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Data publikacji: 18.03.2016

Licencja: Żadna

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Artur Patek

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 7 - 12

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Grzegorz M. Kowalski

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 13 - 28

The aim of the article is to show the transformation that took place in the Romanian constitutionalism in the interwar period. The basis for the author’s considerations are selected provisions of the two fundamental laws in force in Romania during this period, that is, the constitutions adopted in 1923 and 1938. These acts have created the foundation for two entirely different political systems – a parliamentary democracy (a parliamentary-cabinet system of government) and authoritarianism (breaking with the principle of the separation of powers for the sake of concentrating all the power in the hands of one authority, that is, the monarch). The political evolution that took place in Romania is part of the broader phenomenon of the crisis of parliamentary democracy in interwar Europe. The dictatorship, proclaimed in 1940 by General Antonescu, with the suspension of the Fundamental Law, defi nitively ended the constitutional period in Romania. The state was transformed into a totalitarian country. In addition, the article also briefl y presents the fundamental laws in force in Romania during the rule of the Communist Party. A broader reference to the practice of governance is made in the summary, in particular as regards the period after the Constitution of 1938 entered into force.

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Marek Bankowicz

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 29 - 59

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the fi rst and many year long President of the Czechoslovak Republic, was the author of an original theory of democracy. In his eyes, politics may not be dominated by issues of power and its derivatives, but should be based on moral principles and creatively serve to solve people’s problems. Democracy, if properly implemented, gradually brings the realization of humanitarian ideals and political diversion to public life and social relations from the politics of power towards the non-political – ethical and scientifi c – politics. A wider popularity of this kind of behaviour, i.e. humanitarian and non-political politics will, over time, lead to a democracy which will cease to be merely a political mechanism and electoral decision-making procedure, and will become a world-view of modern citizens, which of course does not mean that it will take on the form of a new religion.

