Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century [2] 1443860174, 9781443860178

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Part IV: Colonial Politics and the Age of Empires
10 Models of European Colonial Empires
The Impact of British Policy on the Institutional System of the Khanate of Kalat (North-West India, 1870–1914) • Gianluca Pastori
The First Tunisian Crisis (1864) • Antonello Battaglia
The British Empire in South Africa, 1875–1881: A Case Study in the Changes of Imperial Thought • Michał Leśniewski
Imperialism of Kaiser Wilhelm II: Perspectives and Historiography of German Südpolitik • Francesco Cerasani
“The Moro Problem”: Race, Religion and American Colonial Empire in the Southern Philippines, 1899–1939 • Oliver Charbonneau
Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism • Radu Murea
Colonialism through Emigration: Italian Politics in Latin America between Nationalism and Commercial Expansion from Crispito the Rise of Fascism • Stefano Pelaggi
The Russian Attempt to Colonize East Africa • Roberto Reali
11 Models of Decolonization
South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building? • Ole Frahm
The Challenges of a Postcolonial Nation: The Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (1918–1920) • Daniel Pommier Vincelli
The First Failures of the UNO in Palestine: The Partition Plan, the Creation of the State of Israel and Nakba • Jorge Ramos Tolosa
Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle and the End of the Iraq Petroleum Company (1958–1972) • Philippe Tristani
The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan as a Continuation of the Imperial Policy of Tsarist Russia • Joanna Modrzejewska-Leśniewska
The Intellectual Property Protection System in the African French and British Colonies during 1945–1989 • Mihaela Daciana Bolos
12 Economic Development and Economy of Inequality
German Capital in Georgia at the End of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of the Twentieth Century and its Importance • Revaz Gvelesiani and Nana Maisuradze
Development Strategies between Italy and Romania after the War and the Birth of the Romanian-Italian Commercial Bank: A Historical Overview • Francesca R. Lenzi
Social Integration in the Context of Regional Economic Integration (on the Example of the South Caucasian States) • Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili
Reconfiguring Romanian Architecture by the Second Half of the 1950s: Soviet Models and Local Economic Practices • Mara Marginean
War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy (1914–1919) • Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires
Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970) • Donatella Strangio
Part V: Empires and Nations in South and Eastern Europe
13 Southeastern Europe
Early British Discursive Constructions of Montenegro (1840–1880) • Ana Živković
The Fundamental Rights of the Albanian Population of Chameria in Front of Greek Municipal Law and International Law 1913–1926 • Blerina Sadiku
The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene: From the Multiethnic Symbiosis in the Ottoman Empire to the Greek State, 1908–1912 • Maria Mandamadiotou
14 The Habsburg Empire and Nationalities: The Case of Romanians
Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania and Hungary (1848–1914) • Vlad Popovici
The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement from Transylvania during the Semi-Liberal Period (1860–1865) • Mirela Popa-Andrei
How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism Infusing Politics with National Ideology in Romania at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century • Petru Szedlacsek
The National Question in Transylvania in the Period Around the Ausgleich • Giordano Altarozzi and Cornel Sigmirean
From Protest Petitions to Parliamentary Action: The Attitude of the Leadership of the Nationalities in Hungary in Regards to the Minister Ágoston Trefort’s Magyarization Policy • Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu
Politics and Parliamentarism: The Romanian Political Elite from Transylvania between Vienna and Pest (1860–1871) • Alexandru Onojescu
Coming Late to the Party: Romania’s Accelerated Modernization between 1859 and 1916 • Gabriel Lataianu
15 The Great War: Roots and Consequences
Germany’s Next War: Assumptions and Military Strategies of the German Army in 1905 • Roberto Sciarrone
Montenegro in Italian Foreign Policy during the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) • Slavko Burzanović
The Italian Intelligentsia and Armed Intervention in the Great War: The Debate on Cultural Magazines La Voce, Edizione politica and L’unità, Problemi della vita italiana • Lorenzo Marmiroli
Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia: Perspectives from the Holy See’s Diplomacy • Francesca Di Giulio
Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview • Alessandro Vagnini
Ethnic Conflicts in Cilicia and the Turkish War of Independence 1918–1922 • Nazar Bagci
Reconstruction Projects of Romanian and Hungarian States after 1918 • Lucian Săcălean
16 Europe between the Two World Wars
From the Second to the Third Reich: Foreign Policy and International Relations • David Sarkisyan
Aspects of Political Cooperation between Italian and German Communists during the Period of the Weimar Republic • Martina Bitunjac
Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946) • Radu Mârza
The Perspectives of the Monarchy in Interwar Romania: From the Constitutional Monarchy to Right-Wing Totalitarianism • Paul-Ersilian Roşca
Regional Security Pacts in Southeast Europe between the Two World Wars • Ivanka Dodovska
17 Rethinking the Adriatic Question in the Twentieth Century
Between War and Revolution: The Adriatic Question and D’Annunzio in Fiume, Building a New Italy (1918–1920) • Andrea Carteny
Yugoslav-Italian Relations and the Adriatic Issue in the Late 1918 and the Early 1919 • Alberto Becherelli
The Eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival • Vilim Pavlović
The Trieste Question and the 1948 Elections in Italy: An Assessment of the National and Foreign Propaganda • Gabriele Vargiu
The Last Risorgimento: Riots in Trieste in 1953 • Michele Pigliucci
Part VI: Communism, the Cold War and their Consequences
18 Communism in Europe: Selected Case Studies
The Failure to Cope with Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union of the 1930s (Andrei Platonov) • Anna Troján
Nationalism and Socialism in Romania: The Case of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Cult of Personality • Manuela Marin
Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Roots of the Romanian Dissidence Inside the Communist Camp • Mihai Croitor
National Interests and International Communism: The Romanian Communists Advocating “Allargamento” (1967–1973) • Cezar Stanciu
Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia • Gianluca Senatore
Environment, Pollution and Eco-Nationalism in the USSR • Elena Dundovich
19 Clashing Empires in the Cold War Era
Outer Space: A New Dimension for the Application of the Principle of Balance of Power during the Cold War • Valentina Mariani
The Fear and the Solution: Yugoslavia between the Soviet Threat and the Western Military Aid (1948–1958) • Ivan Laković
Socialism and National Sovereignty: Some Reflections about the “Brezhnev Doctrine” • Andrea Giannotti
Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale: The Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Falklands War in 1982 • Davide Borsani
The End of the Cold War and New Challenges to Democracy • Amit Mishra
20 The Post-Cold War Era
The Debate on the German Nation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Critical Opinions about the Reunification • Costanza Calabretta
The Czech Republic and the Modern Czech • Klára Plecitá-Vlachová
The Alibi of Memories: Political Idealism, Culture and Ideology in Post-Communist Countries • Ege Celeste Reinuma
Poisoned Support? A Hypothesis on US Policy Towards Yugoslavia, 1981–1991 • Carlos González Villa
The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Alliance of Reformist Forces of Yugoslavia • Alfredo Sasso
Between Nations and Empires: Contemporary Reflections on Central Europe • Piotr Chmiel
Soft Power and its Influence on the Developing Countries • Alexandra Calin
The Romanian Struggle for Détente inside the Warsaw Treaty (1955–1965) • Andreea Emilia Duţă

Citation preview

Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century: Volume 2

Edited by

Antonello Biagini and Giovanna Motta

Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century: Volume 2 Edited by Antonello Biagini and Giovanna Motta PRIN 2009 This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Antonello Biagini, Giovanna Motta and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6017-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6017-8 As a two volume set: ISBN (10): 1-4438-6363-7, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6363-6 Editing: Antonello Battaglia, Martina Bitunjac, Alberto Becherelli, Anida Sokol, Roberto Sciarrone and Alessandro Vagnini

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part IV: Colonial Politics and the Age of Empires Chapter Ten Models of European Colonial Empires The Impact of British Policy on the Institutional System of the Khanate of Kalat (North-West India, 1870–1914) ..................................................... 3 Gianluca Pastori The First Tunisian Crisis (1864) ................................................................ 12 Antonello Battaglia The British Empire in South Africa, 1875–1881: A Case Study in the Changes of Imperial Thought .......................................................... 18 Michaá LeĞniewski Imperialism of Kaiser Wilhelm II: Perspectives and Historiography of German Südpolitik ................................................................................ 30 Francesco Cerasani “The Moro Problem”: Race, Religion and American Colonial Empire in the Southern Philippines, 1899–1939 .................................................... 36 Oliver Charbonneau Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism .......................... 45 Radu Murea Colonialism through Emigration: Italian Politics in Latin America between Nationalism and Commercial Expansion from Crispi to the Rise of Fascism................................................................................ 55 Stefano Pelaggi The Russian Attempt to Colonize East Africa ........................................... 62 Roberto Reali

vi

Table of Contents

Chapter Eleven Models of Decolonization South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building? ......... 73 Ole Frahm The Challenges of a Postcolonial Nation: The Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (1918–1920) ............................................................................... 83 Daniel Pommier Vincelli The First Failures of the UNO in Palestine: The Partition Plan, the Creation of the State of Israel and Nakba ............................................ 90 Jorge Ramos Tolosa Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle and the End of the Iraq Petroleum Company (1958–1972) ........................................... 98 Philippe Tristani The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan as a Continuation of the Imperial Policy of Tsarist Russia ............................................................................110 Joanna Modrzejewska-LeĞniewska The Intellectual Property Protection System in the African French and British Colonies during 1945–1989 .................................................. 120 Mihaela Daciana Bolos Chapter Twelve Economic Development and Economy of Inequality German Capital in Georgia at the End of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of the Twentieth Century and its Importance ........................................... 127 Revaz Gvelesiani and Nana Maisuradze Development Strategies between Italy and Romania after the War and the Birth of the Romanian-Italian Commercial Bank: A Historical Overview ............................................................................. 135 Francesca R. Lenzi Social Integration in the Context of Regional Economic Integration (on the Example of the South Caucasian States) ..................................... 142 Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili

Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

vii

Reconfiguring Romanian Architecture by the Second Half of the 1950s: Soviet Models and Local Economic Practices ......................................... 152 Mara Marginean War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy (1914–1919) ............................................................................................ 162 Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970) .................. 173 Donatella Strangio Part V: Empires and Nations in South and Eastern Europe Chapter Thirteen Southeastern Europe Early British Discursive Constructions of Montenegro (1840–1880) ..... 185 Ana Živkoviü The Fundamental Rights of the Albanian Population of Chameria in Front of Greek Municipal Law and International Law 1913–1926 ..... 192 Blerina Sadiku The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene: From the Multiethnic Symbiosis in the Ottoman Empire to the Greek State, 1908–1912 ......... 200 Maria Mandamadiotou Chapter Fourteen The Habsburg Empire and Nationalities: The Case of Romanians Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania and Hungary (1848–1914) ........................................................................211 Vlad Popovici The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement from Transylvania during the Semi-Liberal Period (1860–1865) ............ 221 Mirela Popa-Andrei

viii

Table of Contents

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism Infusing Politics with National Ideology in Romania at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century .................................................................................................... 231 Petru Szedlacsek The National Question in Transylvania in the Period Around the Ausgleich ........................................................................................... 243 Giordano Altarozzi and Cornel Sigmirean From Protest Petitions to Parliamentary Action: The Attitude of the Leadership of the Nationalities in Hungary in Regards to the Minister Ágoston Trefort’s Magyarization Policy ......................... 248 Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu Politics and Parliamentarism: The Romanian Political Elite from Transylvania between Vienna and Pest (1860–1871) ..................... 258 Alexandru Onojescu Coming Late to the Party: Romania’s Accelerated Modernization between 1859 and 1916 ........................................................................... 266 Gabriel Lataianu Chapter Fifteen The Great War: Roots and Consequences Germany’s Next War: Assumptions and Military Strategies of the German Army in 1905 ................................................................... 277 Roberto Sciarrone Montenegro in Italian Foreign Policy during the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) ............................................................................................ 284 Slavko Burzanoviü The Italian Intelligentsia and Armed Intervention in the Great War: The Debate on Cultural Magazines La Voce, Edizione politica and L’unità, Problemi della vita italiana ................................................. 290 Lorenzo Marmiroli Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia: Perspectives from the Holy See’s Diplomacy.......................................... 299 Francesca Di Giulio

Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

ix

Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview ................. 309 Alessandro Vagnini Ethnic Conflicts in Cilicia and the Turkish War of Independence 1918–1922 ............................................................................................... 319 Nazar Bagci Reconstruction Projects of Romanian and Hungarian States after 1918.. ............................................................................................... 328 Lucian Săcălean Chapter Sixteen Europe between the Two World Wars From the Second to the Third Reich: Foreign Policy and International Relations .................................................................................................. 337 David Sarkisyan Aspects of Political Cooperation between Italian and German Communists during the Period of the Weimar Republic ......................... 345 Martina Bitunjac Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946) ............................ 351 Radu Mârza The Perspectives of the Monarchy in Interwar Romania: From the Constitutional Monarchy to Right-Wing Totalitarianism ......... 362 Paul-Ersilian Roúca Regional Security Pacts in Southeast Europe between the Two World Wars .............................................................................................. 371 Ivanka Dodovska Chapter Seventeen Rethinking the Adriatic Question in the Twentieth Century Between War and Revolution: The Adriatic Question and D’Annunzio in Fiume, Building a New Italy (1918–1920) .......................................... 377 Andrea Carteny

x

Table of Contents

Yugoslav-Italian Relations and the Adriatic Issue in the Late 1918 and the Early 1919 ................................................................................... 384 Alberto Becherelli The Eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival ........................... 393 Vilim Pavloviü The Trieste Question and the 1948 Elections in Italy: An Assessment of the National and Foreign Propaganda ................................................. 402 Gabriele Vargiu The Last Risorgimento: Riots in Trieste in 1953 ......................................411 Michele Pigliucci Part VI: Communism, the Cold War and their Consequences Chapter Eighteen Communism in Europe: Selected Case Studies The Failure to Cope with Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union of the 1930s (Andrei Platonov) ............................................................... 421 Anna Troján Nationalism and Socialism in Romania: The Case of Nicolae Ceauúescu’s Cult of Personality ................................................................................... 427 Manuela Marin Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Roots of the Romanian Dissidence Inside the Communist Camp .............................................................................. 437 Mihai Croitor National Interests and International Communism: The Romanian Communists Advocating “Allargamento” (1967–1973) .......................... 446 Cezar Stanciu Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia ..................... 457 Gianluca Senatore Environment, Pollution and Eco-Nationalism in the USSR .................... 467 Elena Dundovich

Empires and Nations from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

xi

Chapter Nineteen Clashing Empires in the Cold War Era Outer Space: A New Dimension for the Application of the Principle of Balance of Power during the Cold War ............................................... 477 Valentina Mariani The Fear and the Solution: Yugoslavia between the Soviet Threat and the Western Military Aid (1948–1958) ............................................. 487 Ivan Lakoviü Socialism and National Sovereignty: Some Reflections about the “Brezhnev Doctrine” ......................................................................... 496 Andrea Giannotti Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale: The Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Falklands War in 1982 .............................................. 507 Davide Borsani The End of the Cold War and New Challenges to Democracy ................ 519 Amit Mishra Chapter Twenty The Post-Cold War Era The Debate on the German Nation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Critical Opinions about the Reunification ............................................... 529 Costanza Calabretta The Czech Republic and the Modern Czech Nation ................................ 537 Klára Plecitá-Vlachová The Alibi of Memories: Political Idealism, Culture and Ideology in Post-Communist Countries .................................................................. 546 Ege Celeste Reinuma Poisoned Support? A Hypothesis on US Policy Towards Yugoslavia, 1981–1991 ............................................................................................... 554 Carlos González Villa

xii

Table of Contents

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Alliance of Reformist Forces of Yugoslavia ..................................... 563 Alfredo Sasso Between Nations and Empires: Contemporary Reflections on Central Europe ..................................................................................................... 575 Piotr Chmiel Soft Power and its Influence on the Developing Countries ..................... 582 Alexandra Calin The Romanian Struggle for Détente inside the Warsaw Treaty (1955–1965) ............................................................................................ 590 Andreea Emilia DuĠă

PART IV COLONIAL POLITICS AND THE AGE OF EMPIRES

CHAPTER TEN MODELS OF EUROPEAN COLONIAL EMPIRES THE IMPACT OF BRITISH POLICY ON THE INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM OF THE KHANATE OF KALAT (NORTH-WEST INDIA, 1870–1914) GIANLUCA PASTORI With its 71,593 square miles (including the area of the semiindependent “feudatory state” of Kharan), the Khanate of Kalat was the most extended part of the Baluchistan Agency, the political and administrative structure set up in 1877 to manage the province, laying on the extreme western parts of British India. Formed by five major regions (Jhalawan, Sarawan, Kachhi, Makran and Kharan), Kalat was ruled by an Ahmadzai king (khan), the leader of a wider Brahoi Confederation and, according to the provision of the “Brahoi Constitution” (the set of customary rules regulating the political relations between the khan himself and the local headmen, or sardars), primus inter pares among the chiefs of the region (IGI/PS 1908; on the “Brahoi Constitution,” see Weightman 1934). The relations between British India and Kalat date back to the early decades of the nineteenth century. During the First Afghan War (1839–42), Kalat was imposed, in Lord Auckland’s eyes, as the main British salient to the northwest (Yapp 1980, 475ff.), but after the war the two powers grew gradually estranged. Neither the Treaty of Mastung (1854) nor that of Jacobabad (1876) could overcome the sense of mutual distrust. The treaties charged the khan with rights and duties vis-à-vis both the British authorities and the sardars. They also entrusted the government of India with the power to intervene (both politically and militarily) in the region. However, both Article 4 of the Treaty of Mastung and Article 6 of that of

4

The Impact of British Policy on the Khanate of Kalat

Jacobabad lacked any precise reference to the forms and to the extent of British involvement (Aitchison 1909, 212–14, 215–17).

Feudal or federal? British policy and the Brahoi Constitution The proneness of the British authorities to regard Kalat through the prism of European feudalism and their attitude to approach the Brahoi Constitution as a sort of Magna Charta help to explain the reason of this misunderstanding. They help to explain also why, after the establishment of the Baluchistan Agency, their local representatives were constantly trying to reshape the khanate’s political and institutional system along the lines of a Western-style constitutional monarchy, balancing the khan’s monocratic rule through the strengthening of the position of the main sardars and the establishment of more or less direct links with them. The image of Kalat as a feudal state was deeply rooted into the British minds and was a constant reference amid the ups and downs of their frontier policy. According to this image, the sardars were bound to provide the khan with their military assistance, in return for the khan’s recognition of their authority. This sort of vassalic obligation played a pivotal role in material as well as in symbolic terms. The responsibility to support the khan and the recognition that their authority stemmed from the khan’s benevolence made the sardars subordinate subjects, independently from the power that they really enjoyed in their possessions or on their tribesmen. On the other hand, the uncontested power that the sardars locally exerted, together with their nature of Kalat’s main political and military power, imbued them with the sense of being the guarantors of the khanate’s “traditional freedoms” against any real or perceived tentative of usurpation (Swilder 1969; on the vassalic obligation among the Brahoi see Swilder 1972). Keeping a balance between these two competing positions was a difficult task. In 1872, Sir William Merewether, the commissioner of Sind (who, at that time, was responsible for the relations with Kalat), remarked: [t]he power of any of the Khans of Khelat [sic] over the turbulent chiefs of that country has always been of a very uncertain nature, much like that of the Plantagenet Kings over the Barons of England. … The Khan is very poor owing to the best lands in his country being in the possession of the chiefs … on whom he can no longer rely in consequence of the changes which are taking place in the habits and ideas of these chiefs. … Though the chiefs, in virtue of their tenure of the lands they have, should give support to the ruler, his power has hitherto been so small that he cannot

Gianluca Pastori

5

enforce their doing so, or venture to deprive them of the lands for nonperformance of their duty. (Merewether 1872, 235–37)

It is not surprising that the sardars massively supported the “constitutional” reading of the Brahoi power structure (Browne 1893).1 A feudal vision (and, even more strongly, the federal vision that emerged in mid-1870s, following the adoption of the sardar-i system)2 allowed them to strengthen their position and to solve (with the British support) the long lasting tug-of-war with the khan. The limitation of the khan’s autocratic power and a creeping autonomization of the country’s most peripheral areas were the main results of this process. Nonetheless, these benefits did not last too long. In the long run, the British involvement in Kalat’s political dynamics led to permanent alterations at central and peripheral levels. Quoting Simanti Dutta (1990–91, 60), by rejecting the khan’s authority and the set of rules supporting it, the sardars “were opting out of the indigenous skeletal, state structure, which had evolved in the eighteenth Century, in favour of a new colonial future within the orbit of the British Empire.” Within the system of the khan/sardars relations, the military dimension played a pivotal role. On the one hand, stood Mir Khudadad’s ambitions to overcome the sardars’ reluctant assistance and to endow the kingdom with an independent military power; on the other, the sardars’ complaints, depicting the levy of what they labeled “a mercenary force” as a violation of their customary rights. Another thorny issue was the sardars’ role in the new institutional system of Baluchistan. The choice to make them responsible for the safety and security of their own possessions; their power to levy tribal forces with the placet of the government of India; the payment of allowances on direct bases and not through the khan’s mediation, were bones of contention under both Mir Khudadad and his successor, Mir Mahomud II (1893–1931). From this point of view, the 1

As a matter of fact, the khan had had an army of his own since the time of Mir Nasir I. Beyond reorganizing the tribal army into two dastà (groups), labeled Dastà-e Sarawan and Dastà-e Jhalawan and formed by the troops of the local sardars, Mir Nasir established, in fact, a Dastà-e Khan under his own orders and formed by mercenaries and former slaves. 2 Through the sardar-i system (Sandeman system), the sardars were made responsible for maintaining law and order in their own possession; for this reason they were allowed to raise tribal forces (levies) and benefited from British allowances on the basis of individual agreements, bypassing the khan to whom they were formally subordinated. This model, originally adopted by Major Robert Sandeman in his dealings with the Marri and Bugti tribes, was extended to the whole Baluchistan Agency during the reign of Mir Khudadad Khan (1857–93).

6

The Impact of British Policy on the Khanate of Kalat

opening of direct contacts between the sardars and the British authorities and the recognition of their independent political role were paving the way—in the eyes of the khan—for the emergence of a “joint power” system, which found its formal sanction with the establishment—under the auspices of the new AGG, Sir John Ramsay—of the Kalat State Council, in 1913.

From the feudal state to the “joint power” system: The KSC The project of Kalat’s new institutional order pursued the double aim of stabilizing the country “from inside,” and of making it less sensitive to the external turbulences, coming, for example, from Persia, a country that, at the end of the 1910s, still deeply felt the impact of the “constitutional revolution” of 1904–1905. In this context, the reference to the Plantagenet experience was expedient in the legitimization of an institutional system that sunk its roots in the sardars’ oligarchy, and that was deemed more apt to the character and the inclinations of the Baluch population than the Pashtun “anarchic” model of “tribal democracy” (Bruce 1900; on Pashtun “tribal democracy”: Caroe 1988; on the British fascination for Pashtuns and what they see as their political order: Ahmed 1978). The birth of the KSC thus was supported (between 1913 and 1914) by the adoption of other practical and symbolic measures. For example, to put the khanate’s administration into a better shape, a regular budget was introduced, including all the state’s properties and revenues, previously considered as mere belongings of the khan. The first Kalat state budget was drafted on the khan’s request, in Mastung, May 18, 1913. From the budget, Mir Mahmud drew 300,000 rupees per year “to cover all my private expenses, including the pay of the troops at present in Kalat and the pay of my private Establishment,” entrusting to his (British) political adviser and to the KSC the management of the remaining sum (Dew 1913a).3 Referring to the government of India about the impact of these 3

On October 13, 1913, Mir Mahmud transferred to the political adviser his authority over the possession (naibat) of Jhalawan in exchange of an extra allowance of 50,000 rupees per year, and the revenues of this territory were included into the Kalat state budget. However, the budget did not include the revenues of Makran. This (provisional) arrangement provides a good measure, on the one hand, of the degree of autonomy that Makran enjoyed, on the other, of the role that the British political adviser still played in the domestic administration of Kalat, even after the adoption of the non-interference policy sanctioned by the government of India.

Gianluca Pastori

7

innovations, Ramsay (1913) remarked how, in his opinion, they were “the most important and far reaching changes that have taken place in Baluchistan during the past twenty years” and how they moved (along the guidelines that he had received) towards a more clear distinction of the British responsibility from that of the authorities of the Kalat state. The short term effects of this action are clearly shown in a report from June 1913 by the political agent at Kalat, Major Armine Dew, about his cold season tour in the region (Dew 1913b). Worth noting, in this report, Major Dew constantly refers to the local headmen as to “the gentlemen of Makran.” He also stressed the importance of the generational change then undergoing, the need to embed the “local aristocracy” into the system of the Indian nobility, and the expediency to acknowledge Makran’s peculiar status vis-à-vis the khan’s authority. Comparing the ongoing situation with the outbursts of violence of the previous years and with the old need of constantly sending “pacifying” missions from India, he observed: the present generation of young Gichki Sardars are mostly educated to certain extent, and have been accustomed to live on friendly terms with the British Officers of the Makran Levy Corps. The son of the senior Sardar, Shehr Umar, is at present going through a Naib Tahsildar’s course of duties under the Political Adviser in Kalat. Sardar Mehrab Khan’s son is training with the 15th Cavalry at Jellunder and the son of Mir Abdul Karim is with the 58th Vaughan’s Rifles (F.F.) in Quetta. … As the AGG is aware, there are no tribal question of any importance in Makran, the Gichki being few in number, and dependent on their slaves for their strength, or on intrigues with the aboriginal Baluchis. The presence of the Makran Levy Corps renders it impossible any combination of the people for purposes of creating trouble could possibly arise. … I also arranged with the Commandant [of the Makran Levy Corps] to form a section of the sons of gentlemen in Makran who are to have a course of training, not only Gichki, but Nausherwanis and others. … I cannot speak too highly of the Makran Levy Corps, and the work accomplished by the young officers who have been in independent and isolated charge of it. … The spirit of the Corps is excellent and when with their own British Officers I feel convinced the man would be capable of very good work. As it, considering the life led by the men on the post on the frontier, their conduct has been exemplary. I do not mean to convey the idea that the Brohui of this country are equal to the best fighting races of India, but for the object for which they were formed and for the work in front of them, better men could not be found; they are capable of extraordinary hardship and fatigue, patient, obedient, and with a fine esprit de corps. They might well form the nucleus of and extremely useful force on this frontier. In has been an excellent institution for the tribes, from which the men are drawn, and adds strength to the administration. A very small percentage of the large recruiting ground

8

The Impact of British Policy on the Khanate of Kalat available has been touched, and more might be done. The Native Officers as a whole are excellent men and on terms of camaraderie with the British Officers.

The spreading of World War I to the Middle East and Asia marked the apogee of this process. Within the framework of an unprecedented war effort, the rhetoric of the return to the “time honored traditions” melted into the wider framework of imperial solidarity. In November 1914, commenting on the recent establishment of the ill-fated Baluch Camel Corps (he had been its wholehearted supporter), Dew (1914), now lieutenant colonel, remarked how: [f]rom a political point of view, the formation of the Corps has had a most excellent effect, not only in that it has enabled the rulers of the two states [Kalat and Las Bela] with their Sardars and tribesmen to show their loyalty and take a share in the burden of war, a share by no means light considering the poverty of these frontier states, but also in that it has enabled the feudal system of supplying help to the rulers in time of stress, which had fallen into disuse, to be resuscitated.4

In Dew’s perspective, the levy of the BCC was the apex of the process in which the Raj’s good offices had led to a pacified country and to a restored tribal solidarity. Here, the return to “the time honoured tribal ‘gham’ … [the] scale of tribal assistance fixed as due by each Sardar” was a product of the restoration of the sound principles of the Brahoi Constitution and an example of how these principles could solve, in a nonconflictual way, many problems of Kalat. Mir Mahmud’s proposal to contribute to the British war effort was, in itself, a sign of his pleasure for the new balance and of his will to cooperate with the British authorities to improve the social and political situation of his kingdom (Dew 1915). In a Whiggish perspective, it was also the final proof of the inherent goodness of a political model “which only required honest, earnest men, endowed with common sense to carry it on” (An Old Moss Trooper s.d.).5

4

According to the wazir-i azam of Kalat too, “this system of tribal gham was in force in the older times, and has again been revived in this occasion after a very long time” (Report of the Wazir-i-Asam on the Formation of the Kalat State Camel Corps, 30.11.1914, BL/OIOC, R/1/34/39). 5 On the basis of opinions expressed in it, the document was probably drafted in the Bombay presidency since its positions are quoted and criticized in a paper of the Punjab government from November 11, 1876.

Gianluca Pastori

9

Concluding remarks Despite Dew’s optimism, in 1915 Makran was burning again, soon followed by Jhalawan. In both cases, the government of India had to dispatch regular troops to crush the rebellions and to reestablish law and order. It was the first proof of the limits of the new institutional arrangement. It was also a proof of the limits that the tribal forces (even when led by British officers) encountered if charged to deal with local insurgencies without the khan’s or the sardars’ support. However, these fresh outbursts of violence went almost unnoticed, and their echo barely reached London. In the new international environment, the problems of Baluchistan became a negligible entity, at both political and military levels.6 The effort to build a “Kalat’s nobility” in vitro had not been able either to solve the country’s deeply-rooted institutional problems or to strengthen the British position vis-à-vis the quarrelsome native leadership. More radically, portraying the Khanate of Kalat as a feudal (or a federal) state, and its domestic political relations as a product of the unwritten rules of the Brahoi Constitution, did not smooth the country’s integration into the imperial structure and did not foster its (largely fictional) role of a buffer state. Rather, it worsened its overall position and led to the final collapse of the same feudal paradigm that the British officers had originally placed at the foundations of their action.

Bibliography Ahmed, Akbar S. 1978. “An Aspect of the Colonial Encounter in the Frontier.” Asian Affairs 9:319–27. Aitchison, Charles U. 1909. A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads relating to India and Neighbouring Countries. Revised and Continued up to 1 June 1906, Vol. XI, North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan, Jammu and Kashmir, Eastern Turkistan and Afghanistan. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing. An Old Moss Trooper. s.d. Two Frontier Policies. Repression or Reprisal. British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection [BL/OIOC; now India Office Records]: L/P&S/20/MEMO32. 6

See, for example, Despatch of Regular Troops to Suppress the Disturbancies in Jhalawan, BL/OIOC, R/1/34/36; Unrest in Makran 1914/1915 and Raids Committed Therein by Transfrontier Baluchis, BL/OIOC, R/1/34/37; Idem, BL/IOR, R/1/34/38; Idem, BL/OIOC, R/1/34/43.

10

The Impact of British Policy on the Khanate of Kalat

Browne, James [AGG in Baluchistan]. 1893. Letter to Durand [Foreign Secretary, Government of India], 15.7.1893. BL/OIOC: R/1/34/14. Bruce, Richard I. 1900. The Forward Policy and Its Results. Or ThirtyFive Years’ Work Among the Tribes of Our North-Western Frontier of India. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Caroe, Olaf. 1988. The Pathans. With an Epilogue on Russia. Karachi: OUP; first ed., New York: Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press, 1958. Dew, Armine B. [Political Agent Kalat]. 1913a. Letter to Ramsay [AGG in Baluchistan], 19.5.1913. BL/OIOC: R/1/34/33. —. [Political Agent Kalat]. 1913b. Letter to Ramsay [AGG in Baluchistan], 14.6.1913, esp. Appendix II, Short note by Major Dew on his tour through Jhalawan, the Levy Tract, Las Bela, Makran, Kachhi and Bolan during winter 1912–13). BL/OIOC: R/1/34/33. —. [Political Agent Kalat]. 1914. Political Agent Kalat’s Report on the Formation of the Kalat State Camel Corps, 30.11.1914. BL/OIOC: R/1/34/33. —. [Political Agent Kalat]. 1915. Letter to Ramsay [AGG in Baluchistan], 8.3.1915. BL/OIOC: R/1/34/39. Dutta, Simanti. 1990–91. “Strategy and Structure. A Case Study in Imperial Policy and Tribal Society in British Baluchistan, 1876–1905.” PhD diss., University of London. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series [IGI/PS]. 1908. Baluchistan. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing. Merewether, William L. 1872. Memorandum by Colonel Sir W.L. Merewether, Commissioner in Sind, on the present state of Affairs in relation to the Khelat State, dated Bombay, the 9th May 1872, in Baluchistan, No. 1. Papers relating to the Affairs of Khelat. Presented to both Houses of Parliment [sic] by Command of Her Majesty. London: HMSO, 1877; repr., Quetta: Department of Archives, 1991. Ramsay, John [AGG in Baluchistan]. 1913. Letter to MacMahon [Foreign Secretary, Government of India], 8.7.1913, n. 496C, Confidential. BL/OIOC: R/1/34/33. Swilder, Nina. 1969. “The Political Structure of a Tribal Federation: The Brahui of Baluchistan.” PhD diss, Columbia University. —. 1972. “The Development of the Kalat Khanate.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 7:115–21. Weightman, Hugh. 1934. Note by H. Weightman on the Constitutional History of the Kalat State. BL/OIOC: R/1/34/60; now Appendix VI, in, The Father’s Bow. The Khanate of Kalât and British India (19th–20th Century), Riccardo Redaelli. Florence: Manent, 1997.

Gianluca Pastori

11

Yapp, Malcolm E. 1980. Strategies of British India. Britain, Iran and Afghanistan 1798–1850. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

THE FIRST TUNISIAN CRISIS (1864) ANTONELLO BATTAGLIA During the same years in which Italy and France were trying to negotiate and find a solution to the Roman question, in Tunisia a violent revolt against the sultan attracted the interest of the two powers and a few years later it became a disputed area between the two countries and the origin of stark contrasts. Tunisia, largely autonomous, was ruled by a bey who received his authority directly from the sultan of Constantinople. Vassalage and dependence on the Turkish domination were characteristic factors of Tunisia, which ensured a military contribution during the Greek crisis of 1827 and the Crimean War of 1854–55 (Tunisian military contingent had 10,000 soldiers). Over time, the trend towards autonomy in Tunisia became stronger: local rulers called for independence from the decadent imperial authority. The centrifugal tendency also found support in the international powers, primarily France, which had consolidated the conquest of Algeria, country that borders Tunisia, and aimed to break the ties between Tunis and Constantinople to extend its influence over the North African coast (Silva 1979, 75). In 1838, an article published in Revue des Deux Mondes, affirmed: “Algiers is not a colony, it is an empire, an empire far two days from Toulon.” This is emblematic because it expresses the aspirations of the French colonialists. Tunisia was also included in the Italian sphere of influence because of its proximity to the coast of Sicily and due to its strategic geographical position on major transit routes. It had attracted the Italian interest and a considerable emigration process and allowed, over the years, the formation of a large Italian community (Gabriele 1958, 368). In the past, the area had attracted the interest of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Sardinia. In the years immediately following the unification of the peninsula, the Italian interest increased, provoking the first conflicts with Paris. In 1863, the financial situation in Tunisia led to the increase of Tunisian debt to France to about 28 million francs. At the end of the year, the prime minister of the bey, Mustafa Kasnar, tried to get a new

Antonello Battaglia

13

substantial loan, but Napoleon III granted only five million francs. In order to increase state revenues, Kasnar, in agreement with the bey, decided to raise tax levies through the doubling of Al-magba, causing protests of the inhabitants and the insurgency of the Bedouins, led by Ali Ibn Ghadaham, in the region of Talah. The riots spread from the hinterland to the coast, where Jews, French and Italians had major commercial developments. On April 21, the Italian royal consul in Tunis telegraphed to the Italian minister of foreign affairs, Visconti-Venosta, to send urgently naval units to protect the subjects from the violence of the uprising. The request of the consul was accepted and the frigates Garibaldi, commanded by Acton, and Etna, under the command of Suni, were sent.1 On April 23, the two ships sailed from La Spezia. Garibaldi stopped in Cagliari to embark 1,000 tons of coal and arrived in Tunis on April 25, the day after the arrival of Etna. The first directives given by Vice-Admiral Albini and Minister of the Navy Cugia to Acton reveal that the Italian intention was not to send an entire fleet and make a landing but to arrive with two ships to supervise the struggles (Gabriele 1958, 372–73). Etna was the first vessel to arrive, followed by two French vessels, Algeciras and Redoutable, and one British vessel, Meane. Initially, the situation did not look serious, the presence of the Italian troops seemed to reassure the community, but in the following days the increase of the French units and the worsening of the situation forced Visconti-Venosta to ask by telegraph Albini to send additional Italian vessals (Maria Adelaide, Duca di Genova and Magenta). The minister demanded to talk with the consul and with the French and English admirals for a possible joint action.2 Vice-Admiral Albini ordered a landing in case the French and the British decided to intervene. It was necessary to take active part in the defense of the European interests and to avoid being ousted in the eventuality of a future partition of Tunisia. On April 27, Visconti-Venosta ordered additional Italian units.3 Albini sailed from La Spezia with Maria Adelaide and arrived in the Gulf of Tunis at 10 am. on April 30. Upon arrival, he reached the French Admiral d’Herbinghem for updates about the situation and immediately realized how strong the Anglo-French rivalry was. In particular, the commander of the French fleet was inclined to urge the bey to dismiss the prime minister, who was guilty of having caused the insurrection, but the 1

Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), box 160, doc. 35. ACS, box 2, doc. 6. 3 ACS, box 2, doc. 9. 2

14

The First Tunisian Crisis (1864)

British Commander Woadhome did not have the same opinion and opposed the French proposal about the landing.4 On May 7, d’Herbinghem confided to Albini that it was necessary to deploy 10,000 men. The Italian vice-admiral telegraphed the ministry requesting adequate military reinforcements to join the action with no less force than France (Gabriele 1958, 378). On May 12, the Italian frigate boarded two companies of marines with supplies previously requested by the vice-admiral. At that time, Console Gambarotta warned Visconti-Venosta that the situation was becoming more “serious and worrying,” referring to the riots in Tunis between the Arabs and the Jews; while in Sfax, the Italians were forced to take refuge on ships.5 In the following days, Acton, the commander of Garibaldi at Susa and Pucci, the commander of Magenta in Sfax, confirmed the seriousness of the situation fearing an agreement between the French forces and the bey for the deployment of the troops and a future protectorate of Napoleon III. The bey dismissed the news, which probably had been spread by the French to test the reaction of the population. The bey officially denied any news about the negotiations with Paris, confirming Tunisian independence from the Turkish and European influences. In the following days, an Ottoman naval division, composed of three units and carrying on board of the flagship an imperial commissioner, arrived at the Tunisian coast and a few hours later also French military reinforcements arrived under the command of Vice-Admiral Bouet de Willaumetz. The Italian consul emphasized the unusual massive presence of the French units and hypothesized an active involvement of Paris in the rebellion against the bey. Albini asked for instructions from Turin and the minister reiterated the order to be very careful regarding the French and the British maneuvering.6 The false information about an impending European landing spread among the population in Sfax, and the population reacted aggressively, asserting their dissent towards the presence of the foreign armies. Acton— the commander of Garibaldi docked in Sfax—suggested caution to the minister, proposing to limit the Italian action to supervision and ensuring the safety of Italian subjects.7 In June, the situation worsened: the bey opposed the French request for the resignation of the prime minister and the population continued to arm in the event of a French landing. In Sfax, Europeans took refuge on the board of Garibaldi, among them also the 4

Albini’s report to Cugia, Tunis, May 3, 1864 –, ACS, box 2, doc. 14. ACS, box 2, doc. 19. 6 ACS, box 2, doc. 23. 7 From Acton to Albini, ACS, box 2, doc. 65. 5

Antonello Battaglia

15

consular representatives of Austria, Denmark, France, Spain and the United States. The British wanted to reestablish the Ottoman control in the area and to avoid the French and/or Italian influence over the area. The fleet that conquered the base in Tunisia would control the Mediterranean Sea and, in the future, with the opening of the Suez Canal, also the routes to the Indies. France would assume the total domination over the seas. As for Italy, London did not want the two coasts of the Mediterranean Sea (Sicilian and African) to be monopolized by a single state. The British considered only two options: (1) to support Tunisian independence from the Ottoman Empire and from Italy and France; (2) to support Constantinople to restore order in the region. In both solutions, London wanted to maintain the status quo by opposing the Italian-French landing and the increase of their influence. Probably the British spread the false news about the upcoming foreign landing, stirred up the local population and promoted the sale of arms by Maltese sailors (Gabriele 1958, 398). Italians were preparing the landing of two infantry regiments, a battalion of riflemen, a battery of artillery, a sapper company and several detachments, in all about 4,000 men. The program was organized as follows: (1) landing and occupation of La Goletta; (2) march on Tunis; (3) stabilization in Tunis; (4) security and organization services; (5) administrative service. The Italian forces would enter Tunis from two directions: sea and land. From the sea, a sharpshooters battalion, a part of the corps of engineers and two companies of marine corps would enter Tunis.8 On June 20, Albini—informing neither the French nor to the British— visited the bey and proposed to land an Italian army corps in order to suppress the revolution. The Tunisian ruler, while emphasizing the good relations with Italy, declined the proposal trusting in his own military forces. Visconti-Venosta warned the vice-admiral. The minister did not have the intention to conquer Tunis and start a campaign, engaging large forces and resources. With the evolution of the situation and due to the British pressure, the international community was considering more and more favorably a Turkish intervention, but the French Admiral Bouet affirmed that France would not accept any intervention from Constantinople (Chiala 1892, 98, 99). Paris began a campaign of intimidation against the bey, threatening to deploy military corps in the eventuality of a Turkish intervention: Actif was sent to cruise in the Tunisian seas, but the British officially protested. 8

ACS, box 2, doc. 106.

16

The First Tunisian Crisis (1864)

In the late summer, the situation gradually improved and the pacification of some tribes brought the feeling that the agitation would end soon. In this context, the continuing rumors of a European landing lost credibility and France accepted the British solution of “non-intervention.” The fear of enemy action and the decrease of the number of clashes allowed all the powers to share the maintenance of the status quo. The bey’s forces were now sufficient for the maintenance of order and the European powers decided to recall their fleets. The order of departure of maritime units became an international controversy because the Turkish commissioner, Haydir Efendi, agreed to withdraw his fleet after the French and Italians, but Paris announced that the French ships would be the last to return to their homeland. The querelle lasted for a month. London tried to overcome the impasse by proposing that fleets leave simultaneously. The British initiative was immediately accepted by Paris, but Constantinople hesitated a few days before giving its placet. The date was established on September 23 at 11 a.m. The Italian fleet sailed towards La Spezia and in the bay of Tunis Etna and Sirena remained to patrol the coastline. At the beginning of October, an official of the consulate of France in Tunisia visited his brother, a resident there and immediately a British flagship, Revenge, sailed to Sfax and Susa under the pretext to notify some orders to the corvette Chanticleer. Indeed, the Anglo-French conflict was not over yet. London feared the expansionist ambitions of Paris and also a French encroachment from Algeria to Tunisia. The bey’s army defeated the rebels in the decisive battle of October 7 and slowly resumed control over the cities and villages. On November 9, the revolution could be considered over: the leaders of the revolt were arrested and beaten, but forgiven, and the last European vessels came back home. Etna and Sirena continued the mission until the first week of December, when they returned permanently to Italy.

Antonello Battaglia

17

Bibliography Primary sources Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS).

Secondary sources Baratieri, Oreste. 1895. “Una spedizione in Tunisia.” Nuova Antologia Vol. 30, fasc. 11:607–10. Chiala, Luigi. 1892. Pagine di Storia contemporanea. Dal Convegno di Plombières al Congresso di Berlino. Turin-Rome: L. Roux e C. Frattolillo, Fernando. 1989. “Mire espansionistiche e progetti coloniali italiani nei documenti dell’Ufficio Storico dello SME.” Fonti e problemi 2:1183–92. Gabriele, Mariano. 1958. La politica navale italiana dall’Unità alla vigilia di Lissa. Milan: Giuffrè. —. 1996. Marina e diplomazia a metà Ottocento. Rome: Rivista Marittima. —. 1999. La prima marina d’Italia (1860-1866): la prima fase di un potere marittimo. Rome: USMM. Monteleone, Giulio. 1980. Il governo italiano di fronte alla crisi tunisina 1864. Rome: Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1875–1881: A CASE STUDY IN THE CHANGES OF IMPERIAL THOUGHT MICHAà LEĝNIEWSKI Contemporary historiography usually questions the notion that there was a change in the British imperial policy during the 1870s and 1880s. Since the 1950s many historians have criticized the idea that there was a significant shift in the imperial policy and thought during the 1870s. Historians, such as Ronald E. Robinson, John A. Gallagher or Alan G.L. Shaw, have stressed the continuity of British imperial policy and thinking during the nineteenth century. They have pointed to the fact that between 1820 and 1870 the supposedly reluctant generation of British politicians added to the empire a considerable set of territories all over the world (Gallagher and Robinson 1953, 2–3; Porter 1994, 65–66, 70–77, 89–90). They argue that those territories were not included by accident. In fact, they argue that the ideology of the empire of that time was expansionist as after the 1870s. They do not deny that there was an anti-imperialist opposition and that there were influential politicians, such as John Bright or Richard Cobden, who opposed the imperial expansion. But they remind us also that such critics had always existed, even during the height of the empire in the 1890s.1 The period between 1815 and 1872 was the time of debate concerning the future of the British Empire. Many different ideas were exchanged between humanitarians, settlers, missionaries, expansionists, colonial reformers, free-traders and protectionists. In fact, the same persons, like Benjamin Disraeli, articulated sometimes contradictory concepts 1 It is enough to mention the famous book of John A. Hobson, Imperialism. A Study, published in 1902 or the works of Bernard Shaw, such as The Man of Destiny. A Trifle from 1920 (especially the pages 200–201), which was first published in 1896 and his Fabianism and the Empire. A Manifesto by the Fabian Society, published in London in1900.

Michaá LeĞniewski

19

(Stembridge 1965, 123–33). Many historians argue that in the case of the so-called reluctant empire arguments of just one group of British politicians were taken as the representation of the official mind of that period (Shaw 1969, 71–95). In this way the whole perception towards the imperial policy and thought of that period was distorted. What was questioned was not only the supposed reluctance of British imperial policy but also the supposed liberalism. Some historians have criticized also the notion that most of the British politicians of that time expected colonies to become eventually independent. In fact they argue that there was a great deal of reservation in this respect. The United Kingdom accepted the idea of colonial self-government only as a lesser evil and did not expect the colonies, in any predictable future, to become independent. Self-government was seen just as another way of administering the empire (Martin 1975, 88–17). In this way two main concepts of this era of the supposed free-trade anti-imperialism were called into question. The British were not so reluctant in their imperial expansion, nor did they wish to hasten the process of decentralization of the empire. The simple opposition between the period before and after the 1870s was, according to them, an oversimplification. The famous Benjamin Disraeli’s speech at the Crystal Palace on June 24, 1872, which symbolically was viewed as the starting point of the new imperialism, was, for them, just a: “restatement of ideas long in Disraeli’s mind and not a sudden response to a wave of imperialism” (Stembridge 1965, 132). But even the most critical historians accept the simple fact that the pace of territorial expansion after the 1870s was faster. Between 1870 and 1814 the territory of the British colonial possessions nearly doubled. Usually for this development they blame the change in the international environment of the empire. Until the 1870s, the United Kingdom had no competition in its colonial policy. Only tsarist Russia, and to a lesser extent the United States, challenged the British overseas expansion (Hopkirk 1990; Stuart 1988; Jones 2011; Sergeev 2013). This situation changed in the 1880s, especially after the Berlin Conference in 1883, when the nineteenth-century scramble for colonies started. At that time new competitors emerged, such as Germany, France, Italy and Belgium, and this development influenced also the British imperial policy. Therefore the competition led to a more aggressive colonial policy and not to any specific change in the British attitude toward the empire. Surely it was an important factor in shaping the British colonial policy in that period. But the question remains if it was the only difference

20

The British Empire in South Africa

between those two periods? To answer it, we can look at the case of the South African Confederation. Why use the South African example? Why was it so important as the testing ground for new ideas? There are many historical and historiographical reasons. Historically, we may use the statement of Lionel Curtis, who, in August 1914, said that South Africa was in a way a microcosm of the whole empire, as there one could find all its crucial social problems (Memorandum by Lionel Curtis, Aug. 1914, New Bodleian Library: MS. Curtis 157/6, 98). This was issued in a very different situation, but it describes as well the situation of the 1870s. Southern Africa was then, as well as later, the microcosm of the British Empire, the combination of British settler communities, foreign populations of European descent and native populations. There were colonies of settlement, crown colonies, native protectorates and independent states both African and Boer and the issue was how to pacify and control such a diverse region. All the main issues of the great empire were concentrated in one small place. Historiographically, it is because the critics of the change in imperial thought used South Africa and especially projected the South African Confederation as an example in their argumentation (Robinson and Gallagher 1961, 53–75). Therefore, why not take the same road? Finally, it has already been used as an example for the supporters of the concept of the reluctant empire; for them the Sand River Convention of 1852 and especially the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854 were a proof of the British reluctance toward colonial expansion at that time (Galbraith 1963, 242–75). Ronald E. Robinson and J.A. Gallagher showed that it may be seen as the opposite case. According to them, the very fact that British politicians elaborated, as early as the 1850s, the idea of the confederation of South African states and colonies proves that the expansionist ideas had already been alive (Robinson and Gallagher 1961, 55–57). It is difficult not to agree with them. Since there is no space to elaborate on this, it is enough to write that the very moment the British acknowledged the independence of the Boer communities in the interior, they started to have second thoughts about this decision. As early as 1856, Sir George Grey, then the governor of the Cape Colony, started to inquire about the possibility of revoking the Sand River and Bloemfontein conventions (G. Grey to Earl of Grey, February 11, 1856, National Archives: CO 48/377; G. Grey to H. Labourchere, December 20, 1856, National Archives: CO 48/379; Kiewet 1929, 91–92, 100–103, 105). When he realized that it was impossible, he inquired about the possibility

Michaá LeĞniewski

21

of creating a federation or confederation of South African colonies and states (G. Grey to Lord Stanley, July 5, 1858, National Archives: CO 48/389; J. Boshof to G. Grey, January 5, 1859, National Archives: CO 48/393; Kiewet 1929, 93–94, 105–106, 108–10, 121–23; Goodfellow 1966, 16–17). At first, the Colonial Office seemed to be receptive, as many lobbies were unhappy about the withdrawal from the territories to the north of the Orange River. But finally in 1859 George Grey was recalled and the whole idea was abandoned (G. Grey to the Cape of Good Hope House of Assembly, March 28, 1859, National Archives: CO 48/395; G. Grey to E. Bulwer-Lytton, April 19, 1859, ibid; E. Bulwer-Lytton to G. Grey, June 4, 1859, ibid.). The main reason for the British reluctance at that time was financial. South African colonies were poor and not valuable, safe for the strategic value of the Cape Town and Durban. The economy of both colonies was minuscule and the value of trade not much bigger.2 The situation of the Boer republics was even worse. Therefore, British politicians were afraid that British taxpayers would be forced to bear the financial burden of such a federation. The Colonial Office was also apprehensive about the ambitious proconsuls such as G. Grey. Finally there was the issue of selfgovernment accorded to such a federation (Goodfellow 1966, 15–21). Although abandoned, the idea was not forgotten. It was revived a decade later in 1868. At that time, the British Empire became more involved in the interior. This was connected with the second Free StateBasotho War of 1865–66. After the treaty of Thaba Bosiu in 1866 in which the Orange Free State annexed over one-third of the Basotho (Lesotho) territory (Eldredge 2002, 50–54), the British became anxious about the growing stability and the strength of the Boer republics. Therefore, when the war started anew in 1867, the British decided to intervene and placed Basotho in 1868 under British protection. The question was: who should be responsible for the new protectorate? There emerged the option of a common responsibility and a federation of the Cape Colony, Basutoland and Natal, as the first step toward a wider federation (Goodfellow 1966, 23–24). At that point the idea of confederation had more appeal to the Colonial Office. It happened just after the successful completion of the Canadian Confederation, an experience that was encouraging. What is more important, large diamond deposits were discovered in Griqualand West 2

It is enough to remember that the total value of exports from both colonies in 1856–60 was less than 1.8 million GBP annually, and that was less than 1 percent of the total value of British imports and one-fourth of the exports from Australian colonies (Feinstein 2005, 29–31).

22

The British Empire in South Africa

(now Kimberley), so there was a real hope that there would be an economic boom in Southern Africa and that such a confederation would, in the end, pay for itself. But the idea was again abandoned. Philip E. Wodehouse, then the governor of the Cape Colony, was not a person who would work with local politicians. He was too authoritarian for that. The relations with the Orange Free State were strained for the British intervention in the OFS-Basotho conflict. In the Cape Colony there was a growing clamor for the responsible government and the issue of Eastern Cape separatism. Also the status of diamond fields was still uncertain, as there were five sides claiming the right of ownership: Nicolas Waterboer, the ruler of Griqualad West, Mahura, the ruler of the Bathlaping, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Korana. This issue would dominate South African politics up to the beginning of the 1870s (Davenport and Saunders 2000, 153; Changuion and Stenkamp 2012, 75–79). Finally, the British politicians believed that there was no need to force the issue, because, according to them, the time was good for the empire. In their opinion, in a long perspective, there was no other option for the Boer republics and native states than to accept the British sovereignty or at least British preponderance in South Africa. The situation changed in 1874 when Lord Carnavon became the secretary for the colonies. From the very start, he decided to carry out a more active policy, and the South African confederation was one of the concepts he decided to push forward. Historians usually stress two main reasons for the change of policy in South Africa, personal and economic: personal—the character and attitude of Lord Carnavon and his experience with the creation of the Canadian Confederation; financial—the annexation of the diamond fields in 1871 by the British Empire and the development of diamond mining, which was faster than anybody had expected.3 Supposedly the mixture of these two factors, not the change of imperial ideas and concepts, influenced and shaped the British policy in South Africa at that time. This view is strengthened by the fact that traditionally such episodes as the annexation of Griqualand West, the granting of a responsible government to the Cape Colony, the annexation of Transvaal or the Zulu war were seen as very loosely connected phenomena (Robinson and Gallagher 1961, 55–75). They were other examples of typical British policy supposedly constant since the 1820s. 3

In the period of 1865–69, the worth of the average annual export of diamonds was 10,000 GBP, in 1870–74 it was already more than 1,000,000 GBP (Feinstein 2005, 101).

Michaá LeĞniewski

23

But lately, some historians, specialized in South African history, proposed to look differently at these events—as parts of a wider process, the First British War for the South African Unification (Etherington, Harries and Mbenga 2010, 383). They suggest that these events were not loosely connected phenomena but elements of one process. Heretofore, the reluctant empire, which did not use opportunities for the extension of direct control, decided to consequently subjugate the whole region. So the annexation of Transvaal, the Zulu war, the war with Bapedi and the disarmament of Basotho may be seen, or rather should be seen, as the stepping-stones toward a complete subjugation of the whole area. In the same way, also the idea of confederation should be viewed. It was a tool to achieve the abovementioned goal—the British domination in South Africa. Evidently British policy became more determined and more aggressive. One thing is important here: it was not a reaction to the outside competition because this policy predates the great wave of European expansion. Therefore, there ought to be other factors that influenced this change. Some still may claim that the personality of Lord Carnavon was crucial in this case. And surely his role was very important and that had been realized even then (Statham 1881, 236–58). But one should also ask another question: could he implement such a policy without the support of the rest of the cabinet and without at least a partial support of the political elites both in the United Kingdom and in the South African colonies? Therefore we should look also for other factors that had influenced the change of policy. First, why was federalism at the time embraced by the British politicians? It was not just a tool to diffuse potential discontent and demands for more autonomy and freedom among the settler communities. It was also not just a way of accepting their aspirations. It was a new way of organizing the empire, a tool for transferring responsibilities to local (settler) communities, and at the same time a tool of imperial expansion. In this way, self-governing colonies and dominions became a kind of secondary forces for the expansion of the British Empire. British settler communities started to develop a new kind of imperial nationalism, which combined local colonial and dominion loyalties with wider imperial and metropolitan ones. In the wider context, this was visible in theoretical reflections, such as in Charles W. Dilkie’s famous and best-selling book Greater Britain, in which he not only professed the belief that “AngloSaxon Race is destined to dominate the world” but also that the settlement colonies were an extension of not only Great Britain but also of the British

24

The British Empire in South Africa

nation (Dilkie 1869, 71). This was further developed in the works of John R. Seeley (1883) and James A. Froude (1886). In South Africa this was visible in the attitude of the British settlers. In fact, they were the stoutest supporters of the British expansion in South Africa. They protested when Lord Glenelg renounced the annexation of Queen Adelaide Province, supported the annexation of both Natal and the Orange River Sovereignty and later strongly opposed the British withdrawal from the territories north of the Orange River. Finally they supported the federal plans of Governor George Grey in the late 1850s (Goodfellow 1966, 15–21; Galbraith 1961, 123–50, 186–92, 242–76; Lester 2001, 83–97, 176–89). For them, the expansion of the empire in South Africa was a necessity, an ever-widening sphere of economic development and growth, in which Boers were tolerated as half-civilized brothers in whiteness and Protestantism despised but at the same time accepted as a constant element of the South African reality. Africans were seen as an obstacle to the march of civilization. Whatever land they had and however they used it, it should be taken from them, and those who could not be pushed away, could be only servants and unskilled labor force, treated humanely and justly, but still just servants. Because of the large demographic disproportion, settlers could realize this ideal only within the empire and with the backing of the empire. So they saw themselves as the vanguard of the empire and of the Anglo-Saxon race. And in this respect they fit into the ideas of Dilkie, Froude and Seeley, who stressed the vital importance of the colonies for the United Kingdom. According to them, the empire was not only an extension of the British state but, first of all, of the English or British nation. And in the South African case, federation was viewed as both the defense against the forces of barbarism and a tool of imperial expansion, which would impose the domination of the British population in this region. This was clearly visible in the propaganda supporting the case of federation, which had two main notions: first, the Black/African threat, which could be only averted by solidarity and cooperation of all white communities in South Africa, both British and Boer; second, the Boer republics and especially the South African Republic needed to be subjugated as they were the strongholds of backwardness, exploiting and oppressing their African subjects (sic!) (Haggard 1900, 28–46, 50–52; Fisher 1896, 98–108). These two main notions may seem contradictory. But they just show two sides of the imperial idea and the duality of the South African British community’s perspective on the situation in the region. When we remember that there was a dual function of the proposed confederation, it

Michaá LeĞniewski

25

is easier to understand these discrepancies. It had two notions that were most touching to the South African British population’s concerns. Those two trends coincided with the emergence of a new kind of justification of imperial expansion. One of the persons who played a crucial role in South African affairs of that time was a well-known historian, James A. Froude, who already in 1869 in his speech at St. Andrews University declared himself an imperialist. In the beginning of 1870, he proclaimed his imperialist creed, stating that the colonies were a necessary extension of the British state of the English nation (Froude 1872, 155–56, 171–77). This was at that time a new idea. To see the empire as an extension of the nation, no matter how it was understood, was something that had not existed before, at least not in this form. Reading Froude’s speeches and recollections more attentively we may find something else. In one of them, he said: “The normal condition of the country must be the supremacy of the white race in the colony” (Froude 1877, 354). He did not believe that the African population was developed enough to participate on equal terms in the so-called civilized government, in fact he went as far as saying that: “It would be better to make the natives into serfs under an organized system, with security for property and life, than to give the rights of freemen and leave them to be eaten up, as it is called, when public policy pretends that an example is wanted” (1877, 354). Here, he is, first of all, criticizing the inconsistency of the British policy toward Africans. In fact, if we read the whole text, he is not proposing such a solution for the African issue, but still we may find also the echoes of ideas born out of the Darwinian concepts of evolution, natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Africans, for him, were still unfit for the participation in the European-like political system. But the fittest, according to him, had special rights and responsibilities. So Africans should be well treated and looked after as subjects, not as partners. This was a mixture of old paternalistic and new Darwinist attitudes. On the other hand, his attitude toward Boers was completely different. He clearly was fascinated with them, valuing them even more than the British settlers in South Africa and that in itself was exceptional. He regarded them as the backbone of South Africa. For him, they were the key to the success of the South African Federation. So they were to be convinced of the necessity of the confederation (Froude 1880, 10–54). And precisely the confederation, not conquest or domination, was for him the solution to the issue. In this way, the British Empire would take the control over the whole region, creating an opportunity for the expansion of not only the state but also of the British nation, and the fears of the Boers could be calmed and their aspirations realized. At the same

26

The British Empire in South Africa

time, the confederation would bring a uniform and consistent policy toward the Africans, which would help them to develop along the lines devised by the British. In conclusion, if we look at the South African situation in the context of the change in imperial policies and ideas, facts speak more than words. Although already during the later part of the 1850s, British politicians accepted that the treaty/conventions policy was a mistake, they did not go beyond reacting to specific challenges like the OFS-Basotho Wars of 1858, 1865–66 and 1867, the proposals of unifying Transvaal and the OFS into one republic or the diamond field issue. But still, despite the belief that only British control could secure the stability of the interior, for over twenty years they did not change their policy. The idea of the confederation of South African states and colonies was just a concept, a topic of discussions, sometimes of very serious ones but nothing more. The situation changed in 1874, well before the start of the scramble for Africa. British started then to act. They tried to force the issue and make the confederation happen. They tried to convince and even bribe the OFS into accepting the scheme.4 They annexed first Griqualand West and later Transvaal, they defeated and conquered Gcalekaland, Zulu kingdom and Bapedi chieftainship. And characteristically, despite the promises made during the general elections, and despite avowed anti-imperialism, the new prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone, was not ready to retreat from those occupied and annexed areas (Schrader 1969, 37–97). He only changed his policy after the successes of the Boer and Basotho rebellions in 1880–81. Only then the British Cabinet finally abandoned the idea of the unification of South Africa. But as we known well, it was only for the time being. So if we take all of those issues into consideration, it is only reasonable to ask—was there really no significant change in the imperial policy and ideas behind the colonial policy during the 1870s?

4

The agreement signed by the British with the Orange Free State might be seen as a way of redressing the OFS claims in hope to change the republic’s attitude toward the proposal of confederation. British paid 90,000 GBP (4,113,000 GBP in 2005 value) (Changuion and Stenkamp 2012, 353–54; Goodfellow 1966, 93–102).

Michaá LeĞniewski

27

Bibliography Primary sources National Archives. Colonial Office Records. London: CO 48/377, 379, 389, 393, 395. New Bodleian Library. Curtis Papers. Oxford: MS. Curtis 157/6.

Secondary sources Changuion, Louis, and Bertus Stenkamp. 2012. Disputed Land. The Historical Development of the South African Land Issue, 1652–2011. Pretoria: Protea. Davenport, Trevor R.H., and Christopher Saunders. 2000. South Africa. A Modern History. London: Macmillan. Dilkie, Charles W. 1869. Greater Britain. A Record of Travel in EnglishSpeaking Countries During 1866–1867. London: Macmillan. Eldredge, Elisabeth A. 2002. A South African Kingdom. The Pursuit of Security in Nineteenth-century Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Etherington, Norman, Patrick Harries, and Bernard K. Mbenga. 2010. “From Colonial Hegemonies to Imperial Conquest, 1840–1880.” The Cambridge History of South Africa, edited by Carolyn Hamilton, B.K. Mbenga, Robert Ross, 319–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feinstein, Charles H. 2005. An Economic History of South Africa. Conquest, Discrimination and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, W.E. Garret. 1896. The Transvaal and the Boers. A Brief History. London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd. Froude, James A. 1872. Short Studies on Great Subjects (Second Series). New York: Charles Scribner and Co. —. 1877. Short Studies on Great Subjects (Third Series). New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. —. 1880. Two Lectures on South Africa Delivered Before the Philosophical Institute Edinburgh, Jan. 6 & 9, 1880. London: Longmans, Green and Co. —. 1886. Oceana or England and Her Colonies. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

28

The British Empire in South Africa

Galbraith, John S. 1963. Reluctant Empire: British Policy on the South African Frontier, 1834–1854. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Gallagher, J., and R.E. Robinson. 1953. “Imperialism of Free Trade.” Economic History Review 6, 1:1–15. Goodfellow, C.F. 1966. Great Britain and South African Confederation (1870–1881). Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Haggard, Henry Ridder. 1900. The Last Boer War. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co. Hobson, John A. 1902. Imperialism a Study. London: John Nisbet & Co. Hopkirk, Peter. 1990. The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia. London: John Murray Publishers. Howard, Jones. 2011. To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in AngloAmerican Relations, 1783–1843. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Kiewet, C.W. de. 1929. British Policy and the South African Republics, 1848–1872. London-New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Lester, Alan. 2001. Imperial Networks. Creating Identities in Nineteenthcentury South Africa and Britain. London-New York: Rutlegde. Martin, G.W. 1975. “‘Anti-imperialism’ in the Mid-nineteenth Century and the Nature of the British Empire, 1820–1870.” Reappraisals in British Imperial History. edited by R. Hyam, G. Martin. London: Macmillan. Porter, Andrew N. 1994. Atlas of British Overseas Expansion. London: Routledge. Robinson, R.E., and J.A. Gallagher. 1961. Africa and the Victorians. The Official Mind of Imperialism. London: Macmillan. Schreuder, D.M. 1969. Gladstone and Kruger. Liberal Government and Colonial ‘Home Rule’ 1880–1885. London-Toronto: Routledge & Kegan Poul. Seeley, John R. 1883. The Expansion of England. Two Courses of Lectures. London: Macmilan. Sergeev, Evgeny. 2013. The Great Game 1856–1907. Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia. Washington, Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Shaw, A.G.L. 1969. “British Attitudes to the Colonies, ca. 1820–1850.” Journal of British Studies 9, 1:71–95. Shaw, Bernard. 1900. Fabianism and the Empire. A Manifesto by the Fabian Society. London: Grant Richards. —. 1920. The Man of Destiny. A Trifle. London: Constable and Co. Statham, Francis Reginald. 1881. Blacks, Boers, & British: A Threecornered Problem. London: Macmillan.

Michaá LeĞniewski

29

Stembridge, Stanley R. 1965. “Disraeli and the Millstones.” Journal of British Studies 5, 1:122–39. Stuart, Reginald C. 1988, United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775–1871. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

IMPERIALISM OF KAISER WILHELM II: PERSPECTIVES AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF GERMAN SÜDPOLITIK FRANCESCO CERASANI Introduction The adoption of weltpolitik by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1897, by replacing the earlier realpolitik approach of the first years of German diplomacy, represented a fundamental shift in the empire’s foreign policy. Weltpolitik, whose primary aim was to transform the country by means of an aggressive diplomacy, resulted as a part of the continuous tensions within German history in the relations with its continental neighbors. The Mediterranean area became one of the key priorities of Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose famous visit to Syria and Palestine in 1898 intended to establish a whole set of measures of cooperation and diplomatic ties. The paper will examine the routes of German contemporary diplomacy towards the Mediterranean region, with a special focus on recent historiography as well as on the long-term trends in shaping Germany’s position in the Barcelona Process.

Germany and the Mediterranean In an important article published in 1998, political scientist Volker Perthes (1998), while creating a comprehensive review of German contemporary foreign policy towards the southern shore of the Mediterranean, concludes his study with a brave definition and argues that Germany, diplomatically speaking, could be described as a “Mediterranean country.” The expression, which could sound paradoxical in a strict geographical definition, gets a much wider and more understandable meaning in the framework of the EU Barcelona Process, i.e. the special political relationship set up by the European Community in 1995 with the southern partners of the Mediterranean. Perthes investigates the long-term trends in German culture and diplomacy and focuses on the forms of continuity that

Francesco Cerasani

31

reflect the deep and strategic interest that the whole Mediterranean area has represented for Germany. Germany got back into a strong role in the Mediterranean region, first of all, by adopting the key decision to endorse the Barcelona Process since the beginning and actually by influencing the development of the whole policy in the next years, through the effort of breaking down the French monopoly—if not proper hegemony—over the area as well as over the whole EU foreign policy in the region. The end of geo-dependency of the south—in the words of German Foreign Minister Fischer in 1999 (Martens 2000) has been in fact the goal of German diplomacy already at the beginning of the negotiations on the new Euro-Mediterranean policies, firstly discussed during the Essen Council in 1994 and then in the Cannes council in 1995: in both summits, the new political sovereignty of Germany, now a reunified state without the diplomatic burden of the Cold War, resulted in a strong commitment of northern members states, led by Germany, to a common European involvement in the new Mediterranean policies. Thus, the new Mediterranean orientation of Germany produced a new and unforeseen fault-line in the contemporary Franco-German relationship, whose last episode occurred, only recently, with the struggle in the Union for the Mediterranean in 2008. In every phase of history of the relationship between Germany and the Mediterranean there was a rich and deep system of cultural and historical ties. The influence of classicism, the Crusades, the strong personality of Friedrich II Hohenstaufen, the myth of the south and of Germany as the followers of the Greek-Roman civilization were key-aspects of the common perception of German culture on the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean had shaped Germany’s moral education, Winkelmann affirmed in 1764, while Herder, in 1784, proudly stated that “on the shores of the Mediterranean mankind could be bound to the soul” (Herder 1769). Hölderlin and Humboldt, other gods of German intellectuals and the main contributors to the development of national culture, long before the reunification, expressed their devotion to the Mediterranean and found their inspiration in the model of Goethe’s Grand Tour in 1786–88 in Italy. During the new Reich’s birth, in 1870, there was a positive environment towards the Mediterranean interests. The official historiography (at that time also defined as “Ranke Renaissance”) placed a special focus on the relationship with the south, a path explicitly quoted as a relevant source of inspiration by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne in his important and comprehensive work Mohammed and Charlemagne (Pirenne 1994). What contributed to the new academic and cultural interests towards the Mediterranean region, at the end of the nineteenth century, was the

32

Imperialism of Kaiser Wilhelm II

beginning of the new geographical studies, whose major scholars, Fischer and Philippson, defined the Mediterranean region as the central stage of Western civilization, “our Kulturkreis” (Philippson 2012). Philippson came to a definition of a real “Mediterranean race,” “Mittelländische Rasse,” without any ethnic meaning but under a particular cultural-historical focus. A civilization marked by the social patterns of circulation and communication, instead of migration, which he described as the traditional structure of German tribes. The cultural debate in the early years of the twentieth century created the conditions for the birth of a new and ambitious discipline— geopolitics—whose theoretical approach, especially through the works of Friedrich Ratzel (1923), had a major influence in shifting German foreign policy towards the forthcoming weltpolitik. In fact, if the German Empire could not be considered as Mediterranean, it was certainly meant to have a deep impact on the geopolitical restructuring of the Mediterranean area. As reflected in French archives, the perception and worries about the arrival of Germany in the Mediterranean area became particularly sensitive in France’s diplomacy of the time. Another confirmation of Germany’s deep involvement in the Mediterranean issues can be found in the Reich’s reaction to the tragic earthquake hitting Messina in 1908: the massive response in terms of material help and the deep empathy from German public opinion were emblematic for understanding the German perception of the Mediterranean region at the eve of the First World War. As described in a recent study edited by professor Motta (2008), an analysis of the pages of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from the first weeks following the disaster clearly shows the “Wahlverwandtschaften” (elective affinities) felt by German public opinion. The prompt reaction from German diplomacy clearly was also aimed at strengthening the diplomatic ties with the Italian state, a move intended to add a new space of action in the context of the new Reich’s weltpolitik, whose focus towards the Mediterranean was crucial and essential to the whole policy.

The südpolitik of the New Reich The described cultural and ideological environment of the Reich’s first years offered an important background for the fundamental shift in German foreign policy that occurred with the end of Bismarck’s era in 1890 and with the opening of the weltpolitik of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to power only a few years before the chancellor’s resignation. Several scholars have pointed out the relevant personal and psychological

Francesco Cerasani

33

factors leading to such an important shift in Germany’s diplomacy (Palmer 1978; Röhl, et al 1982). Cultural factors emerging in German society also had an important role in reshaping and overcoming the entire foreign policy of Bismarck: a new approach to the surrounding areas, a new perception of Germany’s geographical and economic space in Europe. The new focus on the whole Mediterranean area, as well as the new geopolitical studies, had a major contribution in forging and justifying Wilhelm’s new policy. In that definition, Drang nach Osten (push eastward) can certainly be defined on a wider scope and also includes the whole southern region of Europe. In that meaning, weltpolitik, ostpolitik and südpolitik overlap and become part of a same wider historiographical trend. At the very last end of the nineteenth century, Germany’s early steps in the Mediterranean region had represented since the first moves the end of the cautious status quo achieved in Bismarck’s time. It is in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean that the balance of power—as it emerged in the famous League of the Three Emperors in 1873—clearly collapsed and opened several areas of tensions. The control and the balance of la question d’Orient, Bismarck’s milestone in approaching the Mediterranean, became actually the key issues that in Wilhelm’s intentions needed to be deeply changed: from the status quo there was a gradual escalation of tensions, sometimes even approaching the danger of a real military intervention (the crisis in the Balkans, as well as in Morocco, was the main evidence in that respect). German diplomacy attempted in several ways to expand its diplomatic influence and to exploit its economic weight in the region; de facto, by setting up some important projects of development in the area (the BerlinBaghdad Railway, or, for instance, the beginning of oil-related activities in the region of Mosul, after the negotiation for the rights of exploitation from Gulbenkian). Germany was the only country openly facing and defying France and Britain in the entire Middle East area. Wilhelm himself declared Germany and the kaiser as the warrant of Islam, a statement that he proudly repeated and engaged to show on the occasion of his visit to the region in 1898.

Case study: The visit of Kaiser Wilhelm to the Middle East The emperor’s visit to the Middle East region took place in 1898, covering the area of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. According to local witnesses and the press of the period, the large participation of the population testifies to the importance of the event. Ibrahim Al Aswad, the

34

Imperialism of Kaiser Wilhelm II

director of the newspaper Lubnan, the main liberal bulletin of the time, and the official Ottoman translator, drafted a very detailed report (Pellitteri 2009) about the visit as well as about the meetings with the religious and political authorities, public events that included the population, meetings with the representatives of Arab society and even with members of female organizations. The goal of the emperor’s visit to the region, in the eyes of local observers, seemed to be clear: the political and strategic meaning of Wilhelm’s visit was to leave an important landmark in the relations between Germany and Arab-Muslim culture. The German support to the Muslim unity, a long lasting trend in the Reich’s recent foreign policy and the skeptical approach (if not a real opposition) of Germany to the early plans of Zionism were considered as a clear position even before Wilhelm’s visit to the region (although Th.Herzl was—uninvited—part of the delegation accompanying the kaiser to the Middle East) (Pellitteri 2009). The main achievement of the visit, one could argue, was the visit itself: the strong personality of the kaiser and his powerful approach in fostering a new direction of German foreign policy had an important impact on the deepening of economic, cultural and military cooperation established in the recent years by the new German diplomacy. The visit began in Haifa with the arrival of the emperor and his wife on the ship Hohenzollern on October 25, 1898; they left on November 23 of the same year from the port of Beirut, after twenty days spent in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Among the main destinations of the visit, the imperial couple visited Haifa, Yafa, Damascus, Beirut, Baalbek and Jerusalem. The visit to Jerusalem and other landmarks of the Holy Land was intended as the repetition of the tradition of imperial pilgrimage to the main areas of Christianity, an event of particular historical and religious meaning since the early stage of the Reich. During his visit, Kaiser Wilhelm held meetings with clerks in Bethlehem; in Jerusalem he visited the sancta sanctorum of Al Aqsa and Al Ahram, hosted public events with German schools and German associations of Palestine (Gamiyyah al Alman), visited the German hospital and the Lutheran church built by the father of Wilhelm, Emperor Friedrich III, on the land given by Sultan Abd al Aziz in 1869. In Beirut and Jerusalem, with the presence of the Ottoman Sultan Abd al Hamid, both emperors received the greetings from the girls of the Prussian school, Madrasah al Brusyaniyyah, covered for the occasion with the German flag colors. From the political point of view, a particular importance was given to the visit to Damascus, a city where major works of renovation for the occasion of the visit had been carried out, including new religious and

Francesco Cerasani

35

civil buildings. The visit of the emperor focused on the Christian landmarks in the old city, for instance, the churches in Bab Touma and all the area of Bab Sharqi, where the participation of the crowd was described as intense and important. The most important moment of the entire mission to the region was certainly the visit to the Umayyad Mosque, which started with a prayer on Saladin’s Mausoleum, the new Saladin’s tomb, built in an elegant European style, given by Wilhelm’s father, Emperor Friedrich III, in his previous visit. The cultural importance of the visit to Saladin’s area was stressed by a solemn poetry reading of the official poet of the Ottoman Empire, Ahmad Shawqui.

Bibliography Herder, Johann G. 1976. Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769. Stuttgart: Reclam. Martens, Karen. 2000. La politique à l’Est de la République Fédérale d’Allemagne depuis 1949. Paris: PUF. Motta, Giovanna. 2008. La città ferita. Il terremoto dello Stretto e la comunità internazionale. Rome: Franco Angeli. Palmer, Albert. 1978. The Kaiser: Warlord of the Second Reich. London: Wedenfeld and Nicolson. Pellitteri, Antonino. 2009. Introduzione allo studio della storia contemporanea del mondo arabo. Bari: Laterza. Perthes, Volker. 1998. “Germany Gradually Becoming a Mediterranean State.” Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission (EuroMeSCo) Paper 1. Pirenne, Henri. 1994. Réflexions d’un Solitaire. Bruxelles. In Bulletin De La Commission Royale D’histoire. Philippson, Alfred. 2012. Das Mittelmeergebiet: Seine geographische und kulturelle Eigenart. Berlin: Ulan Press. Ratzel, Friedrich. 1923. Politische Geographie: oder die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehrs und des Krieges. Berlin: Eugen Oberhummer.

“THE MORO PROBLEM”: RACE, RELIGION AND AMERICAN COLONIAL EMPIRE IN THE SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES, 1899–1939 OLIVER CHARBONNEAU Introduction: Colonial empire This article explores the fraught interactions between American colonial authorities, military and civilian, and the Moro people of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago in the Southern Philippines during the early twentieth century. In particular, it examines the tactics employed by the US in its attempts to modernize Muslim regions and “civilize” the inhabitants. In what follows, I argue that (1) the activities of the Americans reflected global trends in colonial nation-building at odds with the American promulgation of self-determination and that (2) military and civil resistance by the Moros throughout the occupation ensured that the civilizational imperatives of the Americans went mostly unaccomplished. The United States spent much of the nineteenth century transforming itself from a fledging republic into a continental empire. Land was acquired in whichever way seemed expedient, whether that be through financial transaction or the displacement and destruction of the indigenous inhabitants. In addition, American leaders, who saw themselves as inheritors—as well as refiners—of Anglo-Saxon traditions of empire, quickly used the nation’s ascendant status to assert their right to hemispheric dominance. This was officially stated in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and the remainder of the nineteenth century would see a series of quasi-official incursions into Latin America by the US. In addition, America also took its first tentative steps into the Pacific arena, annexing Hawaii and parts of Samoa and participating in the financial opening of China to the Western powers. Thus, when the United States acquired an overseas colonial empire proper in the wake of a brief war with the Spanish in 1898, the nation had been already well acquainted with the logic behind and the practice of

Oliver Charbonneau

37

dominating foreign populations. The Philippines—along with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam—were ceded to the Americans during the Treaty of Paris at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, and the administration of William McKinley quickly began assembling a colonial regime to replace the outmoded Spanish one. American rule, claimed men like McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, would be unique in its republican character and its promulgation of supposedly American virtues like liberty. As Ann Laura Stoler (23, 23–69) has observed, all empires consider themselves exceptional—it provides them with a raison d’être, an ability to positively contrast themselves with prior forms of imperial aggrandizement and justify their own necessity. Unsurprisingly, the colonial enterprise the United States established was not entirely unique. It came during the heyday of European high imperialism, a vast epistemic community that utilized theories of global capital, racial hierarchy and civilizational progress to rationalize the conquest and occupation of large swathes of the globe. After the Spanish-American War, the United States would enter this community.

Military occupation, 1898–1913 With the above in mind, we turn to a more provincial setting. From the Spanish, the Americans had inherited a large number of Islamic colonial subjects known as the Moro people. Sixteenth-century Spanish colonists, who saw parallels between the Moros and the medieval Andalusian Moors, who had ruled over Spain for seven centuries, bestowed this name. At the time of colonial transfer, the term “Moros” denoted a collection of loosely connected tribes linked by shared religious practices and forms of communal organization. These populations, which were concentrated along the Western Mindanao littoral and throughout the Sulu Archipelago, had fiercely resisted Spanish colonialism for over 300 years, and, as a result, maintained a level of autonomy not found among those Filipinos who had converted to Catholicism (San Juan 2006, 391–422). The reason for this can be found in the dynamism of Islam, which simultaneously provided an alternative transnational monotheistic bulwark against Christian incursion and an ability to synthesize with preexisting local customs to create hybrid versions of itself. The Moros, like many other colonized Muslim societies, proved highly resistant to attempts by outsiders to transform their ethnic and religious traditions. The Bates Treaty of 1899, negotiated between the Sultan of Sulu and the American Brigadier General John C. Bates, marked an early attempt to pacify the Moros through non-violent means. In it, the Americans

38

“The Moro Problem”

promised non-intervention in religious matters, criminal acts occurring between Moros, the practice of slavery and the general leadership rights of datos (members of native royalty). They also negotiated monthly salaries for the sultan and a number of local leaders, ranging from $10 to $250 a month. The treaty, it appeared at the time, was an ideal way to secure American sovereignty over the Southern Philippines without resorting to colonial warfare (Hawkins 2008, 414–15). Pacification, however, would not be so simple. The Moros viewed themselves as distinct from Christianized Filipinos, particularly from the Hispanicized elite who led the nationalist movement against the successive colonial occupations. To them, threats to their society were manifest in both the civilizational imperatives of Western colonialism as well as the settlers from the Christian north who had begun to colonize Mindanao. For their part, American military and civilian authorities understood that the Muslim south was separate from the challenges faced in Luzon and other Christian regions. Looking to distance themselves from an antique Spanish colonial model that placed primacy on religious conversion, the Americans adopted methods that mirrored those of the British, French, and Dutch in Southeast Asia—co-opting local leaders and attempting to integrate Western forms of governance, education, industry, infrastructure, property ownership, and law enforcement into indigenous society. Michael Hawkins calls this approach “imperial historicism”—a pan-colonial style of rule that created racial taxonomies of the world’s peoples and assessed their fitness to receive the “ahistorical modernity” offered by the West. In this worldview, the Moros would either embrace civilization or be relegated to slow extinction (Hawkins 2008, 414). Accustomed to a level of autonomy not found in Christian regions, many local datos—Moro tribal royalty—in Sulu and Mindanao refused to acknowledge US sovereignty and the first years of the occupation saw an escalating number of attacks on US soldiers, surveyors and administrators. This resistance led to a more direct form of rule beginning with the appointment of Major General Leonard Wood as the first governor of what was now called the Moro Province. Wood and many of his men were veterans of the frontier wars against the Native Americans in the 1880s and viewed the Moros in similar terms: savages of inferior race and religion who needed to be brought to heel through a liberal application of force. Moros, according to Wood, were “religious and moral degenerates” (Gems 2012, 50). Juramentado warriors, individual Moros who committed themselves to suicidal attacks on American encampments, were especially frightening to US troops, who drew links between Islamic religious frenzy and the ghost dances of the Plains Indians (Gedacht 2009, 403–404).

Oliver Charbonneau

39

Military rule would continue until 1913, over a decade longer than in the rest of the Philippine Archipelago, with the final major military confrontation between the Moros and American soldiers ending in the massacre at Bud Bagsak in 1913.

Civilizational imperatives, 1914–39 The conclusion of direct military control did not mark the end of intervention into Moro society by US authorities and their Christian Filipino agents. However, civilian rule in Muslim areas lead to different strategies that focused on integrating the Moros into the Philippine colonial polity. Najeeb Saleeby, a Syrian-born scholar-official, reflected on the challenges facing civilian administrators in an article published in 1913, stating “We have to either be tolerant and accept present conditions and institutions as they are and gradually reform them, or be intolerant and introduce radical changes from the start. The first course begins with amity and proceeds with patience and makes slow but permanent progress with telling effect. The second course is bound to begin with enmity and proceed with opposition every step of the way. The latter course has been tried for over three hundred years. History has declared its failure and humanity has condemned its principles” (Saleeby 1913, 30–31). Saleeby’s prescription for the reform of Moro society along paternalist Western guidelines largely predicted the character of American rule in the region during the interwar period, which was based upon the gradual introduction of modern institutions and the attempted reorganization of what were viewed as outmoded forms of communal structuring. Underpinning this process was the attempt to rationalize and commodify the geography of Muslim lands. As Thongchai Winichakul (1994, 149) has illuminated in his pioneering study, modern land-based political reform can only exist if “the ideas of premodern hierarchical polity and the nonbounded realm are suspended or suppressed.” In other words, key to the American civilizing mission was introducing notions of demarcated territory and private property. These are core features of the modern nation-state and American civilian administrators saw little hope for progress if they did not replace traditional Moro concepts of communal space and sovereignty with them. The Moros actively frustrated such attempts to fundamentally alter their societal organization. A vexed report from J.J. Heffington, provincial governor of Lanao Province in the early 1930s, sums up the situation as follows: “The average Moro is improvident and will when he happens to have need, real or fancied, of money or property dispose of his homestead

40

“The Moro Problem”

or the land on which he has been living in exchange for that which he deems to be of greater value or that which better meets his fancied needs at the time. And in this lies the explanation for the statement that the Moro will continue to give way to the Christian settler, the Christian settler obtaining possession of the Moro’s property by some barter or payment of funds and the Moro moving further back into the interior.”1 Annual Reports encountered in the archival record repeatedly voice frustration at the unwillingness of Moros to deal with district land officers, cultivate their lands, or pick-up their deeds at local registration offices. Key to the rationalization of colonial space was utilizing so-called public lands. To accomplish this, US civilian administrators actively pursued policies that aimed to organize Moro communities into stable units that were agriculturally and industrially dynamic. The process, which had begun during the military occupation in the early 1900s, was perpetually chaotic, as illustrated here in an annual report from Lanao in 1933: “Homesteaders, settlers, and Moros have mixed, and mingled, threatened to fight, acquired homesteads, cut boundary lines across each other’s property, and done the thousands and one things that human nature is prone to do when working without the influence of a strong guiding hand.”2 Since Moro concepts of land ownership differed from those imposed by the Americans (centered around private property), disputes were commonplace—particularly if a Moro community felt that their territory was being infringed upon by colonial settlement schemes or public projects. In the matter of land surveys, which Moros were expected to pay for, the local district land officer for Lanao voiced his frustration at opposition, claiming “the Moros have not yet arrived at the time to know and comprehend the advantage of surveyed and titled land.”3 In keeping with pan-colonial practices, American and Christian Filipino authorities made repeated pushes to “educate” the Moros on Western conceptions of proper health and hygiene. Sanitary campaigns persisted throughout the American occupation. One specific example can be found in 1936 in Dansalan, Lanao, where authorities began awarding diplomas to Moros who could “construct a sanitary toilet.” Health officials, worried about epidemics of communicable diseases such as dysentery and cholera, encouraged Moro districts to cease the practice of 1

J.J. Heffington, “Annual Report of Provincial Governor for Lanao, 1932,” Joseph Ralston Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 46–47. 2 J.J. Heffington, “Moro Problem: Excerpt from Annual Report of the Provincial Governor of Lanao for the Year 1933,” Joseph Ralston Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 6. 3 Ibid., 7.

Oliver Charbonneau

41

using lakes and rivers as open-air toilets. In this instance, news reports claimed success,4 but officials were often pessimistic about the state of public health among the Moros. The district health officer for Lanao claimed in his 1933 annual report that “their low standard of living, their inadequate clothing and food, renders them (especially the children) more susceptible to diseases” and that “because of the customs, ignorance and the slow progress of education among the older Moros, the health personnel have to encounter hardships dealing with them especially with regard to vaccination of children.”5 A report filed by the Bureau of Education in 1931 lamented the lack of basic medicines available, calling it “pathetic.”6 Indeed, annual reports from Mindanao and Sulu in the 1920s and 1930s consistently spoke of raising standards for public health, but there is little evidence that this actually happened. Education was also a contentious issue, and although there were moderately successful agricultural and industrial schools at Lumbatan and Zamboanga, Moro parents resisted sending their children to state primary schools for fear that they would be encouraged to renounce their Muslim faith. Americans such as Frank Laubach, who ran a small school at Maranaw, conducted literacy campaigns and made attempts to educate the Moros on local elections, but these efforts were also viewed skeptically.7 A Society of English Speaking Youth briefly existed in Lanao, aiming to promote literacy campaigns, anti-disease drives, public schools, fiestas, books, and fighting against insects. Nevertheless, many Moros saw literacy as unnecessary in their primarily oral society, and those who did place a premium on education preferred to send their children to local madrassas, religious schools that educated them in the Islamic tradition.8 Programmatic efforts to bring teachers in Mindanao and Sulu up to a consistent standard of education were also met with resistance. For example, a report to the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes from Sulu in 1929 4

The Mindanao Tribune, June 13, 1936, “Moros Show Big Progress: Lanao Inhabitants Now Observe Rules of Hygiene and Sanitation,” Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 5 J.J. Heffington, “Moro Problem: Excerpt from Annual Report of the Provincial Governor of Lanao for the Year 1933,” Joseph Ralston Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 6. 6 Luther B. Bewley, December 11, 1933, Report on Schools in the Sulu Archipelago, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 5. 7 Frank Laubach to Joseph Ralston Hayden, June 22, 1934, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 8 Author Unnamed, “The Society of English Speaking Youths” Pamphlet, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

42

“The Moro Problem”

stated that many teachers had resigned or been dismissed when the Division Superintendent of Schools attempted to have them attend summer school in Zamboanga to attain their high school equivalency.9 As a result, American attempts to instill Western values through education were largely unsuccessful. According to a memorandum to the Bureau of NonChristian Tribes, in 1933 only 1.56 percent of teachers in Sulu had any type of professional training, the lowest percentage in the entire Philippine Archipelago.10 Teachers were often the victims of violence because they represented colonial authority. In one case from Tabawan, a small island sixty miles southwest of Jolo, two teachers were killed by a Moro “run amuck” who felt that attacking educational staff would be a great honor.11 Although major military operations ceased with the transition to civilian rule in 1913, armed conflict against the colonial state continued. Rogue datos, bandits, and piracy were common in Mindanao and Sulu. After the departure of the US military, matters of policing and justice largely fell to the Philippine Constabulary, a force administered by the Americans and manned by Christian Filipinos. Although efforts were made to enlist Moro members, American authorities found that young Moro men were either suspicious of the Constabulary or compromised by their partiality in local feuds.12 Similarly, prisons, such as that located at Dansalan, were often staffed by Christian settlers for fear that Moro guards would be liable to allow prisoner escape due to tribal affiliations.13 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, articles in newspapers like the Mindanao Herald and the Lanao Progress featured lurid descriptions of various raids, murders, rapes, and other outrages committed by Moro brigands. A report on an attack on the grounds of the Masonic Temple at Dansalan by a supposedly “crazed” Moro prisoner named Bito is typical,

9

Ludovicio Hidrosolio to the Secretary of the Interior, July 27, 1929, Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes, Manila, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 5. 10 Luther B. Bewley, December 11, 1933, Report on Schools in the Sulu Archipelago, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 11 K.W. Chapman, August 20, 1934, Letter to the Director of Education (Manila), Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 1. 12 Rafael Crame to the Secretary of the Interior, September 8, 1926, Headquarters Philippine Constabulary, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 13 J.J. Heffington, “Annual Report, 1932,” 22.

Oliver Charbonneau

43

describing the murder committed by him and his attempt to use a baby as a human shield before being shot to death by constabulary privates.14 Tensions between Moros and Christian Filipino residents led to outbreaks of panic. In a report filed by Lieutenant Colonel L.R. Stevens dated July 27, 1929, Stevens recounts how in the town of Jolo the murder of a local schoolteacher led to “rampant” rumors that juramentado warriors were coming to the town to slaughter Christian civilians. While Stevens claimed these rumors were unfounded, he noted that roving bands of criminals were still common and would continue to be so “until the entire population has been brought completely under governmental control.”15 American colonial officials never found a solution to the Muslim-Christian schism, and as more control was passed to Christian Filipino administrators in the 1930s, petitions from Moro dignitaries asking for separation from the Christian north became frequent.16 At play were religious and ethnic tensions that predated the US occupation of the Philippines. Attempts to defuse them through the establishment of a cohesive colonial state structure proved ineffective, and Muslim-Christian political and military conflict has continued in the region up to the present. “It is the aim of the government,” reads a report from Lanao written in 1933, “to settle up the unoccupied areas with taxpaying citizens, and at the same time bring the Moros to understand the necessity of a well established system of living, the acquiring of homesteads, obtaining an education and so fitting into the situation as to become a part of the inevitable growth of the province.”17 As evidenced, attempts at instilling a Western modernity upon the Moros were met, at each turn, with resistance. First, during the period of military control through sustained insurgency, and afterwards through non-participation in government schemes and an active refusal to break with centuries of communal tradition. The case of America’s involvement in the Southern Philippines is illustrative of the tensions inherent between the ideological disavowal of traditional colonial 14 The Mindanao Tribune, July 14, 1936, “Tries To Save Self By Using Baby As Shield: Moro Bito Stabs Camp Keithley Official During Conversation—Tries To Escape,” Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 15 L.R. Stevens to Constabulary Adjutant in Manila, Letter, July 27, 1929, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 1. 16 Petition to Governor General from Hadji Bobabong and other Moro Datus, July 13, 1934, Lanao Province, Joseph Ralston Hayden Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 2. 17 J.J. Heffington, “Moro Problem: Excerpt from Annual Report of the Provincial Governor of Lanao for the Year 1933,” Joseph Ralston Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, 2.

44

“The Moro Problem”

empire and the continued practiced reality of it. Far from being an exception among the Western powers as an anti-imperial entity, the United States continued to utilize and refine European methods of colonial control even as they agitated against them.

Bibliography Gedacht, Joshua. 2009. “'The Mohammedan Religion Made it Necessary to Fire’: Massacres on the American Imperial Frontier from South Dakota to the Southern Philippines.” In Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State, edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano, 397–409. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Gems, Gerald R. 2012. The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hawkins, Michael. 2008. “Imperial Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines Muslim South.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39.3:411–29. Saleeby, Najeeb M. 2005. The Moro Problem: An Academic Discussion of the History and Solution of the Problem of the Government of the Moros of the Philippine Islands. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Libraries. San Juan, E. 2006. “Ethnic Identity and Popular Sovereignty: Notes on the Moro Struggle in the Philippines.” Ethnicities 6.3:391–422. Stoler, Ann Laura. 2006. “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies.” In Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, edited by Ann Laura Stoler, 23–69. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Winichakul, Thongchai. 1994. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

DEFENSIVE MODERNIZATION AND SELF-INDUCED COLONIALISM RADU MUREA Progress and European modernity The idea of progress, as Robert A. Nisbet eloquently points out, is strongly and uniquely embedded in the psyche of Western civilization. For quite some time, it has been considered as one of the major cultural and civilizational landmarks of Western (European) identity, next to only such cultural repositories as the Greco-Roman antiquity or the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, the twentieth century has diminished much of its triumphalist impetus, although it remains a potent variable in the presentday political and social discourse. If we are to believe Nisbet, its longevity follows as a direct repercussion of its origin that can be identified in the earliest intellectual achievements of the Greco-Roman world. Further on, Christian thought managed to fuse Greek ideas of growth with the Jewish heritage of sacred history, assembling a vision of the world that is striving and also evolving towards its final chapter while remaining centrally entangled between the contradictions of divine predestination and its immanent drives of self-realization. During the Middle Ages, the restatement of the idea of progress in Christian inspired intellectual instances was heavily influenced by Augustinian and Joachimian thought (Nisbet 1979; 2009). Subsequently, the famous querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, which shattered the literary certitudes of the Académie Française at the end of seventeenth century (de Benoist 2002, 55–62), brought the idea of progress into its rather tormented modern (secular) existence. Through the enlightened thinkers, the history of mankind stopped following a pattern of inescapable decrepitude and acquired a new outline defined by a relentless belief in the realization of the highest human potentials. In part, some of the Christian messianic brushes that fueled former perspectives were quickly drawn to placate a new, at the time foreseeable, golden epoch of humanity. Achieving it would require the relentless process of accumulation, advance and development of science, education and arts, of material progress, and ultimately the

46

Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism

complete discarding of the past epochs’ social and cultural remnants. Politically, the blessings of this “positive and scientific age” of human progress would not stand without its necessary placement under the aegis of the political state, considered by many to be the most perfect accomplishment of progress in history (Nisbet 1979, 24–27). Abundant optimism might have been the mark of Enlightenment philosophers, but they can hardly be considered naïve in their quest for the “amelioration of mankind.” Occasionally unchecked enthusiasm found itself dissolved by a healthy dose of pessimism when confronted with the vast array of problems specific to European societies (Israel 2010, 1–36). Still, on a cultural level, this belief in a process of irreversible changes towards an improvement (Pollard 1968, 9) of cumulative and imperturbable progress was taken at face value and transformed during the nineteenth century into a secular Western religion, which, in part at least, managed to replace the receding Christian faith. A new secular religion, as Ronal Wright notes, was enforced in an anthropological sense by its own mythology, eventually being used as a cultural map to navigate through time/history and on a larger scale to evaluate other civilizations that the expanding European world was encountering (Wright 2005, 4–5).

European perceptions, Islam and Orientalism Out of all the civilizations that during the nineteenth century became the focus and subject of what can be termed as European colonial modernity, none received the full force of the secular religion of progress like the one built upon the Islamic revelation. Considering this, it was in a sense ironic that it was exactly Islam that, through its “repeated aggression” against Europe starting with the seventh century and advancing up to the dawn of the modern age, acted as a “violent midwife” to the nascent Western European civilization (Cardini 1999, 3). Medieval Islam, with its spiritual and imperial outlook, could make sense of a Christian Europe, or Christendom, but it could hardly muster any answer to a modern Europe which started to define itself less and less in spiritual terms. In fact, as it is the case with any coherent civilizational structure, in terms of homogeneity, Islam never really assumed a monolithic standing elsewhere than in the European imaginary. For that fact, Christendom in its own term, seldom, if ever, acted as a religiously defined polity. The shock induced by the new assertive modern Europe was to shake the very basis of Muslims’ perception for which, as Bernard Lewis assures us, “Islam itself was indeed coterminous with civilization, and beyond its borders there were only barbarians and infidels.” This confidence, one that

Radu Murea

47

could be easily translated into a European setting, was far from misplaced when we concede that Islam “created a world civilization, polyethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental” (Lewis 2002, 3–6). From a historical standpoint, the evolution of the Islamic world up to the eighteenth century has been spectacular, and with its diverse and multifaceted social structure it would be hard to compare it with the austere community that left Mecca at the beginning of the Islamic era. In fact, it was exactly this imposing social structure construed on a laborious network of interconnected legal schools, theological sects doubled by a myriad of communal and religious associations that would appear doomed to any European observer of the late eighteenth or the nineteenth century. As H. A. R. Gibb (1962, 165) assures us, such an observer would have “regarded the whole structure as seamed with superstition and destined to be swept away before long by the forces of progress and Enlightenment.” Indeed that was hardly the case in the past ages when during the Renaissance period a mixed feeling of fear, inferiority and true admiration towards the Islamic world triggered the European inquisitive humanistic interest to focus on the philological study of Arabic sources. While these studies began under different agendas, the mass of European knowledge about the Orient accumulated enough momentum to ensure the establishment of a new discipline in itself that is now called Orientalism (Lewis 1993, 12–13, 101, 14). Once the European perspective was subjected to a secularized optic, the scholarly discourse on Islam was permeated by new conceptual categories that, although not entirely divorced from earlier spiritual preconceptions, relegated the Islamic civilization to the unjust status of a study object. In order to understand this European development, it is of great use to make resort to the extremely influential work of the American cultural critic Edward Said. His theorization of the concept of Orientalism continues to be considered as an analytical standard when approaching such a cultural and intellectually fluid area of research. For E. Said Orientalism represents the enormous corpus of European writings and knowledge concerning the Orient, which despite its multiple levels of complexity and ambivalence, acted as a medium through which everything associated with the East was being evaluated and understood. At its most basic form, Orientalism operated by navigating the patterns of a profound dichotomy between a European civilization defined in the Enlightened modern terms of progress, reason, secularity and an external Oriental world (civilization), which, apart from its inherent exoticism, was still clinging to mysticism, patrimonialism and stagnation. This view, seconded by the scholarly authority that it commanded and the knowledge it bestowed upon its

48

Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism

students, placed the West and the Westerner in particular on a position of domination and superiority when faced with the realities of the Eastern world. Once the colonial project was well on its way, European Orientalism became a necessary tool in the arsenal of any self-conscious colonial administrator. His task would have been made easy by the structure of Orientalist knowledge, which was organized and transformed into a systemized and efficient pedagogical structure under the guidance of linguists and orientalists such as Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan (Said 1979). It was of little importance that this discourse was ultimately subjecting entire cultures and civilizations to a relativist and reductionist exercise in which the elements that were too complicated or complex to be included were discarded so that its main line of argumentation remains always attuned to its claim of superiority. The symbiotic relationship that occurred between Orientalism and colonial endeavors is best illustrated by the enormous quantity of works that were produced during the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Without any doubt this relationship was extremely beneficial to both their narrative and practical manifestations, most likely because of the extremely coordinated way in which both discourses and practices were complementing each other. The impact of this colonial-orientalist perspective was not reduced to the cultural and civilizational outlook that produced them but went far beyond rooting itself in the discourse and views of the indigenous intellectual elites. From here, this intellectual discourse, filled with the vast array of colonial argumentation, permeated in time both political and social spheres, inducing a motivation and a societal ideal that was actually connected to European social ideals. Thus in their attempt to fend off the colonial encroachment, first the indigenous religious intelligentsia and then the political elites were forced to transform themselves into the mouthpiece of modernization and progress.

Defensive modernization and self-orientalization In such a case, understanding the nature of European Orientalism and the cultural and civilizational outlook that it both fostered and imposed give us an advantageous opportunity in analyzing the modernization processes that were undertaken by the Muslim political entities that for the most part of the nineteenth century managed to stave off the de facto European colonial encroachment. The nature of modernization is overall a consequence of the Western military and civilizational challenge to which most Muslim polities were subjected during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When describing this process, it is necessary to identify at least

Radu Murea

49

some temporal bearings that will indicate its starting point. Still, such an endeavor is complicated and to a point rendered impossible by the major disparities and gaps that are characteristic to the manifestation of any large-scale historical phenomenon. The scholarly absence of consensus regarding the temporal starting point of modernization in the Middle East adds another shade of complexity to the subject. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, we can safely assume that the military setbacks recorded after 1683 provide us with a European map of decline that in time will induce the need for modernization. Across the Mediterranean, the most representative event for the region, and in this case we might consider it as a starting point of the modernization process in the Middle East, can be considered the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, and with it the destruction of the Mamlukian power base. In the Caspian region, the ascension of the Qajar dynasty at the end of the eighteenth century, although far from the accomplishments of a brilliant military leader like Nader Shah, managed to bring a measure of stability to the Persian monarchy. Stemming firstly from the consequences of the military defeat (Lewis 2002, 7), this process was seen in the beginning, first and foremost, as an act that would, if not ensure the military proneness of the past epochs, at least establish a manageable equilibrium. When such a strategy was deemed inadequate and the Western advance seemed impossible to stop, the former process of modernization was forcibly reevaluated and consciously enlarged in the hope that it would provide a much needed respite. At this phase, when the new measures aiming at modernization started to produce some short-lived results, both the Islamic intelligentsia and political leaders found themselves confronting a new range of problems that were now emerging from within their own societies. These effects, not all benign, meant that the aforementioned process of selective modernization had to be constantly evaluated and reevaluated in order to eliminate the contradictions between modernization/novelty and tradition. To understand this process of selective (albeit defensive) modernization of Muslim polities it would be of use to appropriate, at least allegorically, the principle of action and reaction corresponding to Isaac Newton’s third Law of Motion, which states that for every action there is an opposite equal reaction. In this vein we concede that Muslim political entities were seldom a docile student of Western aggression and every act directed at them, be it military, economic or political, would produce, if not an immediate response, at least one that would attempt at countering the foreseeable effects of the intrusion. The concept of defensive modernization, as theorized by Crawford Young (1982, 83–92), defines this process as the resultant of the transplantation of the Enlightened European idea of progress into a civilization defined by

50

Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism

a cosmology that lacks among its tenets the conception of social progress. As in the case of Islam, such a tension would provoke both political leaders and religious or new-established secular intellectual elites to seek and develop intuitive new patterns by which foreign concepts and ideas could be extracted from their European filiation and accommodated to an Islamic setting. An inventory of the major intellectual representatives of this current, the prime architects of what historian André Miquel (1968) called the “great debate of Islam with modernity,” would most likely involve the names of scholars like Khair al-Din al-Tunisi (1820/2–79), Rifaat al-Tahtawi (1801–73), Abdul-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1849–1902), Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–97) and Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905). We must recognize the fact that their intellectual, political and cultural mark upon the Muslim society of the nineteenth century must be understood in terms and categories inscribed not only to the process of selective (defensive) modernization but also as affected by, at times, an unconscious drive towards self-orientalization. Khair al-Din al-Tunisi deserves mention especially because of the high political offices that he held, both in Tunis and Constantinople. Influenced by his contact with the French cultural and political environment, he will support the accommodation of European institutions and political ideas to an Islamic context, finding in each case counterparts in Islamic history. His argumentation asks for a process of emulation in which the elements that ensured European progress and prosperity like a constitutional government, the rule of law, individual and political freedom and a true separation of powers are not only to be found in the original teachings of Islam but will result in the prosperity of Islamic society (Black 2011, 290– 93). Also influenced by French culture, the Egyptian Rifaat al-Tahtawi is known for translating into Arabic the text of the French Constitution and the works of Montesquieu and Rousseau (Sitaru 2009, 29–30). He is followed by Abdul-Rahman al-Kawakibi whose Umm al-Qura will focus on the idea of liberty; although intrinsic to Islamic teachings, its loss was to be held accountable for the plight of Muslims (Bouazza 2008, 61–65; Lewis 1991, 110–11). Like al-Tahtawi, al-Kawakibi manages to introduce in the Muslim political dictionary a series of elements characteristic to European liberal political thought through a constant reference to symbols, allegories and political concepts derived from Islamic history and tradition. Among the most important thinkers of the current we find Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and his prentice Muhammad Abduh. Both are the representatives of religious intelligentsia and their modernizing views made available to the Muslim world through the medium of the nascent Muslim press assumed a paradigmatic status across Islam. The mercurial

Radu Murea

51

personality of Al-Afghani is extremely difficult to be catalogued, although without doubt he represents par excellence the itinerant militant scholar. During his career he will assume a number of political offices both in Persia and in the Ottoman Empire, were loyal to his credo of reestablishing the golden days of the caliphate, he will become a prime exponent of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II’s (1842–1918) pan-Islamic ideology. His ideas recognize the state of decrepitude, both political and religious, of the Muslim countries and societies and find the cause of this in the traditions and mores that have crept inside Islam’s spiritual fabric. An ardent supporter of scripturalism and religious orthodoxy, he will advocate the unity of Sunni and Shia Muslims in front of Western aggression. For al-Afghani, as long as Islam was detached from cultural and parochial innovations and reason, equality and rational argumentation will surpass blind imitation of tradition, and nothing could prevent Islam from attaining a universal status (Brown 2000, 95–96; Wild 2006). Muhammad Abduh will also share many of the ideas of al-Afghani, in a sense continuing his work. He is one of the exponents of Egyptian modernism, both his intellectual and public carrier being linked to the political events that shaped the country at the end of the nineteenth century. A scholar of the esteemed al-Azhar University, he will later repudiate the profoundly traditional spirit of his intellectual upbringing and through his publicist activity will become a bearer of the modernizing agenda. Although his attempts at reforming Al-Azhar failed, his ideas based on selective modernization took ground and shaped the twentieth-century generation of Muslim intellectuals. As his mentor, M. Abduh desired change, but unlike him, after the September 1882 defeat at Tell el-Kebir, he will consider that change would be best attained through a process of gradual improvement and progress repudiating political revolution (Adams 1968). Apart from the immense role played in modernizing Muslim societies by the thinkers mentioned above, it must also be clear that their modernizing drive was shaped by the impulses coming from the internalization of Orientalist discourse. Even if all strive towards an Islam returning to its fundamentals, their interpretation and diagnosis of the process bear little resemblance to the intellectual heritage of past epochs of Islam and describe most often the range of their personal self-orientalization.

52

Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism

Concluding the sketch: Self-induced colonialism In his Travail sur l’Algérie1 written in 1841, Alexis de Tocqueville makes a cautious remark regarding the future of the Middle East in the eventuality that the colonial project fails to maintain its grip. Tocqueville is certain that failing to transform Algeria into a French dependency might ultimately give impetus to a Muslim power that will bear no resemblance to the one that the French forces destroyed. This unshaped new Muslim state seems to be able to acquire the exact attributes characteristic to the evolving European modern state. It was not beyond de Tocqueville’s reach to see that the military resistance of Abd al-Qadir was using modern warfare techniques similar to those employed by European armies (Kedourie1980, 4). This belief in a Muslim political renaissance, given the absence of European interference, is also supported by the orientalist Stanley Lane Poole in his brilliant Story of Turkey (1893). Indeed at this stage, progress and modernization seemed possible not only to Muslim political leaders and indigenous intelligentsia but also to foreigner observers, regardless of their orientalist intellectual formation. Unfortunately, the process of defensive modernization together with the vast array of policies designed to modernize the fabric of the Muslim societies did not produce the expected results. The most notable achievement stands in the fact that it managed to limit for a time the extent of colonial aggression and intrusion. However it did not alleviate the larger problem. By internalizing the European notion of progress, and thus becoming self-orientalized, both political and intellectual Muslim elites found themselves at odds with their own societies. Khair al-Din al-Tunisi, for example, was instrumental in the implementation of the reform program that was started by the Beylik of Tunis beginning with 1857. Although these policies introduced a new system of taxation, a centralized bureaucracy and a new European inspired legal code, all crowned by the Constitution of 1861, the main response of Tunisian society coagulated into full-out tribal rebellion against the reforms (Kedourie 1980, 21–22). In the case of the Ottoman Empire, the modernization programs started with Selim III (1789–1807) and were continued with various successes by the next sultans who found an abrupt stop in Hamidian despotism. In the same vein, the Qajar and Khedivial dynasties, both active proponents of costly modernization policies, were quickly introduced to a cycle of 1

Édition électronique réalisée par Jean-Marie Tremblay, complétée le 12 mars 2002 à Chicoutimi, Québec. http://classiques.uqac.ca//classiques/De_tocqueville_alexis/de_la_colonie_algerie/ travail_sur_algerie/travail_sur_algerie.pdf. (last access December 2013).

Radu Murea

53

internationally funded debt that ultimately claimed their independence. Eventually at the end of the nineteenth century, the toxic effects of the defensive modernization programs became apparent and too vivid to be ignored. Apart from the new forms of political tyranny that were a direct result of the new centralized bureaucratic state, unchecked by any social or political actors, and the serious disruption of social patterns, most of the Muslim polities lost their independence. Arguably this process, which we have chosen to consider as self-induced colonialism, is the end result of defensive modernization. Because it transformed all these polities from outdated medieval sultanates, with a loosely defined political and administrative structure, into political actors that displayed all major traits of statehood and instutionality recognizable by a European modern state, defensive modernization made them manageable to any interested European colonial power. In a sense it made them appear as rational and, most important, as predictable; two qualities that corroborated with their military and financial frailty ultimately sealed their colonial fate.

Bibliography Adams, Charles C. 1968. Islamic Modernism in Egypt. A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Mu‫ۊ‬ammad `Abduh. New York: Russell&Russell. Black, Antony. 2011. The History of Islamic Political Thought From the Prophet to the Present. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bouazza, Tayeb. 2008. “From Arabization to Arrogance. The Crisis of Arab Liberalism.” Arab Insight Vol. 2, 1:61–65. Brown, L. Carl. 2000. Religion and State. The Muslim Approach to Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Cardini, Franco. 1999. Europe and Islam. Oxford: Blackwell. De Benoist, Alain. 2002. “Un brève histoire de l’idée de progress.” In Critiques Théoriques, edited by Alain De Benoist, 55–62. Lausanne, Switzerland: L’Age d’Homme. De Tocqueville, Alexis. 1841. Travail sur l’Algérie, http://classiques.uqac. ca//classiques/De_tocqueville_alexis/de_la_colonie_algerie/travail_su r_algerie/travail_sur_algerie.pdf (last access December 2013). Gibb, Hamilton A.R. 1962. Mohammedanism. A Historical Survey. New York: Oxford University Press. Israel, Jonathan. 2010. A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

54

Defensive Modernization and Self-Induced Colonialism

Kedourie, Elie. 1980. Islam in the Modern World and Other Studies. London: Mansell. Lane-Poole, Stanley. 1893. The Story of Turkey. London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Lewis, Bernard. 1991. The Political Language of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. 1993. Islam and the West. New York: Oxford University Press. —. 2002. What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Miquel, André. 1968. L’Islam et sa civilisation: VIIle-XXe siècle. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin. Nisbet, Robert A. 1979. “The Idea of Progress.” Literature of Liberty. A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought Vol. II, 1:7–37. —. 2009. History of the Idea of Progress. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Pollard, Sidney. 1968. The Idea of Progress: History and Society. London: C.A. Watts. Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Sitaru. Laura. 2009. Gândirea Politică Arabă. Concepte cheie între tradiĠie úi inovaĠie. Iaúi: Polirom. Wild, Stefan. 2006. “Political Interpretation of the Qur’Ɨn.” In The Cambridge Companion to Qur’Ɨn, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 273–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Ronald. 2005. A Short History of Progress. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers. Young, Crawford. 1982. “Ideas of progress in the Third World Progress and Its Discontents.” In Progress and its Discontents, edited by Gabriel A. Almond, Marvin Chodorow and Roy Harvey Pearce, 83–92. Berkeley: University of California Press.

COLONIALISM THROUGH EMIGRATION: ITALIAN POLITICS IN LATIN AMERICA BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COMMERCIAL EXPANSION FROM CRISPI TO THE RISE OF FASCISM STEFANO PELAGGI Dalla iniziativa dei suoi figli più energici e colti e dalla saggezza dei suoi governanti dipende se nel secolo ventesimo la nostra patria sarà un piccolo paese, sperduto in un angolo del Mediterraneo, oppure un grande paese espandente la sua civiltà e la sua lingua su due continenti. —Luigi Einaudi

This research is focused on Italian politics in Latin America between nationalism and commercial expansion from Crispi to the rise of fascism. In particular, I will try to describe the connection between emigration and Italian colonial ambition through the analysis of the most influential books that suggested the possibility of creating a Nuova Italia on the other side of the ocean, with some actions that the Kingdom of Italy took in Latin America, which were clearly influenced by these theories. Since the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy emigration had been considered in many ways. Many economists found emigration as an easy solution to the overpopulation of the country; others saw it as a problem that could eventually lead to the dispersion of human resources in the extended area of Italy. Most politicians considered the Italian migration flow as an inevitable consequence of the transition to the industrial economy. Public opinion and conservative politicians, who were concerned about the socialist and anarchist ideologists around the country, highlighted the social benefits of transmigration and the relief of many potential subversives. These groups emphasized emigration as a natural solution for the social conflict that had been growing in Italy. The Vatican, which, at that time, was still not involved in the political debate of the country, saw the diaspora movement as a menace to the ethical and religious background of the Italian emigrants who went abroad. The Catholic

56

Colonialism through Emigration

Church was concerned about the religious integrity of the emigrants and about the dissolution of familiar ties in the households that were temporally divided. Emigration has also been a big economic resource that encouraged, through remittances from abroad, the development of some depressed areas, especially in the south and northeast of the peninsula (Massullo 2009). In 1881, after the establishment of the French Protectorate in Tunis, the Italian colonial ambition quickly and virulently started to rise. Politicians, academics, economists and geographers started considering the huge masses living outside the country as a possible resource for colonial expansion. Most of the debates around colonialism, and in particular the ones focused on the use of the migration flow as the key factor for colonial expansion, started in the Società Geografica Italiana. Some historians frequently refer to the Geographic Society during those years as the colonial laboratory in Italy. It is possible to roughly identify two main theories amongst the Italian colonialists during those years: Africanisti and Orientalisti (Vernassa 1996). The Africanisti theorized on a military occupation of the few African countries that had not been already under colonial influence and were basically supporting the idea of il commercio che segue la bandiera (the trade that follows the flag). The Orientalisti suggested a simple commercial expansion without any military occupation. All of the theories that involved the use of the migration flow refer to the Orientalisti because an Italian military occupation in Latin America was not in any way feasible in those years when the Monroe Doctrine was the key framework in the region. Historiography during the Fascist period started to refer to the Italian diaspora as a colony, but the idea of “popular colonialism” that could combine the migration flow with the Italian interests in foreign policy had began in 1860. Between 1876 and 1925, nine million Italians left the country to find a new life in Latin America (Soave 2008)—the region that symbolized a mythical area for all those who were in a serious need of a place with better life conditions or simply were in search of venture. More than two thirds of remittances from abroad in 1872 came from Latin America (Florenzano 1874) and the continent became well know all over Italy as a place to start a new life. All the research dedicated to the possibility of using the emigrants to extend the Italian influence abroad in those years was focused on Latin America. The Italian interests in the region always have referred to the national diaspora community. Almost all of the documents that were connected with parliamentary proceedings and political debates about Latin America contain a reference about the emigrants. Basically, there is a strong link between Latin America, emigration and colonialism since all the issues are

Stefano Pelaggi

57

strongly connected. Several books inspired the vision of an expansion in Latin America; Gerolamo Boccardo in 1864 wrote Le colonie e l’Italia, in which he analyzed the possibilities of the Italians to gain influence in Latin America through the migrants. Boccardo recognizes this way as the most effective and the only viable option for the Italians to expand their territory according to the political, social and economic conditions. The author refers to the Italian colonies overseas as colonie transmarine. In 1870, Paolo Mantegazza wrote a book Rio de La Plata e Tenerife that represented a great resource for all the emigrants for several decades. It is mainly a travel book that contains several facts regarding the structure of Latin American society and it was used by many skilled emigrants as a guidebook to understand the South American social organization (Mantegazza 1870). Mantegazza was amongst the first to identify the Plata region as the most suitable for Italian emigration—e l’Italia non può trovare in nessun luogo terreno più opportuno ai suoi emigranti quanto nel Rio de la Plata. In 1900, twenty-five-year-old Luigi Einauidi wrote a book that inspired many emigrants on their way to Latin America. The Prince Merchant, the English translation of his work, is Einaudi’s public answer to the debate with the English economist Walter Bagehot. The theme of the controversy was that, in Bagehot’s interpretation, in those days it was not possible any more to have an Italian entrepreneur who could be compared with the ones in the Renaissance era (Einaudi 1900). Einaudi wrote this book that is entirely focused on Enrico dell’Acqua, a merchant prince in the author’s definition, and on his activity in Latin America. He wanted to show to the entrepreneurs and to the banks the history of a great business and to rebuild the myth of the enlightened Renaissance’s merchant. Brunialti (1897) in Le Colonie degli italiani highlights emigration as one of the worst problems that the Kingdom of Italy was facing. In his own words, 100,000 emigrants who leave Italy are a loss that can be compared to an army that loses 100,000 soldiers on a battlefield. Brunialti suggests that the easiest way and the first goal for the Italian colonial policy should be to direct, peacefully, through agreement and financial aid, the largest number of emigrants to the Plata region. He was part of the group of young and enthusiastic thinkers led by Cesare Correnti, in which we can find Orazio Antinori, Manfredo Camperio, Clemente Maraini, Giambattisti Beccari. All the groups gathered around the Geographic Society and the Giornale delle Colonie, the official journal where the Latin American colonial option was promoted against the African one. This is a translation from an extract of a speech that Brunialti made in the Camera dei Deputati in 1887: “I am sure that if those 100,000 Italians who left Italy will be directed to the Plata Region, in a few years

58

Colonialism through Emigration

that region will become a new Italy, a state where we will be the most influential.” Answering to this debate, Prime Minister Depretis agreed on all the statements made by Brunialti and underlined the necessity to guide the migration flow to specific countries. All the thinkers were not trying to find the best and the most practical solution for the Italian emigrants. The main effort was to build a strong connection with the overseas countries, expand the Italian influence in Latin America and create an environment similar to the Genoese colonies that had been widespread in the Mediterranean, in North Africa and in the Black Sea until the fifteenth century. Cristoforo Negri, the founder of the Società Geografica Italiana, was one of the greatest promoters of the “African option,” but in his early years he strongly supported the choice of Latin America for Italian colonial expansion. In the book La grandezza italiana, he stated that in the Plata region the only way to be respected is through a gunship policy (Negri 1864). Since then, in the region, Italy has used the so-called gunboat diplomacy. In 1882, Commander De Amezaga, with the corvette Caracciolo, freed two Italian citizens in Uruguay who were accused of murder and did the same one year later in Ecuador. The two main episodes that describe the aggressive Italian politics in Latin America are the Cerruti Affair and the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902–1903. In June 1885, Mancini, the Italian minister of foreign affairs, decided to send a cruiser, Flavio Gioia, to Colombia. The properties of Ernesto Cerruti, an Italian citizen, had been impounded a few months before, under charges of cooperation with the insurgent liberal forces during the Colombian civil war. Commander Filippo Colabianchi received orders from the Ministry of the Navy to act with firm decision against Colombia and on August 5, after Cerruti had been jailed in Bonaventura, he was ordered to surround the island and occupy the mainland. The Italian army put an explosive charge in the strategic point and searched every train leaving the island until two days later when Ernesto Cerruti was released during vibrant protests of the Colombian authorities (Tamburini 2006). This fact and the subsequent demand for compensation by Cerruti were the causes of the twenty-six-year diplomatic conflict between Colombia and Italy, which eventually led to the intervention of Spain and the United States of America as arbitrators, as well as to a myriad of official publications, civil lawsuits in Italian courts and warships being sent to Colombian harbors in order to uphold the claims of Italy in 1888. In 1902– 1903, Italy joined Great Britain and Germany in a naval blockade against Venezuela after President Cipriano Castro’s refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in the recent Venezuelan civil

Stefano Pelaggi

59

war. The British, German and Italian navies attacked various Venezuelan ships and bombarded various forts on the shore (Vernassa 1980). The Italian gunboat diplomacy in Latin America was made in order to gain and maintain the Italian influence in the region, but all the actions were started in the defense of the rights of Italian emigrants abroad. After the First World War, another Latin American country became an option for a sort of colonial expansion in the region; Ecuador nearly became an Italian protectorate. Paolo Soave in his La scoperta geopolitica dell’Ecuador. Mire espansionistiche dell’Italia ed egemonia del dollaro 1919–1945 describes the Italian effort to gain influence in Ecuador mainly with a military mission that lasted until the Second World War. Various ground studies in Ecuador were taken for several years in the attempt to replicate the expansion model led by Giuseppe Volpi in that period in the Balkans (Soave). With the rise of fascism, the entire concept of emigration changed in Italy. Fascism started using the expression italiani all’estero (Italians abroad) instead of emigrants and created the organization Fasci all’estero (Fasci Abroad) (Franzina and Sanfilippo 2003). The first association appeared in New York in May 1921 and after one year there were 150 Fasci Abroad all around the world. The main goal of the association was to build a strong connection between the Italian community abroad and Italy, to discipline the emigrants and to encourage them to join the Italian new political path. Mussolini tried to use the community abroad as a resource for the Italian needs in foreign affairs. This strategy was effective at the beginning, but it was a total failure in the long run. Initially, the Italian community abroad was pleased with a renascent approach towards their problems and with a new consideration from the Italian government. The emigrants were not seen any more as the symbol of the failure of the Italian economy. The Fascists’ effort to identify the Italians abroad as the height of national civilization outside Italy was gratifying to the diaspora communities, but these feelings did not change the loyalty to their countries of adoption. The great number of people with Italian background who joined the army and went to war against Italy in the Second World War is a clear demonstration that the Fascist efforts to spread a sense of belonging amongst the community ware not effective. All over Latin America the Fasci Abroad had a very large diffusion, but they generated political conflicts amongst the community. In Argentina, between 1921 and 1932, there were a large number of incidents, including deaths and public riots inside the Italian community between Fascists and antiFascists (Zanatta 2003). In some other Latin American countries, in particular in Brazil, the Fasci Abroad gained some success, mostly due to

60

Colonialism through Emigration

the large influence that the Fascist ideology had in the Brazilian government in those years. In conclusion, during all those decades Italy had never been able to build strong relations with Latin America through its community. There are many reasons behind this failure; first of all Latin America has never been a priority of Italian foreign policy. The influence of the United States on the continent was growing in those years and all the other European countries, England and Germany above all, were making many efforts to gain influence. The Italian community in Latin America never has been considered a resource for Italy. The Italian government has never been able to represent their interests and has never tried to establish strong commercial links with the community. The Italian diaspora has influenced national culture in several countries, especially in Argentina, Uruguay and in the southern part of Brazil, but the situation was very different from La Nuova Italia that had been theorized by the post-Risorgimental political scientists who were enthusiastically looking at the shore of Plata. All the efforts made by the group that gathered around the Società Geografica gave just a contribution to the myth of Latin America as a promised land for the next century. The aggressive actions, known as gunboat diplomacy, in which Italy took part in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, were strongly inspired by the work of this group. The early fascism tried to use the diaspora communities as factors of expansion and to develop a sense of belonging to their mother country with some success. After 1935, with the deterioration of the relationship with most of the European nations and the United States, for the Italian emigrants the conflict between their new country and Italy became too strong, and they all showed loyalty to the nations of adoption. This demonstrates that the concept of using Italian communities to gain influence in a foreign country was not feasible.

Bibliography Brunialti, Attilio. 1897. Le Colonie degli italiani. Turin: Unione Tipografico Editrice. Einaudi, Luigi. 1900. Un principe mercante. Studio sull’espansione coloniale. Turin: Fratelli Bocca Editori. Florenzano, Giovanni. 1874. Della emigrazione italiana in America comparata alle altre emigrazioni europee. Naples: Francesco Giannini Editore. Franzina, Emilio, and Matteo Sanfilippo in “Introduzione.” Franzina Emilio and Sanfilippo Matteo. 2003. Il fascismo e gli emigrati. La

Stefano Pelaggi

61

parabola del Fasci italiani all’estero (1920-1943). Rome-Bari: Laterza. Mantegazza, Paolo. 1870. Rio de La Plata e Tenerife. Viaggi e studi. Milan: Gaetano Brignola Editore. Massullo, Gino. 2009. “Economia delle rimesse.” In Bevilacqua Piero and De Clementi Andreina and Franzina Emilio. 2009. Storia dell’emigrazione italiana. Rome: Donzelli. Negri, Cristoforo. 1864. La grandezza italiana. Studi, confronti e desiderii. Turin: Paravia. Soave, Paolo. 2008. La scoperta geopolitica dell’Ecuador: mire espansionistiche dell’Italia ed egemonia del dollaro, 1919-1945. Milan: Franco Angeli. Tamburini, Francesco. 2006. “Le operazioni di ‘gunboat diplomacy’ della Regia Marina contro la Colombia nel 1885 e nel 1898.” Bollettino d´Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare a. XX: 71/123. Vernassa, Maurizio. 1980. Emigrazione, diplomazia e cannoniere. L’intervento italiano in Venezuela (1902-1903). Livorno: Editrice Stella. —. 1996. All’origine dell’interessamento italiano per l’America Latina. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Zanatta, Loris. 2003. “I Fasci in Argentina negli anni Trenta.” In Il fascismo e gli emigrati. La parabola del Fasci italiani all’estero (1920-1943), edited by Franzina Emilio and Matteo Sanfilippo, 140– 51. Rome-Bari: Laterza.

THE RUSSIAN ATTEMPT TO COLONIZE EAST AFRICA ROBERTO REALI Colonial expansion in Africa is one of the most interesting perspectives for the illustration of the relationship between nations and empires during the second half of the nineteenth century. On the African continent different political games and commercial policies were played, and the difference between them lies in the reasons and motives that came to be called the “scramble for Africa.” After a cursory examination, this event can be seen as a mere territorial occupation of the crumbling Ottoman Empire by the nations of Europe. Besides the historical protagonists of such stories, the Russian Empire also took part in the scramble for Africa. Moscow fought a major battle in Central Asia against the British Empire and the African continent was the new scenario of the conflict. But for the European countries, Africa was the land of the new frontier and this ancient unexplored continent became a new test for the economic and military prestige of Germany, England, France and Italy. In no time, the whole continent was, at least on paper, granted as a colony to various countries, but the path to such a division is very different from the American race to the West and Moscow’s expansion to the East. Public opinion in various European countries at first refused to support colonization. The burden on the state for the maintenance of colonies was considered to be an increase in costs and a useless enterprise. This same public opinion, however, was very sensitive to the possibility of economic expansion to the virgin territories. Business enterprise, the exploitation of natural resources to enhance industrial development and the need of civilization in the name of the new democrats and liberals became the ideological weapons for the start of the African adventure. This project was difficult and complex. “The European governments had to rely on private capital to support the costs of the transformation of Africa. Wisely chosen companies had to invest in the administration and security of the territories, in exchange for the rights and the exploitation of resources. … But as the need for the investment was growing, the

Roberto Reali

63

enthusiasm declined. The ‘Imperial British East Africa Company’ spent about four shillings for every square kilometer of territory that required development and administration and the ‘German East Africa Company’ was no exception” (Reader 2011, 496). Even Italy’s involvement in the adventure in Africa was similar to that of the other nations. The foreign minister at that time, Pasquale Stanislao Mancini said: “Italy claims maritime stations, airports, docks, warehouses anywhere in the world and the legitimate participation of the country to the benefits of expanded free trade and … rules to follow ‘with an eye’ all the peoples of Europe in the uncharted regions, or not yet fertilized by civilization … and to seek every opportunity to safeguard the rights of Italy” (Zaghi 1955, 47). The British historian Eric Hobsbawm has summarized the reasons, the causes and principles of this new colonial period: “The new imperialism was the product of an international economy based on the rivalry of various industrial economic competitors intensified by economic tensions of the 1880s. It does not follow that this or that colony was seen as a future paradise … .Colonies could simply be a convenient base, a springboard for a regional market penetration” (Hobsbawn 2005, 79). However, the Russian attempt to create a colony in Africa according to this logic may be contradictory. The Russian expansion in Asia was carried out with a very different motivation, related to the traditional glory of the tsar and the desire to create an increasingly wider area for the Russian power. Yet the Russian attempt in Africa was not simply an adventure or a marginal episode. The Russian presence in East Africa accompanied the whole process of colonization of that part of the continent, and the role played by Moscow in the consolidation of balance in that region was strategic. There were, in 1884, a series of Russian military missions that had the purpose to establish a contact with the Negus and his powerful rival, the king of Shoa Menelik, and after the Italian defeat at Adowa, Russia became an important diplomatic partner for the signing of the peace treaty and the issue of Italian prisoners deported to Addis Abeba. Carlo Zaghi has analyzed the story of the Russian attempt to build its own political influence in Africa. The Italian researcher has shown, with great accuracy, the course of history identifying the African attempt of Moscow as part of a wider action to combat the English who opposed Russian expansion in other regions: the Balkans and Central Asia. Moscow’s real intention in its attempt to penetrate Africa was not really to gain territorial assets or to exploit its resources, but it was to find a way to put pressure on England by squeezing it, so to speak, between two fronts.

64

The Russian Attempt to Colonize East Africa

From Asia and the Red Sea, the Russians made the next strategic move in the Big Game: the struggle to conquest the regions that border the Indian Ocean. This game necessarily involved also Italy: “Russia, fully engaged in Asia in a fierce duel with England, determined to bar the door through India, peeps in Ethiopia from 1885 to 1910, during the most acute crisis, but as an element of retaliation against Italy for the policy of solidarity flaunted it in all disputes in which the government of St. Petersburg was committed (such as the Bulgarian question)” (Zaghi 1984, 101; Hopkirk 2006). The Russian defeat in the Crimean War prompted Moscow to try different scenarios and new ways of territorial expansion. The European alliance and the Ottoman Empire managed to curb the race to the Mediterranean, but the tsar found in the Asian continent and its opportunities the solution for the increase of Russian political prestige at the international level and for the continuation of its role as a great vital power. Africa, according to Zaghi, looked like an isolated episode, or an attempt not to be trusted too much, but actually, it was a piece on the chessboard. International historiography has given little attention to the Russian attempt, and Zaghi’s work is, after more than thirty years, the only detailed and comprehensive analysis. Anglo-Saxon historiography refers to a work largely inaccurate, published in the 1950s (Czeslaw 1958, 20–28; Wesseling 2001, 553). According to Zaghi, however, the Russian attempt confirms its weak character. The Russian settlement on the shores of the Red Sea in 1888–89 is described as a “grotesque adventure halfway between the religious mission, adventure, military and diplomatic failure.” Cossack Achinov,1 who, under the auspices of the Slavic exponents, tried to achieve a religious link between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Coptic clergy of Ethiopia, brought the new Russian colony at the same level as the Free State of Congo, which Leopold II of Belgium wanted to liberate from slavery. The real aim, as with all the other powers in Africa, was the opportunity to create a space for its political and military influence: “Ethiopia was not so much a fertile ground for the expansion of Orthodox propaganda, especially as a promising field of action to exploit and plunder freely” (Zaghi 1972, 77). That this attempt of colonization has the same characteristics as that of the previous European nations can clearly be understood by analyzing the history of the first settlements that gave rise to future colonies. The story 1

The spelling of the name, as will be seen, varies depending on the transliteration of various documents in different languages. We prefer to use this variety.

Roberto Reali

65

of the port of Assab, purchased by Giuseppe Sapeto on behalf of the benevolent Rubattino Navy Company, with the support of the Italian government interested in the establishment of a service station for ships, is just well-known (Del Boca 2001, 38–39). The attempts by Robert Stanley for Leopold II of Belgium are not, after all, very different. The British journalist and adventurer was “marching from the north-west with few resources and with great energy to the lower region [in order to] nip the ‘archaeological’ claims by the Portuguese on the coasts of Congo, based, it is true, on questionable historical rights, but also on London’s ruthless support for reasons easy to understand, and Stanley also establishes the interior chains of stations with European residents” (Zaghi 1984, 999). During the “heroic” period of European settlement in Africa, the governments’ uncertainty about these adventures is common history: from the Belgian government’s opposition to the creation of a colony state to Italy that was questioning the purpose and the goal of continuing a Red Sea adventure that was so far from its real aim of expansion represented by the Eastern Mediterranean. Private law, commercial purchase, agreements with a local sultan, seen as a landowner rather than as a political representative, were the solutions that allowed the acquisition of territory without involving publicly the choices of state governments. Companies that were more or less private organizations were responsible to their members and not to the government. One of the most interesting issues is the German case. Germans declared themselves not interested in territorial expansion in Africa, but they allowed and encouraged the creation of several commercial companies. In 1868 the Centralverein fur Handelsgeographie Forderung deutscher und Interessen in Auslande promoted the study of German interests abroad. In 1882 the Deutscher Kolonialverein was born in Frankfurt, and had 15,000 members in 1885. Two years later, Charles Peters founded the Gesellschaft für deutsche Kolonisation and its merger in 1887 resulted in a powerful colonial organization, the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, which centralized and promoted the leading German colonial efforts (Zaghi 1984, 976). This was no time for dreams related to the weltpolitik of William II, but it was not even time to ban the Hanseatic League or other commercial companies under private law to create a basis for probable national territorial claims. The British allowed the West India Company, a privately held company, to win some eastern regions of the Red Sea, and during various agreements for the creation of colonies to the south of the Arabian

66

The Russian Attempt to Colonize East Africa

Peninsula and the land of the Somalis, the private army of this company became an important military resource. The British government defined more clearly its political interests in the valley of the Nile and Egypt only after the siege and the fall of Khartoum and the death of Gordon Pasha. If we consider the temporal context, Moscow’s attempt to create a territorial space in Africa does not differ from the other episodes of settlement and also had an adventurous and ambiguous character. At this stage it is very difficult to distinguish between simple missions of exploration, trade settlements, attempts to evangelize tribes and the establishment of service stations for refueling ships. Every action is actually aimed at creating a precedent. Every document that proves the presence of a space in Africa is the cause of the claims for that territory in diplomatic and political discussions. And no country eschewed these methods for the acquisition of rights for territorial occupation. The Italian counselor Bartolè Viale understood the situation when, on August 14, 1888, he reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about an article in the Russian newspaper The Messenger of Kronstad in which the author says: “I cannot see the reason to mock the particular enterprise of a group of Cossacks, as I do not know why Mr. Ascinov and companions are worse than those British, German and Italian pioneers, who established the basis of many colonies and farms on the banks of the maritime globe. … While many of those pioneers cannot show up at home, Mr. Ascinov, who did not do anything dishonest, quietly comes and goes from Russia having nothing to fear. As regards the attempts to establish a colony of Russian Cossacks on the shore of Africa, this is a personal thing that he had been taken to task and confidence of a meeting of modest Cossacks, eager to find themselves on the other sites of colonization, different, for example, from the Dobruja, where they currently live incomparably worse under Romanian sovereignty.”2 If Zaghi considers the Cossack adventure of 1888 as a miserable expedition during which people were dragged into an absurd and incredible adventure, out of reality and history (Zaghi 1972, 90), one cannot, however, attempt to separate this from the general African context of the period and judge it with the benefit of hindsight. The attempt enrolled in the precise manner as those already undertaken even by the modern Great Powers such as France or England. Even modern countries used political and legal ambiguity. They also knew, however, that these socalled episodes could determine the success or failure of their colonial future. 2

Zaghi’s Archive, 138.02, 25. The Archive of Carlo Zaghi is guarded at the Local Library of Argenta. I thank Ms. Benedetta Bolognesi for her collaboration.

Roberto Reali

67

The important moment of the whole Russian affair is the period of 1884–85. The Egyptian defeat by the Mahdi Army in Sudan forced the withdrawal of the troops from the coast of the Red Sea. The obvious difficulty of the European nations to manage this sudden loss and at the same time the British political and military weakness during the siege of Khartoum allowed all the other states involved in the stabilization of the domains on the Red Sea to try to win the big games for the control of the coast. Italy, for example, was invited by the British to occupy the port of Massawa in spite of the Hewitt Treaty: it made it clear that the main port on the Red Sea was entrusted to Negus Johannes. The same English redefined their strategy towards the defense of the Nile by engaging in the history of Egypt. Also the Germans, in those years, began to make contacts with the Sultan of Zanzibar to create the basis for a future colonial commerce. The situation was much more difficult for France. At that time, Paris had a settlement in the Gulf of Tadjoura, south of Assab. This settlement service was located in one of the most inhospitable regions of the continent, the Danakil, and was in a profound weakness and isolation. Obock, a site occupied by the French, was an outpost and not a strategic objective. The sultan who sold a territorial concession to the French very similar to that of Italian Assab complained that the fee they agreed upon was now paid and the port of Obock was only a lost point on the coast of the most inaccessible and most hostile part of that sea. The person who understood the weakness of the settlement is Antonio Cecchi, the Italian explorer, who wrote to Mancini after the occupation of Massawa, to put the Italian flag also in the ports of Berbera and Zeyla: “if such a thing would happen there would be no more need to fear the competition of our jealous neighbors. And Obock itself, deprived of any element of commercial life, would ultimately become their burden more than a stopover of some use.”3 During the same period, Costantino Nigra, the Italian ambassador in London, wrote to the Italian foreign minister about concrete signs in Moscow to take territories in the area with the usual reasons: “A Russian project for a coal deposit in the Red Sea, and the need for Russia to cultivate good relations with Abyssinia are being discussed now.”4 From these documents that date back to 1884/5, it can be clearly understood that the attempt of Cossack Ataman in 1888 was not an isolated incident; the entire European diplomatic system was aware of the Russian design five years earlier. 3 4

Antonio Cecchi to Minister Mancini (Zaghi 1955, 181, doc. 35). Minister Mancini to Conte Nigra (Zaghi 1955, 160, doc. 15).

68

The Russian Attempt to Colonize East Africa

The story about the colony of New Moscow is more intricate and complex. It is actually the real attempt to create a stable Russian colony on the African coast. Achinov’s trip to Paris in 1887 falls entirely within the strategy described by Nigra. Moscow, in the face of the Anglo-English defeat in Sudan, used the Orthodox Holy Synod and its links with the Coptic Church in Jerusalem to build the first step towards the creation of a territorial base on the Red Sea. The same Achinov made contacts with the nationalist circles in Paris to organize a shipment of weapons in favor of Ethiopia. The Cossack also signed an agreement, be it true or false, which shows the interest of a part of French political society to behave like the British in Massawa, favoring their own ally in creating a colony. Achinov wrote: “French caravans, as well as Russian caravans, must be defended, excluding those from other countries. Abyssinian caravans must be directed towards the French ports. Paths for transport must be created between Abyssinia and the French colony, in particular in order to protect the caravans from the attacks of the Danakil whose chief Sultan Mohammed Leita promised support during my last mission” (De Costantin 1891, 83). The Russian strategy falls perfectly into what seems to be the standard of all the attempts to obtain territorial African law. Only the official reason is different. The Russian goal for expansion is similar to those that had led to the conflict with the Ottoman Empire: “immediate purpose of the mission, operate on the shores of the Red Sea and Abyssinia, and found churches and monasteries to teach people the dogmas of the Orthodox Church. Ultimate goal: the union of the two Russian and Abyssinian churches to be achieved over time through a methodical work of contacts and proselytizing. Unusual incident in the new shipment, Acinov no longer operates like before as a free Cossack or an isolated traveler, but as a voluntary agent (better to say official), a politician and religious person of the Orthodox Church and of the most ardent nationalist environments” (Zaghi 1972, 81). Regarding the African Congress in Berlin, the role played by Cossack Achinov was to formally request or to actually obtain from France the encouragement for a Russian colony in a territory that France itself was not able to expand. The presence of Russia, as an ally of Paris, against the British and Italian hegemonic designs in the region was consistent with the strategy of the European colonies. It also appeared like a consistent ambiguity held by the tsarist government in this crucial passage in which the agreements and the support required from France were searched in “private” and the purpose of the whole operation was covered by religious dialogue. The Russian tactic was, however, known to the European

Roberto Reali

69

chancelleries at least from the first attempts of the tsarist expansion in the Balkans. The expedition of 1888 that led to the establishment of a colony, New Moscow, in the fort of Sagallo in the Gulf of Tadjura, was therefore not a grotesque adventure. On the contrary, it attracted the interest of both the circles close to Alexander III in Moscow and the French nationalists in Paris. The same Achinov succeeded very well in muddying the waters and had never mentioned the creation of a permanent station on the Russian coast of Africa. He spoke of arranging an arms trade, sending Orthodox priests to the Abyssinian empire and Coptic priests to Moscow, but he was silent, as it had happened in the case of Assab to Italy, about the real aim of the initiative: to become, in the name of the tsar, the owner of a piece of land of Africa where to raise the Russian flag next to the French, Belgian, German or Italian ones. The French, however, reacted to this initiative in an unexpected way by cannon firing on the fort occupied by the Russians. In front of the Russian tricolor flag with the cross of Saint Andrew, the French ships did not hesitate to break down every symbol on the Russian coast. The answer given by Renè Goblet to a parliamentary question clarifies the reasons for this behavior: “What was the need to bomb Sagallo, to make Achinoff leave, he who had not come to stay? Goblet: Achinoff was installed on a territory belonging to France and had raised a foreign flag and this was intolerable” (De Constantin 1891, 205). The French attack led to an official protest from Paris to Moscow and to the denial of the involvement of the Russian government in the initiative. The Russians, guilty of an unpardonable crime, which placed the embarrassed tsar in front of their own ally, suffered an exemplary sentence but, as it happened, in a few months it turned into an imperial pardon for Achinov and a golden exile for Orthodox priests involved in the affair. The Russians did not leave the African scene and continued with diplomatic missions that placed them in direct contact with British interests in the region and that would be a real disturbance to Italians who were committed to bring Abyssinia or the Kingdom of Shoa under their protectorate. Yet, the Achinov episode is the only one that can be considered in technical terms as a true attempt to colonize the territory and acquire the rights for the control of Africa. The point that arouses the greatest perplexity is not the Russian attempt to take a part of the African continent, but the French decision to bomb its allies. Having excluded the possibility of a futile adventure, the colony of New Moscow remained, even for Charles Zaghi, an unrealistic attempt, a weird episode, marginal and doomed to failure. The diplomatic exchange

70

The Russian Attempt to Colonize East Africa

that took place between England and Italy about Massawa was not successful between Paris and Moscow. And it is interesting to notice, however, that from that moment, the French commitment in the Danakil, regarding economic and military investments, grew exponentially.5 That decision, however, becomes understandable when one considers that the war being fought in this region was not only military but political, diplomatic and commercial. A memo to the minister of foreign affairs from 1889 written by Cesare Nerazzini, one of the protagonists of the dialogue between Italy and the Kingdom of Shoa, makes it clear that the Russian strategy had been fully understood: “The attempts made by the Cossack Atchinoff last February, having as a goal maybe even the occupation of Harrar, which impressed so much the government of Shoa, can help support our assertions, and give a decisive strike to the intelligence of the governor of Harrar.”6 Nerazzini immediately grasped that the Russian colonial attempt could make much harder the conflict that was taking place at that time between France, Italy and the Kingdom of Shoa for the conquest of Harrar, one of the richest and most fertile regions of East Africa. The Russian presence with the right of penetration from the coast to the inner region, as agreed in Berlin, would turn the conflict between the two European nations, France and Italy, into a larger and possibly unpredictable conflict. The colony would transform Russia from a simple diplomatic witness into an active player in the delicate issue involving Africa in a larger and complex balance. The struggle between empires and nations in this desolate and hidden part of the African continent played a major role. Despite the declared alliances, the French fear of the creation of a Russian colony in the African territory was a signal in front of Moscow with a new role as a colonial power in Africa; the whole concert of the European powers considered Paris responsible for breaking the political balance. Russia was a disturbing factor, too large to get into a diplomatic agreement with England and Germany for the division of the continent. More than individual alliances, what really mattered was the concert of the new nations and the complex and subtle relationship that bound everyone, 5

Zaghi’s Archive contains, among others, the project for the construction of a French railway for the commercial exploitation of Lake Assal: an impressive work for a region so inaccessible because of its elevation. A company for the exploitation of salt marshes was also formed, which became the subject of the political and diplomatic war between France, Italy and the Kingdom of Shoa, given its characteristics as a clear instrument of colonial penetration into inner regions. 6 Zaghi’s Archive, 138.02, 26.

