This book compares the various aspects ? political, military economic ? of Soviet occupation in Austria, Hungary and Romania. Using documents found in Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian and Russian archives the authors argue that the nature of Soviet foreign policy has been misunderstood. Existing literature has focused on the Soviet foreign policy from a political perspective; when and why Stalin made the decision to introduce Bolshevik political systems in the Soviet sphere of influence. This book will show that the Soviet conquest of East-Central Europe had an imperial dimension as well and allowed the Soviet Union to use the territory it occupied as military and economic space. The final dimension of the book details the tragically human experiences of Soviet occupation: atrocities, rape, plundering and deportations.

The book has eleven chapters, each made up of several numbered sub-sections. Apart from the book's introduction and conclusion, the final sub-section of each chapter recapitulates the chapter as "Conclusions, " in which Blomqvist sometimes talks up his contribution in an unfitting way. Reading each chapter's entire text as a reviewer proved repetitive; researchers, however, can choose either to get the gist of a chapter from the mostly footnote-free conclusions, or to read the chapter's actual content and then skip its concluding sub-section. The chapters, in turn, are grouped into five larger parts: an introduction at the front, a conclusion at the end, and in the middle three chronologically-arranged parts on dualist Hungary (Chapters Two to Four), interwar Romania (Chapters Five to Eight), and the Second World War (Chapters Nine and Ten) Assimilationist policies dominate the first two-thirds of the narrative, which is admirably documented during the interwar period in particular. When Blomqvist reaches the Second World War, the level of detail declines, the Romanian-Hungarian conflict recedes, and the expropriation of Jews becomes the dominant issue. Some of the gaps in Blomqvist's final chapter, and particularly the laconic eighth sub-section on "Romanian Reciprocity" (378-379), incidentally, are covered in Holly Case's excellent 2009 study of wartime Transylvania, Between States - The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford University Press).--

Based on the idea that there is a considerable difference between reality and discourse, the author points out that history is constantly reconstructed, adapted and sometimes mythicized from the perspectives of the present day, present states of mind and ideologies. He closely examines historical culture and conscience in nineteenth and twentieth century Romania, particularly concentrating on the impact of the national ideology on history. Boia's innovative analysis identifies several key mythical configurations and shows how Romanians have reconstituted their own highly ideologized history over the last two centuries. The strength of History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness lies in the author's ability to fully deconstruct the entire Romanian historiographic system and demonstrate the increasing acuteness of national problems in general, and in particular the exploitation of history to support national ideology.

Contains geographical, political, and economic assessments for the British delegates to the 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference.