Central European History and the European Union: The Meaning of Europe. Studies in Centraland Eastern Europe by Stanislav J. KirschbaumReview by: Carlos W. C. ReijnenThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 88, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 579-581Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20780465 .

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REVIEWS 579 There are many important details told by the author which are little known

even to well-informed Hungarians (e.g. that the last Communist boss, K. Gr?sz, planned a coup in late 1988, or that in October 1989 the newly formed Socialist Party was more popular than the combined opposition), and such

enlightening statements as that the radically transformed Constitution and fundamental laws passed in late 1989 Hungary returned to that parliamentary system founded in 1848-49 (p. 214). Showing the many tricks and semi-legal transactions in the privatization process, which the Antall government tried to

stop, but with at best partial success, is also most welcome. This is how the new capitalist class, typified by the present Prime Minister, was born.

The reviewer, who was the foreign minister of the Antall government, naturally differs from the author's presentation in a number of cases. The most important ones: the account of the so-called Tan-European Picnic' of 19 August 1989, the selling of a small consignment of rifles for the Zagreb

police in September 1990 and how Belgrade utilized (or provoked?) it, or that it was Antall rather than the Czech leaders who 'invented' the Visegr?d cooperation. But on the whole it is very fortunate that the first major English-language book has appeared about one of Hungary's finest periods.

Corvinus University of Budapest G?za Jeszenszky

Kirschbaum, Stanislav J. (ed.). Central European History and the European Union: The Meaning of Europe. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2007. xxii + 258 pp. Chronology. Maps. Tables. Notes. Index. ?50.00.

Central European History and the European Union is the outcome of papers presented at a congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies and contributes to the field of European (Union) studies from the perspective of Central Europe. The leading expert on Slovak

history, Stanislav Kirschbaum, brings together a set of papers that would not normally find their way into one thematical volume. The book connects cultural historical approaches with contributions with solid roots in the social sciences. The volume is organized in three sections: the first a general historical study, followed by two more elaborate sections devoted to nation states and their national myths and to issues of European integration.

Kirschbaum opens the volume with an, at this point, slighdy outdated, but no less legitimate claim that 'it is in Central Europe's historical experience that some answers may be found in the challenges that the meaning of Europe faces' (p. 2). Fortunately, that means in this particular case that the focus is on two complicated components of the Central European heritage, the nation state and the Communist or totalitarian legacy.

The first chapters deal with the Slovak place in European history (Stanislav J. Kirschbaum), modern federalist conceptions in Central Europe (Francesco Leoncini) and the revolutions of 1989 form a civil society angle (Oskar Gruenwald). Particularly the latter offers a good classification, pointing at a

'triple crisis' of socio-economic, institutional and personal elements that has cleared the path for civil society groups.

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58o SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20I0

The second section of the volume studies the St Stephen cult in Hungary (Juliane Brandt), Wenceslas and the Czechs (Stefan Samerski), the invocations of Prince Stephen the Great in Romania (Krista Zach), Pilsudski and the Polish state (Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski) and lastly the failed attempt at an ethnic national Poland after World War Two (John J. Kulczycki).

St Stephen and the Hungarian Crown are quintessential to Hungarian Medieval and modern history, but Brandt's chapter interestingly shifts the focus to Communist and contemporary Hungary. She moves away from the state discourse and includes such examples as a rock opera (King Stephen).

Wenceslas and the Czechs go back equally far. Samerski takes a similar

approach, now stressing the Interwar year with the massive commemoration of 1929 and post-Communism, when 28 September was reinstalled as a national holiday. Similar to the Hungarian situation was the tension between the saint as a religious and as a state symbol, which is somewhat more com

plicated in Wenceslas's case because of his alleged sell out to the Germans.

Interestingly, Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia had quite the opposite biography as a national hero. At first he was appreciated as a ruler, but was later redefined religiously and became the ideal tool in the Romanian Orthodox Church's efforts to reconcile public discourse.

