’ theory. The further developments of Indreko’s theory have been flourishing since 1990s not only in Estonia, but in Finland, Hungary and other countries as well, and they are supported by scholars of high academic rank.26 A new paradigm is forming in Finno-Ugric studies, and the heritage of exile has been taken over by scholars in homeland once more.27 In exile, Indreko’s findings gave rise to various intellectual activities, some of them highly nonconformist. The biggest enterprise was undertaken by Edgar Valter Saks who wrote monographs in English, analysing a huge amount of linguistic facts, and re-interpreting the place-names of the whole of Western Europe to show that they originate in Finno-Ugric languages. The titles of his books are meaningful: Aestii: An analysis of an ancient European civilization (Montreal et al. 1960), Esto-Europa: A treatise on the Finno-Ugric primary civilization in Europe (Montreal et al. 1966). These attempts go too far into minute detail and seem to discredit the original theory. But perhaps they express some simple basic needs of historical consciousness more clearly than academic hide-and-seek. Nevertheless, there has never been a single consolidated philosophy of ­history in Estonian exile. Exile in the humanities was synonymous with ambivalence: there were viewpoints contrasting with Indreko’s28 or trying to unite the Western and Eastern theories.29 26 27 28 29

See, for example, the special issue of the journal Trames, dedicated to Indreko’s theories (Trames: Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2001, 1). See also Undusk, 2002, 387–390. E.g. Raun, 2001, 6. Ney, 1959.

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Economic History

Another field of special importance was the economic history of Estonia. Its significance was grounded in the fact that economic history, in some sense, seemed to be the shared playground, or even joint venture, of exile and Soviet historians. And still more: Baltic German historians as well participated in this arena, being quite active reviewers of both Soviet and exile works on economic history. There was understandably not much co-operation in the field of political history, because of ideological restrictions. The economy, by contrast, and economic causality as the motor force of history, had to be the starting point for Marxist analysis, but it was respected among Estonian and Baltic German historians in the West as well. The question, of course, is to what extent was so-called Marxist political economy economically grounded. The dogma of class struggle seriously endangered the objectivity of economic analysis. One has the impression that the economic levers of history were more resolutely emphasised only in relation to the lower classes. With respect to the upper classes, the motif of noneconomic factors (for instance, greed) was covertly made decisive. Economic causality and the imperative of the class struggle came into conflict, and 18th century moral philosophy entered into Marxist economic analysis. There were also contradictions in the description of early capitalistic relations, which in the Marxist scheme of development should have reflected progressive forces. In actual fact, however, capitalism was given a negative moral assessment. Commercial-financial relations between peasants and the landed class, and the taxes demanded of the peasants, were unequivocally treated as means of exploitation, without mention of their function in regulating social relations. The background for this was the vagueness of commercial-financial relations in the Soviet lifestyle and the opacity of the tax burden, which made it possible to portray all manner of social taxation as unjust, even in the past. There was a group of strong economic historians in Soviet Estonia; the leading role among them was played by Juhan Kahk, an industrious worker and a talented historian, in any case the most ambitious in the group, and a party functionary. It was especially his books that met with a wide response in the West. His last, posthumously published work in German, Peasant and Baron in the Baltic (1999), is remarkable in several ways; in a sense, it is his scientific last  testament in which rich empirical data, collected during a lifetime and published in many books were re-interpreted in a completely new and partially anti-Marxist way. In the foreword, Kahk pays tribute to the best-known economic historian in exile, Arnold Soom, while dedicating the whole book to him:

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I dedicate this work to the venerated Arnold Soom who with his book Der Herrenhof in Estland (Lund 1954) actually became the founder of the modern branch of this research area [=Agrargeschichte, agrarian history].30 Thus this successful Soviet historian practically says, in his final book, that his real teacher and model has been an exile historian, a specialist in the 17th century Baltic economy, whom he hardly mentions in his previous books. The remarkable fact here is this half-secret, half-veiled connection between the leading figures of economic history in the Soviet homeland and in exile, revealed only after their death. Of course, in some part Kahk’s announcement must be understood as an after-death compliment, or even as a belated selfjustification. But another part of it is worthy of attention, revealing the fact that there sometimes existed a silent parallelism between Soviet and exile scholars. Especially on the Soviet side, historical works written in exile were often not cited overtly, or at least not correctly. The number of footnotes referring to them had to be a minimum, and the best of all were dark hints that such works existed. Co-operation and competition in good and bad, silent thefts included, was still much more widespread.31 8

Silent Co-operation

Some telling examples of intellectual co-operation between home and exile are reflected in historical fiction. Paul Johansen (1901–1965) was the most distinguished non-Estonian historian in Estonia in the 1930s (his parents were 30

31

Kahk, 1999, 10. Quotation in German: “…ich widme diese Arbeit dem verehrten Arnold Soom, der mit seinem Buch Der Herrenhof in Estland (Lund 1954) den modernen Zweig dieser Forschungsrichtung [= der Agrargeschichte] überhaupt erst begründet hat.” By the way, this field, the economy of the 17th century, was chosen by A. Soom because this was the so-called Swedish time in Estonia, and he worked in the State Archives in Stockholm where most of the primary documents were located. This was the case with several other historians in exile: the attainability of the archives determined their prevailing interests. In Sweden, it was the Swedish period of Estonia that was most preferably studied. An example is Aleksander Loit, the professor of Baltic Studies in Stockholm in the 1980s; he wrote not only about the economic policy of the Swedish kingdom in Estonia, but about the Estonian, or the so-called coastal, Swedes, as well. Vello Helk, a well-known historian in Denmark, worked on Danish history, but also visited the archives of Vatican, and thus examined the history of Jesuits in Estonia. This was, of course, unthinkable for a Soviet historian.

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Danish); he received a local German education and left the country together with the Baltic-Germans in 1939. Towards the end of his life, in the spring of 1964, he delivered a lecture in Stockholm at the Estonian Learned Society, in which he emphatically stated that the most renowned Baltic chronicler after Henry of Livonia, Balthasar Russow (author of the best-selling Chronica Der Prouintz Lyfflandt, 1578), was of Estonian origin on his father’s side. The translation of this lecture was immediately published in an Estonian exile journal Tulimuld that was publicly inaccessible in Soviet Estonia, while the German original never appeared as an article.32 Yet several years later, one of the most eminent literary works in Soviet Estonian literature was started: a historical novel in four sequels by Jaan Kross entitled Between Three Plagues (‘Kolme katku vahel’, 1970–1980), inspired to a large degree by Johansen’s little essay. To be exact, Johansen was not the first to hint at the non-German (undeutsch) roots of Russow, and Kross was not the first to deal with the heretical and still charismatic figure of Russow in a literary piece of art. Russow’s contemporary critics among the Baltic nobles used to castigate at him for being an undeutsches offspring. But it was not until Johansen’s professional authority—supported by some newly found data—was engaged in the case that Russow’s Estonian origin became a serious scholarly hypothesis. Even so, there were signs of this renaissance even earlier in Estonian refugee literature. In 1947, a collection of stories by Gert Helbemäe appeared in Sweden, written in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany and focusing on the old times and historical personalities of Tallinn.33 In one of the longer stories of this book, An ordeal (‘Katsumus’), pastor Balthasar Russow occurs as the protagonist: a man of mixed Estonian and foreign blood, an ardent patriot of his home town. This is how this somewhat heroic man of letters from the lower levels of society, a man with independent attitudes and a hint of a genius, was introduced into Estonian literature. Helbemäe moved in Baltic German circles before World War ii, his special interest as a writer was Tallinn in the early modern era, and in some sense he can be called a predecessor of Jaan Kross in Estonian literature.34 But it was not until Kross’ great epic emerged that Russow

32

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Johansen, 1964, reprinted in Johansen, 2005, 174–187. Johansen’s unfinished German monograph, Balthasar Rüssow als Humanist und Geschichtsschreiber, completed and edited by Heinz von zur Mühlen, was posthumously published as late as 1996. Still, Baltic German historians who were well-versed in Estonian letters, knew about his Estonian article and widely recognized Johansen’s statements about Russow. Helbemäe, 1947. See also Liivamets, 1989.

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metamorphosed into an archetype of an Estonian intellectual under a foreign rule in his native land (which was the case for most of Estonian history). The publication of Between Three Plagues had an immense influence upon historical consciousness during the Soviet time: the deeply buried EstonianGerman-Scandinavian roots of the local culture were brought before a wider audience, thus giving the Estonians more self-confidence in thinking about their historical past from the outset of the Middle Ages: that past was overwhelmingly ‘Western’ and ‘Northern’, although not specifically ‘German’, ‘Danish’ or ‘Swedish’. It was important to recognize that the ‘Estonian’ part in Estonia’s culture was not so much represented by the often inadequate ‘Estonian’ writings of German Kulturträger, but more directly by eminent personalities in the distant past who were using the language of the foreigner but writing their own story. The uncompromising opposition to the barbarian Muscovites—a leitmotif of Russow’s original chronicle that hindered its publication during the Soviet times—was not openly depicted in the Kross’ books, of course, but was hinted at in the background. In the figure of Balthasar Russow, a kind of imperishable ‘centre’ was created for interpreting Estonia’s history: a strong personality growing out of the local soil, a seeming void which is not German, Russian or other, not even Estonian any more in the narrower sense of the word, although communicating with—and intrinsically opposing—all of them. This then was the real permanence of Estonia. We can rate highly the historical significance of Kross’ novel, but the aforementioned essay by Johansen has been as highly regarded: With his article, Johansen not only explained Russow’s friendly attitude towards peasantry but gave him in some sense back to his nation. The discovery that a son of their own nation has become the most popular and the stylistically most expressive historian of Old Livonia in the 16th century, and that he was also appreciated in Germany as a writer in Low German language, had a broadening effect on the modern Estonians’ conception of history, and enriched their national culture tradition.35

35

Taube, 1986, 31–32. Quotation in German: “Damit hatte Johansen nicht nur die Erklärung für die Bauernfreundlichkeit Rüssow’s gefunden, sondern ihn auch gleichsam seinem Volke wiedergegeben; denn die Entdeckung, daß ein Sohn ihres Volkes im 16. Jahrhundert zum meistgelesenen und ausdrucksstärksten Geschichtsschreiber Altlivlands und zu einem auch in Deutschland geschätzten niederdeutschen Schriftsteller geworden war, beinhaltete eine Erweiterung des Geschichtsbildes der Esten von heute und eine Bereicherung ihrer nationalen Kulturtradition”.

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It is clear that without Kross’ novel there would have been no such esteem of Johansen’s essay: thanks to Kross, the paper by Johansen gained high rank retrospectively. And, conversely, thanks to Johansen, Kross’ novel was born. We see a perfect co-operation between the two texts and, at the same time, the solidarity of exile with homeland. Political restrictions were not able to eliminate cultural exchange, the secret channels of which were too complicated and too clever to be closed down, running as they did from science to fiction, and vice versa. In this case, the idea was launched by an exiled Baltic German historian’s paper published in an Estonian journal in Sweden, and promoted by the story of an exile writer, and, of course, by the chronicle itself, of which the Estonian translation appeared only in exile. The idea was seized by a writer in Soviet Estonia who knew all these ‘exiled’ texts. He made out of it not only a large belletristic work, but a national-historical construct of lasting value. In such a way, a bridge over the Iron Curtain was built, and a bridge between various national and cultural heritages of the homeland as well. References Bleiere, D. et al. (2005). Istorija Latvii. xx vek. [History of Latvia. 20th century]. Riga. Hanschmidt, D. (2004). “‘Aitäh, Kostja!’ ehk abiturientide tähelepanekuid Eesti ajaloost.” [School-leavers on Estonian History]. Postimees, Dec. 6, 7. Helbemäe, G. (1947). Vaikija: Jutte ja legende Vana-Tallinnast. [Stories and Legends about Old Tallinn]. Vadstena. Hiio, T. et al. (eds.) (2006). Estonia 1940–1945. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn. Ilmjärv, M. (2004a). Hääletu alistumine: Eesti, Läti ja Leedu välispoliitilise orientatsiooni kujunemine ja iseseisvuse kaotus. 1920. aastate keskpaigast anneksioonini. [Silent submission: Formation of foreign policy of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Period from mid-1920s to annexation in 1940]. Tallinn. Ilmjärv, M. (2004b). Silent submission: Formation of foreign policy of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Period from mid-1920s to annexation in 1940. Stockholm (Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 24). Isberg, A. (1988). Med demokratin som insats: Politiskt-konstitutionellt maktspel i 1930-talets Estland. (With an abstract in German „Mit der Demokratie als Einsatz: Politisch-konstitutionelles Machtspiel im Estland der 1930er Jahre“). Uppsala. (Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 4). Johansen, P. (1964). “Kronist Balthasar Rüssowi päritolu ja miljöö.” [The Origin and Surroundings of the Chronicler Balthasar Russow]. Tulimuld 4, 252–260.

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Johansen, P. (2006). Kaugete aegade sära. Koost. J. Kivimäe. [The Brightness of the Distant Ages (Articles)]. Tartu. (Eesti mõttelugu, 65). Kahk, J. (1999). Bauer und Baron im Baltikum: Versuch einer historisch-phänomenologischen Studie zum Thema “Gutsherrschaft in den Ostseeprovinzen.” Tallinn. Kangro, B. (1976). Eesti Rootsis: Ülevaade sõnas ja pildis. [Estonia in Sweden. An Illustrated Overview]. Lund. Liivamets, M. (1989). “Gert Helbemäe.” In Välismaise eesti kirjanduse konverents 28. ja 29. nov. 1988.a. (Ettekanded 2). [The Conference on Estonian Literature in Exile. Nov. 28–29, 1988]. Tallinn, 52–70. Lindström, J. (1960). Tšehhi põrgus: Mälestusi sõjateelt ja vangipõlvest. [In Czech Hell: Memoires of War and Prison]. Toronto. Lipping, I. (1974). “The emergence of Estonian authoritarianism.” In A. Ziedonis et al. (eds.), Baltic History. Columbus, 209–216. Maasing, R. et al. (eds.) (1963). Eesti saatuseaastad 1945–1960. [Estonia’s Fateful Years 1945–1960]. Vol. i. Stockholm. Marandi, R. (1991). Must-valge lipu all: Vabadussõjalaste liikumine Eestis 1929–1937. i. Legaalne periood (1929–1934). (With an abstract in German “Unter der schwarzweißen Fahne: Die Freiheitskrieger-Bewegung in Estland 1929–1937. i. Die legale Periode (1929–1934),” 519–551). Uppsala (Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 6). Marandi, R. (1997). Must-valge lipu all. ii. Illegaalne vabadussõjalus (1934–1937). (With an abstract in German “Unter der schwarz-weißen Fahne: Die FreiheitskriegerBewegung in Estland 1929–1937. ii. Die illegale Bewegung (1934–1937),” 225–237). Uppsala (Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia 18). Moritz, R. (2006). “Innere Emigration.” In H. Brunner et al. (eds.), Literaturwissen­ schaftliches Lexikon: Grundbegriffe der Germanistik. Berlin, 175–177. Naan, G. (ed.) (1957). Eesti nsv ajalugu: Kõige vanemast ajast tänapäevani. [The History of Soviet Estonia: From the Oldest Time to the Present Day]. Tallinn. 2nd edition. Ney, G. (1959). “Zur Ethnogenese des estnischen Volkes (hauptsächlich im Lichte der neueren estnischen Forschung).” Commentationes Balticae vi/vii (1958/59). Bonn, 187–208. Parming, T. (1975). The collapse of liberal democracy and the rise of authoritarianism in Estonia. London. Raun, T.U. (2001). Estonia and the Estonians. Updated second edition. Stanford. Saks, E.V. (1981). “Mõtteid ja vastuväiteid ühe ajalookatse puhul: Dr. A. Võõbuse ‘Suur eesti ajalugu’”. [Thoughts and Counter-Arguments Concerning the ‘Studies in the History of the Estonian People’ by A. Võõbus]. Tulimuld 2, 106–110. Schnell, R. (2007). “Innere Emigration.” In H. Fricke et al. (eds.), Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Bd. 2. Berlin, New York, 146–148. Šilbajoris, R. (2002). A short history of Lithuanian literature. Vilnius. Stephan, A. (1979). Die deutsche Exilliteratur 1933–1945: Eine Einführung. München.

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Strelka, J.P. (1983). Exilliteratur: Grundprobleme der Theorie. Aspekte der Geschichte und Kritik. Bern. Susi, H. (1985). Sarviku sulased: Tõsieluromaan. [The Devil’s Servants: A Documentary Novel]. Tallinn. Taube, A. Freiherr von (1986). “‘Der Untergang der livländischen Selbständigkeit: Die livländische Chronistik des 16. Jahrhunderts.” In G. von Rauch (ed.), Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. Köln, Wien, 21–41. Tomingas, W. (1961). Vaikiv ajastu Eestis. [The Era of Silence in Estonia]. New York. Undusk, J. (1999). “Canonical Patterns of Narrating History: In Search of a Hidden Rhetoric.” In Y. Varpio et al. (eds.), Literatur und nationale Identität ii: Themen des literarischen Nationalismus und der nationalen Literatur im Ostseeraum Tampere, 5–13. (Tampereen yliopisto. Taideaineiden laitos. Julkaisuja 2). Undusk, J. (2002). “Estnisch als Göttersprache: Aspekte der Sprachverehrung.” In R. Blokland et al. (eds.), Finno-Ugrians and Indo-Europeans: Linguistic and Literary Contacts. Proceedings of the Symposium at the Groningen University, November 22–24, 2001. Maastricht, 370–392. (Studia Fenno-Ugrica Groningana 2). Undusk, J. (2003). “Retooriline sund eesti nõukogude ajalookirjutuses.” In A. Krikmann et al. (eds.), Võim ja kultuur. Tartu, 41–68 (with an abstract in English “Rhetorical constraints in Soviet historiography”, 530–531). Uustalu, E. (1952). The History of Estonian People. London Vaska, L. (2004). Euroopa südames: Märkmeid ühest rännakust 1944–1945. [In the Heart of Europe: Notes of a Journey of 1944–1945]. Tallinn. Võõbus, A. (1974). Studies in the History of the Estonian People: With Reference to Aspects of Social Conditions, in Particular, the Religious and Spiritual Life and the Educational Pursuit iii. Stockholm.

In Whose Name is the Story Told? The Émigré Critique of Method in the Historiography of the Polish People’s Republic Artur Mękarski For a large number of Poles who left Poland during the Second World War, the restoration of peace in 1945 did not mean the end of life in exile. Although the war was over, they decided to stay abroad, unwilling to return to a country which, deprived of half of its pre-war territory and reduced to absolute obedience to the Soviet Union, had lost its independence. It is no exaggeration to say that historians were among the leading figures of the Polish diaspora in the West, playing an important role in its cultural life. Apart from the two leading figures, Marian Kukiel and Oskar Halecki, both of whom had succeeded in winning international recognition for their historical writing in the inter-war period, Polish émigré historiography was also represented by such scholars as Stanisław Bóbr-Tylingo, Anna Cienciała, Adam Ciołkosz, Leon Koczy, Stanisław Kościałkowski, Karolina Lanckorońska, Walerian Meysztowicz, Edmund Oppman, Henryk Paszkiewicz and Piotr Wandycz.1 With the mounting pressure on the historical profession in Poland by the communist regime at the turn of the 1940ʼs and 1950ʼs, émigré historians could hardly think of a more important task than that of reviewing and assessing the work of historians writing in the People`s Republic of Poland. This seemed the task for which they, as political exiles concerned about Polish culture, felt a special calling. In what follows, I am going to offer some insight into what appeared to be the most characteristic aspects of the émigré critique of the methodological dimension of domestic historiography. This “methodological turn” was bound up with the elevation in Poland of the theory of historical materialism (in its Stalinist version)—here also referred to as a theory of social emancipation—to the position of the main theoretical instrument to be applied by scholars in presenting and interpreting the past.2 At its core, the 1 On the Polish émigré historiography see: Habielski, 1998; Habielski, 1995; Mękarski, 2011; Stobiecki, 2005; Stobiecki, 2001; Stobiecki, 2003; Stobiecki, 2004a, Stobiecki, 2002; Stobiecki, 2004b; Stobiecki, 2004c. 2 On the problem of the Stalinist version of the theory of historical materialism and the process of the Stalinization of Polish historiography see: Stobiecki, 1993a; Stobiecki, 1996; Stobiecki, 1993b; Stobiecki, 1997; Grabski, 1992; Grabski, 2000; Romek, 2004; Górny, 2006; Wolniewicz, 2006.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_019

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theory centered around the ideas of class struggle and technological determinism. Plagued by class conflicts, humankind had to pass through the eras of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, to reach the “end” of history in the epoch of socialism/communism, when it finally managed to extricate itself from the misery of class antagonisms and thereafter enjoy perfect freedom. The establishment of Polish Peopleʼs Republic marked the beginning of socialism. Historians were entrusted with the task of reconstructing the road to socialist reality. The performance of this task consisted in identifying the so-called “progressive traditions”: processes, events, and people that were considered to have played a crucial role in driving humankind along the path of social progress. I am concerned, however, not with reconstructing the émigré critique of historical materialism as such, but rather with demonstrating the efforts émigré authors took to prove that the theory was abused in the service of purely ideological agenda. Eager to reveal what they termed the adjustment of Marxist vocabulary to the needs of the ruling party, they also showed they had no use for Marxism itself—whether it was or was not pressed into service to the goals of the communist regime—and did not believe it was possible to apply it in a scholarly fashion. In conclusion, I will also comment on what can be referred to—for want of a better word—as a “side-effect” of their critique. Foremost among the works published in Poland during the Stalinist era and reviewed by émigré authors was the so-called mock-up version of the history of Poland (it was published as a full-length book). Prepared under the aegis of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the work was supposed to represent a new, Marxist approach to national past.3 The volume was greeted with particularly bitter criticism by émigré authors, who rejected both the interpretation of Polish history it offered as well as the theoretical presuppositions on which it

3 Some leading Polish historians (Stanisław Arnold, Celina Bobińska, Józef Gierowski, Stanisław Herbst, Stefan Kieniewicz, Witold Kula, Tadeusz Łepkowski, Henryk Łowmiański, Emanuel Rostworowski, Marian Henryk Serejski) were involved in preparing this work which was to be published in many volumes. In the first half of the 50s there appeared only its first two volumes: Historia Polski. Makieta [Mock-up History of Poland], vol. 1: Do roku 1764 [To 1764], ed. by H. Łowmiański, part 1: Do połowy xv w. [To the Middle of the 15th Century], part 2: Od poł. xv w. [Since the Middle of the 15th Century], Warsaw 1955; vol. 2: 1764–1864, ed. S. Kieniewicz, W. Kula, part 1: 1764–1814, part 2: 1814–1864, Warsaw 1956. The remaining volumes were published in the 1960s: vol. 3: 1850/1864–1918, ed. by Ż. Kormanowa, I. PietrzakPawłowska, part 1: 1850/1864–1900, part 2: 1900–1918, Warsaw 1960; vol. 4; 1918–1939, ed. by L. Grosfeld, H. Zieliński, part 1: 1918–1926, chapters 1–13 (1918–1921), Warsaw 1966. This work was never brought to a successful completion.

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was based.4 The views included in this work are to be found in a variety of other publications that appeared in the Stalinist period in Poland and certainly comprised the historiographical mainstream. In criticizing these views, émigré scholars sought to prove that domestic historiography distorted the history of social emancipation in ways that were connected to the effort to portray negatively the tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The goal of the critique was to show that, while a theory of social emancipation provided a vocabulary for criticizing the whole tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, early modern Poland was not criticized for arresting social progress but because the Commonwealth consisted of territories claimed and conquered by the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Thus, for Polish historians in exile, communist historiography was not involved in telling a story of social emancipation, or at least a true story of social emancipation. Nor was it involved in writing a true story of the Polish state. It was, instead, an ideological exercise performed on behalf of the Soviet Union with the aim of legitimating recent Soviet conquests. This meant that some noble socialist ideals were made to serve as “smoke screen” for a purely ideological message. A closer look is needed at the line of argument followed by émigré authors in making this point. This effort by Polish domestic historians to use a ground-breaking methodology resulted in a radical re-conceptualization of the national past. The greatest deviation from traditionally accepted views was reflected in the assertion that the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic in 1795 should no longer be regarded as a turning point in Polish history. This claim elicited an especially fierce and critical response from émigré historians, and the way in which one of their leaders tried to defend the significance of the year 1795 is especially illuminative of the strategy employed by émigré scholars in criticizing domestic historiography in general. Hence, it can serve here as a convenient point of departure in the discussion of the problem at hand. The authors of one of the volumes of the Mock-up History of Poland mentioned above offered the following reasons why the date of the last partition did not deserve to be singled out as a caesura in Polish history: Despite the partitions we want to defend the concept of socio-economic formations, using it as the main criteria [by which to structure the past]. We are trying to write history from the point of view of the masses. The year 1795 does not seem to have changed their life to any serious extent… 4 In émigré journals there appeared several reviews of the second volume of the work in question: Kościałkowski, 1957a; Kukiel, 1956–1957; Wielhorski, 1956–1957; Zaremba, 1957.

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The fact that both before and after 1795 we can still see the two main classes of Polish society standing opposite each other, that both before and after the last partition the ruling class makes use of the same methods and forms of exploitation and the exploited class responds with the same methods of self-defense is for us of crucial importance.5 In criticizing the interpretation that downplayed the significance of the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic in 1795, Marian Kukiel wrote: Facing the legacy of the old Polish Republic, it takes a blind man not to see that the executionerʼs axe that chopped this state into pieces obliterated townsmenʼs newly regained rights permitting them to participate in sessions of the Polish Diet and to occupy official positions in Kościuszko’s government. It also annihilated the peasantsʼ personal freedom, coupled with the legally guaranteed ownership of their land, removing them from the protection of law in general. It wrecked the prospect of a swift abolition of their serfdom, brought to an abrupt end the process of a deep transformation of economic life, and dealt a fatal blow to the reform of education that had already began to bear fruits. And, finally—the fact to which no section of the population can remain indifferent—it killed the nationʼs freedom.6 5 Historia Polski. Makieta [Mock-up History of Poland] (1956), ed. by S. Kieniewicz, W. Kula, vol. 2: 1764–1864, part I: 1764–1814, Warsaw: 5–6: “Mimo faktu rozbiorów skłonni jesteśmy bronić prymatu kryterium formacji społeczno-ekonomicznej. Staramy się pisać dzieje z punktu widzenia mas ludowych [−]. Nie wydaje się, aby 1795 rok wprowadził w doli tych mas poważniejsze zmiany [−]. Fakt, że i przed 1795 rokiem i po nim stoją naprzeciw siebie te same dwie zasadnicze klasy społeczeństwa polskiego, że i przed rozbiorem, i po nim klasa panująca stosuje w zasadzie te same metody i formy wyzysku i ucisku, a klasa wyzyskiwana odpowiada na nie tymi samymi w zasadzie metodami walki, ma dla nas podstawowe znaczenie.” 6 Kukiel, 1993, 32: “Mając przed oczyma dziedzictwo dawnej Rzeczypospolitej, ślepym być trzeba, by nie dojrzeć, że ten topór katowski, który państwo polskie ostatecznie rozrąbał, zabił zarazem odzyskane prawa polityczne mieszczan z udziałem ich w sejmie i w Kościuszkowskim rządzie, wolność osobistą chłopów połączoną z bezpieczeństwem posiadanych gruntów, rzeczywistą opiekę prawa nad nimi, widoki usunięcia pańszczyzny, przebudowę całego życia gospodarczego będącą w pełnym toku, bujnie rozkwitającą oświatę, i—co nie jest obojętnym dla żadnej warstwy narodu—zabił w jego życiu wolność.” Kukiel was not the only émigré author who criticized the diminishment of the importance of the year 1795. Stanisław Sopicki, an émigré publicist, wrote: “To blow out of proportion the significance of the manufactures, established in Grodno by Antoni Tyzenhaus, in order to elevate the importance of 1764 and diminish the importance of the partitions is to reach the tendentiousness characteristic of Soviet scholars.” (Sopicki, 1958, 2). This disregard held for

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As we can see, the émigré author contended that the partitions interrupted the process of large-scale reforms that was already in full swing and if uninterrupted was likely to have resulted in a considerable advancement of social freedom. Purely political reforms carried out in Poland in the latter half of the eighteenth century and designed to reinforce the state (such as, for example, the establishment of a hereditary monarchy) were left out of the émigré historian`s polemical remarks. His focus was specifically on those changes that were likely to culminate in the improvement of the life of the subordinated classes. He clearly aimed to show that the commitment to the standpoint of the unprivileged classes should have led to the inclusion, rather than the exclusion, of the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic among the most important events in Polish history. Denying the importance of this event was simply inconsistent with the theory on which the authors whom he criticised wanted to base historical studies. It was no accident that in the first chapter of his opus magnum, published in exile and titled Dzieje Polski porozbiorowe 1795–1921 (A History of the Post-Partitioned Poland 1795–1921), Kukiel tried to stress the harmful effects the partitions had on the process of social emancipation. Not surprisingly, it was Russia that he castigated for playing a particularly ominous role in dashing all hope for swift social progress that Poland had begun to experience in the last decades of its independent existence. In Prussia, too, a peasant “obtained less than that which he had been offered by Kościuszko.”7 By stressing the extent to which the partitions hindered the progress of social emancipation, Kukiel was clearly pursuing one of the goals of his book. As he declared in the preface, he wanted to provide an exposition of the post-partition history of Poland “to be enjoyed by all educated audiences and, assuming it will reach the country, to rectify that which has been distorted and garbled and to help mend that which has been mangled.”8 The indifference showed by domestic Polish historiography to the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth went hand in hand with a bitter criticism of the act that gave birth to it, that is, the 1569 Union of Lublin. Émigré scholars passionately defended both the act of the Union, as well as the whole tradition of the state to which it gave rise, against the criticism leveled at it. In the books published in Poland in the 1950s, the Union was interpreted as a social and political disaster and criticized as responsible for producing the “degeneration” of the whole course of Polish history. The Union opened the the last partition was also criticized by the second leader of émigré scholars, Oskar Halecki, see his review article: Halecki, 1958, 675. 7 Kukiel, 1993, 56. 8 Ibid., 4.

