PART FO U R

REGIONS IN CENTRAL EUROPE

UNDER COMMUNISM
A PALIMPSEST

Kristian Gerner

‘At least for some regions of Europe, one of which is Upper Silesia,
nationalism has brought much suffering.’1

The Concept o f Region

At the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, the problem, or task, facing
the Central European states was seen as follows. They were to
depart from the parenthesis that was the Soviet era, and from an
anomalous societal condition, and return to Europe, which was
defined as that which was ‘normal’. The mass media, politicians
and social scientists in the W est were generally agreed that these
states and their peoples had been oppressed, and prevented from
realising their inherent potential by the Soviet overlordship and
Communist party rule under which they had lived for nearly half
a century.
In the post-war era, when the Central European states were
constituent parts of a hierarchically structured monolithic bloc,
Western Europe underwent profound changes. These included
not only evolution toward a European U nion (EU), but also the
growing importance of the regional level both in political rhetoric
and at times also in political reality. W hen these states rejoined
the family, the question that naturally arose was whether their
self-fulfilment and welfare would best be served by participation
1 Ingeborg K. Helling, ‘ “ Spätaussiedler” from Poland: Lifeworld and biography’,
in R . G rathoff and A. Kloskowska (eds), The Neighbourhood o f Cultures (Warsaw,
1994), p .112.
178
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 179
in the EU, as well as by decentralisation and the strengthening
of regions.
Approaching regions as problematic phenomena itself implies
that one understands territory —in this case, Europe—as being
divided into hierarchically arranged territorial entities, of which
some are independent states, others are permitted limited self-rule
while yet others exist only as names and contain no independent
political institutions. Names themselves have shifting status, some
being anchored in a historical context and others merely desig­
nations for development projects. Is there such a thing as a Baltic
region, a Lake Malar region and a Barents Sea region? Do they
compare with, for example, Sweden, Switzerland and Scania? In
which instances are we observing fact, and in which are we rather
dealing with constructions and projections that do not correspond
to any political reality? O r is there no clear boundary between
these two dimensions? How important are issues such as the context
and Zeitgeist?
In his discussion of the region as a political and territorial
concept, Anssi Paasi has noted that it refers to a social construction
which needs to be approached from a historical perspective. His
definition is a good basis for studying regions in Central Europe
during the Soviet era:
Regions are not ‘organisms’ that develop and have a life-span or evolution
in the manner that some biological metaphors-so typical in Western
political thought—would suggest. Rather, following Dear and Wolch,
regions and localities are understood in this framework as being a complex
synthesis or manifestation of objects, patterns, processes, social practices
and inherent power relations that are derived from simultaneous interac­
tion between different levels of social processes.[...] Through the in­
stitutionalization process and the struggles inherent in it, the territorial units
in question ‘receive’ their boundaries and their symbols which distinguish
them from other regions."
Paasi argues that a region’s name is its most significant symbol.
It ‘converges’ historical development, great events, episodes and
recollections into one, thus engendering in individuals an ex­
perience of collective identity linked to the region.3 In this context
~ Anssi Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies
of the Finnish—Russian Border (Chichester, England, 1995), pp.32-3.
3 Ibid., p.35.
 180 Kristian Gerner
the question of continuity in the collective consciousness comes
to the fore. Can a region which has a historically manifested
identity disappear? Can it slumber and reawaken? Can actors on
the historical stage construct a ‘historical’ region which did not
in fact exist as such, and thereby endow such a region with
legitimacy so it will gain acceptance in the eyes of other actors?
A region can be defined as a structure. Referring to Fernand
Braudel, Stein Rokkan and Charles Tilly, Daniel-Louis Seiler gives
the concept this meaning:
By structures I mean long-run unvariant systems of relations which
subsume social facts and which influence both actors and organizations in
an unconscious way.[...] Most of the structures to be dealt with link
political power and territory, but also territory and the economy.4
According to Seiler, time is an important factor in the reification
of regions as structures, at least when it comes to perception and
interpretation. Even a newly constructed region such as the Barents
Sea region must be given retroactive historical value in order to
acquire political legitimacy in the eyes of its own spokesmen.
This chapter stipulates that regions do exist in the form of historical
concepts. For example, the regions called Silesia and Karelia, al­
though they have never been states (certainly not in the period
we are considering here), have been ascribed a particular identity
and specific location on the map by both the internal populations
and outside observers. However, our assumption here is that the
concept of region is problematic from the actor-perspective, because
of an ambivalence in its definition between territory and people
and because region exists as a political notion only if people act
in its name.
The term ‘region’, as used today, is directly linked to the
concepts of boundaries and territorial demarcation, and of political
actors. A region is not a statistical compilation of parameters, but
rather a reified delimitation that is assigned an identity, either by
reference to history or m association with a particular project. In
today’s Europe a region is a political-geographical realm that has
a specific name but no specific citizenship. Accordingly, the core

■* Daniel Louis-Seiler, ‘Inter-ethnic relations in East Central Europe: the quest

