Thinking dangerously: Political thought in twentieth-century East Central Europe

The chapter on political thought analyzes key issues in twentieth-century Central and Eastern European history by focusing on the transformation of political languages, tackling the following six key thematic areas in particular: the national question, supra-nationalism and the perspectives of interethnic coexistence; statehood and citizenship; the social question; politics and religion; political thought in the age of extremism; and identity politics. Analyzing the unrelentingly pursued and often self-critical dialogue with ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’, the chapter shows how Central and Eastern Europe emerged as an epicentre of multiple political crises in the twentieth century. This chapter on political thought analyzes key issues in twentieth-century Central and Eastern European history by focusing on the transformation of political languages, tackling the following six key thematic areas in particular. The key thematic areas: the national question, supra-nationalism and the perspectives of interethnic coexistence; statehood and citizenship; the social question; politics and religion; political thought in the age of extremism; and identity politics. The chapter revisits a set of thematic discussions that reflected the processes of socio-cultural and institutional transformation of this region throughout the twentieth century. One of the key features of political thought in the region is the constant overlap and frequent clash of different historical layers: a sort of asynchronic synchronicity of socio-cultural and ideological phenomena that is clearly rooted in the deeply differentiated social structure of these countries. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, East Central Europe was a region of chronic political, social and territorial instability.