Roberto Reali

71

friends and enemies, to find an agreement to divide the immense territory using different strategies and without too much bloodshed. A mortal enemy of England at the table of that division would compromise that possibility forever. The cannons of Sagallo were the signal that Africa was a land for the empires of the new nations and none of the other Great Powers could intervene without their common consent. Berlin marked this legal and political process without exception. All this, however, was based on the fact that no fragment of African land was to be held in any way, public or private, by others external to the “club.” Achinov learned a hard lesson with this new methodology of international relations in Africa, which found a real testing ground.

Bibliography De Costantin, Jean Robert. 1891. L’Archimandrite Paisi et l’Ataman Achinoff. Une Expedition religieuse en Abyssinie. Paris: 83. Del Boca, Angelo. 2001. Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale. Milan: Mondadori. Hobsbawn, Eric. 2005. L’Età degli Imperi 1875-1914. Bari: Laterza. Hopkirk, Peter. 2006. Il Grande Gioco. I servizi segreti in Asia centrale. Milan: Adelphi. Jesman, Czeslaw. 1958. The Russians in Ethiopia. An Essay in Futility. London: Publishing Group, Incorporated. Reader, John. 2011. Africa. Biografia di un continente. Milan: Mondadori. Schmitt, Carl. 1991. Il Nomos della Terra nel diritto internazionale dello Jus Publicum Europaeum. Milan: Adelphi. Wesseling, Henri. 2001. La spartizione dell’Africa 1880-1914. Milan: Mondadori. Zaghi, Carlo. 1984. La Conquista dell’Africa, Studi e Ricerche. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale. —. 1955. P.S. Mancini, l’Africa e il problema del Mediterraneo 18841885. Rome: G. Casini. —. 1972. I Russi in Etiopia. Naples: Guida.

CHAPTER ELEVEN MODELS OF DECOLONIZATION SOUTH SUDAN: AN OUTLIER IN POSTCOLONIAL AFRICAN NATION-BUILDING? OLE FRAHM Sub-Saharan African nationalism and nation-building in the postcolonial period have been characterized by a couple of largely successive developments: (1) state-driven inclusive nationalism opposed to ethnic and tribal distinctiveness; (2) the failure of the official nation-building process to take root in the population and the assertion of ethnic identities and ethnic separatism; (3) the emergence of the politics of belonging and discourses of autochthony. South Sudan as a unique late-comer to independence with hardly any colonial or pre-colonial antecedents as a state or group collective provides a fascinating test case to contrast to the above narrative. Therefore, this paper aims to show that South Sudan in its early post-independence period, effectively in year nine of autonomous rule since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in 2005, follows a very idiosyncratic trajectory in terms of devising and struggling with the idea of a national identity and community.

Historical trajectory of African nationalism and nation-building In order to be able to discuss and evaluate the South Sudanese experience in nation-building, here understood in the literal sense as construction and popularization of a national identity, it is inevitable to seek out the regional, continental and international context of nationbuilding and national identity construction. Analyzing and assessing

74

South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building?

processes of nation-building is an intrinsically comparative endeavor: the idea of nationalism, of a community of people that share both a common culture and destiny while simultaneously being part of the same commonwealth, the same unit of political rule, is a specifically modern concept. What is more, the notion that territory, rule and people ought to be congruous is a distinctly European concept that goes back to the eighteenth century. The African experience of nation, nationalism and nation-building differs substantially from the archetypical European trajectory, invariably so as almost the entire continent was subjected to colonization by the European powers, which cut short and preempted a sui generis evolution of African kingdoms to modern states. It therefore took until decolonization and the takeover of the colonial state by indigenous nationalist forces for the evolution towards African nation-states to begin its uneven and often eclectic course. After World War II, decolonization in Africa proceeded at an exhilarating pace, driven particularly by the bipolar competition between two at least nominally anti-colonial superpowers, the weakening of France and Britain’s global position after the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the contemporaneous independence of Ghana under the inspirational leadership of Kwame Nkrumah who helped spread the panAfrican vision across the continent. What united the continent’s highly heterogeneous inhabitants to proclaim themselves Africans was the common experience of subjugation under the yoke of colonialism and as a consequence the common yearning for independence (Mazrui 1963, 89). Pan-African unity was, however, short-lived as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1964 enshrined the sanctity of colonial borders. Given the state of the international state system, “[h]owever alien the geographical grid of imperial ambition, the logic of struggle compelled nationalist movements to embrace it” (Young 1994, 241). And as Philip Curtin (1966, 149) makes clear, “the aspiration to create a state-nation from virtually nothing was stronger than the desire to base new states on old nations.” Characteristic for early postcolonial thinking is Roger Tangri’s (1999, 8) categorical statement that “at independence, African countries largely lacked a national identity, partly because colonial policy did much to strengthen ethnic, as opposed to national consciousness, and partly because the countries were too recent in existence to elicit a sense of common nationhood.” Moreover, the linguistic heterogeneity of most newborn states in Africa did not allow language to play an equally strong part in uniting citizens as it had in most European nationalisms and thus decreased their chances to “create unique national cultures within their boundaries” (Laitin 2007, 88).

Ole Frahm

75

Notwithstanding these less than ideal starting conditions, most African governments initially opted for an inclusive version of nationalism as “unity of the nation as a regulative idea inspired Africa’s generation of new political leaders” (Tetzlaff and Jakobeit 2005, 125). By promoting an assimilationist idea of the nation, they thereby strove to place their legitimacy on a broader footing (Bratton and van de Walle 1997, 75). Hence, during the first decade after independence, “it seemed natural that the priority should lie in the projection—the making concrete—of the myth of national unity” (Chabal 2008, 44). John Markakis (1999, 71) actually claims that “[w]hatever it may be elsewhere, nationalism in Africa is the ideology of the state. More precisely, it is the ideology of those who wield state power.” In that sense, African state-nationalism is not only a counter-project to imperial strategies of divide-and-rule but a categorical denial of the notion that nationalism emanates from an already existing primordial nation. Yet, in the decades following independence governments generally failed to put the lofty ideals of state-nationalism into practice as popular identification with the state beyond expected benefits was widely lacking. In contrast to the late colonial period when nationalism blossomed due to the visible presence of an easily identifiable “other”—the colonialists— post-independence regimes struggled to define a relevant other and concomitantly struggled to create virulent symbols of national identity (Herbst 1990, 130). The failure of the state to deliver and deserve adherence from its citizens resulted in a resurgence of older forms of loyalty that the nationalist state had sought to suppress. In particular, this meant a surge of ethnic sentiment and ethnic political mobilization whose starting point is arguably the Igbo’s declaration of an independent state of Biafra in the 1960s and which continued especially as a tool of electoral mobilization all over the continent. Ethiopia’s current pseudo ethnofederalist state structure is only the most overt recognition of the salience of ethnic as opposed to national attachments to political and personal identity. By the 1990s, the nature of nationalism and identity politics across much of Africa had radically changed yet again as the “new nationalism” (Ake 1996) proved to be remarkably different from that of the early 1960s (Ottaway 1999, 299–300). Contrary to the first nationalism, contemporary “uncivil nationalism” (Berman 1998) shows a tendency to exclude rather than include populations, resulting in xenophobia and alienation (Kohnert 2008). One of the driving forces behind the activation of ethnicity and the politics of belonging lies in the demise of the postcolonial nation-building projects and the high-stakes struggle over state power and resources in the

76

South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building?

wake of political openings provided by democratization (Markakis 1999, 73). Conversely, on the local level, interest in autochthony and indigeneity stems from a common search for prosperity and security of tenure amidst underdevelopment and state failure, as competing claims to land encourage the politicization of identity as a means to protect and promote claims to ethnic terroir (Bates 2008, 92, 133). Côte d’Ivoire’s vicious struggle over ivoirité (Marshall-Fratani 2006), South Africa’s antiimmigrant riots (Neocosmos 2010), Zimbabwe’s Third Chimurenga campaign against white farmers and black “aliens” (Mashingaidze 2011) and fights for control in Kivu, Eastern DRC (Jackson 2006), are but four twenty-first century instances where debates about autochthony and indigeneity, i.e. debates about who rightfully belongs to the nation, have turned sour and, indeed, fatal. The confusing and potentially bloody kaleidoscope of citizenship is well-characterized by Nyamnjoh’s (2006, 73) depiction of migrants in Southern Africa that are “trapped in cosmopolitan spaces in a context where states and their hierarchy of ‘privileged’ citizens, ethnic minorities and others who straddle borders are bound to feel like travellers in permanent transit.”

South Sudan’s historical pedigree Sudan attained independence from Britain in 1956, almost immediately a rebellion in the South broke out, leading to a drawn out uprising (Anyanya) that culminated in the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement and the institution of the semi-autonomous Southern Regional Government (SRG). When the SRF was abolished by the dictator Nimeiri in 1983, a new rebellion sprung up which was further spurred by the introduction of sharia laws for the entire country. The rebellion was led by the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) until an internal split in 1991 made the South descend into sectarian fighting in the 1990s, but neither Khartoum nor the SPLM was strong enough to win outright. The beginning of oil exports in 1999 and renewed international interest in the region after 9/11 sparked serious peace negotiations leading to the CPA in 2005 and an independence referendum in 2011, in which more than 98 percent of voters opted for independence. Since independence in July 2011 South Sudan has been struggling to replace the wartime bond of joint struggle against a common enemy (the Khartoum government) with a new positive collective identity. I agree with the contention of constructivist theories of nationalism that the most important aspect of national identity formation is the act of constructing the memory of a common past rather than the actual existence

Ole Frahm

77

of the past (Hobsbawm 1983). However, you generally need some nucleus of shared past experiences and symbols for a concept of identity to win acceptance and persevere against competing influences and loyalties. South Sudan is in the unenviable position not to have a readily available nucleus of national memory and identity that all or most of its citizens know of, acknowledge and endorse. At no point in history did the presentday territories of the world’s newest state form a united body politic, nor were they inhabited by a homogenous people. While the Zande, for instance, possessed a sophisticated hierarchical state structure in precolonial times, the reach and expansion of its realm never came close to covering the present-day state (Evans-Pritchard 1963). Other ethnic groups like the Dinka and Nuer (the two largest ethnic groups) were and are acephalous societies with a dispersed horizontal structure of authority (Beswick 1994, 178). Moreover, none of these ethnic groups is either large or strong enough to dominate historical memory to the exclusion of other minor ethnic groups. Hence, for present-day lawmakers and proponents of South Sudanese nationalism, it is virtually impossible to find a credible precedent to refer to. Furthermore, South Sudan in contrast to European nationalism but akin to other African states does not possess a common language except for Juba Arabic, a colloquial form of Arabic which is officially shunned, while only a minority is fluent in English, the official language. A national literature also does not exist as the most popular medium of artistic expression and historical narrative are songs but these differ from tribe to tribe and are thus not national in character. Finally, even though Christianity is today the majority religion, the experience of being subjected to violent proselytization campaigns by the religious fundamentalist regime in Khartoum has convinced Juba to opt for strict secularism. Hence, in Jok Madut Jok’s (2011, 2) words, “South Sudan is only slightly more than a geographical expression. … The main glue that binds the country’s multiple ethnicities together is the history of their struggle for freedom and collective opposition to the north.”

Narratives of South Sudanese nationalism South Sudanese experience with official nationalism in the former Sudan had been almost universally negative. The political imbalance of power led to “a hegemonic attempt of the ‘Arab’ north to impose its political, economic and social identity upon the whole state of Sudan” (Rycx 1991, 142–43), as the Northern elite espoused an exclusive, discriminatory, racist and forcibly homogeneous idea of the nation utterly

78

South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building?

incongruous with the empirical reality of a highly diverse and plural country and society. The extreme violence that many Southern Sudanese were confronted with throughout Sudan’s post-independence period “deepened the identity cleavage between the two parts of the country and strengthened the image of northerners as colonialists in national garb” (Deng 1995, 136). In present-day South Sudan, the government and the entire state structure are dominated by the SPLM, whose only real domestic challengers are rebel militias and lack of capacity. Far from being a monolithic bloc, however, the party is fragmented into different regional, ethnic and other groupings and is itself a coalition rather than a unified actor (ICG 2011:13). Debates over nationalism and nation-building have received quite a prominent place in South Sudan’s public sphere, arguably not in spite of but because of the high levels of need in almost all fields of governance: a common sense of national belonging is counted upon as glue for the struggling newborn state. The national narrative as put forward by the state and its representatives is essentially twofold. On the one hand, the long war that came to an end in 2005 is presented as a glorious feat of liberation from Northern/Arab oppression. In this context, the SPLA lays claim to the lion’s share of glory even though the party’s official line up until the referendum had been to strive for a reformed but united “New Sudan” (Garang 1992). There is obviously not little self-interest involved considering that the government’s upper echelons are overwhelmingly made up of former rebel soldiers. Clearly visible forms of memorialization are public monuments that commemorate the war and the many that have died in its course; for instance a giant statue of John Garang that was unveiled on Independence Day in 2011. In addition, the color red in the national flag represents the martyrs’ blood, while one of the national anthem’s three stanzas as well as a public holiday (July 30=the day of John Garang’s death in a helicopter accident in 2005) are entirely devoted to the fallen soldiers’ memory. On the other hand, speeches and opinion pieces portray multiculturalism that takes into account the country’s ethnic, cultural and religious diversity as the basis and essence of South Sudan’s national ideal. Thus, the SPLM Manifesto (2008:14) states that unless the existing diversity is recognized, building a genuine nation-state will be impossible as it would embolden “the local elite and power seekers, masquerading as nationalists, to seize and retain political power, and then proceed to pillage and render the people of their so-called nation-state destitute.” The Manifesto and other appeals are, however, much less precise when it

Ole Frahm

79

comes to the positive content of unity-in-diversity (El-Battahani 2007) and how it is supposed to be represented, respected and integrated into both the state structure and the national identity. The flipside to this inclusive discourse is that tribalism, i.e. ethnic nepotism, is denounced on every occasion, in particular by members of one of the smaller of the country’s sixty-plus ethnic groups. For in spite of the euphoria that accompanied independence in July 2011, disillusionment and disenchantment with the state has already set in. In the face of grave underdevelopment, lack of infrastructure and a state that fails to deliver services to most of its citizens, ethnically based rebellions and inter-ethnic cattle raids have been on the increase. While mutual raiding has been an integral part of life in South Sudan for centuries, ethnic hatred has been added to the purely economic motivations and raiding has become more violent in turn. Amnesty International (2013, 12–13), for instance, reports how the killing of six Dinka farm workers in Farajallah in December 2012 sparked a wave of ethnic violence in Wau, with Dinka attacking non-Dinka quarters as police officers joined in the fighting based on their ethnic loyalties instead of separating the sides. The ethnicization of politics is also driven by politicians eager to establish a power base by either playing on ethnic animosities (Schomerus and Allen 2010, 20). Therefore, political disagreements and resource competition are frequently articulated in the language of ethnicity. An outgrowth is that each cabinet appointment is immediately scrutinized less for the appointee’s competence but for his or her ethnic and regional origins. In the same vein, discourses of autochthony have entered South Sudan in the wake of autonomy and independence. The South Sudanese Land Act of 2009 grants land rights primarily to communities. Since millions of South Sudanese were either internally displaced or had to flee the country altogether, the question of rightful access to land has become extremely contentious. According to this logic of collective as opposed to individual belonging, most returnees were adamant to return to a particular place in Southern Sudan, their place of origin, which was tied up with the ability to legitimately access resources, most notably land (Hovil 2010, 19–20). At the same time, in a dispute over land increasingly present are (pseudo)historical narratives that highlight that their group had been there first (Rolandsen 2009, 23). The claim to “have been here first” takes on an even more combative meaning when it becomes embroiled with claims that those who actively fought in the war should enjoy privileges over those who did not (LeRiche and Arnold 2012, 229). Thus, returnees from the North, typically the Greater Khartoum area, are occasionally called

80

South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building?

jalaba (Sommers and Schwartz 2011, 6–7), a pejorative term for Northern Arabs. In addition, South Sudanese national identity is asserted in rising levels of xenophobia and acts of violence against foreign nationals, especially petty merchants and taxi drivers from Uganda, Eritrea and Kenya who are accused of stealing jobs and profits from South Sudanese in an eerie echo of similar slogans emanating from right-wing parties across Europe, North America and Australia.

Conclusion As this overview of developments in South Sudan has shown, South Sudan in its current state of development does not stick to the chronological blueprint of its African antecedents. Instead, South Sudan combines all three trends of postcolonial African nationalism and national identity construction (inclusive state nationalism, ethnic resurgence, discourses of autochthony) and exhibits elements of each in its official policies, public discourses and observable actions on the ground parallel to each other.

Bibliography Ake, Claude. 1996. Democracy and Development in Africa. Washington D. C.: Brookings Institution. Amnesty International. 2013. South Sudan: Civil Unrest and State Repression. Human rights violations in Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal state. London: Amnesty International Publications. Bates, Robert H. 2008. When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in LateCentury Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berman, Bruce J. 1998. “Ethnicity, Patronage, and the African State: The Politics of Uncivil Nationalism.” African Affairs 97:305–41. Beswick, Stephanie. 1994. “Islam and the Dinka of the Southern Sudan from the pre-colonial period to independence (1956).” Journal of Asian and African Studies 29(3/4):172–85. Bratton, Michael, and Nicolas van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chabal, Patrick. 2008. “Imagined Modernities: community, nation and state in postcolonial Africa.” In Comunidades Imaginadas: Nação e Naciolismo em África, edited by Luis Reis Torgal, Fernado Tavares Pimenta and Julião Soares Sousa. Coimbra: University of Coimbra. Curtin, Philip D. 1966. “Nationalism in Africa, 1945–1965.” The Review of Politics 28 (2):143–53.

Ole Frahm

81

Deng, Francis. 1995. War of Visions: Conflict and Identities in the Sudan. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution. El-Battahani, Atta. 2007. “Tunnel Vision or Kaleidoscope: Competing Concepts on Sudan Identity and National Integration.” African Journal of Conflict Resolution 7(2):37–61. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1963. “The Zande State.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 93(1):134–54. Garang, John. 1992. The Call for Democracy in Sudan. London: Kegan Paul International. Herbst, Jeffrey. 1990. “War and the State in Africa.” International Security 14(4):117–39. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1983. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hovil, Lucy. 2010. “Hoping for peace, afraid of war: the dilemmas of repatriation and belonging on the borders of Uganda and South Sudan.” New Issues in Refugee Research Report 196. International Crisis Group. 2011. Politics and Transition in the New South Sudan. Africa Report 172. Jackson, Stephen. 2006. “Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D.R. Congo.” African Studies Review 49(2):95–123. Jok, Jok Madut. 2011. Diversity, Unity, and Nation Building in South Sudan. United States Institute of Peace, Special Report 287. Kohnert, Dirk. 2008. “Entfremdung und Ausgrenzung: Afrikas neuer Nationalismus in Zeiten der Globalisierung.” Sociologus 58(2):197– 222. Laitin, David D. 2007. Nations, States, and Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LeRiche, Matthew, and Matthew B. Arnold. 2012. South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence. London: Hurst. Markakis, John. 1999. “Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Horn of Africa.” In Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa: Constructivist Reflections and Contemporary Politics, edited by Paris Yeros. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Marshall-Fratani, Ruth. 2006. “The war of ‘who is who’: autochthony, nationalism and citizenship in the Ivorian crisis.” African Studies Review 49(2):9–43. Mashingaidze, Terence M. 2011. “What Blacks, Which Africans and in Whose Zimbabwe? Pan-Africanism, Race and the Politics of Belonging in Postcolonial Zimbabwe.” In Redemptive or Grotesque Nationalism? Rethinking Contemporary Politics in Zimbabwe, edited

82

South Sudan: An Outlier in Postcolonial African Nation-Building?

by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and James Muzondidya. Bern: Peter Lang. Mazrui, Ali. 1963. “On the Concept of ‘We Are All Africans’.” The American Political Science Review 57(1):88–97. Neocosmos, Michael. 2010. From ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’. Explaining Xenophobia in Post-Apartheid South AfricaCitizenship and Nationalism, Identity and Politics. Dakar: CODESRIA. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2006. Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar: Codesria Books. Ottaway, Marina. 1999. “Ethnic Politics in Africa: Change and Continuity.” In State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa, edited by Richard Joseph. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Rolandsen, Øystein H. 2009. Land, Security and Peace Building in the Southern Sudan. Oslo: PRIO. Rycx, Jean Francois. 1991. “The Islamisation of law as a political stake in Sudan.” In Sudan after Nimeiri, edited by Peter Woodward. London: Routledge. Schomerus, Mareike, and Tim Allen. 2010. Southern Sudan at Odds with Itself: Dynamics of Conflict and Predicaments of Peace. London: DESTIN. Sommers, Marc, and Stephanie Schwartz. 2011. “Dowry and Division: Youth and State Building in South Sudan.” United States Institute of Peace Special Report 295. SPLM. 2008. The SPLM Manifesto. Tangri, Roger. 1999. The Politics of Patronage in Africa: parastatals, privatization and private enterprise. Oxford: James Currey. Tetzlaff, Rainer, and Cord Jakobeit. 2005. Das nachkoloniale Afrika. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Young, Crawford. 1994. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

THE CHALLENGES OF A POSTCOLONIAL NATION: THE AZERBAIJANI DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (1918–1920) DANIEL POMMIER VINCELLI The current South Caucasus is a tiny piece of land lying between the Black and the Caspian seas, from west to east. In the south, this troubled region borders countries like Iran and Turkey, and in the north, the Russian Federation. In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the South Caucasus became a part of the expanding colonial Russian Empire. The collapse of the tsardom in Russia, just before the end of World War I, resulted in the separation of the South Caucasus region from the former empire. Since the start of the Great War this region had been one of the major conflict zones between the Russian and Ottoman armies. But the Russian revolution caused the withdrawal of its troops from the region and opened the way for a very intense Ottoman involvement (Goyushov 2012). While Russia slipped into a full-scale civil war between the remnants of the tsarist regime and the Bolsheviks, elected political representatives of local peoples of the South Caucasus had to take affairs into their own hands and jointly declared independence of the new state called the Transcaucasian Federation in April 1918. But due to the worsening regional hostilities and very complicated world affairs, the Transcaucasian Federation did not last long and after its brief existence fell apart following different international allegiances (Goltz 2009). In May 1918, the former constituencies of the Transcaucasian Federation, namely Muslim Azerbaijanis, Christian Georgians and Armenians declared independence of their respective republics. The end of World War I resulted in the replacement of the Ottoman presence in the region with the British military mission, which accepted the executive authority of the three local Southern Caucasus governments over their respective peoples (Kazemzadeh 1951). In January 1920, two Southern Caucasus republics (Georgia and Azerbaijan) were recognized as de facto states by the Paris Peace Conference. The recognition of Armenia would

84

The Challenges of a Postcolonial Nation

follow the peace treaty between the Entente powers and Turkey. Thus, Azerbaijanis had enjoyed two years of liberty with the democratic government until Bolsheviks reincorporated this first Azerbaijan Republic into Soviet Russia in April 1920. For the next seventy years, Azerbaijan was one of the fifteen major autonomies constituting the Soviet Union. The fall of the USSR in 1991 resumed the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan and paved the way for the revival of the legacy of its predecessor—the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) of 1918, the history of which was deliberately forgotten during Soviet rule due to ideological biases dominating the history of the Soviet regime. Although public and research interests in studying the history of the first republic were enormous, it was not an easy task to accomplish. Only some of the ADR’s prominent leaders managed to flee from the Soviet regime, while the majority of its political class was completely eradicated through assassinations as well as internal exiles and executions during the Stalinist purge. The legacy of the republic was systematically wiped out and internal sources were extremely scarce to provide researchers with enough bases to study. Through the 1990s and 2000s, one of the major tasks in this regard was to search for possible remaining sources in foreign countries somehow involved in relations with the ADR. Researchers benefited from numerous documents preserved in official archives in countries like Turkey, Britain, France and Germany, which had intense contacts with the Azerbaijani government in 1918–20. Some of these countries also hosted prominent Azerbaijani political asylum seekers who fled from the Soviet regime and left behind rich personal archives in those countries (Pommier and Carteny 2013). The short-lived experience of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan marked the history of the twentieth century as the first republican regime and the first parliamentary and pluralistic democracy in a Muslim country, as well as the first nation in the world to grant the right to vote to women, well before most advanced Western countries (women suffrage was granted in the US only in 1924). The “Musavat” republic (the name of the then leading party) obtained many outstanding achievements (such as the foundation of Baku State University in September of 1919, which is still the leading educational institution in the country), nevertheless, the life of the republic was faced with enormous challenges and a very limited time to cope with them. In its twenty-three months of existence, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was shattered by the complicated tangle of Caucasian conflicts among the Ottoman, Russian, British and German armies; after the end of World War I hostilities, the ADR was submitted, for the first ten months of existence, to a regime of limited sovereignty by

Daniel Pommier Vincelli

85

the British occupation army, then impoverished by the collapse of oil and raw materials exports mainly because of the closure of the Russian market, wracked by tensions with the revolutionary Bolsheviks who did not cease plotting against the Musavat rule after their ousting from Baku and the establishment of the republic in the Caspian city (September 1918). Azerbaijan was, furthermore, threatened by the mounting pressure of the White Russian troops of General Denikin and diverted by the rivalry with the neighboring Transcaucasian states, in particular with Armenia over the disputed (and ethnically mixed) territories of Zangezur and Karabakh. Many foreign observers (including Italian military envoys who were active in the region from May 1919) noted the difficulties with which the Azerbaijani leadership was confronted, passing in few months from Russian sovereignty to independence with a desperate and often useless struggle for recognition (Pommier and Carteny 2012). As the Turkish historian Suha Bölükbasi pointed out, Azerbaijan faced “all the challenges of a post-colonial country” (Bölükbasi 2011). This uncertain independence suffered the lack of international recognition, while uncertainty and tensions about the borders marked the relations with Armenia, with the major Entente powers favoring the reunification of the three Caucasian states with Russia. Even the same Azerbaijani leadership until 1918 was unsecure and indecisive between full independence or to remain within a new federal Russia (Swietochowski 1996). The Azerbaijan Republic was founded after the formal end of the conflict on the Caucasian front, following the October Revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, which ended the Russian participation in World War I. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk did not end the hostilities in the Caucasus. The Ottoman government, unsatisfied with the territorial gains granted by the treaty, began a long march across the Caucasus towards the oil fields of Baku, even then considered the strategic core of the region. In order to strengthen the military offensive with political means, the Ottomans supported the emergence of independent Caucasian states. In the Ottoman perspective, the new states would be asking the Turks for “help” against the Bolsheviks and Russian forces. A brief season of the Transcaucasian Commissariat (formerly part of the Russian state) and the even shorter phases of the Transcaucasian Sejm (Diet) turned into the Transcaucasian Federative Republic uniting Azerbaijanis, Armenians and Georgians (April to May 1918). The first state to become independent was Georgia. The Georgian Mensheviks, seeking a guarantee by the Ottoman offensive in the Caucasus, placed the country under the protection of imperial Germany, with the proclamation of independence on May 26, 1918. Then Azerbaijani delegates to Sejm

86

The Challenges of a Postcolonial Nation

(the seat was Tiflis) proclaimed independence, pressed by the Ottoman advance towards Baku. After a brief season of the Bolshevik Commune (April–July 1918), the Caspian oil-boom city was ruled, from July 26, 1918, by a coalition government of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries and the Armenian Dashnaks Central-Caspian Dictatorship (Dikatura Centrokaspija), and militarily was supported by the British forces of General Dunsterville (Suny 1999). The Azerbaijani were thus caught between the “pro-Muslim” Ottoman offensive and the “pro-Russian” Armenian-Russian resistance to the Turkish attack. The last state to proclaim independence was Armenia, with a definitely pro-Russian stance. Following independence, the National Council of Azerbaijan left Tiflis and went to Ganja (Elizavetpol during the Russian rule), hence proclaimed the new capital city, Baku being still under the Commune rule. The government was headed by Fatali Khan Khoyski Isgender oglu, a former Tsarist Duma member of liberal orientation. At this stage, the most problematic aspect was given by the ambivalent relation with the Ottoman Third Army and its leader General Nuri Killigil Pasha (brother of Enver Pasha). On the one hand, Azerbaijanis, whose objective was the liberation of Baku and the reunification of the country, supported the Ottoman advance, while the Ottomans were suspicious of the social and reform programs carried out by the Musavat. The Transcaucasian Sejm since December 1917 had voted for the nationalization of land and its distribution to the poor peasantry. In June 1918, Nuri dissolved the first Azerbaijani government and imposed a new cabinet with a more conservative program. Meanwhile, the Turks began the siege of Baku siding with the Azerbaijani forces in the Islamic Army of the Caucasus (Qafqaz Ordusu Islam), an irregular militia fighting under the guidance of the Ottoman Third Army. Baku, abandoned to its fate by the British troops of General Dunsterville, was captured in September 1918. The following month, the Ottomans advanced toward the North Caucasus and were caught in Derbent, northern Azerbaijan, by the unforeseen news of the Armistice of Mudros between the Ottoman government and the Entente powers (October 30, 1918). With the end of World War I, the British returned to Baku, under the command of General Thomson, and the Azerbaijani government remained the only civil authority de facto recognized by the British military. The English attitude was other than sympathetic toward the new republic, which was considered by Thomson nothing more than a “Turkish product.” The British considered that the local government was usurping the legitimate power of Russia and the White troops of General Denikin, the legitimate ruler of the Russian state. The reaction of the Azerbaijani

Daniel Pommier Vincelli

87

government facing this crisis of legitimacy caused the broadening of democratic representation through convocation of the parliament in December 1918, which also included non-Muslim and non-Azerbaijani minorities, such as the Armenians, who were represented even by a more radical fraction of the Dashnak (Pipes, 1964). The composition in the parliament included a majority of the Azerbaijani Musavat and its allies, the right-wing Islamist opposition (Ittihad), linked to the large land-owner property and left-wing opposition (Himmat) influenced by Bolshevism, as well as the presence of ethnic parties of Armenians, Russians and Jews. A political framework, very complex and extremely pluralistic in comparison with Georgia and Armenia, in turn was dominated by the main national parties, the Dashnak and the Mensheviks. Until August 1919, the British army, controlling all Transcaucasia from Baku to Batum, exercised its power over the actions of the Azerbaijani government, which suffered from numerous crises with the formation of new cabinets. The Azerbaijani government, although subject to British rule, formed a new army with officers of the former tsarist empire, engaging the Armenian forces in the disputed lands. As was the case for other “successor states” of the great multinational empires that had dissolved with World War I, the definition of certain boundaries based on ethnicity was almost impossible in a territory with different ethnic groups in the same space. It was particularly difficult to draw the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on ethnic bases due to the presence of villages where Armenians and Azerbaijanis often mixed or were next to each other, with areas used by both ethnic groups for agriculture and grazing. Between 1919 and 1920, while Azerbaijan established an anti-Russian alliance with Georgia, a number of armed clashes marked the difficult relation with Armenia. Clashes and mutual massacres marked the everyday life of the territories of Nakhcivan, Nagorno Karabakh and Zangeur. Equally difficult and even more worrying was the economic situation. Even in the case of Transcaucasia, as was for the case of successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the division into more national entities undermined the economic and administrative unity of the region. The main economic problem of Azerbaijan was caused by the collapse of the Russian Empire that stopped purchasing oil extracted in Baku and in the peninsula of Abershon. Million tons of crude oil remained unsold in the warehouses of Baku during 1919 and the Azerbaijani government desperately sought to revive its foreign trade. Azerbaijani authorities chose then to focus on partnerships with the Entente powers with a dual task: either to reactivate the oil trade and attract foreign investment or to obtain international recognition that would protect the territorial integrity (and the

88

The Challenges of a Postcolonial Nation

other Transcaucasian states) from the Russian ambitions. Bolsheviks and White forces, albeit opposite factions, shared the vision of the Caucasus as an integral part of the Russian state. With these aspirations, on January 20, 1919, a few days before the British decision to renounce the occupation of the Caucasus in favor of Italy, a delegation headed by the chairman of the Azerbaijani parliament, Alimardan bay Topchubashov, reached Constantinople on its way to the Peace Conference in Paris, in order to support Azerbaijani independence. Italy, facing enormous social and economic unrest, would never concretize the occupation of the Southern Caucasus, and Topchubashov would never return to his motherland as Azerbaijan was invaded by Bolsheviks forces in April 1920. He would become the voice of the Azerbaijani opposition in exile, dying in Paris in 1931. After twenty-three months of difficult survival, the ADR succumbed to the Russian power, and a new colonial rule, although with the rhetoric of the anti-imperialistic Communist ideology (Baku hosted in October 1920 the first anti-colonialist congress of Eastern people), was imposed on the Azerbaijani nation. The autonomous and pro-reform effort of modernization was abruptly stopped and the Caucasian state followed the path of Sovietization.

Bibliography Bölükbasi, Suha. 2011. Azerbaijan a Political History. London: I.B. Tauris. Goyshov, Altay. “A foreword to Pommier Vincelli, Daniel, and Andrea Carteny. 2012.” In La repubblica democratica dell’Azerbaigian. I documenti militari italiani (1919-1920). Rome: Nuova Cultura. Hasanli, Jamil. 2013. Foreign Policy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 1918– 1920: The Difficult Road to Western Integration. New York: M.E Sharpe. Kazemzadeh, Firuz. 1951. The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917–1921). New York: Philosophical Library. Pommier Vincelli, Daniel, and Gabriele Natalizia. 2012. Azerbaigian una lunga storia. Florence: Passigli. Pommier Vincelli, Daniel, and Andrea Carteny. 2012. L’Azerbaigian nei documenti diplomatici italiani (1919-1920). Rome: Nuova Cultura. Pipes, Richard. 1964. The Formation of the Soviet Union. Communism and Nationalism 1917–1923. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

Daniel Pommier Vincelli

89

Suny, Ronald Grigor, 1999. The Baku Commune, 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Swietochowski, Tadeusz. 1996. “National Consciousness and Political Orientation in Azerbaijan, 1905–1920.” In Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social Change. Essays on the History of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, 209–38. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

THE FIRST FAILURES OF THE UNO IN PALESTINE: THE PARTITION PLAN, THE CREATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND NAKBA JORGE RAMOS TOLOSA Sharing the point of view of some Israeli revisionist historians and other authors with a similar paradigm, I will try to explain the first failures and responsibilities of the UNO in resolving the question of Palestine when the British Empire was disintegrating and London transferred to the UNO its responsibility for Palestine. From the First Special Session of the UN General Assembly in 1947 to the days of the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (1949–52), the international institution unsuccessfully attempted to find a solution to the conflict. It was in this context that the Zionist nationalist movement fulfilled its goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, after half a century of colonialist policies. By contrast, for the Palestinians this period (especially 1948) was the time of the Nakba, the disaster that led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the uprooting from their country. During all this time, before and after the war of 1948, the UN validated most of the Zionist/Israeli perspectives and faits accomplis through the influence of the superpowers. Fifty years of colonialism were consummated in Palestine when the global post-WWII decolonisation process had just begun and it was reached at the climax of a conflict that was and still is a central point in the international political agenda. The second part of the analysis will be primarily carried out on the basis of the testimony and diplomatic work of Pablo de Azcárate, an extraordinary historical source who worked at several UN agencies dedicated to Palestine from 1948 to 1952. Azcárate had become number two of the League of Nations and one of the most important diplomats in Spanish contemporary history. Moreover, I will use files from the UN Archives, the United Kingdom National Archives (former Public Record Office) or the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain.

Jorge Ramos Tolosa

91

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Partition Plan of 1947 recommended the division of Palestine into three zones: a Jewish state, a Palestinian state and an international UN zone in the Jerusalem area. The UNGA Partition Plan is usually considered as a turning point in which a fair, pragmatic, legal and balanced “settlement” was arranged for the resolution of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict (Khalidi 1997, 5–6). Moreover, it is commonly assumed that this partition (contained in the UNGA Resolution 181) was honestly and pragmatically accepted by the Zionist Jewish Agency and sharply rejected by the Arab countries and the Palestinian authorities. However, the Partition Plan involved more factors and can be interpreted in a different way. In 1949, when the first Arab-Israeli War had finished and a new status quo was established in Palestine, only one of the main proposals of the UNGA became a reality: the Jewish state. It can be stated that the Partition Plan failed, given that the resolution was not enforced. In addition, the conflict was not only unresolved but also new and huge problems were created in a new period. In this context, what was the responsibility of the UN? Which path and key decisions were taken by UN commissions on Palestine? And how did they influence the new status quo? In February 1947, the United Kingdom, the Palestine Mandatory Power since the beginning of the 1920s, announced its decision to transfer the administration of the territory to the UN, which had been created as an international institution only a year and a half before; thus, it had a very little experience in solving regional conflicts. In this scenario, Palestine would become the first major challenge the UN would face in its full extent (Pappé 1992, 16). Nevertheless, it must be remembered that the UN had already been constrained by the balance of powers of the “Big Five” (the victors of WWII) and especially by the incipient politics of the Cold War. All the same, the US and the USSR agreed that Palestine should be partitioned into two states. The United Nations called for its First Special Session of the General Assembly in the spring of 1947 in order to discuss the question of Palestine. In this same context, the organization began to sponsor some imbalances that marked the course of events. The first one was the number of speeches given by the representatives of the parties of the conflict. The Zionist delegates of the Jewish Agency (David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, etc.) had the chance to take the floor up to four times to expound their ideas on how to solve the conflict, including the first and the last

92

The First Failures of the UNO in Palestine

speeches. On the other hand, Palestinians (represented by the Arab Higher Committee) could explain their points of view only twice.1 At the end of the First Special Session of the General Assembly, it was decided to create a commission, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The task of this body was to travel to Palestine and to give advice about possible solutions to the problem.2 In the second imbalance, the direct influence of the USA over the UN led to the fact that the UNSCOP consisted of eleven members, some of them “knew very little about Palestine” (García-Granados 1948, 4) and predominantly agreed on the partition.3 It must be remembered that the partition was the preferred option not only for the superpowers, but also for the mainstream Zionism since 1937. This accepted partition was regarded as a strategy, as a first step, in order to achieve a Jewish state. After that, the objective was to extend that state to the maximum amount of land and with the minimum number of Palestinians. That moment would come through a war context: in Ben Gurion’s words, “the war shall give us the land. The concepts of ‘ours’ and ‘not ours’ are peace concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war” (Morris 2004, 360). The UNSCOP members arrived in Palestine in June 1947. They were received by Zionists and Palestinians with opposing attitudes: while the former welcomed UNSCOP warmly, the latter ignored them or boycotted them. The reason was that these UN officials were seen as the representatives of the partition, a principle rejected by the Palestinians, inter alia, because of a simple factor pointed out by professor Walid Khalidi: “the native people of Palestine, like the native people of every other country in the Arab world, Asia, Africa and Europe, refused to divide the land with a settler community” (Pappé 2008, 60). It must be remembered that the Zionist political project was defined by Bed Katznelson, one of its most significant ideologues, in these words: “the Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest.” More recently, the diplomat, historian and former Israeli foreign affairs minister, Shlomo Ben Ami, has noted that Zionism is a “schizophrenic … movement of conquest, colonization and settlement” (Ben Ami 2006, 3). Finally, after listening to the testimonies of many Zionist organizations and individuals, after the affaire de l’Exodus and after visiting several displaced persons camps in Europe, the majority of the UNSCOP members decided to recommend several proposals; first of all, the end of the 1

UNOA (United Nations Organisation Archive) A/C.1/PV.48, 07/05/1947. UNOA A/307, 13/05/1947; A/RES/106 (S-1), 15/05/1947. 3 The countries were: Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia. 2

Jorge Ramos Tolosa

93

Palestine British Mandate, which London would establish on May 15, 1948. Secondly, the partition of Palestine into two states (a Jewish one and a Palestinian one) within an economic union. And lastly, the internationalization of the Jerusalem area by means of a formula called Corpus Separatum.4 With some minor changes, this proposal was approved by the UNGA on November 29 in its Resolution 181 (II).5 One day later, what would become a civil war broke out between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. But what I would like to note is that the Partition Plan contained imbalances that favored Zionism and contributed to perpetuate the conflict. First, it must be said that UNGA resolutions are non-binding recommendations, unlike the pronouncements made by the Security Council. In spite of this, the Partition Plan was presented as a fait accompli, not as a recommendation that could serve as a basis for negotiation (Falk and Mendlovitz 1966, 67). The second imbalance is related to the UN decisions taken about a non-autonomous territory, as was the case of Palestine in 1947. In this sense, the Partition Plan violated Articles 73 and 80 of the Charter of the Organisation, since the UN cannot take decisions against the will of the majority of its inhabitants (Iglesias 2000, 35). Thirdly, some aspects of the specific content of the Resolution 181 must be highlighted. Although 55 percent of the territory subject under the Mandate was allocated to the Jewish state, the Jewish community only made a third of the total population and only lived on or owned between 6 percent and 11 percent of land. Moreover, Jews received the best parts of land. In the fourth place, the Resolution 181 did not establish any mechanism to prevent the expulsion of the (non-Jewish) population of the areas allocated to the Jewish state. As Ilan Pappé, Nur Masalha or Walid Khalidi (among other authors) have shown, the smallest knowledge of Zionist ideology made one think that the massive “transfer” of population could take place in Palestine in a war context. To quote just one example, Ben Gurion had stated, as early as 1937: “we must expel Arabs and take their places … and, if we have to use force … we have force at our disposal” (JPS 2012, 248). Finally, the USA pressured small countries in order to ensure that they would vote in favor of the Partition Plan.6 Resolution 181 included the creation of a committee, the Palestine Commission (UNPC), in order to implement the plan. Pablo de Azcárate, one of the most important diplomats in Spanish contemporary history (Azcárate became number two of the League of Nations) was one of its 4

UNOA A/364, 03/09/1947. Thirty-three countries voted for it, ten abstained and thirteen voted against it. UNOA A/RES/181 (II), 29/11/1947. 6 UNOA, A/AC.21/10, 16/02/1948. 5

94

The First Failures of the UNO in Palestine

main members.7 However, the UNPC was born with important problems and shortcomings. It had to deal with the first immediate consequence of the Partition Plan in Palestine: an outbreak of violence that would become a civil war. Under this situation, carrying out the necessary tasks to implement the partition was a very difficult mission. Civil confrontation was not the only drawback. As Azcárate wrote, the UNPC was noted for its “disorder,” “lack of authority” and “inadequacy.”8 Furthermore, in one way or another, the political actors on the ground contributed to the failure of the UNPC’s mission. In the first place, the UK (officially responsible for law and order in Palestine until May 15, 1948) tried to prevent the arrival of the UNPC’s advanced group to Palestine. The British thought that the presence of Azcárate’s party would exacerbate the violence in Palestine, particularly the mood of Palestinians. When the advanced group finally got to Jerusalem, the (still) Mandatory Power put many obstructions to its members.9 Lastly, both Palestinians and Arabs rejected the Partition Plan and, therefore, so did the UNPC. However, a not so well known collusion that aborted the fulfillment of the Partition Plan (with the exception of the establishment of the Jewish state) took place in this context. The Jewish Agency and King Abdullah of Transjordan agreed on keeping Palestine away from the UN decision of creating an independent Arab state in Palestine (Shlaim 1988):10 in this way, even though preponderant Zionism (the Jewish Agency) accepted the Partition Plan and Azcárate’s mission, the preeminent factor at the bottom of its strategy was the collusion with Abdullah. And indeed, after the expulsion of about 750,000 Palestinians, the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, and the subsequent Arab-Israeli War, the map of Palestine was more the result of the Jewish Agency-Abdullah agreement than that of the UN Resolution 181. Thereby, Israel extended its territory along the 78 percent of Palestine and Transjordan annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

7

Particularly, Azcárate acted as a deputy principal secretary and head of the advanced group sent to Palestine. The principal secretary was Ralph Bunche, who would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his work on the question of Palestine. 8 AMAE (Spanish Foreign Affairs Archive, in Spanish acronyms), APPAF (Particular Files of Pablo de Azcárate Flórez, in Spanish acronyms as well) 14/4, 08/02/1948. 9 UKNA (United Kingdom National Archives), FO (Foreign Office) 371/68530; AMAE, APPAF 15/3. 10 UKNA, FO 371/68552.

Jorge Ramos Tolosa

95

In conclusion, the new status quo set up the Zionist/Israeli victory as a result of the Nakba, the disaster for the Palestinians. For this people, 1947–48 symbolized (and still symbolizes today) the catastrophe of a period that meant the dismemberment of its country and its own uprooting. Between 418 and 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed and eleven urban areas were emptied (Khalidi 1992; Abu Sitta 2000). In the summer of 1948, Israeli bulldozers began to raze hundreds of these Palestinian locations by governmental orders. The destroyed Palestinian villages were to become arable land, “natural forests,” new settlements for Israeli Jews or would be merged into existing settlements. All these operations were crucial to prevent the return of refugees. Moreover, this “spaciocide” (Hanafi 2006) tried to perpetuate the myth that Palestine was a wasteland or abandoned territory before the arrival of the first waves of settler Zionist Jews. Likewise, in 1948 a committee was appointed to “hebraize” original Arab place names. In approximately one year and a half, Arab Palestine was wiped out from the map. On the other hand, for the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in the State of Israel, the new times would mean living with fewer rights and under tight military control. Despite the fact that the UNGA Resolution 194 (December 1948) established the right of return for the Palestinian refugees,11 Israel denied (and still denies) it. Resolution 194 also created the Palestine Conciliation Commission, the body that unsuccessfully tried to achieve not only peace between Arab countries and Israel but also the right of return for the Palestinian refugees. Pablo de Azcárate was the principal secretary of the said Commission, which was composed of representatives of the USA, France and Turkey. However, the governments of these countries did not pay enough attention to the Commission, which was abandoned and increasingly subject to the influence of the USA. Although at the Lausanne Conference of 1949 the Israeli government agreed to allow the return of 100,000 refugees in order to be accepted in the UN, once the Jewish state became a UN member its delegates changed their mind and refused to authorize the return. Pablo de Azcárate depicted in his diaries and memories how the Israeli refusal to allow the right of return for the Palestinian refugees deterred the signing of peace agreements (Azcárate 1968).12 From my point of view, the first UN intervention period in relation to the question of Palestine turned out to be a failure. The United Nations did not solve the conflict, and it even sponsored the creation of enormous new problems, specially the dispossession and uprooting of Palestinians. The 11 12

UNOA, A/RES/194 (III) 11/12/1948. AMAE, APPAF 1; 12; 13; 14; 15.

96

The First Failures of the UNO in Palestine

Partition Plan, the “masterpiece” of the UNGA during this time, was not a fair, legal or balanced “settlement”: it can be seen as the culmination (along with the establishment of the State of Israel) of fifty years of Zionist colonialist efforts to create a Jewish “ethnocratic” state in Palestine (Yiftachel 2006). Also, this period—in which the UN fostered several imbalances that favored Zionism—was the key moment for the expansion and homogenization of the Jewish state. Strangely enough, when the global post-WWII decolonization process had just begun, there was a place where a colonialist project was being carried out.

Bibliography Abu Sitta, Salman. 2000. The Palestinian Nakba 1948. London: The Palestinian Return Centre. Azcárate, Pablo de. 1968. Misión en Palestina: nacimiento del Estado de Israel. Madrid: Tecnos. Ben Ami, Shlomo. 2006. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Falk, Richard A. and Saul Mendlovitz H., eds. 1966–67. Strategy of World Order, vol. 3: The United Nations. New York: World Law Fund. García-Granados, Jorge. 1948. The Birth of Israel: The Drama as I Saw It. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hanafi, Sari. 2006. “Spaciocide.” In City of Collision: Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism, edited by Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets, 93–101. Basel: Birkhäuser. Iglesias, Alfonso J. 2000. El proceso de paz en Palestina. Madrid: Ediciones UAM. JPS (Journal of Palestine Studies). 2012. JPS Responds to CAMERA’s Call for Accuracy: Ben-Gurion and the Arab Transfer. Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 2. Khalidi, Walid. 1992. All that Remains. The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies. —. 1997. “Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution.” Journal of Palestine Studies 27:1. Morris, Benny. 2004. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pappé, Ilan. 1992. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951. London-New York: I. B. Tauris.

Jorge Ramos Tolosa

97

—. 2008. La limpieza étnica de Palestina. Barcelona: Crítica (Spanish edition of: Pappé, Ilan. 2006. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld). Yiftachel, Oren. 2006. Ethnocracy, Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

IRAQ AND THE OIL COLD WAR: A SUPERPOWER STRUGGLE AND THE END OF THE IRAQ PETROLEUM COMPANY (1958–1972) PHILIPPE TRISTANI On June 1, 1972, the Iraqi government nationalized the assets of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), which became Iraq Company for Oil Operations (ICOO). That total nationalization of a British company was the first in the Middle East. It put an end to the activities of the first major oil consortium, which then—by virtue of a concession agreement almost half a century old—held a monopoly over the exploration and exploitation rights for almost the entire Iraqi territory. From 1929 to 1972, the IPC associated all of the Western Majors. Thus, group agreements were concluded among eight companies: Royal Dutch Shell, Anglo-Persian Oil Company (British Petroleum beginning in 1954), Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP), two of the biggest American groups joining forces in the Near East Development Corporation (NEDC): Standard Oil of New Jersey (50 percent of the NEDC) and Standard Oil of New York (or Soconi Vacuum, Mobil in 1966), and a minority shareholder, Partex (established by Calouste Gulbenkian, “Mr. 5 percent”). Beginning with the time of its creation, the IPC was both an emanation of the major Western oil groups and the concrete expression of the oil policy in the Middle East pursued by the major Western powers—the United States, Great Britain and France. However, the predominance of the interests of the English-speaking countries within the IPC meant that it was above all an instrument of British and American oil policy in Iraq and in the Middle East. The Iraqi revolution of July 14, 1958 markedly modified the relationships between the IPC and Iraq. Thenceforth, the successive Iraqi governments; in the name of national development and national sovereignty, constantly limited the scope of the IPC’s concession contract. They were supported in their action by the USSR and the Soviet bloc,

Philippe Tristani

99

which provided them with the technical and financial means needed to counter Western oil “imperialism.” We intend to show here how the IPC, beginning in 1960, voluntarily limited Iraq’s oil production both to combat the Iraqi legislative measures and to turn the country into an international oil market adjustment variable. We will see that the Iraqis’ strategy for reducing the pressure exerted by the Majors consisted in constructing a national oil industry in partnership with the USSR and to a smaller extent with France.

Middle Eastern oil: A backyard for the Americans and the Soviet Union Due to its worldwide nature and the interregional balance it demands, oil economics requires a particular kind of geopolitics. In 1971, international oil1 represented one billion 350 million tons (Mt) out of world consumption of 2 billion 396 Mt. Ninety five percent of it was supplied by a dozen developing countries, mainly concentrated in the Middle East. It was mainly purchased and consumed by a dozen others, the industrialized countries. Ninety five percent of exploitation, shipment and trade in connection with that product were handled by the Majors,2 mainly American. Indeed, during the thirty years following World War II, the Middle East became the Western hemisphere’s main production area.3 Here, the United States’ oil policy and diplomacy is based on four objectives closely associating the US domestic oil interests, the world oil situation and national security in a Cold War context: 1

This means oil that is exchanged and is consumed outside the borders of the country where it is produced. 2 The term designates the world’s seven most important oil companies constituting an informal cartel of vertically integrated companies controlling nine-tenths of the world output of crude oil and two-thirds of the refining capacity and of the pipelines outside the United States and the USSR. The “seven sisters” are five American companies: Standard Oil (of New Jersey, which became Exxon in 1972), Mobil Oil, Texaco, Gulf Oil, and Standard Oil of California, one British company and one Anglo-Dutch company: Anglo-Persian Oil Company (which took the name Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935, then British Petroleum or BP in 1954) and Royal Dutch Shell. One sometimes speaks of the Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP, which became Total in 1991) as the eighth Major. 3 In oil language, the world is divided into two spaces: the American continent, which became the Western Hemisphere, and the rest of the world, the Eastern Hemisphere

100

Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle

x Control the oil deposits in the Middle East on the basis of oil concessions allocated, if possible, solely to the American Majors; x Guarantee the security and regularity of supplies on the international oil market while limiting their oil dependence, orienting the oil flows from the Middle East toward Western Europe and Japan; x Installation of a pricing system aimed both at having oil remain a cheap source of energy and at protecting the profitability of its oil industry; x Hold in check and contain the nationalistic demands made by producer countries to maintain its oil leadership and make the Middle East a sanctuary, or at least a shield from Soviet ambitions. Indeed, whatever administration may have been in power, the Federal State always supported the American companies abroad. Moreover, there is a real “symbiosis based on mutual dependence”4 between the State Department’s public policy and the Majors’ action. To reach these objectives, in spite of the opposition expressed by the Department of Justice, which wanted to force the Majors to respect antitrust law, the majors jointly created some large companies in the Middle East such as the IPC, ARAMCO and the Iranian Consortium, which were parts of an oligopolistic oil system. Indeed, as of 1956, the American share in the Middle East’s production exceeded 55 percent. Thus until 1972, the Americans owned 23.75 percent of the IPC group, 40 percent of the Iranian Consortium, 50 percent of the Iran Pan American Oil Co., and 50 percent of Kuwait Oil Co. They held the entire capital of ARAMCO, of Dhofar Concessions, of the Petroleum Concessions, of BAPCO in Bahrain, of the American Independent Oil of California Co. and of the Pacific Western Oil Corporation in the neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, of the Yemen Development Corporation and of the Syrian-American Oil and Gas Co.5 The oil reserves of the Middle East, thus coming mainly under American control, contributed to unifying the world oil market to the Majors’ benefit. 4

Michael Tanzer, in Barnet (1973, 199). On their part, the British held 50 percent of Kuwait Oil, 56 percent of the Iranian Consortium, 2/3 of the Abu Dhabi Marine Areas, 100 percent of Kuwait Shell Co., 85 percent of Petroleum Development (Oman) and 23.75 percent of the IPC and of its subsidiaries. By way of the CFP, the French held the same percentages in the IPC and its subsidiaries, 1/3 of Abu Dhabi Marine Areas, 25 percent of Dhubai Marine Areas, and 10 percent of Petroleum Development (Oman). See Nouschi (1991, 141–62).

5

Philippe Tristani

101

On the side of the USSR, the growing Arab-Israeli conflict and the latent anti-Westernism of the Arabs proved far more susceptible to exploitation. The Soviet Union’s concern for the security of its southern borders, exacerbated by the establishment of the Baghdad Pact, also played a critical role in drawing the USSR closer to the Arabs. Following the 1955 Soviet-Egyptian arms deal, the Soviet Union rapidly built a position of power and influence in the region as it skillfully took advantage of a shared objective with the Arabs—the removal, or reduction, of Western influence. From this point of view, the Soviets’ only interest in the Middle Eastern petroleum industry was in its contribution to Western military and industrial power. Not needing the region’s oil for their own use, they sought to discredit the Western oil companies as agents of Western imperialism. “Oil,” it was argued, “had for decades enslaved the peoples of the Middle East; was it not high time for them to be liberated from these shackles? Had not the people a better title to the huge revenues than the company shareholders?”(Laqueur 1970, 118). What better way to weaken the West than by encouraging the local governments to seek their independence of the oil companies by nationalization? Confrontation between the Soviet and the American strategies directly involved Iraq and the IPC.

IPC-Iraq confrontation Until the 1970s, the concession system governed relationships between operating companies and producing countries. Originally, the concessions covered almost the entire area of the producer countries and had a very long duration. In Iraq, on March 14, 1925 the Turkish Petroleum Company obtained a concession from the Baghdad government corresponding to the northern half of the country, for seventy-five years. In 1932 and in 1938, the Mosul Petroleum Company (MPC) and the Basrah Petroleum Company (BPC) rounded out this system in the southern part of Iraq. So, on the eve of World War II, the area of the concessions covered all Iraq. Those agreements “create veritable de facto monopolies in favor of the companies and grant them exclusive operating rights over immense domains. (They) actually organize a veritable transfer of sovereignty in the oil domain from the host States to the companies” (Sid-Ahmed 1980, 25). The producing countries did not control the amounts produced, the level of exports, or prices. They were confined to a role as mere tax collectors.

102

Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle

The revolution of July 14, 1958, which overthrew Nuri Said’s proWestern government and brought General Abdel Karim Kassem to power, intensified a constant political desire for re-appropriation of the Iraqi oil economy in the name of Iraq’s development and national sovereignty. Until the 1970s, Iraq henceforth played a decisive role in the oil decolonization of the Middle East. As of 1958, three demands—which were traditional for a producer country—fed the antagonism between the IPC group and the Iraqi government. The first one was the application of clause 8 of the 1925 concession contract, which provided for participation by Iraqi capital to the extent of 20 percent of the operating companies’ capital, thus authorizing the presence of an Iraqi director with executive power in the IPC management team. The second one was the return of the IPC group’s concessions6 to enable the government to introduce some new concession holders in Iraq prepared to sign contracts that would be more advantageous than the ones previously concluded by the three operating companies.7 The third one concerns the revision of the establishment of the “posted price” used as a basis for calculation of the 50/50 agreement.8 On these three points, during the twelve years of negotiations that followed, the Iraqi government ran up against systematic opposition by the IPC group, particularly by Anglo-American shareholders. Indeed, the American and English groups, more sensitive to the international oil scene than to the consequences of the Iraqi revolution, observed the principle of not giving way on anything without obtaining an advantage in return, for fear of the possible repercussions in Saudi Arabia or in Iran, in particular. All the more so in that all of the IPC group partners were convinced that Iraq did not want to endanger its oil income: “if we need their oil, they need our markets.”9 This meant that the negotiations were becoming commercial bargaining. The BP and the 6

In 1959, the Iraqi government demanded that the IPC return 60 percent of the area of its concession to it. 7 As of 1957, Enrico Mattei’s ENI had signed a new kind of contract with Iran, more advantageous than the 50/50 agreement. 8 A note from Shell company quoted by Petroleum Press Service in October 1963 defined the posted prices as follows: “The prices at which offers to sell crude are made, the said prices being understood as F.O.B. (free on board) from the ports of shipment.” Hence those prices are determined by the sellers. The posted prices constitute the basis for calculation of the breakdown of profits between producer countries and concessionaire oil companies. 9 T(otal) A(rchives) 92.36/50, Duroc Danner to CFP, 1 September 1958. The threat of a boycott like the one suffered by Iran after nationalization of the AIOC in 1951 hovered over the relationships between producer countries and Majors.

Philippe Tristani

103

NEDC adopted an intransigent attitude toward Baghdad and dragged out the negotiations, persuaded, wrongly, that time was working for them. The Iraqi minister of economics denounced a “policy of deferment and procrastination.”10 It was under these already tense circumstances that the unilateral reduction of posted prices in the Middle East occurred. As of the end of 1958, at a time when oil was in over-supply, the IPC decided unilaterally to lower the posted prices (Free On Board) at the Mediterranean terminals by 10 cents per barrel of crude on average. This was soon followed, in February 1959, by Shell and the BP, which lowered the posted prices by 9 percent, while the Eisenhower administration, responding to the pressure exerted by the “Independents,”11 established oil quotas to reduce US oil imports. The most direct consequence of this series of measures was the 15 percent decline in the revenue of the producer countries in the Middle East. As a result of that difficulty, the Iraqi government tried to offset the decline of its oil revenue. On June 11, 1959, the Basrah port authority instituted a tenfold increase in export taxes, namely 5.7 shillings per ton of crude oil loaded at the port of Fao starting on September 9. The BPC refused to recognize the new rate and, on May 30, 1960, on the pretext of lower demand for crude oil, reduced the loadings in Fao and interrupted production at the Rumaila field. Thus the BPC’s annual output dropped from almost 8 Mt to 3 Mt (Stocking 1970, 240). Kassem multiplied nationalistic speeches denouncing the concessionaire companies’ imperialism: “Every time we have tried to enter into negotiations with the foreign companies, imperialism has made use of its stooges and agents to commit irresponsible acts against our Republic. … We are engaged in a struggle with imperialism and the foreign companies which refuse to recognize our rights until we have fought for them with all our might.”12 Kassem’s nationalistic rhetoric made the re-appropriation of the Iraqi oil industry the core of national independence. In the light of any significant progress in the negotiations, in March 1961 Kassem ordered the company to halt exploration work outside the production spaces. On December 12, the Iraqi parliament approved the “Law 80,” known as the “Kassem Law,” which nationalized 99.5 percent of the IPC concession. This act appeared to be the most significant one undertaken in the Middle East since nationalization of the AIOC by Mossadegh in Iran in 1951. The 10

TA 82.7/7, minister of economics to the IPC, December 31, 1958. In the international oil vocabulary, this word usually designates any company other than the seven Majors. 12 Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), March 31, 1961, in Stocking (1970, 242). 11

104

Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle

fact is that it was the first time since 1951 that the initiative was taken by a producer country, without any prior negotiations on the issue or compensation. Kassem’s successors rounded out this approach by two other laws: the “Law 11” of February 8, 1964, which established the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC), and “Law 97” of August 7, 1967, which transferred the confiscated areas from the IPC to INOC. Thus the return of the IPC group’s concessions became an extremely sensitive issue between the company and the Iraqi government. At this stage, one may wonder whether the “stalemate strategy” developed mainly by the BP and the NEDC paid off for the IPC. The first consequence of the conflict that broke out between the IPC and Iraq was the marked slowdown of Iraqi oil production. There was a strong contrast between the increase in Iraq’s proven reserves, pushing the country from fifth into third place among oil countries, and its oil output, which rose by only 3.5 percent per year between 1965 and 1970. At the same time, Saudi Arabian output advanced by 19 percent, Iran by 14 percent and Kuwait by 6 percent. We are dealing here with the smallest increase among all of the producer countries in the Middle East and Africa. The objective pursued in this connection by the IPC group was a traditional one: the point was both to make Iraq yield by significantly reducing its main source of income and to send an unambiguous warning to the other producing countries that might be tempted to follow the Iraqi example.

The challenge of the North Rumaila oil deposit and the French and Soviet interventions Until the summer of 1967, Iraq’s expropriation legislation had no marked effect other than lower production in the areas still belonging to the IPC. The British company effectively implemented its pressure strategy, consisting in simultaneously playing on the absence of suitable economic and technical executives for developing a national oil policy, on Iraq’s political instability, and on its ability to strangle that country, economically and financially, to reach its goals. However, the Anglo-American component of the IPC Group underestimated the importance of Arab nationalism, pushed in Iraq by the Ba’ath party. For the latter, struggling against the IPC was tantamount to fighting Western imperialism, and hence Israeli imperialism. So the battle for freeing the Arab nation incorporated the fight against the IPC to return Arab oil to the Arabs. The political and ideological dimension firmly prevailed over the merely economic and financial concerns, thus making

Philippe Tristani

105

the budgetary reductions imposed by the IPC’s attitude on Iraq inoperative. The Syrian crisis and then the Six-Day War in June 1967 crystallized the tensions in Iraq centering around the development of the giant North Rumaila oil field, in the southern part of the country, by INOC. The French and Soviet interventions proved to be decisive in constituting a genuinely Iraqi oil industry able, in the medium run, to thwart the allpowerful IPC. The British company was particularly eager to reestablish itself in the territories explored by it and with respect to the petroleum resources that were proven but not exploited. The recovery of the territory including North Rumaila was considered a particularly sensitive point. This territory, with an approximate area of 800 km2, was thought to contain more than 800 Mt of crude oil reserves. Thus North Rumaila would be one of the rare giant oil fields on the planet. The point was not for the company to exploit that sea of oil, but rather to keep it away from the Iraqis in order to thwart law 80 de facto, thus restoring its concession rights. Since July 1960 and the implementation a drastic reduction of its production by the BPC, Iraq had become aware of its dramatic dependence on the IPC and of the resulting financial insecurity. The Iraqi government’s anxiety about the occurrence of long production reductions that could seriously affect the national economy dates from that episode. The vital need for the development of INOC was henceforth finding assistance, a partnership that could enable it to develop national petroleum operations. In June 1967, De Gaulle clearly condemned Israel. The shift in France’s Arab policy enabled it to bring about a rapprochement with the Arab States, particularly Iraq. On October 23, 1967, the French ambassador in Baghdad delivered a letter from de Gaulle to President Aref expressing “the French Government’s eagerness to establish the closest possible links with the Iraqi Republic in all fields in which Franco-Iraqi cooperation could be profitable to both countries.”13 One month later, on November 23, the Iraqi government announced agreement on the signature of a thirty-year contract between INOC and the Entreprise de Recherches et d’Activités Pétrolières (ERAP). It was finally signed on February 3, 1968. It was a question of exploring 10 800 km2 in territory confiscated from the IPC and 2 280 km2 off shore in the southern part of the country for six years.14 ERAP agreed to act as operator on behalf of INOC, which remained the sole owner of the areas to be exploited. 13

MEES, November 3, 1967, in Stocking (1970, 306). France and Iraq: Oil Agreement, International Legal Materials. 1968. Vol. 7, 2:233–36. 14

106

Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle

Thus ERAP’s intervention was to the benefit of the Iraqis’ pressure policy exerted against the IPC. INOC, having succeeded for the first time in cracking the IPC monopoly, used ERAP’s proposals concerning North Rumaila to consolidate its positions vis-à-vis the IPC. Pursing the objective of working out a program for exploration and development of the vast areas taken away from the IPC by law 80, particularly North Rumaila, the Iraqi authorities turned to the USSR. As of September 1967, the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum invited the Soviet representatives in Baghdad to work out an arrangement with that in mind. Thus, on December 24, 1967, Jader, the INOC president, and Semyon Skachkov, the head of the Soviet delegation and chairman of the Committee for Foreign Economic Relations of the Soviet Council of Ministers, signed a memorandum of understanding by which the Soviets undertook to provide Iraq with technical and financial assistance for its petroleum development program. Thus under INOC auspices, the USSR was called on to develop drilling in North Rumaila and facilitate shipment and sale of crude oil. By becoming players in Iraq’s economic development, Soviets could exploit certain tactical advantages over their Western rivals. The Soviet-Iraqi agreement, by showing that new types of contracts were more advantageous than the existing ones, necessarily had repercussions on the future relationships between producing states in the Middle East and the Western oil companies. So with that type of agreement, the Soviet Union did not need to possess any concession rights in order to exploit the oil resources in INOC’s company. The agreements of June and July 1969 continued that bilateral cooperation. With the Ba’ath’s return to power following the military coup of July 17 and 30, 1968, Iraq moved into a new stage in the development of oil nationalism. The new Iraqi minister of petroleum and mines, Rachid Rifai, told the press that the new government was considering a project by which Iraq itself would see to the disposing of the share of local production due to it, rather than leaving that up to the British concessionary companies.15 To reach these political and economic objectives, the Ba’ath party very early recognized that Soviet assistance was indispensable (Smolansky 1991, 16–17). Iraq intensified contacts with the Eastern European countries and Moscow. Thus in the summer of 1969, the memorandum of understanding concluded in December 1967 took the concrete form of a program aimed at enabling INOC to fully realize its potentialities as a national company by developing the territories expropriated from the IPC. The Russian 15

TA 90.4/25, Le Commerce du Levant, August 14, 1968.

Philippe Tristani

107

assistance took two forms: one agreement between the Iraqi and the Soviet governments, and another one between INOC and the Russian company Machinoexport. On July 5, an agreement was signed in Moscow between Iraq and the USSR on behalf of the long term economic and technical cooperation for the development of the Iraqi oil industry, particularly for the development of the North Rumaila deposit, with the immediate goal of producing 5 Mt per year.16 To finance that program, Russia granted a loan of 70 millions of dollars (M$) at 2.5 percent, repayable beginning in 1973 solely in the form of crude oil at the market price. The treaty provided that the North Rumaila field would be operational at the beginning of 1972. The concrete expression of the Soviet assistance to Iraq was the signing of a short-term agreement on general cooperationon on June 21, 1969, in Baghdad, for a period of three years, between INOC and the Russian company Machinoexport. That agreement recognized INOC’s right to directly operate all territories with which it was entrusted under law 97 and to obtain any needed assistance to that end. Within that framework, an additional contract concerned technical assistance, including support by Russian staff and training in the USSR of Iraqi employees. That agreement as a whole was accompanied by a five-year 3 percent loan of 72 M$ to cover all operating expenses. The Iraqi-Soviet oil cooperation agreement appeared, at the time, to be the most significant event in the history of the Middle Eastern oil industry. On October 21, 1969, Baghdad further strengthened its relationship with the Communist bloc. The Iraqis signed a technical cooperation agreement with the Hungarian oil entity Chemokomplex to have it undertake drilling and equipping five wells in North Rumaila, which INOC was getting ready to exploit with Soviet assistance. In that connection, Hungary granted a loan of 15 M$ to Iraq at an annual interest rate of 3 percent.17 That agreement was instrumental in the development of INOC as an integrated national company with an immediate market for its oil. SovietIraqi ties became even closer in April 1972 when Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin visited Iraq for the purpose of signing a fifteen-year treaty of friendship between the two countries. The joint communiqué released at the end of Kosygin’s visit said that: “The successful completion of the construction of the Rumailah project sets the stage in the struggle of the Iraqi people against the controls of the imperialist oil companies.” 16

TA 82.7/38: correspondance IPC 1970, DMO n 8.557, Note intérieure – annexe n 2, February 13, 1970. 17 TA 90.4/31, Études et Documents, Exploration et production de pétrole en Irak par le Département de Recherche du PGA, August 9, 1975.

108

Iraq and the Oil Cold War: A Superpower Struggle

Coincidentally, the first commercial exports began from the North Rumailah field on April 7, 1972. The diplomatic aid provided by the USSR and the technical competency acquired by the INOC teams now enabled Baghdad to envision nationalizing the British company. On January 12, 1972 when negotiations resumed between the Iraqi regime and the IPC, the Majors who were shareholders in the IPC, confident in the disproportionate weight that the British company represented for the Iraqi treasury and convinced of the Iraqis’ inability, despite the support of the Soviet bloc, to market their oil, prepared merely to negotiate an economic and commercial agreement. Six months later, on June 1, 1972, President Al-Bakr announced the promulgation of the decree nationalizing the IPC concession by the Council of the Revolutionary Command. For the very first time, an oil concession belonging collectively to the Majors, was 100 percent nationalized. With the USSR’s ability to absorb Iraqi oil remaining limited, the Vice-President Saddam Hussein, who is regarded as the strong man of the regime, turned his sights to France. The specific interests of the Compagnie Française des Pétroles and the distancing of France from its partners in the IPC were obvious when negotiations started in 1961. Encouraging France to pursue its purchases offered a dual advantage: one of a commercial order, the other political in nature, inasmuch as the Ba’athist leaders could then avoid a dependency on Moscow. A political agreement was signed on June 18 to the effect that the CFP would continue to extract its share of the production from the Kirkuk oil fields. The French company was also authorized to negotiate the purchase of additional quantities of crude. From Abdel Karim Kassem to Saddam Hussein, thirteen years elapsed before revolutionary Iraq fully nationalized the IPC. What all of these struggles had in common was to inscribe in international law the recognition of a state’s sovereignty over both its territory and the raw materials—specifically oil—contained therein. Until the 1970s, Iraq henceforth played a decisive role in the oil decolonization of the Middle East. The IPC’s impact on Iraq and its influence in Iraq were substantial until the development of the INOC and the Rumailah field. By May 1972, the IPC’s impact in Iraq had been neutralized. Nationalization of the IPC by the government was possible only after the viability of INOC as an alternative source of revenue was assured. The crucial factor in the development of INOC was the assistance of the Soviet Union. The most important contribution to the Iraqi cause was assistance in the marketing of the nationalized crude oil. Soviet and French

Philippe Tristani

109

willingness to absorb surplus nationalized crude was essential to the success of the Iraqi nationalization. In this context, the on-going efforts of the IPC and the Foreign Office to prevent Iraq from exploiting its own oil resources was, in the words of the British ambassador to Baghdad, Glen Balfour-Paul, “like closing their eyes to the reality of history.” The United States and the USSR on the other hand decided to accompany these changes in order to bolster their positions in the struggle in which they were indirectly engaged, one against the other.

Bibliography Primary sources Total Archives

Secondary sources Barnet, Richard. 1973. Roots of War. Baltimore: Penguin Books. Blair, John. 1976. The Control of Oil. New York: Parethon Books. Laqueur, Walter. 1970. The Struggle for the Middle East. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Nouschi, André. 1991. “Le Golfe et le pétrole: d’un impérialisme à l’autre?” Relations internationales 66:141–62. Penrose, Edith Tilton. 1976. The Large International Firm in Developing Countries. Virginia: Greenwood Press. Rad Serecht, Farhad. 1985. Le marché pétrolier international: ruptures et nouvelles configurations. Notes et études documentaire. 4790. Paris: La Documentation française. Sid-Ahmed, Abdelkader. 1980. L’OPEP: passé, présent et perspectives. Paris: Economica. Smolansky, Oles. 1991. The USSR and Iraq. The Soviet Quest for Influence. Durham-London: Duke University Press. Stocking, George. 1970. Middle East Oil. A Study in Political and Economic Controversy. Kingsport-Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press. The International Petroleum Industry. 1968. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

THE SOVIET INTERVENTION IN AFGHANISTAN AS A CONTINUATION OF THE IMPERIAL POLICY OF TSARIST RUSSIA JOANNA MODRZEJEWSKA-LEĝNIEWSKA In 2013 it was thirty-four years since the start of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. This act of aggression took the international community by surprise. The 1970s were a period of détente in the EastWest relations and not only in declarations. It was a time of good-will gestures, such as the common Soyuz-Apollo mission of July 17, 1975 (Ezell 1978; Lebedev 1979). Many factors influenced this policy: the balance of the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union, the American failure in Vietnam, the rising tensions in the Soviet-China relations.1 Soviet politicians talked a lot about coexistence and cooperation and these talks were taken in the West as honest statements, when, in fact, they were just empty declarations. The Soviet Union under the Leonid Brezhnev leadership pursued a policy of political, economic and military expansion (Roszkowski 1997, 228–29). The Soviet leadership believed that, after the US debacle in Vietnam, it politically and militarily gained an upper hand. One of the main areas of Soviet expansion was the Third World countries, where it was easier to achieve its goals. These countries were important economic partners of the Soviet Union. It imported from them grain (in 1970, 15.8 percent of grain was imported to the USSR, in 1975, 28 percent and in 1980, 24.2 percent), crude oil, natural gas, which later the Soviet Union was re-exporting, with much profit, to the West (Gu Guan-Fu 1983, 85). The USSR exported to the Third World countries significant amount of its fuel, electric energy (in 1970 the Soviet exports amounted to 15.6 percent

1

The literature concerning the Soviet-American relations is vast; it is enough to mention just several books such as: Boyle (1993); Crockatt (1995); Gaddis (1982); Garthoff (1985); Hammond (1975); Pipes (1981); Urban (1976).

Joanna Modrzejewska-LeĞniewska

111

of the energy imported by these countries and in 1980 it was already 46.9 percent) and arms. The increase in the arms exports was connected with the fact that only during the fifteen preceding years there were forty military coups in thirty countries. It led to the conviction that military intervention in the internal affairs of the Third World countries became a generally accepted rule, and that military rule became a regular practice in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Therefore, the Soviet leadership acknowledged that military help usually led to the change of attitude among usually anti-Soviet military circles (David 1986, 6). The Soviet decision-makers realized that the USSR was unable to dislodge the Western powers from the Third World just by economic pressure, as the Soviet competitiveness in this respect was more and more limited. Therefore, military support was viewed as the only alternative. This attitude was welcomed by many African, Asian and Latin American regimes (Alford 1981). Although Soviet diplomacy was active, and despite the diplomatic, financial and economic offensive in the Third World, it suffered several losses, which weakened the USSR’s position on the international arena. The Soviet Union did not play a direct role in the Camp David Accords of 1979 (Avinieri 1978, 51–69; Khalidi 1979; Bradley 1981; Quandt 1986; Telhami 1990); it was also forced to withdraw from Somalia, where it lost a military base in Berbera (Ormowska 1999, 302–304). Even in the areas geographically closest to the USSR, the Soviet Union suffered some reverses. In 1975, there were military coups in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and in Sri Lanka a right-wing government won the general elections. What was even worse, those governments established closer relations with China. India was also a great disappointment to Soviet decision-makers. In 1976, it resumed diplomatic relations with China and did not support the Soviet plans for the creation of a peace zone in the Indian Ocean or for the signing of a common security pact in Asia. In 1977, India started to improve its economic and military relations with the Western powers (Saivetz and Woodby 1985, 67). Contrary to popular belief, also the Soviet-Afghan relations were not that cordial. There were several major and minor incidents. The first symptoms of the worsening relations can be seen at the end of 1975. During Mohammed Daud’s visit to Moscow there were symptomatic changes in the words of official communiqués. It is characteristic that Izviestia, the official newspaper of the Soviet government, spoke of “mutual trust, mutual understanding, frankness and good will,” but there were no words such as “friendship” or “cordiality” (Bradsher 1985, 64– 65).

112

The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan

Many actions of the Afghan government, such as the removal of some of the Soviet military instructors, the dismissal of forty Afghan officers who studied in the USSR from the armed forces, the revival of relations with Iran, or the steps undertaken toward the normalization of the relations with Pakistan (PAP 1974; Arnold 1985, 63–64; Asian Recorder 1974, 12048; Mukerjee 1975, 311) certainly were viewed in Moscow with growing suspicion. The breaking point came during Daud’s visit to Moscow in April 1977. During the mutual talks, Russians made several accusations concerning the Afghan relations with Iran and the presence of specialists from the Western countries (Ghaus 1988, 179). Daud assumed that Soviets went too far and were meddling into the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and he said to Brezhnev: “I want to remind you that you are speaking to the President of an independent country, not one of your East European satellites. You are trying to interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and this I will not permit” (Hammond 1984, 42). And when the Afghan delegation was leaving the conference room, one of its members turned toward Daud and said: “Did you see the look on Brezhnev’s face when you said that? Mr. President, you are a dead Man” (Hammond 1984, 42). These prophetic words became a reality in April 1978 during the socalled Saur Revolution (April Revolution), when Daud’s government was ousted from power and the pro-Soviet People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan took over the government of the country. Daud was killed during an attack on the presidential palace (Dupree 1979, 14). The coming to power of the pro-Soviet PDPA was unwelcomed by most of the Afghan population. Very soon the discontent started to spread all over the country. In March 1979, there was a serious incident in Herat, where the mob attacked Russians; fifty of them were killed in the riots. In May, the same year, there were violent anti-government outbreaks in many Afghan provinces. In June 1979, some army detachments rebelled in Jalalabad (Bradsher 1999, 51). The new regime was unable to control this situation. It turned to the Soviet Union for military support at least in the form of combat helicopters.2 The Soviet Union decided not to give this kind of support; instead, in December 1979, they decided to intervene directly in

2

(An die Gen. Brezhnev, Kosygin, Andropov, Gromyko, Suslov, Ustinov, Ponomarev, Smirtyukov, Auszug aus dem Sitzungsprotokoll No. 150 des Politbüros des ZK der KPdSU vom 21. April 1979, Strategische Studien 1995, 103-105).

Joanna Modrzejewska-LeĞniewska

113

Afghanistan. The war, as we know, lasted over nine years until February 1989.3 The reasons behind the Soviet intervention are still a subject of many academic and political disputes. Among the reasons for the Soviet intervention specialists point to the fear that Afghanistan could slip away from the Soviet sphere of influence, the anxiety concerning the Khomeini revolution in Iran and its potential spread in the region, especially in Soviet Central Asia, the fear that the US would strengthen its position in South Asia, or finally a bid to obtain access to the Indian Ocean. In 1980, the US President Jimmy Carter commented on the last of these options in this way: “A successful takeover of Afghanistan would give the Soviets a deep penetration between Iran and Pakistan and pose a threat to the rich oil fields of the Persian Gulf area and to the crucial waterways through which so much of the world’s energy supplies had to pass” (Carter 1982, 471– 72). Commenting on this step of Soviet policy, Alvin Rubinstein stated in 1980 that intervention in Afghanistan meant the start of a new phase in Soviet policy in the Third World, as the Soviet troops were sent to support one political fraction against another, with the goal of strengthening Soviet influence there (Rubinstein 1980, 103). Accepting the abovementioned statement as generally true, one may just wonder if this kind of Soviet policy was not, in fact, a continuation of the old tsarist imperial policy. If we look at the Russian method of expansion in Central Asia during the nineteenth century, we may see a kind of regularity; certain phases of expansion were present in most of the cases. First, the initiative was undertaken by central government, sometimes at the instigation of local authorities, but the final decision was always an initiative of central authorities, which organized expeditions. Trusted men such as Mikhail Cherniaev, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky or Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky were sent with such expeditions to Central Asia. Secondly, those expeditions were organized on a pretty grand scale, numbering thousands of soldiers and other men. For example, Perovsky’s unsuccessful expedition against Khiva numbered 6,000 men, while Mikhail Cherniaev’s expedition against the Khanate of Kokand numbered 2,500 men (àukawski 1996, 238, 244).4 The third permanent element of Russian expansion was the erection of forts or fortifications of existing settlements. In this way, strongholds were created such as: Raimsk (Aralsk), Ak-Mechet (Fort Perovsky, now Kyzylorda), Fort Verny 3

The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and its consequences are a topic of many valuable books and monographs. See for example: Weinland (1981); Arnold (1985); Monks (1981); Hyman (1982); Collins (1986); Roy (1987). 4 For a detailed study of the Russian expansion in Central Asia see: Pierce (1960).

114

The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan

(Almaty) or Petro-Aleksandrovsk (Turtkul). These forts were elements of lines of fortifications such as the Orenburg and Siberian line of fortifications, which was a base of the nineteenth-century Russian expansion. It ran from Guryev (now Atyrau) near the mouth of the Ural River, then up the Ural River, on its left bank to Orenburg, then crossed the Tobol River and then went through Troick and Petropavl to Omsk, then along the Tobol River to Semipalatinsk and further to the Chinese border, for more than 2,000 miles together. The whole line, with its additional support lines, was 3,300 km long and over 20,000 Cossacks of the Orenburg and Siberian Cossack troops were stationed there (Rawlinson 1875, 141; àukawski 1996, 236). The fourth element of Russian expansion was the construction of communication lines, in the nineteenth century usually railways, like the Trans-Caspian Railway, which ran through Gyzylarbat, Ashkhabad, Merv (Mary), Krasnovodsk, Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent and Andijan, or the Trans-Aral Railway/Tashkent Railway, which linked Orenburg and Tashkent. This last line was opened in 1906 linking the Trans-Caspian Railway with the Russian railway system (Hauner 1990, 98–101). Finally, characteristic of Russian expansion in Central Asia was its consistency. They did it by the book, stage by stage. At first, they were taking over a territory and its most important strategic points. Then they were establishing or fortifying these points, creating systems of fortifications and developing lines of communication and a logistic base for the next move and only then the next step was made. So, in 1824–54, the Kazakh steppes were conquered (Chalfin 1974, 290). In 1866, the Khanate of Kokand was subjugated and by 1885 the Panj River was reached, which was the last stage of the nineteenth-century Russian expansion in this area. In this way, Russians reached the Afghan borders (Pierce 1960, 25). If we turn now to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which started in December 1979, we may see quite a few analogies; first, the initiative. As we have seen, the Afghan government asked for military support against the growing rebellion in provinces, but it was declined. Instead, the Soviet decision-makers decided to directly intervene in Afghanistan. The central authorities decided to change the policy. The decision was made by the innermost authority circles, by the members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Politburo): Yuri Andropov, Dmitriy Ustinov, Andrei Gromyko and Boris Ponomarev. The general secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, was too ill to take part in this decision making (Bradsher 1999, 79). The military circles probably played an important role in these decisions. The generals probably convinced the Politburo that they could clean up the whole mess in Afghanistan in three or four months (Hammond 1984, 143). Soviet

Joanna Modrzejewska-LeĞniewska

115

generals also may have viewed Afghanistan as an opportunity to test new weapons, try new tactics and get combat experience for their soldiers, as well as a chance to get medals and promotions.5 Secondly, the Soviet decision-makers decided to use an overwhelming power, as they thought. In the first wave they deployed in Afghanistan 81,000 soldiers, out of them 61,000 were in combat units. They were accompanied by 2,400 armored vehicles, 500 combat planes and 800 artillery pieces. In all, during the whole war, between 1979 and 1989, some 620,000 Soviet soldiers were serving in Afghanistan. The third phase was taking over and fortifying main cities, towns and crucial points in a conquered country. In the case of Afghanistan, the Soviet troops took over the main cities, provincial capitals and military bases. In fact, they controlled most of them throughout the whole war. They also tried to control the main communication lines. This led to the fourth stage, the construction of communication lines. In the Afghan case, the Soviet forces concentrated on developing a road system and airfields, but they tried also to build some railway lines. Since the 1950s and the 1960s Soviet specialists had participated, competing in this field with the Americans, in many road-building projects (Teplinskij 1971, 155–56, 199). The Russians built, among other things, the famous Salang Tunnel, one of the most highly situated tunnels in the world (over 3.3 km over the sea level). Without this tunnel Russians would not have been able to carry out the invasion and support their troops for ten years. They also erected 15 km of railway line from Termez, which was mostly used for military transport, and they planned to extend this railway onwards through Pul-iKhumri and Bagram air base to Kabul. Together it would have been 400 km long. But these projects were not carried out (Grantham). Still, one should remember that they were part of the overall strategy. Finally, as in the case of Central Asia, the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan also assumed that there would be certain stages of the whole operation. Eventually this scenario was not carried out. The Soviet forces entered Afghanistan and took over the control of the main cities. They tried to create a stable powerbase through the cooperation with loyal local authorities and through the development of communication and logistic systems. So, why this operation did not end successfully? The answer may be in the words of the first deputy of chief of staff, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev: “There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by Soviet soldiers. Nevertheless, the majority of the 5

Testimony by Professor John Erickson, Great Britain, House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee (1980, 250).

116

The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan

territory remains in the hands of rebels” (Meeting of CC CPSU Politburo 1986, 180). The scenario could not have been carried out due to the effective guerrilla war led by the so-called rebels—Afghan mujahideen, who could count on the financial, political and technical support of the Western and Muslim world. For the Soviet Union this war was too expensive, economically, politically and socially. During the 1980s, the terrible state of the Soviet economy was fully revealed, and this also hindered the effectiveness of the Russian strategy in Afghanistan. Finally, after 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev decided to implement the policy of glasnost, common citizens started to express their disaffection with the war. But one may ask a question: what would have happened if the strategy had worked and the USSR had subdued Afghanistan? Quite possibly, for the next decade or more they would have strengthened their grip over Afghanistan, creating a net of military bases, extending a transport network (airfields, roads and railways) and then they would have been ready for the next move. What it would have been, we cannot be sure. They would have had several options open to them, including the surge toward the Arabian Sea, if really this was a goal of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. After 1989, the Soviet Union and later Russia faced a new reality and new challenges, the downfall of the Communist bloc, the dismemberment of the USSR and critical changes in the world’s geopolitical situation. The Soviet successor states, among them Russia, had to cope with their internal problems first. But during the last ten years, we may observe a resurrection of the Russian activity in the world, and Afghanistan is one of the regions toward which contemporary Russia is turning its attention. On May 8, 2013, President Vladimir Putin, during the session of the National Security Council, stated that the situation in Afghanistan could worsen in the near future. He noted that the activities of radical groups in Afghanistan had been increasing lately, which directly threatened Russia’s national security. He also questioned the unwillingness of the ISAF forces to benefit from Russian support. He offered to Central Asian states Russian economic, technical, military and humanitarian assistance (Xinhua 2013). This statement provokes a question: is Russia again returning to the old imperial policy in that region?

Joanna Modrzejewska-LeĞniewska

117

Bibliography Alford, Jonathan. 1981. “The New Military Instruments.” The Soviet Union and the Third World, edited by E.J. Feuchtwanger and Peter Nailor, 12–29. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Arnold, Anthony. 1985. Afghanistan. The Soviet Invasion in Perspective. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Asian Recorder. 1974. June 11–17. 20, 24:12048. Avinieri, Shlomo. 1978. “Peacemaking: The Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Foreign Affairs 57, 1:51–69. Boyle, Peter G. 1993. American-Soviet Relations from the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism. London: Routledge. Bradley, C. Paul. 1981. The Camp David Peace Process: A Study of Carter Administration Policies, 1977–1980. Grantham: Tompson & Rutter. Bradsher, Henry S. 1985. Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Durham: Duke University Press. —. 1999. Afghan Communism and Soviet Intervention. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carter, Jimmy. 1982. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. New York: Bantam Books. Chalfin, Naftula A. 1974. Rossija i Chanstwa Srednej Azii. Perwaja polowina XIX veka. Moscow: Izdatielstvo Vostoþnoj Literatury. Collins, Joseph J. 1986. The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: A Study in the Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy. Lexington: Lexington Books. Crockatt, Richard. 1995. The Fifty Years War. The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics 1941–1991. London: Routledge. David, Steven R. 1985. “Soviet Involvement in Third World Coups.” International Security 11, 1:3–36. Dupree, Louis. 1979. “Red Flag over Hindu Kush—Part II: The Accidental Coup, or Taraki” In Blunderland, American University Field Staff Report, South Asia Series, 1979, Vol. IV, 45, September 1979. Ezell, Edward Clinton. 1979. The Partnership: A History of the Apollo— Soyuz Test Project. Washington: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Foreign Affairs Committee. 1980. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and Its Consequences for British Policy. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Gaddis, John Lewis. 1982. Strategies of Containment. New York: Oxford University Press.

118

The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan

Garthoff, Raymond. 1985. Détente and Confrontation. American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Washington: Brookings Institution. Ghaus, Abdul Samad. 1988. The Fall of Afghanistan. An Insider’s Account. Washington: Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense Publisher. Grantham, Andrew. Railways of Afghanistan. Hairatan and the Friendship Bridge. www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/afghanistan/railways/hairatan–and– the–friendship–bridge/. Gu Guan-Fu. 1983. “Soviet Aid to the Third World. An Analysis of its Strategy” Soviet Studies 35, 1:71–89. Hammond, Paul Y. 1975. Cold War and Détente. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Inc. Hammond, Thomas T. 1984. Red Flag over Afghanistan. The Communist Coup, the Soviet Invasion, and the Consequences. Boulder: Westview Press. Hauner, Milan. 1990. What is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Hyman, Anthony. 1982. Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964– 1981. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Khalidi, Rashid. 1979. Soviet Middle East Policy in the Wake of Camp David. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies. Lebedev, Lev Aleksandrovich. 1979. Rendezvou in Space: Soyuz Apollo. Moscow: Progress Publishers. àukawski, Zygmunt. 1996. Dzieje Azji ĝrodkowej. Kraków: “NOMOS.” Meeting of CC CPSU Politburo, 13 November 1986. Cold War International History Project Bulletin. 8/9, Winter 1996/1997: 178–81. Monks, Alfred L. 1981. The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan. Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Mukerjee, Dilip. 1975. “Afghanistan under Daoud: Relations with Neighboring States.” Asian Survey 15, 4:301–12. Ormowska, Izabela. 1999. “Historia Somalii do 1991 roku.” Róg Afryki. Historia i wspóáczesnoĞü, edited by Joanna Mantel-Nieüko, and Maciej Ząbek. Warsaw: TRIO. PAP. 1974. Biuletyn Specjalny. lipiec, 476/A/27. Pierce, Richard. 1960. Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pipes, Richard. 1981. US-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente. Boulder: Westview Press. Quandt, William B. 1986. Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics. Washington: Brookings Institution. Rawlinson, Henry C. 1875. England and Russia in the East. London: John Murray.

Joanna Modrzejewska-LeĞniewska

119

Roszkowski, Wojciech. 1997. Póáwiecze. Historia polityczna Ğwiata po 1945 roku. Warsaw: PWN. Roy, Arundhati. 1987. The Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan: Causes, Consequences, and India’s Response. New Delhi: Assosiated Pub. House. Rubinstein, Alvin. 1980. “Soviet Imperialism in Afghanistan.” Current History 79, 459: 80–83. Saivetz, Carol R., and Sylvia Woodby. 1985. Soviet-Third World Relations. London: Westview Press. Strategische Studien. 1995. Sowjetische Geheimdokumente zum Afghanistankrieg (1978-1991). Zurich: Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH. Telhami, Shibley. 1990. Power and Leadership Bargaining: the Path to the Camp David Accords. New York: Columbia University Press. Teplinskij, Leonid B. 1971. 50 let sovetsko-afganskich otnosenij, 19191969. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Nauka.” Urban, George, ed. 1976. Détente. New York: Universe Books. Weinland, Robert G. 1981. An Explanation of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Alexandria: Institute of Naval Studies. Xinhua. May 8, 2013. Putin Warns of Worsening Afghan Situation, www.china.org.cn/world/2013–05/08/content_28769789.htm.

THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION SYSTEM IN THE AFRICAN FRENCH AND BRITISH COLONIES DURING 1945–1989 MIHAELA DACIANA BOLOS Introduction The article explores the system of intellectual property (IP) protection in the former French and British colonies in Africa. The chosen period, 1945–89, is extremely relevant because of the colonies’ evolution and their international legal regime during the era. During the same time frame the international system of IP protection evolved significantly, reaching new levels of protection and international cooperation. An important issue in this complex evolution is the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization, in 1970, which later became a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). One of the key areas is the transition from the colonial status to that of independence and how this change was reflected in the IP protection system. The international intellectual property system is composed of a complex network of interests and power games between states, states and companies and last, but not least, between companies (Bolos 2013). In this international system one can find states struggling to impose favorable policies in intellectual property protection, companies lobbying for the protection of their rights, international governmental or non-governmental organizations seeking to impose new policies either meant to improve the system or directed towards a regional or a specific interest. Such is the case of the European Union in the struggle to ensure a large international protection of geographical indications (in the form of appellation of origin), actions that led to a dispute with the USA and Australia in front of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body. This is just an example of the type of disputes that can be found in the IP world. From the point of view of international actors involved in this system, besides states and companies, an important role is played by the international and regional organizations such as the World Intellectual

Mihaela Daciana Bolos

121

Property Organization (WIPO), the specialized UN agency that promotes the intellectual property system worldwide and that encourages states to become part of this system. Currently WIPO has 186 member states. Another important organization is the WTO, which in the process of encouraging international trade imposes a certain standard of intellectual property protection through the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). For these organizations, the regional organizations play an important role because they establish regional rules and represent regional interests. This is the case of the European Union, African Intellectual Property Organization (AIPO 2013), African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO 2013), Eurasian Patent Organization (2013), Arab States Broadcasting Union (2013), Patent Office of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC Patent Office 2013) and others. These regional organizations are very important because some of them were developed among former colonies immediately after they had obtained their independence or after a certain period of time when political and economic realities requested it. The study will explore the link between the former French and British colonies and the development of regional organizations that have intellectual property protection systems. As there are a large number of former colonies that have the legal status of independent states today, we will only focus on some African ones.

Theoretical perspective The period in question imposes a neo-realist perspective of the world considering the Cold War and the position of the two Great Powers in the evolution of the colonial system. In the system of IP rights protection, the Great Powers had the most important role in imposing the international system of protection, first in the balance of powers of the nineteenth century with the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property Rights (1883) and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Work (1886), and then in the interwar time frame ending with the Cold War. As we pointed out in others studies (Bolos 3/2012; Bolos 2013) in the system following the Second World War, the American position in the development of the system of IP rights was predominant and, sometimes, complemented by the European Union or countries forming this regional organization. Nevertheless, the American position imposed a certain systemic conduct in regard to the IP rights. Few treaties that stumbled upon the American opposition were never adopted or had, and still have, few contracting parties, such as the case of the Lisbon

122

The Intellectual Property Protection System

Agreement for the Protection of Appellation of Origin and their International Registration (Bolos 1958, 1/2011) of 1958 (WIPO 2013). Not everything can be explained by the holistic view of the world, with the focus on the global level of analysis. Some interactions can be explained only by understanding the complex regional relations established between local actors. The process of decolonization happened during a relatively long period of time and had its particularities from one region to another. Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver underline these differences pointing out that in some regions colonies obtained their independence quite fast and simultaneously in 1947–48, while in other parts of the world the process took time and decolonization was carried out in one country at a time, triggering significant local instability (Buzan and Weaver 2003). They argue that this process led to a particular Regional Security Complex marked in some African parts by “intense rivalry” and, in certain situations, by war (Buzan and Weaver 2003). This becomes obvious in the African system of IP protection where we can find an interesting situation regarding the regional organization of IP rights because of the creation of two such entities that have a similar objective.

African regional system of IP rights The analysis will be carried out by looking first at the creation of the two regional organizations and after that at the states that created the regional actor. The African Intellectual Property Organization (AIPO) has its origin in the initiative of twelve states; on September 13, 1962, at Libreville, in Gabon, the Agreement for the Creation of the African and Malgache Office of Intellectual Property was adopted. Some years later, on March 2, 1977, AIPO, rooted in the first office, was created. The Bangui Agreement that created AIPO is still in force even if it was revised several times. Nowadays the organization has sixteen members, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo. Initial members of the first organization and the year others acceded to the regional actor are not specified in AIPO (AIPO, Bangui Agreement 1977), but the information is presented by WIPO (Background information on member States of AIPO, WIPO 2013). The Agreement entered into force in 1982. AIPO’s main objective is the creation of a system of protection for the IP rights. All these countries were at a certain point mainly French colonies or, in a way or another, under French influence. The exceptions

Mihaela Daciana Bolos

123

are Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony and Guinea Bissau, a former Portuguese colony. They all obtained independence around 1960. Interestingly they formed the first organization two years later in 1962, which points to the fact that they felt the need for regional order at least in the field of IP rights. But a more practical explanation can be identified if we look at some legal facts. While a French colony, applicable law was adopted by the French authorities; in this case law no. 54–444 of April 19, 1951, regarding the Creation of the French National Institute of Intellectual Property (2013) and other IP laws. Without these laws there would be no IP protection in these new countries and no means of registering new ones. So the need to create a law and an office should be considered a natural consequence of the decolonization process. An interesting fact is that these new states decided to form a regional organization with this purpose. This indicates that they felt the need for strong regional protection within the states with similar values, cultures and systems. The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) was created by the Lusaka Agreement of December 9, 1979 (ARIPO 2013; WIPO 2013). The agreement in article IV states that the membership is opened to state members of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa or the African Union (AU) (ARIPO 2013). For wider cooperation, ARIPO admits and offers the status of observers. ARIPO has, besides the Lusaka Agreement, under administration the Harare Protocol regarding Patents and Industrial Designs (1982), and Banjul Protocol regarding Trademarks (1993) (ARIPO legal framework 2013). Today ARIPO has eighteen members and twelve observers, but none of these are also members of AIPO. Generally this organization is open for members of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa or the African Union (ARIPO memberstates 2013) looking for a large number of members within the African states. The members are the following: Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Most of these countries are former United Kingdom colonies that obtained their independence in the Commonwealth, such as Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Sierra Leone and others. Thus, one can certainly conclude that, as in the case of AIPO where most of the members are former French colonies, in the case of ARIPO most of the members are former United Kingdom countries. If one looks at the organization’s objectives it is clearly stated that the organization has the purpose of protecting IP rights obtained in

124

The Intellectual Property Protection System

other countries, mostly in the United Kingdom (ARIPO 2013). But the organization does not exclude the membership of any state no matter what its background is. This fact is not only stated, but it is also proven by the diversity of the observers that are expected to become, at a certain point, part of the regional organization. These observers are Angola, Algeria, Burundi, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Seychelles, South Africa and Tunisia, and are former colonies of France, Portugal, Belgium and others (ARIPO 2013). There are African countries such as Cape Verde or Comoros that are not members or observers of any of the two regional organizations but are members of WIPO.

Conclusions The existence of the two IP protection organizations can be explained by historical evolution on the African continent; however, as the most countries involved in these organizations are also members of WIPO and as such they have to comply with the same international IP protection standards, today the separation appears merely political. There seems to be little practical advantage of having two separated regional organizations with identical scope and objectives. The explanation for the existence of the two systems is based on two main reasons: a political and a juridical one. From the political viewpoint, the process of decolonization led to the creation of new independent states, which meant that the dynamics of regional politics should have changed. The new independent countries should have taken their destiny in their hands and also the balance of power in the region should have changed. But things were not that dramatic. The former colonial empires kept a certain influence on the former colonies, a fact that can be understood from an international political perspective. On the other hand, the new states kept to a certain point parts of the colonial system. That explains the existence of AIPO. In the moment when the African states became independent, the legal system of the former empire was not applicable anymore and had to be replaced. In the case of former French colonies this meant the creation of the African and Malgache Office of Intellectual Property in 1962, most members obtaining their independence around 1960. What is interesting is that they choose to form a regional organization instead of forming national laws with particular differences. Later on this office was transformed into AIPO. On the other hand, ARIPO was formed by former British colonies in 1979, which means that this organization was created as an alternative to

Mihaela Daciana Bolos

125

AIPO, which already had existed. Thus, the idea was not to create a regionally wide and strong IP system by developing AIPO, but to build an alternative to the existing one. This fact can be explained only by the regional political tensions and rivalries between the African countries because all of the members of AIPO and ARIPO are members of WIPO, thus the IP rights protection systems should be, if not identical, at least compatible. Nevertheless, this clearly was not an argument for the creation of one single regional IP organization. From the juridical perspective, it is clear that the French system was different from the British one. The former colonies certainly inherited the main features of the empire’s juridical system. But in the field of IP rights these differences are not that relevant, both France and the United Kingdom are part of the UE’s system of IP protection and WIPO. Thus, this cannot stand as an insurmountable argument. The presented situation, created and developed during the interwar period, produces effects nowadays by the two systems that have not fundamentally changed. Recently, a project was developed by the AU to create a single regional IP protection system named Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO) (AU 2013). But as some authors have pointed out, there are still issues that should be considered and solved before creating this organization (Ncube 2013).

Bibliography AIPO. African Intellectual Property Organization. 2013. http://www. oapi.int/ (accessed 05 10, 2013). AIPO, Bangui Agreement. 1977. http://www.oapi.int/index.php/fr/oapi/ etats–membres (accessed 05 25, 2013). Arab States Broadcasting Union. 2013. http://www.asbu.net/home.php? lang=en (accessed 05 10, 2013). ARIPO. African Regional Intellectual Property Organization. 2013. http:// www.aripo.org/ (accessed 05 10, 2013). ARIPO legal framework. 2013. http://www.aripo.org/index.php/about– aripo/legal–framework (accessed 05 25, 2013). ARIPO memberstates. 2013. http://www.aripo.org/index.php/about–aripo/ membership–memberstate (accessed 05 25, 2013). AU. 2013. http://www.au.int/en/member_states/countryprofiles (accessed 05 25, 2013).

126

The Intellectual Property Protection System

AU. Final Draft Statute of the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO), http://www.au.int/ar/sites/default/files/PAIPO%20Statute%20English.p df, 2013. “Background information on member States of AIPO, WIPO.” 2013. http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/outline/oapi.html (accessed 05 25, 2013). Bolos, Mihaela Daciana. 2011. “Appellations of Origin vs. Geographical Indications. Terminological debates during the Lisbon Treaty 1958.” Studia Universitatis Petru Maior. Series Historia 1:275–282. —. 2012. “IP rights protection and international trade.” Procedia Economics and Finance 3:908–913. —. 2013. Trademark and geographical indications in the international relations system. Bucharest: Universul Juridic. Bolos, Mihaela Daciana, and Bradut Vasile Bolos. 2012. “Trademark and GDP correlation, empiric evidence on international system behavior.” Studia Universitatis Petru Maior, Series Oeconomica Fasciculus 1, no. Anul VI:54–69. Buzan, Barry, and Ole Weaver. 2013. Regions and Powers. The Structure of International Security. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Eurasian Patent Organization. 2013. http://www.eapo.org/en/ (accessed 05 10, 2013). GCC Patent Office. Patent Office of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf. 2013. http://www.gccpo.org/DefaultEn.aspx (accessed 05 10, 2013). law no. 54–444 of April 19, 1951, regarding the creation of the French National Institute of Intellectual Property. 05 25, 2013. Ncube, Caroline B. 2013. “The Development of Intellectual Property Policies in Africa–Some Key Considerations and a Research Agenda.” Intellectual Property Rights: Open Access 1, 1:1–5. UN. 2013. http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/africa.pdf (accessed 05 25, 2013). WIPO. 2013. http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=285856 (accessed 05 25, 2013).

CHAPTER TWELVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND ECONOMY OF INEQUALITY GERMAN CAPITAL IN GEORGIA AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND ITS IMPORTANCE REVAZ GVELESIANI AND NANA MAISURADZE In the nineteenth century, particularly in the second half of the century, there were significant changes in Russia as well as in the South Caucasus that created preferred conditions for the development of capitalism in the region. But only social, economic and political situation and raw materials could not ensure a rapid development of different fields of economy. Free capital was also essential, but both local and Russian bourgeoisie lacked the capital. The efforts of the government to take the responsibility for the development of agriculture, production, transportation, trade and banking sectors also did not turn out successful. Under these conditions, the Russian government tried to support the inflow of foreign capital in the South Caucasus (Gugushvili 1949). Foreign entrepreneurs took advantage of the lack of local and Russian capital and began to strengthen their positions in the leading branches of industry of the South Caucasus, such as manganese, iron and copper production. This stimulated the formation of a local market in the region, which was part of the Russian market. Besides supporting the inflow of foreign capital in the South Caucasus, the Russian government also took measures to invest and strengthen its position in the region and to keep the economy under control. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, Germany expressed an active interest in the South Caucasus

128

German Capital in Georgia

region and in the building of the Baghdad Railway. The railway was to become the way for Germany’s economic penetration not only in Turkey but also in the Near East and the Middle East. The ultimate strategic aim of this policy was to strengthen Germany’s position in the Caucasus, Middle Eastern countries and British India (Tsertsvadze 2010). According to their general plan, German monopolies, political agents, diplomacy and military forces did their best to gradually strengthen the influence of Germany over the countries of the Near East and Middle East. German capital was the first to enter the South Caucasus and, having won in the half-century-long competition with other competitors (England, Belgium, USA and others), it managed to play an important role in different sectors of the region’s economy. After establishing a few specialized farms in agriculture in the second half of the nineteenth century, the German economy began to strengthen its position in mining and the production of manganese, copper and oil as well as in metallurgy and the metalworking industry. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economic relations between Germany and Georgia, namely the impact of German capital represented by Siemens & Halske, Gelsenkirchen Mining-Industrial Society and Singer JSC on the Georgian economy and its importance for the whole country. The authors’ interest in the topic of the paper was conditioned by the abovementioned circumstances. Germany holds the leading position among the countries interested in the economy of the South Caucasus, which was first represented in the region by Siemens & Halske. The company began to carry out operations in the South Caucasus in the 1850s by building telegraph lines (Ehrenberg 1906). In 1858 the Tbilisi-Kojori telegraph line was built, which was the first one in the South Caucasus. This was followed by the Tbilisi-Poti, Tbilisi-Stavropol, Tbilisi-Baku, Caucasus-Persia, Caucasus-Turkey and finally, by the Indo-European telegraph line through Tbilisi. In 1865 Tbilisi and Tehran were connected by a telegraph line. Tehran communicated with Moscow and St. Petersburg through Tbilisi and then with Europe through St. Petersburg. This line enabled England to communicate with India, but Russia imposed control on it and significantly influenced Europe’s trade relations with Persia. Three telegraph lines connected England with India: (1) England– France–the Mediterranean Sea–Egypt–the Red Sea–the Persian Gulf– India; (2) England–Europe–St. Petersburg–Tbilisi–Tehran–Bombay; (3) England–Berlin–Vienna–Bulgaria–Constantinople–Baghdad–the Persian Gulf–Karachi–Bombay–Madras–the Bay of Bengal–Singapore–the Indian Ocean Australia. All three lines were overloaded and often failed to work

Revaz Gvelesiani and Nana Maisuradze

129

properly. Consequently, the government of England looked for shorter and more convenient ways to get in touch with India by telegraph. In 1866 Siemens & Halske offered the government of England a new project, the Indo-European transcontinental telegraph (London–Calcutta). Its length was ten thousand kilometers. The route of the line was London– Berlin–Warsaw–Kiev–Odessa–Kerch–the Kerch Strait–Sukhumi–Tbilisi– Tehran–Isfahan–Karachi–Calcutta. Despite the high price, the government of England approved the project. Under certain conditions Germany and Russia also took part in financing the project. The three major Siemens branches—London, Berlin and St. Petersburg—participated in the building of the line. The building of telegraph lines turned out highly profitable for the company. A part of this profit was invested in copper and oil production (Manjgaladze 1991). Siemens took into consideration the high demand for copper in Russia and the South Caucasus and set high prices on it. In the 1860s, the company built a large factory in Kedabegi and another one in Kalakenti (Azerbaijan) in the 1880s. These factories were built with foreign investments and technology, local resources were used and the goods produced were sold on the South Caucasian and Russian markets. The company easily won in the competition with smaller domestic manufacturers and managed to hold the monopoly over the copper market in the South Caucasus. After the reduction of copper ore extraction in Kedabegi, Siemens turned its attention to the Batumi region, where rich copper deposits turned out to be. In 1901 Siemens & Halske got the license for copper mining operations near Batumi and soon the mining operations began. Siemens & Halske also purchased some land for mining near the village of Kvartskhana. At the beginning of the twentieth century, operations of Siemens & Halske were restrained first by French capital (factory in Alaverdi) and then by English-American capital (factory in Tchinkatkhevi). After that, Siemens & Halske did not manage to obtain the monopoly. After the beginning of World War I, a movement against German capital and generally against Germany began in Russia, but Siemens managed to avoid the danger. Siemens & Halske was also engaged in oil production in Georgia. Oil was found in the Signagi region, namely in Eldari, Mirzaani and Shiraki. Oil sources belonged to the government, which granted lease to individuals. At the end of the 1870s, when excise duty on oil was abolished and customs duty was imposed on American oil, Baku oil successfully competed with Sighnaghi oil. Some changes began in Sighnaghi oil

130

German Capital in Georgia

production and sales began to decline. Due to the lack of roads, the transportation of oil from Sighnaghi to Kedabegi (to be used in a factory for copper production) cost more than from Baku. Siemens began to gradually reduce its production in this area. Later, in 1883–84, when a railway was built between Tbilisi and Baku, the company decided to give up oil production in Sighnaghi. This was the end of the extraction and production of oil in Georgia by Siemens & Halske. Thus, from 1866 to 1883 the Siemens Company exploited oil reserves in Shirak, Mirzaan and Eldar. This period was distinguished by remarkable changes in oil production. In 1869 the Siemens Company was the first to successfully begin oil drilling in the Caucasus region. Oil drilling helped the oil production industry to shift to factory manufacturing. A photogenic factory, built by the company in 1868, was a real novelty in oil production. German capital, represented by the Siemens Brothers company, played a very important role in Georgia as well as generally in the South Caucasus. With the introduction of advanced technologies in oil drilling, the company supported the industrial revolution in oil production; the employment of the local work force in the production process helped the preparation of more or less qualified specialists in this field. Operations of Siemens & Halske in the South Caucasus were important not only because of the number of people employed, but also because of the fact that oilrefining was the first and the only one in Georgia and generally in the South Caucasus at that time (Manjgaladze 1991). Finally, it can be concluded that Siemens & Halske carried out operations in many directions in Georgia and held a strong position not only in the building of telegraph lines but also in oil and copper production and cobalt and precious stone extraction as well. The company also gave a contribution to the construction of electric power stations in the South Caucasus and to the importation of a considerable number of German electric and technical goods. German investment played an important role in manganese production in Georgia. Academician Abich (1882) discovered manganese deposits in 1846 in Chiatura and researched them thoroughly. It should be noted as well that Akaki Tsereteli, a famous Georgian poet, played an important role in the popularization of the geological research outcomes of manganese deposits. In 1879 manufacturing companies from capitalist countries began to pay more attention to the Chiatura region and to buy or lease areas with ore deposits (Gavashvili 1957). Famous Georgian public figures and manufacturers were against such invasion by foreign investors. Local manufacturers tried to resist the foreign capital inflow jointly (led by

Revaz Gvelesiani and Nana Maisuradze

131

energetic businessmen Gedevan Chubinidze and Pavle Moseshvili). In 1885 foreign manufacturers left manganese deposits in Chiatura for a few years and moved to other areas (Ajameti, Chkhari, Nakhshirgele). In the second half of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries, German companies entered the Chiatura (West Georgia) manganese production. German capital was represented by the Gelsenkirchen Mining-Industrial Society and the Caucasian Mining Union, the largest companies in the German mining industry. Stakeholders of Gelsenkirchen JSC were large banking and trade unions and famous entrepreneurs. According to historical sources, one of the Gelsenkirchen stakeholders was Emperor Wilhelm. The German company began large scale operations in manganese production in Chiatura. Firstly, the company began to give loans and advanced payments to local manufactures and made them dependent on the company in this way. Secondly, the company purchased land with manganese deposits or leased them for a very long period. The company was willing to expand manufacturing and trade operations and got interested in buliding its own port in Kobuleti. Gelsenkirchen exported about 900 million kilos of ore from Chiatura to Germany during five and a half years. It should be noted here as well that large sums of money were transferred to Gelsenkirchen by its German consumers through Georgian banks. After beginning of World War I, Russia’s authorities announced the liquidation of German companies. Thus the operations of German companies in Chiatura ended. The government of the independent Georgian state (1918–21) made a decision to return movable and immovable property of these companies to the owners who kept their production and property in the region for some period after that. Besides copper, oil and manganese production, German capital also tried to enter the metallurgical and metal working industry in Georgia and in the whole South Caucasus. In the mid-1950s, academician Abich studied the resources in the Bolnisi region and positively evaluated this area. It was decided to build a cast iron manufacturing plant in Bolnisi, namely in the Chatakhi village. Ernst Lieb, a German diplomat, took the initiative and began to build factories there in 1860. On December 28, 1862 the production was launched. After the death of Lieb, the factory was managed by several different owners, but finally in 1892 the production stopped. In that period, manganese was mainly imported to Germany from the Caucasus by the Gelsenkirchen Mining-Industrial Society, managed by Kirdhorf and the German Kaiser, owned by Thyssen. On July 12, 1918

German Capital in Georgia

132

Thyssen, taking into consideration the advice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany, met the Georgian delegation, including Dr. Nikoladze, in Berlin. Three German-Georgian societies were formed that took the responsibility for manganese production in the Chiatura region. The Shorapan-Chiatura Railway and Poti Sea Port would be at their disposal. The members of the society of manganese suppliers were the largest steel concerns, such as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

German-Luxembourg mining JSC (Bochum); joint stock company Friedrich Krupp (Essen); Gelsenkirchen Mining-Industrial Society (Gelsenkirchen); the society of German Kaiser (Hamborn); the society of Good Hopes (Oberhausen) (Manjgaladze 1991).

Germany tried to make its economic influence on Georgia stronger. To achieve this goal, German firms, banks and other companies had to control agricultural and other sectors of Georgia’s economy. But after the Soviet forces came to power, Thyssen and his competitors’ goals in Georgia remained unrealized. Among other companies established in Transcaucasia with German capital, the Singer Company attracts special interest. Singer JSC, the company producing sewing machines, was established in New York, USA in 1851. The company was founded by Isaac Merritt Singer, who was one of the first to invent the machine with a vertical needle, and Edward Clark. Later they expanded the production and opened their branches in Europe and in many other countries of the world. The German branch of the company (located in Hamburg) was especially successful. The German branch was founded by brothers F. and G. Neidlinger. Besides Germany, the company traded with machines in many European countries, including Russia. The German branch initiated the establishment of the branch of Singer JSC in Russia. During that time, German companies in Russia tried not to show their German origin because of the increase of the political and economic tensions between these two countries. Thus, everything was done to shown that the Russian branch of Singer was a Russian-American joint stock company (Tsertsvadze 2010). The structure and trade activities of Singer JSC in the Russian Empire were rather different from foreign companies, including the German ones. Singer’s headquarters were located first in St. Petersburg and then in Moscow (1912). Forty-nine central departments, including two in Tbilisi and Baku, were managed by the headquarters. Such a structure helped Singer to control the whole territory of the Russian Empire. This made possible the company’s successful functioning even in the periods of

Revaz Gvelesiani and Nana Maisuradze

133

crisis. Practically, there was no competition in the sewing machine market in the Russian Empire and Singer was the only trade with sewing machines. In addition, it had nothing to do with the capital of Russian banks and the sewing industry was rather weakly developed; consequently, consumers of sewing machines were mainly individuals, representatives of high and middle classes as well as handicraftsmen, workers and peasants. Singer first imported machines mainly from Germany. In 1902 the company built a new, well equipped factory in Podolsk, Russia, where sewing machines and spare parts were produced. But Singer did not stop importing sewing machines from other countries, which was conditioned by the growing demand for machines. Singer was a very profitable company, but the workers, who were mainly represented by the local people, were paid very low salaries. From time to time, this caused conflicts between the management and the employees. This disagreement was especially strong in the central department in Tbilisi. The tension was so deep that it almost turned into a terrorist act, but the Singer administration somehow managed to settle the conflict with the help of the government (Tsertsvadze 2010). The beginning of World War I caused some threats to the successful functioning of the Singer Company. If the company had not proved that it had nothing to do with Germany and German capital, it would have been liquidated like other companies established by representatives of the countries fighting against Russia. In addition, as it turned out many of Singer’s employees were agents of secret services of Germany. Many of them were arrested and were expelled from Russia. The company found itself in a difficult situation and began to close its offices in many regions. As it turned out, Singer JSC had some high-ranking lobbies that held influential positions in Russia. On September 18, 1915 the Council of Ministers of Russia discussed the issue regarding the national identity of Singer JSC and despite many incriminating documents the company was considered as a Russian-American joint stock company. Since then the company continued to carry out operations without any restriction. After the October Revolution, the Singer Company stopped its operations in Russia in 1917 and in Transcaucasia in 1919.

134

German Capital in Georgia

Bibliography Abich, Hermann. 1896. Aus kaukasischen Ländern. Reisebriefe. Vol. 1, Vienna: Nabu Press. —. 1878-1882. Geologische Forschungen in den kaukasischen Ländern. Vol. 2 Vienna: A. Hölder. Achmeteli, Michael. 1924. Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung Transkaukasiens. Dissertation. Jena. Berg, Friedrich. 1879. Aus Peterburg nach Poti. Dorpt: Kissinger Legacy Reprint. Dechy, Moriz. 1907. Kaukasus und Forschungen im kaukasischen Hochgebirge. Vol. 3. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Fischer, Andreas. 1891. Zwei Kaukasiens Expeditionen. Bern: Bern, Schmid, Francke & Co. Hahn, Carl. 1892. Aus dem Kaukasus, Reisen und Studien. Vol. 4. Leipzig: Kessinger Publishing. Hoffmann, Paul. 1905. Die deutschen Kolonien in Transkaukasien. Berlin: Verlag von D. Reimer. Gavasheli, Aleksandre. 1957. From the History of Chiatura Manganese Production. Tbilisi: Publishing House of Georgian Academy of Sciences. Gugushvili, Paata. 1949. Economic Development of Georgia and the South Caucasus in 19th and 20th Centuries. Book I. Tbilisi: Sakhelgami. Karbelashvili, Amiran. 1981. “Brothers Siemens in Georgia.” Science and Technology 7:13–17. Manjgaladze, Giorgi. 1991. German Capital in South Caucasus (in 1860– 1918). Tbilisi: Science. Tsertsvadze, Aleksandre. 2000. “JSC Zinger in Russian Empire.” Important Issues in Economics (collection of scientific papers) 13:7– 11.

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES BETWEEN ITALY AND ROMANIA AFTER THE WAR AND THE BIRTH OF THE ROMANIAN-ITALIAN COMMERCIAL BANK: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW FRANCESCA R. LENZI In the period immediately after the war, Italy showed interest in setting up an alliance in the Balkan region that would have been in conflict with France’s political and economic expansionist goals. In May 1919, in a telegram to the under-secretary for foreign affairs, Borsarelli, the minister of war, Caviglia, wrote: “And yet I believe that the most efficacious means for contrasting French activities is to send our surplus army materials to directly supply those nations which, like Romania, could be favourable, or less adverse, or which at least may have some possible interests in opposition to the interests of the small nations sustained by France.” On the other hand, the Romanian minister in Versailles, Ionel Brătianu, searched among the various alliances for the solution to territorial claims made over the decisions by the victors1 at the renewal of the Hungarian conflict and the dispute with Bulgaria concerning Dobruja.2 In 1920 Romania decided to endorse the conservative policy of the League of Nations by forming the Little Entente with Czechoslovakia and 1

In a meeting with Bonin Longare, Minister Brătianu revealed his disappointment over the treatment accorded to the minor powers in Paris saying he had hopes for support from Italy. Paris, May 18, 1919. Cabinet archives. 1329/210, Cf. DDI, Ibid., no. 532, 554. 2 In the report by the technical expert Castoldi concerning the conversation with Minister Vaida-Voevod on the claims by Romania, resentment over the French policy in the Balkans was obvious, and the possibility of a Hungarian-Romanian union was discussed with the hope for closer ties with Italy. Paris, May 24, 1919, in DDI, VI, no.599, 613. Concerning Italian interest in an agreement between Hungary and Romania, see Sonnino’s communications to Borghese and to Taccoli Paris, June 7, 1919, in DDI, Ibid. no. 731, 733, Secret telegram 665.

136

Development Strategies between Italy and Romania after the War

Yugoslavia.3 Amongst other things, Italy’s delay in recognizing Romania’s annexation of Bessarabia was determined by economic reasons that kept Italy linked to the Soviet Union through which it hoped to obtain access from Bucharest to rich oil deposits as well as preferential treatment for Italians who owned treasury bonds in Romania, which had been only recently consolidated (Pizzigallo 1981).4 These two commercial and financial issues strongly conditioned Italy’s attitude towards Romania, which, on the other hand, hoped to extract an anti-Soviet agreement from Italy. So, like the recognition of Bessarabia, satisfying Romania’s requests for arms and military equipment from Italy was subject to resolving all the issues of an economic and financial nature, which included the oil deposits and treasure bonds.5 Even though the crisis had stimulated the birth of a Fascist-inspired party in Romania, in the 1930s another economic issue created an obstacle in the relations between the two countries: the Romanian government sustained the sanctions established by the League of Nations against Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia, blocking all financial transactions with Italy and therefore posing the problem of Romanian oil importation (Motta 2006).6 This issue was the focal point of a number of episodes that increased the tension between Italy and Romania throughout the whole decade of the thirties. Tătărescu’s government (1933–37) drew up an agreement with Germany, according to the wishes of King Carol II, forcing Romania to supply the new partner with a fixed amount of oil in exchange for military equipment, directed at defending Romania against Soviet expansion.7 3 Baffigi to the High Command, Bucharest, January 11, 1924, in AUSSME E 11, (State Military Archives) 108/5 prot.11. 4 Thaon di Revel to Orlando, Rome, April 4, 1919, Note 708 RR.P. (Very reserved) in DDI, Sixth Series (1918–23) (hereafter VI), vol.III, no.117, 127. 5 From Sofia, Commissioner Aliotti wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sonnino, concerning the advisability “of possibly convincing allies that it would be beneficial to immediately involve Bulgarian troops against Bolshevism in aid of Romania to make it impossible for them to draw up an agreement in the manner described in my reports and in my latest telegrams 83 and 85.” Sofia, March 25, 1919, Telegram 733/113, In DDI, Ibid. no.20, 17. 6 On the evolution concerning the Romanian attitude towards the sanctions, Sola, the minister in Bucharest wrote to Mussolini, Bucharest October 12, 1935, Telegram 6966/163, in DDI, Eighth Series (1935–39), (hereafter VIII), vol. 2, no.320 298; no.773, 743; no.823, 807. At the same time, negotiations were underway for the Danubian Pact (cf. DDI, Ibid. no.43 et al.; on Italy’s refusal concerning the proposal by the Committee of Five: Ibid. no.134, no. 179). 7 DDI, VIII, vol. XI, no.137, 180.

Francesca R. Lenzi

137

Despite this, in June 1940 Soviet troops occupied Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. As stated previously, as well as the more strictly diplomatic and strategic negotiations there was another core point in the relations between Italy and Romania, also responsible for the evolution in the relations between the two countries until more recent times. With the unification of Italy, alongside the problems of setting up a single state system on a political and administrative level, it was also essential to select the systems and experts most suitable for organizing the national trading and banking system. Developing the strategies for market expansion and Italian finance abroad answered this need, transmitting the interest of a political as well as economic nature, strongly conditioned by the historical evolution of Italy. As well as the strategic reasons mentioned above, one of the main catalysts that caused Italy’s attention to be focused on Romania was no doubt the presence of the Italian community that lived and owned financial and trading businesses in the country. In the fifty years before the First World War, numerous trade agreements were set up between Italy and Romania,8 however, it was only after the Paris Peace Conference that Italy organized an actual economic, financial and commercial policy with Romania (Biagini 2004). The contraction of Italian trade and commerce in the East European country after the war was a reason for great concern among the entrepreneurs, industrialists and traders who had set up business in Romania, and therefore it was considered essential to solicit the strengthening of economic relations between the two countries using cultural methods and through new institutions that could promote and protect their interests. The Società Italiana di Credito Commerciale (Itabank)9 was established in February 1918; originally called Società Generale Commerciale, it had set up branches in Vienna and Trieste. In Trieste Camillo Castiglioni, a local financier, was appointed to act as the contact between Comit and the

8

For the trade agreements between Italy and Romania (December 5, 1906) see: Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea (Library of Modern and Contemporary History) (BSMC, Rome), Italian International Relations 07, Agreements and Conventions of the Kingdom of Italy collected by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Vol. 18, 883. The convention between Italy and Romania was signed the same year to protect literary property and trademarks. Ibid. 912.90. 9 Historical Archives of the banks: Intesa Sanpaolo – Banca Commerciale Italiana (ASI-BCI), administrative office of managing directors Facconi and Mattioli, AD1, folder 2, file 4, Note on Comit’s expansion abroad, 1931.

138

Development Strategies between Italy and Romania after the War

financial world in the Balkan region.10 He helped set up the Banca Ungaro-Italiana (Bankunit) and the Banca Commerciale Italiana e Romena, sponsored by Giuseppe Toeplitz.11 The branches would have permitted the bank to overcome any exchange risks caused by exporting capital from Italy and to keep a close check on companies with Italian interests in those countries. The Banca Comercială Italiană úi Română (Romcomit) was one of the most successful. The bank was constituted on July 28, 1920, as a mixed Italo-Romanian company limited by shares with an initial capital of fifty million lei, thirty of which were signed by Comit (Stângaciu 2010). The Romcomit experience (1920–47) resulted from the interest of the Central Commercial Bank of Milan in creating a financial instrument for trade and export that could strengthen the links between the Italian and Romanian financial-productive systems. The policy of the Italian Commercial Bank, Comit, was to explicitly focus on foreign investments. One of the reasons for this policy was because the twentieth century promoted national interest towards new markets; the Balkan Danube area was selected as one of the main areas of expansion of the credit sector, given its cultural, economic and social aspects, as well as geographical proximity. The channels used to raise the financial resources of the Banca Commerciale di Bucarest were composed of deposits made by private individuals and corporations from Italy, Romania and other countries, as well as engaging in banking activities, credit operations and mutual financial transactions. The first meeting of the Romcomit Board of Directors was held in the headquarters in Bucharest, on August 24, 1920.12 The Romcomit bank was run by representatives of Italian and Romanian political and financial institutions working together on the bank’s Board of Directors and Board of Auditors. The Board of Directors was presided by the Romanian expresident of the Council of Ministers, General Constantin Coandă. In the mid-1920s the direction of the bank was transferred to Enrico

10

Historical Archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (ASMAE) (State Military Archives), of the “Directorate General for Trade 1920–1923,” division V, “Castiglioni Camillo – closure of forest property at TisiĠa,” years 1922–21–22 . 11 ASI-BCI, Administrative office of managing director Giuseppe Toeplitz (1916 1934), Banca Commerciale Italiana, Milan 1995. 12 ASI-BCI, New Accessions (hereafter NA), Papers from the Romanian State archives, Minutes of Romcomit Board of Directors meeting (VCA), reel n.1 (1920–37).

Francesca R. Lenzi

139

Marchesano,13 who was also appointed as the director of the affiliate in Sofia, from 1925 to 1929. Working alongside the bank’s directors were five auditors who shared all decisional power: among these, the only Italian was Enrico Righi, the auditor for a number of banks affiliated with the main headquarters in Milan and also the co-director and future managing director of the bank. In 1921 Romcomit acquired the shares of the Banca Agrară Timiúană, which became an affiliate; the following year it acquired shares of the Banca úi Casa de Economie Fuzionată, at Oradea Mare. It also bought shares in other banks including the Casa de Economie Agrar in TîrguMureú. Like other foreign banks, one of Romcomit’s main advantages was the fact that it could remain free of the limited resources of the Romanian banking system, relying on foreign banks and ensuring itself considerable independence from the national economic situation, while local banks were forced to obtain deferrals from the Romanian National Bank, accepting what was available for integration in their assets. The branches of GalaĠi (including the participation of Credit Anversois), Brăila and Chiúinău were set up between 1921 and 1924. With the entry of Enrico Marchesano in 1924 branches were established in ConstanĠa (1927), Cluj, Arad and Sibiu (1928). The last sister bank was set up in Braúov a short time later. At the time of maximum expansion, the Romanian Commerciale bank network numbered twelve dependent branches: nine agencies and three affiliates, at Oradea Mare (1922), Tîrgu-Mureú (1922) and Timiúoara (1921), subject to different juridical personality control. The Romcomit territorial expansion strategy developed in several directions. In the Danube area, the river estuaries opened the doors to the timber trade, which led to Romcomit’s interest in the “Foresta” industrial group that became the privileged trading intermediary for the two branches 13

At the end of the First World War, Enrico Marchesano was appointed as legal advisor to the Comit and Generali banks. In July 1925 he was appointed director of Bulcomit and two years later he became the director of the affiliate Romcomit. In 1928 he participated in the international loan negotiations directed at Romanian monetary stabilization, in which Comit played a leading role. Marchesano made direct contact with the Romanian government, granting a loan of twelve million dollars that Comit paid to Romania, advancing the international loan, which was set in motion only after several months. At the end of 1929 he decided to return to Italy and was sent to Trieste by the director of Comit, Toeplitz. He was the codirector of the Banca Commerciale Italiana from February 1932 until 1934, when he officially resigned to become the general manager and managing director of RAS for the whole country. In ASI-BCI, Administrative office and letter-book records of G. Toeplitz; Enrico Marchesano letter-book records; Administrative office of the managing director and Mattioli records.

140

Development Strategies between Italy and Romania after the War

in the port region GalaĠi and Brăila. For the same reason Bessarabia was considered an important trading outlet, leading to the setting up of the branch in Chiúinau, while the access to the Black Sea and the industrial development in the surrounding port area spurred Romcomit to direct its interest towards ConstanĠa. In the west, in Banato, Romcomit sustained projects linked with the construction of a railway system, cooperating to aid in local development while at the same time facilitating business trade between Italy and Romania from Trieste towards Eastern Europe, thus creating an alternative to shipping as a means of transport. This strategic move naturally led to the interest in Timiúoara and Romcomit’s relations with “Astra,” a leading company in the Romanian mechanical and railway industry headquartered in the Transylvanian city of Arad, located slightly north of Timiúoara. Last but not least, the Transylvanian region was considered very important because of its rich natural resources and emerging industry, in need of capital and expertise. The foundation of the branches of Arad and Sibiu, Cluj-Napoca and Braúov, as well as the interest shown in Tîrgu-Mureú and the participation in local activities of companies such as “Foresta” and “Phoebus” in Oradea, can be attributed to this strategic policy. Progressively, Romcomit became an increasingly more important vehicle for supporting local industry in key sectors of the Romanian economy: food (sugar), railways, metallurgy, forestry and partly oil. This happened through a reorientation of trade policies that gave priority to the supply of end goods rather than to imports. The study is based on sources from the Italian and Romanian Commercial Bank (Romcomit) and economic documents concerning the relations between Italy and Romania found in the Historical Archives of the Bank of Italy (Rome), in the Historical Archives of Intesa Sanpaolo (Milan), in the Historical Archives of the Army, in the Historical Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Protocol and in the Historical Archives of the Chamber of Deputies. In addition, the research included a new folder of documents recently made available by the State of Romania (Bucharest) and related to the Italian and Romanian Commercial Bank based in Bucharest, which the author has begun cataloguing at the Historical Archives of Banca Intesa Sanpaolo (Milan).

Francesca R. Lenzi

141

Bibliography AA.VV. 198. Banca e Industria tra le due guerre. Bologna: Banco di Roma, Il Mulino. AA.VV. 1982. Le istituzioni finanziarie degli anni Trenta nell’Europa continentale. Bologna: Il Mulino. AA.VV. 1993. Finanza internazionale, vincolo esterno e cambi, 19191939, scritti di Pier Francesco Asso et al. Rome: Laterza. AA.VV. 1994. La formazione della Banca Centrale in Italia: atti della giornata di studio in onore di Antonio Confalonieri. Torino: Giappichelli. Della Banca Commerciale Italiana e della sua espansione nel mondo. 1928. Edited by Banca Commerciale italiana. Milan: BCI. Biagini, Antonello. 2004. Storia della Romania contemporanea. Milan: Bompiani. Cassese, Sabino 1990. Il credito italiano e la fondazione dell’Iri. Milan: Libri Scheiwiller. Confalonieri, Antonio. 1982. Banca e industria in Italia dalla crisi del 1907 all’agosto del 1914. Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana. De Rosa, Luigi, ed. 2001. Sistemi bancari e finanziari internazionali: evoluzione e stabilità, scritti di Antonio Fazio. Rome: Laterza. Di Quirico, Roberto. 2000. Le banche italiane all’estero 1900-1950. Espansione bancaria all’estero e integrazione finanziaria internazionale nell’Italia negli anni tra le due guerre. Florence: European Press Academic publishing. Millo, Anna. 1989. L’élite del potere a Trieste. Una biografia collettiva 1891-1938. Milan: Franco Angeli. Motta, Giuseppe. 2006. Un rapporto difficile. Romania e Stati Uniti nel periodo interbellico. Milan: Franco Angeli. Pino, Francesca. 2000. Introduzione all’inventario Segreteria degli Amministratori Delegati Facconi e Mattioli (1926-1972),VII–LXXIX. Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana. Pino, Francesca, and Francesca Gaido, eds. 2010. Mattioli Raffaele, Uscire dalla crisi. Turin: Nino Aragno editore. Pizzigallo Matteo M. 1981. Alle origini della politica petrolifera italiana Milan: Giuffré. Stângaciu, Anca. 2010. “Il capitale bancario italiano nell’industria romena degli anni venti.” The Scientific Journal of Humanistic Studies 2:83–98. Toniolo, Gianni. 1978. Industria e banca nella grande crisi. 1929-1934. Milan: Etas. —. 1994. Cent’anni, 1894-1994. Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana.

SOCIAL INTEGRATION IN THE CONTEXT OF REGIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE SOUTH CAUCASIAN STATES) EKA LEKASHVILI AND GIORGI GAPRINDASHVILI The importance of the issue In relation to the changing tendencies in the world economy, small countries that have more open and less diversified economies experience a serious influence of interdependence and integration processes. From this point of view, objectively developed relations with neighboring countries are very important in the context of economic integration. In addition, the recently developed modern financial crisis has raised many questions on the issue of maintaining the unity of the European Union. Due to the problems developed in terms of integration, many politicians and experts (M. Schultz, V. Rompel, I. Williams, N. Sarkozy, F. White, N. Parazhi, D. Rodrick and others) cast doubt on the EU’s integrational development, while the EU is a classic example of integration in the theory of economic integration. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics represented a political and economic union where the independence of sovereign republics was formally recognized, although it entered into history with the name “Soviet Empire” according to an assessment made by public figures (N. Berdaev, S. Frank, S. Bulgakov and others). W. Bercken also expresses an opinion on the economic impracticability of the communist idea of society. Parallels drawn between the Soviet Union and the European Union are considered even today (Vernon Coleman, Vl. Bukovski, A. Merkel and others). Were and are these assessments grounded? As an example of socialist integration, was the Soviet Union a classic economic integration with its indicators? Have the seven decades of socialist integration encouraged the maintenance and development of simple trade-entrepreneurial connections

Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili

143

between Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? Could that become a precondition for integration under market conditions? Were the signs of the objective trend of the union present in socialist integration that might be considered as a precondition of economic effectiveness? The present paper is an attempt to answer these questions with the example of the South Caucasus countries.

The studied issue and theoretical-methodological basis Regional integration is the main trend in the development of the modern world economy. It is a decisive element of the spatial transformation of national economies. In order to achieve the effectiveness of spatial transformation, the strategy of regional integration needs to be connected with economic geography. Market size, location and the connection of a separate part of the world with large markets are crucial for success. The majority of small countries separately do not have a qualified labor force, lack local financial funds and the ability to create an entrepreneurial cluster and additional services. Regional agreement is a good strategy for obtaining international competitiveness for small, poor and disadvantaged countries wishing to enter the world market. The effect of trade diversion is contrary to the trade creation effect as in this case a foreign source of goods is not the most effective. Many nonmember countries of an integration, where united customs rates are in effect, can provide goods at a much lesser price. Diversion of trade is the shift of local consumers from an outside source to a domestic, less effective source, which originated as a result of the abolition of import tariffs within a customs union. Generally, the final result of an integrative grouping is defined by the equivalence of trade creation and trade diversion indicators. Regional economic union among independent states covers various forms of economic integration. In the economic literature there are four main forms of integration presented in the following sequence: free trade zone, customs union, common market and economic union. This classification is systematized and does not show the stages and the depth of economic integration. In reality economic unions are presented in a more combined form. Integration among developing countries is restricted by self-destructive elements. Such a type of economic union covers two and more countries that have similar aims—the achievement of development through partnership. Thus, each member country tries to move its own border

144

Social Integration in the Context of Regional Economic Integration

under the conditions of collectively available fixed resources. This process leads to a conflict among partners of a union. The solution to the conflict is quite difficult and usually is a result of immobility and fighting over a long period of time. Union and consolidation between countries might be voluntary and compulsory, despite the fact that part of their aims might be similar, like market broadening and access to other resources. The essential difference between market and imperialistic unions lies in the forms and methods of their unity. The socialist economic system is considered as an expression of imperialism as a subject of economic consolidation. After the dissolution of an empire and the transformation of colonies into sovereign states, economic relations often still remain that consider an invisible or obvious economic or political domination (Rondeli 1996). On the basis of the abovementioned theoretical approaches, it is possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the theory of economic integration and socialist economic integration (See Table 1). Table 1. Comparative analysis of the characteristics of socialist and regional economic integration Indicator Socialist economic Theory of economic integration integration Nature of Compulsory Voluntary economic integration Type of economic Extensive Intensive growth within integration The consequence Stages of economic Stages of economic of stages of integration are integration are economic inconsequent consequent integrational development Political and Politics and ideology Politics and ideology ideological factors are definitive at the are definitive at the initial stage final stage of integration National interests National interests are Integration is defined ignored by national interests based on mutual benefits

Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili

Number of members of economic integration State sovereignty

145

Depends on military powers and interests of the empire

Depends on common aims of the members of the integrative union State sovereignty is maintained Is based on advantages of economies of scale

Impact on the structural transformation of economy

State sovereignty is lost Is not based on advantages of economies of scale Trade policy management is centralized Influence on the transformation of economic structure for political aims

Support of young fields of national industry

Centralized support of young fields of national industry

Use of advantages of economies of scale Solution of trade policy tasks

Trade policy management is based on consensus decisions Influence on the transformation of economic structure on the basis of mutual benefit Support of young fields of national industry on the basis of market principles

The results of the comparative analysis reveal that integrative processes in the socialist system served for carrying out the imperialistic ideology. National requirements and comparative advantages of countries were rarely considered, which proves the biased nature of this integration. We are going to discuss the maintenance of economic ties between countries in relation to socialist integration (empire) and the issues of compliance with the basic principles of the economic integration of the South Caucasus countries. Trade relations developed in the nineteenth century in the Caucasus region on the basis of the trade policy of the tsarist regime. Its goal was not the improvement of commercial relations within the region, but the development of the Russian market’s relations with Asia and Europe. The colonial policy had many positive outcomes for the Transcaucasian region. During this period, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan had to carry a heavy burden due to their location. After the First World War, the Western governments allowed Soviet Russia to return to the Caucasus region. Azerbaijan with its oil resources was of vital interest to Moscow. In 1920, the Georgian city Batumi gained

146

Social Integration in the Context of Regional Economic Integration

importance due to an oil pipeline and, in addition, it was the best port on the Black Sea coast. In exchange for a deal with Turkey, Russia annexed Georgia in 1921 (Koshtaria 1966). At the beginning of the twentieth century (in 1918), the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (Beridze et al. 2004) existed for only one month, which was afterwards transformed into the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Georgia and the Ararat Republic. With the expansion of power, Soviet Russia’s integration processes adopted new contents. In particular, in 1922, a new integrative union was formed based on political-ideological principles: the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Three Soviet republics were united under it: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The mentioned sub-integrative union was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The essence of the sub-union was the effective management of the “turbulent” region by the center. The sub-union was dissolved in 1936, after the main objectives were achieved: the reduction of ethnic obstacles, the formation of the basis for the economic integration of Transcaucasian countries with Russia, the establishment of socialist ideology (Beridze et al. 2004). The economic-legal mechanisms of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and then of the Transcaucasian Economic Region were aimed at the integration of the autonomous republics with the center and with each other. It existed in the form of a united region until the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, three independent states: the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Georgia and the Republic of Armenia were formed. The brief historical overview of the integration processes in the South Caucasus shows that the integration process during the Soviet period served for carrying out the socialist ideology and depended on the situation in Russia: its influence on the region was growing with the stabilization of the situation in Russia. Transcaucasia, according to the Soviet zoning, included fraternal republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. In the Soviet era, according to the economic zoning plan, the Transcaucasian and Northern Caucasus regions were not united into one ethnic region due to political and not economic reasons. In the process of development and strengthening of economic relations between the peoples of Transcaucasia, the Transcaucasian Economic Region held 0.8 percent of the whole territory of the Soviet Union, 4.6 percent of the Soviet population lived there and 3.8 percent of the national income was created in the region (with an area of 186.1 thousand square kilometers) (Koshtaria 1966).

Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili

147

The materials and labor resources of the republics and districts were maximally utilized. Baku oil, Georgian coal and manganese, the copper of Armenia, a large amount of valuable timber, the cotton of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Azerbaijan iron ore mines and the forest-rich arrays of Georgia, its mineral springs and resorts, represented the wealth of the South Caucasus. Each republic in the South Caucasus was developing based on the combination of the sector and territorial planning that depended on the specific nature and the level of industrial specialization. Georgia developed industrial fields, such as ferrous metallurgy (in particular, manufacturing of manganese, ferroalloys, rolled non-ferrous and seamless pipes) and food industry (tea, tobacco, oils, mineral water production and wine-making); Azerbaijan developed oil and chemical industry, mechanical engineering, while Armenia focused on non-ferrous metallurgy (copper production), engineering and manufacture of electronic equipment. Among the Soviet economic regions, the South Caucasian republics had established closest economic relations. In the 1960s and 1970s, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan exported trucks, raw iron, thick layered steel, non-ferrous rolled, stainless steel tubes, wire rod, manganese ore, ferro-alloys, metal cutting machine tools, agricultural machinery, nonmetallic raw materials, cotton, silk and wool fabrics, leather, leather products and leather shoes, a variety of food industry and other products. Meanwhile, oil and oil products, aluminum, iron ore, ferrous metal scrap, various types of fabrics, natural wool, cotton and other products were exported from Azerbaijan to Georgia. While Armenia exported to Georgia electrical equipment, automation equipment, vehicle wheels, metal cutting machine tools, scrap metal, various products of household chemistry, leather, leather products, linens, building materials and other (Koshtaria 1966). The Rustavi metallurgical factory was mainly constructed in order to supply the oil industry of Azerbaijan with seamless steel pipes. It worked on Dashkesan iron ore and Tkibuli-Tkvarchal fuel. Azerbaijan’s oil equipment production received the necessary metal from Georgia. The third circle, established on the basis of cooperative relations of GeorgiaArmenia-Azerbaijan, was in the fact that with the metal received from Georgia, Armenia was manufacturing metal cutting machinery for Azerbaijan. Ninety-eight percent of Georgian exports and 85 percent of imports went to the Soviet Union countries. Such a high level of integration led to an unbalanced industrial structure and its peculiar nature where the dominant role was played by several highly specialized sectors including

148

Social Integration in the Context of Regional Economic Integration

tea, wine, citrus production, manganese mining, textile industry, aircraft building, metal processing, engineering and tourism. The basis of exchange of goods between Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan included industrial cooperation, and trade management was conducted consistently. National requirements, the comparative advantages of the countries and manufacturers’ interests were less considered, that led to the well-known results. Azerbaijan and Armenia consumed a significant amount of light and food industry products produced in Georgia. Traditional connections of silk and wool fabrics supply lines are especially noteworthy. There was a great demand for Georgian tea, mineral waters and other goods in the neighboring countries. The former Soviet Union economy was characterized by a high degree of the integration of its member states’ economies. It was based on the division of labor among member states of the union (Beridze et al.2004). The collapse of the Soviet Union proved the inability of the socialist economy and the administrative structures to quickly and efficiently respond to novelties. The extensive, prolonged mobilization of labor and capital resources and foreign economic pressures reduced the union’s economic efficiency, which ultimately led to the instability and crisis in the financial system (Beridze et al.2004). The obsolete material-technical base did not produce a competitive production of international standards, which is the main component of the post-Soviet economies. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment of new independent states, entrepreneurial connections existing on the basis of socialist integration were aborted. Individual attempts of the states to integrate into the world market proved to be ineffective. This is demonstrated by a comparison of the main trade commodity structure of Georgia with Armenia and Azerbaijan during the Soviet Union era and after it. It is clear that in terms of systemic changes, in ten years (1987–97) the structure of trade relations is substantially different, which demonstrates the biased nature of the integration of the South Caucasus countries and their economic ineffectiveness (see Tables 2 and 3. Analysis was conducted on the basis of data of the Soviet Union’s State Committee of Statistics (Lekashvili 1999).

Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili

149

Table 2. Georgia-Armenia main trade products with Armenia (1987– 1997) Georgia’s main export product Georgia’s main import product to Armenia from Armenia 1987 1997 1987 1997 Non-ferrous Wheat Non-ferrous Electricity metal ore metals Wool products Mineral, sweet, Leather, Cigars and soda beverages footwear and cigarettes light industry products Soft coating Oil and oil Electrical and Oil and oil materials and products thermal energy products hydro isolating materials Mixed fodder Nitrogen Chemical fibber Sulphuric acid; fertilizers yarn and thread oleum Paper-cellulose – Electrical – Industrial equipment Products industry products Textile fabrics – Knitted Fabrics – Table 3. Georgia-Azerbaijan main (1987 and 1997) Georgia’s main exported goods to Azerbaijan 1987 1997 Ferrous metal Natural or artificial mineral waters Main chemical Nitrogen products fertilizers Yarn and Ferrous metal chemical seamless pipes compounds and tubes Electronic industry products

trading goods with Azerbaijan Georgia’s main imported goods from Azerbaijan 1987 1997 Oil processing Salt products Gas Industry products Electric and thermal energy Cotton fabrics

Electric transformers Distribution equipment and their parts Petroleum gases and gas like other carbohydrates

150

Social Integration in the Context of Regional Economic Integration

Cable Products

–

Textile fabrics

–

Fat producing industry products Main chemical products

– –

Results Consequently, in relation to the spread of the Communist power of Soviet Russia, integrative processes gained a new form. The brief historical overview of the integrative processes in the South Caucasus shows that integration processes in the Soviet period served for carrying out the socialist ideology. The study compared main traded goods of Georgia-Azerbaijan and Georgia-Armenia in 1987 and 1997. The comparison proved that the basis for the exchange of goods between Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan represented an industrial cooperation in which comparative advantages of the countries were not considered. Trade management was conducted according to the adopted plan. National requirements were less considered. At the same time, over the considered years the main goods of the South Caucasus countries have changed, which proves the biased nature of this integration. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new independent states, industrial connections, established on the basis of socialist integration, have been cut. Attempts of separate states to individually integrate into the world market proved to be ineffective. The comparative analysis of the characteristics of socialist and regional economic integration showed that socialist integration with its characteristics is not in compliance with the principles of market integration theory; it is the antipode of market integration, a real classic example of which is European Union.

Bibliography Asatiani, Rozetta. 1996. “Some aspects of the economic history and the modern times, the magazine.” Economics 12:3–19. Analytical Information bulletin of State Bureau of Peace in CIS and Caucasus. 1997. Beridze, Teimuraz, Eldar Ismailov, and Vladimir Papava. 2004. Central Caucasus and Economy of Georgia. AICIRK, FCMIG: Baku.

Eka Lekashvili and Giorgi Gaprindashvili

151

Chikvaidze, Tamaz. 1998. “New Paradigm of Caucasus and Security Development in 21th century.” Georgian Economic Review 3:24–86. Deichmann, Uwe, and Gill Indermit. 2008. “The Economic Geography of Regional Integration, Finance and Development.” Vol. 45, 4:45–47. Economic Review of IMF. Azerbaijan. 1994. Economic Review of IMF. Armenia. 1994. European Commission: Trade: South Caucasus (Bilateral relations)– http://ec.europa.eu. Gugushvili, Paata. 1979. Georgia and Caucasus in XIX–XX centuries of economic development. Vol. VI, Tbilisi: Publishing House “Science.” Lekashvili, Eka. 2000. Trade relations of Georgia with the countries of the South Caucasus in terms of reforms (1991–1997). Tbilisi: Tbilisi University Press. Maksoev, Mikxeil. 1998. Caucasus. Tbilisi: Tbilisi University Press. Khoshtaria, Tengiz. 1966. Industrial development issues in the South Caucasus economic region. Tbilisi: Publishing House “Science.” Humane Development Report, Georgia, 1996. The United Nations Development Program. Social-Economic Development of CIS. 2008. Stat.Com of CIS. Social-Economic Development of Republic of Azerbaijan in 1997. 1998. Baku. Veshapidze, Shota, Eka Lekashvili, Grishikashvili, Aslamazishvili, Nana Ambrosi, ed. 2009. World Economy. Tbilisi: Inovacia.

RECONFIGURING ROMANIAN ARCHITECTURE BY THE SECOND HALF OF THE 1950S: SOVIET MODELS AND LOCAL ECONOMIC PRACTICES MARA MARGINEAN On July 31, 1957, a decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union announced the Soviet leadership’s intention to build a dwelling for every family in the country within a ten to twelve-year span. Echoing the difficult living condition of the recently urbanized population, this decree also encapsulated a high level of utopian thinking. At that time, the Soviet Union’s level of technological development in the field of civil constructions, as well as the financial resources’ availability for such ambitious programs, was quite limited. Many observers argued that this political decision was an attempt to construct a symbolic capital for the Soviet leadership by tying its political legitimacy to social programming, particularly in terms of modern family and its function within the socialist state. However, it also generated significant changes in the official engagement with the mass housing programs. Carrying over such projects required the improvement of the construction technology, spread of prefabricated materials, standardization of dwelling space and rethinking the urban functionality. The housing units had to provide nuclear families with the maximum comfort within the minimum dwelling space. Accordingly, twenty-two to twenty-four square meters two-room apartments fitted to accommodate a three-person family became the quintessence of the new project. Furthermore, changes involved reconfiguring the practitioners’ authority within the Soviet system; Nikita Khrushchev claimed that the architect should become an artist thinking of nothing else but cost-efficiency (Reid 2006, 145–70; Varga-Harris 2006, 101–16). Although such a program might appear to address domestic concerns, it soon received an international meaning as the housing matter reached high levels of interest within the entire Eastern Europe. This paper investigates the changes that occurred by the late 1950s within the architectural profession in Romania, a country of the socialist

Mara Marginean

153

bloc. I am concerned with several questions: How did the Soviet housing program influence the Romanian economic program? How did the adoption of mass construction program influence upon Romania’s institutional structure? To what extent the new urban model adopted in Romania by the late 1950s was successful in creating a “socialist egalitarian society”? Such investigation is relevant within the frameworks of the Cold War international relations. By that time, the competing visions on social modernization on both sides of the Iron Curtain were coupled with cultural re-engagement between East and West and emphasized, surprisingly, common trends that emerged particularly within the frameworks of appropriation of modern architecture as a legitimate manifestation Europe-wide. This came in handy by the early 1960s when the Romanian authorities launched the so-called autonomy drive consisting of a steady program of heavy industrial development, a cultural opening to the West and massive technological exchanges with nonsocialist states. Romania’s economic and cultural options augmented the tension between the Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej leadership and the Soviet Union, but effected into a surprising outcome at home (Tismăneanu 2005, 205). I argue that the Romanian authorities’ growing interest in improving the housing system, which occurred simultaneously with adopting the new push of heavy industrial development, made use of the Soviet sanctioned social projects to construct for itself a capital of legitimacy. In this way, the Romanian authorities fructified to their advantage the population’s anti-Soviet reactions and claimed that the significant increase of the finished housing units represented the outcome of the domestic industrialization process. Accordingly, the Soviets’ new approaches to housing acted as a medium of change in the Eastern Bloc, which was conducted in Moscow’s terms, but effected domestically in constructing a new economic Romanian identity. As such, I suggest that the entangled discourses on social programming recuperated a large part of the architectural models effective prior to the establishment of the Communist rule and reinterpreted them within the frameworks of the socialist ideology.

Modernization: East, West Such investigation falls within the theoretical frameworks of modernization, as it analyses the relations between technological advancements and competing views on social progress—that is the nature of urban projects within the socialist system. Equally important it also raises questions of power relations between the Soviet Union and the

154 Reconfiguring Romanian Architecture by the Second Half of the 1950s

Eastern European states by considering the urban models’ circulation between Moscow and the socialist bloc. Some researchers have approached the cultural interactions within the socialist bloc in terms of a “civilizational” transfer of Moscow sanctioned programs towards the EastEuropean countries, which underline a hierarchical subordination similar to that previously identified in the case of colonial empires (Jowitt 2004; Hirsch 2005; Berend 1996; Rees 2008, 25; Tismăneanu 2009, 3). However, as recent scholarship has pointed out by the late 1950s not only were the East-European countries more economically advanced than the Soviet Union, but the new international context made necessary the reevaluation of their place within East and West (Schmid 2011, 128). In this respect, understanding the mass housing programs within the Eastern Bloc invites to a more nuanced understanding of the filiations and functions of the architectural models, which employ the international context of the Cold War as a medium for fertile interactions and crossfertilizations between the socialist and capitalist sides of Europe. I find here particularly useful the concept of “convergence” proposed by György Péteri meaning “a vector or unidirectional progression from difference to sameness, under the impact of a common state of advanced technology and common set of problems and experiences arising from it. Implicitly it references a shared modernity produced by industrial development or modernization” (Reid 2010, 1; György 2012, 3–12). I premise on the assumption that the process of urbanization that took place on the both sides of the Iron Curtain after World War II produced similar effects. As some scholarship has recently pointed out, population concentration in metropolitan perimeters was not a continuous process. On the contrary, urbanization was run in several stages; the initial phenomenon of intensive migration of labor from rural to urban areas due to industrialization was followed by “sub-urbanization” of the city, a step of dispersing the population in non-metropolitan areas and the development of tertiary and quaternary branches of the economy. This process was a result of overcrowding urban areas combined with the lack of accommodation capacity of the workforce and the changing needs of the labor market specialization. As the industrialization is understood to produce similar social effects everywhere—the strengthening of the individuality, the dissolution of traditional families and the emphasis on nuclear family, concerns of privacy and comfort—it would call for similar urbanization solutions.

Mara Marginean

155

State of the matter in the socialist bloc: Housing situation compared The Soviet leader’s announcement produced significant agitation, both within the Eastern Bloc and amongst the Western observers. For instance, shortly after, British and American diplomats based in the East-European countries circulated among themselves numerous comparative analyses on the population’s living standards in the Soviet Union, Poland and Romania, three countries where the dwelling situation was known as being very difficult. Local political leaders were quite aware of the real housing situation of their countries, and the numerous remarks of the Western observers summarized the reality. The diplomats were particularly concerned with each country’s technological capacity, financial power, level of productivity in the construction field, and the availability of the skilled workers. Their diplomatic synthesis stressed that the limited durability of the finished dwellings was an outcome of the blatant quality of the construction materials and lack of efficient training of workers. This was adding up to an institutional chaos caused by the frequent conflicts emerged between the institutional structures responsible with carrying out the programs, which was apparent at all levels of the state leadership, from the top level ministries down to the local bureaucratic structures. As the Western diplomats observed, the housing situation was dramatic since the great majority of the newly urbanized population lived in over-crowded spaces. Although the so-called sanitary norm guaranteeing every person a minimum of eight square meters living space was in effect in the Soviet Union and the rest of the East-European states since the end of the Second World War, the reality was very much different. In the Soviet Union, the living space available hardly went beyond a maximum value of seven square meters per person, whereas in Romania the situation was far worse. By the late 1950s, the national average was around six, while in the newly built industrial urban centers or in the war-devastated cities of Moldavia, this value dropped under four square meters. If one compared the Eastern Bloc with other states, one would easily get a sense of the difficult situation of the socialist states; during the early 1950s, in Britain, for instance, the average livable space per person revolved around a value of twenty-three square meters.1

1

British National Archives, FO 371, file no. 143537, item NS 1431/6; file no. 129120, item NS 1731/1, NS 1731/2, NS 1731/3.

156 Reconfiguring Romanian Architecture by the Second Half of the 1950s

When East meets West: International Congress of Architecture, Moscow 1958 The foreigners’ interest in housing matters rises some interesting points, particularly since until that very moment the Western diplomats based in the East-European countries paid a particular attention to economic dynamics, natural resources’ exploration and political projects. Accordingly, industrial projects generally articulated any references to the population’s living conditions. This seemed to change in time because of the gradual re-engagement between East and West, which reached the climax during 1958. In January that year, the United States and Soviet governments signed a bilateral cultural agreement that opened up collaborations between the two countries. Shortly after, the US had organized all kinds of events within the socialist bloc including cultural meetings, mounting up exhibitions or organizing various events, while a significant number of Soviet specialists benefited from training and exchange programs in North America. In other words, the late 1950s were contradictory: while the tensions between the US and the Soviet Union deepened, the cultural reconciliation echoed the Soviets’ need to acquire Western technology, as well as the Americans’ attempts to destabilize the Eastern Bloc by means of “soft power” actions. Within a couple of months, there were also organized international professional meetings that gathered specialists in the field of architecture or sociology, which for the first time since the end of World War II favored a genuine dialogue between specialists of the two sides of the curtain (Glendinning 2009, 198; Castillo 2010; ğârău 2012; Belmonte, 2008; Morgan, Masey 2008). For instance, the International Congress of Architecture held in Moscow in July 1958 uncovered the fact that in spite of ideological divergences, architects from the two sides of the Iron Curtain were facing similar problems. For instance, throughout Europe, the massive population mobility towards the urban areas was coupled with a chronic inability of the authorities to handle efficiently the flows of incomers within the industrialized area, not to mention to provide them with appropriate dwellings. Consequently, the resolution of the 1958 architects’ meeting synthesized a couple of ideas that reconfigured the architectural practice in terms of how this would meet the social requirements. The central theme of their attention was the systematization of the national territory, by developing regional areas of urban interest. As such, developing metropolitan areas by building suburbia and satellite cities orbiting around the central urban area would help fluidize the functioning of the main town. Developing transportation networks to connect various residential

Mara Marginean

157

neighborhoods was to be further completed by a more efficient distribution of functions and services within the urban space. Then, a reconsideration of the family dwelling that would take into account the family structure, level of education, professionalization or income.2 Within the European planning practice such ideas were not new, the needs to identify the best possible balance between national and regional development being evocative of the modern thinking. Within the Eastern Bloc, however, recuperating the modern approaches to urban development was tantamount to questioning the pre-eminence of Stalinist socialist realism. Accordingly, the new planning solutions would synthesize some projects resembling the functionalist architecture that significantly differed from the highly adorned buildings erected throughout Eastern Europe during the early postwar years. Furthermore, the new approach recuperated many of the ideas on regional development that were connected to interwar modernism and appealed to many architects active throughout the bloc, who were thus given the possibility to employ a functionalist design.

Economic reconsiderations within the Romanian system Although the Soviet decree was hardly mentioned in the Romanian political press, the architects’ meeting held in Moscow in July 1958 was covered extensively by the review Arhitectura RPR. Much more information on the two events is available in the archives, signaling that behind the closed doors the implications of these changes were thoroughly analyzed. The issue of regional development was particularly important on the politicians’ discussion agenda, since it provided valid urban solutions within the context of industrialization. Accordingly, in the same year, in November 1958, a plenary session of the Romanian Communist Party adopted two decisions. The first one was related to the economic development, the regime paying a particular attention to heavy industry—steel, oil and chemical. These branches were to grow considerably over the next year. Consequently, a significant amount of financial resources had to be redirected towards the modernization of production lines, while the number of employees was to increase as well. For instance, the steel plant of Hunedoara, located in the southern part of Transylvania, became a quintessence of the new political 2

“Al V-lea Congres a Uniunii Internationale a Arhitectilor,” Arhitectura RPR 7 (1958): 16-20; “Congresul al V-lea al UIA,” Arhitectura RPR 10-11 (1958): 61– 66; N. Barasov, “Raportul general la Congresul al V-lea al UIA,” Arhitectura RPR 12(1958): 25–27.

158 Reconfiguring Romanian Architecture by the Second Half of the 1950s

project. While in 1958, in this location was produced more than eighty– five percent of the entire Romanian steel, over the next six years the production figures increased by six times. However, about seventy percent of the housing facilities in Hunedoara consisted of provisory buildings, the so-called barracks (Gheorghiu-Dej 1958, 44–45). In order to address these issues, in his public intervention at the November party meeting, Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej pointed out that within the next couple of years the production costs of dwellings should drop drastically, parallel with the improvement of the construction practice. The Romanian leader argued that it was alarming that in some regions, particularly in the newly built industrial centers, the construction price of one dwelling was rising up to a value of 110,000 lei, while, according to the party estimations, the production cost of a two-room apartment should had been around a maximal value of 40,000 lei. Narrowing down the construction costs by almost seventy percent became the architects’ main task. Given the low technological level of the construction industry as a whole, as well as the very limited maneuver space that the politicians afforded the architects, it was unlikely to improve the construction process by better management, higher productivity rates, tehnologization or cuts of unnecessary expenses. As a result, the first construction plans released in the months following the November party meeting proposed building two-room flats no larger than twenty-four square meters each, as well as the transformation of basement space into living quarters. While some of the local authorities rejected the projects on grounds of being inappropriate to shelter the working class, other found them appropriate to solve the pressing social difficulties. Accordingly, the decisions made in Moscow came in handy for the regime to develop its industrialization policies with minimum social expenses. In terms of urban planning, establishing satellite towns and improving the quality of the transportation system would lower the construction costs as well. In the Hunedoara region, for instance, a large number of the steel plant’s employees were redirected towards the newly erected town Calan, located nearby. In this way, the authorities managed to remove from the city’s limits a significant number of residents. In addition, there were projected complicated systems of regional public transportation—trams, trains and busses, which had to facilitate the daily commuting of the steel plant’s workers. In the new urban space, there were organized local and economic facilities, educational and sanitary centers, which were also efficient in absorbing the feminine unemployed labor force. Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of socialism, however, this new model increased the social inequalities amongst the inhabitants, as the

Mara Marginean

159

quality of housing in these satellite neighborhoods was significantly lower than in Hunedoara. In time, many residents of the Calan city complained that they faced difficulties in accessing urban related facilities like consumption goods, food or services, which were unavailable in peripheral areas. Another problem appeared to be related to bureaucratic blockages and abuses, which were much frequent in the new satellite town.3 Changes occurred in the institutional organization, as well. There were established regional planning offices. Endowed with a great amount of autonomy, these structures were made responsible with supervising the construction works and drawing the systematization projects for the region. Assigned to work together with other specialists, including engineers and economists, their responsibility was to set up a unitary development project integrating together the economic and the social matters. A decision of the Council of Ministers proposed the relocation of the architects based in Bucharest at the regional offices (until that moment, according to the official data, almost ninety percent of the trained architects were residing in Bucharest).

Conclusion The historiography still debates on the moment when Romania’s autonomy drive away from the Soviet Union became apparent. Some specialists have argued that the economic policies of the late 1950s favored the later political decisions. Others, on the contrary, have pointed out that it was only by the early 1960s when the Romanian leadership fully engaged in distancing itself from Moscow’s influence. Nevertheless, such arguments are mostly concerned with diplomatic aspects or the personal conflict between the leaderships of the two states and tend to ignore the social implications of the Romanian government’s economic policies upon the everyday lives. This article aimed to stress that domestic policies are equally important since the nationalist rhetoric attached to the process of industrialization effected into constructing a solid legitimacy basis for the Communist regime in Romania during the 1960s. Thus, while many urban solutions adopted by the late 1950s represented pragmatic approaches to 3

Hunedoara County Archives, Fond DirecĠia JudeĠeană de Statistică, file no. 19/1964, 12; Fond Primăria Hunedoara — Secretariat, file no. 131/1963, 252— 253; Fond P.C.R. — Municipiu Hunedoara, file no. 4/1961, 12 and 18; Fond P.C.R. JudeĠul Hunedoara, file no. 62/1958, 56 and file no. 83/1959, 41–42. See also Drumul socialismului (June 27, 1959): 1 and 3; idem, (July 12, 1959): 1; idem, (July 29, 1959): 3; idem, (June 18, 1960): 2; “Călanul, centru metalurgic în plină dezvoltare,” Uzina noastră (February 23, 1961): 2.

160 Reconfiguring Romanian Architecture by the Second Half of the 1950s

impending social problems, the ideological context and the immediate implications individualized this case from the rest of the urbanization processes. Thus, after 1958, many Romanian architects set up contacts with their Western colleagues, which was possible because the Soviet Union permitted such actions. Then, the regime secured a high level of legitimacy and popular support, particularly amongst the newly urbanized population by easing access to housing and urban facilities. This favored the emergence of a new national identity fueled by the industrialization and urbanization. Finally, for many Romanians this new model of socioeconomic order qualitatively improved their lives.

Bibliography Belmonte, Laura A. 2008. Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press. Berend, Ivan. 1996. Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castillo, Greg. 2010. Cold War on the Home Front. The Soft Power of Midcentury Design. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe. 1958. Expunere făcută la úedinĠa plenară a CC al PMR din 26-28 noiembrie 1958. Bucharest: Editura Politică. Glendinning, Miles. 2009. “Cold-War Conciliation: International Architectural Congresses in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s.” The Journal of Architecture 14, 2:197–217. Hirsch, Francine. 2005. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jowitt, Kenneth. 1971. Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development. The Case of Romania, 1944–1965. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morgan, Conway Lloyd and Jack Masey. 2008. Cold War Confrontation: US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War, 1950–1980. Baden. London: Lars Müller. Péteri, György. 2012. “Sites of Convergence: The USSR and Communist Eastern Europe at International Fairs Abroad and at Home.” Journal of Contemporary History 47, 1 (Jan.):3–12. Rees, E. A. 2008. “Introduction. The Sovietisation of Eastern Europe.” In The Sovietization of Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period, edited by Balazs Apor, Peter Apor and E.A. Rees, 1–28. Washington: New Academia Publishing.

Mara Marginean

161

Reid, Susan E. 2006. “The Meaning of Home: The Only Bit of the World You Can Have to Yourself.” In Borders of Socialism. Private Spheres of Soviet Russia, edited by Lewis H. Siegelbaum, 145–70. New York: Palgrave McMillan. —. 2010. “The Soviet Pavilion at Brussels ’58: Convergence, Conversion, Critical Assimilation, or Transculturation?” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 62 (December 2010). http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/WP62_Reid_web_V3sm. pdf. Schmid, Sonja D. 2011. “Nuclear Colonization?: Soviet Technopolitics in the Second World.” In Entangled Geographies. Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War, edited by Gabrielle Hecht, 125–54. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Tismăneanu, Vladimir. 2005. Stalinism pentru eternitate. O istorie politică a comunismului românesc. Iaúi: Polirom. —. 2009. “Introduction.” In Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East–Central Europe, edited by Vladimir Tismăneanu, 1–14. Budapest: CEU Press. ğârău, Liviu C. 2012. Prin ochii unui diplomat American: oraúul Cluj în anul 1958. Cluj Napoca: Editura FundaĠiei pentru Studii Europene. Varga-Harris, Christine. 2006. “Forging Citizenship on the Home Front. Reviving the Socialist Contract and Constructing Soviet Identity during the Thaw.” In The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization. Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era, edited by Polly Jones, 101–16. New York: Routledge.

WAR AND EMPIRE: PORTUGUESE AFRICA AND THE WAR ECONOMY (1914–1919) MARIA FERNANDA ROLLO AND ANA PAULA PIRES Introduction The African continent remains nowadays—like during the First World War—a worldwide issue of central nature, as evidenced by the recent EU/Africa summit held during the Portuguese presidency of the European Union. Regarding Africa throughout the twentieth century equals considering a stage in permanent mutation, where different elements arising from internal dynamics—yet influenced by realities foreign to the continent—interact and connect with each other. The observation tends toward greater accuracy and thoroughness once we manage to channel it in order to focus on more specific realities, such as the situation resulting from the outburst of the First World War in the summer of 1914. Portuguese Africa stands out as an agent in the globalization process: (1) as an element of direct action, particularly through the exploitation of its natural resources in the widest sense possible, but also through the unique features of its political situation as regards international relations, and (2) due to the role it played as a crossroads, i.e. a connection and passage platform for various material and immaterial flows at a worldwide scale, in relation to the influence of neighboring British territories, in particular South Africa. During the Belle Époque, the network of transactions of goods and people had spread considerably, bringing remote and peripheral places, like the African territories, closer to the center of the world economy. It was then that Portuguese territories in Africa gained a global dimension, and began, considering its geo-strategic importance, namely in East Africa, and the relevance of its natural resources, to be disputed by both Britain and Germany.

Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires

163

This paper is intended to explore, from a critical and integrated viewpoint, the main policies and measures (or the lack thereof) carried out during the Portuguese First Republic in the domain of production development, as well as in the search for the instruments necessary to boost the recovery of East African colonial markets, in an attempt—with varied degrees of success—to minimize the effects of external dependency, particularly as regards basic necessities.

Europe and the rest of the world: Africa and nineteenth-century globalization In 1914, when the First World War started, all major European powers, with the exception of the Habsburg Empire, ruled over territories outside Europe. In this paper we analyze the strategic importance of the Portuguese colonies in Africa, namely Mozambique, understanding its importance in a cross-compared reading frame and studying it from three perspectives: (1) the dispute of the empire; (2) the mobilization and the strategy of the European powers toward war in Africa and (3) the protection, preservation and maintenance of the integrity of the Portuguese colonial empire. In a time and context of profound internationalization, communications (terrestrial and “voice”) had acquired a new dimension, becoming, throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the main instrument in the construction of an international economic model that involved and unleashed a scenery of global and general mutation, prompted by the same technological leap that produced the Industrial Revolution (or the two industrial revolutions). The economic dynamism that marked these years reinforced the positivist faith in the notion of progress and, at the same time, promoted the alliance between scientific research and technical development. Thus, a single global economy emerged, supported by a thickening circulation network of people, capital and goods, a reality made visible by the growing and continuous interdependence between developed countries and the underdeveloped world. On the eve of the war, Britain controlled about four fifths of the trade in the south of the Sahara region, while Germany, on the other hand, continuing the policy initiated by Bismarck in the late nineteenth century, had a small, but strategically placed empire, extending from Madagascar to the entrance of the Red Sea. Both empires bordered territories under Portuguese administration, for whose political and economic interest they began to compete on the international stage, particularly after the British

164

War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy

ultimatum of 1890, which in August 1913 would culminate in the signature of a secret agreement that aimed at sharing the Portuguese colonies in Africa between Britain and Germany.

War and empire The colonies during the First World War were not mere battlefields, they were an integral part of the economic warfare of European countries, providing raw materials and food, therefore it is important to understand the strategic position occupied particularly by the Portuguese East African territories, regarding them as agents in the globalization process particularly through the exploitation of natural resources in the widest sense possible, but also through the role they played as crossroads and a connection and passage platform for various material and immaterial flows at a worldwide scale. We shall consider, as regards the Portuguese case, three major issues: 1. the extent to which the changes resulting from difficulties in crossborder commerce might have played a relevant role in the attempts to adjust Portuguese exports to wartime conditions, with an emphasis on the efforts towards expansion to new markets (Africa and Latin America); 2. the Portuguese role in the strategy of conquering commercial positions carried out by the British foreign office; 3. the extent to which the war has altered the way in which governments and society regarded the national economic structure, acknowledging the limitations of the Portuguese productive system. Although most of the clashes occurred on European soil, the involvement of the African continent played an essential role within the Great War, which was a fundamental expression of the globalization of the conflict: for over four years Africa provided human and material resources on an unprecedented scale to the Western Front. From the “black continent” standpoint, it is worth to note how the First World War contrasted in terms of objectives, impact, scale and duration with the many conflicts that erupted throughout the nineteenth century, conducted mainly against native populations, and motivated by local and limited objectives. Right after Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, on August 4, 1914, one of the main priorities of London was to eliminate and/or control the strategic potential of the German colonies and possessions all over the world, a strategy that was felt with particular intensity in Latin America

Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires

165

and in Africa and that consisted of capturing port facilities, submarine communications, cable and radio masts.

East Africa and economic warfare For Portugal what actually was at stake, during August of 1914, was not so much the direct effects of the armed conflict as the disarticulation of the economic workings and the regular distribution circuits. It is worth noting how devastating and far-reaching the consequences of the decrease in importations were to the economy and the people’s daily life. This reality was soon acknowledged and denounced by Lancelot Carnegie who, in a letter to the British minister of foreign affairs, did not hesitate to identify it as the decisive factor that explained why the Portuguese government intervened “… at this early stage even more drastically than has been necessary in States that are more affected politically by the conflict.”1 The Portuguese government also developed some efforts towards the promotion and development of agriculture in its colonial territories; as the first step a law was published, establishing a service agency of the Portuguese colonies.2 The new agency reflected the pretext and the opportunity to promote the export of agricultural products, while taking into account that these would only be viable if exported at a competitive price; much more than the promotion of agricultural specialization, the main goal of the agency had to do with the rigorous calculation of the price of agricultural products and the presentation of effective methods of reducing production costs.3 For such objectives to be achieved it was required that within a short period of time significant improvements were introduced in the colonial infrastructures, i.e. building more roads and railways and completing a network of modern equipped commercial ports to serve as mandatory connection points on the route of world trade; however, as regards this issue, the act provided not a single solution. This story cannot be properly interpreted and understood if one does not bear in mind the impact and direct and indirect consequences of the vigorous campaign of recovery of commercial positions launched by the Foreign Office right after the declaration of war, which sought the goal of fighting German commerce and commercial strategies. To sum up, the 1

National Archives of the United Kingdom (NAUK), FO 368/1063, Letter 26 Aug. 1914 sent by Lancelot Carnegie to Edward Grey, 1. 2 Decree, no. 1 142, Diário do Governo, I Series, no. 226 of 3rd December, 1914. 3 Idem.

166

War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy

idea was to establish a policy symbolizing—more than really imposing— the will to persuade British commerce and finance to invest in Portugal. It was one of the key notes of the memorandum made by the British consul Erroll Macdonell on Britain’s chances of reclaiming German businesses throughout Portuguese Africa. The telegram sent ten days after the onset of hostilities by Edward Grey to the British consulates should also be regarded within this context, as it reflects the concern of His Majesty’s government regarding the gathering of all essential information to the pursuit of a commercial policy mostly focused on promoting and valuing British trade.4 As it became clear, the British government established a specific strategy and put together the necessary instruments (similarly to what it did in Latin America), aimed at controlling the Portuguese colonial markets, particularly Mozambique, where the German presence was notorious. That was the strategy pursued by the British representatives in terms of orientation and definition of the priorities that were to guide the trade relations between Britain and Portugal.5 As for the rest, it was well known that, as the British secretary of commerce phrased it, “War creates no trade, but it may correct it.”6 The way in which the British government welcomed the pressure from British commercial agents interested in the Anglo-Portuguese trade is therefore unsurprising. The British diplomacy would put its best effort into providing more favorable conditions to its commercial activity, eventually achieving most of its goals through the trade treaty entered into by both countries on January 12, 1914. The British strategy grew more intense throughout the months that followed Pimenta de Castro’s rise to power (January 25, 1915 to May 15, 1915). In reality, due to circumstances and reasons related to the alleged pro-German standing of the Portuguese head of government, the attitude of the Foreign Office evolved into a reinforcement of the trade relations between the two countries, through the adoption of specific measures aimed at persuading British trade and finance to invest in Portugal and thus take over German businesses and trade positions in Africa,7 particularly in Mozambique. This attitude was the result of the significant increase in the consumption by the German army of Portuguese colonial 4

“A guerra comercial” Jornal do Comércio e das Colónias, November 26, 1914, 1. Cf. NAUK, FO 368/1063, Report of September 1914 by the British Secretary of Commerce, 1. 6 Idem, 1. 7 NAUK, FO 368/1382, Memorandum of 22nd February, 1915, put together by the general consult Errol Macdonell. 5

Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires

167

products, notably foodstuffs (cocoa, coffee and sugar). This circumstance led the Germans to establish alternative routes that enabled them to ship colonial products into Germany, while avoiding “war zones” and taking advantage of the situation and “goodwill” of their neutral neighbors.8 The truth is that German companies controlled the trade of Mozambican colonial products, a situation to which the combined effect of an economic policy aimed toward the development of equipment and infrastructures (ports, railroad and navigation lines) necessary to transport those products to the European markets contributed greatly.9 British diplomacy in Lisbon persevered in its intention to intensify the Anglo-Portuguese trade relations, with the involvement of the British Chamber of Commerce and the Commercial Association of Lisbon and put efforts into studying the trade and finances of Portugal.10 The British authorities were evidently aware of the difficulties in putting their strategy into practice, as the lack of interest of the financial milieu in investing in what they deemed “a small market about which little is known and that little unfavourable”11 was rather notorious; at best, the exploitation of Portuguese colonial resources might raise some interest, particularly concerning Angola and Mozambique. On the other side, Britain was starting to come to terms with the fact that it might be required to render financial support to Portugal, as Carnegie argued, “in return for the supplies and support given us.”12 As results started to appear and the knowledge of the economic and financial reality grew larger—particularly regarding the outline of the Portuguese commercial activities—the country’s strategic value and potential became increasingly notorious, as a connector between Central Africa and South America, thus confirming the interest in promoting and intensifying the British investment in Portugal.13 In summary, since the summer of 1914 the British foreign policy had sought to profit from the wartime conditions in order to foster the expansion of British commercial interests around the world, particularly aiming to conquer German commercial and industrial positions, both in 8

NAUK, FO 368/1383, Confidential memorandum on trade and finances of Portugal, 22nd March, 1915, sent by Lancelot Carnegie to Edward Grey. 9 Idem, 5. 10 NAUK, FO 368/1383, Note of 17th March, 1915, sent by Lancelot Carnegie to Edward Grey, 1. 11 NAUK, FO 368/1383, Note of 17th March, 1915 sent by Lancelot Carnegie to Edward Grey, 1. 12 Idem, 1–2. 13 Idem, 5–6.

168

War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy

Europe and in Africa, where the Portuguese colonies, notably Mozambique, played a significant role. As far as Portugal was concerned, the impact and effects of the worldwide conflict raised many difficulties besides those strictly resulting from the war, which reflected the weak development of our peripheral economy, based on an agricultural sector whose levels of production and productivity lagged behind the minimum necessary, and strongly dependent on foreign funding, freighting and essential goods (foodstuff, fuels and even on equipment, technology and raw materials that were essential to our small industrial sector that by then had become reduced to minimal expression), in spite of a vast “empire” that was economically and strategically relevant, particularly in the context of the world-wide conflict. The war also raised awareness of the weaknesses of the domestic economy, awakening or stimulating a certain amount of internal pressure toward the pursuit of debate and the introduction of a program of economic modernization for the primary sector that also fostered the industrialization of the country and included the intensification of economic relations with the colonies, especially Angola, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. This intention was well-fitted to the British strategy regarding their position in the mainland and especially in the colonies, and Britain therefore encouraged it to a certain extent. The situation was noticeable as regards the colony of Mozambique in particular, as a set of initiatives aiming to develop the commercial and economic relations between the territory and the mainland started appearing. That was the purpose behind the appeal, in February 1916 (one month before Germany’s declaration of war on Portugal), by the Governor of Mozambique, Álvaro de Castro, to the Chamber of Deputies, inviting its president to organize and send a mission to the colony in order to collect information necessary to the execution of a survey that served “… as propaganda at the same time.”14 On that same day, February 4, 1916, the governor sent a note to the representatives of industrial and commercial associations informing them on the advantages of closer economic ties between Mozambique and the mainland, an option that could be justified, according to Álvaro de Castro, by the market conditions and the variety,

14 Refer to the note from the government of Mozambique to the chairman of the Chamber of Deputies in: “Reforma das Pautas” O Trabalho Nacional, March 1916, 81. The proposition was only submitted to the parliament a few months later, in early May: Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, Session no. 79, 2nd May, 1916, p.4.

Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires

169

value and wealth of the products of the territory.15 The government pledged to invest all means available to adequately disseminate the initiative, through exhibitions and the distribution of all sorts of informative elements. The initiative actually raised the interest of the Oporto Industrial Association, which regarded the investment in Eastern African markets with some enthusiasm, underlining the need to join forces with the Commercial Association and the Commercial Centre of Oporto in order to pursue actions.16 The governors’ power to send the list of requests of exclusive industrial rights on the colonial territories to industrial associations (instead of sending them to the minister of colonies) was recent and reflected a decentralizing policy regarding the administration that had been introduced by the First Republic and which seemed to produce positive results. Although the number of requests increased, the activities they pertained to were, with few exceptions, of artisanal nature, resorting to techniques and equipment that were more often than not somewhat inadequate. Shortly afterward, in April 1916, a draft bill authorizing the governor of Mozambique to enter into a loan of 500 thousand dollars to fund the construction of infrastructures to develop the colony was discussed in the Portuguese parliament.17 Until then, the intervention of the republican government concerning Mozambique was limited to exploiting revenues that directly depended on the relations with neighboring territories, particularly with South Africa, with no program in place that fostered the development of the productive activities within the colony, which was a much criticized situation, as it was widely deemed “imprudent.”18 Even so, the Portuguese parliament hesitated in its answer to Álvaro de Castro’s request, arguing that it lacked a structured development plan encompassing the construction works in need of funding.19 Upon repeated insistences from the chamber, the drafter of the proposal, Ernesto de Vilhena, eventually put forward an explanation that convinced few on the proposed direction: “… one should not be required to thoroughly describe all the development works to which the 500 000$ loan is intended, firstly 15

Idem, 81–82. Idem, 82. 17 Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, Session no. 64, 3rd April, 1916, p.16. 18 See, particularly, the intervention by unionist MP Armando Ochoa. Idem. 19 Further details on this discussion in Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, Session no. 66, 5th April, 1916, 8–14. 16

170

War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy

because it is not customary to do so; secondly, it is inconvenient; thirdly, because such insertion would in no way increase the guarantees for the State represented by the loan in accordance with the legislation in force; and, fourthly, because the Parliament was adopting a centralising orientation that contravened its own decision.”20 The interest and expectations on the possibility of the colonies supplying the mainland and Madeira with essential products grew as internal hardship increased. In reality, the government had “discovered,” somewhat late, the colonies as a source of provisions through which it could help supply the mainland and thus contain the general discontent and protests from an increasingly dissatisfied population suffering from the effects of war, aggravated by the route (or rather the lack thereof) undertaken by the political power in terms of wartime economy, mostly as regards subsistences. All of a sudden, the colonies appeared in the horizon as the solution to a fair deal of difficulties that afflicted the economy in the mainland. In addition to direct supply, there was also an interest in exploiting raw materials, attracting the investment of Portuguese capital in Africa. The colonies were regarded beyond the political sovereignty, as part of the national economic space, worthy of investment, something similar to the idea that the state would try to assert much later. As the member of parliament José Barbosa claimed “… our colonies were never an advantage to the mainland, but rather the only market that has enabled us to maintain our trade and industrial balance.”21 However, the economic exploitation of the colonies suffered little change in the long run and remained behind the possibilities and resources offered, even though their importance to the mainland cannot be assessed solely by the results of investments or colonial trade and these kept on playing a vital political and economic role for Portugal. The case of Angola was very different from the situation of Mozambique during the First World War. On the other side of Africa, regardless of its immense resources, Angola was not aimed by a propaganda campaign or any appeal to investment similar to that of Mozambique. Although it underwent noticeable development in 1914–15, the Angolan economy fell into recession in 1916, as a result of the considerable plunge in the amount of foodstuff exported to the mainland. The interest in Mozambique remained. Even when, after the takeover of Quionga and the occupation of Xivinga, the commercial and industrial mission that the Parliamentary Committee for the Colonies had decided to 20 21

Idem, 11. Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, Session no. 67, 6th April, 1916, 13–14.

Maria Fernanda Rollo and Ana Paula Pires

171

send to Mozambique, in May 1916, had to be postponed, the impetus of industrial and commercial agents by no means weakened.22 Globally, one can assert that Portugal’s involvement in the war marked a turning point in the way politicians and industrial tycoons regarded the need for closer relations between the mainland and the colonial space, in order to profit from opportunities and resources that had meanwhile become essential for fuelling a growing war effort. As Lisboa de Lima puts it, there was only one way we could possibly face those challenges and it was by “joining the efforts of each and every one … both in the mainland as well as in the colonies, to work with one single goal, with no attempt to make mainland or colonial interests prevail over the others, as they are all Portuguese… .”23 The war had ultimately proved that the time was ripe to conquer abandoned markets in East Africa. This was basically the idea made public by the Oporto Industrial Association when it declared that the industrial development achieved during the war required expansion into new markets, as well as the intensification of Anglo-Portuguese trade relations.

Bibliography Primary Sources Arquivo Histórico Parlamentar. Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Arquivo de Cultura Portuguesa Contemporânea, Espólio de Manuel Teixeira, Gomes. The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Secondary Sources Afonso, Aniceto. 2007. Grande Guerra – Angola, Moçambique e Flandres 1914-1918. Matosinhos: Quidnovi. Alexandre, Valentim. 2004. “O Império Português (1825-1890): ideologia e economia.” Análise Social 169:959–79. Arrifes, Marco Fortunato. 2004. A Primeira Grande Guerra na África Portuguesa. Angola e Moçambique (1914-1918). Lisbon: Edições Cosmos/Instituto de Defesa Nacional. Axelson, Eric. 1967. Portugal and the Scramble for Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 22

Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, Session no. 89, 15th May, 1916, 29–30. “Conferência na Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa em 8 de Maio de 1916 feita por Lisboa de Lima” Revista Colonial, May 25, 1916, 120–21.

23

172

War and Empire: Portuguese Africa and the War Economy

Clarance-Smith, Gervase. 1985. O terceiro império português (18251975). Lisbon: Teorema. Das, Santanu, ed. 2011. Race, Empire and First World War Writing. 2011. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pires, Ana Paula. 2011a. António José de Almeida. O Tribuno da República. Lisbon: Divisão de Edições da Assembleia da República. —. 2011b. Portugal e a I Guerra Mundial. A República e a Economia de Guerra. Casal de Cambra: Caleidoscópio. Proença, Maria Cândida Proença. 2008. A Questão Colonial no Parlamento. Lisbon: Colecção Parlamento/Publicações Dom Quixote. Portugal na Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918). As negociações diplomáticas até à declaração de guerra, Tomo I. 1997. Lisbon: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros. Roberts, A.D., ed. 1986. The Cambridge History of Africa 1905-c.1940. Vol.7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosas, Fernando, and Maria Fernanda Rollo, ed. 2009. História da I República Portuguesa. Lisbon: Tinta da China.

COMPANIES AND FIRMS IN THE “ITALIAN SOMALIA” (1960–1970) DONATELLA STRANGIO Introduction It was clear that since the period of Italian trusteeship Italy would not be able to oversee the economic development of Somalia alone, but its task was the preparation and application of a set of norms to create the prerequisites for a healthy economic development on a private basis (Morone 2011; Strangio 2010). This involved facilitating the work of private entrepreneurs who were attracted to those sectors that were considered to be the most suitable and profitable, whilst discouraging solutions that were not convincing. These private businesses had to be provided with sufficient economic means and to be run by staff completely aware of the economic issues they had to face and capable of establishing the necessary international financial and commercial relations for the planned strategies. The experience of the pre- and postwar periods had shown that a private enterprise in agricultural, industrial and commercial sectors was not able to operate efficiently or to pull through in moments of difficulty if it was isolated and organized in small units, as had been encouraged by the former Italian administrations (Acemoglu et al. 2001, 1369–1401). On the contrary, the most successful enterprises were those organized on a solid industrial basis of an appropriate size, which allowed risks to spread across complementary and coordinated activities and which were able to resist and recover from a crisis by introducing new programs of production that were appropriate for the new situation. The best example was SAIS (Società Agricola Italo-Somala), which had been founded by the legendary Duke of Abruzzi and whose agricultural, industrial and commercial activities were centered in a village bearing his name. It represented in great part the new Somali economy. The company, therefore, relied first on the group of firms represented by SAIS and its subsidiaries to extend its business. SAIS ran a large

174

Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970)

agricultural business on an industrial basis, whilst the real industrial sector was run by the Società Saccarifera Somala and the commercial business by the Società Commerciale Italo-Somala, which worked through a lot of Italian and foreign firms.

The Società Agricola Italo-Somala A description of the colonial agriculture will help us to understand the connection between colonialism and the main issues that still plague the country today. The first attempts to exploit Somali agricultural resources date back to the end of the nineteenth century, but it was only thirty years later that this work produced results and was integrated into the local economy. In the period between 1893 and 1896 southern Somalia was administered by a concessionaire company, the Compagnia Filonardi, which was primarily interested in the administration of ports and the control of trade. The company soon went bankrupt, as it was unable to cover the costs of what amounted to a paramilitary presence in the country to impose its authority on the local population. The Società del Benadir, which was supported by some industrialists interested in the production of cotton, took over the Compagnia Filonardi. This company hoped to invest in and develop agriculture as well as collect revenues from the taxes levied on trade. But the Società del Benadir soon faced insurmountable problems in starting a small-scale private agriculture and the Somali economy basically remained unchanged. This led to the end of this form of administration in 1905, when the Italian government took over the direct responsibility for the Somali colony. In the following years, the Italian government started its first attempts to promote agricultural development. Between 1907 and 1909, concessions of about 45,000 hectares were granted to Italians along the Juba and Shebelle rivers. As a result, fifteen concessions of a considerable size were created, but within a few years, in spite of a very favorable contract, about half of these companies were abandoned. The contract, in fact, was supposed to last sixty years and the concessionaire was obliged to cultivate only 20 percent of all the area within five years. The concessionaire was exempted from paying taxes for five years and later had to pay a very low rate for the following twenty years. However, the failure of these settlements can be explained by the economic potential of the single firms, inadequate to face the enormous investments necessary to start a production, and by the lack of infrastructure at the time.

Donatella Strangio

175

This phase of experimentation was followed by another one marked by the Italian administration’s growing awareness of the need to intervene with more financial means in the agricultural sector, to reclaim more land and to create a new transport infrastructure to ease the difficulty of reaching the coast. As a result, they hoped that after the war of 1915–18 a land reclamation firm could be set up to invest in and develop agricultural production. Whilst travelling in Africa in 1918, the Duke of Abruzzi (Tenderini et al. 2006; Dell’Osa 2010)1 spent a lot of time in Somalia where he was very attracted by the population and the countryside. He came across a land near the village of Giohar-Eilo in the Scidle region2 that could be easily exploited and was suitable for a big agricultural company, especially as a large workforce was available. The Duke immediately realized that it was essential to establish cordial relations with the local chiefs and the leading figures in the area as he had to negotiate an agreement on the availability of land over a long period of time. One thing was clear: it was necessary to start some basic works. In November 1920, SAIS was established with limited liabilities, which obtained a concession of 25,000 hectares from Somalia in a very fertile territory on the two banks of the River Shebelle. Its aims were clearly expressed in article 3 of its statute: “The objective of the Società is to enhance a part of the Scidle Region on the River Shebelle and transform the present cultivations into large scale crops in order to help the Motherland and to stimulate the potential wealth of those lands.”3 A main irrigation canal was built, 6 km long and 450 m wide, from which secondary canals branched off towards single farms. The flow of water was regulated by a dam. At the same time woodland was transformed into a cultivable plain served by canals and roads. SAIS’ land had an internal network of 148 km of roads and was divided into seven farms,4 each had 1,000 hectares that included market gardens, nurseries and experimental fields. 1 Luigi Amedeo di Savoia (Aosta), Madrid 1873 – Villaggio Duca Abruzzi (Somalia) 1933. 2 Scidle was an area in the district of Mahaddei Uen (Middle Shebelle basin) of approx. 1,000 km2, inhabited by a population of freedmen along the rivers, with 23,000 inhabitants in 49 villages close to and 25 far from the river; today, the same name indicates more or less the area between the villages of Baarow Weyn to the north and Xawaadley to the south. 3 From the “Statuto 1920–21,” printed in Turin, cited in Milanese, 1995, 67–122. 4 Historical Archives of the Banca d’Italia (henceforth ASBI, Banca d’Italia, Direttorio — Formentini, number 11, issue 2.

176

Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970)

The project immediately got underway under the personal direction of the Duke, who was the president and the chief executive of the company. Despite its optimistic start, there were fears about the success of the project from the very outset due to the distance from Italy, the slowness of sea transport, the precarious nature of land transport, as well as thousands of other environmental difficulties aggravated by the general lack of organization in the colony. The expenses for the initial works were also much higher than had been estimated in spite of the help given by the Italian government that had granted war surplus and other materials to Somalia. SAIS was the first company in Somalia to tackle the complex organizational issues of a big firm and its interests gradually extended from purely productive questions into the social, civil and human sphere. Consequently, schemes were organized to establish new working relations with the Somali workforce, introduce the cultivation of cane sugar and many other crops, such as cotton, peanuts, bananas, over vast areas, set up sugar refineries, conduct experimental research on a wide scale, mechanize agriculture and introduce the processing of products (oil mills, distilleries, shellers for cotton, hand operated shellers for peanuts, soap factories). It was the Duke himself5 who personally tried to solve the problems of river transport by creating some weather stations and conducting hydrometric studies on the average flow of the river and the composition of the water at various times of the year. He was also involved in the commercialization of bananas as soon as mass production became a real possibility. But, undoubtedly, what was the most striking was his commitment to social and human aspects of the program, as he was convinced of the importance of the psychological reflexes the new forms of agricultural work would have on the Somali and the need to maintain excellent relations with the Somali leaders of the area. His first objective was not to create an agricultural firm, as many already had existed, but to create a real base for development (Maugini 1970). On his death in 1933, his project was widely praised and acclaimed; it was acknowledged that “the company had, among other things, offered workers the possibility to evolve, to get to know themselves better, to improve themselves, to favor the movement of the more talented and ambitious from the humble beginnings as farm workers and herdsmen to tractor drivers, mechanics, irrigation workers and other positions at higher levels” (Maugini 1970, X). 5

ASBI, Banca d’Italia, Isp. Gen 385, 6, Mogadiscio 1934/52.

Donatella Strangio

177

The numerous successes obtained are attributed to Luigi di Savoia and his strong belief, mostly put into practice, that irrigation could succeed in compensating for the lack or irregularity of rainfall and that water could be found in the area near the farms by drilling wells. In this way it was possible to breed animals for agriculture, which, together with machinery, could increase yields and lighten the workload. Lastly, he was convinced that monoculture had to be abandoned and a wide range of crops introduced, without neglecting animal husbandry, and all should be accompanied by an adequate industrial organization to obtain the best possible processing of products.

Towards independence By the end of the fourth decade of the company, both SAIS and Somalia had entered a phase of great change. Italy had begun introducing Somali officials into state affairs from 1952 onwards, which led in 1956, somewhat earlier than planned, to the formation of a Somali government endowed with sovereign and independent powers in order to promote and establish the political and economic institutions that were a prerequisite for a modern state. This strategy, which was widely praised internationally, led to an ever growing group of Somali executive officials being trained and gradually placed in the leading positions. Elections were called to form the government organs, local leaders were taught and helped in international relations and given greater power. And lastly, the fatiguing procedures necessary for the passage from the old to the new order were started under close guidance in order to avoid the risk of discontinuity that would have endangered the public and private life of the country. These fundamental political events were accompanied naturally by a very important series of economic measures that aimed at guaranteeing assistance from friend nations, and in particular Italy, in Somalia’s first steps as a new independent nation. Many measures were taken by the United Nations and by the European Economic Community to provide technical and financial aid. Italy cancelled the deficit of the state balance of payments at the time of the transfer of powers and Italian public bodies handed over the ownership of a lot of equipment and property in Somalia (INCIS, INAIL, Cassa per la Circolazione Monetaria della Somalia, etc.). Furthermore, Italy continued to provide technical assistance with 250 experts with various skills until 19656 and also purchased growing

6

The period was extended to June 30, 1967 and then to the end of 1970.

178

Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970)

quantities of Somali bananas with preferential treatment at least to the end of 1965.7 Independence was achieved in a climate of general collaboration, without any incidents. A smooth changeover also took place within SAIS, even though at a later time the ferment created by the new political situation stirred a series of union claims by company workers. It led to the signing of a collective contract with the Somali Confederation of Workers, which came into force on June 1, 1961 and inevitably produced increased costs for the company. In the meantime two interesting projects were started with broad social and economic repercussions. The first concerned the selection of local personnel to continue the gradual Somalization of services throughout the agricultural and industrial complex by organizing special courses and encouraging Italian employees to help in the training of Somali workers. The second one concerned an extension of the plant to enable the company to face the growing demand in the country as well as covering most of the needs of the ex-Somaliland that had joined the new independent Somali state. This project, however, required a large amount of capital and consequently needed adequate guarantees of a lasting economic viability of investments, that is, in practice, the guarantee that the sale price of sugar would be sufficient to cover all production costs. On more than one occasion the Somali authorities asked for a reduction of the sale price of sugar cane, even regardless of any reduction in production costs that could be achieved only through the extension of the plant, but also without considering the substantial increases in the costs of all the factors of production, especially labor, recorded in that period. The situation worsened drastically as a consequence of the Decree of the president of the Somali Republic on March 31, 1962 that came into force on April 15, which led to the price of sugar being reduced by a third, falling from 130.90 somali to 88 somali per quintal. This price was then applied not only to the current production, but also to the enormous reserves that had been kept in warehouses for some time. It became immediately obvious that the social policy of the company could no longer be continued. As a consequence, whilst the management began to prepare its case to show it could not objectively bear the costs of applying the Decree, emergency measures were taken to deal with the situation and drastically limit expenditure in the complex business organization until a solution to the crisis could be found and thus avoid the irreparable harm the end of sugar production would cause to the company 7

This period was also extended, first to the end of 1967 and then to the end of 1969.

Donatella Strangio

179

and to the whole country. These measures included the dismissal of Italian and Somali personnel, the cancellation of the development plans and a marked reduction in all activities. Only the sugar cane that had already been in the fields was to be cultivated for immediate use and the sale of sugar was suspended until the outcome of the request for a price revision was not known. As the risk of the company to totally abandon its incalculable economic and social work after so many years of activity became more urgent and after long and laborious negotiations, the creation of a new company to develop the sugar industry was proposed; to it SAIS would transfer its complex of agriculture and industrial plants located in Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi.

Conclusion: The transformation of SAIS into SNAI 1960–63 The conditions of the cession were undoubtedly a big loss for the company and its shareholders because the real value and the cost of setting up the business were much higher than the price agreed. This solution was implemented with a convention signed at Mogadishu on November 3, 1962 with the Somali government. These were the main points: 1. Commitment on the part of the Somali government to create or promote the creation of a company for sugar production in Somalia by December 31, 1962 to be located in the area of Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi and its agricultural and industrial facilities at a price of 30,000,000 somali. The new company had to start its business on May 1, 1963. Half of the payment, i.e., 15,000,000, had to be in cash and the remaining half in shares of the new company at their nominal value and for a quota of 50 percent of share capital. SAIS was authorized to immediately transfer to Italy all its assets after all debts had been paid and to remain as a partner for 50 percent in the new company. It was also obliged to transfer to the Somali government a minimum of 60 percent up to a total of all its shares in the company at their nominal value if asked within five years. 2. The following were excluded from the cession: a) The reserves of sugar produced before April 30, 1963, as well as other products in the warehouses on that date, and the fuel, oil and other goods held in deposits; b) Property of special historical or religious significance, such as the palace of the Duke and its museum, including the garden,

180

Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970)

the Catholic church, the rectory, the nuns’ convent, the grave of the Duke and the Catholic cemetery. These were donated to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which operated in Somalia giving assistance. c) The “A. Cecchi” and the “Luigi di Savoia” hospitals and their services and the primary school, which had to be donated to the Somali government. 3. From the date of the signing of the convention, i.e. November 3, 1962, the price of sugar, which had been lowered to 88 somali, was increased to 110 somali by changing the tax on manufacturing and the customs on imports without any negative repercussions for the consumer. As soon as the convention was signed and the new price came into force, SAIS withdrew its appeal to the supreme court. 4. When SAIS took over 50 percent ownership of the shares in the new company, the Board of Administration was made up of an equal number of members appointed by the two parts, whilst the president and the managing director were chosen by a common agreement. 5. The administrators and managers of the new company had to follow strictly economic technical and organizational criteria. Accordingly, the Somali government set up the Società Nazionale Agricola Industriale (SNAI) with 1,000,000 somali. It had the basic task of continuing sugar production in Somalia, initially relying on the already existing facilities in Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi and later promoting their expansion. The capital was later increased from 1 million somali to 30 million somali, divided into 300,000 shares of 100 somali each, half of which remained in the hands of SAIS as had been established in the agreement. On April 30, 1963 the transfer of SAIS’s agricultural and industrial plant and the materials, stocks and spare parts kept in the warehouses was completed, so that SNAI could start its work without delay. On May 11, 1963 at Mogadishu, the formal act of donating the property of special historical and religious interest mentioned above at point 2b was signed. Once these obligations of the convention were fulfilled, some practical issues were solved in the spirit of collaboration and reciprocal trust so that the operations to settle the questions between SAIS and SNAI could be completed quickly. These measures included the sale of the stocks of sugar in the SAIS warehouses and technical assistance for the expansionary plan of SNAI. SAIS, indeed, willingly collaborated by preparing a detailed program for the integration of the existing plant and then giving it to SNAI, which was very appreciative.

Donatella Strangio

181

By the end of July 1965 the new company was able to complete the extension of the sugar factory to guarantee sufficient production to cover the internal demand for sugar. In his inauguration speech at the sugar factory, reported in Corriere della Somalia, on August 1, 1965, the new chief executive, Ahmed Dahir, stated that: “From today we are beginning an annual production of about 400,000 quintals of sugar, knowing very well that domestic consumption is about 300,000 quintals a year. The number of specialized workers will be increased from 800 to 1, 200 units and an increase in agricultural employment from 2,000 to 4,000 units daily, with obvious advantages for the well being of neighboring communities. We will sell the excess production in the international market, thus guaranteeing the country a good inflow of currency and contributing to an improvement in our balance of payments” (Belli 2000, 36). In its first year of activity, 1966, even though it only reached 200,000 quintals of sugar, a significant increase in production was recorded, thus confirming the forecast of a growth trend. SNAI was nationalized on May 7, 1970. SAIS in its long experience up to 1970 had succeeded in accomplishing an industrialized and modern form of sugar production in Somalia, so much so that from 1954 onwards, for a few years, the sugar produced in Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi had made Somalia selfsufficient in this sector.

Bibliography Primary sources Historical Archives of the Banca d’Italia (henceforth ASBI, Banca d’Italia, Direttorio – Formentini, number 11, issue 2. ASBI, Banca d’Italia, Isp. Gen 385, 6, Mogadiscio 1934/52.

Secondary sources Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2001. “The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation.” American Economic Review 91, 5:1369–1401. Belli, Anna Maria. 2000. Lavoro e sperimentazione agricola in Somalia: la Società Agricola Italo Somala e la canna da zucchero in Somalia. Florence: Studio editoriale fiorentino.

182

Companies and Firms in the “Italian Somalia” (1960–1970)

Dell’Osa, Pablo. 2010. Il principe esploratore. Luigi Amedeo di Savoia, duca degli Abruzzi. Milan: Mursia. Maugini, Armando. 1970. L’opera della Società agricola italo somala in Somalia: significato e valore delle realizzazioni, delle esperienze e degli studi compiuti dalla S.A.I.S. nei suoi 44 anni di vita. Milan: La Società. Milanese, Ernesto. 1995. “Storia di una bonifica coloniale: la nascita della Società Agricola Italo–Somala (S.A.I.S.).” Rivista di Storia dell’agricoltura XXXV, 2:67–122. Morone, Antonio Maria. 2011. L’ultima colonia. Come l’Italia è tornata in africa 1950-1960. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Strangio, Donatella. 2010. Decolonizzazione e sviluppo economico. Dalla Cassa per la circolazione monetaria della Somalia alla Banca nazionale somala: il ruolo della Banca d’Italia (1947-1960). Milan: FrancoAngeli. Tenderini, Mirella, and Michael Shandrick. 2006. Vita di un esploratore gentiluomo. Il Duca degli Abruzzi. Milan: Corbaccio.

PART V EMPIRES AND NATIONS IN SOUTH AND EASTERN EUROPE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE EARLY BRITISH DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF MONTENEGRO (1840–1880)1 ANA ŽIVKOVIû This article examines British representations of the struggle for independence in Montenegro from the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. My analysis will show that discursive representations of Montenegro are not homogenous; they change and are modified under the influence of wider political and historical pressures, as well as a consequence of writers’ own experiences. I will illustrate shifts in perceptions by looking at extracts from works of several British observers, with various backgrounds, ranging from political, diplomatic, naval, military and religious. These texts often reflect writers’ positions as extensions of their own country’s political and economic aims on how to project power over other parts of the world. In addition, writers enter into a dialogue with discursive constructs and codes of representation originating from their home culture. I will focus on the accounts left by members of a naval expedition that paid an official visit to Petar I, the vladika of Montenegro, in 1844. The leader of this expedition was Lord Admiral Clarence Paget, captain of the frigate HMS Aigle, who would later become the commander-in-chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet (1866–69). In the following two passages Paget relates his observations:

1

I gratefully acknowledge the financial support for the participation at the Empires and Nations conference at La Sapienza University of Rome, 20–22 June, 2013, received from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Brighton, England, without which the present study could not have been completed.

186

Early British Discursive Constructions of Montenegro (1840–1880) I was next sent on an interesting expedition to the Vladika, or Prince of Montenegro, a wild chieftain in the interior of Albania [sic]. He was in a chronic state of war with Turkey. Sir Stratford Canning had remonstrated with the Turks for atrocities to the Montenegrins, but they rejoined that the latter were a set of robbers, and always the aggressors. My mission was to endeavour to stop the butchery. I anchored in the Bocca di Cattaro, and proceeded on horseback up the precipitous path leading to the territory of Montenegro. On arrival at the frontier I was escorted by a band of veriest cut-throats to the capital Cetinje, a long day’s ride. A short distance from the village the Vladika himself rode out, attended by his guards, to meet me. He was profuse in promises of good behaviour, and for some little time there was a truce between him and the Turks. (Paget 1894, 74)

At the time of Paget’s writing, Britain’s naval dominance in the Mediterranean was unchallenged. In fact, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Britain’s supremacy at sea was established for the rest of the century. The expansion of British commercial interests around the globe led to an increase in trade that was dependent on shipping (Hill 2005, 61– 67). Britain’s interests concentrated around the safe route to India that passed through the Ottoman Empire. British foreign policy at the time was pro-Ottoman, supportive of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans and concentrated on maintaining strong political links with Turkey. Often aristocratic British travelers felt that their meetings with the Turks were like the coming together of two imperialistic nations able to appreciate their mutual successes. The British preferred the Ottoman overlords to people whom the Ottomans ruled. There was solidarity between the two colonizers, the two empires. A sort of mutual back-slapping between fellow-conquerors “was common to British travel literature and later to western journalistic accounts: while such works often manifest a tension between empathy for the Ottoman rulers and opposition to Islam, the former usually predominates” (Todorova 1994, 465). Britain’s economic and business interests were at stake, so for the British trade to carry on unhindered, political stability in the Ottoman Empire was needed. On the empire’s margins, the Montenegrin fight against the Ottoman Empire, or, as it is often referred to in texts, the fight against “the Turks,” was a destabilizing factor. Paget’s mission was to effectively chastise the Montenegrin vladika for offering resistance to the Ottomans. It was vital for this British official that the status quo be maintained and no resistance to the Ottoman authority be tolerated.

Ana Živkoviü

187

In his text, Paget refers to the Montenegrins as “the veriest cutthroats,” “robbers,” aggressors.” Early travel writing on Montenegro contains a lot of similar negative representation and denigratory images of Montenegro as a savage, barbarous and warlike area. In a passage written by a priest, Reverend A. C. Fraser, who also joined Paget’s naval expedition to Montenegro in 1844, the Montenegrins are depicted in a similar fashion: “It is not every thing uncommon that deserves a stare and we were accustomed to strangeness. But we had not met any thing so striking as the wild figures of these barbarians, thrown into relief by the appropriate background of the mountain” (Fraser 1846, 442). The tendency was to represent Montenegro as an other and alien to the British. The binary oppositions between civilization and barbarism, sophistication and primitivism, advanced and backward, humanity’s adulthood and childhood permeate British accounts at the time; the assumption was that from some point onwards travelers were entering a barbarous region (Todorova 1997, 11). As Andrew Hammond (2004, 603) explains, “imperialistic sentiment pervaded the culture from which Balkan travelers emerged, saturating British literature, art, science, even education, and their representations of backwardness, savagery and social turbulence in the Balkans.” In order to deconstruct the structure of a British observer’s approach to Montenegro, it is important to point out that the vladika’s personality is the unifying motif in the series of accounts and the meeting with him manages to change the observers’ primarily negative preconceptions and perceptions of Montenegro. The grand occasion to which Fraser and his co-travelers looked forward “as opportune to personal conclusions” was their conversation with the vladika, as well as and his cuisine, which, according to them would “both afford indicia of his social grade” (Fraser 1846, 441). As a consequence, the situation Rev. Fraser and his party experienced turned out to be totally different to what they expected: But when this time [dinner] arrived, it found us under considerable selfreproach. We had found our host to be a much more polished person than we had expected. In this calculation we had, perhaps, only vindicated our John Bullism, which assigns to semi-barbarism all the world beyond the sound of Bow Bells, and of which feeling, be it observed, the exhibition so often renders John Bull ridiculous. [my italics]. (Fraser 1846, 441)

Rev. Fraser allowed for reflection on the validity of “John Bullism,” the home culture discourse available to him, and, as a consequence, he readily suspended his preconceptions as “ridiculous.” This visitor takes the critical view and modifies the codes and discourses of the master, or the

188

Early British Discursive Constructions of Montenegro (1840–1880)

superior, the language and metaphors available to him in the context of the discursive structure of the British Empire of the nineteenth century (Norris 1999, 26). He found that his dinner was excellent, with champagne flowing “abundantly, and unexpectedly,” and described in detail how the table was neatly laid for dinner (Fraser 1846, 441). When dinner provided an opportunity for small talk, the vladika’s guests were “astonished at the extent and the particularity of his information” (Fraser 1846, 441). The whole experience was enchanting for the Rev. Fraser: Our host throughout the evening maintained the character of a hospitable and dignified entertainer; comporting himself with that due admixture of conscious dignity and affability, which seems necessary to the courtesy of princes. He occasionally addressed himself to one or other of us, and always seemed to answer with pleasure the questions that we ventured to put to him. (Fraser 1846, 443)

One question that Rev. Fraser and his co-travelers asked about during their encounter with the vladika related to the constant state of war Montenegro found itself in. It is clear from the following passage that what was striking for these British visitors was the Montenegrin bishop’s approval of war, where the expectation would be quite the reverse: The Vladika talked in a gentle manner of the most ungentle subject. War was the subject on which he descanted with pleasure and judgement, and on which those who sat near him endeavoured to draw him out. But he also proved himself conversant with several subjects, and inquisitive on European affairs. His hostility to the Turks was obviously a matter of deep reality—his hatred was evident in the description which he gave of them as bad, wicked men, who observed no faith, and with whom terms were impossible. The Albanians especially were marked by his animadversions. Our clergyman nearly produced an explosion by an ill-timed remark. As he listened open-mouthed to the right reverend lecturer on war, he was betrayed by his sense of the incongruity. The brow of the Bishop was for a moment darkened, and his lip curled in contempt, of which, perhaps, the social blunder was not undeserving. ‘And would not you fight,’ said he, ‘if you were attacked by pirates?’ … We changed the subject, and asked what was the Montenegro flag? ‘The cross,’ said he, ‘as befits; what else should Christians carry against infidels?’ (Fraser 1846, 432)

The vladika was both the bishop and the prince of Montenegro. He was both the spiritual and the temporal ruler. At times of war, in tiny Montenegro, people expected him to be a soldier; when they had aggressors at their door, everybody, clergymen included, joined the war

Ana Živkoviü

189

effort. “And such a bishop as now occupies this throne has not been seen since the martial days of the fighting Pope Julius,” notes Fraser (1846, 429). With respect to the Montenegrin struggle against a much bigger enemy, Fraser (1846, 429) noted that the Montenegrins were a “spectacle,” i.e. “a spectacle of a people who, proceeding on a principle of religion, however that principle be obscured, have instituted, and long have maintained, a crusade against the religious fanatics who once made Europe tremble.” Fraser (1846, 430) compares their struggle to the struggle of the knights of Malta and Rhodes, who “noble, polished, and temporarily influential, defended the weak point of Christendom—the sea.” The Montenegrins, “unpolished, ignorant, of little worldly account, but great zeal, have done their part for Eastern Christendom, in opposing the continental power of the Turks” (Fraser 1846, 430). Here Fraser concludes that, out of this comparison, the Montenegrins came superior as they were never conquered by the Turks and never driven out from their territory. The oscillating nature of British visitors’ perceptions towards Montenegro between otherness and kinship, where Montenegro is sometimes represented as distant and sometimes familiar, permeates these accounts. The religious dimension of the Montenegrin struggle was also considered in the 1870s, during the nationalist uprisings in the Balkans, when the public opinion in Britain swayed in support for the South-Slav question. Numerous texts glorified Montenegro’s effort against the Turks. In his essay on Montenegro and in his speeches in parliament, the British Liberal politician Gladstone (1877, 360) praised the Montenegrins as “extraordinary people who were not sufficiently known and understood by the rest of the world,” and feared “that even a plain presentation of the history of Montenegro might seem an exaggeration or a fable.” In his address to the parliament in 1877, when he was on the side of the opposition, he stressed that the people of Montenegro had persisted in their fight to stay free through a series of extraordinary difficult challenges “to which is hard to find a parallel in the annals of Europe, perhaps even of mankind” (Gladstone 1877, 360). It is sometimes said, in relation to individuals, that the world does not know its greatest men. It might at least as safely be averred, in speaking of large numbers, that Christendom does not know its most extraordinary people. The name of Montenegro, until within the last two years, was perhaps less familiar to the European public than that of Monaco, and little more than that of San Marino. And yet it would, long ere this, have risen to world-wide and immortal fame, had there been a Scott to learn and tell the marvels of its history, or a Byron to spend and be spent on its behalf.

190

Early British Discursive Constructions of Montenegro (1840–1880) Before them [the Montenegrins], as before others, lay the trinoda necessitas, the alternatives of death, slavery, or the Koran. They were not to die, for they had a work to do. To the Koran or to slavery they preferred a life of cold, want, hardship, and perpetual peril. Such is their Magna Charta; and without reproach to others, it is, as far as I know, the noblest in the world. (Gladstone 1877, 360)

In Gladstone’s essay, Montenegro is represented as a defender of Christendom. Whereas before, Montenegro was often seen as an alien, threatening other, here in Gladstone’s text, it is Turkish Muslim side that is perceived as the other. Montenegro is seen as “us,” a fellow Christian country fighting against the common enemy of Islam. There is a sense of solidarity with Montenegro. Gladstone champions the cause of Montenegro. In the famous sonnet Montenegro, written by the poet Alfred Tennyson and published together with Gladstone’s essay in The Nineteenth Century in 1877, Montenegro is put on a pedestal and glorified as a heroic little resistor: They rose to where their Sovran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, arm’d by day and night Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight By thousands down the crags and thro’ the vales. O smallest among peoples! Rough rock-throne Of Freedom! Warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Tsernagora! Never since thy own Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. (Tennyson 1877, 359)

To conclude, in both Gladstone’s and Tennyson’s texts Montenegro and its people receive a lot of favorable, positive and complimentary comments and support. Their representations reveal how Montenegro was viewed through the prism of larger, bigger others, as a small people against a sea of Turks. The political outcome of the favorable discourse on Montenegro was the fact that Montenegro became recognized as an independent state at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Furthermore, when Gladstone returned to power in 1880, his enthusiasm helped the enforcement of the Berlin Treaty and the settlement of the frontier question between Montenegro and Turkey, despite the resistance of the Ottoman government.

Ana Živkoviü

191

Bibliography Fraser, Alexander Charles. 1846. “Visit to the Vladika of Montenegro.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh’s Magazine 60:428–43. Gladstone, William Ewart. 1877. “Montenegro; A Sketch.” The Nineteenth Century 1/3:360–79. Hammond, Andrew. 2004. “The Uses of Balkanism: Representation and Power in British Travel Writing, 1850–1914.” The Slavonic and East European Review, 82/3:601–24. Hill, Richard. 2005. Maritime Britain. Norwich: Jarrold Publishing. Norris, David A. 1999. In the Wake of the Balkan Myth: Questions of Identity and Modernity. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. Paget, Admiral Lord Clarence E. 1894. Autobiography and Journals London: Chapman and Hall. Tennyson, Alfred. 1877. “Montenegro.” The Nineteenth Century 1/3:359. Todorova, Maria. 1994. “The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention.” Slavic Review, 53/2:453–82. —. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE ALBANIAN POPULATION OF CHAMERIA IN FRONT OF GREEK MUNICIPAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 1913–1926 BLERINA SADIKU The Conference of Ambassadors in London in 1913 recognized the independence of Albania, but almost half of its territory, which was predominantly inhabited by Albanians, remained outside the borders of the new state. Chameria was one of these regions. It was divided between Greece and Albania after the finalization of the latter’s borders with the Protocol of Florence in 1925. The major part of Chameria had been annexed by Greece since the Conference of Ambassadors in London in 1913. The toponym of this region derives from the river Thyamis, which is the name from antiquity for the Kalama River, and also from the Turkish word Çam, which means pine tree in English. This toponym was used during the Ottoman Empire’s rule in the Balkans, which lasted for almost five centuries. Albanians inhabiting the region of Chameria found themselves between Greek municipal law and international law. Due to the fact that the nation-states were a new concept for the international arena, this situation created a certain global turmoil. De jure, international and municipal laws tented to protect the fundamental human rights and the rights of minorities as well, but de facto it was very difficult to establish peaceful coexistence between ethnicities inhabiting the newly created nation-states. On the other hand, the international arena was essentially seeking only a superficial stability within these new political entities through the use of the instruments guaranteed by international law. Soon, the creation of these types of states in the Balkans further accentuated the issue of coexistence between various ethnicities. Greece sought to Hellenize its state’s territory, while, on the other side, Albanians included in the new borders of Greece were forced to obey this assimilation process despite the fact that their Albanian national identity had been preserved through centuries. After the annexation of this region by Greece, its

Blerina Sadiku

193

population was reduced (Colonna di Cesaro 1922, 75; Tsitselikis 2012, 76). This fact conveys the consequences of the pressure that was exerted on the population for the achievement of the highest possible degree of assimilation policies. Later on, it was considerably difficult for the Albanians of Chameria to continue preserving their national identity due to official and unofficial pressure. Greece aimed to achieve its objectives through the collaboration of the irregular military and clergy, as it occurred in the massacre of Selan Creek soon after the annexation of the region. In March 1913, seventy-two men from Chameria were massacred in the Creek of Selan. Persecutions, before and after this period, were revealed to the public and condemned not only by the Albanians inhabiting the region of Chameria but also by the representatives of the Albanian government and other patriots as well as several representatives of the international community, like diplomats and travelers. Albanians constantly sought help from the international political community, but the latter’s intervention was superficial in various circumstances, as it was revealed, during the decades, that the protection of this population’s basic rights was never fully achieved in the long run. In 1913, after the International Commission of Control aimed to establish the borders between Greece and Albania, as the finalization of the conclusions of the Conference of Ambassadors, the autochthonous population suffered persecutions like arrests and forced transfer that had the aim to prevent this population from interfering with the work of the commission (Isufi 2007, 203; Elsie et al. 2013, 10–12). In May 1913, the Albanian government’s representatives Mr. Mehmet Konitza and Philip Nogga sent a letter to Sir Edward Grey, who was at the time the secretary of state at the Foreign Office and also the president of the Conference of Ambassadors in London in 1913. In this letter they condemned the Greek authorities’ actions on forcing the Albanian population to accept the annexation of their land by the Greek state, and those who opposed it were suppressed by all means: arrests, forced transfer from their properties, the confiscation of the latter, massacres and disappearances (Elsie et al. 2013, 10–12). In June 1913, the government of Ismail Qemali sent a delegation to Rome and Vienna to ask for help and save the territories whose fate was being decided at the Conference of Ambassadors in London 1912–13. Eqerem bej Vlora, mentioned in Xhufi and Isufi’s article on the Violent Annexation of Chameria by Greece and the Albanian Efforts to Protect it, wrote in his memoires that Rauf Fico, one of the delegates, kneeled in front of the Italian secretary of foreign ministry, begging him to save Chameria (Eqerem bej Vlora 1973).

194

The Fundamental Rights of the Albanian Population of Chameria

During this time, the international system was very fragile, and this can also be deduced from the fact that the Great War exploded soon after the Balkan Wars. Therefore, international and municipal laws, not only of Greece but also of all the states, existed only de jure, without major effects in reality. After the Treaty of London, the Treaty of Bucharest and the Protocol of Florence in 1913 and 1925, only few of the Chameria region’s villages remained within the Albanian state. Following the Protocol of Florence in 1913, Greece complained about the inclusion of the so-called Northern Epirus into the Albanian state. It continued to claim the autonomy of this region before and after the signing of the Protocol of Corfu in 1914. During this time, the local population was the first to suffer the suppression of Greece’s persistence to include under its rule the socalled Epirus region. In 1914, the Greek army infiltrated the Albanian borders aiming at the establishment of an Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus. Arrests and massacres of the population of these territories were quite usual. Greece was one of the states that signed but did not ratify the Convention of Hague of 1907 regarding the laws and customs of war. Legally, Greece was not bound by this convention, and informally the protection of individuals’ rights before the state’s interests was quite inconceivable. Despite the fact that this convention was considered as having a weak impact, its content has a contemporary perspective as it states the importance of non-infringement of the rights of individuals not involved in war procedures. During these operations, however, the rights of the population of the invaded territories were infringed in different ways. Various testimonies, such as the letter reported in Elsie et al. documentary book on Chameria from a British delegate of the International Control Commission, Mr. Harry Lamb, sent to Sir Edward Grey in 1914, show that the Greek army infiltrated the southern border of Albania while massacring the population by burning and violating them and their properties and leaving a deserted land with a terrified population (Harry Lamb Report to Sir Edward Grey 15 July 1914). Authors of the early 1900s paid attention to the controversy regarding the content of international law of the time and its effectiveness. Tsitselikis mentions in his book the opinion of two professors Tenekides and Seferiades on the effectiveness of international law during the first decades of the 1900s based on bilateral and multilateral treaties that had been implemented (Tenekides 1926; Seferiades 1928). They analyzed the effectiveness of international law from an impressive contemporary point of view by noticing the infringement of human rights due to war procedures, stating that human rights had been considerably violated as the

Blerina Sadiku

195

consequence of international relations’ patterns that had not shown proper attention to the treatment of various populations (Tenekides 1926; Seferiades 1928). After the end of the Balkan Wars, the Treaty of London, the work of the International Commission of Control, Chameria was in an irreversible state, i.e. as the Protocol of Florence in 1925 would shown later, its major part remained definitely under Greece’s control. In the second half of 1913, Greece signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, after the weakening of the latter at the end of the Balkan Wars, in order to regulate the issues of the respective minorities inhabiting Greece and Turkey. The territory of the Balkans had been de jure under Ottoman jurisdiction, while the territory inhabited predominantly by Albanians was considered as an Ottoman concession and later the population of this territory was treated as Turkish. In this treaty, the two signatories were bound by the principle of reciprocity on the treatment of the respective populations, but the Turkish population in Greece was considered in this way on religious basis, therefore, the Muslim population was considered as Turkish. The two countries (Greece and the Ottoman Empire) had to respect the civil, political and economic rights of these populations, but in reality this was almost inapplicable. As the borders of Albania were not established until 1926, the population of north Greece, which had been for many centuries predominantly inhabited by Albanians, was in the middle of turmoil that characterized Albania and Greece’s relations of that period. In the peace treaty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire, the fundamental rights of the Muslim population were sanctioned, especially through Article 6, referring to the property rights and Article 11, referring to the civil and political rights. They had the liberty to fully enjoy their cultural, economic and political rights. Apart from few issues/restrictions for Greece on public property management claimed by Ottoman authorities, other types of rights, as fundamental rights, were accepted by the Greek part also in the third protocol of this treaty, where these restrictions are conveyed. However, for what regards the Albanian population, the treaty concludes that “instructions in schools should be in Turkish, and the Greek language is obligatory” (Treaty of Athens 1913). This statement disregards the nationality of the inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire’s ceded territories; in this case, the Albanian nationality of the population inhabiting these territories, which are included nowadays in the northern Greek border. Anyway, Greece did not respect this agreement, since it aimed to expand its state territory towards the north of Albania as well, and the engagement of the irregular military in this situation prevented the autochthonous population to enjoy their fundamental human

196

The Fundamental Rights of the Albanian Population of Chameria

rights. Soon after the territorial expansionist aims, Greece engaged in the so-called agrarian reform, which was a further denial of economic rights. The laws that were implemented in this regard never could properly compensate the population for the land that was taken from them. On the other hand, Greece and Turkey agreed to exchange their respective minorities by the adoption of the Treaty of Lausanne, but the migration of the respective populations from one country to the other was carried out several years before this treaty and also continued few years after it. The Greek-Orthodox minority of Turkey had to be exchanged with the Muslim population of Greece, which essentially was not Turkish. The Greek state was based on Article 17 of its Constitution of 1911 to formulate the laws of the agrarian reform applied on large property ownerships. Most Albanians of Chameria were large landowners. According to Law no. 232 of 1917 of the agrarian reform, the owners of land from the new territory of the Greek state could not make any transactions with their private properties. However, there were other laws to complete the agrarian reform as those of 1919, 1922, 1924 that aimed at a certain indemnity for the taken properties, but it never represented a real value of the taken properties from the landowners. The land of Chameria was used for the settlement of the Greek population coming from Turkey, while the Albanian population of Chameria was continuously under pressure and masses of people from this region were obliged to flee towards Turkey. Many of them were obliged to declare the willingness of this transfer. In this situation, the position of the autochthonous landowners was considerably damaged and their life was made quite difficult. Regarding the economic rights, according to an author from 1926, this period of the agrarian reform in Greece can be considered as the one when land was forcibly expropriated from the legitimate owner (Evelipidis 1926, 14). In 1917, Law no. 232 aimed at distributing land to poor farmers so they could cultivate it and provide a stable economy for their families, but this was achieved through expropriating land from the owners of the largest properties. The territories of New Greece did not have the permission for any transaction of private property (Efimeris tis Kivernisesos, arithmou 232, 1917). According to Evelipidis, it was difficult to apply this decree law, therefore, with Law no. 2052, in 1919, some formalities of the previous land law were changed with the aim to limit, through decentralization, the land that remained to the owners (1926, 18; Efimeris tis kiverniseos, arithmos fillou 6, 1919). In 1920, according to Law no. 2521, poorer farmers had to work on land and give a part of the products to the owners, but this was not applied until 1922, when Law no.

Blerina Sadiku

197

2921 was implemented (Efimeris tis kiverniseos, arithmos fillou 128, 1922; Evelipidis 1926, 18). In 1923 and 1924, further decree laws aimed at putting justice in the previous laws were formulated and implemented. These laws sought to compensate owners for the expropriated land in a small amount and limit the largest land properties to medium ones (Efimeris tis kiverniseos, arithmos fillou 324, 1924). Despite these laws, and the decree law on December 1925, the population of Chameria suffered these changes because Cham Albanians were the owners of large land properties and other agricultural ownerships and were obliged to coexist in a community with Greek refugees; their lives were made quite difficult since they had to give up most of their private property to this population’s needs. Regarding the issues raised in the process of exchange of populations, especially Muslim Chams were forced, through local and national decrees, to leave everything behind and were transported by sea to Turkey. Cham Albanians, due to their religion, were misunderstood as Turks, and consequently they were obliged to leave all their properties in Chameria and be involved in the process of population transfer to Turkey (Margaritis 2009, 119). This was one of the many denials of the fundamental human rights of this population, since they were treated as objects for the fulfillment of Greece’s duties in the international arena, in this case, regarding the bilateral agreement with Turkey. On the other side, international laws intended to respect minority rights through several treaties, like the Treaty of Sèvres. However, this treaty’s aim was mainly to maintain a stable international community from several ethnic groups of nation-states to a wider area and not properly to focus on the real needs of national minorities of nation-states, since, apart from few declarations of recognition, it did not bring many changes for the interest groups. The Albanians of Chameria could not enjoy neither their cultural rights. They found themselves in difficulty to express their national identity because Greece was implementing assimilation policies in order to Hellenize its nation-state. The clergy played a considerable role in marginalizing the Muslim community of Albanians of Chameria, discriminating them several times. This population neither could have their national schools. In this regard, the Albanian state had a weak role; most of the time it pleased the Greek state with the opening of Greek schools in Albania, while Greece put many obstacles to the opening of Albanian schools in Greece, despite its commitment under the League of Nations to provide subsidies for Albanian schools. Pupils were often humiliated and, therefore were obliged to leave education in Albanian and to embrace that

198

The Fundamental Rights of the Albanian Population of Chameria

one in Greek as the better one. Essentially, these were parts of assimilation policies of the Greek state. Considering the pressure made on the Albanians of Chameria for what regards their basic human rights, it was quite impossible to imagine the affirmation of their political rights in the Greek parliament and the local government as well. Chams never had their representatives in the Greek parliament, while in the local government there was a tendency to discriminate against the Muslim population in terms of their participation in public life (AQSH fold 1004, 3). However, during 1926, the Greek state recognized and respected, in the short run, the fundamental rights of the Albanian population in Chameria at the League of Nations through a declaration of its representative Dendramis. One the other hand, Albanian representatives at the League of Nations constantly sought their population’s fundamental rights in Greece, even though their state had a weak position in the international arena. Neither the treaties on minorities’ rights nor the declarations of the Great Powers’ leaders, like the declarations of President Wilson to promote peace through his ideology known as Wilsonianism, could stop the rise of nationalism in the Balkans. The consequent clashes were due to the difficult co-existence of different ethnicities. In the end, it was not the type of policy that determined the respect of “the other’s” fundamental rights during the first years of the twentieth century. It was simply the willingness of a certain state to do so, and the Greek state, since the beginning, had been determined in its assimilation aims and the Hellenization of its state territory through ethnic cleansing policies.

Bibliography Primary sources AQSH. Koleksion Dokumentesh. Folder 1004. P. 3 On–line database of Greek Parliament et.gr Efimeris tis Kiverniseos. Arithmos fillou 232. 1917 Efimeris tis Kiverniseos. Arithmos fillou 6. 1919 Efimeris tis Kiverniseos. Arithmos fillou 128. 1922 Efimeris tis Kiverniseos. Arithmos fillou 324. 1924

Secondary sources Colonna di Cesaro, G. A. 1922. L’Italia nell’Albania Meridionale. Note e Documenti (1917-1918). Foligno: F. Campitelli.

Blerina Sadiku

199

Eqerem bej Vlora. 1973. Lebenserinnerungen. Band II (1912-1925): 19 quoted in Isufi Hajredin and Xhufi Pëllumb. 1997. Aneksimi i dhunshëm i Çamërisë nga Greqia dhe Lufta e Shqiptarëve për Mbrojtjen e saj. Studime Historike-Separat. No. 1–4. Akademia e Shkencave e RPSSH. Instituti i Historisë: 17. Evelipidis, C. 1926. La reforme agraire en Grece. Athens: Phd.diss. Isufi, H. 2007. Çamëria – Nëpërmjet Kronikave të Kohës 1902-1940. Tirana: Pegi. “Letter from Mehmed Konitza and Philippe Nogga to Sir Edward Grey 1913.” In The Cham Albanians of Greece. A Documentary History, edited by Robert Elsie, Bejtullah Destani and Rudina Jasini, 10–12. London: I.B. Tauris, The Centre for Albanian Studies. “Letter from Harry Lamb to Sir Edward Grey.” 1914. in The Cham Albanians of Greece. A Documentary History, edited by Robert Elsie, Bejtullah Destani and Rudina Jasini. London: I.B.Tauris, The Centre for Albanian Studies: 17. Margaritis, J. Bashkëpatriotë të padëshiruar– Të dhëna mbi shkatërrimin e minoriteteve të Greqisë. Translated into Albanian in 2009 by Maklena Nika. Tirana: Bota Shqiptare.

THE GREEK ORTHODOX COMMUNITY OF MYTILENE: FROM THE MULTIETHNIC SYMBIOSIS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE TO THE GREEK STATE, 1908–1912 MARIA MANDAMADIOTOU I shall begin this paper with a hypothesis. Although we ought to avoid hypotheses in historical analysis, I think in this case it would be useful to explain exactly what I mean. If Lesbos (Delis 1997, 58)1 had become a province of another country, other than Greece, in 1912, or if it had become an independent state, the historiography of the island—especially that of the nineteenth century and the years up to 1912—would have been considerably different from what we have today. I am fairly convinced that this hypothesis would hold for other parts of what is now the Greek state that were subsumed after its initial formation, just as I am sure it holds in the case of other parts of the world incorporated into a pre-existing modern state under conditions determined by its status as a nation-state. In Lesbos’ case, this hypothesis has become a certainty in my mind after years spent working with the relevant archive material. My reason for proposing this hypothesis is to stress that treating 1912 as inevitable entails a risk of taking a mistaken historical view of Lesbos. That is because Greek national historiography, especially when it crystallized after the Second World War, did consider the incorporation of Lesbos to have been inevitable in 1912. Here is an example which I believe illustrates quite faithfully the huge divide between a sample of this type of historiography and the actual events: on November 8, 1912, the Greek fleet took Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. The day has been a national holiday on the island ever since, and 1

Located in the northeast Aegean, the island of Lesbos was incorporated into the expanding Ottoman Empire in September 1462, when the last Genoese ruler Nicola Gattelusi handed over the keys of the capital’s fortress to Mehmet Pasha.

Maria Mandamadiotou

201

the celebrations always portray the event as a day of liberation from the “Turkish yoke” and as “the fulfillment of the age-old desire nursed by the Christians for union with the Kingdom of Greece” (Syndesmos 1996, 212, 216; Anagnostou 2004, 460, 477–79). Yet no such intimations are made to another significant day in the history of the island: July 14, 1908, the day of the proclamation of the Constitution by the Young Turks. As will become clear below, the granting of the constitution and the recognition of equality before the law for all regardless of creed, was what the people of the empire had desired and aspired to. Consequently, when the Young Turks promised to do just this in July 1908, both Mytilene’s Christians and Muslims welcomed the news with joyous celebrations. In contrast, they do not seem to have been prepared for the coming occupation of the island by the Greek fleet on November 8, 1912. It is easy to understand why the dominant Greek historiography should have overlooked this and downgraded the significance of 1908. Viewing events in the light of the need to build the nation, Greek historiography sought to shape the local example and fit it into the narrative of Hellenic nationhood, maintaining that union with the Greek state was a desire shared by all the “unredeemed” Christians from Ioannina to the Aegean Islands and Thessaloniki to Crete. Nonetheless, the stance taken by the people of Mytilene in both 1908 and 1912 was both entirely logical, in accordance with their needs and aspirations, and completely in keeping with the conditions of their age. And this is what I shall be seeking to illustrate in this paper. To begin with, it should be noted that the Greek bourgeoisie of the Ottoman Empire, including Mytilene’s upper and middle social groups, owed their financial and social position to imperial reforms, and specifically to the Tanzimat introduced between 1839 and 1876 (Davison 1973; Inalcik 1973; Anagnostopoulou 1998).2 In essence, from the midnineteenth century onwards, Mytilene experienced a gradual process of modernization and urbanization that transformed the agrarian and precapitalist character of the local economy (Argyris 1995, 54; Sifneou 1995, 308; Mandamadiotou 2013, 45–54). In addition to Ottoman reforms, two other factors had played a key role in the island’s development: its economic and cultural contacts with the neighboring cities of Asia Minor—Kydonies (Ayvalik), Smyrna and Edremit, with which it formed what was virtually a single entity (Michaʀlaris 1995, 24)—and the 2

During the Tanzimat period, the Porte implemented measures that highlighted the shift in power away from the local Ottoman governors and the Orthodox Church towards Christian lay members, and the Porte entrusting new socioeconomic and administrative roles to the dimogerontes.

202

The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene

relatively peaceful coexistence of the island’s Christian and Muslim populations at least until 1908.3 However, urbanization brought with it an asymmetrical distribution of wealth and glaring social inequalities. The economic wealth, as well as the demographic boom (Mandamadiotou 2013, 44–46) was largely confined to the central and eastern parts of the island, and was bound up with olive cultivation and the existence of ports to facilitate commercial transactions. These developments were largely driven by the Christian upper and middle social groups, thanks to their involvement in trade and commerce. The lower economic groups—the factory workers and farmers—were excluded from the economic wealth, as was the majority of the Muslim population. The Muslim element, which comprised 12.5–15 percent of the total population and mainly consisted of local islanders who had converted to Islam in the first centuries of Ottoman rule,4 was mostly settled in the northern and western parts of the island; it could be claimed, without fear of exaggerating, that most Muslims—save Ottoman officials—remained agrarian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and unable to keep up with the pace of urban development (Karavas 1996: XVIII–XXI). Thus, when the Young Turks of the “Committee of Union and Progress” seized power in July 1908, what Christians and Muslims alike wanted most of all were equality, social justice, brotherhood and freedom in their shared homeland. Indeed, the reaction of the Greek Orthodox population of Mytilene was enthusiastic enough to concern both the Ottoman administration and the Greek vice-consul on the island, Ioannis Karatzas, whose report to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs on July 17, mentions “noisy demonstrations held by people of every class, ethnicity and faith. The whole of Mytilene,” he notes, “resembles a madhouse, with Turks and Greeks demonstrating on the streets arm in arm,

3 The Christians of Mytilene lived under an Ottoman regime that was far from repressive and limiting. For this reason, at least until 1908, their complaints in the Metropolitan Codes of Mytilene dealt largely with tax problems; see Metropolitan Codes of Mytilene, code VII, Proceedings nos 80, 84, 115. 4 According to F. Dimou-Paroditis, “the figures of the Turks of Lesbos make evident their origin. They still have the same characteristics, both Christians and Turks. Also, the same habits and the same traditions very little distinguish them racially.” And he adds: “Because no serious colonization took place, the large number of Turks on the island of Lesbos was the result of Islamization”; DimouParoditis (1935, 188, 191). Also, see Karydis and Kiel (2000, 96–97).

Maria Mandamadiotou

203

brandishing Turkish and Greek flags and expressing desires for a GreekTurkish alliance.”5 Similar demonstrations were taking place at this time in Constantinople, Smyrna, Chios and other regions around the empire. In most cases, these ended up with clergymen and civil servants linked to the absolutist regime being condemned and removed from their posts.6 This phenomenon was particularly marked in Mytilene, where the popular enthusiasm of Christians and Muslims alike turned into anger directed at the Ottoman governor of the island, Ali Nosrend Pasa, who was accused of “unconstitutional behavior,” and at the metropolitan of Mytilene, Kyrilos, who was considered a supporter of the former regime, and to share in the blame for the governor’s arbitrary acts. The metropolitan retained his position, but the Ottoman governor was forced to resign and quit the island forthwith. Two other clergymen were forced to resign, while a number of public servants across the island lost their positions.7 A letter sent on July 30, by a local Ottoman Greek possibly to a relative, underlines that “The Committee is in the process of purging the State of thieves, scum, informers, dirty scoundrels and corrupt officials. … They are already being arrested and brought to Justice. The way things are going, the position of the Constitution is more solid every day. Things had reached the point of no return.”8 The uncontrollable impetus of the— largely Christian—crowd and the sheer length of the demonstrations were very troubling for the Young Turks. Members of the Salonika Committee visited Mytilene on July 23, with two aims: to halt the demonstrations and to show to the people that they owed respect to the empire’s new political leaders. The Committee members were afforded a most cordial welcome, and the enthusiasm of both the local leaders and the crowd of 10–15,000 people seem to have worried the Greek vice-consul Karatzas, as did the “radical” speeches by the members of the committee. According to Karatzas, the Young Turks seemed determined to impose changes and to 5

ǿǹȊǼ (Istoriko Archeio Ypourgeiou Eksoterikon/Historical Archive of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs) 1908/111, Karatzas to MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), no 580, Mytilene, July 17, 1908. See also Amalthia, (July 18/31, 1908). 6 Indicatively, see Amalthia, July 17/30, 19/1, 21/3 and 23/5 1908 and Ekklisiastiki Alithia, no 30, July 30, 1908, 351–54. Also, see Shaw and Shaw (1977, 273), Anagnostopoulou (1998, 460), Kechriotis (2010, 157–81) and Panayotopoulos (1977). 7 Amathia, July 22/4, 1908 and ǿǹȊǼ 1908/111, Karatzas to MFA, no 3604, Mytilene, July 19, 1908 and no 674, July 22, 1908. Also, see Kambouris (1962: 114). 8 Grimanis private letter, Agia Paraskevi Lesvou, July 30, 1908.

204

The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene

restrict the sultan’s authority—by violence, if necessary.9 Regarding the local branch of the committee, there is evidence that it was set up a few days later.10 The enthusiasm with which the inhabitants of Mytilene welcomed the new regime clearly reflects their hope for a still more optimistic future in their Ottoman fatherland. In early September 1908, the correspondent of the newspaper of Smyrna Amalthia in Mytilene, noted that “the freedom granted by the Constitution won over the hearts and minds of the lowest, as well as the upper and middle classes.”11 And it was certainly no coincidence that the island’s porters, boatmen and soap factory workers staged their first strikes at this time in pursuit of better working conditions.12 Moreover, the staging of parliamentary elections in autumn 1908, and the election of two Christian MPs from Lesbos cultivated the hope, especially among the middle and upper social groups, that their economic strength would henceforth be combined with greater access to political power (Mandamadiotou 2013, 82–91). Mytilene’s first newspapers appeared in February 1909 on the back of the promises made by the Young Turks. However, the initial enthusiasm of the Ottoman Greeks, which stemmed from their hopes of a further improvement both in their position and in the general political situation in the empire, began to fade after the 1908 parliamentary elections. During the first months of their government, the Young Turks brought into force measures, which were anything but favorable towards the interests of non-Turkish ethnic groups (Lewis 1961, 228–29; Zurcher 2007, 129). In essence, the local leading groups, and especially the journalists, perceived the Young Turks’ policies as an attempt at systematically calling Greek “rights” into question. When the law concerning the conscription of Christians into the Ottoman Empire was instituted in the summer of 1909, the Christians of Mytilene did as the patriarchate encouraged them to and willingly presented themselves for service.13 The local press praised the Christian recruits, describing their decision to serve their common homeland alongside the Muslims as “an example of true and pure patriotism.”14 9

IǹȊǼ, 1911/105, Karatzas to MFA, no 680, July 23, 1908. Grimanis private letter, September 10, 1908. 11 Amalthia, September 6/19, 1908. 12 Ibid. 13 “As Ottoman citizens, the Christians have a duty to gladly rush under the flag and serve the fatherland. Military service is the holiest and highest of all and Christians who avoided serving in the army scorn the Church and humiliate the ethnos”; Salpinx, July 4, 1909. 14 Salpinx, October 8, 1909. 10

Maria Mandamadiotou

205

However, this enthusiasm would give way within a few months to disappointment and draft dodging. From early 1910 onwards, the island’s Christians would avoid being conscripted due to the poor treatment they received in the Ottoman army, choosing instead to flee beyond the borders of the empire. As a result, between 1910 and 1912, virtually many young men, the most vital part of the population, would quit the island with incalculable consequences in its society and economy.15 Regarding the Cretan question, the appearance of a plethora of articles in the press of Mytilene from the summer of 1909 onwards, constitutes an indication of a pervasive concern for its outcome (Mandamadiotou 2013, 209–15). The newspapers Salpinx and Laʀkos Agon, both viewed the struggle of the Cretans with sympathy and discreetly supported their demands for union with Greece. However, by placing the resolution of the question within the competence of the Great Powers, the local press attempted to dissociate the Greek state and the Greeks of the empire from the demands of the Christian Cretans.16 Such an attempt is understandable at a time when, in periods of tension concerning the Cretan question, the Young Turks were hardening their stance towards the Greek state and the Greeks of the empire.17 According to Salpinx, it was neither just nor logical for all of the Greeks of the empire to be labeled “enemies of Turkey” and to be considered responsible for the choices made by the Christian Cretans.18 Interestingly, although Salpinx supported Cretan calls for union with the Kingdom of Greece, it did not seek the same future for the Greeks of the East, whom it describes as “the true Greek power.”19 The newspaper went on to argue that, through their commercial activities, schools and churches, the Greeks represented the entire vibrant culture of the East and were thus best placed to play a leading role in the drive to reform and modernize the new Turkey.20 In autumn 1909, Salpinx proposed the establishment of a “Greek-Turkish Empire” with the joint rule of Greeks 15

Salpinx, March 11, 1910 and February 9, 1912 and Laʀkos Agon, December 25, 1911. The difficult conditions that the Christians of the empire faced in the army made more and more of them to buy out their service or emigrate; see Boura (2005, 141). 16 As for the Greek state, weak as it was militarily and economically following the defeat of 1897, it could not support the demand of the Christian Cretans in a dynamic way; see Ventiris (1970, 98–99). 17 Salpinx, June 15, 1910 and Laʀkos Agon, December 18, 1911. 18 Salpinx, July 14, 1909. 19 Salpinx, February 18, 1910. 20 Salpinx, July 18, 1909, March 16, 1910 and May 5, 1912.

206

The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene

and Turks, according to the Austro-Hungarian model.21 And it certainly was not a coincidence that the model proposed was a diarchic regime in the empire and not a nation-state. Clearly, the desire for the dominance of the Greek Orthodox population within the boundaries of the empire existed alongside the desire for peaceful coexistence with the Turks, despite the wave of pessimism the Young Turk policies were giving rise to at this time. In August 1909, in the wake of the Goudi coup, Salpinx made its first extended reference to the events in Greece. The Greek officers’ coup, it writes, had served to halt the unfortunate political decline in the Kingdom of Greece.22 And because “the people living in Greece and the East comprise one family,” it seems reasonable that the improvement in the political situation in Greece, in the “brotherly neighboring country,” should ensure the peace and happiness of the people of the East.23 The description of Greece as a “brotherly” country is especially noteworthy, as is the linking of the political fates of Greece and the empire. It is clear that the primary concern of the local press was for a permanent rapprochement and cooperation between the empire and the kingdom, which would ensure the position of the Greeks in the empire.24 In the autumn of 1910, the Salpinx responded to Venizelos’ premiership by describing the new prime minister of Greece as an “extraordinary politician.”25 The moderate and appeasing policy that Venizelos would go on to pursue until the spring of 1912 absolutely matched the desire of Salpinx for a closer relationship and alliance between Greece and the empire.26 As Salpinx underlines, “it was the political old guard who bedeviled Greece, … and the late Deligiannis whose bombastic speeches had fooled the gullible nation and led to the disasters of 1897.”27 It is quite clear that the local press was dissatisfied with the political problems facing the Ottoman state between early 1909 and autumn 1912. 21

Salpinx, September 5, 1909. Salpinx, August 20, 1909. 23 Salpinx, March 18, 1910. 24 “Constantinople and Athens walking side-by-side, implementing a joint programme and combating historical enemies [the Slavs], which would establish us sole masters of the East, as well as the most important agent in international policy. … Turks and Greeks will only be saved by settling their differences amicably, becoming unbreakably linked,” Salpinx, May 19, 1909. 25 Salpinx, November 20, 1910. 26 E. Venizelos maintained until the spring of 1912 an inactive and moderate stance towards the empire on all outstanding issues, trying to avoid tensions that could prove catastrophic to Greek interests; see Gardika-Katsiadaki (1988, 267). 27 Salpinx, October 19, 1910. 22

Maria Mandamadiotou

207

For these problems, it places the blame primarily on the Young Turks of the committee—which is to say on the very same group it had heralded in July 1908 as the modernizing saviors of the Ottoman Empire. Nonetheless, and in spite of developments, Salpinx believed that the situation could still improve, if the “chauvinists” could be removed from the political stage, if the constitution were applied in good faith, and if the rights of all the people in the empire were respected.28 In spring 1912, when the news arrived in Mytilene for the alliance of the Balkan states against the empire, Laʀkos Agon—the editors of which were driven by socialist ideals29—expresses its annoyance, arguing for a “dual Greek-Turkish Kingdom”30 or a powerful “Balkan federation” including Turkey.31 Furthermore, another article from the same period considers it “as sad as it is amusing that a handful of radical dreamers should still be working for the fall of the Ottoman state and for the dream of a Greater Greece,” stressing that “those who seek glory and magnificence for Greece in the fall of the Ottoman Empire should know that if, God forbid, this should ever come to pass, not a trace of Hellenism will remain.”32 In early September 1912, reporting on Greece’s decision to join the Balkan alliance, Laʀkos Agon expresses its sadness that Greece should have joined an alliance against the empire, while Salpinx maintains that “Greece was led to the opposite camp because of the chauvinistic policy of the Young Turks.”33 After the occupation of Thessaloniki by the Greek army on October 28, Laʀkos Agon, believing that the war would soon come to an end, stresses that the government thenceforth was obliged to put into effect the reforms that it had promised before the start of the war.34 On November 8, 1912, the day on which the Greek fleet sailed into Mytilene’s harbor, Salpinx’s headlines warn how critical the “current situation” has become “for our homeland”—where “homeland” clearly refers to the empire. For that, it places the blame squarely on the 28

Salpinx, June 8, 1910. See Mandamadiotou (2013, 100–101). 30 Laʀkos Agon, May 23, 1912. 31 Laʀkos Agon, June 8, 1912. Even when the First Balkan War was officially declared (18-10-1912), Laʀkos Agon noted: “The war began and will end. … The result of the war will be the coalition of all the Balkan States with the participation of Turkey and the formation of a great power with such enforcement and prestige, that will not be in the future the game of European diplomacy and its voice will be heard with respect”; Laʀkos Agon, October 19, 1912. 32 Article of the newspaper Hakk cited in Laʀkos Agon, June 6, 1912. 33 Laʀkos Agon, September 11, 1912 and Salpinx, September 22, 1912. 34 Laʀkos Agon, October 30, 1912. 29

208

The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene

committee; it wonders whether “a man would finally appear who, for the sake of the homeland, would arrest all those buffoons, sit them in the dock and convict them of high treason against the homeland.” That same day, on November 8, 1912, the front page of Laʀkos Agon declared that the leader of the Liberal party, prince Sabahaddin, has a good grasp of the situation and expressed the hope that the empire would be able “to recover from this tragic war.” On November 9, the front-page of both newspapers was adorned by a waving Greek flag and expressed their joy for the arrival of the Greek fleet in Mytilene. As it turned out, a historical reality that favored the formation of nation-states had belied the ambitions of the local intelligentsia, as these were expressed by the local press, and revealed their goals to be unrealistic. The local newspapers convey the celebratory atmosphere that prevailed in the days that followed: the welcoming of the Greek authorities to the island, the official offering of thanks to God in Mytilene cathedral, the delivery of speeches and the joy the Christians felt at having acquired their freedom. However, the joy is accompanied by a degree of uneasiness and uncertainty about the island’s future in a Greek state with which the local middle and upper social groups had cultivated neither economic nor political ties. The articles of the newspapers during these first days feature words and slogans markedly different from those the locals had used in July 1908. Specifically, the demands for equality, social justice and brotherhood have gone, and while freedom remains, its content has changed. In 1908, “freedom” was synonymous with release from the sultan’s repressive and absolutist regime; in 1912, it has come to mean liberation from the nationalistic policies of the Young Turks. Greek historiography would pay scant attention in the years that followed to the ambitions Mytilene’s Greeks had nursed with regard to the Ottoman state until November 1912, and would claim that they had spent four centuries waiting for the “brutal Turkish yoke” to be lifted off their shoulders (Syndesmos 1996, 212). In this way, with the compliance of the local élite of the island, the history of Ottoman Mytilene has been incorporated into an unequivocally Greek historical narrative.35

35

There are recent historical works with a new approach to the local communities during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, outside the framework imposed by post-Ottoman ethnocentric historiography, see Exertzoglou (1996), Anagnostopoulou (1998), Lyberatos (2009), Karavas (2010) and Blumi (2011).

Maria Mandamadiotou

209

Bibliography Anagnostopoulou, Sia. 1998. ȂȚțȡȐ ǹıȓĮ, 19ȠȢ ĮȚ.-1919. ǹʌȩ IJȠ ȝȚȜȜȑIJ IJȦȞ ȇȦȝȚȫȞ ıIJȠ İȜȜȘȞȚțȩ ȑșȞȠȢ. Athens: Ellinika Grammata. Anagnostou, Stratis. 2004. “Ǿ ȠȚțȚıIJȚțȒ İȟȑȜȚȟȘ IJȘȢ ȁȑıȕȠȣ, 1462-1912. Ǿ ȝİIJȐȕĮıȘ Įʌȩ IJȘȞ ĮȖȡȠIJȚțȒ ıȣȖțȡȩIJȘıȘ IJȠȣ ȤȫȡȠȣ ıIJȘȞ ĮıIJȚțȒ įȚȐȡșȡȦıȒ IJȠȣ.” PhD diss., Aegean University. Argyris, Pantelis. 1995. ȁȑıȕȠȢ: Įʌȩ IJȘȞ țĮIJȐțIJȘıȘ (1462) ıIJȘ ıȪȖȤȡȠȞȘ İʌȠȤȒ. In ȁȑıȕȠȢ Ș ǹȚȠȜȚțȒ. Athens: Asterismos: 36–70. Blumi, Isa. 2011. Reinstating the Ottomans. Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800–1912. New York: Macmillan. Boura, Catherine. 2005. “The Greek Millet in Ottoman Politics. Aspects of Political Relations Between Greeks and Young Turks.” PhD diss., King’s College London. Davison, Roderic. 1973. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876. New York: Gordian Press. Delis, Giannis. 1997 [1901]. ȅȚ īĮIJİȜȠȪȗȠȚ İȞ ȁȑıȕȦ, 1355-1462. Mytilene: Entelecheia. Dimou-Paroditis, Fotios. 1935. ǿıIJȠȡȓĮ IJȘȢ IJȠȣȡțȠțȡĮIJȠȪȝİȞȘȢ ȁȑıȕȠȣ 1462-1912. Vol. III. Mytilene: Tsivilis. Exertzoglou, Charis. 1996. ǼșȞȚțȒ IJĮȣIJȩIJȘIJĮ ıIJȘȞ ȀȦȞıIJĮȞIJȚȞȠȪʌȠȜȘ IJȠȞ 19 ĮȚ. ȅ ǼȜȜȘȞȚțȩȢ ĭȚȜȠȜȠȖȚțȩȢ ȈȪȜȜȠȖȠȢ ȀȦȞıIJĮȞIJȚȞȠȣʌȩȜİȦȢ 18611912. Athens: Nefeli. Gardika-Katsiadaki, Eleni. 1988. ǺİȞȚȗȑȜȠȢ țĮȚ ȣʌȠȣȡȖİȓȠ ǼȟȦIJİȡȚțȫȞ: ȈȪȖțȡȠȣıȘ Ȓ ıȣȞİȡȖĮıȓĮ; In ȈȣȝʌȩıȚȠ ȖȚĮ IJȠȞ ǼȜİȣșȑȡȚȠ ǺİȞȚȗȑȜȠ. Edited by E.L.I.A. & Mouseio Benaki. Athens: E.L.I.A. & Mouseio Benaki. Inalcik, Halil. 1973. “The application of the Tanzimat and its social effects.” Archivum Ottomanicum 5:97–128. Kambouris, Zannis. 1962. “ȉĮ IJİȜİȣIJĮȓĮ ȤȡȩȞȚĮ IJȘȢ ȉȠȣȡțȠțȡĮIJȓĮȢ ıIJȘ ȁȑıȕȠ (1908-1912).” Lesviaka IV:102–188. Karavas, Spyros. 1996. Ǿ ȁȑıȕȠȢ IJȠȞ 19Ƞ ĮȚȫȞĮ: ǻȘȝȠȖȡĮijȚțȑȢ ʌĮȡĮIJȘȡȒıİȚȢ. In S. T.[aksis]. ȈȣȞȠʌIJȚțȒ ȚıIJȠȡȓĮ IJȘȢ ȁȑıȕȠȣ țĮȚ IJȠʌȠȖȡĮijȓĮ ĮȣIJȒȢ. Mytilene: Panepistimio Aigaiou: III-XXV. —. 2010. “ȂĮțȐȡȚȠȚ ȠȚ țĮIJȑȤȠȞIJİȢ IJȘȞ ȖȘȞ.” īĮȚȠțIJȘIJȚțȠȓ ıȤİįȚĮıȝȠȓ ʌȡȠȢ ĮʌĮȜȜȠIJȡȓȦıȘ ıȣȞİȚįȒıİȦȞ ıIJȘ ȂĮțİįȠȞȓĮ, 1880–1909. Athens: Vivliorama. Karydis, Dimitris, and Machiel Kiel. 2000. ȂȣIJȚȜȒȞȘȢ ǹıIJȣȖȡĮijȓĮ țĮȚ ȁȑıȕȠȣ ȋȦȡȠȖȡĮijȓĮ (15ȠȢ-19ȠȢ ĮȚ.). Athens: Olkos.

210

The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene

Kechriotis, Vangelis. 2005. “The Greeks of Izmir at the end of the Empire. A non-Muslim Ottoman community between autonomy and patriotism.” Phd diss., University of Leiden. —. 2010. “Celebration and contestation: The people of Izmir welcome the second constitutional era in 1908.” In ȂȞȒȝȘ ȆȘȞİȜȩʌȘȢ ȈIJȐșȘ. ȂİȜȑIJİȢ ȚıIJȠȡȓĮȢ țĮȚ ijȚȜȠȜȠȖȓĮȢ, edited by Lappas, K. et al., 157–81. Irakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis. Lewis, Bernard. 1961. The emergence of modern Turkey. London: Oxford University Press. Lyberatos, Andreas. 2009. ȅȚțȠȞȠȝȓĮ, ʌȠȜȚIJȚțȒ țĮȚ İșȞȚțȒ ȚįİȠȜȠȖȓĮ. Ǿ įȚĮȝȩȡijȦıȘ IJȦȞ İșȞȚțȫȞ țȠȝȝȐIJȦȞ ıIJȘȞ ĭȚȜȚʌʌȠȪʌȠȜȘ IJȠȣ 19Ƞȣ ĮȚȫȞĮ. Irakleio: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis. Mandamadiotou, Maria. 2013. The Greek Orthodox community of Mytilene: Between the Ottoman Empire and the Greek state, 1876– 1912. Oxford: Peter Lang. Michaʀlaris, Panagiotis. 1995. “ȃİȫIJİȡȠȚ ȤȡȩȞȠȚ.” In ȁȑıȕȠȢ, Įʌȩ IJȘ ȈĮʌijȫ ıIJȠȞ ǼȜȪIJȘ, edited by D. Talianis, 20–33. Mytilene: Dimos Mytilinis: Panayotopoulos, A. 1977. ȅ İțȜȠȖȚțȩȢ ĮȖȫȞĮȢ IJȠȣ 1908 ıIJȘ ȋȓȠ. ȂȚĮ ȐʌȠȥȘ IJȘȢ țȠȚȞȠIJȚțȒȢ įȚĮʌȐȜȘȢ. Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon I: 241–65. Shaw, Stanford, and Ezel Shaw. 1977. History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sifneou, Evrydiki. 1995. ȁȑıȕȠȢ. ȅȚțȠȞȠȝȚțȒ țĮȚ țȠȚȞȦȞȚțȒ ȚıIJȠȡȓĮ. Athens: Trochalia. Syndesmos, Filologon Lesvou, ed. 1996. ǿıIJȠȡȓĮ IJȘȢ ȁȑıȕȠȣ. Mytilene: Syndesmos Filologon Lesvou. Ventiris, Georgios. 1970[1929]. Ǿ ǼȜȜȐȢ IJȠȣ 1910-1920. Vol. I. Athens: Ikaros. Zurcher, Erik. 2007 [1993]. Turkey, a modern history. London: I.B. Tauris.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE HABSBURG EMPIRE AND NATIONALITIES: THE CASE OF ROMANIANS REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE ROMANIANS FROM TRANSYLVANIA AND HUNGARY (1848–1914) VLAD POPOVICI Since the fundamental concept this paper operates with is that of “political culture” (or “civic culture”—we will use the terms interchangeably), it is only natural to start by defining it. Without proceeding into the subtleties of sociological and political science debates regarding the relation between the community on one side and the political act and experience on the other (Almond and Verba 1963; 1989) we believe it appropriate to designate as starting point the definition given by the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Institutions, according to which the political culture represents “the notion of a culture, spirit, mood or set of values which shapes the conduct of politics of a nation or groups” (Bogdanor 1987, 446). On opening the subject we also believe it necessary to briefly present the general characteristics of the shaping and evolution of the political culture of the Romanians from Transylvania and Hungary. Starting with the second half of the eighteenth century, the process of the emergence of national consciousness began and one could witness the first political manifestations with a national basis (Prodan 1984, 62–94) together with the crystallization, at the elite level, of the political culture’s first stages. As the elite grew in number and diversified professionally, broadened its intellectual scope through readings and academic journeys (Sigmirean

212 Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania

2000, 24–38) and experienced the rise of liberal expectations due to the spread of the French revolution’s ideas (Prodan 1984, 281–304; Bocúan 1997, 34 sqq.) the political culture gained consistency. In fact, one can state that it developed, in the first stage, as a consequence of the effort of theorizing the idea of nation. Prior to the 1848–49 events, given the nature of political and social systems in the Habsburg Empire, what one might call political culture remained the privilege of a small elite group, less connected to the nation’s body—which mainly consisted of peasants. It had, however, a fundamental component that could be found both in the elite’s discourse and at the mass level: the philo-dynasticism (Maior 2006). It was the political practice of 1848–49 and 1861–65 that represented the beginnings of the spreading of political culture to the masses. Starting with the 1867 Compromise and Transylvania’s integration into the political and legislative system of Hungary, within the context of an increasingly regular electoral exercise, but also of the intense press debates between the passivists and the activists, the Romanians entered a new stage of political cultural development (Suciu 2000, 235–99). The changes are noticeable both in the elite’s discourse and in the current practice: taking part in elections or boycotting them. This second stage faced an accelerated growth of the Romanians’ interest for politics at the beginning of the twentieth century, as a result of the intense professionalization of the political life and the Romanian National Party (RNP) giving up passivity (Maior 1986, 51–80). Given the historical context presented above, our research raises the question: what was the contribution of the cultural personalities and what was the impact of the cultural and scientific ideas of the time in shaping the political culture of the Romanians in Transylvania, between 1848 and the outbreak of World War I? In order to globally understand the role of cultural personalities in forming and modeling the political culture of a nation that was still in search of its identitary landmarks, it is firstly necessary to identify the position held by these personalities in the political structures and in relation to the national propaganda instruments (mainly the political press). The first Romanian political representation forum was the National Romanian Committee from 1848. Its composition was fluctuating, but one must take into account the high percentage (over 70 percent) of members with cultural-scientific concerns, who later became important personalities in their fields: Simion BărnuĠiu, Alexandru Papiu Ilarian, August Treboniu Laurian, Timotei Cipariu, Andrei ùaguna (Pavel 1995, 220–36).

Vlad Popovici

213

Within the Romanian national committees from 1861 and 1863, the percentage of culturally active members dropped significantly to almost 30 percent—especially given the fact that almost half of them were high hierarchs (Popovici 2012, 11–16). The same trend continued between 1869 and 1881, the shift of ideological support from culture and philosophy towards law and jurisprudence (in an attempt to judicially justify passivism through the illegitimacy of the 1867 Compromise) also contributing to this effect (Popovici 2012, 33–58). After the unification of the two Romanian political parties from Hungary (1881), the number of cultural personalities within the new party board remained low (Surdu 1968, 323). Out of the representatives of the old generation only G. BariĠiu and somehow I. Popescu stood out, while the presence of cultural personalities amongst the younger generation was still scarce. Members such as I. Slavici, N. Fekete-NegruĠiu, C. Diaconovich, G. Popa, A.C. Popovici, D.P.-Barcianu or D. Comúa did not benefit from more than two mandates, while the politicians with a judicial formation (especially lawyers) constantly formed over 50 percent of the party board. The beginning of the twentieth century perpetuated this state of affairs, and names such as V. Goldiú or O. Goga represent exceptions in a Central Committee dominated by lawyers (70 percent) and other intellectuals without great expectations regarding culture (Popovici 2012, 33–58, 71– 90). The same thing can be said about the Romanian MPs in the Hungarian parliament (including those elected on the Hungarian parties’ lists), whose educational background was mainly a juridical one (Iudean and Onojescu 2013). Looking back, one can realize that, whereas by 1848 the nation’s political leadership had been assumed by personalities with a high intellectual formation, connected to the great ideological movements of the time, after the process of political professionalization began, leadership affairs remained in the care of bureaucrats (1861–65), then freelance intellectuals, mostly lawyers. The few leaders with major cultural concerns who appeared after 1890 cannot even be mentioned under the category of “cultural personalities,” except maybe for O. Goga, who would benefit a lot from his literary capital in order to advance in politics. Furthermore, none of the three MPs who held the positions of professors at the University of Pest (A. Roman, I. Ciocan, I. Siegescu) can be regarded as “cultural personalities” of the time, being rather “career intellectuals” (Iudean 2012, 54–57, 101–4, 107–10). The gradual elimination of this elite category from the ranks of opinion is an obvious effect of the political class’s professionalization and modernization, but at the same time, it

214 Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania

raises major question marks regarding the impact that European cultural and scientific movements of the time had on the Romanian electoral body. It is obvious that the liberalism of the 1848 generation was crucial for the affirmation of the ethnic and political character of the idea of nation, and also in stimulating the people, as an element of the nation, in the political process (Bocúan 1997, 122). In this context, framed by the revolution, the Romanians’ political culture was strongly influenced by their relation to the national and social otherness represented by the Hungarians. This mirror-identity construction offered extra support to the illuminist philo-dynasticism, maintaining the image of the “good emperor” as a component of the Romanians’ political culture up to the years of the Memorandum (1892–96). The neo-absolutist period, through opening the Romanians’ access to the administrative structures, only strengthened this trend among the masses. The strict censorship, a small number of political newspapers and the explicitly loyalist attitude of some important public figures also contributed to orientating the Romanians’ emerging political culture towards the throne. The liberal ideas developed only amongst a certain part of the elite that could not express them open-voiced, thus rendering their public impact minimal. One can state, without fear of being wrong, that between 1850 and 1860 the most permeable category for this type of discourse were the students (Sigmirean 2000, 24–38 passim)—due to their age and wide intellectual horizon—especially the ones who were to become members of the future political and administrative elite. The evanescent liberal experiment of the 1860s consistently contributed to the Romanians’ growth in political experience, although it brought little addition to their political culture. The experience was shared by both the elites (in the form of national committees) and the masses (through exercising their electoral rights). However, the changes in the political culture, slight as they were, were exclusively present at the elite level and maybe among some educated people (such as teachers and priests). They did not spring as a result of an expanding cultural horizon, but as a secondary result of the political experience gained during the negotiations with the Hungarian elite, of the parliamentary struggles and of the frequent contacts with the Imperial Court (Retegan 1979; 2004; Onojescu 2012). On another side, the time span in itself (1860–65) was too short for allowing political education activities with long-term effects and the political press was yet poorly developed: only one new political newspaper emerged during these years (Concordia), it was issued two times a week and was mostly read in the Banat and the western parts.

Vlad Popovici

215

Only the shock caused by the 1867 Compromise and the radical changes it brought, together with the loss of Transylvania’s autonomy, provoked agitation strong enough to lead to the reconfiguration of the political tactics of the entire nation. The attempt to impose passivism accelerated the political culture’s formation process, on the one hand, through the debates raised at the elite level, but also through the impossibility of imposing these tactics amongst the masses. Left outside the elite’s influence, a large part of the Romanian voters were integrated into the country’s political system, their civic culture taking a hybrid shape of both a formal support of the national goals and the passivist leaders of the RNP, but at the same time of the involvement in the electoral campaigns of the Hungarian parties’ candidates. Up to the present day, there is no research to analyze and evaluate the real level of electoral involvement among the Romanians from Hungary, but it is obvious that their positions were divided and most of them probably incoherent. As long as they were under the direct influence (made so by physical presence) of a RNP leader, they had the tendency to maintain passivism. As the distance from the regional party center increased, or its propaganda was overshadowed by financial incentives, the Romanian voters’ presence at elections also increased (Iudean 2012, 395–410). Even more, regarding the participation at county elections, historiography had a complete disinterested attitude, even if there the most intense political activities of the Romanians took place, with a real impact upon the voters’ everyday life. Even if we lack exact statistics, we are certain that passivism was a half-failure, but with positive side-effects concerning the Romanian population’s experience and the political culture. Frauds were a rather established practice for the Hungarian elections, but just as customary were staging an electoral show, with persuasive actors participating at electoral meetings and sometimes giving speeches in more than one language (Iudean 2012, 240). The Romanians that could vote took part in these manifestations and especially before 1887 their high frequency (once in three years or even more often) was an important factor in educating the electorate, regardless of nationality. Thus, the political culture of the Romanian electorate was built upon two foundations, fundamentally different, but relatively equally influential. On the one side stood the nationalist political discourse, spread through the nationalist press and sometimes through national gatherings. On the other side, the discourse of the parliamentary candidates must have been just as influential—even more as it was part of a complex of manifestations (shows, feasts) designed to impress.

216 Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania

During the 1870s, the influence of the main European cultural and scientific trends on the Romanian political press seemed to have been minimal. Even the most elaborated texts were tributary to local realities, exceeding only by accident the historical-juridical context of Hungary. The situation was somehow normal, as the main point of interest was Transylvania’s autonomy and all energies were focused on justifying the abuse made by the 1867 Compromise, while trying, more or less, to cope with the new situation. The activist manifest “The Romanian question in 1872” is representative (PăcăĠian 1910, 25 sqq.). When some European paradigms were present (such as in the writings of V. Babeú), (Bocúan 1979, 281–83), they were the ones from 1848, carried on by the members of that generation. At the opposite pole, gifted young personalities, who could have imposed ideas in accordance with the newest European trends, gave up politics very soon—as is the case of Alexandru Mocioni (Botiú 1939, 111–259). The emergence of a new generation, which stood out from the end of the 1870s, brought into the press new ideas and concepts, taken from the major European flux, implicitly introducing them into the political culture, at least at the elite level. The intellectual formation of some of those with major cultural-scientific concerns determined them to adopt the ideas of Darwin and Spencer into their political discourse, consequently emphasizing the necessity of a socioeconomic training of the nation as premises of political success (Popovici 2008, 32–33). The liberal ideas were also aligned with the current forms of the European liberalism— namely with the nationality principle—and this can be best seen in the structure of the famous 1892 Memorandum (Bocúan 1994, 265 sqq). The historical circumstances determined the perpetuation, in the political culture, of a permanent relation to the competing Hungarian otherness, either in the form of “survival of the fittest,” or by blaming the façade of Hungarian liberalism. However, people of culture or science had too little to do with all these additions, reconstructions and remodeling. At their origin stood the class of freelancers (lawyers, business owners, landowners, economists and publicists), promoting in Transylvania some of the Western ideas they stumbled upon during their university studies. It was them (especially those who gradually became professional politicians) who created and forwarded the Memorandum, reinstated activism and rebuilt the connection between the masses and the elite, after three decades of passivism (Maior 1986, 51–80). Thus, part of the Romanian electorate could use the experience gained in the electoral process to support their own candidates, leading to the partial disappearance of that hybrid form of

Vlad Popovici

217

civic culture through which the nationalist electorate voted for Hungarian candidates, since the Romanian ones were absent. The beginning of the twentieth century brought forth new influences, confirming the integration of the Romanian elite into the general evolution of thoughts and ideas from Central and Eastern Europe. V. Goldiú, for example, was a politician proliferating ideas resembling those of Christian-Socialists and Christian-Democrats, both programs being very suitable for the Hungarian realities. During this period, Goldiú developed a conception about nationality close to the Austrian-Marxists, originating in Otto Bauer’s ideas: “nationality is a community of features generated by the community of destiny shared by people living together and is totally subjected to the combinations of natural laws” (Goldiú 2007, 65). On the other hand, his conception regarding the relationship between church and science was similar to those of Huxley or Spencer, considering that the two cannot be separated without provoking irreparable damage: true science is religious and religion can only flourish if it chooses to support itself on the conquests of science. Such ideas were reflected by the political speech and the interaction with the voters as well, possibly shaping their perception of the political role of the nation, especially since denomination was an important feature of the Romanian identity. But besides such influences, most of the electoral speeches of the Romanian nationalist candidates were marked by the matters of their conationals’ political and social rights, while the Romanian candidates on Hungarian parties’ lists were focusing on solving particular problems of the community they were to represent (Iudean 2012, 411 sqq). On one side, the pragmatism of the political discourse and the lack of sophisticated theoretical frame are signs of the professionalization of the political class. On the other side, the increasing political and social tensions, generated by the process of Magyarization, contributed in imposing the national question as a fundamental element of political orations. It is very possible that the federalist solutions, brought into attention by part of the elite at the beginning of the twentieth century, were not assimilated or even understood by many less educated voters. Under these circumstances, the civic culture of the Romanians from Hungary was at the time almost uninfluenced by the major trends of European culture and science. The ones that could have disseminated such ideas were not very active politically and their presence among the political elite continuously decreased. The press and speeches of the time reflect an interest for the Western-European space, but using it mostly as reference for various civic and political situations. Due to the electoral franchise, the figure of those holding a decent intellectual training was low

218 Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania

(illiteracy was still frequently present among those enjoying electoral rights) and for most of the voters the socioeconomic issues and the national question were reduced to the everyday conflicts with the Hungarian state. Looking back on the evolution of the Transylvanian Romanians’ political culture during the nineteenth century, a constantly decreasing relation with the cultural and scientific ideas of the time can be highlighted. The illuminist inclination toward the imperial power was successful because the population found the symbol of the emperor’s person both strong and easy to understand. The romantic liberal ideas did not penetrate the low social layers, except in the national identity-related forms, thus sticking to a previous de facto situation and using the Hungarian otherness as a defining factor. Similarly, the social Darwinism adopted by the 1870s–80s generation fitted perfectly to the beginning of the Romanian economic development from the end of the nineteenth century. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, the changes in European cultural and scientific thought were much more alert than those from Romanian society in Hungary, which remained quite far away from the positivism, secularism and modernism of the Western side of the continent. Only the Marxist influences found a minimal implementation ground amongst the proletariat of the Western regions (Banat, Criúana), partly due to the substantial contribution of the Hungarian socialdemocrats. The reconfiguration of the political elite, the social structure of the nation and the evolution of the Hungarian attitude towards the nationalities were the three factors that determined, at the beginning of the century, the visible decrease of the Western cultural and scientific ideas’ influence on the civic culture of the Romanians in Hungary. If around 1850 the lagging was minimal, the sharpening of the national issue and the disappearance of cultural personalities from the foreground of politics led to reorientation. The interest towards theoretical concepts decreased, being replaced by the pragmatism of the political act, and even the federalist solutions remained the concern of a reduced elite group.

Vlad Popovici

219

Bibliography Almond, Gabriel Abraham, and Sideny Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Newbury ParkLondon-New Delhi: Sage Publications. Almond, Gabriel Abraham, and Sideny Verba. eds. 1989. The Civic Culture Revisited. Newbury Park-London-New Delhi: Sage Publications. Bocúan, Nicolae. 1979. “ContribuĠia la concepĠia politică a lui V. Babeú. Circulara-manifest din 1865.” Tibiscus – Istorie 5:281–86. —. 1994. “Ideologia politică a memorandului.” In Memorandul 18921894. Ideologie úi acĠiune politică românească, edited by Pompiliu Teodor, Liviu Maior, Nicolae Bocúan, ùerban Polverejan, Doru Radosav and Toader Nicoară, 265–85. Bucharest: Progresul Românesc. —. 1997. Ideea de naĠiune la românii din Transilvania úi Banat (secolul al XIX–lea). ReúiĠa: Banatica. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. Bogdanor, Vernon, ed. 1987. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Institutions. Oxford-New York: Blackwell. Botiú, Teodor. 1939. Monografia familiei Mocioni. Bucharest: FundaĠia pentru literatură úi artă “Regele Carol II.” Goldiú, Vasile. 2007. Scrieri social-politice úi filosofice, ed. and introd. study by MarĠian Iovan. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. Iudean, Ovidiu. 2012. “DeputaĠi guvernamentali români în Parlamentul de la Budapesta (sfârúitul secolului al XIX–lea – începutul secolului XX).” PhD Diss. “Babeú-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca. Iudean, Ovidiu and Alexandru Onojescu. 2013. “Politics, Nationalism and Parliamentarism. The Romanian Representatives in the Budapest Parliament (1861–1918).” Transilvanian Review 20 no.4: forthcoming. Maior, Liviu. 1986. Miúcarea naĠională românească din Transilvania 1900–1914. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. —. 2006. Habsburgi úi români. De la loialitate dinastică la identitate naĠională. Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică. Onojescu, Alexandru. 2012. “Politică úi strategii de grup la elita românească din Transilvania (1860-1869).” PhD Diss. “Babeú-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca. Pavel, Teodor. 1995. “Din istoria institu‫܊‬iilor politice româneúti moderne: Comitetul NaЮional Român din Transilvania între 1861-1867.” In David Prodan. Puterea modelului, edited by Nicolae Bocúan, Nicolae Edroiu, Liviu Maior, 220–36. Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane – FundaĠia Culturală Română.

220 Reflections on the Political Culture of the Romanians from Transylvania

PăcăĠian, Teodor V. 1910. Cartea de Aur sau luptele politice naĠionale ale românilor de sub coroana ungară. 6. Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane. Popovici, Vlad. 2008. Tribunismul 1884-1905. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. —. 2012. Studies on the Romanian Political Elite from Transylvania and Hungary (1861–1918). Cluj-Napoca: Mega. Prodan, David. 1984. Supplex Libellus Valachorum. Bucharest: Ed. ùtiinĠifică úi Enciclopedică. Retegan, Simion. 1979. Dieta românească a Transilvaniei 1863-1864. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. —. 2004. ReconstrucĠia politică a Transilvaniei în anii 1861-1863. ClujNapoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. Sigmirean, Cornel. 2000. Istoria formării intelectualităĠii româneúti din Transilvania úi Banat în epoca modernă. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. Suciu, Dumitru. 2000. Antecedentele dualismului austro-ungar úi lupta naĠională a românilor din Transilvania 1848–1867. Bucharest: Albatros. Surdu, Bujor. 1968. “ConferinĠa de constituire a Partidului NaĠional Român din Ungaria (1881).” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie din Cluj 11:307–25.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL ELITE IN THE ROMANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT FROM TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE SEMI-LIBERAL PERIOD (1860–1865)1 MIRELA POPA-ANDREI A review of the literature devoted to this subject shows the lack of an in-depth analysis dedicated to the ecclesiastical elite of the nineteenth century, an important part of the Romanian elite of the modern era in Transylvania. This ecclesiastical elite retained its pre-eminence among the Romanian intellectuals and scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century too, despite the emergence of new socio-professional categories such as civil servants, doctors, lawyers or owners. If in Europe, the greater parts of the cultural, political, social and even ecclesiastical decisions were mostly imposed by high civil authority, in Transylvania, due to the existing political circumstances, the ecclesiastical elite maintained its quality of a legitimate spokesman for the Romanians (Hitchins 1995, 148). The reasons for which the ecclesiastical elite almost overlapped with the political elite can be found in the past history of the Romanians in Transylvania, which may be summarized as follows: in the absence of a powerful noble elite, the clergy, as the most educated social category among the Romanians and the most deeply involved in the life of society, provided the sole plausible alternative. Its pre-eminence also derived from the fact that, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the only representatives of the Romanians who were acknowledged as such by the political authorities were, first and foremost, the two most important Romanian bishops investigated in this study (Hitchins 2000, 66, 95; Retegan 1979, 121; Bocúan 1992, 183–84). 1

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN–II–RU–TE—2011– 3–0286.

222

The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement

Throughout its historical existence, Transylvania has been a multiethnic and multiconfessional space in which the Romanian population—as shown by all the historical sources and censuses—has always been the majority in demographic terms (Gyémánt 2008, 52; Retegan et al. 2006, 616).2 Notwithstanding all this, the Romanian nation was, for centuries, excluded from political life and deprived of social, economic and even cultural rights. Under the “unio trium nationum” pact (1437) (Hitchins 2000, 16– 18), the Hungarians, the Saxons and the Szeklers laid the foundations of a long-term social and political alliance, whereby they shared the governance of Transylvania. The three self-entitled “political” nations excluded the “Romanian nation” from political leadership, classifying it as “tolerated” (accepted, but deprived of all its natural rights) (Hitchins 2000, 16–18, 30). The Austrian rule,3 however, did not remove the unjust political system of the privileged nations, which was maintained in Transylvania until 1918. This state of affairs that lasted for approximately 500 years (1437– 1918) led the Romanian nation to remain a “peasant nation” (Bocúan 1992, 185) until the middle of the nineteenth century; it was deprived of the rights to education and ownership, it lacked political institutions and had an extremely fragile elite that generally comprised the higher clergy, some civil servants, modest categories of tradesmen (Sibiu-Braúov) and only a few noble families, who had survived mainly in the border territories (Făgăraú and Maramureú). From the Middle Ages until the end of World War I, the years of Austrian liberalism (1860–65) were the only period when the Romanians were able to achieve their political objectives, even if only for a short while (they attained political and denominational equality with other ethnicities of Transylvania, as consecrated by the laws issued by the Diet of Sibiu 1863–64) (Retegan 1979, 91–210). Confessional segregation also contributed to the precarious state of the Romanian nation.4 The establishment of the Romanian Church United with Rome (1699–1701) (Freyberger 1996, passim; Hitchins 2000, 18–21) 2

According to this document, dated February 1861, the population of Transylvania at that time included: 1,300,000 Romanians; 300,000 Hungarians; 200,000 Szeklers; 170,000 Saxons and 85000 Gypsies. 3 At the end of the eighteenth century (through the signing of the Peace Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699), Transylvania officially became a province of the Habsburg Empire, under whose dominion it would remain until the end of World War I. 4 As a consequence of the establishment of the Romanian Church United with Rome (1700), confessional segregation consisted in dividing the Romanian nation into two denominations: the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics, through the conversion to the religious union with Rome of a part of the Romanian population, hitherto entirely Orthodox.

Mirela Popa-Andrei

223

represented an event with complex consequences in the longue durée of history, not only marking the rupture of religious unity but also producing a rift in the Romanian national unity (Popa-Andrei 2011, 393–400). The policy whereby the members of the Habsburg dynasty privileged the Greek Catholics over the Orthodox led to the deepening of confessional disputes amongst the Romanian population in Transylvania (Popa-Andrei 2009, 132–49). However, the birth of national consciousness and sentiment, owing largely to the prodigious activity of the Romanian Enlightenment thinkers, meant that the principle of national solidarity began to take precedence over confessionalism in the first half of the nineteenth century, the outcome of this solidarity being found in the Romanians’ unity of action that happened when historical conditions required it despite their confessional identity, during the events from the years 1848–49. Culturally, the religious union fostered important achievements for the Romanians in Transylvania (Hitchins 1987, 30–33). These included the formation of an educated clerical elite that, in the absence of other powerful elite groups, took over the leadership of the national liberation movement for about a century. In 1761, the Romanian Orthodox Church in Transylvania was officially recognized by Vienna5 and, later on, it joined the Greco-Catholic Church in the struggle for national rights. While initially the Orthodox elite was less educated and less numerous, in the second half of the nineteenth century, during the time of Bishop ùaguna (1846–73) (Hitchins 1995, 124–75 passim), consistent efforts were made to bridge the divide, which means that during the years of “semiliberalism” most of the Orthodox elite drew closer to the Greek-Catholic one. The neo-Absolutist policy, which focused on school and education, brought improvements to the socioeconomic life of the Transylvanian Romanians (Hitchins 1995, 120). Then, in the same context, the imperial patents of 1853–54 led to the abolition of feudal relations and to the allotment of land to the peasants. Consequently, along with clerics and teachers who had prevailed numerically, now more and more civil servants and members of the liberal professions (lawyers, owners, etc.) penetrated the ranks of the elite. This was due to the favorable policy promoted by the Schmerling regime (Retegan 1979, 69) as well as to the Romanian elite’s power of dissemination into the administrative structures of Transylvania, now the beneficiary of an adequate education (Popovici 2010, 217, 224). 5

After the religious union of Atanasie Anghel with the Roman Church, no Orthodox bishop was appointed in Transylvania for six decades. The right to existence of the Romanian Orthodox Church was recognized only in 1761, when it received a bishop in the person of Dionysius Novacovici. See Bernath (1994, 166).

224

The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement

As regards the structure of the Romanian elite, between 1860 and 1865, the Romanian elite was marked by powerful upheavals, disputes and realignments, which brought into relief several political factions: a conservative group (the clergy) formed around ùaguna, another moderate group (the civil servants) around V. L. Pop, and a third group—of younger people with liberal professions and with independent economic status, which allowed them to adopt a more radical political vision—rallying around G. BariĠiu (Hitchins 2000, 53–59, 70; 1995, 161–63; Popovici 2010, 217, 223). Despite all these changes affecting the structure of the Romanian elite, the ecclesiastical elite remained at the forefront of the political national movement. In fact, it was the laity that placed the bishops (and the conservative group) at the forefront of the national movement during the national conference in January 1861, granting them the co-presidency of the Romanian National Committee (RNC), a political body with an executive role, under whose guidance the national-political movement of the Transylvanian Romanians would get organized and evolve in the coming years. It was a realistic option because the national movement needed the endorsement of the two hierarchical ecclesiastical networks and, given the lack of a political tradition, attempts were made to restore the connection with the historical tradition (the model of the RNC was the RNC from 1848).6 The movement also needed recognition and support from the authorities and the Court of Vienna, and the bishops were among the most reliable persons in this respect. In this study we aim to analyze, from a sociological perspective, the position occupied and the effective role played by the ecclesiastical elite, its degree of involvement in the Romanian national political movement, as well as the political behavior of this social category between 1860 and 1865. In this sense, we shall focus mainly on the following two aspects: the numerical weight of the clergy in the leadership of the national movement and the influence they exerted on the events of that period. Our analysis will consider the key moments of the Romanian national movement from the period 1860–65, namely the activity of the three Romanian deputations in Vienna in 1860–61, the Regnal Inter-Ethnic Conference (February 1861), the two national conferences (January 2–

6

The Romanian National Committee was the first Romanian government formed during the events of the years 1848–49 and was the institutional model to which the Romanian national movement in Transylvania related itself during the years of semi-liberalism and also the model of the Romanian national parties, founded in 1869.

Mirela Popa-Andrei

225

4/14–16, 1861 and April 20–23, 1863), the participation in the Diet of Sibiu (1863–64).7 Regarding the numerical weight of the ecclesiastical elite, the prosopographic analysis has enabled us to see that the numerical presence of the clergy in the events of the “semi-liberal” epoch was significantly reduced at the helm of the national movement. We shall present two situations in this sense: the RNC’s composition and the members of the Diet of Sibiu. The first Romanian conference (January 1–13 to 4–16) attended by 100 delegates, equitably divided into fifty Greek Catholics and fifty Orthodox, elected an RNC consisting of twenty members, such as the Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Al. Sterca-ùuluĠiu, the Orthodox Bishop Andrei ùaguna (as presidents) and other well-known personalities from Transylvania. In denominational terms, nine of the twenty members were Orthodox and eleven were Greek Catholics: four of them were clerics (three Greek Catholics, one Orthodox) and sixteen were laymen. The National Committee elected at the conference held in April 1863 consisted of twenty-nine members (fifteen Greek Catholics and fourteen Orthodox): seven clerics and twenty-two laymen, eighteen of which were civil servants. As regards the Romanian members of the Diet of Sibiu, the following may be ascertained: of the eleven Romanian royalists, five were clerics, which meant 45 percent, while of the forty-eight Romanian deputies only nine were from the field of “ecclesiastical government,” 18.75 percent respectively.8 We may, therefore, notice a significant percentage of the clergy in the royalist category, which shows that they had remained the main elite social category for the Viennese Court. However, the situation appears more relevant if we consider the election results, because, in fact, the elected deputies represented the will, the option of those who elected them, the people: in this case, the Romanian people from Transylvania chose to be represented by the laity (civil servants, lawyers). What can be noted at this stage is the increasing presence of civil servants at the leadership of the national movement. 7

In terms of the facts and from the perspective of political history, all these events have been extensively dealt with by the historian S. Retegan in the works: Dieta românească (1979) and ReconstrucĠia politică a Transilvaniei în anii 1861-1863 (2004). 8 Our analysis is based on the studies conducted on the structure of the Romanian elite in Transylvania during the second half of the nineteenth century by the historian V. Popovici, collected in the volume Studies on the Romanian Political Elite from Transylvania and Hungary (1861–1918) (2012, 9–16) and Retegan (1979, 64–79).