for a pattern o f accom m odation’, Communist ami Post-Communist Studies, vol.26,
no.4 (1993), p.352.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 181
of the problem lies in the impossibility of an individual being a
citizen of a region; one can be a citizen only of a state or in
certain instances of two states.
As was implied earlier, the concept of region became legitimate
in the political discourse of W estern Europe after the Second
W orld War, and has acquired political significance as a platform
for action also in post-Communist Central Europe. This is in
contrast with the aftermath of the First W orld War and the interwar
period, when the nation-state was the central political subject
according to the topical theme o f the national right to self-
determination. in the political language established by the League
of Nations, national or ethnic minorities were recognised beneath
the level of the state. The political concept ‘national minorities’
pertained to groups of people rather than to strictly delimited
territories; those minorities themselves were granted collective
rights but territories were not granted autonomy.
Parallel to the evolution of the European Economic Community
into the European Community, and ultimately the European
Union, the notion of regions has been forged at the substate and
interstate levels. Historical provinces such as Wales and Catalonia
began to be represented by politicians who viewed them as actors.
In certain cases, e.g. Catalonia, this idea was accepted by the
central government. So-called ‘Euroregions’ were created in the
areas bordering the Federal Republic of Germany such as Saar-
Lor-Lux based on purely pragmatic or on historical and economic
arguments. This devolution occurred within the framework of
democracy, market economy and a well-developed legal system.
One way to illustrate what is meant by the concept of region,
as well as other historical terms that pertain to corresponding
concepts, such as province, is to highlight the relationship between
the central power and its border-areas in three major imperial
projects in European history —the Rom an Empire, the Soviet
U nion and the EU. From the viewpoints o f those in power,
order and control over the citizens are critical, since they make
the outcome o f political decisions predictable. Disorder around
the state boundary is thus extremely undesirable; hence this bound­
ary is extended in order to integrate ever new provinces into a
hierarchical system.5 Because of limited resources and/or political
3 See Jochen M artin, ‘T he Rom an Empire: domination and integration’, Journal
 182 Kristian Cerner
or geographical impediments, afocedborder (limes, the Iron Curtain,
the external boundary of the Schengen Agreement) is drawn,
cutting off the outside world.
An important distinction between the Rom an Empire on the
one hand and Soviet rule in Central Europe and the EU on the
other is that the latter came into being at a time when the system
of nation-states had long been prevalent in Europe. Moreover,
both the Warsaw Pact and the EU were constructed around the
principle that the units which together constituted the system
were the individual states. The Rom an approach involved in­
tegrating the new provinces into the state by granting Rom an
citizenship to the political elites, while with Soviet rule and the
EU the states were integrated in their existing forms. The provinces
of the Rom an Empire ultimately became part of the state, while
in the modern cases the relationship between the whole and its
components is problematic, in terms both of the relations among
the states and of the political status of the regions within them.
The EU, quite unlike the Rom an model, is moving towards
political decentralisation in accordance with the so-called sub­
sidiarity principle. This principle requests that any given question
should be determined by those who will be most directly affected
by its outcome. Macro-economic decisions and large-scale en­
vironmental problems are in the hands of the central authority,
but matters like local transport, education and health care are
dealt with at a lower level.
The actors within the EU all belong to a nation-state, while
also cooperating in a supranational organisation. They are thus
accustomed to a hierarchical approach to spheres of authority, so
it is natural to view the nation-state as constructed in the same
way, i.e. by regions. W hether these regions are administrative
entities created by the central power like the counties (Ian) in
Sweden, or communities established in the Middle Ages like the
Swedish provinces (landskap) is politically important. As a rule,
the older, historically evolved structures have a standardising influence
on the formation of the new, administratively conceived regions.
The structure of the Rom an Empire resembled a pyramid,
with the imperial cult serving as a unifying rite for the towns
and provinces, and the Emperor functioning as both the principal
o f Institutional and Theoretical Economics, vol.151, no.4 (1995), pp.714-24.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 183
authority and the symbol of this unity. The EU in its turn resembles
a temple whose colum ns—states—support the overarching entity
and are linked by horizontal functional bonds. W ithout unifying
rites, sacred rituals or a personified deity, the EU is symbolised
by an abstract ring of stars. Between Rom e and the EU lie the
Enlightenment, rationalism and modernisation, which are critical
to the configuration of the relationship between state and citizen.
Between R om e and the EU, cultural and ethnic nationalism
and ‘the m odem project’ have emerged. Nationalism has often
been a more potent source o f political mobilisation than the
democratic principle o f citizenship. Territorial and ethnic identity
can either coincide or diverge. W ithin geographical regions in
each of the European states there are populations whose forefathers
autochthonously resided in the same historical region for many
generations, as well as individuals or groups who are immigrants
in the country or the offspring of immigrants. The latter tend to
identify not only with the region of settlement, but also with the
area from which they arrived, the ‘region of origin’. Furthermore,
several generations have been reared in ethno-nationalism, and
the result is that individuals identify not only with the region but
also, in some instances, with the state where those who share
their language or faith are state-sustaining/state-defining.
Because of the multidimensional character o f‘region’ its relations
to both territory and people and its blend of historical tradition
and political construction, the concept is quite dynamic. Different
aspects of its definition are relevant depending on the context in
which a particular region is discussed. A political-historical analysis
requires more than a purely topological and chronological perspec­
tive; it must be contextual.