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way for the rise of a large group of big landowners (as a result of the Union, some large territories in the east, now in Ukraine, were incorporated into Poland) whose ascendancy culminated in the enhancement of class exploitation and, by extension, in the perpetuation of feudalism. Moreover, great magnates became so strong as to resist the King and foil any attempt to reform the country in the future. Not only was the emergence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth followed by the increased oppression of its people, but Poland also became embroiled in unnecessary conflicts with Russia to which—it must be added—the population that inhabited the annexed territories in the east was naturally gravitating.9 The rejection of this criticism by émigré scholars appealed to the idea of what can be referred to as the contextualization of historical judgments. A historical judgment could be considered justified only in so far as it took into account the context and social standards typifying the era to which it pertained. This was clearly one of the conditions which historians in communist Poland failed to meet. Domestic historiography, as one of the émigré historians wrote, was guilty of providing “too negative a view of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, judging it by the criteria characteristic of our own times”.10 Émigré authors maintained that it was necessary to contextualize the conditions of Polandʼs peasant population by juxtaposing them with those existing in early modern Russia. In view of the fact that the inhabitants of the eastern parts of the Commonwealth, exposed to an especially acute form of “feudal” exploitation, could fall under the rule of either Poland or Russia—there was no other alternative—such a juxtaposition seemed especially justified. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth emerged victorious in this comparison. Poland outstripped its eastern neighbor in terms of the social freedom enjoyed by the people living in both countries. Admittedly, there could be no doubt that in Poland also, the life of those who cultivated land owned by the lords and lived in serfdom, was very difficult. But it was 9

10

For example, in one of the books published in the Stalinist era we can read: “the Union allowed Polish lords to keep their conquests in Ukraine, making possible the further annexation of eastern territories. It stood in the way of unification of Belarus and Ukraine…. It prolonged the period of feudalism in Poland and prevented a transfor­ mation of multinational Republic into a strong national state.” (“Unia lubelska dawała panom polskim podstawę do utrzymania zaboru ziem ukraińskich, miała też ułatwić  ­dalsze zabory na wschodzie. Stawała na drodze do zjednoczenia Białorusi i Ukrainy […]. Przedłużała trwanie feudalizmu w Polsce. Uniemożliwiała przekształcenie wielonarodowościowej Rzeczpospolitej w silne państwo narodowe.”), see Missalowa and Schoenbrenner, 1951, 70. Kościałkowski, 1957b, 16–17.

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never as hard as in Russia. Reviewing a Stalinist publication, one of the émigré authors wrote: “To measure historical phenomena we need to use a comparative scale. The peasant population in Poland definitely suffered exploitation, but how much more ruthless it must have been in Russia to make thousands of serfs abandon their households and flee abroad.”11 Émigré scholars stressed the fact that the waves of peasants fleeing from Russia to Poland considerably surpassed in number those who migrated in the opposite direction.12 Thus, to criticize the annexation of the eastern areas by Poland on the ground that it entailed an increased exploitation of the people who were regarded as naturally gravitating towards Russia seemed incompatible with the very idea of writing history from the standpoint of the subordinated classes. A historiography that wanted to turn its commitment to the cause of the oppressed people into its trademark laid itself open to charges of “recommending” life under the system which was much more oppressive than that existing in the Polish-Lithuanian state. Responding to this fierce criticism of the traditional view of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, émigré historians argued that the criticism had little to do with the application of “emancipatory methodology” but originated instead in the desire to serve the political interests of the communist regime. The annexation of the eastern territory of the inter-war Poland by the Soviet Union was to be “supported” and justified by an ideologized vision of the past, in which the whole tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was condemned and rejected. That vision intended to delegitimize the image of Poland in the past in the territories conquered by the Soviet Union in the ­present.13 The same reasons, of course, lay behind the expunging of the last partitions from the list of the most important events in Polish history. The Polish-Lithuanian Republic that ceased to exist in 1795 symbolized a long and bitter struggle with Russian imperialism. To consider its fall as a great national disaster and as a crime committed by Russia was to add fuel to a national discontent over the annexation by the Soviet Union of the eastern territory of the 11

12 13

Wielhorski, 1956–1957, 47: “Wszelkie zjawiska historyczne mierzymy skalą porównawczą. Jeżeli w Rzeczypospolitej istniał wówczas niewątpliwy ucisk włościan, to jakież jego natężenie być musiało w sąsiedniej Rosji, które zmuszało rzesze pańszczyźnianych włościan do porzucenia swych gospodarstw i szukania ratunku w ucieczce za granicę.” See, for example: Kukiel, 1956–1957, 19. In reviewing the Mock-up History of Poland, Stanisław Kościałkowski wrote: “The Mock-up History of Poland tries to discredit the Union both morally and politically, allowing itself to be swayed by the political interests of today and approving of the post-Yalta annexation of the Lithuanian territories by the Soviet Union.” (Kościałkowski, 1957a, 14). See also Wielhorski, 1956–1957, 31–32.

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inter-war Poland that had existed from 1918 to 1939. The implementation of ideological goals appeared here in the guise of an allegedly revolutionary methodology that in fact was simply abused in the name of Soviet imperialism. Émigré authors also rejected the economic interpretation of the Union of Lublin, insisting that it was concluded mainly for political reasons.14 In their opinion, the establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a response to a growing threat from Russia and, to some extent, from Turkey. Consequently, they also refused to agree with the opinion, strongly expressed in Polish domestic historiography, that the Union, empowering the magnates and enfeebling the king, contained the seeds of the future fall of the state in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In a sense, they reversed this judgement by claiming that the act of 1569 should be given credit for creating a political organism capable of resisting imperialistic tendencies of Russia for more than two centuries.15 This tendency to reduce the attempt to tell a story of social emancipation that culminated in the advent of socialist freedom to an attempt to sanction Soviet conquests was reflected in the observations of one émigré author about the 1950s monographs devoted to General Ludwik Mierosławski—one of the leading figures of Polish history in the nineteenth century—and published in Poland.16 Ludwik Mierosławski was portrayed in them as representing the rightist wing of the Polish Democratic Society (the Society was one of the main political organizations created by Poles in exile after the collapse of the November Uprising in 1831). The General was labelled as a reactionary who did not deserve to be counted among those who formed the “progressive” traditions of Polish history. In criticizing such an interpretation, Józef Żmigrodzki, stressed the fact that Ludwik Mierosławski was so leftist in his outlook as to call for the expropriation of big landowners, while the Polish Democratic Society was so tightly knit an organization as to rule out the very possibility of having any rival factions within it. At the same time, the émigré author argued that the reason why Mierosławski was misrepresented had to do with the fact that he was always bitterly anti-Russian and committed to the idea of restoring an independent Poland in the vast area it had possessed prior to the first partition in 1772.17 This, of course, meant that Ludwik Mierosławski had envisaged 14 15 16

17

See, for example, Sopicki, 1969, 18–19. For more on the problem see Mękarski, 2011, 91–100. Żmigrodzki, 1966. Żmigrodzki referred here to Stefan Kieniewicz (1953) and to other minor publications. First of all, however, he criticised the work by Bronisław Baczko (Baczko, 1955), which he described as “abc of Stalinism.” Ibid., 57.

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Poland as occupying the lands Poland had been deprived of by the Soviet Union after World War ii. Again, it is clear that it was not “reactionary” views held by Red General (that is how Mierosławski was called), but his anti-Russian attitude that needed to be held responsible for the bitter criticism he received in Polish domestic historiography. The last example that illustrates the way in which émigré historians criticised the application of Marxist theory—or rather of Marxist vocabulary—in domestic historiography concerns the interpretation of the rebirth of a sovereign Poland in 1918. In the Peopleʼs Republic of Poland the restoration of independence in 1918 was interpreted as strictly connected with the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It is to this revolution that the Poles were said to have owed a debt for the regaining of their state. However, they proved unable to take full advantage of the opportunity offered by the revolution in Russia. Although they succeeded in rebuilding their state at the turn of 1918/1919, they failed to give it a socially progressive form. Bourgeois parties— and the Polish Socialist Party was included within this group—managed to seize power only to prevent Poland from becoming a truly socialist state as early as 1918/1919. The construction of socialist Poland had to be postponed by more than twenty years. At the advent of independence, it was only Polish communist parties—SDKPiL (Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania) and pps-Lewica (Polish Socialist Party-Left)—that were said to have adhered to a truly progressive social and political agenda. Foremost among those who propagated such an interpretation was Henryk Jabłoński whose works constituted an official version of Polish history in the period that lasted until the start of the 1970s.18 The interpretation just outlined presented the restoration of independence in strict connection with the socialist tradition. Not surprisingly, it was the doyen of Polish socialists, Adam Ciołkosz, who, in exile, took upon himself the task of criticizing it. His criticism was based on the assumption that the system built by the Bolsheviks had nothing to do with any conceivable form of socialism. In one of his articles he expressed the following view: “The concept of socialism is inherent in the concept of freedom. One cannot imagine a true socialist system in which a worker is a slave. The system started by Lenin is not socialism as it does not serve to satisfy the needs of the proletariat but those of the military and police apparatus.”19 If the work of the Bolsheviks was to be perceived only through the prism of the establishment of a totalitarian regime 18 19

It was particularly Henryk Jabłońskiʼs work (1962) that came in for bitter criticism in exile. See Komarnicki, 1964. Ciołkosz, 1968, 56.

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that did not even distantly resemble socialism, then the role of Polish communists who rejected the idea of rebuilding a Polish state in favor of staging a Europe-wide proletarian revolution should be seen in the same light: SDKPiLʼs revolutionary ways and the partyʼs willingness to defend the interests of the working classes amounted to attempts to undermine the Polish proletariatʼs struggle for a sovereign Poland and to subordinate the  interests of the proletariat to the interests of Russian workers and Russian revolution. In the crucial period of 1918–19, the SDKPiL members and later communists were adamant about their rejection of the very idea of struggling for an independent Polish statehood regardless of a social and political form it was about to assume [italics added]. On the other hand… ppsʼs reformism and counterrevolutionary agenda fed themselves upon the belief in the possibility of building an independent Poland whose political and social form was going to depend on the strength and vitality the Polish working classes would have on the verge of national independence.20 Ciołkosz did not doubt that an independent and democratic Poland, even a capitalist one, would create an incomparably better ground for the development of social freedom than totalitarian Russia. Thus, contrary to the views held by those who wanted to accuse the pps of betraying socialist ideals, its endorsement for the idea of national sovereignty, inherently anti-Bolshevik, needed to be interpreted as expressing the support for those ideals. Consequently, Ciołkosz excluded the tradition of Polish communism from the history of Polish socialism. Polish communists simply had no right to claim their place in the process of the emancipation of the working classes. The émigré critique of domestic Polish historiography was voiced mainly in the 1950s, or referred to books published in the 1950s. The first half of that 20

Ciołkosz, 1960, 230–231: “otóż rzekoma rewolucyjność i klasowość esdecji polegała jedynie i wyłącznie na zwalczaniu dążeń proletariatu polskiego do niepodległości własnego kraju i na podporządkowaniu interesów polskiej klasy robotniczej interesom proletariatu rosyjskiego i rewolucji rosyjskiej. Esdecy, a potem komuniści, w przełomowym okresie lat 1918–1919 w sposób jak najbardziej stanowczy odrzucali program niepodległości Polski, bez względu na formę polityczną i treść społeczną przyszłego państwa polskiego […]. Z  drugiej strony rzekoma kontrrewolucyjność i reformizm pps polegały jedynie i wyłącznie na tym, iż pps przewidywała, że klasa robotnicza będzie mogła nadać państwu polskiemu taką formę polityczną i taką treść społeczną, na jaką pozwolą jej siły w momencie odzyskania niepodległości.”

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decade saw the process of the Stalinization of Polish Clio which to an unprecedented extent was harnessed to the task of pursuing ideological goals. The so-called Polish October and political thaw in 1956 brought changes to the historical profession. There is no doubt that émigré authors were prepared, at least to a certain extent, to recognize those changes, appreciating scholarly effort undertaken by historians in communist Poland. Generally, already in the 1960s there began to appear an increasing number of positive reviews written by émigré scholars of books published in Poland. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the recognition of the changes was often more an act of criticism than an appreciation of the progress domestic historiography had made. However improved, the vision of Polish history presented after 1956 still left much to be desired. Émigré authors aimed here to show that the political turmoil of 1956 from which the communist system emerged a little less oppressive sufficed for historians to rapidly do away with some of the interpretations that had allegedly been erected on a rock-solid foundation of the new methodology. Józef Żmigrodzki, for example, contrasted the portrait of Ludwik Mierosławski painted in the 1950s with one offered in a book published in 1963.21 The latter contained a revised image of Red General and aroused no reservations in the émigré author. That the first was so completely and swiftly abandoned was proof enough that there was nothing behind it but ideological motives of the communist regime. As we have seen, the heart of the émigré criticism of the methodological dimension of domestic historiography consisted in showing that Marxist vocabulary was used as a tool with which to legitimate Soviet conquests and advance the interests of the communist regime in Poland. Thus, rather than serving to highlight the story of social emancipation—one of the most important tasks with the execution of which the Stalinist form of Marxism was declared to be entrusted—it offered a distorted or even a false picture of the history of social progress. To indicate the discrepancy between the role it aspired to play and that it actually performed was to reveal its exclusively ideological nature. Passionately involved in denouncing an ideological function of the methodological turn of Polish domestic historiography, émigré scholars remained reluctant in recognizing the fact that the way in which the Marxist methodology was applied in domestic historiography after 1956 evolved—even if they did recognize it, they refused to admit it publicly in the texts and reviews they published. It can be argued that perhaps because the émigré response to the 21

Żychowski, 1963.

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transformation of Polish historiography—apart from being a scholarly polemic—was also a kind of a political protest whose strength consisted in the unveiling of an inherently ideological use of the theory in question, the very attempt to acknowledge any positive effect Marxism may have had upon the development of historical studies would have implied diluting the protest— the effect they wanted to avoid. When Leon Koczy wanted to appreciate—in his account of the International Historical Congress held in Paris in 1950—the analysis of some demographic trends presented in a paper sent to the Congress by a distinguished Polish Marxist historian Witold Kula, the decision to publish his text was made after a long debate among the members of the editorial board of Teki Historyczne, which was the leading historical journal published by Polish historians in exile.22 Undoubtedly, the Marxist vocabulary was still arbitrarily used, often in a way that violated the spirit of the Marxism itself, to criticize the tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic. On the other hand, however, there can be no doubt that some of the best Polish historians of the second half of the twentieth century were not only truly inspired by Marxism, but were also able to put this inspiration to a use that met high scholarly standards. The research of such historians as Marian Małowist, Witold Kula or Jerzy Topolski certainly ranks among the achievements of Polish historiography. Kulaʼs work, entitled Teoria ekonomiczna ustroju feudalnego. Próba modelu (The Economic Theory of the Feudal System. The Draft of a Model),23 reverberated throughout the scholarly world outside of Poland. These studies drew in some measure on the conceptions developed by the French Annales school. None of the works published by the leading Marxist historians after 1956 was ever reviewed by émigré authors, nor was any work devoted exclusively to economic and social history. A methodological study by Witold Kula, Rozważania o historii (Reflections on history), was an exception. The exception was quite characteristic of the émigré way of assessing Polish domestic historiography.24 In his work Kula criticized the way in which the methodological transformation of Polish historiography was carried out. The opinion he expressed was that of a disappointed Marxist historian who clearly saw that political pressure certainly did not benefit the development of historical studies in Poland. Zbigniew Jordan—one of the émigré authors—who reviewed Kulaʼs work contended that it needed to be regarded only as a document revealing the pressure exerted by the communist regime on historians in Poland. At the same time, he added that Kula did not deserve to be given credit either for 22 23 24

See Stobiecki, 2002. Kula, 1962. Kula, 1958.

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making a positive contribution to the methodology of history or for offering a better understanding of the nature of historiography.25 Again, the émigré authorʼs attention was focused on the ideological and political dimension of the problem, failing to notice that Kula presented a more flexible and less ideological approach to Marxism. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, it is perhaps worth stressing that this “failure” in acknowledging the evolution of domestic historiography concerned only its methodological dimension: one strictly connected with the idea of applying some form of Marxism in historical studies. Books published in Poland after 1956 and appreciated by émigré authors simply did not have much to do with the application of Marxist methodology. The émigré historiansʼ clash with an abusive ways of applying the theory of historical materialism in the 1950ʼs seems to have also affected the way in which they reacted to changes occurring in Western historiography. The observation of how the theory of historical materialism was applied in the Stalinist period was one of the factors that had a hand in making them particularly reluctant to approve of the direction in which Western historiography was evolving. The development of studies in social history that, especially in the first decades after the Second World War, were to a great extent inspired by Marxism did not gain acceptance among émigré scholars. Recollecting their participation in International Congresses of Historical Sciences, Marian Kukiel went so far as to say that the Congress held in Paris in 1950 could be regarded as marking the beginning of the crisis of Western historiography.26 His criticism was directed against historians affiliated with the Annales school. During that Congress, Polish historians were probably given an opportunity to see the extent to which Marxism was gaining currency in some circles in the West. The stress on the material dimension of life (climate, agriculture, trade routes, demography—problems that were the staple diet of the Annales historians) seemed to deflect attention from the spiritual sphere of reality which in the eyes of most émigré authors appeared to be much more important. Perhaps it is worth mentioning here that Oskar Halecki argued that Poland owed its prosperity in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to Queen Jadwiga because she had the courage to usher principles of Christian religion into politics. Not only did émigré authors refuse to agree to the relegation of political history to a secondary place, but they also clung to the tradition of individualistic historicism, sometimes venturing into the realm of providential historiosophy in the tradition of Saint Augustine (Witold Dzięcioł, Halecki). Perhaps 25 26

Jordan, 1958. Kukiel, 1966–1968, 219.

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adhesion to the old and reluctance to consider the new was the price émigré scholars had to pay for their indomitable struggle to defend the idea of sovereign and independent Poland. References Baczko, B. (1955). Poglądy społeczno-polityczne i filozoficzne Towarzystwa Demokratycznego Polskiego [Socio-political and Philosophical Ideas of the Polish Democratic Society]. Warszawa. Ciołkosz, A. (1960). “Polska Partia Socjalistyczna w czasie wojny.” [Polish Socialist Party during the War]. Bellona 3, 230–31. [Review of Jabłoński, 1958] Ciołkosz, A. (1968). “50 lat po ‘Wielkim Październiku’” [50 Years after the Great October], in: Polemiki, 7–8. Górny, M. (2006). “Od Lelewela do Smoleńskiego. Spory historiograficzne lat pięćdziesiątych.” [From Lelewel up to Smoleński: History Debates of the 1950s] in: Wierzbicki, A. et.al. (eds.), Klio Polska. Studia i materiały z dziejów historiografii polskiej po ii wojnie światowej, Warszawa: 148–177. Grabski, A.F. (1992). “Stalinowski model historiografii.” [The Stalinist Model of Historiography]. Dzieje Najnowsze, No. 3, 23–45. Grabski, A.F. (2000). Zarys historii historiografii polskiej [An Overview of the History of Polish Historiography]. Poznań. Habielski, R. (1995). “Utopia kraju lat dziecinnych (Emigracja powojenna wobec Kresów).” [Utopia of the Homeland of Childhood (The post-World War ii Exile and the Polish East)] Kresy, No. 2, 12–22. Habielski, R. (1998). “W światłach i cieniach przeszłości. Emigracja wobec Millenium [The Glamour and the Shadows of the Past. The Exile and the Millennium].” Więź, No. 11, 20–42. Halecki, O. (1958). Historia państwa i prawa Polski do roku 1795, ed. by J. Bardach, Z  Kaczmarczyk, B Leśnodorski [History of the State and Law in Poland to 1795, ed.  by. J. Bardach, Z. Kaczmarczyk and B. Leśnodorski (Review article)], The American Historical Review, no. 3. Jabłoński, H. (1958). Polityka Polskiej Partii Socjalistycznej w czasie wojny 1914–1918 r. [The Politics of the Polish Socialist Party during the War 1914–1918]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Jabłoński, H. (1962). Narodziny Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej 1918–1919 [The Birth of the Second Republic 1918–1919]. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. Jordan, Z. (1958). “W. Kula Rozważania o historii” [W. Kula Reflections on History.] Teki Historyczne, vol. 9, 105–107. [Review of Kula, 1958].

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Kieniewicz, S. (1953). Ruch chłopski w Galicji w 1846 [The Peasant-Agitation in Galicia 1846]. Warszawa. Komarnicki, T. (1964). “Odrodzenie Polski w krzywym zwierciadle.” [The Rebirth of Poland in a Distorting Mirror.] Polemiki 2, 25–40. Kościałkowski, S. (1957a). “Spostrzeżenia i uwagi krytyczne.” [Observations and Critical Remarks] Kultura (Paris), no. 7/8, 45–60. Kościałkowski, S. (1957b). “Spostrzeżenia i uwagi krytyczne (dok.).” [Observations and Critical Remarks Finalized]. Kultura (Pris), no. 9, 16–17. Kukiel, M. (1956–1957). “Przesilenie w historiografii krajowej.” [Crisis in the Polish Historiography at Home]. Teki Historyczne 8, 1–29. Kukiel, M. (1966–1968). “Od Zurychu do Wiednia. Pięć Kongresów Międzynarodowych.” [From Zurich to Vienna. Five International Congresses] Teki Historyczne 15. Kukiel, M. (1993). Dzieje Polski porozbiorowej (1795–1921) [A History of the PostPartitioned Poland 1795–1921]. London: Puls. [First Edition: London 1961]. Kula, W. (1958). Rozważania o historii [Reflections on History]. Warsaw. Kula, W. (1962). Teoria ekonomiczna ustroju feudalnego. Próba modelu [Economic Theory of the Feudal System. The Draft of a Model]. Warszawa. Mękarski, A. (2011). Między historiozofią a polityką. Historiografia Polski Ludowej w opiniach i komentarzach historyków i publicystów emigracyjnych 1945–1989. [Inbetween of the Philosophy of History and the Politics. The Historiography of the Polish People’s Republic (1945–1989) From the Viewpoint of Polish Historians and Publicists Living in Exile] Warszawa. Missalowa, G. and J. Schoenbrenner (1951), Historia Polski. [History of Poland] Warszawa. Romek, Z. (2004). “Polsko-radzieckie dyskusje o ‘Istorii Polszi’ w trzech tomach w latach 1950–1959.” [Polish-Soviet Discussions About the Three-Volume Soviet Polish History ‘Istorija Polši’ 1950–1959] in: Wierzbicki, A. (ed.), Klio Polska. Studia i materiały z dziejów historiografii polskiej po ii wojnie światowej, Warszawa. 169–191. Sopicki, S. (1958). “Spór o 1000-lecie.” [The Controversy over the Millennium]. Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, no. 206. Sopicki, S. (1969). Unia lubelska i jej znaczenie [The Union of Lublin and her Impact]. London. Stobiecki, R. (1993a). Historia pod nadzorem. Spory o nowy model historii w Polsce (ii połowa lat czterdziestych—początek lat pięćdziesiątych) [History Under Supervision: Debates on a New Model of History in Poland between the Mid-1940s and the Beginning of 1950s.] Łódź. Stobiecki, R. (1993b). “Stalinowska wizja dziejów Polski—próba rekonstrukcji modelu.” [Stalinist Vision of the History of Poland—Trying to Reconstruct the Model] Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 3, 73–82.

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Stobiecki, R. (1996). “Stalinowska mitologizacja idei postępu.” [Stalinist Mythologization of the Idea of Progress] in: Barszczewska-Krupa, A. (ed.), Historia. Mity. Interpretacje. Łódź: 139–47. Stobiecki, R. (1997). “Pierwsza Konferencja metodologiczna Historyków Polskich.” [The First Conference of Polish Historians on Methodology] in Bäcker, R. and P. Hubner (eds.), Skryte oblicze systemu komunistycznego. U źródeł zła, Warszawa: 193–211. Stobiecki, R. (2001). “Obraz kresów wschodnich w emigracyjnych syntezach dziejów Polski po roku 1945.” [The Polish East in the Historical Syntheses Written in Exile after 1945] in Szczerbiński, M. and T. Wolsza (eds.), Światowa Rada Badań nad Polonią. Prace naukowe. Gorzów Wielkopolski 7, 595–605. Stobiecki, R. (2002). “Historycy polscy na uchodźstwie na Międzynarodowych Kongresach Nauk Historycznych.” [Polish Emigré Historians on the International Congresses of the Historical Sciences] Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 3, 75–93. Stobiecki, R. (2003). “Emigracyjne syntezy dziejów Polski. Próba analizy na wybranych przykładach.” [Historical Syntheses Written in Exile. Analysis of Selected Examples] in: Szczerbiński, M. and T. Wolsza (eds.), Z dziejów Polski i emigracji (1939–1989). Księga dedykowana byłemu Prezydentowi Rzeczypospolitej Ryszardowi Kaczo­ rowskiemu. Gorzów Wielkopolski, 159–173. Stobiecki, R. (2004a). “Leon Koczy (1900–1981). Szkic do portretu.” [L. Koczy (1900– 1981). Draft of a Portrait] Teki Historyczne 23. Stobiecki, R. (2004b). “Twórczość emigracyjna Oskara Haleckiego (1891–1973).” [O. Haleckis Work in the Exile] in Faryś, J., ks. R. Nir and M. Szczerbiński (eds.), Studia z dziejów Polski i Europy w xix i xx w. Księga dedykowana Profesorowi Piotrowi Stefanowi Wandyczowi. Gorzów Wielkopolski. 581–592. Stobiecki, R. (2004c). “Klio na wygnaniu. Miejsce refleksji teoretyczno-metodologicznej w twórczości polskich historyków na uchodźstwie po 1945r.” [Clio in Exile. The Position of Theoretical and Methodological Thought in the Work of the Polish Exile Historians] in Wierzbicki, A. (ed.), Klio polska. Studia i materiały z dziejów historiografii polskiej po ii wojnie światowej, Warszawa. 9–49. Stobiecki, R. (2005). Klio na wygnaniu. Z dziejów polskiej historiografii na uchodźstwie w Wielkiej Brytanii po 1945 r. [Klio in Exile. About the Polish History Writing in the Exile in Great Britain after 1945]. Poznań. Wielhorski, W. (1956–1957). “Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie w komunistycznej historii Polski.” [Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Communist History of Poland], in: Teki Historyczne 8, 30–45. Wolniewicz, M. (2006). “Między tradycją legionową a ‘tradycjami postępowymi’. Powstania narodowe w refleksji historycznej Stefana Kieniewicza.” [Between the Tradition of the Legions and those of ‘Progress’: The National Uprisings in the

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Historical Reflection of S. Kieniewicz] in Wierzbicki, A. (ed.), Klio Polska. Studia i materiały z dziejów historiografii polskiej po ii wojnie światowej, Warszawa. 91–121. Zaremba, P. (1957). “Interpretacja nie tworzy faktów. Na marginesie makiety historii Polski.” [Interpretation does not Create Facts. On the Occasion of the Blueprint of Polish History] Kultura (Paris), no. 6, 118–133. Żmigrodzki, J. (1966). “Sąd nad Mierosławskim.” [Trial on Mierosławski] Polemiki 5, 41–60. Żychowski, M. (1963). Ludwik Mierosławski 1814–1878, Warszawa.

