Study Group for Minority History

In this episode, Maciej Górny, Professor of History at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, talks to us about the legacies of the First World War in East, Central and Southeast Europe. Górny draws our attention to the experiences of war along the Eastern Front, an area of study that has still remained largely neglected in contemporary Western historiography. Górny notably demonstrates that the war ultimately determined patterns of inter-state violence that accompanied the formation of the new nation-states in the region. This is followed by a discussion of the role of experts and maps in the process of the social construction of ethnic identities and national minorities in East-Central Europe.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Tamara Scheer, Lecturer in East European and Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, talks to us about ethnic and linguistic diversity in the Habsburg military in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Following Austria-Hungary's political formation in 1867, its broad ethnic diversity was recognised as key to its legal and institutional cohesion. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in the armed forces, which began implementing measures that could better reflect the linguistic diversity of its soldiers, particularly as the Empire's borders expanded southeastwards. However, such measures also highlighted persistent socio-political imbalances between the Dual Monarchy’s Austrian and Hungarian portions.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Alexander Maxwell, Associate Professor in History at Victoria University of Wellington, discusses his research on Habsburg Pan-Slavism, a form of minority linguistic nationalism. While Panslavism is often conflated with Russian expansionism, linguistic Panslavism, as originally propounded in the Habsburg lands in the 1830s and 1840s, emphasised linguistic commonality between speakers of different Slavic "dialects." By 1914 however, linguistic Panslavism had largely given way to the particularist nationalisms that dominated the twentieth century.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Pieter Judson, Professor of 19th and 20th Century History at the European University Institute in Florence talks to Jan Rybak at Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism about the relation between Empire and nation and what they meant for minorities in the Habsburg Empire and its successor states. Judson speaks about how both imperial institutional practices and nationalists’ activism invented minorities in a decidedly multinational/ethnic/linguistic space. With the downfall of the monarchy nationalists aimed to make the category ‘nation’ the bedrock of their new states, leading to often disastrous consequences for those who could not identify with the titular majority nation. Pieter discusses the long-term trajectories of imperial practices and nationalist politics and ideologies and what they meant for minorities in the former Habsburg space.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Orlando Figes, Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, discusses ethnic and religious diversity in the late Russian Empire and its impact on the outcome of the 1917 revolutions in the broader historical sense. Orlando also highlights important, and often overlooked, issues of continuity between Imperial Russian and early Soviet history in relation to nationality and minority concerns, and the benefits of following a transnational approach when it comes to studying modern Russia’s history and culture.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, John Paul Newman, Associate Professor in Twentieth-century European History at Maynooth, National University of Ireland, discusses his ongoing research into the lives and experiences of physically disabled military veterans in the Former Yugoslavia during the inter-war and Cold War eras. Despite receiving official and public praise for their sacrifices in the First and Second World Wars, former soldiers often struggled to reintegrate into civilian life, frequently coupled with inadequate state welfare provision. This, in turn, gave rise to a partial sense of social identity among disabled veterans, one with the potential to transcend ethnic and historical divisions.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Boerries Kuzmany, assistant professor for Habsburg and East European History at the University of Vienna, talks to us about ethnic and religious diversity in the Habsburg province of Galicia, specifically the city of Brody located today near Ukraine’s border with Poland.

Boerries is also the principal investigator for the “Non-Territorial Autonomy as Minority Protection in Europe” project, funded by the European Research Council. He explains the concept of non-territorial autonomy and its potential for minority protection. Originally articulated by Austrian Social Democrats at the turn of the 20th century, the idea of non-territorial autonomy was incorporated into the political agenda of several newly established governments in Eastern Europe in the interwar period as a method for managing ethnic diversity. Despite its recognized limitations, Boerries argues that the concept endures as a suitable model for multi-ethnic states and continues to appeal to politicians and theorists worldwide.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Andrii Portnov, Professor of Entangled History of Ukraine at the European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder), talks to us about the historiographical challenges of Ukraine’s ethnic and confessional diversity. Once the borderland of three different empires, the territory that forms modern-day Ukraine had failed to secure its independence in the aftermath of the First World War and remained split between the Soviet and Polish governments until 1939. Even after seceding from the Soviet Union in 1991, however, Ukraine continues to grapple with these imperial legacies while struggling to politically embrace its historical and modern-day heterogeneity.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Cathie Carmichael, Professor of European History at the University of East Anglia, talks to us about the military occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary and its impact on the various minority groups that comprised its multi-ethnic population from 1878 to 1918. This was especially notable in the territory's more remote southern region of Herzegovina where the Habsburg military's 'civilizing' efforts faced a plethora of social challenges and rising political tensions.

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

In this episode, Mark Levene, Emeritus Fellow in History at the University of Southampton, talks to Raul Cârstocea, Lecturer in European History at Maynooth University and Honorary Fellow at the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Leicester, about historical ethnic and religious diversity in Central and Eastern Europe and the challenges the region and its people have faced throughout the 20th century. Key to this was the ethnic violence that accompanied the collapse of the European empires from 1917 to 1923 and the atrocities of the Second World War, as well as the ongoing climate crisis as experienced by the region’s minority groups.

Rescue!History: http://www.rescue-history.org.uk/

"Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)