Parameters fo r Regions in Central Europe

During the Communist era the states of Central Europe were
highly centralised. Local authority was invariably an extension of
the central state administration, which in its turn was controlled
by the rigidly hierarchically organised and centralised Communist
party. It was like a patron—client relationship between individuals,
w ho represented themselves, their own physical security and
 184 Kristian Cerner
material gam.6 During nearly fifty years o f Soviet rule there was
no integration of the provinces through an expansion o f the notion
of citizenship as there was under Rom e. The leaders o f the Warsaw
Pact states were not Soviet citizens, who represented their province
of origin in Moscow, the centre of the empire; those who showed
an inclination to place the interest of their own state above that
of the Soviet Union were either forced to back down or removed.
W ithin the Sovietised states, the local administrators did not rep­
resent the local population but the central power —and incidentally
they used their position in the hierarchy for personal gain. Inside
the Soviet bloc there was little room for regional actor-identity
or cooperation among the peripheries across state frontiers on the
Euroregional model. Each central power made sure that the sig­
nificance of the border was preserved, and local contacts across
the state frontiers were discouraged.
During the Soviet era demographic changes had a profound
impact on the historical regions in Central and Eastern Europe.
The redrawing of state boundaries affected Germany, Poland,
Czechoslovakia and also Hungary, which had to relinquish to
Slovakia an area across the Danube from Bratislava. Historical
regions such as Carpatho-Ruthenia, Silesia and the Vilna area
partly or completely switched their state affiliations. A great number
of people were displaced, with the result that the ethnic make-up
of the population was radically altered in many historical regions.
In 1945 several million former Polish citizens, who had fallen
under Soviet rule in 1939, were moved from eastern Galicia,
Volynia and Polesia to East Prussia, Pomerania, the Poznan area
and Silesia, and once again became Polish citizens. Millions of
German-speakers were expelled from Poland, the Sudetenland,
Slovakia and Hungary and became German citizens, the majority
within the Federal Republic. These developments had important
political consequences, given that individuals identified with a
particular ethnic group and a given territory. The expelled Germans
continued to identify with the Silesia, East Prussia or Sudetenland
of the past, and the presence of these Heimatvertriebene was one
factor which determined the Federal Republic’s initially restrictive
h See Andrew Coulson, ‘From democratic centralism to local democracy’ in
A. Coulson (ed.), Local Government in Eastern Europe: Establishing Democracy at
the Grassroots (Aldershot, 1995), pp.7-9.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 185
Ostpolitik. In Poland and Czechoslovakia the Communist leadership
sought to enhance its tenuous political legitimacy by conjuring
up the image of a revanchist and irredentist Germany, from which
they would protect the people with the help of the Soviets. The
political legitimacy of this leadership remained weak, as the eruption
of various crises showed, but the message conveyed to the rising
generation was that the Germans had been present in Poland and
Czechoslovakia only during the war period of 1939-45. This also
influenced naturally the rising generation’s views of the regions
of Silesia and Erzgebirge, affirming the notion that these were
historically geographic designations that had been ethnic Polish
and ethnic Czech areas from time immemorial.
Thus the revision of state boundaries and the interstate migrations
of the time affected the ethnic identity and social make-up of
these historical regions. However, other phenomena also had im­
portant consequences in this context. The Communist state’s in­
dustrialisation and urbanisation policies were critical developments:
by 1989 the historical regions harboured the Soviet legacy of
large cities with obsolete industries and an immigrant labour force
from various rural areas, and of a backward rural society of peasants
originating from quite different territories.7 Communications and
the infrastructure in general were severely neglected. Regions had
been isolated and thus become provinces in the negative sense:
the Socialist states were largely focused on the capitals. In addition,
the rigidly hierarchical governing method of the Communist system
sought to destroy local collaboration at all levels.x Both material
and spiritual conditions prevented the evolution of collective con­
sciousness —a regional ‘we-feeling’ vis-à-vis the central state power
— and of political organisation within the historical regions.
If the concept ‘region’ signifies an empirically observable entity
with a special identity and distinct boundaries, an independent
cultural, political and economic configuration below the state level,
it must be affirmed that the existence of regions was not permitted
in Communist Europe. However, after 1989 political actors invoked
ethno-territorial identities as grounds for special treatment politically,
7 See Ivan Volgyes, ‘The legacies of Communism: an introductory essay’, in
Zoltán Barany and Ivan Volgyes (eds), The Legacies o f Communism in Eastern
Europe (Baltimore, 1995), pp.1-19.
H Ibid., p .52.
186 Kristian G erner
economically and culturally vis-à -vis the titular nation of the state
and not necessarily in harmony with the economic policies con­
ducted by this state. Efforts have also been made to forge cross­
boundary Euroregions in the former Soviet bloc. Thus the political
map of Central and Eastern Europe is beginning to resemble a
palimpsest. W hen political actors in Germany, Hungary, Poland,
the Czech Republic and Slovakia invoke history to gain legitimacy,
older political-geographic patterns appear under the Communist
surface layer. The territorial and ethnic aspects of the region concept
are both brought to life.

The Soviet Imprint

During the Soviet era the problem was two-sided. O n the one
hand, there was a certain continuity insofar as throughout the
period there were actors with a preserved regional identity and
regional awareness. On the other hand, certain developments in
some areas both before 1939 and after 1989 showed evidence of
regional identity, although they were not actors between 1945
and 1989. However, it is important above all to estimate how
far the Soviet period generated changes in the regional identities.
In Hungary, the county system was reorganised in 1950, and
central rule was strengthened. One observer commented con­
cerning the county capitals: ‘...placed there by the central apparatus
and playing a secondary role in redistribution, they had nothing
to do with the forming of regions, or even an intermediary form
of self-government.’9 Hungary has a system rooted in the Middle
Ages of division into counties (megye). In the Soviet period, these
were governed by centrally-appointed administrators who approved
the local budget, monitored the collection of taxes and allocated
state funds. These counties can be understood as historically es­
tablished regions, although they were unable to function as actors
during this period because the local leadership exclusively repre­
sented the central pow er.10
9 József Tóth, ‘Historical and today’s socio-econom ic conditions o f regionalism
in H ungary’, manuscript (Pécs: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre
for Regional Studies, 1990).
1,1 Kenneth Davey, ‘Local Governm ent in H ungary’ in Coulson (ed.) Local
Government in Eastern Europe, p.73.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 187
In the German Democratic Republic (GDR) former Lander
were transformed into Bezirken with boundaries that did not build
upon tradition. In 1975 Poland was partitioned into forty-nine
counties without historical foundations. This represented the fur­
thest extent of a deregionalisation process begun in 1945.11
States that were labelled federations in no way corresponded
to the functional, decentralised structures existing in say the United
States or the Federal Republic of Germany. National minorities
were largely unable to assert themselves in their home areas, even
ones where they were formally recognised as minorities. The
notion of a homogeneous nation-state was realised under Com ­
munism. In 1967 the situation was described as follows:
In the USSR, as in Yugoslavia, and as in Czechoslovakia ... the federal
powers have been gradually reduced.[...] The functional authority of the
centre was progressively reasserted and re-imposed. The same is true also
of the other European Communist states which are not federal: East
Germany, which transformed its initial Länder into Bezirken (provinces);
Rumania, where the Magyar Autonomous Region was slowly, after 1956,
de-autonomized, etc.
Czechoslovakia was administered through National Committees
at the regional, district and county levels. These were funded out
of the state budget, but could retain certain revenues from enterprise,
although this too was regulated by the central state power. This
was intended not to promote regional independence but rather
to lessen economic discrepancies among the regions: the regional
administrative level was abolished by the first post-Communist
regime.13 In the Czech case, analysis of possible regional identity
must begin with discovering traces of the historical provinces of
Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia from the Communist period. In
Slovakia the area of greatest interest is Carpatho-Ruthenia.

