A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe ― Negotiating Modernity in the Short Twentieth Century; 1968 and Beyond

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a synthetic work, authored by an international team of researchers, covering twenty national cultures and 250 years. It goes beyond the conventional nation-centered narratives and presents a novel vision especially sensitive to the cross-cultural entanglement of political ideas and discourses. Its principal aim is to make these cultures available for the global 'market of ideas' and revisit some of the basic assumptions about the history of modern political thought, and modernity as such.

The present volume is the final part of the project, following Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century', and Volume II, Part I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Short Twentieth Century' (1918-1968) (OUP, 2018). Its starting point is the defeat of the vision of 'socialism with a human face' in 1968 and the political discourses produced by the various 'consolidation' or 'normalization' regimes. It continues with mapping the exile communities' and domestic dissidents' critical engagement with the local democratic and anti-democratic traditions as well as with global trends. Rather than achieving the coveted 'end of history', however, the liberal democratic order created in East Central Europe after 1989 became increasingly contested from left and right alike. Thus, instead of a comfortable conclusion pointing to the European integration of most of these countries, the book closes with a reflection on the fragility of democracy in this part of the world and beyond.

Balazs Trencsenyi, Professor in the Department of History, Central European University Budapest,Michal Kopeček, Head of the Ideas and Concepts Department, Institute of Contemporary History, Prague,Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, PhD candidate at the program in Comparative History of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe, Central European University, Budapest,Maria Falina, Lecturer in Modern European History, Dublin City University,Monika Baar, Professor of Central European Studies, University of Leiden

Balazs Trencsenyi is Professor in the Department of History, Central European University Budapest. His research focuses on the comparative history of political thought in East Central Europe and the history of historiography. He is Co-Director of Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies at CEU and Editor of the periodical East Central Europe (Brill). His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopeček, OUP, 2016), The Politics of 'National Character': A Study in Interwar East European Thought (Routledge, 2012), Whose Love of Which Country?: Composite States, National Histories and Patriotic Discourses in Early Modern East Central Europe (Brill, 2010), and Hungary and Romania beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements (Peter Lang, 2013).



Michal Kopeček is Head of the Ideas and Concepts Department at the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague, and Co-Director of Imre Kertesz Kolleg, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Quest for the Revolution's Lost Meaning: Origins of the Marxist Revisionism in Central Europe, 1953-1960 (forthcoming Brill, 2018).

Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič is a PhD candidate at the program in Comparative History of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the Central European University, Budapest. His main fields of interest include intellectual history, nationalism, and history of political thought, with a focus on European peripheries and semi-peripheries. He co-authored a volume on modern radical ideologies ( Utopije demokracije, ZNK Masovna, 2005), and edited a volume on humanism in contemporary social and political thought ( Blodnjaki smisla: misliti humanizem danes, DHG, 2007). He is the editor of the Slovenian quarterly journal Razpotja.


Maria Falina is Lecturer in Modern European History at Dublin City University. Her main fields of interest are intellectual history, nationalism, and history of religion and politics. Her publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopeček, Maciej Janowski, and Monika Baar, OUP, 2016), and articles such as 'Between "Clerical Fascism" and Political Orthodoxy: Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Interwar Serbia' in Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions (2007) and 'Religion Visible and Invisible: The Case of Post-Yugoslav Anti-War Films', in C. Schmitt and L. Berezhnaya, eds. Iconic Turn(s): Religion and Nation in East European Films after 1989 (Brill, 2013).


Monika Baar is Professor of Central European Studies at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on modern historiography, cultural history and political thought, with special attention to the problem of marginality. Her publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopeček, Maciej Janowski, and Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Historians and the Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2010). She is Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers.


Maciej Janowski is Head of Section at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw and Visiting Professor at the Central European University, Budapest. His main fields of interest are social and intellectual history of Central Europe and the history of liberalism. He is editor of the periodical East Central Europe (Brill) and Deputy Editor of Kwartalnik Historyczny. His publications include A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century' (with Balazs Trencsenyi, Michal Kopeček, Monika Baar, and Maria Falina, OUP, 2016), and Polish Liberal Thought before 1918 (CEU Press, 2004).