The Other Europe: Deep Roots of Diversity | Full Episode | The Great Courses

foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] professor of history and director of the center for the study of war and Society at the University of Tennessee Knoxville he earned his PhD in European history specializing in modern German history from the University of Pennsylvania Dr lulavishes has won the top two excellence in teaching awards at the University of Tennessee and was awarded a research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities his research focuses on German relations with Eastern Europe in the modern period other interests include International history and the history of the Baltic region he has published numerous articles and two books including a study of the experience of German soldiers on the Eastern front in World War One foreign [Music] European history at the University of Tennessee I am American but as you can tell from my name I have connections to Eastern Europe my ancestry is Lithuanian and Russian but I was born and grew up in Chicago Illinois so I tell my students that when they hear me speaking they're not hearing an exotic Lithuanian accent but rather an exotic South Side Chicago accent let's start with a famous joke that shows how difficult it is to identify Eastern Europe the object of our course of study incidentally the intense pressure in which Eastern Europeans have existed has produced countless marvelous political jokes created out of tragic conditions like diamonds formed by constant pressure in this course we'll mention many of these jokes precisely because they played an important role in the history of Eastern Europe the Great British writer George Orwell once said that every joke is a tiny Revolution because that challenges the established order and there would be many such jokes in Eastern Europe this joke in particular tells about how two Travelers set off on opposite Journeys setting off from Paris by train a Frenchman heads toward Moscow at the exact same moment a Russian going to Paris also boards a train and then sometime later both of those trains arrive in Warsaw the capital of Poland and each of the traveling men looks out mistakenly thinking that he has already reached his final destination the Russian announces with a great grin of Happiness this this is at last the west and exactly at that same moment the Frenchman stares out and gives a shiver of apprehension and declares now I am in the deepest East when the joke illustrates is how much perspectives of east and west are relative dependent on one's Point of Departure and prior assumptions now you would think that simply defining Eastern Europe would be easy a simple matter of getting out a map and drawing a line down the middle of Europe but in fact definitions of Eastern Europe vary usually they run from Estonia in the north at the Chile shores of the Baltic Sea all the way to Bulgaria in the south at the Black Sea some 20 or so countries of tremendous diversity in language ethnicity religion and history the reasons for the indeterminacy of Eastern Europe and its shifting borders are ultimately historical this other Europe as it has sometimes been called has found itself over the centuries wedged between the series of Empires the Russian ottoman Turkish Habsburg Austrian and German Empires and it's this geopolitical reality that has shaped Eastern European history so in a word Eastern Europe is a strategically crucial location and over the centuries has been a really dangerous piece of real estate in fact few peoples in the region want to be considered Eastern European or readily identify themselves as such for example estonians will tell you that they're really Northern Europeans or close to Scandinavia which is true if you ask a Hungarian poll check or Latvian they will most often tell you that they consider themselves Central Europeans checks point out quite correctly that their capital of Prague is actually to the west of Vienna Austria meanwhile lithuanians are proud that a geographical Commission of experts officially pinpointed the central point of Europe in a field in Lithuania but there's a whole other series of other rival spots that are also claimed as the center of Europe depending on how you draw the lines some people in this region instead insist on it being called Eastern Central Europe which is a very fine distinction a subcategory of all of this involves the label Balkan which is also rejected by many in the Southeastern European region a key point then is that hardly anyone wants to be in Eastern Europe this is because Eastern Europe's past conjures up images of economic backwardness communist repression the Iron Curtain and periods of intense fragmentation and violence the very word balkanization is synonymous with disorder and ethnic cleansing allegedly uniquely linked to the southern reaches of Eastern Europe this is a historical experience conditioned by being between massive Empires often Empires that were contending with one another as a result this area has been fought over repeatedly divided and full of turmoil no wonder that people want to get out for Western Europe Eastern Europe has also often functioned as a sort of foil the other against which they can Define themselves consider one of the classic accounts in popular literature of the other that's Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula in which Jonathan Harker a young unsuspecting lawyer from England is sent on a mission to Transylvania to meet the most famous fictional Eastern European of all Count Dracula heading into the Carpathian Mountains the lawyer is aware that he is entering one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe not even shown on maps and the atmosphere is one of mystery wildness and backwardness Harker observes that in this land with many different ethnic groups quote every known Superstition in the world is gathered into the Horseshoe of the carpathians as if it were the center of some sort of imaginative