" See Anna Cielecka and John Gibson, ‘Local governm ent in Poland’, in
Coulson (ed.), Local Government in Eastern Europe, p.23.
12 Ghita Ionescu, The Politics o f the European Communist States (London, 1969),
pp. 122-3.
13 Kenneth Davey, ‘The Czech and Slovak republics’ in Coulson (ed.), Local
Government in Eastern Europe, p .43; Sona Capkova, ‘Local authorities and economic
developm ent in Slovakia’, ibid., p .199.
188 Kristian Gerner
Historical Parameters
The character of regions in the Central and South-East European
context is most closely comparable to the three regions of Belgium
—Flanders, Wallonia and Eupen-M alm edy —rather than with
regions in countries such as Sweden, France and Britain where
today’s regionalism involves the artificial resuscitation of older
administrative designations, with the territorial definition being
wholly decisive. The Belgium regions also entail older administra­
tive entities, but they are defined ethnically insofar as language
- French, Dutch or German —represents the principal identity-
marker for each group. In accordance with the principles adopted
after 1918, the identity of the ethnic group, rather than o f the
region, forms the basis.
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, like Belgium nearly a century
earlier, emerged long after the feudal territorial states in W estern
Europe had been defined as nation-states, and Bretons, Gaelic
Scots and Jamtlanders had ceased to be more than exotic local
colour. The historical territorial states such as Bohemia-Moravia
and Croatia, which became parts of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia
respectively, were perceived by most actors as ‘belonging’ to the
ethnic groups of Czechs and Croats and thus as being ethnically
defined. This prevented a development of Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia along ‘French’ or ‘British’ assimilationist lines. The
result was ethno-regionalism within those states and —after 1968
and 1945 respectively —within the federations, not only among
Czechs and Croats but also among Slovaks, Serbs and other peoples.
Poland had been divided between three empires after the as­
cendancy of the modern nation-state began, and governing was
becoming increasingly centralised in Russia, Germany and to a
lesser extent Austria. This development was manifested on the
symbolic level by infer alia, the system of railway lines with strong
emphasis on the capitals, and on the practical level by the language
policy, Russification or Germanisation. The difference between
the diffuse eastern area in the Polish republic, kresy and the well-
organized western expanse towards Germany, pogranicze, was further
accentuated.'4 Behind the illusion of a unified Polish identity in

14 Anne Applebaum, Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe
(New York, 1994), p.47.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 189
the state established in 1918 lay profound economic and mental
differences that were to prove important after 1989.
Hungary’s identity as a state was linked from the early Middle
Ages onwards not only to Pannonia, with Visegrad and Buda as
the centres for royal power, but also to Transylvania and Slovakia.
During the Ottom an occupation of central Hungary in 1541—1686,
Pozsony (Bratislava) was the capital, with a Habsburg as king,
while Transylvania was governed as a duchy in vassalage to the
Ottoman Sultan, though with significant freedom of action even
in foreign policy. Hungary lost the historic provinces of Transylvania
and Slovakia through the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
Romania was constructed in 1919-20 from the old Regate
consisting of Wallachia and Moldavia, which during the period
after the the end of the Crimean W ar and the Congress of Berlin
in 1878 came to resemble a Romanian nation-state; Transylvania
with its large ethno-nationally mobilised Hungarian population;
and the multinational regions of Bukovma and Bessarabia —the
latter three regions were incorporated into Romania as a result
of the First W orld War. Ethno-regionalism was brought into
domestic politics as an explosive ingredient, and as a reason for
the irredentist policies pursued in 1940 by neighbouring Hungary
and the USSR.
N o one has yet determined how many generations need to
elapse before the descendants of immigrants see themselves, and
are seen by others, as ‘natives’. In Transylvania Hungarian and
Romanian nationalists alike describe each other as ‘immigrants’
with less ‘historical right’ to the province. During the Middle
Ages the sparsely-populated duchy of Bohemia, inhabited by
Czech-speaking people, received as immigrants German-speaking
burghers and entrepreneurs in the mining industry. W hen Czecho­
slovakia was formed in 1918 as the state of the ‘Czechoslovak
nation’ president Tomas G. Masaryk described the residing German
population as ‘colonisers’, i.e. no more than a temporary presence.
It was thus that the term ‘Sudeten German’ evolved as the desig­
nation for the German-speaking population in the ‘Sudeten’. Those
who had merely been Germans within Austria —the Habsburg
E m pire—now became a specific ethnic group.
The evolution of Sudeten German history is well known. The
majority identified with Nazi Germany both in the 1930s and
during the Occupation, and were collectively penalised for this
190 Kristian Gerner
by being deported in 1945. Most of the deportees came to Bavaria,
where they were eventually recognised as a fourth ‘tribe’ alongside
Bavanans, Swabians and Franconians.
If the Germans in Czechoslovakia had not been defined as
‘Sudeten Germans’ in 1918, and these had not become a ‘tribe’
in Bavaria, they would have remained merely Germans. The specific
group had become as illusory as the Cheshire Cat in Alice in
Wonderland behind its smile. In order to highlight the subjectivity
of the construction further we may consider the regional versus
the ethnic identity of the German-speakers in Prague in 1918.
They were not ‘Sudeten Germans’, but the circumstances obliged
them to identify with this ethno-territorially defined group. The
option of being a Bohemian, i.e. territorially identified with all
of Bohemia-Moravia and without ethnic affiliation, did not exist.
The only alternative was to become Czech. In Czech, Bohemia
is ‘Cechy’, and Moravian is viewed as a dialect. In other words,
the name that denotes the region is also the name of the people.