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Peter Švorc

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 61 - 82

In Czechoslovakia 28 October 1918 was regarded as the date when the state of the Czechs and Slovaks was created. The National Assembly (Národné zhromaždenie) decided that the day would be a national holiday and then it slowly passed into the consciousness of all generations as the day when the Czechoslovak Republic was established. The situation was, however, much more complex. The act of the inauguration of the new state did not mean, in fact, that at this point a new state was established. Much more effort was still needed to do so. By right one can say that Czechoslovakia was established between 28 and 30 October 1918, but in fact this happened at the end of 1918. On the part of Greater Hungary the words by right were clearly of a relative nature, and in the case of Slovakia the term was not at all acceptable. Its aim was to make this act of state-building unrealized. It was also the aim of the actions of Magyar (Hungarian) politics and diplomacy – albeit attempted without success. On the other hand, this way of thinking was also visible in the dynamic state-forming process within the emerging state of Czechoslovakia. It was visible in the way how individual nations and nationalities living in Slovakia understood the dissolution of the monarchy, mainly of Great Hungary, as well as the emergence of Czechoslovakia. Slovaks became the decisive factor in this new situation, as they were the force without which Czechoslovakia would not come into existence. The key issue was how Slovaks would accept the new reality and whether they would identify themselves with the newly established state. It was more than certain that Slovak residents would support the disintegration of Greater Hungary and the emergence of Czechoslovakia – the events which would fundamentally change their position. From a nation condemned to the status of an ethnic group, who, in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century was denied basic national rights, they were going to become a fully-fl edged and state-creating nation. Hundreds of Slovaks in exile had been working to achieve this goal. They were actively involved in the national movement since the beginning of the First World War, Začleňovanie Slovenska do nového štátu a vznik Československa 79 preparing to fi ght and engage in politics in the Czech and Slovak environment. In the country the entire process would be more complex because of the persecution that appeared in the decisive moments of the end of 1918. The Slovak political elite set up a representative political body of the Slovak National Council (Slovenská národná rada) only in October 1918 and in the Martinska Declaration (Martinská deklaracia) of 30 October 1918, they voted in favour of the Czech-Slovak state. Some Slovak citizens established councils and national committees in villages and towns, but most people waited passively for the development of the situation. The Lower Protestant clergy and Catholic priests accepted the pro-Czechoslovakian direction, and at the end of 1918 they opposed their church hierarchy in this respect. The hierarchs had a pro-Hungary orientation and called upon both the clergy and believers to oppose the disappearance of the former Hungarian state. Catholics were threatened with Czech Hussite and anti-Catholic tradition, while Evangelicals were intimidated with the disappearance of Hungarian general ecclesiastical authority, which would mean that Evangelicals in Slovakia would be in the minority. Slovakian offi cials, state employees, teachers, some clergy, lawyers and entrepreneurs all supported Greater Hungary, as they feared that in the new state they would lose their social position. They used the neutrality of the inhabitants, particularly of eastern Slovakia, in order to spread pro-Hungarian propaganda. Eastern Slovakia was one of districts where Slovaks were consciously denationalized, disoriented and intimidated by propaganda for the longest time. At the beginning of November 1918, the East-Slovakian National Council (Východoslovenská národná rada) was established in Prešov and acted as a counterweight to the Martinska Slovak National Council. It worked closely with the Prešov Magyar National Council and was in favour of retaining the whole of Greater Hungary. It organized campaigns supporting old Hungary in Prešov and its surroundings. It also tried to include Slovaks from other parts of Slovakia in its activities, but only those under the aegis of an independent Slovakia, without the Czechs. The activities of the Eastern Slovakia National Council intensifi ed after 11 November 1918, when Slovak pro-Magyar People’s Republic (Slovenská ľudová republika) was proclaimed in Kosice and asked Budapest for help and protection. The actions of the government of the Slovak People’s Republic were closely followed by Budapest, which at the same time hoped that the Slovak National Council in Martin and the Ambassador of the Czechoslovak Government Milan Hodža will opt for a compromise that would satisfy Budapest, for example by reducing the size of the forming territory of Czechoslovakia in the Upper Hungary-Slovakia region or leaving it within its current state. Budapest did not openly support Slovak People’s Republic, not seeing mass support for its representatives. The Slovak Peoples’ Republic, whose capital was to be Prešov, disappeared with the arrival of the Czechoslovak army at the end of December 1918.