226

The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement

The Romanian composition of the Diet of Sibiu appeared to herald the change that was about to occur at the top level of the national movement in the following years. It should be emphasized, however, that this change was not sudden, but gradual, the result of accumulations on the political and economic levels. It must, nonetheless, be emphasized that while there was a decrease in the number of the clergy in favor of the laity at the level of the national movement’s central leadership, that is, of the frontline elite, the role of the clergy remained dominant at the local level because here the clergy represented the most numerous and influential contingent of the intelligentsia. In the context of the electoral process for selecting the Diet members and in the absence of a political organization extended to the level of the entire province, the network of ecclesiastical institutions represented the only way of communication (Retegan 1979, 68–72). For the Romanians, the church remained the only institution that could organize and supervise the smooth conduct of the elections. The bishops had the opportunity to show their power of influence over Romanian society once again, being the only people who could give orders, who could claim obedience and demand the execution of these orders. Through their circulars, they were the ones who mobilized both the local elite (priests and teachers) and the great mass of believers, instilling in them the spirit of discipline, responsibility and tolerance. In a patriarchal society, as was the Romanian society in Transylvania during that period, the village priests became the most active agents in the mobilization of the Romanian population. For Romanians, this semi-liberal era represented a period of their maximum interest in politics. After a decade of apathy (neo-Absolutist era), this “political thaw” unleashed energies that had been restrained for such a long time, stimulating the Romanians’ political organization and the institutionalization of the national movement. However, despite the Romanians’ mobilization, the collaboration between the elite and the masses, as well as political maturity, was not helped by the political circumstances. The same happened during the period of the 1848 revolutionary events. Like before, the attitude adopted by the Viennese Court was not sincere, but merely circumstantial, the Romanians being used, like in the past, as a counterforce element in the political struggle against the powerful dual Hungarian liberal faction. The envisioned changes were stopped even though they had brought great hope to the Romanians, who lost the lead they had gained in the Diet of Sibiu (Hitchins 2000, 74–83; 1995, 176–203). Once again it was the Romanians who were sacrificed at the level of the imperial policy in favor of the

Mirela Popa-Andrei

227

Hungarians (the restoration of the political regime from the spring of 1848). Inside the national movement it was the higher ecclesiastical elite that was sacrificed. What also contributed to this situation was the differences between the two Romanian hierarchs, which, in the autumn of 1865, in the context of the emerging new (dual) political regime, had become increasingly harsh, insulting statements being made by both sides, and making reconciliation impossible. The disputes between the bishops also represented one of the causes of the deepening distrust manifested by the other national leaders in the capacity and mission of the ecclesiastical elite to manage the national movement in the future. In the context of the political changes from the years 1865–67, the two Romanian hierarchs evinced different opinions and attitudes and proposed divergent political strategies (Bocúan et al. 2005, 76–84). Andrei ùaguna opted for moderation and caution, which made the Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Al. Sterca-ùuluĠiu to accuse him of having crossed to the side of the new political regime (the Austro-Hungarian dualism). In return, ùaguna accused ùuluĠiu (who wanted to continue the national struggle) that he had identified the national cause with his personal cause. Of course, another reason that led to the withdrawal (relegation) of the clergy into the background was the spirit of the age: the victory of nationalism, the success of secularization ideas. In Romanian historiography, two theories so far have been set forth as regards the moment when the leadership of the Romanian national movement definitively passed from the clergy to the laity. One theory, according to which 1869 represented the key moment (the establishment of the Romanian National Party Transylvania), belongs to K. Hitchins, who has been joined by other historians. More recent research, however, suggests the opportunity of reconsidering the “excessive importance” this moment has been invested with (see N. Bocúan; V. Popovici). Our opinion on this subject is that the period of Austrian “semiliberalism” was characterized by a good collaboration between the clergy and the secularity within the Romanian national movement, the former maintaining their dominant position, above all, in terms of the influence they exerted in society and the political and administrative authorities. This was due to the political realism of the secular elite, who understood that the influence of the Romanian ecclesiastical hierarchy on Transylvanian political life was still significant. It is true that after the laws issued by the Diet of Sibiu were repealed and dualism was installed, the secularity movement increasingly lost its confidence in the bishops’ ability to lead the national movement. But the Romanian movement did not

228

The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement

abandon its religious connections yet, therefore we still talk about a joint effort of all leaders of secular and non-secular elites to achieve the results, but the latest took the leading role. Indeed after the creation of the Romanian political institutions (1869), the bishops were no longer at the forefront of the national movement, but at the local level the clergy (canons, protopopes, priests) continued to play an important role. It should also be noted that in the 1870s, the laity took key positions in the leadership of the national movement, so much so that we may consider that this was the decade that ended the secularization process of the national movement. Still, if we could conventionally choose a deadline marking this secularization, we believe that the most appropriate moment would be the unification of the two Romanian parties in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. We are making this assertion given the fact that in the preliminary discussions held in local electoral circles, meant to designate the delegates to the National Conference in Sibiu (1881),9 most of the voices called for the elimination (read non-election) of the clergy from the senior leadership structure of the party. Indeed, if we look at the composition of the Central Electoral Commission, the executive body of the Romanian National Party after 1881, we find an ever more limited presence of the clergy, who left more and more room for the laity at the central level in the leadership of the Romanian political movement for national freedom in Transylvania.

Bibliography Bernath, Mathias. 1994. Habsburgii úi începuturile formării NaĠiunii Române [The Habsburgs and the Beginnings of the Formation of the Nation Romanian]. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. Bocúan, Nicolae, Ioan-Vasile Leb, Gabriel Gârdan, Pavel Vesa, Bogdan Ivanov, eds. 2005. Andrei ùaguna. CorespondenĠă [Correspondence], vol. I/1. Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University Press. Bocúan, Nicolae. 1992. “RevoluĠia de la 1848.” In Memorandul 18921894. Ideologie úi acĠiune politică românească [“The Revolution of 1848.” In The Memorandum of 1892–1894. Romanian Ideology and Political Action]. Bucharest: Progresul Românesc. Freyberger, Andreas. 1996. Historica Relatio unionis walachicae cum Ecclesia Romana sau Relatare istorică despre Unirea Bisericii Româneúti cu Biserica Romei [A Historical Account of the Union 9

The conference for the unification of the RNP in Transylvania with the Romanians’ National Party in Hungary.

Mirela Popa-Andrei

229

between the Romanian Church and the Roman Church]. Translated and introductory study by Ioan Chindriú. Cluj-Napoca: Clusium. Gyémánt, Ladislau. 2008. “Habitat úi evoluĠie demografică.” In Istoria Transilvaniei (de la 1711 până la 1918) [Habitat and demographic evolution. In The History of Transylvania (from 1711 until 1918)], vol. III. Cluj-Napoca: The Romanian Academy, Centre for Transylvanian Studies. Hitchins, Keith. 1987. ConútiinĠă naĠională úi acĠiune politică la românii din Transilvania (1700-1868) [National Consciousness and Political Action among the Romanians of Transylvania (1700–1868)]. ClujNapoca: Dacia. —. 1995. Ortodoxie úi naĠionalitate. Andrei ùaguna úi românii din Transilvania 1846-1873 [Orthodoxy and Nationality. Andrei ùaguna and the Romanians in Transylvania 1846–1873]. Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic. —. 2000. Afirmarea naĠiunii: miúcarea naĠională românească din Transilvania 1860-1914 [Orthodoxy and Nationality. Andrei ùaguna and the Romanians in Transylvania 1846–1873]. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică. Popa-Andrei, Mirela. 2009. “Biserica ortodoxă din Transilvania în epoca reformismului austriac.” In În spiritul Europei modern. AdministraĠia úi confesiunile din Transilvania în perioada reformismului terezian úi iosefin (1740-1790) [“The Orthodox Church in Transylvania during the of era Austrian reformism.” In In the Spirit of Modern Europe. The Administration and the Confessions. Transylvania between Reformism and Theresan Josephinism (1740–1790)], edited by Remus Câmpeanu úi Anca Câmpian. Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University Press. —. 2011. “Dispute confesionale úi acĠiune naĠional-politică la românii transilvăneni. Din epoca iluministă la era semiliberală.” In RealităĠi sociale úi implicare politică în Transilvania între 1849-1867. Studii [National-Religious Disputes and Political Action among the Transylvanian Romanians. From the Enlightenment to the SemiLiberal Era. In Social Realities and Political Involvement in Transylvania between 1849–1867. Education]. 393–453, Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române. Popovici, Vlad. 2012. Studies on the Romanian Political Elite from Transylvania and Hungary (1861–1918). Cluj-Napoca: Mega. —. “Elita politică românească din Transilvania (1861-1881). O perspectivă alternativă” [“The Romanian political elite in Transylvania (1861– 1881). An alternative perspective”]. Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Historica, 14/I, 2010: 213–27.

230

The Ecclesiastical Elite in the Romanian National Movement

Retegan, Simion, Dumitru Suciu, Mádly Loránd, and Mirela Andrei, eds. 2006. Documente privind Miúcarea românilor din Transilvania între 1849-1918. Documente [Documents on the Movement of the Romanians from Transylvania between 1849–1918. Documents], vol. III. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române. Retegan, Simion. 1979. Dieta românească a Transilvaniei (1863-1864) [The Romanian Diet of Transylvania (1863–1864)]. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. —. 2004. ReconstrucĠia politică a Transilvaniei în anii 1861-1863 [The Political Reconstruction of Transylvania in the Years 1861–1863]. Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University Press.

HOW THE LIBERALS MONOPOLIZED CULTURAL NATIONALISM INFUSING POLITICS WITH NATIONAL IDEOLOGY IN ROMANIA AT THE TURN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY PETRU SZEDLACSEK The modern, national Romanian state emerged in 1866 as what contemporaries saw a typically civic nation-state. Although formally still under Turkish suzerainty, the Danubian Principality was characterized by: a national ruler, a constitution, a parliament, a flag, political parties, central government, and bureaucracy. In other words, the establishment of the Romanian nation-state was drawn on Western, liberal models. This is hardly a surprise since many of the early Romanian nationalist political leaders, like Ion Brătianu, Dimitrie Sturdza, or Constantin Rosetti, who had studied abroad and actively participated in the 1848 Revolution both in Paris and Bucharest, founded the influential National Liberal Party (NLP) in the newly united Principalities. Nevertheless, Romanian intellectuals, especially by the turn of the nineteenth century, started challenging these modern, Western-imported structures. Especially three of the most important cultural organizations— Junimea (The Youth), Poporaniútii (The Populists), and Sămănătoriútii (The Sowers)—1addressed what they saw a veritable identity crisis caused by modernization.2 Regarding the novel implement as foreign to Romanianness, they sought to define Romanian specificity on the model of fashionable ideologies in fin de siècle Europe, inspired by the ideas of 1

The intellectuals who founded these associations were educated at Germanspeaking universities and they adopted the Hegelian, organicist, and historicist approach to politics. In other words, they viewed Romania’s historical development as a result of an organic expression of Romanians’ original rural Kultur. State and politics were to be nationalized in order to represent Romanian authenticity (Hitchins 1994, 60–61). 2 This tension could be summarized in the slogan promoted by the Junimists of “[modern] forms without [local] substance” (Maiorescu 1868).

232

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism

German Sonderweg or Russian special path.3 Similarly to other such enterprises throughout Europe, Romanian cultural elites sought an increasing involvement in politics in order to reconcile national identity with politics and tradition with modernity.4 It was a Kulturkampf that aimed at nationalizing all aspects of Romanian public life, especially culture and politics. As part of a European-wide revivalist movement, such as the Celtic Revival or the Zakopane Style, Romanian artists, literates, and architects focused on creating a fusion between vernacular culture and high-culture in order to provide a local specificity to national culture.5 John Hutchinson argues that reviving and promoting local specificity is a typical feature of cultural nationalism (Hutchinson 2000, 654; 1999, 399).6 Art, literature, architecture, and press mythologized folk culture in order to pressure the political sphere to accept a new morality for the Romanian nation. Leading to cultural styles such as neo-Romanian in architecture against a perceivably artificial, threatening urbanization reified in the foreign Beaux Arts style, cultural nationalism aimed to provide a more authentic, rural touch to the Romanian urban setting (Kallestrup 2006, 69, 81, 99). After all, myth producing and promoting is one of the crucial tasks of cultural nationalists like historians, artists, and journalists in order to become politically relevant (1992, 103, 104). As notorious intellectuals such as Junimists Titu Maiorescu and Petre Carp, writer Barbu Delavrancea or Romania’s national historian Nicolae Iorga gradually got involved into politics, the political sphere began 3

Defining diverse national paths by the turn of the nineteenth century was a general (mainly cultural) phenomenon. See for example on the German Sonderweg, American exceptionalism, and Russian “separate path:” Evans (1997); Kocka (1988); Tyrell (1991); Borodaj et al. (1995). 4 Such debates characterized for instance the German Heimat [Hearth] movement, as concluded by Confino (2002). 5 For studies treating Polish and Celtic revivalist movements in the context of wider European revivalism such as primtivism and arts and crafts see: Dabrowski (2005); Crowley (2001); Manouleian (2000); and Hutchinson (1987). 6 I employ John Hutchinson’s definition of cultural nationalism. He advances that cultural nationalism appeared, in the context of a national identity crisis caused by the uprooting effect of modernity, “when a statist nationalism seems to have failed” (Hutchinson 1999, 393), as reconciliation between tradition and modernity in Hutchinson (1992). Or in the words of Anthony Smith explaining Hutchinson’s point of view: “as political nationalism falters and ebbs, cultural nationalists, as it were, pick up the torch and seek to rejuvenate a frustrated and oppressed community” (Smith 1998, 177). For other works belonging to Hutchinson expressing similar views see 1994 and 1992.

Petru Szedlacsek

233

promoting a program based on cultural nationalism. Regarding Romania as primarily an agrarian country, cultural nationalists pushed for a rural orientated national politics with the aim of protecting Romanianness, putatively embedded in tradition (Hitchins 1996, 72–107).7 Politics was increasingly based on a peasant utopia; that is, on a new morality based on the mythical figure of the peasant (Turda 2008, 443). Interestingly, coinciding with the election of the young Ionel Brătianu as president of the NLP, the liberals aimed at monopolizing this newlyemerging and increasingly fashionable discourse on Romanianness. It was a phenomenon that crucially altered the course of Romanian politics by making the NLP the preeminent political leader through this infusion with an overt nationalist ideology. Even though several political parties adopted parts of the new national narrative, it was the NLP that thoroughly reframed its program, marking the birth of Romanian liberal nationalism. It is the mechanism of liberal monopolization of the emergent cultural nationalist agenda that this paper seeks to explore. Its argument draws on Hutchinson’s model of cultural nationalism.8 Both the wide popularity of cultural nationalists and the strong pressure exercised by them on the political sphere convinced Brătianu Jr. to refashion his party-agenda on the model of this new nationalist repertoire. Simply put, cultural nationalism reshaped liberal nationalism making its rhetoric less civically inclusive and more nationally exclusive. The literature analyzing the link and mutual influences between nationalist culture and politics in pre-1914 Romania is scarce,9 although there is the seminal work of Irina Livezeanu (1995) analyzing this aspect for the later, interwar period. Classically, the two phenomena are generally treated separately in factual descriptive manners, like in the works of Zigur Ornea (1966; 1970) or Keith Hitchins (1994). Therefore, by inquiring into the complex intertwining of nationalism, culture, and politics, this paper seeks to explain how the Romanian political imagery and decision7

Hutchinson argues that cultural nationalists are a new social strata of intellectuals and part of the (mainly professionally dispossessed) intelligentsia who both seek to address the identity crisis allegedly created by state-led modernization by providing a new national morality based on culture (Hutchinson 1987, 495; 1999, 397). More extreme in his view—namely, that he sees nationalists as political opportunists, seeking to monopolize state-power for themselves—is Breuilly (1993, 63, 69). 8 See note 5. 9 One example, though only marginally treating this subject, is the book of Bucur (2009). Additionally worth mentioning are the articles of Turda (2008) and Trencsényi (2010).

234

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism

making, under the influence of certain cultural trends, became openly nationalist. As national definitions were becoming increasingly ethnic and exclusive all over Europe by the turn of the nineteenth century (Taras 2002, 36), Romanian intellectuals were also struggling to link national specificity with politics. In fin de siècle Poland for instance, with the goal of gaining increasing political influence among the masses, liberals pressured established political elites to include Catholic Polish peasants in national ceremonies and exclude non-Catholics and non-Poles (Dabrowski 2000, 409). Thus, Polish nationalism gradually turned to a much more ethnically exclusive discourse (Dabrowski 2000, 401, 410). Similarly, in Habsburg Hungary, liberalism altered under the influence of racist ideologues, as Marius Turda convincingly argues against Karen Barkey. She advances that Hungary, unlike Romania, prior to the First World War, had a politically inclusive attitude toward minorities, becoming more illiberal only after the post-1918 territorial losses (Barkey 2000, 498). Instead, Turda reveals that under the influence of nationalist social scientists such as Beksics, Herrman, and Hunfalvy, fin de siècle Hungarian liberalism became more and more ethnocentric: politics increasingly focused on protecting and developing the allegedly superior Hungarian culture in order to forcefully assimilate the Crown’s minority cultures (Turda 2007, 8, 11; 2003, 16–17). Thus, nationalism together with social Darwinism and racism were integrated into liberalism, transforming “Hungarian political discourse, from a tolerant and liberal Gesellschaft (that of 1867) to an illiberal and exclusivist Gemeinschaft (that of 1900)” (Turda 2003, 7). Throughout Europe liberal nationalism was becoming increasingly salient. The Romanian nationalist rhetoric at the end of the 1800s fitted the general scheme. Nevertheless, it would be oversimplifying to argue that it plainly turned, like the whole non-Western world, from a liberal national politics to an illiberal one, as some classical authors on nationalism advance with respect to Eastern Europe such as Hans Kohn or more recent ones such as Ray Taras.10 It is not simply the case that Bucharest blindly followed a general trend. Instead, as Turda argues for the Hungarian case and Hutchinson for his theory of cultural nationalism more generally, liberalism adopted a novel, ethnocentric language, when national culture and politics started to be seen by intellectuals as experiencing an identity crisis; namely, when modern politics was increasingly seen as meaningless 10

Both split nationalism in two categories: a Western, liberal, civic, rational, and political nationalism and a non-Western, non-political, ethnocultural, and irrational one (Kohn 1965, 29–30; Taras 2002, 51–60). For an illuminating analysis rejecting this sharp split see Brubaker (2004, 133–46).

Petru Szedlacsek

235

by the cultural elites (Turda 2003, 9; Hutchinson 1999, 403). Drawing on these findings, this essay puts forward the new president of the Liberal Party, Ionel Brătianu, as the great innovator. He pushed for the adoption of the intelligentsia’s mainstream discourse on Romanian specificity and at the same time invited important intellectuals—such as the notorious, former Poporanists, called generoúii (the generous ones)—to join his party. Thus, Brătianu seemingly provided liberal politics with national meaning, reconciling the gap between culture and politics. Before the 1900s, any democratic or national discourse was exclusively subordinated to gaining political capital, that is to the ultimate goal of political parties to come to power and maintain it by every means. Political narratives of nationalism scarcely materialized prior to Ionel Brătianu. Therefore, even the national ideal had a specific, realist goal and was not at all used to involve the public in politics. This situation was taken to the extreme when in 1896, the Liberal Party under the leadership of Dimitrie Sturdza, held a radical campaign against the government, accusing it to be ignorant of the Magyarizing policies of Budapest. Subsequently, this popular stir enabled Sturdza to come to power. But, when in the government Sturdza made the very un-national decision choosing to cut the stipends intended for the financing of the Transylvanian Romanian schools from Braúov/Brassó/Kronstadt, his own party weapon was successfully used by the opposition in order to bring about the Liberals’ fall (Hitchins 1996, 128–29; Scurtu 2004, 171–72; Constantiniu 1997, 254–55). On the basis of such opportunistic practices, the Romanian intelligentsia argued for a regeneration of politics in order to make it genuinely national. The stir caused by Sturdza for instance determined writer Barbu Delavrancea to leave the NLP for the opposing Conservative Party. Intellectuals saw a veritable alienation of the political class from the Romanian masses of the population and pressured for change. In criticizing Carol I—a king with German background, seemingly estranged from his Romanian subjects—poet and journalist Mihai Eminescu created his own image of an ideal ruler: a native, poor peasant-prince, close to his people and land.11 Based on such discourses, in their struggle for power, a new generation of politicians overtook the task of Romanianizing politics. The power configuration at political level was characterized not only by a competition between the two main parties—Liberal and Conservative— but also, increasingly, by a struggle for preeminence against the king’s influence too. This competition was promoted especially by young politicians of both political specters such as Take Ionescu and Brătianu. 11

See for example his Scrisoarea a III—a poem.

236

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism

However, they lost the monarch’s trust as a consequence of their ambitions and were thus at pains in gaining any ministerial function (Scurtu 2004, 202, 205). Therefore, they sought alternative ways of gaining popularity by co-opting important intellectuals to their parties and ideologizing their political program. Making use of the discourse on the putative identity crisis outlined by the intelligentsia, a contrast was imagined between, on the one hand, the old, conservative and traditional political forces, such as the dynasty as well as the Conservative Party, and on the other hand, the renewed liberal ideology—allegedly more national and democratic. Indeed, Rudolf Dinu points out, “the manner in which Romania’s sovereign and ‘his ministers’ administered the foreign affairs was … ‘absolutist one,’ rational and still relying on the idea of arcana imperii” (Dinu 2002, 124). In line with the Prussian Immediatsystem, Junimist Titu Maiorescu, who served as primeminister and minister for foreign affairs under the Hohenzollern Monarch during the Second Balkan War, confessed that “[h]is Majesty wishes that his ministers be in the foreign affairs performers rather than inspirers.”12 Outbidding in public rhetoric the establishment’s power, a new generation of liberals imagined an increasing gap between this outdated realpolitik and a need for a more national and democratic politics. It could be said that the whole part of the memoirs belonging to the liberal Ion Duca—prime-minister in the inter-war period—dealing with pre-1914 Romania, is an account of the clash between a putatively reactionary political class and the revived Liberal Party. The author considered the year 1914, when the liberals under Brătianu were called in the government and also when the old King Carol I died, as representing the final clash between the two opposing attitudes. At that time, the memoirs narrate, Brătianu talked about following the public opinion, whereas the conservative leader Carp supporting the king’s view answered: “one talks to me about public opinion. It does not preoccupy me! The duty of the statesman is for him to lead the public opinion, not to be dragged by it” (Duca 1992, 56). For Duca, the Crown Council of 1914 that decided Romania’s neutrality in the Great War, while debates took place in the outdated, un-national, and foreign French language, still symbolized conservative, un-Romanian Romania “in her whole splendor” (Duca 1992, 56). 12

Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministro degli Aggari Esteri, Roma, Archivio di Gabinetto, 1910—1920, Casella 27, Titolo III, Fasc. 248: R 1728/411, Auriti to San Giuliano, Bucharest, September 15, 1913, as cited in Dinu (2002, 136). For the relationship between the monarch and his administration in Germany and how it drew on the Prussian tradition of Immediatsystem see Lehman (2004, 65, 66).

Petru Szedlacsek

237

In fact, Brătianu’s move in politicizing cultural nationalism was seen even since his time as a very popular move. Conservative politician Argetoianu and prime-minister under King Carol II speculated that Brătianu “found in the Poporanist Constantin Stere the determined and documented guide for refreshing the program [added emphasis]” of the NLP (Argetoianu 1991, 51). The electoral and agricultural reforms, the protectionist policies for traditional artisans, as well as the rapprochement with the Entente favoring an irredentist policy envisioning Transylvania, were all part of the new political program announced by the NLP leader in 1913 (7 Septembrie, 1913). Since Romania was secretly part of the Triple Alliance, the Austro-Hungarian minister in Bucharest, Count Ottokar von Czernin, sent his complaint to his foreign minister, Count Leopold Berchtold, regarding the suspicion of the former that Brătianu is stirring nationalist sentiments in Romania since his coming to power.13 By 1914, saturated by irredentism and peasantism, NLP politics became a veritable expression of Romanian liberal nationalism. As European peace was increasingly under threat at the beginning of the twentieth century, the new liberal imagery, now overtly nationalist, was more and more evident also in war legitimation. During the Second Balkan War for example, conservatives under Maiorescu publicly offered only realpolitik reasons for Romania’s engagement: a strategic border between Romania and Bulgaria, an autonomous Macedonia, and an alleged civilizing role of Romania in the multiethnic Balkans (Maiorescu 1995, 125–26).14 By contrast, the liberals concentrated on nationalist motives. Articles in liberal newspaper Viitorul linked the war with broad nationalist goals, like improving the peasants’ social condition or a Transylvanian foreign policy stemming from the war.15 13

ANIC, Fo. Casa Regală, Dossier 16/1914, 277. With respect to the supposedly Romanian civilizing mission in the Orient see for instance Conservatorul (The Conservative) article ImportanĠa României (Romania’s Importance) of June 10, 1913: “All the eyes of civilized Europe are now turned towards our country … . That is why we will have to try hard in the future, to better inform the countries abroad on our role and tendencies, as the most stable state, for maintaining the peace and facilitating the culturizing and civilizing work in the unstable Orient.” By contrast, the Bulgarian enemies were viewed in the Romanian press as barbarians; see for instance from the same newspaper article Barbariile oribile ale bulgarilor (The horrible barbaric acts of the Bulgarians) of July 2, 1913. 15 Liberal Viitorul (The Future) article Entuziasmul Ardealului: În momentele solemne úi istorice românii de pretutindeni simt acelaúi dor (Transylvania’s Enthusiasm: During Solemn and Historical Moments Romanians Everywhere Feel the Same Longing) of July 5, 1913 for instance meaningfully stated: “The 14

238

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism

Subsequently, during World War I, even the war plans themselves appear to have been drawn rather on idealistic terms than on strategic ones. Brătianu ordered the General Staff to prepare military plans for an offensive centered on Habsburg Transylvania—“the cradle of Romanianness”— meaning the perspective of a Romanian exposure from the south, which ultimately proved militarily disastrous (Torrey 1966, 178). From then on, Romanian political programs no more relied on realpolitik, but on nationalism. What varied was how nationalism was understood. The renewal patronized by Brătianu secured undisputed popularity for the liberals—leaders in Romanian politics for almost fifteen years (with brief interludes) starting with 1914. While notorious intellectuals, who saw themselves as the real spokesmen of the nation, were pressuring the political sphere to adopt their vision of national politics, the liberals seized the opportunity to refashion their ideology by shifting it toward liberal nationalism. Hutchinson points out that, at times of political legitimacy crisis, it is a recurrent phenomenon that of politicizing cultural nationalism advocated by the intelligentsia (Hutchinson 1999, 393, 402; 1987, 487). Although famous intellectuals like Maiorescu, Iorga or Delavrancea increasingly involved into politics, it was the NLP which monopolized the mainstream discourse on national identity, eliminating any strong opposition: from traditional political forces such as the Conservative Party and the dynasty to emerging political entities like the social-democrats. Similarly to early twentieth-century Hungary, Romanian liberals solved the national identity crisis by providing national meaning to politics. Did this complex interaction between politics and culture bring about any significant change in the political sphere on the long term? Normally, this renewal was directed at the political imagery, in order to Romanianize it as a result of its previously perceived foreign character, as it appeared for instance in Carol I’s Peleú Castle from Sinaia or the Beaux Arts style originally employed in urban planning.16 If Brătianu adopted liberal nationalism to gain popularity, the increasing pressure coming from the intellectuals to nationalize politics was also gradually understood by the royal family. Familiarized with the main European cultural trends such as consensus of the harts of the Romanians, the concert of feelings of everyone dwelling on the same illustrious memories and common ideals. The Transylvanian gazettes from the first days of the mobilization of the Romanian armies … speak of the glorious actions of Romanianness, of the acts of an army that will throw the rays over the Carpathians that cut the united souls.” 16 Bucur (2009, 27–28) and Kallestrup (2006, 69, 81) documented the lack of tradition of Beaux Arts type of constructions in Romania under King Carol I and the Romanian intelligentsia’s reaction to these buildings.

Petru Szedlacsek

239

arts and crafts, which made use of artifacts belonging to allegedly primitive cultures, either local or exotic, Princess and late-Queen Maria chose to promote the Romanian vernacular culture and surrounded herself with a folk imagery. This was reflected in the construction of Cotroceni Royal Palace in Bucharest, in official photos of the princess dressed in Romanian folkloric garments, and in the setting-in scene of the Alba-Iulia Coronation of 1922. The dynasty too was adopting elements of the new Romanian imagery. Apart from this, the politicization of cultural nationalism had indeed long lasting effects regarding the new uses of national specificity in the political sphere. As Turda (2008, 438) and Livezeanu (1998, 12) suggest, the peasant utopia that started permeating all aspects of the Romanian modern state provided a useful paradigm for Romanian right-wing extremists (and not only)—best represented by the Legionaries, also known as the Iron Guard. In fact, all over Europe pre-World War I nationalist utopias and myths furnished the roots of European fascism (Kallis 2004, 16). Consequently, the role of the historian grew in importance for his myth-making skills; Hutchinson reveals that his goal was to instrumentalize a golden age—in Romania, the ancestry of peasant life—as a model for spiritual regeneration and progress. For the Legionariess, by contrast to the modern and foreign urban world, the rural one provided an inspiring source of moral palingenesis (Turda 2008, 438). Thus, the morality of nineteenth-century cultural nationalists, after being monopolized by the liberals, was subsequently radicalized and included into the political program of ultra-nationalists. In the Legionaries’ view, this backward looking ideology ultimately became the motor for national progress.

Bibliography Argetoianu, Constantin. 1991. Pentru cei de mâine: Amintiri din vremea celor de ieri. Vols. II, Part 4. Bucharest: Humanitas. Axenciuc. 2000. Avuаia naаională a României: Cercetări istorice comparate, 1860-1939. Bucharest: Centrul Român de Economie Comparată úi Consensuală. Barkey, Karen. 2000. “Negotiated Paths to Nationhood: A Comparison of Hungary and Romania in the Early Twentieth Century.” East European Politics and Societies 3:497–531. Borodaj, Jurij et al. 1995. “Between East and West: Russian Renewal and the Future.” Studies in East European Thought 1/2:61–116.

240

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism

Breuilly, John. 1993. Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. “‘Ethnic’ and ‘Civic’ Nationalisms.” In Ethnicity without Groups, edited by Rogers Brubaker, 133–46. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Bucur, Maria. 2009. Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in TwentiethCentury Romania. Bloomingdon: Indiana University Press. Bulei, Ion. 1980. Atunci când veacul se năútea. Bucharest: Eminescu. Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. 2010. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press. Confino, Alon. 2002. “Federalism and the Heimat Idea in Imperial Germany.” In German Federalism: Past, Present, Future, by Maiken Umbach, 70–90. New York: Palgrave. Conservatorul. “Barbariile oribile ale bulgarilor.” July 2, 1913. Conservatorul. “Importan‫܊‬a României.” June 10, 1913. Constantiniu, Florin. 1997. O istorie sinceră a poporului român. Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic. Crowley, David. 2001. “Finding Poland in the Margins: The Case of the Zakopane Style.” Journal of Design History 2:105–116. Dabrowski, Patrice M. 2000. “Folk, Faith and Fatherland: Defining the Polish Nation in 1883.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 2:397–416. —. 2005. “Discovering” the Galician Borderlands: The Cae of the Eastern Carpathians.” Slavic Review 3:380–402. Dinu, Rudolf. 2002. “King Charles I and Decision Making Process in the Romanian Foreign Policy before the First World War.” Revista Arhivelor 2:121–139. Duca, Ion. 1992. Gh. Memorii. Vol. I. Bucharest: Editura Expres. Dunlap, Tanya. 2003. “Astra and the Appeal of the Nation: Power and Autonomy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Transylvania.” Austrian History Yearbook 12:215–46. Eminescu, Mihai. “Cestiunea izraelită.” Timpul, May 23, 1879. Evans, Richard J. 1997. Whatever Became of the Sonderweg? Rereading German History: From Unification to Reunification 1800–1996. London: Routledge. Hitchins, Keith. 1994. Rumania: 1866–1947. Oxford: Clarendon Press. —. 1996. România: 1866–1947. Translated by George G. Potra and Delia Răzgolescu. Bucharest: Humanitas.

Petru Szedlacsek

241

Hutchinson, John. 1987. “Cultural Nationalism, Elite Mobility and NationBuilding: Communitarian Politics in Modern Ireland.” The British Journal of Sociology 4:482–501. —. 1992. “Moral Innovators and the Politics of Regeneration: The Distinctiv Role of Cultural Nationalists in Nation-Building.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 1/2:101–117. —. 1994. Modern Nationalism. London: Fontana Press. —. 1999. “Re-Interpreting Cultural Nationalism.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 3:392–407. —. 2000. “Ethnicity and Modern Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4: 651–669. Kallestrup, Shona. 2006. Art and Design in Romania: 1866–1927: Local and International Aspects of the Search for National Expression. Boulder: East European Monographs. Kallis, Aristotle. 2004. “Studying Interwar Fascism in Epochal and Diachronic Terms: Ideological Production, Political Experience and the Quest for Consensus.” European Quarterly 9:9–42. Kitch, Michael. 1975. “Constantin Stere and Rumanian Populism.” The Slavonic and East European Review 131:248–271. Kocka, Jürgen. 1988. “German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg.” Journal of Contemporary History 1:3–16. Kohn, Hans. 1965. Nationalism: Its Meaning and History. New York: Vam Nostrand Reinhold Company. Lehman, Katharine A. 2004. “The Kaiser’s Elite? Wilhelm II and the Berlin Administration, 1890–1914.” In The Kaiser: New Research on Wilhelm II’s Role in Imperial Germany, edited by Annika Mombauer and Wilhelm Deist, 63–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Livezeanu, Irina. 1995. Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building & Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930. London: Cornell University Press. —. 1998. Cultură úi naаionalism în România Mare, 1918 1930. Translated by Vlad Russo. Bucharest: Humanitas. Maiorescu, Titu. “În contra direc‫܊‬iunii de astăzi a culturei române.” Convorbiri literare September 2, 1868. —. 1995. România, Războaiele Balcanice úi Cadrilaterul. Bucharest: Machiavelli. Manouleian, Edward. 2000. “Invented Traditions: Primitivist Narrative and Design in the Polish Fin de Siecle.” Slavic Review 2:391–405. Ornea, Zigu. 1966. Junimea úi Junimismul. Bucharest: Eminescu. —. 1970. Sămănătorimul. Bucharest: Minerva. Scurtu, Ioan. 2004. Carol I. 2nd. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică.

242

How the Liberals Monopolized Cultural Nationalism

Smith, Anthony. 1998. Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Surbey of Recen Theories of Nations and Nationalism. London-New York: Routledge. Taras, Ray. 2002. Liberal and Illiberal Nationalisms. Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan. Torrey, Glenn. 1966. “Rumania and the Belligerents 1914–1916.” Journal of Contemporary History 3:171–191. Trencsényi, Balázs. 2010. “’Imposed Authenticity‘: Approaching Eastern European National Characterologies in the Inter-war Period.” Central Europe 1:20–47. Turda, Marius. 2003. “‘The Magyars: A Ruling Race’: The Idea of National Superiority in Fin-de-Siécle Hungary.” European Review of History: Revue européen d’histoire 1:5–33. —. 2007. “Race, Politics and Nationalist Darwinism in Hungary, 1880– 1918.” Ab Imperio 1:1–25. — 2008. “Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism in Early Twentieth-century Romania.” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion 4:437–53. Tyrell, Jan. 1991. “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History.” The American Historical Review 96:1031–55. Viitorul. “7 Septembrie, 1913.” September 8, 1913. Viitorul. “Entuziasmul Ardealului: În momentele solemne úi istorice românii de pretutindeni simt acelaúi dor.” July 5, 1913.

THE NATIONAL QUESTION IN TRANSYLVANIA IN THE PERIOD AROUND THE AUSGLEICH GIORDANO ALTAROZZI AND CORNEL SIGMIREAN In the eighteenth century, abbot Sieyès wrote in the famous pamphlet Qu’est-ce que le Tiers Etat?: “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? Un corps d’associés vivant sous une loi commune et representés par la même législature” (Sieyès 1888, 31). Not many peoples of Europe could meet the requirements of the definition given by Sieyès, since they did not have states and could only affirm themselves through the claims for equal rights with the constituted nations, which were the creators of states. Named cultural nations, they were defined through the consciousness of the community of ideals among generations, based upon the knowledge and elation of their common history, which also supposed the idea of a common origin. At the middle of the nineteenth century, nations like the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Serbians, the Croatians, the Poles etc. were in this situation “cultural nations” that had lost their status through the occupation by other states, and then the Romanians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, who were claiming a status of equality with the majority or the dominant nation from a political point of view (Tamborra 1971). All these Central European nations identified the sources of their cohesion in their historical past, language, traditions, customs, and cultural creation. The ideological reference marks of the Central European nations were the German philosophers Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and especially Johann Gottfried Herder, who made himself famous through his work Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. According to Herder, the language was the stimulus of spiritual forces, and an instrument for the profoundest culture and education (Neumann 1997, 145). Each nation has a unique collective soul—the Volksgeist—which manifests itself through popular creations, poems and music. His work represented a true pedagogy of nation-building in the Habsburg Empire, and was taken over by the majority of scholars in this space. Among the first scholars who spread the knowledge about the work of the German

244 The National Question in Transylvania in the Period Around the Ausgleich

philosopher in the Habsburg Monarchy was the Italian abbot Alberto Fortis, who was impressed by the way Herder glorified the popular genius and tradition (Fortis 1774). Herder’s work influenced the political thought of Kossuth Lajos, Széchenyi István and PetĘfi Sándor, in the case of the Hungarians, and Nicolae Bălcescu and Simion BărnuĠiu, in that of the Romanians. Consequently, in the entire space of Central and South-East Europe a movement of political claims was created in the name of national identity, each nation endeavoring to discover a most brilliant past. The Slavic peoples and the Hungarians were discovering a glorious past in the Medieval Age, when they met periods of political advance (Mureúan: 225). The Transylvanian Romanians investigated their past in the Antiquity, an epoch that comprised glorious moments of their Dacian, but mostly their Latin origin. At the middle of the nineteenth century, in Transylvania, then a province of the Habsburg Empire, almost every nation had its own national project, which the elites tried to apply. Taking into consideration the belonging of the Crown of St. Stephen’s territories to the Habsburg Empire as a consequence of the dynastic union on March 15, 1848, the remaking of the Hungarian state within the borders of the previous medieval kingdom was proclaimed. Subsequently, Transylvania was annexed to Hungary. The Romanians, who represented ethnically the majority element in Transylvania, opposed it and joined Vienna in the war with the Hungarians. To the Romanians, the preferred solution in 1848 was de-federalization of the empire. Undoubtedly, the moment of 1848 demonstrated the destabilizing potential of the birth of nations (Chereji 2004, 54). After the revolution, a neo-absolutist regime was installed in the Habsburg Empire, which lasted until 1860. After the defeats suffered by Austria in the war with Piemont and France, fearing an alliance of the Hungarians with France, which could have led to Hungary’s independence, Vienna gave up the absolutist regime of government in favor of a liberal regime. The Imperial Diploma of October 8/20, 1860 announced the transition to a constitutional system of government, and the Imperial Patent of February 14/26, 1861 preconized the restoration of the autonomy of the countries and provinces that had a state tradition in concordance with the principle of the historical federalism (Bérenger 2000, 428; Taylor 2000, 89–90). The autonomy of the Great Principality of Transylvania was thus recognized. The Hungarian political class rejected Vienna’s political project, boycotting the representation of Hungary in the Imperial Senate (Reichsrat), which comprised the representatives of the empire’s provinces. In 1863, the

Giordano Altarozzi and Cornel Sigmirean

245

German newspaper Wiener Zeitung published the imperial Rescript for the convocation of Transylvania’s Diet and the electoral norms of its convocation. Following the elections, forty-eight Romanian, forty-four Hungarian and thirty-three Saxon deputies were chosen (Hitchins 1999, 74). Upon its convocation in Sibiu on July 3/15, the Hungarian deputies refused to participate, considering that the Diet was illegal and that the laws of 1848 should have been applied, which stipulated the union of Transylvania with Hungary. Nevertheless, the Diet of Sibiu inaugurated the Romanians’ presence in Transylvania’s political life (Pop, Nägler, and Magyari 2008, 413–16). Two laws voted by the Diet of Sibiu—the law for the equal justice for the Romanian nation and its confessions and the law for the introduction of the Romanian language in administration—granted for the first time to the Romanians the equality of rights with the other nations of Transylvania. It was in fact the victory of Herder’s principle, which considered language as a major factor of a nation’s identity. Being a uniting means for the members of a nation, it represented the condition for their educational and cultural progress. Then Austria’s military defeat occurred in the war with Prussia, which transformed the Hungarians into Vienna’s privileged interlocutors (Bérenger 2000, 430). The 1866 military failure led to the creation of Austro-Hungary through the coronation of the emperor as king of Hungary on June 8, 1867. Thus, the Austro-Hungarian dualism was born, leading to the restoration of Great Hungary with more than thirteen million inhabitants, out of whom nearly seven million were non-Hungarians. Transylvania, Slovakia, Vojvodina, Carpathian Ruthenia and Croatia entered under the authority of Buda-Pest. The laws voted by the Diet of Transylvania in 1863–64 were annulled and Transylvania lost its autonomy. The Ausgleich created in the Danubian Empire two privileged, dominant nations, which led the state affairs, while the other nations were destined to have a secondary role, politically insignificant. The House of Habsburg did not represent anymore a protector of the little nations, which brought about the radicalization of the discourse in the direction of separation and creation of their own states in the period that followed the installation of Dualism. The Romanians of Transylvania promoted the idea of the province’s autonomy. As a reaction to the consecration of Dualism, they submitted a written statement, Pronunciamentul de la Blaj (The Pronouncement of Blaj), a political document adopted on May 3/15, 1868 at the Comemorative meeting of the 1848 Revolution, by which they rejected the political act granting the creation of dualism and required the autonomy of

246 The National Question in Transylvania in the Period Around the Ausgleich

Transylvania (PăcăĠian 1928). The signees of the document and the editors of the newspapers Gazeta Transilvaniei and FederaĠiunea were investigated and were brought to a political law suit. By the emperor’s intervention the penal suit was ceased, with the exception of Alexandru Roman, convicted to one year of jail. The Pronouncement had an ample echo in Transylvania’s public opinion and press and in the parliament of Budapest too, demonstrating that the national problem represented at that time the priority of Romanians’ political life, as for all the empire’s nationalities. In this document, Romanians enounce their political targets: maintenance of political autonomy of Transylvania, based on Leopoldin Diplomas and Pragmatic Sanctions; restoration of laws adopted by Sibiu’s Diet, recognizing Romanians as a nation of the monarchy, with identical rights as the other ones; the reopening of the Transylvanian Diet on the basis of a real popular representation (PăcăĠian 1906, 354–55). Politically, the Romanians from Austro-Hungary were divided into two political directions, passivism and activism, but, nevertheless, both tactics rejected Dualism as a political formula. The Ausgleich radicalized the Central European nationalism, finally proving that it was a solution that rather undermined the empire instead of consolidating it and made the reformation of the Habsburg Empire impossible. The Transylvanian press, an important vector in the nation’s construction in the second half of the nineteenth century, represents a significant source in the reconstitution of the Central European nationalist evolution in the period that followed the installation of Dualism.

Bibliography Bérenger, Jean. 2000. Istoria imperiului Habsburgilor. 1273-1918. Bucharest: Universitas. Chereji, Christian Radu. 2004. IdentităĠi ale Europei Centrale. 1815-2000. Cluj-Napoca: Accent Fortis, Alberto. 1774. Viaggio in Dalmazia dell’abate Alberto Fortis. Venice: Alvise Milocco. Hitchins, Keith. 1999. A Nation Affirmed: The Romanian National Movement in Transylvania 1860–1914. Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House Mureúan, Camil. În templul lui Janus. Studii úi gânduri despre trecut úi viitor.http://www.historycluj.ro/Istorie/cercet/Muresanu/In%20templul %20lui%20Janus.pdf Neumann, Victor. 1997. “Mitteleuropa între cosmopolitismul austriac úi conceptul de stat-naĠiune.” In Europa centrală. Nevroze, dileme, utopii,

Giordano Altarozzi and Cornel Sigmirean

247

edited by Adriana BabeĠi and Cornel Ungureanu, 144–57. Iaúi: Editura Polirom. PăcăĠian, Teodor V. 1906. Cartea de aur sau Luptele politice-naĠionale ale românilor de sub Coroana ungară, vol. IV. Sibiu: Tipografia Henric Meltzer —. 1928. “Pronunciamentul din Blaj.” Transilvania 59,1:26–37. http:// documente.bcucluj.ro/web/bibdigit/periodice/transilvania/1928/BCUC LUJ_FP_279996_1928_059_001.pdf. Pop, Ioan-Aurel, Thomas Nägler, and András Magyari, eds. 2008. Istoria Transilvaniei. Vol. III. De la 1711 până la 1918. Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane Sieyès, Emmanuel. 1888. Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? Paris: Au siège de la société. Tamborra, Angelo. 1971. L’Europa centro-orientale nei secoli XIX-XX (1800-1920). Milan: Vallardi Commissionaria Editoriale. Taylor, Alan John Percivale. 2000. Monarhia habsburgică, 1809-1918. O istorie a Imperiului austriac úi a Austro-Ungariei. Bucharest: Allfa.

FROM PROTEST PETITIONS TO PARLIAMENTARY ACTION: THE ATTITUDE OF THE LEADERSHIP OF THE NATIONALITIES IN HUNGARY IN REGARDS TO THE MINISTER ÁGOSTON TREFORT’S MAGYARIZATION POLICY1 OVIDIU EMIL IUDEAN AND OANA VALENTINA SORESCU Despite the fact that more ample subjects of Magyarization through education and Minister Agoston Trefort’s projects have been discussed by other Romanian historians, these approaches have not attempted to offer a comprehensive treatment of the way in which the lay leaders of the nationalities reacted to these issues. This paper focuses on the reactions of the Romanian representatives in the Budapest parliament. The activity of the lay political elite has been relegated to the periphery or even ignored in the previous studies that have discussed the attitude of the high clerics of the two Romanian churches in Hungary. The signing of the Ausgleich in 1867 brought about significant changes in the political life of the Romanians in Hungary. During the dualist period, an increasing number of lay political leaders came to the fore, who, in cooperation with the clerical elite, directed their activity towards obtaining and defending the rights of the Romanian nation. This study aims precisely to identify the evolution from a traditional political representation to an essentially modern one. From this perspective, the option of the Romanian political elite in Hungary to blend the older tactic of writing petitions with the more novel notion of parliamentary activity, which was more adequate to the political realities of the time, may be characterized as especially relevant. The reaction to 1

This paper was supported by CNCS—UEFISCDI through the research project PN—II—PCE—2011—3—0040.

Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu

249

the Minister Ágoston Trefort’s educational laws constituted the first moment when these transformations became visible. The leaders of the two Romanian churches and the parliamentary representatives collaborated in order to counteract some of the provisions from the laws of 1879 and 1883, which they had assessed as contrary to the interests of the Romanian nation. The tactic of writing petitions (also known as petitionalism in Romanian historiography) had been used by the leaders of the Romanian nation since the eighteenth century. It remained the main type of political action for the Romanians in the Austrian Empire throughout the constitutional period (Hitchins 1999, 28–77). During the dualist period, the role of the lay elite increased constantly owing to the activity of Romanian representatives in the Budapest parliament. Despite their common goal—that of contributing to the development of the Romanian nation—they were divided by their respective political orientation. Some adhered to the national program, while others believed it was more opportune to collaborate with the Hungarian political parties. Even these two orientations were further subdivided on account of divergent opinions. While the political leaders who had a national orientation were divided between activism and passivism, the members of the second category were inclined to give their support either to the opposition Hungarian parties, or to the governing political organization (Iudean 2012, 858–87). Taking these multiple divisions into account, it will be interesting to note the way in which different representatives chose to act when the Romanians’ national interests were threatened. During the second part of the nineteenth century, the Dual Monarchy experienced an accelerated process of modernization. One of its effects was the increased laicization of society. Within this context, but also wishing to align themselves with Western European tendencies, the Budapest governments became increasingly involved in the educational process (Brusanowski 2010, 294–95, 310–14). Thus, the church’s traditional predominant role in schooling and education (at the beginning of the dualist period approximately 80 percent of the schools in Hungary were ecclesiastically supported) was increasingly rivaled by the state’s interests. As a result, the education of new generations represented a key element in the attempt to exert control over society, a task, which had become desirable to the Hungarian governments (Sularea 2008, 123–88). The ethnic and confessional realities in Hungary—and especially those in Transylvania and the Banat region—transformed the dispute between the church and the state into a nationally-charged argument. The Romanians, who made up the majority of the population in both regions,

250

From Protest Petitions to Parliamentary Action

regarded the government’s intentions to become more deeply involved in confessional education as a grave threat to their ecclesiastical autonomy. Their attitude was easily understandable if one takes into account the fact that both the Greek-Orthodox and the Greek-Catholic churches were the only institutions which had their own Romanian organization. The Budapest governments’ educational projects were seen as Magyarization policies, which would have affected the other nationalities in Transleithania. Although deconfessionalization and the laicization of education were in accordance with the European Zeitgeist, and the confessional education was relatively archaic, the nationalities could not regard the state’s modernizing role favorably. This attitude was caused by the excessive subordination of this role to the process of Magyarization, seen, after 1875, as an essential factor in the existence and development of Greater Hungary (Szasz 2002, 650–51). Once the Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza assumed leadership of the government (1875–90), the educational policies of the Hungarian governments were characterized by a perpetual tendency towards Magyarization. Tisza aimed to integrate all of the nationalities in Transleithania into a single nation, the Hungarian one, through a series of educational and cultural measures. The first measures that helped to further this aim were the laws drafted when the minister for religion and education was Ágoston Trefort (1872–88) (Katus 2008, 123–25, 449–55). This study will concern two of Trefort’s legislative accomplishments, namely the Law regarding the introduction of Hungarian in primary schools (1879) and the Law regarding secondary schools (1883). The first aspect which can be noted is the quantitative discrepancy between the two laws. The 1879 law was limited to only eight articles, while the latter piece of legislation included over seventy articles, which concerned different aspects of the educational problem. This discrepancy was decisive in determining the attitude of the Romanian leaders towards the two laws. While the first law was contested in its entirety, in the case of the second only certain articles were opposed. The purpose of the first law was to introduce the Hungarian language as a subject in all primary schools, both those supported by the state and those that benefitted from ecclesiastical support. In addition, the law’s provisions maintained the fact that the study of Hungarian was mandatory both for graduates in the science of pedagogy and for teachers who were already employed in primary schools on Hungarian territory (Puttkamer 2003, 187–209). As far as the second law is concerned, we will only present some of its numerous provisions, namely those that sparked the discontent of the

Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu

251

nationalities in Hungary (especially that of the Romanians, the Transylvanian Saxons and the Serbs): firstly, the introduction of the study of the Hungarian language and Hungarian literature in all the eight levels of secondary education; secondly, the introduction of the abovementioned subject as a compulsory subject in the final examination at the end of the secondary level of education; thirdly, the increased involvement of the Ministry for Religion and Education in the activity of confessional secondary schools, with regard to the qualification of the teacher body, the final examinations and the school inspections (Puttkamer 2003, 180–86). Both laws passed through both chambers of the Budapest parliament and, through their provisions, caused an ample reaction from the nationalities. We will now refer to the reaction of the Romanians in Hungary, and succinctly compare the approaches of the high clerics to those of the parliamentary representatives. Even before the laws reached parliamentary debate, in both cases the Greek-Orthodox and Greek-Catholic metropolitans sent petitions to the Emperor-King Franz Josef and to the Budapest parliament. These petitions not only expressed the necessity of taking a strong position against these measures that affected the Romanians’ interests but were also the result of nation-wide unrest, which had been sparked by the vigorous campaign in the Romanian press. The Greek-Catholic petition was handed to the emperor on January 28/February 9, 1879, by the Metropolitan Ioan Vancea, while the GreekOrthodox one was handed several days later on February 1/13, by the Metropolitan Miron Romanul. Several arguments were used to ground this petition. Firstly, its unpedagogic character: the language was unknown; it was not spoken in the Romanian communities and therefore was difficult to learn to such a degree that it could later be used at an intermediate level. In addition to the fact that the school curriculum was unduly burdened by the introduction of a new subject, the law had a pronounced Magyarizing character: learning Hungarian became compulsory through legislative measures, thus leading to forced Magyarization. Thirdly, the school autonomy of the churches in Hungary was affected, especially in the case of the institutions where nonHungarians were enrolled. This was caused by the provisions regarding teachers, who in four years needed to learn Hungarian to such an extent, that they could afterwards teach it, or risk losing their positions through the action of the competent institutions, subordinated to the Ministry of Religion and Education. Furthermore, the teachers lacked the financial and material means that would have allowed them to study Hungarian, which made this almost impossible. Thus, the Romanian teacher body was

252

From Protest Petitions to Parliamentary Action

extremely affected, which would have led to their replacement by nonRomanians of another confession. This law also significantly threatened and endangered the “ecclesiastical language”—Romanian, which had been recognized by the Holy See in 1853 as the official language for church services in the case of the Greek-Catholic Church (Păcă‫܊‬ian 1910, 708– 19). The emperor promised to take all of the needed measures, but this promise never materialized in the way the Romanians expected. In 1883, both petitions were handed to the Chamber of Representatives in the Budapest parliament. The arguments against the law were as follows: firstly, a significant limitation of educational autonomy for the two churches would take place, because the confessional authorities could no longer qualify secondary school teachers. Teachers who were already employed in secondary schools needed to pass new examinations, and the ministry had the right to appoint teachers for secondary schools. In addition, the possibility of drafting curricula and handbooks was severely limited, and complemented by the excessive involvement of the ministerial inspectors and commissaries in the internal matters of confessional secondary schools. This would have led to the establishment of educational standards that would have easily allowed the Hungarian authorities to close down the confessional secondary schools and to transform them into state-run institutions. Secondly, the Magyarizing character of the law: there was a pronounced danger that Hungarian would soon reach the status of exclusive language of teaching, which would limit the nationalities’ right to benefit from education in their own cultures (Păcă‫܊‬ian 1913, 73–93). In 1879, thirteen Romanian representatives were active in the Budapest parliament. Of these, nine were pro-governmental (on the side of the Liberal Hungarian Party), three were on the side of the opposition, namely the Party of Independence and the Party of Opposition, and one was a national representative, elected from the lists of the Romanian National Party in Banat. In 1883, only nine Romanian representatives were active. Of these, seven were adherents of the Liberal Magyar Party, one was a member of the Moderate Opposition Party, and one was a member of the National Romanian Party (Popovici and Iudean 2011, 127). In 1879, a total of five Romanian representatives—three progovernmental and two members of the opposition—joined the Serb and Saxon representatives who spoke in the session of the Budapest parliament against the law. Although several differences were noticeable, especially in regards to the vehemence with which the provisions of this law were combated—the representatives of the Hungarian opposition were especially vocal in this respect—the discontent and arguments invoked are

Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu

253

strikingly similar. They form several patterns, among which the most important were the limitation of ecclesiastical autonomy; the imminent breakout of dissensions between the nationalities in Hungary, which would make their cohabitation even more difficult. The cohabitation between the Romanians and the Hungarians benefitted both nations, and was especially supported by the pro-governmental faction. Moreover, the support given to the constitutional right to petition (regarding the approach taken by the two churches) and the condemnation of the Hungarian press that had qualified these petitions as unpatriotic and illegal instigated Hungarian public opinion against the Romanians. In addition, the provisions of the law of nationalities from 1868 (which allowed for an entire series of rights, including in the field of education) were neither respected nor applied (Telegraful Român [Sibiu], April 26, 1879; Păcă‫܊‬ian 1910, 746– 815). The law was also heavily criticized from a pedagogic standpoint and seen as lacking applicability. The representatives argued that children would not be able to learn Hungarian to the necessary extent because of low attendance but mostly because they would have no one to practice with outside of school, as they lived in Romanian communities. Furthermore, teachers who already worked in primary education and who did not know Hungarian did not have enough financial means to participate in courses necessary to learn Hungarian. Their social status was a major obstacle, as their low salaries forced them to become involved in agricultural activities, which would have been neglected in the event of attending courses in Hungarian and would have thus reduced their income even further. A counterexample to the efficacy of the law that was brought up was the unsuccessful attempt made by the Austrian authorities to impose the learning of German in the territories of the empire’s former military border (Telegraful Român [Sibiu], June 2, 1879; Păcă‫܊‬ian 1910, 746–815). From a similar perspective, it was argued that the time spent studying Hungarian would have deprived the primary school pupils of gaining more applied and necessary knowledge. Despite these concerns, a great part of the Romanian intelligentsia, who were fluent in the language, accepted the study of Hungarian at a secondary school level. However, the introduction of Hungarian in confessional primary schools was seen as inadequate, as the government did nothing to support these institutions materially. The of lack moderation manifested by the Hungarian political leaders was criticized: they were compared to the generation that came to the fore in the first decade after 1867, when

254

From Protest Petitions to Parliamentary Action

moderate personalities such as Eötvös Józef úi Deák Ferenc assumed leadership. Lastly, the Magyarizing underpinnings of the law were noted by all of the five representatives, implicitly as well as explicitly (Telegraful Român [Sibiu], June 7, 1879; Păcă‫܊‬ian 1910, 746–815). The discontent caused by the law’s provisions, as well as the position taken by the Independence Party’s club caused the resignation of its vicepresident, the Romanian representative George Pop of Basesti (Gazeta Transilvaniei [Braúov], February 27, 1879). In 1883, only three Romanian representatives, all of them progovernmental, spoke in the parliament’s session. Their positions increasingly reflected their political orientation. The first, Alexandru Roman, raised several clearly expressed counterarguments to the law: he contested the composition of the commission that had approved the project—the representatives of the nationalities (Saxons, Serbians and Romanians) who could have opposed this project had been excluded from this committee, as well as those who were part of a confession that the project directly affected (Greek-Catholic, GreekOriental and Lutheran). In addition, he supported the introduction of the study of Hungarian both in the seventh and eighth levels of secondary education and the establishment of this subject as a part of the final examination. While criticizing the excessive involvement of the ministerial authorities in the internal matters of the confessional secondary schools, he emphasized that there was a danger of Magyarization if some of the law’s provisions were put into effect. Moreover, he argued that the great number of Hungarian classes—thirty-one per week—compared to those of Romanian, sixteen per week, was extremely exaggerated (Păcă‫܊‬ian 1913, 99–115). The second representatives, Iosif Gall, had numerous interventions during the debate concerning the change in the formulation of certain articles. His professional background as a lawyer and his political experience led him to attempt to change the details of certain provisions, rather than to condemn the legislative initiative as a whole. He argued for the maintaining of the church’s right to appoint teachers in confessional secondary schools—a proposal that was ultimately accepted by the parliament, and of its right to deal with their pedagogic qualifications. He also supported the subordination of the ecclesiastical and confessional authorities, from an educational perspective, directly to the Ministry for Religion and Education, and not to high-level school inspectors. Moreover, he reasoned that it was necessary to establish clear rules to regulate the conditions wherein a secondary school could be legally closed down by the authorities and the necessity that individual blame should not

Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu

255

reflect on the entire student or teacher body in the event of serious deviations. These two emendations were not accepted by the parliament (Păcă‫܊‬ian 1913, 115–19). The third representative, Ioan Missici, expressed his complete support for the entire project, which he saw as a means to aid in the social, economic and cultural development of the Romanian nation (Telegraful Român [Sibiu], May 22, 1883). Beyond the MPs parliamentary activity and the actions of the high clergy of the two Romanian churches, the law also caused ample street protests in numerous Transylvanian cities where the Romanian population held the majority. Although these came as a natural reaction, caused by profound discontent, the “national agitations” endangered the MPs’ activity. The ever-increasing manifestations brought about the reaction of the radical Hungarian circles. Through the press and the parliamentary representatives, they pressured the government to resist the solicitations of the Romanian MPs. The ensuing situation risked compromising the latter’s previous efforts. As a result, and because of the insistence of the Hungarian central authorities, five Romanian MPs who shared progovernmental views drew up an “Appeal” through which they asked the protesters to renounce their actions. They argued that the concessions they had obtained through parliamentary action—the maintaining of Romanian as a teaching language in Romanian secondary schools, the continued right that teachers be appointed by the appropriate ecclesiastical forums, the limitation of the government representatives’ involvement in the maturity examinations, which somewhat ensured the preservation of confessional autonomy—had been extremely significant and that they were endangered by the continued protests. The Greek-Orthodox metropolitan from Sibiu, Miron Romanul, joined the efforts of the Romanian MPs by drafting circulars containing similar requests and addressed to the parishes in Transylvanian and Banat. The Romanian nationally-inclined press however staunchly criticized both the “Appeal” and the circulars, and argued for continued street protests while condemning the attitude of the signatories of the aforementioned documents (Luminatoriul [Timiúoara], April 14, 1883). It may be stated that there was a pronounced difference in the way the Romanian representatives reacted to the two laws. While in 1879, all of the representatives who expressed themselves in the parliament were against the law, in 1883 there was a greater diversity of opinion: very few vehemently protested, some protested moderately, while others were in favor of the law.

256

From Protest Petitions to Parliamentary Action

The explanation for this fact can be found in the different political orientations of the Romanian representatives during the two parliamentary cycles. While during the 1878–81 cycle there was a greater diversity of political orientations, in the following cycle, from 1881 to 1884, the liberal-governmental current dominated the ranks of the Romanian representatives. In addition, the 1879 law’s more pronounced Magyarizing underpinnings may account for this situation. We must also observe the collaboration between the clerical and the lay elite in regards to the 1879 law, as well as its weakening in 1883. The withdrawal of some of the most experienced and charismatic Romanian political leaders from the Hungarian political after 1881 certainly led to such a situation. The adoption of passivism (the Romanian voters’ boycotting of parliamentary elections) in 1881 was the main factor behind this withdrawal. One thousand eight hundred eighty-one marked the beginning of a new period from the perspective of parliamentary representatives, as the majority was now part of the Hungarian pro-governmental current. This aspect was readily visible in the debate of important laws that were significant to the educational and confessional interests of the Romanian nation, when the higher clerics of the Romanian Churches lacked the support of favorable parliamentary speeches.

Bibliography Primary sources Luminatorul (Timiúoara). 1883 Telegraful Român (Sibiu). 1879, 1883. Gazeta Transilvaniei (Braúov). 1879.

Secondary sources Brusanowski, Paul. 2010. Învaаământul confesional ortodox român din Transilvania între anii 1848-1918. 2. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujenă. Hitchins, Keith. 1999. A Nation Affirmed: the Romanian National Movement in Transylvania 1860–1914. Bucharest: The Encyclopaedic Publishing House. Iudean, Ovidiu. 2012. “Between National Solidarity and Local Interests. The Pro-governmental Political Orientation of the Romanians in Hungary (the End of the 19th Century—the Beginning of the 20th

Ovidiu Emil Iudean and Oana Valentina Sorescu

257

Century).” In Infusing Research and Knowledge in South-East Europe, edited by Konstantinos Bratanis, Dimitris Dranidis, and Pavlos Koktsidis. 858–87. Thessaloniki: South-East European Research Centre. Katus, László. 2008. Hungary in the Dual Monarchy 1867–1914. New York: Columbia University Press. PăcăĠian, Teodor V. 1910. Cartea de Aur sau luptele politice naĠionale ale românilor de sub coroana ungară. 6. Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane. —. 1913. Cartea de Aur sau luptele politice naĠionale ale românilor de sub coroana ungară. 7. Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiecezane. Popovici, Vlad, and Ovidiu Emil Iudean. 2011. “The Elective Representation of the Romanians in the Hungarian Parliament.” Studia Universitatis Petru Maior 11: 121–146. Puttkamer, Joachim von. 2003. Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag. Sularea, Daniel. 2008. úcoală úi societate. ÎnvăЮământul elementar confesional în Episcopia Greco catolică de Gherla (1867–1918). ClujNapoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. Szász, Zoltán. 2002. History of Transylvania. 3. New York: Columbia University Press.

POLITICS AND PARLIAMENTARISM: THE ROMANIAN POLITICAL ELITE FROM TRANSYLVANIA BETWEEN VIENNA AND PEST (1860–1871) ALEXANDRU ONOJESCU The 1860s proved to be an age of hope for the Romanians from Transylvania. If the previous decade (marked by the so-called neoabsolutism) gave the Romanians a chance to hold public offices, the constitutional experiments in 1860–61 registered both the exponential rise of the Romanian civil servants body and a larger freedom to uphold Romanian national and political claims. Whether it was the legislative or executive branch, the Romanian political elite took advantage of every opportunity to demand a political and legal status equal to that of the Hungarians and Saxons, the other resident nations who held the monopoly of power for centuries. We are mostly concerned with the attitude the Romanian political elite had to the various legislative forums held successively in the Great Princedom of Transylvania and in the Kingdom of Hungary between 1863–69: the Diet from Sibiu (1863/64), the Diet from Cluj (1865) and the two Diets from Pest (1865–68, 1869–71). Also, we will try to assess the relation that the same elite had in regard to the two political centers of power directly interested in the fate of Transylvania: Vienna and Pest. As always in the case of the Hapsburg Monarchy, foreign policy failures had strong repercussions in terms of domestic policy. The collapse of the absolutist regime, established immediately after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution of 1848–49, led to the implementation of two constitutional experiments: the October Diploma (October 1860, with a strong federalist character) and the February Patent (February 1861, with a centralistic emphasis). The goal was to find an optimal constitutional mechanism to ensure the internal peace of the empire (Hoensch 1965, 10– 16; Taylor 1965, 95–140). The Viennese attempts did not meet the requirements of the Hungarian political elite who advocated the reinstatement of the so-called April laws

Alexandru Onojescu

259

of 1848. Among these was the law on the unification of Transylvania with Hungary, the main cause of the Romanian uprising in 1848–49 against the Hungarian revolution. Moreover, according to the abovementioned two constitutional provisions, Transylvania was considered a separate selfgoverning entity, with different legislative, executive and judicial institutions. That is why, from the start, the Romanians accepted the Diploma and the Patent. Again, just like in 1848–49, the Romanians rallied to the political principles of Vienna, opposing the Hungarian unionist tendencies. Romanian concerns in regard to the identification of an electoral formula for their benefit in their struggle for fundamental political rights began as early as the first months of the constitutional experiments in Vienna. Using the Romanians as leverage in their fight against Hungarian claims, the Hapsburg Court entitled them with the right to convene a national conference in order to meet and discuss the current political issues.1 The electoral law was one of the main topics of debate: both the retrograde law of 1791 and the Hungarian revolutionary liberal electoral law of 1848 were rejected, the latter mostly because the Romanians did not want to create the impression that they would accept the union. The Romanian proposals were by far more liberal and democratic than those of the Hungarians. First of all, the eight florins electoral tax was abolished and anyone who was aged twenty-four or more and had an urban or rural property, regardless of its financial value; those who practiced a craft, commerce or were factory owners; those who had an annual income of fifty florins; and all of those who practiced liberal professions could become candidates and could be elected in any district, regardless of their permanent residence. According to these ideas, the number of electors in Transylvania should have risen to some hundreds of thousands. The electoral mechanism should have also changed: the vote had to be direct, and acclamation was prohibited. The preservation of the imperative mandate was a step back. Electors had a direct control over their representative and could at any time ask for his dismissal if they felt that their interests were neglected. Later, when the situation required the convening of the Transylvanian Diet, Vasile Ladislau Popp, one of the most important Romanian officials in Vienna, submitted a series of electoral proposals that differed from those in Sibiu. The Diet was to be convened in Sibiu, and the first item on its agenda had to be the political recognition of the Romanian nation. The 1

Protocolulu úedinĠelor conferinĠei naĠionale româneúti Ġinute din 1/13 până în 4/16 ianuariu 1861 la Sibiu sub preúedinĠia a doi Archipăstori româneúti din Transilvania, cu aclusele sale úi cu un comentariu (Braúov, 1861).

260

Politics and Parliamentarism: The Romanian Political Elite

electoral tax of eight florins was preserved, but it included capitation. Also, the representation of MPs was increased, setting a ratio of one to every thirty thousand inhabitants. The authorities in Vienna agreed with Popp’s proposals, more so as the Hungarian Diet was dissolved after its refusal to send its representatives to the Reichsrat (Retegan 2004, 157–59). The refusal of the Hungarian political leaders from Transylvania in charge with the electoral process to call the elections, thus obeying their emperor, resulted in their dismissal. Anyhow, the court itself had its hesitations. Convening a Diet that could have a relative Romanian majority was a hard decision to take. Altogether, even if the Romanian nation had the will and the ambition, it lacked the necessary expertise to take over the reins. Eventually the Transylvanian Diet was convened, but only after the Viennese government made sure that the Romanians will do all their best to send the twenty-six Transylvanian deputies to the Reichsrat. The national conference from Sibiu (1863) voted an address accepting the two constitutional acts of 1860 and 1861. In exchange the Romanian political elite gathered in Sibiu and asked for the recognition of their nation, denominations and language as politically equal to those of the Hungarians and Saxons, and their incorporation in the Transylvanian constitutional establishment.2 The alliance between Vienna and the Romanians made the Diet of 1863/64 possible. It was for the first and last time when the Romanians held enough political power to change their nation’s status. To be sure of its success, the court submitted some provisional electoral regulations, foreshadowed by Popp’s 1861 proposals. The most important innovation was the restriction of the number of royalists. Of the 165 members only 40 were to be appointed by the king, on meritocratic criteria. That was a clear deviation from the historical tradition, by which the Crown subordinated the legislative bodies to its will. It did not mean that Vienna lost control of the legislative process. There were two reasons for that. It was for the first time that the tradition of binding instructions was removed. That meant that the MPs represented the whole body of electors and not just the ones from their constituency. Second, the massive involvement of the Romanian civil servants the court could control indirectly in a more subtle fashion: the bounding oath to the emperor and their financial subordination as bureaucrats were enough to gain a more conciliatory attitude. There were sixty Romanian MPs that participated in the Sibiu Diet, covering 37.5 percent of the total: forty-nine of them were elected and eleven were appointed. Out of the same total 70 percent were civil 2

Protocolulu Congressului natiunei romane din Ardealu, ce s’au tienutu in Sabiiu la 20/8 Prieru 1863. Sibiu, Diocesan Press, 1863.

Alexandru Onojescu

261

servants in different hierarchies. If we only look at the body of the elected MPs the proportion rises to 78 percent.3 A similar trend is also apparent to the Saxons of Transylvania.4 Instead, the Hungarian MPs were mostly landowners and free-lancers. This allowed them to immediately give up their mandates and to implement a passive resistance. The summoning of the legislative body, their electoral involvement and the onset of the legislative process constituted, with small exceptions, a new stage in the political activity for most of the Romanian delegates. Their integration in a political-legislative paradigm implied the possession and exercise of special abilities (debate, argumentation, compromise, and negotiation in addition to legal and administrative expertise), but mostly the ability to prioritize, which worked hand in hand with the possession of political realism. Only part of the Romanian representatives had such an expertise, most of them being high civil servants. Some even participated in the drafting of the official executive projects that were to be discussed by the legislature. The expediency with which some of the Romanian officials wanted to discuss and vote the legislative projects displeased other MPs who thought that various problems had to be thoroughly discussed and voted according to their importance to the Romanian nation. Various press articles on the subject opened the door to controversy. The civil servants were considered to be mostly working for the government instead for the people who elected them. Indeed, their status was ambivalent. That is why it was for the first time that different voices requested the enactment of some of the most important principles of modern parliamentarism: the balance and separation of powers.5 A similar debate took place in the plenum of the Diet when discussing the new electoral law. The issue of the participation of senior officials in the Diet was again raised in consideration to the fact that the legislative body needed more independence in its relation to the Crown. Unfortunately, despite the attractiveness of the principles conveyed, the human resource deficit that the Romanians had could solely be counterbalanced by the bureaucratic component of the national movement. Although the Transylvanian Diet did send its representatives to the Reichsrat as promised, the legislative experience from Sibiu ended at the end of 1864 when, in secret, the negotiations for the Compromise between the emperor and some Hungarian officials had started. 3

Koloszvári nagy naptár 1866—dik évre (Kolozsvár, 1866) 193–97. History of Transylvania. Vol. 3, edited by Szász Zoltán. Boulder, Colo. New York Social Science Monographs. 436. 5 “Inconvenientul în dietă úi conflicte escate în ea,” Concordia, no. 4 (January 13/25, 1–2) and 5 (January 16/28, 1). 4

262

Politics and Parliamentarism: The Romanian Political Elite

One of the essential conditions for the Austro-Hungarian reconciliation was that the Hungarian Diet should summon in its 1848 format, including its representatives from Transylvania. In fact, the April laws eliminated the right of Transylvania to have a legislative body of itself. As a sign of good faith to the Hungarians, the emperor signed a decree (September 13, 1865) by which the Diet from Sibiu was suspended and a new Diet in Cluj was to be assembled. Its sole purpose was to solve the union question between Transylvania and Hungary. The new electoral rules were those from 1791 and 1848, which rescinded the rights of the Romanians as a political nation. The high electoral tax made almost impossible any attempt to participate in the electoral process and win seats in the new Diet. In the case of the Diet of Sibiu the crucial problem, from a Romanian perspective, was not the participation itself. They needed a solid political and juridical performance in order that the new legislation would be the most beneficial for Romanians, but also to maintain a balance between all three inhabitant nations. This was not the case for the Diet of Cluj. The Romanians gradually adopted a passive resistance policy. The political events in Vienna and Pest funneled the Romanians into a lose-lose situation, regardless of their participation in the Diet. Likewise, in Cluj the overwhelming majority of Romanian deputies were civil servants: 74.9 percent of a total of forty-nine.6 Interestingly enough is the activity of some of these officials, all of them being appointed as royalists. Thirteen out of thirty-five did not participate in the legislative process, opting for a subtle passive attitude. By this act, part of the Romanian officials, feeling betrayed by the Austrians, founded, along with freelancers like Ioan RaĠiu and George BariĠiu, the passivist doctrine following the example of the Hungarian political elite in 1863. Anyhow, the Romanians were aware that they did not stand a chance in fighting the Hungarian super-majority of 195 MPs. Likewise it is possible that the thirteen officials chose this attitude in order to demonstrate that they can be trusted by their fellow countrymen. After the events in Sibiu there were strong voices that feared that their actions would favor the new regime (Hitchins Maior 1970, 81–82). Finally, the Romanians reached an agreement regarding their participation in the Cluj Diet. The preliminary national conferences set the text of a Memorandum that was going to be read by the Orthodox Archbishop Andrei ùaguna (PăcăĠian 1905, 845–50). However, the Romanian actions were futile. The Diet of Cluj was actually meant to be more of an Austrian subterfuge in order to buy some time before taking a 6

Protocolulu úi cartea de documente a dietei Marelui Principat Transilvania conchiemată în libera cetate regia Clusiu pe 19–a Novembrie 1865 (Cluj, 1866).

Alexandru Onojescu

263

decision regarding the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. That is why the Hungarians also drafted an address which clearly stated that the Diet of Cluj did not have the legal quality to express itself in regard to the union. To their opinion the question was already solved in 1848. The rescript of December 25, 1865 postponed the Diet of Cluj, and decided that, in conformity with the April laws, Transylvania should send its representatives to the already conveyed Diet of Pest. Again, the electoral process followed the second law of the 1848 Cluj Diet, which again proscribed the Romanian nation. Anew the electoral tax was the biggest in the Hapsburg Empire, and the general criteria were extremely selective. Only those holding a property valued at minimum 300 fl., those earning an annual income of minimum 100 fl., or those who were nobles had the right to vote. The Romanians were faced with two dilemmas: to participate or not to the elections, and, if yes, should they also participate to the legislative process. In both cases the Romanian political elite was confused. The lack of organization led to a situation where every district constituency decided on its own whether to participate or not. There was no clear widely accepted program in order to prohibit or promote the idea of electoral participation. Thus, for the 1866–68 period, the total number of elected Romanians was eighteen, most of which were civil servants. This time, even if the figure was still high (61 percent), their influence was weakened by the uncertainty in regard to their careers due to the AustroHungarian negotiations. No wonder they were among the first who rushed to validate their election, foregoing any specific decision. A relevant example was Ilie Măcelariu, a Romanian official. After several unsuccessful attempts to find a unanimous decision as to how the Romanians should proceed, he finally went to Pest and started his mandate. Măcelariu sincerely believed that he had to be present in the Diet and fight for his nation’s rights. His almost suicidal act, when he started one of his speeches in Romanian, made him extremely popular among the Romanian community. Furthermore, he also defended the most important passivist actions: the December Petition (December 1866), or the Blaj Pronunciamento (May 1868). All these actions brought him his dismissal as a civil servant in 1868 (Suciu 2002). The majority of those elected between 1866 and 1868 eventually accepted to participate at the legislative process of the Pest Diet because of its symbolic status: the emperor was going to take his oath as King of Hungary. An absence to this event would have been considered as an affront to the emperor. Moreover, the monarch was not considered to be responsible for the situation, but the Hungarian political elite, which was

264

Politics and Parliamentarism: The Romanian Political Elite

unwilling to share the power they obtained and the fundamental rights and freedoms they themselves demanded. Anyway, regardless of their decision to participate or not, the Romanians had little chance to change something. On February 17, 1867, the emperor appointed Gyula Andrássy as primeminister of Hungary and accepted to be sworn in as king of Hungary. In June 12, 1867 he signed the Compromise law. As far as Transylvania was regarded, a series of decrees established its new status. On February 17, 1867, the Aulic Chancellery was dissolved, its functions being taken over by the Hungarian government. On April 2, 1867, the same government named Emanuil Péchy as royal commissioner with the purpose of supervising the process of political and institutional integration of Transylvania within the Hungarian Kingdom. Right after the coronation, the emperor signed two other important decrees, dated June 20, 1867. The first disbanded the Diet from Cluj, and the second, annulled the previous legislation of the Sibiu Diet of 1863/64 (PăcăĠian 1906, 856– 58). The fate of the Romanians was sealed. Gradually, the MPs from Transylvania associated with their conationals from the Banat and Eastern Hungary with the hope of having a better chance to straighten the situation. Unfortunately, their efforts did not suffice in order to change the legislation concerning the rights of nationalities or the Union of Transylvania. The Nationalities Law (voted on December 5, 1868), in itself a liberal law, granted citizens a number of fundamental rights irrespective of their ethnicity: to use their own language in public institutions, churches, schools; the right of association; but rejected the idea of nationality as a criterion for holding public offices (Hitchins 2000, 88). However, it was not enough, because it did not recognize the existence of other nationalities, except the Hungarian one. Furthermore, the provisions of the law were not respected at all, mostly after the rise of Kálmán Tizsa’s government (1875). In the case of the Union law, the results were similar, even if the Romanian MPs showed a lot of solidarity. Eighteen of them signed a proposal that asked the Hungarian parliament to respect Transylvania’s autonomy and to summon a Diet, based on the electoral law voted by the Diet from Sibiu. The proposal was quickly rejected by the majority, the Hungarian political elite being determined to put an end to all debates concerning the matter. The law was adopted on December 7, 1868 (PăcăĠian 1905, 801–42). The failure of the Romanian Transylvanian MPs in the 1866–68 parliamentary cycle to assure a better status for the Romanians in Hungary or for Transylvania as a former state raised some thoughts about what should be done next. Their frustration was manifested mainly by

Alexandru Onojescu

265

reinforcing the passivist current. If for the 1866 elections the Romanians did not reach a collective decision, this time, for the 1869 elections, they were better prepared. The only political path foreseen by the majority of the Romanian political elite was opposition outside the constitutional establishment. All the more, they were encouraged by their co-nationals from the Banat and Eastern Hungary, who supported the passivist trend in Transylvania. Amid this public opinion a national conference was organized in Miercurea (March 1869), which declared passive resistance as the only proper doctrine for the Romanian nation.7 The same conference voted the formation of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania, led by a Central Electoral Committee. Shortly after, it was outlawed by the Hungarian government. Created, employed and promoted by some of the most important Romanian political figures in Transylvania, passivism, with few exceptions, survived as a political and electoral doctrine almost forty years, until 1905, when it was replaced by activism. Unfortunately, then, as in 1865–68, the activity of the Romanian MPs was still very limited in its political goals and consequences.

Bibliography History of Transylvania. Vol. 3, edited by Szász Zoltán. Boulder, Colo. New York Social Science Monographs. Hitchins, Keith. 2000. Afirmarea naĠiunii: miúcarea naĠională românească din Transilvania 1860-1914. Bucharest: Encyclopedic Publishing House. Hitchins, Keith and Liviu Maior. 1970. Corespondenаa lui Ioan Raаiu cu George Bariа 1861-1892. Cluj Napoca: Dacia Publishing House. Hoensch, Jörg K. 1965. A History of Modern Hungary. London: Longman. PăcăĠian, Teodor V. 1905. Cartea de aur sau luptele politice naаionale ale românilor de sub coroana ungară. Vol. 3. Sibiu: Iosif Marschall Press. Taylor, Alan J.P. 1965. The Habsburg Monarchy. 1809–1918. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Retegan, Simion. 2004. ReconstrucĠia politică a Transilvaniei în anii 1861-1863. Cluj-Napoca: Cluj University Press. Suciu, Dumitru. 2002. Miúcarea antidualistă a românilor din Ungaria úi Ilie Măcelariu (1867-1891). Bucharest: Albatros Publishing House.

7 Acte si date despre conferinti’a romana natiunale din Transilvania, tienuta in 7 si 8 martiu 1869 in Opidulu Mercuria, (Pesta: Em. Bartalits Press, 1870).

COMING LATE TO THE PARTY: ROMANIA’S ACCELERATED MODERNIZATION BETWEEN 1859 AND 1916 GABRIEL LATAIANU On January 24, 1859 Colonel Alexandru Ioan Cuza became the Principe of the United Principalities that later would be named Romania. The political union of Wallachia and Moldavia is usually seen as the birth of a new nation-state in Europe but also the start of accelerated modernization. Indeed, Walachia and Moldavia had been gradually connected to the international market by the liberalization of navigation on the Danube (1829). Also, Romanian intellectual elites had been synchronized with the Western European modern liberal ideas even earlier, at the end of the eighteenth century or during the Napoleonic campaigns. Yet the moment of the Union was the initiation of simultaneous and comprehensive reforms as a nation-state project. Prince Cuza and most of the political elite who forged the Union were former 1848 revolutionists. The Forty-Eighters and their followers were perfectly aware of Romania’s status of a backward nation, at the periphery of Europe. They sincerely believed that accelerated modernization—by the internalization of (Western) European economic, political and socio-cultural models— represented the only way to become part of the selected club of modern Europe nations. In 1866 Colonel Cuza was forced to abdicate and a new prince, Carol I of Hohenzollern, came to power. Romania continued on its road towards becoming a full-fledged nation-state gaining independence from the Ottomans in 1877 and becoming a kingdom in 1881. The following decades were a period of relative socioeconomic stability when Romanian elites continued the race to overcome the status of an undeveloped nation at the periphery of Europe. The former Forty-Eighters had a great opportunity to put in practice the ideas and projects they had envisioned in the heat of the 1848 revolutions. The Westernized elite in power since 1859 intended to build up an independent and respected nation and the only way was that of forging a

Gabriel Lataianu

267

modern state and economy. For the next decades the ruling elite emulated the Western institutions, laws and mores, hoping to “burn” the centuries of backwardness. The goal of this paper is to briefly analyze the main Western-inspired modernizing reforms between 1859 and 1914, focusing my attention on the effects that modernization had on agriculture, as the main economic sector during the period under scrutiny. Important changes in agriculture were brought by the agrarian reform of 1864 that banished the corvée. The peasants did not have any work obligation to their local landed aristocracy (called boieri). An important number of peasants gained land, especially from the state reserves, under the condition to pay for it in fifteen years. The modernizing elites sought to create modern, capitalist relationships in agriculture, in which peasants were to become free agricultural workers. Peasants were expected to transform into farmers or workers able to work for themselves or to sell freely their labor to the owners of big properties. A milestone in modernizing Romania is the Constitution of 1866. The supreme law followed the model of Belgian Constitution of 1831, seen as very liberal for that time and appropriate for a middle-range constitutional monarchy. The new constitution guaranteed most of the modern freedoms and rights, set up a constitutional monarchy with a system of “checks and balance,” initiated the rule of law and abolished censorship. The right to vote was guaranteed to men only. More concretely, the electorate was divided in four colleges of electors based on wealth and income, reducing dramatically the political representation of the great majority of the population, the peasantry. The first and the second colleges were comprised of the largest rural proprietors and, respectively, medium-sized estates owners. The third college was formed of urban property-owners and educated citizens and the last one of peasantry and the rest of the population (Janos 1978, 85). To have a real image of the inequality of the vote principle we can have a look at the electoral colleges in 1883. So, in the senate the great bulk of citizens—the peasants—had no representative. In the Chamber of Deputies, 23,584 electors of the first, second and third colleges sent 118 deputies, while the college four (peasantry 80 percent of the population) elected only thirty deputies (Hitchins 1994, 20–21). It is worth mentioning that the big landlords made an efficient lobby and managed to obtain firm guarantees against state expropriations. In the article 19 it is written that “nobody could be expropriated with the exception of public utility reasons and followed by just and foreannounced material recompense.” The propriety becomes “sacred and inviolable” (Iacob 1995, 225). The strict propriety stipulations were

268

Coming Late to the Party: Romania’s Accelerated Modernization

designed to put an end to the state abuses in this field, but the hidden goal was the maximal protection of the large land estates against expropriations. The new constitution created the framework for a modern political system and society, but the decision-makers in Bucharest made also attempts to install firmly the Western-type industrial capitalism on Romanian soil. At the middle of the nineteenth century, the Romanian economy was dominated by large extensive agriculture that, for decades, had participated in the international trade system as a main grain exporter. The ruling elite wanted to conserve the market niche, so investments were oriented towards the modernization of the existing Danube ports and roads. But building the national railway network represented the main challenge in modernizing the infrastructure. By 1875 the main nation-wide rail routes were finished. In 1878 Romania already had 1300 km of railroads that reached 3549 km in 1914 (Iacob 1995, 139). Railway development was the symbol of the nineteenth-century technological advancement but also the most efficient transportation way for Romanian grains to foreign markets and a strategic asset in a potential military conflict. Good business meant also rapid and modern telecommunications. Romania imported Western organizational methods and technology to develop modern postal services, a telegraph network and, later, a telephone communication. To illustrate some progresses in this area, I will mention the telegraph, firstly introduced in 1854, where Romania occupied the fourth place in terms of telegraph posts density per capita in Europe at the turn of the century (Bulei 1990, 46). The phone network developed dramatically too, from 177 phone lines in 1894 to 17979 in 1913 (Iacob 1995, 293). Romanian elites realized that modern industry was the base of economically successful modernization. In 1859 some oil refineries, manufacture workshops and little factories of sugar and other food products, alcohol and beer, paper, glass, carpets functioned especially in rural areas. A Western-like advanced industry was necessary in order to help the modernization of the Romanian state, army, infrastructure and, also, to meet the new consumer demands of the emerging bourgeoisie and rural middle-class. The newly independent country would develop a local and substantial industry that would create a domestic (ethnically Romanian) bourgeoisie and would be financed by the domestic Romanian capital. At the beginning of the 1880s numerous laws and governmental decisions granted subsidies, exceptions from taxes and preferences for Romanian capital in shares packages. Dozens of laws concerning special

Gabriel Lataianu

269

industrial branches were also issued; all these culminating with the general Law of Industry (1887). The legislative effort had to come hand in hand with the financial national support. The National Bank and other smaller Romanian banks were called to finance the industry. Also, liberal decisionmakers applied tariff protectionism in foreign trade to “shelter” the embryonic Romanian industry. The state concentrated its attention on developing those industries that could extract their raw materials in Romania and the best option was the oil industry. If in the middle of the century Romania produced 275 tones of oil yearly, in 1870 the production reached 12,000 tones, 250,000 tones in 1900, and 1,847,875 tones before 1916. In 1857 the first refinery started its activity in Ploiesti. Forty years later (1894) no less than eighty-seven refineries processed the domestic oil, eighty-four of them financed by Romanian capital (Georgescu 1992, 134–35). A strong industry needs modern financial institutions; therefore, the first step was minting the first Romanian coins in 1867. In fact, the national currency was regarded as a sign of national sovereignty, the issuing of Romanian money playing not only the role of guaranteeing a normal market but emphasizing also the Romanians’ national aspiration. The successive governments made efforts to develop state institutions of credit. One by one, Romanian state banks appeared in the market: Savings and Consignments Bank in 1864, Rural Credit Bank in 1873, Urban Credit Bank in 1878. Setting up the National Bank of Romania (1880) represented the coronation of the national financial system. Following the model of the National Bank of Belgium, it functioned as a bank of emissions and also as a commercial bank. In the next decades credit institutions increased in number and capital. As an illustration they rose from 5 in 1880s to 197 in 1913, 40 percent of the capital being shared by foreign (Georgescu 1992, 139). Education system had to be aligned with the Western education system. Following French and German models, Romanian modernizers opened the first modern Romanian universities in Jassy (1860) and Bucharest (1864). A general free education based on the French Enlightenment was instituted in 1864. As well, the Romanian high schools emulated the French lycées with the final goal of educating the future middle level state bureaucrats. It was also necessary to develop a state administration in order to collect the taxes and to implement the state policies. Starting from 1864, to the old ministries—internal affairs, external affairs, war, finance, justice, education, control of public works—new ones were added that reflected the new realities. As an illustration, in 1870 the new Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture emerged, this getting reorganized as the

270

Coming Late to the Party: Romania’s Accelerated Modernization

Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce in the 1880s. The juridical system was extended, consolidated and protected from abusive implication of the executive and legislative powers. In order to have independent courts a special law was issued in 1891. As well, the police and gendarmerie were reorganized as modern institutions based on balanced territorial structure and standardized training. Simultaneously, numerous police officers and army cadets were sent with state scholarship to study abroad. Concerning the state territorial organization, Romania preferred also the French pattern of a centralized state divided in judete (corresponding to the French departments), represented by prefects at the local power level (Boia 2000, 21). This territorial organization with some modifications has persisted until today. The general spirit of modernization reached the Romanian cities, too. Cities grew (true, it was no urban explosion) and rapidly got endowed with modern facilities found in every Western city. New and beautiful state and private buildings emerged almost overnight. Everyday free press, active public debates, public scandals marked urban life in cafes and restaurants, clubs and parks. Banks and libraries, palaces and villas, boulevards and public parks marked the face of Romanian cities. Shops, boutiques, markets made a vivid commerce. Festivals, spectacles, sport contests, exhibitions gathered crowds hungry for high life and Western civilization. However, numerous commentators noticed the big disparities between urban and rural. In 1904 a Romanian senator described the gap between Romanian villages and cities as follows: “In cities we have palaces, in countryside mud-huts; in cities people travel in carriages … on asphalted or stoned street, in villages the mud engulfs half of cart wheels on nonasphalted roads; the cities are electrically illuminated, the rural moonlight is enough … in cities we have cultural establishments and institutions for social care and sanitation, shortly we cherish an Occidental life, whereas in villages it is a such deep backwardness that makes somebody to think he is in another country” (Bulei 1990, 68). The question is why the rural world missed the opportunity of Westernmodeled modernization. Why did not Romanian peasants morph into Western-like agricultural workers or farmers? Obviously the answer is complex, but I will focus my attention on the most important factors explaining the minimal transformation of the Romanian agriculture in the discussed period. Firstly, the 1864 limited agrarian reform eliminated the peasants’ obligation to work on big landowners’ fields, yet they had to accept unjust agreements due to the lack of an alternative. The land was inequitably

Gabriel Lataianu

271

distributed with 70 percent of the arable land being property of large state or private estates, the great majority of the peasants having little or no land possessions (Hurezeanu 1996, 116). Indeed peasants were free on paper, but in real life they were dependent on the big landowners and, increasingly, on their middlemen. The situation became even more desperate with the Law of the Agrarian Contracts of 1866. The law contained serious obligations and sanctions for peasants and many legislative loopholes due to ambiguous and arbitrary stipulations that would be speculated by landowners and middlemen (Iacob 1995, 190). Local authorities and courts got flooded with complaints from peasants, most of them remaining unresolved, a fact that contributed to the accumulation of great frustration in Romanian villages. The limitation of peasants’ economic freedom continued with the Law of Agricultural Relations of 1882 that prohibited “breaking the labor contracts” and ordered the return of fugitive laborers by gendarmerie (Janos 1978, 87). The already difficult situation of the Romanian peasantry became even more hopeless through the development of monopolistic networks of middlemen, mainly of non-Romanian ethnic origin (many Jews, but also Greeks, Armenians, etc.) who were interested in short term higher earnings to recuperate the invested capital and make good profits. An important segment of the grand landowner class became addicted to Western-like high society life, being in a permanent need of increasing income from their properties. For most of them, the production and capital accumulation were unfamiliar practices. For illustration, in 1875, 17.7 percent of imports represented clothes, footwear and leather products coming directly from Western Europe (France especially) (Berindei 1992, 271). These imports appear impressive if we take into consideration that the consumers of these goods were roughly 2–3 percent of the whole population. In the same vein, N. Xenopol calculated that between 1910 and 1914 the Romanian residents spent abroad about 200 million lei. For estimations, this sum represented about 30–50 percent of the value of whole country exports (Axenciuc 2000, 407). An important factor that made the “agrarian question” worse was also the inheritance traditions and the relatively high fertility rate among peasant families. According to old Romanian traditions the land inheritance is divided among all descendents and, therefore, the average land lots became smaller with every generation. On the other hand, despite high attention and investments the urban industry and bureaucracy were unable to counterbalance the rural overpopulation.

272

Coming Late to the Party: Romania’s Accelerated Modernization

The peasantry became highly frustrated also due to the increasing taxation as a solution to the crisis generated by the significant collapse of the international prices for cereals after the 1870s resulted from the competition with the USA, Russia and Argentina. The unjust land distribution, unconstitutional agrarian contracts laws, corrupt local authorities, heavy taxation, lack of other employment options, and greedy middlemen networks constituted the main sources for tow significant peasant uprisings, in 1888 and 1907. The latter one started in Moldavia, engulfed almost the whole province and extended quickly to vast parts of Wallachia. The gendarmerie and the army pacified ruthlessly the revolted peasants. The 1907 uprising ended with 10,000 dead, mostly peasants, thousands incarcerated, and a huge number of properties destroyed. The uprising was a clear signal that under the thin cover of urban modernity a deep and complicated “agrarian question” bubbled unresolved. Six years after the painful 1907 uprising, the National Liberal Party proposed a solution to the “agrarian question”: a universal land reform. For decades the liberals were too weak to challenge the post-1866 status quo. The grand landowners’ interests were defended well by the Conservatory Party and a strong wing of latifundia owners of their own party. Beside this, for decades liberals believed the agriculture is a sort of Cinderella of the socioeconomic development. The grain export had to continue and, if possible, to increase in order to support financially the rapid modernization of the emerging state’s bureaucracy, army, industry and infrastructure. Any change in the agrarian ownership might jeopardize the export of grains, the key factor for cash accumulation. They hoped that the industry and services would absorb the rural overpopulation, yet this did not happen as planned. In 1913, the liberals (mostly non-rural bourgeoisie) were afraid of spreading revolutionary ideas and aware of potential military conflicts in the zone. In the last instance, the national army was basically an army of conscript peasants. No state could face a military conflict with an army of frustrated and angry soldiers (Iacob 1995, 200). The Conservatory Party fought fiercely against any challenge of status quo. The party of the big landowners held the idea that any land reform would mean the fragmentation of agricultural properties that would attract the fall of land productivity and, by extension, international export of grains (Iacob 1995, 200; Berindei 1992, 110). They had a deep interest to keep the peasantry dependent and poor in order to practice extensive agriculture with minimal investment in agricultural machines, irrigations and fertilization.

Gabriel Lataianu

273

Summing up, after almost six decades of rapid Western-modeled accelerated modernization the results were modest. In 1913 still 81 percent of the population was employed in agriculture and only about 3 percent in manufacturing (Janos 1978, 96). Despite the great efforts of industrialization, the “capital stock of industrial enterprises with more than twenty five workers represented only 1.5% of the total capital stock of the country” (Janos 1978, 97). The progress of agriculture was minimal, too. Indeed the production and export of grains increased about six fold between 1878 and 1906 (Janos 1978, 97). However, this increase was based more on the extensive use of labor and the extension of the cultivable area that rose from 19.9 percent to 46.8 percent of the total area of the country (Georgescu 1992, 133). In terms of yields per hectare of wheat and corn remained 30 percent below the European average (Janos 1978, 97). The technological level of agricultural world in 1900 was not so far from that of 1850 (Chirot 1976, 222). Romania’s income per capita represented 50 percent of the average of Western developed nations (Iacob 1995, 146), being placed the lowest in Europe excepting Serbia and Albania (Janos 1978, 97). The above presented data demonstrates that Romania did not escape the European periphery position. Probably Edward Tiryakian was right when he commented on the East Central European modernization in the nineteenth century as one in which “the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak” (Tiryakian 1995, 251). Romania embarked on the road of full modernization, but the pool of options was limited and the challenges were huge for a peripheral underdeveloped new nation. The new country had to build up at once a national bureaucracy and army, to modernize the society, and to develop state-of-the-art infrastructure and industry with the state as the main agent of modernization. Moreover, this huge project had to be financially supported by agriculture, the only viable source of cash flow (Iacob 1995, 188; Hurezeanu 1996, 119). Even if villages used to contribute with 80 percent to national export, the rural investments represented less than 20 percent of the state budget (Hurezeanu 1996, 119). It was the luck, but also the curse of Romania to get connected to the international market by its grains. Since 1829 Romania has expanded its arable areas and grain export. Between 1880 and 1914 Romania exported 80 million tones of cereals. For this period, Romania overcame the USA in corn export (Bulei 1990, 61). In 1913 Romania became the fourth world exporter of wheat after Russia, Canada and the USA (Iacob 1995, 146), and this constituting a real success for a relatively small nation. But the overspecialization of export (cereals representing about 80 percent or more of total Romanian exports) and the reliance of the Romanian Western-influenced

274

Coming Late to the Party: Romania’s Accelerated Modernization

modernization project on the cash crops led to a sort of “path dependency.” The path of huge grain exports forced a status quo in the agrarian relations of ownership and productions. No important political force was audacious enough to come with any type of social reform that could endanger the “milky cow” role of agriculture in the accelerated modernization. Even though some liberals acknowledged the fact that the Law of Agrarian Contracts was unfair or that land reform was badly needed, any attempt of change was a lost cause from the very beginning. A close analysis of the production patterns in the Romanian agriculture of the second half of the nineteenth century shows that this country stayed in business because it had a comparative advantage in fertile land and in cheap labor force on the global market. The latter one seems to fit to the contemporary times. Romania was able to stay in textile business in the 1990s due to its inexpensive working force. Finally, the international business and capital left Romania for even cheaper labor areas of Moldova or Morocco. Certainly, some Chinese leaders see the level of exploitation in most of Chinese manufacturing sector, but any type of improvement in the labor relations may attract the flee of Western capital to neighboring Vietnam. For the latecomers to a party there are not too many goodies left.

Bibliography Axenciuc, Victor. 2000. Introducere in Istoria economica a Romaniei: Epoca moderna si contemporana. Bucharest: Editura Fundatiei “Romania de Maine.” Berindei, Dan. 1992. Societatea romaneasca in vremea lui Carol I (18661876). Bucharest: Editura Militara. Boia, Lucian. 2000. Istorie si mit in constiinta romaneasca. Bucharest: Humanitas. Bulei, Ion. 1990. Atunci cand veacul se nastea. Bucharest: Editura Eminescu. Chirot, Daniel. 1976 Social Change in a Peripheral Society. The Creation of a Balkan Society. New York: Academic Press. —. 1989. The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Georgescu, Vlad. 1992. Istoria Romanilor. Bucharest: Humanitas. Hitchins, Keith. 1994. Rumania: 1866–1947. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hurezeanu, Damian. 1996. Tranzitii in modernitate. Bucharest: Editura ALL. Iacob, Gheorghe. 1995. Modernizare-europenism. Iasi: Editura Universitatii din Iasi.

Gabriel Lataianu

275

Janos, Andrew. 1978. “Modernization and decay in historical perspective: The case of Romania.” In Social Change in Romania 1860–1940: A debate on Development in a European Nation, edited by Jowitt, Kenneth, 72–116. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies University of California. Ornea, Zigu. 1996. Anii treizeci. Extrema Dreapta romaneasca. Bucharest: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, Bucuresti. Stoianovich, Traian. 1975. Balkan Worlds the First and Last Europe. London: Penguin. Tiryakian, Edward. 1991. “Modernization. Exhumetur in Pace.” International Sociology 6–2:165–80.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE GREAT WAR: ROOTS AND CONSEQUENCES GERMANY’S NEXT WAR: ASSUMPTIONS AND MILITARY STRATEGIES OF THE GERMAN ARMY IN 1905 ROBERTO SCIARRONE The Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the following alliances between the major European states gave way to a long period of peace that ended with the Balkan Wars and the First World War. The turn between the two centuries was marked by multiple, unique and changing factors. The German Empire, at the beginning the promoter and the core of balance in the mainland, was in the early years of the twentieth century crushed under the weight of its own economic growth. It emerged from the Bismarckian isolation eager to compete with the major actors to pursue a policy of power that was dragging Europe into war. The information reported here comes from a study made in December 1905 about the military policy of the German Empire and the Third Republic of France. The documents are stored at AUSSME (Historical Archive of Army General Staff), fund G22, box n. 20, among files named “Military Literature” (117–22), and were sent to the chief of Eastern exchequer, Colonel Annibale Gastaldello, between 1905 and 1913. Possible conflicts and German strategies concerning the French “enemy” and its revanchism (Chabod 1951)1 were not rare topics in the writings of some of the most

1

Revanchism was the political state of mind widespread in France of the Third Republic, which asserted a fast revenge (revanche) on Germany, which took the territories of Alsace and Lorraine with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A leading

278

Germany’s Next War: Assumptions and Military Strategies

influential observers of the time and in the European press. The way Otto von Bismarck led the foreign policy of Germany (Breuilly 2004, 56–78) secured a long period of peace and balance, reshaping the old model of the concert of Europe (born in 1815 during the Congress of Vienna [Percivale Taylor 1955]). After the Russo-Turkish war, the Congress of Berlin (1878), sponsored by Austria-Hungary to amend the Treaty of Peace of San Stefano, enhanced Germany’s role as the negotiator between the major European powers (Giordano 2008, 17–155). The congress halted the full independence and limited the territorial gains of Bulgaria, a Russian satellite, established the Austrian administration in Bosnia-Herzegovina and confirmed the independence of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. The German Empire, as mentioned, increased its diplomatic prestige but worsened its relations with Russia, not at all satisfied with the negotiations. The Ottoman Empire, while losing large territories, limited its damage compared to the former peace treaty. Bismarck assured “the longest period of peace in which the old continent had enjoyed since the dawn of the modern age” (Giardina 2009, 229), even though the crisis moved to the East of the continent, with growing tensions concerning the “Balkan question.” Some of the harshest aspects of the Bismarckian policy and his failure in his attempt to conciliate Austrians and Russians led to the fall of the chancellor. The Dual Alliance, a defensive military pact signed in 1879 in Vienna by Germany and Austria-Hungary, was motivated by the danger of a Russian attack on the two empires (May 1968). It was the first permanent agreement concluded during the time of peace between two Great Powers since the end of the ancien régime. On June 18, 1881, the Alliance of the Three Emperors tied William I of Germany to Alexander III of Russia and Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. The pact, of defensive type, in the intentions of Chancellor Bismarck had to establish clear Austro-Hungarian and Russian spheres of influence in the Balkans. The alliance remained in force until 1887. In November 1881, the French prime minister, Léon Gambetta, started negotiations with the Russian Empire and Great Britain. A few months later (February 1882), Bismarck urged the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Gustav Kalnoky to resume negotiations with the Kingdom of Italy, apparently worried about possible understandings between France and Italy (Minniti 1983). The following May, the Triple Alliance was signed that would survive for over thirty years; it was a diplomatic masterpiece of Bismarck (Salvemini 1970; Salvatorelli 1939). The agreement assured aid by exponent of revanchism was Georges Boulanger, general and minister of war in 1886.

Roberto Sciarrone

279

Germany and Austria-Hungary to Italy in the case it was attacked by France and the neutrality of the other two states in the case if one of the contracting powers fought a war with the other ones (Petrignani 1987, 271–305). The continent began to split into two large blocks. New alliances brought the French Third Republic and Great Britain in 1904 to sign the Entente cordiale that, in addition to solving the conflicts of the two ancient rivals in colonial Africa, represented the end of French diplomatic isolation that had been achieved by Bismarck since 1871. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the relations between the European powers were characterized by contrasts between the two blocks: on the one hand the two Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), plus the Kingdom of Italy, united by the Triple Alliance; on the other, Russia, France and Great Britain. The tensions between the two blocks reflected the issues of balance and worldwide competition among the imperialist powers (Mazzetti 1974). The study of 1905 examined here was written by the lieutenant colonel of the German Army, Baron Ottomar von der Osten-Sacken-Rhein. It was published in Berlin with the title Deutschlands nächster Krieg (Germany’s next war). The purpose of this study was to spread in the German press the idea that Germany had the absolute need to increase the units of its army and navy in order to be able, if needed, to cope successfully at the same time with France and Russia, relying only on its own strength. The contemporary formulation of the “Schlieffen Plan” indicates that the author wanted to calculate its pros and cons in the light of the European political reality (Minniti 2003). It is interesting to note that, in recent years, European historiography has reopened the debate on the “Schlieffen Plan.” Authors such as T. Zuber (2009) in The Schlieffen plan reconsidered and L.C.F. Turner (1967) in The significance of the Schlieffen plan have shed new light on the German strategic plans at the dawn of the First World War. In Italy, the historian Fortunato Minniti in his essay Why Italy has not had a Schlieffen Plan tried to stimulate the continental historiography comparing the Italian strategic plans and the best-known German ones. In the report, Osten-Sacken-Rhein believed, with ostentatious security, that the Kingdom of Italy would not be faithful to the Triple Alliance and would shift, in all probability, to the enemy bloc.2 According to the author, peace was going to be maintained considering the possible consequences of a conflict that would occur on a continental scale, remembering that on June 30, 1870 the French prime minister at the time, Émile Ollivier, 2

AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, Deutschlands nächster Krieg “La prossima guerra della Germania.” 1.

280

Germany’s Next War: Assumptions and Military Strategies

declared that peace in Europe had never been so safe and that nothing could threaten it. The German lieutenant colonel articulated his analysis on the assumption that the governments were no longer able to decide on the question of “war or peace.” Disputes between the states were manifested especially in the economic sphere and were ready to flow on the battlefield. The constant development of commercial interests of the European countries forced all the powers of the time to adopt strict protectionist policies. Germany, however, according to Von der OstenSacken-Rhein, from an agricultural country was transformed, in a short period of time, into an industrial country. This change demanded its more active role in foreign policy, and since it was based on force, a great fleet: “How can we engage in the world trade, if we are not in a position to protect it? Do not forget that 2/3 of our import and export, representing an annual value in the complex of eleven billion, pass the seas.”3 According to the study, the main competitors with the German Empire for supremacy in the seas were England and the United States of America, not to mention Japan that was starting to assume a strong position in the Asian markets. Hence there was a growing animosity of Germany against these powers, aggravated by the attitude of the international press, which discussed possible scenarios of war against England or the United States.4 The analysis, however, excludes war scenarios with the major trading powers of the time. England and the United States will not choose weapons to counter the rise of the German commercial empire. Another factor considered is the mutual rivalry between England and the United States. Daringly, the author hypothesizes a conflict.5 In his opinion the two actual enemies are France and Russia: “They wait only the occasion to attack us. So every war by sea would mean a war on the ground and the decision would be sought in this. Even the greatest naval victory would not save Germany from ruin, if we are defeated on the ground. The current importance of Germany is always in the continent. But what makes France and Russia our enemies?” (Biagini 2012). The Russian Empire, continued the colonel, used against Japan only a part of its forces and was able to fight simultaneously, even if unwillingly, on different fronts. The colonel argues that in the Russian Empire, due to Bismarck’s behavior in 1878, the opinion that only the defeat of Germany could open the gates of Constantinople to the tsar was widespread. The author is firmly convinced that Russia hated Germany as much as France and maybe more, and because of its enormous size and its 128 million inhabitants he considers it 3

AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, cit., 5. AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, 6. 5 AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, 6. 4

Roberto Sciarrone

281

an extremely dangerous opponent: “Capable of stepping on anyone on its path.”6 The Franco-Russian friendship worried the German press and also in the study there are constant references to the Treaty of Frankfurt, which gave to the new German Empire the territories of Alsace and Lorraine (Wawro 2003). The hypothetical “duplex” theater of war was well represented by the expression: “The day when you will hear the roar of the cannon at the Western frontier, the dance of weapons to the Eastern border will begin as well.”7 Many people thought that Germany would face a conflict of major proportions in the near future (Paléologue 1934; Feuchtwanger 1989). The Anglo-French agreement, however, was not based only on the common Germanophobia, but it also regulated the colonial issues between the two countries. In the intricate framework of alliances that occurred in those years, we cannot overlook the contemporary collapse of the “sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire (Motta 1998; Shaw 1976). In fact, the consolidation of blocs hastened the crisis of one of the last bastions of the “old world” (Biagini 2002). One last question has still to be considered: would England enter the war to defend the Belgian territory from the German attack? The most obvious danger, the author notes, would be the numerical superiority of the French army and the difficulty to find themselves facing the enemy troops and the French fortifications on the other side. The policy of power, the rearmament, the huge “war machine,” initiated by Alfred von Tirpitz, was leading the empire towards the inevitable epilogue of a continental conflict: “We’ll have to realize that in the future war battles will have an extension until now thought to be impossible, battles in which such imposing armies will face each other for the first time. Even if we pass through the fortifications of the enemy and decisively beat its main forces, the whole work would not be done by all means! History teaches us that France can only be won in Paris, whose seizure will always remain the ultimate goal.”8 Assuming a war on two fronts, the author argues that the Eastern front gives more chances for victory with the support of Austria-Hungary, which, probably, would contain a Russian advance, while on the opposite side, the penetration of the imperial troops in France worried a lot (Sciarrone 2013, 18–70).

6

AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, cit., 20. AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, cit., 21. 8 AUSSME, G22, envelope 20, fasc. 117, cit., 60. 7

282

Germany’s Next War: Assumptions and Military Strategies

Bibliography Primary sources AUSSME, G22, box 20, fasc. 117, Deutschlands nächster Krieg “La prossima guerra della Germania.”

Secondary sources Biagini, Antonello. 2002. Storia della Turchia contemporanea. Milan: Bompiani. —. 2012. La guerra russo-giapponese. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura. Breuilly, John. 2004. La formazione dello Stato nazionale tedesco. 18001871. Bologna: Il Mulino. Chabod, Federico. 1951. Storia della Politica estera italiana dal 1870 al 1896. Bari: Laterza. Feuchtwanger, Edgar Joseph. 1989. Democrazia e Impero, l’Inghilterra fra il 1865 e il 1914. Bologna: Il Mulino. Giardina, Andrea, and Giovanni Sabbatucci. 2009. Storia Contemporanea. L’Ottocento. Bari: Laterza. Giordano, Giancarlo. 2008. Cilindri e feluche. La politica estera dell’Italia dopo l’Unità. Rome: Aracne. May, Arthur J. 1968. The Habsburg Monarchy 1867–1914. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Mazzetti, Massimo. 1974. L’esercito italiano nella triplice alleanza. Aspetti della politica estera italiana (1870-1985). Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. Motta, Giovanna. 1998. I turchi il Mediterraneo e l’Europa. Milan: Franco Angeli. Minniti, Fortunato. 1983. “Politica militare e politica estera nella Triplice Alleanza. Dietro le trattative del 1882.” Memorie storiche e militari 1984:117–187. —. 2003. “Perché l’Italia non ha avuto un piano Schlieffen.” Società Italiana di Storia Militare. Quaderno 1999:46–67. Paléologue, Maurice. 1934. Una svolta decisiva della politica mondiale 1904-1906. Milan: Mondadori. Percivale Taylor, Alan John. 1955. Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman. London: Hamish Hamilton. Petrignani, Rinaldo. 1987. Neutralità e alleanza: le scelte di politica estera dell’Italia dopo l’Unità. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Roberto Sciarrone

283

Salvatorelli, Luigi. 1939. La Triplice Alleanza. Storia diplomatica 18771912. Milan: Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale. Salvemini, Gaetano. 1970. La politica estera italiana dal 1871 al 1915. Milan: Feltrinelli. Sciarrone, Roberto. Strategie militari franco-tedesche a confronto, 19051913. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura. Shaw, Stanford J. 1976. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2. Cambridge: C.U.P. Turner, Leonard, and Charles Frederich. 1967. “The Significance of the Schlieffen Plan.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 13:40–47. Wawro, Geoffrey. 2003. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870–1871. Cambridge: University Press. Zuber, Terence. “The Schlieffen plan reconsidered.” 2009. War in History 3:12–24.

MONTENEGRO IN ITALIAN FOREIGN POLICY DURING THE BALKAN WARS (1912–1913) SLAVKO BURZANOVIû Even though the outbreak of the Balkan War in October 1912 facilitated the establishing of peace between Italy and the Ottoman Empire, it also brought concerns about the change in the Balkans’ status quo to the detriment of Italy and the possibility of it being drawn into plots it was not prepared for. Italy followed with attention the Montenegrin territorial aspirations in northern Albania. Rome’s initial acceptance of the Montenegrin annexation of Shkodra was abandoned after learning that Austria-Hungary would accept it only if Montenegro conceded Lovüen to it. This was perceived in Rome as a threat to its own national interests. When the Montenegrin takeover of Shkodra in spring of 1913 caused a crisis of European proportions, Italy decided to intervene together with Austria-Hungary against Montenegro, rather than to permit a one-sided action on Vienna’s part. Besides the political and the military issues, Italian diplomacy during the Balkan Wars showed interest for the state and the future opportunities of Italian economic ventures in Montenegro. Despite the opposition of the European powers and guided by the principle the Balkans to the Balkan people, in October 1912, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro started a war that crushed the Ottoman military forces in the Balkans, resulting in the establishment of a new political map in this part of Europe. Behind the Montenegrin material and military support to the Albanian insurgents and refugees, as well as to the transboundary Slavic population in the period from 1910 to 1912, there was a desire for territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Both Belgrade and Sofia believed that, alongside Montenegro, Italy was involved in the Albanian insurrections, as well. This was brought in connection with Vittorio Emanuele III’s visit to Cetinje on the occasion of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Montenegro in August 1910, when, supposedly, large amounts of weapons for Albanian insurgents were shipped from Italy (Makiü 1977, 8–11).

Slavko Burzanoviü

285

King Nikola suggested a joint action between Italy and the Balkan peoples only after the break out of the Italo-Turkish War in September 1911, offering that the Montenegrin army enters into Albania (Biagini 1977, 206). Italy refused the offer, unwilling to open the Eastern question and faithful to the promise it had made to its allies on not conducting military operations in the Balkans. By the end of October 1911, King Nikola also addressed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He hinted at the possibility of a military cooperation, not only against the Ottoman Empire, but also against Italy, on the condition that the neighboring monarchy helps him seize northern Albania (Childs 1990, 81). But it was to no avail. Montenegro was not the only Balkan country well disposed for a joint action with Italy against Turks. In March 1912, after the establishment of the Serbian-Bulgarian alliance, there were some indications that the two countries would also form an alliance with Italy (Childs 1990, 81). The Italian rejection of such combinations contributed to the decreasing enthusiasm caused by the Italo-Turkish War (Biagini 1977, 203). During the conversation between Vittorio Emanuele III and German Emperor Wilhelm II on March 24–25, 1912 in Venice, the Italian monarch also mentioned the Montenegrin position in the ongoing Balkan crisis. Influenced by the information on the continuous Russian pressuring of Montenegro to improve its relationship with the Ottoman Empire, Vittorio Emanuele III believed that King Nikola would never do anything to displease the Great Powers (Childs 1990, 128–29). The Italian minister in Cetinje, Squitti, suspected that the Russian advice to Nikola had solely theatrical purposes. However, while the king acted against all instructions, they were never sanctioned by Russia.1 Contemporarily working on the creation of a Balkan alliance, King Nikola offered, as a friendly gesture towards the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman envoy Rustem Bey to intercede in private with Vittorio Emanuele III for the establishment of peace with Italy (Childs 1990, 142). On October 8, 1912, in agreement with its allies, Montenegro was the first to declare war on the Ottoman Empire2 (Ĉurišiü 1960, 77). Rome was not very surprised. A couple of days earlier, the Italian military attachés were given orders in the case of a Balkan war (Biagini 1990, 79). Squitti and other representatives of the Great Powers in Cetinje, after failing to avoid the outbreak of the conflict, kept uselessly insisting on stopping the 1

Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 23 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1878, Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministro degli Affari Esteri (=ASDMAE), Roma. 2 Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 12 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1857, ASDMAE, Roma.

286

Montenegro in Italian Foreign Policy during the Balkan Wars

war operations.3 Day after day, Squitti sent reports to Rome about numerous successes of the Montenegrin army.4 The Italian government received war information also from its ambassador in Vienna, Avarna.5 Even though the war in the Balkans facilitated the peace agreement Italy made with the Ottoman Empire in Ouchy near Lausanne on October 18, 1912, its outbreak did not represent good news for the Italian diplomacy, due to the fact that it opened the complex Eastern question in an unfavorable moment for Italy. The Italian diplomacy was concerned about the possibility that the Austro-Hungarian Empire might participate in the war, displeased by the war success of the Balkan League. Vienna’s objections to the Montenegrin incursion into Sandžak and the conquest of Bijelo Polje influenced both the Italian and the Russian representatives to council King Nikola not to undertake new actions in the same direction.6 The king later complained to Squitti that, following the Italian advice, he missed the opportunity of an easy occupation of Pljevlja.7 Analyzing the political consequences of the establishment of a shared border between Montenegro and Serbia, Squitti was trying to point out the possibility of the annexation of Montenegro into the great Serbian state.8 The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs San Giuliano understood that this could represent a new cause for instability in the region.9 The Montenegrin operations in the Shkodra region from October 1912 to April 1913 confronted the Italian diplomacy with the issue of the town’s 3

Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 9 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1856, ASDMAE, Roma. 4 Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 13 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1853, ASDMAE, Roma; Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 14 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1858, ASDMAE, Roma; Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 16 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1859; Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 17. ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1861, ASDMAE, Roma; Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 17. ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1862, ASDMAE, Roma. 5 Avarna a San Giuliano,Vienna, 14 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1855, ASDMAE, Roma. 6 Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 13 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1853, ASDMAE, Roma; Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 19 ottobre 1912, N. 1865, ASDMAE, Roma. 7 Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne, 25 ottobre 1912, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1872, ASDMAE, Roma. 8 Squitti a San Giuliano, Cettigne 12 gennaio 1913, Londra 324, Montenegro 1913, ASDMAE, Roma. 9 San Giuliano a Avarna, Roma, febraio 1913, Londra 324, Montenegro 1913, ASDMAE, Roma.

Slavko Burzanoviü

287

future. Even though Italy preferred Shkodra to remain part of the future autonomous or independent Albania, at the beginning of the war it would have also accepted the annexation of Shkodra if the Montenegrins had succeeded in capturing it. The interest of other Great Powers for Shkodra’s destiny, however, influenced the evolution of the Italian position. On October 21–23, 1912 in San Rossore, Pisa and Florence, San Giuliano and his Austro-Hungarian colleague Berchtold agreed upon a series of joint and coordinated actions on the localization and termination of the war (Duce 1983, 289–90). The future Albania was seen as a barrier on the Adriatic against the expansion of Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. Italy wanted the territories of the southern Albanian to be as big as possible, in order to separate Greece from Vlorë, while they allowed the possibility for the expansion of Montenegro onto Shkodra, Shëngjin and Lezhë in the north. Vienna, on the other hand, advocated for the greatest possible Albania, as well as for the preservation of the existing border between Albania and Montenegro (Miloševiü 1991, 817–18). In the beginning of November 1912, different attitudes were conveyed to the Italian government from Vienna. The Montenegrin siege of Shkodra was conditioned by the change of the border on Lovüen. San Giuliano thought that Italian public opinion would oppose this change, but that Austro-Hungarian requests also triggered the Italian rights for compensation. He was well prepared to accept in principle the territorial aspects of the matter, although he opposed the formation of special economic ties between Montenegro and Austria-Hungary—another request from Vienna—which would contend the Italian economic interests in Montenegro. San Giuliano advocated that, besides Shkodra, Montenegro also got Shengjin as its port of exportation. He reckoned that the Montenegrin and Serbian governments could reach an agreement on using it together. Both Austria-Hungary and Italy were against the Serbian territorial claims on the Albanian cost. Italian stances on the issue were communicated by San Giuliano in the letter dated November 26, 1912 (Vojvodiü 1970, 29; Duce 1983, 305–306). During the conference of ambassadors in London, which was assembled in order to discuss the results of the Balkan War, Montenegro relied on the support of Italy and Russia for its claims on Shkodra. The former, however, had no such desires and the latter was not able to give support in an efficient manner (Vojvodiü 1970, 33–37). At the beginning of January 1913, San Giuliani gave much thought to the matter of compensation to Austria-Hungary if Shkodra was to be conceded to Montenegro. He thought that the Montenegrin concession of the territory on Lovüen would represent a change in the status quo in the

288

Montenegro in Italian Foreign Policy during the Balkan Wars

Balkans, described in the Article 7 of the Triple Alliance agreement. San Giuliano sent the instructions to London that the main interest of the Italian diplomacy at that moment was to stop the concession of Lovüen to Austria-Hungary, even if that meant denying Shkodra to Montenegro.10 Despite the friendly rhetoric in the communication with the Montenegrin representatives, from that moment on, Italy followed the Austro-Hungarian policy towards Montenegro (Ĉurišiü 1960, 356–57). At the end of January, King Nikola’s attempt to get the support from the Italian monarch for the annexation of Shkodra was unsuccessful (Vojvodiü 1970, 61). By the end of March, the London conference invited Montenegro to stop the siege of Shkodra. An international fleet was directed towards Montenegrin waters (Duce 1983, 319). Italian ships Saint Bon and Ferruccio participated in the naval demonstrations in the bay of Bar at the beginning of April.11 The Italian government was afraid that the Italian hostility would compromise the position of Italian capital in Montenegro, and especially in Bar. According to them, the best way to induce Montenegro to give up Shkodra was to make a different type of concessions. The Russian idea about financial compensations to Montenegro seemed acceptable. Rome suggested to the Viennese government to give an interest-free loan to Montenegro amounting to 10– 12 million francs; Count Berchtold accepted to consider the possibility of financial help, although not in the form of compensation (Vojvodiü 1970, 112–13). Given that Montenegro did not desist under the pressure of the powers, the Italian and Austro-Hungarian diplomacy considered the possibility of a joint military intervention against Montenegro. Giolitti was opposed to both the joint and to the autonomous Austro-Hungarian action. San Giuliano remained reserved, but without rejecting the first option (Vojvodiü 1970, 156). After the Montenegrin siege of Shkodra on April 22, when Austria-Hungary started organizing an autonomous armed intervention, the Italians finally decided to participate. In case of the Austro-Hungarian capture of the Albanian and the Montenegrin territories, they decided to occupy Vlorë. King Nikola was warned that on May 5, the Austro-Hungarian troops would cross the Montenegrin border (Vojvodiü 1970, 176). Montenegro then desisted, conceding Shkodra to international forces. 10

San Giuliano a Imperiali, 3 gennaio 1913, Londra 324, Montenegro, 1913, ASDMAE, Roma. 11 Rinella al Ministro degli affari esteri, Belgrado, 17 aprile 1913, Montenegro, XXI, N. 1915, ASDMAE, Roma.

Slavko Burzanoviü

289

In these events, which in spring 1913 took on the dimensions of a European crisis, Italy had a crucial role. Its decision to participate in the Austro-Hungarian intervention influenced the change in the attitude of the Triple Entente, which then took away all the possibilities of King Nikola to persist in his position. Besides ending the crisis, Italy succeeded to stop an autonomous Austro-Hungarian intervention, all at minimum military and material costs. Italy demonstrated the solidity of its alliances, while, at the same time, emphasizing the existence of its own special interests in south Albania (Vojvodiü 1970, 178).

Bibliography Primary sources Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (ASDMAE).

Secondary sources Biagini, Antonello F. M. 1977. “Simeon Radev, Le nazioni balcaniche e la guerra italo – turca (1911-1912).” Rassegna di Risorgimento, vol. 64, fasc. 2:203–14. —. 1990. L’Italia e le guerre balcaniche. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura. Childs, Timothy W. 1990. Italo-Turkish diplomacy and the war over Libya, 1911–1912. Leiden: Brill. Duce, Alessandro. 1983. L’Albania nei rapporti italo-austriaci 1897-1913. Milan: A. Giufre. Ĉurišiü, Mitar. 1960. Prvi Balkanski rat 1912–1913. (operacija crnogorske vojske). Belgrade: Istorijski Institut JNA. Makiü, Ĉorÿe. 1985. “Srbija i Crna Gora u malisorskoj krizi 1910-1911. godine.” Istorijski zapisi 2:5–35. Miloševiü, Miladin. 1991. “Uspostavljanje meÿudržavne granice izmeÿu Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca i Albanije posle Prvog svetskog rata (1919–1926).” In Stanovništvo slovenskog porijekla u Albaniji. Titograd. 1970. Skadarska kriza, edited by Vojvodiü Mihailo, Belgrade: Titograd Istorijski institut Crne Gore.

THE ITALIAN INTELLIGENTSIA AND ARMED INTERVENTION IN THE GREAT WAR: THE DEBATE ON CULTURAL MAGAZINES LA VOCE, EDIZIONE POLITICA AND L’UNITÀ, PROBLEMI DELLA VITA ITALIANA LORENZO MARMIROLI The present contribution deals with the ideological position on the Italian intervention in the Great War of the magazines La Voce, directed by Prezzolini and then by De Robertis, La Voce, edizione politica, its political edition, directed by Prezzolini, and L’Unità, problemi della vita italiana, directed by Salvemini and, later on, by De Viti de Marco as well. While La Voce is a literary magazine, La Voce, edizione politica and L’Unità are pretty political issues. All the three cultural magazines were in favor of an armed intervention in the conflict against the Central Empires. It is important to point out the role such magazines played in the preparation of the war: according to the kind of items displayed, magazines’ public was formed of university professors and students, school teachers and teachers from the countryside, well-educated members of the Italian middle-class and free thinkers; these social classes played a key-role in the war, forming the largest part of noncommissioned officers in the Italian army, the fundamental connection between privates and professional officers. It seems that the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on June 28, 1914, did not catch much attention on the pages of the magazines. In the issue of July 3 of L’Unità an item appears with the newly-released book La nuova Albania, focusing on the political situation of Albania,1 a usual point of disagreement between Austria-Hungary and Italy. L’Unità of July 10 displays an article about Bosnia and Austria, insisting on the fact that, although the economic conditions of the Balkan country had developed since Austria-Hungary started controlling its 1

Observer. 1914. “La nuova Albania.” L’Unità no. 27, July 3.

Lorenzo Marmiroli

291

territory, the lack of freedom of the people and the growing hatred between the different nationalities would cause severe damage: But Serbian victories of 1912, sharpening Serbian national feeling, disclosed in Bosnia all the grudges that have been piling up during forty years of injustices. Sarajevo’s tragedy and anti-Serbian repressions of these days will render the hatred even more violent.2

L’Unità of July 17 contains an article about the future of Albania in European international policy and the possible choices Italy would soon have to face: Without playing the role of a Cassandra, L’Unità insists in showing some possible developments in actual international situation, in order to show to the Italians, although just as a hypothesis, the part of the imminent story which can be foreseen (and therefore managed and corrected).3

The issue of July 24 is opened with a criticism to the French Socialists’ decision of a general strike against the war. According to L’Unità, although this would be already a great sign of steadfastness, it could not last long: the European working class and the Socialist Party are not ready for a coordinated strike and, moreover, the authors warn against the power of armaments’ lobby. The lack of a concrete goal would sentence the strike to failure and, by taking place only in France, it would leave the country unsafe against a German attack. There is also a second item in the issue of July 31 dealing with the Hungarian policy of de-nationalization of Fiume for the schools, the Chamber of Commerce and the administration. The last issue of July, moreover, deals with an article from the American magazine The Nation about the harm caused by commercial vessels’ capture and ports’ blockade. The first issue of August is very different from the previous: the majority of the articles deal with the 2

D’Acandia G. 1914. “La Bosnia e l’Austria.” L’Unità no. 28, July 10: “Ma le vittorie serbe del 1912, esasperando il sentimento nazionale serbo, hanno fatto venire a galla nella Bosnia tutti i rancori accumulatisi in quarantanni d’ingiustizie. La tragedia di Sarajevo e le repressioni anti-serbe di questi giorni renderanno sempre più violenti gli odi.” Unless otherwise indicated translations are those of the author. 3 SH. 1914. “Cose che posson accadere.” L’Unità no. 29, July 17:“Non per il magro divertimento di far la Cassandra, l’Unità insiste a delineare alcuni possibili svolgimenti dell’attuale situazione internazionale, ma per sottoporre gli italiani, sia pure come ipotesi da lavoro, quella parte che è prevedibile (e che può esser quindi diretta e corretta in tempo) dell’imminente storia.”

292

The Italian Intelligentsia and Armed Intervention in the Great War

outbreak of the war, starting with an item about the “absolute” neutrality chosen by Italian Socialists: After that the conflict escalated from Austria and Serbia to all Europe, the question about Italy’s behavior is so full of complicated, different factors that would be silly to hold it as a simple judgment of responsibility between the two Balkan governments. And, according to the difficulty of such a position, neutrality is definitely the wiser choice. This neutrality, that today is wise, could be tomorrow, after different circumstances, held for crazy or guilty, also from a socialist point of view.4

The biggest issue to solve for Italy facing the war is the Dreibund pact: according to L’Unità, Italy has various reasons for not declaring war in support of the Central Empires, first of all, that Austria itself did not respect the pact by changing the status quo in the Balkans, thus attacking Serbia without any agreement with Italy. And here we are, the declaration of war against Serbia after Sarajevo’s incident, written, as everybody knows, like the Petersburg agreements of 1897 and Mürzsteg, in 1903, without any prior understanding with Italy. And the explanation to this omission should be found, as usual, in the trick of the exclusion of any ‘territorial’ claim. Austria doesn’t pretend from Serbia any ‘territorial’ conquest, which would result in a ‘termination of the contract’ with Italy: only requests the ‘control’ of the railways, the customs, the army, the justice, and Serbian schools as well; it’s not about ‘territorial’ conquests, but just an extension of the ‘sphere of interests.’5

4

L’Unità. 1914. “La neutralità “assoluta”. L’Unità no. 32, August 7: “Specialmente, dopo che il conflitto si è allargato dall’Austria e dalla Serbia a tutta l’Europa, il problema dell’atteggiamento dell’Italia si presenta irto di fattori così terribilmente complessi e contradittori, che sarebbe stolta ingenuità ridurlo tutto a un semplice giudizio di responsabilità fra i due governi balcanici. E data questa difficoltà della nostra posizione, la neutralità è senza dubbio la unica soluzione saggia. Diciamo solo che quella neutralità, che è saggia oggi, può rivelarsi domani, col variar delle circostanze, folle o colpevole, anche dal punto di vista socialista.” 5 Observer. 1914. “I patti della Triplice Alleanza e la questione balcanica.” L’Unità no. 34, August 21: “Ed eccoci ora alla dichiarazione di guerra alla Serbia dopo l’incidente di Serajevo, fatta com’è noto, a somiglianza degli accordi di Pietroburgo del 1897 e di Mürzsteg del 1903, senza alcuna intesa preventiva con l’Italia. E la spiegazione di questa omissione si deve, evidentemente, spiegare, al solito, col trucco della esclusione di ogni pretesa “territoriale”. L’Austria non pretende fare a spese della Serbia nessuna conquista “territoriale”, che rappresenterebbe una “rottura di contratto”, rispetto all’Italia : domanda solo di “controllare” le ferrovie, le dogane. 1’esercito, la giustizia, finanche le scuole della

Lorenzo Marmiroli

293

Facing the war, L’Unità immediately understands the importance of the conflict for Austria-Hungary and its internal stability, foreseeing that “it’s about deciding through weapons if Austro-Hungarian Empire will be strong enough to keep together the eight or nine nationalities that form it.”6 Serbian irredentism is felt as the biggest issue Austria faces, and will face through the war: “[Serbian irredentism] is the biggest problem of contemporary Austria, long since ripe, which now arises and dominates the whole political panorama of the Empire.”7 La Voce, despite the fact that it is a literary magazine, releases an editorial in number 15 on August 13, recognizing the difficulty of the international situation, and Italy’s great task: The settling crisis has begun. While everybody gazes at immediate present and near future, we will see further and higher. The inevitability of all this was clear. … Italy’s task is more difficult than the other’s. … We wish us that it will behave with the greatness of spirit that such a hard task needs.8

On the second issue of August, another editorial explains La Voce’s mind about the war, through various needs and wishes: on the one hand the European war is felt as a palingenesis for Western culture: Cheers to the new world! Will the war give us what many of our generation expected from a revolution? The soul is steadfast in front of the event that takes place, and we cannot question tomorrow. Civilization doesn’t die! It falls back, to jump further. Dives into savagery, to get stronger.9

Serbia ; non si tratta di conquiste “territoriali”, ma solo di una estensione della “sfera d’interessi.” 6 L’Unità. 1914. “L’Austria e la guerra”. Idem: “si tratta di stabilire con le armi se l’impero austro-ungarico avrà ancora la forza di tenere unite le otto o nove nazionalità che lo compongono.” 7 Idem: “[l’irredentismo serbo] è il più grandioso problema dell’Austria contemporanea, maturato già da molto tempo, che sorge adesso intero e domina tutto lo sfondo politico dell’Impero.” 8 La Voce. 1914. “L’ora”. La Voce no. 15, August 13: “La crisi d’assestamento è cominciata.Mentre tutti volgono lo sguardo al presente immediato e al futuro prossimo noi guarderemo più lungi e da l’alto. L’inevitabilità di tutto questo era chiara. […] II compito dell’Italia è più difficile di quello degli altri. […] Ci auguriamo che essa sappia guidarsi con quell’altezza di spirito che è necessaria ad un compito così difficile.” 9 La Voce. 1914. “Facciamo la guerra”. La Voce no. 16, August 28: “Salute al nuovo mondo! Ci darà la guerra quello che molti delle nostre generazioni hanno

294

The Italian Intelligentsia and Armed Intervention in the Great War

On the other hand, La Voce is conscious of Italy’s great future task: it supports the country’s neutrality, just because of the fact that by deciding so, Italian government proved Rome’s independence from Vienna and Berlin: For the moment neutrality has been good, because it stated Italy’s autonomy, the fact that in this conflict Italy has its own interests, interests that are not in common with those that the nations we shall follow have. Autonomy is a country’s first duty.10

The importance of the Great War in history is clearly felt from La Voce, thus seeing the war as fate’s call for Italy, the last war of Risorgimento the country will have to fight for unity: “What shall we tell our sons? That the grandfather fought in 1848. The father fought in 1860. And that we, in 1914, were lounging around.”11 The question of nationality, and how should Italy act regarding it, is the main topic of a letter a reader writes to La Voce in the issue number 19, in October. The magazine answers by defending Italy’s requests towards Trentino and Trieste: 1st some nations still didn’t get to the self-determination principle; for them, slavery under superior people is the best way to get to it; that it is impossible to talk about freedom to someone who doesn’t deserve it. 2nd there are economic and geographical conditions where the selfdetermination principle cannot be followed, just like free elections, like in many places in the Balkans, where nationalities mix and confuse, like in Trieste, where the Italian city couldn’t survive without the Slav hinterland.12

atteso da una rivoluzione? L’animo è calmo di fronte alla totalità del fatto che si compie e non possiamo dubitar del domani. La civiltà non muore! Indietreggia per prendere un nuovo slancio. Si tuffa nella barbarie per rinvigorirsi.” 10 Idem: “Ma intanto la neutralità è stata un bene perchè ha affermato una cosa: l’autonomia dell’Italia, che in questo conflitto l’Italia ha degli interessi propri, degli interessi che non sono quelli delle nazioni alla coda delle quali ci vorrebbero portare. Il primo dovere d’un paese è l’autonomia.” 11 La Voce no. 17, September 13, 1914: “Che diremo ai nostri figli ?Il nonno si è battuto nel 1848. Il padre ha combattuto nel 1860. E noi nel 1914 si stava in panciolle.” 12 La Voce. “La lega dei neutri”. La Voce no. 19, October 13, 1914: “I° che al principio di nazionalità certe nazioni non sono ancora giunte; che per esse la schiavitù sotto un popolo superiore è il grado migliore per giungervi ; che non si può regalare la libertà a chi non ne è degno. 2° che vi sono condizioni geografiche

Lorenzo Marmiroli

295

The issue of national minorities in Trentino, Trieste, Fiume, and even Dalmatia, after a possible successful Italian intervention, is strongly felt in both magazines. For instance, in the issue of October, Prezzolini warns the reader against the mistakes Austria did in its policy towards the minorities: We already pointed out to the difficult problems Italy will have to solve the day it would master Trieste, Istria, Trentino (until Brenner), Fiume—and, like some people would like, Dalmatia until Zara. We think these problems are more difficult to solve than simple military conquest. Which spirit, which moral and intellectual preparation will change into Italian these regions? Will we repeat Austria’s mistakes?13

On the other hand, Prezzolini firmly states his disagreement with Italian irredentist parties: in his opinion, the war is a collective, existential imperative, thus summoning Italy for a greater task than just the annexation of regions felt as “Italian” but under Austrian administration: Everybody believes we are irredentists. Well, I am not irredentist. Now, it’s time to tell that. I am so little irredentist that, if tomorrow Austria would offer us Trento, Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia, in exchange of not declaring war against the Central Empires, I would refuse. … The problem of the war is not the problem of irredentism: it is the problem of Italian freedom. … . Irredentism is a provincial matter. We will meet on our way Trento, Trieste, Fiume, the others. We will take them, if we can, because of these reasons: grant us strong borders … ., get the control of the Adriatic Sea, and, once for all, be done with this irredentism. If you want, I am irredentist as well: in order to abolish irredentism.14

ed economiche alle quali il principio di nazionalità è inapplicabile, e così quello della libera elezione, come in molti luoghi dei Balcani dove le varie razze si intersecano, si mischiano, si addentellano, come a Trieste dove la città italiana senza i dintorni e il retroterra slavo non potrebbe avere vita.” 13 Prezzolini G. 1914. “Il problema di Trieste”. La Voce no. 20, October 28: “Abbiamo accennato ai gravi problemi che l’ Italia dovrà risolvere il giorno che fosse padrona di Trieste, dell’Istria, del Trentino (fino al Brennero), di Fiume – e come alcuni si propongono, della Dalmazia fino a Zara. Crediamo questi problemi più gravi da risolvere della stessa conquista militare. Con quali disposizioni di spirito, con quale preparazione morale e intellettuale, l’Italia si accingerà al compito di italianizzare, di spirito almeno, quelle regioni? Ripeteremo gli errori dell’Austria?” 14 Prezzolini G. 1914. “Non sono irredentista”. La Voce no. 2, December 30: “Tutti credono che siamo irredentisti. Ebbene: io non sono irredentista. E ora, è necessario dirlo. Sono tanto poco irredentista che se domani l’Austria ci offrisse Trento, Trieste, l’Istria e la Dalmazia, a patto di non entrare in guerra contro gli

296

The Italian Intelligentsia and Armed Intervention in the Great War

From the beginning of May, the game seems to be already set. In the issue of May 14 of L’Unità a last, desperate letter is written by a German intellectual, L. Hartmann to Salvemini: the author points out the interests Italy has towards Malta, Corsica and Southern France, even Tunisia, suggesting that, if Italy would declare war against the Allies, these regions could be granted as a reward for its support. But Salvemini roughly rejects this proposal, answering that: As long as people of Corsica will not feel attracted by any unbearable force towards us, the best we can do is to stay home. … Trieste and Istria’s problem is, from the national point of view, an Italian-Slavic problem; from economic point of view, it is also a German problem. Hartmann is perfectly right by stating that a city—Trieste—separated from its hinterland through customs, cannot exist.15

Through the work of La Voce and L’Unità, the Italian reader for the first time opens his eyes on the unknown Balkans, finding out the existence of new people. Salvemini focuses on Trieste and Istria’s problem, stating that: The Italian-Slavic national problem … is an inescapable contrast between cities and countryside, complicated by a different national composition of cities and countryside. Such a problem cannot be solved through a sharp cut.16

imperi centrali, io sarei per rifiutare. … Il problema della guerra non è il problema dell’irredentismo: è il problema della libertà italiana. … . L’ irredentismo è provinciale. Noi incontreremo per strada Trento, Trieste, Fiume, il resto. Ce li prenderemo, se potremo, sopratutto per queste ragioni: garantirci dei confini abbastanza sicuri … , ottenere il dominio sull’Adriatico, e toglier di mezzo una volta per sempre questo problema dell’irredentismo. Se si vuole, sono anche io irredentista : per abolire l’irredentismo.” 15 Hartmann L.M, Salvemini G. 1915. “Ultime discussioni”. L’Unità, no. 20, May 14: “Finché gli abitanti della Corsica non si sentiranno attratti da nessuna forza invincibile verso di noi, è evidente che il meglio che essi e noi si possa fare è di rimanercene ognuno a casa sua. … Il problema di Trieste e dell’Istria è, dal punto di vista nazionale, un problema italo-slavo; dal punto di vista economico è anche problema germanico. L’Hartmann ha perfettamente ragione a ritenere impossibile la esistenza di una città Trieste – divisa con barriere doganali dal suo hinterland.” 16 Idem: “il problema nazionale italo-slavo … si tratta di un contrasto ineluttabile fra città e campagne, che si complica con una diversa composizione nazionale delle città e delle campagne. E’ un problema che non si può risolvere con nessun taglio netto.”

Lorenzo Marmiroli

297

The future Italian policy in the Balkans, its relation with Slavic minorities, the management of the new territories and people are a central issue on all the three magazines. For instance, L’Unità writes that: During its liberation effort, Italy can follow two directions: to try a new compromise with the Slavs, or to change Austrian bureaucracy with an Italian one, in order to oppress … no more Italians, but only Slavs. This is the biggest danger which threatens peace and love for Italy, in case of victory.17

Moreover, the crumbling of the Habsburg Monarchy is already felt as a concrete possibility from the beginning of the conflict: Salvemini, in his article Finis Austriae?18 in L’Unità, deals with the problems of such a multicultural empire. I would stress out that, according to La Voce and L’Unità, Dalmatia has never been a serious issue. L’Unità fights on the pages of the magazine in order to explain that Dalmatia is not a prior target for Italian foreign policy, mostly because of its ethnic composition, warning that ‘only Germany could profit from the Dalmatian campaign.’ In 1915 Prezzolini even writes a pamphlet against Italian Nationalists’ campaign for Dalmatia: the two magazines conduct a policy of friendship with Slavic neighbors, even supporting the idea of a Great Serbia as a third, balancing power on the Adriatic Sea.19

The first issue of La Voce, edizione politica, on May 7, 1915, is dedicated to the future Italian policy in the Balkans, to the ideological battle against protectionism and to the foundation of a British-Italian League, with cultural and financial support purposes. La Voce, edizione politica, while supporting Italy’s war against Austria-Hungary, informs the readers about the Balkan people, with various articles about their history, languages, traditions and possible political solutions to the Balkan question. The final declaration of war is welcomed by all the three magazines: it is felt as a supreme moment for Italy, as the country will be

17

Idem: “In questo sforzo di liberazione l’Italia può seguire due vie: tentare un nuovo compromesso con gli slavi, oppure sostituire alla burocrazia austriaca la burocrazia propria per opprimere austriaco more non più gli italiani ma gli slavi. E’ questo il maggior pericolo, che minacci la pace e l’amore d’Italia, in caso di vittoria.” 18 Salvemini G. 1915. “Finis Austriae?”. L’Unità no. 11, Mar. 12. 19 L’Unità. 1915. “La campagna per la Dalmazia”. L’Unità no. 20, May 14: “La campagna per la Dalmazia non può servire che alla Germania.”

298

The Italian Intelligentsia and Armed Intervention in the Great War

finally united: “Nobody has been cheated about this war, its difficulty, its length, its bitterness: shall this war remain pure till the very end.”20 In conclusion, I might state that the Italian liberal intellectuals in 1915 were well informed about the war, its risks and possibilities; they also knew well the Adriatic territories with Italian national minorities, and were informed about the Slavic world: the ten months Italy enjoyed after the outbreak of the conflict were fundamental in the preparation of the country’s army and minds.