Traces in the Palimpsest

As we have implied above, the regional question in Central Europe
underwent extensive ethnicisation in the twentieth century. The
notion of common territorial identity for citizens with different
m other-tongues was suppressed by state propaganda, which
presented the historical regions as ‘actually’ ancient Polish, Czech,
Hungarian or Romanian areas. M odern ethno-nationalism was
projected back into history. In addition, the leadership endorsed
the thesis that the ethnic group which had left the earliest traces
in the region still had an exclusive claim on the area. Historians,
archaeologists and philologists were all made to serve the ethno-
national propaganda of the state.
Because the relationship between territory and ethnicity was
presented in a one-dimensional way, and because of the socialist
state’s hierarchical centralism, the historical regions did not evolve
into collective actors. Instead they became, explicitly or implicitly,
battlefields for ethnically-motivated conflicts. Ethnic groups in
regions such as Transylvania and the Vilna area struggled against
each other rather than asserting the interests of the region vis-a-vis
the central power.
In the exposition below we focus on a lim ited num ber of
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 191

historical regions in Central Europe. Both the previous history

and post-1989 development in these areas warrant an investigation
of the socialist period to determine whether they can be said to
have existed as self-conscious entities during this era. The regions
in question are Transylvania, Moravia-Silesia, Silesia, the Vilna
area, Carpatho-Ruthenia and the Kaliningrad district. O f these
we devote the most attention to Transylvania: the question of its
status in Rom ania and the open political struggle among the
ethnic groups imply that it was indeed a region of its own during
the Socialist period.

Tl^ANSYLVANIA
U nder the leadership of Petra Groza, who was from Transylvania
and spoke both Rom anian and Hungarian, the popular front
government that took power in Romania after the Second W orld
192 Kristian Gerner
W ar conducted a liberal policy towards minorities. MNSz, the
Organization of the Hungarian People, functioned as a political
party and participated in the popular front government. A substantial
number of the Romanian Communist Party’s leaders were H un­
garian-speaking Jews from Transylvania.
In 1948 the Com m unists unilaterally assumed pow er in
Romania, and on 13 April the country had a new constitution
and became a ‘Popular Democracy’. Industry and agriculture were
socialised in accordance with the Soviet model. The trial of László
Rájk in Hungary in 1949, resulting in his execution, had reper­
cussions in Transylvania, since Rájk was from this region and
had maintained contacts across the border. From the Stalinist angle,
the Hungarians in Romania were ‘Titoists’ and traitors. The MNSz
leaders were arrested and the organisation broke up. Groza was
removed as prime minister in 1952, which confirmed for the
Hungarians that things were not going in the right direction.
In 1952 Romania was administratively redivided. A Hungarian
A utonom ous R egion was established in Transylvania. The
authorities dissolved the MNSz in 1953, which they justified with
the argument that no Hungarian political organisation was necessary
since the Romanian Communist Party protected minorities. Also
in that year, the party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej declared
that the nationality question in Romania was resolved. It now
became impossible to discuss the status of minorities openly.
During the Communist period there was significant social and
geographic mobility, and this served to alter inter-ethnic relations
in Transylvania. In 1977, 35 per cent of the population were
living in areas outside their native communities. The cities in
Transylvania were Rom anianised, and previously Hungarian
centres such as Satu Mare (Szatmár), Oradea (Nagyvarad) and
Cluj (Kolozsvár) now had a Romanian majority.
The 1956 revolution in Hungary aroused expressions of sym­
pathy among Hungarians in Transylvania, and thus led to arrests.
In that year the Romanian Communist party adopted a manifestly
Romanian-nationalist line. The myth of Daco-Romanian con­
tinuity has long been an essential component in Romanian con­
sciousness of historical identity. The theory, according to which
Romanians have lived in the area since antiquity and thus 1,000
years before the Hungarians arrived in 895, first appeared as a
historical-political argument in the writings of Inochentie M icu-
r

Regions in Central Europe under Communism 193

Klein (1692-1778).15 Ceaugescu, who assumed the post of First
Party Secretary in 1965, further emphasised Romanian nationalism.
A new constitution was drafted, its stipulations securing individual
human rights while also affirming collective cultural rights for the
‘coexisting nationalities’. These groups were granted the right to
use their own language in public life within their administrative
area. In 1968 the designation ‘areas populated by Hungarians’ was
substituted for ‘areas with mixed populations’. The Hungarian
Autonomous Region was dissolved in 1967.
U nder Ceauçescu, Romania was a rigid Communist dictatorship
plagued by a disastrous economic policy, the effects of which
struck at all citizens without regard to nationality. The regime
sought to prevent all its subjects from forging contacts with the
outside world, and thus made any contact across borders difficult,
including the exchange of books and journals. Hungarian ac­
quaintances visiting Romania were classified as ‘foreign tourists’,
and so were not allowed to stay at the homes of their friends.
In 1979 a decree was passed stipulating that foreigners could pur­
chase petrol only with Western currency; obviously this would
have been difficult for visitors from socialist Hungary. These restric­
tions denied Hungarians the right to visit their kin on the other
side of the border. The repressive policies were understood as
deliberate ethnic discrimination. Because the Hungarians in Tran­
sylvania not only contrasted their circumstances with the relative
prosperity of Hungary, but could identify with the Hungarian
state, dissatisfaction with the government became explosive.
In 1957 a reorganisation of the school system was initiated in
Transylvania. Hungarian schools became subsections of Romanian
schools and thereafter were successively weakened. The Hungarian
university in Cluj v/as included in the Romanian one. In some
specialist colleges, all instruction in Hungarian was stopped. In
1973 a new law was introduced stipulating that there had to be
a minimum of twenty-five students at secondary school level and
thirty-six at the lyceum level for instruction in a minority language
to be possible. If one Romanian-speaking student was present, a
Rom anian-medium class would be set up.
15 Sándor Vogel, ‘Transylvania: M yth and Reality’ in André Gerrits and Nanci
Adler (eds), Vampires I Instaked: National Images, Stereotypes and M yths in East
Central Europe (Amsterdam, 1995), pp.78-9.
 194 Kristian Cerner
As for what was actually taught, Transylvania’s history was
utterly ignored, except for how it served the continuity theory,
as during the Hungarian period in 1940-4. However, the national
overtones were reversed. In 1977 one observer wrote: ‘From the
description of Transylvanian history, no one could guess that H un­
garian politicians and noblemen, together with the German Saxons,
ruled the province for almost a millennium. N ot even the anti-social
estate holders and nobles are described as Hungarians, lest the
reader be told that Hungarians ruled the province.,16
Hungarian cultural institutions, such as the society of writers,
the theatres and the opera in Cluj were fused with Romanian
ones and became sections within them. The Rom anian language
generally prevailed. Hungarian-language books were published in
smaller editions in proportion to the population than Romanian-
language texts and were often translations of Romanian works.
Locally published Hungarian books and journals were more widely
sold outside Transylvania than within its borders. The greatest
blow to the cultural tradition of the Hungarian minority came
m 1974 with a law which though not overtly directed against
minorities, had severe repercussions on them:
In accordance w ith laws 63 an d 2 0 7 /1 9 7 4 , all b ooks, archives an d in
essence all objects o ld er th an th irty years w ere nationalised. T hese laws
w ere im p lem en ted in o rd er to ‘preserve th e n ational cultural h eritag e’. In
reality, th e d ev elo p m en t p ro ceed ed in precisely th e opposite direction.
T h e archives and d o cu m e n t collections o f th e H u n g arian C ath olic and
R e fo rm e d churches w ere seized. M aterial th at had previously been acces­
sible to scholars and th e public was rem o v ed and stored in various places
w ith n o consideration for classification. T h e archives o f the R o m a n -
C atho lic bishopric in O radea w ere transferred fro m a b u ild ing p u t up in
th e 18th cen tu ry for th e specific pu rp o se o f sto rin g this m aterial, to a
w arehouse in ail old castle th at was u tterly ill-suited for its preservation
and for research. T h e archives in th e bishopric o f S atu -M are have been
virtually destroyed in this sam e w ay. M o reo v er, th ere has b een no train in g
of librarians and archivists in R o m a n ia since 1957, w h ich m akes th e
consequences o f these n ew laws even w orse. M aterial th at is u n iq u e n o t
only to H u ng ary , b u t to all o f C en tral E u ro p e is ab o u t to go to w a ste .'7

1(1 Michael Z. Szaz, East European Quarterly, vol. II, no.4 (1977), p.499, cited
in Gellert Tamás, ‘Ungrare i Transsylvanien’ in Uiigrama i Transsylvanien (Stock­
holm, 1988).
“ Uttgrarna i I'mnssylvanieti, pp.41-2.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 195
In 1978 the Hungarian minority in Transylvania attracted in­
ternational attention: one o f its leaders, Károly Király, who had
held a high position in the Communist party, released to the
foreign press three letters which had been sent to the Romanian
party leadership the previous year thoroughly criticising the national
discrimination suffered by Hungarians in the area. Király was
punished with a brief internal exile, but Ceaujescu visited Tran­
sylvania and put in motion a campaign intended to gain the sym­
pathy of the minorities, while he simultaneously branded ‘decadent
persons’ (read Király) who had conspired with foreign forces (read
Hungary). In 1981 Hungarian intellectuals in Transylvania launched
an underground journal, Counterpoints, and the September 1982
issue appealed to the CSCE conference in Madrid to draw up a
treaty on collective rights for nationalities and found an international
committee to review the situation in Transylvania. From 1984
reports on the state of affairs in this region were regularly sent
to the outside world. From the mid-1970s to the fall of Ceau§escu
in 1989 ample testimony exists to show that the representatives
o f the Hungarian minorities in Transylvania felt that they were
subjected to discrimination.
Relations between Hungary and Romania deteriorated further
after Ion Lancranjan, a Ceau§escu aide, published a book in 1982
which portrayed an eternally Romanian Transylvania, to which
the Hungarians came as intruders. This produced an intense reaction
in Hungary. In 1984, in conjunction with its congress, the H un­
garian Communist Party asserted the right of the minority to
develop its own culture. The point was conveyed to the Romanian
party congress the same year by the Hungarian delegation but
the statement was censored by the Romanian press, which wrote
of ‘revanchist currents’ in Hungary. Romania closed its consulate
in the Hungarian border town of Debrecen, and the Hungarian
consulate in Cluj was closed in 1988.
The situation went from bad to worse in 1986, when the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences published its three volume Eiistory
of Transylvania, edited by the minister for cultural affairs, Bela
Köpeczi. This work accorded the Hungarians an important place
in Transylvania’s history and was met with a vehement Romanian
campaign in which Kádár’s Hungary was compared to Miklós
Horthy’s authoritarian interwar regime, called Fascist by the Romanians.
196 Kristian Gerner
Hungary was accused of making irredentist claims on T ransylvania,18
Because of Ceau§escu’s economic policy, Rom ania by the late
1980s had a backward economic structure, severe supply problems
and widespread petty crime. The whole of society was in a state
of dissolution. Ceauçescu attempted to create legitimacy of a
pseudo-Byzantine sort for his regime through a zealous cult of
personality and of Romanian nationalism. This made life still more
difficult for the Hungarian minority, which was now subjected
to forced assimilation. The method in this process consisted of
population transfers in connection with the so-called ‘systématisation’
of the countryside, where the old villages were to be eradicated
and the populations thrown together in barracks in ‘agro-towns’.
This ‘systématisation’ was an obvious threat to Hungarian culture,
with further encroachments on Hungarian-language instruction,
the closing of cultural institutions, and harassment of the churches.
In March 1988 the Romanian government announced that
‘socialist evolution’ required the razing of 8,000 villages, to be
replaced by urbanised ‘agro-industrial complexes’. This policy was
not to follow any particular ethnic considerations, but it was
clearly well-suited to wreck the material foundations o f the old
peasant culture among the Hungarian and German peoples of
Transylvania. In addition, the government’s declaration was made
at a time when tens of thousands of Hungarians had gone to
Hungary fleeing ethnic persecution.
In his speech to the Romanian Communist Party Congress in
November 1989 in Bucharest, Ceauçescu rejected all notions of
liberalisation, but by this time the tide that was bringing down
the regimes of Central Europe was about to reach him.
During 16-18 December thousands demonstrated in Timisoara
(Temesvár in Hungarian) in the Banat, a town o f some 300,000
inhabitants, many from the Hungarian or German minorities. The
demonstration of 16 December was triggered by a rum our that
László Tökes, a priest of the Hungarian Reformist Church and
a champion ofcivil rights, was to be seized by the police. Hungarians
and Romanians demonstrated together against the authorities. Many
youths were severely injured when Securitate troops violently