The Figure of “Antemurale” in the Historiography at Home and in Exile* Andreas Lawaty In some countries of the Central Eastern Europe the conviction of being a part of antemurale christianitatis played an important role in defining one’s own identity. It gave these countries of the ‘younger Europe’ in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times a sense of mission and of self-consciousness by defining their own historical role as a line of defence of Christianity from Infidels, Heretics and Schismatic and especially from the Turks. This topic was transformed in the 19th and 20th century as the historic circumstances of defending one’s identity and the political borderlines changed. It could maintain its mainly religious character being only applied to new social and political realities, and subduing the last to religious or even confessional purposes. The process of adoption of the figure of antemurale could take just as well the other direction, when the secular interpretation dominated giving rather ­emotional temperature and philosophical grounds to national and political entities for the belief in one’s own historical mission of being a bulwark of the right cause. The idea of perennial conflicts, of civilized world and its borders, of Europe vs. Asia, of the West vs. East, of Freedom vs. Despotism, of Idealism vs. Com­ munism, of Morality vs. Violence and of Christianity vs. Infidelity was applied not only to sets of beliefs but also to spaces and political entities. It was very much alive in the confessional religious thinking, in the realm of geopolitics and in cultural criticism. And it was present in the history writing as well. Trying to reconstruct the history of the figure in the historical discourse one should look out for the semantic and linguistic transformations of the figure, the change in its ideological or apologetic utilization, and its usefulness as a  historical argument. On the other hand one should be aware of easiness, with  which such rhetorical figures can be over-interpreted, generalized or insinuated by the interpreter. The result turns than to become an ideo­ logical  weapon or useless hermeneutic instrument in the hands of the historian himself. * An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 21st Conference on Baltic Studies of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, May 29 to June 1, 2008, in Bloomington, Indiana University.

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For the purposes of the following chapter two levels of interest in a concrete historical context should be discerned. The first level concerns the impact the overwhelming presence of the Russian empire and of the Soviet Union have had in the 20th century on the development of philosophical, ethical and even theological views of the sense of national history as developed by the neighbours of Russia inflicted by its rule. Countries exposed to the Russian and Soviet domination had good reasons to use the figure of antemurale or bulwark in describing its relationship to the eastern neighbour, especially if they could hark back to a tradition of doing so.1 At the same time it should be important to identify, what the Soviet Union stands for in a certain discursive context: Russian expansionism, materialism, godlessness, totalitarianism? And what is supposed to be defended in the face of the Soviet menace: Christianity, the West, national interest, capitalism, free World, democracy? On the other level it is going to be of primary interest, how did the ‘­antemurale’-figure function in the historical literature written in exile. The exile historiography felt responsible for keeping up the truth about the history of its country and making understandable to the readers of the foreign host country, what the special historical mission and the destiny of their home country really was about. In the years of occupation and of an alien ideological rule between 1939 and 1989 put the history writing at home under specific, changing nevertheless difficult conditions of constraint and control. The Soviet-dominated countries became a place of suppression of any kind of bulwark-idea that could be directed against this supremacy. Thus the comparison of the exile and the home-historiography should be one between an open defensive and a clandestine offensive usage of the figure. The topic is broad and it should be treated in a wide comparative modality as well—comparing not only between the respective national historiography in exile and at home, but also between different national historiographies in exile. On this place it must be reduced to some examples of continuity, functionality and modification in the usage of that specific figure of historical narrative.

1 A general comparative reconstruction of the history of the figure in Europe is targeted in a research project headed by Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg at the University of Gießen. 2008 there was a conference organized in Gießen entitled Militante Inklusions- und Exklusionskonzepte und europäische Integration: Antemurale, Vormauer, Bollwerk, Festung Europa. The lectures were held on Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Ottoman Empire, Poland, Germany, and Spain. The results are not published.

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1 At the aabs-Conference in Bloomington (1998) there was a panel on the history of historiography chaired by Eduard Mühle. I am acquainted with the results of this panel on the basis of the papers published 1999 in the Journal of Baltic Studies in a special issue entitled “The Baltic Lands, National Historiographies, and Politics in the ‘Short Twentieth Century.’”2 This issue was augmented by some additional papers originally not presented at the session. Out of the five papers published, one was concerned with Latvian, another with Estonian historiography, and three of them with history writing of the Baltic Germans.3 None of them was about history writing in the exile, which seemed to me somewhat surprising, since the Baltic experience of at least half of the “short century” is also one of exile as well as one of deportation. On the other side, one could argue, this panel was dominated by dealing with historiography written in the exile, if one wants to see the history written by Baltic Germans in Germany as an exile historiography. Since the Baltic Germans lost their political, economic and cultural preponderance in the region ever since the foundation of the Baltic States due to the results of World War I, they could feel as expelled from their Heimat even before they were transferred Heim ins Reich by Hitler in 1939. Jörg Hackmann made it in his paper on “Contemporary Baltic History and German Ostforschung 1918–1945” clear, how the specific experience of privation made by the Baltic Germans influenced their claims of the historical rights to their homeland. He writes: “The Baltic German historians’ claims did not refer to border revisions, but sought rather to confirm their Heimatrecht, that is, their demands for a significant role in the political, social and economic life of their countries. This claim for Heimatrecht, however, was based not so much on twentieth century history as on the cultural and national mission of the Germans as an antemurale throughout the centuries since the Aufsegelung.”4 The civilizing mission of the Germans in the Baltics was seen as directed against the danger coming from the East, concrete from Russia and its Russification efforts. Now, the vision of defending the superior German culture on the outskirts of Europe in the Baltics was not a product of Exile, but was a part of the colonial attitude of the Baltic Germans augmented by the feeling of being menaced by the process of nationalization of the Russian Empire as well as of the local peasant people, the Latvians and Estonians. The principal of 2 Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 1999. Mühle, 1999a. 3 Plakans, 1999; Raun, 1999; Pistohlkors, 1999; Hackmann, 1999; Mühle, 1999b. 4 Hackmann, 1999, 328.

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loyalty toward the Tsar because of the oath given to him didn’t have to change anything on such cultural self-estimation.5 On the other hand the figure of antemurale, the confession to a historic mission of defending higher culture and higher rights, also of religious (protestant) orthodoxy against the church claiming to be orthodox, could give in the situation of exile a special comfort to those who lost their Heimat to those whom they believed to be inferior.6 I would like to argue, there are three basic components of an antemuralefigure: (1.) The claim of a perennial menace by an “other” as enemy on a territorial or cultural basis (by the Russians, the Moslems, Asia, but also by the Jews, Freemasons or Communists); (2.) The claim to defend not only oneself, but also the others (Christianity, Europe, Civilization, etc.); this “altruistic” component can be problematic, because the defender and the defended can lightly fall into one category differentiated only by the level of abstraction (for example: a Catholic Pole defending Christian Europe, or: a Christian defending Christianity); (3.) The claim of being chosen (by God, by History, for reasons of a geopolitical situation) to defend a higher or greater entity, which one is part of. In other words, a sense of destiny seems to be an important component of the antemurale-figure. Adapting the figure of antemurale to national history can be a form of historic interpretation, but it seems to be much more a tool of giving sense to history, making historical experience, especially the experience of menace and persecution, meaningful. Whenever history is needed for the production of identity, the meaning of history is much more important than the interpretation of it. Even though we know, the belief, interpretation would be objective, is an illusive one, we still are more aware of the construction-character of any interpretation. This is not the case in the process of giving meaning to history, since it requires our engagement and confession, if we want to be part of this meaningful history, if we identify ourselves with it. If this is the case, one could expect that the figure of antemurale becomes all the more important, when the identity is being endangered. It is true especially when there is a tradition of using this figure in the concrete master narrative on national history. It would be of interest to examine, if there are cases when the figure was produced for the first time in an exile-situation. Defining the role of ones nation as defending higher values can rationalise the engagement of émigré for his homeland and make his nation of interest to those in his host land, who believe themselves to participate on and to represent those higher values. Toivo Raun demonstrated ten years ago in Bloomington when 5 Saagpakk, 2006. 6 Little self-critical reflection on this problem is to be found in: Rauch, 1986.

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comparing the treatment of Baltic Germans in the Estonian historiography of the 1930s with Estonian historiography in the Soviet time of 1970s a “striking amount of continuity…despite the paradigmatic shift from an organizing principle based on the nation to one based on class struggle… For all authors, the Baltic German elites represented the reactionary status quo in the region and are seen as the ‘enemy’ of the rising Estonians.” And Raun makes a further important observation: It was “the glasnost’ era and especially the postcommunist decade of the 1990s [which] have witnessed the beginning of a fundamental shift in the treatment of the Baltic German elites in Estonian histo­riography. No longer seen as the ‘enemy’, their forced departure from Estonia in 1939 has been viewed with sympathy and understanding.”7 The question I would like to pose, without being able to answer it partly due to my linguistic insufficiency is, whether this shift was prepared in the Estonian historiography written in exile? The growing sympathy to the Germans is paralleled by growing enmity toward Russia. There is of course a historic dimension to this turn around of a  frontier feeling among the Baltic nations. Jaan Tõnisson, the leader of the Estonian liberal party was thinking mainly about Germany when he wrote 1905: “Estonia and Latvia are living borders of Russia against the West”.8 In the analysis of Marko Lehti up to 1917/1918 “to the Estonians and the Latvians Germanism represented the natural enemy”. Engaging in the idea of a BalticScandinavian federation and then becoming sovereign states after World War I “they turned their faces towards the west and created a new border against the east.”9 The conflict with Russia or the Soviet Union which prevails in the national identity of Estonians and Latvians up to the present is at the same time much more adequate for any kind of antemurale-imagination. The Baltic nations were small in size, but this is not really of importance, when interpreting the non-civilized otherness. This situation was richly prefigured by the Biblical story of conflict between David and Goliath. Olaf Mertelsmann briefly explained how the experience of Soviet occupation and the identification with the history of the country (not only of the Estonian nation) helped to construct a historically far way back projected border of civilization between Estonia and Russia along the Narva-River.10 This antemurale-situation against Russia seems to have become an important element of the national and European identity of Estonians. Was it prepared in any way by the history written in the exile? 7 8 9 10

Raun, 1999, 348, 349. Quotation and interpretation by Lehti, 1997, 48. Lehti, 1997, 49. Mertelsmann, 2006.

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2 There are some good reasons to believe, that exile experience can foster an idealisation of the lost homeland. But it is not necessarily so. I see exile here as a result of political and of ideological decisions—made either by the expelling power or by the expelled person. Conscious remaining in a condition of exile, a kind of “practicing exile” implies, that there is a continuity of identifying oneself with the home country as well as a continuity of dissent with the political and ideological condition, the home country finds itself in. Consequently, the condition of exile must not be terminated only by the return to the homeland because of a change in the political situation or of a change of political conviction. It also can be terminated by a decision, not to practice the exile anymore, but to integrate, to assimilate, or just to “forget” the past and connect once own future only with the host country. At that moment an émigré historian becomes a historian of the host country with a migration background. Assuming this, a historian practicing his profession in any country is writing history in exile only when he has a sense of responsibility for the country he left or a sense of mission in keeping up the truth about its history. In order to be treated as an exile historian, he should be “practicing exile” himself. And “practicing exile” means also participation on something prefigured by the Jewish experience in the time of nationalism: the ‘diaspora nationalism’.11 It seams to be clear, but it is not. The practicing of history as a profession can be motivated by being in a situation of exile. But to analyse the views of professional historian by the term of him being an émigré, one should have good reasons to do so. For sure, it is a problem faced by any self-critical historian, that there is an entanglement of professional skills and political, philosophical or moral attitudes. We can’t really overcome this entanglement, but we can make it open and conscious to us. There is no simple connection between an “exile biography” and “exile attitudes”, whatever the latter should be about. On the other hand, an exiled historian (or historically thinking person) remains in the exile even if he does not want to. Even if he decides not to “practice exile” anymore, he can be interpreted as having views of an émigré as soon as he is talking or writing about his former home country or about its enemies. Here is one of the reasons to be found, which make the definition of the corpus of historiography “written in exile” so difficult. It could be of great use therefore to compare the criteria established to define the “writing history in exile” in the time after 1939/1945 which was caused by the violence of war and the violence of the (fascist and communist) 11

Hilbrenner, 2007.

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ideology with the criteria established to study the enforced exile of history writers in another time periods. First of all one can legitimately ask the question if the emigration movements due to the October Revolution in Russia 1917/191812 and the Nazi takeover of power in Germany 193313 should not be treated as an integral part of the post World War ii political emigration. It had partly the same ideological reasons although the political shape of Europe differed totally. There were also interwar migration movements due to the emergence of new national state in the Central Eastern Europe. World War I itself and the interethnic conflicts it caused in multinational empires as well as the new political shape of Europe in result of it, they all were crucial causes of a new reflection on history and its meaning—“at home” which was without changing ones own domicile usually not the same anymore, as in the exile. A basic form of comparison is to be found in the Great Emigration of Polish patriots after 1830 uprising in the Russian part of Poland. But the 19th century witnessed also other migrations on national, political and especially economic basis, which produced history writing outside of the homeland as well. On the other hand it could be easily overseen that there are good reasons to look for a comparative basis to the religiously motivated migration of the early modern times. The religiously engaged and often nationally conscious historiography written by history writers in exile in that time offers different forms of reaction to the exile situation as well as conciliatory or unconciliatory interpretations of the history of the homeland.14 3 The figure of antemurale is not a product of exile, but it is—theoretically—of special use to it. I would like to illustrate it on the case of Polish exile. There is a long tradition of the functioning of the antemurale-figure in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ever since the early modern times, with some roots in the middle ages.15 The reason for it seems to be the fact, that the Commonwealth defined itself, in spite of all the religious, ethnic and cultural diversity inside, as a borderland of the Latin Christian World, and 12 13 14 15

Raeff, 1999. Kessler, 2005; Eakin-Thimme, 2005. Kersken, 2008. There is some research on the subject but it leaves many questions on comparativeness, transformation, popularity and functionality open: Borkowska, 1982; Krzyżaniakowa, 1992; Tazbir, 2004; Hein-Kircher, 2005.

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it saw its mission in defending it against the schismatic Orthodoxy, Islam and Protestantism. This conviction grew with the time proportionally to the political menace coming from the expansionist neighbouring powers, Poland was exposed to. In the 18th century, the time of partitions and loss of independence, as well as the time of reforms and that of the enlightenment, a process of secularization of the antemurale-Myth could be noted.16 Still the latter, secular version of defending Europe against the invasion of Asia and of Barbarism, did not replace the former figure of antemurale christianitatis. In the contrary, both forms existed parallel to each other, and could come into use depending on which form would better fit in. Still it was only the time of Romanticism that gave the Polish Nation its new shape, based on the memory of the Commonwealth but provided with a new sense of historic, moral, and religious mission. What is known as Polish Messianism is a kind of reconstruction of the antemurale-figure for the needs of emancipative nationalisms and a view of Europe menaced by the Russian despotism and the European homemade Autocracy. Interestingly enough this Polish Messianism was produced in the Great Polish Emigration after the defeated uprising of November 1830. It was 1832 when Adam Mickiewicz published his manifesto of Polish Emigration: The Books of Polish Nation and of Polish Pilgrimage. He envisioned therein the Polish Nation as chosen by the destiny to defend Europe and Christianity against its enemies, and the Polish Exile as the vanguard of the liberation movement. “Poland defending Europe” and “Europe careless about Poland” became two stereotype tenets of Polish nationalism. This Manifesto of Polish Messianism was remembered of during and at the end of World War ii in the Polish exile. It was reprinted 1940 in London, 1941 in Switzerland, 1945 in Hannover and Pittsburgh, 1946 in Rome. Rome became beside London, Paris and New York a centre of Polish emigration and a place in which publishing of historic literature took a prominent place. Rome attracted in a special way publishing activities of Polish émigrés, who believed in the Christian destiny of the Polish Nation and who saw Poland in the hands of a power and ideology alien to the tenets of European Civilization (Abendland). For the purpose of making the results of Polish historic research accessible to the western scientific community and public opinion, a new periodical was founded 1954 in Rome, edited by the Polish Historic Institute in Rome. Polish historians published there predominantly in western languages. Sources from western archives concerning Polish history were published as well. The periodical was given the programmatic title Antemurale and the editor in chief, the priest and historian Walerian Meysztowicz, stated clearly in his first editorial 16

Sójka, 2001.

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(in Latin language), that the object of the periodical is not the Polish history alone, but that of Central Eastern Europe as defined in the book The Borderlands of Western Civilization written 1952 by the émigré historian Oskar Halecki.17 The journal was until 1983 a platform of serious historical research to very different epochs and themes, yet clearly located in the framework of thinking of Poland’s predominant role in Eastern Europe (or Central Eastern Europe) seen as a legitimate part of the whole Europe and a stronghold of Christian-European civilization. The bulwark-character of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was directed against Russia in a definite and unquestionable way. Russia as a power endangering all civilized people, an Asian or Eurasian entity of its own, bringing forth an ideology like communism, a development foreseen by the romantic Poet Zygmunt Krasiński in the Un-Godly Commedy18 etc. As Meysztowicz died in 1982, his donator and co-worker Karolina Lanckorońska wrote in the obituary: “Few Poles equalled him [Meysztowicz] in understanding the true nature of our neighbour [Russia]. This made him recognise Russia as a potential threat to the world; it also gave him a deep sense of foreboding which played an important part in his later life. … Meysztowicz knew that the West ended where lawlessness began, on the eastern border of Poland. Beyond that border stood another world, a threat to Poland and to other nations.”19 In his article concerning “Rome and Eastern Europe after the Council of Trent”20 one of the most prominent polish Exile-historians Oskar Halecki specified quite clearly what the idea of antemurale in the historic perspective was really about: “Poland was a ‘bulwark’ against both infidels [Moslems] and schismatics [Orthodox, Protestants] though many peoples of different creeds were living in the Commonwealth”21. At the time of the Council of Trent (1563) “in Eastern Europe the only Catholic power which still preserved its integrity and close association with the West, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, had to face not only the Muslim danger, and that in a twofold, Turkish and Tartar form, but also the aggressive imperialism of Moscow. The Tsardom of Ivan the Terrible was, of course, a Christian power…but in its character it had much in common with the Empire of Suleyman, and from the religious point of view, the Third Rome was irreductibly opposed to the First.” In Turkey and Moscow Poland, “the defender of the Western World,” was “facing two equally

17 18 19 20 21

Meysztowicz, 1954. See also: Bömelburg, 2007. Folkierski, 1959. Lanckorońska, 1982–1983, 218–219. Halecki, 1955, 8–35. Halecki, 1955, 27.

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dangerous neighbours”, “two aggressive imperialistic powers in Eastern Europe.”22 It could therefore not cooperate with one against the other. The other menace to Europe was of internal nature: Protestantism. Halecki explained the inability of the different fractions of Protestants to unite with problems inherent to Protestantism: “Such a unity was obviously impossible among the individualistic and rationalistic radicals who even in their most important centre at Raków developed conditions of religious and social chaos.” But the “freedom loving Poles” were aware that “methods of coercion would not have served at all the Catholic cause.” And, it was the King Sigismund iii, who tried to achieve more religious unity in Poland: “not through any persecution of those who were decided to remain either Protestant or Orthodox, but through a voluntary, spontaneous reunion with Rome of the great majority of the Ruthenian hierarchy.”23 Peaceful character of the religious regiment in Poland was an important tenet in the system of beliefs making the picture of antemurale. Another was the ability of the nation-concept of the Polish Commonwealth to unify different ethnic strata under one common identity. This was juxtaposed to “the rise of new nationalism, young, rude and powerful” in the second half of the 19th century.24 One of the purposes of the antemurale-concept was to explain the otherness of Russia, as being not a part of Europe, but on the contrary, endangering its very existence on the political and cultural level. One of the methods to exclude Russia from Europe was to explain its ties to western culture as not existent. Henryk Paszkiewicz, an émigré-historian, member of the Editorial Board of Antemurale and author of numerous works on the origins of Russia, went a step further and tried to get rid of Russia in the family of Slavic people. In the article entitled “Are the Russians Slavs?” he answers the posed question negatively. The peaceful character of the Slavs—a stereotype popularized by Johann Gottfried Herder in his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–1791)—seems to him incongruous with the aggressive character of the Muscovy Russian state. He described the “Muscovy’s drive to the West, towards Slavonic lands” since the 15th century as an expansion, which “consisted mainly of conquests which brought only ruin to the local population. In the State of Muscovy the Slavonic element was mostly reduced to a passive role, either as war captives taken away from their homeland, or, if allowed to remain in their territory, as people terrorized by cruel methods of government. This element 22 23 24

Halecki, 1955, 9, 17, 18. Halecki, 1955, 11, 12, 28. Wielhorski, 1967, 203.

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did not and could not have any significant influence on the character of Muscovy as a State, on its ideological image and its political aims. The State itself was already shaped before it had absorbed the Slavonic element, and had also enough power to wipe out at least to a certain extent the feeling of ethnical separateness in those Slavs. The process of history did not lead to the Slavonization of Muscovy but, on the contrary, was directed to turn Slavs— into Muscovites. The ethnical differences between the Russians and the Slavs form a key problem of the whole East-European history.”25 Paszkiewicz’s consequent ‘Norman Theory’ as applied to Russian History caused a lot of controversies in the Soviet, Polish-homeland, West-European and American historiographies.26 In its exclusion of the Russian history from any European character it had something in common with the theory produced by the Russian émigré intelligentsia after the Revolution, with an opposite sign—the idea of Eurasianism.27 Common to this kind of thinking is the need of finding a specific place for its own nation or state or even empire on the mental map of civilizations. This cannot be done without discerning ones own role from that of its neighbours, especially those, one is staying in conflict with. This kind of exclusion of Russian history from Europe was not possible in the Polish historiography written under communist regime. Polish-Soviet ‘friendship’ wanted to be legitimized there also historically. Beside the reception and interpretative application of the romantic idea of fighting “For our and your freedom” or Poland as the “Knight of Europe” however, there were repercussions of the idea of antemurale, secularized or not, which were developed in Poland between the wars28 but also in the occupied Poland during World War ii.29 The need to know the historical truth not distorted by communist propaganda and the need for philosophy of national history flourished in the cultural underground of communist Poland. Still strong elements of the antemurale-concepts can be found in the Church Historiography that cannot by analysed here. Writing history in the Church circles at home and writing  it in the exile needs to be compared yet. Even though there were also 25 26 27 28

29

Paszkiewicz, 1970, 84. Filipowicz, 2007, 184–191; see also: Nowak, 2007. Wiederkehr, 2006; Bäcker, 2007. Poland as a “shield of Europe”—see: Materski, 1994. Of interest would be to analyse in Poland and Polish exile the reception of the ‘system of civilizations’ taught by Feliks Koneczny (1862–1949), a historian and philosopher underlining the affiliation of the Polish culture to the Latin Civilization, which the Russian and German culture would have nothing to do with. See i.e. Paszko, 2002. The Nazi attempts to exploit Polish antemurale-feelings for a support of the German war against the Soviet Union collapsed however: Głowiński, 2000.

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anti-­antemurale concepts and criticism towards a national history interpretation, the feeling of being a victim of anti-Christian powers, this attitude of moral politics and political theology was nevertheless widespread and quite common not only as an element of conservative ideology but also as a reflex of identity, of inclusion, and of self-confidence. It was Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland, who again and again gave his influential interpretation as to what was the current “theology of the (Polish) nation” and its mission in the Central Eastern Europe suffering under the communism. For him “God was the creator of a national form of existence, and he expects us, to defend it.” A ‘neutral’, scientific, sociological perspective on the nation would not allow, in his view, to understand its essence and its mission. Shortly before he died 1981 he has sent a message to the Polish episcopacy emphasizing the mission inherent to the Polish “to win the entire East for the Church in Poland” and reminded Poland of its responsibility “for that group of nations, which built a part of the stock of the Slavic people.”30 These words did not remain without impact on the historical thinking itself in Poland under the communist rule. They had a longer tradition especially in Poland between the World Wars and they came back into open historical thinking after the breakdown of the system 1989. The exile historians played an important role in preserving this kind of historic and historiosophic imagination. The main question remains: How did professional émigré historians succeed, considering the Soviet-Russian domination in Central Eastern Europe, to satisfy the desire of meaning and hope among emigrants, and how were they able to cope at the same time professionally with the political situation of the divided world giving to it an interpretative aid on the basis of historical research. References Bäcker, R. (2007). “From Rejection to Attempts at Reconciliation: Poles and the Interwar Eurasian Movement,” in Shlapentokh, D. (ed.), Russia between East and West. Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism. Leiden, Boston, 109–120. Bömelburg, H.-J. (2007). “Zwischen imperialer Geschichte und Ostmitteleuropa als Geschichtsregion: Oskar Halecki und die polnische ʽjagiellonische Idee,ʼ” in Hadler, F. and M. Mesenhöller (eds.), Vergangene Größe und Ohnmacht in Ostmitteleuropa: Repräsentationen imperialer Erfahrung in der Historiographie seit 1918. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 99–130.

30

Nowak, 2005, 138f., 150f.

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Borkowska, U. (1982). “The ideology of ‘antemurale’ in the sphere of Slavic culture 13th– 17th centuries,” in The common Christian roots of the European nations: an international colloquium in the Vatican. Part 2: Written contributions to the 12 carrefours. Florence: Le Monnier, 1206–1221. Eakin-Thimme, G.A. (2005). Geschichte im Exil. Deutschsprachige Historiker nach 1933. München. Filipowicz, M. (2007). Emigranci i Jankesi. O amerykańskich historykach Rosji [Emigrants and Yankees. About American Historians of Russia]. Lublin. Folkierski, L. (1959). “Un Poéte Visionnaire: Sigismond Krasiński (1812–1859) et son anticipation d’une Europe Communiste.” Antemurale 5, 89–107. Głowiński, T. (2000). O nowy porządek europejski. Ewolucja hitlerowskiej propagandy politycznej wobec Polaków w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie 1939–1945 [For a New European Order. The Evolution of the NS-Propaganda towards the Poles in the Generalgouvernement 1939–1945]. Wrocław. Hackmann, J. (1999). “Contemporary Baltic History and German ʽOstforschung’ 1918– 1945. Concepts, Images and Notions.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 322–337. Halecki, O. (1955). “Rome and Eastern Europe after the Council of Trent.” Antemurale 2, 8–35. Hein-Kircher, H. (2005). “Antemurale Christianitatis—Grenzsituation als Selbstver­ ständnis,” in Hecker, H. (ed.), Grenzen. Gesellschaftliche Konstitutionen und Transfigurationen. Essen, 129–147. Hilbrenner, A. (2007). Diaspora-Nationalismus: zur Geschichtskonstruktion Simon Dubnows. Göttingen. Kersken, N. (2008). “Geschichtsschreibung im Exil. Historiker und ihre Texte im Kontext erzwungener Migration,” in Bahlcke, J. (ed.), Glaubensflüchtlinge. Ursachen, Formen und Auswirkungen frühneuzeitlicher Konfessionsmigration in Europa. Berlin 2008, S. 27–59. Kessler, M. (ed.) (2005). Deutsche Historiker im Exil: (1933–1945); ausgewählte Studien. Beiträge des Workshops am 13. Juli 2001 am Zentrum für Zeithistorische Studien Potsdam. Berlin. Krzyżaniakowa, J. (1992). “Poland as ‘Antemurale Christianitatis’. The Political and Ideological Foundations of the Idea.” Polish Western Affairs 33, no. 2, 3–24. Lanckorońska, K. (1982–1983). “Walerian Meysztowicz (1893–1982)”, Antemurale 26, 217–223. Lehti, M. (1997). “Sovereignty, Borders, and the Construction of National Identities in Estonia and Latvia,” in Landgren, L.-F. and M. Häyrynen (eds.), The Dividing Line. Borders and National Peripheries. Helsinki, 43–54. Materski, W. (1994). Tarcza Europy. Stosunki polsko-sowieckie 1918–1939 [The Shield of Europe. Polish-Soviet Relationship 1918–1939]. Warszawa.