Bibliography VV. AA. Jun. 1914 – Jun. 1915. La Voce. Rome. VV. AA. May 1915. La Voce. Edizione politica. Rome. VV. AA. Jun. 1914 – Jun. 1915. L’Unità. Problemi della vita italiana. Florence. Carpi, Umberto. 2003. La Voce. Letteratura e primato degli intellettuali. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia. Gentili, Sandro, ed. 2010. “La Voce” 1908-2008. Perugia: Morlacchi Editore. Golzio Francesco, and Augusto Guerra, eds. 1962. La cultura italiana del ‘900 attraverso le riviste: L’Unità, La Voce politica (1915). Turin: Einaudi. Scalia, Gianni, ed. 1960. La cultura italiana del ‘900 attraverso le riviste: Lacerba, La Voce (1914-1916). Turin: Einaudi.

20

La Voce. 1915. “Il governo e le notizie”. La Voce, edizione politica no. 3, June 7: “Questa guerra a voler la quale non si ingannò nessuno, né sulle difficoltà né sulla durata, né sull’asprezza, resti pura fino al fondo.”

RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC IDENTITIES IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR MACEDONIA: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE HOLY SEE’S DIPLOMACY FRANCESCA DI GIULIO This paper focuses on the political and religious situation and conflicts in Macedonia during World War I, based on information and interpretation provided by the Holy See’s diplomatic documents and other materials produced by Catholic institutions operating in the country. The Ottoman Empire (Mantran et al. 1999; Shaw 1977) was going through a difficult period as a result of the emergence of ethnic nationalism and the colonial policy of the European powers. The eighteenth century witnessed an escalation of conflicts caused by the unrest among many nationalities in the empire. The Sublime Porte’s response to the growing difficulties met by the imperial machine was an attempt to open up to modernity through comprehensive reform policies, known as the Tanzimat. As a result of the reform enacted in 1839, the subjects were granted greater religious freedom. The Holy See took advantage of the change, launching new missionary activities and expanding the Catholic presence by opening a number of hospitals, schools and other social and cultural institutions. The multireligious and multiethnic Ottoman Empire became an ideal testing ground for the pope’s nineteenth century ambitious policies of a hegemonic approach towards the Eastern Christian communities by supporting the growth of Uniatism and actively pursuing, at the same time, the expansion of the Latin Rite (Motta et al. 1998; Trinchese et al. 2005; Del Zanna 2003). Throughout the century, the Holy See made constant efforts in the direction of dealing directly with the Ottoman government, distancing itself from the policies pursued by the other European powers (especially their colonial ambitions) and trying to carve out spaces of substantial autonomy. The Catholic Church clearly felt that it was necessary to loosen the association with the European powers. Their unwieldy pretences to act as “protectors” of Christian communities were perceived by the Holy See’s

300

Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia

diplomacy as a limitation to the Eastern policy of the papacy. The fundamental strategic tenet of this policy was the strengthening of Catholicism in the East in order to contain the denominational fragmentation of the Christians and to check the growth of Russia’s panSlavic policies. The Russian monarchy had become the main antagonist of the Holy See in the Christian East, following the diminished role and the crisis of the Ecumenic Patriarchate based in the Fanar of Istanbul due to the Greek independence. The Catholic Church did not encourage national projects in the Ottoman Empire because they could irremediably compromise the space of cohabitation, which only a multiconfessional empire could guarantee. For these reasons, Rome showed itself always in favor of maintaining the imperial integrity and was always very cautious towards anti-Islamic and nationalistic enthusiasm (Riccardi 1997; Rumi et al. 1990, 82–120; Pizzo 2008). Pope Benedict XV worried about the situation of Christians in the Middle East and about the influence of the tsarist empire in that area; Russia sought the control of the Turkish Straits in order to secure access to the Aegean Sea. In line with the policy laid down by Pope Leon XIII at the end of the nineteenth century, Pope Benedict created the Congregation of Oriental Churches in 1917 to support his project. During the Great War, the Holy See had neutral political attitude towards the belligerents (Salvatorelli 1937, 7–716; Rochat et al. 1995, 28–60) in order to safeguard the Catholics in the countries involved in the conflict. Pope Benedict XV (Morozzo Della Rocca 1994) deplored the war, but he never said words of moral condemnation against one or the other contender. Thanks to its neutrality, the Holy See was able to help the population hit by the conflict. As a result, the activity of missionaries during the war focused on bringing aid and relief to distraught civilians (Rochat et al. 1995, 61–71). Macedonia, a crucial crossroads in the south of the Balkans (Franzinetti 2010; Fromkin 1992; Gorgeon and Dumont et al. 1997; Mazower 2001; Weibel 2002), was the object of multiple interests expressed by local communities, neighboring states and international powers. The Macedonian question, one of the most sensitive problems in the Balkan region, had kept European diplomacies busy since the Berlin Congress (Hakan Yavuz, Sluglett et al. 2011, 253–69). The Balkan Wars (Biagini 2012), and eventually the Great War, exasperated old rivalries among local communities and precipitated open conflicts between opposing expressions of communitarian nationalism. The ethnic and religious mosaic characterizing Macedonia throughout its history was somewhat confirmed and crystallized by both the Ottoman system of

Francesca Di Giulio

301

millet for the administration of non-Muslims and by the lack of any clearcut ethnic majority. Moreover, the region was the object of nationalistic claims and expansionist ambitions of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria (Braude and Lewis 1980). Worried about the effects of the end of the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries allowed Catholics to live and profess their faith freely, the Holy See asked the apostolic delegate in Constantinople about the situation in Macedonia. The delegate, Monsignor Angelo Maria Dolci, asked a detailed relation from the naval division’s military chaplain of the French Armée D’Orient (Herriot 1917; Allain 1992, 37–50; Tison 1997, 59–69) in Salonica during the Great War, abbé Ferdinand Renaud (1885–1965).1 Ferdinand Renaud (Tison 1997, 297–332), a Lazarist (Droulez 1945) priest from Paris, wrote a Memorandum, a detailed relation and a very important testimony of the religious and ethnic situation in Macedonia, with the aim to persuade the pope to reinforce the Catholic presence in that crucial region. According to Renaud, it was formed by 2000 faithful of the Roman Rite, plus, approximately, 10,000 Byzantine Rite uniates. The Lazarists arrived in Macedonia at the end of the eighteenth century, but they transferred their Provincial House to Salonica in December 1914, after being expelled from Istanbul following the end of the regime of capitulations2 (October 1914). Renaud arrived in Salonica with the Charlemagne battleship and he soon started his spiritual ministry and political action in Macedonia. In 1917, he was appointed military chaplain of the French flagship La Patrie. In this position, he operated very actively as a link between the Catholic clergy in the country and the French Army. In 1918, he went back to France. On his way home he 1

Dolci to Van Rossum,“Macedonia”, 4 giugno 1919, in Archivio Storico della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli (from now on APF), NS, Vol. 630, 68–72. Dolci to Gasparri “Macedonia”, 4 giugno 1919, APF, NS, Vol. 630, 73–77. At the same time, the Father Superior of the Catholic Mission in Macedonia, the French Lazarist Jules Leveque, sent a short report about the bad situation for the Catholic mission in that area. The mission was threatened by the Greeks and the Serbs who had secured their control over parts of Macedonia with the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913. In his report, Leveque indicated the creation of an independent Macedonia as the best safeguard for the Catholic interests in the region; Leveque to Van Rossum,“La Macedoine autonome et le catholicisme,” June 17, 1919, in APF, NS, Vol. 630, pp. 80–84. 2 The Ottoman capitulations were bilateral treaties between Ottoman sultans and European powers that granted rights and privileges to the Christian states in favor of their subjects present in the Ottoman territory in different ways. France was the first state that signed the agreements during the sixteenth century. France was the protector of the Catholics.

302

Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia

stopped over in Rome, where he was received by the Secretary of State Gasparri and by the Cardinal Van Rossum of Propaganda Fide, and later by the pope himself (Tison 1997). Renaud suggested the institution of a separate delegation for Macedonia in order to strengthen the Catholic presence in that crucial region of the Balkans. During his residence in Salonica, he had visited the Aegean Islands to verify the French religious establishment. The French clergy wanted to extend its presence in Macedonia and Greece by trying to limit the Italian clergy. Renaud’s dynamism was appreciated in Rome. Pope Benedict XV asked him for a detailed relation about the state of the Catholic presence in Macedonia (Tison 1997, 297–332). On August 4, 1918, Renaud sent a Memorandum to the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda Fide entitled Pour l’Eglise de Macedoine. Exposé de la situation religieuse en Macedoine.3 The Memorandum is a valuable source for the study of the ethnographic and religious situation of Macedonia. Renaud’s report is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the political situation of Macedonia from the Treaty of Berlin of 1878 to the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913. Renaud emphasizes the struggle of the Macedonian people for their own political and religious independence from the Ottoman Empire and from other independent Balkan states. He provides details about the extremely complex ethnic landscape of the region. Macedonia’s territory hosted Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Turks and Serbs. According to Renaud, each of these communities was in the position “to enforce its rights in the country” by invoking “ethnographic arguments or historical memories.”4 The second part of Renaud’s Memorandum deals with the religious situation of Macedonia and in particular with the Christian Rites that were present in the country at the beginning of the twentieth century. The report provides details about the Catholic communities in the important towns of Salonica, Zeitenlik and Monastir. Renaud concludes his Memorandum with remarks about the future of Catholicism in Macedonia and possible ways to develop Catholic proselytism among the local population. Renaud stresses the competing claims to Macedonia’s territory made by three national movements that led to the establishment of the independent Christian kingdoms of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria in the 3

Renaud Ferdinand,“Exposé de la situation religieuse en Macedoine”, 4 August 1918, APF, NS, Vol. 608, 552–639. From now on: Ranaud Ferdinand, Memorandum. This relation is still unpublished and it was only mentioned by Frank Tison in 1997, when the author wrote Renaud’s biography. In this article a copy from the Historical Archive of Propaganda Fide in Rome is used. 4 Ranaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 556.

Francesca Di Giulio

303

course of the nineteenth century. Greece claimed Macedonia as the cradle of Hellenistic civilization and for other historical reasons. As a matter of fact, Greeks pointed out to the common Orthodox tradition, which preserved Macedonia from the complete assimilation by the Ottoman Empire.5 Serbia too formulated its claims on Macedonia on the basis of history: from the fourteenth century until the Ottoman conquest, Macedonia was part of the Kingdom of Douchan (Dušan). According to the Serbs, Macedonia was conquered by the Turks when it was under the Serbian rule and, as a logical consequence, once liberated from the Ottoman yoke, the country should revert to Serbia’s control. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908 had deprived Serbia of a perspective outlet on the Mediterranean Sea and made Salonica a viable alternative for Serbia’s expansionist ambitions.6 Bulgaria raised the issue of territorial claim based on ethnic affinity. Indeed, the majority of the Macedonian population had common roots with the Bulgarians. After the Congress of Berlin (1878), Macedonia was in a state of constant terror caused by the incursions of Serbian and Greek bands. The two countries did not refrain from violence as one of the means employed to pursue their competing national causes in Macedonia, along with trying other forms of political pressure to convince the Macedonian population about their Greek or Serbian origins and distance themselves from the Bulgarian Church.7 On August 24, 1919, a Bulgarian delegation came to visit the papal delegate in Istanbul in order to ask the Holy Father to intervene in favor of Bulgaria’s rights in Macedonia and Sophia’s claims.8 Abbé Renaud lamented the situation, which he portrayed as dramatic for the Macedonian population and gave his suggestions how to restore peace in the country. He questioned the appropriateness of both sharing the Macedonian territory among the states that were competing for it and allowing the creation of a fully independent Macedonian state. While he was drawing up his Memorandum, the situation in Macedonia underwent changes. In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war against France, Great Britain and Russia. The part of Macedonia under the Serbian control fell under the Bulgarian occupation, while the part of the country that was under the Greek occupation came under the control of the Allies and particularly France. Abbé Renaud suggested in his report that for him 5

Ranaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 556–57. Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 557. 7 Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 557. 8 Dolci to Van Rossum, “Delegazione bulgara per la Macedonia,” in APF, NS, Vol. 630, 551. 6

304

Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia

the best solution for the Macedonian people and for the interests of the Catholics is the creation of an autonomous state under a foreign prince appointed by the European powers and possibly placed under the control of an international commissioner. The possibility of violence, revenge and future ethnic cleansing was highly likely. For this reason Renaud suggested external control. Renaud asked the Holy See to raise its voice at the negotiating table for peace in order to defend the autonomy of the Macedonian people: “We would like that the Church demands autonomy for Macedonia. Of all the possible solutions of the Balkan question, this is the only fair one, it is the only one that can ensure peace and it is the only one that could safeguard the interests of Catholicism in Macedonia.”9 From 1878 until the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, the situation in Macedonia was characterized by constant harassments, killings and tortures by the Ottoman government, which tried by every possible means to maintain its possession. The Young Turks’ policy was directed to enhance the Turkish character of Macedonian lands by supporting actively the settlement of Muslim immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina and by acquiring the full control of schools and religion, bypassing the millet system. The problem of the loss of land by Christian Macedonians to the benefit of Muslims and the persecutions worsened the already turbulent local context. The Balkan Wars and the division of Macedonia between Serbia and Greece made the situation unbearable for the local population. To maintain their domination over the Macedonian territories, Serbs and Greeks resorted to systems of oppression. Belgrade attempted to force “Serbization” of the Macedonian population, which produced killings, arrests and the deportation of the local clergy who resented the control of the Serbian Church. The Greek methods turned out to be even harsher than those employed by the Serbs. There were arrests, violence against women, requisitions, burning of entire villages, killings.10 As previously stated, the second part of the report examines the state of Macedonia from the religious point of view. Renaud’s presentation of the religious situation of Macedonia makes very clear that Catholics were a very small minority of the population. The faithful of the Latin Rite were mostly foreign residents in Salonica. The Uniate Catholics of the Bulgarian Rite were more numerous than the Latin, but due to the mass killings during the war their number had been reduced considerably. According to Renaud, the city of Salonica had a special position among all Macedonian cities due to its strong international and cosmopolitan character. The Jewish community, who had moved in from 9

Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 586–87. Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 579–83.

10

Francesca Di Giulio

305

Spain since the sixteenth century, had a very strong presence with an important role in business. In 1914, in Salonica there were, approximately, 1800 Catholics of the Latin Rite who came from several European countries. They went back to their homes after the outbreak of World War I. Salonica hosted Italians, French, Austrian-Hungarian subjects, Greeks and many other nationalities, which made the city a lively and rich commercial and cultural center.11 Renaud called attention to a movement within the separatist Bulgarian Church that was somewhat sympathetic towards Catholicism. The motivations of this movement were political rather than theological. It was functional to the attempt of the Bulgarian Orthodoxy to distance itself from the domination and influence of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. A number of “separatists” joined the Roman Church until 1913, when some territories were occupied by Greeks, who burned entire villages and dispersed many people, forcing the surviving communities to pay obedience to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.12 Catholic proselytism in Macedonia started at the end of the eighteenth century by the initiative of the Lazarist Priests and the Sisters of San Vincenzo de’ Paoli. Taking the Sisters as a model, the Lazarists founded a congregation of local nuns, the Eucaristine. The Catholic mission in Macedonia was divided into three centers: Salonica, Zeitenlik and Monastir, where there were churches, schools, clinics, hospitals, colleges, hostels for the poor, orphanages, a vocational school, seminaries etc. Abbé Renaud forecasted a double order of problems. According to him, if the religious and political Bulgarian-Macedonian élite decided to join Catholicism, the people would follow it. The only condition would be the question of the Rites. If Macedonia was ruled by Greece, there would be no real possibility of mass conversion because Athens would not permit it. If Macedonia was ruled by the King of the Serbs, conversions would be easier. In Renaud’s personal opinion, the Serbs were less intolerant toward Catholicism than the Greeks. In the same way, if Macedonia joined the Kingdom of Bulgaria, none of these difficulties would exist because of the favorable perception of the Catholic Church in that country.13 He suggested that the best way to expand Catholic proselytism in the region was to undertake a concrete action. For that reason he wanted to show to the local population the Catholic charity works and its doctrine, the benevolence of the local missionaries.14 According to Renaud, this direct 11

Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 589–90. Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 590–91. 13 Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 612–15. 14 Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 615–20. 12

306

Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia

experience would give birth to sentiments of benevolence, sympathy and gratitude among the Macedonians. In his opinion, the first step to undertake was the recruitment of a well-trained indigenous clergy that would be able to attract the general population. In his long and detailed relation, Renaud called for the emergence of an autonomous Macedonian state and the formation of a Macedonian apostolic delegation to meet the needs of local communities.15 On March 18, 1926, with the Brief In Sublimis Principiis, Pius XI erected the apostolic delegation of Salonica. Until that date, Macedonia and Thrace were administered by the apostolic delegation of Constantinople.16

Bibliography Primary sources Archivio Storico della Congregazione per l’Evangelizzazione dei Popoli (APF).

Secondary sources AArbakke, Vemund. 1993. “Identità etnica e irredentismo in un contesto di mutamento politico e sociale. Il caso della Macedonia fra Otto e Novecento.” Quaderni Storici 84/ a.XXVIII. 3:719–44. Allain, Jean Claude. 1992. “Le Commandement Unifié sur le Front d’Orient: Théorie et pratique en 1918.” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 168:37–50. Biagini, Antonello Folco, 2012. L’Italia e le guerre balcaniche. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura. Braude Benjamin, and Bernard Lewis. 1980. Christians and Jews in Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society, Vol. I, The Central Land. New York-London: Holmes and Meier Publishers. Del Zanna, Giorgio. 2003. Roma e l’Oriente. Leone XIII e l’Impero ottomano (1878-1903). Milan: Guerini. —. 2011. I cristiani e il Medio Oriente (1798-1924). Bologna: Il Mulino. Droulez, Arthur. 1945. Histoire de la Mission lazariste à Thessalonique (1783-1945). Istanbul: Collège Saint Benoit. Engström, Jenny. 2002. “The Power of Perception: The Impact of the Macedonian Question on Inter-ethnic Relations in the Republic of 15 16

Renaud Ferdinand, Memorandum, 621–35. Annuario Pontificio, Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1929, 399.

Francesca Di Giulio

307

Macedonia.” London School of Economics and Political Science, The Global Review of Ethnopolitics Vol. 1, 3:3–17. Ferragu, Gilles. 2000. “Eglise et diplomatie au Levant au temps des Capitulations.” Rives méditerranéennes 6:69–78. Franzinetti, Guido. 2010. I Balcani dal 1878 ad oggi. Rome: Carocci. Frazee Charles A., 1983. Catholics and Sultans: the Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453–1923. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fromkin, David. 1992. Una pace senza pace. La caduta dell’Impero Ottomano e la nascita del Medio Oriente moderno. Milan: Rizzoli. Georgeon, François, and Paul Dumont, eds. 1997. Vivre dans l’Empire Ottoman, socialités et relations intercommunautaire (XVIIIe-XXe siècles). Paris: L’Harmattan. Hakan, Yavuz M., and Sluglett P., eds. 2011. War and Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War op 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin, Salt Lake City: The Univeristy of Utah Press. Herriot, Edouard M. 1917. La France en Macedoine. Revue FrancoMacédonienne. Paris: Georges Crès. Karpat H., Kemal. 1973. An inquiry into the social foundation of nationalism in the Ottoman State: from social estates to classes, from Millets to nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 1985. Ottoman Populations 1830–1914: demographic and social characteristics. Madison-Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press. Mantran, Robert, ed. 1999. Storia dell’Impero Ottomano. Lecce: Argo. Mazower, Mark. 2001. The Balkans. A Short History. Phoenix Press: Universal History Series. Morozzo, Della Rocca Roberto. 1994. “Le Saint-Siège et la première guerre mondiale.” Dictionnaire Historique de la Papauté, Paris. Motta, Giovanna, ed. 1998. I Turchi, il Mediterraneo e l’Europa. Milan: Franco Angeli. Pettifer, James. 2001. “The New Macedonian Question.” In The New Macedonian Question, edited by James Pettifer, 15–27. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pizzo, Paola. 2008. Chiesa e Islam nell’età contemporanea. Tra crisi di coabitazione e prospettive di dialogo. Rome: Aracne. Rumi, Giorgio, ed. 1990. Benedetto XV e la pace. Brescia: Morcelliana. Riccardi, Andrea. 1997. Mediterraneo. Cristianesimo e Islam tra coabitazione e conflitto. Milan: Guerini. Rochat, Giorgio, ed. 1995. La Spada e la Croce. I cappellani italiani nelle due guerre mondiali, Atti del XXXIV convegno di studi sulla Riforma e i movimenti religiosi in Italia (Torre Pellice, 28–30 agosto 1994), Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi n. 176: Torre Pellice.

308

Religious and Ethnic Identities in the First World War Macedonia

Roudometof, Victor. 2000. “Culture, Identity, and the Macedonian Question: An Introduction.” In The Macedonian Question: Culture, Historiography, Politics, edited by Victor Roudometof, 1–24. Boulder, CO, East European Monographs: Columbia University Press. Salvatorelli, Luigi. 1937. La politica della Santa Sede dopo la guerra. Milan: ISPI. Shaw S. J., and Shaw E. K., 1977. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II Reform, Revolution and Republic. The Rise of modern Turkey 1808–1975. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Tison, Frank. 1997a “Un abbé en politique: Ferdinand Renaud (1885– 1965).”Revue Historique 298:297–332. —. 1997b. “L’Église de France et l’Armée d’Orient (1915–1918).” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 187:59–70. Trinchese, Stefano, ed. 2005. Le cinque dita del sultano. Turchi, Armeni, Arabi, Greci ed Ebrei nel continente mediterraneo del ‘900. L’Aquila: Textus. Weibel, Ernest. 2002. Histoire et géopolitique des Balkans de 1800 à nos jours. Paris: Ellipses. Zürcher, Erik Jan. 2009. “The late Ottoman Empire as laboratory of demographic engineering.” Il Mestiere di Storico I:1.

DRAFTING THE HUNGARIAN-YUGOSLAV BORDER: A SHORT OVERVIEW ALESSANDRO VAGNINI The definition of the borders of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,1 the subject of this article, is a particularly interesting topic because of its many and varied effects on the whole European politics in the aftermath of the Great War. France and Great Britain were concerned about the situation in the Balkans, while the Italian government was very interested in the fate of the Kingdom of SCS and, in order to put a limit to the Slavic threat, tried to encourage a more equitable division of the former Habsburg Empire.2 The Treaty of London had, in fact, marked the Italian entry into the war in exchange for the recognition of its sovereignty, among other things, over the Istrian peninsula and Dalmatia, but the claim on these territories had been one of the reasons that led Slovenes and Croats to side with Belgrade.3 In addition, Rome preferred divided and weak neighbors, rather than a single state able to counter its regional hegemonic ambitions. Tensions between Rome and Belgrade arose at the end of the war, when after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy claimed the territories comprised in the London Pact of 1915 that, under the pressure of Wilson, was therefore nullified with the Treaty of Versailles. For this reason, relations between the two shores of the Adriatic in the early months of 1919 were particularly difficult; a change came only after several months of intense negotiations. In July 1920, on the sidelines of the Conference of Spa, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlo 1

Even if until 1929 the official name was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, for reasons of simplicity I have chosen to use, as is often the case in the original documents, alternatively also the terms Yugoslavia and Yugoslav. 2 On the complexity of the situation in Yugoslavia and the even more difficult relations with Italy see, e.g., Lederer (1963); Banac (1988). 3 Despite pressure from the Allies, the full implementation of the Treaty of London would remain for a long time the official line of the Italian government. DDI, 1955. Serie 6, vol. I, Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 161 and 192.

310

Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview

Sforza had talks with his Yugoslav colleague, Ante Trumbiü, with the intention of resuming the negotiations on the borders. Thus Giovanni Giolitti and Milenko Vesniü signed the Treaty of Rapallo according to which Trieste, the Gorizia inland, areas of Carniola, Istria, some Dalmatian islands (Pelagosa, Cazza and Lagosta) and the city of Zara (Zadar) were assigned to Italy, while the new kingdom annexed most of Dalmatia (Toscano 1934; De Martens 1939, 821–26). The Free State of Fiume was also created; in the following months it would be in the center of a heated dispute. Only on January 27, 1924, Italy and the Kingdom of SCS eventually signed the Treaty of Rome, with which Rome annexed the center of Fiume (Rijeka) and a strip of coastal land up to the border with the province of Pula, leaving the Yugoslavs the territories around the town and the delta of the River Eneo. Throughout this period, relations between Hungary and Yugoslavia were often difficult, while the definition of the new Hungarian frontier would long remain a particularly delicate subject of great interest to the powers. After the fall of the Hungarian Bolschevik regime, relations with Belgrade were determined by three factors: Yugoslav territorial and economic demands vis-à-vis Hungary, the risk of a Habsburg restoration and the role of the Romanians. Due to this complex scenario, not surprisingly, the Yugoslav aspirations in Baranya and the area of Pécs made the situation even more unstable (Hornyák 2013, 53). Thus, although the Yugoslavs had submitted their territorial demands to the Supreme Council already on February 18, 1919, only by the end of May 1920 the Conference of Ambassadors began to work seriously on the issue of the Hungarian borders, initiating the creation of the Allied military commissions in charge of settling border disputes between Hungary and its neighbors.4 The issue, however, was not resolved before the final signing of the Treaty of Trianon even though the Hungarian-Yugoslav frontier, more or less, had been set by a demarcation line that was drawn in the Belgrade Military Convention of November 18, 1919. The Hungarian-Yugoslav Border Commission was the main body in charge of defining the new frontier of the Kingdom SCS, responsible to trace in detail most of the borders of this new state. The commission met for the first time in Paris on August 1, 1921. The British delegate Lt. Col. Cree was appointed as its chairman; the other members were Col. Luigi Valvassori (Italy), Lt. Col. Marminia (France), Lt. Col. Yanagawa (Japan), 4

DDF, 1997. 1ere Série. Paris: Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Imprimerie Nationale. 1920, Tome II, 41. The Conference of Ambassadors decided the issue with the resolution of June 30, 1920. See also DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946, 204.

Alessandro Vagnini

311

while Col. Vassel and Col. Vojin ýolak-Antiü were included as additional members,5 representing respectively Hungary and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The city of Varaždin was chosen as the seat of the commission; there the delegates arrived on August 18. On the basis of the peace treaty provisions, the border was divided into four sections (from A to D) comprising the area along the Mura and Drava and the so-called Vojvodina. This region comprises three portions: Bácska, between the Danube and Tisza; Baranya between the Drava and Danube; Banat, on the left bank of the Tisza.6 Following these decisions the Yugoslav and Hungarian delegates began their investigation on the ground and with mutual agreements studied a provisional line in Section A (the northern part of the border), which was then largely accepted by the commission.7 Initially, the commission met between September and October and by December it completed the study on Section C;8 at the beginning of 1922, the activities focused on Section D, while the final details were set for the other parts of the border (the most part of Baranya).9 As a result of the harsh discussions between Hungarians and Yugoslavs, the attention of the delegates focused mainly on the last section of the border; in the meantime, Belgrade also asked for an intervention of the League of Nations, in order to gain an advantage against the Hungarian government, but this proposal was quickly rejected by the commission. The definition of the border in this part of Baranya could have indeed created many problems to the delegates of the powers, which, however, by the end of March settled the issue.10 Another issue of great importance was the definition of the point of contact between the borders of Hungary, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. As a matter of fact, since the end of 1918 Belgrade and Bucharest came into conflict for the definition of the border of the Banat and, at the Paris Peace 5

As Tcholak Antitch in the Italian records. Given the Magyar census of 1910 the population of these areas was 1,350,477 with about one third of Magyars. The Yugoslav census of 1921 counted 1,380,460 with the Magyars being only 24 percent. 7 AUSSME, G–22, 54/1, Commissione di delimitazione dei confini ungaro – jugoslavi – Delegazione italiana, Relazione n. 1. Varaždin, 18 settembre 1921. 8 AUSSME, G–22, 54/1, Commissione di delimitazione dei confini ungaro – jugoslavi – Delegazione italiana, Relazione n. 6. Nagykanizsa, 18 dicembre 1921. 9 AUSSME, G–22, 54/1, Commissione di delimitazione dei confini ungaro – jugoslavi – Delegazione italiana, Relazione n. 7. Osijek, 16 marzo 1922. 10 AUSSME, G–22, 54/1, Commissione di delimitazione dei confini ungarojugoslavi – Delegazione italiana, Relazione n. 8. Osijek, 31 marzo 1922. The Baranya County, whose capital is the city of Pécs, in its current boundaries is bordered to the south by the course of the Drava and Danube to the east. 6

312

Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview

Conference, both sides were absolutely intransigent, with Romania claiming the whole area on the basis of the treaty of 1916, while the Serbs asked for all the western part of the Banat. The Yugoslav claims against Hungary were based mainly on ethnic and strategic basis.11 Belgrade, in fact, aimed for the union of all the former Habsburg territories inhabited by South Slavs under one crown, as well as the union with Montenegro and some “changes” to its border with Bulgaria; moreover, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, aimed at the annexation of the Albanian territory north of the Black Drin.12 Belgrade initially proposed a frontier that left the administrative eastern boundary of Styria, east of Fehring, following the river Raab (Rába) toward Szentgotthárd, then heading south-east along a line approximately parallel to the Drave and Mura. Near Pécs the border should head north and then east to reach the new Romanian border.13 Based on the ethnic principle, this new border would include all the Serbian and Croatian communities, ensuring—in the Serbian view—economic unity and a stable defense of the region and Belgrade in particular.14 Practically, the proposed border would include all the area south of a line starting from Arad, where the frontier had to meet the Romanian border, passing southward of Szeged and Baja. Although initially the Serb claim had been admitted by the powers, notwithstanding it was considered excessive. The Italians in particular had serious doubts about the validity of the Yugoslav thesis. As a matter of fact, from an ethnic point of view, the Italians believed the northern part of this region had a clear Magyar majority and therefore proposed a compromise line along the river Mura. The northwestern part of the frontier, namely Medjumurje (Muraköz) and Prekmurje, actually did not call for special consideration by the Allied delegates and were “easily” annexed to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Since the Drave formed the historical border between Hungary and Croatia-Slavonia it was accepted without special objections, while discussions concentrated mostly on the eastern part of the border 11

AUSSME, G–22, 55/3, Promemoria sulle frontiere ungheresi, 19–20. AUSSME, E–8, 80/1, Delegazione italiana per la pace – Sezione Militare, “Promemoria sintetico delle frontiere della Jugoslavia” – 29 marzo 1919. 13 AUSSME, E–8, 80/1, Delegazione italiana per la pace – Sezione Militare, “Promemoria sintetico delle frontiere della Jugoslavia” – 29 marzo 1919, Parte III, Frontiera verso l’Ungheria. 14 As a matter of fact, until the First World War Belgrade was virtually a border town and for this reason it would suffer in 1914. AUSSME, E–8, 80/1, Delegazione italiana per la pace – Sezione Militare, Segretario italiano della Conferenza, Delegation du Royaume des Serbes-Croates-Slovènes au Congrès de la Paix, n. 3205. Copia. 12

Alessandro Vagnini

313

(Macartney 1937). The main problem was, in fact, the future of Vojvodina (Bácska, Baranya and part of the Banat); this is the southern part of the great Hungarian plain, essentially a flat area of great economic value that was traditionally considered the granary of Hungary. At least for Bácska, British, French and American representatives in Paris found themselves in accord with a line that would follow substantially the Serbian proposal— with Italy still expressing its doubts—and eventually on its meeting of May 8, 1919 the Conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs officially adopted it. The Serbian claim on Baranya met more opposition as the Conference of Foreign Ministers was initially favorable to leave the area north of the Drava to Hungary even if at the time the area was still under Serbian occupation and the Serbs evacuated Pécs only in 1921. As a matter of fact, the basis of the new border had been drawn already in 1919 when the Allied Committee for the borders of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes explicitly stated that: “The Committee at once unanimously found that up to the confluence of the Mura and the Drave, the Drave indisputably formed the best frontier.”15 In this complex situation, the other key points were the future of Bácska, where the Magyars lived in large number and where a part of the German community had already expressed pro-Magyar feelings,16 and above all Baranya, whose enormous value in agricultural terms was a prominent element in the negotiations; in the last case, the position of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was based on the assumption that Baranya and Vojvodina were a single entity in geographical and economic terms, which is why Belgrade also required some additional changes in its favor. Historical reasons were advanced as well in support of the Yugoslav thesis and, obviously, this strategy would eventually result in a fruitless debate with emphatic and unnecessarily controversial tones on both sides. At the same time, generally, where the line of the frontier was favorable to the Magyars, Belgrade appealed to economic and social reasons to request changes to its advantage with no respect for any ethnic or historical character of the population. On the other hand, not surprisingly, the Hungarian proposals had little chance of being accepted also because of the strong Yugoslav opposition and the excellent propaganda that Belgrade continued to do to the British and French representatives. Also the 15

AUSSME, E–8, 81/1, Report presented to the Supreme Council of the Allies by the committee charged with examining the territorial question concerning the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 16 Mémoire des Habitants du Comitat de Bács–Bodrog dit “Bácska” de nationalité hongroise et allemand á la Commission de délimitation, Budapest, Imprimerie Victor Hornyánszky, 1922. AUSSME, G–22, 53/3.

314

Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview

diplomatic efforts made in Paris to mitigate the effects of defeat brought no results, and in June 1920 Hungary had to sign the peace treaty (Adám, GyĘzĘ and Pomogáts 2000). Budapest essentially aimed at the old Hungarian administrative southern boundary, based on the Danube-Drave line, but as a matter of fact, almost nothing could be granted to the Magyars as the priority was always on the strategic interest of the Kingdom of SCS and actually there was not much room for Hungary. Moreover, on the diplomatic level, the Hungarian position became even weaker after the collective defense arrangement that was signed in Belgrade on August 14, 1920, during a convention between Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, strengthened the Yugoslav position,17 granting mutual assistance in the event of an unprovoked attack launched by Hungary and against any risk of a Habsburg restoration (Ádám 1993). The alliance had to prove its determination already in March 1921, when King Charles returned to Hungary reclaiming the throne. Opposed by the powers and without adequate support at home, the king was forced to leave the country. Charles came back on October 20, 1921, and renewed his claims that were supported by the paramilitary groups active in the Burgenland, but were opposed by Horthy and the most part of the army. The failure of this second attempt put an end to any hope of a Habsburg restoration and in a sense helped in stabilizing the Hungarian borders as well. The fear of a Magyar threat, real or perceived, continued however to influence Yugoslav foreign policy causing a cautious attitude towards the members of the Yugoslav-Hungarian Border Commission even though, between 1921 and 1922, the commission continued its intense activity. Another important topic on the ground was the question of Pécs, at the time under Yugoslav occupation. On May 16, the British ambassador to Belgrade, Sir Alban Young, met with the mayor of Pécs, Béla Linder, who proposed an autonomous status for Pécs, stating that the city did not wish to be re-incorporated into Hungary until it became a truly democratic state. It was not only a dislike for the Magyar reactionary regime, which moved the local leadership, but also a real fear of vengeance for its political actions.18 In his meeting with the British diplomat, Linder affected to disparage any idea of Yugoslav interference in an autonomous Baranya but, Young informed London that he could not say if the Magyar politician was a sincere advocate of the rights of the people or merely Belgrade’s tool. Afterwards, London was very concerned about the situation and on June 23, the British delegate to the Conference of Ambassadors suggested, 17 18

Ratifications were exchanged in Belgrade on February 10, 1921. DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, 237. Note 6.

Alessandro Vagnini

315

on the basis of previous instructions issued by Lord Curzon, to seriously consider the situation in the area of Pécs and start the procedure of the evacuation of Serbian troops from southern Hungary, charging the Military Inter-Allied Committee with the supervision of the operation. Thus London, supported by Italy, asked Belgrade to proceed with the previous Allied directives starting the final evacuation of the region in accordance with the provisions of the peace treaty.19 In fact, the situation in Pécs was quite complex, while a faction considered the Yugoslav occupation as a necessary evil to be endured only as long as Horthy remained in power, an extreme left wing, led by János Polacsi and having Pecsi Ujsag (Pecs News) as its press organ, publicly engaged in propaganda for the annexation to the Kingdom of SCS. In between stood Béla Linder, pushing for the autonomy under the aegis of the League of Nations and under the Yugoslav military protection. Linder, to gain the approval of the Great Powers, stressed his lack of Communist affinity and reinforced his position by an alliance with anti-Communist peasants of the Smallholders Party. He also thought to have solved the main problem of the autonomy of the region embracing the formula of an independent republic. Also Svetozar Rajiü, the Yugoslav prefect in Pécs, pledged his personal support to this proposal considering that this would bring to an indefinite prolongation of the Yugoslav control over most of the region (Hajdu 1957, 383). The Conference of Ambassadors considered the schemes for the evacuation of southern Hungary again on its meetings of July 20 and 23. Finally, on August 5, 1921, the Ambassadors gave instructions for the Yugoslav withdrawal and asked the Yugoslav government to appoint an officer through whom the local Allied Commission might communicate with Belgrade; eventually, the date for the beginning of the withdrawal was fixed for August 18. Meanwhile, Linder presented a memorandum asking the Yugoslav government to continue to offer protection to those Magyars who might suffer under Horthy’s regime.20 On August 13, SCS civil authorities in southern Hungary requested a delay of three months in what seemed to be a clear effort to maintain Baranya under their rule and as a matter of fact, Yugoslav Army did not evacuate Pécs until the end of August (Hornyák 2013) and during its withdrawal established the socalled Republic of the Baranya-Baja, a short-lived puppet state of pro-

19 20

DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, 236–37. DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, 320.

316

Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview

Socialist orientation that Yugoslavia wanted to use against Budapest.21 The Republic of Baranya-Baja was proclaimed on August 14, 1921, while in the very same hours the Yugoslav Commander refused to evacuate the region due to the new political situation. The “experiment” of the BaranyaBaja Republic took place during a three-week period in August 1921; in those critical days, in Pécs the Rajic-manipulated Left and its press clearly distorted Allied intentions on the Yugoslav evacuation and stated that a military intervention against Hungary was imminent. Meanwhile, new efforts to save the republic were made through Linder’s unofficial diplomatic talks in Belgrade and using regular diplomatic channels in Paris between the Kingdom of SCS and the Conference of Ambassadors. Notwithstanding, the Conference of Ambassadors did not change its decision and protested to Belgrade even if the Allied CO in Pécs, colonel Gosset, had already granted a delay of forty-eight hours for the withdrawal.22 The proposal for an Allied joint representation to Belgrade was finally avoided when news came that Yugoslav forces were to withdraw by August 19. Even though Hungarian troops entered into Pécs three days later, the evacuation of the whole region was extremely slow, and this actually provoked the Italian complaint and an official Allied note that was presented to Belgrade on September 12, 1921.23 In fact, the evacuation of Serbian forces from southern Hungary was also linked to what was happening in Burgenland, where the Hungarian paramilitary forces had created many problems (Vagnini 2013). As a matter of fact, Burgenland remained a suitable excuse for Belgrade’s attacks against Hungary, since Budapest was not complying with the mandates of the powers about the evacuation of the region (Hornyák 2013, 114), thus providing the Yugoslavs an excuse to do the same in southern Hungary.24 However, the small Republic of Baranya did not manage to gain international recognition and since it depended on the Serbian protection, after the Yugoslavs finally withdrew, Horthy’s forces entered into the region putting an end to it (Tihany 1978). These problems were actually added to the tensions that crossed Hungary until 1923 causing many problems mainly to the Magyar Prime Minister Count Bethlen, both 21

Actually by August 17, British diplomats reported that Yugoslav civil and military personnel had received no orders to evacuate. See DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, 330. 22 DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, 333. 23 Italy asked for a faster and complete evacuation and the signature of a protocol. DBFP, First Series, vol. XXII, 380. 24 Hungary signed the protocol about the evacuation of Burgenland on October 3, 1921, but this did not resolve the problem.

Alessandro Vagnini

317

internally and with regard to the relations with the Little Entente that had showed increasing tension in cooperation especially during the Genoa Conference of 1922, the negotiations for an international loan and for the possible recognition of the Soviet Union (Fink, Frohn and Heideking 2002). Moreover, Hungary was still subject to the international military control (Vagnini 2009). The year 1923 was a very important one for the Italian strategy for South-Eastern Europe as well due to the talks for a treaty of friendship between Rome and Belgrade and the crisis with Greece, which eventually led to the short occupation of Corfu.25 Even though at a diplomatic level the issue of the Hungarian-Yugoslav border was practically solved, the Military Inter-Allied Border Commission continued its work; at the end of 1923 the last topographic studies along the border were completed and the commission concentrated on its final report and some minor issues. Notwithstanding, only at the end of May 1924 the commission gathered in Zagreb to draft its final report. The diplomatic relations between Budapest and Belgrade seemed less difficult now, even though they would have remained erratic until 1927, the year in which Hungary would definitely chose a line of proximity to Fascist Italy. The definition of the Hungarian-Yugoslav border was undoubtedly an important element for the stabilization of Europe in the aftermath of WWI, which contributed to the establishment of a new regional balance. The main elements of this complex international dynamics: the definition of a new and discussed border, the regional rivalries and a growing conflict between France and Italy inevitably affected the Hungarian and Yugoslav politics in the subsequent years.

Bibliography Ádám, Magda. 1993. The Little Entente and Europe (1920–1929). Budapest: Akademiai Kiadó. Adám, Magda, Cholnoky GyĘzĘ and Pomogáts Béla, eds. 2000. Trianon. A Magyar békeküldöttség tevékenysége 1920-ban. Budapest: Lucidus. Banac, Ivo. 1988. The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins History, Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. De Martens, Georg Friedrich. 1939. Nouveau recueil general de traits. Leipzig: Librarie Hans Buske. Documenti Diplomatici Italiani (DDI). 1955. Serie 6 (vol. I-III) – Serie 7 (vol. I-II). Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. 25

The Italian diplomatic documents throughout the 1923 record, not surprisingly, a feverish activity in this area. See DDI, Serie 7, vol. I–II.

318

Drafting the Hungarian-Yugoslav Border: A Short Overview

Documents Diplomatique Français (DDF). 1997. 1ere Série, 1920–1932, Tome I–II. Paris: Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Imprimerie Nationale. Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1918–1939 (DBFP). 1946. First Series, vol. XXII. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office. Print. Fink, Carol, Frohn Axel and, Jürgen Heideking. 2002. Genoa, Rapallo, and European Reconstruction in 1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hajdu, Gyula. 1957. Harcban Elnyomok es Megszallok Ellen. Pécs: Város Tanácsának kiadása. Hornyak, Arpad. 2013. Hungarian-Yugoslav Diplomatic Relations, 1918– 1927. New York: Columbia University Press. Lederer, Ivo J. 1963. Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference. A Study in Frontiermaking. Yale: Yale University Press. Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. 1937. Hungary and Her successors. The Treaty of Trianon and its consequences 1919–1937. London-New York – Toronto: Oxford University Press. Romsics, Ignác. 2002. The Dismantling of Historic Hungary. The Peace Treaty of Trianon, 1920. New York: Columbia University Press. Print. Tihany, Leslie C. 1978. The Baranya dispute, 1918–1921: diplomacy in the vortex of ideologies. New York: Columbia University Press. Toscano, Mario 1934. Il Patto di Londra: Storia diplomatica dell’intervento italiano (1914-1915). Bologna: Zanichelli. TĘkés, Rudolf L. 1967. Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. New York: Praeger. Vagnini, Alessandro. 2009. “La Commissione Interalleata Militare di Controllo per l’Ungheria e la ricostruzione della Honvédség nelle carte dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore Esercito.” Bollettino dell’Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico, Anno IX, 17/18:229–40. —. 2013. “A disputed land: Italy, the military inter-allied commission and the plebiscite of Sopron.” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 1–19. DOI:10.1080/00905992.2013.803523

ETHNIC CONFLICTS IN CILICIA AND THE TURKISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 1918–1922 NAZAR BAGCI Introduction This paper is an attempt to present the findings of my research for my MA thesis that endeavored to explain the socioeconomic and historical reasons behind the emergence of ethnic conflicts in Anatolia during the Independence War years. With this purpose, my research focused on a specific region and time period in the Ottoman Empire. Cilicia, located at the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea and surrounded by the Taurus and Amanos mountains to the east and west, constituted the region of my study, while, as the time span, the thesis focused on one part of the Turkish War of Independence as it occurred between French and Turkish forces in the context of the French invasion of Cilicia throughout 1918–22. Between the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1922 Cilicia witnessed not only the French occupation but also the rise of the Turkish nationalist movement aspiring to establish hegemony over the same lands. Cilicia, hosting a variety of communal groups of Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Circassians and Arabs, became the stage on which imperial and national power blocs competed to gain the allegiance of local groups, which they envisioned as vital for the consolidation of their institutional power. For this reason, the reasons for which various ethno-religious groups either gave consent to the French occupation or opposed it by joining the ranks of the Turkish nationalist movement are given careful consideration in order to understand the agencies in choosing their sides. Cilicia became a French occupation zone by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, according to which Britain and France divided the Middle East into four territories of control. Cilicia comprised the Northern Occupation Territory with the city of Adana as its administrative center. During the Sykes-Picot negotiations, the French representative, GeorgesPicot, also made an agreement with the representative of the Armenian

320

Ethnic Conflicts in Cilicia and the Turkish War of Independence

National Union, Boghos Nubar, stating if Armenians would aid the Allies militarily against the Ottoman Empire, then, in return, the French would aid them in establishing an autonomous Armenia in Cilicia. While one part of this agreement necessitated that Armenians would work as soldiers under the French command during World War I, the other part necessitated that the French would carry out the repatriation of 100–120,000 Armenians who had been deported from the region back to Cilicia.

French settlement in Cilicia French officials’ pro-Armenian policy was consolidated during the initial stages of World War I. As early as May 24, 1915, when the news of the deportation of Armenians had reached the Allies, Britain, France and Russia issued a joint declaration which read: “In view of this new crime of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied governments make known publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold all the members of the Turkish government as well as those officials who have participated in these massacres, personally responsible.” In November 1916, Aristide Briand, premier and foreign minister of France wrote to Senator Louis Martin: “When the hour for legitimate reparation shall have struck, France will not forget the terrible trials of the Armenians, and in accord with her Allies, she will take the necessary measures to ensure for Armenia a life of peace and progress.” Two months later, he announced that the high war aims of France included “the liberation of peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks, and the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, which has proved itself so radically alien to Western civilization” (Hovannisian 1968, 147–51). This line of policy was strengthened when Georges Picot promised Boghos Nubar that France’s taking over Cilicia would create an autonomous Armenia on that land in return for the military aid provided by Armenian volunteers throughout World War I. As articulated in the SykesPicot Agreement, French foreign policy rested on the goal of creating direct and indirect colonial spheres of influence in Cilicia, Syria and Lebanon, with the overall goal of extending France’s control over the Near East. France’s colonial policies, however, went through swift adjustments during World War I, when the USA entered the war in April 1917, and Woodrow Wilson announced the postwar aims of the United States through the Fourteen Points declared in January 1918. President Wilson’s foreign policy called for the settlement of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination within the lands of all nations that had participated in the war and, consequently, opposed European secret

Nazar Bagci

321

agreements calling for the partition and annexation of Ottoman territories. In response to the declaration of the Fourteen Points, Britain and France issued a joint declaration in November 1918 stating that the two powers would aid the establishment of governments in the Near East that would derive their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations and disclaimed any desire to impose on the populations of these regions any particular institutions. The hegemony of the Wilsonian principles in the post-World War I diplomatic context compelled Britain and France to readjust their colonial aims in terms of the interests of the indigenous societies they wished to rule. Sam Kaplan (2002, 350) claims that although French policymakers initially wished for the political emancipation of Armenians from the Turkish yoke and favored establishing Armenian sovereignty in Cilicia, they also imagined this would happen after a protracted mandate that would cater to French economic and political interests in the region. It was against this background of colonial “imagination” that the repatriation of Armenians was carried out by the Allied authorities. This restructuring of Cilician society according to French colonial desires compelled the French officials to seek favor and sympathy from the Circassians, Alevi Kurds and Arabs, alongside the Armenians. The main reason was, as stated, France’s intention of consolidating itself as a mandatory power and creating a demographic plurality of ethnicities that would favor French rule. Through gaining their support, the French would decrease the effect of the Turks on the local administration, eliminate the opposition of the local Turkish population and further consolidate their hegemony. In order to do this, the French administration sought to alienate them from the influence of the Porte and the Turkish nationalist movement. The first steps towards this end were carried out when the French officials in Cilicia either dismissed from their posts or arrested and exiled most of the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) officials who were suspected of having had a part in the Armenian massacres or resisting the French occupation. In addition, the law enforcement offices of the police, gendarmerie and judicial system were filled with Armenians and Muslims who favored the French occupation. Bremond also ordered the opening of schools that would teach in Circassian, Kurdish and Arabic only and granted spheres of autonomy to these groups in various sanjaks of Adana. An arbitration commission was founded to take back the Armenian properties from Turkish hands, and the French also took measures to intervene in the finance system of Cilicia by trying to put back into effect the capitulations the CUP had rescinded, as well as doubling the taxes that

322

Ethnic Conflicts in Cilicia and the Turkish War of Independence

were levied on the Muslim population. All these measures, in return, alarmed the Turkish/Muslim notables that the French occupation was merely a means to impoverish Turks and intimidate and terrorize them into leaving Cilicia. Overall, it can be claimed that the French intention of forging a society that was malleable to French political and economic interests had partial success in Cilicia. During their stay, the French managed to gain the consent of non-Turkish and non-Muslim sectors of society. Nevertheless, most of the Circassians and Kurds gave up their support for the French rule and later left to join the Turkish nationalist resistance by the beginning of 1920 and while the Armenians gave full support to the French rule from the beginning, French-Armenian relations also deteriorated by the end of 1919.

The onset of the war The main reasons why the French lost the support of various ethnoreligious communities that supported them were the shift in French policy towards leaving Cilicia to Turkish sovereignty by the end of 1919 and the rise and success of the Turkish nationalist movement throughout the same year. There were a variety of reasons behind the shift in French policy throughout 1919 from seeking to establish a direct colonial sphere of influence in Cilicia to leaving the area to Turkish sovereignty under French supervision, and finally the chain of events that led France to totally retreat from the region, handing the control to the Kemalists. First of all, France’s position was complicated by its rivalry with the British in the Middle East, where French and British intentions differed sharply concerning the disposition of Arab lands. As the Sykes-Picot Agreement granted France the right to occupy Cilicia, Lebanon and coastal Syria, it also determined inner Syria, including the cities of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, as France’s indirect sphere of influence. The British military officials, on the other hand, had made promises to the Arab leaders, Sharif of Mecca Hussein and his son Emir Faisal, that in inner Syria and also in certain parts of Iraq, an independent Arab state or a confederation of Arab states would be established. Emir Faisal’s claims, to an extent supported by Britain, caused much of the conflict between France and Britain, since France regarded Syria, including Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, as areas of its control, either directly through annexation or indirectly as part of a political and economic sphere of influence in the guise of a League mandate. Britain, on the other hand, had militarily dominated the wartime campaigns and postwar occupation in the

Nazar Bagci

323

Middle East. Therefore, the British were eager to consolidate their preeminent position through friendship with the Arabs and were reluctant to evacuate Syria until they were sure that their claims on Palestine and those of Arabs to control Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo would be recognized (Helmreich 1974, 6–7). Besides, the Greek occupation of western Anatolia on British initiative and with their support was the main reason behind the French concern in making peace with the Kemalists because if the Greek invasion was successful in restoring Greek hegemony in the region, then Britain would extend its zone of influence in Anatolia at the expense of French influence. Another important factor was the armed cooperation between Arab and Turkish nationalists that led to the simultaneous outbreaks of Sharifian and Turkish guerrilla raids against the French in October and November in the east and south of Cilicia. By late October, Bremond was so alarmed by the frequency of such events that he sent a conciliatory telegram to Sivas with an assurance to Mustafa Kemal that the French had no intention of extending their authority into the AntiTaurus range. Kemal replied with an expression of satisfaction with this promise. However, he also added that in order to restore their traditional friendship, the French must declare their regime in Cilicia as temporary and deny rumors of their intent to occupy Maraú, Antep and Urfa. Finally, the general elections of November 1919 in France resulted in the victory of the colonialist party, which assumed power under Millerand on January 20, 1920. Zeidner (2005, 265–73) reports that, from as early as October 17, onwards, the conservative newspapers of France campaigned for a quick settlement in Turkey based on preserving the integrity and independence of the whole of Turkey under some sort of international supervision. Apparently, the colonialist party also shared this sentiment. Due to all of the international and national factors cited above, starting from the end of summer of 1919, the “new” French policy became apparent but would be still subject to swift changes until the end of 1921 when the formal Ankara peace agreement was signed between French and Turkish parties. However, it can be claimed that by the end of 1919 French authorities were intent on leaving Cilicia to nominal Turkish sovereignty with French supervision in financial and police affairs. Upon this purpose, in December 1919, Georges Picot, French high commissioner in Syria, visited Mustafa Kemal in Sivas for unofficial peace talks. In this meeting, Picot offered Mustafa Kemal the restoration of Adana, Antep and Urfa to the Turkish hegemony in return for economic concessions. Mustafa Kemal, however, demanded the immediate termination of the French occupation. Then, Picot assured him that the French government supported the independence of the Ottoman state and that it would eventually

324

Ethnic Conflicts in Cilicia and the Turkish War of Independence

withdraw from those territories and would strive to persuade the other Entente powers to follow its example. The Picot-Kemal negotiations were an unofficial meeting and therefore fell short of providing a pre-settled peace. Picot’s assurances to Mustafa Kemal, however, signaled the shift in French policy towards sacrificing Cilicia to the Turks in return for consolidating their hegemony in Syria and Lebanon. Throughout the next two years, the violence between ethno-religious groups escalated due to mainly two reasons. Firstly, after the Sivas congress in October, Mustafa Kemal sent two commanders to organize the nationalist resistance in Cilicia. And these commanders, when they arrived in the region, contacted both the notables and brigands operating in the region to draw them to the ranks of the nationalist resistance. The Turkish strategy in this sense was firstly to channel the already existing resentment towards the French occupation into the nationalist resistance. Secondly, the commanders also aimed to draw to the side of the nationalist movement the Circassian and Kurdish soldiers and notables who had collaborated with the French administration. And we can say they were successful in their attempt because as the Turkish uprising started and gained success in Marash, the majority of Circassians, Kurds and Arabs working for the French gendarmerie forces deserted their positions and switched sides to the Turkish nationalist movement. The war started in Cilicia in January 1920 with the Marash uprising and lasted until the end of 1921, when a peace agreement was signed by Turkish and French parties in October 1921. During these two years, the battles were fought through guerrilla warfare, and immense city battles took place in Marash, Antep, Urfa and Hacin, wherein thousands of lives from both sides were lost. And as French officials began negotiating with the Turkish officials to end hostilities in Cilicia, they also left the Armenians, whom they had promised to defend against Turkish attacks, to their own fate. For this reason, most of the Armenians who had been repatriated to Cilicia by the Allies had died during the war or were killed by the Turkish forces. The few survivors who were left fled back to Syria, before the French retreat.

Conclusion When we come to review the ethnic violence of this period, we see completely different accounts. When we review the Turkish accounts1 of 1

The most important works in this respect are: Yu‫ޠ‬cel Gu‫ޠ‬c޽lu‫ޠ‬, Armenians and the Allies in Cilicia, 1914–1923 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010);

Nazar Bagci

325

the violence of this period, we see a lot of resentment and reaction towards the cruelty of both the French administration and Armenians. Turkish representations of this period especially emphasize that the Armenians who returned back were not their good old friends but were so full of feelings of hate and revenge that, immediately upon their arrival, Armenian legionnaires and brigands started attacking the Muslims. These brigands would either ransack Turkish villages and murder Turkish peasants, or they would target Muslim notables, ransacking their farms and killing them along with their workers. The Armenian accounts,2 on the other hand, emphasize that the Turkish nationalist movement, organized under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, continued the genocidal policies of the CUP, so the movement commanding Turkish and Kurdish brigands massacred the returning and remaining Armenians during the Independence War years. My intention in the thesis was to point out that each account had been written according to a certain historiographical goal. The Turkish perspective, in this sense, wants to point out that the Independence War was a war of self-defense by the Muslim public against the imperialist purposes of the Great Powers and their internal collaborators, Greeks and Armenians, who both collaborated to partition the empire, destroy the Ottoman state power and dishonor and dislocate its subjects. And the Armenian account wants to point out that, contrary to the efforts of the Great Powers to save the Armenians from the Turkish rule and establish a safe homeland for them, the Turkish nationalist movement and the Muslim public was still hostile to Armenians. What I suggested throughout my thesis was that the ethno-religious violence of the period under study was not solely the work of the Armenian legionnaires and brigands who favored French patronage, as suggested by the Turkish nationalist historiography, or the work of Turkish and Kurdish brigands who favored the patronage of the Turkish nationalist movement, as suggested by the genocide scholarship. In fact, regular and Stanford Shaw, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of Liberation: 1918– 1923: A Documentary Study (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 2002); Kemal C޽elik, Milli Mu‫ޠ‬cadele’de Adana ve Havalisi (1918–1922) (Ankara: Tu‫ޠ‬rk Tarih Kurumu, 1999). 2 The most important works in this respect are: Richard Hovannisian, The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2007); Levon Marashlian, “Finishing the Genocide, Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920–1923,” in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999).

326

Ethnic Conflicts in Cilicia and the Turkish War of Independence

irregular forces were employed both by French and Turkish parties, composed of Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Arabs, each attempting to “hold their own” against each other. Hence, paramilitary violence was a means used both by statist and localist forces and both by the notables and outlaws of the region to negotiate their positions against the changing central authority. The evidence suggested in my thesis portrays that different ethnoreligious groups and different classes within these groups had fluctuating allegiances both to the foreign occupation and to the Turkish resistance and suggest that neither ethnicity nor religion was the primary determining factor in the formation of the identity claims of this period. Class, material interest and regional associations determined, to a great extent, the loyalties especially of the Muslim inhabitants of Cilicia during the Independence War years rather than the fight for Islam or the Turkish nation. It has been pointed out before that most of the Muslim notables who had collaborated with the French occupation shifted sides when the Turkish nationalist movement began to consolidate itself in Cilicia. In most cases, notables were merely weighing their choices according to the social status and power offered by the occupation administration vis-à-vis the nationalist government. Hence, the same situation was valid also for the brigands operating in the region. While some Muslim brigands politicized around the effort of protecting their area of control against Armenian resettlement and brigand activity and joined the nationalist forces to this end, some were using the opportunity offered by the war to ransack and rob more villages and notables. To this end, brigands changed sides accordingly with their interests. This was also true for the Armenians of the region who had supported the French occupation from the beginning upon the promise that the French occupying the region would establish an autonomous mandate in Cilicia wherein the leading role would fall on the Armenian community. However, upon realizing that the French officials in Adana had their own colonial goals at the expense of Armenian claims, and when, by the summer of 1920, the shift in French policy towards conciliation with the Kemalists upon leaving Cilicia to Turkish sovereignty became evident, Armenians political parties and militia forces organized around preventing a Turkish-French conciliation and safeguarding their presence in Cilicia. The self-defense operations they engaged in Marash, Antep, Urfa and Hacin were to serve this end. Thus, the collaboration between the “imperialist” occupiers and their Armenian “collaborators” was not as stable as the official Turkish historiography portrayed it, neither were their mutual aims.

Nazar Bagci

327

On the other hand, I would also like to point out the shortcomings of this thesis in arriving to its conclusions. I mostly relied on missionary reports and memoirs of the Turkish/Muslim, French and Armenian actors involved in the conflicts of the period under study. However, for a more comprehensive and detailed account on the local conflicts of this period, an archival study both in the local and imperial centers of the province of Adana and Istanbul needs to be done. By means of archival study, both the relationship between the central government and local actors can be detected. Besides, the social and economic fault lines that actually triggered the local rivalries, that is the transformations in the land and property regimes, and the political structure of the area under study need to be verified from archival documents as well as local newspapers and publications. A research of this kind, I hope, will be the subject of future studies.

Bibliography C޽elik, Kemal. 1999. Milli Mu‫ޠ‬cadelede Adana ve Havalisi (1918-1922). Ankara: Tu‫ޠ‬rk Tarih Kurumu. Gu‫ޠ‬c޽lu‫ޠ‬, Yu‫ޠ‬cel. 2010. Armenians and the Allies in Cilicia, 1914–1923. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Hovannisian, Richard G. 1968. “The Allies and Armenia, 1915–18.” Journal of Contemporary History 3, 1:145–68. —. 2007. The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical legacies. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. Helmreich, Paul C. 1974. From Paris to Sevres: the Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919–1920. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Kaplan, Sam. 2002. “Documenting History, Historicizing Documentation: French Military Officials’ Ethnological Reports on Cilicia.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, 2:344–69. Marashlian, Levon. 1999. “Finishing the Genocide, Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920–1923.” In Remembrance and Denial: the Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Shaw, Stanford J. 2002. From Empire to Republic: the Turkish War of Liberation: 1918–1923: a Documentary Study. Ankara: Turkish Historical Society. Zeidner, Robert. 2005. The Tricolor over the Taurus: the French in Cilicia and vicinity, 1918–1922. Ankara: Ataturk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History.

RECONSTRUCTION PROJECTS OF ROMANIAN AND HUNGARIAN STATES AFTER 1918 LUCIAN SĂCĂLEAN The year 1918 was crucial but different for both Romania and Hungary. For Romania this year and the immediately following ones brought a plan that met the expectations of the political class. On the contrary, for Hungary it meant a loss felt strong by the collective mentality that no state reconstruction project seemed viable in the absence of territories that were considered temporarily lost. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the changes of the borders, Hungary, separating from Austria, proclaimed its independence; it was recognized by the Treaty of Trianon of June 4, 1920, and a homogenous national state was formed (Mureúanu 1997). In Romania we can mention other state projects, which, however, remained only at the level of intention. In 1848, a bold project was shaped with a memorandum submitted by Ion Maiorescu, sent by the plenipotentiary of the provisional government in Bucharest to the president of the Federal Parliament of Frankfurt, which proposed the unification of Bucovina, Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania in a kingdom under the name of Romania. Another project, the least interesting, is the one belonging to Aurel Popovici (1997), known as the “United States of Greater Austria,” a federal structure composed of sixteen states, which would later expand to the Balkans with the role to prevent the spread of the Russian influence. With the assassination of the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 and the outbreak of the first global conflict this project fell into oblivion. The search for a solution did not stop even during the conflict. Unlike the majority of politicians and even the Royal House, that saw in Austria a dying empire, Constantin Stere crafted a personal alliance with Emperor Wilhelm, an alliance seen as a guarantee for Germany but also as an argument to obtain Transylvania. The evolution of the conflict made this project only a utopian one, bringing Romania in 1918 to a turning but favorable point. The solution chosen by the Romanians was, in part, the consequence of a difficult dialogue between the Transylvanian Romanian

Lucian Săcălean

329

leaders and the officials from Budapest and between the Romanian Kingdom and the Hungarian state after 1918. After the elections of June 1910, and in the context of the election success, Tisza proposed to find a solution to the issues of the Romanian population but hesitated before a direct dialogue with the leaders of the Romanian National Party “considering political organizations on ethnic criteria incompatible with the unity of the state and the principle of the single Hungarian nation” (Ghiúa 2003). The meeting of the Foreign Commission in April 1914 in Budapest was not coincidental (Ghiúa 2003). Its members, representatives of the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments, debated over the relations with Romania. Despite the desire of Vienna, the Hungarian position remained generally intransigent; they were much less willing to make concessions and thus facilitating an approach to the Kingdom of Romania. The positions radicalized, producing the event of December 1918; the decisions made at Alba Iulia created a surprise for the Hungarian government, although all signals had existed before that moment. Entering the war eventually alongside the Entente, Romania would influence not only the timing of military developments but especially future political developments. The belated reform attempts within the empire were generally perceived positively, but they could not change anymore the course that nationalities gave to history. The opposition of the government in Budapest to the liberalization of nationalities, especially that which concerned the Romanian, the late acceptance of reforms, the lack of vision and misunderstanding of the historical moment would inevitably lead to what most Hungarian politicians and historians would perceive as an unfair blow to the Kingdom of St. Stephen. Basically, after the First World War, we witness a veritable “cat-andmouse” game at whose stake is the very survival of the two nations. Obviously, for the Hungarians the defeat created tremendous hardships and dissatisfaction. It would lead to the outlining of various solutions, out of which some were impractical, but all in the hope for “corrections” to repair the injustice suffered by the Hungarians. It was an active waiting, designed to put the Romanian state in a bad light in the international arena, but also to create internal difficulties in managing the situation of the Hungarian minority. The relations between the two countries fully reflected this. On the other hand, the Romanian state had a position that allowed it to settle the existing domestic disputes in its favor, measures aimed at imposing its administration, the official language, managing to find ways to defend its interests despite the impositions outside the country. For a short time during the Second World

330

Reconstruction Projects of Romanian and Hungarian States after 1918

War, Hungary had the satisfaction of its administration confirmed on an important area of Transylvania, in the end, however, the evolution of this conflict was unfavorable too. The end of the Second World War brought an important change in the relations between the two countries. Concerned at first in getting the Soviet willingness to use its influence as an argument in its relation with the other part, the relations between the two countries were very complex. They swung in an apparent calmness, given by the belonging to the same political-military bloc, in which the minority issue was present, but official recognition of the authority of the state concerned the moments of tension and tension-related issues such as the minority situation, the assumed vision of the history of Transylvania, foreign policy guidelines. In the new historical conditions, the Romanian-Hungarian dialogue had started with the Arad negotiations on November 13–14, 1918. The talks, which failed, involved the Transylvanian Romanians and not the authorities from the kingdom, the former ones were trying to make their intentions known at Paris, London and Washington. The negotiations in Arad, in case of their success, were considered crucial in preserving the territorial integrity and even the creation of a federal state. The choice of a Romanian political unity was clear and no other project could take its place or be compelling enough for the Transylvanian Romanians. After the failure of the talks in Arad, bilateral relations were not interrupted; immediate administrative needs required a dialogue between Budapest and Arad (Hungarian National Council, Romanian National Council), which meant practically a mutual recognition. The political necessity of gaining international recognition made the Hungarian government address Romania in an attempt to obtain accreditation for an official representative in Bucharest, in a note submitted on November 9, 1918 (Ghiúa 2003) (note that the Transylvanians had a similar initiative to the government in Budapest). What followed in the interwar period bares the same pattern, in spite of the attempts to get closer, the Romanian-Hungarian positions remained generally conflicting (Ignác 1996). After hope for the transfer of the powerhouse from Vienna to Budapest had failed, the unfavorable development of events made many Hungarians perceive the reality as an unanticipated cataclysm; a prerequisite condition in their opinion for reviving the Hungarian nation as “maintaining” its territorial integrity. The given arguments, ranging from a “historical” defense mission of Christianity to the idea of a moral-cultural nation, were without ethnic affiliation. Therefore, regardless of orientation, the new leaders of the

Lucian Săcălean

331

Hungarian state had the same basic objective in foreign policy—the territorial one (Leuútean 2003). Most of the reconciliation attempts were made between 1918 and 1920, when various alternatives had been proposed, most of them lacking any relation to the geopolitical reality of the time. These plans were aimed at dividing Transylvania after the Helvetic model—the idea that remained a potential solution even after 1990, especially among Hungarian intellectuals—the independence of Transylvania, or even a RomanianHungarian union proposal (Nándor 1999) or offering the crown of St. Stephen to the sovereign of Romania, the last being a skilful move of the Hungarian diplomacy (Poncea and Rogojan 2003). A potential Romanian-Hungarian alliance, or a Romanian-PolishHungarian alliance, as an opposition to the Slavic power (Romsics 1996) was out of question, as long as the reconciliation between the two sides was seen by the Romanians through the prism of a Hungarian waiver of any claims over Transylvania. Amid growing mistrust and the increasingly apparent grievances in Hungarian society, the rise to power of Béla Kun is not surprising; he is one of the territorial integrity defense policy supporters, one who was willing to grant broad autonomy to different nationalities but without recognizing their right to part from Hungary (Hitchins 1997). The coming to power of Kun (Ghiúa 2003), the one who had to deal with the external relations portfolio as the people’s commissar for foreign affairs in the government installed on March 21/22, 1919, was clearly linked to the atmosphere created by the resign of the Hungarian government on March 21, 1919 and with the end of the period in which the artisan of Hungarian politics was Mihály Károly. The resignation was due to the way the line was defined for Romania and Hungary. An interesting aspect was related to the work of the governing council, which on May 24, 1919 concluded an agreement with the government counsels of the republics. It was a clever step for the Hungarians to play a role in the future of Transylvania as long as the agreement, provided for the establishment of diplomatic relations between Budapest and Sibiu, meant the recognition of Transylvania as a distinct state entity; the text of the Convention, although endorsed by Budapest, was rejected after its delivery to the governing council, by the resolution of the Romanian General Staff, invoking the “state of war” (Ghiúa 2003). A game of nerves and telegrams (Leuútean 2003) followed; the Budapest government was trying unsuccessfully to get out of the international isolation, together with the growing concern of the Romanian

332

Reconstruction Projects of Romanian and Hungarian States after 1918

plan to occupy the capital of Hungary, benefiting from the provisional government of Szeged’s support, whose members were anti-Bolsheviks. On July 20, 1919, the Hungarian army began a general attack, but it was stopped after four days of fighting, and on August 4 the Romanian offensive ended by entering Budapest. The government led by István Peidl accepted the Military Armistice Convention, with the removal of the Red regime, ending the state of war between Romania and Hungary (Leuútean 2003). On June 4, 1920, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, Article 73 recognized the independent status of Hungary, the Belgrade Military Convention of November 13, 1918 was cancelled, so was the Treaty of Bucharest of May 7, 1918 imposed on Romania by the central government, while Hungary was obliged through Articles 54–60 to protect the minorities on its territory (Leuútean 2003). Further discussions between Romania and Hungary would be marked by what some believed to be “lose or win” dialogue, often in the same tone as before 1920. The exchange of letters between the Hungarian officials and the Polish statesman Jósef Pilsudski on the Romanian-Hungarian dispute disclosed the existence of the Polish interest in an eventual Romanian-PolishHungarian approach. On June 6, 1920 Count Pál Teleki, the prime minister of Hungary, proposed a plan for establishing friendly relations between the two countries based on the following principles (Ghiúa 2003): the return of the territories around the border inhabited by Hungarians and Saxons to Hungary; territorial autonomy for Hungarians, Szeklers and the Saxons in Transylvania and liberal agreement for the treatment of minorities. Such requirements were considered unacceptable by the Romanian part: the following years were marked by diametrically opposed positions, namely a treaty revision versus maintaining the status quo. Another idea would be born in the late 1920s, the creation of a new Central European bloc under the Italian management that would reunite Austria, Hungary and Romania. Hungary would ensure a common border with Romania and renounce the territorial claims in exchange for the autonomy of Transylvania. Romania’s intention to make people aware of the Hungarian initiative led to the abandonment of the project. In 1929, it was the turn of another test under Polish mediation; the Hungarian prime minister proposed to Romania the removal of the Little Entente in exchange for giving up the territorial claims, and offering cultural concessions for the Hungarian minority, which was also an unsuccessful attempt (Romsics, 1996). A moment of tension was recorded in 1923 during military maneuvers near the border with Romania made by the Hungarian army, amid rumors

Lucian Săcălean

333

of a potential attack (Muúat and Ardeleanu 1986). But the dialogue was not interrupted during this period; between 1920 and 1926 there were discussions for the proximity of the two countries through the Royal Family of Romania, the idea of a Romanian-Hungarian union was becoming a subject approached by third parties (Leuútean 2003). As a result of the global crisis, the 1930s brought several proposals for the Danube cooperation. Thus, the establishment of an agricultural building between Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia, which would join Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Baltic States, failed because of the opposition of England, Germany and Italy, due to the different interests of the latter. In 1932, the French Minister André Tardieu’s plan to achieve a customs union between Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania, as a counterbalance to the German expansion, failed for the lack of British support and due to the Italian and German opposition (Gyula 1975). Another failure was the British government’s proposal of 1932: customs union of six states on the Danube, including Romania and Hungary. Initiators hoped thereby to reduce the influence of France and Germany in the region (Mihály and Sipos 1998). The evolution of the international scene, the clearer assertion of revisionist tendencies led to a change in the form of a direct intervention from Hitler, which by the second arbitration had established a new territorial formula. The arbitration marked significant domestic and foreign policies of the two countries, Hungary had higher expectations that were not met, Romania went through a national tragedy, the loss of territory and the fact that one million of its citizens came under Hungarian domination. The Armistice Convention, signed in Moscow on September 13, regarded the border issues between Romania, the USSR and Hungary. The Soviet-Romanian border was restored over Prut, as was imposed on June 28, 1940; the arbitration decisions from Vienna regarding Transylvania were considered non-existent. The Allies agreed that Transylvania had to be returned to Romania with the condition to be confirmed by the Treaty of Peace (Northwestern Transylvania remained under the provisional administration of the Soviet Army until March 1945). Although Hungary tried to promote its own foreign policy objectives, even in the position of a defeated country, Romania had prevailed at the negotiations table—the Soviets supporting the return to the 1938 border. The Hungarian government sought to include within the Hungarian borders a strip of territory around the cities Satu Mare, Oradea and Arad, or, if that was not possible, an exchange of territory that would bring

334

Reconstruction Projects of Romanian and Hungarian States after 1918

Hungary as many Romanians as how many Hungarians would be within the Romanian borders (Mocanu 1996). It must be said that the establishment of Communist regimes under the direct control of the Soviet Russia meant the establishment of what we call “Soviet Pax,” the conclusion of the treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between the USSR and the satellite states. Romania and Hungary were not exceptions, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was signed between the two countries on January 24, 1948. It thus appears that both countries had found the path. The 1980s brought nationalism as a factor of mobilization and loyalty around the Communist party, but also as an alternative discourse to a reality marked by the economic crisis. It was also the time when Hungary began to raise the issue of ethnic Hungarians and successor states, managing step by step to internationalize its dispute with Romania. The change of guard at the head of the Hungarian state, the emergence of Károly Grósz instead of János Kádár, brought a nationalist current in Hungary. Basically, the regime in Budapest applied a political survival scenario (as well as Bucharest), directing Hungarian nationalism on Romania to divert the attention from the harsh living conditions in Hungary. The fall of the Communist regimes brought up the question of loss and gain by Trianon. From the perspective of national construction, no fundamental changes can be observed. Regarding bilateral relations between the two countries, although the influence of the Treaty of Trianon was not over, we can notice the alternation of periods of relaxation and tension. In this relation, it seems that sometimes some areas could ensure cooperation (economic, military, etc.) as before 1989, and the political factor was the reluctant one, causing the tensions. Maybe the most distancing factor, until the signing of the treaty, was the national rhetoric; Hungary rediscovered ties with the Hungarian minority in Romania, Romanians revived the anguish caused by the perception of a direct threat to the nation. The developments in Europe have imposed the idea of reconciliation between the two nations. Willingly or unwillingly, the Romanians and the Hungarians were forced to sit at the negotiating table. At stake were what seemed to be a better future and security. Making a compromise was not easy, the Recommendation 1201 of the Council of Europe, recognizing the borders of Romania, the subject of fierce dispute. The rising to power of the Hungarian Socialists with a more moderate vision facilitated the finding of a solution. The signing of the treaty sent to the European Community the signs of a possible and wanted positive evolution.

Lucian Săcălean

335

The rediscovering of the interwar arguments regarding the economic and geographical unity, related to beneficial consequences of the Hungarian statehood and cultural superiority, the arguments about the need of a stable power as a balance area between Germany and Russia and the inability of new states to manage the minority issues (Bárdi 2009) produced only tensions in the relations between the two countries but offered Budapest a good opportunity to find new arguments in relation with the Hungarian community in Transylvania. In retrospect, we can say that both Romania and Hungary have attempted to impose a development of state-building that would be favorable. From this point of view, Bucharest saw a unitary state solution, while Budapest tried various scenarios to bring the disputed territory under its possession, or at least to soften its loss, in a manner that would ensure at least a partial influence.

Bibliography Bárdi, Nándor. 2009. “Sistemul instituĠional úi strategia de politică maghiară a guvernelor din Budapesta.” In Partide politice úi minorităĠi naĠionale din România în secolul XX, vol IV, edited by Ciobanu de Vasile, 64–65. Sibiu: Techno. —. 1999. “A szupremacia és az önrendelkezés igénye, az erdélyi kérdés rendeszésére (1918-1940).” In Források és a stratégiák, edited by de Olti Agoston, 63–78. Miercurea Ciuc: Pro-Print. Fülöp Mihály, Sipos Péter. 1998. Magyarorszaág Külpolitkája a XX Században. Budapest: Aula. Ghiúa, Alexandru. 2003. România úi Ungaria la început de secol XX : Stabilirea relaĠiilor diplomatice (1918-1921). Cluj Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană. Gyula, Juhász. 1975. Magyarorszaág Külpolitkája, 1919-1945. Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó. Hitchins, Keith. 1997. Socialiútii români úi Republica Sovietică Ungară, în Mit úi realitatea în istoriografia românească. Bucharest: Enciclopedică. Ignác, Romsics. 1996. Helyünk és sorsunk a Duna Medecében. Budapest: Osiris. Leuútean, Lucian. 2003. România úi Ungaria în cadrul noii Europe. Iaúi: Polirom. Mircea Muúat and Ion Ardeleanu. 1986. România după Marea Unire, vol I (1918-1933). Bucharest: Editura ùtiinĠifică úi Enciclopedică.

336

Reconstruction Projects of Romanian and Hungarian States after 1918

Mocanu, Marin Radu. 1996. România în anticamera ConferinĠei de Pace de la Paris, Documente. Bucharest: Arhivele NaĠionale ale României. Mureúanu, Camil. 1997. Europa modernă. De la renaútere la sfârúitul de mileniu. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia. Popovici, Aurel C. 1997. Stat úi naĠiune – Statele Unite ale Austriei Mari. Bucharest: Albatros. Traian-Valentin Poncea, and Aurel Rogojan. 2003. Servicii secrete din Ungaria. Originea evoluĠia úi acĠiunile structurilor informative secrete ale Ungariei în spaĠiul românesc. Bucharest: ANI.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN EUROPE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS FROM THE SECOND TO THE THIRD REICH: FOREIGN POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS DAVID SARKISYAN Since the Treaty of Westphalia the system of international relations has operated in Europe based on the principle of balance of power. Coalitions between states were subject to changes due to vibrations in the international power balance and to the rise or fall of a super-empire or a group of leading states. A relative sustainability in the international political order of Europe was established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. “The Vienna settlement added some new legal-institutional arrangements meant to manage and restrain power to the old European logic of balance” (Ikenberry 2001, 114). More than half a century the political flows went in the framework of the so-called Vienna system with its rules, divided territories of influence and monarchic solidarity, without any major political cataclysms in Europe. The situation altered dramatically when the Second German Reich entered the historical scene as a unified empire-state. From that moment up to present times a new center of power arouse in the center of the continent that had previously been dominated for centuries by the political drives from the flanking powers. Expressing continental international relations in terms of physics, the European politics shifted from a centripetal to a centrifugal pattern with Great Britain and France taking a more defensive position and Germany a more assertive one. This transition had several fundamental political factors in its basement.

338

From the Second to the Third Reich

The Second Reich in international relations British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli argued that the balance of power had been entirely destroyed by the Franco-Prussian War (Greenville 1976, 358). Observing the new reality in terms of geopolitical patterns and approach we can underline tectonic changes in European politics. Some authors even speak about a new Bismarckian system of international relations (Roskin 2001, 8). Speaking about the Second German Reich, we are discussing a new epicenter of power in the European balance of power system. The emergence and activity of that new epicenter resulted in dramatic changes of the very balance. However, at the initial or Bismarckian phase, German policy-makers adhered to the broader concept of balance of the power-oriented world order and shaped their foreign policies within the borders of its logic. The fundamental drive was to achieve a more favorable distribution of power for Germany and for the coalition bloc led by Germany. Bismarck once famously said that in a combination of five players it is always desirable to be on the side of the three (Kissinger 1994, 139). After the ouster of the iron chancellor and with the beginning of the Wilhelmian phase of German foreign policy the ultimate goal was set as the abolition of the world order operating on the balance of power system and the achievement of a new order for Germany based on hegemony. More specific manifestations of the conceptually new foreign policy model will be discussed below. Later we will see the same trend for a hegemonic world order inherited in the form of geopolitical designs of Third Reich Nazi leaders. So, in order to examine the foreign policy of the Second Reich more thoroughly, we have divided it into two phases. The first one is the period of chancellorship of the founding father of the empire—Otto von Bismarck. We have tried to outline the main characteristics of his political line which are: a limited field of foreign political activity, which was set in Central Europe; avoiding at any cost the formation of coalitions against Germany (cauchemar des coalitions); striving for the diplomatic isolation of France and preventing a revenge war. Further observance demonstrates that all the major goals set by the iron chancellor were fulfilled and contributed to the economic prosperity and the rise of military-political might of the country. The major shift in strategy was made after the ouster of Bismarck by the new emperor Wilhelm II. The geography of the new foreign policy was immensely broadened and mounted to a world scale. The German Reich, which had already been transformed from an agrarian state to an industrial superpower of its time, now demanded the world power—the Weltmacht status. This shift was not ripe at that moment and became the root of the

David Sarkisyan

339

Reich’s major catastrophe that occurred a quarter century later—WWI. However, there were some objective conditions for German expansion: economic, colonial and military. The enormous industrial and military growth rates created the opportunities for a more active foreign policy and created a center of power not only for Central Europe but for a much broader geopolitical space. This reality resembled in the ideas of German policy-making circles. The speculations of the German political establishment are revealed in a memorandum, dated September 9, 1914, where the German chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, set out his ideas for Germany’s demands in peace negotiations (Fischer 1967, 103–105). The memo contains extensive territorial claims at the expense of France and Belgium. But what is most interesting, the largest part of the memo deals with the creation of a European Economic Association, dominated by Germany (Blouet 2001, 38–39). Within EEA, tariffs would be structured so that German products would enjoy access to the European economic space and would not be subject to discriminatory tariffs when, for example, they entered France. The initial members of EEA were to be France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary and Poland. Italy, Sweden and Norway were listed as possible members. The economic objective was to secure, in the chancellor’s words, “Germany’s economic dominance over Mitteleuropa” (Fischer 1967, 104), however, it is obvious that German ambitions were much larger. But still, on the other hand, the empire was not strong enough to challenge the world order alone, so it needed strong allies from the flank states of the European fortress, i.e. either Great Britain or the Russian Empire. The first option was ruled out by the armament race and naval programs of the Second Reich’s last emperor as well as by his whole political course. When it comes to Russia, Wilhelm II made the same mistake, which was later repeated by the Third Reich’s führer, a mistake against which the founding father of the German new-age imperial statehood warned. That mistake was analyzed in details in the works of Karl Haushofer as well. From the geopolitical mosaic both Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler decided to ally themselves with Italy and Austria, two central European states, instead of making a truce with Russia. When it comes to the level of influence exercised by Bismarck, that type of alliance could have proved effective, but for the preparation for the war that was going to gamble the world leadership it was definitely not enough. A wrong political orientation and the early challenge for world domination led the both German reichs to a total failure in the two world wars.

340

From the Second to the Third Reich

The Third Reich and world politics The end of WWI brought the end of the Second Reich. In the following historical period of fifteen years there is a transitional form of German statehood, the Weimar Republic, as well as the unstable interwar IR system (Roskin 2001, 9). Being a democratic state, its foreign policy was not completely peaceful and that fact was stipulated by the anti-German provisions of Versailles. The Weimar Republic went between the Rapallo agreement and military deals with Soviet Russia, obeying the new world order set by Western democracies. Whatever was its foreign political orientation, the massive economic crisis laid the foundation for its abolition from inside in 1933 with the seizure of power by the Nazis, who came to pursue a rather active foreign policy. When it comes to seeking coalitions there was no balance-of-powercoalition pattern in foreign policy that was dominant in the Bismarck period. Instead we deal with a national might-increasing means aspiration model: a seizure of resource-rich regions, an alliance-patronage with a weaker ally or the establishment of zones of economic and/or political domination. The second pattern had priority even when it harmed the potential acquisition of balance or when it encouraged the formation of anti-German coalitions meant to restore the balance of power. We are inclined to divide the foreign policy of the Third Reich into three stages: 1933–35, 1935–37, 1938–39. At the initial stage, or as the Nazi leaders called it—the zone of risk, Germany’s efforts were directed at breaking the diplomatic isolation of the country, fighting the limitations imposed by the Versailles Treaty as well as creating favorable foreign conditions for keeping the West’s attention away from the remilitarization process in Germany. We already see that the Second and the Third Reich started differently and the Nazi empire had much worse conditions at the beginning. In order to compensate that disadvantage, the Nazis employed the ideology of the German barrier against communism in Europe (Ludecke 1938, 468). One of their first steps was an agreement with its Eastern foe—Poland, which was the ally of France in Eastern Europe. Thus, German leaders secured themselves from a two-front war (something they did not do when starting WWII). All in all, the whole political course of 1933–35 can be described as timewinning for the rebuilding of the country’s strength (ɗɜɚɧɫ 2010, 667; Hillgruber 1973, 328–345). The period of 1935–37 had witnessed more aggressive steps such as Rhineland’s remilitarization (Weinberg 1970, 264–84), the agreement on the naval military with Great Britain, which was completely against the

David Sarkisyan

341

Versailles system, and efforts of the Austrian Anschluss. From 1936 until the beginning of WWII, Nazis used the direction of Western democracy’s attention towards Japan’s aggression against China, the Italo-Abyssinian War, the issues in the Mediterranean and other political crises throughout the world (Klaus 1999, 23). That helped them to push their aggressive policy that turned into expansionism in the next stage in 1938–39. When it comes to choosing allies, at first Hitler adhered to what we call right-acting scenario, i.e. for challenging the world leadership, Germany needed support from the flanking powers of Europe—Great Britain or Russia. And he chose Great Britain. Regarding the British political leadership, it made an agreement with Nazis and even conducted the policy of appeasement (Klaus 1999, 16–17). However, it did not go further and never fell for a military alliance. At that point Germany made a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. But the biggest mistake it made was the two-front war against the both flanking powers and the breaking of Bismarck’s political testament—do not attack Russia at any cost. With other strategic failures during WWII, these fatal mistakes led to the destruction of the last Reich in the German political history.

Conclusion What is interesting is that the abolition of one reich never led to an insurmountable decline of the national might as in case of many other empires throughout the world. It is difficult to imagine a complete revival of a country so severely damaged from major defeats such as Germany. And we consider the phenomenon of German rebirth as a very interesting aspect in international relations of the country. Starting from the nineteenth century, the first time it occurred in the 1860s. Then it was repeated in the 1930s after the loss of WWI and the suffering through the Great Depression. Comparing the foreign policies of the two German reichs we are simultaneously drawing parallels between the two politically multi-polar worlds. Chronologically, the end of WWI can be considered as the dividing line between these two systems. Finding analogies in the two systems and concentrating on the reasons of the German rebirth and further rise in the framework of those IR systems, we could underline several fundamental factors. The most important ones are the geopolitical factors of the vacuum of power and the annihilation of foreign influences in Central Europe and on the territory of Germany in particular. In the 1860s, the flanking powers Great Britain, France and Russia annihilated each other’s influence and

342

From the Second to the Third Reich

thus created favorable conditions for the consolidation and rise of the German Empire. In the 1930s again, the refusal of democracies at the initial phase of the Nazi rise to engage themselves in the balance of power competition and the whole policy of appeasement partly stipulated by that resulted in the vacuum of power and the absence of influence on Germany. After the remilitarization of Rhineland, when France took a defensive position and especially after the Munich Agreement, the vacuum of power in Eastern Europe became more than evident and by the domino effect the Eastern European countries fell under German influence, which immensely increased its might. This time again the balance of power restarted on the eve of WWII was not able to prevent the conflict. What concerns the balance of power in Europe, it is obvious that before the formation of the German geopolitical center, the balance of power system of Vienna was rather stable. One could argue that the post1871 concert of major powers in Europe should have balanced itself as well. However, stability was not established again as it is implied by the balance of power logic, but on the contrary, the system was outbalanced, which finally resulted in WWI. The balance of power became invalid in the Versailles system as well and brought a more terrific catastrophe, WWII. In this paper we have tried to answer the question: “Why the European system together with the German epicenter becomes unstable and cannot be regulated when operated by the balance of power?” From our point of view, there are mainly two reasons for that: 1. Geographically, the European politics before the unified Germany as a regional power looked like a set of centripetal vectors (where each vector stands for the political-military might of a major European power expressed in its geographical direction on the continent), whereas after the formation of the German epicenter, the image is supplemented with an inner set of centrifugal vectors. So when we deal with an alliance between Germany and one or more of the major states, we delete the value of the (German) vector directed towards that/those state(s) and add that value to the direction of the vector(s) of the mentioned state(s), i.e. to the direction of the alliance vector that makes it extremely difficult for the state against whom the alliance is directed to cope with the pressure at a given geographic point even when the summative value of two competing coalitions’ might is equal. This phenomenon occurs because of Germany’s central geographic

David Sarkisyan

343

position in the heart of Europe, which makes it easy to attack any of the major powers directly. 2. Naturally the unification of Germany has shaken the balance of power. One could argue that a new balance ought to emerge as long as it was in the core logic of the balance of power system. However, the economic, military and demographic potential/might of Germany after exposure as a single integrated actor made it extremely difficult to find a new combination of states in confronting coalitions to make both sides of the balance equation of might really equal. Bismarck always tried to have three out five on his side. When it comes to Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler they tried to “desequalize the equation” by increasing the nation’s industrial and military might instead of adding new summons to their side (as Bismarck did). Whatever the methodical differences in foreign policies of the German leaders, the balance was actually never accurate but rather prone to transform into inequality and hegemony. This led to major clashes in WWI and WWII. If we take a look at modern European politics, we can argue that the ratio of potentials/might of major European actors has not altered dramatically, which means that in case Europe returns to the balance of power model (which of course is highly unlikely), a new major clash would be inevitable. So, we can see that the emergence of a single German epicenter of power in 1871 has once and for all changed the logic of the European balance of power and structure of European politics.

Bibliography Blouet, Brian W. 2001. Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. Fischer, Fritz. 1967. Germany’s Aims in the First World War. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Grenville, J.A.S. 1976. Europe Reshaped, 1848–1878. Sussex: Harvester Press. Klaus, Hildebrand. 1999. The Third Reich. London-New York: Routledge. Hillgruber, Andreas. 1973. “Grundzüge der nationalsozialistischen Auȕenpolitik 1933–1945.” Saeculum 24: 328–345. Ikenberry G. John. 2001. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton-New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

344

From the Second to the Third Reich

Kissinger, Henry. 1994. Diplomacy. New York: Simon and Schuster. Ludecke, Kurt. 1938. I Knew Hitler. New York: Jarrolds. Ɋɢɱɚɪɞ ɗɜɚɧɫ. 2010. Tɪɟɬɢɣ Ɋɟɣɯ, Ⱦɧɢ ɬɪɢɭɦɮɚ 1933-1939./ ɉɟɪɟɜɨɞ ɫ ɚɧɝɥɢɣɫɤɨɝɨ. Ɇoscow: Ⱥɫɬɪɟɥɶ. Roskin, Michael G. and Nicholas O. Berry. IR. 2001. The New World of International Relations. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

ASPECTS OF POLITICAL COOPERATION BETWEEN ITALIAN AND GERMAN COMMUNISTS DURING THE PERIOD OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC MARTINA BITUNJAC The march of Mussolini on Rome (Marcia su Roma), headed by the future dictator Benito Mussolini, and the National Fascist Party’s (Partito Nazionale Fascista or PNF) takeover of power in the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d’Italia) led to the prosecution, imprisonment and execution of hundreds of anti-Fascists and Communists and their banishment to Italian islands. As a consequence, the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista Italiano or PCI), established on the initiative of Amadeo Bordiga, Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti, was—like all democratic and left-wing political formations—forbidden by Mussolini in 1926. Bordiga, the first leader of the PCI, was arrested by the Italian Fascist regime in 1923 and his successor Gramsci, one of the most eminent Italian Marxist theoreticians, was sentenced in 1928 to twenty years in prison, where he wrote the Letters from the Prison (Lettere dal Carcere) and Prison Notebooks (Quaderni del carcere). Eleven years after, Gramsci was released from prison because of serious health problems; he died in April 1937.1 During the Fascist regime, the Communist Party of Italy was reconstituted clandestinely; while one part of its members remained in Italy, the other emigrated primarily to France and the Soviet Union. That the Italian political opposition depended particularly on the moral and material aid of their Soviet and French (Maltone 2006) fellow party members is well-known, but also the German Social Democrats and Communists gave them a strong support. The German Reich, respectively the Weimar Republic, with its Social Democratic government and Friedrich Ebert as its first chancellor (period of governance: 1919–24), 1

About the Communist Party of Italy see: Bertelli and Bigazzi (2001); De Felice and Serrati (1971); Dundovich et al. (2005); Spriano (1967).

346 Aspects of Political Cooperation between Italian and German Communists

was especially attractive to Italian refugees and not only as a transit country. The Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, also KPD), the second most important section of the Communist International (also Comintern or Third International), was able to provide the necessary support to the Italian refugees, prisoners in Italy and their families that remained in Italy. The CPG was a mass revolutionary party, which in 1918/1919 grew up to over 300,000 members. In the Weimar Republic, the CPG, since October 1925 headed by Ernst Thälmann, represented the largest Communist party in Europe. The bilateral political relations between the Italian and German Communist activists had intensified since the foundation of the Italian Communist Party in 1921, also due to the similar developments in their homelands, which, indeed, did not have the same form of government. While the Weimar Republic exercised a parliamentary system, in Italy the monarchy was replaced by Fascist structures. However, after the First World War, both countries were destabilized by a deep economic and political crisis. The Communist parties of Germany and Italy were temporarily banned. In addition, inner disputes weakened these parties. Like all Communist parties, also the CPG and CPI saw their political goals in the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and propagated the self-emancipation of the class. Some of their demands in Italy were the guarantee of the absolute safety of all workers’ organizations and full amnesty to political prisoners. The common struggle against the Italian Fascists and, at a later date, against Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) especially had to be realized, because, with the rise of national socialism also the German Communists in the Weimar Republic were more and more confronted with the ideological enemy in their own country (Striefler 1993; Röpenack 2002). The cooperation between the Italian and German party officials was characterized by various contacts and meetings; well known is the controversial correspondence between Amadeo Bordiga and the German Communist theoretician Karl Korsch. However, the political relations between the Italian and German anti-Fascists were not only based on theory: in the Weimar Republic, and especially in its capital Berlin, the Italian Communists formed—together with the German anti-Fascists—in the first half of the 1920s, political circles that were directed against the Fascist dictatorship in Italy. Only in 1923, there were about 300 Italian Communists and anti-Fascists who fled to Germany.2 2 Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Direzione Generale della Pubblica Sicurezza (DGPS), Polizia Politica (PP), box 108.

Martina Bitunjac

347

To get closer to the ideological Communist idea in 1922 at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, the International Red Aid was founded in order to form an organization of permanent relief for the political, material and moral support of the anti-Fascists and victims of the class struggle. Also the German department of The Red Aid (Die Rote Hilfe Deutschlands)3 used to support the Italian Communist Party morally and financially, helping their members to immigrate to the German capital, where a circle of Italian Communists was established, probably under the leadership of the Italian worker Umberto Pintarelli, who later was accused to be a Fascist secret agent.4 Moreover, the Communist Party of Germany and respectively the Red Aid of Germany were the most significant financial sponsors of the Italian Communist movement: just in 1923, the German Communists contributed one million marks to the Red Aid, with the goal to support the Italian refugees in the Weimar Republic and the arrested Communists in Italy.5 The Berlin organization several times gave a financial support to the PCI.6 Moreover, the Red Aid of Germany helped the Italian political refugees to find accommodation in their new home, and gave them, if necessary, false documents. To be able to proceed more intensively against the Fascist regime of Mussolini, the Germans and Italians formed liberal and politically leftwing associations, such as The League Against the Dictator (La lega contro il dittatore), Free Italy (Libera Italia) and the Society of Friends of the Freedom of Italy (Società degli amici della libertà d’Italia). Also the Italian Committee of Anti-Fascist propaganda in Berlin worked actively on the dissemination of Communist ideology. The ideological purpose of these associations was the promotion of the struggle against the Italian fascism and the support of its opposition members. However, it is rather difficult to reconstruct intensively the activities of these political organizations because of the lack of sources. Nevertheless, it is important to mention, that besides the political interests, also personal acquaintances between the Italians and Germans eased the lives of the refugees: for example, Kurt Grossmann, the secretary general of the German League for Human Rights, granted the Italian Communists—who were constantly 3

About the International Red Aid see: Aiutiamo le vittime della reazione. 1924. edited by the Italian section of the Red Aid. Rome: Società Anonima Poligrafia Italiana; Weiße Justiz und Rote Hilfe: Die Tätigkeit der Roten Hilfe in Deutschland im Jahr 1926. 1927, edited by the Red Aid of Germany. Berlin: Mopr Verlag. 4 ACS, DGPS, PP, Materia, box 12. 5 Das Bundesarchiv, Die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), RY1/I2/3/214. 6 ACS, DGPS, PP, 1924, box 9.

348 Aspects of Political Cooperation between Italian and German Communists

observed by the Italian Fascist spies—protection in his private apartment and helped them to flee to the Soviet Union. The fight against the political Fascist rivals intensified the cooperation between the German and Italian Communists, especially regarding propaganda. The famous editorial journalist Alfred Kurella was one of the few Communists who in 1931 managed to make a secret photographic reportage of Mussolini’s Italy, its population and colonies without getting caught. Until 1918, Kurella was the leading member of the Communist Youth Movement and editor of the magazine Free German Youth (Freideutsche Jugend). He was the founder of the local circle of the Free Socialist Youth in Munich and joined the CPG and the Deputy Head of the Agitprop Department of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. The Italian police noticed his activity in Italy only when the photographic contributions entitled “Italy—the nation in chains” (Italienein Volk in Ketten) appeared in the Communist magazine The Workers Pictorial Newspaper (Die Arbeiter Illustrierten-Zeitung, which was published from 1924 to 1933 in Berlin by the German Communist propagandistic leader Wilhelm, better known as Willi Münzenberg (Willmann 1974). In its report, the Italian police stated: “Alfred Kurella … was able to enter in Italy where he stayed about two months, and even to arrive in Tripoli, under his real name and with a regular passport. Kurella Alfred, who also speaks Italian very well … visited many towns and villages, factories and mines, in different regions of Italy, taking over 400 ‘stunning’ photographs of the Italian situation and the life of the working masses, the treatment of the opponents of the regime, and so on. Kurella … could with daredevilry get recommendations from the Fascist authorities and trick them to open the doors and walk undisturbed in every direction.”7 Furthermore Kurella, in his article, spoke about the circumstances of the Italian children who worked in sulfur pits, the miserable social situation of the Italian workers and the imprisonment of political enemies. 7

“Alfred Kurella … è riuscito a penetrare, sotto il suo vero nome e cognome e con regolare passaporto, in Italia, dove ha soggiornato circa due mesi, e ad arrivare perfino in Tripolitania. Il Kurella Alfredo, che parlerebbe anche molto bene l’italiano … avrebbe visitato numerose città e villaggi, officine e miniere, in diverse regioni d’Italia, prendendo oltre 400 fotografie sensazionali della situazione italiana e della vita delle masse operaie, den trattamento degli avversari del Regime, ecc. Il Kurella … sarebbe riuscito anche con la sua audacia a carpire, con trucchi, delle raccomandazioni di autorità fasciste per farsi aprire le porte e circolare indisturbato in ogni direzione.” ACS, DGPS, PP, box 43.

Martina Bitunjac

349

Kurella also published a sociopolitical account of a journey entitled Mussolini without a mask. The first red reporter visit Italy (Mussolini ohne Maske. Der erste rote Reporter bereist Italien). His documentation of the Italian fascism got a positive reception from the Russian and European Communists as one of the first critical voices against the Italian dictatorship. Finally, it must be noted that during the years of the Weimar Republic an intensive cooperation between the Italian and German comrades existed: they exchanged their interpretation on political views, communicating through letters, and established, primarily in Berlin, associations with anti-Fascist character. The Red Aid of Germany supported the Italian political refugees and the Communist Party of Italy in many ways. With the rise of national socialism, also the German Communists had to flee from their country; others, like Ernst Thälmann, were imprisoned and killed.

Bibliography Primary sources Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS), Direzione Generale della Pubblica Sicurezza (DGPS), Polizia politica (PP). Das Bundesarchiv, Die Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD).

Secondary sources Bertelli, Sergio, and Francesco Bigazzi. 2001. P.C.I. La storia dimenticata. Milan: Mondadori. Besier, Gerhard. 2006. Das Europa der Diktaturen: eine neue Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Bulferetti, Luigi. 1949. Introduzione alla storiografia socialista in Italia. Florence: Leo S. Olschki. Bretholz, Wolfgang. 1928. “Diktatur und Presse. Der Staatsjournalismus in Sowjetrussland und Italien.” Zeitungswissenschaft. Monatsschrift für internationale Zeitungsforschung 10:145–51. Timothy, S. Brown. 2009. Weimar radicals: Nazis and communists between authenticity and performance. New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books. De Felice, Franco, and Bordiga Serrati. 1971. Gramsci e il problema della rivoluzione in Italia 1919-1920. Bari: De Donato.

350 Aspects of Political Cooperation between Italian and German Communists

Dundovich, Elena, Francesca Gori, and Emanuela Guercetti. 2005. “Fonti relative agli italiani vittime di repressioni politiche in Unione Sovietica (1918-1953).” Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato 3:419–84. Kurella, Alfred. 1931. Mussolini ohne Maske. Der erste rote Reporter bereist Italien. Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag. Maltone, Carmela. 2006. Exil et Identité. Les antifascistes italiens dans le Sud-Ouest 1924-1940. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux. Röpenack, von, Arne. 2002. KPD und NSDAP im Propagandakampf der Weimarer Republik: eine inhaltsanalytische Untersuchung in Leitartikeln von “Rote Fahne” und “Der Angriff.” Stuttgart: IbidemVerlag. Spriano, Paolo. 1967. Storia del Partito comunista italiano. Da Bordiga a Gramsci. Vol. 1–2. Turin: Einaudi. Striefler, Christian. 1993. Kampf um die Macht: Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten am Ende der Weimarer Republik. Frankfurt am Main: Propylaen. Weiße Justiz und Rote Hilfe: Die Tätigkeit der Roten Hilfe in Deutschland im Jahr 1926. 1927, edited by the Red Aid of Germany. Berlin: Mopr Verlag. Willmann, Heinz. 1974. Geschichte der Arbeiter Illustrierten-Zeitung 1921-1938. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.

DIPLOMACY AND PROPAGANDA IN ROMANIA (1918–1946) RADU MÂRZA In all countries science is employed in helping foreign policy and war efforts not only to supply new and more efficient rockets but also to state the official point of view—i.e. propaganda. At the same time, diplomacy focused on friendly, enemy, or neutral countries is supported by historians and many other scientists who give different kinds of arguments: historical, cultural, linguistic, demographic, or statistic. The present paper is a part of a larger research project focused on the contribution of Romanian historians to the diplomatic and propaganda efforts of their country during the first half of the twentieth century, emphasizing several “hot” moments: the First World War and its end, the Peace Conference in Paris (1919–20), the end of the interwar period and the rise of revisionism, the Second World War and the peace negotiations, including the Peace Conference in Paris (1946). My present paper deals with the external political context in which Romanian historians of the time were active: the international relations in Central and South-Eastern Europe, Romania’s relations with its neighbors, the disputes over certain historical provinces and it will analyze the propaganda tools available to Romania too. The future researches and papers will focus on the institutions, publications and historians involved in Romania’s propaganda effort during the abovementioned period. I. Several initiative groups making propaganda in favor of Romania were active during the First World War. They consisted of governmental circles in Romania (but the government did not control all the initiatives of this type), but there were also groups of immigrants living in Western Europe (Paris, Rome) or the United States (Vasile Lucaciu, Vasile Stoica). The main goal of Romanian internal affairs and diplomacy was the union of Transylvania and other provinces inhabited by Romanians (Banat, Bukovina, Bessarabia) with the Romanian Kingdom. At the same time, one can note that the Romanian government did not develop a coherent strategy in order to reach this goal. In the beginning of the war, Romania (having signed alliances with the Central Powers) proclaimed its

352

Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946)

neutrality, but in the summer of 1916 it joined the war along the Entente with the declared purpose of freeing the provinces inhabited by Romanians; nevertheless, towards the end of 1916 the Romanian armies were repelled on all fronts and the Central Powers counterattacked, occupying Bucharest, Walachia and threatening Moldavia where the royal family, the government, and the main institutions had retreated. Despite the hard-won victories on the Moldavian front (1917), Romania was forced to make peace with the Central Powers through the Treaty of Bucharest (May 1918) and to rejoin the war on November 10, 1918, one day before the end of the conflagration. During the following month, the Romanian army entered Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transylvania, occupying them, while the Romanian national organizations prearranged the political aspect of the union of these provinces with Romania. The Romanian propaganda effort was more intense during the final months of the war and its aftermath, in the context in which the countries of the Entente had to be persuaded of the correctness of the occupation of the Romanian historical provinces. The effort reached its peak around and during the Peace Conference in Paris. The focus was placed on Transylvania and the Banat, which Hungary and Yugoslavia also claimed. In its propaganda actions, Romanian diplomacy worked on several fronts. On the one hand, it aimed at convincing politicians and diplomats from France to write favorable articles published by the French media and to organize interviews with personalities from or favorable to Romania (Dascălu 1998, 13–17). Another channel employed was through the news agencies. On the other hand, publications dedicated for example to issues of the Banat, Dobrudja, Transylvania, periodicals (for example La Roumanie published in Paris in January 1918), and sets of photographs illustrating Romania’s involvement in the war were prepared and distributed abroad. The Peace Conference in Paris (1919–20) triggered a huge (for those times) propaganda effort on the part of the Allies (Great Britain, France, USA, Italy, Japan), of the other victorious countries, but also of the defeated Central Powers and the successor states. From this perspective, Romania held an unclear position since the Great Powers did not express a clear stand and there were several suspicions that, after two years of neutrality, Romania joined the war on the Entente side but in May 1918 it settled for peace with the Central Powers and re-entered the war one day before it ended (MacMillan 2001, 140). In Paris, the Romanian delegation focused on Transylvania and the Banat strongly contested by Hungary and Yugoslavia, which also took great diplomatic and propaganda efforts to gain them (MacMillan 2001,

Radu Mârza

353

119–33, 265–78; Scurtu et al. 2003, 4–5). Hungary’s cause was nevertheless compromised by the proclaiming of the Republic of Councils in Budapest, and the Great Powers preferred to protect the interests of the new successor states—Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia in which they (especially France) saw a future sanitary cordon against both Germany and Soviet Russia. Yugoslav claims were not better received than those of Romania because the new Yugoslav state was prefigured as a multinational state covering a large part of the Balkans; Italy was especially concerned since it held bitter territorial disputes in Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia (MacMillan 2001, 135–44; Dobrinescu 1993, 78–95). Dobrudja was disputed with Bulgaria, which, nevertheless, received a bad image in Paris despite the fact that from a demographical perspective its claims were much stronger that those of Romania (MacMillan 2001, 150–51; Dobrinescu 1993, 61–63). Bukovina, a former Austrian province, remained unclaimed by the states taking part in the conference; the Austrian-German Republic (Deutsch-Österreich) was practically unable to claim a province so far from its new borders. On the other hand, strong national struggles broke in Bukovina before the war between the Romanian and Ukrainian elites and in the end of the war this province was claimed by the ephemeral Ukrainian states. The Civil War on the territory of the former Russian Empire and the absence of the new Soviet leaders from the Peace Conference meant that from a diplomatic perspective Romania was the only claimant of Bukovina. The same can be stated in the case of Bessarabia, a former Russian province (MacMillan 2001, 137; Dobrinescu 1993, 59–78; Dobrinescu 1996) that the Soviets or the White Armies involved in the Civil War were unable to effectively claim. Nevertheless, despite all these considerations and all Romania’s allies, mainly France, which favored Romania both in the diplomatic salons and on the battlefield, through logistic support provided in 1917 and the expedition corps placed in Dobrudja and the Banat, there were numerous voices against Romania and its territorial claims. First of all, certain delegates noted that Romania had already raised exaggerated claims during negotiations with the Entente focusing on its entering the war (1916) and that in Paris Prime Minister Brătianu had adopted a rigid position, closed to the negotiation of certain provinces that Romania had anyway occupied de facto in the end of 1918 (MacMillan 2001, 137–40; Scurtu et al. 2003, 7–8). Even more, in Paris Brătianu threatened that if he were to resign, Bolshevism would take hold in Romania and during the Peace Conference fear of Bolshevism was a very serious argument. Besides, it seems that one of the reasons for the Allies to accept Romania’s occupation and integration of Bukovina and Bessarabia was precisely the

354

Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946)

specter of Bolshevism (MacMillan 2001, 74, 137). Romania’s campaigns against the Hungarian Republic of Councils and its anti-Bolshevik discourse confirmed this (Brătianu 1939; ğepelea 1996; Mărdărescu 1921; Péteri 1984; Scurtu et al. 2003, 16–19). Without going into details on the proceedings of the conference, I must note that from a technical point of view it consisted of general or special commissions; a territorial commission was dedicated to Romania (the Territorial Commission on Romanian Affairs) and it included diplomats, military men, geographers, linguists, ethnographers, and historians. All participant countries prepared a large number of materials supporting their point of view and their own claims, which were presented during plenary meetings or the “technical” commissions. Such documents included texts, maps, statistics, images that were circulated among conference participants; some were printed as brochures and books and were mainly circulated among delegations and representatives of those countries that had a say on Romania: Mario Roques and Emmanuel de Martonne (Pop 1953; Dobrinescu 1993, 81–82; Dascălu 1998, 53; Lapedatu 1985, 354– 55; Scurtu et al. 2003, 5; Bowd 2012), members of the French delegation, and also the British historians David Mitrany, Robert Seton-Watson, Arnold Toynbee (Alexandrescu 2007; Dascălu 1998, 57–58; Dobrinescu 1993, 81; Scurtu et al. 2003, 4–5). The Historical Section of the Foreign Office had prepared (ever since 1917!) an impressive series of Peace Handbooks, complex files that included the most varied types of data of the world’s countries and regions and that answered the British diplomacy’s need for information (Peace Handbooks 1920; Dobrinescu 1993, 81–82). Alexandru Lapedatu’s memorial testimonies provide details on Romania’s presence at the Peace Conference; the Romanian historian took part as a “technician,” a councilor to the Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu. Lapedatu relates on the meetings he took part in and the papers he prepared, the structure of the Romanian delegation and the informal meetings in which he was involved, the foreign delegates he encountered, and the general atmosphere during the conference (Lapedatu 1985, 348– 73; Mazălu 2011, 48–54). Among other things, Lapedatu mentions the fact that he wrote eight memoirs, most of them published in Paris by Dubois et Bauer (1919); some were also translated in English. In the days before the signing of the Treaty of Trianon, Lapedatu was also involved in the writing of a common report of the Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, and Romanian delegations (Lapedatu 1985, 351–53, 370–72; Dobrinescu 1993, 50–51). The reports and memoirs, with hundreds of pages of annexes containing maps, photographs, graphics and statistics, were just a part of

Radu Mârza

355

the impressive quantity of documentary materials and publications produced around and during the Peace Conference in Paris. The Romanian cause was supported by both Romanian and foreign authors; (Leeper 1918; Wells 1919. Leeper is cited by Lapedatu 1985, 354) among the first one must note those living abroad (such as Vasile Stoica in USA) (Stoica 1919a; Stoica 1919b; Stoica 1919c). Historian Ion I. Nistor, born in Bukovina, engaged in an intense propaganda activity in favor of the union of Bukovina and Bessarabia with Romania (1917–18); he was active in Iaúi, Chiúinău, and Odessa, publishing several interesting books and brochures. The treaties signed during the Peace Conference in Paris fulfilled, in their general lines, all of Romania’s territorial claims (Pop et al. 2006, 532): the Treaty of Trianon confirmed the union of Transylvania and Banat with Romania; the border between Romania and Hungary was established (thanks to France and Italy) along the lines desired by Romania (West of the Timiúoara–Arad–Oradea–Satu–Mare line) (Lapedatu 1985, 357; Scurtu et al. 2003, 16–26). As for the Banat, Romania received the eastern part of the province (two thirds of the province) and Yugoslavia was given the western part (one third), together with the Bácska and Baranya regions, former Hungarian territories. The conference also recognized Dobrudja as a Romanian province (including its southern part, the so-called Cadrilater); the same happened in the case of Bukovina and Bessarabia (Lapedatu 1985, 362–65; Scurtu et al. 2003, 10–16, 26–30). It is interesting to note that the Paris negotiations regarding Besserabia were even more complicated by the fact that during the Russian Civil War the Allies supported the White Armies, which considered that Besserabia was a Russian province (Scurtu et al. 2003, 27). II. After the First World War, propaganda activity was almost completely abandoned in Romania, but several voices could be heard— such as Nicolae Iorga—stating that Romania required information and documentation services on foreign attitudes, expressions, and on publications regarding Romania (Dascălu 1998, 17–18). During the 1920s there were only a few institutions and departments of the governmental ministries in Bucharest dealing with propaganda (The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministries of the industries, justice, internal affairs); it was only in 1926 that a certain centralization was reached, through the establishment of the General Directorate of Press and Propaganda that was later on reorganized numerous times. Propaganda only received greater attention in 1938–39, as expected, during King Carol II’s dictatorship, Goga government and the Legionary (Fascist) government. Great personalities of Romanian culture were active in these structures especially during the

356

Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946)

years before the beginning of the war: journalists, literary historians, writers, historians, archaeologists, philosophers such as Alexandru Busuioceanu, Oscar Cizek, Nichifor Crainic, Constantin Giurescu, Gib Mihăescu, Zenovie Pâcliúanu, Alexandru Philippide, Zaharia Stancu, Ilarie Voronca, Radu Vulpe (Dascălu 1998, 17–39). The main problem for Romanian official politics, diplomacy and thus also propaganda was the international tensions, the rise of the Third Reich, Mussolini’s Italy, and the Central and East European states that rejected the Versailles System and raised territorial claims (Hungary, Bulgaria); one could add the Soviet Union that experienced an obvious diplomatic ascension during the 1930s. All these developments became manifest not only through diplomacy and expressions of military force but also through propaganda and its specific tools. Thus, Romania’s 1918 frontiers, confirmed by the peace treaties of 1919–20 were contested; the revisionist countries claimed certain territories or entire provinces: Hungary aimed at having the Treaty of Trianon annulled and regaining Transylvania and the Banat, the USSR envisaged Bessarabia, the former Russian province, and Bulgaria had an eye on Dobrudja or at least its southern part (Cadrilater). When the Second World War broke out, Romania did not become involved on either side. Despite the fact that the political class was traditionally tied to the Allies (Scurtu et al. 2003, 507–14, 520–32; Pop et al. 2006, 604–606), the general Ion Antonescu’s regime and its short-term Fascist allies (the Iron Guard) brought Romania close to Germany, politically, economically, and from a military perspective too (Scurtu et al. 2003, 514–20; Giurescu et al. 2008, 179–204; Pop et al. 2006, 604). This connection was nevertheless inefficient against the territorial losses of the summer of 1940 in favor of the USSR, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Ironically, all of them were Germany’s allies. In June 1940, the USSR sent an ultimatum to Romania, requesting the evacuation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina which it occupied several days later (besides the region of Hertsa). In August–September, through the Dictate of Vienna and the Treaty of Craiova, Romania lost the northwestern part of Transylvania to Hungary and Southern Dobrudja (Cadrilater) to Bulgaria (Scurtu et al. 2003, 566–89; Pop et al. 2006, 605–606). During the summer of 1941 Romania participated alongside Germany in the campaign against the USSR (the Operation Barbarossa). The Romanian propaganda named it the Crusade against Bolshevism. Romania’s goal was to liberate the provinces occupied by the Soviet Union during the previous year, but the Romanian army eventually continued the campaign beyond the Dniester and accompanied the German

Radu Mârza

357

army throughout the entire Eastern Campaign (Giurescu et al. 2008, 219– 81). The anti-Fascist insurrection led by King Michael and Marshal Antonescu’s arrest (23 of August 1944) led to an armistice between Romania, the Allies, and the USSR. Romania entered the war against Germany and its allies. In these conditions, Romania (together with the Red Army) freed northwestern Transylvania (Giurescu et al. 2008, 133–77, 297–339), but the new political and military conditions, the USSR occupying Romania, the beginning of Sovietization, and the enforced foreign policy according to the Soviet model made it so that the other historical provinces could no longer be recovered. Romania took part in the Peace Conference in Paris in 1946. Through the peace treaties signed there Romania recovered Transylvania according to the Treaty of Trianon, but Bessarabia and northern Bukovina were not regained and Romania ceased to claim the Cadrilater; (Dobrinescu 1988, 119–28; Giurescu et al. 2008, 795–98; Pop et al. 2006, 614) the Romanian-Bulgarian frontier remained the one settled through the Treaty of Craiova signed in September 1940. Thus, Romania left the Peace Conference with the frontiers it still holds today. III. Already during the years before the war, when Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the USSR rejected the Versailles System and the frontiers confirmed by the Peace Conference in Paris, Romanian propaganda attempted to present its point of view through numerous publications. Compared to the time of the First World War and the Peace Conference of 1919–20, during this period propaganda was better organized in Romania, having special institutions, periodicals founded especially for propaganda purposes, some printing houses published a series of propaganda works and, in general, the quantity of publications aimed at informing on and presenting Romania was much larger. These were general works or materials focusing on single issues, especially on each province. Such propaganda activity aimed at sensitizing Western politicians, diplomats, and the media (mainly the newspapers and the news agencies of the Great Powers: Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain, the USA) with regard to the Romanian perspective over the claimed historical provinces. Several diplomatic initiatives of reopening the issue of the territories lost in 1940 can be noted in Romania during the war. On the one hand, the officials and General Antonescu were active in convincing Germany and Italy on the justness of the Romanian cause. Romania’s involvement in the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union led to the partial completion of this objective because the territories occupied by the Soviets in June 1940 were recovered, but there remained the sensitive issue of Transylvania. Since

358

Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946)

Hungary was also one of the allies of Germany, the convincing effort on the part of Romanian officials was much greater. At the same time, the democratic opposition (but also several personalities around General Antonescu) negotiated with the Allies ending the alliance with Germany and Romania’s surrender to the Allies (Giurescu et al. 2008, 133–63, 204– 18) and, in this context, they also raised the issue of the territories lost in 1940. One can thus note the existence of several initiatives in Romania, all of them aiming at recovering Transylvania, Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia and the Southern Dobrudja (Cadrilater) (but there was little emphasis on the latter). From a technical perspective, the Study Bureau active by the Ministry of External Affairs since the summer of 1940 coordinated the documentation efforts of the Romanian diplomatic effort (MândruĠ 1989, 321 and note 8). The Bureau of Peace was established during the first part of 1944 by the Romanian Ministry of External Affairs that charged the Center for Studies and Researches regarding Transylvania with the preparation of propaganda works to be distributed abroad (MândruĠ 1989, 343). The governmental Commission for the Study of Peace Issues (the so-called Commission of Peace) was established in the beginning of 1945; it took over the attributions of the former Bureau of Peace and prepared informative and documentary materials to be used during the negotiations of the future peace conference after the war, with the help of the Center for Studies and Researches regarding Transylvania (MândruĠ 1990–91, 153). With the materials thus prepared and numerous other publications, some of them academic publications, Romania sent to Paris an impressive delegation consisting of seventy-three members, including historians, geographers, cartographers, specialists in demographics. Most of these “technicians” formed the two commissions (delegations), one for political and the other for economic issues (Dobrinescu 1988, 130–33). The two Romanian delegations functioned in 1946 like the previous ones of 1919– 20, preparing documentary materials, presenting reports and conducting discussions with the other delegates taking part in the conference. The major problem that worried the Romanian delegations was, like in 1919– 20, the issue of Transylvania, disputed this time as well with Hungary that supported active propaganda activities in convincing the Allies and the Soviets of the justness of its claims over this province (Dobrinescu 1988, 122–26, 149–79; Sălăgean 2002; Giurescu et al. 2008, 717–35). Not only political formations, but also certain institutions and research centers, periodicals, printing houses, and even certain cultural associations were involved in propaganda. One can mention here the Institute for National History of the University King Ferdinand I in Cluj, led by

Radu Mârza

359

professors Ioan Lupaú and Alexandru Lapedatu and moved under refuge to Sibiu between 1940 and 1945; the Center for Studies and Researches regarding Transylvania, founded in Cluj in 1942 and publishing Revue de Transylvanie (established in 1934); the Institute for the History of Romanians founded in Bucharest in 1942 under the leadership of Constantin C. Giurescu; the Institute for Balkan Studies and Research founded in Bucharest in 1943; “A.D. Xenopol” Institute for National History founded in Iaúi in 1943; the German Scientifical Institute in Bucharest, (MândruĠ 1989) but also the Romanian-American Institute created in Sibiu, naturally after August 23, 1944 (MândruĠ 1990–1991, 153). The Institute of Romanian Studies was created in Paris in 1946 (MândruĠ 1990–1991, 156) and the Sons of Roumania Association was active in New York.1 One can add specialized printing houses such as Dacia in Bucharest (Dacia Verlag), publishing numerous propaganda works in German and associations of friendship such as Amicizia ItaloRomena in Bucharest. Similarly, the Transylvanian Academic Institute was organized after the Hungarian Army occupied Cluj in the summer of 1940, serving similar propaganda purposes regarding Transylvania (MândruĠ 1989, 325–26) and printing a series of works entitled The Transylvanian Academic Notebooks (MândruĠ 1989, 326). One can identify the publications edited by the abovementioned institutions, while future research in the archives of these institutions or in governmental archives might bring to light new data on the propaganda activity of that period. According to the abovementioned research project, an electronic database of publications on Romanian history written in international languages is under construction and it already seems to be an exceptional bibliographic source that allows various types of analyses of publications that are deemed interesting from various perspectives. One can identify the major topics of historical propaganda writings, establish the preferred topics of historians, but also the thematic and conceptual continuities and discontinuities between historiography during the first half of the twentieth century (1918–46) and later periods.

1

The only activity of this association identified so far is publishing I. Lupaú’s brochure entitled The revisionist movement, shown to be illusory and without substance (Historical corrections; historical justice; historical antecedents of the Little Entente), New York, Fischer Press Inc., s.a. [1936], 13 pp. See also http:// businessprofiles.com/details/sons—of—roumania/IN—192879—110 (accessed June 2013).

360

Diplomacy and Propaganda in Romania (1918–1946)

Bibliography Alexandrescu, Mihai. 2007. “David Mitrany: From Federalism to Functionalism.” Transylvanian Review XVI, 1:20–33. Bowd, Gavin. 2012. Un géographe français et la Roumanie: Emmanuel de Martonne (1873-1955). Paris: L’Harmattan. Brătianu, Gheorghe I. 1939. AcĠiunea politică úi militară a României în 1919, în lumina corespondenĠii diplomatice a lui Ion I. C. Brătianu. Bucharest: Cartea Românească. Dascălu, Nicolae. 1998. Propaganda externă a României Mari (19181940). Bucharest: Ed. Alternative. Dobrinescu, Valeriu Florin. 1988. România úi organizarea postbelică a lumii: 1945-1947. Bucharest: Ed. Academiei RSR. —. 1993. România úi sistemul tratatelor de pace de la Paris (1919-1923). Iaúi: Institutul European. —. 1996. The diplomatic struggle over Bessarabia. Iaúi: The Center for Romanian Studies. Giurescu, Dinu C. et al. 2008. Istoria românilor. Vol. 9. România în anii 1940-1947. Coord. Dinu C. Giurescu. Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică. Lapedatu, Alexandru. 1985. Scrieri alese. Articole, cuvîntări, amintiri. PrefaĠa, ediĠie îngrijită, note úi comentarii de Ioan Opriú. Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Dacia. Leeper, Alexander Wigram Allen. 1918. The Justice of Rumania’s Case. London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton. MacMillan, Margaret. 2001. Peacemakers. The Paris Conference of 1919 and its Attempt to End War. London: John Murray. Mazălu, Dan Mircea. 2011. Alexandru Lapedatu între istorie úi patrimoniul cultural naĠional. Alba Iulia: Ed. Altip. Mărdărescu, G.D. 1921. Campania pentru desrobirea Ardealului úi ocuparea Budapestei: 1918-1920. Bucharest: Ed. Cartea Românească. MândruĠ, Stelian. 1989. “Centrul de studii úi cercetări privitoare la Transilvania. Istoric úi activitate (1942-1948).” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie úi Arheologie din Cluj XXIX:317–45. —. 1990–1991. “Centrul de studii úi cercetări privitoare la Transilvania. Istoric úi activitate (1942-1948).” Anuarul Institutului de Istorie úi Arheologie din Cluj XXX-151–63. Peace Handbooks. 1920. Issued by the Historical Section of the Foreign Office, vol. I–II. Austria–Hungary. Part I–II. London: H.M. Stationery Office; vol. III–IV. The Balkan States. Part I–II. London: H.M. Stationery Office.

Radu Mârza

361

Péteri, György. 1984. Effects of World War I. War Communism in Hungary. New York: Social Science Monographs, Brooklyn College Press. Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1984. Pop, Ioan-Aurel et al. 2006. History of Romania: compendium, edited by Ioan-Aurel Pop, and Ioan Bolovan. Cluj-Napoca: Romanian Cultural Institute. Pop, Sever. 1953. Pour un cinquantenaire scientifique Mario Roques et des études roumaines. Paris: Institut Universitaire Roumain Charles I, 1953, 222 p. Sălăgean, Marcela. 2002. The Soviet administration in northern Transilvania (November 1944–March 1945). New York: Columbia University Press. Scurtu et al. 2003. Istoria românilor. Vol. 8. România întregită (19181940). Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică. Stoica, Vasile. 1919a. Bessarabia. New York: George H. Doran Company. —.1919b. The Dobrogea. New York: George H. Doran Company. —. 1919c. The Romanian Nation a Sentry of Western Latin Civilization in Eastern Europe. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Printing Company. ğepelea, Ioan. 1996. 1919-1920: o campanie pentru liniútea Europei. BilanĠuri paradoxale. Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Dacia. Wells, John. 1919. A Plea for Roumania: New York: The Roumanian Relief Committee of America.

THE PERSPECTIVES OF THE MONARCHY IN INTERWAR ROMANIA: FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY TO RIGHT-WING TOTALITARIANISM PAUL-ERSILIAN ROùCA The end of World War I undeniably led to major changes in the early political, social, economic and religious life in Europe. The affirmation of the new national states was realized through retracing the state borders and the globalization of world politics. Wilsonianism was at the heart of determining each nation to make a plea for their claims and redefine negotiation strategies. Hence, Romania has fully benefitted from the new European status and sealed the unification of the Romanian-inhabited provinces under one crown. With the outstanding involvement of Queen Marie of Romania, Bucharest diplomatic representatives managed to receive the recognition of the newly formed state at the Paris Peace Conference. Several ethnic and religious issues unknown until the Unification Day could be identified. Thus, finding a balance in a new and extremely heterogeneous society together with organizing and solving conflicts within the new state represented the requirement that they successfully accomplished. During the interwar decades, the right-wing extremism represented by the Iron Guard gained more and more ground and was joined by King Carol II’s authoritarian regime, both representing an illustration of the nationalist movement. The Romanian connection to similar European movements was obvious. Our paper presents the most important transformations arisen within Romanian society after World War I. Furthermore, we focus on the role of the monarchy in defining Romania’s own political view during the interwar years. In this context, Romania did not remain isolated from European politics but tried to find its balance, the failure of democracy being extremely dearly paid during the next decades. The beginning of the twentieth century doubtlessly was a premonitory one with respect to the dynamics the international political arena would later become familiar with. We will restrict our analysis to Europe, which

Paul-Ersilian Roúca

363

presents the symptoms of the acceleration of national feelings often doubled by the accomplishment of the nation’s aspirations under the form of some newly emerged states on the continent map. The role nationalism played in the new socio-political equation was extremely important and was evident in the way in which the ethnic element concentrated latent energies. However, as the last decades demonstrated, if it was still necessary, “nationalism has run so deep and strong that it has appeared to possess an elemental, almost gravitational, quality. Time, location, and circumstances have, of course, altered its flow, as have war, revolution, socioeconomic transformation, ideology, perhaps even some of the brave attempts at emancipation from the bondage of historical fancy. Still, nationalism has been the fundamental fact of life for nearly two hundred years” (Lederer 1969, 396). People understood that beyond the political and territorial structures, there was a much stronger structure: the nation. Simply put, the latter represents “a group of people who feel themselves to be a community bound together by ties of history, culture, and common ancestry. Nations have ‘objective’ characteristics which may include a territory, a language, a religion, or common descent, and ‘subjective’ characteristics, essentially a people’s awareness of its nationality and affection for it” (Kellas 1991, 2–3). On the other hand, by analyzing the notion of ethnic identity, we notice that this is represented by core elements common to all individuals belonging to an ethnic group. These factors “determine individuals to be united and to show solidarity, to share the same values, rules, aspirations and ideals, to have a sense of community and to recognize the traditions, customs and common origins” (Panu 2012, 136). The difference between the two is, essentially, materialized in the existence (in the case of the nation) of a territory consecrated as such. Nonetheless, the values are sensitively common and will play an extremely important role in the ethnic groups’ attempt to protect their state from any centrifugal tendencies. Thus, we may identify two matrices with respect to the establishment of the national state: (1) the state is the one that coagulates the nation even if the latter is not unitary from an ethnic and religious point of view—state-creating nation; (2) the nation, this time overlapping with the ethnic-religious dimension, is the one that manages to form a state which represents its interests and aspirations—nation-creating state. However, one must not underestimate the power of ethnoconfessional nationalism. Gordon N. Bardos defines it as “a sentiment or emotion that consistently draws the support of two-thirds to ninety percent of a specific ethnic group or nation, and that one’s ethnoconfessional background

364

The Perspectives of the Monarchy in Interwar Romania

determines (or at least significantly influences) an individual’s beliefs and behaviour on a wide range of issues: voting preferences, choice of marriage partner, settlement patterns, etc. Furthermore, ethnoconfessional nationalism is a phenomenon that unites ideologically—dissimilar individuals from across the political spectrum horizontally and vertically as well, thereby undermining the usually posited dichotomy of elites and masses, or between classes” (Bardos 2013, 7). When discussing about Romania, we must state from the beginning that we cannot overlook the bidirectional way of the formation of today’s national state. The ethnic Romanian space was not identical to the national Romanian space. In 1918, Romania as a state structure represented only half of the territory inhabited by the Romanians. By carefully analyzing the Romanians’ history, and not the history of Romania, we notice that “[t]he speakers of the various regional dialects of Romanian seem to have shared throughout their known history several regional myths of origin (prince Dragoú’ hunting expedition for Moldova, Negru Vodă for Walachia) but also shared a common one, which made them the ‘heirs of the ancient Romans’. Nevertheless, they were subjects of different medieval states (Moldova, Wallachia and the Hungarian Kingdom). It is worth noting that, until the modern age, even in the cases in which one of these kingdoms or provinces happened to defeat and conquer the other, none of their rulers thought about uniting them into a single state. The idea of a Romanian nation, deserving, or claiming its own state, was clearly not conceived, nor claimed by anyone before the XVIII century” (Goina 2005, 155). The Romanian conscience played an important role especially in the historical provinces that were not part of Romania, where the strong desire for unity was emanated by the individuals, by the people, not by the state. The ethnoconfessional dimension offered coherence to the Romanians’ national discourse and generated the sincere desire for unity with Romania. Such an example is represented by Transylvania, where “at the time when the Hungarian state collapsed due to its defeat in World War I, the modern Romanian state found in Transylvania a well-organized, massbased national movement that facilitated the province’s unification with Romania. The unification itself was due as much to the national mass movements of the Transylvanian Romanians, as to the capacity of the Romanian kingdom to successfully occupy and manage the province, and to use the international relations arena in order to adjudicate Transylvania” (Goina 2005, 167). In 1918, Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina decided to unite with Romania, which is the pure exemplification that the nation is the model for creating the state.

Paul-Ersilian Roúca

365

On the other hand, in Romania before the Great Union in 1918, the national feeling was often related to the image of alterity and the attachment to demesne. The neighbors (whether Turks, Hungarians, or Russians) were always enemies willing to conquer, while the Romanians always fought for the ancestral land. Nonetheless, the destruction of the Romanian nation was continuously attempted. The state was the one that generated and maintained the national feeling. Acquiring national independence in 1877, proclaiming Romania as a kingdom in 1881, together with the prestige acquired after the Balkan Wars in 1912–13 asked for the unification of all the Romanian provinces. In this context, the state emphasized the development of the ancestral land as the cradle of civilization, as an ancestral root. A veritable nationalism of the territory started to be present in the collective perspective. That is why for interwar Romania, for monarchic Romania, “the nationhood represents more than its political, economic, administrative or juridical components. The Romanian nation is not only a political construction, an institutional product of modernity, it is furthermore an organic structure having its roots in the ancient past and extracting its identity from its millennial continuity” (Panu 2012, 139). The most illustrative proof of the national symbolic universe is represented by Queen Marie of Romania. Although she was an English princess, a princess who lacked any information about Romania and the people who inhabited it at the moment of her arrival, she came to thoroughly take upon herself the national being. The moral will she prepared not long before her death reveals the register of national wishes materialized and consolidated after the Great Union from 1918. It was both a moving and a definitive will for the way in which the queen’s feelings could be illustrated. Hence, she claims: “I have reached the end of my road. But before becoming silent for eternity, I raise my hands, for one last time, to your blessing. I bless thee, beloved Romania, the country of my joys and my pains, the beautiful country who has lived in my heart and whose paths I have all become acquainted with. Beautiful country that I have seen replenished, whose faith I have shared for so many years, whose dream I dreamed too, and which I was allowed to see fulfilled. May you always be rich, great and full of honour, stay always glorious among other nations, be loved, fair and competent. And now I say farewell forever” (Neamul Românesc 157:1). The beginning of the 1930s brought major changes to the history of Romania and Europe. The Great Depression, the collapse of liberal politics and the more and more pronounced dissatisfaction of people with respect to the old political structures led, as it was expected, to the emergence of

366

The Perspectives of the Monarchy in Interwar Romania

radical national movements. The occupation of the Romanian throne by King Carol II represented for many contemporaries a solution preferred to the reign of a minor king (Michael I was only nine years old), even if taking over the power had not been constitutional or perfectly lawful. The hopes related to Carol II’s ability to change Romania were unrealistic, as it was later proven. The new monarch will not hesitate to consolidate his position and personal power at the risk of sacrificing the fragile democracy so difficultly enhanced by his predecessor. The national accents were not absent. On the contrary, the king tried to highlight the profoundly national character of his reign throughout the whole period of his occupying the throne. Given that he was loved by the army, together with the fact that he was a true connoisseur of Romanian culture and was well aware of the way Romanians were like, Carol II understood the fact that attracting the people on his side was imperative. Consequently, Carol II speculated the Romanians’ prevailing vivid orthodoxy and the centuries-old relationships between the monarchic power and the Church. From the beginning, Carol “took over the idea of improving the role of religion and Church in the life of the society. The king perceived himself as a waivode from the medieval times, the restaurateur of the State-Church symphony, the one who actually released the ecclesiastic institution from the influence of politics” (Enache 2012, 288). His enterprise would not be a singular one. Similarly to political movements of the extreme right that flourished in Europe, the Iron Guard led by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu produced a strong affinity among the youth, the peasants and a part of the members of the intelligentsia. By having a political and cultural program that highlighted the deeply national values, the idea of protecting the ancestral land against any foreign influence, and by including mostly the youth and the peasants, the legionaries’ approach would soon intersect with King Carol II’s ideas and plans. By using the dictum divide et impera, Carol managed to attenuate the legionaries’ influence and activity in the beginning, given that the years 1934 and 1935 were rather calm from this point of view. Furthermore, Germany’s legation in Bucharest signaled the fact that “the Government achieved a surprising success. The ‘Iron Guard’, which, until the beginning of the year seemed to become the next state power … after its dissolution declined, coming to such a state of decay that it was eliminated as a political factor in the same year” (n.tr.) (Heinen 1999, 259). The decline was a temporary one and much less important in comparison to the expectancies of King Carol and the government. It was soon understood that effective measures of triggering promonarchic feelings were needed, together with illustrating the close

Paul-Ersilian Roúca

367

relation between the monarchy and the people by using the fundamentally Romanian values. The constitution of Straja ğării (Sentinel of the Motherland), a youth organization modeled on similar models from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, could not contribute substantially to changing the option of many young people for the Legion. Furthermore, Carol’s attempt to become a central, mythic figure was sensitively counterbalanced by the image of Codreanu, who enjoyed an overwhelming popularity as an undisputed leader of the Legion. Furthermore, the Legion developed a cult of personality for the charismatic young man. By emphasizing a pure Romanian spirit, the return to the ancestral roots, and by following the idea of eliminating foreign elements from within the society, Codreanu’s discourse had a considerable resonance. Given these conditions, the rivalry between Carol II and Codreanu could not be unnoticeable in the western chancelleries, especially in Berlin. Germany’s position with respect to Romania has known an interesting dynamics throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In the beginning, Hitler preferred to enjoy a harmonious relationship with King Carol II, who became increasingly attentive towards the German side due to financial reasons. Therefore, Germany’s mission in Bucharest considered that its objectives in Romania could be best reached through a close collaboration with the government led by Octavian Goga, who was a more malleable politician than Codreanu and had a strong relationship with the king. On the other hand, the Germans considered the Legion to be quite unpredictable at that moment and they envisioned an inevitable internal revolt as a result of the ascension of this Nationalist-Mystic group (this would not take place, though). Although “Codreanu favoured the BerlinRome-Bucharest Axis in the foreign policy, and the Legion, out of all the right-wing Romanian movements, was the closest to Nazis from an ideological point of view, Germany did not pay close attention to the Legionary movement until 1934. Germany started to be interested in the Legion only in the beginning of 1937, and Berlin was conscious that it would take long before the Legion came to power” (Quinlan 2008, 238). King Carol II started sensing that the legionaries’ ascension became more and more visible, especially the popularity enjoyed by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. By understanding that he would not be able to subjugate the Legion, Carol regarded Codreanu as a real menace to his reign and, consequently, the situation needed a comprehensive solution. However, the king’s strategy would later prove to be totally inappropriate. The first measures regarded the government, which, in the beginning of 1938, becomes a personal leading instrument, as Carol II himself admitted in front of the British journalist A. L. Easterman: “[t]he government

368

The Perspectives of the Monarchy in Interwar Romania

is my government. It must have my approval. The day I will not be content with the way in which it deals with the duties of the country, I will ask for its replacement. If I will not be satisfied by the government, I will steadily ask it to resign its power. And it will leave, if necessary” (Easterman 1942, 94). One of the most outstanding figures in anti-legionary politics was Armand Călinescu, a personality who will gradually assert himself as the main collaborator during the last three years of Carol II’s reign. As a supreme measure of imposing the new existing facts, a new constitution was adopted in 1938, which installed de jure an authoritarian regime, with somewhat dictatorial valences. Given the new context, the actions against legionaries become more and more concentrated and specific. Hence, besides the bloody confrontations between legionaries and the supporters of the Carlist regime, under threat from the Anschluss, Calinescu is allowed to arrest legionary leaders, especially Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. The summer of 1938 would bring an event with a multiplicity of national resonances. The death of Queen Marie of Romania on July 18 produced a real shock for Romania. Politically and publically isolated during the last years by Carol II, Queen Marie of Romania symbolized unity, sovereignty and national independence in the eyes of Romanians. An almost mythic-like figure departed from the nation she loved so much, she left the king surrender to national resentment, alone and isolated. The king’s decisions with respect to the legionaries would culminate with the tacit approval of the assassination of the Iron Guard leaders on the night between 29 and 30 November, 1938. This moment represented a point where Carol II’s fall could no longer be stopped. Being confronted with the legionaries’ hatred and their wish for revenge, Carol received Germany’s reproaches and menaces. Given the deep internal crisis and the general dissatisfaction, the assassination of Armand Călinescu on September 21, 1939 left the king without the main collaborator of his policy. Acting under the strong desire for revenge, the short governing period of General Gheorghe Argeúanu (from 21 to 28 September 1939), Călinescu’s successor, was distinguished by a true bloodshed against the legionaries. The psychological effect generated in the conscience of the public opinion was contrary to the effect expected by the authorities since the legionaries were regarded as victims of a system which became more and more detestable. Hence, Carol II missed two crucial aspects. Firstly, Hitler preferred the Legionary Movement to his regime, the reconciliation actions in 1940 being belated and insignificant. Codreanu’s image was so strongly associated to a martyr’s, to a veritable “saint’s,” that any attempt to reach a

Paul-Ersilian Roúca

369

consensus was doomed to failure. Secondly, Carol II did not understand that the Germans desired Romania’s resources at any risk and the fact that they would come as occupiers or allies counted to a small extent in the general equation. Carol hoped he would receive the support and the friendship of Germany, but his decisional instability, his hidden hope that Western democracies will manage to stop the German aggression, his diplomatic balance, eventually irritated Germany that gave a favorable resolution to the Hungarian revisionism, through the Second Vienna Award. Given the territorial losses in the summer of 1940, which were unacceptable for the Romanians, the total collapse of Carol II’s regime became a certainty. After a ten-year reign, the sovereign left the country, being forced by the external context (which was totally disadvantageous for him) and the actions of a personal policy that proved wrong from the beginning. His national vision was gradually lost, while his personal greed for power increased. For a period, the nation resonated with the king who tried to use the national feeling to his advantage. However, his mischance was represented by the fact that the Legionary movement focused on an extremely attractive type of nationalism in the era of nationalist movements. The two perspectives intersected and a conflict arose which seemed to culminate with the glory of the legionaries. This did not happen, which proves that extreme right-wing nationalism did not represent the solution Romanians really wished. In conclusion, we may notice that the national feeling in Romania took different forms of expression dependent on the political and ethnoconfessional realities and on the areas that were inhabited by the Romanians. This national feeling was not unique, but joined the similar nationalist movements in the interwar Europe period. In the flames of the Second World War, the period of constitutional monarchy identified with King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie was miles away. The romantic nationalism was replaced by the right-wing nationalism and a few years later communism would bring a turnover of the sense of nationalism.

Bibliography Bardos, Gordon N. 2013. “Ethnoconfessional Nationalism in the Balkans: Analysis, Manifestations and Management.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University. Easterman, A. L. 1942. King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.

370

The Perspectives of the Monarchy in Interwar Romania

Goina, Călin. 2005. “How the State Shaped the Nation: an Essay on the Making of the Romanian Nation.” Regio: Minorities, Politics, Society 8:154–69. Heinen, Armin. 1999. Legiunea “Arhanghelul Mihail”. O contribuĠie la problema fascismului internaĠional, transl. by Cornelia and Delia Eúianu. Bucharest: Humanitas. Lederer, J. Ivo. 1969. “Nationalism and the Yugoslavs.” In Nationalism in Eastern Europe, edited by Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer, 396–438. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kellas, G. James. 1991. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. London: Macmillan. Neamul Românesc, nr. 157, year XXXIII, 23 July 1938. Panu, Mihai A. 2012. “The concept of ‘ethnic elite’ in the interwar Romanian eugenic discourse.” In Anuarul Institutului de Istorie “George BariĠiu” din Cluj-Napoca LI: 135–44. Quinlan, Paul D. 2008. Regele Playboy. Carol al II-lea al României, transl. by Mona Antohi, Bucharest: Humanitas.

REGIONAL SECURITY PACTS IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS IVANKA DODOVSKA The Paris Peace Conference in 1919 officially ended the First World War. The Versailles system of decisions caused major changes in the Balkan Peninsula. The military superiority of the forces of the Entente and the associated countries in the war, as well as the military fortune, created a new Europe, more commonly known as Versailles Europe. The Balkan boarders, for the first time in history, were drawn according to the principle of self-determination of nations, the ideological inspiration of the American President Wilson. The victory of this revolutionary principle provided a vacuum of power that was created in Southeast Europe and was directly influenced by the breakdown of the prewar imperial structures. All this was largely referring to the future geopolitical shocks that were linked to a possible rehabilitation of Germany and Russia, especially for their sinister influence over the Balkan countries. Such a position of the new Balkan countries referred to the urgency of their unification in one powerful Balkan block, which came to represent a guarantee and a wall against an eventual external influence, mainly the influence of the USSR and Germany. Under these circumstances regional security pacts in Southeast Europe were created, better known as the Little Entente and the Balkan Entente. During the first decade after the First World War, France represented the most powerful country in the European continent. Its policy firmly supported the unification of the countries that had received benefits through the peace treaties of 1919. In that position, its intentions were aimed at building a system of alliances, with which it intended to preserve its favorable status quo in Europe and, in the long run, to prevent the damaged countries to revise the Treaty of Versailles (Stojkoviü 1998). In a situation where no state was strong enough to threaten its position, French diplomacy was orientated towards connecting with the new countries situated in Central and Eastern Europe, which, as already mentioned, as France, were aiming to prevent the penetration and reinstating of German power and the spread of the Soviet wave in Southeast Europe. In Eastern

372 Regional Security Pacts in Southeast Europe between the Two World Wars

Europe, France found such allies in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.1 The British position in this period was founded on the belief that France was sufficiently strong and that it was not necessary to strengthen its strategic position in Europe even more (Kissinger 1999, 212). In this period, it showed an increased interest in the relations in the Balkan Peninsula, with special emphasis on the relations between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, on the one hand, and Bulgaria, on the other, arguing that the entire relations among the other Balkan countries depended on these ones. Although emerging as a winner in the First World War, Italy, during the whole period between the two world wars, faced a considerable internal turmoil, as well as unfavorable diplomatic results of Versailles, which threatened its expansion guaranteed by the secret Treaty of London (Kissinger 1999, 701).2 For these reasons, with the arrival of Mussolini as the head of the Italian state in 1922,3 it strongly supported the concept of creating a pact between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece with a sole goal—to reduce the French influence in the Balkans, through the Balkan isolation of

1

France desperately wanted a military alliance with Great Britain, as an additional guarantee, which was denied by the US Senate when it rejected to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. The British politicians did not agree with this desire, they never entered into a military alliance with the most powerful European country, and now they believed that France could thus reestablish its former primacy in the continent. See more in Kissinger (1999, 212). 2 See more about this contract in Maxwell Henry Hayes Macartney, Paul Cremona, (1938); and in Cepreganov, Todor, (2000), quote: “Italy set megalomaniac requirements in Versailles which were defined by the end of XIX century and because of them it began to enter into international imperialist conflicts and because of which it entered the war in 1915. Its specific objectives were directed towards the Balkan Peninsula, where it attempted to replace Austria-Hungary with complete domination of the Adriatic Sea. The victims of this policy were to be the Yugoslav and Albanian territories that were provided by the secret agreements in London (1915) and by Saint Zhen de Morien (1917). In these secret agreements the following territories were included: Trieste, the Julian Alps, Istria, a part of the Dalmatian Riviera (with Rijeka, Zadar and Šibenik) and the islands, central Albania with the Vlore port and island Sazan. In addition, the secret agreements promised it also parts of South Tyrol in the north, some islands in the Aegean Sea and some Turkish territories in Asia Minor, in the east. See p. 17. 3 Italy’s young and often shaky liberal democratic system remained intact under the strains of the Great War. Italian democracy proved too weak, however, to withstand the burdens left by that conflict. See more in Barber (2006, 236).