18 George Schöpflin, ‘The role of Transylvania in Hungarian politics’, Radio

Free Europe Research, vol.13, no.48, Part I (1988).
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 197
broke up the demonstrations on the 17th and 18th in an event
that became known as the Timisoara Massacre.
Despite this bloody repression, the protests continued both in
Transylvania, where the Hungarian minority resided, and elsewhere
in Romania. The regime tried in vain to depict the incidents in
Transylvania as being caused by provocations by Hungary and
attempts to recover Transylvania as it had done in 1940. On 21
December, Ceaujescu organised a rally in Bucharest as he often
did, to address the people and be hailed by them. He was interrupted
by angry calls, whereupon the security forces fired on the demonstrators,
claiming still more lives. Ceau§escu fled with his wife, and on
22 December, the defence authorities aligned themselves with
the popular rebellion. A National Salvation Front consisting mainly
of prominent Communists who had fallen out of favour with
Ceaujescu a few years earlier formed a provisional government.
Ceau§escu and his wife were executed. Subsequent developments
revealed that Ceau§escu had been overthrown by men who
belonged to the ruling caste. However, it was not possible to
determine whether the demonstration and repression at Timisoara
had actively been manipulated by the coup instigators, or whether
the latter merely recognised the opportunity that was presenting
itself and thus sprang into action when it became clear that the
people were ready to part company with Ceau§escu.
The arrest of the Hungarian László Tökes was the spark that
ignited the revolution in Romania. The revolt began with an
ethnic minority that Ceaujescu had actively persecuted and which
was influenced by the liberalisation process going on at the same
time in Hungary. This minority suffered from the oppression
more strongly than any other group, and also had an alternative
— life in H ungary—in its field of vision. Although Transylvania
with the Banat did not appear as a collective actor, it was still
this region, the battlefield between the central government and
the ethnic Hungarians, that finally caused the political upset in
Romania in the fall of 1989. The region still had an identity.

M ORAVIA-SILESIA
Between 1945 and 1989 the Sudeten area was simply the border
area of Bohemia-Moravia, sparsely populated, with dilapidated
villages whose former German inhabitants had been superseded
198 Kristian Gerner
by Gypsies from Slovakia. But the ‘tribe’ had settled in Bavaria
and cultivated the myth of its origins —in the Sudetenland. Ac­
cording to their own view, the ‘colonisers’ had brought civilisation
to Bohemia, and thus the area was their land. W hen the Communist
surface layer was erased from Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia in
1989, the prewar pattern of mixed German and Czech settlements
re-emerged —not as a reality, but as a retrieved and, in the eyes
of many political actors, re-legitimised recollection.
Under a law passed in 1968 and effective from 1969, Czecho­
slovakia became a dual federation in which Slovakia had some
autonomy. To the extent that one can speak of regionalism in
the Soviet period, the exact status of Slovakia was the issue. His­
torically, the Czech portion comprised three entities or regions.
Those were Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, and Bohemia ( Cechy)
was identified with the entire portion. After 1969 Slovakia was
a part ot equal standing; but Czech and Slovak were distinct
languages, and the religious differences were likewise so marked
that there was a veritable cultural boundary between the two
peoples. Thus Moravia and Silesia are of special interest in the
context of regions.
During the Prague Spring of 1968, in Brno, the National C om ­
mittee for Moravia, i.e. a Communist administrative structure,
put forward a project for a three-part federation in which Moravia-
Silesia would become an entity equal to Bohemia and Slovakia.
In late May a Society for Moravia and Silesia was established in
Brno to promote the project, and by its own account it soon
had 200,000 members. The project met with resistance, both in
many cities in the Brno area and in northern Moravia, from those
who wished tor greater autonomy for districts and municipalities
rather than fédéralisation; and in Silesia from local forces who
wished to see their region become the fourth in a federalised
state.
The Moravian and Silesian projects encountered massive op­
position from the Slovak leaders, who balked at any idea o f granting
the Czech people still more regions to pit against Slovakia in a
federation. Czech leaders in Prague were likewise against the project.1
Requests for a plebiscite, presented by the Association for Moravia
H. G ordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, NJ,
1976), pp.470-47.
r
Regions in Central Europe under Communism 199
and Silesia, were rejected. The ‘Moravian patriots’ wished to vote
on a num ber of issues, including official recognition of a specific
Moravian tradition, and the removal of anti-Moravian Czech senior
officials from their posts.20
After 1989 the Moravian-Silesian question once again became
topical in Czechoslovakia. In the parliamentary elections of 1990
the M ovem ent for a Self-GoverningDemocracy and the Association
for Moravia and Silesia received 8 per cent of the votes in the
Czech Republic. The m o vem en t was territorially defined but was
soon faced with an ethnically-oriented contender, the Moravian
National Party. The Czech constitution, adopted in November
1992, is informed by the notion of a civic state rather than an
ethnically demarcated state. In its preamble, the constitution defines
the population as ‘the citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia,
Moravia and Silesia’. Although this formulation can be understood
as acknowledging the existence of historical regions, respect for
pertinent regional identities had no place in the policies of the
government headed by Vaclav Klaus. In 1993 a proposal was
drafted for the division of the Republic into thirteen regions, and
in 1994 a similar plan proposed division into seventeen regions
not based on any histoncal boundaries. Klaus expressly refuted
all arguments that invoked history for the determination of regions.
In 1993, in a speech in conjunction with Brno’s 750th anniversary
celebrations, President Vaclav Havel appealed to his listeners to
‘think of the destiny of the entire people’, and urged Brno to
refrain from demanding a separate government and parliament
for Moravia, and to become instead a symbol o f cooperation and
cohesion in Central Europe.21
Moravian regionalism had apparently become no stronger in
the period after 1968, and Prague’s position on greater inde­
pendence for Moravia and Silesia was as reserved after 1989 as
it had been during the Communist era.

