Suggesting that events in Poland during 1980–1981 represent the tip of an iceberg, the contributors examine the rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe and its potential consequences for European security. They analyze developing problems and trends in the region, including the cooling of relations between the USSR and individual countries in Eastern Europe, the continuing economic crisis, changing social structures, the influence of the intelligentsia, and the eroding importance of ideology as a key part of Eastern Europe's political culture. The second half of the book focuses on the impact of these shifts on political and military relations between the USSR and Eastern European countries and on the efficient functioning of the Warsaw Pact.

Peoples of Eastern Europe -- Ethnicity on the edge of extinction -- Linguistic nationalism -- Nationality struggles : from idea to movement -- Insurgent nationalism : Serbia and Poland -- Cursed are the peacemakers : 1848 in East Central Europe -- The reform that made the monarchy unreformable : the 1867 compromise -- 1878 Berlin Congress : Europe's new ethno-nation states -- The origins of National Socialism : fin de siecle Hungary and Bohemia -- Liberalism's heirs and enemies : socialism vs. nationalism -- Peasant utopias : villages of yesterday and societies of tomorrow -- 1919 : a new Europe and its old problems -- The failure of national self-determination -- Fascism takes root : Iron Guard and Arrow Cross -- East Europe's anti-fascism -- Hitler's war and its East European enemies -- What Dante did not see : the Holocaust in Eastern Europe -- People's democracy : early postwar Eastern Europe -- Cold War and Stalinism -- Destalinization : Hungary's revolution -- National paths to communism : the 1960s -- 1968 and the Soviet bloc : reform communism -- Real existing socialism : life in the Soviet bloc -- The unraveling of communism -- 1989 -- East Europe explodes : the wars of Yugoslav succession -- East Europe joins Europe.

With the raging civil war continuing unabated in the former country of Yugoslavia, and the potential for similar conflict in other former members of the Eastern Bloc (such as Czechoslovakia), it is urgent to understand the underlying motivations of the various groups fighting in order to resolve the conflict before more lives are lost. This report provides an analysis of the significance of nationalism and ethnic conflict in the affairs of the populations of Central and Eastern Europe. It describes and analyzes nationalist developments--particularly in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia--and examines the response of European security institutions to problems of ethnic nationalism.

The thawing of the Cold War has brought new concerns over the nature of European security to the fore and uncovered major differences in the approaches of individual states to changed circumstances. This book clarifies the options for a new European security order and contribute to the growing debate. It adopts a medium-term analytical approach and uses a three-tier format, covering the nature and structure of security and the security implications of Europe's resurgent nationalism; security strategy, with particular reference to the NATO perspective and to the European Community; and the distinctive security concerns of individual states. It looks at both Eastern and Western Europe and at the Soviet Union and it analyses the role of the United States in European security.The thawing of the Cold War has brought new concerns over the nature of European security to the fore and uncovered major differences in the approaches of individual states to changed circumstances.

The authors of this book retell the political and economic history of East-Central Europe, the post-communist Balkans, and the Baltic states and speculate about their future from the vantage point of three competing forces operating in the region: territorial imperialism, globalization, and nationalism. Exposed to imperial aspirations, the geographic area from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea has in the past 150 years been subject to alternating waves of globalization and nationalism. The nineteenth century Eastern European empires were open to forces of economic globalization, but all collapsed at the end of World War One. Emerging nation-states embraced the logic of Western-led globalization but were subjugated by Nazi and Soviet empires, which pursued policies of economic autarchy. The demise of the Soviet empire marked the revival of pre-1939 nation-states and the re-entry of forces of liberalism and globalization into the region, with multiple crises of economic transition, ethnic militancy, new forms of authoritarianism, and external security threats. By 2010 negative, nationalist-populist reactions against crises that globalization brought to Eastern Europe became the dominant political trend. The analysis involves the consideration about the very contemporary factors of Brexit and COVID, as well as Russia’s and China’s influences, and their effects on Eastern Europe.