Ivanka Dodovska

373

the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes i.e. after 1929, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.4 The offensive tendencies of the developing European countries stood up to the French aspirations for keeping the borders in the Balkans unchanged; they felt that the time was right to draw the new European borders. Such an interest was expressed by Italy and Weimar Germany, where during the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazi and the Fascist regimes5 were established. The appetites of Germany became especially big with Adolf Hitler’s coming to power in Germany in 1933 (Jelavich, 1999, 228). The Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in November 1917 caused Russia to withdraw from the finals of the First World War. This step heavily influenced the end of the war and the results of the Versailles peace agreements. With the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the new leadership in Russia led by Lenin announced the Soviet revolutionary wave in Europe (Brodnjak 1990). Although the Soviet expectations were that this plan would be implemented very quickly, in fact, it worked out only in Hungary (Jelavich 1999, 159). Despite the failure of the Communist parties in gaining a victory in another country, between the two world wars, the Great Powers followed the revolution with great attention. The Bolshevik revolutionary movement was seen as a threat to the established social order, which would impair the balance of the powers and the international order. The communist wave all over Europe suffered the impact of the apparent subordination to the USSR, since the Communist parties were directly related to and commanded by Moscow. The activities of the Comintern in this period negatively affected the independent development of the local Communist parties, and this was strongly emphasized at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern, held in 1924, when the position on the national question was passed. In essence, the intentions of the Comintern regarding the self-determination of oppressed nations—Macedonia, Thrace, Croatia, Slovenia, Transylvania, Dobruja, Bessarabia and Bukovina—were determined on the basis of this position. According to this concept of the Comintern, Bessarabia and Bukovina were supposed to 4

Supported by the United Kingdom, Italy would become the most important carrier of the imperialist expansion of the Great Powers in the Balkans and Podunavlje and the main instigator of the international “unagreements” in this part of the old continent. See more in Popov (1976, 357). 5 The Italian Fascists’ ideology quickly made them the favorites of aristocrats and the lower middle classes. Fascism also attracted some industrialists. These segments of society shared the Fascist spirit of super patriotism and hatred for Socialists and Communists (Jelavich 1999, 240).

374 Regional Security Pacts in Southeast Europe between the Two World Wars

become parts of the USSR and the other territories were to be organized as separate states under the protectorate of a strong Communist federation. With the US withdrawal from the European political scene in 1919, Great Britain and France were left alone to defend the Versailles decisions from Germany and the USSR, which were very soon joined by Italy, in the 1920s. Although these powers did not act synchronously, especially in the beginning, the deep discord between the Great Powers became the main cause for the appearance of repeated clashes in the diplomatic relations throughout the period between the two world wars (Jelavich 1999, 162). Considering the changes in the Balkans that occurred as a result of the First World War, the most affected country in a territorial sense was Bulgaria, whose ambitions to create hegemony surrounded by the Aegean Sea, Southern Dobruja and Macedonia, were seriously undermined by the defeat in this war. This ambitious plan, which had carried its genesis since the preliminary Treaty of San Stefano, was perceived in Bulgaria as the biggest national disaster and, therefore, all hopes of Bulgarian foreign policy between the two world wars were aimed at improving the opportunities that would lead to the revision of the Treaty of Neuilly. In contrast to the defeated Bulgaria, in 1918, the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes emerged. Based on the state interest in preserving its borders, its policies were directed towards cooperation with the neighboring Balkan countries, not disregarding the constant pressure by Italian irredentism on the Adriatic Sea and Bulgarian revisionism from the East. Regarding Hungarian revisionism, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes protected itself by signing the Little Entente in 1920, while the main enemies of its sovereignty and integrity continued to be the Italian and Bulgarian aspirations. In that sense, thinking strategically, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the 1920s and the early 1930s began an interesting diplomatic friendship with the Kingdom of Bulgaria, which at times left an impression to the international community that a large Slavic monarchy in the Balkans was being created, which would consist of the entire Bulgarian state, as well as the city of Thessaloniki. On the other hand, the major European powers during the period of this study had different attitudes towards the unresolved ethnic and territorial issues of the Balkan states. Thus, Great Britain showed increased interest in the relations in the Balkan Peninsula between the two world wars, with special emphasis on the relations between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Kingdom of Bulgaria, maintaining that the relations between the other Balkan countries depended entirely on these relations.

Ivanka Dodovska

375

Between the two world wars, France worked on the inclusion of defeated Bulgaria in the Geneva Treaty of 1920, while Italy, at international level, made strong efforts for creating a pact between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece in order to reduce the French influence in the Balkans, through the creation of the Balkan isolation of the Yugoslav state. In the early 1930s, the Balkan countries demonstrated aspirations for mutual support, which was motivated by the need to neutralize the impact of the great European powers in the affairs on the Balkan Peninsula. As the beginning of this changed relationship of events, the postwar leaders of Greece and Turkey, Ataturk and Venizelos established the first diplomatic relations between the two countries after the First World War in 1930. This was followed by the final signing of the Balkan Entente in 1934, which was also joined by Yugoslavia and Romania. Among other things, this agreement provided for mutual assistance and cooperation. As a sign of great progress in the preservation of peace and stability in the region, the representatives of Greece and Turkey were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Bulgarian state made some efforts to join the Balkan Entente, but because of the unsolvable territorial claims on its Balkan neighbors, it fell out of this regional-security system. The resulting international relations during the 1930s were evidently affected both by the great economic crisis of 19296 and by the increasing influence of the European radical regimes, which were arising from the shadow of the Versailles decision. After the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, the dominant role of Italy and France in Southeast Europe in the period between the two world wars was conditioned by the “Sovietization” of Russia, by the defeat of Germany and by the favorable geostrategic position through which they could influence: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, Romania, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and Albania. The changed circumstances that took over the European continent just prior to the Second World War 6

In the month of Stresemann’s death, the New York stock market crashed. Business shares plunged to half their original value within a few weeks. Soon, many enterprises and banks failed. Numerous other financial institutions stood on the brink of collapse. They began to demand the repayment of huge loans contracted by European nations in the wake of the Great War. As a result of the especially heavy debts of Germany and Austria, these countries quickly followed the US into a deep economic slump. By 1932, this Great Depression had spread to virtually every European nation. It created masses of jobless people, many of whom were ready for extreme measures to end the crisis. The especially severe shock of the Depression in Germany made the nation highly susceptible to the Nazi idea of a dictatorial nationalist savior (Jelavich 1999, 248).

376 Regional Security Pacts in Southeast Europe between the Two World Wars

smashed this predominantly French-security system to pieces and opened the door to a total destruction.

Bibliography Barber, John R. 2006. Modern European History. Greensboro, NC: Collins. Brodnjak, Vladimir, ed. 1990. Povjest svijeta-od poþetka do danas. Zagreb: Naprijed. ýedomir, Popov. 1976. Od Versaja do Dancinga. Belgrade: Nolit. Barbara Jelavich. 1999. Istorija na Balkanot, 20 vek, vol II. Skopje: NIK LIST. Dodovska, Ivanka. 2013. The Balkan Entente and the Macedonian question. Skopje: Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Primus.” Kissinger, Henry. 1999. Diplomacy. Belgrade: VERZALpress. Macartney, Maxwell Henry Hayes, and Paul Cremona. 1938. Italy’s Foreign and Colonial Policy 1914–1937. London-New York: Oxford University Press. Stojkoviü, Momir, ed. 1998. Balkanski ugovorni odnosi, 1876-1996, V II, 1876-1996. Belgrade, JP Sluzbeni List SRJ, SJU “Medzunarodna Politika.” Todor, Cepreganov. 2000. Sudirot na britanskite i germanskite interesi na Balkanot vo tekot na Vtorata svetska vojna. Skopje: Institut za nacionalna istorija.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN RETHINKING THE ADRIATIC QUESTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BETWEEN WAR AND REVOLUTION: THE ADRIATIC QUESTION AND D’ANNUNZIO IN FIUME, BUILDING A NEW ITALY (1918–1920) ANDREA CARTENY As a premise, we have to introduce the Yugoslav question and the Eastern frontiers of Italy at the end of the Great War, the final step of the Italian Risorgimento historical process (Motta 2011). The turning point in the Eastern and Adriatic question was January 1918, when in the Fourteen points’ speech the American President Woodrow Wilson stated: “The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.” Indeed, in that period, the ethnic and social situation in Austria-Hungary was very difficult and every call for “national independence” could cause important consequences. Among the Entente powers, mainly Italy carried out a strong action intended to give a “coup de grâce,” to destroy Austria-Hungary militarily and politically through a “policy of nationalities” (Valiani 1996). Although the Italian minister of foreign affairs, Sidney Sonnino, was to respect the London Pact, preserving the existence of Austria-Hungary, before and after the defeat of Caporetto (1917), the strong position of several Italian circles—and among them the influential newspaper Corriere della Sera and the group headed by the columnist and senator Luigi Albertini (Albertini 1953)—was a real support to the oppressed nationalities and an evident criticism of the Western “Austrophilia,” demonstrated by Italy

378

Between War and Revolution

even in the Second Balkan War (Biagini 2012). The aim of this criticism was to support directly the Southern Slavs and to “renounce” the London Pact (from this word the pejorative definition of rinunziatari for Corriere’s group). This target gained new supporters and a constructive confrontation with Mussolini’s newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia and with Gabriele D’Annunzio, the supporter of an extreme nationalistic position, who appreciated Corriere’s new deal in his mail of January 19 (“Mi felicito del vigoroso stile con cui il Corriere difende la nostra causa”). In the London Pact there was no mention of Fiume: in all the cases, diplomatic negotiations focused on the Italian and Yugoslav question, especially on the borders in Istria and Dalmatia, and finally an agreement (called TorreTrumbiü by the negotiators) was reached. On 8 April, the Congress of “oppressed nationalities of Austria-Hungary” was opened in Rome: it was said that they were the delegates of 30 million Slavs and Latins fighting against 20 million Germans and Hungarians to create, “against the Empire of violence, the building of right, of freedom and of justice for the nations.” While at the Italian High Command, General Pietro Badoglio prepared papers to spread the new national policy among the enemy ranks, Minister Sonnino did not sustain sincerely this action, trying to keep the London Pact to preserve the Italian national aims. The direct sponsorship of the Italian council president, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, was achieved the day after and in an interview published on April 25, Orlando explained that “the famous London Pact was negotiated against the enemy Austria,” but now “to face a friendly Yugoslav state, the situation and the intentions change” (as quoted in the interview published in Le Journal des débats). After the “Rome pact,” a lively debate followed a “line of balance” between Italians and Slavs in Istria and Dalmatia and about the entire Adriatic question. All the observers agreed to consider the Italian attitude as a double-faced policy towards the issue of nationalities as the different positions between Orlando and Sonnino. As the main consequences of the Rome Congress, we have to mention the achieved idea of the dissolution of Austria-Hungary through the organization of former war prisoners’ legions (Czech-Slovaks, Yugoslavs, Romanians, Poles) and through an active propaganda over the enemy lines for desertion and joining the Entente side (Albertini 1968). In this international framework, in the city of Fiume, the historical corpus separatum integrated within the Dualist Empire in the Crown of Hungary, at the time of the armistice and the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the majority of the population expressed a clear choice for the annexation to Italy. A complicated option to be allowed by the peacemakers of the Paris Conference: as mentioned, Fiume was not considered in the London

Andrea Carteny

379

Pact and is populated mainly by Italians (Susmel 1921). Fiume is a big harbor (46, 000 people: 29,000 Italians, 9,000 Croats, 4,500 Hungarians etc.) and after Italians, its inhabitants are also Hungarian and German bureaucratic and commercial families and a large Slavic community (mostly Croat Catholics, but also Orthodox Serbs). Because of Wilson’s opposition, at the Peace Conference, the perspective for Fiume was not the annexation to Italy. A possible solution was to constitute an independent little state (we can see the maps in military files, in the General Staff Archive, fund E8, n. 268: Inter-allied Commission for Armistice), but by the spring of 1919, a party led by the nationalist Giovanni Host-Venturi is preparing an insurgent action and other citizen associations are organizing the arrival of Italian volunteers (Host-Venturi 1976). Host-Venturi calls all the soldiers to form a “legion”: in this context the pressure of the Great Powers and the growing tension between nationalists (for the annexation to Italy) and Autonomists (supported by the Allied), on summer 1919 push the Italian soldiers out of Fiume. Sardinia’s grenadiers stop the march away from Fiume in Ronchi: there, on August 31, a group of Italian officials swears loyalty to the “holy cause” of Fiume, aiming at a “complete and unconditioned annexation to Italy” with the slogan “Fiume or death!,” “Fiume o morte!” (Susmel 1941). Gabriele D’Annunzio, the famous poet and soldier, the “hero” of war and the protagonist of the “Bakar mockery” (beffa di Buccari) and the “flight over Vienna,” replies to this call (Guerri 2008). On September 6, he demands a “necessary action” from Ronchi with the best Arditi, “daring ones,” and veterans from Fiume. At Saint German-en-Laye, Austria signs, with the Allied, the Peace Treaty, and two days after, on September 12, D’Annunzio, with two thousands legionaries, enters Fiume: the coup of Fiume begins (Gerra 1974–75). From Italy, many volunteers, Arditi and former soldiers, nationalists and pro-war leftists join D’Annunzio, called Vate, with the goal to build a “new Italy” in Fiume (Gerra 1966). As requested by the Italian Army Command on September 13, the Allied troops leave the city: after the military authority, on September 20, D’Annunzio assumes the Fiume civilian power (Leeden 1975). As Italy’s Fiume Command, all the deliberations of the city’s collegial bodies are under the power of Commander D’Annunzio. However, from Rome the government of Francesco Saverio Nitti does not want to exacerbate the tension with Wilson (also for the Italian needs in terms of financial and economic aid from the US), thus General Pietro Badoglio takes the charge of the special commissioner for the region Venezia Giulia, the Julian March, and assumes the role of the commander of the Eighth Army to find a solution to the Fiume question (Badoglio 1946). The Commander of

380

Between War and Revolution

Fiume d’Italia calls for city polls for an assembly: on October 26, with the abstention of the Autonomists of Riccardo Zanella, the National Union of Carlo Conighi and Riccardo Gigante wins the polls and confirms the Comando’s government. On November 16, together with the Italian national polls, also the citizens in Fiume vote for a member of the Italian parliament, but the election of Luigi Rizzo in the Fiume college (ad hoc constituted by the president of the National Council, Antonio Grossich), as expected, is not accepted by the government of Rome. On November 23, General Badoglio presents a draft agreement, based on the provisional Italian Army occupation and on the autonomy for the city, but without warranty for their railway and harbor links: the nationalist environments reject it and launch back the proposal for the recognition of the legionaries’ coup and of the Command of Admiral Enrico Millo to the governorate of Dalmatia (Giuriati 1954). On December 8, Italian Minister Carlo Sforza adjusts the draft to warrant the wishes of the population: this modus vivendi is supported finally by the Autonomists and the Italian delegation at the Paris Conference receives a memorandum based on the Wilson line and the constitution of a “Free State of Fiume” under the control of the League of Nations. The Fiume National Council agrees on this initiative, and a plebiscite about it is held on December 18: but this poll is contested by D’Annunzio and the scrutiny is interrupted. General Enrico Caviglia is called to take in charge the military command in the region, while the Fiume pirates, called “Uskoks” steal around the Adriatic sea supplying goods, foods, arms and weapons for the needs of the city population. After a failed compromise with Italy, the Fiume experience is now clearly oriented to a revolutionary way by D’Annunzio (De Felice 1978). From the cultural and ideological perspective, Fiume in some week shows to be the center of creativity: a lot of artists, poets and writers of avant-garde arrive in the city, called by the environment of freedom warranted by the Imaginifico D’Annunzio (Salaris 2002). Naturism and homosexuality are practiced freely, the emancipation of women is declared in the political life too (as the right to vote and to be elected). The founder of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, visits Fiume on September 16: back in Italy he declares that in Fiume the artists have the power. The weekly La testa di ferro (“the iron head”), the “free voice of Fiume legionaries” is published in February 1920 by the Futurist Arditi, such as Mario Carli (Carli 1992). During the 1920s, the Yoga association, a “union of free souls,” gathers the most libertarian and radical legionaries: their actions are ironic shows, full of symbolic meanings, as the flight of Guido Keller, in autumn, when over Rome he leaves a chamber pot falling down

Andrea Carteny

381

on the parliament (Bertotto 2009). Without the support of monarchists and moderates, leftist nationalists and revolutionary trade unionists become supporters of the Commander. On January 10, 1920, Alceste De Ambris becomes the cabinet chief, in a real constructive relationship with D’Annunzio (De Felice 1966). “Fiumanism” clearly shows itself as a revolutionary ideology, representing an Italian way for freedom and revolution: De Ambris, the “number two” of the Commander, gives back to Fiumanism the real meaning of “national revolution,” as “Sansepolcrists” (first Fascists) and leftist interventionists wanted to improve (Perfetti 1988). The bureau for “external” relations is formed under the direction of Léon Kochnitzky and Ludovico Toeplitz: thus, in opposition to the League of Nations, as the main result of the Great Powers, the Fiume government launches a League of “oppressed peoples,” taking contacts with countries and nations under colonial power and national minorities damaged at the Paris Conference, e.g. Egyptians, Montenegrins, Croatians, Albanians, Indians, Persians, Cubans, Flemish, Turkish, Hungarians in Romania and Czechoslovakia (D’Annunzio 1980). In the revolutionary perspective of the Fiume League, the Command is in contact with former exponents of the Councils’ Hungarian Republic and appreciates the leadership of Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution, searching the diplomatic relations with the Soviet government. Through the inspiration of Kochnitzky, until summer 1920, Fiume becomes the reference point of this “new” doctrine of revolutionary freedom: that is the period of the “Balkan intrigues” against the oppression of a centralized Yugoslav solution, with strong contacts and agreements signed, between summer and autumn 1920, with Croatians, Montenegrins, Albanians, Macedonians, Hungarians, united by the common goal of rebellion against the Serbian “oppressor.” On August 12, the same day of the foundation of the first “Fiume fasci of combat,” the new constitution for Fiume is proclaimed: the “Charter of Carnaro,” the Constitution of the new State of Fiume, shows the nationalist and revolutionary inspirations of D’Annunzio, together with the ultra-democratic and republican elements inspired by the syndicalism of Alceste De Ambris (De Felice 1973). Constitutionally, Fiume society is based on nine corporations, plus the tenth of “superior individuals” (as poets and heroes) and the government is organized in seven “rectors” (ministers); representative bodies are the Council of the Best (Ottimi) and the Council of Corporations (Provvisori). In the middle of the debate about the institutional and juridical framework (monarchy vs. republic), on September 8, the “Italian Regency of Carnaro” is proclaimed, leaving an open door to the next re-unification with the Italian Kingdom. After Nitti, the Giovanni Giolitti government

382

Between War and Revolution

follows the same strategy: to have an agreement about Fiume in a direct negotiation with Yugoslavs. In August, a Fiume delegation comes back from Rome with no results. On November 4, aviators from Fiume fly over Rome distributing papers against the “murdered victory”: but since August, with the agreement of Lloyd George and Millerand, until the meeting of Santa Margherita (November 7), Sforza and Ante Trumbiü (respectively Italian and Yugoslav ministers) reach an agreement on the armistice line (the recognition of the Dalmatia possession by the Yugoslavs, except the city of Zadar). On this basis, on November 12, the Rapallo Treaty, between Rome and Belgrade, is signed and a “Free State of Fiume” is created: which means the political and international end of D’Annunzio’s revolutionary experiment. On December 20, D’Annunzio and the Fiume government refuse to respect the Treaty because no Fiuman representative was involved in the negotiations. General Caviglia notifies an ultimatum, and on December 21, the state of war is proclaimed in Fiume. On December 24, an Italian attack is launched: on 25, a Christmas ceasefire for one day is called. The situation lasts until December 28, when D’Annunzio, finally, resigns and, on 31, Fiume accepts the treaty. The consequences of the “Bloody Christmas” are 50 dead, more than 200 wounded. The Italian Army enters in the city, while Fiume legionaries, between January 4 and 13, exit from Fiume. D’Annunzio leaves Fiume after fifteen months. In conclusion, we can say that Fiume’s coup was a revolutionary experience in the Italian political history: D’Annunzio and the legionaries, along with Arditi, Futurists, Freemasons, artists, veterans, and revolutionaries from all over the world were able to build the largest antisystem movement produced by Italian culture since the revolutions of 1848. Fiume, as a part of Italian culture and civilization, that had been lost in the past and found in its renewed “Italianity,” became the main factor of the glorious national heritage at the origin of modern Italy, embodying the future of a “new nation” in a new world, in D’Annunzio’s ethical and esthetical point of view. Nationalism and revolution were the targets sincerely searched by veterans and soldiers, as written in the Report on the Fiume events (General Pecori Giraldi, available in the Italian General Staff archive). The aim of D’Annunzio’s revolution in Fiume was to build a new nation against the old empires: a “new Italy,” not only territorially, but also morally and culturally.

Andrea Carteny

383

Bibliography Albertini, Luigi. 1953. Da Caporetto a Vittorio Veneto (ottobre 1917novembre 1918), III Vol. – L’Italia nella Guerra Mondiale, II Part, in Venti anni di vita politica, Voll. 5 (1950-1953). Bologna: Zanichelli. —. 1968. “La Grande Guerra.” II Vol. In Epistolario. 1911-1926, edited by O. Barié. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori. Badoglio, Pietro. 1946. Rivelazioni su Fiume. Rome: De Luigi. Bertotto, Alberto. 2009. L’uscocco fiumano Guido Keller: fra d’Annunzio e Marinetti. Florence: Sassoscritto. Biagini, Antonello Folco. 2012: L’Italia e le guerre balcaniche. Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura. Carli, Mario. 1992 [1920]. Con D’Annunzio a Fiume. Foggia: Miranda. D’Annunzio, Gabriele. 1980. Scritti politici, edited by P. Alatri. Milan: Feltrinelli. De Felice, Renzo. 1966. Sindacalismo rivoluzionario e fiumanesimo nel carteggio De Ambris-D’Annunzio: 1919-1922. Brescia: Morcelliana. —, ed. 1973. La Carta del Carnaro nei testi di Alceste De Ambris e Gabriele D’Annunzio. Bologna: Il Mulino. —. 1978. D’Annunzio politico: 1918-1938. Bari: Laterza. Gerra, Ferdinando. 1966. L’impresa di Fiume nelle parole e nell’azione di Gabriele D’Annunzio. Milan: Longanesi. —. 1974–1975. L’impresa di Fiume, 2 Voll.: Fiume d’Italia, vol. I; La reggenza italiana del Carnaro, vol. II, Milan: Longanesi. Giuriati, Giovanni. 1954. Con D’Annunzio e Millo in difesa dell’Adriatico. Florence: Sansoni. Guerri, Giordano Bruno. 2008. D’Annunzio: l’amante guerriero. Milan: Mondadori. Host-Venturi, Giovanni. 1976. L’impresa fiumana. Rome: G. Volpe. Ledeen, Michael A. 1975. D’Annunzio a Fiume. Bari-Rome: Laterza. Motta, Giovanna, ed. 2011. Il Risorgimento italiano. Dibattito sulla costruzione di una nazione. Florence: Passigli Editori. Perfetti, Francesco. 1988. Fiumanesimo, sindacalismo e fascismo. Rome: Bonacci. Salaris, Claudia. 2002. Alla festa della rivoluzione: artisti e libertari con D’Annunzio a Fiume. Bologna: Il Mulino. Susmel, Edoardo. 1921: La città della passione. Fiume negli anni 19141920. Milan: Treves. —. 1941. La marcia di Ronchi. Milan: Hoepli. Valiani, Leo. 1966. La dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria. Milan: Il Saggiatore.

YUGOSLAV-ITALIAN RELATIONS AND THE ADRIATIC ISSUE IN THE LATE 1918 AND THE EARLY 1919 ALBERTO BECHERELLI The Adriatic issue was one of the most important and difficult subjects at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (from 1929 the official name was Yugoslavia) were resolute in gaining their territorial claims and a compromise was very hard to reach. After the armistice, tensions between the two countries rose and there was the possibility of an armed conflict. Hostilities especially intensified after Italy occupied the former Austro-Hungarian ethnically mixed territories where Slovenes and Croats composed over half of the population and which had been promised to Italy by the Treaty of London on April 26, 1915.1 American President Woodrow Wilson, the only representative of the Great Powers not tied by the obligations of the treaty, was against all Italy’s territorial claims, while Great Britain and France refused to give Fiume (Rijeka), demanded by the Italian delegation at the Peace Conference in addition to the promised territories from 1915 (Woodhouse 1920, v–vi).2 The Yugoslav delegates had an inferior role in the negotiations about the territorial disputes. At the beginning, the key to the Yugoslav-Italian question was in Wilson’s hands, but later it was passed to Great Britain and France. Two years after weary discussions, the settlement of the Adriatic issue was reached by direct negotiations between 1

For the text of the Treaty of London see A. Giannini (1934, 7–12). Fiume had not been given to Italy by the Treaty of London, but the government in Rome claimed it after the defeat of Austria-Hungary. At the moment of entering the war on the side of the Entente, Italy demanded the complete control of the Adriatic Sea through the annexation of Dalmatia, but Russia, defending the interests of Serbia and the South Slavs, insisted that Italy could take only Zara and Sebenico. Russia, the first to propose the Italian military assistance to the Entente in the war, feared that Italy’s participation would complicate the peace settlement and act as an element of discord among the Allies (Albrecht-Carrié 1938, 25).

2

Alberto Becherelli

385

Rome and Belgrade, with the Treaty of Rapallo, on November 12, 1920. Italy’s main objective was to gain a mare clausum. The Adriatic Sea had a great strategic value for Italy, especially its eastern coast. On the western Adriatic flat shore, it was impossible to build fortifications or protected naval harbors (except at the two extremes of Venice and Brindisi) and it was unsuited for defense, while the eastern coast had better conditions for defending, being protected by numerous small islands, which formed a perfect curtain of canals to hide a whole fleet and facilitate a war of ambush (Warren 1917, 47). In the spring-summer 1918, relations between Italy and the Yugoslavs were still good. The so-called Pact of Rome,3 the outcome of the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities held in Rome in April, explicitly placed the unity and the independence of Italy and future Yugoslavia on the same footing and stated the desirability of an amicable territorial settlement between the two countries, on the basis of nationality and self-determination. The Pact gave the possibility to include minorities of one nationality within the frontiers of the other, with proper guarantees. In addition to this, on September 8, the Italian government gave a statement declaring that: “Italy considers that the movement of the Yugoslav people for independence and for the constitution of a free state corresponds to the principles for which the Allies are fighting and to the aims of a just and lasting peace” (Albrecht-Carrié 1938, 44–46). In the aftermath of the end of the Great War (the Armistice of Villa Giusti was signed on November 3, 1918) and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the friendly Yugoslav-Italian relations changed. To satisfy her aspirations for national completion and strategic security in the Adriatic Sea, Italy had to face a “new enemy”—the Serbian ally during the conflict. Already during the last part of the war, the Croats in Istria and Dalmatia started openly to support the Yugoslav ideology and the creation of a South Slav state outside the borders of the Habsburg Empire. The Croats, who according to Italian propaganda were among the best fighters in the Austrian army and were agents of Vienna during the war, accepted the Serbian conditions for the unification of South Slavs to ensure international protection from Belgrade and to counter the Italian aspirations for the control of the entire Adriatic Sea. Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the South Slavic state was proclaimed on December 1, 1918) conflicted over the following territories: Gorizia and Gradisca, Trieste and its district, Carniola, Istria with the Quarnero Islands, Fiume with the surroundings and Dalmatia. According to the Austrian census of 1910, there were more Slavs than Italians living in these areas. The territories were inhabited by around 3

For the text of the Pact of Rome see F. Šišiü (1920, 13–15).

386

Yugoslav-Italian Relations and the Adriatic Issue

437,385 Slavs (267,000 Slovenes and 171,000 Serbo-Croats) and around 356,000 Italians. In the district of Gorizia-Gradisca—where the total population was about 300,000—90,119 Italians (30 percent) and about 155,000 Slovenes (51 percent) lived. Around 119,000 Italians (62 percent) and less than 60,000 Slavs (31 percent, 57,000 Slovenes and around 2,500 Serbo-Croats) lived in Trieste (the total population was 190,803). For Istria—where the Italians were concentrated in the western coastal towns and most of the Slavs inhabited the countryside—the census gave the following results: 147,000 Italians (37 percent) and about 224,000 (58 percent) Croats and Slovenes out of the total of 382,652. In Dalmatia the total population numbered 663,778, among which 18,028 were Italians (3 percent) and 612,669 (94 percent) Croats and Serbs. Regarding the islands, only Lussino (Lošinj) had an Italian majority, while in the town of Fiume there were around 26,000 Italians and less than 15,000 Slavs, not including the Slavic suburb of Sušak where around 25,000 Slavs lived (the surrounding country was completely inhabited by Croats). The Italians claimed that the Austrian census was incorrect because, according to them, it did not correspond to the figures given by the municipalities. They accused Austria for openly favoring a larger number of the Yugoslav population (Woodhouse 1920, 187–88). For example, according to the census taken in 1910 by the Italian municipal authorities of Trieste, 74 percent and not 62 percent of the population in the city was Italian. The census of December 1918 of the National Council of Fiume gave the following results for the town: 19,684 Italians, 6,576 Slavs and 4,834 Hungarians, Germans etc. (the census was not held in Sušak). According to the Italians, the Austrian plan was to “fill’’ the Italian towns and country districts with Slavs, “to twist the ethnical truth and submerge the original inhabitants beneath a wave of shameless immigration. Slavism became a great denationalizing instrument for Austria in the coast provinces, Istria, Trieste and Gorizia, especially since 1866” (Warren 1917, 30–31). Among the Allies, the Americans were convinced that the aim of the Italian policy on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea was to deliberately provoke tensions in order to create a pretext for military intervention. At the same time, the Italians were particularly suspicious of the Americans because their self-determination policy encouraged their new enemies and curtailed Italian aspirations. On November 14, Italian troops tried to take Spalato (Split) under the excuse of a joint Inter-Allied occupation. The following day, a Serb battalion entered Fiume, but after a compromise for internationalization of the occupation was arranged, the Serbs consented to withdraw. On November 17, Allied forces entered the town; the largest percentage of the occupying force, as well as its command, was Italian

Alberto Becherelli

387

(Živojinoviü 1972, 240). For the Yugoslavs this meant the fulfillment of the Treaty of London and on the next day the Zagreb Council issued a note against the occupation to the governments of the Allies. At the Peace Conference in Paris, Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes accepted the principles of self-determination of nations, included in the “Fourteen Points” of Woodrow Wilson, as the basis for peace and a future arrangement. The most important Yugoslav delegates were Premier Nikola Pašiü, the leader of the Serbian Radical Party and the Dalmatian Croat minister of foreign affairs and Ante Trumbiü, the president of the Yugoslav Committee, while on the Italian side, the most important ones were: Premier Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sideny Sonnino. Initially, the situation regarding the Adriatic issue between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was less strained and both sides were willing to give concessions. The Yugoslavs ceased to mention Trieste with the same insistence as previously and Orlando was willing to give up larger parts of Dalmatia, except Zara (Zadar), if Italy gained Fiume. In February, the situation worsened. Italians reported the Croatian discontent with Serbia and the treatment of Italians in the Yugoslav regions, while the Yugoslavs spread the rumors about the ill-treatment of the Italian troops towards the civilian population in the Italian occupation zone. Both sides claimed that they were the injured one. Trumbiü recommended President Wilson’s arbitration for the settlement of the borders, but the Italian delegation did not accept the proposal. The Yugoslav offer was undoubtedly a skillful move. The armistice discussions had already clarified the Americans’ support for the Yugoslav territorial claims and Wilson’s opposition to the Treaty of London. In addition to this, at the end of January, the first Report of the American Territorial Experts recommended that Fiume, a fundamental port for the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, had to be given to the Yugoslavs, as well as the entire coast from the Italian frontier in Istria to Albania, with all the islands. As a response to the Italian rejection of the American arbitration, the Yugoslavs widened their claims and demanded the fulfillment of their maximum program with the River Isonzo (Soþa) as the border line. This meant that the Yugoslav delegation was demanding the whole Istria, Trieste, Fiume and all the Dalmatian islands, except Pelagosa (Palagruža).4 According to the Yugoslav side, Italy claimed the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea on no national, geographical or economic grounds, but only from an egotistical desire for conquest (Rojc 1919, 66). 4

AUSSME, E–8, Commissioni interalleate di Parigi, Jugoslavia, box 79, fasc. 9, La question des frontieres italo–yougoslaves, 5.

388

Yugoslav-Italian Relations and the Adriatic Issue

They insisted that Italy had no right to claim Fiume: the town was not included in the Treaty of London and the population of the suburb of Sušak and of the surrounding country was entirely Croatian. Fiume was of great economic importance to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes: it was the port best connected to the interior of the Yugoslav state. There was no reason for the Italians to claim the union of Fiume with Italy: historical and ethnographical rights, social and local conditions spoke against such a conception.5 Italy rejected the accusation of imperialism and began to treat the Yugoslavs as old enemies. On February 7, in the Italian memorandum drawn up by Salvatore Barzilai, a member of the Italian delegation, they claimed Trieste, Gorizia, Pola (Pula), Dalmatia and Fiume, the last one on the basis of the plebiscite held on October 30 by the Italian National Council of the town, which proclaimed the union of Fiume with Italy. The Italian reasons for the annexation of Fiume were also economic: the Italians feared that if Fiume became part of the Yugoslav state, it would fall under the indirect control of Germany, which could worsen the commerce in Trieste (Albrecht-Carriè 1938, 96–98). In March, the Italian delegates began threatening to leave the conference unless Fiume was given to Italy. According to Orlando, Italy had the right to gain Fiume based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but the American President was against it. Wilson stated that Quarnero’s town should be annexed to the Yugoslav state or should be internationalized. On April 16, Pašiü proposed a plebiscite to settle the Dalmatian territorial issues, which would be conducted under the supervision of a friendly and impartial power, but the Italian representatives again rejected the Yugoslav proposal. Orlando had already refused to listen to Trumbiü while he was presenting Yugoslav territorial claims, stating that he was the representative of the enemy people (April 3). On April 19, Orlando and Sonnino presented Italy’s case repeating their demands: Fiume and the fulfillment of the Treaty of London. Orlando claimed the natural frontiers 5

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had other difficulties besides those with Italy. In February, the Supreme Council of the Allies authorized a committee to examine all the territorial claims of the Yugoslavs (the Banat, Baþka, Baranya, the Austro-Yugoslav and the Hungarian-Yugoslav frontiers), except those that directly interested Italy. AUSSME, E–8, box 81, fasc. 1, La questione territoriale e di confine jugoslava, 1919-1920, Report presented to the Supreme Council of the Allies by the Committee charged with examining the territorial questions concerning the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Yugoslav state assured full and complete protection of life and liberty to all inhabitants of the kingdom without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race or religion. Ibidem, b. 79, fasc. 5, Alleati e delegazione serba, 1919, Draft of the Treaty.

Alberto Becherelli

389

for reasons of defense and security. Regarding Fiume, which fell within the natural frontier of Quarnero, the main consideration was the population’s own wish to be part of Italy. Dalmatia and the islands were demanded for the reasons of strategy and historical connection, but Wilson was resolute in his position: he could not recognize the Treaty of London and could not give Fiume to Italy. Few days later, Orlando had private meetings with David Lloyd George, with whom he discussed the possible exchange of Dalmatia for Fiume or the proposal to divide Quarnero’s town. According to this plan, the Yugoslav state would get the suburb of Sušak and the part of the port on the left bank of the River Eneo (Recina). Fiume had to be internationalized, the strategic islands annexed to Italy and Zara and Sebenico (Šibenik) settled by a plebiscite or transformed into free cities under the League of Nations (Albrecht-Carrié 1938, 132–33; 137). On April 24, Lloyd George arranged a meeting between the Italian delegates, Wilson, Georges Clemenceau and himself. Lloyd George and Clemenceau again supported Wilson and pointed out that France and Great Britain intended to stand by their treaty obligations, if Italy adhered to hers, but that it was inconsistent for Italy to get Fiume and all the rest of Dalmatia. Because of this response, in the afternoon, Orlando, General Armando Diaz and Barzilai left Paris for Rome, while Sonnino left two days later.6 Other members of the Italian delegation remained in Paris and continued to collaborate in the Inter-Allied Commission but were not directly involved in the main activities of the Peace Conference. In Italy, Orlando received enthusiastic greetings; parades and demonstrations were held in many cities. The Italian nationalist press maintained a friendly tone towards America but generally attacked Wilson, Lloyd George and Great Britain. Many publicists also saw a threat to Italy in the French good attitude towards the South Slavic state in order to neutralize Germany. Gabriele D’Annunzio became the head of the extreme nationalists who were ready to take Fiume and Dalmatia by force. On April 26, the National Council of Fiume decreed the annexation to Italy, but General Francesco Saverio Grazioli, the commander of the Italian troops, prudently declined to accept the offer in the name of Italy, declaring that he must wait a mandate from the Peace Conference (Woodhouse 1920, 250). The Italian delegation was waiting for the opportunity to show its strength: the delegates planned to return to Paris only if the Italian rights were recognized. However, the Italian enthusiasm rapidly turned into 6

Documenti Diplomatici Italiani (DDI), Sesta serie, 1918–1922, vol. III (24 marzo–22 giugno 1919), doc. 194, 195, 239, 280, 300.

390

Yugoslav-Italian Relations and the Adriatic Issue

apprehension when it became clear that the work of the Peace Conference had not been interrupted by the absence of the Italian delegation. When Italian delegates returned to the Peace Conference on May 6, a compromise was almost certain. The impression was that Loyd George and Clemenceau were ready to support the achievement of the Treaty of London, although Wilson had not changed his mind about Fiume and Dalmatia. However, all the negotiations continued to fail and there were no definite settlements about the Adriatic issue (the Peace Conference was primarily focused on the German Treaty). The efforts to come to an agreement with the Americans were less successful than the attempts to reach an agreement directly between Italy and the Yugoslav state (Albrecht-Carrié 1938, 184). Among the numerous plans presented by the parties to resolve the Yugoslav-Italian territorial dispute, at the end of May 1919, the so-called Tardieu plan needs to be mentioned. The Tardieu compromise failed, like numerous plans before and after it; nevertheless, it introduced the idea of a buffer state, the Free State of Fiume (before the parties only spoke about a solution to transform Fiume into a free city), which was a starting point for further discussions after the nomination of the new Italian government. On June 19, 1919, in fact, the Orlando government was replaced. Francesco Saverio Nitti formed a new Cabinet and Tommaso Tittoni became the new foreign minister. With the new government the situation changed and the agreement seemed to be within the reach. Tittoni resumed negotiations and, on August 12, presented his first proposal according to which Fiume, with its hinterland and Veglia (Krk), would form a neutral free state under the protection of the League of Nations, while Dalmatia, except Zara, would go to the Yugoslavs and eastern Istria with Cherso (Cres) and Lussin (which should both go to Italy) would be neutralized (AlbrechtCarrié 1938, 244). One month later, on September 11, the issue of Fiume was complicated by Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the town. The Yugoslavs refrained from direct action but were each day more insistent that something had to be done about D’Annunzio’s occupation. D’Annunzio’s coup created an extremely embarrassing situation for the Italian government and made the possession of Fiume even more necessary for Italy. As a consequence, in Paris Tittoni changed his proposal: instead of the creation of an independent state, Italy would receive Fiume and the Yugoslav state the rest of the territories, which had to be demilitarized (the League of Nations had to take over the port of Fiume and to guarantee for ethnic minorities). According to the proposal, Dalmatia would become part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, except Zara, which would be a

Alberto Becherelli

391

free city under the League of Nations, with guarantees for the Italian minority and economic interests in Dalmatia. Lussin, Unie (Unije), Lissa (Vis) and Pelagosa had to become part of Italy. At the end of September, Wilson rejected also Tittoni’s second project and, in the first half of October, the Italian foreign minister presented to the conference his third proposal. The main point of this new project was to establish the territorial contiguity of independent Fiume with the Italian territory. The free state had to be under the League of Nation’s control, while Italy had to receive the island of Lagosta (Lastovo), besides Lussino, Unie, Lissa and Pelagosa. Zara had to be independent under the protection of the League of Nations and the Dalmatian coast neutralized. However, Wilson persisted in his refusal to accept the Italian proposals and the negotiation was abandoned (Albrecht-Carrié 1938, 245–52). On October 24, the government in Belgrade issued a decree annexing Sušak, while D’Annunzio sought to extend his influence beyond Fiume, in Zara, where he received a friendly reception from Admiral Enrico Millo, governor of Dalmatia, and in Traù (Trogir). One month later, Vittorio Scialoja took Tittoni’s place at the leadership of the Italian delegation at the Peace Conference. The conflict still remained a dispute between Italy and the Allies, more than between the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Italy. This was confirmed again on December 9, 1919, when the United States, Great Britain and France drew up a new memorandum hoping to reach an agreement.7 Only one year later, a solution was negotiated directly between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. On November 12, 1920, the dispute was apparently resolved by signing the Treaty of Rapallo,8 which annexed to Italy the western part of Carniola, Istria, Zara and the small Dalmatian islands of Lussino, Cherso and Lagosta. According to the treaty, Fiume became an independent and free state, thus ending the military occupation of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s troops. Finally on January 27, 1924, Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed the Treaty of Rome, according to which Italy gained Fiume and the South Slavs Sušak.9 The Adriatic issue, however, was not over and it continued to be one of the most important issues in the Fascist Italy’s foreign policy and propaganda, until the Axis’ invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. 7

For the text of the memorandum of December 9, 1919, its British-French revised proposals and February’s notes of President Wilson see The Adriatic Question, presented by Mr. Hitchcock, February 27, 1920, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1920. 8 AUSSME, E–8, box 79, fasc. 4, Trattato di Rapallo. 9 For the text of the Treaty of Rome see Giannini (1934, 124–61).

392

Yugoslav-Italian Relations and the Adriatic Issue

Bibliography Primary sources Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito Italiano (AUSSME).

Secondary sources Adriacus. 1919. From Trieste to Valona. The Adriatic Problem and Italy’s Aspirations. Rome-Milan: Alfieri & Lacroix. Albrecht-Carrié, René. 1938. Italy at the Paris Peace Conference. New York: Columbia University Press. Giannini, Amedeo. 1934. Documenti per la storia dei rapporti fra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia. Rome: Istituto per l’Europa orientale. Lederer, Ivo J. 1966. La Jugoslavia dalla conferenza di pace al trattato di Rapallo, 1919-1920. Milan: Il Saggiatore. Miholjeviü, M. A. 1919. The Yugoslav Question with Special Regard to the Coasts of the Adriatic. Zagreb: Hrvatski štamparski zavod d.d. Rojc, Milan. 1919. The Yougoslavic Littoral on the Adriatic Sea. Zagreb: Government Press. Šišiü, Ferdo. 1920. Jadransko pitanja na Konferenciji mira u Parizu. Zbirka akata i dokumenata. Zagreb: Izvanredno izdanje Matice Hrvatske. Warren, Whitney. 1917. The Just Claims of Italiy. The Question of the Trentin, of Trieste and of the Adriatic, n.p. Woodhouse, Edward James, and Chase Going Woodhouse. 1920. Italy and the Yugoslavs. Boston: Richard G. Badger. Živojinoviü, Dragan R. 1972. America, Italy and the Birth of Yugoslavia (1917–1919). New York: Boulder, East European Quarterly, Columbia University Press.

THE EASTERN ADRIATIC IN THE CROATIAN NATIONAL REVIVAL VILIM PAVLOVIû In this paper, I will attempt to display the implementation of the ideology of the Croatian National Revival (Hrvatski narodni preporod) in the writings of The Croatian Newspapers (Novine Horvatzke) concerning the eastern Adriatic. The Croatian National Revival was a national movement that developed in the 1820s and 1830s and was primarily concentrated on the raising of the awareness of historical, cultural and linguistic connections between the perceived Croatian lands. Among these lands were the coastal regions on the eastern Adriatic—Dalmatia and Istria, as well as the city of Rijeka. In determining the treatment of the “Croatian” eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival, I will be examining The Croatian Newspapers—the main medium of the national movement. I have chosen this particular source because of the importance given to newspapers and publishing in the early periods of national movements. This study of public media, which was supposed to herald the ideology of a national movement, should help us understand how certain “revivalist” ideas were propagated and treated in the public sphere.

The beginning of the Croatian National Revival The Croatian National Revival was a political and cultural movement organized in Zagreb in the 1830s. However, political activity only became significant in the 1840s, leaving the early period of the revival predominantly based on cultural activity and concentrated on the spreading of the perceived Croatian culture. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, there was an initiative for collecting and printing folk stories and songs, thus giving a prominent role to publishing in the early stages of the movement. This tendency was continued and expanded in the nineteenth century when the growing ambitions of the revival led to the publishing of newly written patriotic songs and various other texts. These included, for example, the contemporary anthem of the Republic of

394

The Eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival

Croatia, Our Beautiful Homeland (Lijepa naša domovino) written by Antun Mihanoviü and originally published in 1835 under the title Croatian Homeland (Horvatska domovina) (Šidak 1990, 120) in Danicza—a literary edition of The Croatian Newspapers. The basic idea, motivation and background of this cultural activity was the creation of a Croatian identity and a Croatian “imagined community” (Anderson 1991) based on cultural and linguistic kinship—as was the case with most national movements in this period. However, the emphasis of the Croatian National Revival on cultural rather than political activity was not a choice made by the leaders of the revival. Their hands were tied by the existing political situation in the Habsburg Monarchy within which the national movement had to function. The political system of State Chancellor Klemens von Metternich created a series of restrictions and oppressive measures to ensure the survival of the imperial state in the wake of revolutionary movements and nationalism. That being said, limited forms of political activity were permitted and were used by the national movement to the best of its ability. The overall main political demand of the Croatian National Revival was the unification of the perceived Croatian lands. These included the historical kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, the region of Istria, the city of Rijeka (Fiume) and the Military Frontier—a defensive belt against the Ottomans. The Croatian national movement saw these regions as one territorial, cultural and national body, broken apart by historical circumstances and even injustice. While this is debatable, what remains unquestionable is the high level of heterogeneity within the so-called Croatian lands. From a purely administrative standpoint, Vienna and the Habsburgs controlled Istria and Dalmatia, while Croatia, Slavonia and Rijeka were connected to the monarchy through Hungary. The Military Frontier, as a territory of strategic and defensive importance, was directly subordinated to Vienna with a separate administrative organization. This lack of connection between Croatian lands was further amplified by linguistic diversity. The eastern Adriatic coast, which had been under Venetian rule for centuries before Napoleon’s destruction of that state, retained its existing administrative officials and hierarchy even after the integration into the Habsburg Monarchy. This meant that administration and education were mostly conducted in Italian. In the northern Croatian regions, the language of administration was German, sometimes Hungarian, but rarely Croatian. Only the peasantry and a handful of gentry and nobility spoke the Croatian language, and even within the language there were three distinct dialects (Shtokavian, Kajkavian and Chakavian). Education was rarely conducted

Vilim Pavloviü

395

in the vernacular, as a result of which only a handful of individuals had the capability to receive and further distribute national ideas. The first step in the attempted unification of Croatian lands came from Ljudevit Gaj in 1830, when he published his Brief Basics of the Croatian—Slavonic Orthography (Gaj 1830). A standardization of language provided a foundation for the spread of national ideas. In addition, the standardized orthography had the potential to remove the dialectal barrier within the Croatian language, thus bypassing one element of disintegration and heterogeneity. The second step was the so-called Dissertation published by Count Janko Draškoviü (1832). Dissertation was a political program that concisely promulgated the demand for the unification of the Croatian lands. Draškoviü’s demand for unification was not the first, but it was for the first time formulated in a concise, targeted and active political program of an organized movement. However, as already described, the political circumstances of the Habsburg Monarchy within which the Croatian National Revival had to function, restricted its options in the political arena. That is why the emphasis of the movement had to be placed on cultural activity.

The Croatian Newspapers and the eastern Adriatic in 1835 The Croatian Newspapers, organized and launched by Ljudevit Gaj in 1835, was the main and official herald of the Croatian National Revival and as such had a central role in the cultural activity of the movement. This also meant that the newspaper in some way related to the Croatian lands on the eastern Adriatic (Dalmatia, Istria and Rijeka). It is the goal of the present paper to establish how The Croatian Newspapers treated the eastern Adriatic. I intend to present and analyze how the ideology of the Croatian national movement was implemented in the articles concerning the eastern Adriatic during 1835, and to see whether the newspaper actually had a role in the propagation of Croatian nationalism on the eastern Adriatic. I will now present some of the typical news in The Croatian Newspapers and then progress to the analysis of the content. I will present only the news items that best represent the overall type of texts found in the newspaper. We can find the first piece of news concerning the eastern Adriatic already in the first issue published on January 6, 1835. This issue contains an article from December 24, 1834 from the city of Karlobag, north of Zadar. On that day, three fishermen, Karlo Potochnyak, Anton Bachich and

396

The Eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival

Blas Bachich, drowned after their boat capsized while they were returning to Karlobag from the nearby island of Pag. It is also remarked that the same area had claimed three more lives in 1831 when three other fishermen drowned (Gaj 1835, 2). The second issue of the newspaper from January 10, 1835 brings an article about the appointment of Vinczenczo Catalinich, a lawyer and judge of the Bakar county (near Rijeka), as a teacher at one school in Rijeka. In the same issue, we find detailed information about the arrivals and departures of ships from what is called “our port” (Nashe brodische) (Gaj 1835, 5). It is not clear from the article which port is in question. The possible ports include Rijeka and Zadar, as well as Trieste, which is sometimes also mentioned (Gaj 1835, 5). We find the next mention of the Croatian eastern Adriatic in the sixth edition of the newspaper from January 24, 1835. In an extensive text, there is a report on an article found in the newspaper Gazzetta di Zara from December 22, 1834 when this Italian language newspaper, published in Zadar from 1832, issued an article in which they were thanking the “emperor and king” (Gaj 1835, 21) for his financial help. Thanks to the financial help, new buildings were erected in Dalmatia, including a new lazaretto in Dubrovnik and a new water supply system in Zadar. Also, a new road was built through the Velebit mountains, connecting Dalmatia and Croatia, and twenty new stipends were created for gymnasium students. Finally, it is stated that the financial help was most welcomed because of the drought that had hit Dalmatia the previous year (Gaj 1835, 21). One of the most extensive and detailed articles is found in the twelfth issue of the newspaper from February 14, 1835. The article reports on the sinking of a ship traveling from Zadar to Rijeka. When the word of the accident reached the commander of the port in Rijeka, he assembled a few boats and set off to help the survivors. Most of the crew and passengers had already died by the time they arrived. The only survivors were two women who were stuck inside the boat. The rescuers used axes to cut through the haul of the boat and rescue them. The two women were then taken care of by the inhabitants of a nearby fishing village of Ika, until they recovered (Gaj 1835, 45). When it comes to religious structures, there is one piece of news from February 17 concerning the appointment of Pantalemon Gorikovich to the bishop’s seat of the Orthodox Church in Šibenik, a city south of Zadar (Gaj 1835, 49). The issue from May 16, 1835 has an article about the strengthening of trade routes between Trieste and Napoli, Alexandria and Izmir. There is

Vilim Pavloviü

397

also talk of emerging trade with South America where, as it is stated, there was room for improvement. It is also said that the overall trade could be even stronger if there was peace and if certain areas could achieve independence from Spain. The article is concluded by a statement claiming that trade would improve even further when more trade is conducted with Greece (Gaj 1835, 152). In the issue of The Croatian Newspapers from May 19, there is an extensive story about two fishermen from a village near Zadar, who, while returning to the port, got caught in a strong wind which carried them to the open sea. There they drifted for four days until finally they were rescued near Pescara on the Italian side of the Adriatic. Dehydrated and seriously injured, they were helped by the locals. After twenty days, they set of to Pescara where the Austrian consul, Alexandar Marinis, helped arrange a ship that would take them to Dalmatia. In the end, it is said that their intention in writing the article was not just to report, but to thank everyone who helped the unfortunate fishermen (Gaj 1835, 165). We can find at least a short mention of the eastern Adriatic in most issues of The Croatian Newspapers. These articles fit into three specific categories. The first and largest group of articles concerns the appointments of officials to administrative and, on a few occasions, religious positions. Most times these are short, one-sentence news items. These types of articles are especially prominent after the death of Emperor Francis I and the subsequent accession to the throne of Ferdinand I. During those times, many officials were appointed to new positions and that is reflected in the articles regarding the eastern Adriatic. The second type of news is the reporting on the travels, arrivals and departures of ships to Adriatic ports. Finally, the third group of news is without strict topical direction and contains reports on significant events from everyday life. However, in these articles there are never any additional comments by either the authors or the editor, thus offering to the reader only the most basic information about events.1

The sources of The Croatian Newspapers To understand why the articles in The Croatian Newspapers were written without additional comments, we first need to understand the criterion by which pieces of news were selected for publishing. We thus need to first explore where the articles concerning the eastern Adriatic 1 The author of an article is never signed or mentioned anywhere in the newspaper. Only Ljudevit Gaj is credited as the editor of The Croatian Newspapers.

398

The Eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival

come from. The largest group of news items regards and comes from Dalmatia, only a handful concern Rijeka and there is an evident absence of news from Istria. This fact can be seen through the basic principle by which newspapers are written and edited in this period. The Croatian Newspapers was a small newspaper that did not have its own correspondents in all the regions it was covering. Its content reached it through other publications. Most of the articles concerning distant parts of Europe came from larger newspapers from Vienna. Similarly, the content concerning eastern Adriatic came from regional newspapers. Most of the articles concerning Dalmatia came from the Gazzetta di Zara newspaper. This was a paper published in the Italian language in Zadar since 1832. More importantly, we see in this why there is an abundance of news from Dalmatia and a lack of news from Istria. Zadar was a larger city with good connections with Zagreb. It had a larger middle and upper class (for which newspapers were intended in this period) than cities in Istria. We can thus conclude that the selection of articles for The Croatian Newspapers was based on the criterion of availability, rather than on an ideological basis.

The question of ideology We thus come to the most important question of this paper—the implementation of the ideology of the Croatian National Revival in the articles concerning the eastern Adriatic, or rather the lack of it. What is most intriguing is the total absence of ideology in the content of the newspaper. The articles are regular pieces of news, not much different from what we find in the media of the same type today. The basic demand of the revival for the unification of Croatian lands can only be seen through which territories the newspaper chose to write about. The only sign of the political demand formulated by Janko Draškoviü for the unification of Croatian lands is the fact that The Croatian Newspapers published news about those lands. However, within the articles there is no promotion of the ideological demand for unification. The political demands of the Croatian National Revival are never mentioned. In fact, during 1835 and shortly in 1836 the newspaper was published in the Kajkavian dialect and not in the Shtokavian language standardized by Gaj in his orthography. This made it even less accessible and readable for the Croatian population on the eastern Adriatic where the third dialect of the Croatian language, Chakavian, was the dominant vernacular. One instance when the ideology of the Croatian National Revival could have been implemented was on August 25, 1835. That issue of the newspaper reported the appointment of Juraj Ternovzki to the position of

Vilim Pavloviü

399

teacher of the Hungarian language in Rijeka (Gaj 1835, 265). This becomes extremely significant if we consider that one of the most prominent programmatic goals of the Croatian National Revival was the resistance to Magyarization. The conflict of Croatia and Hungary over language had been an active political, social and cultural question for decades. Ljudevit Gaj’s orthography was actually published as a tool of countering the Hungarian attempt of implementing Hungarian in Croatian lands. It thus seems that an article concerning the appointment of a new teacher of Hungarian in one of the perceived Croatian lands would have been an ideal place to present the basic ideological provision of the Croatian National Revival. However, this was not the case and the news remained just one of many articles of the same topic, lacking any comment from the unnamed author or Ljudevit Gaj as the editor. This lack of ideology is surprising considering the mythological position given to The Croatian Newspapers within the Croatian national historiography as the main medium for the “awakening” of the Croatian nation. With the expansion and growth of the movement as a political party in the 1840s, the Croatian Newspapers2 became a more significant promoter of national ideology. However, in 1835 and during the first few years of the national revival, their role was not in the spreading of the ideological foundation of the Croatian National Revival The Croatian Newspapers was started at the very beginning of the Croatian National Revival, when the foundations of the movement were still fragile. In addition, the number of people actively participating in the revival was very small. What was needed was the creation of national awareness outside the small group of the movement’s founders. The Croatian Newspapers served this purpose. The newspaper was distributed mostly among the middle class in Zagreb where just reading about Croatian lands alerted the national elite to the very existence and extent of the Croatian nation. It thus seems that The Croatian Newspapers had a much greater role in the national “awakening” within the center of the Croatian National Revival than it did in the national periphery outside Zagreb. There are a number of factors that prevented the direct influence of the Croatian National Revival (through The Croatian Newspapers) on the eastern Adriatic. The first factor was the content of the newspaper, which as we have seen, did not serve the purpose of spreading the ideology of the movement. The second reason was inherent in the coastal regions and is 2

The Croatian Newspapers was renamed in 1836 to The Illyrian People’s Newspaper and in 1843 to The People’s Newspaper, after the banning of the Illyrian name.

400

The Eastern Adriatic in the Croatian National Revival

strongly connected to the issue of education in the vernacular. The absence of such education on the Croatian Adriatic meant that literacy among the Croatian speaking population was extremely low. Only a handful of individuals were actually capable of receiving the messages coming from the center of the revival. However, even among them there were sometimes strong feelings of regional pride and (in a way) regional nationalism, which prevented a more significant establishment of Croatian nationalism on the eastern Adriatic in this period. Finally, the social structure of the population on the eastern Adriatic made it impossible for the Croatian revival to establish itself there in this period. The middle class and the gentry were crucial for the establishment of a national revival. While that social stratum was present on the coast, it associated itself with the Italian identity and spoke Italian. Only in Zagreb did the middle class identifying itself with Croatian nationalism exist in significant numbers. It is thus obvious that it was only in the national center that The Croatian Newspapers could, and did have the greatest impact—even if that impact was not necessarily the promotion of the national ideology, but rather the creation of national awareness.

Conclusion As we can see, the ideology of the Croatian National Revival was not implemented in the articles concerning the eastern Adriatic in The Croatian Newspapers. It is undoubtedly true that newspapers had a profound role in the early national revivals. However, as we can see here, their actual impact is not always obvious. With the absence of clear ideological markings, we are forced to search for an underlying and subtle context to find the real meaning and significance of The Croatian Newspaper. In this case, we find it in the fundamental function and programmatic tendency of early national movements—the creation of national awareness among the elite of a nation.

Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Draškoviü, Janko. 1832. Disertacija iliti razgovor, darovan gospodi poklisarom zakonskim i buduüem zakonotvorcem kraljevinah naših, za buduüu dietu ungarsku odaslanem, držan po jednom starom domorodcu kraljevinah ovi. [Dissertation, or Treatise, given to the honorable lawful deputies and future legislators of our Kingdoms,

Vilim Pavloviü

401

delegated to the future Hungarian Diet, by an old patriot of these Kingdoms.] Karlovac: Joan Nep. Prettner. Gaj, Ljudevit. 1830. Kratka osnova horvatsko–slavenskoga pravopisana. [Brief Basics of the Croatian-Slavonic Orthography.] Buda: Kralevsko Sveuþilište. —, ed. 1835. Novine horvatzke [The Croatian Newspapers]. Šidak, Jaroslav. 1990. Hrvatski narodni preporod: ilirski pokret. [Croatian National Revival: Illyrian movement.] Zagreb: Školska knjiga.

THE TRIESTE QUESTION AND THE 1948 ELECTIONS IN ITALY: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE NATIONAL AND FOREIGN PROPAGANDA GABRIELE VARGIU Introduction Besides their fundamental importance for the national context as a step toward the full restoration of democratic practice, the 18 April 1948 elections acquired a broader meaning on the international stage owing to their consequences over the newborn Western-Eastern struggle for the control of the European scenario. As a result, the United States and the Soviet Union, the only post-World War II superpowers, found themselves compelled to focus a huge diplomatic, economic as well as propagandistic effort over their respective national champions, the Alcide De Gasperi-led Christian Democracy (DC) and the Palmiro Togliatti-led Italian Communist Party (PCI). The issues of Trieste and the Italian eastern border were directly involved in such maneuvers. The risk of amputation of the whole Venezia Giulia, one of the most evident negative legacies of the wartime, was a priority issue both in the public opinion and the national diplomacy. It is no coincidence that Ennio Di Nolfo, an important Italian historian, defined the issue of Trieste as “an omnivorous presence in Italy’s foreign policy” (Galeazzi 1995, 4) whose solution was necessary to reach if the country aimed to overcome the heritage of its 1943 defeat. Being aware of this, the US Department of State, advised by the Italian government and the officials of the American embassy in Rome, sought to use Trieste in the run-up to the elections to lead voters toward a pro-Western choice, promising the reintegration of the city under Italian sovereignty via a double public commitment issued on March 20, 1948. Relying on a wide range of sources, the paper intends to weigh how much these foreign and local engagements for a satisfactory solution about the Trieste question affected the results of the ballots and the shape of

Gabriele Vargiu

403

Italy’s international profile in the aftermath of the elections. First and foremost, the paper will outline an historical portrait illustrating the reasons that made the bilateral dispute over a narrow strip of the Adriatic coastline an important propaganda tool. Subsequently, drawing on the national press and the accounts provided by the relevant literature, the focus will move on the public and political reactions in front of the socalled Tripartite Declaration. Lastly, it will seek to assess whether or not such a strategy produced effects both on the voters’ choice and the American attempt to raise a common Western “sense of we-ness” in postWorld War II Europe, an essential requirement for the strengthening of its ideological “imperium.”

The struggle for Italy From the last months of World War II until the beginning of 1948 the reasons explaining the American and British interest in Trieste can be linked mainly to military observations. Keeping troops on the eastern side of the northern Adriatic Sea meant minimizing the risk that the Yugoslav claims over the region could result in a new conflict with Italy and preventing the expected escalation that was likely to lead Europe into another war. Moreover, such a headquarters was a useful strategic bridgehead on Eastern Europe and Austria, this latter occupied both by British-American forces and the Red Army. In spite of Italian and Yugoslav dissatisfaction, the institution of the Trieste buffer state represented a wise, although temporary solution for containing local and global tensions during the most chaotic and uncertain stage of the early Cold War (De Castro 1981, 474–80). All these considerations evolved radically at the eve of 1948. The failure of the Allied conferences in Moscow and London, along with the US Secretary of State Marshall’s European Recovery Program and the creation of Cominform, increased contrasts between the blocs throughout 1947. By the end of the year, the exclusion of all Communist parties from the Western European governments and the growing Soviet leverage over the Eastern half of the continent marked the definitive split among the post-WWII Great Powers. While the strategic scenario was taking a new shape, Italy was coming closer to its first general elections. The outcome of the elections, which were held in April in 1948, was hardly predictable and the increasing approval obtained by pro-Eastern political forces during the previous local elections raised American concerns about the centrist, Catholic-inspired Christian Democracy (DC)’s capability to rank again as the Italian leading

404

The Trieste Question and the 1948 Elections in Italy

party. As a result, the Truman administration found itself compelled to focus additional economic and diplomatic efforts on the country.1 Between the last months of 1947 and April 1948, American attention toward Italy increased sharply. The Marshall-led Department of State strengthened its ties with some key figures of the Italian centrist establishment and, in a close cooperation with the US Ambassador in Rome Dunn pursued a propaganda policy following two different plans of action. On the one hand, the intervention strategy made use of American overwhelming economic and soft power tools in order to play up to the Italian public. While ships provided harbors with increasing amounts of commodities and raw materials, the so-called Friendship Train went through the country lavishing food spontaneously collected by American citizens for helping their European neighbors. Italian Americans, who accounted for a significant part of the population, were urged to write letters for their families across the Atlantic Ocean, advising them not to vote for the leftist coalition. To figure out the huge size of the campaign set in motion by the Italo-American community, it should be recalled that in a couple of months around ten million letters and cables were sent to Italy via the so-called freedom flights (Ellwood 1993, 19–22). Even Hollywood stars like Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio addressed the Italians several times. On the other hand, the US sought to stabilize Christian Democracy’s political primacy supporting its claim for the revision of the 1947 peace treaty, a choice that answered to the Soviet proposal for the return of Italy to its pre-Fascist African colonies delivered to the Palazzo Chigi on February 17, 1948 (Pastorelli 1979, 235–51). Such an engagement represented Italy’s first post-WWII chance to take advantage of its internal weaknesses and unstable international positioning (Pastorelli 1987, 125; Varsori 1998, 63–64). Aware of this potential, Italian Foreign Minister Count Sforza informed the officials of the American embassy that he was expecting a similar offer from the Western powers, although the British opposition towards an Italian colonial trusteeship in Libya forced the American government to direct concessions on a different issue (De Castro 1981, 721–26). The alternative issue was identified in the reintegration of Trieste into Italy when Sforza called the American, British and French representatives 1

NSC 1/1. 1947. “The position of the United States with respect to Italy, November 14, 1947.” FRUS 1948, vol. 3, 724–25; NSC 1/2. 1948. “The position of the United States with respect to Italy, February 10, 1948.” FRUS 1948, vol. 3, 767–69.

Gabriele Vargiu

405

for a meeting on February 28, 1948. Relying on Western worries stemming from the boldness showed by the Soviets during the Czechoslovakian crisis, Italian diplomacy asked openly its partners for the return of the Free Territory of Trieste to its sovereignty (Romano 1993, 46–47). The request was accepted for three reasons. First and foremost, the fate of Trieste aroused nationalist feelings of the Italian public, who perceived the amputation of the whole Venezia Giulia as the most humiliating postwar imposition, whose correction would surely meet a widespread popular approval, also providing De Gasperi’s party with a strong propaganda tool during the run-up to the elections.2 Citing from Corriere della Sera of March 30, 1948: “… fought amid rallies and walls of houses, the electoral battle burns quickly every subject of debate but Trieste’s issue. … That because, rather than a subject for propaganda, it represents a real national tragedy.” Marshall’s Department of State in Washington, the US embassy in Rome and the Palazzo Chigi were completely aware that although fascism’s imperialist excesses prompted a political rejection of nationalism, Italian public opinion preserved a strong feeling for the defense of national identity. Wisely, the intransigent call for the protection of Trieste’s italianità was linked to the pacifist ideology supported by Christian Democrats so as to prevent any connection with a bellicose attitude. “The claim for Trieste is a claim for peace,” declared De Gasperi during a public speech in Frosinone, on March 29, 1948, a statement that shows both the inherently diplomatic nature of such a battle and the widespread interest for this issue above and beyond the northeastern regions of the country. Secondly, choosing the border dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia as a pivotal topic for propaganda meant forcing Communists and Socialists to deal with a very awkward topic. Up to Stalin’s death in 1953 and due to his personal ties with the Soviet politburo, Palmiro Togliatti embodied a full orthodox view of Italian communism, condemning any form of dissent or “deviation” regarding the USSR’s political line even when the latter could jeopardize the national interest. Nevertheless, subordinating the very Italian expectations to the worldwide scopes of international communism just before the elections could provoke substantial collateral damages (Galeazzi 1995, 97–126). While the leftist coalition proudly showed the Risorgimento hero Giuseppe Garibaldi as their symbol for the elections, 2

A survey managed by the Milan Institute Doxa on October 1946 revealed that more than half of Italians considered the threat of territorial amputation of Venezia Giulia the worst consequence of the defeat. By contrast, the loss of the colonial empire concerned no more than 20 percent of population.

406

The Trieste Question and the 1948 Elections in Italy

the lack of Soviet explicit support to the Western proposition for the return of Trieste to Italy forced the Italian Communist Party to adopt an ambiguous position. Togliatti’s strategy toward the issue swung between the search for a compromise with Belgrade (Pupo 1989, 36) and the refusal of the Tripartite Declaration’s solution, “an American fraud,” as he defined it in an interview for l’Unità on March 26. Meantime, citing from Il Giornale di Trieste of March 26, Togliatti’s deputy Luigi Longo affirmed, during a rally in Bologna, that “using the formula Italian Trieste they [the US and its allies] intend to drag the country into a new world war.” If the DC keywords for the matter were peace and positive expectations about the Western commitment, the ones coming from Togliatti and his entourage evoked the fear of a conflict, without offering any other valid alternative for overcoming the impasse. Lastly, the US and its allies agreed with Sforza’s proposal because issuing such a declaration would have produced positive electoral benefits without compelling a real actualization of its content. According to the literature (Cacace and Mammarella 2006, 168–69; Varsori 1998, 63–64), the Tripartite Declaration aimed for a complete restitution of the FTT to Italy which would not have been achievable without a Yugoslav military withdrawal from the southern part of the disputed territories. Oddly, this inconsistency was not a result of a Western imposition. Following the meeting on February, Marshall and his European colleagues informed De Gasperi and Count Sforza that they should feel free to chose which kind of commitment the Allies need to assume in front of the public opinion, taking for granted their will to restore, as soon as possible, the Italian sovereignty over Trieste in exchange for an informal renunciation of the Yugoslav-ruled FTT Zone B. Conversely, they opted for a maximal engagement, a choice which ensured an even broader surge of electoral approval for the incumbent government, a solution permitting the Americans and Britons to keep their troops next to the edge of the Iron Curtain and an evidence of the denied propaganda aim (Sforza 1982, 321– 22) hidden behind the promise.

Reactions to the Tripartite Declaration “… During the Council of Foreign Ministers’ discussions of the Italian peace treaty, it was the consistent position of American, British and French representatives that Trieste, which has an overwhelming Italian population, must remain an Italian city.”3 3

Department of State Bulletin. Statement by the Governments of the United States, United Kingdom and France issued on March 20, 1948. vol. 18, 425.

Gabriele Vargiu

407

On March 20, 1948, after a month of talks, France, Britain and the United States issued a joint statement postulating that the FTT should be returned to Italy. The declaration took the shape of a proposal addressed to the Soviet Union and Italy, leaving Yugoslavia out of the negotiations, although its consent was indispensable both for amending the 1947 Italian peace treaty and for the concrete territorial restitution. Simultaneously, as a further proof of its official obligation, the United States handed Italy a bilateral memorandum in order to make more explicit its support to the initiative and the reasons explaining the shift in its diplomatic position (Novak 1977, 8–9). The declaration had an outstanding echo in the national press. Pro-DC newspapers like the Corriere della Sera, Il Popolo and La Stampa devoted their headlines to Trieste’s question on a daily basis, following in footsteps the diplomatic evolution, while leftist gazettes—Avanti!, L’Unità, Il Paese—criticized the Western choice as an attempt to exploit Italy’s internal problems. The centrist press often lapsed openly into chauvinist and propagandistic tones, lingering profusely on Trieste’s “spiritual call” for a just electoral choice, depicting the renewed Western pro-Italian attitude as a constant in the Allies’ policies since the end of the war and explaining their previous hesitations with the need to give a sop to Tito’s victorious Yugoslavia—“at that time [the immediate aftermath of the war n.d.r.] Britons, Americans and French were sure Trieste should be left to Italians.” Notwithstanding their ideological differences, journalists unanimously acknowledged the Tripartite’s electoral scope. The day after the emission, Corriere della Sera commented on the document emphasizing its critical implications for Soviet policy: “Whether Moscow would reject the Western offer it would be discredited in front of Italy’s public. On the other hand, whether the Soviets would agree on it they would compound their relations with Yugoslavia.” Neither the press nor the Western powers and Italy knew that those relations had already started getting worse when on March 20, Tito addressed his first formal complaint to Molotov. In spite of his worldwide charisma, Tito’s vain ambitions for an autonomous policy inside the Yugoslav regional context had gradually set off a split between Russia and its former, most eager European ally, causing, on June 27, a formal ban of Yugoslavia from the socialist bloc, which overturned the American strategic evaluations over Trieste’s fate once again (Clissold 1975, 169– 79). Such yet secret rupture affected positively the electoral effect of the Western promises though it did not entail an improvement in the chances to obtain their fulfillment. Stalin carried on with his pro-Yugoslav approach toward Trieste even when his relations with Tito touched their

408

The Trieste Question and the 1948 Elections in Italy

nadir: giving up on the territorial claim would have meant disavowing pan-Slavism, abandoning every possibility to overcome the bilateral crisis and, most importantly, forcing Yugoslavia to join openly the Western camp in order to protect its sovereignty (De Castro 1981, 264). As a consequence, the Soviet Union found itself forced to turn the proposal down, declined just a few days before the elections, while the United States kept on backing the declaration, calling three more times for a mutual agreement with Moscow and presenting itself as the unique defender of Italy’s interest. Kept in the dark about the Communist strife, the press, namely La Stampa on April 15, explained the Russian denial either as a surrender to the unavoidable centrist victory or as an erroneous evaluation of the importance of such an issue for the public opinion. Finally, on April 17 the propaganda machine turned its engine off and allowed the voters speak: Christian Democrats collected more than 48 percent of votes, defeating their rivals and leading Italy definitively into the Western sphere of influence.

Conclusion As historiography points out (Bucarelli 2008, 22; Cacace and Mammarella 2006, 168–69; Duroselle 1966, 267–70; Eden 1969, 200; Miller 1993, 167; Novak 1973, 281–83; Varsori 1998, 63–64), a thorough analysis of internal and international political dynamics that shaped Italy during the run-up to the April 18 elections seems to confirm that the American and Western involvement in Trieste’s impasse via the Tripartite declaration responded mainly to an electoral aim. Those who have disagreed with such a view have hardly managed to prove the opposite. Diego De Castro, arguably the author of the most detailed studies on the Italian eastern borders’ issues, sought to play down the interpretation of the declaration as a mere propaganda tool, stating that the document had been issued in relation to a greater threat, a Soviet invasion on the whole Europe. Nevertheless, rather than denying the propagandistic use of the promise, such a stance appears to suggest its even broader systemic meaning inside Truman’s containment policy (De Castro 1981, 262–64). What is more, even assuming as true Sforza’s idea about the US willingness to soften a punitive peace treaty, one could wonder if the “disinterested gift” produced some effects over Italy’s electoral inclination and overall attitude toward Americans. Concerning this point, academics offer conflicting verdicts. While Varsori acknowledges a prominent role for the US promise (Varsori 1982, 56–57), Novak argues that it entailed little benefit during the elections and

Gabriele Vargiu

409

huge negative consequences over the bilateral talks (Novak 1973, 281– 90). Jean Baptiste Dureselle, who does not express a clear evaluation of the subject, remembers how several months after the elections different deputies admitted its propagandistic nature and significant effect on public opinion.4 Arguably, even if it seems impossible to isolate the weight of each internal and external factor affecting the Italian choice, the Tripartite declaration represented an important tool that contributed to co-opt Italy inside the Western bloc, proving the long-term success of the US strategies. All things considered, these elements lead the research into two main findings. The first one confirms that, in spite of the previous imperialist excesses, national matters still maintained strong public appeal in Italy’s postwar social and political landscape. The second one shows how, along with a wide use of the new media and soft power instruments, American policies aimed at including Italy inside its ideological imperium relied largely on the old nineteenth-century approach focused over negotiations and promises about traditional territorial issues.

Bibliography Bucarelli, Massimo. 2008. La questione jugoslava nella politica estera dell’Italia repubblicana (1945-1999). Rome: Aracne. Cacace, Paolo, and Giuseppe Mammarella. 2006. La politica estera dell’Italia. Dallo Stato unitario ai giorni nostri. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Clissold, Stephen. 1977. “The Postwar Period: Friendship and Friction.” In Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, 1939–1973, edited by Stephen Clissold, 169–79. London: Oxford University Press. De Castro, Diego. 1981. La questione di Trieste. L’azione politica e diplomatica italiana dal 1943 al 1954. Trieste: Lint. Department of State Bulletin. Statement by the Governments of the United States, United Kingdom and France issued March 20, 1948. vol. 18. Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste. 1966. Le conflit de Trieste 1943-1954. Bruxelles: Edition de l’Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles. Eden, Anthony. 1969. Mémoires 1945-1957. Translated by Jean R. Weiland. Paris: Pion. Ellwood, David J. 1993. “The 1948 Elections in Italy: a cold war propaganda battle.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Vol. 13, 1:19–22.

4

Parlamento, Camera dei Deputati. 1948. Atti Parlamentari, Discussioni. vol.2, 2441–43.

410

The Trieste Question and the 1948 Elections in Italy

Galeazzi, Marco. 1995. Roma-Belgrado: gli anni della Guerra Fredda (prefazione di Ennio di Nolfo). Ravenna: Longo. Miller, James E. 1993. “L’accettazione della sfida: gli Stati Uniti e le elezioni italiane del 1948.” In La politica estera italiana nel secondo dopoguerra (1943-1957), edited by Antonio Varsori. Milan: Led. Novak, Bogdan. 1973. Trieste 1941-1954. La lotta politica etnica e ideologica. Milan: Mursia. —. 1977. “American policy toward the Slovenes in Trieste, 1941–1974.” Slovene Studies Journal 1:8–9. NSC 1/1. 1947. “The position of the United States with respect to Italy, November 14, 1947.” FRUS 1948, vol. 3, 724–25. NSC 1/2. 1948. “The position of the United States with respect to Italy, February 10, 1948.” FRUS 1948, vol. 3, 767–69. Parlamento, Camera dei Deputati. 1948. Atti Parlamentari, Discussioni. vol.2, 2441–43. Pastorelli, Pietro. 1979. “La crisi del marzo 1948 nei rapporti italoamericani.” Nuova Antologia 2132: 235–51. —. 1987. La Politica estera italiana nel dopoguerra. Bologna: Il Mulino. Pupo, Raoul. 1989. Fra Italia e Jugoslavia. Saggi sulla questione di Trieste (1945-1954). Udine: Del Bianco. Romano, Sergio. 1993. Guida alla politica estera italiana. Milan: Rizzoli. Sforza, Carlo. 1982. Cinque anni a Palazzo Chigi. Rome: Atlante. Varsori, Antonio. 1998. L’Italia nelle relazioni internazionali dal 1943 al 1992. Rome-Bari: Laterza. —. 1982. “La Gran Bretagna e le elezioni politiche italiane del 18 aprile 1948.” Storia Contemporanea 1:56–57.

THE LAST RISORGIMENTO: RIOTS IN TRIESTE IN 1953 MICHELE PIGLIUCCI Introduction One of the main propagandistic goals of the Italian Kingdom’s entry into World War I against the Central Empires was to conquer Trieste, the final path of Italian unification. When Italy lost World War II, the city of Trieste was occupied by Anglo-American troops and stayed under military control for nine years, until a diplomatic decision about the borders between Italy and Yugoslavia was not reached. A “cold war scenario” was established in the city during the military occupation: the Yugoslav secret service’s agents worked to organize a “fifth column” to set up a Yugoslav invasion of the city, while the Italian secret service’s agents secretly trained Trieste’s youth (and Fascists too) to defend the city with NATO weapons hidden in it. In this context a civil disorder took place on November 3–6, 1953 in which English policemen were compelled to attack the protesters, killing six and injuring dozens of people.

Cold war scenario in Trieste occupied for nine years When Italy lost World War II, Yugoslav Partisans, led by Marshal Tito, engaged in a military race to liberate the city before the Allied troops; this was called “the race to Trieste.” Yugoslavs freed Trieste before the Allied troops with the purpose to gain a geopolitical advantage in the area. Tito, in fact, wanted to establish a great Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that would include also Trieste; with the motto “Trst je naš” (Trieste is ours) Yugoslav troops occupied the city from May 1 to June 12 1945, terrorizing the Italian population whom they considered responsible for fascism. The Yugoslav occupation ended on June 12, 1945, when Tito left the city to the Allied troops after an agreement with General Alexander. Two years later, the Treaty of Peace assigned the entire region of Venezia Giulia to Yugoslavia except for a strip of coastline that included Trieste, Capodistria and some other towns with the majority of the Italian

412

The Last Risorgimento: Riots in Trieste in 1953

population. On this strip of land not assigned to Italy or Yugoslavia an independent state called the Free Territory of Trieste was established. It was composed of two zones with a provisional military administration: the A zone, which included the city of Trieste and the surrounding area, was under a provisional Anglo-American administration and the B zone, which included the rest of the territory, was assigned to the provisional administration of Yugoslavia. According to the goal of the Treaty of Peace, this territory had to remain independent, led by a president that had to be appointed by the United Nations. But the Free Territory of Trieste was never established officially and a president was never appointed; Italian and Yugoslav diplomacies started to work to convince the Allies that they had the right on the entire territory. Therefore, a long period of uncertainty about Trieste’s future began. The population in the city was divided into three groups: the supporters for the city’s return to Italy, the proponents of Yugoslavia and the supporters of the Free Territory of Trieste as an independent state. These three groups were politically organized: the Italian parties were a single block that included all political parties except the Communists, including Fascists, Monarchists, Christian Democrats and the Socialists; the Slavs were a well-organized minority with a secret component linked to Yugoslavia; and the pro-independence block represented a novelty in the political scenario of Trieste. The main pro-independence party was the Fronte dell’Indipendenza del Territorio Libero di Trieste (Independence Front of the Free Territory of Trieste), a new party that gained more than eleven thousand votes in the elections of 1949. The Independence Front collaborated with the Yugoslav formations, which through them hoped to diminish the support for the Italian cause; in fact, the independence of the Free Territory of Trieste could weaken the Italian presence and allow in this way a cultural and economic penetration of Yugoslavia, which would prepare the path for a possible future annexation. The other pro-independence party was the Communist Party. From 1948, when Tito was expelled from the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), the majority of the Communists of Trieste remained loyal to the Italian Communist Party and then to the Soviet Union and decided to leave the position of Yugoslav propaganda and to take the proindependence side. Just a small part of the Communists (especially Slavispeaking ones) remained loyal to Tito and joined a second Communist party, born after the split of 1948 and managed by Branko Babiü. Despite having the same goal, independent parties were divided into two blocks: the Independence Front was allied with the Slav parties and the Communist Party of Vittorio Vidali was linked to Italy and was ready

Michele Pigliucci

413

to react with weapons against an eventual invasion of the Yugoslav army. Indeed, while the Italian diplomacy worked to prevent the establishment of the Free Territory of Trieste and to regain the possession of the city, Tito threatened on several occasions to invade the city in order to avoid the area being placed under Italian sovereignty. The Italians knew very well that in case of a Yugoslav invasion the Allied military government would not defend the territory; this widespread feeling was subsequently confirmed in the documents preserved in the National Archives in London. The Italian government decided to equip the Italian population of Trieste for a defense in case of a Yugoslav aggression. While the chief of staff of the Italian defense was designated to plan the military invasion of Istria, at the same time the Minister of Defense Taviani took the charge of organizing the defense of the city from the inside. The youth of Trieste— and especially the Fascist ones—were brought in convoys to Monfalcone, the first town over the border in Italy, where they were trained to use weapons in special military camps. At the same time, Taviani sent the Partisan leader Enrico Martini Mauri to the city with the task of setting the weapons (secretly brought in the city) and organizing a resistance. Despite the cold war scenario, he did not dislike involving in the resistance both the Fascists and Communists, ones who were the most prepared to fight. At the same time Tito seriously planned to invade the city and organized groups that had to support an eventual invasion from the inside of the city: the so-called fifth column, probably led by the Yugoslav Partisan Franz Štocka, the former head of the city command during the Yugoslav occupation in May 1945.

Civil disorder November 3–6, 1953 In this scenario, a critical political phase stared in Italy: the elections of June 7, 1953 rejected the politics of Alcide De Gasperi, who tried unsuccessfully to create a new government but did not gain a vote of confidence in the parliament. Italy was in a political crisis without a government in a very delicate moment. The task of setting up a new government was given to Giuseppe Pella, who achieved a parliamentary majority by involving the right wing parties in the Trieste issue. Pella was sure that the only way to solve the issue was the partition of the Free Territory of Trieste: the A zone should be placed under Italian sovereignty; while Italians would lose the B zone. However, the government was not strong enough to support this solution in front of public opinion: Italians still hoped to regain possession of the whole area. Meanwhile, the more time passed, the more the

414

The Last Risorgimento: Riots in Trieste in 1953

situation became complicated for Italy; in local elections of Trieste in 1952, the Independence Front doubled the votes from eleven thousand to twenty-two thousand. So it was necessary to operate quickly to create political conditions for a division between the two territories. Tito agreed with this aim; for the dictator it was important to guarantee to the Slovenians access to the sea through the possession of the B zone, but he knew that the occupation of Trieste would unleash a war and undermine the balance between the Yugoslavs in his state and the relations with the West. Premier Pella decided to make the first move; on the occasion of a demonstration of former Partisans in Slovenia in a place close to the border with Italy, he decided to mobilize the army, demonstrating their readiness to react to an invasion. This move quickly raised the already high tensions between the two states: Tito reacted by mobilizing troops to the border, and the two states started threatening that they will occupy the city. The move achieved the expected outcome: Allied diplomacy’s offices began to work for a quick solution of the issue to avoid a war in which Anglo-American troops in the city would have been involved. Meanwhile in Yugoslavia and in Italy there were street demonstrations in every city; but in Trieste the Allied military government banned demonstrations for all the parties. This ban was broken by the Yugoslav supporters on October 14, 1953, when a large number of protesters crossed the streets of the city and were tolerated by the British police. However, violent clashes took place when the protesters started fighting with Italians. And it was just the beginning: on November 3, the city of Trieste was celebrating the patron saint’s day and also the anniversary of the entrance of the Italian troops into the city in 1918. This date was the occasion for a big march prepared by the Italian citizens of Trieste with the support of the Italian government, but the British police decided to forbid this event and seized the Italian flag put on a flagpole by the mayor. The day after, November 4, was the anniversary of the Italian victory in World War I. The inhabitants of Trieste marched again in the city to demand the return of the confiscated flag; new clashes erupted, which were extended throughout the city and lasted late in the night. The next day, November 5, students decided not to return to school after holidays but to march again protesting against the police violence of the day before. Violent clashes with the police erupted; the police decided to respond with weapons killing a fourteen-year-old boy, Piero Addobbatiand, and a sixtyfive-year-old man, Antonio Zavadil.

Michele Pigliucci

415

On November 6, the clashes turned into a real riot. The city was crowded with protesters from the early morning; people attacked policemen and set fire to their vehicles. The protesters crossed the whole center of the city, attacked and destroyed the headquarters of the Independence Front and then came to the Unità d’Italia square, where they attacked the headquarters of the police by using guerrilla tactics: they crawled behind the edge of the sidewalk to defend themselves from the gunfire of the police shooting from the roof of the building, then they came close to the building and attacked it with hand grenades. A student Francesco Paglia disarmed a policeman and tried to shoot, before being hit. The police responded by shooting at people across the square, killing four citizens and injuring dozens. The riot ended just when the square was occupied by US troops—which were respected by the Italians. The US troops replaced the policemen and interposed themselves between the protesters and the building. In three days, riots had caused six deaths and dozens of people were injured. After the riots, the police department was dismantled and many had to leave the city forever. In Italy, newspapers gave prominence to the clashes and people were sure that a resolution to the issue was quickly needed. In a few months, on October 5, 1954, the Memorandum of Understanding of London was reached; it was the agreement on the division of the Free Territory of Trieste between Italy and Yugoslavia. The city and the A zone were assigned to Italy, while the B zone was given to Yugoslavia.

The role of the Yugoslav secret service Who organized these clashes? The British government was convinced that the Italian secret service had planned and staged the clashes with the goal to force the Allied command to seek Italian intervention and, in this way, to pass the administration of the city to them. Indeed, historical documents prove that Premier Pella had been privy to the organization of a big march in the city, even that he had sent money for this, but it is difficult to think about an Italian strategy of tension because clashes could cause a war with an uncertain outcome. Pella had wanted surely a large demonstration but not a serious riot. But certainly someone wanted riots in Trieste. A few days before, certain persons under the guise of Italian agents hired some members of the gang of the Cavana quarter to turn the marches into violent clashes, giving them Yugoslav money in exchange. Our opinion is that the Italian secrete service was not behind these clashes for several reasons: the riot

416

The Last Risorgimento: Riots in Trieste in 1953

was more valuable to Tito than to the Italian cause and we can observe in private documents that no one in the Italian government knew about this operation, neither in Rome nor in Trieste. In the following days several people went to the office of the Italian delegation in Trieste demanding their reward, but they were turned away by the workers. After all, General Winterton, the head of the Allied military government in the city, claimed that the Yugoslav money given to the Cavana gang members had not come from the Italian government but from an unknown source. It is possible to suppose that agents of the Yugoslav secret service had organized these clashes to force Pella to agree with the split of the territory. Cavana members could have been hired by Yugoslav agents to begin the riot, believing that they were hired by the Italian service. It is just a theory. We know that in these demonstrations there were students, workers, children, women, pensioners from Trieste; thousands of people clamoring for freedom of their city. Fifty-one years later Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Italian president of the republic, reminded the public about this event by giving a gold medal to the memory of the killed people, recognizing the Trieste riot as a real last step of the Italian Risorgimento. As in the past, Trieste was the city in which the Italian Risorgimento was concluded for the second time.

Bibliography Amodeo, Fabio, and Mario José Cereghino 2008. Trieste e il confine orientale tra guerra e dopoguerra. Udine-Trieste: Editoriale FVG. Belci, Corrado. 1989. Trieste, memorie di trent’anni (1945-1975). Brescia: Morcelliana. Borsatti, Ugo. 2003. Trieste 1953: i fatti di novembre. Un film di Ugo Borsatti. Trieste: Lint. Cappellini, Alessandro. 2004. Trieste 1945-1954: gli anni più lunghi. Trieste: MGS Press. Cattaruzza, Marina. 2007. L’Italia e il confine orientale. Bologna: Il Mulino. Cerceo, Vincenzo. 2004. Trieste, novembre 1953: una contro lettura. Trieste: La Nuova Alabarda. Chicco, Gianni. 1993a. Le finalità e le attività della Public diplomacy ed i fatti del 1953 a Trieste. Trieste: Edizioni Italo Svevo. —. 1993b. Trieste 1953 nei rapporti USA. Trieste: Edizioni Italo Svevo.

Michele Pigliucci

417

Committee for the defense of the Italian character of Trieste and Istria. 1953. Trieste Novembre 1953, Facts and Documents. Trieste: Committee for the defense of the Italian character of Trieste and Istria. Dassovich, Mario. 1989. I molti problemi dell’Italia al confine orientale. Udine: Del Bianco Editore. De Castro, Diego. 1981. La questione di Trieste. L’azione politica e diplomatica italiana dal 1943 al 1954. Trieste: Lint. De Leonardis, Massimo. 1992. La diplomazia atlantica e la soluzione del problema di Trieste (1952-1954). Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane. De Robertis, Antonio Giulio Maria. 1983. Le grandi potenze e il confine giuliano. Bari: Laterza. De Szombathely, Gabrio. 2000. A Trieste sotto 7 bandiere 1914-1954. Trieste: Edizioni Italo Svevo. Gon, Diego. 2004. Il problema di Trieste 1945-1954. Rome: Centro militare di studi strategici. Grassi, Livio. 1966. Trieste Venezia Giulia 1943-1954. Trieste: Istituto storico divulgativo. Licciardello, Nino. 1954. Ero a Trieste: cronaca vissuta degli eccidi del novembre’ 53. Catania: Ed. Tip. Camene. Longo, Luigi. 1954. I comunisti italiani e il problema triestino. Trieste: Edizioni del PC-TLT. Maranzana, Silvio. 2003. Le armi per Trieste Italiana. Trieste: Edizioni Italo Svevo. Millo, Anna. 2011. La difficile intesa. Roma e Trieste nella questione giuliana 1945-1954. Trieste: Edizioni Italo Svevo. Novak, Bogdan. 1973. Trieste 1941-1954. Milano: Mursia Editore. Parlato, Giuseppe. 2007. Trieste nella politica italiana (1945-1954), Trieste: Comune di Trieste. Pigliucci, Michele. 2013. Gli ultimi martiri del Risorgimento. Gli incidenti per Trieste Italiana del novembre 1953. Trieste: Edizioni Mosetti. Pupo, Raoul. 1989. Fra Italia e Jugoslavia. Saggi sulla questione di Trieste. Udine: Del Bianco Editore. —. 1999. Guerra e dopoguerra al confine orientale d’Italia 1938-1956. Udine: Del Bianco Editore.

PART VI COMMUNISM, THE COLD WAR AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN COMMUNISM IN EUROPE: SELECTED CASE STUDIES THE FAILURE TO COPE WITH SOCIALIST REALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION OF THE 1930S (ANDREI PLATONOV) ANNA TROJÁN While the Party in the late 1920s and 1930s left the Soviet scientists mostly in peace, the Soviet writers and artists were under the pressure of the strict and obscure rules of the official art—socialist realism. Because of its own arbitrariness, the Stalinist cultural policy became an instrument of purges. In order to keep publishing, the writers tried to cope with the requirements of the occasionally dogmatic, occasionally obscure rules. In the 1920s, in the Soviet Union there were many different literary groups (e.g. LEF, Proletkult, RAPP, VAPP, Poputchiki [the journal Pereval]) and writers who were not members of any of them. At this time the allpervasive control of literary life was still not possible. But in the late 1920s, the proletarian literary organizations (especially RAPP) gained strength. The Party leadership was afraid of their growing influence. In 1932, the Party issued a directive On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organization and all literary and cultural circles were dissolved. In 1934, the Union of Soviet Writers was established. There are two palpable intentions in the Russian historians’ work about Stalinism (Jurganov 2011). One group of scholars sees in the dogmatic ideology of Stalinism a set of rules that protected their followers from trouble and could even work as a social insurance. Another group of scholars claim to observe only opposing, outstanding and rebellious thoughts that did not coincide with the contemporary ideology of the Party.

422

The Failure to Cope with Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union

The second position implies a victim status of the writers. It is assumed that in the 1920s in the Soviet Union proletarian writers could think— there was a broad field of cooperation between a writer and the power. Writers could regard themselves as active participants of the historical process—with the purpose of surviving to form the Lebenswelt of Socialism. There was not only the pressure from above, but also the voluntary pressure from the intention of the majority of writers to cope with what we call now Stalinism. Besides the negative censorship, a layer of positive censorship was introduced too. The course of socialist realism dictated what the writers had to represent in their works, and how: positive heroes, evil enemies (saboteurs), or descriptions of the processes of production. In this respect, the life and oeuvre of Andrey Platonov is remarkable. He became an unpublished author, but he survived many waves1 of persecution. And he, like others, wrote his letter to Stalin. Acknowledged nowadays as one of the most abiding working-class authors from the time of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Andrey Platonov suffered exclusion and persecution from the early 1930s. Despite his lower-class origins and his ambitions as a Communist writer, Platonov’s perception of reality lent a sarcastic character to his utopia. Working in the Ukraine as a land reclamation expert, he experienced the meaninglessness of his own work—many of his projects were simply abandoned after their completion. In that time the progressive figure of the narrator-expert in Platonov’s works vanished, and a new type of narration from the point of view of a declassed nobody appeared. Besides Platonov’s non-proletarian sympathy and affinity to the problems of peasantry, his works also did not fit into the framework of the emerging socialist realism because of his roots with the avant-garde. The first wave of Platonov’s trouble was in 1929, after the publication of his short story Doubting Makar. This short story presents one of the main nodes of conflict between Platonov and the power—Platonov’s nonproletarian sympathy and affinity to the problems of the peasantry. The story is written in a satirical and allegorical genre, in the Russian tradition—skaz. The main character, Makar Gannushkin, is a resident of a small village. He is going to Moscow to earn money to pay a fine levied on him by his more progressive comrade Chumovoi.2 Chumovoi fined Makar because the roundabout which Makar had built for his 1

The waves of persecution were connected to his next works—Doubting Makar (1929), For Future Use (1931), The River Potudan (1937), Literaturnii kritik (1939), Oborona semidvoria (1943), Ivanov’s Family (1946). 2 The name means plague.

Anna Troján

423

neighborhood brought him loss—Chumovoi’s colt ran away, while people were having fun. Makar prefers handicraft to plowing. In Moscow he sees others as craft makers. Makar and his co-worker Peter are finally admitted to a lunatic asylum, where they read out Lenin’s works. The friends go to Rabkrin (RKI or Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate) to gain power and to eliminate the state. Platonov’s protagonists are far from being positive.3 In Platonov’s characters the reader finds the absence of any positive hero’s superiority over the surrounding world.4 Platonov’s characters are contemplative rather than active and enthusiastic. In his novel The Foundation Pit (1930) Voshchev is fired from his factory job because he just stands around thinking while everyone else is working. Platonov’s description of the essence of the main character in the story For Future Us5 does not show superiority but conversely a high degree of weakness and incapability of the protagonist: “The essence of such a man was sugar diluted in urine, whereas the genuine proletarian man should be composed of sulfuric acid, so that he could burn all the capitalist bastards, and occupy their land”6 (Transl. A. T.). After this unflattering description of his main character, Platonov suddenly changes the point of narration. The author delegates his narration to this weak character. The whole story unfolds through the lens of the subject who was described by the author as sugar diluted in urine. Platonov explains why he is so gracious to such a disadvantageously presented person. And his explanation conveys absurdity. He gives the right to this character, being the point of view, the lens of the story, only out of convenience: “If we shall call this traveler ‘I’, it is only for brevity, and not because of recognition that helpless contemplation is more important as tension and struggle”7 (Transl. – A. T. ) By this, Platonov calls into question the seriousness of the concept of positive hero. And the 3 One of the main features of socialist realism is the presence of a positive hero (Terc 1957). 4 The superiority reader can find only in the position of Platonov’s narrator—as the author—he oscillates between the expression of superiority over his own characters and the expression of compassion to them. 5 A new short story about collectivization—titled For Future Use—evoked Stalin’s condemnation again. This was the second wave of persecution of Platonov in 1931. 6 “ɋɭɳɧɨɫɬɶ ɬɚɤɨɝɨ ɱɟɥɨɜɟɤɚ ɫɨɫɬɨɹɥɚ, ɩɪɢɛɥɢɡɢɬɟɥɶɧɨ ɝɨɜɨɪɹ, ɢɡ ɫɚɯɚɪɚ, ɪɚɡɜɟɞɟɧɧɨɝɨ ɜ ɦɨɱɟ, ɬɨɝɞɚ ɤɚɤ ɧɚɫɬɨɹɳɢɣ ɩɪɨɥɟɬɚɪɫɤɢɣ ɱɟɥɨɜɟɤ ɞɨɥɠɟɧ ɢɦɟɬɶ ɜ ɫɜɨɟɦ ɫɨɫɬɚɜɟ ɫɟɪɧɭɸ ɤɢɫɥɨɬɭ, ɞɚɛɵ ɨɧ ɦɨɝ ɫɠɟɱɶ ɜɫɸ ɤɚɩɢɬɚɥɢɫɬɢɱɟɫɤɭɸ ɫɬɟɪɜɭ, ɡɚɧɢɦɚɸɳɭɸ ɡɟɦɥɸ” (For Future Use 2011, 284). 7 “ȿɫɥɢ ɦɵ ɜ ɞɚɥɶɧɟɣɲɟɦ ɧɚɡɵɜɚɟɦ ɩɭɬɧɢɤɚ ɤɚɤ ɫɚɦɨɝɨ ɫɟɛɹ ɹ, ɬɨ ɷɬɨ – ɞɥɹ ɤɪɚɬɤɨɫɬɢ ɪɟɱɢ, ɚ ɧɟ ɢɡ ɩɪɢɡɧɚɧɢɹ, ɱɬɨ ɛɟɡɜɨɥɶɧɨɟ ɫɨɡɟɪɰɚɧɢɟ ɜɚɠɧɟɟ ɧɚɩɪɹɠɟɧɢɹ ɢ ɛɨɪɶɛɵ” (For Future Use 2011, 285).

424

The Failure to Cope with Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union

absurdity of this explanation shows that the author is aware of the crucial meaning of his choice of the point of view. It gives an additional weight to his irony. Unfolding the story, Platonov only declares but does not enforce this point of view during the whole narration. Through the admitted weakness of the protagonist, the reader sees the analytical and omniscient mind of the author. But by focusing his omniscient authorial attention on the weakness of the lens of the narration, Platonov challenges the border between the orientation of the official art on the positive character and his own protagonist. And the place of interpretation is the mind of the reader. Another shift of Platonov’s character from the Lebenswelt of the positive hero: the ideal positive hero according to the tradition of socialist realism had to promote its ideological campaigns whole-heartedly, and had to be its mouthpiece. But Platonov’s character instead of promotion only observes them. He sees a list of campaigns on a collective farm’s bulletin board. When Platonov enumerates various campaigns on the bulletin board, he undermines the importance of each of them. The protagonist’s eyes, of course, rest on the most unthinkable campaign—the feeder campaign. The aim of the feeder campaign is to feed people by force because they are not independent enough. And Platonov wrote this in the years of collectivization and famine. This sort of literary imagination, the shift of meaning, landed Platonov in trouble with Stalin. Both of these works Doubting Makar and For Future Use were published by the same editor—Alexander Fadeyev. It was not the carelessness or stubbornness of the editor that provoked this new wave of persecution. But more likely, that from the point of view of the contemporary cultural policy-makers, Stalin’s Fadeyev could not predict Stalin’s condemnation in the late 1920s, and it was not obvious that Platonov would be condemned as an ideological enemy again. On the contrary, at the same time, another Platonov’s editor, G. Z. Litvin-Molotov, praised Platonov’s work very highly.8 The fabrication of ideological labels was still not smooth. Stalin’s notes on the margins of the short story For Future Use show that he could not find the proper ideological stigma for Andrej Platonov immediately. Stalin is reputed to have written on the margin of the story talented, but scum. The formulation of the official policy of art was still haphazard and unpremeditated. 8

He prepared for the press Platonov’s most famous novels Chevengur and The Foundation Pit. These most politically controversial novels, and Platonov’s dramas, were first published in the Soviet Union only in the late 1980s.

Anna Troján

425

A. Platonov was interested in that broad mass of newcomers from nowhere who had become the scene of social life as a result of the revolution. Previously invisible masses learned the Soviet newspeak of agitprop, bureaucracy, and technique and immersed it in folktales and the spoken language of contemporary workers and peasants (Levin 1998). From the point of view of the peasant agitators, soldiers and commanders are often foolish in Platonov’s works. The writer’s question is: we will cope with the poor, but what we do with fools? The most interesting objection from the point of view of Platonov’s contemporaries was the duality of the content of his work. From one side, his protagonists pronounce politically correct sentences. From another side, the correctness of these sentences is called into question by the irony and absurdity of the context. Leopold Auerbach who was the chief of RAPP wrote that “Our time doesn’t tolerate ambiguity.”9 Later in A. Platonov’s dramas, for example Fools on periphery, the ambiguity of the whole story is even stronger. This piece is based on an anecdote. The Committee of the Mother and Infant Protection on the grounds of adequately insufficient financial circumstances of the family prohibits Maria Ivanovna from aborting an unwanted pregnancy. The husband (an accountant) brings the matter to court and he claims that the committee on the grounds of its own decision has proclaimed itself the father to the child. The court acknowledges the committee as the father of the child. As the consequence, the wives of two married committee members want a divorce. In the previously mentioned work Doubting Makar (1929), Makar is in Moscow and he is full of doubts in regard to the Soviet state because his innovative ideas are not welcomed by the authorities. He proposes to build a milk pipe from the countryside to Moscow in order to save the cost of transporting the empty cans back to the countryside. At the construction site he offers a similar innovation, a streamlined application process with a pipe to transport concrete in the frame of buildings in order to free up the manpower for more useful purposes. The ambiguity of the narrative undermines the seriousness of the ideological burden in a parodistic way. The main source of the ambiguity and sarcasm in Platonov’s prose and dramas is the palpable mapping of the new registers of the Russian language connected to the new Soviet reality. A. Platonov’s interest in low-register language can reconcile him with M. M. Zoschenko. The style of Zoschenko’s prose in this period (1930s– 9

In his razgromnoi statye L. Averbah writes: “Ɋɚɫɫɤɚɡ ɉɥɚɬɨɧɨɜɚ ɢɞɟɨɥɨɝɢɱɟɫɤɨɟ ɨɬɪɚɠɟɧɢɟ ɫɨɩɪɨɬɢɜɥɹɸɳɟɣɫɹ ɦɟɥɤɨɛɭɪɠɭɚɡɧɨɣ ɫɬɢɯɢɢ. ȼ ɧɟɦ ɟɫɬɶ ɞɜɭɫɦɵɫɥɟɧɧɨɫɬɶ … ɇɨ ɧɚɲɟ ɜɪɟɦɹ ɧɟ ɬɟɪɩɢɬ ɞɜɭɫɦɵɫɥɟɧɧɨɫɬɢ” (Averbah 1929).

426

The Failure to Cope with Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union

1940s) was a parody on the ponderous and tongue-tied tautological thoroughness of Stalin’s style. M. M. Zoschenko took this style in his prose as a normative manner of presentation and in the same moment mocked it (Weisskopf 1998). In music A. Platonov’s style brings to mind D. D. Shostakovich, who also spoke freely with the themes and motifs of the low registers of art.

Bibliography Ⱥwerbach, Leopold. 1929. “Ɉ tselostnyh masshtabah i chastnyh Makarah.” Na literaturnom postu XXI:XXII. Jurganov, Ⱥndrej 2011. Russkoe natsional’noe gosudarstvo. Zhiznennyj mir istorikov epohi stalinizma. Moscow: RGGU. Sinyavsky, Andrej. 1957. “Chto takoe sotsialisticheskij realizm?” Ɇɨscow: Samizdat.http://antology.igrunov.ru/authors/synyavsky/105 9651903.html. Smirnov, Igor 2000. “Sotsrealizm: Antropologicheskoe izmerenyije.” In Sotsrealisticheskij kanon, edited by Günther Hans and Dobrenko Je. 16–32. Sankt-Petersburg: Gumanitarnoje Agentstvo “Akademicheskij proekt.” Platonov, Ⱥndrej 2011. Sobranije sochinyenij v vos’mi. Moscow: Vremia. Weiskopf, Ɇikhail 1998. “Stalin glazami Zoshchenko. Izvestiya ȺN. Seriya literatury i yazyka.” 57:51–54. http://www.philology.ru/ literature2/vayskopf–98.htm.

NATIONALISM AND SOCIALISM IN ROMANIA: THE CASE OF NICOLAE CEAUùESCU’S CULT 1 OF PERSONALITY MANUELA MARIN Introduction My paper will analyze the relation between nationalism and Nicolae Ceauúescu’s cult of personality. In this respect, I will try to identify the context in which nationalism came to be associated with Ceauúescu’s cult. As unity and independence became the main landmarks of rewriting Romanian history in a nationalist guise, I intend to show how the party propaganda strove to identify Nicolae Ceauúescu as the warden of national independence and unity and how this influenced the official narration about his entire political activity. Also, in the last part of my paper I will examine how the photographic materials published in the Romanian press conveyed graphically Ceauúescu’s contribution to defending the country’s independence and unity. My analysis is mainly based on the Romanian press printed between 1968 and 1989 such as Scânteia, the official newspaper of the Romanian Communist Party (hereafter abbreviated as RCP), several cultural periodicals (like Flacăra, Saptamâna, Luceafărul), homage volumes dedicated to Nicolae Ceauúescu and also on the secondary literature regarding the evolution of the Romanian Communist regime.

August 1968: The Beginning of Nicolae Ceauúescu’s Cult of Personality Nicolae Ceauúescu’s speech held on August 22, 1968 marked the beginning of his cult of personality and also of his laudatory identification as the warden of national independence and unity. In this speech, he 1 Research for this paper was supported by CNCS–UEFISCSU, PN–II–RU–TE– 2012–3–0077.

428

Nationalism and Socialism in Romania

denounced the Soviet led invasion of Czechoslovakia as a flagrant violation of the principle of national independence and sovereignty and also that of non-interference in the internal affairs of another party and state. Moreover, Ceauúescu reasserted openly the right of each Communist or Socialist party to decide its own approach to internal or external affairs. This decisional independence was supposed to protect the interests of the country and also of the people these parties led. Related to this, Ceauúescu’s position towards the Czechoslovakian crisis implied a rejection of the Soviet Union’s claim to be the supreme decision-maker of the Eastern Bloc and, consequently, to impose its decisions as mandatory for its European allies (Scânteia 1968, 1). Nicolae Ceauúescu’s position towards the Soviet Union was not a novelty. In fact, it was the peak of an on-going disagreement between the Romanian and the Soviet leadership. It started at the beginning of the 1960s with the Soviet-sponsored plans for an economic specialization within the bloc and continued with the so-called Declaration of Independence of the Romanian Workers’ Party from April 1964 (Scânteia 1964, 1–2). The Romanian leadership opposed the Soviet plans for economic integration within the bloc because they would have hindered the country’s development according to the Stalinist model. Thus, it justified its position by invoking the right of each party to decide freely upon its policies and development strategy (King 1980; Floyd 1965; Ionescu 1965). Although the plans for economic integration were abandoned, after his ascension to power in March 1965 Nicolae Ceauúescu continued to defend his party’s right of autonomous decision-making in internal and external matters. Therefore, the Romanian leader’s support for the Czechoslovak leadership and its reformist program, which culminated with his speech on August 22, 1968, was just another opportunity for reasserting his point of view regarding the nature of the relations between the Soviet Union and its political allies. As I mentioned before, Ceauúescu’s speech held on August 22, 1968 marked the beginning of his cult of personality. It brought him a real popular support that was essential in the organization of his public homage. This support was mainly triggered by the traditional anti-Russian feelings of the population that identified Russia or the Soviet Union as a permanent threat to the independence and unity of the Romanian state. Romanians began considering Ceauúescu as the warden of national independence and unity against the Soviet threat. In that context the safeguarding of the country’s independence and unity depended exclusively on defending the right of the RCP to follow an independent

Manuela Marin

429

path of building socialism and Nicolae Ceauúescu came to personify these ideals (Marin 2008, 83–84).

Nicolae Ceauúescu: Warden of the national independence and unity The Romanian propaganda used two main instruments for presenting Nicolae Ceauúescu as the warden of national independence and unity. The first one considers his political activity both as a member of the RCP and also as its leader after March 1965. The second one is related to the artistic means used by the Romanian propaganda in order to identify Ceauúescu as a faithful descendent of the Romanian greatest historical personalities whose political activity had been mistakenly limited to their contribution to defending the country’s independence and unity. Before I show how the party propaganda used nationalism in order to praise Nicolae Ceauúescu, I will look at the political changes that took place during the 1960s from a different perspective. The Romanian-Soviet disagreements forced the Romanian Workers Party to replace the Soviet Union and proletarian internationalism as the source of its internal legitimacy. Therefore, the Romanian party began to downplay its relation with the Soviet Union and highlight those episodes of its history that could cancel out its image as a foreign political organization whose rise to power was due to its complete subordination to the Soviet Union and its interests. Following Ceauúescu’s interventions on the subject of the RCP’s history (Ceauúescu 1966, 1975), articles published in the Romanian newspapers offered a new version of national history. According to it, since its creation, the RCP embraced the cause of the people’s fight for national independence and unity. Thus, it became the only defender of “the independence, sovereignty and dignity of the motherland” against the Fascist forces and their plans for the political and economic subordination of the country during the interwar period and after the beginning of World War II (Scânteia 1978, 1; Achim 1987, 3). As Ceauúescu’s cult of personality flourished, the Romanian press identified him as the only activist who fully devoted himself to the RCP’s fight against the old regime and its Fascist allies. Therefore, Ceauúescu became a major character in the main anti-Fascist actions organized by the RCP during the interwar period (Marin 2008, 22–53). The celebration of May Day in 1939 is an example of how any historical event was reinterpreted in order to describe the interwar RCP and Nicolae Ceauúescu as veritable fighters against the Romanian “bourgeois” regime. According to the official version, the royal apparatus

430

Nationalism and Socialism in Romania

organized a huge mass rally on May Day that was meant to gain popularity for the monarchy. As the representative of the RCP, Ceauúescu supposedly organized the transformation of the workers’ manifestation into an antiFascist one. As a result, when the king appeared at the balcony of the Royal Palace in Bucharest to receive ovations, the people started shouting the anti-Fascist slogans of the RCP: “Down with Fascism!, Down with War! We Want a Free and Independent Romania!” (Matichescu and Neagoe 1982; Matichescu 1974; 1981; 1989; Berceanu 1979; Muúat 1989). In reality, the May Day 1939 rally ended without the shouting of any anti-Fascist slogans. As one witness mentioned, Ceauúescu did not organize anything and he was neither among the few Communist militants participating in this popular rally (Câmpeanu 2002, 35). But in order to prove his exceptional revolutionary credentials, the Romanian propaganda used a low quality photo manipulation. Therefore, Nicolae Ceauúescu’s and his wife’s faces were unskillfully pasted on a photo taken back in 1939. As the result, the heads of the presidential couple were bigger in comparison to those of the other participants. Moreover, two Romanian newspapers failed to publish the same version of this photo on the occasion of May Day 1985. Thus, in May 1985, Romania Literară, a literary magazine, printed the abovementioned altered photo. In its turn, Scânteia published the same picture with the difference that a hat replaced Ceauúescu’s face in the picture published by Romania Literară (Radio Free Europe Domestic Bloc May 13, 1986). Concluding, the falsification of this event was part of the general strategy of the “nationalization” of the RCP’s image after the beginning of the Romanian-Soviet disagreement in the early 1960s. Banking on its image as the defender of national independence and unity in conflict with its main ideological enemy, fascism, the RCP sought to make his way into Romanian history by turning the May Day rally of 1939 into an episode of its ceaseless struggle against the old regime and its supposedly Fascist allies. The inclusion of this May Day rally into Ceauúescu’s revolutionary biography is related to my abovementioned considerations. His participation in an anti-Fascist meeting was supposed to foresee his future actions as a party and state leader in defending Romania’s independence and territorial integrity. Ceauúescu’s contribution to safeguarding his country’s independence was also related to his leadership activity. The Romanian press frequently underlined that Ceauúescu’s constant involvement in drafting and implementing the national plans determined a previously unseen

Manuela Marin

431

development of the country. On different occasions, the regime’s propaganda described “Ceauúescu Era” as the most advanced and enlightened period in the Romanian history and identified the markers of the Romanian socialist civilization: industrialization, urbanization, an unprecedented development of the country’s agriculture and an unmatched rise in the people’s life standards (Marin 2008, 287–304). Also, the official narration constantly underlined that all these achievements that marked Romania’s journey to its communist future were due to Ceauúescu’s unshakable faith in adapting the general scheme of building socialism according to the national conditions that existed in his country. This stance hinted to the RCP’s arguments regarding the interdependent relation between the internal development of a state and its political independence. From this point of view, the advancement of the national economy would have strengthened the state’s capabilities to act as an independent political actor on the international scene. In its turn, the economic development was the result of the political independence enjoyed by the national decision-makers. This would have allowed them to adapt the general prescriptions for the building of socialism according to the specific conditions that existed in Romania. Obviously, these ideas echoed those put forward by the Romanian leadership in the early 1960s when it defended its (Stalinist) vision for the country’s development against the Soviet plans for economic integration. The national unity was another mark of the reinterpretation of history in a nationalist guise. Consequently, the entire history was rewritten in order to highlight the everlasting yearning of the people from all the Romanian provinces to unite in one independent state. This selective perspective of looking at the past was supposed to find traces of the unity ideal in the entire Romanian history and also to identify certain historical characters whose political activity could somehow fit into the scheme of rewriting history. Thus, at the expense of the historical truth, in 1980 the regime organized the commemoration of 2,050 years since the creation of the “first centralized and unitary Dacian state” by the King Burebista. Moreover, the reign of Mihai Viteazul, a medieval voievod and also that of Alexander Ioan Cuza, another political figure of Romanian history, were extolled for their contribution to fulfilling the ideal of national unity. The official narration about this subject continued with the unification of all the Romanian territories on December 1, 1918. This represented the achievement of the political unity of all the Romanians in one independent state. After its creation in May 1921, the RCP supposedly continued the struggle for defending the territorial integrity of the newly created

432

Nationalism and Socialism in Romania

Romanian state against the threat posed by the Fascist allies of the Old Regime. The establishment of the Communist regime in 1948 ended the struggle for national unity as the people fully supported the RCP’s efforts for consolidating the state and its economy. Related to this, the press articles mentioned that the sociopolitical unity around the RCP was the consequence of the great socialist achievements that radically and positively changed the face of the country and the people’s lives. The use of national unity in connection with Ceauúescu’s cult of personality is three-folded. Firstly, the Romanian propaganda underlined that his leadership was characterized by a previously unseen development of the country that increased the people’s life standards. This would have provided the needed arguments for consolidating the popular unity around the Romanian leader and its party. While the achievements in the socialist transformation of the country justified the people’s support for the Communist regime and its leader, the unity of action between these two was also highlighted as an essential requirement for consolidating the country’s advancement towards its communist future (Scânteia 1984, 3; Gregorian 1981, 1, 5). Secondly, the official narration emphasized the relation between national unity and independence on one side, and the Romanian leader’s activity on the other side. Therefore, the press articles mentioned that Nicolae Ceauúescu’s determination for building his own version of socialism was responsible for the country’s successful development. This economic advancement would have ensured Romania’s political independence and also justified the people’s support for the regime and its supreme leader (Marin 2008, 295–97). Thirdly, the Romanian propaganda used several facts of Ceauúescu’s early biography in order to underline his predestination as the warden of national unity. The first one is related to his date of birth. Ceausescu was born on January 26, 1918 in Scorniceúti, Olt County. The press emphasized the fact that 1918 was the year of the unification of all the historical Romanian territories in one independent state. Also January 26 was close to January 24 when, back in 1859, Alexandru Ioan Cuza united two of the Romanian historical provinces (Hamelet 1971, 9; România Literară, 1982, 1; Velea 1983, 7). Ceauúescu’s association with the symbol of national unity was also related to his birth place. Scorniceúti was the place that supposedly gave Mihai Viteazul’s army four captains and other “courageous soldiers.” Therefore, as one article concluded, it was likely that one of Ceauúescu’s ancestors “would have fought with a gun in his hand for the ideals of Union, of independence” (Purcaru 1978, 5).

Manuela Marin

433

The following part of my paper will analyze how the official propaganda used paintings and other photographic materials in order to convey Ceausescu’s identification as the warden of national independence and unity. Therefore, the Romanian publications reproduced images that could easily transmit the message about this subject contained in the laudatory articles. These images visually associated Nicolae Ceauúescu with some of the abovementioned historical characters whose leaderships were forcedly connected with defending the country’s national independence and unity. In Constantin Piliu‫܊‬ă’s well-known painting The First President, Ceauúescu is depicted standing in front of the tribune wearing the scepter, the sash and also the decoration “The Star of the Republic.” This was a familiar image of Ceauúescu that was constantly shown in the pages of newspapers or magazines after his election as president of Romania in March 1974. Behind Ceauúescu, several historical leaders were shown (Burebista, Mircea cel Batrân, ùtefan cel Mare, Mihai Viteazul, Alexandru Ioan Cuza and Nicolae Bălcescu), each of them occupying their own niche. This selection is not random as it identifies historical personalities whose rewritten biographies presented them as political leaders fully devoted to defending the country’s national independence and unity. Moreover, as the party’s endorsed version of history indicated, some of them distinguished themselves through remarkable achievements in their foreign and domestic policy. The general organization of the painting suggests that Ceauúescu’s place was among the most important Romanian political leaders and that his commitment to defending the country’s independence and unity had already secured him a place in the Romanian national pantheon. In order to better underline Ceauúescu’s identification as the warden of national unity, the painter deliberately ignored the historical truth. Therefore, in the gallery of the political leaders, he put Mihai Vitezul before ùtefan cel Mare so the former is placed exactly behind Ceausescu. This was done in order to suggest that there was a connection between these two leaders in their common ambition to maintain the country’s unity and territorial integrity (Drăguúanu 2002, 148; Mocănescu, 426–27). The same message of the connection between Ceauúescu and his supposed ancestor, Mihai Viteazul, was fully conveyed by a mixed collection of paintings and pictures. Flacăra’s issue on December 1, 1983 contained two well-known pictures of Mihai Viteazul: one of him holding the scepter, the other one depicting his entrance in Alba-Iulia, shortly before unifying the three Romanian Principalities in 1600. On the opposite page, in perfect symmetry, there was a picture of Ceausescu wearing his

434

Nationalism and Socialism in Romania

scepter and the sash during the ceremony of his inauguration as the president of Romania in March 1974. Below, another image captured an instance of Ceauúescu’s recent working visit to Alba Iulia, at exactly the same place that the previously mentioned painting of Mihai Viteazul during his festive entrance in this city (Flacăra 1983, 4–5).

Conclusion My paper sought to highlight that nationalism was at the base of Nicolae Ceausescu’s cult of personality. As I have already shown, the party propaganda strove to identify in Ceausescu’s entire political activity the signs of his attachment to Romania’s independence and unity. Moreover, the rewritten version of history in nationalist guise placed him in the long lineage of several historical characters whose political activity could fit in this simplified perspective of the past.

Bibliography Achim, Silviu. 1987. “110 ani de la proclamarea independenĠei de stat a României. MăreaĠă înfăptuire a poporului, pregătită de istorie, pentru istorie.” Scânteia May 9:3. Berceanu, Patrel. 1979. “1 Mai 1939. Zi de istorie.” Luceafărul April 28:3. Câmpeanu, Pavel. 2002. Ceauúescu anii numărătorii inverse. Iaúi: Editura Polirom. Ceauúescu, Nicolae. 1966. PCR – continuator al luptei revoluĠionare úi democratice a poporului român, al tradiĠiilor miúcării muncitoreúti úi socialiste din România. Expunere la adunarea festivă organizată cu prilejul aniversării a 45 de ani de la crearea PCR. 7 mai 1966. Bucharest: Editura Politică. DeclaraĠia cu privire la poziĠia Partidului Muncitoresc Român în problemele miúcării comuniste úi muncitoreúti internaĠionale adoptată de Plenara lărgită a CC al PMR din aprilie 1964. 1964. Scânteia April 26:1–3. Drăguúanu, Adrian. 2002. “La commémoration des héros nationaux en Roumanie par le régime communiste de Nicolae Ceauúescu (19651989).” PhD diss., University of Laval. Flacăra. 1983. December 2:4–5. Floyd, David. 1965. Rumania. Russia’s Dissident Ally. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers. Fiul al poporului român. 1982. România Literară January 21:1.

Manuela Marin

435

Gregorian, Ada. 1981. “Unire, Unitate – idealuri luminând prin secole, realităĠi ale prezentului socialist al patriei.” Scânteia January 24:1 5. Hamelet, Michel P. 1971. Nicolae Ceauúescu. Biografie úi texte selectate. Bucharest: Editura Politică. Ionescu, GhiĠă. 1965. The Reluctant Ally. A Study of Communist NeoColonialism. London: An Ampersand Book. King, Robert. 1980. History of the Romanian Communist Party. Stanford: Hoover Institution. Marin, Manuela. 2008. Originea úi evoluĠia cultului personalităĠii lui Nicolae Ceauúescu. Alba Iulia: Altip. —. “The Myth of the Young Revolutionary: The Case of Nicolae Ceausescu.” Transylvanian Review 17:22–53. Matichescu, Olimpiu, and Stelian Neagoe. 1982. Ani de luptă comunistă 1933–1934. Bucharest: Editura Politică. Matichescu, Olimpiu. 1974. 1 Mai 1939 moment semnificativ în lupta poporului român împotriva primejdiei fasciste, pentru apărarea independenĠei úi suveranităĠii naĠionale. Bucharest: Editura Politică. —. 1981. TinereĠea revoluĠionară a tovarăúului Nicolae Ceauúescu. Exemplul eroic al luptătorului neînfricat pentru triumful idealurilor comuniste. Bucharest: Scânteia Tineretului. —. “Antifascismul–trăsătură fundamentală a ideologiei úi politicii partidului nostru.” 1989. Luceafărul August 19:1,7. Mocănescu, Alice. 2010. “Practicing Immortality: Schemes for Conquering Time during Ceausescu Era.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10: 426–427. Muúat, Mircea. 1975. Programul PCR de făurire a societăĠii socialiste multilateral dezvoltate úi înaintare a României spre comunism. Bucharest: Editura Politică. —. 1978. “9 Mai-Ziua IndependenĠei, Ziua Victoriei. IndependenĠa, libertatea, pacea – cauze scumpe României socialiste.” Scânteia May 9:1. —. 1989. “1 Mai 1939. O pagină luminoasă din istoria României.” Luceafărul April 29:3. Purcaru, Ilie. 1978. “La Scorniceúti, în satul natal al tovarăúului Nicolae Ceauúescu. Conducător, sătean úi tovarăú, aúa cum îl útim spre bucuria úi spre mândria noastră.” Flacăra 19:5. Radio Free Europe, Romanian Broadcasting Department, N. C. Munteanu, Radio Free Europe Domestic Bloc 13 May 1986, OSA Archivum HU OSA 300–60–1 Box 705, State Apparatus: Personality Cult Ceauúescu Nicolae 1984–1985.

436

Nationalism and Socialism in Romania

“Unire-Unitate, un ideal de veacuri, o realitate fundamentală a societăĠii noastre socialiste.” 1984. Scânteia 21:3. Velea, N. 1983. “Simbol al unităĠii naĠionale.” Luceafărul 21:7.

GH. GHEORGHIU-DEJ AND THE ROOTS OF THE ROMANIAN DISSIDENCE INSIDE THE COMMUNIST CAMP MIHAI CROITOR Over the past two decades Romanian historiography has often inquired the debut of the Romanian dissidence inside the Communist bloc. Was dissidence caused by the process of de-Stalinization that emerged in the USSR after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)? Did the Romanian dissidence follow the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? Or was it triggered by the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Romania in 1958? Can the debut be traced back to 1960 when the Sino-Soviet ideological differences became increasingly tense? Or to June 1962 as the Moscow conference of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) member states was being convened. The beginning of de-Stalinization in the USSR, in February 1956, did not record radical changes in the main guidelines of Romanian foreign policy. The secret speech delivered by Nikita Khrushchev on February 25, 1956 (in which he partially condemned the abuses committed by Stalin) took by surprise the delegation of the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) present in Moscow.1 When he returned home, Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej convened, after several postponements, the plenary of the Central Committee of the RWP on March 23–25, 1956. In the report that he read at this plenary, the Romanian communist leader fully endorsed the Kremlin’s new principles, condemning Stalin’s abuses. According to Gheorghiu-Dej, the persons most accountable for the propagation of Stalin’s personality cult in Romania had been the “right-wing deviators” Ana Pauker, Teohari Georgescu and Vasile Luca, who had been removed from the leading structures of the party as early as 1952 (Tudor and Cătănuú 2001, 29–49).2 1

See the speech delivered by Nikita Khrushchev in: the National Central Historical Archives (hereafter, ANIC), Central Committee (CC) of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) Fund – External Relations Section, file 23/1956, 1–61. 2 “1956, 23-25 martie. Raportul delegaĠiei PMR, prezentat de Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, cu privire la lucrările Congresului al XX – lea al CC al PCUS”.

438

Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Roots of the Romanian Dissidence

The motivation behind this statement was that Gheorghiu-Dej wanted to dismiss the accusations made by Iosif Chiúinevschi and Miron Constantinescu on his behalf. However, given his precarious position, Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej refrained from adopting a more firm stance against the two dissidents. He adopted the same tactics at the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RWP, held on April 3, 4, 6 and 12, 1956, specifically convened to analyze the actions of the two.3 On the opposite pole, the Chinese regime, on April 5, 1956, authorized the publication of a column (with the title On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat) in Renmin Ribao, which firmly stated that although Stalin had made some mistakes, he still had to be considered “a great MarxistLeninist.”4 In his memoirs, Silviu Brucan accredited the idea that the Romanian dissidence inside the Communist bloc began at the end of 1956, stating: “I was in Washington … when I was called back immediately in Romania. Right away I was convened by Gheorghiu-Dej who at first seemed disturbed and worried. He told me straight out: ‘Dear Také, if we don’t take a 180o turn in our relations with the Soviets we are lost!’” (Brucan 1992, 72). But none of the actions taken by Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej after the Hungarian Revolution seemed to confirm what Silviu Brucan recounts. On the contrary, the RWP leader joined the Soviets in condemning the events unfolding in Hungary (Ionescu 1964, 267). Also, once the “thaw” advocated by Khrushchev was over, the RWP leader, enjoying an obviously consolidated position, convened a series of plenaries of the Central Committee of the RWP with the intention of reinforcing his authority inside the party. Hence, in July 1957 and June 1958, two such plenaries were summoned by Gheorghiu-Dej in order to gain full control of the party, so that centrifugal tendencies would not be possible again (Tismăneanu 1999, 90). The obedience of the Bucharest regime towards the Soviet ideological commandments would remain a constant and the Kremlin did not react in any way towards the developments that occurred inside the RWP. In our opinion, the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Romania (in 1958) cannot be considered the starting point of the Romanian dissidence inside the Communist bloc. In August 1955, Emil Bodnăraú, at the request of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RWP, inquired to Nikita Khrushchev about the possibility of withdrawing the Soviet troops from 3

ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Chancellery, file 32/1956, 2–117. The Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), 18.

4

Mihai Croitor

439

Romania.5 According to Khrushchev, the main argument put forward by Bodnăraú was that Romania was bordering only socialist countries. However, the answer of the Soviet leader was negative (Khrushchev 2007, 706). And yet, in 1958 the Soviet authorities decided to withdraw the Soviet troops from Romania following troop reductions in all Central and Eastern Europe, of approximately 300,000 military personnel (Evangelista 1997, 5). Khrushchev argued that the decision to withdraw the Soviet troops from Romania was triggered by two combined factors: one was that Romania was bordering only socialist states and the other was based on material grounds, namely that the upkeep of the Soviet troops abroad was much more expensive (Khrushchev 2007, 708–709). But the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Romania was not going to lead to a reconfiguration of Romanian foreign policy. Although from a political stand the attitude of the authorities in Bucharest remained on the path of complete obedience towards the Kremlin, we cannot say the same thing about the economic outlook taking shape in Bucharest in contradiction to Moscow’s principles. Since 1959 mainly the Soviet, the East German and the Czechoslovakian regimes began to assert “specialization” theories inside Comecon. However, the RWP representatives did not hold back criticizing the need to implement economic integrationist views (Croitor 2009, 214–15).6 And yet, these economic disagreements did not affect in the least the Romanian-Soviet political and diplomatic relations. In June 1960 was convened the Third Congress of the RWP, a good opportunity for Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej to announce his intention to industrialize Romania (with a focus on heavy industry). On this occasion, a six-year economic plan and a prospective fifteen-year plan were adopted.7 In spite of the integrationist forces in Comecon, Nikita Khrushchev did not disapprove the economic plans put forward by the Romanian regime. A few days later, during the conference of the Communist and workers’ parties in Bucharest (June 24– 26, 1960), Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej, as the president of the meeting, endorsed the anti-Chinese rhetoric advocated by Nikita Khrushchev. The origins of the Bucharest conference can be found in the letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU dated June 2, 1960, which was in favor of organizing a conference of the Communist and workers’ parties right after the Third Congress of the RWP. The reason behind this initiative was to 5

ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Chancellery, file 32/1956, 9. ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file 28/1964, vol. II, 126–27, 138–39. 7 Congresul al III-lea al Partidului Muncitoresc Român, (Bucureúti: Editura Politică, 1960), 645–88. 6

440

Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Roots of the Romanian Dissidence

discuss “the international situation created after the overset by the Americans of the high level Conference” (U–2 incident).8 However, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stated that the conference should be postponed. In such circumstances, on June 7, 1960, the Central Committee of the CPSU addressed a new letter to the Communist and workers’ parties proposing a mere “exchange of views” in Bucharest without having to make a decision.9 On June 10, 1960, the Chinese authorities accepted the Soviet proposal.10 Before the beginning of the conference, the Soviet authorities distributed to the representatives of the Communist and workers’ parties present in Bucharest an informative note, condemning the “ideological heresies” perpetrated by the CCP (in matters such as the nature of the contemporary epoch, war and peace issues, peaceful coexistence, forms of transition from capitalism to socialism etc.).11 Consequently, the envisaged “exchange of views” turned into a real debate about the ideological precepts governing the Communist movement. The Chinese delegation was partially backed up by the Albanian delegation. All the other Communist and workers’ parties present at the Bucharest conference would rally to the anti-Chinese rhetoric advocated by Nikita Khrushchev.12 Moreover, on August 2, 1960, on the Kremlin’s advice, Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej sent an acid letter to Beijing in which he refuted as insubstantial the CCP’s accusations that an “attack by surprise method” had been used at the Bucharest conference. At the same time, the RWP leader rejected as “calumnious” the CCP’s allegations that the Soviet delegation had “used its authority in an abusive way.”13 The same anti-Chinese stance was adopted by Gheorghiu-Dej in the course of the conference of the Communist and workers’ parties held in Moscow in November 1960 (Croitor 2009, 174–206). The loyalty shown by Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej towards Khrushchev’s anti-Chinese rhetoric would pay off. During a visit in the USSR of an RWP delegation headed by Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej (from July 31 to August 12, 1961), the Soviet Communist leader praised the progress achieved by Romania in industrialization, a

8

ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file.28/1964, vol. II, 27. Ibid., 27–28. 10 Ibid. 11 ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file 33/1960, 3–68. 12 ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file 35/1960, vol. I, 4– 166; file 35/1960, vol. II, 2–215. 13 ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file 7C/1960, 3–23. 9

Mihai Croitor

441

tacit approval of the economic plans adopted in June 1960 in Bucharest at the Third Congress of the RWP.14 In such conditions, it comes as no surprise that the RWP endorsed the Kremlin’s anti-Chinese rhetoric. Moreover, on March 3, 1962, the Central Committee of the RWP, urged once again by the Kremlin (Croitor 2012, 19–21),15 sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CCP in which it condemned the proliferation by the Chinese of ideological principles that breached the Moscow Declaration of 1960 (Croitor 2012, 21–28).16 However, it was the last anti-Chinese stance assumed by the RWP leader. What triggered this change? In March 1962, the Poles, advised by the Soviets, issued a document meant to put in place a series of economic integrationist views inside Comecon.17 Although Poland revised its position in moderation afterwards, the ideas put forward by the Polish plan were reiterated by Nikita Khrushchev at the conference of the Comecon member states of June 6–7, 1962 in Moscow.18 Here Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej, unlike the other Communist leaders of Central and Eastern Europe, did not speak about the integration of plans, but preferred the term “coordination” (Cătănuú 2005, 82; ‫܉‬ăranu 2007, 150). As such, no consensus on implementing the economic integrationist plans was reached at the Moscow conference. Given the dissident position adopted by the RWP leader at the Moscow conference, it is not surprising that the visit made by Nikita Khrushchev in Romania (June 18–25, 1962) was marked by tensions (Croitor 2011, 105–15). Starting from June 1962, the Bucharest authorities stopped taking sides in the Sino-Soviet dispute and began to adopt a disengagement policy (Croitor 2009, 244). The reiteration of the Soviet integrationist views in the Executive Committee of Comecon, in February 1963, convinced the Romanian regime of the need to change the orientation of Romanian foreign policy. In order to discuss the latest developments in Comecon, a plenary of the Central Committee of the RWP was convened on March 5–8, 1963, which endorsed the position expressed in Moscow by Alexandru Bârlădeanu, who had refuted the 14

ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file 32/1961, vol. II, 243. 15 “Document 1: 1962 ianuarie 8. Notă cu privire la audienĠa solicitată de către I.K. Jegalin, ambasador al URSS la Bucureúti, referitoare la poziĠia adoptată de delegaĠia chineză la sesiunea Consiliului Mondial al Păcii de la Stockholm, din decembrie 1961.” 16 “Document 2: 1962 martie 3. Scrisoarea CC al PMR adresată CC al PCC, cu privire la promovarea de către comuniútii chinezi a unor teze potrivnice DeclaraĠiei de la Moscova din 1960.” 17 ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Chancellery, file 29/1962, 173–226. 18 ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Chancellery, file 29/1962, 56–100.

442

Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Roots of the Romanian Dissidence

Soviet integrationist plans.19 It is worth noting that the Western press interpreted the conclusions of the plenary as a clear statement of the Romanian-Soviet frictions.20 Faced with the Romanian opposition, Moscow sent delegates to Bucharest (Andropov in April 1963 and Podgorny in May 1963) with the aim of releasing the tension in the Romanian-Soviet relationship by organizing a high level bilateral meeting (Cătănuú 2004, 204–28).21 After an exchange of letters between the two leaders (Croitor 2012, 44–54, 60– 85),22 Nikita Khrushchev took a trip to Romania trying to persuade the Romanian leaders that implementing the integrationist views in Comecon would not alter national sovereignty. However, the Romanian-Soviet talks of June 24–25, 1963 did not lead to a settlement of the bilateral disagreement (Croitor 2012, 86–159).23 Apart from the diplomacy of disengagement towards the Sino-Soviet dispute, launched in the second half of 1962, the RWP leader tried to improve the Sino-Romanian relations, seriously damaged by the outcome of the Bucharest conference of June 1960 (Croitor 2009, 273). Under these circumstances, Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej asked Corneliu Mănescu, the Romanian foreign affairs minister, to summon Xu Jianguo, the Chinese ambassador to Bucharest and ask him to inform Beijing that the Romanian regime wanted a normalization of its relations with China. While meeting Xu Jianguo on May 16, 1963, Corneliu Mănescu stressed that the RWP did not tolerate the integrationist views promoted by the USSR inside Comecon, thus informing the Chinese decisional factors about the fact that

19

ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Chancellery, file 6/1963, 1. Open Society Archives 300–60–1, 602 Communist party: Foreign relations: USSR, 1961–1963, BOX 86, unpaged. 21 See: “1963 aprilie 3. Notă cu privire la discuĠiile cu delegaĠia condusă de A.I. Andropov, relativ la evoluĠia relaĠiilor româno—sovietice”, and “1963 mai 26. Stenograma discuĠiilor avute la Snagov între delegaĠia de activiúti ai PCUS în frunte cu N.V. Podgornâi úi membrii Biroului Politic al CC al PMR.” 22 “Document 4: 1963 mai 23. Scrisoarea adresată de către Nikita Hruúciov, prim – secretar al CC al PCUS, lui Gheorghe Gheorghiu – Dej, prim – secretar al CC al PMR, referitoare la divergenĠele româno – sovietice” and “Document 6: 1963 iunie 7. Scrisoarea adresată de Gh. Gheorghiu – Dej, prim – secretar al CC al PMR, lui Nikita Hruúciov, prim – secretar al CC al PCUS, referitoare la divergenĠele româno – sovietice.” 23 “Document 7: 1963 iunie 24 – 25. Stenograma discuĠiilor purtate de delegaĠia română, condusă de Gh. Gheorghiu – Dej, prim – secretar al CC al PMR, cu delegaĠia sovietică, condusă de Nikita Hruúciov, prim – secretar al CC al PCUS, referitoare la divergenĠele româno – sovietice.” 20

Mihai Croitor

443

in Bucharest there had been a change of mind (Croitor 2012, 29–44).24 Subsequently, on December 12, 1963, Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej himself met Xu Jianguo and criticized the Soviets’ plans to reform Comecon, expressing his intention to boost Sino-Romanian contacts (Croitor 2012, 196–226).25 The feedback received from Beijing was positive. On January 24, 1964, the Chinese regime accepted to take part in a Sino-Romanian bilateral meeting.26 The difficulty in organizing such a meeting was that direct Sino-Romanian diplomatic contacts would have raised suspicions in the Soviet camp. This is why the RWP came up with the idea of mediating the Sino-Soviet conflict. The trip of the Romanian delegation to Beijing and then to Pitzunda was approved equally by the Soviets and the Chinese. In reality, the so-called mediation of the Sino–Soviet conflict was nothing more than a pretence used by the Romanian regime in order to facilitate direct political and diplomatic contacts with the Chinese counterparts and to initiate the Sino-Romanian rapprochement (Croitor 2009, 271–84). In our opinion, the RWP’s attempt to “mediate” the Sino-Soviet conflict had a second ulterior motive. The “mediation” propaganda allowed the Romanian regime to draft and publish the Declaration of April 1964 that, apart from the ideological precepts taken from the Moscow Declarations of 1957 and 1960, stressed the RWP’s efforts in “mediating” the SinoSoviet conflict and the Romanian-Soviet differences inside Comecon (Croitor 2012, 511–49).27 The new foreign policy line adopted by the Communist regime in Bucharest now became public. In our opinion, the Romanian dissidence inside the Communist bloc began after the conference of the Comecon member states, which took place in Moscow (June 6–7, 1962) and followed Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to Romania (June 18–25, 1962). The two events had a major impact on the political leadership in Bucharest, who reacted immediately by adopting the diplomacy of disengagement towards the Sino-Soviet dispute. One year later, the bases of the direct Sino-Romanian political and diplomatic contacts were set and by 1964 the Sino-Romanian rapprochement became a fact. The propaganda about assuming a “mediation” role in the Sino24

“Document 3: 1963 mai 16. Notă cu privire la audienĠa lui Xu Jianguo, ambasador al RPC la Bucureúti, la Corneliu Mănescu, ministru al Afacerilor Externe, referitoare la divergenĠele româno – sovietice.” 25 “Document 9: 1963 decembrie 12. Notă privind convorbirea de la Snagov, dintre Gheorghe Gheorghiu – Dej, prim – secretar al CC al PMR, úi Xu Jianguo, ambasador al RPC la Bucureúti, referitoare la divergenĠele româno – sovietice úi necesitatea apropierii româno – chineze.” 26 ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, file 93/1963, 23–33. 27 “Declara‫܊‬ia din aprilie 1964.”

444

Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej and the Roots of the Romanian Dissidence

Soviet conflict would allow the Communist regime in Bucharest to publish the Declaration of April 1964, which largely disseminated the details of the Romanian-Soviet divergences.

Bibliography Primary sources ANIC, CC of the RCP Fund – Foreign Relations Section, files 23/1956, 33/1960, 35/1960 vol. I–II, 7C/1960, 32/1961, 28/1964 vol. II; CC of the RCP Fund – Chancellery, files 32/1956, 29/1962, 6/1963. Open Society Archives 300–60–1, 602 Communist party: Foreign relations: USSR, 1961–1963, BOX 86.

Secondary sources Brucan, Silviu. 1992. Generaаia irosită. Memorii. Bucharest: Editurile Univers & Calistrat Hogaú. Cătănuú, Dan. 2004. Între Beijing úi Moscova. România úi conflictul sovieto–chinez, vol. I, 1957–1965. Bucharest: INST. —. 2005. “DivergenĠele româno-sovietice din CAER úi consecinĠele lor asupra politicii externe a României, 1962–1963, II.” Arhivele Totalitarismului 3–4:75–98. Croitor, Mihai. 2011. “An Episode of the Romanian–Soviet Differences: the medium body weight of slaughtered pigs in Romania.” Studia Universitatis “Babeú-Bolyai.” Historia, vol. 56, 2:105–15. —. 2009. România úi conflictul sovieto–chinez (1956-1971). Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Mega. —. 2012. În umbra Kremlinului: Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej úi geneza Declaraаiei din Aprilie 1964. Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Mega. Evangelista, Matthew. 1997. “Why Keep Such an Army?” Khrushchev’s Troop Reductions. Washington, D.C.: Working Paper No. 19, Cold War International History Project. Ionescu, GhiĠă. 1964. Communism in Rumania, 1944–1962. London: Oxford University Press. Khrushchev, Sergei. 2007. Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Statesman (1953–1964). University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ‫܉‬ăranu, Liviu. 2007. România în Consiliul de Ajutor Economic Reciproc, 1949-1965. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică.

Mihai Croitor

445

The Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959. Tismăneanu, Vladimir. 1999. Reinventarea Politicului: Europa Răsăriteană de la Stalin la Havel. Iaúi: Polirom. Tudor, Alina, and Dan Cătănuú. 2001. O destalinizare ratată. Bucharest: Ed.Elion.