Whirlpool end quote he notes that the farther east one goes the more unpunctual the trains Little Wonder then that he asks himself with a sense of foreboding what sort of place had I come to and among what kind of people the answer of course is that he has landed in the castle of a vampire who will seek to import his evil into the very heart of Western Civilization Britain let's start by listing each of the present-day countries we will include in our definition of Eastern Europe as I just noted this is a contentious issue but we'll follow a productive Criterion of including those countries from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea which have been thought of as Eastern Europe because of politics and culture our Eastern Europe is not small at present it includes some 180 million people beginning all the way in the north we include the Baltic states Estonia Latvia and Lithuania they lie along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea now in spite of our speaking of them as a unit the designation baltics in fact hides tremendous diversities which we'll explore later the Estonian language is finno-ugric related to their neighbors the Finns across the Baltic in northernmost Europe Latvian and Lithuanian are both Baltic languages and thus remote from Estonian but other than this latvians and estonians have more of a shared history with each other than they do with lithuanians they had been under German rule which will also examine in later lectures to the south of the baltics lies Belarus whose Independence is recent the East Slavic belarusians in earlier times were sometimes called White Russians or white ruthenians at the center of the belt of countries we consider is Poland a country whose borders have shifted dramatically over the centuries but whose identity showed remarkable durability in spite of these transformations further to the South lies the vast country of Ukraine the largest country entirely inside of Europe Russia is larger still of course spanning the Eurasian land mass the very name of Ukraine speaks to the historical experience of Eastern Europe it suggests Borderland or home region next come two countries which for a time were linked the Czech Republic and Slovakia checks and slovaks are both West Slavs occupying a central position landlocked to their South lies Hungary also landlocked an Old Kingdom established by a people unrelated to their other neighbors these are the majaras as the hungarians call themselves they were once a nomadic Warrior people who settled in Eastern Europe their language is finno-ugric and distantly related to that of the estonians all the way to the north to the southeast of Hungary stretches Romania including Transylvania from the Carpathian Mountains to the warm Waters of the Black Sea as you might guess from the name Romanian is a romance language related to Latin also spoken in the neighboring state of Moldova to the east between Romania and Ukraine now if we shift a bit West and South toward the Mediterranean Sea we have at last reached Southeastern Europe first comes mountainous Slovenia with access to the Adriatic Coast to its South continuing along the Adriatic Coast is Croatia then Bosnia and Herzegovina and then Montenegro here south Slavic languages are spoken farther south still along the Adriatic is Albania a strip of Coastland and then hugely steep Mountain Landscapes indeed 80 percent of Albania is mountains the Albanian language is distinct from Slavic and is also spoken in Kosovo at the center of the Balkan Peninsula is the state of Serbia to the south of Serbia and to the north of Greece is the Republic of Macedonia further to the east with coasts along the Black Sea is Bulgaria Serbian Macedonian and Bulgarian are South Slavic languages also a smaller corner of turkey is located in Europe with a black sea and the Mediterranean on either side the point where Europe and Asia meet after this tour from east to west let me add a few special notes in our definition of Eastern Europe we're not including Finland all the way to the north nor Greece all the way to the South although we will occasionally mention these countries at their respective extremities Finland is northern European and closer to Scandinavia which is a distinct region while Greece is more Mediterranean in its long long history at the center of this range of territories we will include two areas which have been drawn in to Eastern European history Austria and the Eastern parts of Germany we really include them for historical reasons Austria whose name in German usted derives from the empire in the East was the home of the hopsburg dynasty among those Empires that contended for these lands while Eastern Germany not only played a long role in Eastern European history it also for decades after World War II was incorporated into the so-called Eastern Bloc the Communist satellite states of the Soviet Union playing a prominent role in Eastern European history also is Russia in fact in the present day Russia includes a small non-contiguous territory along the Baltic Coast called kaliningrad which once had been German territory and we will of course explore all of this history in our course but Russia self-evidently also is a greater unit unto itself spanning all of Eurasia the largest country in the world stretching over 11 time zones so while Russia will certainly play a significant role in the survey of this history its identity in Europe and Asia makes it unique in its own right it obviously deserves a course or courses of its own and indeed the great courses offered such a class in its series having sketched in the current political geography of Eastern Europe we should next remind ourselves of the physical geography of this region which did so much to shape its Essence and historical trajectory in terms of its physical geography Eastern Europe can be divided broadly into three larger elements or zones up to the north lies the vast and open geographic feature called the great northern European