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Mertelsmann, O. (2006). “Die Region Ida-Virumaa (Narva) als Zivilisationsgrenze und Bollwerk gen Osten” in Hein-Kircher, H. and H.H. Hahn (eds.), Politische Mythen im 19.–20. Jahrhundert in Mittel- und Osteuropa. Marburg: Herder-Institut, 319–333. Meysztowicz, W. (1954). “De Instituto Historico Polonico deque eiusdem praesenti edition.” Antemurale 1, 5–8. Mühle, E. (1999a). “The Baltic Lands, National Historiographies, and Politics in the ʽShort Twentieth Century.’” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 285–292. Mühle, E. (1999b). “Deutschbaltische Geschichtsschreibung zum Livländischen Mittelalter im Kontext der politischen Entwicklungen der 1920er bis 1950er Jahre. Zwei werkorientierte Fallstudien.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 352–390. Nowak, A. (2005). “Czy teologia narodu Prymasa Wyszyńskiego jest nadal aktualna?” [Is Primate Wyszyński’s Theology of Nation still effective?], in A Nowak, Powrót do Polski. Szkice o patriotyzmie po “końcu historii” 1989–2005. Kraków, 133–151. [The article first published 2002]. Nowak, A. (2007). “ʽPolish Connection’ in American Sovietology: or the Old Homeland Enmities in the New Host Country Humanities.” Ab Imperio, no. 4, 237–259. Paszkiewicz, H. (1970). “Are the Russians Slavs?” Antemurale 14, 59–84. Paszko, A. (2002). O katolickie państwo narodu polskiego. Inspiracje katolickie w ideach politycznych grupy ʽSzańca’ i Konfederacji Narodu [A Catholic State of the Polish Nation. Catholic Inspirations in Political Ideas of the Group “Szaniec” (The Rampart) and Konfederacja Narodu (Confederation of the Nation)]. Kraków. Pistohlkors, G. von (1999). “Images and Notions of Baltic History and German ʽOstforschung Concerning Baltic History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 307–321. Plakans, A. (1999). “Looking Backward: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in Inter-war Latvian Historiography.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 293–306. Raeff, M. (1999). “Remembrence of Things Past. Historians and History in Russia Abroad,” in Sanders, T. (ed.), Historiography of imperial Russia. The Profession and Writing of History in a Multinational State. Armonk, n.y.; London, England, 188–211. Rauch, G. von (ed.) (1986). Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtsschreibung. Köln, Wien: Böhlau Verlag 1986. Raun, T. (1999). “The Image of the Baltic German Elites in Twentieth-Century Estonian Historiography: The 1930s vs the 1970s.” Journal of Baltic Studies 30, no. 4, 338–351. Saagpakk, M. (2006). “Der Erste Weltkrieg in den autobiographischen Texten deutschbaltischer Autoren.” Journal of Baltic Studies. 37, no. 1, 1–21. Sójka, A. (2001). “Staropolska koncepcja przedmurza w literaturze polskiego Oświecenia” [The Old Polish Concept of Ramparts in the Literature of Polish Enlightenment]. Studia Filologiczne / Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczno-Przyrodnicza w Sandomierzu, no. 2, 115–124.

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Tazbir, J. (2004). Polska przedmurzem Europy [Poland as a Rampart of Europe]. Warszawa 2004. Wiederkehr, S. (2006). Die eurasische Bewegung: Wissenschaft und Politik in der russischen Emigration der Zwischenkriegszeit und im postsowjetischen Russland. Köln 2006. Wielhorski, W. (1967). “The nationality of Mickiewicz in the light of modern sociological and ethnographical studies.” Antemurale 11, 193–204.

A “Polish Connection” in American Sovietology Or the Old Homeland Enmities in the New Host Country Humanities Andrzej Nowak Try to imagine the intellectual life of the post-war West without the Polish emigration. The Polish impact has been especially immense when it comes to views on Russia. Czesław Miłosz lectured at Berkeley with uncanny empathy on Dostoyevsky. Leszek Kołakowski entombed Soviet Marxism as well as Western Marxism in his monumental trilogy, and composed an immortal parody of revisionist scholarship on Stalinism (for the pages of Survey, edited by Leo Łabędź). Andrzej Walicki of Notre Dame struck brilliant portraits of Russian populism and the SlavophileWesternizer divide. …And beyond the history of ideas, Zbigniew Brzeziński, the grand strategists and perceptive analyst of the Soviet Bloc, served as National Security Adviser (under Carter), while Richard Pipes, the grand synthesizer of imperial Russian history, also found his way into the National Security Council (under Reagan). The University of Pennsylvania’s Moshe Levin became the acclaimed leader among historians of Soviet Russia’s peasant inheritance. The itinerant Isaac Deutscher, achieved biographical mastery over Stalin. And there have been many others, notably Adam Ulam.1 This list, enumerated in Adam Ulam’s posthumous book review, is far from complete. One could have added here names of pre-war Polish scholars, continuing their careers in the post-war West. Wacław Lednicki—leading “Pushkinologist” was Miłosz’s predecessor at Berkeley. Oskar Halecki taught medieval history of Eastern Europe at Fordham, writing Limits and Divisions of European History (1950). Henryk Paszkiewicz added his monumental trilogy to a debate on the Origin of Russia (first volume in 1954, the last one in 1983). Jan Kucharzewski presented to American audience an abridged version of his seven-volume From White Tsardom to Red (1948); Stanisław Swianiewicz, a pioneer of Soviet studies, teaching at Halifax (Canada), continued his research over the Forced Labour and Economic Development in the Soviet Union (1965). The younger generation could be represented by Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, associate of Russian Research center at Harvard and a prominent student of 1 Kotkin’s review of Adam Ulam’s Understanding the Cold War: Kotkin. 2000.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004299696_021

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the Soviet ethnic politics; Piotr Wandycz—professor at Yale and the leading expert in the Soviet and European diplomacies and international relations history in the twentieth century; Seweryn Bialer—“Kremlinologist” at Columbia, Andrzej Sulima Kamiński—professor of Russian history at Georgetown, or Roman Szporluk (of Polish-Ukrainian origin), author of path-breaking studies of eastern European nationalisms as well as other “Empire-breaking” forces, for many years director of Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Is it possible to find any common denominator in the perspective all these scholars brought to the subject of their studies? Is the simple fact that all of them were born in Poland, and that all of them were compelled or decided to live outside their country of origin, important not only to their reflections about the homeland but about its powerful, historical neighbor—Russia—as well? Quite possibly, we may assume, when we take seriously this specific warning: “You don’t give Russia to the Poles: they don’t think straight”.2 The problem is, however, that these words were addressed by one from the above list, Professor Moshe Levin, in his polemics against another one: Richard Pipes. The latter answered justly and curtly: “This ethnic slur would be merely offensive were it not also ludicrous, given that Professor Levin happens to be himself a native of Poland.”3 From this short exchange we may deduce that being a native of Poland (even an expatriate one) is definitely not enough to form a common ground for opinions on Russia. We have to dig deeper to find one. It is advisable however not to disregard completely the Levin’s remark. It expresses a stereotyped outside/Western view of a Polish stereotype of Russia. What is this stereotype? It is expressed well by another Richard Pipes’ polemist—Martin Malia—in his book Russia Under Western Eyes (2000), in which he accuses the influence of Polish political propaganda of creating a distorted view of Russia as “Imperium perennum”—an essentially un-European, aggressively imperialistic force: “the Poles used it [this view] to explain their oppression by Russia.”4 The very title of Malia’s book is an obvious allusion to the most prominent exponent of this “Polish view of Russia” in the West, namely Joseph Conrad, the author of Under Western Eyes. This view of Russia permeated a large part not only of Polish political propaganda during the partitions, but school curricula and even historiography after Poland regained her independence and defended it in a fierce struggle against the Soviet (this time) invasion in 1920. Jan Kucharzewski, an independent 2 Levin, 1991. 3 Pipes, 1993a. 4 Malia, 2000, 413.

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scholar in the interwar Poland, who lived his last years in the United States (after 1945), (and mentioned above as the author of a monumental, seven-volume study From White Tsardom to Red), could be named here as a perfect example of this view. It might be said that he accumulated centuries of Polish political experiences (or prejudices, some would say) connected to Russia as a neighbor and a contender for the leadership in the whole of Eastern Europe. This vision stresses continuity—between “the White Tsardom” and “the Red” one: The system so extreme in destroying…, so maximalist and dictatorial was the result of centuries and had a deep, historical, internal foundation. … This spontaneous anarchism of the masses, hatred of any authority, besides an inveterate passive resignation of submitting to the commands of force, favors the calling to life of a new organization of absolute, dictatorial, ultra-police coercion… The age-old despotism regenerates, aided by a number of factors constituting the inheritance of the past: the instinct of despotism inherent in the souls of the new rulers, the urge of conquests, of dominating foreign nations…, finally the lack of democracy, of a historical school of civic development of the masses.5 That the Soviet system was a product of Russian history and political culture at least as much as of Bolshevism seemed quite natural to any Pole immersed in the traditions of the struggle for Polish independence. This perspective, dominating the educational atmosphere of the Polish ii Republic (1918–1939), was validated again in September, 1939, when the Soviet Union met halfway with the Third Reich just to crush and dismember the Polish state once more. This nightmare of history was really hard to resist at this particular place and time. Still, it was perceived from different angles by different observers in Poland— and this we have to take into consideration. Not all of the emigrants from the fallen Second Republic of Poland were Poles, sharing the sentiments of a Kucharzewski, or—say—Halecki. There were some Jews among them who never identified themselves with that state, sometimes seeing (like Deutscher or—possibly—Levin) one of their oppressors in this very state, and not in its eastern invader. It is obvious that one has to take nationality, and not only the original statehood, into account when analyzing attitudes of emigrants towards other nations. However neither ethnic factor can be treated as the decisive one. Generational differences could also be very influential. Scholars are different, even if they were born in pre-war Poland. 5 Kucharzewski, 1948, xi, xv. For another succinct example of a similar view by a Polish historian in the West, see Halecki, 1952.

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Instead of looking for a general pattern of influences imprinted in their reflection on Russia and the Soviet system by their “Polish connection,” it is probably more advisable to look for a more particular and detailed set of relations in this respect within a much narrower group of scholars, who shared more than just the fact of having been born in Poland. We propose here to follow a somehow atypical “group”, consisting not of self-identified Poles active in emigrant circles, but of three Jews born in Poland between 1920 and 1923, and developing after World War ii careers as specialists in Russian/Soviet studies quite apart from any Polish emigrant politics: Leopold Łabędź (his name is frequently written without Polish diacritics as “Labedz”), Adam Bruno Ulam, and Richard Pipes. We begin with a short curriculum for each. Leopold Łabędź was born on January 22, 1920, into an assimilated Jewish family. He attended a private gymnasium of Michael Kreczmar in Warsaw (half of students were Catholics and half Jews). Following his father’s profession he entered medical studies, first at the Warsaw University, then (in 1938) at the Sorbonne. Being in Poland in the fateful month of September 1939, he was overtaken by the Soviet invasion in Lwow. His father was forced to work there at an nkvd clinic. This fact postponed Łabędź’s arrest and deportation to Central Asia, but only for a few months. Eventually, he was deported, together with hundreds of thousands of the former Polish citizens who were sent to Soviet labor camps in Kazakhstan and Siberia. Leopold’s uncle was shot with six thousands other Polish officers in Katyn (April 1940) by the nkvd. Leopold managed to get out of the Soviet Union, when, after the Nazi invasion in June 1941 Poles suddenly became allies and were allowed to form an Army. This Army was released eventually by Stalin to go through the Middle East to fight against Germans on the Italian front in 1944–1945. After his service in the Army, Łabędź renewed his studies, this time in sociology and economics at London School of Economics (under Rajmund Popper). There—that is, in London—he established in 1955 and co-edited (together with Walter Laquer) journal Survey, the first serious forum for sovietological studies in Western Europe, read regularly by the most influential politicians of the West during the rest of the Cold War. He lectured on the Soviet Union frequently in the most prestigious universities of the us and Western Europe. Being one of the members and close collaborators of Encounter magazine, one of the leading intellectual magazines in the English-speaking world, Łabędź was able to influence a broader public with his views on the Soviet system and Communism. He expressed this view in many publications, such as Revisionism. An Essay in Marxist Ideas (1963), Revisionism. Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas (edited by Łabędź in 1962), Polycentrism (coedited with Walter Laquer in 1962), Literature and Revolution in Soviet Russia 1917–1962

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(edited in 1963), International Communism after Khruschev (edited in 1965), Khruschev and the Arts. The Politics of Soviet Culture, 1962–1964 (edited in 1965), On Trial: the Case of Siniavsky and Daniel (edited in 1967), Solzhenitsyn. A Documentary Record (edited in 1974); Poland Under Jaruzelski. A Comprehensive Sourcebook on Poland During and After Martial Law (edited in 1983). His final collection of essays—Use and Abuse of Sovietology (1988)—stands as his intellectual testament. He died in London on March 22, 1993.6 Adam Bruno Ulam was born on April 8, 1922, in Lwów, at that time the second largest center of Polish cultural and intellectual life after Warsaw. He was the son of Dr. Józef Ulam, a respected lawyer in private practice, and his wife, Chana (maiden name Auerbach). The Ulams “stood as high on the social ladder as a Jewish family could at that time”.7 Young Adam attended Public High School (No. 7, named for Tadeusz Kościuszko). His brother Stanisław, thirteen years older, an extremely gifted mathematician (this talent would make him the co-inventor of the American hydrogen bomb in the future), had an appointment as a Junior Fellow in mathematics at Harvard. Spending 1939 summer at home, Stanisław decided to take his younger brother with him to the United States. They sailed from Gdynia (the main Polish port) just a few days before the outbreak of the war. They never saw their father and elder sister again. Together with all of Adam’s uncles and many cousins the parents perished in German-occupied Poland after 1941. Enrolling in Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Adam studied there. Then, following his elder brother to the University of Wisconsin, he obtained a job as an army instructor for Russian. In 1945 he began his studies in politics and history at Harvard. He graduated with brilliant success two years later, exactly at the moment when General Marshall announced there, at Harvard, his plan to save democratic Europe. Ulam got immediately the position as instructor in the Department of Government. After teaching a course on the British Empire, he switched his interest to “an expanding rather than to a contracting subject”—to the Soviet Union. His first teacher, then associate in the subject there, was Merle Fainsod. They both joined the Russian Research Center, just when it was established at Harvard (in 1948). Ulam would serve as the director of this most prestigious institution for Russian and Soviet studies for many years (1973–1976, 1980– 1992). As a Harvard professor (Gurney Professor of History and Political Science), Ulam established his position of the leading expert in Russian revolutionary thought, Communist ideology, and the Soviet system and its place on the global theatre of the twentieth-century history. Many of his twenty books 6 All biographical and bibliographical data are taken from Nowak, 2000. 7 Ulam, 2000, 6.

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achieved the status of classics in the field: The Bolsheviks: the Intellectual, Personal and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia (1965), Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy 1917–1967 (1967), Stalin: the Man and His Era (1974), Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from Herzen to Solzhenitsyn (1976), or Dangerous Relations: the Soviet Union in World Politics 1970–1982 (1983). Though many times asked to serve as an expert political advisor in Washington, dc, and testifying many times about Soviet affairs before congressional committees, Ulam resisted the temptation to become a professional policy maker. He preferred instead his study at Harvard, his little social pleasures and torments as a keen Red Sox Boston baseball team, and as an avid reader of mystery novels (he even wrote one—on the Kirov affair…). He died on March 18, 2000.8 Richard Edgar Pipes was born on July 11, 1923, in Cieszyn, a small town in Polish Silesia. His father, Marek, came from Lwów, where his family was well established within the Jewish community. The extent to which Marek was assimilated into Polish community on the other hand was testified by his enrollment in the Legions, which Józef Piłsudski organized in 1914 to fight against Russia for the independence of Poland. Richard’s mother, Zofia Sara Haskelberg, was one of eleven children of “a well-to-do Hassidic Warsaw businessman.” Pipes’ family moved—together with Marek’s business ventures (mostly in chocolate factories)—from Cieszyn to Krakow, then to Warsaw. Richard attended the same Kreczmar gymnasium as Łabędź three years earlier. He was not so lucky, as Ulam however, to escape just before the war. He was in fact even luckier: after surviving the three-week long German siege of Warsaw in September 1939, seeing Hitler’s triumphal entrance into the captured capital, and then witnessing the first weeks of the Nazi occupation, Richard and his parents left Poland for the West on forged papers as citizens of Argentina. Through Italy, Spain, and Portugal they landed eventually in New Jersey in July 1940. Richard started his American education at Muskingum College in Ohio. Drafted in 1942, he was chosen for a special training program in the Russian language at Cornell University. His next academic step, after the war, was graduate school at Harvard. He studied Russian history there, under the tutorship of Michael Karpovich.9 After completing his dissertation (on Bolshevik nationality theory) in 1950, he decided to expand it into his first book which dealt with a subject of Russian/Soviet imperialism: Formation of the Soviet Union: 8 Basic biographical data and full bibliography of Ulam’s work can be found in his memoirs: Understanding the Cold War (Ulam, 2000). 9 See: M. Karpovich Collection, Bakhmeteff Archive—Butler’s Library (Columbia University, ny), Box 2—Correspondence (with Richard Pipes and others).

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Nationalism and Communism, 1917–1924 (1954). After a few years of teaching Harvard undergraduates as an instructor, he was given a professorship in Russian history there in 1958. Associated with the Russian Research Center at Harvard, Pipes would serve as its director from 1968 to 1973. His academic books thereafter—on Nicholas Karamzin’s political ideas (1959), the St.  Petersburg Labor movement (1963), a two-volume biography of Peter Struve (1970, 1980)— established Pipes’ position as a leading authority of Russian history in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. His most discussed book—Russia under the Old Regime (1974)—a brilliant essay on the evolution of Russian statehood from the earliest times to the late nineteenth century, stressed a continuity between the patrimonial tradition of the old Russian statehood ­traditions and the Communist party’s totalitarian control over both politics and economy. He became involved in politics as a consultant to Senator Henry Jackson’s campaign against the shortcomings of the u.s. policy of detente towards the Soviet Union. In 1976 Pipes headed so called “Team B”, a group of independent specialists, summoned by President Gerald Ford to audit the cia’s assessment of Soviet strategy. The team of Pipes (with Paul Nitze and Paul Wolfowitz, among others) proved that the Soviet military did not look for a balance but were seeking a decisive nuclear superiority. The “Team B” advice was that this strategy must be countered by appropriate us measures. Pipes developed a “hawkish” fame, since his “Team” report leaked to the press at the end of 1976. Four years later, after Ronald Reagan became president, he joined the National Security Council staff as head of the East European and Soviet desk. Pipes took a twoyears-leave from Harvard, serving until the end of 1982 in Reagan’s administration. He is considered one of the main architects of this administration’s “tough policy” towards the Soviets, symbolized perfectly in Reagan’s description of the adversary as the “evil empire.” After returning to Harvard, Pipes continued his political commentaries on the Soviet Union and the prospects for us-Soviet relations (in 1984 he presented them in a form a book: Survival Is Not Enough). His main achievement as an historian came just when the Soviet Union was crumbling apart: in 1990 Pipes published his monumental The Russian Revolution, covering the years 1899–1919. In 1994 he added a sequel: Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (dealing with the years 1919–1924). After retirement, he continues to bring forward new important themes and books, such as Property and Freedom, The Unknown Lenin, or The Degaev Affair, as well as commentaries on current situation in Russia and Russian-American relations.10 10

See: Pipes, 2003b; idem, The author about himself, in Pipes, 1994, 79–84; idem, Introduction, in Pipes, 1989, 1–5.

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There is one remembered moment that captures all three heroes of this essay together. We owe it to Adam Ulam’s recollections of the year 1962 and the Cuban missile crisis. Leo Łabędź came to Harvard to criticize American foreign policy for allowing the Soviets and Castro to create a blackmail for the us. He came straight to Ulam’s office to express his outrage: “Leo along with Dick Pipes, professor of history, and Zbigniew Brzeziński, then still an assistant professor in my department, sent a message to one of the powers-that-be in Washington urging no retreat on the blockade of Cuba. It would be interesting to know which government official in those feverish days took the time to notice and ponder this message from three Polish-born scholars”.11 Were all our three heroes—Ulam, Pipes, and Łabędź—Polish-born? Not exactly. Łabędź was born in Simbirsk, the town where Lenin had been born fifty years earlier. The family of Łabędź had been deposited in this central Russian region by the vagaries of World War i and the Bolshevik Revolution, but they repatriated happily soon after Leo’s birth. So re-patriated? Could Poland be treated as patria, a homeland, for Łabędź? And for Pipes, for Ulam? To some extent—yes. The question is, to what extent? For Łabędź and Ulam Polish was their first language, for Pipes—the second (his family spoke German at home), but even for him—through Polish school and friendships—Polish became probably the most familiar language before 1939 (Professor Pipes says now that when he starts forgetting some English words—Polish, and not German, equivalents come to his mind…). They all could speak Polish in America into their old age, not only fluently but with some elegance, characteristic of their pre-war Polish high school education (missing in, for example, Professor Brzeziński’s worse Polish). Łabędź family was probably the most assimilated to Polish culture among the three considered here. In Ulam’s case, his family read regularly the Polish liberal press (Wiadomości Literackie—the most important cultural weekly), the most popular Polish daily Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny, along with liberal-Zionist (Polish-language) Chwila. For Pipes’ family, a Polish-Jewish daily Nasz Przegląd was a basic newspaper. Both Adam’s, and his older brother’s, correspondence with the family in Lwów was written in Polish. Assimilated Jews, or rather Poles of Jewish origin, shared an educational experience virtually indistinguishable from that of their Christian peers. For example, Adam Ulam recalled with fondness the classes in Polish literature, Latin, and history at a Lwów high school. Already early on, like ‘everybody else’, Ulam learned to dislike Germans. Otherwise, ‘like most 11

Ulam, 2000, 110–111.

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Poles of my background I was brought up in the belief in the enormous power and masterful diplomacy of Great Britain. In politics we were all Anglophiles, just as when it came to the arts and culture in general most educated Poles were enamored of France’.12 Ulam’s attachment to his Polish-cultural roots lasted to the last minute of his life, literally. He organized in his Harvard office a daily coffee-break as a remembrance of happy Lwów days, where coffee-houses were the most important social places—for his family, also. He usually regaled there his guests at the Russian Research Center with recitations of Polish poetry. When he was dying of cancer in a Boston hospital, his very last wish, as it happen, was to see a new film—With Sword and Fire—based on the most popular Polish historical novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz and depicting Polish-Ukrainian battles in the seventeenth century. A few months before, while discussing the things he still hoped to do, he mentioned a brief visit back to Poland and western Ukraine with Lwów (what he jokingly called Ukrainian-occupied Poland) in the second place (a return to Russian Research Center being in the first).13 One can suggest in jest that Polish literature played an important part in Richard Pipes’ life, also. He met his future wife at Cornell University in 1943, after listening to a record of her recitation of passages from the national epic of Poland—Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. The girl, Irene Roth was from a Jewish family, assimilated in Poland.14 Though Pipes was evidently less enamored of the Polish educational system and the stereotypes engrained in it,15 even for him pre-war Poland was a kind of natural milieu of a happy childhood and relatively safe youthful years. The problem of anti-Semitism in the pre-war Poland, though mentioned in all three our heroes’ remembrances, was presented by them as not nearly as 12

13

14 15

Chodakiewicz, 2003, 225–226. Other data presented in this paragraph are taken from Ulam Family Letters from Lwów: http://www.aulam.org/anxiuos.htm; Ulam, 2000, 5–7; Pipes, 2003b, Chapter 1, as well as from my personal interviews with Łabędź (made in London, November 1990), Ulam (made in 1991), and Pipes (made in Cambridge, Mass., March 1991, and Kraków, November 2004). Ulam, 2000, 305, 308. Ulam’s elder, beloved sister, Stefania Franciszka, was led on her path to further assimilation up to a tragic end: she married a Polish boy, and joined the Polish resistance movement against German invaders. She perished (together with her husband and their baby-child) in the great Warsaw uprising in 1944 (so notoriously unknown in the West that even in Ulam’s memoirs 1st edition the year of the uprising is identified wrongly with 1943—the year of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto). See Ulam, 2000, 59. Pipes, 2003b, 50. See Pipes, 2003b, 29.

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afflicting as some Western stereotypes of the problem depict it. “Assimilated Jews, such as we were, lived in…an in-between world, but I must say that I felt more in common with educated Poles than with Orthodox Jews. …We led normal lives: skating and skiing in the winter, driving out of town for picnics and swimming in the big Legia pool in the summer, going to the movies”, writes Richard Pipes.16 Pipes, Ulam, and Łabędź were abruptly driven from this homeland: the homeland of their carefree youth. “Homeland” here cannot be identified completely with Poland, but in many dimensions the two were coterminous. For Ulam his homeland was represented probably by his native city—Lwów—to which he was faithful to the end (lying in his death-bed he decided to found his own publishing company, named “Leopolis Press”—Leopolis being the medieval name of Lwów, City of Lions). For Pipes and Łabędź probably felt on their  identities a territorially more dispersed influence of pre-war Poland. Though none of them considered himself just a Pole, a Polish patriot, and all of them could appropriate the term used by Pipes for his self-portrait—“non-­ belonger”—they all had felt many sentiments (positive rather than negative) attaching to Poland. This is the first, though indistinct, characteristic they shared. The second which can also be derived from the memory snapshot of their meeting at Harvard in 1962: their common antipathy towards Communism and the Soviet system, which they saw as a real danger to the free World. This antipathy probably had not much to do with any historical or political-scientific reflection on these matters in the pre-war Poland. While living in Poland, they were just not interested Russia and the Soviet Union. Łabędż was on the path of becoming a medical professional, Pipes was interested in art history, and Ulam was fascinated with the British Empire. Pipes, “accused” on many occasions of being an exponent of a Polish historical bias towards Russia, dismissed outright any suggestion about his intellectual “borrowings” from Kucharzewski’s monumental study of the transformation of the White Tsardom to Red.17 Ulam acknowledged, half jokingly, only one identified Polish influence on his thinking on Communism and Revolution: that of his Polish nanny who answered for the young boy’s constant queries ‘why this or that?’—with a conservative wisdom: “because this is the way it used to be”.18 The formative experience, one can assume, that shaped their basic relations towards the Soviet Union, came on August 23, 1939, together with 16 17 18

See Pipes, 2003b, 20–21. Pipes and Nowak, 2002, 212–213. My interview with Adam Ulam, March 1991, ms.

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Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. It seems quite meaningful that this is the event that opens historical narration both in Pipes’ and Ulam’s memoirs. As Ulam noted: “My brother and I never shared the belief, so widespread in the East [sic!—should be: the West] among the Left, the liberals, and even the Communists, that an accommodation between the two dictators was unthinkable”.19 A Polish geopolitical perspective, which tends to minimize the ideological differences between the two neighboring powers who can always organize common aggression against the Polish presence between them, was quite naturally absorbed in all three assimilated Jewish families— and was proved true. With the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and its rapidly developing consequences, totalitarian reality came really close to their lives. Pipes saw personally “Warsaw in flames, resembling Dante’s inferno.” He saw personally the end of his Poland, crushed by Hitler with the help of Stalin.20 He managed to escape right after the fall. Though Ulam escaped a few days before, the tragedy of the rapid demise of his homeland reached him dramatically with subsequent news about the deaths of his closest members of family. The destruction of his (Polish-Jewish) Lwów, occupied first by the Soviets, than by Germans, and finally by the Soviets again, became a great personal trauma for him. As mentioned earlier, Łabędź had the opportunity of learning about the Soviet half of the totalitarian pincers that destroyed Poland in September 1939. While living under the Soviet occupation near Lwów he first observed a very prominent feature of this system: an ever present totalitarian lie, which he called a “Soviet surrealism”.21 The new lords of eastern part of the former Polish state brought with them a primitive material level of their “civilization” together with the official faith that this level was the peak of human possibilities and needs. “We have everything in the Soviet Union”, they repeated tendentiously. Łabędż tried to test this “surrealism” with his question, posed to his new overlords: “Do you have Kopenhagen there as well?” “Of course, we have lots of Kopenhagens…”—he was answered with great assurance.22 Deported afterwards (just because of being “a Polish bourgeois”) deep into the interior of Stalin’s system (Gulag), he could see what these Soviet Kopenhagens, these wonders of the Soviet utopia, looked like.23 19 20 21 22 23

Ulam, 2000, 14. Pipes, 2003b, 1. This same impression of the official lie, unbearable in everyday life, overwhelmed Pipes during his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1957—see Pipes, 2003b, 89–90. Łabędź and Chojnacki, 1991, 91–92. Rozmowa z Leopoldem Łabędziem [Interview with L. Łabędź] in Łabędź, 1989a, 320.

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Though, among them only Łabędź acquired first-hand experience of the Soviet communism in practice right after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, all three Polish-Jewish boys, future experts in the subject, acquired a distinct sensibility of the end of their first, happy period of life brought by the brutal intervention of the Soviet Union. This sensibility, shared by hundreds of thousands of Poles who experienced Soviet expansion in practice, was probably much more fundamental for the opinions of the three future “Sovietologists” about their shared subject than any influence of some pre-war Polish studies in the field.24 One can presume that it is in this very real experience or in this very sensibility that one has to look for an explanation of the common intransigence of all three toward the so-called revisionism in Soviet studies, as well as to other “sophisticated” methods of interpretation of Soviet realities. The beginnings of their careers coincided with the beginnings of the Cold War, when there was a great demand for specialists in Soviet and Russian matters, due to the fact that the Soviet state and its system began to be perceived as the main rival of the us and the “free world”. This opened the door in institutions and university appointments, for the expertise the young emigrants from Eastern Europe were ready to offer. They did not identify themselves with Polish emigrants by that time, which made them less vulnerable to accusations of a “typically Polish Russophobia”, and made their merger with new, “AngloSaxon” academic mainstream easier.25 At the same time they could write their first scholarly works without betraying their experience that Communism and its Soviet “representative” was not just a beautiful Utopia but a real and aggressive political force. They had slightly diverging opinions about the origins of this aggressiveness, but they all stressed the fact that it was a real phenomenon and had real victims: millions of individuals and whole nations. This attitude was expressed eloquently in Ulam’s conversation with George Urban: “In the West, we have been spared the imposition of a totalitarian Utopia which has haunted the world for the best part of two centuries; but we have to managed to keep our heads above water only because we are standing on the shoulders of submerged Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians.”26 Actually, neither Pipes, nor 24

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Actually, they all started to study Russian and Soviet topics seriously only after they landed in the West (the u.s. in Ulam’s and Pipes’ cases, and the u.k. in Łabędź’s case). We have to remind that both Pipes and Ulam started their studies in Russian almost from “zero-level,” feeling just their advantage of Polish-speakers over other candidates, not so naturally versatile in a Slavic idiom. See Kotkin, 2000. Ulam and Urban, 1990, 55.