NATIONAL INTERESTS AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM: THE ROMANIAN COMMUNISTS ADVOCATING “ALLARGAMENTO” (1967–1973) CEZAR STANCIU Since 1962, when the Soviet Union, along with other socialist countries in Europe, expressed its commitment for a vast plan aimed to reform the Council of Mutual Economic Aid (CMEA) through the international division of labor, the Romanian Communists—after rejecting the plan— followed an increasingly independent course in foreign and domestic policy, trying to emancipate themselves from Soviet control (Jovanoviü 2006, 714). This course involved numerous changes that were especially visible in foreign policy. Romania gradually improved its relations in the West, in search for alternative commercial partners and adopted a neutral position in the emerging Sino-Soviet split (Radchenko 2009, 44). In April 1964, the party issued a declaration concerning relations within the world Communist movement, which called for equality among parties, denied the leading role of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and argued in favor of a national model for socialist construction (Berend 1999, 131). As Moscow was getting more and more engaged in the dispute with the Chinese, N.S. Khrushchev found it difficult to retaliate. The Romanians’ challenge to Soviet domination was encouraged by the changes in the leadership that occurred soon afterwards: in October 1964, N.S. Khrushchev was removed from his position and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev, while in Romania, party Prime-Secretary Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965 and was replaced by Nicolae Ceauúescu. The new leader of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) continued his predecessor’s international policy, taking advantage of a favorable international environment, especially in what concerned relations among Communist parties. In order to preserve his regime’s recently gained autonomy in the bloc, N. Ceauúescu employed major efforts to undermine Soviet control over world communism, although his means to achieve that

Cezar Stanciu

447

were rather limited. A most important feature of his international policy was the PCR’s relations with West European Communists, especially the Italian Communist Party (PCI), whose theses aimed at reforming world communism soon found support in Bucharest. The PCR leadership understood, long before N. Ceauúescu’s ascendance to power, that any policy that was either independent or contrary to Moscow needed to be ideologically legitimized in order to avoid isolation, to gain support among other parties and improve chances of résistance in front of potential Soviet pressures. The PCR developed good relations with the PCI and other West European Communist parties before N. Ceauúescu, but the PCR’s feud with Moscow was also accompanied by unrest in Western Europe as well, which facilitated a rather close cooperation between the PCR and the PCI. Palmiro Togliatti’s thesis regarding the polycentrism of world communism was known in Romania, but in the context of its enunciation it did not create much debate among Romanian Communists and did not have much influence in their ideological discourse. Still, the challenge against Moscow’s leadership of world communism was visible in the April 1964 Declaration. N. Ceauúescu himself represented his party at P. Togliatti’s funeral, in 1964. But, following 1964, as Luigi Longo was trying to reshape the PCI’s internationalist identity, the Italian ideological approach grew more and more influential within the PCR. As it has been argued before, the PCI was interested in reshaping its political identity in order to adapt to political conditions in Italy (Bracke 2002, 10). This effort became stronger after 1964, when Luigi Longo assumed the leadership of the party. Moscow’s loss of prestige as a consequence of its disputes with China, as well as the improving international climate created conditions for Communist parties to claim autonomy from the CPSU. Luigi Longo had understood that the PCI would never accede to government as long as it was regarded as a party completely subordinated to Moscow. The PCI’s only chance to govern was in a larger leftist coalition, together with the Socialists (Pons 2010, 49). Still, there was a major obstacle to this: Communists, following the Leninist interpretation, designated the Social-Democrats as “traitors” of the working class or “Social-Fascists,” as the Communist International (Komintern) had named them. Although the political environment of the mid-1960s was radically different from that of the interwar period, the negative view of Social-Democracy had not significantly changed. As the PCI could envisage governance only in an alliance with the less radical left, the party needed to overcome the traditional Kominternist interpretation and find an ideological justification for it. This is how Luigi

448

National Interests and International Communism

Longo’s theory of “allargamento” emerged. The PCI made it public during the preparatory consultations for the meeting in Karlovy Vary in 1967—a meeting of European Communist parties convoked to discuss issues of security and cooperation in Europe (Bracke 2002, 26–28). A Warsaw Pact meeting, a year before, had publicized a declaration calling for European security and the Communist parties were called upon to evaluate the impact of the document. At the time, European security was becoming a top matter in the Communist rhetoric, along with the struggle against imperialism. This last topic gained momentum as the conflict in Vietnam escalated by the United States and worldwide communism considered it as its moral and political duty to support the people of Vietnam against the American “aggressors.” The Soviet Union initiated certain steps in order to summon another Communist meeting with the purpose of coordinating assistance for the Vietnamese people, but its plan eventually failed due to the PCR’s opposition (Ouimet 2003, 17). The Romanians feared that such a conference could be directed against the Chinese, since Mao Zedong was not expected to participate, in the midst of the Sino-Soviet disputes. A meeting of the PCR’s leadership, in early 1966, illustrated clearly the Romanian position towards the idea of a conference aimed at coordinating support for the Vietnamese: its sole purpose, as Ion Gheorghe Maurer pointed out, was to isolate the Chinese and to reassert the Soviet leadership of the world Communist movement (Bracke 2002, 27–28). Since its plan for such a conference failed, as the PCR stubbornly opposed it, L. Brezhnev opted for a new idea: to summon Communist parties of Europe to a conference dedicated to European security issues. Brezhnev insisted to have such conferences organized because gathering all Communist parties around Moscow would have certainly given the impression of homogeneity and hierarchy in the world Communist movement, different from the fragmented image propagated by the Chinese, Albanian and Yugoslav dissidences. But such an idea of unity and hierarchy, involving Moscow’s leadership of the movement, was exactly what both the PCI and the PCR were trying to prevent. It was under these circumstances that Luigi Longo enunciated “allargamento.” The meaning of the concept was that the struggle against imperialism, as well as that for European security, could no longer be fought on the narrow and sectarian bases of world communism. Instead, it maintained, an enlargement was needed towards other forces with similar interests, namely the Socialist and Social-Democrats in Europe and the national liberation movements in the Third World. Enlarging the world Communist movement as a manifestation of reform increased the chances

Cezar Stanciu

449

of the anti-imperialist struggle. Behind this rather coherent and modern ideological approach, another interest laid: that of weakening Moscow’s control over other parties and that of offering ideological justification for a governmental coalition with other leftist forces. Enlarging the world Communist movement towards parties that were not under direct Soviet control would have weakened even further the CPSU’s domination in the movement, providing for an increased freedom of maneuver for other parties. It was for this last rationality that the PCR decided to support the Italian thesis. Luigi Longo declared that the PCI would only participate in the Karlovy Vary meeting if “allargamento” was accepted as a basis, but in the end, the PCI participated anyway, even if the Soviets remained rather cautious about the PCI’s intentions (Bracke 2002, 27–28). Unlike the PCI, the PCR chose not to participate in the meeting, which was a major defiance to Moscow. Romania was, after all, a Warsaw Pact member, and its absence was visibly a sign of Soviet lack of control in the bloc. But the PCR’s reasons were different from “allargamento” at that point and they had to do with the CPSU’s refusal to offer insurances that China would not be subjected to criticism. At that point, the Romanians seemed much more interested in maintaining their neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Shortly after, due to specific reasons, the PCR took on the thesis of “allargamento.” Another gesture of defiance orchestrated by the PCR against the Soviets occurred in January 1967—four months before the Karlovy Vary meeting, which convened in April that year. In January 1967, Romania established diplomatic relations with West Germany and so became the first Communist country, apart from the USSR, to recognize West Germany (Preda 2009, 98–101). This was the first step towards the future course of Ostpolitik, to be implemented after 1969 by Chancellor Willy Brandt. Romania’s decision was mainly justified by economic and commercial reasons, as West Germany was Romania’s most important trade partner in the West. But its decision was regarded, both in Moscow and Berlin, as a major blow to socialist solidarity. In the months preceding the Karlovy Vary meeting—from January to April 1967—the PCR and Romania were subjected to severe criticism in the Soviet and East German press, which ultimately contributed to N. Ceauúescu’s decision to decline participation in the European Communist parties’ meeting. It is difficult to establish exactly when the PCR decided to follow Luigi Longo’s theory of “allargamento,” since there was no explicit decision to this effect. Similar suggestions were put forward by J.B. Tito of Yugoslavia, in his discussions with N. Ceauúescu. Nevertheless, it is obviously visible that, in the spring of 1967, N.

450

National Interests and International Communism

Ceauúescu’s public discourses as well as discussions with other party leaders became more and more infused with the idea of “allargamento.” The enlargement of world communism served multiple purposes for the PCR: it had the potential to weaken Moscow’s position and therefore preserve Romania’s autonomy; it opened new opportunities for economic cooperation towards Western governments dominated by Socialists and Social-Democrats, and also created windows for economic cooperation in Third World countries. But, first and foremost, “allargamento” had the potential to justify Romania’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with West Germany, in spite of criticism. N. Ceauúescu had the chance to discuss these issues with Luigi Longo in August 1967, when a PCI delegation was in Bucharest for consultations. On that occasion, he confessed to Ceauúescu that he was aware his party did not have much chance to join a governmental coalition, given its constant association with Moscow in the past. Longo understood that his party had to display a different, more independent, public image in order to gain public support, as he told the Romanians. Ceauúescu was a strong adept of change in inter-party relations, just as Longo, but the PCI regarded the possibility of change in different terms. If the PCR considered that absence from the Soviet-led conferences of Communist parties was a way of expressing autonomy, Longo was of another opinion. He told Ceauúescu that he believed in a change from within, in the sense that participation in such conferences would offer more opportunities to prevent an unwanted course of events, rather than non-participation. It was for this reason, Longo mentioned, that the PCI would participate in future conferences, as well. Finally, both leaders expressed their commitment to cooperate with Socialists and Social-Democrats, for the sake of overcoming sectarianism.1 Among all Social-Democrats of the West, Willy Brandt’s SocialDemocratic Party (SPD) was of special interest to both the PCR and the PCI. Luigi Longo welcomed the SPD’s new policy towards the East and helped the SPD to establish contacts with the East German Communists (Di Donato 2011, 149–50). The PCR also assumed an active role in defending Willy Brandt’s new policy, including in what concerned relations with the West German Communist Party (KPD). The West 1

“Stenograma primirii de către tovarăúul Nicolae Ceauúescu, secretar general al CC al PCR, la Eforie Nord, a tovarăúului Luigi Longo, secretar general al Partidului Comunist Italian” (Stenograph of the meeting between cmd. Nicolae Ceauúescu, Secretary General of the CC of the PCR and cmd. Luigi Longo, Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party), ANR, fund CC al PCR, section External Relations, dossier no. 61/1967, 28–31.

Cezar Stanciu

451

German Communists, faithful to the East Germans, condemned the SPD’s opening to the East as an imperialist maneuver, but the PCR’s leader tried to convince them of the opposite. The PCR’s official position was that the SPD must be supported in its endeavor to change West Germany’s foreign policy, because progress can only be attained in small steps, not necessarily by radical turnabouts. N. Ceauúescu advocated a similar point of view during his meeting with L. Brezhnev, in December 1967. He told Brezhnev that, according to the PCR, Willy Brandt represented a progressive force in West Germany, for which reason he had to be supported. A real concept of European security—he also mentioned—could only be conceived in a larger framework, together with Socialists and Social-Democrats. Brezhnev rejected his point of view and claimed that W. Brandt and the SPD were nothing but mere instruments in the hands of imperialism.2 The two did not reach an agreement, but that did not prevent Ceauúescu from actively pursuing a course of “allargamento.” In 1967 he met with Guy Mollet, a French socialist leader, with whom he shared his ideas of cooperation. When Ceauúescu met the Italian socialist leader, Venerio Cattani, he also advised in favor of cooperation, impelling Cattani to work together with the PCI.3 In February 1968, another meeting of Communist parties took place, this time in Budapest. It was intended as a preparatory meeting for a future worldwide conference of Communist parties, an event that seemed to become a fixation for Brezhnev, as the Sino-Soviet split continued to aggravate. N. Ceauúescu chose to participate this time, advocating “allargamento” in front of all Communist parties that participated. A month before the meeting, he had another consultation with a PCI delegation, led by Carlo Galuzzi, and both parties decided to work together in order to prevent a restoration of the leading center of world

2

“Stenograma convorbirilor dintre delegaĠiile Partidului Comunist Român úi Partidul Comunist al Uniunii Sovietice, Kremlin 14–15 decembrie 1967” (Stenograph of the discussions between the delegations of the Romanian Communist Party and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Kremlin, 14–15 December 1967), in ANR, fund CC al PCR, section External Relations, dossier no. 101/1967, 18–29. 3 “Stenograma discuĠiilor acute cu ocazia primirii de către tovarăúul Nicolae Ceauúescu a delegaĠiei Partidului Socialist Unificat Italian, în ziua de 22 iulie 1967” (Stenograph of the discussions held during the meeting between cmd. Nicolae Ceauúescu and the delegation of the Unified Socialist Party of Italy), în ANR, fund CC al PCR, section External Relations, dossier no. 52/1967, 8.

452

National Interests and International Communism

communism, in a Kominternist style.4 In spite of that, the PCR decided to leave the meeting during its session, due to an attack directed against the Chinese by the Communist Party of Syria. The PCI, on the other hand, did not do much to defend the Romanians.5 The PCI did not have positive relations with the Chinese Communists and, apart from that, was much more moderate that the PCR in challenging the Soviets. Enrico Berlinguer, who led the PCI delegation to Moscow, did not seem so keen on upsetting the Soviets, unless there was a gain to it. It should be mentioned, nonetheless, that the PCI was still heavily dependent on Soviet financial support. An important question arises here concerning the difference between the statements made by Luigi Longo and Carlo Galuzzi to N. Ceauúescu and the PCI’s reserved attitude towards the PCR during the meeting in Budapest. According to Romanian evaluations, many other parties have insisted in private conversations that Romanians should not leave the meeting, for they did not have the power or possibility to defend similar points of view, although they believed in the principles laid out by the PCR. The conclusion in Bucharest was that many parties shared the Romanian (and Italian) ideas regarding the reform in world communism, but could not express them in public due to their dependence on Soviet financial assistance.6 It is a question yet to be answered whether or not the PCI had encouraged the PCR to participate and take an active stand during the meeting in Budapest, only to be spared themselves from the risks of such an endeavor. In other words, did the PCI use the PCR in order to popularize its own points of view without assuming the inherent risks?7 4

“Stenograma primirii de către tovarăúul Nicolae Ceauúescu a tovarăúului Carlo Galuzzi, membru al DirecĠiunii PC Italian, Timiúoara, 5 ianuarie 1968” (Stenograph of the meeting between comrade Nicolae Ceauúescu and comrade Carlo Galuzzi, member of the Direzione of the Italian Communist Party), in ANR, fund CC al PCR, section External Relations, dossier no. 2/1968, 12. 5 Giuseppe Boffa, “La delegazione romena abbandona il convegno consultivo di Budapest,” L’Unità, March 1, 1968, 13. 6 “Stenograma úedinĠei plenare extraordinare a Comitetului Central al Partidului Comunist Român, din ziua de 1 martie 1968” (Stenograph of the extraordinary plenary of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party which took place on March 1, 1968), in ANR, fund CC al PCR, section Chancellery, dossier no. 31/1968, 6. 7 Such questions could only be answered by intensive research in the archives of Partito Comunista Italiano. During the PCR’s Central Committee plenum that followed the meeting in Budapest, high-level party officials expressed their conviction that many other parties, especially West European ones, tried to convince the PCR that they shared the same views on the USSR, but did not have

Cezar Stanciu

453

But the event that brought the two parties on the closest positions in the history of their relations was the Soviet-led invasion in Czechoslovakia, in August 1968. For both Luigi Longo and Nicolae Ceauúescu, it was practically a disaster. It undermined the credibility of Western communism, including that of the PCI, because criticism of the intervention could hardly be countered by reasonable arguments. All Western Communist parties were still associated with Moscow in the public mind that caused major losses of prestige (Lomellini 2009, 61). The PCI was fast to condemn the intervention and dissociate itself from it. Luigi Longo had even visited Czechoslovakia in May 1968 and expressed his party’s support for the reforms that were under way at that time (Navratil 1998, 126). The PCR, on the other hand, although was just as noisy in criticizing it, was also faced with a major threat to the country’s security. Given his defiance of Moscow, N. Ceauúescu had serious reasons to believe that such an intervention could be directed against him, as well. Facing such risks, N. Ceauúescu tried to appease the Soviets soon after. The PCI, on the other hand, was interested in doing the same thing for various other reasons: to avoid isolation in world communism, to avoid being dragged in public polemics that were detrimental to the party, and also to insure further subsidies from Moscow. N. Ceauúescu met with a PCI delegation led by Giancarlo Pajetta in September 1968. Both agreed on that occasion that, in the aftermath of the intervention, the wisest thing to do was to leave the matter behind and help both the Soviets and the Czechoslovaks “normalize” the situation. Further divergences on the topic could not benefit anybody, Ceauúescu and Pajetta agreed. The meeting ended with a mutual promise that neither party would back down from its principled position, though.8 An immediate post-Prague challenge to both the PCI and the PCR was Moscow’s project for a new Communist conference that would reunite all Communist parties in the world. The preparatory meeting in Budapest, in the power to do anything about it. Instead, they insisted that the PCR remain at the meeting to confront the Soviets on others’ behalf, as well. During N. Ceauúescu’s meetings with the West European party leader—prior to the meeting in Budapest—it was the PCI leadership that insisted for the PCR to participate at the meeting, promising to support its position. The fulfillment of that promise was questionable, according to the Romanians. 8 “Stenograma primirii de către tovarăúul Nicolae Ceauúescu a tovarăúului Gian Carlo Pajetta, membru al Biroului Politic úi al DirecĠiunii Partidului Comunist Italian” (Stenograph of the meeting between comrade Nicolae Ceauúescu and comrade Giancarlo Pajetta, member of the Political Bureau and of the Direzione of the Italian Communist Party), in ANR, fund CC al PCR, section External Relations, dossier no. 126/1968, 6–7.

454

National Interests and International Communism

February 1968, decided that the conference was going to reunite in the autumn 1968, but the turmoil caused by the intervention in Czechoslovakia sabotaged Moscow’s efforts to have it convened at that time. Both the PCR and the PCI expressed their wish to have it postponed as long as possible. The risk of the conference was that, should Moscow try to legitimate the intervention and its subsequent “Brezhnev doctrine,” both the PCR and the PCI would be faced with two drastic choices: to accept the Soviet point of view and therefore to ruin their entire discourse of reform in world communism, or to oppose it publicly once again, causing a scandal. Moscow accepted the postponement and the conference only convened in June 1969, the most important topic on the agenda being the struggle against imperialism in the context of the Vietnam War. The Soviets, already concerned with China, chose not to raise the Czechoslovak issue, and nor did other parties. It was a convenient exit for both the PCR and the PCI. During the sessions, N. Ceauúescu expressed his party’s conviction that the struggle against imperialism could only succeed if organized on larger bases, together with Socialists, Social-Democrats and with the movements of national liberation. The same thesis was also defended two months later, at the PCR’s 10th Congress, in August 1969. The efforts to unite the world Communist movement against Moscow ultimately failed. There were many Communist parties that wanted emancipation from Soviet control, but few of them had the possibility to speak out loud and assume the implicit dangers. A common anti-Soviet front was also impossible due to diverging interests and loyalties in world communism. Under such circumstances, bilateral or trilateral agreements against parties, aimed at defending a common position, were the only way in which Moscow could be opposed. The PCR and the PCI worked together to that effect, although the degree of coordination among them was not very high: there never existed a coherent plan to sabotage the Soviets (Di Giacomo 2011, 175). The defense of “allargamento” was one of the common positions of the two parties and its importance must not be underestimated. Although the PCR and the PCI had different rationalities for advocating the enlargement of world communism towards other anti-imperialist forces, still, “allargamento” was one of the centrifugal forces that ultimately shattered the unity and homogeneity of worldwide communism and contributed to Moscow’s loss of influence. “Allargamento” emerged in the context created by Willy Brandt’s accession to power in a governmental coalition, when the SPD issued the first signals of a new policy towards the East. The PCR and the PCI were practically the first Communist parties to

Cezar Stanciu

455

recognize a potential to this change and tried to welcome it. The PCI played an important role in the SPD’s success, by establishing contacts with the West German party, mediating between the SPD and SED and, this way, legitimating Willy Brandt’s initiatives. Also, the PCR’s role was just as important. At a moment when Communists were quick to condemn Brandt’s initiatives as “bourgeois machinations,” therefore rejecting the prospect of reconciliation, Romania decided to accept the SPD’s intentions as honest and acted upon that assumption by establishing diplomatic relations with West Germany. The PCR and the PCI had different reasons to welcome the SPD’s initiatives, reasons which derived from their own domestic and foreign necessities, but their support of Willy Brandt was essential in the birth of future Ostpolitik, a course which may well have been aborted due to two interacting factors: domestic criticism directed against Brandt, on the one hand, and negative reactions from the East, on the other hand. The first factor was naturally amplified by the second. The PCR and the PCI broke this vicious circle. “Allargamento,” as a concept, was therefore essential to future détente not only by facilitating East-West reconciliation, but also by undermining Soviet influence abroad, increasing freedom of maneuver among Communist parties and ultimately, by creating diversity where there had been uniformity.

Bibliography Berend, Iván T. 1999. Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bracke, Maud. 2002. Proletarian Internationalism, Autonomy and Polycentrism. Florence: EUI Working Paper. Di Donato, Michele. 2011. “Il rapporto con la socialdemocrazia tedesca nella politica internazionale del Pci di Luigi Longo (1967-1969).” Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica 2:145–71. Di Giacomo, Michelangela. 2011. “Prospettive ‘eurocomuniste’. La strategia del Pci e I rapporti col Pce negli anni Settana.” Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica 2:173–203. Jovanoviü, Miroslav N. 2006. The Economics of International Integration. Camberley: Edward Elgar Publishing. Lomellini, Valentine. 2009. “The Two Europes: Continuity and Breaks 1968 and 1981, Eastern Crisis, Italian Outcomes.” In The Two Europes, edited by Michele Affinito, Guia Migani and Christian Wenkel, 59–72. Brussels: Peter Lang.

456

National Interests and International Communism

Montias, J.M. 1967. Economic Development in Communist Rumania. Cambridge: MIT Press. Navratil, Jaromir, ed. 1998. The “Prague Spring” 1968: A National Security Archive Documents Reader. Budapest: Central European University Press. Ouimet, Matthew J. 2003. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Pons, Silvio. 2010. “The Rise and Fall of Eurocommunism.” In Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. III, edited by Melvin P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, 45–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Preda, Dumitru, ed. 2009. România – Republica Federală Germania. Începutul relaĠiilor diplomatice 1966-1967. Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică. Radchenko, Sergey. 2009. Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967. Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

ENVIRONMENT, REAL SOCIALISM AND SUSTAINABILITY IN RUSSIA GIANLUCA SENATORE Introduction Real socialism had its source of legitimacy in the “October Revolution.” The promise of communism was based on the realization of a fair society, which would have put an end to the exploitation of the working class by capitalists and smoothed out any class difference, leading to the highest standard of living for the “new Communist man” characterized by abundance of material and cultural goods. Such promise means a centrally controlled economic policy that sets goals, resources and priorities through medium-term plans, covering all productive sectors. In this model, the sustainability issues would be lessened, at least in theory. First, the problem of national borders would be overcomed, because the model would hit a large geographic area; second, this model would lead to a centralized political governance, able to promote and support it. Theoretically, the use of planning would have allowed the weighing of environmental measures effects on the economic and social sectors. History shows not only a different truth but also a cultural background completely divorced from the theoretical framework outlined, except for a relatively short period of important policy initiatives (1918–24), influenced by innovative development ideas related to environmental protection, proposed by a group of scientists who had given birth to a movement for the protection of nature (Weiner 1999). Obviously, in the years immediately after the Second World War, nobody paid attention to environmental issues, neither in the West nor in Central and Eastern Europe, at least on a political and economical level; the environment issue was seen as an obstacle to the economic growth. Consequently, attention to sustainable development was not, and could not be in the agenda of planners, even in a socialist key. However, when the ideas of anthropic degradation, exploitation of resources, the concept of a limit, beyond the pollution of the big cities, began to interest public

458

Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia

opinion and governments in the West, such a thing would not happen in countries with centrally planned economies (Senatore 2013). Although theoretically favorable to an integral development, real socialism focused primarily on industrialist policies, ignoring social measures and actions for the population. Therefore, according to these objectives of unlimited growth, the concept of limit could not find acceptance, as well as measures that would add the economic development to the environmental sustainability.

Nature: A resource to protect in Bolshevik Russia During the last century, the importance of protecting the environmental resources in Russia was not always underestimated. In fact, between 1918 and 1921, a set of laws for the protection of parks, shooting grounds and forests were promulgated, until the creation of Soviet society for the Protection of Nature called VOOP, in 1924, and the implementation of large protected areas, called zapovedniki (Dundovich 2012, 44). Douglas Robert Weiner (1999) shed light on relevant papers testifying the existence of groups, in particular scientists and academics, which influenced the policy choices of Lenin in the promotion of environmental and nature conservation, allowing the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to obtain significant results in environmental protection. The idea to institute the zapovedniki—pure natural reserves untouched by men— was proposed for the first time by the Russian scientist Grigory Alexandrovich Kozhevnikov in 1909. The purpose of this intervention in favor of nature had the dual aim of protecting the nature and of using these reserves for scientific purposes, monitoring and studying animal and plant species, according to the evolution of nature without external influences. Here comes the movement for the protection of nature, which will give life to a series of associations such as VOOP, the Moscow Society of Naturalists (MOIP), the Ali-Union Botanical Society, the Moscow branch of the Geographical Society of the USSR (MGO). Significantly, the major input to the activities for the environmental protection came right after 1917. The decline of the tsar was accepted by many scientists as a sign of renewal and opportunities to relaunch the policy of nature conservation, but initially Bolsheviks’ answer to the hopes of the scientists was not entirely positive, as the recently established power had other priorities. Indeed, Bolsheviks never faced the environmental issue and even the most enlightened had thought of the possibility of reconciling the need to restructure the productive system with the protection and respect for

Gianluca Senatore

459

nature. Although Lenin had never really dealt thoroughly with the possibility of considering the environment and the nature as a resource to protect, he was one of the most involved in this issue among the leaders of his party. On several occasions he endorsed the rational exploitation of natural resources such as forests or oil fields. The management of resources and the respect for the laws of nature accompanied Lenin in his idea to increase industrial and agricultural production in Bolshevik Russia.1 From these considerations, as noted by Weiner (1999), it is clear that in Lenin’s vision there was not only an intention of establishing a relationship with the academic world and with the bourgeois’ cultural and scientific heritage, to raise the technological level of the country, but also the idea of a necessary link between the party and the scientists involved in natural sciences. The confirmation of this project is clear through the political actions of the Soviet government, which signed an agreement with the Academy of Science in April 1918. The agreement, signed by the People’s Commissar for Education Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilyevich, provided the recognition of the autonomy and independence of the scientific and academic institutions, in exchange for a fair collaboration. After one year, the State Committee for the Protection of Monuments of Nature was established, with the participation of many distinguished scientists and Russian academics, such as the anthropologist and geographer Dmitri Anuchin and the geochemical Alexander Fersman. On April 11, 1919 the first zapovedniki of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was instituted. The peculiarity of this event is in the fact that Lenin himself agreed to personally take care of this project, which had been proposed to him by Nikolai Nikolaevich Podiapolskij, a Bolshevik agronomist to whom he assigned the task of preparing a set of proposals for the establishment of reserves and parks all over the Soviet territory. The Ilmenskij zapovedniki (National park) was born on May 14, 1920 in the region of Miass, in the southern Urals, with an institutive decree signed by Lenin. Lenin himself, on September 16, 1921, signed also the decree for the “Protection of Monuments of Nature, Reserves and Parks” and gave to the people’s commissar for education all the competences in matter of conservation of natural heritage, with very tight restrictions on the exploitation of protected areas. In addition to that, the commissioner had full powers of establishing new zapovedniki all over 1

Tiziano Bagarolo made an interesting reconstruction of the relationship between Lenin and the environment in Lenin sconosciuto, la rivoluzione sovietica e l’ecologia, starting from the considerations of Weiner and adding ideas and connections from documents already known but appropriately reported.

460

Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia

Soviet territory. The decision to entrust this task to the Commissariat for Education arises from the fact that this ministry could not exploit these zapovedniki economically. These areas remained untouched for a long time, or nearly, until August 29, 1951 when Stalin removed the constraints of protection from 88 to 128 natural reserves, with the decree n. 3192 “O zapovednikach.”2 There is no doubt that from 1918 to 1924 the Russian government’s policy actions were strongly influenced by the academic and scientific elite of the Russian movement for the protection of nature. Furthermore, the elite was able to affect the economic development policy until the death of Lenin. In fact, even before the introduction of the first five-year plan, the substitutive of NEP initiated by Lenin in 1921, the movement had lost its authority, especially in the economic rational plan, that is promoting a sustainable development caring of the exploitation of resources. Several scientists tried to openly obstruct the economic plans of Stalin, but such efforts were totally vain. The courage and determination of the activists in the movement (lab biologists, scientists, chemistry and physics, geologists and soil scientists) was truly remarkable, not only for the work of scientists in a particularly complicated sector, threatened by industrialist ambitions of the Soviet Union, but specially for their ability to remain independent from the party. In spite of all, activists continued to work, maintaining their independence; this was also due to some members of the party who were not hostile to the scientists’ ideas. Of course, their role had been greatly reduced over the years and the Soviet government did not consider them a problem, since their role was considered marginal. There were occasions of polemical conflicts: in 1953–54 the too independent scientists lost control of VOOP, which was assigned to other academics, loyal supporters of the party. Activists of the movement transferred their activities at MOIP, still under the scientific direction of the movement. From 1929 onwards, the movement fought mainly to save the last remaining reserves. Everything else was literally attacked and destroyed to make space for the demand of useful raw materials in the great race for economic growth.

2

Stalin Decree O zapovednikach reduces the zapovedniki area from 12.6 million hectares to about 1,384,000 hectares. The exploitation of reserves and parks protected until then by the law “Protection of Monuments of Nature, Reserves and Parks” (September 16, 1921) involved not only Russia but also all the other republics that had to promulgate similar decrees to allow the exploitation of protected natural areas (Weiner 1999, 129; Dundovich 2012, 45).

Gianluca Senatore

461

The plans of the second postwar period and the disappearance of the environmental element “Today we cannot understand the persuasive force of the communist utopia, but really it acted together with several factors (military, strategic, economic, diplomatic and social factors) to build a plumbean reality with few opportunities for the development of the East European society” (Biagini and Guida 1997, 8). The fact remains that, from a political point of view, the power of the Communist Party and of its General Secretary Stalin went out greatly strengthened by the victory of war. Therefore, the restoration of the institutional order of the prewar period was a priority, together with the economic restoration. Methodologies and objectives of administrative planning were used for these purposes, as indeed until 1940. In fact, on August 19, 1945, five-year plans were restored with the aim of achieving the total reconstruction and relaunching all Soviet regions to achieve and exceed the level of prewar development. The goals to reach were the base of the fourth five-year plan (1946–50), which according to the forecasts, was supposed to bring the national income to 38 percent more than in the 1940, industrial production to 48 percent; agricultural production to 27 percent, while real wages would have to exceed 23 percent of the level of 1940.3 On April 16, 1951 a triumphant public announcement was released, underlining the success of the fourth floor. Obviously it was propaganda not supported by the actual achievement of the objectives (Leon 1977). During the period of implementation of the five-year plans, the Soviet government made other partial and intermediate plans, with the aim of creating the right conditions for the achievement of the objectives of economic planning. Among these, the most important was Stalin’s plan for transformation of the nature, published on October 14, 1948. It provided the creation of artificial lakes and forests to fight the drought. The objectives announced by Stalin for this plan were really ambitious: eight great forestry projects, with a total area of 5,300 km long and 30–60 km wide; the deviation of the great Siberian River Ob’ from the Arctic Ocean to its affluents to the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea; the construction of hydroelectric plants.4 In 1954 the Ministry of Agriculture refused to 3

During the war years, economic planning was suspended and the “path to communism” had started again and became the main goal of the party after that the Soviet constitution of 1936 declared the complete realization of socialism in the USSR. 4 Among the most important hydroelectric power plants we recall: Kujbysev (launched on August 21, 1950) with a gross production of 2.000.000 Kw and

462

Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia

precisely indicate the level of forestation reached and the number of survived plants. As to the irrigation program, only a 10 percent of the land that had to be irrigated was cultivated concretely. Since then, the term “nature” will only be used for possible exploitation of industrial or agricultural purposes. No measures and no formal acts would be launched for the environmental protection. During this period the only exception is an urgent measure adopted as a remedial, and not precautionary, purpose in 1956. The purpose of this measure (and of the following intervention) was to put a stop to the pollution of radioactive substances, caused by the discharge of toxic waste along the River Teca, with thousands of victims in the following years and other instances of the same nature. In 1957 a nuclear waste dump exploded in Kystym, causing a toxic cloud that covered hundreds of kilometers along the provinces of Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen. In 1967, another ecological disaster happened. In Majak, close to the plants of conservation of nuclear waste, the authorities dumped waste containing cesium and strontium along the rivers of the lakes of Kaaracaj and Staroe Boloto. Later on it was discovered that these operations were happening for at least fifteen years (Dundovich 2012, 63). The research of raw materials and industrial discharges will mess up the whole territory, making the Soviet Union one of the most polluted countries in the world. In August of 1952, the fifth five-year plan (1951– 55) was published, twenty months after its enactment. It provided considerable growth rates, in the Stalinist style, high goals for agricultural production and priorities to the productive sector. In March of 1953, in full swing of the plan, Stalin died and his death produced enormous political, economic and ideological consequences. With the arrival of Kruscev, the decline of some dogmas characteristic of the Stalin era was observed: the law of “balanced development of the Soviet economy planned” was brought into question by the repeated failures in agriculture and the law of “priority development of production goods” as well by a political and social necessity to make concessions to the population (Leon 1977, 166). However, on April 25, 1956, the success of the fifth five-year plan was solemnly announced in Pravda. Although the revision of the economic policy was pursued after the death of Stalin, the sixth five-year plan (1956–60) followed the Stalinist models, giving priority to heavy industry. Also, the sixth plan was difficult to implement, but the attitude of the Soviet government was different than in the past. In fact, instead of pretending the full realization, the government criticized the weaknesses of the plan publicly, highlighting its failure to perform as Stalingrad, (launched on August 31, 1950) with a gross production of 1.700.000 Kw.

Gianluca Senatore

463

expected and ordering, on September 18, 1957, the preparation of a sevenyear plan (1959–65)5 that could replace the previous one. During this period, several political events, such as the outburst of the Berlin crisis of 1960, the American airplane U2 that flew over the USSR territory in May 1961, and in particular the delicate event of the missiles sent to Cuba in the fall of 1962, had immediate repercussions in the Soviet economic policy. In fact, the military budget was increased by 3,114 million rubles, the demobilization of about 1,200,000 soldiers was interrupted and the authorities had to renounce a large number of planned investments, because of military spending (Leon 1977, 174–75). Even if anchored to Stalin models, the Seven-Year (1959–65) showed some efforts of modernizing the economy. It pointed to increasing the production in the chemical industry, oil and the gas mining sector was developed and the exploitation of natural resources in the East started massively, with the building of a metallurgical base in Siberia. On October 18, 1961 Nikita Khrushchev presented to the XXI Congress an ambitious program for the construction of a Communist society in twenty years. In the economic sector, it relied on overtaking the most developed capitalist countries on pro capita output, realizing the highest standard of living worldwide with great abundance of material and cultural goods. Finally, the social part of the program included the cancellation of the social class differences between manual and intellectual work, urban and rural and the fulfillment of the ideological unity, with the creation of a new Communist man of higher education; moral purity, excellent physical health and ideological consciousness. The intermediate economic objective predicted the achievement of a world leadership in the industry compared to other countries, including the USA, already by the early 1970s. Since 1970, millions of people would be freed from manual auxiliary labor because, thanks to the introduction of new technology, there would have been a growth of employment in culture, health care and other public services. From a rapid analysis of the results of the development plans for the realization of communism, we see how very few things were actually made at the end of the 1960s, and ambitious promises could not be kept. The fall of Nikita Khrushchev also modified the economic policy of the USSR and the immediate effect was the eighth five-year plan (1966–70). It was focused on the increasing efficiency of social production, accelerating 5

In May 1957, Nikita Khrushchev criticized the approach of preparing a rigid annual or five years plan. He sustained that life is a continuous process, while plans stop at a precise date on the calendar. He proposed a continuous schedule: planned objectives for the present year shall be known already, while planning for the future five years shall be done at the same time (Leon 1977, 168).

464

Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia

the improvement of science and technology. We must remember how, starting from the 1950s, the Soviet Union had achieved several successes in space technology and nuclear energy sectors: the first missile to the moon (January, 1959), the construction of two nuclear power plants and the first atomic icebreaker. Despite these successes, the growth rates of the USSR suffered a general reduction in almost all sectors. According to estimates from 1951 to 1955 the average growth rate was 6.0 percent, from 1956 to 1960 was 5.8 percent, from 1961 to 1965 was 5.0 percent, from 1966 to 1970 was 5.5 percent.6 As calculated by the Soviet economist T. S. Khacaturov, the reason of the reduction is due to the decrease in the return on investment: from 1959 to 1965 the yield rose from 0.83 to 0.70, while in 1970 to 0.69. The ideal program announced by Khrushchev in 1961 did not find completion.

Return to environmental issue as international policy strategy From the second postwar period to the mid-1970s, the dual influence of the economic growth and the armaments race, started during the Cold War after the signature of the Treaty of peace in 1947, did not promote neither the development in a sustainable key nor the consciousness on environmental issues, but in May of 1972, Nixon and Podgornyj met in Moscow and finally signed the first Treaty of Cooperation to reduce air and water pollution, followed by, in the same year, the USSR signing of the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, and in 1974 the signing of the Helsinki Convention. This historical moment is particularly important because the environmental issue is linked to economic issues and international affairs. Therefore, it is important that Sweden had to wait until 1972 to get the world Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, proposed in 1968 by the Swedish government to the United Nations. The Soviet Union and many countries of the socialist block did not attend the conference. Why? Environment became part of the great international issues during this important symposium. Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor and later the secretary of state in the administrations of President Richard 6

Evaluated by Rush V. Greenslade, Gross National Product, by sector of origin (including armaments), weighted in 1970, Index 1940 = 100. It must be noted that Soviet official evaluations (Index 1940 = 100) calculated different results with average growth rates in reduction in 1946–65. According to Soviet evaluations from 1951 to 1955 growth rate was 11,4%; in 1956–60 it was 9,2%; in 1961–65 it was 6,7%; in 1966–70 it was 7,7% (Leon 1977, 204–205).

Gianluca Senatore

465

Nixon, gave a great contribution to the conference. Right in the middle of the Cold War, Kissinger’s role was crucial, because there was an unexpected convergence between the positions of developing and developed countries, through a declaration and an action plan with 109 recommendations. For the first time in history, environment and economic growth were put on the same level, disproving the beliefs of many countries, among which the Soviet Union, that perceived the protection of nature (preservation of parks, rivers, lakes, forests) as an obstacle to economic growth. In that same period, Henry Kissinger was working for the détente of relations between China and the US that led to the meeting between Richard Nixon and Mao Tse-tung, in China in 1972. The meeting raised great prominence in public opinion and gave Kissinger the opportunity to have a strong influence in international policy. We must remember that, in 1972, China was not yet the world economic power that we know today, but it represented the developing countries with a crucial role in international politics. In the period 1954–72, Soviet aid to foreign developing countries reached 8,196 million dollars, with a maximum point of 998 million dollars spent in 1964 and 1,244 million dollars in 1966. Among the beneficiary areas there were the Middle East at 3.3 billion, South Asia 3 billion and Africa 1.2 billion. In conclusion we can infer that the US took the chance to discuss about environmental issues for starting important international relations, while the Soviet Union was confronted with an internal territory massacred by pollution and other problems that will arise some time later.

Bibliography Biagini, Antonello, and Francesco Guida. 1997. Mezzo secolo di socialismo reale: l’Europa centro-orientale dal secondo conflitto mondiale all’era postcomunista. Turin: Giappichelli. Biagini, Antonello, and Rita Tolomeo. 1996. L’Ungheria dal socialismo all’economia di mercato. Caratteristiche e prospettive del processo di transazione. Milan: Egea. Boulding, Kenneth E. 1966. “The economics of the coming Spaceship Earth.” In Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, edited by Jarrett H. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Catton, Robert W. Jr., and Reley E. Dunlap. 1978. “Paradigms, Theories, and the Primary of the HEP-NEP Distinction.” The American sociologist 13.4:252–56. doi: 10.2307/27702344. Dundovich, Elena. 2012. Cornobyl’. L’assenza. Florence: Passigli Editore.

466

Environment, Real Socialism and Sustainability in Russia

Forrester, Jay, W. 1994. World Dynamics. Portland Oregon: Productivity Press. (1970) Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Graziosi, Andrea. 2008. Storia dell’Unione Sovietica. L’Urss dal trionfo al degrado. vol. II. Bologna: Il Mulino. Greenslade, Rush V. 1976. “The real Gross National Product of the USSR, 1950–1975.” In Soviet Economy in a New Prospective, Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Washington, October 14, 1976. http://archive.org/stream/sovietinn00unit/sovietinn00unit_djvu.txt. Kaplan, Norman, and Richard Moorsteen. 1960. “Indexes of Soviet Industrial Output.” II vol. Research Memorandum RM-2495. Santa Monica CA: The Rand Corporation. Leon, Pierre. 1979. Storia economica e sociale del mondo, Volume 6, i nostri anni dal 1947 a oggi. Rome: Editori Laterza. Originally published, Histoire économique et sociale du monde, Tome 6, Le second XX siècle: 1947 à nos jours, (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1977). Nutter, G. Warren. 1962. Growth of Industrial Production in the Soviet Union. Princeton: Princeton University Press. —. 1963. “The Effect of Economic Growth on Sino-soviet Strategy.” In National Security: Political, Military and Economic Strategies in the Decade Ahead, edited by David M. Abshire and Richard V. Allen. New York: Praeger. Persson, Karl G. 2011. Storia economica d’Europa. Conoscenza, istituzioni e crescita dal 600 d.C. a oggi. Milan: Apogeo. Rist, Gilbert. 1997. Lo sviluppo. Storia di una credenza occidentale. Torin: Bollati Boringhieri. Senatore, Gianluca. 2013. Storia della sostenibilità. Dai limiti della crescita alla genesi dello sviluppo. Milan: Franco Angeli. Tiezzi, Enzo, and Nadia Marchettini. 1999. Che cos’è lo sviluppo sostenibile? Le basi scientifiche della sostenibilità e i guasti del pensiero unico. Rome: Donzelli Editore. Weiner, Douglas, R. 1988. Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. 1999. A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev. Berkeley: University of California Press. —. 2005. “A death-defying attempt to articulate a coherent definition of environmental history.” Environmental History 10.3:404–20. doi:10.1093/envhis/10.3.404.

ENVIRONMENT, POLLUTION AND ECO-NATIONALISM IN THE USSR ELENA DUNDOVICH From the environmental point of view, the Cold War had a calamitous effect on the land, lakes, rivers, air, and even biosphere, and the consequences will continue to be felt for thousands of years. The prevailing logic of antagonism and competition pushed Moscow and Washington to encourage research and exploration in once untouched parts of the globe (McNeill and Unger 2010, 3). A closer look shows that not a single initiative undertaken as part of the Cold War outlook did not have serious negative repercussions on the environment. Even the construction of dams, airports, and railway lines was influenced by the anxieties and fears typical of the two-sided standoff and the resulting frenzied search for new raw materials to sustain competition between the powers. Many of the superpowers’ political decisions had devastating effects on the environment—yet none were premeditated. The question of mass-scale arms production and above all the nuclear weapons tests that were conducted over the decades was, however, quite a different story (Makhjani et al. 1995). In just a few years, beginning in 1945, Washington and Moscow expanded their military-industrial complexes to never-before-seen levels and stocked massive nuclear arsenals (Nuti 2012). But it was those very nuclear arsenals, and awareness of the attendant risks, that assisted at the birth of the first environmentalist movements, both in the United States and in countries like West Germany and Great Britain, where protests against installation of US military bases and weapons installations grew in strength from the 1960s onward. The technocratic view of the environment that had prevailed to that point was challenged: nuclear arms testing, use of herbicides, pesticides, and defoliants, the biological and chemical warfare waged in Asian and African countries, and satellite technology— which for the first time showed us comprehensive images of the earth and its ecological disasters, invisible from the ground—all contributed in different manners to the rise of modern-day environmentalism, which was supported by ordinary citizens but also by scientists and politicians.

468

Environment, Pollution and Eco-Nationalism in the USSR

Behind the Iron Curtain, instead, the opposite was happening: the environment emerged as a political issue and was transformed into a tool for openly criticizing the Communist governments and the single-party system. Environmental themes were not new in the context of dissent and struggle against the regime, which had always, at least in part, tolerated such expressions in light of their apparently weak political valence. But everything changed in 1986: with Gorbachev’s reforms, the emphasis inevitably shifted, so much so that Moscow’s initial attempt to cover up the Chernobyl incident was so much in contrast with the spirit of glasnost that, by reaction, it opened the way for radical environmentalist criticism that the regime could no longer pretend to ignore. At the Eighth Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers, held in June of 1986, the intellectuals condemned the environmental cost of the Soviet model with unprecedented candor. The next year, the Party Secretary spoke openly to the issue at a public debate with physicist Andrei Sakharov, just released from exile. All things considered, aside from some exceptional events, the ecological protests during the perestroika period were the first large-scale demonstrations of citizens’ dissatisfaction with the regime (Weiner 1999, 441). Obviously, following the Chernobyl incident, eco-nationalism was infused with the strong tones of anti-nuclear protest and between 1987 and 1991, grass-roots movements spread throughout the four republics that had been the cradle of the Soviet nuclear program. Armenia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, and Russia spoke up, although with different cadences and in different manners (Dawson 1996). The Soviet period as a whole had been characterized by decades of radical projects for transforming nature, which left a legacy of environmental degradation of frightening proportions: polluted air, toxic spills of considerable proportions that are still leaching pollutants into the water tables, immense and silent factories dominating landscapes that fully qualify as industrial deserts (Josephson 2007, 294–321). With their theories, the ideologues of the regime, in the firm belief that nature should and could be totally subjugated to man, inspired and perpetuated the socalled hero projects extolling Soviet power: dams, hydroelectric power stations, chemical plants, and—after 1945—nuclear plants. They unleashed a true war against nature, which in the USSR was soon elevated to the status of state doctrine. The objective of this “gigantomania” was twofold: to modernize and consequently to strengthen the Soviet Union, perceived as being circled by a hostile capitalist world, by upping the pace of development to rhythms such as to demonstrate to the whole world the superiority of the Soviet system over the capitalist approach (Josephson

Elena Dundovich

469

2010, 21). This was true both during the Stalinist era and in the decades that followed (Graham 1993). After 1929 and the first five-year plan, huge industrial complexes were built in the Ural region in western Siberia, with its great reserves of such raw materials as potassium, nickel, cobalt, chrome, and the aluminum ore bauxite. In Magnitogorsk, defined as the “steel city,” a gigantic iron and steel plant was constructed; in Chelyabinsk, a huge tractor plant; in Yekaterinburg, the Ural’s’kiy Zavod Tyazhelogo Mashinostroyeniya (also known as Uralmash), which manufactured heavy machinery for the mining and metallurgical industries of the Urals and Siberia. In southwestern Siberia, new factories were built in the Kuznetsk Basin or “Kuzbass” south of Tomsk, one of the world’s most extensive coal-mining regions. In the extreme Siberian east, along the Amur River, the Amurstal Works industrial complex (and the little-visited nearby city of Komsomolsk-onAmur) in the Russian Far East; for many decades it was the only steel plant east of Lake Baikal. Even after Stalin’s death, great industrial centers were built in Pechenga, Apatity, Vorkuta, Olenegorsk, Kovdor, Lovozero, Norilsk, all in the Murmansk Oblast, for exploiting the crude oil and gas of the Yamal peninsula, where production increased significantly during the last years of the USSR. The pollution levels in these areas, now an immense industrial dump site, are still extremely high (Kotkin 1991; Komarov 1994). Famous factories in European Russia were the Gorky automotive works and, to the southwest, the world’s largest tractor plant in Stalingrad (Volgograd), on the banks of the Volga. Beginning in the 1930s, the country saw a veritable orgy of construction of hydroelectric plants and dams and river reversal projects, which began to slow down only in the fifties. Think, for example, of the Moscow-Volga and the Volga-Don canals, construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station and giant dam that created the reservoir of the same name, and the “reconstruction” of the River Dnieper on which a colossal dam near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia exploited the force of the waters to drive Europe’s largest electric power generation plant (Weiner 1999, 355). On river after river, in the European Soviet republics in the 1920s, in the Urals, during World War II, and on the major Siberian rivers (Ob, Irtysh, Yenisei, Angara, Amur), from the fifties to the eighties, immense dams were built to harness waters for just as immense hydroelectric plants, which achieved capacities of millions of kilowatts. The thrust eastward was strongly influenced by strategic considerations as well: the Siberian rivers were far from the European borders and at the same time in areas rich in tungsten, manganese and bauxite, fundamental for aluminum

470

Environment, Pollution and Eco-Nationalism in the USSR

production, while the 1950s expansion of the nuclear fusion and plutonium production plants from Chelyabinsk to Krasnoyarsk required the availability of enormous quantities of water and electrical power. Damming the rivers harmed fish; the river waters were contaminated by indiscriminatelydumped waste, with serious consequences for sources of potable water. The degradation of the forested areas was no less serious. As in the agricultural sector, where use of chemical products in quantities from three to five times the admissible European and US limits was permitted, so were enormous quantities of pesticides and herbicides used in the forests, without regulation and with grave impacts on flora and fauna (Robinson 1988, 19). Finally, and on particular under Brezhnev, the five-year plans promoted increased investments in northwestern Siberia, above all in view of the conspicuous gas and oil reserves that had been discovered there and of the increased demand from the European countries that began when East-West tension eased. Brezhnev thus approved two large-scale projects for transforming nature (Feshbach and Friendly 1992). The first was a reprise of work for construction of the railway line known as the BAM (BaikalAmur Mainline) (Ward 2009), intended to facilitate access to Yakutia (Sakha) and the republic’s gold, tin, copper, lead, and silver—and timber—resources. The second project targeted diverting more than 10 percent of the flow volume of several rivers: both rivers in the north of European Russia toward the south, and Siberian rivers toward the central Asian republics and their orchards, vegetable fields and cotton fields. The first plan called for diverting the Sukhona, the Northern Dvina, and the Pechora, as well as the waters of the Kubena and Onega rivers, into the Volga basin, in order to compensate the scarcity of water in the southern areas of European Russia and, additionally, to combat the drop in the level of the Caspian Sea. More ambitious yet was the project for diverting the waters of the Irtysh and, in part, of the Ob into the gigantic “Sibaral” (Siberia-Aral) canal, which would have sent the water southward for more than 2500 kilometers to the central Asian republics and would have also helped the Aral Sea, desiccated by the rerouting operated in turn on its two sources of surface water inflow, the Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya. The Aral Sea lost more than half its water volume between the 1950s and 1980; its salinity rose to unprecedented levels. Additionally, the sands uncovered by the drop in the water level were found to be impregnated with pesticides and herbicides from unregulated dumping during previous decades; exposed, these lethally toxic substances were transported by the winds, with serious repercussions on the health of the populations living

Elena Dundovich

471

around the lake and the cultivated fields and pastureland, where widespread desertification ensued. Between the end of World War II and the 1950s, eastern and western Siberia were at the center of interest in Moscow—in part for reasons of atomic research and, after 1949, development of a complex and diversified nuclear arsenal. Initially, the most important and best-known center for plutonium processing was Mayak, in the Chelyabinsk Oblast (Josephson 1999). The decision to site the plants in the central Ural region, close by the metalworking and chemical factories of Perm, Sverdlovsk, and Chelyabinsk itself, was partly based on strategic criteria, given the distance of the area from the country’s borders, as well as economic considerations, in light of its proximity to important, pre-existing industrial centers and the availability of labor—both conscript and voluntary. The Soviet nuclear research and development program (Michailov and Petrosyant 1995) got its start on February 11, 1943 with the creation, in Moscow, of Laboratory No. 2, now known as the Kurchatov Institute, headed by the nuclear physicist of the same name. The program called for building, or expanding, facilities devoted solely to arms research and manufacture, known as “closed administrative-territorial formations” (zakrytye administrativno-territorial’nye obrazovaniya—acronym ZATO), the “secret cities” that became the heart and soul of Soviet military power. It is estimated that there were about 47 ZATOs, ten of which were equipped with nuclear plants and reactors (Bukharin et al. 1999). The Chernobyl incident was not the first in the history of Soviet nuclear research and its military and civil applications. At least three incidents occurred at the Chelyabinsk-65 (formerly Chelyabinsk-40) ZATO, within in whose territory was located the well-known Mayak complex (Whiteley 1999, 59–96). There were significant releases of radioactivity in all three cases. An example is the 1967 incident in the Lake Karachay area of the complex. Since 1951, probable because the nuclear waste tanks at Mayak had reached capacity, the authorities began pumping quantities of cesium and strontium out of the tanks into the river system flowed into the two lakes near the plant. Lake Karachay received high-level waste and Lake Staroe Boloto, medium level waste. The drought of 1967 caused Lake Karachay to dry up; the exposed radioactive waste was carried by the winds for thousands of kilometers and affected tens of thousands of people. The lake, today a swamp, had in effect been used as a nuclear waste dump for fifteen years. It is currently considered the most radioactive site on earth. Even today, a person standing at lakeside for one hour absorbs a lethal dose of radiation. And yet, the Mayak authorities still tend to minimize the link between illness and the

472

Environment, Pollution and Eco-Nationalism in the USSR

three nuclear incidents, all of which were kept totally secret for many years (Egorov et al. 2000, 150–53; Feshbach 1995, 48–49). While the rural communities suffered on account of radiation, the populations of many cities in the Urals faced the consequences of the pollution caused by the chemical and metallurgical industries. In 1994, the Chelyabinsk Provincial Institute for Public Health and Environment published a report on non-infectious diseases in Karabash, Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, Zlatoust, Kopeisk, and Miass, citing considerable increases of various diseases in the Chelyabinsk region; the results for Karabash and Magnitogorsk were so dramatic that the local authorities classified these cities as ecological disaster areas: the incidence of cancer in the metallurgical district of Chelyabinsk alone were 4–5 times higher than the Russian average. An environmental disaster of a whole other kind, but which nevertheless caused irreversible damage to nature was pollution of Lake Baikal (Feshbach 1992, 113). While for decades the gag imposed by the regime had silenced any public debate over environmental issues, the situation changed after March, 1986, with Gorbachev’s calls for reform voiced in the glasnost and perestroika programs. People began to believe in change and it began to become clear that the people no longer countenanced pharaonic projects in their territories at the cost of (often irreversible) harm to the environment. As far back as 1986, there were protests against continuation of the project for diverting the waters of the Ob and the Irtysh that was strongly promoted by the groups in power in Kazakhstan and in Uzbekistan, since the excessive irrigation of vast agricultural areas with the waters of the two rivers supplying the Aral Sea had caused its rapid desiccation and a true ecological disaster. The opposition held that the new water basins and canals would have destroyed historic agricultural regions, sites of cultural interest, historic monuments, Russian Orthodox churches, and the natural Siberian habitats. Tempers ran high in 1987–88 over the resurrection of the proposal to build of a new hydroelectric dam in the Katun River valley in the Altai Republic. The dam would have served to generate electricity without causing further air pollution in western Siberia and would have reduced dependence on polluting, fossil fuel-burning and air pollution plants. The project was twice submitted for the opinion of the ecologists of the Soviet agencies, since the citizenry, as well as the Society for the Protection of Nature, protested loudly, especially against the loss of historic monuments in the valley through which the caravans once traveled from Asia to Europe and the massive amounts of mercury that would have poisoned the area. In November of that same year, the citizens of Angarsk marched to the mouth of the Angara River and the citizens of Irkutsk

Elena Dundovich

473

demonstrated in the streets of the city to protect Lake Baikal and ban all industry from the lakeshores. The two paper-making and cellulose pulp processing factories on the east bank of Lake Baikal in Baikalsk, in the Buryat ASSR (now the Republic of Buryatia), had always discharged liquid waste into the once immaculate waters of the lake, causing irreversible damage to the aquatic microorganisms. Despite the fact that in 1986 and again in 1987 the protests were joined by students, the powerful central ministry in charge of cellulose continued to insist on expanding the plants. The battle, which eventually took on quasi-religious tones—with mention of “Saint Baikal”—was extremely lengthy but concluded with a decree by the USSR Council of Ministers (April 13, 1987) ordering conversion of the plants by 1995 into furniture manufacturing plants that did not produce effluent. Again in 1987 there was a vociferous and prolonged protest, which began on June first with demonstration by 10,000 people, against the emissions produced by a biochemical plant in Kirishi, a small city of 52,000 inhabitants located on the Volkhov River between Novgorod and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg). Since 1975, after a new biochemical plant had been opened, numerous cases of disease had been noted and similar phenomena had cropped up in other cities as well, such as Volgograd, Novopolotsk and Kremenchuk, where other plants of the same type were sited. Nothing happened for years, until the poisoning struck again and caused the deaths of eleven children under five years of age. Journalist T. A. Shutova wrote that this was one of the first spontaneous mass demonstrations in the country in decades (Weiner 1999, 435). The pressure brought to bear by the organized citizens’ groups, the media, and academics contributed to creating a growing interest in ecological issues. An example was not only the 1986 decision, after the Chernobyl incident, to suspend work on the project to divert the waters of the Siberian rivers to the south to irrigate the drought-stricken cotton fields and rice paddies of the central Asian republics. In 1987, the Council of Ministers moved to suspend lumbering on the shores of Lake Baikal and ordered that the two paper mills and cellulose pulp processing plants that had so polluted the lake be gradually shut down. A few months later, in early 1988, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers created Goskompriroda (Pryde 1991, 2; Turnbull 1991, 2–9), the new State Committee for the Protection of the Environment (Robinson 1988, 367), and analogous commissions were instituted in the republics and the regions of the USSR (Weiner 1999, 372). Over the years, the protests that had initially been inspired by strong scientific motivations and ecological concerns took on strongly nationalistic

474

Environment, Pollution and Eco-Nationalism in the USSR

or, in some cases, even messianic tints. For example, the ultra-nationalist Russian organization Pamyat, like the Otechestvo group, always opposed any project that threatened sites of cultural and historic interest of Holy Mother Russia, independently of any scientific or economic considerations. Many of the battles fought at the regional level were marked by strong anti-Russian rhetoric: the Latvians opposed the new heavy industry that the ministers in Moscow would have imported to their territory; the Georgians opposed the project for a new highway tunnel in the Caucasus mountains because it would have damaged the forests and cultural sites. In the Ukraine, in 1987, writers protested against a nuclear plant slated to be constructed in the Kremenchuk basin, near Chyhyryn, the historic capital of the Cossack Hetmanate. After Chernobyl, eco-nationalism gathered strong impetus in the field of nuclear industry as well. Faced with the aim of the twentieth five-year plan, launched in 1986, to double nuclear production, the Soviet population of the four republics that had been the cradle of the USSR nuclear program—Armenia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia—began demanding that Moscow not only cancel plans for construction of new reactors but close down the plants already in operation. When the law on censorship was reviewed in January of 1988, the groups that had formed in the meantime benefited from new opportunities for public debate. Some results were achieved between 1988 and 1990: in Lithuania, plans to expand the Ignalina plant were abandoned; in Armenia, the Metsamor nuclear power plant was closed; and construction of more than fifty new reactors was suspended. Environmental protection became a more than legitimate pretext for affirming national interests and quite often revealed the intolerance of nations that saw themselves as “colonies” oppressed by “imperialist” Moscow.

Bibliography Bukharin, Oleg, Thomas Cochran, and Roberto Norris. 1999. Nuclear Weapons Databook. New Perspectives on Russia’s Ten Secret Cities. NRDC Nuclear Program, Washington: Natural Resources Defense Council. www.http//docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/nuc_100119901a_208b.pdf. Dawson, Jane I. 1996. Econationalism. Duhram: Duke University Press. Egorov, Nikolai, Vladimir Novikov, Frank Parker, and Viktor Popov, eds. 2000. The Radiation Legacy of the Soviet Nuclear Complex. London: Earthscan. Feshbach, Murray, and Alfred Friendly. 1992. Ecocide in the Ussr. New York: Basic Books.

Elena Dundovich

475

Graham, Loren R. 1993. Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: a Short History. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press. Josephson, Paul R. 2007. “Industrial Deserts: Industry, Science and the Destruction of Nature in the Soviet Union.” Slavonic and East European Review 85, 2: 294–321. —. 2010. “War on Nature as Part of the Cold War. The Strategic and Ideological Roots of Environmental Degradation in the Soviet Union.” In Environmental Histories of the Cold War, edited by John R. McNeill, and Corinna R. Unger, 21–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Komarov, Boris. 1994. The Geography of Survival. Ecology in the Post Soviet Era. New York: Sharpe. Kotkin, Stephen. 1991. Steeltown USSR. Berkeley: University of California Press. Makhjani, Arjun, Howard Hu, and Katherine Yih, eds. 1995. Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michailov, V.N., and A.M. Petrosyant, eds. 1995. Creation of the First Soviet Nuclear Bomb. Moscow: EnergoIzdat. McNeill, John. R, and Corinna R. Unger, eds. 2010. Environmental Histories of the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nuti, Leopoldo, ed. 2012. A qualcuno piace atomica. Limes 4. Rome: Gruppo editoriale L’Espresso. Pryde, Philipe R. 1991. Environmental Management in the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, Nicolas. 1988. “Perestroika and Priroda: Environmental Protection in the USSR.” Pace Environmental Law Review 5, 2: 351– 423. Ward, Christopher. 2009. Brezhnev Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism. Pitthsburg: Pitthsburg University Press. Weiner, Douglas R. 1999. A Little Corner of Freedom. Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev. Berkeley: University of California Press. Whiteley, John. 1999. “The Compelling Realities of Mayak.” In Critical Masses: Citizens, Nuclear Weapons Production and Environmental Destruction in the Unites States and Russia, edited by J. Dalton Russell, Paula Garb, Nicholas Lovrich, John Pierce, and John Whiteley, 29–58. Cambridge: MIT Press.

CHAPTER NINETEEN CLASHING EMPIRES IN THE COLD WAR ERA OUTER SPACE: A NEW DIMENSION FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF BALANCE OF POWER DURING THE COLD WAR VALENTINA MARIANI The years between 1945 and 1989 cannot be compared to any other period of the previous five centuries. The most complex and vigorous international order that had ever existed was set up in this period. Twenty-five years after the Second World War are generally considered as a real “golden age” of capitalism (Marglin and Schor 1991): the annual growth of world industrial production reached the incredible average of 5.6 percent, while in Western Europe it was even higher. This period was characterized by a relevant increase of life expectancy and well-being almost everywhere.1 It might seem incomprehensible that a period so full of conflicts could, however, be defined as “ordered.” The reason could be the first truly distinctive element of this “new world order,” that is the large contradiction on which the international system grew, resulting from the contrast between the Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is common knowledge that since 1947, with the breakup of the Grand Alliance against Fascism, an ideological, political and especially military opposition began between the United States and the Soviet Union. In March 1947, US President Harry S. Truman2 proclaimed the doctrine of 1

Data registered from 1948 to 1971. The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech delivered by President Truman before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947. With this doctrine, President Harry

2

478

Outer Space

containment, saying that the United States had a duty to contain the expansionary trend of the Soviet Union and the Communist movement, providing support to the countries and forces that opposed it. In July 1947, the Soviet decision not to join the European Recovery Program, announced a month earlier by the US Secretary of State George Marshall, marked the break between the two superpowers, while in September, with the establishment of the Cominform,3 the Cold War and the bipolar confrontation became the center of the new doctrine of Soviet foreign policy (Mark 1984, 90). At the end of the Second World War, therefore, the US and the USSR declared a new one on each other, yet this one was of such a different type that it required a new way to define it: the American journalist Walter Lippmann named it the “Cold War.”4 The contrast between the two countries gave a bipolar aspect also to international relations and to the process of postwar reconstruction, since it forced European countries to take sides, whether they liked it or not, with the two superpowers on the basis of a dividing line corresponding to the one between the Anglo-American and Soviet occupational zones. When in 1946, in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill said that an “iron curtain” had been drawn on Europe, he was simply observing this fact. Immediately after the war, a debate on the causes and nature of the Cold War developed and it was inevitably affected by the particular harshness of the ideological conflict between East and West. Through the analysis of the main interpretations of this debate (Gualtieri 2008, 115–

S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented US foreign policy, from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts. 3 Founded in September 1947 by leading Communists from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Italy and France, who met at Sklarska-Poreba in Poland, the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) represented the revival of institutional links among Communist parties that had been in abeyance since the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. The main purpose of the organization was to commit member parties to a common strategy under the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party in the struggle against what was termed American-led imperialism. It marked a turning point in the relationship of the Soviet Union with both its former Western allies and the emerging Communist-dominated governments in Eastern Europe (www.soviethistory.org). 4 Expression coined by Walter Lippmann, columnist of the New York Herald Tribune, in 1947.

Valentina Mariani

479

20),5 it is possible to reassess the “imperialist” line of interpretation by reconsidering the geopolitical, cultural and domestic political reasons that led both countries to engage in this confrontation (Schlesinger 1967). Such analysis reveals the concepts of security dilemma (Biagini and Bizzarri 2007, 13–30) and the complex debate about the balance of power (Andreatta et al. 2012, 55–63). An interpretation of the period considers the Cold War no longer under the guise of a total conflict between ideologies but rather as a balanced system of power based on two main actors. According to this interpretation, this particular system grew out of the power vacuum produced by the Second World War (Crockatt 1997, 126–30). This approach avoids the mistake of overemphasizing the weight of the ideological conflict, despite its undoubted importance, but it also demonstrates how, despite their conflicts, the two superpowers soon reached a sort of modus vivendi that assigned a special role to the Cold War, that of a paradoxical stable control system of international relations. The US and the USSR were simultaneously mortal enemies in the fight for achieving new support, and loyal allies in sharing the government of the international global system. This line of interpretation seems particularly suitable for the purpose of this article, when we consider the element of outer space. Space became a new field for a “never fought” war for a balanced demonstration of power representing the contrast between the US and the USSR; a contrast that has also been called an imaginary war (Kaldor 1990) and that assumed the aspect of a great spectacle, with the sky as an enormous screen and with space as a metaphorical chessboard, on which the two great players could study their moves. Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for the Cold War competition. The history of space exploration is still treated as a “parallel history.” On the contrary, the space race can be considered the most spectacular aspect of the Cold War; it provided another means through which the superpowers could compete without direct military conflict. In this sense space constituted another form of “periphery,” with scientists and technocrats assuming the positions of importance. What had united the United States and the Soviet Union during the Second World War in their will to defeat the Nazi authoritarianism was not replaced by a new common goal that could sustain such a fragile 5

The main lines of interpretation on the phenomena of the “Cold War”: immediately after the Second World War (Orthodox), at the end of the sixties (Revisionist), and in the first half of the seventies (Neo-orthodox), (Gualtieri 2008).

480

Outer Space

friendship. In addition, first the rapid development of missiles and then the aerospace programs explain what Winston Churchill called the balance of terror.6 The concept of deterrence became fundamental in the strategic lexicon. Nuclear weapons served to discourage their use by the opponent. If they were used by one of the parties, they would have failed their purpose—that of maintaining the situation balanced. From this situation came the essence of a strategic stability that such weapons were able to provide. This became more important than their destructive power, technical reliability and availability. Therefore, it is possible to agree with those who argue that the fear of destruction caused by a possible nuclear war and the need to build weapons that could retain the balance between the two superpowers accelerated and facilitated the space race (Sebesta 2003). Speaking of space, necessarily involves science and technology. The ideological contrast between the two superpowers was also reflected in the scientific field, where incompatibility of purposes and ideals soon emerged. “Cooperation among nations and peoples, where scientists would become diplomats, crossing the old borders with the gifts of technology and a rich harvest of material and educational solutions,” wishing for the end of the war, was evidently far from reality (Rabinowitch 1946).7 There is no doubt that, in general, states begin an expensive technological competition with other countries, mainly because of their perception of the importance of that technology to national security (Moltz 2012). Other considerations are related to military interests that this technology could have, as well as its cost; but there is no doubt that the main cause of a race like the one started for the conquest of space is the strategic threat. During the Cold War and the paradoxical balanced period, based on mutually assured destruction, the need to detect a possible launch of 6

In Churchill’s view, it was the central characteristic of the Cold War, which became more widely known as Mutually Assured Destruction. This concept reflected the fact that the two superpowers could not engage each other militarily without the inevitable escalation to a nuclear exchange which would have led to the annihilation of both sides. As a consequence the Cold War had to be played out in other ways. An obvious example of this is the sponsorship of different sides in regional conflicts, notably in the Third World War, i.e. in the periphery, a position that put Third World countries in an important strategic position. 7 Science was supposed to be a “unifying force of humanity” and scientists would engage in political life in favor of the resumption of international scientific life. It is clear that in this view of the role of science it could be found an accusation to the scientists involved in the construction of the atomic bomb (Rabinowitch 1946).

Valentina Mariani

481

intercontinental ballistic missiles was at the root of the issue regarding the superpowers’ interest for space applications. In the early 1950s, early warning systems based on radar technology were already operative, but their scope was limited by the curvature of the earth. One year before the Sputnik launch, in the United States there were already studies about sensors that could identify heat emissions that characterized the early stages of the launch of Soviet missiles; those sensors were supposed to be placed on spy-planes with the aim to monitor the Soviet frontier. But the prohibitive cost of the materials caused a delay in the concretization of the American project. It is well-known that space technology of the period was essentially a derivation of missile technology; the Soviets had a long missiles tradition8 thanks to their German engineers,9 so that they were soon able to launch the Sputnik I satellite into orbit on October 4, 1957 (Cavina 2007). From that moment Russia declared the space race open. Sputnik’s symbolic effect was enormous all over the world. Moscow ranked first in the space race and the launch of the first US satellite, Explorer I, just four months after Sputnik, was in vain, since the Soviet success was not an isolated case. On the contrary, it was only the first in a 8

From the end of WWII, the Soviets made rockets their most important military asset. By the mid-1950s, they were ready to test their first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). One of those missiles, the R-7 rocket, carried Sputnik I into orbit. 9 During 1945 and most part of 1946, 284 Soviet specialists worked in Germany, searching and restoring hardware and documentation related to the A-4 and other German missiles. In 1946, with the help of numerous German engineers and workers, the Soviets reestablished the production line of the A-4 rocket, at the former repair plant, which turned out around dozen missiles. Actual launches of the A-4 missiles in Germany were also under consideration, however citing the security concerns, the Soviet government ordered all further work on missile development to be transferred to the USSR. In October 1946, most experienced German specialists who worked for the Soviet missile program were ordered on the trains and sent to various locations in the USSR to assist in the organization of missile production and design. By the beginning of the 1947, Soviets completed the transfer of all works on rocket technology from Germany into secret locations in the USSR (www.russianspaceweb.com). Sergei Korolev was the lead Soviet rocket-engineer and spacecraft designer during the space race. He is considered by many as the father of practical astronautics. Arrested for alleged mismanagement of funds (he spent the money on unsuccessful experiments with rocket devices), he was imprisoned in 1938 for almost six years, including some months in a Kolyma labor camp. Following the end of World War II he was released from prison and sent to Germany to study the Nazi’s V-2 rocket and other technologies (www.nmspacemuseum.org).

482

Outer Space

series that sanctioned the USSR space supremacy for at least a decade. Only one month after the Sputnik I launch, the Soviets launched Sputnik II into orbit, with the dog Laika on board, to study the impact of the launch on a living being. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut, was the first man to travel into space and this date is still a national holiday in Russia. In 1963 the Soviet Union sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereskova and in 1964 the first crew composed of three cosmonauts (Caprara 2011). Soon after the Sputnik launch, American public opinion was shaken by the fear that a Soviet satellite could drop a nuclear bomb on a US city. Paradoxically, the blow was even more serious considering that, until the thirties, many American companies invested in the Soviet Union, judging it as a backward country and certainly not a threat to the United States. The defense industry quickly asked the federal government for a new investment in the missiles and nuclear industry. In July 1958, under the presidency of Eisenhower, the National Air and Space Administration NASA was established. President Eisenhower was very suspicious of what he called “the military-industrial complex”10 and, together with the first Scientific Director of the White House, James Killian, immediately calmed public fears by explaining that a Sputnik bombardment of New York was technically impossible. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that space was a next exceptional battlefield between the two superpowers (Sebesta 2003). Lyndon Johnson, who was the leader of the Democratic majority in the Congress at the time, said: “Being first in space means to be first in everything”; as a consequence, in 1958, Johnson himself hurried the law that approved the creation of NASA and President Eisenhower resolutely supported Johnson and his choice to create this civil agency. Finally, the choice of Houston as the main base for NASA was dictated by the need of the support of Texan politicians in order to fund this new federal agency. The success of the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961 greatly embarrassed the new occupant of the White House, John F. Kennedy. Until then, the newly elected president of the United States had not seriously taken into consideration the space race since he was interested neither in exploring space, nor in developing NASA. Yet, after the Sputnik launch, President Kennedy began to wonder about how to respond to the Russian triumph, turning space into an exclusive field of global competition with the Soviets. Washington had therefore accepted the Soviet challenge, and what just a few years before was merely a hobby for a limited group of 10

Dwight Eisenhower. 2013. www.dwightdeisenhower.com. Accessed May 03.

Valentina Mariani

483

enthusiasts, soon became the second largest research and development program of military technology after the nuclear. Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, but he only flew on a short suborbital flight instead of orbiting the earth, as Gagarin had done. In addition, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in mid-April put enormous pressure on Kennedy. He wanted to announce a program that the US had a strong chance at achieving before the Soviet Union. However, Shepard’s flight demonstrated NASA’s capabilities and awakened Kennedy’s attention to the potential of this new frontier. Outer space became the instrument to increase US credibility and to redeem its image. During one of the first meetings of NASA at the White House, President Kennedy harshly expressed his intentions: “I’m not that interested in space. I think it’s good [to explore space], I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about fantastic expenditures. We’ve wrecked our budget, and all the other domestic programs. And the only justification for it, … is because we hope to beat the Russians, to demonstrate that starting behind, and we did, by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.”11 This confirms that Kennedy was only interested in competing with the Soviets, not exploring the final frontier. “This is, whether we like it or not, a race. Everything we do [in space] ought to be tied into getting to the moon ahead of the Russians.” Thus the Cold War is the primary contextual lens through which many historians now view Kennedy’s speech.12 Kennedy asked for something that Americans, and the world in general, could understand and remember as a definitive proof that the United States had won the space race. On May 25, 1961, he announced before a special joint session of the Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the moon before the end of the decade, and the birth of the Apollo program beforehand the Soviets. The decision involved enormous human effort and costs to make Project Apollo a reality by 1969. Only the construction of the Panama Canal in modern peacetime and the Manhattan Project during the war were comparable in scope. NASA’s overall human spaceflight efforts were guided by Kennedy’s speech. Project Apollo was designed to execute Kennedy’s goal, and his goal was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong raised the USA flag on the moon’s surface and on the winning post of the space race. 11

Space KSC. 2013. http://spaceksc.blogspot.it. Accessed May 03. NASA’s History Office. 2013. http://history.nasa.gov/moondec.html. Accessed June 4.

12

484

Outer Space

Some authors consider the landing on the moon as the end of the space race; others believe that the real end of the competition in space was reached in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission during which the American and Soviet crew visited their respective shuttles and started some joint experiments, symbolically marking the beginning of space cooperation. It is certainly possible to find some factors that helped to slow down the space race. First, through the détente opened by Nixon, the two superpowers began to limit the military aspects of their global competition, trying to reduce the risk of a conventional nuclear war. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Helsinki Accords of 1975 marked the major turning points in this direction. Before it, the strictly military space dimension had already been limited from the Outer Space Treaty13 signed in 1967 by the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. Secondly, the Americans thought they had won the competition by landing on the moon, while the Soviets thought they had won thanks to the first orbital flight of Gagarin. Without further goals of such a symbolic impact, such as, for example, the landing of a man on Mars or Venus, there were no more sensational goals to achieve to break the substantial balance reached by the two superpowers in space. Finally, the space race did not stop completely: it just followed different directions. The United States started to concentrate on the development of a 13 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other Celestial Bodies. The Treaty was opened for signature by the three depository Governments (the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) in January 1967, and it entered into force in October 1967. The Outer Space Treaty provides the basic framework on international space law, including the following principles: the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind; outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all states; outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means; states shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner; the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes; astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind; states shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities; states shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; states shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies. United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space, United Nations, 2008.

Valentina Mariani

485

spacecraft able to land on the earth like an airplane, allowing them to reuse it for multiple launches cutting the cost of the space programs.14 On the other hand, the USSR devoted itself to the project of putting a permanent space station into orbit.15 The space race had a sort of revival in the eighties, when President Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative,16 but the Soviet system was in decline that it could not hold a new competition with the United States. In conclusion, beyond when, and if, the race to space can be considered closed, the dynamics that took shape and regulated the relations between the two superpowers in space are fundamental for the purposes of this article. What appears then, together with the great pressure to have the United States “catch up to and overtake” the Soviet Union in the space race, is a period certainly dangerous and tense but, at the same time, remarkably stable. Belligerents in space, the US and the USSR could take only words on earth. This balanced distribution of power, according to the theory of balance of power, corresponding in the space-field to a balanced display of power, helped to reduce the uncertainty of the international system and to limit, as much as possible, motivations for an armed confrontation that could have led to a third world war.

Bibliography Aga-Rossi, Elena, ed. 1984. Gli Stati Uniti e le origini della Guerra Fredda. Bologna: Il Mulino. Andreatta, Filippo, Marco Clementi, Alessandro Colombo, Mathias Koenig-Archibugi and Vittorio Emanuele Parsi. 2012. Relazioni Internazionali. Bologna: Il Mulino. Biagini, Antonello, and Mariano Bizzarri, eds. 2011. Spazio. Scenari di competizione. Florence: Passigli Editori. 14

The first Space Shuttle was launched in 1981, not coincidentally the same day that twenty years before Gagarin had orbited the Earth. 15 In 1986, Soviet station Mir was sent into orbit around the Earth, although it was incomplete. 16 The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars, was a program first initiated on March 23, 1983 under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union (The Cold War Museum).

486

Outer Space

Bonanate, Luigi. 2010. Storia Internazionale. Milan: Mondadori. Cassese, Antonio. 2006. Diritto Internazionale. Bologna: Il Mulino. Crockatt, Richard. 1997. Cinquant’anni di Guerra Fredda. Rome: Salerno editrice. Cavina, Stefano. 2007. Sputnik. Rep. of San Marino: Aiep. Caprara, Giovanni. 2011. Era spaziale. Milan: Mondadori. Gualtieri, Roberto. 2008. Introduzione alla Storia Contemporanea. L’Europa nel mondo del XX secolo. Rome: Carocci. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1995. Il secolo breve 1914-1991: l’era dei grandi cataclismi. Milan: Rizzoli. Kaldor, Mary. 1990. The Imaginary War. Understanding the East-West Conflict. Cambridge: Blackwell. Marglin, Stephen, and Juliet Schor. 1991. The Golden Age of Capitalism. Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience. Oxford: Clarendon press. Mark, Eric. 1984. “La politica americana nei confronti dell’Europa Orientale e le origini della Guerra Fredda (1941-1946).” In Gli Stati Uniti e le origini della Guerra Fredda, edited by Aga-Rossi, Elena, 131–60. Bologna: Il Mulino. McDougall, Walter. 1985. The Heavens and the Earth. A Political History of the Space Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University press. Moltz, James Clay. 2012. The Politics of Space Security. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pigliacelli, Filippo. 2006. Una nuova frontiera per l’Europa. Storia della Cooperazione spaziale Europea 1958-2005. Forlì: Clueb. Rabinowitch, Eugene. 1946. “International Cooperation of Scientist.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists vol. 2, 5–6:1. Reijnen, Maria. 1992. The United Nations Space Treaties Analyzed. Gifsur-Yvette: Éditions Frontieres. Schlesinger Jr., Artur. 1967. “Origins of the Cold War.” Foreign Affairs 46:22–52. Sebesta, Lorenza. 2003. Alleati Competitivi. Rome: La Terza. Sebesta, Lorenza, and Filippo Pigliacelli. 2009. Breve storia della militarizzazione dello spazio. Rome: Carocci. Servan-Schreiber, Jean Jacques. 1968. La sfida americana. Milan: Etas Kompass. United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). 2008. United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space. United Nations.

THE FEAR AND THE SOLUTION: YUGOSLAVIA BETWEEN THE SOVIET THREAT AND THE WESTERN MILITARY AID (1948–1958) IVAN LAKOVIû Although the Eastern Bloc, existing on the basis of ideological uniformity and, more importantly, on the clear supremacy of the Red Army, until 1955 was not organized as a formal alliance, it had all the attributes of a functional military ideological organization with strong subordination and hierarchy. During the first postwar years, Yugoslavia was considered as one of the most faithful and ideologically righteous members, the one of the opinion that the USSR had played the most important war role and that it had proved to be the natural and unquestionable leader of the incoming world revolution. The situation dramatically changed in 1948 when its expulsion from the family of socialist states gave the USA an unexpected possibility for political penetration in Eastern Europe, with all the military and diplomatic benefits (see Kennan 1954; Bekiü 1988; Heuser 1993; Lis 1997; Bogetiü 2000; Pavloviü 2011). The Yugoslav heresy, besides the strategic complication of a potential Soviet breakthrough towards northern Italy, could have become an example to other Soviet allies to leave its orbit. Interbloc confrontation had already reached the level when everything of this kind was changing the existing balance, being a factor if not of supremacy or inferiority, then at least of essential initiative or passiveness. The Yugoslav position did not only stop or slow down a hypothetical Soviet offensive against Lombardy and eastern and southern France, but it also provided a base for a counterstrike on the Soviet side and back in case of operations towards Western Europe. The US leadership, although unprepared for this course of events, relatively quickly created a platform for further policy towards Yugoslavia, defined on the exactly mentioned premises (Allen and Kauzlarich 2006, 13–20, 21–48, 79–100).

488

The Fear and the Solution

On the other side, Yugoslavia had to take care of the consequences of its expulsion from the socialist bloc, which produced its relatively defenseless position in case of Soviet and satellites’ attack. Its doctrinaire position did not allow a direct transfer to the opposite side, but it was necessary to create a certain system of military political relations with organizations of ideologically different countries. Those ties should have acted as prevention in the face of Eastern danger, but they had never been planned to reach such an extent to jeopardize the internal social and political constellation. Besides, dynamics of this rapprochement had to be adjusted not only to the existing Western readiness, but also to the readiness of domestic political and military public opinion to such a “U turn” and, what is even more important, to a possible Soviet reaction. One could have expected that the entrance into the system of military arrangements should have been among the first activities after the breakup, but it took place only when conditions allowed that their existence would strengthen the country’s position, without making it more complicated and dangerous (Lakoviü 2006, 19–25). The Yugoslav leadership had to carefully choose the moment for the beginning of these activities, taking into account everything that could decipher their further flow and nature. As the leader of the Western military alliance, the USA was also determining different levels of usefulness of a military cooperation with Yugoslavia, not imposing its content as a condition of political support. Although its full political and military incorporation into NATO would have provided a stabilization of the vulnerable southern flank, such constellation decreased the essential political and ideological momentum aimed towards the other Eastern European countries, an important possibility of their alienation from the USSR or, at least, weakening the ties inside its organization on the base of the positive Yugoslav experience (Biseniü 2001, Politika 28–30.03). According to some US calculations, every policy that could keep Yugoslavia in the current position of “the enemy’s enemy” was generally acceptable, since the benefits gained from such a situation could have been exploited in many fields of contemporary politics. Strengthening the ties with their formal allies in NATO seemed as a normal development of the relations that emerged from the postwar constellation, but bringing Yugoslavia into the Western orbit represented a first grab at the realm of the Eastern opponent. Geopolitically, Yugoslavia played a role that mainly suited the US interests, and its position was constantly and carefully analyzed during all the period of this program. The equation was clear—for the value of delivered military goods and, what is more important, the political weight of the US decision to step into

Ivan Lakoviü

489

such a program, the West was provided with the Yugoslav formal readiness to protect, while defending its own territory, the main directions for defense of European south and south-east.1 After signing the agreement on US military aid on November 14, 1951, the country found itself in a much safer position, which was not so much secured by the reception of the US military equipment, but because its arrival signaled the Western readiness to treat Yugoslavia as a protégée or an ally. The future creation of the Balkan Pact with Greece and Turkey (see Terziü 2005; Terziü 2008), which brought Yugoslavia at the doorstep of NATO, only strengthened this picture. Deep in its roots, every kind of military bonding between Yugoslavia and NATO required the Yugoslav readiness to be on the Western side in case of a global armed conflict, so it was exactly the internal ideological organization that was giving the special shape of the allied relations, enabling the political effect of “wedging” into the system of Eastern European countries. Together with later changes in the Soviet leadership after Stalin’s death, such politics enabled Yugoslavia, while consolidating its diplomatic position, obtaining financial sources for some economic projects and reorganizing and modernizing its armed forces, to go through this period with intact internal system, making a maximum in the area limited by its ideological conceptions and available possibilities. By its quality and quantity, the content of military aid clearly reflected the strategic intentions of the donor, based on the structure and compatibility with the ones used in native forces. Here we can locate three different levels: the intention to maintain a minimum of Yugoslav army’s fighting capabilities; the intention to create a system that would allow, if necessary, the integration of Yugoslavia into a mutual defensive concept and, finally, the intention to essentially include Yugoslavia in the strategic, operative and technical concept of NATO. The characteristic of the first dominant level was the deliverance of Second World War material surpluses, preserved at huge stockpiles in the USA and Western Europe. Considering their quantity and real quality, they were a significant component of every postwar program of military aid, being more useful to the donor, relieving it of the obligation to pay costs of preservation, maintenance or destruction of the mentioned material, which had already

1

LC (Library of Congress, Washington DC,), MD, Paul H. Nietze papers, box 99, f 9, Foreign Aid 1949, 1956–57, Military Assistance and the Security of the United States 1947–1956, 20 December 1956. LC, MD, Paul H Nietze papers, box 99, f 10, Foreign Aid 1956–57, Military Aid Programs, 20 December 1956.

490

The Fear and the Solution

been surpassed and replaced by newer models.2 The majority of the delivered materiel fell into this category. The superstructure of this system came with the first deliverance of such types of military equipment that were still used in operative units of the US army, but with their replacement being planned in the near future. Their appearance in the structure of military aid usually pointed out the tendency to raise the recipient to the level of basic technical compatibility with its own strategic-operative system in order to enable it to play a more important role in case of war operations. A good sign of such perception of the Yugoslav armed forces was the deliverance of jet planes F–84G Thunderjet, T/RT–33 Shooting Star and F–86E Sabre, tanks M–47 Paton and some types of infantry weapons and radar equipment.3 The highest scope of this military aid program would have been the distribution of war materials that represented the standard equipment of the donor’s own first-line troops or first-line troops of allies in NATO, more exactly, the deliverance of contemporary military items on which the current concept of conducting war operations was based on. The presence of such materials would be a sign of the clear intention or agreement on the integration of the recipient country into the strategic system and a proof of rising bilateral relations not only to the level of friendship, but to an agreed alliance. It is needless to say that in this program there were no signs that Yugoslavia was perceived in this way.4 In the background of delivering the abovementioned military goods, there was an interesting political “game” that both influenced and was influenced by the flow of this program. The Yugoslav political leadership was very cautious regarding any aspect of military cooperation with the West that could have endangered its current level of independence between the blocs. At the initial phases, while the conditions and rules for entering into the program of American military support were being determined, what was clearly pointed out was the Yugoslav obligation to accept an American control body that would administer the program and

2

DAMFAS (Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign affairs of Serbia, Belgrade), PA, 1956, f 83, 29, 423631, 1–9. MA, (Military Archive of the Armed Forces of Serbia, Belgrade), II Department, S-115, 269/12, f IV, 33, 6–14. 3 MA II Department, K-21, f III, R-3, Document no. 22. 4 Ibid.

Ivan Lakoviü

491

allow its superstructure through entering into more substantial talks on the coordination of defense plans with the Western allies.5 Although unwillingly, the abovementioned body was installed in Belgrade, but since it had created unexpectedly many problems during the negotiating period, it was agreed to remove from its mandate some important functions that were on the agenda in similar American bodies in allied armies and states in NATO. Although this category may seem as only a technical question, it appeared to be if not the cause, then an always present excuse for raising the tone in communication between the US and Yugoslav military officials during the program. Yugoslavs tended to treat the members of AMAS (American Military Assistance Staff) as predominantly intelligence service agents, so they were very restrictive in providing required data. On the other side, bureaucratic stubbornness that characterized many activities of the AMAS members was too often inappropriate when the situation needed flexibility and fast adaptation to changed political circumstances (Lakoviü 2006, 187–203). Regarding the second issue, Yugoslavia accepted the beginning of strategic military talks during the summer of 1952, after the visit of the American military delegation led by Generals C. Eddleman and G. Olmstead.6 That visit coincided with the deliverance of the first jet fighters to the Yugoslav Air Force, which represented a clear sign of the American willingness to support the Yugoslav position (Bogetiü 2000, 32–33). The only question was in which context to realize this support. Yugoslavia strictly refused to have it through the framework of NATO, not only because of the unsolved Trieste question with Italy as a member of that alliance, but more for its wish to stay as far as possible away from any existing military political organization. On the other side, neither the Western officials could easily agree on the pretext for further military political negotiations with Belgrade, since there was a certain diversity of views on that question within NATO and the American administration. Finally, it was decided that the future head of the Western delegation for talks with Yugoslavia “… must not wear the NATO hat …”, so the framework of a tripartite (US-British-French) approach was chosen, as the 5

MA, GŠ-1, k.14, f 7, 1/1, Dvanaest zajedniþkih konferencija USA-Jugoslavija u Pentagonu, 17 maj-13 jun 1951. godine (Twelve joint conferences USAYugoslavia in Pentagon, 17 May–13 June 1951). NARA (National Archives and Record Administration, Washington, DC,), RG 218, JCS, E 13, box 19, f CCS 092 Yugoslavia (7-6-48) sec 8, Report of the 1st, 2nd and the 3rd conference with K.Popovic, 21 May 1951. 6 NARA, RG 334, E 292, Box 22, AMAS activity report for July 1952, Inclosure 1, Report of visit of the Generals C.Eddleman and G.Olmstead.

492

The Fear and the Solution

representatives of these countries had been formally preparing the support for Yugoslavia from the initial phase.7 These talks took place at two tripartite-Yugoslav conferences, in Belgrade on November 15–19, 1952, and in Washington, DC on August 24–29, 1953. The Western delegation at the first conference was led by General T. Handy, the commander in chief of US forces in Germany and the deputy commander of US forces in Europe, while General P. Dapþeviü, the chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army, headed the delegation of the host country. These talks were doomed from the beginning. The mandate of Handy’s delegation was restricted to solely acquiring data without accepting any formal obligation for the Western side, which was totally unacceptable for the Yugoslavs. During five days of a very tense atmosphere, Yugoslav generals presented their view on the current military situation in the Balkans, their estimation of Soviet and satellites’ forces as well as the overall Yugoslav defensive plan with front lines, units, manpower, equipment, traffic and logistic infrastructure. After facing Handy teams’ unwillingness to provide a more substantial and precise Western view, they restrained from getting into more detailed talks.8 Faced with the failure of direct negotiations with the Western powers, Yugoslavia still succeeded in finding another way to formalize the ties with the West through the formation of the Balkan Pact with Greece and Turkey in March of 1953. The death of Joseph Stalin, which immediately followed (March 23), also meant that there would be no Eastern military campaign against Yugoslavia in the near future, so the Yugoslav position seemed much stronger than a half a year ago. Not wanting to alienate Yugoslavia, US officials created a new platform for the continuation of tripartite-Yugoslav talks, based on the main Yugoslav claims from the November conference. They were based on accepting the projection that the attack on Yugoslavia would be carried out as a part of the global warfare in Europe, involving the US military support, protection and coordinated action. Both sides knew that a global war was not approaching in the forthcoming days, but they wanted to keep such a pretext for continuing their cooperation. The Yugoslav delegation, led by General Lj. Vuþkoviü, presented in Washington detailed plans of the Yugoslav defense as well as the plan of the reorganization and reequipping the Yugoslav Army, Air and Naval forces. Although the conference was marked with agreement and left an impression that the arranged activities would 7

TNA (The National Archives, London), FO 371, 102165, Minutes to telegram Ministry of Defense to British Joint Services Mission Washington ELL 407, 1–2. TNA, FO 371, 102180, 1. 8 MA, II Department, S-8, f IV, 1387, 8.

Ivan Lakoviü

493

undoubtedly lead to a closer military bonding, the outbreak of the Trieste crisis in the fall of 1953 put an end to such tendencies.9 Faced with the pressure of the Western powers regarding Trieste, Yugoslavia had a hard time to maintain established military ties with the West. The official rhetoric was emotional and intense; troops were moved and additionally mobilized, while the deliveries of already agreed military aid were stopped. In that atmosphere there was no space for the realization of the theses of the Washington conference. Nikita Khrushchev started a new initiative to improve the relations with Tito and Yugoslavia, which resulted in his famous visit to Belgrade in May of 1955. With the détente in the relations with Moscow, as well as settling de facto the situation in Trieste by the London agreement, Tito found himself in the position where there was no need to further limit the Yugoslav freedom of action by written and unwritten rules of Western military aid. In this period, when Yugoslav officials dealt with both solving the Trieste question and the Soviet rapprochement initiative, the US administration relied too much on its program of military aid as a political tool. Failing to observe a change in the Yugoslav position, they pressed on bureaucratic issues such as formal insufficiencies of the reports submitted to AMAS by Yugoslav officers, the unwillingness to allow the increment of its personnel and Yugoslav tendencies to store and preserve delivered military items rather than to exploit them in daily use. The chief of AMAS at the time, General Peter Hains, asked for a halt in all military deliveries to Yugoslavia until the mentioned questions were not solved according to the American position.10 Since these activities coincided with secret preparations for Khrushchev’s visit to Belgrade, it appeared that the American initiative presented a reaction to the Yugoslav-Soviet détente. Although US Ambassador J. Riddleberger put a strong effort to deny any connection between these two events, it was obvious that the program of military aid failed to create an appropriate level of Yugoslav dependence on the West.11 The failure of the “ambassadors’ conference” of June 25–2712 and the limited success of the mission of American Envoy R. Murphy in September 9

MA, II Department, 2951, f III 14, appendixes A – K. NARA, RG 330, E 15A, box 62, AMAS activities report for April 1955, 2–3. 11 NARA, RG 330, E 15A, box 62, AMAS activities report for May 1955. 12 AY (Archive of Yugoslavia, Belgrade), KPR I-5-c, Stenografske beleške sa sastanka ambasadora SAD, Ujedinjenog kraljevstva i Francuske sa drugom S.Pricom, u Beogradu, u vremenu od 24 do 27 juna 1955 godine. (Minutes from the meeting of Ambassadors of USA, United Kingdom and France with cammarade S. Prica in Belgrade, from 24 to 27 of June 1955). 10

494

The Fear and the Solution

of 195513 showed that this program was about to meet its end without any new aspect for cooperation. Finally, Tito even decided to make another move when in conversation with Ambassador Riddleberger on December 6, 1957 he expressed the Yugoslav wish to step out from this program, emphasizing the country’s readiness to function without it.14 Formally the program ended on December 12, 1957. According to Yugoslav sources, its executed value reached 746 477 822 $ of 890 693 957 $ planned.15

Summary The program of Western military aid to Yugoslavia 1951–58 was one of the most controversial military political programs of its time. The leader of the anti-Communist global front, the United States, found a way to support a Communist state in order to consolidate its position against the USSR and its bloc. Yugoslavia did not become a part of NATO or the “Western world,” but its further policy provided great advantages for the West—the consolidation of the south flank of NATO by bonding Italy with Greece and Turkey, the denial of access to Soviet troops to the Adriatic Sea and the protection of the strategically important corridors towards Thessalonica through the Morava-Vardar valleys and northern Italy through the so-called Ljubljana Gap. Along with these more “real” categories, this cooperation provided an important political impact on the other Soviet satellite countries, luring them to turn away from the USSR following the Yugoslav example. On the other side, Yugoslavia had used the program to modernize its armed forces and to come into possession of military items that it could not afford otherwise, not allowing it to grow into a reason for further political dependence on the West.

13

AY, KPR I-3-a SAD, Poseta Robert Murphy-a. (A visit of Robert Murphy). NARA, RG 330, E 15A, box 62, AMAS activities report for August 1955, Minutes from the conference Murphy-Gosnjak, held on 28 September 1955. 14 NARA, RG 334, E 292, box 27, f 319.1 jan-mar, AMAS quarterly activity report for period ending 31 December 1957, 1. 15 MA, II Department, K 21, f 3, R No. 3, Vojna pomoü SAD (US military aid), 1.

Ivan Lakoviü

495

Bibliography Primary sources NARA (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, USA), RG 218, 330, 334. LC (Library of Congress, Washington DC,), MD (Manuscript division), Paul H. Nietze papers. TNA (The National Archives, London), FO 371. AY (Archive of Yugoslavia, Belgrade), KPR (Kabinet Pretsednika Republike). DAMFAS (Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign affairs of Serbia, Belgrade), PA (Politiþka Arhiva). MA, (Military Archive of the Armed Forces of Serbia, Belgrade), II department, GŠ-1.

Secondary sources Allen, John K, and Kauzlarich, Richard D, eds. 2006. From “National Communism” to National Collapse: US Intelligence Community Estimative Products on Yugoslavia. Pitsburgh: GPO. Bekiü, Darko. 1988. Jugoslavija u hladnom ratu: Odnosi sa Velikim Silama. Zagreb: Globus. Biseniü, Dragan. 2001. “Svedoþenje Vladimira Velebita.” Politika 28–30:3. Bogetiü, Dragan. 2000. Jugoslavija i Zapad 1952-1955: Jugoslovensko približavanje NATO-u. Belgrade: ISI. Heuser, Beatrice. 1993. Western “Containment” Policies in the Cold War: The Yugoslav Case, 1948–1953. London: Routledge. Kennan, George F. 1954. Realities of American Foreign Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lakoviü, Ivan. 2006. Zapadna vojna pomoü Jugoslaviji 1951-1958. Podgorica: IICG. Lis, Lorain. 1997. Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Pavloviü, Voja, ed. 2011. The Balkans in the Cold War: Paper Collection. Belgrade: Institute for Balkan studies of Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. Terziü, Milan. ed. 2005. Balkanski pakt 1953-1954: Document Collection. Belgrade: Institut za strategijska istraživanja. —. 2007. Balkanski Pakt 1953-1954: Paper Collection. Belgrade: Institut za strategijska istraživanja.

SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY: SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE “BREZHNEV DOCTRINE” ANDREA GIANNOTTI Foreword Berlin, 1948, East Germany and Poland, 1953, Budapest 1956: episodes that demonstrate how the intervention of the Soviet Union in the countries of the socialist community was not exceptional. The novelty of the Prague Spring was the explicit theorization of the right and duty of the countries of the Warsaw Pact led by the USSR to intervene in the socialist states to prevent deviations from the Soviet model of socialism and socialist society. This paper proposes a reflection on the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” from its theoretical basis to the delicate relationship between the national sovereignty and membership of the socialist camp. It will conclude by analyzing the consequences of the intervention in Czechoslovakia on the relations between the Soviet Union and the fraternal countries.

Third International: The origins of limited sovereignty? The critical aspects of the relationship between the principle of national sovereignty and the interests of the international Communist movement (de facto progressively identified with those of the USSR) were not born with the people’s democracies and the extension of Soviet influence beyond the traditional borders of the Russian Empire. Even with the establishment of the Third International, on March 2, 1919, in view of the realization of what Lenin called the “international republic of Soviets,” the leaders gathered in Moscow agreed that the term “socialist community” should be understood as an ideological, political and territorial entity whose cohesion would transcend its individual national components (Korey 1969, 52–53). Moreover, it was the stage immediately after the October Revolution, when it was believed that the national state

Andrea Giannotti

497

itself represented an outmoded concept to be overcome. Therefore, there was a general consensus when Zinoviev announced that the Comintern would have to become a highly centralized leadership, able to coordinate, both in ideological and organizational terms, the movements in different countries, through an Executive Committee that would exercise these functions between congresses, in a remarkable blend between internationalist vocation and manifest will of centralization. Thus, already in 1919, in the midst of enthusiastic fervor for the “world revolution” and still far from the Stalinist “socialism in one country,” “national roads” or socialist multipolarity were concepts entirely unrelated to the programs and the mindset of world communism’s leaders. Due to the isolation in which the initial Soviet Russia was held, the action of the Comintern was severely limited, however, there is an episode that can be considered a forerunner to the “doctrine of limited sovereignty.” Immediately after the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, arose the problem of the ideological nature of the new regime, which had been established by both Communists and Socialists. Bela Kun, already stressed by Lenin to impart a more Communist than Social-Democratic connotation, asked the Comintern for instructions and the reply from Petrograd was that the direction expected him to formulate a clear Communist program as soon as possible. It is clear that Bela Kun already acknowledged the leadership of the international Communist movement authority as superior to any national sovereignty. Similarly, the subordination of every legal formalism to the needs of the class struggle of which Kovalyov wrote in 1968, finds a prestigious precedent in Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, then the people’s commissar for foreign affairs, who stated bluntly that the goals of the proletarian revolution transcended the normal rules of diplomatic relations. From a purely theoretical point of view, the subordination to the higher requirements of world communism would have regarded the Soviet Union itself, but in practice the problem did not arise due to the coincidence of the two leaderships. In this sense, it is not strange that the Comintern, funded by the USSR and with offices in Moscow and Petrograd, has been defined by both Lenin and Zinoviev “a Russian organization progressively coinciding with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” The PolishSoviet War was the occasion when there emerged two additional elements that would have been adopted as part of the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” First, it was clarified that the use of military force was perfectly conceivable both to defend and to establish Communist regimes. Secondly, the Comintern took upon itself the task of assessing the reliability of the various revolutionary parties, judging those considered unreliable even more dangerous than the bourgeois parties. The consequences were the contrast

498

Socialism and National Sovereignty

to social-democracy and later social-fascism and, more generally, the identification of any deviation from the line drawn by the center with heresies to be destroyed. None dared to question the status of “older brother” (Salvi 1993, 40) recognized as the Russian (then Soviet) party, even after the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943. This record began to be challenged after the end of World War II, when some Communist parties (the Yugoslavian, Albanian, and later Chinese) were successful in establishing governments without the intervention of the Red Army. In spite of everything, except for Tito’s experience, the veneration of Stalin managed to keep firmly the leadership of the international Communist movement firmly in the hands of the Kremlin, but the death of the dictator and the denunciation of the personality cult, saw the start of critical reflections that would soon lead to talk about “national roads to socialism,” raising deep concern in the Soviet leadership. An editorial that appeared in Pravda on March 11, 1957 stated: “The relations between the states, which are part of the socialist community as based on full equality and true fraternity, are determined by the nature of the socioeconomic development of various countries, by the unity of their fundamental interests and their end goal: the construction of communism as well as from the common Marxist-Leninist point of view of the communist parties. It follows that considerable interdependence requires continuous theoretical development to decide what is specific and what is general … .” And again: “ … It is necessary to bear in mind the enormous international significance of the experience of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the first country that built socialism … and whose experience helps the entire labor movement in understanding what is essential and general” (Pravda, March 11, 1957).

The “Brezhnev Doctrine” It must be said that after 1953 the approach of the Soviets toward other Communist realities was characterized by a pragmatic split: as regards the international Communist movement, they gave proof of great realism and over time changed some of their positions about the actual guidance of the various outbreaks of world revolution. On the occasion of the International Conference of Communist and workers parties in 1969, they came to support “the greater importance of free coordination of the actions of the

Andrea Giannotti

499

parties to effectively perform their duties.”1 Quite different, however, was the attitude towards the Communist countries, for which the principle of the whole block would have been valid: it was necessary that each country should draw up its policy taking into account the interests of the other members of the socialist community; the point being the eventuality that the prospect of such interests was not duly considered, or even ignored, leading to exit from the system of the fraternal countries. The consequences for such a circumstance were explained by Brezhnev at the V Congress of the United Polish Worker’ Party on November 13, 1968, when he declared: “When the socialism in one country or the entire socialist community is threatened, the issue affects all socialist states.”2 These words of the general secretary of the CPSU were reported by The Times (London), November 13, 1968. Already in 1956, a declaration by the CC of the CPSU, on October 30, had suggested that the internal and external security of the people’s democracies had an impact on all socialist peoples—and a few days later the Red Army crushed the Hungarian Revolution just as a few months before the revolt of Polish workers in Poznan had been suppressed. The declaration of 1956 appeared to be an introduction to the words pronounced by Brezhnev on July 4, 1968 during a meeting with the Hungarian leader Janos Kadar: “We cannot be indifferent to the fate of socialist building in other countries, such as the common cause of world socialism,” and still: “Of course, each country’s building of socialism accords to its national peculiarities, but it is necessary to have common principles, an immutable bases, without which there would be no socialism.” Kadar, for his part, promised ominously: “We are ready to bring international aid to those who, in any country, defend the cause of socialism against the class enemy” (Ambri 1973, 140– 41). The necessity of this interference was motivated by several arguments. Firstly, the weakening, even only ideological, of a socialist state, would have been detrimental to the whole block. In particular, to challenge the leading role of the party, admitting that it could be criticized or spread non Marxist-Leninist ideas, was a sure indicator of ideological weakness and political disarmament: a counter-revolutionary dangerous also for the other countries, whose populations could be infected (Kovalyov 1968). Another aspect was related to the aforementioned role of the CPSU within the 1

Conferenza internazionale dei partiti comunisti e operai: Mosca, 5-17 giugno 1969. Testi e documenti, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1969, 50. 2 These of the Central Committee for the V Congress of the Polish United Workers’Party: adopted on July 9th, 1968 by the Twelfth Plenary Session of the C.C., Varsavia, 1968.

500

Socialism and National Sovereignty

international Communist movement after the death of Stalin. Although after 1953 the Soviets had had increasing difficulty, the idea that each party could go alone still remained alien to the essence of Leninism, since renouncing to define a common line of action would mean a return to the much-criticized Second International. In conclusion, the sovereignty of states belonging to the socialist community had always been limited by virtue of the dependence of the Communist parties in power on the military and economic support of the Soviet Union. The “Brezhnev doctrine” only revealed the nature of that relationship.

The theory in practice: From the invasion of Czechoslovakia to the Treaty of Prague On September 26, 1968, a long article appeared in Pravda entitled Sovereignty and international duties of the socialist countries, a sort of summa of the theoretical and political bases of the intervention in Prague and the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” The author, Sergei Kovalyov, resolutely denied that the intervention of members of the Warsaw Pact was incompatible with the Marxist-Leninist principle of self-determination, stating that the concept of national sovereignty had to be considered in the light of the class struggle. In this context, Kovalyov said, although the right of each socialist country to define its own specific course was indisputable, this could never occur by taking decisions in conflict with the fundamental interests of other socialist states, and where this had happened, it would entail a natural limitation of national sovereignty in the interest of the world socialist movement. In the case in question, the article went on to claim that the government of Czechoslovakia said it was acting on the basis of the right of sovereignty while going against the true interests of the people of Czechoslovakia and, besides, would have involved an advance of the imperialist forces directly on the borders of the Soviet Union, breaking the deployment the Warsaw Pact, separating Hungary from Poland and the GDR. Therefore the military intervention of the fraternal countries was presented as aid lent to the Czechoslovak working class exposed to the attack of the counterrevolution. Kovalyov concluded as unthinkable the abandonment of class perspective in compliance with legal formalism as an abstract concept of national sovereignty and accepted that this would have meant powerlessness against the resurgence of neo-Nazism in West Germany or against the regime of the Colonels in Greece, potentially classifiable as “internal affairs of sovereign states.” On the contrary, the Soviet Union, consistent

Andrea Giannotti

501

with its internationalist duty, would always provide relief to progressive forces in each country, by supporting them in their struggle for national and social liberation. The invasion was evidently justified on a theoretical level, leaving nothing to chance. Returning to the article by Kovalyov: “Every Communist Party is responsible not only to its people, but also to the other socialist countries and the entire communist movement. … A socialist state, which is part of that system of states that is the socialist community, cannot be insensitive to the overall interests of the community.” Referring directly to the events in Prague: “The Communists of the brother countries cannot remain passive in the name of an abstract sovereignty when they see one of these countries hit by a process of anti-communist degeneration.” The article ended with a reply to the Western criticism about the legitimacy of the intervention: “Whoever refers to the intervention of the allied socialist countries in Czechoslovakia calling it “illegal” forgets that in class society, no law above the classes exists. The laws follow the rules of the class struggle and the laws of social development … . The formal legal considerations should not cause the loss of the class point of view” (Hanak 1972, 275). The position expressed on the subject by Gromyko in his memoirs is very interesting: “… suddenly the forces related to the old system, the system in which power was held by politicians indifferent to the welfare of the people and the true interests of the country, decided to turn back the wheel of history and to do so with weapons in hand regardless of the consequences. In other words, they decided to carry out a coup using for this purpose some people infiltrated in the apparatus of the state. Of course, the enemies of the new Czechoslovakia had received aid from the outside as well as had happened in Hungary in 1956. Prague and the whole of Czechoslovakia were shaken by news of actions aimed at conquest by force of the institutions, the conquest of power … . Evidently the enemies of the new Czechoslovakia had been prepared for this for a long time and with care. But they got their accounts. Requests for help addressed to the Soviet Union were turned to other socialist countries too, in order to block the way to the counterrevolution. The fraternal countries provided immediate and effective help” (Gromyko 1989, 240). Another sign that the days of Stalin had definitively passed was that the harshest reactions came from some Communist parties (Schmidt 1969, 309–10). The Japanese party spoke of “shame for socialism” and among European parties not in power, only the Greeks, Luxembourgers and Cypriots supported Moscow. The protests of Tito and the Albanian Prime Minister Shehu, who compared the claims of Leonid Brezhnev to those

502

Socialism and National Sovereignty

advanced in the past by Mussolini towards Albania, were taken for granted (Dönhof 1969, 58). The normalization could be considered concluded with the signing in Prague on May 6, 1970 the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union (Ginsburgs and Melville Slusser 1981, 544): a very interesting text not only as a clear demonstration of the deep consequences in that the invasion had led to the evolution of relations between the two countries, but also because it is an interesting example of what the Soviet legal literature has called “the new international law that regulates a new type of relations between the socialist states” (Menžinskij 1971, 3). The reception of the “Brezhnev doctrine” is particularly evident in art. 5, which states “the contracting states expressing the irreversible will to continue building socialism and communism, will take the necessary measures to protect the socialist achievements of the people, as well as the security and independence of both countries; operate for the further development of relations between the states of the community in all sectors and in the spirit of strengthening their unity, their friendship and their fraternity.” In a contribution published on January 29, 1970 in the army’s newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, Stepanjan, a member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, observed that in the clash between the two world systems, Communist and capitalist, the defense of an authentic sovereignty of states in the Communist regime could not be considered as a “simple matter interesting individual sectors of the national communist movement” (Krasnaja Zvezda, January 29, 1970) and an article in Kommunist, theoretical journal of the CPSU, stated that there was incompatibility between proletarian internationalism and “different models of socialism” (Kommunist, II, January 1970). In Moscow it was found necessary to strengthen the tools of the relations between states of the socialist community and between individual Communist parties, because any deviation even by only one of them from the strict application of the Soviet line would have resulted in a weakening of the entire Eastern Bloc and thus the Treaty of Prague contemplated the right of intervention for the guide state to enforce socialism. As regards the pertinence of the pact, both Gromyko and Ponomarev during a report to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Supreme Soviet, let it be understood that, as the only one signed with Czechoslovakia, it should serve as a model to regulate the system of relationships throughout the block. Another eloquent sign is in art. 10, which states in the first paragraph: “In case of an armed attack against one of the two contracting states from any state or group of states, the second party will consider it as a direct attack

Andrea Giannotti

503

against itself and provide without delay all help, including military, and all support with all the means at its disposal, also applying the right of individual or collective self-defense based on art. 51 of the UN Charter.” This principle was already contained in art. 4 of the Warsaw Pact, establishing the homonymous military organization, but it referred to an armed attack “in Europe,” while in the Treaty of Prague there was no geographical limit. Was this innovation a Soviet attempt to involve the fraternal countries in a conflict with China: an editorial celebrating the anniversary of the Warsaw Pact published in Krasnaya Zvezda on May 14, 1970 warned: “The U.S. aggression in southeast Asia is extending, the Israeli aggressors do not cease their activities … .To the same mill of the enemies of peace, democracy and socialism the unbridled anti-Soviet campaign in progress for some years in China brings water. All this imposes on the Soviet military, as well on our brothers-in-arms of the socialist countries, increased vigilance and a permanent readiness in the defense of the conquests of socialism” (Krasnaja Zvezda, May 14, 1970). And Marshal Ivan Ignatyevich Yakubovsky, supreme commander of the Warsaw Pact forces stated in an article published in Pravda on May 14, 1970: “The Soviet forces and their allies are ready always and anywhere to strike a devastating blow to aggressors” (Pravda, May 14, 1970). Through the Treaty of Prague it was therefore possible for the Soviet Union to start a more intense integration of the Warsaw Pact. Military units of the Covenant would carry out joint exercises and would be educated in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. This military integration was a useful means to consolidate the Soviet political control over Eastern Europe (Sterpellone 1970, 184), was less expensive and more rapid than economic integration and was also favored by the disposition of many officers for centralized chains of command. Hence, once possible anti-Soviet influence was removed from the armed forces, it was relatively easy in Czechoslovakia to carry out the liquidation of the survivors of the new course of Dubþek, achieving the re-absorption of the Czech state as part of a total Soviet controlled context. By analyzing ex post the facts of Prague and in the light of the aforementioned treaty, we can conclude that the Soviet action was dictated more by considerations of a defensive nature than by aggressive intentions. Moscow intended to launch a warning in two directions: on the one hand towards the West, in particular the Federal Republic of Germany, to refrain from any interference in the affairs of the Eastern Bloc that could undermine the irreversibility of such a political status quo, but also to refrain from all friendly policies towards individual states of the socialist community disregarding the wishes of the Soviet Union. In this

504

Socialism and National Sovereignty

sense, a common letter signed by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany and Hungary, prepared during a meeting of the Warsaw Pact on July 15, 1968, declared: “The borders of the socialist world have been extended in the heart of Europe, from above Elbe to the Bohemian Forest. We will never allow these two historic achievements of socialism—the independence and the security of our populations to be endangered. We will never allow imperialism, whether it is acting from the inside or from the outside, through peaceful or aggressive means, to dig a hole in the socialist system and alter to its own advantage the balance of forces existing in Europe today” (Bischof, Karner and Ruggenthaler 2009, 137). On the other hand, the Soviets sent a serious warning to the other socialist countries, especially those critical of the measures adopted in Czechoslovakia: once a country becomes socialist, it has to remain so forever and the Soviet Union and the other powers of the Warsaw Pact enjoyed a right of action against every country in order to ensure this status (Dönhof 1969, 61). A line confirmed by Gromyko in his UN speech, stating that a policy of détente would have been possible only on condition that it did not affect the status quo (in other words, it would guaranteeing the current extension of the Soviet empire). Even more explicitly the foreign minister made it clear that only the Soviet Union could fill the role of interlocutor in the eventual policy of détente and that the autonomy of the other socialist countries in foreign policy was still conditioned by the coincidence of this policy with the Soviet interests (Dönhof 1969, 57).

Conclusions What has gone down in history as the “Brezhnev Doctrine” was one of the most debated topics of the entire Soviet foreign policy. For many people it was the proof that the “socialist community” was nothing more than a prototype of imperial rule brutally subjected to the will of the Kremlin. The well-known dissident Mikhail Voslensky observed that the Soviet leaders were characterized by “natural aggressiveness” (Voslenskij 1980, 382). However, in addition to the ambition of expansion there were other considerations that drove such a mild man as Leonid Brezhnev, perfectly clear-headed in 1968, to support the invasion of Czechoslovakia and then to theorize a right and duty of intervention in all the brother countries. Firstly, after the drama of the defeats of the period 1941–42, the Soviet military doctrine was obsessed with the idea of fighting again on Russian territory, necessitating a barrier between NATO and the borders of the USSR.

Andrea Giannotti

505

Secondly, pressure was exerted by the leaders of other Communist countries, worried about a possible spread of the Czechoslovak trends. Everything must be contextualized in the balance of the Cold War, for which neither party could afford failures without jeopardizing the overall resilience of its block. Added to this, the myth of stabil’nost’ was tenaciously pursued by the CPSU in the Brezhnev era, a stability that would also be extended to the brother countries. Without disregarding the imperial ambitions typical of any great power, these considerations gave rise to a defensive instinct in the Kremlin, which resulted in the attack against Prague and, generally, to a devaluation of the traditional concept of national sovereignty, cleverly redefined in the light of the “special relationship between the fraternal countries of the socialist community.”

Bibliography Ambri, Marino.1973. La dottrina Brežnev. Milan: Il Timone. Bischof, Günter, Stefan Karner, and Peter Ruggenthaler. 2010. The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Plymouth: Lexington Books. Conferenza internazionale dei partiti comunisti e operai: Mosca, 5–17 giugno 1969. Testi e documenti. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Dönhof, Marion. 1969. “L’esperienza di Praga.” Affari Esteri 1:58–61. Ginsburgs, George, and Robert M. Slusser. 1981. A Calendar of Soviet Treaties 1958–1973. Alphen aan den Rijn: Brill. Gromyko, Andrej A. 1989. Memorie. Milan: Rizzoli. Hanak, Harry. 1972. The Soviet Foreign Policy since the Death of Stalin. London: Routledge and K. Paul. Korey, William. 1969. “The Comintern and the Geneology of the “Brezhnev Doctrine.” Problems of Communism 18:52–58. Kovalyov, Sergej M. 1968. “Suverenitet i intemazional’nye obyazannosti sozialistiþeskich stran.” Pravda. Menžinskij, Viktor I. et al. 1971. Meždunarodnye organizazii sozialistiþeskich stran. Moscow: Meždunarodnye otnošenija. Ouimet, Matthew J. 2003. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Salvi, Sergio. 1993. La mezzaluna con la stella rossa. Genoa: Marietti. Schmidt, Helmut. 1969. “The Brezhnev Doctrine.” The Atlantic Community Quarterly 7:307–13.

506

Socialism and National Sovereignty

Sterpellone, Alfonso. 1970. “Evoluzione della dottrina Brežnev.” Affari Esteri 7: 184–89. These of the Central Committee for the V Congress of the Polish United Workers’Party: adopted on July 9th, 1968 by the Twelfth Plenary Session of the C.C. Warsaw: Polish United Workers’ Party. Voslenskij, Michajl S. 1980. Nomenklatura. Vienna: Verlag Fritz Molden.

IMPERIAL LEGACY AND COLD WAR RATIONALE: THE ANGLO-AMERICAN DIPLOMACY AND THE FALKLANDS WAR IN 1982 DAVIDE BORSANI On April 19, 1982, the American magazine Newsweek ran on its cover a picture of a British aircraft carrier with the headline The Empire Strikes Back. Seventeen days before, on April 2, the Argentine military junta invaded the Falkland Islands, an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom in the Western hemisphere. The few royal marines were unprepared to fight, and the Argentines easily seized them. Margaret Thatcher, the then-prime minister of the United Kingdom, vigorously responded and quickly dispatched a naval task force to regain the islands. However, Newsweek was fundamentally wrong: the Falklands War was not a war to defend the empire as such. The conflict has indeed to be contextualized in a Cold War framework. The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union was particularly tough in the first years of the 1980s. In the US, the new president, Ronald Reagan, responded to the Soviet advance by implementing “a hawkish posture … tough rhetoric, a military buildup, and confrontational policies on arms control and regional conflicts” (Fischer 2010, 269). The Reagan doctrine essentially had two geopolitical pillars, Europe and Latin America, as the president ironically epitomized in 1981: “roses are red, violets are blue, [USSR must] stay out of El Salvador and Poland, too.” (Reagan, Ronald, June 12, 1981. Remarks at a White House Reception for the Republican National Committee, Washington D.C.).1 The doctrine aimed in Europe at confronting the USSR by strengthening NATO and supporting political dissent in Soviet satellite countries; in Latin America, it concentrated on rolling back communism by asserting the traditional myth of the Monroe doctrine: 1

Reagan, Ronald. June 12, 1981. Remarks at a White House Reception for the Republican National Committee, Washington D.C.

508

Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale

“America for the Americans.” The Western hemisphere was, thus, at the core of the renewed US strategy, and Argentina was a relevant underpinning in the Southern Cone. The Reagan administration believed that “a close and cooperative relationship with Argentina was an essential precondition for the success of American strategy” (Thornton 1998, 62) from both ideological and military perspectives. After Jimmy Carter’s unsteady years, ties between Buenos Aires and Washington now got stronger to tackle communism. Pragmatically, the Casa Rosada’s support for the thesis of “ideological frontiers” corresponded with the military involvement in counterinsurgency operations in Nicaragua against the Marxist Sandinistas. The Anglo-American “special relationship” was the European cornerstone of the strategy. In 1946 Sir Winston Churchill had defined this relationship as “the fraternal association of the English-speaking people,” characterized by a “growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society … [and] the continuance of the intimate relations between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers.”2 Thirty-five years on, Thatcher and Reagan shared the same opinion: their political/economic philosophies and their mutual domestic goals were catalyzed by a personal chemistry, though this did not always take their foreign policies to overlap automatically. Notably, the Anglo-American relationship was strong due to the military. Still in 1980s, Britain and the US had a common command and full integration of planning and logistics in NATO, a very active exchange of personnel, particularly between the two navies, and shared communications and intelligence, weapons and equipment. Against this background, what kind of role the US “superpower” chose to play in the Falklands War between two of its allies instinctively arises as the main question. The “special relationship” was not, in fact, entirely special.

A “little ice-cold bunch of land down there”?3 The sovereignty over the Falkland Islands is a very complicated historical and legal issue. Claimed by Britain, France and Spain in the Modern Age, the dispute was renewed in 1816 by the newly-born United 2 Churchill, L. S. Winston. March 5, 1946. Sinews of Peace (Iron Curtain speech). Westminster College, Fulton. 3 Reagan, Ronald. Quoted in Margaret Thatcher Foundation. The US & the Falklands War (1): the US ‘tilt’ towards Britain (30 Apr 1982). Accessed October 2, 2013. http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/us—falklands.asp.

Davide Borsani

509

Provinces of the Río de la Plata, later simply called Argentina. In 1833, despite the prescriptions of the Monroe doctrine, a US Navy’s action allowed the British to recapture the islands and replace Argentine installations. The Falklands officially became a Crown Colony in 1845. In the aftermath of World War II, the Argentine Peronist regime reinvigorated its jingoistic claims over the islands. In the 1960s and 1970s, London and Buenos Aires attempted to settle diplomatically the dispute through bilateral talks resulted in joint condominium and lease-back drafts. But every effort failed. Of course, the strategic and economic value of the islands to a declining Britain was scarce; but, otherwise, British public opinion strongly committed itself to defend the primacy of the principle of self-determination for the islanders. Whitehall concluded that the islands had to remain British until their inhabitants wished to be so, and they always did, indeed, regularly putting in difficulty their motherland. Undecided between expensive deterrence and cheap appeasement, London finally did few to reinforce her posture at the Falklands. According to an author, “At best, British Falklands policy prior to March 1982 could be described as ‘benign neglect’” (Clarke 1996, 36). In April 1982, trying to take advantage of economic, strategic and political uncertainties in Britain, the Argentine dictatorship—in turn, squeezed by domestic pressures and in search of legitimation—decided to take the islands by force. At Number 10, Thatcher was astonished and naturally assumed the role of Churchillian war leader, strongly supported by her public opinion (Reynolds 1991, 260). No appeasement was now considered: rolling back Argentina and reestablishing the British rule was, thus, the only available option. As she proclaimed in the House of Commons after the invasion, “We cannot allow the democratic rights of the islanders to be denied by the territorial ambitions of Argentina.”4 The Falklands War was instinctively perceived by the prime minister as a war for principles: she felt she could not allow an autocracy to settle a territorial dispute by force against a democracy committed to freedom and international law. In her vision, Western principles, posture and reputation were at stake. Britain now had to champion those fundamental values for which Europe and the US were already standing for in the Cold War. As she recalled in her memoirs: “It was essentially an issue of dictatorship versus democracy” (Thatcher 1993, 198). Even so, it would be misleading not to grasp that a British vital interest was also at stake: honor. Not as an empire, but as a nation. In 1982, Thatcher continued, “we had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the 4

Thatcher, Margaret. April 3, 1982. House of Commons speech (public statement). London. Margaret Thatcher Foundation (MTF) DOCID= 104910.

510

Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale

capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war” (Thatcher 1993, 173). The Falklands might have been a reputational lever to change that perception at home and abroad and, therefore, reverse Britain’s declining name. “Better than any Prime Minister since Macmillan, Thatcher understood that prestige was a form of power” (Reynolds 1991, 256). In 1982, thus, she did not fight for the remnants of the empire, but for the British national soul. She was an ideological nationalist,5 “[not a] nostalgic neo-colonialist” (Ferguson 2013, 299); and defending the Falklands was not considered at No. 10 an anachronism of an outdated European imperialism, as Argentina maintained. Thatcher was already prepared to decolonize the islands, but not to hand them over without the consent of the islanders (Moore 2013, 659). Moreover, “Looking more closely at her handling of post-imperial problems … [the Falklands policy] was an aberration, not the norm. Simultaneously, Britain was loosening its hold on most of its other remnants of empire, including Rhodesia, Hong Kong and even Northern Ireland” (Reynolds 1991, 256). On imperial issues, Thatcher always “revealed a flexibility that often dismayed her more dogmatic supporters” (Ferguson 2013, 300). Last but not least, the bet at stake for Thatcher was her premiership. Considering that, by the beginning of April, the Labour party already had an advantage over the Conservatives in the voting intentions and the next year new elections had to be held; if Britain had given up to Argentina the Thatcher government would have been overshadowed (or even would have fallen)—a lesson learned from the Suez “fiasco” in 1956—and her party likely would have lost the elections and would have been replaced by the pacifist left. In a Cold War framework, this was not in the US interest. Apart from the Reagan-Thatcher personal relationship, the Labour anti-nuclear stance, its proposed unilateral disarmament and perceived anti-Americanism were seen in Washington as “a direct and immediate threat to the president’s own cold-war strategy” (Aldous 2012, 138).

“Brits in American clothes”?6 Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, since her appointment as the US permanent representative at the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick had maintained Latin America as “the most important place in the world for us” (Aldous 2012, 79) and Buenos Aires as a key ally. Accordingly to 5

“Hers was, in essence, an ideological nationalism which linked the right ideas about how all people should live with the history and the genius of a particular people” (Sharp 1999). 6 Kirkpatrick, Jeane. Quoted in Gustafson (1988).

Davide Borsani

511

her, during the Carter presidency “The deterioration of the U.S. position in the hemisphere has already created serious vulnerabilities where none previously existed, and threatens now to confront this country with the unprecedented need to defend itself against a ring of Soviet bases on and around our southern and eastern borders” (Kirkpatrick 1981). Few days after the invasion, her view inside the National Security Council—as the State Department officer James Rentschler reported—“was that the key issue in the South Atlantic crisis is the preservation of the Inner-American System (whatever the fuck that is).”7 The risky alternative would have been the rise of a left-wing anti-US regime in Buenos Aires. Rentschler’s explicit phrasing is a symptom that inside the administration there was not only Kirkpatrick’s perspective. On the contrary, her Latinist policy was rather a unique exemplar. There were two other lines. The Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger line was explicitly Anglophile: “the British are our closest friends and allies, they are the victims of aggression, give them what they need as quickly as we can” (Smith 1990, 84). More diplomatically, the Secretary of State Alexander Haig line “was to mediate in public, but also in private to do at least some of the things that Weinberger was so eager to do” (Smith 1990, 85). In his opinion, the US needed to mediate impartially between the two counterparts in order to uphold together its own regional interests and avoid the showdown; but, had the mediation failed, Washington would have backed Britain. Accordingly, the ultimate strategic priority was Latin America for Kirkpatrick and for both Weinberger and Haig, although in different ways, was Europe. Reagan, not a skilled diplomat (Barié 2013, 64), underestimated the extent of the crisis. He unsuccessfully tried by phone to persuade the Argentine junta to stop the invasion, but, once the islands were seized, he became reluctant to support fully one part or another because, he was convinced, a negotiated solution was possible. Even though he was clearly sympathetic with the British and opposed in principle to any deliberate armed aggression “even on the obscure shores of a few rocky Islands in the South Atlantic” (Reagan 1990, 416), he acknowledged that both countries were relevant to the US strategy. He consented to the State and Defense Departments to work in almost complete autonomy on their lines and assumed an aloof leadership, which reflected, firstly, his overall conception of the presidential role in secondary issues and, secondly, the relatively decentralized policy system of the US. On the one hand, thus, Reagan appointed Haig as diplomatic 7

Rentschler, James. 1 April–25 June 1982. Falklands Diary. MTF link: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/arcdocs/Rentschler.pdf. Accessed October 2, 2013.

512

Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale

mediator; on the other hand, he allowed the Pentagon to follow Weinberger’s policies. In this manner, the president tried to reconcile the Latinist and Atlanticist visions of his administration through the mantle of public neutrality, while ordered to give “Maggie everything she needs to get on with it” (Lehman 2012). Clearly, it was a fundamental contradiction as the crisis went on. Then, he left Washington for meetings and a brief vacation in the Caribbean. For the next three weeks, Haig repeatedly flew to Britain and Argentina trying unsuccessfully to find a compromise in the dispute. The first stop-over of this Kissinger-like “shuttle diplomacy,” on April 8, was London, where he was not welcomed “as a mediator, but as a friend and ally” (Thatcher 1993, 192). However, Thatcher changed opinion soon. Their lively and direct discussions led to nowhere. Haig outlined a three-step approach involving the withdrawal of Argentine forces, the creation of a temporary interim administration under international control and the resumption of bilateral Argentina-UK negotiations on sovereignty without preconditions. The prime minister, from her side, was pledged only to the effective restoration of the British administration with possible, not necessary, further negotiations and, first and foremost, to safeguard the primacy of the islanders’ right to self-determination. Thatcher believed this Haig’s proposal, like his relatively-amended next ones, violated these simple principles.8 Their incompatible stances regularly undermined Haig’s diplomatic mission in finding a compromise in the first place with the British. The state secretary quickly reported to Reagan that “the Prime Minister has a bit in her teeth … She is clearly prepared to use force” and the US had to “apply unusual pressure to Thatcher … if we are to head off hostilities.”9 From Jamaica and Barbados, Reagan acknowledged that “London headlines give little basis for optimism” to foster “a compromise that gives Maggie enough to carry on and at the same time meets the test of ‘equity’ with our Latin neighbors.”10 However, the president invited Haig to reiterate his efforts. The attempt to put the greatest diplomatic 8

For Goldberg (US Embassy of Buenos Aires) from Streator (US Embassy of London). 8 April 1982. Memcon: Secretary’s Meeting with the Prime Minister Thatcher. Falkland Islands Crisis, Thatcher digital archive (per US State Department), MTF, DOCID= 114333. 9 Haig to Reagan. 9 April 1982. Memo to the President: Discussions in London. White House, Top Secret Situation Room flash cable. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book N. 374. 10 Reagan to Haig. 9 April 1982. Your Discussions in London, White House, Top Secret Situation Room cable. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book N. 374.

Davide Borsani

513

pressure on Thatcher occurred on April 14, once Haig’s trip to Buenos Aires likewise failed. In a draft public statement transmitted to the British, Haig envisioned to restrict the British use of the US military facilities on the UK Ascension Island in the Mid-Atlantic, the only logistic base towards the Falklands for the already-sailed task force. Thatcher angrily replied that it was “a bit devastating”11: “let’s get Ascension Island out of it altogether, because it’s our island … it can’t be even-handedness.”12 Haig reluctantly had to accept her intransigence on this issue,13 but he reached a compromise over the flow of material support provided by the Pentagon through the channels of the “special relationship.” He maintained that the UK could not “accede to requests that would go beyond the scope of the customary pattern of cooperation.”14 Nevertheless, as Weinberger twenty-one years later recalled, “it was quite wrong” (RROHP 2003, 21). Indeed, the extent of the US military support was not “customary” at all. According to Nicholas Henderson, the then-UK Ambassador to the US, “From day one of the task force, pleas for everything from missiles to aviation fuel flooded the Pentagon from the British military mission … There were also many telephone calls from British fleet headquarters in Northwood direct to friends in the United States Navy. Many of these requests were not known about by senior officials. To those intimately involved, it seemed at times as if the two navies were working as one” (Henderson 1984). In order to fulfill every request at a very rapid pace, Weinberger sent his assistant, Dov Zakheim, back and forth to Britain in a parallel “shuttle diplomacy” behind Haig’s back.15 The US was also producing and sharing helpful intelligence thanks to its worldwide communication lines and providing a huge quantity of aviation fuel. This was Weinberger’s “basic offer: to help with everything short of actual participation in the military action itself” (Weinberger 1990, 213). 11

Record of conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Haig (1). 14 April 1982. TNA, PREM19/617 f76, MTF, DOCID= 121991. 12 Record of conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Haig (2). 14 April 1982, at 2000 hours. TNA, PREM19/617 f70, MTF, DOCID= 121990. 13 From a legal perspective, she was right because of the US-UK agreement relating to the use of the airfield at Widewake in Ascension Island, entered into force in August 1962. 14 Record of conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Haig (2). 14 April 1982, at 2000 hours. TNA, PREM19/617 f70, MTF, DOCID= 121990. 15 Zakheim, Dov S. June 14, 2012. Speech at The Heritage Foundation: The Liberation of the Falklands, Thirty Years After: Why the United States Must Back Britain Now. Accessed October 2, 2013. http://www.heritage.org/events/2012/06/falklands.

514

Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale

On April 30, once the conflict became unavoidable, the NSC finally decided on an explicit pro-UK “tilt.” Haig acknowledged that his “shuttle diplomacy” had failed and “we have a problem in Britain and with our other allies. The popular perception is that we are too neutral, too tepid”16 and that Thatcher’s premiership might be in danger: it was time to make a clear choice before “the Argentine government … falls like a house cards” (Haig 1984, 293). Weinberger confirmed: “we need to come out of this getting credit for something; we need to get credit for our support of the British.”17 Kirkpatrick still bet on a further mediation “in some forums,” notably the UN, in order to avoid the war and save Argentina’s face. Reagan ironically commented that “it would be nice if, after all these years, the UN could accomplish something as constructive as averting war,”18 but, more pragmatically, he agreed with Haig and Weinberger, and approved specific pro-British actions such as the suspension of all military exports to Argentina and a full range of economic sanctions concerning credits, insurances and guarantees.19 The US administration, thus, eventually abandoned a diplomatic balanced posture: both the public opinion and the Congress supported the shift.20 Nevertheless, this did not mean the end of every mediation effort. The goal was now to prevent Argentina’s humiliating defeat in order not to excessively compromise the US position in Latin America. Haig tried in 16

NSC Meeting. 30 April 1982. South Atlantic Crisis (Minutes). The Cabinet Room at The White House, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Meeting File, [Folder: NSC 00048 – 04/30/1982 — “Falkland Islands”], Box 91284; also in Saltoun-Ebin, Jason, and Chiampan Andrea. August 2011. The Reagan Files: The Falklands Crisis. Accessed October 2, 2013 http://www.thereaganfiles.com/. 17 NSC Meeting, South Atlantic Crisis (Minutes), The Cabinet Room at The White House, 30 April 1982, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Meeting File, [Folder: NSC 00048 – 04/30/1982 — “Falkland Islands”], Box 91284; also in Saltoun-Ebin, Jason, and Chiampan Andrea. August 2011. The Reagan Files: The Falklands Crisis. Accessed October 2, 2013 http://www.thereaganfiles.com/. 18 Ibid. 19 Rentschler, Falklands Diary, 27–28. 20 According to Gallup, the US public opinion sympathies “were clearly with the British (50 percent) rather than with the Argentines (15 percent) while 21 percent said their sympathies lay with both side equally”. See Gallup, George. (1982). “The Gallup Poll: Falkland War Sentiment.” The Herald Journal, May 8. Moreover, “Both Houses of Congress passed resolutions supporting the US action siding with the United Kingdom.” See Grimmett, F. Richard. June 1999. Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress, CRS Report. Accessed October 2, 2013 http://fpc.state.gov/6172.htm.

Davide Borsani

515

vain to play again a feeble mediation role side-by-side with both the UN Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar, and the Peruvian President, Fernando Belaunde. Reagan, too, appealed by Kirkpatrick personally, tried to soften up Thatcher’s resolute position: he telephoned her on May 13 and, again, on May 31 prompted by Haig, when the British Forces were advancing successfully across East Falkland. However, these attempts were fruitless and intrinsically mined by his inclination to consider justifiable the prime minister’s black-and-white attitude. As he already stated in his diary on April 19: “I don’t think Margaret Thatcher should be asked to concede anymore”; and on May 31: “[Thatcher] feels the loss of life so far can only be justified if they win. … She may be right” (Reagan 2007, 80, 87). Along this line, he nearly apologized in the last phone call: “Well, Margaret, I know that I’ve intruded and I know how … I know how I would feel … So I do know.”21 Then, he held up the phone to his staff and said with admiration: “That’s one hell of a tough lady” (Ovendale 1998, 150), “Isn’t she wonderful?” (Renwick 2013, 79). Certainly, statesmen do not base their foreign policies on personal diplomacy, and the US attempt to mediate during the Falklands War proved this once again. But it would be misleading not to consider at all that the “kindred spirit” between Thatcher and Reagan and their common principled view played a somewhat influential role upon the president’s “malleability and indecision” (Wapshott 2007, 160) during the whole war. From her side, Thatcher did not appreciate the mediation effort both before and after the “tilt.” Even though she recognized “that in negotiations some flexibility is necessary,” “there are surely some things on which we should not compromise. … first the right to self-determination and second that aggression must not pay”; the US proposals, on the contrary, were not “faithful to the basic principles we must protect.”22 Only on June 4, at the G7 summit in Paris, Reagan and Thatcher met tête-à-tête and smoothed the rough edges off. By now, the president accepted “that it was not possible for you to take any diplomatic initiative,” while Thatcher reassured him that she “had no desire to humiliate Argentina.” In the end, diplomatic goals of the UK and the US overlapped. The prime minister also opened the meeting “by thanking … Reagan warmly for the material help which the United States had extended

21 White House record of telephone conversation. 31 May 1982. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library: Executive Secretariat NSC: Country File (UK) Box 20, MTF, DOCID= 114114. 22 Thatcher draft letter to Reagan (never sent). 5 May 1982. Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre): THCR 1/20/3/11 f4, MTF, DOCID= 122852.

516

Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale

to us.”23 In her memoirs, she frankly admitted that without military assistance from the Pentagon and the active role played by Weinberger,24 “we could not have retaken the Falklands” (Thatcher 1993, 226).

Conclusion From a military perspective, the Falklands war clearly showed that the “special relationship” worked “at full speed” (de Leonardis 2013, 91). However, it cannot say the same for diplomacy. The Reagan administration tried to reconcile two regional interests at a time when a compromise was impossible and, above all, it did not elaborate a consistent strategy. Haig’s effort, thus, was not backed by military substance and, as the crisis went on, Thatcher did not need to consult the ambivalent and perceived-ambiguous Americans before taking decisions. Therefore, she just informed them. The outcome was that diplomatic relations were put under strains. In the end, the US “tilt” was necessary because of both realpolitik and principles: Europe was confirmed as the main theatre of the Cold War, the UK was the more important ally and Thatcher, who—differently from the Leftists—was in broader terms proUS grand strategy, had to stay in charge to consolidate the Atlantic bridge. Moreover, Argentina’s armed aggression deliberately broke international law and, in a zero-sum game that could potentially involve many other territorial disputes on the continent and in the world (including the Western block),25 it had not to be generously rewarded to the detriment of the British ally. After the clear-cut British victory in June, Weinberger concluded that “We certainly helped substantially, and quickly,” but “the 23

No.10 record of conversation (Thatcher—Reagan) at US Embassy in Paris. 4 June 1982. TNA, PREM19/633 f47, MTF, DOCID= 122121. 24 Who was given for this reason an honorary knighthood in 1988. 25 Not only Argentine and Chile had a territorial dispute over the Beagle Channel, but there “were some Third World small and micro states which were grateful for the strong British response to Argentina’s invasion, bearing in mind their own vulnerability to powerful neighbors.” Moreover, according to an author, “attitudes in Greece were influenced by its scattered and vulnerable islands as well as, of course, the situation in Cyprus. The French too could hardly be unaware of the vulnerability of some of their remaining overseas territories.” On April 4, 1982 The Sunday Times reported (maybe, exaggerated) that someone asked at the Konigswinter Conference in Cambridge: “If you abandon 1800 Falkland Islanders … What will 2 million West Berliners think?” (Hill 1996). “Introduction: The Falklands War and European Foreign Policy.” And Edwards 1996. “Europe and the Falkland Islands Conflict.” In Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, edited by Stavridis and Hill, 1–18 and 40–56.

Davide Borsani

517

decisive factor was Mrs. Thatcher’s firm and immediate decision to retake the Islands” (Weinberger 1990, 215). In hindsight, her successful resoluteness, which in fact was made sustainable by the US material backing, had been a significant tool for the West in the Cold War. Not only the Falklands experience made Thatcher—who totally reached her initial goals—a prominent player in the international landscape and contributed to the advent of a civilian regime in Argentina (and so to the pro-West “third wave of democratization”), but according to John Lehman, the thenUS Secretary of the Navy, “Thatcher’s decision to fight for the Falklands came as a real shock to the Soviet leadership. It forced them to rethink their assumptions for Western Europe and begin to take NATO forces far more seriously. … Far from a ‘last imperial hurrah,’ the successful Falklands campaign … had been a crucial factor in convincing the Soviets that they were on the losing side of history” (Lehman 2012).

Bibliography Aldous, Richard. 2012. Reagan & Thatcher. The Difficult Relationship. Hutchinson: Random House. Barié, Ottavio. 2013. Dalla guerra fredda alla grande crisi. Il nuovo mondo delle relazioni internazionali. Bologna: Il Mulino. Clarke, Michael. 1996. “Foreign Policy Analysis: A Theoretical Guide.” In Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy. Western European Reactions to the Falklands Conflict, edited by Stelios Stavridis and Cristopher Hill, 19–39. Oxford-Washington: Berg. De Leonardis, Massimo. 2013. Ultima Ratio Regum. Forza militare e relazioni internazionali (II ed.). Bologna: Monduzzi. Dobson, Alan P., and Steve Marsh, eds. 2013. Anglo-American Relations. Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Erhman, John, and Michael W. Flamm. 2009. Debating the Reagan Presidency. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield. Ferguson, Niall. 2013. Always Right. How Margaret Thatcher Saved Britain. Odyssey Editions. Kindle edition. Fischer, Beth A. 2010. “US foreign policy under Reagan and Bush.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. III (Endings), edited by Melvin P. Leffler and Odd A. Westad, 267–88. New York: Cambridge University Press. Freedman, Lawrence. 2007. The Official History of the Falklands Campaign (Vol. I). London: Taylor & Francis. Gustafson, Lowell S. 1988. The Sovereignty Dispute Over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

518

Imperial Legacy and Cold War Rationale

Haig, Alexander. 1984. Caveat. Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy. New York: Macmillan. Henderson, Nicholas. 1984. “America’s Falklands War.” The Economist March 3:29–32. Kirkpatrick, Jeane. 1981. “U.S. Security & Latin America.” Commentary 71: 29–40. Lehman, John. 1988. Command of the Seas. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. —. 2012. “Reflections on the Special Relationship.” Naval History Magazine 6 (5). Accessed October 2, 2013 http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2012–09/reflections– special–relationship. Moore, Charles. 2013. Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (Vol. I: Not for turning). London: Penguin Group. Ovendale, Richie. 1998. Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reagan, Ronald. 1990. An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, Epub edition, 2011. —. 2007. The Reagan Diaries. New York: HarperCollins. Renwick, Robin. 2013. A Journey with Margaret Thatcher. Foreign Policy under the Iron Lady. London: Biteback. Reynolds, David. 1991. Britannia Overruled. British Policy & World Power in the 20th Century. Essex: Longman. Ronald Reagan Oral History Project (RROHP). 2003. The Falklands Roundtable. Final Edited Transcript. Washington D.C. Smith, Geoffrey. 1990. Reagan and Thatcher. London: Bodley Head. Sharp, Paul. 1999. Thatcher’s Diplomacy. The Revival of British Foreign Policy. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Thatcher, Margaret. 1993. The Downing Street Years. London: Harper Press. Thornton, Richard C. 1998. The Falklands Sting. Reagan, Thatcher and Argentina’s Bomb. Dulles: Brassey’s. Wapshott, Nicholas. 2007. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. A Political Marriage. New York: Penguin Group. Weinberger, Caspar. 1990. Fighting for Peace. Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon. New York: Warner Books.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR AND NEW CHALLENGES TO DEMOCRACY AMIT MISHRA Introduction The Cold War was a protracted ideological, geopolitical and economic struggle that emerged after World War II between the erstwhile superpowers supported by their military alliance partners. It lasted from the end of World War II until the period preceding the demise of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. From 1949 to 1991 the USA and USSR played nuclear brinksmanship over the same ideological issues they had fought over in 1918 (Riff 2005). Decades had passed but the ideologies of democracy and communism were still opposed to each other. Communism resulted in a mass murder of millions of human beings all over the world. As a result of this split, the American CIA and Soviet KGB squared off using covert action. Many scholars, however, see the end of the Cold War as the triumph of democracy and freedom over totalitarian rule, state-mandated atheism and a repressive Communist system that claimed the lives of millions (Pacalo, 2011). While equal blame for Cold War tensions is often attributed both to the United States and the Soviet Union, it is evident that the Soviet Union had an ideological focus that found the Western democratic and free market systems inherently oppressive and espoused their overthrow. The present paper tries to find some answers to the following queries: first, what is the legacy of the Cold War? Second, has it resulted in some dilution of the socialist ideology and to what extent Fancis Fukuyama’s End of History thesis holds good at the present juncture? Third, how have the global actors like the US and other liberal Western nations promoted democracies in the post-Cold War period? Fourth, is global capitalism now the dominant political model? Fifth, can we retrace the transformation of Cold War ideological energies into a variety of ideological concepts—the “democratic peace,” the “battle of cultures,” Islamic-fascism and “rogue states,” or political concepts promoted by the anti-globalization movement

520

The End of the Cold War and New Challenges to Democracy

or by political forces rooted in protest movements denouncing the Cold War order?