Plain the extension of a great expanse that stretches Beyond eastwards to Eurasia and the steps of Russia this is a largely flat and level plane without many natural Frontiers or boundaries between the Baltic Sea to the north all the way to the Carpathian Mountains to the South this expanse is dotted with countless Lakes beautiful forests of Pine and of delicate birch trees here also are the last remnants of Europe's primeval Woodlands the biawovija forest where bison still roam as they did in prehistoric times here lie the pupiat marshes and rivers like the Vistula Neman and older flow through this territory but they're not so large as to foreclose movement very much such unboundedness of the great northern European Plain has made it an ideal Corridor for the movement of peoples of trade and of armies over the centuries in the center of this region lies the larger zone of the danubian Basin the valley formed by the Danube this is where the mighty River the Blue Danube flows this Great River stretches for nearly 2 000 miles it originates as a small stream in the black forest of Southern Germany and then winds its way Eastward all the way down to the Black Sea in its course the Danube river passes through 10 countries and amazingly it actually flows past four National capitals Austria's Vienna Slovakia's Bratislava hungary's Budapest and Serbia's belgrad the Danube River Basin carved out by this river is a large plane of fertile soil stretching from the Bohemian Plateau to the west to the great Arc of the Carpathian Mountains and the Transylvanian Plateau to the east the Carpathian Mountains run for 900 miles from the Alps in the west eastwards from Austria to Slovakia Poland Ukraine and Romania at the present-day border of Serbia and Romania the Danube River cuts across the Carpathian Mountains separating them from the Balkan Mountains this is a dramatic Geographic spot a Gorge called the iron gates and further to the southeast the Balkan Peninsula forms another region it stretches out into the Mediterranean with the Adriatic Sea to the west and the Aegean Sea to the east the craggy Landscapes of the Balkan Peninsula thus form a discrete geographic area unto itself dominated by the Balkan Mountains which also stretch into Bulgaria and end to the Black Sea indeed the very name Balkan comes from the Turkish word for mountain finally we want to start by identifying the four major themes which we'll find defining the history of the region into the present day in the course of our lectures first the essential historical character of Eastern Europe is its diversity A diversity which brings both richness and challenges now of course Western Europe also has variety but there in the west the earlier formation of States imposed units that enforced certain uniformities of language and culture and identity much earlier creating units like France England and Spain the diversity of Eastern Europe also includes a multiplicity of peoples and population movements into the region this includes different branches of the Slavic peoples the West Slavs East Slavs and South Slavs the Baltic peoples the bulgars the hungarians or majaras the Mongols Jews the Roma formerly called gypsies Turks and Germans and of course there's also a diversity of religions the result of earlier Pagan Traditions then of missionary work among the Slavs bringing the Orthodox faith and Catholicism the arrival of the Jews the spread of Islam the Protestant Reformation and Jesuits bearing the counter-reformation such a patchwork produces places in Eastern Europe where multilingualism was not unusual but in fact was the rule where it seemed quite ordinary to have one language used for government transactions another for the marketplace and yet another language spoken in the kitchen at home the second key theme of our course is the history of Eastern Europe's constantly contested spaces which produce a tragically often violent and disruptive history in these struggles we see not only Empires repeatedly trying to carve out territories or spheres of influence we also see local peoples seeking strategies for survival and self-rule and sometimes cooperation between peoples to make that happen all of this produces a most complex and fascinating history consider just for a moment the case of Transylvania that distinct historic region where Bram Stoker's novel begins it is a poetic and romantic name that in fact simply means the land beyond the forests well consider what sort of Transformations Transylvania has witnessed in succession it belonged to the ancient Roman Empire then the kingdom of Hungary and experienced also an influx of German settlement then to ottoman turkey then Hungary again then Romania after the first world war then Hungary during the second world war and then again again to Romania after the second World War such repeated overlays of experience produce a texture to Eastern European history that is quite distinctive the third key theme of our course is that this historical experience has produced marked contrast with Western Europe indeed sometimes Eastern Europe is called the other Europe focusing on these disparities shows us a different perspective on events that we think we know well each lecture will emphasize that difference and surprise for instance we'll ask how the enlightenment movement that promised Liberty in the west instead led to the eating alive of a state in Eastern Europe as surrounding Empires partitioned the kingdom of Poland Lithuania we will explain why World War one which has been called the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century was actually seen in many parts of Eastern Europe not as simply a catastrophe but instead is the fiery baptism of national Independence for new countries we'll observe how World War II did not end neatly in Eastern Europe with the fall of Berlin but instead in a real sense continued in the east in a series of bloody Guerrilla conflicts while the West was able to get busy with a peaceful work of reconstruction