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Ulam, nor Łabędź identified themselves fully with some general “western” point of view of the Soviet Union and Russia. On the contrary, they criticized certain myopia of Western politicians and “specialists” dealing with these phenomena. Ulam wrote extensively on “the incredible obtuseness of western diplomacy”, and on a “totalitarian prudence, almost incomprehensible to the western mind”.27 Pipes criticized on many occasions a “typically western” mistake of ‘mirror-imaging’, the presumption that “the Soviets thought just as we did.” The entirety of Łabędź’s career as the editor of Survey might be considered as an uninterrupted crusade against all western misconceptions, sometimes misplaced infatuations, and differently motivated apologies of the Soviet system and Communist ideology.28 What did they see that many of their Western colleagues didn’t? As Pipes put this succinctly: many of the latter tried to write bloodless history about a time that drowned in blood. Having had a narrow escape from the carnage produced by Stalin’s agreement with Hitler, future historians of Russia and the  Soviet system from Warsaw and Lwów could not forget this basic fact. While they tried to understand the system they analyzed, they never discarded the “judgemental” side of their job. This aspect of their works confronted them with so called “revisionists”—academic apologists for the Soviet Union—who blamed the us for instigating the Cold War, denied Stalin’s genocidal history, regarded communism as a great idea that got diverted and believed the membership of the Communist Party usa consisted of idealists who had nothing to do with Soviet espionage.29 According to Ulam, “Revisionism was based on bad history, and on the inappropriate assumption that there must be two sides to every political argument”.30 Ulam, Pipes, and Łabędź, however, were by no means alone in their opposition to the tide of revisionism in the sixties and seventies, though they belonged to the most prominent (along with Robert Conquest perhaps) critics of this new “perspective.” What singled them out distinctly was the concept of “empire” they used to describe and understand the conduct of the Soviet Union. They all remembered well that besides individuals there were also nations-victims of the system. Pipes was the first scholar in the u.s. to present a systematic view of the Soviet Union as a new imperial system build on the ruins of the old, Russian-tzarist one. His 1954 book reminded the reader of the fact that not only Russians but many other nations also should be taken 27 28 29 30

See Ulam, 1968, 260; Ulam, 1962, 41. See Sikorski, 1993; Tanenhaus, 2003. See Tannenhaus, 2003. Ulam, 1968, 175.

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into account while describing the nature of the system and its functioning. This fact was quite obvious to any emigrant from Poland (as well as from the Baltic republics, Ukraine, or Hungary), but seemed rather exotic to most of Western specialists in Soviet affairs. George Kennan wrote at that time that Ukraine was as fully integrated into the Soviet Union as Pennsylvania into the us, and his “understanding” has been much better absorbed by Western audiences than Pipes’ for a long time. Ulam, in his analyses of the Soviet behavior on the international arena, always tried to remind readers of how important the task was of controlling over some 100 million non-Russian people in Eastern and East-Central Europe. This point of view, taking into account a naked fact that the Communist system expanded not through a “natural” revolutionary process but rather through an external, military aggression stemming from Moscow center to non-Russian peripheries, strengthened all three historians in rejecting “revisionist” tenets. They remembered and stressed in most of their works that Communist regimes were widely unpopular, not only because they represented Communist ideology but also because they represented subjugation to a foreign, that is, to Russian power. “The Soviet Union was not only a police state, but also an empire with the Russians as the dominant nation. If the veil of fear were lifted from society, would Ukrainians, Balts, and other ethnic groups continue to acquiesce in Russian domination?”31 This rhetoric question, resounding through all the, so to speak, Polish tradition of the (Russian) empire-breaking efforts, permeated historical analyses and Sovietological assessments of Ulam, Pipes, and Łabędź.32 Pipes pushed his work to the limits of this particular perspective, stressing—functionalisticaly first, structurally second—a continuation between the two empires—Russian and Soviet. He set out this concept historically in his hotly debated Russia Under the Old Regime (1974), and soon drew political lessons from it: “To understand some of techniques presently employed on a global scale by Soviet diplomacy one can do no better than study the history of Moscow’s conquest of Novgorod (fifteenth century), the Golden Horde (sixteenth century), and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (eighteenth century), as well as the efforts of Imperial Russia in nineteenth century (largely frustrated by Western countermeasures) to partition the Ottoman Empire and China. No other country has a comparable wealth of accumulated experience in the application of external and internal pressures on neighbors for the purpose of softening them prior to conquest”.33 While he served as the Director of 31 32 33

Ibid., 177. See Nowak, 2004. Pipes, 1981, 71.

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the nsc Soviet and East European desk during the first years of the Reagan administration, Pipes was the first “suspected” of being the author of the resounding phrase of one of his patron’s speeches—about “the evil Empire”. When Pipes was asked, many years later during one of his visits in Yeltsin’s Russia, whether he was really the author of this formula, he answered characteristically: “K sozhaleniu net…” (Unfortunately, I am not).34 Ulam never identified the two imperialisms, and even criticized openly a suggestion implied in some Pipes’ statements that the Soviet system could be understood as a logical continuation of Tsarist autocracy. The author of Ideologies and Illusions noted many tempting historical parallels between White and Red Tsardom, and acknowledged a Russian element in the Soviet form of Communism, stemming from a “particularly authoritarian conception of socialism in the 19th century, to which were added a very Russian form of xenophobia and Russian nationalism”. But, with all that, he stressed in most of his works that “the totalitarian character of Communist regimes stems from the basic tenets of Communism itself. […] Communism has to be tyrannical and imperialistic because it is Communism”.35 In his rejection of a too simplistic version of Kucharzewski’s (or Pipes’) equation between “Russian” and “Soviet,” Ulam intended to imply that Russia is by no means doomed to stay in this vicious circle of autocracy and totalitarian imperialism. He saw the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia, as well as particular traits of its expansionist policy, not only as a result of the cultural and historical complexities of the Russian heritage. The ideology, of course, but also personalities (that of Lenin or Stalin), and sheer accident have played their part, alongside the economic forces and general tendencies of European politics.36 Actually, as his pupil, Nina Tumarkin, aptly observed, “for Ulam there was no Soviet system, but rather a collection of knowable and comprehensible (to an extent) actions taken by strangers in a strange land, a way of being in

34

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Pipes and Nowak, 2002, 219. It is important to note that Pipes actually didn’t follow Kucharzewski’s concept but in his Russia Under the Old Regime (1974) as well as in an abridgement of its main argument in Property and Freedom (1999) he developed his own version of a “continuity theory.” It was based on the “patrimonial state” concept, where power is not constrained by the institution of private property. A very similar concept, adapted however to the Muscovite state only, was presented for the first time not in Polish historiography, but by a Russian historian, Alexandr E. Presnakov (1870–1929). His works however are not mentioned by Pipes (just as Kucharzewski’s are not mentioned either). See, for example: Presnakov, 1993; Kaganovich, 1997; Zhukovskaya, 1998. Ulam and Urban, 1990, 49. Ulam, 1962.

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the world, pieced together, often ad hoc, by particular men (and, rarely, women) born to particular parents in certain geographical and historical settings.”37 Nonetheless, Ulam—as did Pipes—saw at least this one obvious trait of continuity: the imperial one. He quoted on many occasions the adage of one of  Catherine ii’s chancellor—“That which stops growing begins to rot”—as a warning that was still very much on the mind of his Soviet successors. And he kept repeating in many of his Soviet foreign policy analyses that its guiding principle was imperial rather than ideological (Communist), so that it could be countered appropriately: it “simply moved in any direction where there appeared to be vacuum and lack of resistance. Wherever the vacuum threatened to be filled up by the interest and active support of the other great power… aggressive policies were given up or indirect methods were substituted for direct ones.”38 They all—Ulam, Pipes, and Łabędź—shared the view that identified the Soviet Union and its outer sphere of domination as an empire. But, what was even more important for their position in the “Sovietological” community was their common rejection of a “realistic” justification of empire. Some “realists”, especially during the detente era (Henry Kissinger39 and, to some extent, George Kennan after 1956, can be seen as the most outspoken representatives of this “school”) expounded a view that it is possible and even advisable to keep the imperial nature of the Soviet adversary satisfied with a stabilization of its sphere of influences. They tended to view chaos as the only alternative to empire. Pipes, Łabędź, and Ulam didn’t accept this alternative as real. They knew that spheres of influences, treated by Kennan or Kissinger abstractly as an obvious means of diminishing international clashes, consist of real people and living nations that do not like to perceive themselves as anybody’s spheres of influences, but as living communities, with their own traditions and natural rights. In contrast to “realists”, they not only saw the imperial nature of the adversary but they judged it—from a point of view of the oppressed, and from a point of view of the viability of the Soviet empire. Kennan kept asking “What would you expect to put in place of the Soviet government?”40 and articulating his deep conviction that the Soviet system could be abolished only from outside, the premise being that the only forces that matter in the great game of 37 38 39 40

Tumarkin, 2002, 6. Ulam, 1962, 57; see also Ulam, 1968, 751–752. Kissinger was, nota bene, one of the first students of Ulam’s classes at Harvard—see: 2000, 74. Kennan, 1960, 364–365.

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international competition are great powers. Pipes, Łabędź, and Ulam remembered that there—that is, within the Soviet empire—lived real people, who might dislike the system, and could not only exert decisive pressure for its demise, but also create a new—and better—order by themselves. And that they deserved it.41 It seems that this perspective had something to do with both their places of birth (now under the Soviet rule), and historical experiences of the three historians. “There are dangers attending the fall of any great empire, but on balance I incline to think that disintegration of the iniquitous Soviet system is infinitely less destabilizing than its continuing existence would be”—Ulam’s firm answer to a “realistic” fear, dominating the State Department as late as in 1990, may be quoted as an example of a common stand of all three our “heroes” in this respect.42 They analyzed historical and political phenomenon of the Soviet system as  scholars, but they looked forward its final collapse as human beings whose relatives and most of the friends of their youth were the victims of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. They observed signs of an imminent crisis of the empire in Eastern Europe, and in Poland in particular (since 1978, John Paul ii’s election, and 1980—the beginning of “Solidarity” movement) while this perspective was almost disregarded not only by “realists,” but also by the vast majority of Western observers who saw either American pressure or Gorbachev reforms as the only important reason of the final collapse.43 Their common perspective combined a serious warning of the real danger of Soviet expansionism with a firm conviction that the enemy has its weaknesses. They all understood knew the empire’s vulnerabilities wanted to expose then to the Western public. To compel the Soviet Union to turn inward—from conquest to reform—was the shared wisdom of numerous appeals that Pipes, Ulam, and Łabędź were making in their publications throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties.44 Identifying the source of the international aggressiveness of the Soviet system in its oppressive internal nature, they were all well aware of the consequences of reform for the empire. Adam Ulam expressed this conviction: “I had no expectation that the Soviet system could evolve peacefully into ‘socialism with a human face’. …I, on the contrary, believed that 41

42 43 44

See: Pipes, 2003b, 103–104 [a polemic with Kennan’s “realism”]; Pipes, 1981, 51–52 [a critique of Kissinger’s “realism”]; Łabędź, 1989a [a polemic with Kennan’s book The Cloud of Danger (1977)]; and: Łabędź, 1989b. Ulam and Urban, 1990, 54. See, for example, Pipes, 1995; Ulam, 2000, 196–197, 221–229; Łabędź, 1983. See, for example, Pipes, 1980; Ulam, 1968, 751–752; Ulam, 1983, 315–316; Łabędź and Laquer, 1975.

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any attempt at a basic reform would lead not to democracy but to the collapse of the Soviet Union”.45 Was this belief somehow typically Polish? Ulam, Pipes, and Łabędż never shared the opinion (that dominated throughout the Sovietological community since the sixties) that the Communist government was popular and therefore stable. They understood that though the Soviet system enjoyed a degree of control over domestic and foreign affairs that no democratic state could match, it was exactly this control that was depriving the system of that public support that democratic states can usually muster in times of crisis.46 It seems that there was nothing particularly Polish in this observation: it was expounded in most eloquently by an astute French observer of the contrast between democratic and autocratic systems, Alexis de Tocqueville, almost one and half century before the demise of the Soviet Union. Maybe what the three emigrants from the Second Republic of Poland could take from their homeland’s political perspective on Russia was rather a tendency to reveal a creaky machinery of deception that tried to hide the internal weaknesses of a seemingly monolithic empire? Perhaps; but in this respect we can mention as the best exponent of this view another nineteenth-century French intellectual, the Marquis Astolphe de Custine, who in his La Russie en 1839 depicted Russia as l’empire des façades. Probably no one common trait of historical perspective of the three Polishborn Jewish-origin English-writing scholars can be “assailed” as exclusively Polish. It is rather the combination of traits that allows us to guess at some influence of their homeland’s historical and geographical experience on their perception of Russia and the Soviet Union. The nature and extent of this influence is obviously hard to determine precisely, even more so since the three authors never bothered seriously with this question. They never dedicated any important part of their scholarly efforts to the history of their Polish homeland: none of them became a “specialist” of Poland. Neither did they identify themselves personally with “Polishness.” All three of them could probably have subscribed, however, to the following confession expressed by Richard Pipes when he reached his eightieth birthday: “Coming from Poland, a country which had bordered Russia for a thousand years and lived under its occupation for over century, I unconsciously shared Polish attitudes toward Russia.”47 Whatever these attitudes may be and we tried to find at least a few of them here—Pipes, Ulam, and Łabędź were probably more effective in influencing the 45 46 47

Ulam, 2000, 177. Pipes, 1962, 169. Pipes, 2003b, 81.

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Western intellectual and political imagination after 1945 than most of their Polish colleagues, who were making a conscious effort to propagate a Polish view on the “Russian/Soviet enigma.” As far as we can judge, none of our three scholars expressed similar ambitions. For Ulam, Pipes, or Łabędź the answer for the most vital question of any emigrant—who are we?—would be neither obvious nor simple. A different question, also prominent on any political emigrant’s mental map—“where is the enemy/who is the enemy?”—would however be answered by them probably with much greater certainty. This answer fits well into a Polish mental map, on which a real experience of Russian imperial expansion; a bequeathed “instinct” of the weaknesses of the enemy; as well as a very vivid memory of the Communist system coming from the East with naked force first in the form of Tukhachevsky’s armies in 1920, and then in as a consequences of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, all coexisted for decades, two of which proved to be formative for Leopold Łabędź, Adam Ulam, and Richard Pipes. These three eminent “non-belongers” never abided “group think”, but their common fate and memories and their common “victimization” by the pact of August 23rd, 1939, made them susceptible to at least the negative side of Polish historical experiences: that filled by the political activities of Poland’s powerful eastern neighbor. They were able to analyze these activities with new intellectual instruments, and from the new perspectives developed during their academic training at the best American and British (in Łabędź’s case) universities. But they all remembered too well that their field of studies was not a theoretical model. Of great import were their Polish years, the final, tragic days of their youthful remembrance. To some extent, at least. That’s all we can guess. References Chodakiewicz, M.J. (2003). “Poland’s Fragebogen: Collective Stereotypes, Individual Recollections” in Chodakiewicz, M.J., J. Radzilowski and D. Tołczyk (eds.), Poland’s Transformation. A Work in Progress. Charlotesville, va. Halecki, O. (1952). “Imperialism in Slavic and eastern European History.” American Slavic and East European History ii, Feb., 1–26. Kaganovich, B., S. Presnyakov and K. Wittfogel (1997). “Wokrug odnoi kontseptsii russkogo istoricheskogo processa” [On a certain concept of the Russian historical process] in: Tret’i martovskie chtenija pamyati S.B. Okun’a v Mikhailovskom zamke, St. Petersburg, 15–24. Kennan, G.F. (1960). Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. New York. Kotkin, S. (2000). [A review of Adam Ulam’s] “Understanding the Cold War.” The New Republic, Nov. 6.

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Kucharzewski, J. (1948), The Origins of Modern Russia. ny. Łabędź, L. and W. Laquer (1975). “A Question of Survival.” Harper’s, July. Łabędź, L. (ed.) (1983). Poland Under Jaruzelski. A Comprehensive Sourcebook on Poland During and After Martial Law, London. Łabędź, L. (1989a). Bez złudzeń. Wybór pism 1962–1988. [Without Illusions. Writings 1962–1988]. London. Łabędź, L. (1989b [1977]). “Dwie dusze George’a Kennana.” [Two Souls of George Kennan] in Łabędź, L., Bez złudzeń. Wybór pism 1962–1988, London. Łabędź, L. (1989c). “Dusze George’a Kennana, raz jeszcze.” [The Souls of George Kennan once more] in Łabędź, L., Bez złudzeń. Wybór pism 1962–1988, London. Łabędź, L. and P. Chojnacki (1991). “ʽNazywać rzeczy po imieniu.’ Z Lepoldem Łabędziem rozmawia Paweł Chojnacki.” [ʽTo call a spade a spade.’ P. Chojnacki’s interview with L. Łabędź.] Arka 36 (6). Levin, M. (1991). [Interview]. Boston Globe, May 18. Malia, M. (2000). Russia Under Western Eyes. From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum, Cambridge, Mass. Nowak, A. (2000). “Leopold Łabędź” in: Dybciak, K. & Z. Kudelski (eds.), Leksykon kultury polskiej poza krajem od roku 1939, vol. 1, Lublin, 232–233. Nowak, A. (2004). “From Empire Builder to Empire Breaker, or There and Back Again: History and Memory of Poland’s Role in East European Politics.” Ab Imperio. Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space 1, 255–89. Pipes, R. (1954). Formation of the Soviet Union: Nationalism and Communism, 1917–1924. Harvard: Harward Univ. Press. Pipes, R. (1962). “Domestic Politics and Foreign Affairs” in Russian Foreign Policy. Essays in Historical Perspective, ed. by I.J. Lederer, New Haven. Pipes, R. (1974). Russia Under the Old Regime, New York:Charles Scribers’s Sons. Pipes, R. (1980). “Soviet Global Strategy.” Commentary, August. Pipes, R. (1981). us-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente, 1969–1976. Boulder: Westview. Pipes, R. (1984). Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet realities and America’s future. New York: Simon and Schuster. Pipes, R. (1989). Russia Observed. Boulder: Westview. Pipes, R. (1990). The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf. Pipes, R. (1993a). “1917 and Revisionists.” National Interest, Spring. Pipes, R. (1993b). Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. Pipes, R. (1994). Communism: The Vanished Specter, New York. Pipes, R. (1995). “Misinterpreting the Cold War.” Foreign Affairs 74, January. Pipes, R. (1996). The Unknown Lenin. From the Secret Archive. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Pipes R. (1999). Property and Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf.

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Pipes, R. (2002). Rosja, komunizm i świat. Wybór esejów. [Russia, Communism and the World. Essays]. Kraków: Arcana. Pipes, R. and A. Nowak (2002). “‘To imperium się rozpadnie…’—z profesorem Richardem Pipesem rozmawia Andrzej Nowak.” [‘This Empire will fall apart…’ A. Nowak interviews Prof. R. Pipes] in R. Pipes, Rosja, komunizm i świat. Wybór esejów, Kraków: Arcana. Pipes, R. (2003a). The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia Yale: Yale Univ. Press. Pipes, R. (2003b). Vixi. Memoirs of a Non-Belonger, New Haven:Yale Univ. Press. Presnakov, A.E. (1993). Kniazhoe pravo w drevnei Rusi. Lektsii po russkoi istorii. [The Grand Princes Law in the Old Russia. Talks about Russian History]. Moskva. Sikorski, R. (1993). “Leo Łabędż, R I P.” National Review (Editorial), April 26. Tanenhaus, S. (2003). “The Hard-liner.” Boston Sunday Globe (“Ideas” Section), November 2. Tumarkin, N. (2002). “Adam Ulam as Writer” in Remembering Adam Ulan (Kennan Institute Occasional Papers no. 282). Washington, d.c., 5–7. – http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ sites/default/files/ACF2BF.pdf. Ulam, A. (1962). “Nationalism, Panslavism, Communism” in I.J. Lederer (ed.), Russian Foreign Policy. Essays in Historical Perspective. New Haven, 39–67. Ulam, A. (1965). The Bolsheviks: the Intellectual, Personal and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia. New York: Macmillan. Ulam, A. (1968). Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917– 1967. New York: Fredrick A Praeger. Ulam, A. (1973). Stalin: the Man and His Era. New York: Viking Press. Ulam, A. (1976). Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from Herzen to Solzhenitsyn. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Ulam, A. (1983). Dangerous Relations: the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982. New York: Oxford University Press. Ulam, A.B. and G. Urban (1990). “What is ‘Soviet’—What is ‘Russian’? A Conversation between Adam B. Ulam & George Urban.” Encounter, May. Ulam, A.B. (2000). Understanding the Cold War: A Historian’s Personal Reflections, Charlottesville. Zhukovskaya, T.N. (1998). “A. Ye. Presnyakov i marksizm: Opyt istoriograficheskoi demifologizatsyi.” [A. Ye. Presnyakov and Marxism. An Attempt to De-mythologize by Historiography] in: A.A. Fursenko (ed.), Rossia v xix–xx vv. Sbornik stat’ei k 70-letiju so dnia rozhdenija R. Sh. Ganelina. St. Petersburg, 28–40.

The Idea of Latvian National History in Exile: Continuity and Discontinuity Iveta Leitāne The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the most influential models of Latvian history in exile, including those which are often represented in media, in history books, in scientific and popular historical studies and reviews in exile, especially those devoted to the issues of recent Latvian history, Latvianness (Latv. latviskums)1 and Latvian culture.2 Several matters have to be kept in mind. First, the Latvian constructors of national identity from the middle of the nineteenth century onward were not all historians but belonged to broader circles of intellectuals and middle-class writers, artists, philosophers and theologians. Beginning with the second quarter of the twentieth century influential politicians can also be found among them. During the 1920s, writing the history of the nation played a particularly important role in legitimizing the re-emergence of an independent Latvian state in 1918. Second, the concept of exile can never be free of religious overtones and connotations. What is to be understood by religious connotations in history writing? It is hardly possible to discuss this very complicated problem here, since it deserves to be analyzed separately. Still less should an understanding of religion be placed in opposition to the secular understanding of western society and history.3 Two short remarks should suffice here for our purposes. One must distinguish between ‘religious’ and ‘theological’ components in history writing. The first stem from the under-determination of historical knowledge in general4 and its need for narrative structures which are often borrowed from religiously-laden stories5 in order to build a consistently, scientific-objective knowledge; and, 1 ‘Latvianness’ (latviskums, latvietība)—a term of objectifying the Latvian order of life (Latvian life world), Latvian culture and the existing Latvian mentality despite sovietization, globalization and threats of assimilation. 2 Particularly in the annual publication Archīvs (1969–1990); see E. Dunsdorfs (ed.), Archīvs. Raksti par latviskām problēmām. Melbourne: Pasaules brīvo latviešu apvienība un Kārļa Zariņa fonds [Archive. Essays on Latvian Problems. Melbourne: World Federation of Free Latvians and Kārlis Zariņš Fund]. 3 Secularism is one of the most discussed problems in religious studies today. It is not possible to recapitulate these issues here. For a controversion study, see Tschannen, 1992. 4 Tucker, 2004. 5 “History, in this view, is no science but an art, intimately related to the arts of poetry, fiction, and drama, insofar as they all narrate a succession of human acts and sufferings. As Toynbee

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from its political interests, to legitimate a certain national and political order. So ‘exile,’ which is a temporary state, may follow “the Golden Age”, the commencement of which has to be interpreted and the end of which can be predicted and even hastened. In the western world the notion of exile can hardly escape the Christian and Biblical theologoumena. Exile is in this sense confronted with the issues of freedom and responsibility, as well as the idea of guilt. It can involve such theologoumena as salvation, awakening and rebirth, some of them being hospitable to pagan imagery as well. Although Christian and Jewish outlooks on the issues of exile and diaspora, as reflected in the contemporary discourse of social, cultural and literature studies (diaspora studies), seem diametrically opposed to each other,6 they always hold some sense of the religious dimension in common: alienation from the land, alienation of people from each others, etc., the loss of homeland and political freedom. In our use of the word ‘historyʼ we shall henceforth distinguish between history (scientific meta-language) and ‘historyʼ (personified object-language). We will try to demonstrate how the former has been affected by the latter in Latvian historical thinking in exile.

The Negation of ‘History’ in the Late 1980s

The political events during the 1980s, culminating in the rebirth of the Latvian state in 1991, put an end to Latvian exile, at least in the political sense. This period preceding 1991, frequently referred to as ‘Awakening’ (Latv. atmoda) deserves special attention. Two leading theories of ‘history’ made an appearance at the beginning of the Awakening in Latvia. Before analysing the idea of history in exile, a characterization of both of them is in order. Both theories postulated the existence of a deadly threat to the physical, ethnic, and cultural survival of the Latvian people, in the western and Soviet worlds, and both theories offered their own solutions to the problem which, having catastrophic overtones, can be aptly described as ‘ways of salvation.ʼ The first one, which could be called ethnocentric and traditionalistic, strictly juxtaposed “one’s own” and “foreign,” the two excluding each other. The modern ‘history’ of Latvia was postulated to be a field of triumph of the “foreign,” which was has observed, history shares with the drama and the novel a common origin in mythology, where the line between fact and fiction was never clearly drawn.” (Matson, 1957, 272). 6 This issue cannot be discussed here. See the introductory articles for Jewish exile: Eisen 1987; Mendes-Flohr, 1987. On the relationship between Latvian and Jewish historiographical theories and their references to Biblical modes of thought, see Leitane, forthcoming b.

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meant to include foreign elements in the population as well as the pressures coming from foreign powers manifested in distortion of Latvian mentality. By contrast, the image if “one’s own”, i.e. the “Latvian” dimension, was dominated by ‘pre-history’. Resuscitating elements of prehistoric life was considered tantamount to liberating the Latvian people from the grip of the “foreign” and its equivalent, the “historic.” A moderate version of this view divided history into two stages: one, which was capable of assimilating the “foreign” and transforming it into “one’s own,” making it “one’s own flesh and blood” (this adapted from ethnic and tribal language, partly borrowed from the Biblical use; the terminology of tribal kinship); and, two, “foreign” ‘history’, which had not yet been dealt with. The long-term modern condition was identified with this second stage. The “one’s own” and the “foreign” did not totally exclude each other any longer, according to the version of this idea laid out by the philosopher Pauls Jurēvičs (1891–1981) in a work published in exile after World War ii.7 This idea also encompassed the influential organistic and vitalistic theories in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly developed by such Latvian phenomenologists as Teodors Celms8 and such theologians as Kārlis Kundziņš,9 and their students, most prominently, Haralds Biezais.10 This conception assumed the possibility of a sort of ‘return,’ by which was meant the return to that accumulated content that had already “crossed” into “Latvian mentality”. Latvians were postulated to be subject to the powers of ‘history,ʼ consequently—of the “foreign” as such. Thus the vision of a future and the hope for the ‘salvation’ of Latvian mentality or the Latvian people—the telos of this theory—was related to the recovery of “one’s own”, and thereby the overcoming of ‘history’. The influence of ‘history’ on Latvianness and Latvian mentality—both of which are to be salvaged because they were in great danger—was considered to be destructive. A metaphor was created to characterize such feelings in the 1980s and 1990s—“a child at the crossroads”—the author of it being the poet Māra Zālīte. The metaphor was first used in the rock-opera Lāčplēsis (Engl. Bearslayer11 [Lyrics by Māra Zālīte and music by Zigmārs Liepiņš; based on motifs from Latvian folktales and epics]12) which played a significant role in 7 8 9 10 11 12

See note 21. Celms, 1934, especially the chapter “Kultūras krīze tagadnes Vakar-Eiropā” [The crisis of culture in Western Europe today], 3–67. See for example Kundziņš, 1936. Biezais, 1936; Biezais, 1935. About Biezais, see Leitāne, 2007. For the English translation see Pumpurs, 2007. Pumpurs published the epic in 1888. The religious underpinnings of genealogies, epics, and biographies in the complex setting of national identity construction cannot be discussed here.