The two chapters on Poland more explicitiy discuss competing national and state conceptions. Tilsudski and the politics of symbolism' is an excellentiy

well-documented chapter that elaborates on the construction of a narrative of state formation. It deals with the gradual election of 11 November as a state

holiday in the interwar years. Finally, Kulczycki documents the conceptual ambivalences and the practical impossibilities of making Poland an ethic Polish state after World War Two.

The section on the European Union opens with an attempt to find

(dis)continuities between intellectual ideas about Europe in the 1980s and the appreciation of EU accession (Ba?ak Z. Alpan). Laure Neumayer, in one of the most lucid chapters of the volume, tries to go to the heart of contem

porary euroscepticism in Central and Eastern Europe. She moves beyond popular explanations that use traditional cleavage theories or distinctions between 'soft' and 'hard' euroscepticism and explains how opinions about the European Union greatiy help Central and East European political parties to (re-)establish a position among other parties. Ingrid R?der analyses the

impact of pre-accession policies on gender equality in the Czech and Slovak

Republics. An Schrijvers reaches interesting conclusions about the Polish

participation in the European Convention. As it turns out, Poland was

hardly as inflexible and anti-federalist as it was perceived to be. This makes one wonder about the causes of this perception and, more importandy, if it

may have triggered Poland to act accordingly from that point onwards.

Finally, Mojmir Kriz?n discusses the persistent ethnic or cultural nationalism in Croatia and the inability of the European Union to deal with this, though actual European Union policies are underrepresented here.

The volume contains both weak and inspiring contributions. In particular, the second and third sections offer good case studies or new perspectives.

What is greatly missed in this volume are attempts to link the approaches of nation building and national myths with issues of European integration. For

instance, what do national traditions or myths tell us about euroscepticism or

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REVIEWS 581 gender reforms in accession countries? Is the European Union able to deal with ethnic nationalism and if not, why not? These issues seem to be the

underlying idea in a volume like this, but unfortunately never really surface and require self-active reading. What remains is a number of good chapters that will attract readers from different disciplines.

Department of European Studies Carlos W. C. Reijnen University of Amsterdam

Kanet, Roger E. (ed.). Russia: Re-Emerging Great Power. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2007. xii + 229 pp. Notes. Index. ?53.00.

Malfliet, Katlijn, Verpoest, Lien and Vinokurov, Evgeny (eds). The CIS, the EU and Russia: The Challenges of Integration. Studies in Central and Eastern

Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2007. xvii +

250 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures. Index. ?56.00. Gower, Jackie, and Timmins, Graham (eds). Russia and Europe in the Twenty

First Century: An Uneasy Partnership. Anthem Press, London, New York and Delhi, 2007. xxiv + 305 pp. Notes. Index. ?50.00.

The success of Nicolas Sarkozy, in his capacity as President of the European Union, in bringing about a cessation of hostilities in the war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 demonstrated the importance of the EU's diplo matic soft power for both Tbilisi and Moscow. Although it might have been

argued that the mediation worked only because a major power such as France held the EU presidency, the importance of the EU to Russia was highlighted by the next crisis involving Russia, four months later. Bulgaria and other East

European countries froze without gas for two weeks as a consequence of the decision of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the beginning of 2009 to suspend gas supplies to Ukraine. The Czech government holding the EU

presidency was forced to act to protect citizens of EU countries which are

dependent on the Russian gas export monopolist Gazprom. The Czechs were less successful than the French in mediating a solution, which was finally achieved bilaterally, after EU pressure, between Putin and the Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Both these events show that the EU sometimes has the capacity and the necessity to intervene in disputes between Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Economic issues play a role in these disputes, but a common factor is the increased wealth and power of

Russia and the desire of the Russian authorities to resist what they see as Western encroachment on their sphere of special interests, the CIS. The media coverage of the August 2008 war showed a high level of bias. While this was unfortunately to be expected in Russia, given the state control of

media there, it was less explicable in most of the Western countries, where in the course of the war itself much of the press and television followed the

knee-jerk anti-Russian reaction of policy-makers in most of the Western states. Several months passed before policy-makers and media came to a more

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