closer to our own times we'll see how the static front lines of the Cold War were actually breached by popular forces in the region itself but there's another element encompassed by the difference of Eastern Europe which will want to devote special attention to as well and that is how Eastern Europe has been perceived understood and defined in Europe as a whole how did Eastern Europe come to carry the associations that people want to escape from today how did it come to be defined as other marked as marginal less developed less civilized why would Bram Stoker decide to set his vampire story here rather than in Portugal Scotland or Norway we will survey the myths that have been cultivated about Eastern Europe's difference we'll Trace how Enlightenment thinkers juxtaposed Western Civilization with an Eastern Europe of their own imagination we'll see how a series of German thinkers built up a myth of this as a wild East a sort of counterpart to the American Myth of the Wild West Eastern Europe as a land of present Wilderness and future possibilities an arena for a unique German civilizing mission we'll Trace how stalinous regimes imposed on the region after World War II also sought to impose a new uniformity on the area an attempt that ultimately failed and we will track how Eastern Europeans themselves reacted to these projections and formulated identities of Their Own in particular we'll see how historical memory was mobilized to create alternative scenarios for the future to offer a vision of something better than the present or the past the fourth theme that we'll pursue is the very flip side of the third which stress difference Eastern Europe's history also shows amazing connections with the West as well as Global histories far outside the region this produces some amazing mysteries for us to explore for instance when Napoleon tried to recapture Haiti in the Caribbean a French Colony why were polish Volunteers in the advanced guard how did the story published by Upton Sinclair in 1905 about an ordinary Lithuanian worker in the Stockyards of Chicago actually launched a new school of American journalism and transform American government during the global struggle of World War One why was the brand new state of Czechoslovakia declared in downtown Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in World War II as the Battle of Britain raged in the Skies over London against the Nazis why were polish volunteer Pilots again to the fore IGN how did a Hungarian inventor create the world's most popular puzzle toy how did Eastern European dissidents reshape the understanding of what Europe itself meant and announced a message of political Liberation that they insisted was urgently needed in the west as well in our own times how did the entry of Eastern European countries into NATO and the European Union transform those International organizations these and many other significant historical episodes are really what our course is about we'll pursue these themes and the dramatic stories and remarkable individuals that make up the history of Eastern Europe in our coming lectures we'll Begin by looking at ancient and medieval Eastern Europe the alleged Golden Ages of pre-modern and Renaissance kingdoms then the way in which the modern period opened with an international crime The Carving up of one country by surrounding Empires we will examine the growth of the powerful idea of romantic nationalism and how Empires coped or in fact proved unable to cope with this emotionally charged definition of ethnic identity we'll take a close look at Jewish life in the cities and Villages a crucial ingredient in the makeup of Eastern Europe next we'll track how the first world war blew up the earlier borders and state structures of the region and how hopeful young democracies mostly succumb to authoritarian Trends turning into dictatorships then in the lead-up to World War II we will analyze how the mortal enemies Hitler and Stalin cooperated to divide Eastern Europe until the Nazis invaded their partner the Soviet Union we'll trace the vast tragedy and crime of the Holocaust as the Nazis and local collaborators destroyed a vital part of Eastern Europe its Jewish communities even the end of the second world war did not bring peace to Eastern Europe as mass expulsions of peoples continued stalinist communist regimes were imposed with great speed and even long-standing armed resistance finally was eliminated we will examine what life turned out to be like in the so-called Eastern Bloc of communist countries and we'll see repeated attempts at revolts in East Germany Poland Hungary and Czechoslovakia we'll see how Yugoslavia broke away from the Soviet Union's control how the independent Trade union solidarity in Poland challenged the Monopoly of the state and how dissidents and Ordinary People cooperated to peacefully topple the Berlin wall and the regimes of Eastern Europe in 1989 and then the Soviet Union itself in 1991. we'll examine the wrenching transitions of post-communism how Yugoslavia disintegrated into devastating Civil War how other Eastern European countries sought integration into the rest of Europe and the recent crisis in Ukraine and Crimea and finally by Our Last lecture on current challenges facing Eastern Europe will bring our course up to the present day when events in Eastern Europe are in the headlines we will seek to answer whether Eastern Europe still exists today as a unit shaped by commonalities of existence as we set out on this ambitious journey together our Point of Departure is first of all to examine the history of ancient Eastern Europe and the Middle Ages and what these earlier periods meant for the region and for Europe as a whole we'll turn to examine formative waves of migration into Eastern Europe then political expansion by kingdoms and religious change in our next lecture

Channel: The Great Courses

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Length: 29min 45sec (1785 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023