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the so-called “Singing Revolution” during the 1988–1991 years. This metaphor alluded to Latvia’s geo-political weakness and dependence, to the end of the Soviet occupation, and questioned the possibilities of a people changing their destiny by themselves. It stressed the ‘innocenceʼ of the Latvian people and a possible (though threatened) state of ‘perfectionʼ. Its symbolic content underscored the power of ‘history’ in shaping the events that could not have been influenced by the Latvian people until recent times: the German Christianization of Latvian tribes in the thirteenth century and Soviet occupation. Overpowered by the unpleasant events of ‘history’ the Latvian people was forced to ‘forgetʼ its “Golden Age”, and therefore it is necessary to ‘forget’ ‘history’ itself in order to remember and to revive ‘pre-history’. Depicting ‘pre-history’, the historian turns into the artist, and only an adequately depicted ‘pre-history’ can function as the source of spiritual power for the people. This view is based further on the “axis” concept of history—the period of the Latvian state from 1919 until 1940, when ‘pre-history’ was believed to have recaptured its primordial power, at the same time being at the peak of its creative potential, thus selfanticipating its own future or even eternity. In exile, Biezais expressed this feeling, which may sound paradoxical to the ordinary “historian”: “To know the fate of one’s own people and to live in the creative environment of retrieved freedom, to feel both oppositions—then and now—was possible only for my generation. This was a time powerful enough to make one forget the past, giving space for the new.”13 This period seemingly symbolized ‘innocenceʼ and ‘perfectionʼ which both were lost as a result of the loss of political independence and homeland. The other version, which might be called the “Christian”, was also based on the idea of the people’s salvation. The object of salvation, however, was not Latvianness or ‘the Latvian mentality’, but the whole Latvian nation—­ conceptualized as “the Community”, something like a church or “national church” (Latv. tautas baznīca). According to Christian clergy in Latvia, it was  the Christian faith which saved the Latvian nation as a community, in the process saving its mentality as well. Christianity was understood here to work like a container carrying and safeguarding its Latvian mental content, the Latvian way of life, and mental singularity. Admittedly, the Christian concept of Latvian salvation through history was not as closed and rigid as the pre-­historical one, but more flexible and open to change. The hope for survival of the Latvian nation rested in its status as the church or Christian community  at large. The addressees of this view popularized by Latvian clergy were both—Christians and post-Soviet non-believers of Latvian origin. There 13

Biezais, 1995, 3.

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were actual historical facts that demonstrated how Christianization worked in favor of the survival of Latvians as an ethnic group.14 In this view, the Christian narrative perceived ‘history’ as a “road to Golgotha” for the Latvian people, alluding thereby to mass deportations of the Soviet times and the beginning of Latvian political exile after World War ii as a symbol of suffering in the sense of imitatio Dei. This was another negative model of ‘history’ as something which has to be overcome, but the final outcome was thought to be catastrophic and (subsequently) triumphal at the same time. The fulfillment of ‘history’, as an outcome was projected onto the Latvian state which actually found its realization in 1991 and was conceived as a recurrence of the first Latvian Republic. According to this theory, the survival of the Latvian people and Christianity are in an asymmetrical relationship to each other: it remained to be explained why the survival of the Latvian nation was necessary for the Christian Church. The cumulative approach to this asymmetry— as we shall see—could be the only thinkable answer on the part of the Christian elite and it had certain limits. At the same time, the first version was not without its voluntaristic aspect of radical freedom: a Latvian must decide whether to be or not to be a Latvian. This conceptualization, in which the third way was deemed impossible, was also shot through with religious connotations, because ‘salvationʼ could be the state that was close to the realities of faith, while the existential decision was not free from self-assertion—self-salvation—which involves heroic and militaristic analogies or metaphors. Latvian exile economist and historian Arnolds Aizsilnieks (1898–1982) wrote in the 1960s: …it was more difficult for our fathers, mothers, and other ancestors to bring up their children than it is for us today…it never entered their minds to allow their children to assimilate… Even more, our ancestors protected their people from perishing while armed, and there were countless soldiers who gave their own lives for their people. Hence, the abandonment of one’s own people and the resulting assimilation is a heavy crime against them.15

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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in religious programs on Latvian radio, clergymen (a good example is the Lutheran minister Juris Rubenis) argued that during the Christianization of Latvian tribes and the Reformation the main traits of the Latvian mentality were preserved. By contrast, the Soviet occupation had to be blamed for any form of mental devastation. Aizsilnieks, 1965, 3, 73.

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National Historiography before the Political Exile

Latvian national historiography introduced itself in an unusual way: the writing of history, it was believed, was a special, almost secret, science, which had to be disclosed slowly if the Latvian people were to survive. Thus, national historiography was framed within a set of ideas centered around self-preservation and secretiveness.16 In the 1920s and 1930s, the historian Arveds Švābe drew on the “priestly lie” theory. In order to hinder the development of the Latvian people and keep them obedient, the Baltic Germans hid from Latvians their real history, especially the Latvians’ earlier era of freedom when they had had—according to this presumption—their own definite political goals. Latvian history was to be developed from the beginning as the story of disclosure and liberation. Historiography and history-writing was assigned a causative role in the struggle for liberation.17 No contradiction was seen in the idea that empirical facts had yet to be discovered and the consciously hidden picture of history thereby revealed. This idea was expressed by Augusts Tentelis in the 1920s: “To be honest, there is no such thing as a non-Latvian historiography of our country.”18 Therefore, the development of a Latvian historiography was of immeasurable importance, particularly when it came to Latvian prehistory and the very recent times when this prehistory was supposedly recovered. The value assigned to research of prehistoric times is still prominent even twenty years after the restoration of a Latvian nation-state in 1991. The intellectual positions during the 1920s and 1930s that characterized the idea of a “Latvian history” can be described as being centered on two main ideas. (1) The Place of Latvia in the History and Geopolitics of Europe. Among Latvian intellectuals there were two main theories in the 1930s about the place of Latvia in Europe. The first theory—drawing on Oswald Spengler—pictured Europe as being in a state of decline, to which Latvians as an ‘ancient Aryan people’ and among them, upholders of an ancient “Baltic religion” could offer a viable alternative (i.e. the neo-pagan dievturi movement19 with its leader, Ernests Brastiņš). When others had nothing to offer but abstract ideas, Latvians had already put such ideas into practice a very long time ago. The second theory (as exemplified by the writer Kārlis Skalbe and a number of philosophers) 16 17 18 19

On the role of secretiveness as a necessary characteristic in the self-definition of groups or persons and its religious setting, see Gladigow, 1999. Švābe, 1940b/1963b, 118 and Švābe 1940a/1963a 6–7. Tentelis, 1948. Dievturi—“God-keepers”. In 1934 around thirty Latvian writers and artists belonged to this movement.

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advocated a rapid integration of Latvia into the European family of nations and described the country’s economic life and national culture as the most important Latvian contribution to European society. There was a significant increase of exported economic goods in the 1920s20 and Latvian intellectual life was pictured as enriching the whole culture of humankind. A version of this latter model saw Latvians as a young nation endowed with special creative powers that “the West” did not possess anymore (Pauls Jurevičs). Unlike the first theory that stressed the authenticity of life and ancient teachings, this version of the second did not project the authenticity and creativity into the distant past but connected it to the present Latvian state and its future.21 Neither of these two theories separated the history of Latvia from the destiny of the whole of Europe, but the role assigned to Latvians differed significantly in each of them. The second theory with its optimistic outlook on the European environment at large became dominant among in exile after World War ii. Yet, in this reformulation, the emphasis earlier placed on ‘prehistory’ was now shifted to refer to the interwar period, the two decades of the first Latvian Republic. The interwar years and Latvian life and culture in them were now to be considered the only period in history authentically Latvian and therefore it had to be imitated as closely as possible given all the limitations of exile life. As paradoxical as it might seem, imitation of the interwar period was seen as the only creative way forward into the future. (2) Latvia’s Unique Place between East and West Explains Latvia’s Insularity and therefore Requires Its Own Creative Ways. In contrast to Lithuania’s identity discourse that was dominated by Catholic authors and their positive attitude towards syncretism that legitimized assimilation of foreign influences, the assimilation of foreign influence was seen as much more problematic in Latvia. Thus the more radical varieties of protestant Pietism22 could find their continuation in Latvian identity discourse. The theologian Haralds Biezais in his comments on recent Latvian history with its struggles for freedom, the usurpation of power by Kārlis Ulmanis, and national economic and cultural politics stressed the necessity of this self-made Promethean Latvian: “…an interpretation of our successes as having been caused by foreign factors or influences does not correspond to events in our time and reaches behind the dynamics of life.” And Biezais concludes that, inevitably, “truthfulness is lost as a result”.23 As one example of such an effort, he presented the attempts of Baltic German 20 21 22 23

See Aizsilnieks 1968, 403–414. Jurevičs, 1966. See also Jurevičs, 1946; Jurevičs, 1960; Jurevičs, 1973. The issue cannot be recapitualted here. See Luven, 2009. Biezais, 1940, 257.

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writers to deduce all Latvian life from German influence, as if Latvians did not or could not have generated a culture of their own. Such claims, Biezais believes, show that their articulators “do not live the life of their own time and are not organically related to it.”24 Biezais seems to be sure, however, that he himself avoids subjectivism and relativism: the recognition of historical truths of a dynamic kind compels the scientist (theologian) to assume a significant responsibility, because he is obliged to acknowledge his own time and its ways of thinking, to seek truth and express it. It is not possible to live in the world of forms that typifies the theological thinking that dominated a hundred or a thousand years ago.25 As a result, “the highest goal and task of historical truths lies in their meaningful relationship to their own age.”26 In the 1920s and 1930s, under the influence of phenomenology and the ‘philosophy of life,’ there was an effort to recognize a neutral and ethically uncontrolled viewpoint that placed at the centre the survival of the individual and a people. Identity discourse in Latvia for a long time continued to be characterized by an antagonism toward cultural absorption that prevented a positive recognition and objective appreciation of “influences.”27 However formulating the traits of “one’s own nation,” constructors of Latvian identity adopted both the categories of Slavophiles (such as Danilevski, among others) and the conceptual tools used by scholars of the ‘Aryan religion’ (such as Leopold von Schroeder) and created boundaries aimed at negating influences from the dominant features of “German characteristics.” In these theories, Latvians were refashioned to become more “western-oriented” (meaning more Aryan in that case) than the west itself, or were expected to create an alternative to western civilization consisting of borrowings from various quasi-religious intellectual domains of the nineteenth century, such as romantic orientalism, hermeticism, and the cult of heroes that became the“heroic nation.” These would work, of course, only if western ideas were redefined as genuinely Latvian. In either case, historians were expected to understand Latvian culture as the culmination of European civilization. It comes as no surprise to learn that in exile, beginning with 1945, these ideas became marginalized though they did not disappear altogether. 24 25 26 27

Ibid., 257. Ibid., 259. Ibid., 259. See Leitāne, forthcoming a.

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The View of Historiography in Exile on Latvian History before Exile

History books published in exile provide a concise summary of Latvian history. Besides the learning they offer, Latvian-language history books served as the main tool for implementing Latvianness in exile. They have proven to be good sources for reconstructing exile views on the issues of survival and self-­assertion of the people. What are the keywords in the history schoolbooks in exile? Latvian history in them was depicted as the history of liberation—proceeding from enslavement and occupation toward the creation of an independent national state. The Latvian state that came into being in 1918 realized the idea of order that could not have been achieved by other regimes (for example, the brief Bolshevik regime in Latvia in 1919). Latvians themselves began to take care of order in their own state (the Vidzeme Temporary Land Committee, for example, was established in 1917). As a result of the 1905 revolution and the subsequent elections to the Russian State Duma, Latvians had already commenced the job of understanding and ordering of the life of the state. The history of Latvia appears in these books as the history of the establishment of democracy. Exile historiographers pictured the beginnings of cattle breeding, for example, as a specifically Latvian economic element and a priority in developments after 1905. Borrowing from the theories of the first Latvian “awakening” the nineteenth century, exile history books emphasized the Enlightenment topos—a causal connection between the growth of ‘wealth’ and the development of ‘education’. Moreover, the wealth-education connection made it possible for Latvians to enjoy the comforts of life hitherto available only to Baltic Germans. Also, education was not seen as a goal for itself alone; it was required for emancipation. The idea that assimilation was fruitless was sometimes based on the argument that Latvians could by themselves enjoy the comforts of life. The flourishing nation, which favors the cultural development of all humanity, is seen as a definite outcome of the growth of wealth. History schoolbooks attained synchronization by reordering historical facts to fit such theses. For example, after the print prohibition was abolished in Latgale in 1904, a newspaper, Druva, edited by the Catholic priest Kazimirs Skrinda, postulated that Latgalians, Kurlanders, and Livlanders were all members of the same nation (Latv. tauta) and therefore had to become unified. Moreover, the history of Latvia in the textbooks was divided into two periods (two differing states). The first one was Latvia as a democratic republic (from 1920) in which all power belonged to the people. The other state emerged after the coup d’etat of 15 May 1934, which is seen as ‘correcting’ the ‘disordered state’ of the earlier parliamentary (Saeima) period. History-writing was centered around the idea of a new beginning, a kind of creation ex nihilo:

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In the beginning of state-based life in Latvia, internal structures had to be rebuilt almost from nothing, because the earlier wars had devastated the land…destroyed, demolished or burned down buildings, removed or damaged necessary heavy equipment, killed domestic animals, exhausted the farmers. Nevertheless, agriculture recovered very rapidly.28 We notice here the euphoric positivism of hastened development. Cattle breeding above all flourished…/Cows/ gave a lot of milk, which farmers took to the dairy, where butter was produced. Export to other countries [of dairy products] grew rapidly in a few years, becoming onequarter of the total income from Latvian export. The export of meat, especially bacon, increased as well. Trees from the forests were cut and exported, but not to such an extent as to cause lumber shortages in Latvia.29 Here we have the image of an ideal and inexhaustible material reservoir, guaranteed by order. This image, interestingly, is one of the main motifs of eighteenth-century physiocracy. The crowning achievement of the construction sector was seen in the erection in all localities of monuments for soldiers killed in the liberation struggles in 1919–1920, and in the creation of the Cemetery of the Brethren (Brāļu kapi) in Riga. The task of these monuments was to bring home the idea of the immortality of a people. It is no wonder that Biezais, already mentioned above as an exponent of the organistic theory of peoples and nations, took his confirmands to Riga’s Cemetery of the Brethren during the years when he was a pastor in Gramzda.30 Another important motif of exile history was that in independent Latvia all people lived from their work. After the education law of the May 15th regime was issued, education was viewed as strengthening the virtue of work, favouring the love of the fatherland and promoting the mutual understanding of people from different classes: the result would be the arrival of the Friedensreich (Kingdom of Peace). For the same reason, the viepoint embodied in the Latvian “New Current” (Jaunā strāva) of the pre-wwi period was considered to have been deletorious. In the New Current era, its participants pictured socio-­ economic classes in opposition to each other. ‘Work and struggle’ as forms of self-assertion among the Latvian people in the pre-state era had already been 28 29 30

Latvijas vēstures grāmata skolām [A textbook on Latvian history for schools], 1956, 12. Ibid., 18. Biezais, 1995, 128.

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projected to the first Awakening in the middle of the nineteenth century. These ideas in general were characteristic of the discourse of mobilisation. In the May 15 regime, the main fault was seen to be the political system: politics were controlled by political parties that struggled with each other, forgetting the interests of the people and the state and spending time in fruitless disputes (‘individualism versus corporatism’, ‘theory versus practiceʼ, ‘corruption versus pietyʼ). The unifying significance of the Song Festivals—which united geographical locales and social classes—the singers and listeners—was acknowledged as a viable anticipation of Latvians as the eternal people and participants in the ‘eternalʼ Latvia.31 An additional focal point for the understanding of exile historiography was the experiences of the massive numbers of Latvian refugees (perhaps some 700,000) who moved into Russia in the wwi years from 1915 to 1920. Post-wwii exile literature discerned its own prototype in this story. During wwi, the Russian (Tsarist) government supplied some funding for refugee care, but for the most part these earlier refugees had to organize and help themselves. Twenty refugee committees were established in various locations in Russia, with Latvian refugees themselves staffing the St. Petersburg Central Committee for Refugee Relief, an organization that “held together the dispersed members of the nation and protected them from perishing.”32

The Idea of Exile in Exile

One of the most important concept of the exile condition is “continuity”. Exile literature generates a “way of preserving continuity” that stands in contrast to the“dangers of spiritual assimilation.” The “way of preserving continuity” is the way of tradition, and it presupposes the “transmission of spiritual heritage” as the obligation of older people toward the young. Exile literature is—in a manner of speaking—the literature of older people. Consequently, a small version of the interpretative “three-period-schema” is operative in this confluence. The formula supposes the existence of a “golden” or classical age that degenerates but is followed by the restoration of the “golden age”. The scheme can be related to the situation of Latvian exiles during the first decades after World War ii. Restoration is understood as the “restoration of spiritual values.”33 The literature 31 32 33

Latvijas vēstures grāmata skolām, 1956, 23. The concept of ‘eternal Latvia’ requires a special study that cannot be offered here. Latvijas vēstures grāmata skolām, 1956, 17. Soikāns, 1965, 97.

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of exile is aware of the static nature of traditionalism, yet tradition remains unsurpassable in principle and this notion has the following consequences. First, there is no seeking for new ways. Second, there is no discussing and documenting of the tragedy of one’s own age and the “tragedy” of the history of Latvian people in general (the exception was E. Dunsdorfs’ view of K. Ulmanis). Third, there are no far-sighted guidelines worked out for the preservation of national culture in politics, because emigration took place on the individual’s own initiative. The position of the exile oscillates between two standpoints here. On the one hand, the exile, being in the “free world,” has always claimed to be realising a successful order in society (at best, a federalism34 that remains neutral nationally). On the other hand, it is impossible in principle to realize the idea of order in exile since “middle-time” is characterized by a “disturbed order.” At the same time, exile can imagine itself situated in the “golden age,” not accentuating the idea of order but reiterating that Latvians are “the children of the Mother Latvia.” Fourth, exile experiences the decline of national art (culture). This is important because culture, literature and art are the privileged media in which “Latvianness” is preserved. The concept of ‘Latvian culture’ can be understood only in the context of aesthetisation, which is grounded in Kant’s notion of the faculty of judgement.

Is there a Convergence of Both Exiles in the Thinking of Latvian Historians?

Latvian historians in exile saw even life in Latvia after World War ii as a sort of exile, existing parallel to the exile outside Latvia. Thus they discerned an exile in the exile and an exile in the homeland35 during the time of Soviet occupation. Consequently, there could be an imaginary convergence of both exiles. This would allow bringing life in the homeland and in exile into line with each other in order to achieve a common diagnosis. The key words for this convergence are “assimilation” or “the loss of Latvianness”. Rethinking emancipation in exile and preserving Latvianianness, exile historians made wide use of the term “freedom.” The notion of freedom in the views of exile authors coincides in astonishing ways with the disposition, which were characterised at the beginning of this chapter as predominant in the homeland during the 1990s.

34 35

Ibid., 110. During the Soviet occupation (1945–1991) the Latvian people turned from a majority into a minority in their own country.

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Freedom is not anarchy, but a voluntary decision in favor of one definite world view, way of life, submitting to some order or laws of life. Freedom cannot be imagined without the understanding of law. The law is balanced in the conscience of duty—that is the decisive distinction between the free and the enslaved world. Here is the balance between free decision and the duty of human beings and artists, but there—only the imposed duty to the Comparty [Communist Party—i.l.]. There, the artists are not permitted to express their conviction, to represent the national art of one’s own people, because the Comparty…makes the artist an impersonal artisan of lines and colours and with this internationalizes them. …we…, at the same time, do the same quite voluntary: we internationalize ourselves.36 As we can see in the passage above, the concept of Latvianness stands for the active use of one’s freedom of choice, which is possible only in exile, whereas being prepared to remain passively under the sway of an impostor is tantamount to assimilation. That means voluntarily renouncing your own rights. One exile sees itself in the other as in a mirror; the state in the homeland functions as a source of negations to understand the faults of the exile. “Freedom does not mean running with every wind of fashion, but a consequent attitude, by asserting, not denying, one’s own self.”37 Writers and artists in exile preferred terms like “fertile land”, “an environment created by one’s own people” or other organic metaphors borrowed from plant life. Given certain prerequisites, they could find “little homelands” even in foreign countries. The use of metaphorical language enabled exile discourse to avoid serious engagement with contemporary reality. Artists of the older generation had such deep roots in their country and national culture so that transplanting them in a foreign soil of some new culture is quite impossible. There is only one exception. By virtue of their undoubted authority in the first period of exile in Germany, there was an echo of independent state art…[which] stopped the turning of the time wheel… It could not…be called the expression of national culture of one’s own time, because it did not overlap with the period of one’s own nation’s tragic experience of trials, but covered it up.38

36 37 38

Soikāns, 1965, 100, 102. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 102, 104.

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Disparate elements such as creativity, youth and political order (nation-state) met and created a portrait of the young artist, who, in a heroic effort to overcome the difficulties of his time, eventually reached a point where individual and national creativity merge. This generation of artists still spent its youth and subsequent years of art studies under the sign of two-headed eagle’s slavery. Only an absolute faith in the uniqueness of the creative genius of the Latvian people, and their right…to exist besides every other people’s national art made possible for it [this generation—i.l.] to accomplish almost the impossible with admirable persistence and purpose. It created Latvian art, which was not provincial or nationalistic, chauvinistic, or otherwise sectarian or limited in its expression and manifestations. …Latvian painting ranks next to the Belgians and the French not because we are their epigones, but because we had our own individual, spiritual face and the high-quality culture of painting… [However,] building of this spiritual cathedral required too much for one to suddenly turn one’s back to it.39 “Individuality” and “high culture” versus “mass culture”—this duality served as the main parameter of Latvianness, as opposed to both forms of exile outside and inside Soviet Latvia. By oversimplifying a complex political reality, Western popular culture and Soviet ideology appeared in this context in close relationship to each other. The notion of “cultural heritage”, moreover, had the connotation of possession and ownership. This was also reflected in metaphorical language: the “day labourer” (gaitnieki) generation in the pre-state period was followed by the generation of “farmer’s sons”. for whom: …‘receiving of the father’s inheritance’ eases the way… This is the happiest generation in the history of our art. Development takes place in spiritual freedom among of one’s own people, in one’s own country, in one’s own independent state…rooted in the spiritual heritage of the older generations. On the other hand, the impulse was very sensitive to its own time and the modern currents of the West-European art. At the same time the impulse retained a healthy distance, adopting Western European modernity while not losing one’s own individual essence.40

39 40

Ibid., 104. Ibid., 104–105.

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This second generation, formed under the influence of the 15 May 1934,41 was characterised by national positivism, which was formally bound to the created heritage. Its creativity no longer had the guarantee of tradition. Yet this period was quickly drawing to an end because there was only one younger generation growing up during the short time of the first Latvian nation-state. Exile would either exhaust itself in imitation or would proceed to go beyond the limits of continuity. The foundation of continuity in exile were shaken as the pedagogy of art (or transmission of tradition) became weaker. In the beginning of the exile era, it found an anemic expression by comparison with one’s own time, but after dispersion of Latvians all over the world, when the art schools of ­foreign countries took over the education of Latvian artists, the problem of continuity was encountered immediately. The legitimating of exile in exile can be discussed as a typology having three variants: (a) An a-historical theory that postulated that the most stable period covered the years from 1944 until the middle of the 1950s. Latvianness is an outcome of history, but it is not intrinsically related to history. Its roots are in the homeland and its spiritual “heritage.” Exile is a temporary state and does not have legitimacy in and of itself; exile is “life lived for the liberation of Latvia,” with total faith in victory and absolute conviction that the spiritual and physical body of one’s own people need to be preserved. (b) Eschatological or apocalyptic theory envisaging the rapid and inevitable and irreversible assimilation of Latvians during exile. One can only remain in the position of a passive recipient of assimilative pressures. Assimilation takes place in exile, whereas rapid russification takes place in the old homeland. Still, the Latvian people have some chance of surviving, but only in their homeland. Existence in exile is dependent on the existence of the homeland. A model containing stages can be used to understand the apocalyptic view, thus incorporating attention to the corresponding present and making a qualified prognosis. The model introduced the concept of time, and uses argumentation that may be polemical or critical (in relation to the present time), legitimating, or awaiting salvation or being convinced about its absence. Time here is related to the social and cultural conditions of the moment, where the beginning and the end of “time” mark the corresponding horizons of what is understood as a time-fragment of social reality. The interpretative systems of “time” do not concentrate on the disruption between the two periods (life in the homeland until World War ii, life in exile 41

This date refers to the coup carried out in Latvia by Kārlis Ulmains against the elected government. Ulmanis dissolved the parliament (Saeima) and made himself head of an authoritarian regime.

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after the end of the war), but on the situation shortly before the changes (the social, political and cultural aspects of life after the coup carried out by Ulmanis) or right after them (the “little homeland” in Germany already mentioned above). Synchronizing the process is an important means of interpreting history. This harmonizes the interpretative system of time and present them for interpretation. For example, (historical) development is described as moving in the direction of the present breach point (a positive period of Latvian history manifesting itself as a self-organized group of fugitives and a wave of democracy, both of which followed World War i and anticipated Latvian exile after World War ii); or—another possibility—that a new beginning has already taken place (change of government, change of territory), and has been legitimated by assistance from one’s ‘own’ time. Thus all change is conceived of as having been positive. Accepting such a theory either describes the present events as speeded up and approaching the end (the acceleration of time), or greets the new beginning with euphoria. (A characteristic of Ulmanis’ regime was the euphoric tone of its propaganda, particularly concerning national achievements: “We are walking upright into our future.” Its negations were to be found, first, in Soviet ideology, and, later, in the doubts about the positive outcome of Latvian emancipation under circumstances of exile). Synchronization is related to the experience of life among the addressees, and reacts swiftly to changes in their lives. The eschatological version may be followed by an a-historical one, when faith in victory disappears and statements about preserving one’s own spiritual and physical body seems to become only empty phrases. This change in feeling about life no loger coincides with the potential emancipatory successes of Latvians in exile, as they prepare for the restoration of Latvia. Exile as “life aimed at the liberation of Latvia” becomes simply “assimilation” and the fulfilment of material desires. Different systems for interpreting time thus increase the formal plausibility of outcomes. Separating time into eras using the ethnocentric perspective correlates with “our kingship/rulers.” The politicization of time means, of course, that any theory of time/times becomes an interpretative category as well. Changes in kingship are at the same time changes of eras, and “one’s own peoples”: the last ruler restores justice, introduces the state of finality and reverses the crimes of previous generations. The three-age-doctrine is one of those eschatological models. The ruler ought to be a legitimate heir to power. One may remember the attempt of Kārlis Ulmanis to compel the historian and archaeologist Francis Balodis42 to “dig out” the golden crown—previously ordered by Ulmanis himself from Germany—from the Jersika castle mound, as 42

Balodis, 1948, 5–18.

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a symbol of the kingship of the Visvaldis; Ulmanis was thus positioning himself to be the legitimate restorer of the “ancient order.”43 This was a version of the classical three-kingships-doctrine, in which the old order, taking advantage of disturbances in time, replaces the future by returning things to an ­original state: the “end of time” thus awaits in modernity. The new time begins with the emergence of a new ruler. Even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the political parties in Latvia used this eschatological model in their own party names (e.g. “The New Party,” “The New Time”). The present and its challenges are projected into the past. Among the tasks of Latvian exile, therefore, was the injunction to talk and write about the injuries caused to Latvians during the  medieval centuries (these injuries might be feudal society that lasted until the abolition of serfdom or, again, the period of Soviet occupation). Latvian politicians saw their task as involving telling the world about truths not yet completed, because they believed that “Europe doesn’t understand us,” i.e.  there continued to be a demand for information concerning the sufferings of the Latvian people brought to them by foreign powers. The idea of a “court”—a judicial proceeding—played a central role and was seen to be essential in the awakening of the homeland (the 1990s). The poet Māra Zālīte dramatised this issue briefly during these events.44 (c) The conception of a realistic or private Latvianness existing in conditions of pluralism gave up the idea of Latvianness as a type of social order, at least as far as exile was concerned. Kārlis Rīdūzis, in exile, wrote that “our problem is not to deny the life-style of our newly acquired home country, nor is it to emphasize Latvian superiority over it at every step; but to consciously enrich the selection of life-styles in the new country where the Latvian way of life is clearly different.”45 Latvianness in this view becames a kind of private religiosity or some cultural equivalent of it. Family becomes the real keeper of identity, best of all—a family in which the mother or the Latvian grandparents did not work for a living. The new country guaranteed public life, while Latvianness was a private thing. The argument went as follows: Latvianness does not guarantee all order in conditions of exile. “Is it possible with these crumbs of Latvian culture, reproduced here in exile, to grow up as a spiritually rich human being? If all of us could be together, then everything would be different.”46 The Latvianness sought for in exile was minimalist one that with favourable conditions (we already mentioned “the fertile land,” “an environment created by 43 Cielēns, 1964, 35. 44 Zālīte, 1987. 45 Rīdūzis, 1965, 80. 46 Ibid.

