NATIONALISM IN EAST CENTRAL EUROPE AND CORE-PERIPHERY RELATIONS
This research paper explores aspects of the complex inter-relationships between nationalism, as manifested in East Central Europe, and relations between core and periphery statesin that area within the modern world economic system. The paths nationalism took in East Central Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were strongly, but by no means exclusively, influenced by the nature and content of the interactions between those states and certain great powers. Today, nationalism in the area remains a potent force.
East Central Europe basically comprises the areas which make up modern Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Nationalism is the political expression of the desires of specific ethnic groups or nationalities to achieve self-determination as a nation-state. Core nations are the great powers, the "economically strong, technologically and structural developed" states and the periphery are countries which are relatively "weak . . . [and] structurally backward" (Berend and Raki 125). States in between, into which category fit some of the most dynamic economies in the world, are in the semi-periphery.
Distinctive Features of Nationalism in East Central Europe
In East Central Europe, as contrasted with Western Europe, nationalism moved in directions which were distinct and different in several respects:
(1) strident and inflexible xenophobia or ultra-nationalism which stemmed from long struggles certain groups to attain control over their own destinies. Poles, Czechs and Hungarians had enjoyed long periods of sovereignty before and during the Middle Ages, Poland under its kings, the current Czech states under the ancient crown of St. Wenceslav (Moravia, Silesia and Bohemia) and Hungary under the Magyars prior to the Turkish occupation of 1526-1541. Poland did not recover its independence until 1918. It was subjec...