Ruthenians living on this territory were Slavs and they were perceived in Czechoslovakia by defi nition as members of the state-forming group. Before the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic Ruthenian residents, apart from a few people from the intelligentsia who in November 1918 founded the Old Lubovna and Presov Ruthenian National Council (Ruska národná rada), did not engage in any state-forming activities. Ruthenian Greek Catholic clergy, which formed the core of national intelligence, were of a mostly pro-Hungarian orientation and encouraged their parishioners to be the same. If one looks at Ruthenians only on Slovak territory, one can see that they quickly embraced the idea of the disintegration of Greater Hungary and although most often passively, identifi ed either with the views of their national representatives concerning creating their own Ruthenian state (Uhrorusínia or Karpatská Rus), or becoming a part of the Slavic Czechoslovakia. Magyars (Hungarians) were in a completely different situation. For them, the creation of Czechoslovakia assumed the proportions of a disaster and this is how they understood it. In Czechoslovakia they would cease to be members of the ruling nation and would fall into the position of an ethnic minority. This concerned about 640,000 Hungarians (according to statistics from 1921, or – 896,271 Hungarians according to Hungarian statistics from 1910) who wanted Greater Hungary 80 PETER ŠVORC to survive and rejected the idea of creating Czechoslovakia. They wanted to use newly established local councils as political tools. Such councils gathered all residents supporting the integration of Greater Hungary and relied on Budapest and Hungarian politicians of that time. They intimidated Slovaks, Jews and Russians on ethnically mixed areas, whom they wanted to pull away from activities against Greater Hungary. Also Hungarian Germans who clearly supported Hungary fi rmly rejected the idea of a new state. Magyarization changed their beliefs successfully, and they did not seem to object to that fact. They perceived Slovaks as a nation of servants and coachmen or people of a lower category, and they did not want to be on the same social level or identify with Slovaks. They rejected the idea of being citizens of a Slavic state in which Slavs (that is, also Slovaks) would be a state-forming nation and Germans, who used to have a higher social status would only be a national minority. Everyone, including about 140.000 people of German nationality (according to Hungarian statistics from 1910 a population of 196,958 Germans and according to Czechoslovakian ones from 1921, a population of 139,900) rejected the notion of a new state.
This became visible at the end of 1918, when the independent Republic of Spiš (Spišská republika) was proclaimed on 9 December in Kežmarok. Representative Germans in Slovakia became its members, inspired by the presidium of the German Upper-Hungarian Council (Hornouhorská nemecká rada). Spiš republic was supposed to be an Upper-Hungarian Switzerland, which would, however, be protected by Budapest. In connection with the approaching Czechoslovak army, Germans of Spiš gave up the idea of creating the Spiš republic, and it soon disappeared. The new state was also rejected by Jews. Jewish residents did not have the same social status as the rest of the citizens of Great Hungary. They were viewed with disdain but, given their economic power, they were not indoctrinated and in comparison with Slovaks they could advance higher in the social hierarchy. In Hungary, Jews found conditions for a tolerable and even successful existence and the country whose structure they knew well turned out to be a better haven in diffi cult moments than the newly proclaimed Czechoslovakia. In this sense, Jews also belonged to those rejecting the Czechoslovak statehood. This was true for 136,000 inhabitants of Slovakia. If we consider only the nationality of the inhabitants of Slovakia as a basis to reject the new state, it appears that out of 2,926,824 inhabitants (data from 1910) between October and December 1918, 1,138,311, or 38.81% of the population were against Czechoslovakia. This data, however, is incomplete, as the number of people who in the fi rst weeks after the end of World War I did not identify with the new state also included the Slovaks and Russians. These were mostly people who were connected to Great Hungary and its state power and joined their further existence with this state. The size of this category is very diffi cult to determine, as it never was statistically captured. František Votruba may help to approximate this number, as in his words during the coup there were only about 1,200 members of nationally oriented Slovak intelligentsia in Slovakia who proclaimed their allegiance to their own nation. If to those 54 per cent of people rejecting Czechoslovakia one adds any other number, it will turn out that in fact up to 50% of Slovakia’s inhabitants were against the disintegration of Greater Hungary and incorporating Slovakia into the Czechoslovak state. This was an argument that could actually weigh on the forthcoming peace conference in Paris. Slovak national activists and Czech politicians were aware of this fact and therefore tried to level internal relations as soon as possible as well as to eliminate external infl uences that could destabilize the new state. That is why on 5 November 1918, politically active Slovaks established the Provisional Government of Slovakia (Dočasné vláda pre Slovensko). On its behalf they offi cially asked for military assistance of Prague in incorporating Slovakia to the new state. This aid was granted to them very quickly. By the end of 1918 Slovakia became a real part of Czechoslovakia, but at least until the signing of the Trianon Treaty of Peace in June 1920, it was a territory with many destabilizing Začleňovanie Slovenska do nového štátu a vznik Československa 81 factors that caused the rejection of the Pittsburgh Agreement (Pittsburská dohoda) of 30 May 1918. The Pittsburgh Agreement, signed by American Czechs and Slovaks and also the future president T.G. Masaryk, validated the autonomous position of Slovakia in the joint Czech-Slovak State.