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one’s own people”) could develop and flourish as maximal and full-fledged Latvianness: “Perhaps the most important factor is the knowledge of Latvian language. Its knower will always be open to our culture circles and he or she will identify himself or herself as Latvian.”47 Latvian history is also a minimal history, a story. History turns into a narrative. This narrative is simply the “story of the fortunes of a people” in a short and concentrated version, as exemplified by Latviešu tautas piedzīvojumi (The Adventures of Latvian People) by Uldis Ģērmanis.48 In fact, we are dealing with the “coordination” of two conceptions: the possibility of the traditionalistic conception is preserved within the framework of Latvianness as a private (i.e. religious) experience. Seemingly opposite structures are being held in creative tension here: ‘Latviannessʼ is natural and an issue of ‘decision,ʼ of individual choice. It acts as a guarantor of supra-individual values and the social order at the same time. ‘Latviannessʼ is the ‘culture of the closed type,ʼ acquiring in the ‘axis timeʼ features of the ‘culture of the open typeʼ as well. The first sees itself as continuing according to tradition, from the time (‘timeʼ is here meant conventionally) when there existed “fullness of truth”…while ‘history’ is the history of the gradual loss of this fullness. The second “sees itself as arising ‘from zero,ʼ ‘from nothing,ʼ” and is “gradually accumulating elements of ‘truth,ʼ” the fullness of which is believed to lie in the future.49 Historiography is there not just to reiterate this ideal coincidence of opposites but to constitute an integral and necessary part of it.

Religion in Exile. Latvianness and Religiosity: Partners or Competitors?

Further, we need to discuss the postulate of exile historians about the “religiosity of Latvians,” which stands in sharp contrast to the point of view in the old homeland that underscored the “a-religiosity of Latvians.” The active discussions in Latvia at the beginning of the twenty-first century about religious education in schools were an extension of the latter and not the former. Exile writing, in sharp opposition to socialist and social-democratic positions, persuasively argued its own position, which was religion-affirming. Thus, for example, it was stressed in history books that the “New Current” movement50 47 48 49 50

Ibid., 81. See also: Lūsis, 1969, 8. Aizsilnieks, 1965, 74. Lotman, 1978, 236. A political and literary movement during the 1890s with social-democratic leanings.

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did not have many supporters among the Latvian people, because the movement had been “against religion.” How can this religion-friendly attitude among exiles be explained? It should not be forgotten that Christianity was introduced into the Latvian region by foreign powers and the subsequent process of Christianization amalgamated elements of foreign cultures with Latvian traditions. Thus presenting Christianity as an integral part of Latvian history often proved a difficult task. How do we explain the fact, that exile academics rarely saw a sharp contrast between the pre-Christian Latvian religion and Christianity? On the other hand, Soviet historiography never failed to place native folk beliefs and the Christian religion in opposition to each other, and this same view prevails in post-Soviet Latvia. In exile, Latvian Lutheran parishes worked as stabilizing factors and centres of communication within the dispersed Latvian communities. The Lutheran pastor and theologian, Visvaldis Klīve observed that “our parishes are our strongest cultural organisations. In many Latvian colonies, they have been entrusted with the governance of practically all local Latvian cultural life.”51 And E. Stukelis added: “The parish is that single natural organization that can unite all our countrymen of good will for working and struggling for all that is sacred, dear and noble to our people.”52 Yet less than a full decade after the beginning of exile after World War ii, Stukelis thought about the reasons for the exhaustion of the public life in Latvian parishes: “Nobody has time… The philosophy of life was the same for everybody: how and where to earn more, how to push one’s way up.”53 And, further, he opined that “the noblest and greatest ideas for which our men struggled and even gave their lives suffer as a consequence. Because of the pursuit of secular wealth and because of the lack of idealism, interest in religion and the church, in the homeland and Latvian people, disappears.”54 ‘Latviannessʼ and ‘Catholicityʼ are both defined as nonsecular concerns. In these observation, Stukelis contrasts the two entities, supporting the postulate that the growth of wealth is a cradle of nationalism. In other observations, however, he drew parallels between the two exiles—inside and outside the old homeland—and emphasized the importance of religious feelings: “the fate of Latvia and Latvian people becomes indifferent, although the older generation itself suffered from the terror of foreign powers and dangers of war.” The view of this Catholic author, voiced in 1954, was that which we can be proud of is the power of the spirit and of culture: “…of what is endured, 51 In Baznīcas Kalendārs 1967. gadam, 52. 52 In Dzimtenes balss. Latviešu katoļu mēnešraksts, 1954, 42. 53 Such observations have been part of all identity discourses since the 1870s. 54 Quoted in Ručs, 1969, 31.

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suffered through. This is the cause for the percentage of active Christians in the Baltic region being higher than elsewhere in Western Europe.”55 Another Catholic writer, Kazimirs Račs, ended his essay with the well-known lines from Rudolfs Blaumanis poem, Tālavas taurētājs (1902): “my gold is my people, my honour is its honour.”56 Cast in the honour discourse of the Romans, this was a great concession by Catholicism to nationalism. The idea of a fugitive here is explained by reference to “the highest value of the human being—the salvation of life and freedom,”57 not by the pursuit of material goods. The church in exile had to compensate for the lack of institutionalized political life. The goals of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in exile included the preaching of the Gospel, the struggle for the freedom of Latvian people, and the  restoration of the independence in Latvia. The environment was hostile toward both Latvianness and the church (against the latter in the form of secularization). For exile Latvians, both had to be upheld together, rather than only one or the other. At the same time, the prognosis was rather pessimistic: “So long as our people in the homeland do not remove the chains of slavery or as long as our youth does not awake religiously, we cannot see the possibility of growth for our church in condition of exile.”58 The church in exile enhanced other cultural factors in the struggle for Latvian unity. For instance, church liturgy in the Latvian language was seen as the religious equivalent of the secular song festivals. Both played a unifying role for the nation: “The church buildings acquired by the parishes now gather, every Sunday, thousands of Latvians, speaking and praying to God in Latvian. I reiterate: this happens every Sunday. Does it not have an exceptionally great significance from the viewpoint of the unity of the people?”59

The Reflection of Exile in Theology and Philosophy

Latvian exile theologians and philosophers started to reflect on the reasons and the essence of the exile condition after World War ii. Their works played 55

Ručs, 1969, 31. It is no cooincidence that these issues were discussed after the publication of such seminal works on the secularization paradigm as Bryan Wilson’s Religion in Secular society (1966), Peter Berger’s Sacred Canopy (1967), and Thomas Luckmann’s Invisible Religion (1967). ‘Latviannessʼ in exile could therefore reiterate the bipolar structure of this paradigm. The decline of participation (in church and Latvian organizational life) was a widespread feature confirming the ‘secularʼ thesis. 56 Ručs, 1969, 31. 57 Ibid. 58 Lūsis, 1969, 10. 59 Ibid.

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the important role of embedding Latvian national history in the wider framework of universal historical categories. Yet even this activity did not appear without considerable delay. The theologian Visvaldis Klīve mentions two significant questions among the interests of those theologians and philosophers who abandoned Latvia during World War ii: (1) an understanding of this era, because living culture itself seemed to be endangered, and (2) the tragedy of the Latvian people and, if it could be said, of Latvian culture. Using the words of Zenta Mauriņa, it can be said that the question was about ‘tragedy of exile.’ Reformulating the problem theologically, it contained the question of the sense and meaning of the suffering of our people. In the beginning of exile, many of these questions were asked widely. Departure from the homeland and the enprisonment of Latvian soldiers raised these questions among the people.60 Their conclusion was that “life somehow had lost ‘the moral sense’”.61 But that did not mean that this question remained unanswered. This situation was further complicated by the fact that “the view into the future was equally problematic. Almost every one of our thinkers saw a serious connection between the fate of Latvian people and what was happening in the world.”62 What was that connection? Klīve points out two factors, both of which had already been emphasized by the philosopher Teodors Celms in his Imbshausen lectures—“the shaping of mass society and emergence of technological man,” these ideas having originated in Miguel de Unamuno’s cultural diagnosis and in “apocalyptic signs,” in the language of some theologians (J. Ķullītis). Moreover, the spread of existentialism in the West was dismissed: Philosophy should be more or less idealistic, because Latvians should fight against the wave of materialism from the East endangering them. … values should be absolute, because a long and heavy struggle awaits us. National education can be based only on the foundation of of idealism.63 In exile, Latvian theology came to embody conservativism and orthodoxy and stepped away from liberal ideas. Klīve points out how in exile Kārlis Kundziņš, 60 Klīve, 1991, 7. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid.

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a professor of theology, denied the assertion that he had been the pillar of liberal theology in the Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia during the 1930s. Only Haralds Biezais, who received his doctoral degree in philosophy (in the field of the history of religions) in Sweden at the University of Stockholm, apparently remained in strictly liberal positions.64 Klīve also mentions two other “negative factors”65 that influenced Latvian thinking in exile and directed it toward ultraconservativism. He called the first the “mentality of exile”: Latvians together with their culture feel themselves endangered. Therefore, critical questions about the basic insights and presumptions of Latvian society apear to be unacceptable. …One may say that philosophy was endangered. Critical thinking was not generally honoured.66 Mistrust of an younger generation of intellectuals and pastors and the exclusion of new paradigms—these being generated by an ideological and organizational power struggle between generations—aggravated the situation further. The dominance of ultraconservatism had the following consequences: “almost everyone who in the 1950s and 1960s studied philosophy and theology felt how far Latvian society had moved away from what was happening in the  contemporary spiritual world” and therefore could not really influence the situation. The outcome: “Latvian exile” went its own way, looked b­ ackward, 64

65 66

Haralds Biezais began to work as a professor at the University of Åbo in 1970. His inauguration lecture praised the Swedish archbishop, Natan Soderbloom, who was also a scientific researcher of religions during the beginning of the twentieth century. Biezais himself was an example of a “scientist in exile” who wrote about tragic utopias. In his historical study Kurelieši, he described an armed group of Latvian soldiers, under the leadership of General Jānis Kurelis, organizing during the German occupation of Latvia an underground Latvian Central Committee of Latvian fugitives in exile and “remaining faithful to free Latvia.” This group stood in opposition to the hated German occupation powers, and they were not recognized either by the leaders of the Latvian Legion or by the Bolsheviks. Their history was tragic because the historical constellation of forces prevented their goals from being achieved. Although they were part of the Nazi armed forces, the Kureliens, unlike the Legionaires, did not swear an oath to support the Great Germany in hope of renewing a free Latvia. Biezais, serving science, moved away from the ideologised Swedish Church and gave up the visits of his homeland after 1991. This behavior, I think, in fact represents tragic, although honourable, ideal behavior of the part of an exile. Reconstructing and describing, at the academic level, the pre-Christian Latvian religious ideas, Biezais offers a view of Latvian history that combines the traditionalistic and the liberal views of history (Biezais, 1991). Apparently as a guarantee for preserving the creativity of exile. Klīve, 1991, 8.

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not around or forward.67 The emergence of a new generation of philosophers and theologians was thus “characterized more by discontinuity than continuity”. The distance between the generations was double-edged: “the young people on many questions did not know what had happened in the earlier Latvian thinking.”68 Klīve even drew parallels between the developments in exile and in the old homeland: “In the same way as in the homeland, the asking of critical questions has not been ‘in fashion’ for a long time, and the exiles had often avoided critical discussions.”69 Moreover, it is possible that this comparison went even deeper. The most thorough investigations did not deal with philosophical, theological, metahistorical problems70 but was characterised by a “turning to specific social, political, economic and moral questions”—questions that Klīve described as peculiar to the era, at least in theological development. Klīve appreciated the contribution of intellectuals in exile to the “preservation of Latvian culture” and to the struggle for “Latvian existence”, which has to be “cultivated and protected.”71 In Klīve’s view, the only exception to this trend was Pauls Jurēvičs and his book, published in 1955 and entitled Dzīve and liktenis (Life and Fate), which Klīve described as “reflections about Latvian existence.” Even for Jurēvičs, however, certain beliefs remained axiomatic: “Foreign culture cannot be quite appropriate for us, and we cannot feel ourselves comfortable in its atmosphere because we are different people with different intellectual and emotional attitudes toward the world and, consequently, toward culture.”72 “We…are or have been a young nation. We are still fresh, still juvenile,—Western Europe is old—and the farther from us, the older.”73 Small wonder, therefore, that an attractive representation of the Latvian nation—a metaphor for it—throughout the course of the twentieth century was that of the child, ready to receive (gifts),74 but unprotected from dangerous foreign influences because it had not yet been emancipated.75

67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Klīve offers the radical observation that “interestingly, until the very last there were no serious theological controversies and debates in Latvian exile society” (Klīve, 1991, 8). 71 Klīve, 1991, 10. 72 Jurevičs, 1966, 23. 73 Ibid. 74 Skalbe, 1990, 98. 75 Jurevičs, 1966.

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The Problem of the Holocaust: Crisis of Exile or Dilemma of Emancipation?

The Holocaust is another specific matter to be considered. When it comes to the Holocaust,76 national and world history turn out to be inseparable. Given both major arguments in favor of the value of Latvianness for world civilization and Christianity—the contribution to the fullness of expression of the Divine and the resistance to chauvinism and coercion of the majority of the Church itself—this issue in Latvian exile historiography becomes a kind of litmus test. Since both exilic biblical figures, Adam and Cain, were incorporated into Latvian exile consciousness (see Leitane forthcoming a), the question remains: were the relevant interpretations invested in dealing with the Holocaust? The question is: does participation by Latvians in the Holocaust mark a caesura of Latvian history as it does for the history of Europe, or is that participation just a “myth,” requiring deeper reflection? The exile historian Andrievs (Andrew) Ezergailis produced the standard work on the question of Latvian participation in the Holocaust.77 The discussion of this question in Latvia after 1991 aptly exhibited the limits on receiving the ideas of exile researchers and went beyond the traditionalistic and ethnocentric perspective. In interviews in the year 2000 with Ezergailis, it was observed that Latvian “shooters of the Jews” were still designated as a “myth”and not “reality” in Latvia, or, more precisely, a Western myth created to excuse the crimes of the West (that is, national socialism) in World War ii. The Latvian “shooters of Jews” apear in the broader circles of exile and in the homeland as such a myth or a self-projection of west. The shadowy, dark side of the west (national socialism) is projected onto the societies of Eastern Europe, whereas the west represents itself with only its “bright side”, that is, as “enlightenment” (western criticism of national socialism) that the west now—ex post facto—offers to, or imposes on, Eastern Europe. Resistance to an unbiased inquiry into the history of the Holocaust, particularly of Latvian participation in it, revealed the desire to forget one’s own “history” and to plunge into “pre-history” (such “pre-history” could be the 76

77

“The hermeneutic tradition in history writing attempted to make sense of modern historical developments including war, ethnic and national hatred, and Holocaust. The focus of this approach might be labeled ‘history as remembrance.’ Contributors to this strand of thought emerged from twentieth-century European philosophy, including existentialism and Marxism, and were influenced by the search for meaning in the Holocaust” (Little, 2007; see LaCapra, 1994). Ezergailis, 1996.

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utopias of intellectuals with the facts of history made plain). On the other hand, the denial of Latvian participation could have been another attempt to deconstruct the historiographic traditions of the West. During Soviet rule, the term “emancipation” was widely rejected because it was considered to be an integral part of Soviet discourse, hence of Soviet ideology. A more moderate attitude towards “emancipation” was expressed in exile, where the term denoted keeping a certain distance from “western” values, that is, from socio-economic emancipation. Latvian exiles after 1991 criticised the homeland for, as they saw it, a lack of “emancipation” from the Soviet regime and its mentality. Latvian society in Latvia, in turn, saw such criticism as a form of ideological aggression, and accused the ‘westʼ (including Latvian exiles) of fostering the illusion of moral superiority. This explains, why the Soviet strategy of anti-emancipation found its continuation even after 1991. This also allowed the homeland writers to rewrite Latvia’s “own history” of resistance by using exile categories: Western secularism and assimilation was seen as no different from the pressures of Soviet ideology. In sum, Latvian exile writers to a great extent preserved very traditionalistic and ethnocentric view on Latvian history, a view saturated with religious categories. The eschatological model, in multiple expressions, was implictly dominant in it. The understanding of history in exile legitimated the existence of exile itself and the facts of history were “listened to” in the form of the “history of exile before exile” (e.g. Latvian exile in Russia during the World War i). Postwwii exile obtained its positive meaning by explaining itself as the continuation of emancipation. At some time, however, these approaches intersected and merged, proclaiming that only the acquisition of wealth guaranteed (or provided) education, and consequently made Latvianness possible. Nonetheless, by the middle of the 1950s these schemes proved no longer to be satisfactory. This development activated the eschatological model, stressing the mutually exclusive nature of both entities—the exile and the homeland. The thesis that Latvian destinies would be decided in Latvia and that the emancipatory model needs to be surrendered influenced the view of Latvian history prevalent in the decisive years at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Exile history operated permanently by using versions of the “three-period-schema.” In this, the “old” time ended with the Christianization of Latvians. The national awakening in the middle of the nineteenth century was the renaissance of the old state or its beginning. The outer limits of different eras could be moved in one or another direction (the renaissance occurring on 18 November 1918 or on 15 May 1934). For Christians, the “golden age” was the synthesis of Christianity and Latvianness during the 1920s and 1930s, and not the Christianization of Latvian tribal societies in the thirteenth century. The exile period itself was

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seen as an example of the succession of three eras or kingships (the “little exile” in Germany, the dispersion, the attempts of restoration). In these presentations, the categories of “freedom” and “responsibility” were subordinated to the traditionalist model of history. The category of “guilt” appeared to be in a paradoxical situation: Latvians, who decided to be Latvian, did not experience guilt, but Latvians who assimilated did not have the opportunity to be held responsible (“he no longer has any relation to Latvianness”). Academic research of the Holocaust in Latvia, naturally, contradicted these schemes. But the work of Biezais in representing the Kurelians as tragic exiles does not essentially contradict the classical model. The restoration of independent Latvia may have been doubted in reality, but its modality was changed (becoming discursive academic restoration). The suffering of people characterizes the “middle time,” the heroism and martyrdom of the people are combined. The homeland used secular, quasi-religious terminology, which did not differ semantically from the exile. The quasi-religious Soviet terminology in the homeland (the motifs of “work” and “struggle”) and the convergence of the views of exile and homeland enabled a slight exchange of other elements. The weakness of the theory of emancipation in exile was partly responsible for its similar weakness during the “third awakening” and partly as well for deficits of democracy in Latvia today.78 References Aizsilnieks, A. (1965). “Pārdomas par ppp.” [Reflections on ppp]. Archīvs, no. 5. Aizsilnieks, A. (1968). Latvijas saimniecības vēsture. 1914–1945. [Economic history of Latvia, 1914–1945]. Stockholm: Daugava. Balodis, F. (1948). “Mūsu senču sūtība Baltijas telpā” [The mission of our ancestors in Baltic space], in A. Švābe (ed), Latvju kultūra. Rakstu krājums [Latvian Culture: A Collection of Studies]. Ludwigsburg: Klāvsona apgāds. Biezais, H. (1935). “Reliģiskais kultūras pesimisms.” [The cultural pessimism of religion]. Ceļš. Biezais, H. (1936). “Nācija kā totalitāte” [The nation as totality], in: J. Lapiņš (ed.), Jaunais nacionālisms [The new nationalism]. Riga: Valters un Rapa. Biezais, H. (1940). “Vēsturisko patiesību dinamiskais raksturs” [The dynamic character of historical truth]. Ceļš, no. 4. Biezais, H. (1991). Kurelieši. Nacionālas pretestības liecinieki [The Kureliens, Witnesses of National Resistance]. Ithaca: Mežābele. 78

See also Zaķe, 2005.

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Biezais, H. (1995). Saki tā, kā tas ir [Say things the way they are]. Riga : Svētdienas Rīts. Celms, T. (1934). Tagadnes problēmas [Problems of Today]. Riga: Valters un Rapa. Cielēns, F. (1964). Laikmetu maiņā. Atmiņas un atziņas [In changing times: memories and recognitions], vol. iii. Stockholm: Memento. Eisen, A. (1987). “Exile”, in: A.A. Cohen and P. Mendes-Flohr (eds), Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought. New York: The Free Press, 219–225. Ezergailis, A. (1996). The Holocaust in Latvia 1941–1944: The Missing Centre. Riga: Latvian Institute of History. Gladigow, B. (1999). “Vom Naturgeheimnis zum Welträtsel”, in J. and A. Assmann (eds.), Schleier und Schwelle, vol. iii: Geheimnis und Neugierde. München: Fink, 77–97. Jurevičs, P. (1946). “Latviskā dvēsele” [The Latvian soul], in Idejas un īstenība [Ideas and reality], Goeppingen: Grāmatu Draugs, 208–236. Jurevičs, P. (1960). “Mūsu pagātnes aktualitāte” [The reality of our past], in: Kultūras sejas [The Faces of the culture]. Stockholm: Daugava, 127–156. Jurevičs, P. (1966). “Latviešu emocionālā attieksme pret Rietumu kultūru” [Latvian emotional attitudes towards western culture], in: H. Biezais (ed.), Latviešu kultūra laikmeta maiņās [Latvian Culture in Changing Times], Stockholm: Daugava, 7–24. Jurevičs, P. (1973). “Romantiskā ievirze dzīvē un rakstniecībā” [The romantic trend in life and literature], in: P. Jurevičs, Pretstatu pasaule [The world of opposites], New York: Grāmatu Draugs, 146–159. Klīve, V. (1991). “Atskats uz filozofiju un teoloģiju trimdā” [Retrospective on the philosophy and theology of exile], in: M. Kūle (ed.), Filozofija un teoloģija, Rakstu krājums, [Philosophy and theology. A collection of essays]. Riga. Kundzinš, K. (1936). “Reliģiskā kopība, tās raksturs un nozīme” [The religious community, its character and significance], in: Ap lielo dzīves mīklu. Apcerējumi. [On the great riddle of the life]. Riga: Valters un Rapa, 184–192. LaCapra, D. (1994). Representing the Holocaust: history, theory, trauma. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Leitāne, I. (2007). “Haralds Biezais (1909–1995): ein Religionshistoriker zwischen Theologie und Religionswissenschaft”, in H. Junginger (ed.), Study of Religion under Impact of Fascism. (Numen Book Series. Studies in the History of Religions). Leiden: Brill. Leitāne, I. (forthcoming a). Die religiösen Komponenten in der Konstruktion der nation­ alen Identität. Berlin and Franfurt: Peter Lang. Leitāne, I. (forthcoming b). Secular Jewish Thought in Latvia (1919–1940). Little, D. (2007). “Philosophy of History”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Standford University Press. Lotman, Y. (1978). “Text and Function.” New Literary History 9, no. 2.

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Lūsis, A. (1969). “Mūsu baznīca svešuma robežās.” [Our church in exile limitations]. Archīvs, no. 9. Luven, Y. (2009). Das nationale Erwachen ab dem 19. Jahrhundert im Baltikum [The national awakening in the Baltic region since the 19th century]. Lüneburg: CarlSchirren Gesellschaft. Matson, F.W. (1957). “History as Art: The Psychological-Romantic View.” Journal of the History of Ideas 18, no. 2 (Apr.) Mendes-Flohr, P. (1987). “History”, in: A.A. Cohen and P. Mendes-Flohr (eds), Con­ temporary Jewish religious thought: original essays on critical concepts, movements, and beliefs. New York. The Free Press, 371–387. Pumpurs, A. (2007/[1888]). Bearslayer: the Latvian legend. Translated by A. Cropley. Riga: lu Akadēmiskais apgāds. Rīdūzis, K. (1965). “Pārdomas par ppp.” [Reflections on ppp]. Archīvs, no. 5. Ručs, K. (1969). “Latviešu katoļu draudžu nacionālā nozīme trimdā” [The importance of Latvian Catholic parishes in exile]. Archīvs, no. 9. Skalbe, K. (1990). Mazās piezīmes [Little notations]. Rīga: Zinātne. Soikāns, J. (1965). “Nacionālā māksla un tautas liktenis” [National art and people’s destiny]. Archīvs, no. 5. Švābe, A. (1940a/1963a) “Leģendārais vēsturē.” [The Legendary in History], in A. Švābe, Straumes un avoti [Streams and Springs], vol. ii. [1st edition]. Riga: A. Gulbis 1940. Reprint: Nebraska: Pilskalns 1963. Švābe, A. (1940b/1963b). “Latviešu vēstures uzdevumi” [Tasks in Latvian History], in: A. Švābe, Straumes un avoti [Streams and Springs], vol. ii. [1st edition]. Riga: A. Gulbis 1940. Reprint: Nebraska: Pilskalns 1963, 6–7. Tentelis, A. (1948). “Mūsu tautas likteņa gaitas” [The fate of our nation], in: A. Švābe (ed.), Latvju kultūra. Rakstu krājums. Ludwigsburg: A. Klāvsona apgāds, 43–111. Tschannen, O. (1992). Les théories de la sécularisation. Genève: Droz. Tucker, A. (2004). Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zake, I. (2005). “Latvian Nationalist Intellectuals and the Crisis of Democracy in the Inter-war Period.” Nationalities Papers 33, no. 1, March. Zālīte, M. (1987). Divas dramatiskas poēmas [Two dramatized poems]. Riga: Liesma.