Legacy When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power of the Soviet Union in 1985, he instituted the policies of glasnost and perestroika with hopes of sparking the sluggish economy. What resulted from this taste of freedom was the revolution that ended the Cold War. Americans were pleasantly shocked at the turn of events in the Soviet bloc. No serious discourse on any diplomatic levels in the USSR addressed the likelihood of a Soviet collapse. Republicans were quick to claim credit for winning the Cold War. They believed the military spending policies of the Reagan-Bush years forced the Soviets to the brink of an economic collapse. Now the enemy was beaten, but the world remained unsafe. Others pointed out that no one really won the Cold War. The United States spent trillions of dollars arming itself for a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union that fortunately never came. However, thousands of American lives were lost waging proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam. The end of the Cold War did not end the attempts to use concepts, such as democracy and human rights, as ideological tools to undermine other states. Attempts to change domestic social and political systems, especially those of Great Powers or their allies and neighbors, may lead to a new era of Great Power confrontation that would be especially dangerous because of common threats such as terrorism, spread of weapons of mass destruction, environmental crisis and so on.

Emerging global system With the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the bipolar international system dominating the Cold War period disappeared, leaving its place basically to a unipolar system under the leadership of the United States. The former rivals of the United States, especially the Soviet Union and China, have either collapsed or jettisoned the central features of their ideologies that were hostile to the United States. Other countries have turned to American military protection. American military power serves a number of critical functions. In some areas, in the Persian Gulf for example, it guarantees weak states against attacks by their stronger neighbors. In Asia, the presence of the United States stabilizes the region in which a number of states might otherwise

Amit Mishra

521

feel compelled to develop much larger military forces than they currently have. American military power indirectly protects China and other Asian states against the consequences that might flow from a heavily re-armed Japan (Sanders 2008). From a political-economic point of view, the international system can be said to be multipolar, rather than unipolar. The United States is undoubtedly a great economic power. However, there are other power centers, most notably, the European Union, the Organization of AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation, as well as some other emerging powers like China, India, Brazil and South Africa (Harrison 2004).

New trends in international relations The broad objective of the dominant powers in the post-Cold War era is to preserve the status quo from which they mostly benefit. Hence, international cooperation has substantially expanded among major powers, as exemplified by the increase of peace operations involving 11, 2660 military personnel and civilian police. The decreasing ideological clashes between the United States and Russia manifested themselves most clearly in the decline of the veto at the Security Council. From 1945 to 1990, the permanent members of the Security Council cast the following number of vetoes: China, 3; France, 18; United Kingdom, 30; US, 69; and the Soviet Union, 114. Then between June 1990 and May 1993, there was no single veto. One exception occurred in May 1993 when Russia blocked a resolution on financing the peacekeeping force in Cyprus. With this exception, the postCold War capacity of the Security Council to reach agreement has survived and constituted a key reason for the increase in the number of peacekeeping operations (YÕlmaz 2005). Another feature of the post-Cold War era is that since the West has become the victor of the East-West ideological rivalry, Western systems and Western influences, in general, started to dominate the whole world. For example, the United States has visibly enhanced its influence in the Middle East and in the Caucasus since the end of the Cold War. It seems that most of the reactions take place in the Islamic world, as if it proves Samuel P. Huntington’s famous “clash of civilizations” thesis (Huntington 1997). Anti-Westernism in the Muslim world and elsewhere feeds terrorism, a serious threat to peace in the post-Cold War period.

522

The End of the Cold War and New Challenges to Democracy

New threats to global stability Although the ending of the Cold War clearly increased the willingness of governments to work through the United Nations and other international channels to resolve conflicts and keep peace around the globe, several new threats have emerged in the post-Cold War era that are, indeed, beyond the full control of major powers. One of the greatest threats is the prevalence of intra-national conflicts occurring within the borders of states. These are mostly ethnically-driven conflicts over self-determination, succession or political dominance. Despite contrary expectations, however, a fresh cycle of ethnopolitical movements have re-emerged recently in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Although intra-state conflicts appear to be local, they can quickly gain an international dimension due to global interdependence and to various international supports. In fact, when external parties provide political, economic or military assistance, or asylum and bases for actors involved in local struggles, these conflicts inevitably assume an international dimension (YÕlmaz 2007). Undoubtedly, effective management of intra-state conflicts requires an understanding of the root causes of these conflicts, as well as the application of proper strategies for stopping violence and building peace. By far, the international community has been relatively successful in deploying peacekeeping forces in violent internal conflicts, whereby such conflicts were somewhat controlled. As mentioned above, fifty peace operations were realized in the post-Cold War era. Another threat to peace in the post-Cold War period is the rising religious militancy. To some extent, it seems that religiously-driven conflicts have replaced the ideological zone of the Cold War as a serious source of international conflict. Although Huntington’s thesis is a provocative one, in its support, one can point to governments in countries like Iran that have readily resorted to the language of cultural confrontation leading to religious militancy (YÕlmaz 2002).

New challenges for a democratic revolution The end of the Cold War provided both new opportunities and dangers. Civil wars and terrorism have created a new era of international anarchy and instability in the power vacuum left by the Cold War. From the genocide in Rwanda and Sudan to the terrorist attacks on the US in September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have witnessed both the failure of peacekeeping by the UN and the inability of the US as

Amit Mishra

523

the lone superpower to keep the world order. The collapse of totalitarianism and the reinvigoration of the liberal ideal in the 1990s mark the end of a century-long competition between two opposing views of economics, politics and humanity. Democracy’s resurgence is profound. This trend will help determine the limits and extend the possibilities of the post-Cold War era. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 symbolized the democratic renewal. Countries as diverse as Taiwan, Nicaragua and Namibia underwent significant political openings that year, while the two largest democracies in the world—India and Brazil—conducted sharply contested elections that resulted in a peaceful transfer of power to new civilian governments. The end of the Cold War did not end the attempts to use concepts, such as democracy and human rights, as ideological tools to undermine other states (Müllerson 2012). The post-Cold War era has seen democratization, spreading to many states previously ruled by Marxist dictatorships, and led to significant progress in resolving several Third World conflicts that had become prolonged during the Cold War (Yilmaz 2011). At the end of the twentieth century, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, out of the two major competitors only one had stayed in the ring thus leading to the victory of democracy over communism. At the dawn of the twentyfirst century, many authoritarian countries have undergone the democratization process. In Asia, the postwar period has brought significant democratic successes in Korea, Pakistan and the Philippines, among others. Even in Africa, the authoritarian alternative and single-party politics seemed to play themselves out, with the spread of democracy from Algeria to South Africa (Roberts 1990). There are now clear indications that the democratic movement of recent years has been a movement of governments and states. In fact, it is both broader and deeper. A major factor is the success of the democracies in competing with totalitarian and authoritarian states. Besides, there is the success of democrats in founding their movements on indigenous philosophies, histories, institutions, and aspirations. Another factor in the democratic transition is the communications revolution. Now, democratization continues to be a fundamental international political force in the post-Cold War period. However, established democracies are not universally admired, especially in some parts of the Muslim world. In places like Latin America, democracy has emerged more by default than design, and the collapse of old anti-democratic regimes cannot universally be seen as a triumph of indigenous democratic forces. The communications revolution has reached more people in the developed world than in the developing one. Anti-democratic ideologies remain relevant especially among elites

524

The End of the Cold War and New Challenges to Democracy

who still command the instruments of state repression in closed societies such as Iran or China. To be sure, democracy is no guarantee of economic prosperity. Non democracies have sometimes outperformed democracies in generating increases in gross national product. In South Korea and Taiwan, for example, economic growth occurred in societies with a narrowly constrained political life. The world of the twenty-first century will put demands on the state that would have been unimaginable in the last; this helps concentrate the public and political mind on democracy’s strengths in meeting the crisis of governance. Of course, there is often a lot of hypocrisy in pro-democratic declarations and statements as well as a genuine misunderstanding of what democracy means.

World order politics in a democratic era Democratization is not a panacea for the problem of international conflict. The view that it might be has enjoyed a growing currency of late, with proponents arguing that history shows that democracies are less warlike than non-democracies. First, democracy can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of obstacles. Second, the pacific orientation of democracies toward one another may have as much to do with their relative political stability and development as with their democratic character. In Europe, the establishment of democracy has helped to create considerable optimism about the durability of the new European peace order embodied in the historic agreements signed in Paris in November 1990. The sense of promise and expectation attached to a united Germany, an integrated European Community in 1992, and a security architecture designed around the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) has its foundation in the democratic character of the states involved. In Asia as well, democratization is relevant to the major questions of peace. On the Korean Peninsula, expectations about the achievement of a breakthrough are shaped fundamentally by the process of liberalization in the South and the anticipated decay of the autocratic regime in the North. In Latin America, the challenge of (re)building democracy in Panama and Nicaragua and encouraging political openings in El Salvador and Mexico is the key to whether the region will return to an endemic turmoil. Moreover, some regional leaders see the broadening of democratic

Amit Mishra

525

institutions and rules as directly relevant to their ability to cope with the problems of insurgency, drugs and immigration. Democratization also seems relevant to the kinds of international priorities emerging in the post-Cold War era. That era is rich in opportunities presented by economic interdependence, but it is also burdened with problems compelling new forms of collective responses. These include the environment, where new regimes are under negotiation to limit pollution; collective security, where the principles and mechanisms embodied in the United Nations are enjoying a revival; multilateral arms control, where regional and global negotiations to reduce or eliminate armaments are gaining momentum; changing trade relations; and perhaps even drugs. If democratization creates incentives for cooperation in the new era, it may also help diminish the domestic sources of international conflict. Democracy can help societies cope with the demands of change. It does this by providing mechanisms for articulating the necessity of change, establishing agreed rules to proceed with change, and legitimizing shared sacrifice. At the height of euphoria about “the end of history” and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was common to hear the argument that support for democracy abroad should be enshrined as the central pillar of a postcontainment grand strategy for the United States. But the abrupt eruption of the war in the Gulf and the retreat of reform in the erstwhile Soviet Union have provided a useful corrective to the so-called notion that the United States alone could lead a kind of jihad for democracy and that this would be enough to define the full range of the US global strategy. Democracy promotion in the 1990s has focused largely on what often were called transition initiatives—that is, the shepherding of formerly Communist countries and the less ideologically defined dictatorships in the Global South toward Fukuyama’s promised land. Not surprisingly, in an economically successful tyranny such as China or a politically effective tyranny such as Putin’s Russia, Washington’s idea of democracy transition was viewed as a “regime change.” The ideological fervor fueled the idea that we were all witnessing the birth of a world in which practically everyone on the planet would live under the same political and economic system. There certainly was no historical basis for such a vision. What emerged was what must be called a missionary zeal for the universalization of democracy curated by the United States and its Western allies. Democracy became as much a faith as a system, and in promoting it governments and NGOs were performing their legitimate role.

526

The End of the Cold War and New Challenges to Democracy

One of the most important trends of the past decade, largely unrecognized by the US, is the renaissance of the strong state in countries of the Global South such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka. In the 1980s and 1990s, freewheeling groups such as Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee could operate in many parts of the world almost entirely as they saw fit. But now, even in war zones and during refugee emergencies, local authorities largely have the upper hand. Thus, while Washington may complain that populist leaders in the developing world are resisting outside democracy-promotion efforts because such activities threaten their hold on power, the days are long gone when democracy promotion under Washington’s aegis enjoyed a tremendous amount of leeway. Sooner or later, America will recognize that the global rules of the game have changed, just as it already recognizes its inability to exert much influence over whether China democratizes. During the Cold War, the utility of democracy promotion was clear: it was a weapon in that conflict. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, it was possible to believe a new world order curated by the United States might actually come into being. Understandably, the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States have unsettled the American policy establishment. And Washington has no experience dealing with a successful pushback to its democracy-building ambitions.

Conclusion One can hypothetically believe that the end of the Cold War signified a triumph of the Western style democracy and market economy. The more pragmatic Chinese Communists had understood it a decade earlier when under Deng Xiaoping they had started to reform their economy. Therefore, it may have indeed seemed that at the end of the twentieth century, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, out of the two major competitors only one had stayed in the ring. It seemed that the world, while naturally remaining heterogeneous in many respects, is becoming in some important ways more and more homogeneous. A liberal-democratic future of the world seems to be a distinct possibility. On the other hand, some societies may greatly suffer not only from inadequate methods of promotion of democracy, but also from the failure to understand that a remedy that cures one patient may kill another. Quite a few of exporters of democracy have in mind rather different considerations such as oil, gas, war against terror and strategic advantages and do not give a damn about democracy. Western countries have started to implement programs of democracy promotion without any serious discussion of the readiness of different

Amit Mishra

527

societies to accept these concepts. As with some “importers” of democracy, “exporters” too had mixed motives and sometimes rather naïve understanding of what democracy would mean in specific contexts of these far-away societies. Idealism that often equals to naivety and hypocrisy that sometimes has to pay homage to virtue together with pragmatic approaches are all present in the export-import business of democracy. Naïve approach to democracy promotion is not less dangerous than thoughtless experiments with markets and “shock therapy.” Today, they are contributing, as an ideological cover of a new Great Power confrontation where an “arc of democracies” may face a circle or some other configuration of authoritarian powers. Today, it is clear that the socalled End of History thesis as championed by Fukuyama is not practicable in the foreseeable future. However, the wave of democratization will continue to be a driving factor in international politics. The need to secure democratic transitions in the erstwhile nondemocratic states will remain a priority. The Western democracies cannot afford to ignore these trends. The broad global movement toward democracy does not eliminate the many problems of war and peace confronting the international community. And it creates the preconditions for a more cooperative approach to common international problems. This cooperation may well yet prove to be the foundation of a new world order.

Bibliography Ikenberry, G. John. 1996. “The Myth of Post-Cold War Chaos.” Foreign Affairs 3:79–91. Müllerson, Rein. 2012. “Promoting Democracy without Starting a New Cold War?” Chinese Journal of International Law 7:25–30. Pacalo, Patrick. 2011. Cold war History – Who, What, When, Where and How. Youngstown, Ohio: Publish America, trade paperback. Riff, David. 2005. At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention. New York: Simon & Schuster. Reiff, David. 2013. “Evangelists of Democracy.” National Interest 17:210–214. Roberts, Brad. 1990, ed. The New Democracies: Global Change and U.S. Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Yilmaz, Muzaffer Ercan. 2008. “The New World Order. An Outline of the Post-Cold War Era.” Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relation. Vol. 7, 4:48–54.

CHAPTER TWENTY THE POST-COLD WAR ERA THE DEBATE ON THE GERMAN NATION AFTER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL: CRITICAL OPINIONS ABOUT THE REUNIFICATION COSTANZA CALABRETTA Introduction German reunification in 1990 has often been seen as a foregone conclusion, the only possible one, after the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. This event ended the Cold War, definitely changing the world. The historian Robert Darnton has written that for the GDR the fall of the Berlin Wall was like the storming of the Bastille for the ancien régime in France. With the opening of the borders, SED—the Communist party that had been leading the GDR since 1946—lost its last effective power resource. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, “the fall of the discredited SED dictatorship” (Henke 2005) was inevitable, even if the end of the GDR and the reunification were not. The GDR’s democratization was quickly achieved between December 1989 and January 1990 and brought the German unification issue. The quick ruin of the GDR revealed that it was not possible to establish it as an independent state. This evolution was generated by a number of elements: the GDR citizens’ impression of the Western living standard; the effects of glasnost, underlining the seriousness of the GDR’s economic crisis; the political leaders’ moral discredit after the sequence of revelations about their conduct and about the Stasi.

530

The Debate on the German Nation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

The March 18, 1990 elections, the first free elections in the GDR, became a crucial turning point for the reunification path. The huge victory of the Kohl alliance, Allianz für Deutschland (The Alliance for Germany), which won 48 percent of votes, signified the victory of the fastest proposal for German unity. The GDR citizens gave legitimization to Kohl’s proposal: German unity would be achieved through the 23rd, rather than the 146th article of the constitution. The underrating of other politician movements, from the SPD to the civil ones, not able “to tell people how western-level welfare would have been reached” (Loth 2005), contributed to Kohl’s success. In fact, the SPD took 22 percent of votes, and Bündnis 90—the civil movement party—only 3 percent. The election results affected both internal and international situation. In July 1990, the First State Treaty established an economic and monetary unification, while in September the Second State Treaty established the state unification between the GDR and the FRG. In fact, the new German National Day is celebrated on October 3, the day when the Second State Treaty became effective. On the international level, during the “Two Plus Four” negotiations (the FRG and the GDR, plus France, England, the USA and the USSR— the winners of the Second World War), Germany gained full sovereignty. Gorbachev let the reunited Germany become part of NATO: the Cold War was over. Less than a year after the GDR’s “peaceful revolution,” reunification brought the German issue to an end. We have to remember, nevertheless, that the international community responded ambivalently to the prospect of German reunification. Because of the historical fears of a strong Germany, in 1989 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterand opposed and hesitated before deciding to support the process of German reunification, giving it a European direction. George Bush, who saw the collapse of communism as a chance to reinforce USA influence in Europe, was the real supporter. But the key figure was Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR president. This short synopsis clearly reveals how much, and how fast, the German reunification idea was gaining strength. The GDR citizens sustained it even during the demonstrations after November 9, changing the “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the people) slogan into “Wir sind ein Volk” (We are one people). They also summoned the national GDR anthem’s stanza referring to Germany as a “united homeland.” It was the “turning point within the turning point”: moral and civil revolution “converted and absorbed into the ‘national issue’, become itself a ‘welfare promise’” (Rusconi 1990), as Gian Enrico Rusconi has written. From December, during the demonstrations, the GDR citizens demanded the

Costanza Calabretta

531

same currency of the FRG, the Deutsche Mark—a slogan was “Kommt die DM, bleiben wir; kommt sie nicht, geh’n wir zu ihr!”, which sounds like “The DM comes, we stay; it doesn’t come, we join it!” The March elections marked this transition. Voting for Kohl, as Charles Maier said, outlined “the choice for a future that seemed more concrete … and that boded better in the long distance because it linked East Germany to the strongest European economy” (Maier 1997). But the reunification, and, most of all, the way in which it was achieved, was not unanimously accepted. If we consider the short length of time between November 1989 and March 1990, we can find different unsure and fearful opinions questioning the possible risks of German reunification. The article focuses on the inner German debate: its aim is to point out different opinions that stood out, between 1989/1991, especially among the intellectuals.

Doubts and criticism On November 16, one of the first critical voices rose from the FRG. The Green Party leader, Joschka Fischer, explained that his disagreement with the perspective of the reunification was based on historical and moral reasons. Fischer said: “Bismarck’s German national state, the German Reich, whelmed the world twice in wars that brought inexpressible affliction. The post-conflict order built in Europe after the 8th of May 1945 has a practical target: the violent nationalism chilling fever must never fright Europe again and because of that Germany must never be able to become a great power on the war footing again” (Winkler 2004). Fischer thought that disagreeing with nationalist calls was a democratic duty. The fear of an aggressive and nationalistic Germany’s comeback was the western critics’ leitmotif. These opinions referred to the tragic German history and called upon the “Nazi ghost.” The main example was the position of the writer Günter Grass, who was against the reunification: because of this, he was accused of being a “homeland betrayer.” Grass said: “a man who reflects on Germany and looks for answers to the German issue has to remember Auschwitz. That place of horror, named here as an example of lasting trauma, excludes a future unified German state” (Grass 1990). With this radical historical exemplification, Grass confused the unified state with the totalitarian state, making a wrong connection between unified Germany and Shoah. Rusconi wrote that Grass made an “unbearable logic short-circuit” (Rusconi 1990), arguing that unified Germany was the premise of Auschwitz. Grass was only one of the

532

The Debate on the German Nation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

intellectuals who thought that keeping the division was a way to remember the German fault: the extermination of Jews in Europe. The fall of the Wall, consequently, could have represented a risk for the historical memory of the German people. Müller wrote that with this reasoning many left-wing intellectuals considered the reunification as “an automatic forgetting of the past. Especially, if left-wing intellectuals viewed the division as punishment, unity would amount to amnesty and necessarily be followed by amnesia” (Müller 2000). Grass, taking part at the SPD congress in December 1989, added even another argumentation to his disagreement with German reunification. He thought that unity would represent an inner danger too, because the GDR citizens would inevitably lose their identity and he prophetically declared: “reunited Germany would be a giant afflicted by a lot of complex” (Winkler 2004). He thought that only a confederation between the GDR and the FRG could have given the appropriate resolution to the German issue. United in a confederation and not in a unified state, the two German states could have established a more equal relation. The FRG left-wing intellectuals underlined the risks of reunification basing them on historical and moral considerations, while those in the GDR used social and moral arguments to speak against it; they claimed the GDR’s economic and social model validity and separated this aspect from the political one and from the SED dictatorship. In this way they wanted to save the GDR’s economic and social achievements. They looked for democratization in the GDR’s political life, but not for capitalism of the FRG. On November 26, well-known intellectuals, artists and civil rights movements’ leaders, made a plea called Für unser Land (For our country). In order to get out of the crisis, they wanted the GDR to become an independent state in which peace, social justice, individual freedom, freedom of movement and environmental protection would be granted. They proposed a third option to capitalism and communism, in fact in the plea Für unser Land they said: “we still have the possibility to develop a socialist alternative to federal republic … We can still remember the antifascist and humanitarian ideals from which we come from” (Winkler 2004). The civil movements, which led the autumn 1989 protests, were puzzled and alarmed. Capitalism, consumerism and social climbing became the dark side of a democratic future. The Neues Forum, the main civil group founded in September 1989, warned: “Do not allow yourselves to be pushed from claiming a political rebuilding of society. Be aware of the people who are going to take the advantage of enterprises and

Costanza Calabretta

533

marketplace starting from now on, and be aware of what the social prices are going to be” (Maier 1997). The Neues Forum fit into East German citizens’ mood only lately and not overcoming all its doubts. Its January 1990 program linked the view of German unity to a general European unity, constantly recalling the socialist market economy. Civil movements, involved in the “Central Round Table” (the institution that worked on the GDR’s democratization), opposed the total unification with the FRG, pushing for a larger preservation of the GDR’s specific identity. “The Central Round Table” established a different constitution from the SED dictatorship’s one and from Bonn Grundgesetz, the FRG constitution. They were rushing over to the unity. Modrow (chief of the GDR government, one of the SED reformists) tried to correct this trend proposing, on February 1, 1990, a gradual achievement of German unity. It was the ultimate and unsuccessful effort to grant the GDR the autonomy of internal reforms, which were finally linked to unification, inevitable by that time. The battle over the way to accomplish the unification was important not just technically: it involved “above all two different political approaches and conclusions” (Collotti 1992). It was possible to refer either to article 146 or to article 23 from the Bonn Grundgesetz, which had first been used with the Saar in 1956. The first one meant that the two different states had to draw up a new constitution, giving birth to a third new national identity: it actually meant incorporating the GDR legislation into the Grundgesetz, accepting it as an equal and independent partner. The second one meant the annexation of the East Länder to the state, without changing the Grundgesetz; it was the faster way and the GDR citizens chose this solution via the March elections. This solution was supported by Kohl, and opposed by the SPD: the party endorsed a popular decision to draw up a common German constitution. Different approaches were coexisting in the SPD, from Vogel and Brandt’s patriotic one to Lafontaine’s post-national one. Lafontaine, who was the SPD candidate to the 1990 German elections, thought that German reunification would have been undesirable and even dangerous if separated from the European one. During an interview, in December 1989, Lafontaine defined Kohl’s politics towards the GDR citizens as “Kohlonialismus,” playing with words Kohl and Kolonialismus (colonialism) (Winkler 2004). Lafontaine based his argumentation even on an historical consideration: he thought that the national state and the nation had never corresponded in Germany. After the 18th of March elections, the philosopher Jürgen Habermas developed a complex argumentation, warning Germany against a new form of nationalism: the D-Mark nationalism. Habermas disapproved

534

The Debate on the German Nation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Kohl’s policy, accusing the chancellor for having destabilized the GDR using promises in order to realize the annexation of the state to the FRG. The Frankfurt philosopher was worried about the return of traditional patriotism, hoping that it was finally over in the FRG. A reasonable ground for his fear was Kohl’s hesitation about the issue of the border between Germany and Poland. Habermas had no doubt about the way to accomplish the solution to the German issue: the 146th FRG Constitution article. Only this solution could prevent German citizens from undergoing the reunification process (Habermas 1990). From this short review it is clear that intellectuals, but also the left wing politicians, did not succeed in influencing the German reunification process. Ralf Dahrendorf, summing up the debate, has pointed out that German intellectuals did not come to terms with the concept of nation. The problem was that they “tried to defend—or fight against—the national cause with an unsuitable economic concreteness or an unsuitable cultural vagueness, so that they lost the real meaning of nationality” (Dahrendorf 1990).

The new capital We can find echoes of this debate in the discussion about the future new capital of the united Germany. The Second State Treaty, in August 1990, established Berlin as a new Land and designed the city as the new German capital. Nevertheless, the treaty did not establish which city should be the seat of the German parliament and government. The question of the new German capital stayed open and uncertain. The West Länder preferred Bonn, the FRG’s capital from 1949, to stand as the German capital. Bonn was the seat of the first German democracy that had a successful life, ensuring the FRG’s economic achievements, stable politic institutions and an important role in Europe. Even the reunification has been seen as a symbol for the FRG’s successful life. In Bonn supporters’ opinion, Berlin was related to the most obscure pages of German history: the Prussian militarism, the failure of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi hegemony, the division and the Communist dictatorship. Bonn represented the FRG’s modesty, while Berlin stood for the German bad sides, like the German mania for nationalistic greatness. Bonn was the symbol of the new federal balance, while Berlin represented the symbol of centralistic authoritarianism. It is important to notice that Berlin symbolized the fear of a nationalistic Germany’s comeback, as was argued by the Bonn supporters. We should pay attention to the position of post-socialists, like Oskar

Costanza Calabretta

535

Lafontaine, who supported Bonn, like the CSU party and the majority of parliamentarians from West Germany. On the other hand, the East Länder preferred Berlin for the new German capital, underlining the advantages of its position that could connect Germany and Eastern Europe; in their opinion Berlin could represent the new beginning for Germany after the long division. They also reminded that the city, during the Cold War, was the symbol of the struggle for freedom—in the West sector, but also in the East one, too. The issue about the capital city caused a huge public debate. The pro-Bonn or pro-Berlin voices developed economic, historical and geopolitical arguments. On June 21, 1991, the debate came to an end: the Bundestag decided that Berlin should be the capital of the reunited Germany. Berlin won with a slight majority: only 338 votes against 320 for Bonn. After twenty-three years, Berlin’s role as the German capital gained strength, thanks to its huge urban renovation and its image as a lively and young European metropolis. Berlin symbolizes the new life of Germany as a reunited state, underlined by the expression “Berliner Republic.”

Conclusion After the reunification, the main publicly debated issues were related to the GDR’s history and its social, political and moral life. The reunified Germany had to acknowledge the past of its Eastern part: this process is still going on. Intellectuals’ hesitations about German reunification, the positions against Berlin as the capital, the fear of a nationalistic Germany’s comeback could appear far away in time and without contemporary consequences. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the short length of time, from November 1989 to March 1990, reveals how German reunification was not a foregone conclusion for all the involved political figures: their positions tell much about their political culture and their interpretation of the autumn 1989 events.

Bibliography Collotti, Enzo. 1992. Dalle due Germanie alla Germania unita. Turin: Einaudi. Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1990. 1989. Riflessioni sulla rivoluzione in Europa. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Grass, Günter. 1990. “Brevi considerazioni di un senza-patria.” In Capire la Germania, edited by Gian Enrico Rusconi, 221. Bologna: Il Mulino.

536

The Debate on the German Nation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. La rivoluzione in corso. Milan: Feltrinelli. Henke, Karl-Dietmar. 2005. “1989: la rivoluzione in Germania.” In Italia e Germania 1945-2000, edited by Gian Enrico Rusconi and Hans Woller, 418. Bologna: Il Mulino. Loth Wilfried. 2005. “Mikhail Gorbacëv, Helmut Kohl e la risoluzione della questione tedesca (1989-1990).” In Italia e Germania 1945-2000, edited by Gian Enrico Rusconi and Hans Woller, 426. Bologna: Il Mulino. Maier, Charles S. 1997. Il Crollo. La crisi del comunismo e la fine della Germania dell’Est. Bologna: Il Mulino. Müller, Jan-Werner. 2000. Another Country. German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity. New Haven-London: Yale University Press. Rusconi, Gian Enrico. 1990. Capire la Germania. Bologna: Il Mulino. Winkler, Heinrich August. 2004. Grande storia della Germania. Rome: Donzelli.

THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND THE MODERN CZECH NATION KLÁRA PLECITÁ-VLACHOVÁ The some-what cheerless and intermittent history of the Czech nation, which has passed through the very antechamber of death, gives us the strength to resist any such illusion. For there has never been anything selfevident about the existence of the Czech nation and one of its most distinctive traits, in fact, has been the unobviousness of that existence. —Kundera 1967

The Czech Republic was created twenty years ago by a faultless constitutional division of federative Czechoslovakia. Taking everything into account, the existence of the Czech Republic is not only the result of the successful diplomacy of Czech political representations led by V. Klaus in 1992, and T. G. Masaryk (philosopher and sociologist) in 1918, but also the result of wars of empires—World War I, World War II and the Cold War. The resurrection of the Czech nation, which had “passed through the antechamber of death” during the four hundred years of Habsburg rule, was a deliberate act of a group of intellectuals at the end of the eighteenth century accompanied by arguments for and against. After 1848, Czechs were able to monopolize the Czech/Bohemian identity (Drabek 1992), and in 1918, they were emancipated enough to use the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in World War I to establish an independent state—Czechoslovakia.

Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovakism Behind the rise of Czechoslovakia was the national ideology of “Czechoslovakism,” which referred to a single nation composed of Czechs and Slovaks. Czechoslovakism emerged already in the nineteenth century under the influence of national unification streams in Germany and Italy, or Hungarian nationalism. During World War I it was the basis for the national liberation of the Czechs and Slovaks. It was the most successful conception of Czech and Slovak liberation in the Austro-Hungarian

538

The Czech Republic and the Modern Czech Nation

Monarchy and had a higher transnational content aiming at overcoming provincialism. It was also a state doctrine enshrined in the Constitution of 1920. From a political and national perspective, the creation of one (Czechoslovak) nation was a must, as in Czechoslovakia there were other large ethnic minorities, some (Germans) stronger than the Slovaks. Czechoslovakism represented an ideology for creating a significant majority nation in Czechoslovakia. The connection of two Slavic nations facilitated the emancipation of the Slovak nation, which had been threatened by complete Magyarization before World War I. Czechs took Slovakia as a challenge, or rather a mission—cultural and civilizational. The origin of that mission then dates back to the 1920s when Hungarian civil servants and teachers were replaced by Czech ones. While the Czech nation was formed primarily on a bottom-up cultural basis, the Czechoslovak nation was formed on a civic basis from above, by ruling elites controlling state institutions including the education system, army, etc. In nations formed from above, an important part of the nation-forming process is to assimilate cultural and linguistic minorities into the dominant culture (Bakke 2000). However, once the nation-forming process is completed, membership in a nation is a matter of identification and recognition. Czechoslovakism became an obstacle to the completion of Slovak national self-realization. The idea was much closer to the Czechs, and the Czechoslovak identity gradually weakened under the weight of events—the formation of the Slovak state at the beginning of World War II in 1939, re-establishment of Czechoslovakia with an asymmetrical constitutional arrangement of Czechoslovakia after World War II in 1945, the establishment of a federation in 1969, disputes over the constitutional arrangement of Czecho-Slovakia after 1989, and finally its definitive dissolution on December 31, 1992 (e.g. Musil 1993; Kandert 2000). On July 17, 1992, Slovaks exercised the democratic “right to self-determination” guaranteed by all constitutions of Communist federations and declared independence. Opponents of the common identity were especially recruited from among Slovak Communists and Autonomists. The emergence of nationalism in many countries of Eastern Europe was described as a kind of Communist legacy, but it is necessary to recall that Communist regimes had suppressed (and conserved) all kinds of nationalisms. In Central and Eastern Europe, the concept of nationalism has a very shaky sense, with prevailing negative connotations. The influence of the Leninist concept of “bourgeois nationalism” as opposed to “working class internationalism” is evident there. After the fall of Communist regimes, nationalisms were released out of the bottle like the proverbial genie (Hroch 2012).

Klára Plecitá-Vlachová

539

Territorial identity is an important civic element of national identity. In the Czech case, a territorial conception of what it meant to be Czech coexisted with a cultural-linguistic conception until well after the turn of the nineteenth century (Bakke 2000). The territory of the Czech nation was demarcated by the borders of three historical Czech lands, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, which lost their sovereignty after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, borderlands in 1938, experienced the expulsion of Germans and Hungarians in 1945, and Russian army in 1991 (Hroch 2000). An important event that defined not only the territory of the modern Czech nation happened on January 1, 1969, when the unitary Czechoslovak Socialist Republic became a federation of two national states, the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic. The federalization of Czechoslovakia in the late sixties of the last century is an under-reflected event, which, however, was a prerequisite of the breakup of 1992 and significantly influenced the modern Czech and Slovak national identities. Czechs have gradually taken for granted that there is a Czech nation, one they are not very proud of. The Czech state became the highest entity Czechs (90 percent) identify with, and accession to the European Union (in May 2004) did not change that as only 38 percent of Czechs are identified with the EU. Twenty years after the division of federative Czechoslovakia, Czechs think that the greatest loss of that event was the reduction of the country’s territory and population, while Slovaks talk about economic losses (Bútorová and Tabery 2012).

Czech citizenship When the Czech Republic was formed on January 1, 1993, Czechs gained their own sovereign state and started to search for its new name and national identity. Cosmopolitan pro-EU political elites were not helpful in this process. Although the Czech Republic is not the successor of Czechoslovakia, identification with it is evident there—the flag, the currency, the national anthem, and the national holiday on October 28, Czechoslovakia’s Independence Day, remind them that Czechoslovakia was mainly the Czech political project. In the beginnings, the Czech nation was formed as an ethno-cultural nation from below. Later on, civic universalism prevailed in people’s understanding of the nation. Historians, social and political scientists have often juxtaposed two models concerning the self-image or self-consciousness of a state-nation and its citizens developed by the Czech émigré Hans Kohn (1944): (1) The concept of an “illiberal Eastern” culture-nation means that members of a nation should have their roots in the generations that have

540

The Czech Republic and the Modern Czech Nation

lived in the nation’s territory and share its customs and culture (e.g., language, religion) since childhood. (2) The concept of a “liberal Western” civic-nation means that membership in a nation is based primarily on political criteria, especially citizenship; everybody who obtains citizenship (say, upon his birth in a country) is regarded as a full member of the nation. Pure cultural or civic nations exist in theory. All nation-states began as ethnic and only gradually evolved into civic states. All nation-states are composed of both cultural and civic criteria (cf. Smith 1991; Bakke 2000; Kuzio 2002; Shulman 2002). A nation-forming elite, whether of the ruling type or in the form of a national movement, formulated what it meant to be a nation and worked actively to spread national consciousness to the masses. According to the cultural-civic dichotomy, it is supposed that civic nations are more voluntary than ethnic nations. But in fact, civic nationalism often involved much more coercion than ethno-cultural nationalism. Membership in any nation is a matter of belonging. No one can choose to belong to just any nation in the world. To belong to a nation, we must be born to it or satisfy other criteria of belonging (Margalit and Raz 1995). Membership in the nation rests at the same time on (self-)identification and recognition from the others. Who was recognized as a member of the Czech nation after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia? For institutions of the new state those were the Czech citizens, above all. Czech citizenship was granted according to Act No. 39/1969 Coll., about the acquisition and loss of citizenship of the Czech Republic. The citizenship of the new independent state was intricately determined not only from the immediate place of residence, but also from the place of birth or citizenship of parents (ancestry). Czech citizenship was granted primarily on the basis of the traditional and conservative concept of nation—ethno-nation or culture-nation. Members of the new Czech nation were defined as people having their roots in the Czech territory for generations and who have lived in the nation’s territory since childhood. Ius sanguinis was the dominant prerequisite for becoming a Czech citizen. Special cases—people who were by December 31, 1992, citizens of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, but had no Czech citizenship or the citizenship of the Slovak Republic, were able to choose Czech citizenship by declaration (Act No. 40/1993 Coll.). Some citizens of Slovakia were able to acquire Czech citizenship in a simplified manner by declaration (persons with permanent residency in the Czech Republic since the dissolution of the federation, and their dependent children, dependent children living in nationally mixed families at the time of the dissolution

Klára Plecitá-Vlachová

541

of the federation, and persons who were granted Slovak citizenship). In the abovementioned cases, Slovak citizenship might be retained.

Who is “a true Czech”? Czechs, like other Europeans, consider both ethno-cultural and civic components of their national identity (cf. Vlachová and ěeháková 2009). Membership in a nation is associated with the command of a national language, and the same applies to the Czech nation. Ability to speak Czech is the most important prerequisite of being a true Czech, identification with the nation is the second, and Czech citizenship is the third. Mastering a language is easier for all those having it as their mother language since the birth. Mother language is ascribed, but knowledge of any language might be learned, achieved. Exploratory factor analysis showed that there are three distinct definitions of the Czech national identity—ascribed, achieved (cf. Haller and Ressler 2006), and based on respect to both secular and religious institutions and laws. The first definition consists of birth in the country, citizenship, ancestry, and having lived in the country for the majority of one’s life. The second one contains living in the country, feeling as a Czech person, and mastering the Czech language. These achieved components of national identity are important for citizenship granted to legal immigrants. The Czech Republic is one of the strictest countries in Europe as concerns acquiring citizenship. Moreover, in 2012 the Ministry of Interior proposed an even stricter law that foresees testing applicants for the Czech language and knowledge of the constitution, history and geography. The number of people receiving Czech citizenship has declined rapidly in the last eleven years (from 6321 in 2001 to 1936 in 2011). New citizens come mainly from Slovakia (declaration and naturalization according to special Act No. 40/1993 Coll.), Ukraine, Poland, Russian Federation, and Vietnam. Factor analysis revealed also a third, residual definition of the Czech national identity consisting of respect to political institutions and belonging to any Christian religion. Respect to political institutions usually belongs to the achieved component of national identity, while religion belongs rather to the ascribed component of national identity (cf. Haller and Ressler 2006). Why are these elements of national identity residual in the Czech Republic? The nation-state is a modern political institution possessing the right to use force within a demarcated territory. People belonging to one nation should respect political institutions deciding upon their political destiny. The Czech Republic, like many other European societies, suffers from distrust and disrespect to political

542

The Czech Republic and the Modern Czech Nation

institutions. And moreover, like many post-Communist societies, it suffers from low national pride in the performance of the state.

National identity and religion In many nations (e.g. the Spanish, the Italian, the Polish, the Slovak), religion (Catholicism) is the important part of national identity because it played an important role in shaping the nation. But religion is not equally salient to all nations. The modern Czech national identity is a secular one. In 1921, more than 80 percent of the Czechoslovak population reported membership in the Roman Catholic Church, but the Church was in a very difficult situation in the new-born Czechoslovakia. Its loyal attitude to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (connection between the throne and the altar) led to anti-Catholic sentiments (“Away from Rome!”, cf. Kružíková 2005) symbolized by the toppling of a Marian column at Prague’s Old Town Square. In 1919, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church separated from the Catholic Church and gained popularity by declaring itself as a national church for the new society. The new nation favored secularization, liberalization, and modernization. The anti-Catholic atmosphere was cleared in 1929 during the millennium celebrations of St. Wenceslas when also the St. Vitus Cathedral was completed. However, the status of churches deteriorated after the adoption of church laws in 1949 that put the Communist regime in control over the life of churches and religious communities in Czechoslovakia. All public functions of religion were deliberately suppressed and atheistic propaganda devalued religion as a relic of old times. The era between the years 1948 and 1989 saw a significant decline in the proportion of people in churches, worship attendance, and the proportion of children attending religious education. Catholics now comprise almost 10 percent of the Czech Republic’s population, while 80 percent is non-religious (cf. Hamplová and Nešpor 2009). Religion is probably one of the more restrictive criteria of nationhood. It is possible to change or abandon a religion if it has no consequences. The majority of Czechs do not express any church affiliation and do not attend religious services because they have little meaning for them, but religion (predominantly Catholicism) is still present in their culture, historical memory (through the celebration of Christmas and Easter holidays, and official memorial days for the Christianization of Great Moravia by Saints Cyril and Methodius and the execution of ecclesiastical reformer Jan Hus and St. Wenceslas, etc.), state/national symbols (St. Vitus Cathedral, the Czech crown jewels, etc.), and national identity. An important event in this

Klára Plecitá-Vlachová

543

regard was the conclusion of an agreement in the joint administration of St. Vitus Cathedral in 2010. President Václav Klaus and the archbishop of Prague and Cardinal, Dominik Duka, signed an agreement ending an eighteen-year property dispute over the ownership of the cathedral. The Church lost control of St. Vitus’s Cathedral in 1954. After the fall of Communism, Duka’s predecessor Cardinal Miloslav Vlk initiated a court battle over cathedral ownership. Twice in the past, lower Czech courts ruled in favor of the church, but the last decision of the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state. Archbishop Duka said: “It is clear that this particular property cannot be judged on purely legal grounds. This cathedral is a historical, spiritual, national and cultural symbol dear to the heart of all Czechs—regardless of their faith.”

Conclusion Nations did not form spontaneously, by voluntary adherence and consent. The same truth applies to the Czech nation as well. In the last two hundred years, it passed both historical stages of national evolution—the ethno-cultural one and the civic one. The nation-forming elites formulated (or refused to formulate) what the Czech nation is and what it means to be Czech. Czechs have gradually taken for granted that there is a Czech nation and a Czech state they are not very proud of. They also do not have a high sense of belonging to their compatriots. After more than twenty years of independence, democracy, security, and welfare, they can afford the feeling that they owe less to their fellow compatriots than they owe to foreigners. But the content of national identity is not determined once and for all. It may change under the influence of both external and internal conditions. Results of the analyses based on the data from International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) show that national identities change in all nation-states, including the Czech Republic. And the social organization of identity (including its content) shapes how people view the world and provides a foundation for individual and collective behavior.

Bibliography Bakke, Elisabeth. 2000. “How voluntary is national identity?” Paper presented at the 8. National Political Science Conference, Tromso, Norway. http://folk.uio.no/stveb1/How_voluntary.pdf. Bútorová, Zora, and Paulína Tabery. 2012. “RozdČlení ýeskoslovenska.” 20 let od vzniku samostatné ýR a SR [The division of Czechoslovakia: 20 years since the independence of the Czech Republic and the Slovak

544

The Czech Republic and the Modern Czech Nation

Republic.” Tisková zpráva (Press release)]. http://cvvm.soc.cas.cz/ politicke–ostatni/nazory–obyvatel–na–rozdeleni–ceskoslovenska–3. Drabek, Anna. 1992. “The Concept of ‘Nation’ in Bohemia and Moravia at the Turn of the 19th Century.” History of European Ideas 15:281–302. Haller, Max, and Regina Ressler. 2006. “National and European Identity. A Study of their Meanings and Interrelationships.” Revue francaise de sociologie 47:817–50. Hamplová Dana, and ZdenČk Nešpor. 2009. “Invisible Religion in a ‘Nonbelieving’ Country: The Case of the Czech Republic.” Social Compass 56:581–97. Hroch, Miroslav. 2000. “Národní tradice a identita” [National Tradition and Identity]. In Sborník analytických studií pro Strategický program sociálního a ekonomického rozvoje ýeské republiky [Collection of analytic studies for the Strategic Program of Social and Economic Development of the Czech Republic], 213–28. Rada vlády ýeské republiky pro sociální a ekonomickou strategii. —. 2012. “Nevítaná identita: nacionalismus jako odkaz komunismu?” [An unwelcome identity: nationalism as communist heritage?]. Cahiers du CEFRES N° 14, Spoleþné pohledy na Evropu. http://www.cefres.cz/IMG/pdf/hroch_1998_nevitana_identita_nacional ismus.pdf. Kandert, JiĜí. 2000. “Národní tradice a identita” [National Tradition and Identity]. In Sborník analytických studií pro Strategický program sociálního a ekonomického rozvoje ýeské republiky [Collection of analytic studies for the Strategic Program of Social and Economic Development of the Czech Republic], 229–38. Rada vlády ýeské republiky pro sociální a ekonomickou strategii. Kohn, Hans. 1944. The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background. New York: Macmillan. Kružíková, Jana. 2005. “Mezi ‘Pryþ od ěíma!’ a ‘Modem Vivendi’: z osudĤ katolické církve v ýeskoslovensku za první republiky a za nČmecké okupace” [In between “Away from Rome!” and a “Moddus Vivendi”]. Lidé mČsta 7. http://lidemesta.cz/index.php?id=315. Kundera, Milan. 1967. “NesamozĜejmost národa” [The existence of the Czech nation is not self-evident]. Paper presented at the 4th Congress of the Union of Czechoslovak Writers, Prague, Czechoslovakia, June 27–29. http://www.pwf.cz/rubriky/projects/1968/milan–kundera–speech– made–at–the–fourth–congress–of–the–czechoslovak–writers_897.html. Kuzio, Taras. 2002. “The myth of the civic state: a critical survey of Hans Kohn’s framework for understanding nationalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 25:20–39.

Klára Plecitá-Vlachová

545

Margalit, Avishai, and Joseph Raz. 1995. “National Self-Determination.” In The Rights of Minority Cultures, edited by Will Kymlicka, 79–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Musil, JiĜí. 1993. “Czech and Slovak Society.” Czech Sociological Review 1:5–21. Shulman, Stephen. 2002. “Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the study of nationalism.” Comparative Political Studies 35:554–85. Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Vlachová, Klára, and Blanka ěeháková. 2009. “Identity of non-selfevident nation: Czech national identity after the break-up of Czechoslovakia and before accession to the European Union.” Nations and Nationalism 15:257–82.

THE ALIBI OF MEMORIES: POLITICAL IDEALISM, CULTURE AND IDEOLOGY IN POST-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES EGE CELESTE REINUMA Introduction Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter were dealing with the Soviet Union and used a magnificent word and actions—a containment policy. But they failed. When Ronald Reagan came to office, he opened the door for a more radical agenda—to challenge the Soviets everywhere; economically, politically, militarily, but more over psychologically. It was a breakpoint for the Soviet Union to understand that defeat can be more real than sailing in a victory course. And it was the first invisible rift in the perfectly oiled system. Every action or step from the outside gave a butterfly effect to the Soviet Union, which means that the local political and propaganda system made huge jumps to shape the mind of society—worldview was the target number one. It was not the idea to struggle against the simple things, but as the leaders loved to say: the Sovietologists from the bourgeois society were not able to create a positive and alternative reality instead of socialism and Marxist ideology. Even if they tried to expand their research of socialist reality and politics, they were capable only to provoke hysteria against Soviet society and to organize a new dark war against communism. It was no wonder that there was uncertainty in different economic and political levels and finally until 1990 there was the emergency need to make plans—just to improve socialism with using soft and neutral words: promote, organize and explore.

Ege Celeste Reinuma

547

Ideology Ideology was the most important tool in the Soviet regime. Ideology was the magic toy that restructured the mind of audience, including cultural space and symbols. Remaining faithful to ideology and to the general point of view was the basis of propaganda texts—the purpose was to create a human being who looks in one specified direction. More the local system withstood the political and economic pressure from the outside, stricter and sharper was the ideological content on the agenda of the apparatus to justify the historical revolution with a better structure of society, and prioritize revolutionary heroes, only for a unique image and for the connection to the great victories. Usually this unique image was available only to the local people—it was their daydream to become a kind of a new mankind, ideologically manipulated, but a bit better than other parts of the world. The Soviet Union loved to use examples from their recent history: immortal heroes, the power of victory and revolutionary memories, the stories of a utopian future. According to Teun van Dijk, ideology is a set of social beliefs that are very common to a specific social group. The ideological basic tenets should be universal and also abstract but mostly very substantial for a group (Teun 1998). In that case, Soviet society believed that social facts are the basis of ideological action and a criterion as a starting point and as a result. Theory, propaganda and practice are dialectically connected—the development of society and its ideological-political bond can make a society productive and successful. Therefore, every effort was made only for the control—ideology as a mainstream discourse can control a group of opinions, or attitudes, serve the subordinated groups, evoke the sense of solidarity and organize and support the resistance. It was important that the audience can feel the near-revolution feelings including the Soviet regime conceptions, values and assessments. The new world order with the Socialist regime had to be better, equitable and one-direction only. We have to accept the idea that ideology in Soviet society was more than a part of real life. And it was also propaganda. Propaganda is a wide concept, but its main function is to distribute information, to shape emotional conditions and finally affect the behavior of the audience. Soviet society used propaganda more than eagerly—it was not a taboo that the audience was affected by different ideological-political ways. These systems were quite independent but were connected internally. Believing that the proletariat is the force of progress and advancement, they did not have any reasons to hide their real interests and goals from other levels of society. But turning to propaganda was not bad at all—it

548

The Alibi of Memories: Political Idealism, Culture and Ideology

was a great opportunity to shape the consciousness and to liberate it from the illusions of the bourgeois ideology. Just to avoid mistakes and one-side imaginations. It was important that the working class has a self-perception and understanding of their historical mission; and of course, to fulfill that mission emotionally. It was so simple and so feasible. Even Hegel told that the passion is the most important, without it, great things never happen. It is somehow positive that the goal of propaganda can be a kind of development of intellectual and esthetical feelings. But there is no reason to forget that propaganda in Soviet society was a tool of publicity and informing for the audience, whatever that was supposed to mean. There was ideology, political propaganda and the highly principled Soviet working class. But there was something more—the cultural space of satellite countries had to be changed and improved by the Soviet regime. The cultural space was an absolutely different field—historically and by behavioral pattern, with different symbols and meanings. I can summarize it with the definition of Thomas Eriksen, “culture means skills, understandings and a behavior what the audience usually acquire (Eriksen 1993). The cultural space was a tempting playground for the Soviet system— the former meanings had to replace the new ones or as a matter of fact— the new system had to be reinterpreted. The whole process was a little bit complicated. The Soviet Union satellite countries still remembered their own history and nationality; probably they had so-much-hated bourgeois attitudes that communism tried to take out from their memories, but without any success. The historical and political events in the late 1980s were a kind of mirror effect of Soviet society. The periphery was the first target, which was open to mass-oriented psychological influences. The reason was simple to which attention is easily diverted. The cultural space was ideologically politicized, art and literature were censored and cinema and film had a key role in mass-media landscape. Soviet society “loved” culture because of information, frames and power. And the power, of course, wanted to dominate, no matter how; the resources were seemingly endless. The games of power have to admit that absolutizing everything can lead to the absurd. According to Mark P. Orbe (1998): “Whereas emphasizing commonalities focuses on similarities during communication with dominant group members, mirroring represents an integrative communicative practice that recognizes dominant or subordinate group differences and attempts to downplay those differences. Co-cultural group members who engage in this practice consciously attempt to make their co-cultural

Ege Celeste Reinuma

549

identities less visible and adopt those behaviors and images of the dominant culture. In this regard, members of different co-cultures venture to mirror-reflect to others—the appearance of the dominant culture.” It represented the Soviet dream life with some important extras, like censorship, which was a part of the system and a part of everyday life. The Soviet censorship was entirely peculiar. According to Miranda Remnek, it is possible to find the word “omnicensorship,” which is something new and a very common in the Soviet system. In her essays in the book The Space of the Book she wrote: “It was something entirely new, devoted by soviets, who claimed that there was no such thing as censorship in the Soviet State, not who at the same time implemented a system that permeated the society thoroughly and affected everyone” (Remnek 2011). It was well known that the Soviet censorship was not only a total and large scale activity, but it was subordinated to one main goal with one central interest. But it also followed the aspirations of the power of the apparatus. It is very violent to say that building communism and the aspirations of the apparatus are equal, one of them is a form and the other one a substance. And the main idea of the substance was the empire—to expand and to reinforce it. It was a conqueror’s aggression to the other cultural space, breaking it and filling the vacuum with different alien content. In the middle of the 1980s, the restructuring project—perestroika—had to bring crucial changes to the life of all the Soviet people, to “restructure” the Soviet political and economic system. The policy of Ronald Reagan had crossed the boundaries—the everlasting political and economic race lost its power. The restructuring project opened the Soviet Union to the world, but also led to the economic fiasco and to the fatal division between the Soviets themselves; political and national interests of its parts collided and eventually the great project itself ended with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Some sources point March 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the beginning of project. He indeed was the man who launched it—Gorbachev was the first to use the term in his report on the economic reform delivered just some days after taking the county’s main post. But during the initial period, Gorbachev’s reforms were similar to those of the previous regimes, repeating their fatal mistakes—transforming the already existing Soviet system, the so-called policy of acceleration did not bring any considerable change. Few years later, in the early 1987 the motto became a full-scale campaign and started to produce quite practical results—the reconstructing

550

The Alibi of Memories: Political Idealism, Culture and Ideology

project was actually proclaimed an official state ideology. The economic decline was worsened by political tensions between forces supporting socialism and parties and the movements insisting on capitalist principals. Suddenly the idea of a perfectly functioning Soviet Union was not a future anymore.

Beyond the boundaries In hectic political times with uncertainty in economic and political levels, with unknown future, the great empire was on the crossroads. No matter what the apparatus finally chose, the collapse process was inevitable. Lack of food, hectic transport, closed borders, disappointment, inflation and discontented people made the crisis even deeper. It was a strange turning point for the Soviet Union and there was no idea how to deal with such an issue. Situations like these offered a kind of freedom to touch the boundaries and the first battlefield was history—the revelation of the crimes of Stalinism. Here, the Soviet leaders forgot a simple lesson from Orwell: to control the past over the present is the assumption to control the future. In pre-crisis situations usually the apparatus can bring different, odd decisions that might be a crazy experiment to save something that is not worth saving. The loss of the perception of reality happened to the apparatus a long time ago. But somehow the hectic uncertain situations were a good ground to try to make the illusions real. It was a great opportunity for Soviet satellite countries. The self-financing system was one of them and a perfect idea for many satellite countries. It meant a bit more political and economic independence. But it was also like walking on thin ice—just to fail was an invisible price to pay. For how much they were ready to pay that price? Just the simple wish for a greater economic independence and some control over the state apparatus were leading the whole process in one-way direction—the birth of nationalism, revealing the silent history and mostly the hope for a better tomorrow and the fight for that. It is hard to say, but probably different levels in the Soviet Union’s history caused a breaking point without any reasonable steps for future. Mikhail Gorbachev summarized his speech in 1991 at Khabarovsk: “We are making such a large turn that is beyond anyone’s dreams. No other people have experienced what has happened to us.” The ambition to follow the path of independence and political freedom was unacceptable to the authorities and caused different actions in society: in mid-January in

Ege Celeste Reinuma

551

1988 the whole situation in the state was destructive and the dissatisfaction of the people steadily increased significantly. The local civil initiative was very eager to organize demonstrations to celebrate different local historical events. Instead of that, the local authorities dispatched a militia against the protesters. The authorities used violence, people were beaten and many of them arrested. But it was not the solution, still the political crisis intensified more than ever. The idea to have a perfectly flawless control-mechanism was ruined and worked against the totalitarian regime. A little scratch on a perfect system can prick the eye, it amplifies and it irritates. The authorities were still in confusion and many of the satellite countries started the period with new ideas—initiative groups for the support of the perestroika. It was not a bad idea for all, because both the perestroika and the rate of innovation were the main targets of the Communist Party and also the creation of initiative groups Moscow advocated for quite some time. The changes were not only political or economic, but they also happened in the cultural space. Restoring symbols in the cultural space gave to nationalism a new dimension. The authorities just watched over it quite feebly without any courage to intervene. But it was an ostensible act with greater ideas. The local authorities tried to get the permission from Moscow to organize forces against the masses. The permission was a good idea but it was only an idea. It never became a reality with one simple reason—the Communist Party was afraid to lose the reliability of perestroika. It was very important to show to the West that perestroika as a project was a new direction for the Soviet Union. The internal political processes started with a small but interfering fact—the limitation of the scope of rights for the SU satellite countries. There was a proposition to remove from the constitution a provision concerning the right to step out form the union. The idea like this created protests and also a demand to interrupt the political discussions immediately. The arrogant attitude from the Communist Party made it clear for the satellite countries—step out from the union after radical decisions. Even small achievements did not come easily, and the very simple way of the renunciation of the imperialist power was strangely hurtful. The euphoria of freedom, national emotions and the discovering of the nonSoviet-hybrid identity made the specific period so real. According to Richard Rose (2009) in his book Understanding post-communist transformation, the transformation is different in kind from adaption that the established political systems periodically engage into to maintain their stability. That transformation is a kind of abnormality. It starts with a

552

The Alibi of Memories: Political Idealism, Culture and Ideology

disruption of a steady state. It is a relatively short phase in a country’s history, an interlude between a way of life that has been upset and the establishment of a new way of governing society. There was the treble transformation of the economy, society and the political regime and often of the boundaries of the state as well. After the collapse of the Communist regime, society was moving with fast speed to the next level—to the transformation of society. It was clear what was being left behind, but it was not clear what lay ahead. According to the Hungarian sociologist Elemer Hankiss (1990), “People will have to realize that the fight for free and prosperous society is a much more difficult and complex task than they had imagined in the years and decades of despair and servitude. The golden age of innocence and simplicity has passed.”

Transforming According to Zbigniew Brzezinski (Brzezinski 1967), a transformation period starts when an active political regime can break the boundaries. It happened in the early 1990s for many Soviet satellite countries, including the Baltic ones. The transformation period will end if a state can reach a stabile democracy with a mature political party formation, democratic political culture, solid economic growth, high enterprise culture, independent court system and a highly developed legal culture. As the post-Communist society can achieve different democratic levels, this is no longer the transformation society. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that a state has passed the transformation period if there is a proper political culture. But political culture can summarize and connect different sides, like symbols, values, beliefs, regulations, ratings and rituals. Usually the post-Communist period can be characterized as follows: materiality, masculinity, nationalism, individualism, weak civil culture, and mostly the majoritarian politcal style. Perhaps the national view is so much related to Soviet history that the national ideology now can play a huge role. This role is so strong, that the political apparatus focus more and more to preserve the national symbols rather than to solve socioeconomic issues. Just to solve one problem and not pay attention on the entire society is an abnormal action in general. This behavior caused finally wrong priorities, wrong values, the collapse of educational and cultural space, different problems like the desire to achieve quick results and improvements, the economic crisis and finally the decline of the living

Ege Celeste Reinuma

553

standards. All of these are the reasons of deficiency of motivation and a political perspective. Such kind of political behavior can cause alienation inside a society and the lack or weakness of a civil culture. People have no chance to participate in or affect the political life. Alienation has a domino effect on every level of society, which finally inhibits the quite logical developments. A society needs more time to adapt knowledge and confidence, with the creation of a new self-consciousness, and the challenges of social development run at different speeds. A Soviet satirist Mikhail Koltsov summarized the dream-like Soviet life: “In the land of the Soviets a new type of the comedy is being created—a comedy of heroes. A comedy that does not mock its heroes but depicts them so cheerfully, emphasizes their positive qualities with such love and sympathy that the laughter of the audience is joyful and the members of the audience will want to emulate the heroes of the comedy to tackle the life’s problems with equal ease and optimism.”

Bibliography Elemér, Hankiss. 1990. East European Alternatives. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eriksen, Thomas. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism. London: Pluto Press. —. 1995. Small Places, Large Issues. London: Pluto Press. Orbe, Mark. 1998. Constructing Co-Cultural Theory: An Explication of Culture, Power and Communication. London: Sage Publications. Remek, Miranda. 2011. The Space of the Book: Print Culture in the Russian Social Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rose, Richard. 2009. Understanding Post-Communist Transformation. London: Routledge. Van Dijk, Teun A.1998. Ideology. A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage Publications. Zbigniew, Brzezinski. 1967. The Soviet Bloc. Unity and Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

POISONED SUPPORT? A HYPOTHESIS ON US POLICY TOWARDS YUGOSLAVIA, 1981–1991 CARLOS GONZÁLEZ VILLA Introductory note The aim of this paper is to introduce two lines of argument in relation to US foreign policy towards Yugoslavia during the final stages of the Cold War and the beginning of the post-Cold War era. Yugoslavia’s path, after the death of Josip Broz Tito in 1980, became a challenge for the United States, especially after Slobodan Miloševiü came to power in Serbia and the beginning of the process of independence of Slovenia. Nevertheless, foreign policy towards Yugoslavia during that period was consistent with broader geostrategic approaches. In this paper, I propose as a hypothesis that US ideological and geostrategic rationales, as well as policies derived from them, eased the path for centrifugal forces, therefore contributing to the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation and, concurrently, to the creation of new states adapted to the post-Cold War conditions.

US policy towards Yugoslavia in the Second Cold War The foreign policy of the United States towards federal Yugoslavia during the Cold War was always formulated in terms of supporting its unity and territorial integrity since the Tito-Stalin split in 1948.1 Even after the reconciliation with the Soviet Union in 1955, Yugoslavia remained an important piece in the containment policy and an “unofficial NATO associate member” in the following decades (“Dodging Armageddon …” 1

It should be noted that, in mid 1950, coinciding with the Korean War, the US started a military assistance program and was prepared to use nuclear weapons in case the country was attacked by the Soviet Union: (“Dodging Armageddon …” 2000–2001, 89–91).

Carlos González Villa

555

2000–2001, 92). However, the terminology and particular formulations of the policy suffered changes depending on strategic priorities of the hegemonic power. Thus, the initial relevance of the country started to decline in the late sixties. The support for independence continued, but the détente strategy did not allow that Yugoslavia could become an issue in bilateral relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, coinciding with the early stages of the Second Cold War, an important leap occurred when Jimmy Carter linked the issue of Yugoslavia’s independence to the support of its “territorial integrity and unity” (“Dodging Armageddon …” 2000–2001, 91–92), not excluding the use of military force in case of Soviet attack on the socialist federation. According to the veteran journalist David Binder, the administration’s support for Yugoslav unity was a consequence of the fears that the Soviet Union could manipulate the national question in that country in order to divide it.2 Interestingly, the use of the national question was also an element taken into account by several officials, starting from the National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, at the end of the seventies, considered that, after Tito, the Yugoslav federation could not survive nationalistic tensions between Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.3 In fact, Yugoslavia was imagined as an artificial construction that could only be kept in one piece by supporting Tito or, in his absence, institutions provided in the 1974 Constitution.4 Based on this rationale, President Ronald Reagan issued a National Security Decision Directive on the policy towards Yugoslavia in 1984 (NSDD–133 1984), which was adapted to the aggressive approach towards the Soviet Union5 that originated the Second Cold War.6 In the

2

Binder, David, “U.S. Affirms Backing for Yugoslav Unity,” The New York Times, March 10, 1978 (Quoted in Moþnik 2008, 191). 3 A telephone interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, December 1, 2011. 4 A good example showing this approach could be found in CIA accounts of the situation of Yugoslavia (Director of National Intelligence 1970). Cord Mayer (1980, 294), who held different positions in the agency between 1949 and 1977, summarized CIA’s views. According to him, in 1980 there existed a real possibility that Yugoslavia would disappear as a state and that the dissolution would end up in a civil war between nationalities that would ask for help either Washington or Moscow. 5 The “American New Right” that gathered around the Committee on Present Danger was present in the elaboration of Ronald Reagan’s program and some of its members (like William Casey, Richard Allen, Paul Nitze, Colin Grey, George Schultz or Richard Pipes) were important officers in his administration (Dalby 1990, 151–64).

556

Poisoned Support? A Hypothesis on US Policy Towards Yugoslavia

document, Yugoslavia was considered “an important obstacle to Soviet expansionism and hegemony in southern Europe.” With the aim of preserving its “independence, territorial integrity and national unity,” the president ordered a set of measures, including the promotion of the “trend toward an effective, market-oriented economic structure,” political and diplomatic support and military cooperation initiatives for its defense needs. However, NSDD 133 did not correspond to Yugoslavia’s reality. The document did not address the main political issue in the country: the distribution of power between the republics and the federal government. The Yugoslav systemic crisis had deep roots, but it became increasingly acute since Tito’s death in 1980. In the economic field, the country was suffering the consequences of the oil crisis of the seventies, in terms of the reduction of exportation (Žižmond 1992, 104) and the increase of public debt (Meier 1999, 10). During the eighties, Yugoslavia was immersed in a protracted period of economic stagnation and had greater difficulties in obtaining foreign loans. The International Monetary Fund and Western moneylenders came along with “suggestions” for the liberalization of the economy (Boughton 1989, 434). Nevertheless, attempts were made only by administrative means and avoiding systemic changes in the federation, which were strongly opposed by republican elites. The first attempt, the “Kraigher Committee,” established in 1983 by Milica Planinc’s executive, pointed at the question of excessive decentralization as a problem for economic recovery (Flakierski 1989, 17). According to Jože Mencinger, the failure of this initiative was related to the lack of systemic answers to the problem.7 However, the US political support to the federal government was linked to the preservation of the political status quo in the country. Contrary to the policy towards the Soviet allies in Eastern Europe (NSDD–54 1982), the encouragement of internal liberalization, which would bring closer the actors at the republican and federal levels, was left for the long run (NSDD–133 1984). Yugoslav federal institutions were subject to the geopolitical order of the Cold War. According to Robert Cox, world orders are based on a certain distribution of material power in the world, the capacity of the hegemonic superpower to project a shared image of nature and legitimacy of power relationships and a set of international institutions of universal pretentions (Cox 1981, 135–41). The Cold War order allowed the political 6

In the short term, the goal was to reinforce ideological and military spheres of activity in order to transcend the containment policy, ultimately defeating the Soviet Union (Dalby 1990, 164–67). 7 “The great mistake in the eighties was trying to carry on reforms without changing the basic ideas.” An interview with Jože Mencinger, May 9, 2011.

Carlos González Villa

557

domination of the United States over its influence sphere (Cox 1990, 30– 31), which included the states of the center of the world system and important parts of the semi-periphery and periphery. The political control by the hegemonic power in the Cold War took the form of an informal empire, as US domination was exercised indirectly (Taylor and Flint 2002, 142–56). On the other hand, as Robert Cox stated, US hegemony commanded “a wide measure of consent among states outside the Soviet sphere and was able to provide sufficient benefits to the associated and subordinate elements in order to maintain their acquiescence” (Cox 1981, 144). A commonplace for consent was found in the projection of a static bipolar world that successfully conditioned foreign policies of states in the semi-peripheral area. The US geopolitical discourse was formulated by constructing an antagonistic other as a baseline for identifying itself with the right solution for structural imbalances (Agnew 2005, 121). In this context, the Yugoslav federal government suffered the virulent reactivation of the Cold War in the eighties. The country had to abandon its autonomous political orientation and the leading role in the NonAligned Movement after the beginning of the deterioration of the economic situation in the seventies and started to focus on economic policy issues (Mingst 1984, 307). At the end of the day, the US policy of support for independence and unity through the backing of the Yugoslav status quo was an obstacle to reforms at the federal level in the period when systemic changes were increasingly necessary.

Geopolitical transition to a new world order When George H. W. Bush took office in January 1989, the political processes in the Yugoslav republics were quite advanced, due to the lack of a response from federal authorities to the systemic crisis of the federation.8 The resurgence of nationalism and the questioning of internal borders of the federation characterized the Serbian response to the Yugoslav crisis (Veiga 2004, 57). At the end of 1988, nationalist demonstrations took place in Serbian provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and the Socialist Republic of Montenegro. The leadership of Vojvodina and Montenegro were forced to resign due to popular pressure, whereas Belgrade authorities took the direct control of Kosovar institutions (Veiga 2004, 97). From 1989, after these so-called anti-bureaucratic revolutions,

8 Yugoslavia, as the whole socialist semi-periphery, entered into the period of systemic crisis during the seventies (Wallerstein 1976, 461–62).

558

Poisoned Support? A Hypothesis on US Policy Towards Yugoslavia

Slobodan Miloševiü could count on allies in four out of eight federal entities. Another response was taking place in Slovenia, where different actors started to work in a common national project since the beginning of the 1980s, but in a centrifugal direction. After the federal army intervention in 1988—an episode that triggered the beginning of a nationalist social mobilization cycle—these actors proposed initiatives for the modification of the Slovene Constitution. The amendments were approved in the autumn of 1989 and included the right of Slovenia to secession and opened the door for the celebration of the republican multiparty elections.9 However, US policy was still formulated towards federal institutions despite the fact that regional politics were far more important for the fate of the country. The initial aim was to transform Yugoslavia into a capitalist country by supporting the efforts of Premier Ante Markoviü, who started in 1990 an economic program based on a “shock therapy” approach with the advice of Jeffrey Sachs (1990), known for his recipes against inflation, a chronic problem of the Yugoslav economy at that time. Sachs’ program consisted of two axes. The first was related to the economic reforms of the country involved. According to Markoviü himself, his reforms were the most radical in Eastern Europe.10 Secondly, Sachs considered that Western financial support was a condition for the success of the reforms. However, Yugoslavia did not receive the same treatment as other countries, like Poland, which represented the priority of US policy. Neither the United States, nor the International Monetary Fund and the then European Community, contributed to the financial needs of the Yugoslav federation when it started its reforms program at the beginning of 1990. Several years later, Sachs reminded this and the fact that the Yugoslav government’s request—a stand-by arrangement for its foreign debt—was “modest” considering its efforts (Sachs 2005, 127). According to the American ambassador in Belgrade, the Department of Treasury’s positions were characterized by its “ideological point of view” (Zimmermann 1996, 51), an expression that could be translated as 9

Amendments to the Slovene Constitution included a set of measures, including the sovereign character of Slovenia (Hayden 2000, 33) and opened the door for multiparty elections only at the republican level, forbidding the celebration of federal democratic elections in the republic (an interview with Milan Kuþan, May 6, 2011). 10 Main measures were related to the deregulation of importations, the control of salaries, the liberalization of prices, tax cuts, a restrictive monetary policy and the link of Yugoslav dinar with seven units in relation to the German mark (Tomiü 1990).

Carlos González Villa

559

neoliberal orthodoxy. However, there were exceptions in this policy. Due to a special legislation related to national security issues, the Treasury had to back down several times during 1990 (Department of Treasury 2000). Egypt and Jordan are two good examples of countries that were assisted in order to preserve the US position in critical points during the period of geopolitical transition (Freedom House, 2013). Disparity in the application of foreign assistance policies shaped the capacity of the Yugoslav government to succeed in its particular response to the state crisis. As Francisco Veiga states, “from shock doctrine planning centres, it was only reluctantly assumed that Yugoslavia was a laboratory as important as Poland” (Veiga 2011, 78). According to Robert Hutchings, the director of European Affairs of the National Security Council at that time, policy-makers were not really optimistic about the likelihood of Yugoslavia’s program.11 The pessimism of two veterans in Yugoslav affairs, Lawrence Eagleburger (then Deputy Secretary of State) and Brent Scowcroft (Bush’s National Security Advisor),12 influenced policy formulations towards the socialist federation. What was the element that shaped Yugoslavia’s position from the point of view of the hegemonic power? Economic foreign policy was subject to US geopolitical interests. Therefore, pessimism was more a consequence of a strategic rationale than a matter of capacity. At the end of 1990, the administration received a CIA estimate in which the authors predicted the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the year to come (Director of Central Intelligence 1990). As Hutchings notices, the estimate proved to be right in its analysis, but it did not let the administration take further steps in its policy (Hutchings 1997, 306). Materially speaking, it only paved the way of secessionist republics that were advancing on their plans.13 This behavior could have had a strategic rationale. As Francisco Veiga remarks (2011, 82–85), Yugoslavia could have been a model for inducing the disintegration of the USSR via imitation or contagion.14 11

A telephone interview with Robert Hutchings, November 3, 2011. Both of them, especially Eagleburger, were well known for having strong commercial and emotional ties with Yugoslavia (Binder 1992). 13 It should be noted that the administration had accurate information about the steps taken by Slovenes and Croats (Director of Central Intelligence 1990). 14 There are several clues that lead to this possibility. Actually, Soviet political actors believed that some sort of contagion was plausible. In the interview I held with then Slovenian foreign, Dimitrij Rupel (Interview, May 11, 2011), he stated that Boris Yeltsin encouraged him and his team in August 1990 (when Yeltsin was a leading critic of Gorbachev) to continue with the independence process, so it would be imitated in the Baltic republics. 12

560

Poisoned Support? A Hypothesis on US Policy Towards Yugoslavia

Equally important in the geopolitical transition was the ideological element. In that arena, the US also had to prove its hegemony at the beginning of the unipolar era. I propose that the decision of favoring the Yugoslav dissolution was also based on the proclamation of a New World Order in September 1990 by President Bush (1990). Addressing the Congress, he stated that such an emerging order would be “a new era— freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.” A month later, Blair Dorminey, the director of policy planning of the White House, addressed a memorandum entitled “Yugoslav Disunity and the ‘New World Order’” to Robert Gates, then the deputy national security advisor (Dorminey 1990). In the document, Dorminey suggested a revision of the US official position towards Yugoslavia, stating that an order of “freedom and security built on the rule of law” would be opposed to coercion and violence and, at the same time, would favor movements for selfdetermination and autonomy. At least formally, former Yugoslav states that were recognized by the US in April 1992 (Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) fulfilled the requirements of liberal democracies that the hegemonic power was promoting after the end of the Cold War.

Bibliography Agnew, John. 2005. Geopolítica: una re-visión de la política mundial. Madrid: Trama. Binder, David. 1992. “Eagleburger Anguishes Over Yugoslav Upheaval.” The New York Times, June 19. Accessed August 31, 2013. http:// www.nytimes.com/1992/06/19/world/eagleburger–anguishes–over– yugoslav–upheaval.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. Boughton, James M. 2001. Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979–1989. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund. Bush, George H. W. 1990. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit.” Accessed August 31, 2013. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Toward_ a_New_World_Order. Cox, Michael. 1990. “From the Truman Doctrine to the Second Superpower Detente: The Rise and Fall of the Cold War.” Journal of Peace Research 27, 1:25–41.

Carlos González Villa

561

Cox, Robert. 1981. “Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 10, 2:126–55. Dalby, Simon. 1990. Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics. London: Pinter Publishers. Department of Treasury. 2000. “U.S. Debt Reduction Activities FY 1990 through FY 1999, Public report to Congress.” Accessed August 31, 2013.http://www.treasury.gov/press–center/press–releases/Documents/ debtreduct.pdf. Director of Central Intelligence. 1970. “Yugoslavia: The Outworn Structure.” RSS N. 0048/70. CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Accessed August 31, 2013. http://www.foia.cia.gov/. Director of Central Intelligence. 1990. “Yugoslavia Transformed. National Intelligence Estimate 15–90.” CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Accessed August 31, 2013. http://www.foia.cia.gov/. “Dodging Armageddon: The Third World War that Almost Was, 1950.” 2000–2101. Cryptological Quarterly 19/20, 4–1: 85–95. Dorminey, Blair. 1990. “Memorandum for Robert Gates: Yugoslav Disunity and the ‘New World Order’, October 19.” ID #9008332, NSC Numbered Files, Bush Presidential Library. Flakierski, Henryk. 1989. The Economic System and Income Distribution in Yugoslavia. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Freedom House. 2013. “Country ratings and status, FIW 1973–2013.” Accessed August 31, 2013, http://www.freedomhouse.org/report– types/freedom–world. Hayden, Robert M. 1999. Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Hutchings, Robert L. 1997. American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989–1992. Washington DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Meyer, Cord. 1980. Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA. New York: Harper & Row. Meier, Viktor. 1999. Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise. London: Routledge. Mikuliþ, Albin. 2007. Rebels with a Cause: National Defense Manoeuvre Structure. Ljubljana: RS Ministry of Defense. Moþnik, Josip. 2008. “United States-Yugoslav relations, 1961–1980: The Twilight of Tito’s Era and the Role of Ambassadorial Diplomacy in the Making of America’s Yugoslav Policy.” PhD diss., Bowling Green State University.

562

Poisoned Support? A Hypothesis on US Policy Towards Yugoslavia

“NSDD 54: U.S. Policy toward Eastern Europe, September 2.” 1982. National Security Decision Directives, 1981–1989. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Accessed May 15, 2013. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/NSDDs.html. “NSDD 133: U.S. Policy toward Yugoslavia, March 14.” 1984. National Security Decision Directives, 1981–1989. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Accessed May 15, 2013. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/NSDDs.html. Sachs, Jeffrey. 1990. “What is to be done?” The Economist, January 13. Accessed August 31, 2013. http://www.economist.com/node/13002 085. —. 2005. El fin de la pobreza: Cómo lograrlo en nuestro tiempo. Barcelona: Debate. Taylor, Peter y Colin Flint. 2002. Geografía Política. Economía-Mundo, Estado-Nación y Localidad. Madrid: Trama. Tomiü, Mirjana. 1990. “Ante Markoviü: ‘Necesito cinco años para realizar la reforma económica’.” El País March 3. Veiga, Francisco. 2004. Slobo:Una biografía no autorizada de Miloševiü. Barcelona: Debate. —. 2011. La fábrica de las fronteras: Guerras de secesión yugoslavas, 1991–2001. Madrid: Alianza. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1976. “Semi–Peripheral Countries and the Contemporary World Crisis.” Theory and Society 3, 4:461–83. Zimmermann, Warren. 1996. Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers. New York: Times Books. Žižmond, Egon. 1992. “The Collapse of the Yugoslav Economy.” Soviet Studies Vol. 4, 1:101–12.

THE DEFEAT OF DEMOCRATIC YUGOSLAVISM IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: THE ALLIANCE OF REFORMIST FORCES OF YUGOSLAVIA ALFREDO SASSO The failed multi-party transition in the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia had its crucial moment at the republican elections held in 1990, which were dominated by two kinds of actors: the successors of the republican Leagues of Communists and the ethno-nationalist right-wing parties. A third political field failed to emerge: the democrat-reformist Yugoslavism, calling for a pluralist transformation of a united Yugoslav Federation. This paper focuses on the main political party representing that option, the Alliance of Reformist Forces of Yugoslavia (Savez reformskih snaga Jugoslavije, SRSJ). Particular attention is dedicated to the role of the SRSJ in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the party primarily established and raised greater expectations. How did a multiethnic and reformist party as the SRSJ articulate its proposal, in a context of sharp political polarization and social fragmentation? More specifically, which positions did the SRSJ adopt on the main issues of Yugoslav transition (that is, the economic reform, the institutional framework and the national question) and how did they affect the electoral outcome of the party?

Genesis of a “government party”: Rises and obstacles In an apparent paradox with its strongly civic feature, the Alliance of Reformist Forces showed a strong personalistic identification with its founder and undisputed leader Ante Markoviü. As prime minister of Federal Yugoslavia from March 1989, Markoviü headed a program of radical economic reforms to stop a severe hyperinflation and unemployment crisis. These reforms meant a drastic revision of the socioeconomic Yugoslav model based on self-management, while at the same time attempted to avoid a mere dismantling of social guarantees in a purely

564

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina

neo-liberal perspective. The purpose was the creation of a “new socialism,” a sort of a third way for a Third Yugoslavia inspired by the Scandinavian model of social-democracy.1 The first results were extremely successful, stopping hyperinflation and achieving monetary stability in the first half of 1990. The Yugoslav government regained reputation and authority, after having been marginalized by the republican élites in the previous years. Ante Markoviü gained widespread (albeit not homogeneous) popularity for representing a “neo-Yugoslavist” option with an economic characterization, but also with political and symbolical implications.2 Nevertheless, the republican leaderships of Slovenia, Serbia and (later) Croatia considered the federal government as a common strategic obstacle and an ideological opponent to their (albeit rival) purposes. Moreover, during the first year of his mandate, Markoviü dedicated almost all efforts to the economic domain. Although he envisaged a wholesale political reform of the federal institutions (including calling for the first panYugoslav elections), he did not propose it openly in order to avoid an open conflict with republican élites. Two events undermined Markoviü’s plan. The first was the dissolution of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in late January 1990 after the Fourteenth Congress, as a consequence of the Serb-Slovene definitive rupture. The split aroused further tensions between the republics and overthrew one of the few truly federal institutions, which would have been in charge of promoting constitutional reform at the Yugoslav level. The second obstacle to Markoviü’s project was the victory of the center-right (and openly anti-federalist) parties at the first multi-party elections in Slovenia and Croatia taking place in March and April. After that event, rumors began to circulate about a direct engagement of Markoviü in the political spectrum. The prime minister confirmed these speculations in late May, revealing his intention to establish a government party with a reformist and pro-Yugoslav orientation, running in eventual federal elections.3 Two months later, he finally announced the creation of the “Alliance of Reformist Forces of

1

The anti-inflationary “shock therapy” would have been compensated, in Markoviü’s view, by maintaining different forms of property (private, cooperative, public and mixed) and by granting shareholder rights to workers. 2 According to an opinion poll conducted in May 1990, 72 percent of Yugoslav citizens considered favorably Ante Markoviü. The highest positive consideration was located in Bosnia-Herzegovina (92 percent) and Macedonia (84 percent), the lowest in Serbia (61 percent) and Slovenia (53 percent). “Ante vodi za tri koplija” Osloboÿenje, May 22, 1990. 3 “Markoviü osniva stranku” Osloboÿenje, May 27, 1990.

Alfredo Sasso

565

Yugoslavia” (SRSJ).4 The new party would seek popular legitimation in the remaining republican elections to take place at late autumn 1990. In particular, he expected higher electoral support from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, where an eventual seizure of power could allow the relaunch of the whole reform plan. The historical-ideological spectrum of the SRSJ was quite heterodox, attempting to re-elaborate Yugoslavism in a non-Communist, proEuropean and liberal-democratic way. While introducing the new party’s platform, Markoviü made references to various strongholds of the Titoist era, such as anti-fascism, anti-stalinism and non-alignment, as unquestionable achievements and as the basis of Yugoslav unity. Meantime, he introduced in detail the results of his economic plan, projected towards the future as a base for a whole democratic transition. The new social model would be the base of a common identity, which suggests a parallel with the early Titoist approach to the national question though with completely opposite premises. In fact, in the immediate postwar period, until the early 1950s, the socialist economic transformation had been the key to the (attempted, then failed) creation of an “all-Yugoslav consciousness” (Cohen 1995, 28). Similarly, Markoviü’s vision identified the market transition as a necessary base for recovering a minimum of common values in the Yugoslav federation. The supreme ambition of the SRSJ was to become a true “al-Yugoslav” party (actually, it would be the first after the collapse of the Communist league, since all the others were republican-based), competing in an eventual federal elections. Nevertheless, such elections never took place since Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian leadership obstructed any plan for calling them. The imminence of the republican elections and the different features of each political system forced the SRSJ to adopt a decentralized model of party organization and strategy. Thus, the Macedonian SRSJ was set up as a traditional liberal left-of-center party closer to the former Communists, later joining them in a post-electoral coalition with a progressive and anti-nationalist orientation. Instead, Reformists in Serbia and Montenegro cooperated with other opposition forces to face the postCommunist governments. The Serbian SRSJ did not essentially evolve from a club of anti-regime intellectuals, whilst the Montenegrin branch 4

Ante Markoviü announced the creation of the SRSJ on July 29, 1990 during the celebration of the anniversary of the “Kozara Offensive,” a Partisan uprising that took place in 1942. Kozara is located in northwestern Bosnia, in the municipality of Prijedor. The celebration was traditionally a highly emotive and symbolic circumstance. According to the media, about 100,000 people attended that meeting. “Glas za reforme, glas za buduünost” Osloboÿenje, July 30, 1990.

566

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina

embraced a proper coalition of different parties. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, as detailed below, the Reformists finally opted to organize an autonomous party running alone at the elections. Finally, a federal coordination of the SRSJ barely succeeded to form, due to the short time available and to the peculiar character of Yugoslav multi-party transition.

Great expectations. The Alliance of Reformist Forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina “… The Markoviü’s Reformist Party was like Barcelona, the Football Club Barcelona. They had a Dream Team. But at the end, they failed.” —Zdravko Grebo5

The Yugoslavist dimension of the SRSJ raised great expectations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the republic with the most complex ethnic structure,6 as well as one of the poorest and most dependent on an integrated economy and on budget transfers. At that time, the party system in BosniaHerzegovina was already polarized between national and non-national forces. Natural opponents of the SRSJ were the three nationalist parties corresponding to the “founding peoples,” the Muslim SDA, the Serb SDS and the Croat HDZ.7 Each of them adopted a harsh nationalist rhetoric, claiming the allegedly uneven status of their own community in the political and professional domains. Yet, during the electoral campaign they rarely attacked each other, self-proclaiming themselves as the true defenders of cultural-national pluralism and as the only legitimate representatives of their own communities, following a consociational and hegemonic scheme. On the non-nationalist side, the League of Communists of BosniaHerzegovina (SKBiH)8 could be a potential ally for the Reformists: the 5

Interview by author. Sarajevo, May 15, 2012. According to the census of 1991, the national composition of the population in Bosnia-Herzegovina was as follows: 43.5% Muslims, 31.2% Serbs, 17.3% Croats, 5.5% Yugoslavs, 2.5% other nationalities. 7 Party of Democratic Action (Stranka demokratske akcije, SDA); Serbian Democratic Party (Srpska demokratska stranka, SDS); Croatian Democratic Community (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, HDZ). 8 The League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Savez Komunista Bosne i Hercegovine, SKBiH) during the 1990 electoral campaign also added the denomination of “Party of Democratic Changes” (Stranka demokratskih promjena, SDP). In most of the electoral districts, the SKBiH was in coalition with the Alliance of Democrat Socialists (Demokratski socijalistiþki Savez, DSS), a minor party which also originated from the old regime structure. 6

Alfredo Sasso

567

SKBiH was gradually shifting to social-democracy, while maintaining a multiethnic internal composition and a pro-Yugoslav approach. However, the Bosnian Communists came from a strongly dogmatic and hard-line tradition since the Titoist era, commonly labeled as the “weight of the past.” Furthermore, the Bosnian League of Communists had experienced a sudden power decline since 1987, mainly related to the “Agrokomerc” financial scandal and other corruption or intra-elite affairs. Various reformoriented figures had left the party in the previous years, discouraged with any opportunity of modernizing the league from within. The SKBiH’s opening to economic reform and political pluralism were widely seen as slow and poorly effective, even compared with other republican Leagues of Communists.9 All these features did not fit with Ante Markoviü’s ambition to create a truly innovative political force. The Reformists’ dilemma of how to approach the Communists had also organizational implications. Markoviü had initially omitted to specify whether the SRSJ would be a proper political party or, rather, an umbrellacoalition of non-national forces (eventually including the SKBiH). Markoviü also avoided appointing any leading or coordinating roles for the Bosnian SRSJ, vaguely appealing to self-organization. The Communists tried to make advantage of this vacuum, requesting their own local councils to join the Reformist Alliance and to support its founding process. The first phase of the Bosnian SRSJ’s structuring resulted to be quite chaotic, due to the Communists’ “entryism” and the lack of a party leadership.10 After realizing that this confusion could seriously compromise the party structuring, in mid-August Markoviü appointed a republican presidency, which finally decided to reject the proposals to form a joint progressive front coming from the SKBiH and their minor allies.11 The Reformists aimed to distance themselves from the “weight of 9

In late 1989, reform-oriented wings had taken the control of the League of Communists in Croatia and Macedonia, voting out their respective dogmatic leaderships. Not by chance, in Macedonia the Reformists and the former Communists would closely cooperate, which would not be the case in BosniaHerzegovina. 10 This strategy of “entryism” was later admitted by the then president of the SKBiH Nijaz Durakoviü (“Ravno do dna” Osloboÿenje, October 5, 1990). Some of first Reformists’ local branches initially employed Communists’ offices and infrastructure. In other cases, “outsiders” with few or no previous political engagement, or cadres recently excluded from SKBiH’s ranks (trying to recover their positions) joined the SRSJ. The situation generated troubles as Andjeliü recalls, “There were several cases of two or even more local branches which had self-organized in the same town or village” (Andjeliü 2003, 154). 11 “Jedinstven front SRSJ u BiH” Osloboÿenje, August 15, 1990.

568

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina

the past” that supposedly lied on the Bosnian Communists.12 They were also (too) self-confident to win the election alone, overrating the popular support around Markoviü’s figure, apparently widespread and confirmed by the first pre-electoral surveys.13 Besides the internal electoral assessments, the foreign policy of Ante Markoviü may have been another factor influencing that decision. The prime minister was constantly involved in negotiations with Western governments and international agencies to get financial and political support for Federal Yugoslavia. An eventual alliance of his party with formerly hard-line Communists could have been considered as inappropriate for his international role. Three social categories were mainly represented in the Bosnian SRSJ’s top rank: academic professors, artists-intellectuals and private managers.14 Many of the intellectuals were a sort of “in-out” figures of the former regime who had recently left the SKBiH for critical or openly dissident stances, while businessmen represented the “new class” who should most benefit from Markoviü’s reform. The prominence of the intellectuals within the party extended the moral prestige of the SRSJ, but had also negative consequences on the internal cohesion, as many of them were not so well-disposed to accept internal hierarchies and discipline.15 Moreover, the party was perceived as elitist and poorly attractive, especially for nonurban and less educated strata of the population. The SRSJ delayed, or completely failed to form local branches in some Bosnian municipalities, particularly in rural areas. Still, even in urban domains, the Reformists revealed less able than expected to encourage political participation within its ranks. The rivalry with the Communists had slowed the SRSJ’s organizing process. The 12

Mateljan, Tadej. Interview by author. Sarajevo, May 15, 2012. According to the main pre-electoral polls, Communists and Reformists were the leading parties in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Nevertheless, those polls were not wellbalanced, strongly overweighing the urban, mixed and more educated strata of the population, more inclined to vote for non-nationalist parties (Arnautoviü 1996, 59). 14 The Bosnian Presidency of the SRSJ was composed by twenty-one members. The academics occupied the main charges, as the president was the politologist Nenad Kecmanoviü, then rector of the University of Sarajevo, while the sociologist Džemal Sokoloviü was vice-president. The artists were also well represented in the presidency, with prominent figures such as the film director Emir Kusturica, the actor Josip Pejakoviü and the writer Abdullah Sidran. The singer Goran Bregoviü, though not included in the presidency, was also a high-rank member of the party. Dževad Haznadar was the main representative of the “businessmen” tendency which, despite being poorly represented at the republican top-level, was wellestablished at the local scale. 15 Kecmanoviü, Nenad. Interview by author, Banja Luka, June 27, 2012. 13

Alfredo Sasso

569

Reformists had to reset from zero many of their local branches, recruiting late their electoral candidates. In some social strata the SRSJ had been irreversibly marked as a “continuist” force of former regime structures; in others, on the contrary, as elitist and far-liberal. The very short time available did not help them to articulate their political proposals, while national homogenization and ethnic parties’ mobilization was rising.

A Reformist program in an ethno-political arena The first programmatic milestone of the Bosnian SRSJ was the unconditional support to the federal government’s plan of economic reforms. This was, in their view, a pre-condition for the political reform, a principle of “economy over politics” that looked very close to a technocratic approach. The Reformists’ discourse was strongly centered upon individual merit and on the (foremost economic) “rationality” of the Yugoslavist option, in sharp contrast with the “communitarist” discourse of nationalists.16 Yet, since the second semester of the year 1990, the shortterm benefits of Markoviü’s economic reforms were already declining in the whole federation, especially due to the counteracting policies carried out by Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia. Furthermore, the social costs of economic restructuration, such as the further increase of unemployment and the salary freeze, were especially serious in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Andjeliü 2003, 163). Despite the initial achievements, the program of economic reforms looked not satisfactory to represent a political manifesto in itself. Not by chance, all the parties—including the Bosnian Communists—had generally supported the federal government’s program of reforms and market transition, but they began to sharply attack it when Markoviü became an electoral competitor, as the main responsible for the social situation that, indeed, had deeper and structural causes. The second core principle of the SRSJ was the commitment to Yugoslav unity as a defense of cultural and civic values. However, the Reformists’ position about the institutional order of Yugoslavia had never been officially or clearly defined, although it could appear as de facto profederal. They used to define the debate on the status of Yugoslavia as a “false dilemma” between federalism and confederalism. This lack of clarity was due to the tactical needs of Markoviü’s cabinet that sought to keep the issue open, in order to not permanently damage the relations with the pro-confederalist élites of Slovenia and Croatia. This paradox seemed to bewilder the leaderships and the militants of the Bosnian SRSJ and 16

“Drugovi postali braüa i sestre” Osloboÿenje, October 6, 1990.

570

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina

adversely influenced the coherence of their discourse, while nearly all their main competitors adopted explicit positions on the issue.17 On the national question in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the SRSJ supported a “supra-national” principle, centered upon civic-individual (rather than collective-national) rights (Tanjug 29). Apparently, the intention was to overcome the principle of “national key,” a legacy of the Communist regime, which implied the proportional repartition of posts in political and professional domains, according to national belonging. Nevertheless, the Reformists failed to articulate more precisely this proposal, not clarifying how to balance an integrative identity with national equality. Moreover, neither the Reformists nor the Communists advocated a properly Bosnian identity, although from apparently different premises. The Reformists’ supra-national conception relied on a Yugoslav (rather than Bosnian) basis. Indeed, the Communists maintained the pluri-national approach that had been traditionally applied in the former regime, thus considering BosniaHerzegovina as a republic formed by the three founding peoples (plus the minorities), rather than by a united Bosnian-Herzegovinian people. Meanwhile, the three nationalist parties succeeded in gaining territorial presence and public influence, shifting the attention to the alleged discrimination of their own community as the primary source of the economic disease and social tensions. Furthermore, they reached an electoral agreement that—despite originating from the mere tactical purpose of obstructing Communists and Reformists—effectively transmitted the idea of national parties as allegedly moderate and sincerely democrat forces, able to reach a compromise in favor of common coexistence and the “good neighborhood” principle. These dynamics contributed to a political competition in ethnic terms (Caspersen 2010). The 1990 electoral campaign was the prelude of the “Bosnian ethno-politics,” a model of essentialist multiculturalism based on an absolutist approach to ethnos as a constitutive element of citizenship rights (Mujkiü 2008). The agreement also strengthened the polarization between two fields: the first was composed of united nationalists (with strongly antiCommunist characterization), the second included non-nationalists fragmented between two Yugoslavist options, a traditional one represented by the Communists, and an innovative one represented by the Reformists. This polarization strengthened a typical perception of the “prisoner’s dilemma,” as some authors have already observed. The people from each 17

The SDS and SKBiH were pro-federal (though with different premises), while the HDZ was pro-confederal. Only the SDA maintained an ambiguous position until the elections, before switching to confederalism and, finally, to independentism since mid-1991.

Alfredo Sasso

571

of the three national groups feared that the others would vote for “their own” nationalists, so they would do so, instead of choosing civic parties (Pešiü 1996, Mujkiü 2008). Still, it should be added that a similar prisoner’s dilemma arose at two levels, the Bosnian/republican and the Yugoslav/federal. Nationalist parties had already triumphed in Slovenia and Croatia, and were likely to succeed even in the remaining republics at the forthcoming elections. Therefore, most Bosnian citizens belonging to the three communities preferred to vote for their own nationalists, who would more strongly represent the national interests in the Yugoslav political field. A factor undermining the Reformists’ chances in Bosnia and throughout Yugoslavia was also the obstruction coming by influential Croatian and Serbian media.18 Soon after the SRSJ’s foundation, the Belgrade-based newspaper Politika first launched a series of attacks against Ante Markoviü. Then, it ignored almost completely the SRSJ’s campaigning throughout Yugoslavia. A similar attitude was employed by TV Belgrade as well as by Croatian media such as TV Zagreb and newspaper Vjesnik, while Bosnian media showed a more balanced attitude. Attempts by Markoviü to intervene on the media spectrum were ineffective or came simply too late to counterbalance the nationalist propaganda (Tašiü 1993; Tomaševiü 2007). Finally, the Bosnian elections resulted in an overwhelming victory of the nationalist parties (which got about 70 percent of the votes, 85 percent of seats in the parliament and all the seven members of the collective presidency) and in a complete failure of the Reformists, whose outcome was worse than the one of the Macedonian or Montenegrin branches. Even in urban areas the results of the Bosnian Reformists were unexpectedly low.19 The defeat of the SRSJ provoked its immediate political marginalization and the retirement of several prominent leaders and militants. The poor outcome considerably contributed to the weakening of the role of Ante Markoviü and the Federal Government, due to his strong 18 In large parts of Bosnian territory (especially next to the republic’s borders, but even in urban areas with mixed presence) Bosnian Croats, Serbs and also other citizens generally accessed the press, radio or televised media from Croatia or Serbia, besides those from Bosnia. 19 If we consider the results of the municipal elections, the SRSJ did not achieve 20 percent of elected councilors in any municipality except Tuzla (where they got 35.3 percent of seats). Tuzla is a city with a deep tradition of social movements, civic associations and trade unions, favoring “supra-national” identification. The Reformists obtained 17.5 percent of seats in the Council of Sarajevo, 13 percent in Banja Luka, 11.9 percent in Mostar, 9.4 percent in Zenica.

572

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina

identification with the party.20 Meanwhile, the disagreements between the three governing nationalist parties resulted almost immediately in a political paralysis of political institutions, both at the republican and local level. Within the framework of the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation, this was the prelude to war.

Conclusion The Yugoslav Reformists in 1990 had a very narrow window of opportunity due to several limiting factors, such as the counteracting policies of opponent republics against the federal government (the latter also suffering from a decline in the support from the international community). The political project of Markoviü needed a properly federalscale political transition to succeed (based on the calling for pan-Yugoslav elections), what the federal government had failed to promote. The creation of the SRSJ came after the early elections in Croatia and Slovenia, so that the project of Markoviü looked incomplete, a sort of “rump Yugoslavism.” And a context of the “double prisoner’s dilemma,” both at the Yugoslav and Bosnian scale, considerably damaged the Reformists’ chances. Moreover, other factors contributed to their defeat too. The Reformists’ discourse was based on a certain degree of economism, that is, it was centered on economic reforms whose short-term benefits were already losing effect during the electoral campaign, especially in BosniaHerzegovina. The SRSJ lacked a proper political program about other central issues in order to more intensely challenge its competitors, who proposed sharper visions (although not necessarily more tangible or realistic). The SRSJ was an attempt to combine two urgent strategic needs, finally failing in both. First, it failed to succeed as an “instant party,” having to organize itself in a very short time and competing in an electoral campaign strongly based on emotional factors. Then, the SRSJ failed to reinforce the legitimation of his leader. Ante Markoviü was compelled to act both as a “mediator of interests” and as a political leader at once. Finally, his action proved to be very efficacious in his institutional role as prime minister, but not as such in the political arena. A bad “timing” in the party creation, and a technocratic and little sympathetic approach in discourse and program, revealed to be crucial mistakes in his defeat. 20

Ante Markoviü resigned as federal prime minister in December 1991. In 1992, the SRSJ was transformed into the Union of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Social Democrats (Unija bosansko-hercegovaþkih socijaldemokrata, UBSD).

Alfredo Sasso

573

In other words, the Reformist option came too late to legitimize the role of a Yugoslav “supra-republican” government because of a political frame being already fragmented; yet, it came too early to gain consensus for its very innovative and ambitious proposal of changing the institutional structure and the political culture at once.

Bibliography Andjeliü, Neven. 2003. Bosnia-Herzegovina. The End of a Legacy. London: Frank Cass. Arnautoviü, Suad. 1996. Izbori u Bosni i Hercegovini ‘90: analiza izbornog procesa. Sarajevo: Promocult. Bougarel, Xavier. 1996. Bosnie, Anatomie d’un conflit. Paris: La découverte. Caspersen, Nina. 2010. Contested Nationalism. Serb Elite Rivalry in Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s. New York: Berghahn Books. Cohen, Leonard. 1995. Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia’s Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition. Boulder: Westview press. Djokiü, Dejan, ed. 2003. Yugoslavism. Histories of a Failed Idea, 19181992. London: Hurst & Company. Federal Executive Council. 1990. Yugoslav changes. Address and statements by Ante Markoviü. Belgrade: Jugoslovenski Pregled. González Villa, Carlos. 2010. “El cuestionamiento del nuevo orden mundial. Estados Unidos en el espacio ex yugoslavo, 1991-1995.” Estudios Internacionales de la Complutense 12, 1:31–62. Matteucci, Silvia, ed. 2000. Il nazionalismo: culture politiche, mediazione e conflitto. Ravenna: Longo Editore. Mulaosmanoviü, Admir. 2008. “O politiþkom kontekstu Afere Agrokomerc.” Historijska traganja 1:181–211. Mujkiü, Asim. 2008. We, the Citizens of Ethnopolis. Sarajevo: Centar za ljudska prava. Pešiü, Vesna. 1996. “Serbian Nationalism and the Origins of the Yugoslav Crisis,” Peaceworks 8: 1–48. Sambrò, Virtuts. 2012. Anàlisi de les eleccions de 1990 a la R.S. de Bòsnia i Hercegovina. Madrid: Editorial Académica Española. Savez Reformskih Snaga za Bosnu i Hercegovinu. 1990. Programska Deklaracija SRSJ. Sarajevo: SRSJ za BiH. Savezno Izvršno Veüe. 1990. Program daljih reformi jugoslovenskog društva. Belgrade: SIV. Sekuliü, Tatjana. 2002. Violenza etnica. I Balcani tra etnonazionalismo e democrazia. Rome: Carocci.

574

The Defeat of Democratic Yugoslavism in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Tanjug. 1990. Stranke u Jugoslaviji. Belgrade: Tanjug. Tašiü, Predrag. 1993. Kako sam branio Antu Markoviüa, Skopje: Mugri 21. Tomaševiü, Bato. 2007. Montenegro. Attraverso una saga familiare, la nascita e la scomparsa della Jugoslavia, Trieste: Linz Editoriale. Veiga, Francisco. 2002. La trampa balcánica. Barcelona: Grijalbo. Veladžiü, Sabina. 2011. “Destabilizacija Bosne I Hercegovine krajem osamdesetih godina 20. Stoljeüa”, Historijska traganja, 7:201–29. Woodward, Susan L. 1995. Balkan Tragedy. Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution. Zriliü, Ranko. 1991. Dnevnik presjedniþkog kandidata. Travnik: Borac.

BETWEEN NATIONS AND EMPIRES: CONTEMPORARY REFLECTIONS ON CENTRAL IEUROPE PIOTR CHMIEL The aim of this article is to provide an overview on different roles that were attributed to nations and empires in the idea of Central Europe, as they were presented by certain writers in the second half of the twentieth century. This theoretical concept is a category related to the imaginative politico-cultural geographies. It has been formulated by certain authors coming both from the region and from beyond its traditionally delimited borders. Moreover, at the end of the article, I would like to reflect whether this conception and the criteria used in the description of the region and in defining it may be useful for other similar imagined entities. The political conditions of the 1980s caused a revival of the idea of Central Europe understood as an entity, situated—according to a statement formulated by a Czech writer Milan Kundera (1984, 1)—in a geographical center, the political East and cultural West of Europe. The reflections on the idea, defined in the 1920s and 1930s as Mitteleuropa and associated at that time mainly with a German project of expansion towards the East,1 became in the 1980s a political manifesto, which attempted to present particular features of the regions’ past and defined it as different from both Eastern and Western Europe. Already the title of Kundera’s well-known essay: The Stolen West or the Tragedy of Central Europe shows that Central Europe was expected to be a part of the West, being temporarily occupied by an external force coming from the East. Kundera’s text outlined frames for a definition of the region, by describing it as “the 1

This connotation was attributed to the word “Mitteleuropa” due to a controversial work by Friedrich Naumann under the same title, published in 1915, in the period of strong imperialist attitudes present in the whole Europe. However, the expressions “Mitteleuropa” and “Central Europe” are synonyms; as Halecki (1950, 147) observes, it makes no sense to introduce a difference between these two terms that are actually two linguistic versions of the same notion. In some languages (like German or Italian) it is the world “Mitteleuropa” that is used more frequently.

576

Between Nations and Empires

greatest variety within the smallest space” (Kundera 1984, 3) and presenting it as a “fate” (Kundera 1984, 6) and not as a simple area with well-defined boundaries. Still in the 1980s, in the period of upcoming political changes that shaped the new order of Europe, some other authors like the British historian and commentator Timothy Garton Ash, the Hungarian intellectual György Konrád or Italian writer Claudio Magris focused on the idea of Central Europe and underlined its multinational character and vulnerability to the expansion of different empires, linking the last feature to the region’s “fate.” Actually, the revival of the idea of Central Europe that occurred in the 1980s was prepared by some earlier writings such as Native Realm (1959) by the Polish poet Czesáaw Miáosz or The Limits and Divisions of European History (1950) by the Polish historian Oskar Halecki. Both works were published in English in the 1950s. Moreover, the historical frames of the idea were explained in an essay by the Hungarian historian JenĘ SzĦcs, published in 1981 and translated into French in 1985 as Les trois Europes. The author proposed there his model of understanding of sociopolitical and cultural development of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary and tried to explain the difference between these countries and the development’s patterns of the East and West of Europe respectively. But it seems it was only Kundera’s text to introduce the concept of Central Europe to the Western collective imagery. As probably desired by the followers of the idea, the countries of Central Europe became a part of the political West within 10–15 years after the Eastern bloc’s fall. Paradoxically, the idea of Central Europe did not succeed at a cultural level, since the countries of the region often continue to be defined in the humanities as Eastern European ones. The criticisms towards the idea of Central Europe arrived soon after it had been developed. Perhaps the best known voice of criticism is an essay by Maria Todorova (published in 1997) comparing the imaginative geographies of Central Europe and the Balkans (Todorova 2009, 140–60). Even though the researcher’s arguments seem questionable,2 she is right when she points 2

It is not a right place to discuss Todorova’s essay. Generally, there can be made three reservations: 1) the researcher treats the region in political terms, with only several references related to its history or culture (her essay is based mainly on articles and essays published in IR periodicals or bulletins and newspapers); 2) Todorova’s analysis of some works quoted by her (Halecki, Kundera, Garton Ash) seems to be fragmentary; 3) the researcher seems to overestimate the role of confessional and cultural differences between the Orthodox and Latin traditions of the region when applied to define the difference between Central and Eastern Europe respectively (was it perhaps an influence of the famous Huntington’s work, frequently quoted and discussed in the 1990s?).

Piotr Chmiel

577

out diverging methodological criteria used by various writers for the description of the region. In fact, it may be quite difficult to find a good pattern for a common Central European past, contrary to the Balkans, once dominated by the Ottoman Empire. Then, the definitions elaborated by the aforementioned writers are based on different criteria: historical (as in case of Halecki and SzĦcs), political (as in Garton Ash), cultural (for example in Magris and Miáosz) and even civilizational, i.e. related to some values attributed to the region’s inhabitants (as in Kundera). The notion of Central Europe is used to describe the post-Habsburgian space (as done by Magris)—and this usage remains probably the most common one. But it can be also related to the post-Jagiellonian area (as in the case of Miáosz); to the countries that entered the world of the Latin respublica Christiana in the tenth century (in SzĦcs) or, more generally, to the part of Europe situated between the German and Russian linguistic spaces (in Halecki). Bearing in mind these difficulties, one may ask whether it makes sense to use the term “Central Europe” in cultural studies or historiography. However, the same problem regards other politico-cultural or geographical/cultural constructs, as for example the Mediterranean region (as pointed out in an essay by Herzfeld 2005, 45௅63). The discussions around the term “Central Europe”—and, at the same time, the appearance of some other expressions, like Hannah Arendt’s “belt of mixed populations” (Stasiuk 2006, 82௅83) or Luigi Martinelli’s (2008, 73) “meridian stripe,” which are always related to the region—may prove, in fact, the existence of a need to define a third entity between the Eastern and Western Europe. Trying to encompass the reflections of the abovementioned writers on Central Europe, one may observe that the region is distinguished mainly by its multiethnic and multinational character, also associated with a multitude of confessions present within its borders. For Garton Ash the nations of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy represented a rich and diverse mosaic. Magris (1986, 347) also uses the metaphor of mosaic, referred to the local “nations, peoples, forces and jurisdictions.” Miáosz (1981, 12), on the other hand, observes that the region “could not claim religious homogeneity.” All the authors pay attention to some single long lasting national traditions, memories of remote events or struggles for national independence. In such a context, the Hussite movement (Kundera 1984, 6), the Battle of Mohács (Magris 1999, 336) or the Warsaw Confederation (Halecki 1950, 157) are mentioned. The writers conceptualize the Central European nations as perennial ones (in the meaning attributed to this term by Smith [1999, 5]), considering them communities that inhabited their homelands from the

578

Between Nations and Empires

Middle Ages onwards. According to Garton Ash (1989, 147), the selfperception of these nations is similar to the concept of Kulturnation and not to the idea of nation understood as a modern political creation. In fact, as observed by Konrád (1987, 151), the Leitmotif of the whole Hungarian national history and historiography is the problem of an existence of a Hungarian state. Moreover, the nations of the region are characterized by an antemurale syndrom, i.e. by a firm belief of having served for centuries as a bulwark of a “civilized” world. According to Magris, Central Europe is a “culture of defence,” “a fortress providing safe refuge” (Magris 1986, 181), while Halecki defines the region as a “shield of the whole Europe” (Halecki 1950, 94). Indeed, many national discourses present the respective national cultures of the region as bulwarks saving the rest of the continent from an invasion coming from the East. According to the analyzed writers, the empires are the second group of actors present on the regional chessboard. They represent external forces that came to occupy small homelands of the nations. There are usually presented three empires in question: the Habsburg, the Russian and the Ottoman ones, while the writers do not define as empires the broader multiethnic entities, created by the living in the region itself. These entities (as for example the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Kingdom of Hungary) are described rather as commonwealths. Some authors, usually those who are outside Central Europe, do not even mention these regional multiethnic states. It is only Halecki who dedicates more attention to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a space of “peaceful cooperation of free and equal nations, surrounded by aggressive neighbours,” organized “in a great variety of constitutional forms” (Halecki 1950, 194). The expansion of foreign empires was a moment of the greatest change in the history of the region, affecting seriously the development patterns of its political structures and interethnic relationships. Such perception of the historical changes in the region may be deduced from an essay by Konrád (1987, 62). Moreover, according to the intellectual, the defeat (of the national cultures) was as natural as “a part of the game” performed for centuries among various empires in Central Europe (Konrád 1987, 117). In Halecki (1950, 130, 154–55), the whole regional history is actually an answer, an “agelong struggle,” to the progressing German and Russian expansions, culminated in the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Halecki 1950, 175). However, contrary to the Ottoman and Russian empires, treated as Eastern invaders, the Habsburg Monarchy is perceived by the intellectuals not so much as a powerful and aggressive entity, but rather as a kind of multiethnic network that reshaped the region from a cultural point of view.

Piotr Chmiel

579

According to Magris, the empire facilitated the coexistence of different nations (Magris 1986, 286௅87). It contributed to the interethnic character of the region, understood as the intertextuality of respective national discourses. The cultural role of the Habsburg Monarchy is underlined by Kundera, too (1984, 4). Even SzĦcs, maybe the most critical towards Vienna’s empire among the writers quoted in the present article, appreciates the role of the Habsburg state by underlining the specificity of the Austro-Hungarian absolutism (SzĦcs 1996, 80). In fact, to the quoted writers, the legacy of the Habsburg Empire has been internalized by national cultures of Central Europe. The monarchy became a sort of commonwealth: an empire with a cultural and not a political force. Therefore, this narrative on the Habsburg Empire may be easily read in the context of an “institutional lightness of ancient empires” (as defined by Di Fiore and Meriggi 2011, 123), which aims to rethink the classical concept of empires by opposing them to the nation-states and the latter’s presumed oppressive policies towards internal minorities. This idea, echoing the interpretation of the past undertaken by Serge Gruzinski and Sanjay Subrahmanyan, is used in the discourse of Central Europe as an important and timeless factor, referred not only to the early modern age—as it was done originally by both mentioned scholars—but also to the nineteenth century, traditionally understood as a period of rising nationalisms. Let us ask the final question: may the idea of Central Europe—as defined by the abovementioned authors—be useful beyond the geographical borders of the region? Certainly, it can contribute to the pan-European perception of memory, serving both as an example of long-term multiethnic coexistence and as a kind of warning against effects of policies that could endanger the existing patchwork of nations. In fact, almost all quoted writers mention the impact of the twentieth-century totalitarianisms on the region and its internal ethnic relations. But the memory studies approach applied to Central Europe is a vast field of research and I would not like to dedicate here more space to this question.3 However, when considering the politico-cultural or geographical/cultural perspective, the discourse on Central Europe seems to be very different from diffused postcolonial models of the interpretation of the past. Contrary to them, the region is depicted as an entity that previously belonged to an idealized “empire” (or maybe commonwealth) of the West—being it the Medieval respublica Christiana or the Renaissance/Early Modern Europe—and ceased to be its part only thereafter, when the region became a battlefield between different 3

Cf. the papers presented during the 2012 European Network Remembrance and Solidarity Conference Regions of Memory (Warsaw, 26–28 November 2012), available at the project’s website: http://genealogies.enrs.eu/?page_id=2482.

580

Between Nations and Empires

empires, either included in the “internal” historiographical narratives or excluded from them. This model offers an unusual reflection of continuities and discontinuities in the national discourses on the past. It also shows to what extent some imperial traditions may be appropriated by the nations once living within the boundaries of foreign empires. In fact, it seems very different from the postcolonial rupture with the colonizer’s historiographical or cultural patterns. However, as it seems, this model may be applied only to those regions in which the national narratives of the past internalize—at least to a certain extent—a foreign imperial tradition. It is probable that this kind of interpretation may be found in the cases of the historiographical traditions of the Southern Caucasus nations, especially in Georgian and Armenian ones. In both cases, one may retrace a narrative on cultural affinities with Christianitas/Europe, an antemurale syndrome, as well as “external” Ottoman and Persian imperial traditions. The dissimilarities with Central Europe regard the presence of the Byzantine and Russian imperial and cultural traditions in the Georgian and Armenian interpretations of the past. Moreover, it remains to be clarified whether the Central European discourse may be applied to some other areas, especially when their historiographical or cultural traditions do not focus on nations and national discourses as key elements of a collective identity.

Bibliography Garton Ash, Timothy. 1989. The Uses of Adversity. Essays on the Fate of Central Europe. London: Granta Books. Halecki, Oskar. 1950. The Limits and Divisions of European History. New York: Sheed & Ward. Herzfeld, Michael. 2005. “Practical Mediterranean: Excuses for Everything, from Epistemology to Eating.” In Rethinking the Mediterranean, edited by William V. Harris, 45–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Konrád, György. 1987. Antipolitics: An Essay. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Kundera, Milan. 1984. The Stolen West or the Tragedy of Central Europe. New York Review of Books. 37(7). Here quoted according to: http://www.euroculture.upol.cz/dokumenty/sylaby/Kundera_Tragedy_ (18).pdf. Magris, Claudio. 1986. Danubio. Milan: Garzanti. Martinelli, Luigi. 2008. Fra Oriente europeo ed Occidente slavo. Rome: Lithos.

Piotr Chmiel

581

Meriggi, Marco, and Laura Di Fiore. 2011. World History. Le nuove rotte della storia. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Miáosz, Czesáaw. 1981. Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, D. Anthony. 1999. Myths and Memories of the Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. SzĦcs, JenĘ. 1996. Disegno delle tre regioni storiche d’Europa. Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino. Stasiuk, Andrzej. 2006. Fado. Volovec: Czarne. Todorova, Maria. 2009. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

SOFT POWER AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ALEXANDRA CALIN Soft power and its meaning We know that power it is the ability to do something. In his book, Joseph Nye (2004b, 2) tells us that “power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes one wants.” When we talk about power, we refer to soft and hard power. If everyone knows what hard power means, when we talk about soft power people are reluctant and they often ask about the meaning of this word. Soft power or unseen power became one of the keywords of our days and “it is a kind of creation in international politics” (Li and Hong 2012, 48). It is also known like the second face of power and refers to the capacity of a country to get what it wants without resorting to tangible resources. Joseph Nye (2004b, 5) thinks this term represents the power of getting others to want the outcomes that you want, you co-opt them and you shape the preferences of others without the use of force, violence or coercion. Also, I can tell that soft power is the power that may attract others instead of forcing them to realize the purpose that usually contains the appeal of foreign policy and culture, ideology and political value (Lin, Li and Hong 2012, 59). The soft power of a country results from its culture, political values and its foreign policy at home and abroad. Cultural soft power is the core of power that determines the existence of a national legality and rationality (Wang and Hong 2012, 28). It comes from the cultural identity of a country, traditional aspects, people etc. Despite its benefits, soft power has some limits: some skeptics think that imitation or attraction are not power and they forget the ability to get the outcomes you want without having to force people to change their behavior. Soft power is important when power is dispersed in another country rather than concentrated; sometimes soft power has direct effects on specific goals. Other people object to using this term in international politics because governments are not in full control of attraction and they

Alexandra Calin

583

argue that popularity measured by opinion polls should not be taken seriously (Nye 2004b, 15–18). To make soft power you need to combine three skills that are important for a proper evolution: vision (you must be able to see what are your future needs), emotional intelligence (in this way the leaders channel their emotion in order to attract others) and communication (to spread your soft power you should be able to tell others your ideas efficiently). In conclusion, soft power can help a state to provide value, to attract tourists and to keep favorable relationships with international institutions. Soft power is important for countries because it promotes a peaceful way of having power and influences other states.1

Hard power: The first side of power If we want to make a comparison between soft and hard power, we need to find out more about the last one. This term has a long history and it usually refers to the military capacity of a country. Hard power represents the ability of a state to use the tools of economic and military power to make others to follow its will (Nye 2004a). Also, it can be shown like the ability of a country to compel another to act in ways in which that entity would not have acted otherwise (Wilson 2008). Furthermore when we refer to hard power we talk about military power. In other words, the concept is closely related to the movement of ground forces, naval forces and precision munitions that are able to provide a vital national objective (Campbell and O’Hanlon 2006). This kind of power also refers to the economic part, which plays an important role. For example, the commercial trade embargo that the US imposed on countries such as Cuba, Iran etc. Military intervention is one of the most obvious exercises of hard power and there are a lot of examples when a country uses military power to obtain a specific objective.2 1

For Joseph Nye (2004b, 6) “soft power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument … . It is also the ability to attract, and attraction often leads to acquiescence.” In my opinion, this kind of power is useful for those countries that have great leaders who know how to manage in a profitable way history, cultural aspects etc. 2 For example, in the twentieth century military power was used often for the achievement of specific aims: the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China in order to stop the Boxer Rebellion; in 2003 the United States invaded Iraq in order to satisfy its concerns about Iraq’s weapon capabilities (Bush, 2003–2008).

584

Soft Power and its Influence on the Developing Countries

Even though this kind of power is useful to assure one’s place in the international order, it is necessary to combine it with the use of diplomacy. Hard and soft powers are related because they are both aspects of the ability to achieve one’s purpose by affecting the behavior of others. While one of them attracts and co-opts, the other one threatens and induces. Soft power comes from inherent qualities and the sources for hard power come from threats, intimidation, payment, rewards (Nye 2006).

Soft power and the way it is applied in different states First of all I will try to show how some states have demonstrated that soft power can help them to achieve what they really want. I will start with the Soviet Union, which engaged in a broad campaign during the Cold War to convince the rest of the world of the attractiveness of its Communist system (Nye 2006). In Europe there are a lot of countries that use soft power. For example, many European multinationals have brands with global name recognition, France attracts more tourists than the US, Britain is known for her musicians, and Germany for beer and festivals; the most important European sport is soccer, which is more popular than American football or basketball. The first Asian state where we can talk about soft power is Japan, which is considered to be one of the cultural giants of the world. The first aspect through which the power of this country can be seen is the way in which it combines ancient art with the contemporary one, manga and anime, which are more and more often being borrowed by states such as in the US or in Europe (Nishiyama 2006). Another example can be that of the US, which has applied the soft power theory in all its activities (cultural, economic, historical, political, etc.). This can be noticed from the fact that more and more states from across the world have been adopting ideas promoted by the US, especially those linked to the freedom of expression, legislation, the republican government practices, the way in which immigrants are seen by all races and religions, the educational system, history and American traditions. When we talk about educational system, we refer to the fact that 28 percent of world students are enrolled in the American universities (Nishiyama 2006). Moreover, we can also talk about Canada, which is not a large military power, but it applies the soft power theory that comes from the power of the brand of the country.

Alexandra Calin

585

Also, we can present the North Korean situation, where an important accent on the territorial stake is placed. This state is seen like the purest form of totalitarianism that the human mind has ever invented. I think this kind of governance gives its soft power. North Korea uses military force to manipulate and rule its people. So, here we see how hard power leads and how soft power does not have a real place in creating the international relations of this country. Another state is Taiwan, where the political stake counts because it wants to proclaim independence from China. Taiwan has one of the most developed economies in Asia and in the entire world. This development comes from its industry, international trade and services. In the following lines, we will see the way in which soft power influenced China’s evolution and what are the practices at its basis.

China and soft power theory China is changing in a very alert rhythm, not only economically, but also empirically. The cities conserve their history, and they display modern architectural qualities based on European buildings or original creations famous in the whole world (for example, the Seven Stars Hotel, the Birds’ Nest Stadium, etc.) Recently, a lot of areas have been brought to life by a powerful industrialization, making commerce of any kind possible. In comparison with other nations, China has some unique advantages in extending its unseen power. One of them is represented by cultural heritage, which is now renowned as a major characteristic of East Asia and South-East Asia. Another important aspect is the educational system, which attracts students from all over Asia. Students choose to study disciplines that provide general information about Chinese culture (for example: the Chinese language, art, history, philosophy, traditional Chinese medicine, etc.) (Huang and Ding 2006, 26). Nye considers that art, cuisine and the ancient Chinese culture and tradition have been perceived in the whole world, providing thus that China has a considerable unseen power (Li and Hong 2012, 51). Besides these, China is known also through some contemporary personalities and their performances. The examples are numerous, but we will focus on some of them: in 2000, China won the first Nobel Prize for literature; the player from NBA Yao Ming is considered to be another Michael Jordan; the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the highest grossing foreign language film, etc.

586

Soft Power and its Influence on the Developing Countries

China needs the soft power theory for development, to improve its economy, technology, and army. It seems that this theory has been noticed even in the 1960s when Chinese President Hu Jintao presented the idea of building a new world, proposing a series of policies, which now stand at the foundation of an external strategy based on soft power so that China can secure its place in the international order. The political proposals have been the following (Ding 2008, 197): (1) multilateralism has to be admitted in order to achieve common security with the UN, which plays an important role in the international cooperation for global security; (2) all the nations should encourage and sustain the efforts of resolving disputes and international conflicts through consultation and negotiation; (3) a mutual beneficial cooperation has to be admitted in order to acquire a collective property with the developed countries that have a huge responsibility for a universal development, coordinated and balanced in the world; (4) the spirit of inclusion must be maintained in order to build a world in which all the civilizations coexist harmoniously. Starting with these ideas I can affirm that the unseen power of China comes from the traditional Chinese ideologies, showing that the measures taken for the country to become more developed and to become one of the world powers have been built on the ideas proposed above. The objective of cultural spread is to realize the significance of culture in exchange of global culture and to achieve its own identity among all the cultural classes. In order to improve the spread of cultural effects starting from the soft power theory, we need to consider the creation of an identity value so that it does not take into account the approach. In order to get to this, it is necessary to go through a series of essential steps (Wang and Hong 2012, 31–32): the recognition of sovereign cultural values, the recognition of the cultural values regarding human rights, the recognition of the cultural values in civil rights. While the Chinese have sufficient cultural resources they can exploit, the situation is a bit different regarding its industrial culture. Even though the products made in China are everywhere, this is just less than 6 percent of the global market of industrial culture, in comparison with the US, which has 42.6 percent and Europe with 33.9 percent. In order to solve this cultural deficit, a favorable environment has to be created to encourage the freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas between China and the rest of the world (Huang and Ding 2006, 31). Another point to consider is the relation between China and some important entities of the world: the United States, Taiwan, North Korea and Europe, especially the Euro zone.

Alexandra Calin

587

First of all we will talk about the United States, China and the Euro zone triangle because they are the primary drivers of global growth. In his paper, Dan Steinbock (2013, 108) tells us the following lines “the Euro zone crisis is far from over … . The United States faced a fiscal cliff … . Beijing’s challenges require prudent macroeconomic management … .” We know that the Euro zone crisis is far from over due to the measures that the European leader has taken in the last period. A few examples are austerity policies, the erosion of competitiveness and innovation, some controversial monetary policies and a lot of banks that are facing a crisis of liquidity. In the United States, the fiscal cliff came from the Bush tax cuts, automatic spending cuts, unemployment. In China macroeconomic management can give growth and equity. Here we can talk about a structural reform that includes the boost of consumer spending, the promoting of urbanization and the increase of its quality and, also the investment in infrastructure projects. The relationship between North Korea and China are strictly about interest. North Korea needs China to survive and in this way North Korea assures China’s security. This is the perfect method in which “China can minimise the danger of nuclear weapons or material falling into the hands of non-state actors” (Plant and Rhode 2013, 62–63). I think this strategy is beneficial for China because in this way it focuses to develop the sources of soft power. Furthermore, China helps North Korea to access financial resources in order to prevent the export of nuclear weapons by North Korea. In the last part of the essay, I will show the relationships between the United States and China. As we know, these relations are not very good because there is a real competition between the two states. This refers to economic and military aspects. When we talk about military actions, we are referring to the fact that China is concerned because US military forces have been operating in the international seas and airspace near its territory (Goldstein 2013, 49–55). In this way China is in a permanent alert situation and it must be able to preserve the current relations with North Korea and to prevent it to enter into a military conflict with the US.

Conclusions All in all, I can state that soft power is a relatively controversial term, but it helps a state to create a long-term value. As it has been defined above, it refers to the power that attracts others without forcing them to achieve the purpose that usually contains the important aspects of culture,

588

Soft Power and its Influence on the Developing Countries

external politics, ideologies and political values, the influence of international institutions. Hard and soft powers are two forms of exercise policy. The policy is about promoting national interests and progress is the result of it. Also, I could notice the difference between soft power and hard power. If the first one emphasizes the values, the second one uses physical force. Soft power is not always better than hard power because nobody wants to feel manipulated for the achievement of outcomes that others want. As shown in the lines above, there are states that have been promoting the soft power theory over the years because this is a simple way to attract and manipulate others without using military force. Moreover, China’s power comes from its cultural values that have a major influence on the economy and that sustain a part of external politics. Yet, China has to work a lot on its industrial culture in order to be able to compete in the international markets with the other global powers. Finally, I can say that China’s evolution is mainly due to the effects of soft power and I consider that in the future it should take advantage from them in order to keep its position among the powerful states of the world. In conclusion, I can say that soft power became the key component of states and it plays an important role in the ability of a country to attract others and to maintain its place in the international order.

Bibliography Bush, George W. 2003–2008. Remarks by President Upon Return from Camp David. Washington, DC.: White House Press Release. Campbell, Kurt M., and Michael E. O’Hanlon. 2006. Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security. New York: Basic Books. Ding, Sheng. 2008. “To build a ‘Harmonious World’: China’s Soft Power Wielding in the Global South.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 13/21:93–213. Goldstein, Avery. 2013. “First Things First: The Pressing Danger of Crisis Instability in U.S.–China Relation.” International Security 37/4:49–89. Huang, Yanzhong, and Sheng Ding. 2006. “Dragon’s underbelly: An Analysis of China’s Soft Power.” East Asia 23/4:22–24. Lin, Dan, Li, Wenjuan, and Xiaonan Hong. 2012. “The research on the Soft Power of City Culture.” Studies in Sociology of Science 3/2:59– 62. Li, Lin, and Xiaonan Hong. 2012. “The application and revelation of Joseph Nye’s Soft Power Theory.” Studies in Sociology of Science 3/2:48–52.

Alexandra Calin

589

Nishiyama, George. 2006. “Japan Pitches Pop Culture for Diplomacy.” Reuters, Tokyo. Nye, Joseph S. Jr. 2004a. Power in the Global Information Age: From Realism to Globalization. London, New York: Routledge. —. 2004b. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. —. 2006. “Soft Power, Hard Power and Leadership.” http://www.hks. harvard.edu/netgov/files/talks/docs/11_06_06_seminar_Nye_HP_SP_L eadership.pdf. Plant, Thomas, and Ben Rhode. 2013. “China, North Korea and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons.” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 55/2:61– 80. Steinbock, Dan. 2013. “The Great Triangle Drama: The Euro Zone Debt Crisis, the U.S. Fiscal Cliff, and Chinese Growth Prospects.” American Foreign Policy Interests 35/2:108–18. Wang, Ailing, and Xiaonan Hong. 2012. “The effective spreading of Soft Power in Chinese Culture.” Studies in Sociology of Science 3/2:32–38. Wilson, Ernest J. 2008. “Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616:110–124. L.A.: Sage Publications.

THE ROMANIAN STRUGGLE FOR DÉTENTE INSIDE THE WARSAW TREATY (1955–1965) ANDREEA EMILIA DUğĂ Following World War II, Romania was included within the Soviet sphere of supremacy, reality that marked the country’s history for about fifty years. Therefore, the policy of the Romanian Communist regime was in line with the international political realities having as the main directions subordination to Moscow and obedience to the Kremlin’s decisions. Through COMECON (set up in 1949) and the Warsaw Treaty (created in 1955), Moscow’s domination became absolute (Rijnoveanu 2007). The satellite states began to break away from the USSR and Stalinism, Yugoslavia (with important ominous moments) during 1953–56, East Germany (1953), Poland and Hungary (1956) (Crampton 2002, 305–32; Catanus 2004, 10). In 1953, after the death of Stalin, while talking about Eastern Europe, President Eisenhower considered Romania as “the most soviet” state under the tutelage of the Kremlin (Harrington and Courtney 2002, 153; Sowards 2008, 24). In 1954, the USSR’s proposal for a system of collective security in Europe remained without results, leading to the establishment of the Warsaw Treaty (WT), the existent treaty’ dependence on NATO was emphasized. In 1955, in Warsaw, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance—the Warsaw Treaty was concluded. The Joint Command of the Armed Forces and the Joint Forces Staff were created, with the headquarters in Moscow. In order to bring into effect consultations of the participating states on all important international issues affecting their common interests, (article 3) and for the purpose of examining questions that could arise in the operation of the treaty, a Political Consultative Committee (PCC) was set up (article 6). Political cooperation was achieved between the states participating in the treaty, in the form of consultation, exchange of views in relation to specific situations within the PCC. Between 1955 and 1961, the representatives of other states participated on a regular basis as observers at the conferences of the PCC; thus, officials of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of

Andreea Emilia DuĠă

591

Korea and the Mongolian People’s Republic attended the conference. In 1959, 1964, 1967, 1971 and 1973, no meetings of the PCC were held. In 1956, in Prague, some contingents of the army of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were included, and the regulation of the joint staff was approved. They decided to establish a permanent committee for the elaboration of recommendations on issues of foreign policy and the joint secretariat, headquartered in Moscow. Between 1956 and 1958, Romanian diplomacy made efforts for the withdrawal of the USSR troops from Romania (the armed forces and the KGB) (Sowards 2008). In 1958, Romania opted for its own foreign policy line as a consequence of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from its national territory, and thus the general strategic framework for a role and a distinct place within international policy was set up (Sergiu 1992, 159; Garz 1997, 204–205). In 1958, in Moscow, it was decided to withdraw the Soviet troops from the Romanian territory (Banu and ğăranu 2004, 43–54). The SovietChinese split of 1960 created another opportunity to widen the gulf between Moscow and Bucharest (King 1974). In 1961, in Moscow it was decided to exclude from the meeting the delegation of Albania, on the grounds that their participation was not at the highest level. Since the 1962 PCC Conference, the representatives of Albania have not participated. In 1963, the Soviet proposal to admit Mongolia as a member of the WT, following Romania’s objections that this proposal was going to change the character of the treaty, was no longer a subject for discussion. The causes that led to the end of the WT, a defensive treaty of European regional character, were indicated in the treaty’s preamble, which shows that this was necessary because of the establishment of the Western European Union as a military group, with the participation of Western Germany and because of its entering into NATO. The WT was a body whose existence was determined directly by the lack of a collective security system in Europe. In 1964, the April Statement of the power marks a new stage, when “Romania started on its own way … Gheorghiu-Dej died in March 1965. His successor, Ceauúescu, carried ahead the process of separating Romania [from the Kremlin policy] …” (See, Cornils and Waters 2010; Bowd 2009; Deletant 1995; Moch 1968, 175). Externally, the policy of Bucharest would be conducted according to a comprehensive program with the aim of taking Romania out of the tutelage of Moscow (Watts 2010, 37).

592

The Romanian Struggle for Détente inside the Warsaw Treaty

In September 1965, while paying his first visit to Moscow, Ceauúescu, with a surprising courage, assumed the role of defying the Soviet leaders even in their lair—at the Kremlin (Tismăneanu 2002; Buzatu 2005, 126; Yong 2006). Between 1958 and 1985, Romania’s results were positive and they recorded, under Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceauúescu, mostly an upward trend, but then, after the arrival of Gorbachev at the Kremlin, Ceauúescu’s role as “rather unquestionable” of the West in the East-West dialogue diminished rapidly (1985–89), drastically and dramatically, in a decisive and permanent way. Romania’s policy should be linked with the decline of power in Moscow and the rise of Beijing, with the attitudes of France, the USA, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Italy, Spain and Japan (See, Gripp 1973).1 In 1965, due to the fact that “lately the meetings were held between the representatives of the Central Committee of the PCUS (CC PCUS) and the delegations of some fraternal parties of the participating countries in the WT” during which “the participants emphasized that it is necessary to draw up concrete measures for improving the structure and the mechanism of the organization,”2 a series of measures were suggested. In the Romanian specialists’ opinion, through the elaboration of a statute for the PCC, they aimed to change the legal nature of this structure, that is its transformation from a consultative body, in accordance with the article 6 of the WT, into a deliberative body, capable to make decisions. In other words, the PCC would become a body of foreign policies of the member states of the WT.3 By accepting the deliberative role of the PCC the premises of the existence of a supra-state body that forces the member states of the WT to comply with its decisions would be carried out. The elaboration of a statute for the PCC was not the “the improvement” of the activity, but it aimed at fundamental changes in respect of its essence and structure, ignoring the provisions of the treaty. Based on these

1

“Romania is the only East European country still to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.” (See, Kamm, F. “Romanian Tighten Emigration Curbs,” N.Y. Times, April 29, 1975, at.4, col.4). 2 See, Foreign Ministers Conference of the states parties to the Warsaw Treaty, convened following the letter of the Central Committee of PCUS from January 7, 1966. 3 See, The Conference of Foreign Ministers of the states participating in the Warsaw Treaty, summoned following the letter of the Central Committee of January 7, 1966. Ceauúescu was more disruptive than de Gaulle in NATO (Watts 2010, 214).

Andreea Emilia DuĠă

593

considerations, the Romanian position was to reject the elaboration of a statute of the PCC/PEC. To the proposal of establishing a secretariat of the WT, only one task was agreed upon, that is to convey at due time the materials to be debated, as it was considered to be only a technical structure to be ensured by the state where the meeting was to be held (Retegan 2002, 38). Suggestions for setting up a permanent commission for the elaboration of recommendations on issues of foreign policy were not accepted (Retegan 2002, 43). Regarding the establishment of a subordination of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and of the Joint Staff, it was believed that it was impossible, since they were in the exclusive competence of the member states of the treaty and were not under the PCC jurisdiction.4 Measures that were of utmost importance and that could include liabilities and obligations for the other member states of the treaty called for prior consultations among the member states’ governments. Important actions such as the general disarmament program, the missiles located in Cuba, the draft treaty on the non-dissemination of nuclear weapons were to be consulted among governments, before being conducted. Furthermore, when states participating in the WT took commitments, a preliminary exchange of views had to be taken. With the initiatives of the states concerning international issues that were of utmost importance and that could involve some other states or referred to their interests and their support, consultations among governments was an essential requirement.5 Consultations were necessary not only when points of view coincided, but also when they did not coincide, and it was essential to improve the practice of consultations in the sense of their thorough preparation. The Romanian delegation did not accept the attributions that were to be given to the PCC, to the joint secretariat and to the permanent commission on the basis of the argument that they were founded on the schema and forms used by NATO and other organizations.6 According to the proposal, the elaboration of a statute that sets the political competence and functions of the PCC should take over the problems of applying the WT related to the defense capability and to the joint forces, the appointment of the supreme 4

See, AMAE. Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty. February 10–12, 1966. f.32– 37. Binder, David, “The Cult of Ceausescu,” New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast), November 30, 1986. 5 See, The conference of the deputies of Foreign Affairs Ministers from member states of the Warsaw Treaty, Berlin, February 1966. 6 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty. February 10–12, 1966, f.63– 72.

594

The Romanian Struggle for Détente inside the Warsaw Treaty

commander and of the secretariat general, the organization of permanent commissions and of some other bodies to deal with specific issues. The level of representation was at the highest level, first-secretaries of the parties and heads of government. At the meetings of the committee, the commander-in-chief, the chief of staff and the secretariat general also participate.7 The Romanian intervention, according to the Russian delegation, was opposite to the point of view of the others. The Romanian side said no three times: to the secretariat, to the permanent committee and to the statute. However, in the opinion of the Romanian delegation, the three issues that the Russian delegation referred to were nothing but three formulas within some larger issues: improving contacts and consultations as well as a better preparation of the meetings of the PCC, issues to which they responded positively three times.8 In the opinion of the head of the Russian delegation, Iliciov, the Romanian proposals took back what was agreed upon in 1956, suggesting that the Romanian delegation should develop the Russian proposals and stating that he expected to have discussions with the Romanians only on the issue of drafting provisions of the statute or the secretariat’s various tasks, but not on the issue itself. During negotiations, several proposals to discard some of the issues that faced objections were made. The Soviet side considered essential—the rule of unanimous consent for the decisions of the political committee— that the consultations should be summoned and held with a certain automatism, there should be definite meetings on certain dates and extraordinary ones agreed at the request of a state should be attended by others without objection. In fact, the repositioning of the Soviet party included the basic details of the initial system.9 Three points sparked heated debates both in the drafting committee as well as in the plenary session: the exclusion of Albania, the principle that each state must elaborate its own foreign policy and the unconformity of the other delegations’ proposals with the WT.10 The issue that each state should elaborate its own foreign policy was a hot topic.11 The question of 7

See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty. February 10–12, 1966, f.163– 169. 8 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.15. 9 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.20– 21. 10 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.2231. 11 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.32– 40.

Andreea Emilia DuĠă

595

the non-compliance of proposals related to the statute, to the joint secretariat and to the permanent political commission with the WT was stated by the Romanian delegation; they argued that it required the establishment of a new organization.12 As a reaction to the position of the Romanian delegation, the German delegation presented a second protocol, agreed upon by the other delegations, on a page that had four ideas: sessions were held on the subject of the mechanism and the structure of the treaty; the exchange of views was useful, and as an alternative, a few adjectives (constructive, meaningful) were suggested; the commission shall entrust the delegations to report to their governments what happened, and finally, a new meeting was necessary.13 As a result of the discussions concerning the conclusion of the protocol, it was established that the exchange of views was dealt upon the improvement of the WT, without mentioning other proposals, such as the one of setting up new structures. The fact that the participating delegations would report it to the heads of the party and of the state, not as a task given by the assembly, but as an observation, was reiterated and the conclusion of the works declared.14 As to the proposals of the Romanian delegation, the other delegations did not make any comments. The text of the protocol accepted by the Romanian delegation was not signed by the other delegations. In the end, the strictly factual protocol records the persons who participated in Berlin for an exchange of views on the issue of improving the work within the WT and the fact that they will report to their governments.15 In the assertion of its foreign policy, Romania refused the transformation of the PCC into a deliberative body,16 i.e. into a supra-state body and it also refused the reproduction in a new legal act of the fundamental provisions of the WT, arguing for the importance of 12

See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty. February 10–12, 1966, f.41– 42. 13 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.45– 60. 14 See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.51– 62. 15 See, ANIC, Fund of CC of RCP, Chancellery, file 17/1966, f.11–23. 16 The responsibilities of the PCC regarding consultation is provided in the article 6 of the treaty: “for the purpose of bringing about the consultations provided for in this treaty between the contracting states to the treaty and for the examination of the problems that will arise in connection with the application of the treaty, the PCC is being created.” See, AMAE, Issue 23. 9v 3.1966. Warsaw Treaty, February 10–12, 1966, f.63–72.

596

The Romanian Struggle for Détente inside the Warsaw Treaty

preserving the power of decision at the level of each member state.17 Therefore it required continuity and consistency, setting out the reasons that ever since the entry into force, several proposals and even decisions had been made on improving the work of this organization (Watts 2012, 2).

Bibliography Banu, Florian and Liviu ğăranu. 2004. “Primăvara de la Bucureúti.” Cum s-a adoptat “DeclaraĠia de independenĠă” a României. Bucharest: Enciclopedică Publishing House. Burr, William. 2002. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 66. February 27, 2002. Buzatu, Ion. 2005. Istoria relaĠiilor României cu China din cele mai vechi timpuri până în zilele noastre. Bucharest: Meteor Press. Bowd, Gavin. 2009. La France et la Roumanie communist. Paris: L’Harmattan. Catanus, Dan. 2004. Between Beijing and Moscow. Romania and the SinoSoviet Conflict, vol. I, 1957–1965. Bucharest: National Institute for the Study of Totalitarism. Cornils, Ingo, and Sarah Waters. 2010. Memories of 1968: International perspectives. Bern: Peter Lang. Crampton, R.J. 2002. Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century—And After. Bucharest: Curtea Veche. De Gaulle, Charles. 1971. Discours et messages, tome 5. Paris: Ploan. Deletant, Denis. 1995. Ceauúescu and the Securitate: coercion and dissent in Romania, 1965–1989. London: C. Hurst. Garz, Florian. 1997. Expansiune spre est a NATO. Bătălia pentru Europa. Bucharest: Coru‫ ܊‬Pavel. Georgescu, Titu. 1993. Romania between Yalta and Malta. Bucharest: Casa de Editură úi Proză “ùansa.” Gripp, Richard C. 1973. The Political System of Communism. New York: Dodd and Mead. Harrington Joseph, and Bruce Courtney. 2002. Romanian-American Relations, 1940–1990. Iaúi: European Institute. Herbstritt, Georg, “Eine feindliches Bruderland: Rumänien im Blick der DDR-Staatssicherheit” [An Enemy Fraternal Country: Romania as Perceived by GDR-State Security], Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik, 1. 17

See, ANIC, Fund of CC of RCP, Chancellery, file 17/1966, f.25–26.

Andreea Emilia DuĠă

597

King K. 1974. “The Problems of Romanian Foreign Policy”, 20 Survey: J. East & West Studies 105. Moch, Jules.1968. “Evolution recente de la Roumanie.” La Revue socialiste 210. Retegan, Mihai. 2002. Political War inside the Communist Block. Documents. Romanian-Soviets Relations in the years of the 60’s. Bucharest: Editura RAO. Rijnoveanu, Carmen. 2007. “The Impact of Hungarian Revolution of 1956 on Romanian Political “Establishment.” Proceedings of the RomaniaIsraeli seminar The Crisis of the ‘50s- Political and Military Aspects. Tel Aviv: IDF-Department of History, 6–21. Sergiu, Verona. 1992. Military Occupation and Diplomacy Soviet Troops in Romania. 1944–1958. London: Duke University Press. Sowards, Steven W. 2008. Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History (The Balkans in the Age of Nationalism). Bucharest. Tismăneanu, Vladimir. 2002. “Gheorghiu-Dej and the Romanian Workers’ Party: From De-Sovietization to the Emergence of National Communism.” Working Paper No. 37. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center. Watts, Larry L. 2012. “A Romanian INTERKIT? Soviet Active Measures and the Warsaw Pact ‘Maverick,’ 1965-1989.” Cold War International History Project, Working Papers Series 65. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. —. 2012. “The Soviet-Romanian Clash over History, Identity and Dominion.” Cold War International History Project, Working Papers Series 29. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Xia, Yafeng 2006. “China’s Elite Politics and Sino-American Rapprochement, January 1969–February 1972.” Journal of Cold War Studies 8/4:3–28. Yong, Liu. 2006. Sino-Romanian Relations: 1950’s–1960’s. Bucharest: INST.