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Grzegorz Mazur

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 83 - 95

Eastern Galicia (east of the San River), which before the outbreak of World War I was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Volyn, located to the north of Galicia, which was part of Russia is what is meant by Western Ukraine. At that time the political infl uences of Russia and Austria-Hungary clashed in this very region. The paper also discusses confl icts which took place in these lands between the Polish, Ukrainian and Russophile political fractions. After World War II, these lands were included in the Second Republic of Poland and the confl ict between the Soviet Union and Poland was accompanied by an increasing activity of Ukrainian nationalists. During the war they carried out a series of bloody ethnic cleansing campaigns on the Polish population, in particular in Volyn in 1943. These actions, together with the policy of the Soviet authorities immediately after the war was the reason why the Polish population left the territory. These lands were part of the Soviet Union for many years and after its collapse – Ukraine.

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Bohdan Hud'

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 97 - 107

The nature of Ukrainian-Polish confl icts of the 19th and the fi rst half of the 20th century in the Right-bank Ukraine has been analysed. It was emphasized that by the end of World War I, these were confl icts mostly of an ethno-social nature. In the interwar period, they were just as important as the ethno-political confl icts on the territory of East Galicia and especially Volyn, which had been annexed to the Second Polish Republic. In the author’s judgment, the abovementioned requires a deeper unconventional approach to researching the reasons of the so called Volyn Tragedy of 1943–1944.

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Andrzej Kastory

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 107 - 107

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Jan Rychlík

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 109 - 116

In Central and Eastern Europe all multinational states – Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union – failed, because they had no strong unifying idea and their citizens of different nationalities had no common identity unifying them with the state rather than with their nation. After the World War I Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire disintegrated for the same reason. The successor states of Austria-Hungary declared themselves as the nation-states, but in fact they were only smaller copies of deceased Austria-Hungary. They were multinational states based mainly on the language proximity of the particular nations (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Yugoslavia, Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia) and in addition, they had also strong national minorities. It became soon clear that the language proximity is not enough to form the new common identity which would bridge the people of different nationality in the new succession states. The succession states lasted only for roughly two decades. It is true that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia became victims of the Nazi German aggression, but it is highly likely that in the longer period they would disintegrate anyway. After the war both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were restored. According to the Soviet example, Yugoslavia chose the federative model which Czechoslovakia adopted in 1968, too. However, the federation based on national principles proved to be unstable. The limits of federation became soon too narrow for the smaller nations in the federations. After the fall of Communist dictatorship in these countries at the end of 1989, there was no power and no idea to keep these multinational states. The idea of democracy could not span different nations within one state if there was no other spanning idea and common identity. This was the reason why Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia defi nitively disintegrated in the nineties. However, the process of disintegration of multinational states should not be seen as something negative per se because throughout history the states come and go. More important than maintaining existing states are the relations between the new successor states.

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Janusz Józef Węc

Studia Środkowoeuropejskie i Bałkanistyczne, Tom XXIII, 2015, s. 117 - 148

The article focuses on Polish-German relations in the European Union and NATO since Poland’s accession to these two international organizations. The futher analysis confi rms the introductory research hypothesis that both Polish-German bilateral relations, as well as these relations in the European (EU) and Transatlantic (NATO) dimension appear to be positive. On the other hand, real spheres of confl ict have appeared in both of these areas, related to differences in the national interests of both countries, different political priorities or the opposite interpretation of historical events. In the European Union such confl ict spheres were the reform of the political system of the European Union, Eastern Partnership and the common energy policy of the EU. As regards NATO, the confl ict of interests between Poland and Germany concerned the war in Iraq, the dispute over the US missile defense system as well as the Ukrainian crisis. The analysis also showed that in many matters concerning the European Union (eg. the Eastern Partnership, common energy policy, energy security) the positions of Germany and Poland were and still are the result of the relationship of these two countries with Russia. On the other hand, a different approach of Poland and Germany to their relations with the United States resulted in differences in the views of the governments of both countries towards transatlantic cooperation (eg. the war in Iraq, missile defense system).

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