Name Index Ābers, Benno 71, 75, 76 Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Lord 270 Adams, Arthur E. 98 Adamus, Jan 264n4 Aizsilnieks, Arnolds 51, 86, 400 Akinševič, Leŭ 124 Akula, Kanstantyn 126 Aleksandravičius, Egidijus 9 Aleksandrowicz, Jerzy 132n2, 141 Aleksandrowicz, Józef see: Najdziuk, Jazep Alexander I (Tsar) 277 Alexander II (Tsar) 225 Amburger, Erik 312 Anders, Władysław 142 Anderson, Edgar (Andersons, Edgars) 41, 57, 58, 71, 72, 73, 73n6, 78, 85, 86, 88n34 Anderson, Walter 56 Andrusiak, Mykola 96 Angelus, Oskar 53 Angermann, Norbert 314 Arbusow, Leonid 309, 312 Arciszewski, Mirosław 217 Arendt, Hannah 6, 263n, 271 Arens, Ilmar 51 Arens, Olavi 2, 58 Armstrong, John A. 99, 111 Arnold, Stanisław 184, 344n3 Askenazy, Szymon 257 Aspāzija (pseud. for Elza Rozenberga) 68 Augustine (Saint) 355 Aunver, Jakob 36, 313 Bach, Johann Sebastian 227 Backvis, Claude 178 Baczko, Bronisław 350n16 Balodis, Francis 411 Balzac, Henri 175 Bateson, Gregory 270 Baudouin de Courtenay-EhrenkreutzJędrzejewiczowa, Cezaria (Jędrzejewiczowa, Cezaria) 131n2, 133, 134, 136, 148, 150 Bauer, Albert 312 Bauman, Zygmunt 159

Bauer, Albert 312 Beauvois, Daniel 289 Becker, Carl 286 Benedict, Ruth 270 Benz, Ernst 53 Berg, Hermann von 302 Berg, Nicolas 227n78 Bergengruen, Werner 219 Berger, Peter 415n55 Berger, Stefan 9 Betley, Jerzy 179 Bialer, Seweryn 376 Białkowski, Błażej 208, 216 Bičiūnas, Johannes B. 144n50 Bidlo, Jaroslav 6, 266 Biegański, Stanisław 142, 284 Biezais, Haralds 71, 75, 76, 85, 87, 398, 399, 402, 403, 405, 417, 417n64 Bīlmanis, Alfrēds 71, 75, 76, 77 Bird, Thomas E. 291 Biržiška, Vaclovas 50 Björk, Ragnar 9 Blackwell, William L. 291 Blaumanis, Rudolfs 415 Blesse, Ernests 50 Blum, Aleksander 132n2, 149 Blumfeldt, Evald 14, 16, 18n15, 19, 21, 22n32, 51, 57, 58, 245 Bobińska, Celina 344n3 Bóbr-Tylingo, Stanisław 177, 178, 284, 343 Bocheński, Józef Maria 199 Bociurkiw, Bohdan R. 99 Bock, Woldemar von 206, 301 Boehm, Max Hildebert 59 Bohachevska-Chomiak, Marta 109 Bohusz-Szyszko, Marian 132, 134, 149 Bömelburg, Hans-Jürgen 265, 266, 272, 361n1 Bosse, Heinrich 314 Boswell, A. Bruce 288 Brackmann, Albert 166n30 Braha, Symon, see. Tumaš, Vitaŭt Brandi, Karl 166n30 Brastiņš, Ernests 401 Brock, Peter 291

426 Brüggemann, Karsten 315, 316 Brunner, Otto 179 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 97, 106, 195, 272, 291, 375, 382 Bujak, Franciszek 164 Bujnowski, Józef 131n2 Butterfield, Herbert 286, 287 Campe (Kampe), Paul 50, 57 Campenhausen-Orellen, Balthasar Baron von 222, 304 Carter, Jimmy 375 Castrén, Matias Aleksanteri 335 Castro, Fidel 382 Cat-Mackiewicz, Stanisław 192 Catherine II (Tsarina) 127, 390 Celms, Teodors 398, 416 Chamberlin, William Henry 97 Charkiewicz, Walerian 139, 140 Charles XI of Sweden 245 Chowaniec, Czesław 170, 175 Chubatyĭ, Mykola (Chubaty, Nykola) 96, 179 Chyzevs’kyj, Dmytro 102 Ciechanowski, Jan 193, 193n10, 285 Cienciała, Anna M. 200, 285, 291, 343 Ciołkosz, Adam 193, 194, 343, 351, 352 Ciołkoszowa, Lidia 193 Cohen, Robin 94 Collingwood, Robin G. 182, 286, 288 Conquest, Robert 387 Conrad, Joseph 290, 376 Conze, Werner 55, 310, 311 Cooper, Henry R., Jr. 98 Copernicus, Nicolaus 137 Curman, Sigurd 19n22 Custine, Marquis Astolphe de 392 Ćvikievič, Aliaksandr 121, 122 Czartoryski, Adam Jerzy 175, 258, 259, 277, 278 Danilevski, Nikolai Y. 403 Danilewicz-Zielińska, Maria 191, 193, 194, 197 Danilewiczowa, Maria, see: Danilewicz-Zielińska, Maria Dante 175 Davies, Norman 289 Dawson, Christopher 252 De Almeida, Luis Ferrand 144n50 Dembiński, Bronisław 164, 168, 175

Name Index Deutscher, Isaac 375, 377 Dingley, Jim 126 Donskis, Leonidas 9 Dopkewitsch, Helene 309 Doroshenko, Dmytro 97 Dorošenko, Vasilij V. 57 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor M. 375 Draus, Jan 132 Duchanov, Maksim 58 Dülfer, Kurt 311 Dunsdorfs, Edgars 33, 48, 48n5, 51, 52, 53n33, 57, 71, 75, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 88n34, 407 Dvornik, Francis 253 Dybciak, Krzysztof 132 Dygnas, Aleksander F. 286, 287 Dzięcioł, Witold 355 Dziewanowski, Marian Kamil 177, 249 Eckardt, Julius von 206 Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah 100 Eksteins (Ekšteins), Modris 71, 79 Elias, Otto Heinrich 314 Engels, Friedrich 219 Erdmann, Karl Dietrich 162n17, 183 Erixon, Sigurd 19n22 Erpenbeck, Dirk 314 Etzold, Gottfried 314 Ezergailis, Andrew (Andrievs) 58, 71, 79, 80, 87, 88, 419 Fainsod, Merle 379 Falkowski, Czesław 137, 140 Farmer, Kenneth C. 99 Feest, David 315 Feldman, Józef 173, 249 Feldmann, Hans 312 Filipowicz, Mirosław 5, 8, 177n63, 264n2 Folejewski, Zbigniew 132n2, 150 Fölkersahm, Hamilcar Baron von 222 Folkierski, Władysław (Ladislas) 175, 193, 194 Ford, Gerald 381 Fraenkel, Ernst 48, 50, 61 Friszke, Andrzej 193 Gaigulis, Jānis 35, 38 Gall Anonym 291 Gangnus, Gustav 314 Garber, Klaus 314

427

Name Index Garleff, Michael 314, 315 Garliński, Józef 192n6 Garton Ash, Timothy 291 Gąsiorowski, Zygmunt 177 Gawlina, Józef 145 Gehrke, Roland 227n78 Gellner, Ernest 100 Ģērmanis, Uldis 57, 58, 71, 72, 73n6, 78, 85, 87, 413 Giedroyc, Jerzy 105, 106, 190, 194, 255n20, 284, 285, 288, 289, 290 Gierowski, Józef 344n3 Giertych, Jędrzej 191 Gieysztor, Aleksander 173, 184 Ginters, Valdemārs 50 Glaser, Stefan 132n2 Glénisson, Jean 182 Golobucky, Volodimir 178 Gombrowicz, Witold 290 Gomułka, Władysław 255 Gooch, George Peabody 288 Gorbachev, Michail S. 391 Gorer, Geoffrey 270 Grabowicz, George 109 Granö, Johannes 50 Graubner, Hans 314 Greene, Victor 291 Grekov, Boris 256, 256n25 Gross, Feliks 251 Grüner, Viktor 212n28 Grydzewski, Mieczysław 196n16 Haar, Ingo 227n78 Habielski, Rafał 195, 196n16, 276 Hackmann, Jörg 3, 183n78, 221, 315, 316, 362 Hagen, Manfred 314 Halecki, Oskar 4, 5, 6, 106, 146, 147, 156, 164, 165, 166n28, 166n30, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 192, 196n16, 200, 249, 250–255, 258, 259, 263n, 264–273, 274, 275, 278, 285, 287, 343, 355, 368, 369, 375, 377 Haller, Johannes 206 Handelsman, Marceli 6, 164, 168, 184, 249, 266 Harasymiw, Bohdan 99 Harder-Gersdorff, Elisabeth 314 Haroška, Leŭ 126 Hartmann, Stefan 314

Hartung, Fritz 167n30 Haskelberg, Zofia Sara, see: Pipes, Zofia Sara Haskins, Charles H. 269 Hasselblatt, Cornelius 315 Heckmann, Dieter 315 Hehn, Jürgen von 297, 309, 316 Heidegger, Martin 271, 276 Heinrich von Lettland 312 Heitzman, Marian 285 Helbemäe, Gert 338 Helk, Vello 5, 56, 57, 58, 179n70, 236–248, 337n31 Hellmann, Manfred 312 Henning, Detlef 315 Henry IV of France 168 Henry of Livonia 338 Herbst, Stanisław 344n3 Herder, Johann Gottfried 369 Hertz, Aleksander 251 Heyde, Jörg 315 Himka, John-Paul 103, 109 Himmler, Heinrich 56, 226 Hirschhausen, Ulrike von 315 Hitler, Adolf 207, 208, 215, 228, 362, 385, 387 Hobsbawm, Eric 172 Holstein, Alexander Baron Stael von 300 Horak, Stepan 99 Housden, Martyn 9 Hrushevsky, Mykhailo 95, 96, 97, 101, 102, 104 Hubatsch, Walther 49, 49n14 Hunchak, Taras 106, 107 Ilmjärv, Magnus 332, 333 Ilnytzkyj, Oleh S. 111 Indreko, Richard 18n15, 335 Ipsen, Gunther 49 Irbe, Kārlis 216 Isberg, Alvin 245, 331 Ivan the Terrible (Tsar) 368 Ivinskis, Zenonas 49, 50, 179 Jabłoński, Henryk 351, 351n18 Jackson, Henry 381 Jacob of Courland, Duke 73n6 Jadwiga (Queen) 355 Jagodziński, Zdzisław 193n10, 195, 195n14, 284

428 Jähnig, Bernhart 314 Jaks, Ilmar 323 Janikowski, Stanisław L. 137 Jansen, Ea 21 Japsen, Annemarie 242 Jarmalkovič (Jarmołkowicz), Viktar 123 Jasinowski, Bogumił 132n2 Jasnowski, Józef 147, 177, 177n61, 178, 193, 193n10, 287, 291 Jędrzejewiczowa, Cezaria, see: Baudouin de Courtenay-Ehrenkreutz-Jędrzejewiczowa, Cezaria Jefferson, Thomas 291 Jermalovič, Mikola 128 Jeż, Tomasz Teodor 199 Jezierski, Stanisław 143 Johansen, Paul 55, 309, 312, 337, 338, 339, 340 Johansons, Andrejs 50, 71, 78, 85, 86 John Paul II (Pope) 391 Jordan, Zbigniew 354 Jundziłł, Zygmunt 148, 148n61, 150 Jurēvičs, Pauls 398, 402, 418 Kaarsted, Tage 243 Kahk, Juhan 336, 337 Kalinowski, Konstanty 289 Kalubovič, Aŭhien 128 Kampe, Paul see: Campe, Paul Kangeris, Kārlis 71, 87, 88 Kangro, Bernard 244 Kant, Edgar 49, 49n14, 50, 244 Kant, Immanuel 269 Kaplan, Herbert H. 291 Karamzin, Nicholas 381 Karjahärm, Toomas 58 Karling, Sten 19n22, 58 Karpovich, Michael 380 Karski, Jaǔchim 121 Kasiak, Ivan 123n9 Kateb, George 272n26 Katkov, Mikhail N. 222 Kautsky, Karl 316 Kędzierski, Jerzy Z. 288 Ķēniņš, Atis 210, 228 Kennan, George F. 388, 390 Kennedy, John F. 251 Keuchel, Gustav 307, 308 Khrushchev, Nikita 39, 323

Name Index Kielanowski, Leopold 132n2 Kieniewicz, Stefan 173, 184, 344n3, 350n16 Kiersnowski, Tadeusz 149 Kipel, Vitaŭt 124, 125, 128 Kipel, Zora 124 Kirov, Sergej M. 380 Kissinger, Henry 390, 390n39 Kivimäe, Jüri 57 Kivimäe, Mart 215, 227 Kivimäe, Sirje 58 Klīve, Visvaldis 414, 416, 417, 418 Kłoczowski, Jerzy 253n11, 265 Klöker, Martin 315 Koczy, Leon 146, 147, 169, 170, 173, 175, 176, 176n59, 177,178, 183, 249, 284, 343, 354 Koht, Halvdan 163 Kohut, Zenon 93n1, 109 Koit, Jakob 16, 18n15, 18n19, 20n24, 245 Kołakowski, Leszek 291, 375 Köll, Anu Mai 9 Komarnicki, Tytus 178 Komarnicki, Wacław 131n2, 133 Koneczny, Feliks 370n28 Konopczyński, Władysław 169, 173, 249, 251n4 Kornelius, Peter 221 Korzeniowski, Józef Konrad, see: Conrad, Joseph Kościałkowski, Stanisław 131n2, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 148, 149, 150, 192, 198, 249, 343, 349n13 Kościuszko, Tadeusz 277, 347 Kot, Stanisław 175, 249, 289 Kotkin, Stephen 375n Krasiński, Zygmunt 368 Kraszewski, Charles S. 285 Kravchenko, Volodymyr 3 Krawchenko, Bohdan 103, 109 Krečeǔski, Piotra 121,122 Kreczmar, Michael 378 Krēsliņš, Jānis 9, 58 Krėvė-Mickevičius, Vincas 50 Kridl, Manfred 131n2, 132, 134 Krodznieks, Jānis 68 Kroeger, Erhard 61, 213, 228 Kronvalds, Atis 307 Kross, Jaan 324, 338, 339, 340 Krupnikovs, Peteris 58 Krusenstjern, Georg von 312

429

Name Index Kruszyński, Jan 132n2 Krzyżanowski, Ludwik 285 Kubijovyč, Volodymyr 108 Kucharzewski, Jan 249, 375, 376, 377, 384, 389, 389n34 Kudelski, Zdzisław 132 Kujawski, Władysław 143, 146 Kukiel, Marian 5, 146, 147, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 177, 177n62, 178, 182, 183, 191, 192, 192n6, 195n14, 196, 196n16, 200, 249, 252, 257–260, 273, 275–279, 284, 286, 287, 292, 343, 346, 347, 355 Kula, Witold 172, 354, 344n3, 355 Ķullītis, Jēkabs 416 Kundziņš, Kārlis 398, 416 Künnapas, Teodor 22n32 Kupranec’, Orest 144n50 Kurelis, Jānis 417n64 Kusber, Jan 315 Kutrzeba, Stanisław 249 Laakmann, Heinrich 302 Labedz (Łabędź), Leo 8, 375, 378–379, 380, 382–393 Labuda, Gerard 183, 183n78 Lanckorońska, Karolina 141, 142, 143, 176, 176n60, 194, 249, 256, 343, 368 Laquer, Walter 378 Laskowski, Otton 175, 284 Lastoǔski, Vaclaǔ 121, 122 Latkovskis, Leon 71, 88 Łatyszonek, Oleg 4, 129 Laurentius Nicolai Norvegus 239 Lawaty, Andreas 7, 160n8 Lazda, Paulis 71, 88 Lednicki, Wacław 146, 166n28, 175, 285, 375 Lehti, Marko 364 Leitāne, Iveta 8 Lejiņš, Peter 38, 83n25 Leland, Valdo G. 165 Lelewel, Joachim 178, 249, 270 Lenin, Vladimir I. 351 Lenz, Wilhelm jun. 314 Lenz, Wilhelm sen. 312 Łepkowski, Tadeusz 344n3 Leśnodorski, Bogusław 173, 184 Lettevall, Rebecka 9 Levin, Dov 53n34 Levin, Moshe 375, 376, 377

Levits, Egils 56, 57 Lewis, Archibald L. 291 Lewycky (Lewicki), Borys 106, 289 Lieber, George 109 Liepiņš, Zigmārs 398 Lindsaar, Peeter 32 Lindström, Juhan 330 Lisowski, Jan 145 Loit, Aleksander 57, 58, 245, 337n31 Loorits, Oskar 17, 18, 24, 25 Łowmiańska, Maria 133 Łowmiański, Henryk 133, 173, 257, 344n3 Lubachko, Ivan S. 120, 125 Lubicz-Zaleski, Zygmunt 170, 175 Luckmann, Thomas 415n55 Luckyj, G.S.N. (George Stephen Nestor) 99 Lumans, Valdis 71, 79, 88 Lupul, Manoly R. 103 Luther, Martin 227 Luven, Yvonne 315 Lypynsky, Vyacheslav 96, 104, 105 Lysiak-Rudnytsky, Ivan (Łysiak-Rudnycky, Iwan) 4, 99, 101, 101n43, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 289 Mace, James E. (Mejs, Dejms) 99 Maceina, Antanas 50 Mackiewicz, Antoni 289 Mackiewicz, Józef 191, 273–275, 278 Mackiw, Theodore 99 MacMillin, Arnold 126 Mäelo, Meemo 20 Magocsi, Paul Robert 102, 109, 110 Maier, Konrad 315 Malia, Martin 376 Malinowski, Bronisław 270 Małowist, Marian 172, 354 Manasein, Nikolaj A. 221 Mancelius, Georgius 58 Mandelíčková, Monika 9 Mannheim, Karl 70 Manning, Clarence A. 97 Manteuffel, Tadeusz 184 Marandi, Rein 332 Mauriņa, Zenta 416 Maver, Giovanni 141 Mayo, Peter 126 Mayski, Ivan 134 Mead, Margaret 270

430 Meissner, Boris 53 Mękarski, Artur 7 Mensenkampff, Ernst von 304 Merriman, Roger B. 251n6 Mertelsmann, Olaf 315, 364 Mettus, Woldemar 238 Meysztowicz, Walerian 4, 131–151, 170, 171, 176, 183, 194, 343, 367, 368 Michałowski, Józef 142 Mickiewicz, Adam 145, 178, 290, 367, 383 Middendorff, Alexander von 222 Mierosławski, Ludwik 350,351, 353 Militzer, Klaus 314 Miłosz, Czesław 131, 132, 290, 375 Misiunas, Romuald J. 41, 58 Mroz, Lech 134 Molotov, Vyacheslav M. 385, 386, 391, 393 Mosely, Philip 98 Mühle, Eduard 362 Mühlen, Heinrich (Heinz) von zur 297, 312, 315, 338n32 Mühlstein, Anatol 251 Nadson, Alexander 126 Nagórski, Zygmunt 285 Najdziuk, Jazep (Polish also: Aleksandrowicz, Józef) 123, 127 Namier, Lewis 288, 292 Namsons, Andrīvs 53 Napierski, Karl Eduard 303 Napoleon III 178 Naruszewicz, Piotr 143 Neitmann, Klaus 315 Nekrasov, Viktor 323 Nerman, Birger 19n22 Neuschäffer, Hubertus 314 Ney, Gottlieb 51, 53 Nicholas II (Tsar) 206 Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn 291 Niendorf, Mathias 49n17 Nietzsche, Friedrich 214 Nitze, Paul 381 Nolcken, Ernst Baron 305 Nollendorfs, Valters 37, 57, 58 Nowak, Andrzej 8 Nowak, Frank 251n6 Nowakowski, Zygmunt 254, 255n20

Name Index Oberländer, Erwin 314 Obolensky, Dimitri 179, 253, 253n10 Odlozilik, Otakar 291 Ohloblyn, Oleksander 96, 101, 111 Okulicz, Kazimierz 149, 289 Oncken, Hermann 167n30 Oppman, Edmund 284, 286, 343 Oppman, Regina 284 Osadczuk, Bohdan 288 Ostrowski, Stanisław 149 Otto III (Emperor) 271 Ozols, Jēkabs 51, 52, 57, 58 Pajewski, Janusz 251n4 Pakštas, Kazys 50, 51 Panucevič, Vaclaŭ 127 Papée, Kazimierz 137, 142 Parming, Tõnu 58 Pashuto, Vladimir T. 257 Paszkiewicz, Henryk 5, 6, 122, 141, 142, 147, 175, 177, 177n63, 183, 249, 255–257, 258, 259, 284, 287, 343,369, 370, 375 Pásztor, Lájos 144n50 Päts, Konstantin 331 Paul VI (Pope) 255 Pelensky, Yaroslav (Pelenski, Jaroslaw) 104, 105, 106 Peter the Great (Tsar) 207, 208 Petlura, Semen 289 Pickhan, Gertrud 315 Piechnik, Ludwik 151 Piechowiak-Topolska, Maria Barbara 148n60 Piirimäe, Helmut 57 Piłsudski, Józef 150, 257, 380 Pipes, Irene, b. Roth 383 Pipes, Marek 380 Pipes, Richard 8, 97, 106, 195, 196n16, 249, 291, 375, 376, 378, 380–393 Pipes, Zofia Sara, b. Haskelberg 380 Pistohlkors, Gert von 5, 7, 37, 47n2, 54, 60, 314, 315, 316 Pius XII (Pope) 147, 254, 255 Plakans, Andrejs 3, 41, 57, 58, 71, 80, 88, 306 Plettenberg, Wolter von 220, 309 Pliekšāns, Jānis, see: Rainis, Jānis Pobóg-Malinowski, Władysław 196n16, 200 Podoski, Bohdan 149 Pohlhausen, Henn 52

431

Name Index Popper, Rajmund 378 Porshnev, Boris 183 Potebnia, Olexander 102 Potichnyj, Petro (Peter J.) 99, 106 Presnakov, Alexandr E. 389n34 Pritsak, Omeljan 4, 99, 101, 102, 104, 106 Puciata, Leon 138 Račs, Kazimirs 415 Raczyński, Edward 149 Rahač, P., see Stankievič, Jurka Rainis, Jānis (pseud. for Jānis Pliekšāns) 68 Rakowska-Harmstone, Teresa 375 Ränk, Aino 20 Ränk, Gustav 15, 18n15 Ranke, Leopold von 167 Rauch, Georg von 19, 20, 36, 54, 60, 298, 309, 312, 313 Raun, Alo 48 Raun, Toivo Ülo 3, 25n42, 41, 57, 58, 302, 306, 323n4, 334, 363, 364 Rautenfeld, Harald Berens von 214, 215 Reagan, Ronald 375, 381 Rebas, Hain 56, 58, 314, 316 Reklaitis, Povilas 50, 53n33 Renouvin, Pierre 182 Reshetar, John 99 Rexheuser, Rex 314 Ribbentrop, Joachim 385,386, 391, 393 Richter, Arthur von 305 Rīdūzis, Kārlis 412 Rimscha, Hans von 61, 312 Ristikivi, Karl 322 Ritscher, Alfred 315 Ritter, Gerhard 167n30, 173, 182 Robinson, James Harvey 286 Romer, Eugeniusz 265 Roos, Hans 289 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 14 Rose, A. L. 286 Rostworowski, Emanuel 344n3 Rothfels, Hans 55, 222n62, 223, 309, 311 Rozenberga, Elza, see: Aspāzija Rubenis, Juris 400 Rudnyckyj, Jaroslav B. 99 Rudnytsky, Ivan L. 105 Runnel, Hando 324 Russow, Balthasar 338, 339 Ruszczyc, Ferdynand 143

Rybakov, Boris 178 Rydleŭski, Liavon 128 Sadoŭski, Jan 126, 128 Said, Edward 32 Saks, Edgar Valters 335 Salo, Vello 245, 246 Salu, Herbert 244 Satzewich, Vic 94 Saunders, David 111 Sawczyński, Adam 178 Schaudinn, Heinrich 309 Schiemann, Paul 214, 217, 226, 228, 308 Schirren, Carl 60, 221, 305 Schmidt, Helmut 273 Schmidt, Roderich 38 Schmitt, Carl 182n75, 268n13 Schoeler, Lothar 210 Schönfeldt, Alfred 314 Schroeder, Leopold von 403 Schultz, Hans 213n31 Schultz, Lothar 52 É Schultz-Bertram, Georg Julius 58 Schweitzer, Robert 314 Seeberg-Elverfeldt, Roland 298 Serejski, Marian Henryk 344n3 Ševčenko (Shevchenko), Ihor 105 Shevchenko, Taras 109 Siemaszko, Zbigniew S. 150, 193, 194, 197, 200, 285 Sienkievič, Viktar 124, 125, 126 Sienkiewicz,Henryk 383 Sierakowski, Zygmunt 289 Sigismund III (King) 369 Siilivask, Karl 58 Sikorski, Władysław 134, 160, 257 Šilde, Adolfs 71, 75, 76, 85, 86, 87, 88 Simpson, G.W. 97 Sipovič, Česlaŭ 126 Sirge, Rudolf 323 Sivers, Jégor von 301 Skalbe, Kārlis 401 Skałkowski, Adam 173 Škėma, Antanas 322 Škialonak, Mikola 127 Skrinda, Kazimirs 404 Skrzyński, Władysław 137 Skrzypek, Stanisław 285 Skujiņš, Māris 210, 215

432 Smend, Rudolf 226 Sobieski, Jakub 146, 175 Sobieski, Wacław 168 Soderbloom, Natan 417n64 Sokolnicki, Michał 192 Söllner, Alfons 271n25 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 323 Soom, Arnold 18n15, 19, 20, 21, 51, 52, 57, 58, 179, 245, 313, 336, 337, 337n31 Sophocles 276 Sopicki, Stanisław 346n6 Speer, Helmut 298 Spekke, Arnolds 71, 75, 77, 86, 87, 88n34, 144n50 Spengler, Oswald 401 Staar, Richard F. 291 Stackelberg, Otto Baron 300, 301 Stalin, Iosif V. 96, 246, 325, 385, 387 Stankievič, Jan 127, 128 Stankievič, Jurka (pen-name P. Rahač) 128 Stankievič, Stanislaŭ 4, 124 Staszic, Stanisław 265 Steffen, Katrin 9 Šteimans, Josifs 88n34 Šteinbergs, Valentīns 39 Stępnik, Andrzej 289 Šterns, Indriķis 71, 73, 78, 85, 86. 87 Stobiecki, Rafał 5, 6, 132, 160n11, 265, 267 Stone, Daniel 291 Stradiņš, Jānis 57 Strauss, Leo 6, 263n, 271, 272 Strelka, Joseph P. 322 Struve, Peter 381 Strzetelski, Stanisław 285 Stukelis, Edvards 414 Šturms, Eduards 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 Subtelny, Orest 109, 110 Suchcitz, Andrzej 193n10 Suits, Gustav 50 Sukiennicka, Halina 132n2 Sukiennicki, Wiktor 131n2, 133, 135, 139, 147, 148 Suleyman the Magnificent 368 Sulima Kamiński, Andrzej 376 Sulimirski, Tadeusz 149, 175 Sullivant, Robert S. 99 Supruniuk, Mirosław A. 4, 160n8 Susi, Heino 330

Name Index Švābe, Arvēds 50, 59, 71, 72, 74, 75, 75n7, 76, 77, 86, 87, 88n34, 401 Swianiewicz, Stanisław 131n2, 132, 133, 135, 148, 149, 375 Šymaniec, Uladzimir 128 Sysyn, Frank E. 93n1, 109, 289 Szelągowski, Adam 168 Szeptycki, Andrzej 289 Szkuta, Aleksander 193n10 Szporluk, Roman 103, 106, 109, 289, 376 Taagepera, Rein 41, 58 Talve, Ilmar 51 Tammekann, August 50 Tap, Pierre 197 Tarle, Evgenij V. 286 Tarvel, Enn 57 Taska, Artur 244 Taube, Arved von 55, 220, 241, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 311 Tauber, Joachim 315 Tăutu, Aloysius L. 144n50 Tawney, Richard H. 288 Taylor, A.J.P. 288 Tender, Erik 48 Tentelis, Augusts 400 Terlecki, Tymon 199, 283 Thiess, Frank 323 Thomas, William Isaac 157 Thumser, Matthias 315 Tobien, Alexander von 298, 299, 300, 302, 306 Tocqueville, Alexis de 392 Tomiak, Janusz 179 Tõnisson, Jaan 364 Toomse, Mihkel 49, 50 Topolska, Maria Barbara Topolski, Jerzy 354 Toynbee, Arnold 96, 253, 288, 292 Trapāns, Jānis 71, 80,87 Troebst, Stefan 6, 272 Trypućko, Józef 132n2 Tuchtenhagen, Ralph 315 Tukhachevsky, Michail N. 393 Tumarkin, Nina 389 Tumaš, Vitaŭt (pen-name: Braha, Symon) 124 Tunander, Ola 263, 272, 274, 279 Turkowski, Lucjan 131n2

433

Name Index Turonak, Jurka (Polish also: Turonek, Jerzy) 123 Tuulse, Armin 18n15, 19, 20, 57 Tymieniecki, Kazimierz 173 Tyzenhaus, Antoni 134 Uibopuu, Henn-Jüri 56–57 Ulam, Adam Bruno 8, 97, 195, 196, 196n16, 249, 291, 375, 378, 379–380, 382–393 Ulam, Chana, b. Auerbach 379 Ulam, Józef 379 Ulam, Stanisław 379 Ulam, Stefania Franciszka 383n13 Ulmanis, Kārlis 68, 402, 407, 410n41, 411, 412 Unamuno, Miguel de 416 Undusk, Jaan 5, 7 Ungern-Sternberg, Jürgen Baron 314 Urban, George 386 Urban, Paŭla 124, 125, 127 Uustalu, Evald 334 Vācietis, Jukums 78 Vahtre, Sulev 57 Valters, Miķelis 61 Valters, Nikolajs 57, 58 Vardys, V. Stanley 41, 83n25 Vasar, Juhan 302 Vaska, Lauri 330 Venclova, Tomas 291 Vićbič, Jurka 128 Vīgrābs, Georg (Juris) 50, 52, 58, 313 Vihalem, Paul 21 Vīksniņš, Nikolajs 71, 75, 76 Vinovskis, Māris 71, 79, 88 Voegelin, Eric 6, 271 Volkmann, Hans-Erich 314 Vollrath, Ernst 271n25, 272n26 Võõbus, Arthur 327, 329 Vries, Axel de 205, 302 Wajsblum, Marek 286n8 Wałek-Czernecki, Tadeusz 164

Walicki, Andrzej 375 Wandycz, Piotr S. 196, 196n16, 200, 249, 251n6, 285, 289, 291, 343, 376 Warszawski, Józef 143 Webermann, Otto Alexander 36, 50, 52, 55, 57, 58, 241, 313 Webster, Charles Kingsley 288 Weintraub, Wiktor 192, 286 Weiss, Hellmuth 241 Westermann, Gertrud 312 Wieczorek, Joseph 285 Wielhorski, Władysław 133, 135, 148, 149, 150 Wieselgren, Per 19n22 Wilczyński, Jan 132n2 Wilson, Bryan 415n55 Wilson, Woodrow 263n, 269, 270, 273, 291 Winkler, Edmund 145 Wistinghausen, Henning von 314 Wittram, Heinrich 314 Wittram, Reinhard 5, 38, 54, 55, 59, 60, 205–235, 299, 303–310, 312, 313, 315 Wolfowitz, Paul 381 Wörster, Peter 315 Wynar, Lubomyr 101 Wyrwa, Tadeusz 192, 197, 200, 282, 285 Wyszyński, Stefan 371 Yavorsky, Matvii 96 Yeltsin, Boris N. 389 Zacharka, Vasil 121, 122 Zadencka, Maria 4, 6 Zadrożyńska, Anna 134 Zālīte, Māra 398, 412 Zaprudnik, Janka 124, 125n17 Zawadzki, Wacław H. 195n14 Zbyszewski, Karol 192, 283 Zetterberg, Seppo 53, 314 Żmigrodzki, Józef 350, 353 Znaniecki, Florian 157, 157n2, 158, 166, 167 Zygmunt, Antoni 134