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Reconstruction in Central Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Extract
The area of small nations between the Baltic and the Mediterranean has always been exposed to the rivalries and pressures of the Great Powers, due to its strategic and commercial importance, and because of its location on crossroads of conflicting cultures, religions, political and economic systems. A like situation might again arise at the end of the present war when the peasant peoples of these regions find themselves faced with the growing strength of the Soviet socialism and an expanding Western capitalism, whose application of the principles of the Atlantic Charter and of the Four Freedoms might widely differ. The problem of reconstruction of this part of Europe should be examined, therefore, from the point of view of the possibility of reorganizing this zone of perennial friction and insecurity into a politically and economically balanced and stabilized unit, and into a constructive link between the two diverse worlds of ideas and of institutional practices.
The internal political difficulties of these countries, from Poland to Greece, have in the main resulted from the incompatibility of the feudal-like régimes with the growing political activation of the people. The states formed on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire inherited many of its feudal characteristics. In Poland, a military group, landed gentry, and state officials, supported by the Church hierarchy, ruled the country, while the parliament and the written constitution existed only nominally. In Hungary, the landed magnates and gentry were the actual ruling classes, and in Austria medieval scholasticism and clericalism were the ideological and political agents behind the authoritarian régime. Of all succession states, Czechoslovakia alone seemed superficially free of feudal remnants, because this industrially advanced country had an independent and liberal bourgeois class.
- Type
- International Affairs—Problems of Post-War Reconstruction
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1943
References
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7 The clash in Yugoslavia between the “Chetniks” and the “Partisans” and “Green Cadres” is an expression of the sharp conflict which exists between the feudal and the anti-feudal tendencies in that country. This cleavage seems to have deepened as a result of differences in the attitudes taken on this issue by the Soviet Union and by some British and American official circles. The situation in underground Poland is not unlike that in Yugoslavia.
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10 Atlantic Charter, Point 3.
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15 South-Eastern Europe, op. cit.; also R. Bićanić, op. cit., p. 144.
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17 At present, less than one-third of the available labor hours are used in the winter months.
18 This is, for instance, the case of Greece, whose standard of living is higher than in the neighboring countries because of the cultivation of industrial plants and the development of industries processing the agricultural products, especially tobacco and currants (South-Eastern Europe, op. cit., p. 158). This is also the case of the Dalmatian coast, where the peasants are engaged primarily in wine production.
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28 Bosnia-Herzegovina is settled by Croatian-Catholics (23 per cent), Croatian-Moslems (30 per cent), and Eastern Orthodox Serbs (43 per cent).
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30 Polish-Czechoslovak Declaration of Nov. 11, 1940.
31 Ibid.
32 Tomašić, Dinko, “Croatia in European Politics,” op. cit., pp. 81–85.Google Scholar See the same writer's “The Struggle for Power in Yugoslavia,” op. cit., pp. 148–165.
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35 On the importance of the quest for “justice” as a unifying symbol, see Lasswell, H. D., World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York, 1935), pp. 249–250.Google Scholar
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