20 O tto Ulc, Politics in Czechoslovakia (San Francisco, 1974), p.68.

2’ M atthew Rhodes, ‘National identity and minority rights in the constitutions
o f the Czech Republic and Slovakia’, East European Quarterly, vol.29, no.3
(1995), pp.353-7.
200 Kristian Cerner
SILESIA
A destiny comparable to that of the Sudeten Germans befell the
Polish-speaking people from the interwar Polish Republic’s kresy,
the eastern areas which were incorporated into the Soviet Union
after 1945. The Polish-speaking groups were moved to the formerly
German Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia —areas from which
the Germans had either fled or been expelled, or where they had
escaped attention by allowing themselves to be Polonised.
Silesia experienced a distinctive displacement in relation to East­
ern Galicia, which Poland was forced to relinquish to Soviet
Ukraine in 1939. The process can be illustrated by name-changes:
for example Lwów, became L’viv and Breslau became Wroclaw
— and by the fact that intellectual and academic Lwów lived on
in Wroclaw after 1945, with the traditions of the Polish university
in Lwów being transferred to the former German university in
Breslau. Polish schoolchildren learned that the German influence
was a legacy from the time when the western part of Poland
belonged to Prussia after 1772, not of medieval settlement. The
Instytut Slaski in Opole propagated the thesis of Silesia’s quin-
tessentially Polish character. Correspondingly, Germans learned
little of the situation in Silesia after 1945: their history ended
with the expulsion.22
In the interwar period, the autochthons in Silesia were known
as Slonzaks (with differing spellings in German, Polish and Czech).
They spoke a W est Slavic language or a dialect of Polish or
Czech. German elements maintained that this was a corrupted
form of German, so-called ‘ Wasserpolnisch ’. Silesia was not a state
dunng the interwar years, having then been divided between
Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Inhabitants who later
migrated to the area identified themselves and each other as Czechs,
Poles and Germans, not as Silesians, and viewed Slonzaks as
Polonised Czechs or Germans, Czechised or Germanised Poles,
or Germanised Czechs and Poles. The specific ethno-regional
identity of the original population was completely disregarded in
political and cultural affairs.
W ith Poland’s resurrection as a state in 1918, one great dilemma
was the question of how the boundary with Germany (and with
22 Mariusz Urbanek, ‘Slask Polaków i N iem ców ’, Polityka, no.44 (1995), pp.68-
r
Regions in Central Europe under Communism 201
Czechoslovakia) was to be drawn in Silesia. It seemed self-evident
that Silesia should not become an independent state; however,
the area was perceived by the majority of the actors involved,
including the victorious Allied powers, as a historically-given
region. Was the region to be divided, or should it fail entirely
within one or other of the states? Following a plebiscite which
left Polish nationalists aggrieved, and a revolt led by the Polish
plebiscite commissioner Wojciech Korfanty, the area was parti­
tioned in 1922 under supervision by the League of Nations. In
a preparatory study the Allied Control Commission had written
that it would be impossible to draw boundaries on the basis of
ethnic criteria both because the ‘races’ lived intermingled with
one another and because the ‘industrial triangle’ could not be
broken up for geographical and economic reasons.23 The victorious
powers determined that Silesia would be divided on the basis of
a combination of ethnic and economic factors. The partitioning
of Silesia between Germany and Poland meant that three-quarters
of the coal-producing areas and two-thirds of the steelworks went
to Poland, while 625,000 Polish-speakers found themselves in
Germany and 260,000 German-speakers in Poland.24
From 1919 up dll the plebiscite in 1921, a lively propaganda
war raged in and around Silesia. The newspaper Der Oberschlesier
in Oppeln, which had close ties to the Catholic Zentrum Party
in Germany, promoted the notion of a specific Silesian identity,
as did the Oberschlesische Zeitung in By tom, organ of the Democratic
Party, and the Oberschlesischer Kurier in Könígshütte and Ratiborer
Rundschau , both also associated with Zentrum. It is noteworthy
that the assertion of Silesian particularity was identified with the
assertion that the region should belong to Germany. The argument
implied that the area was historically German, that it was a geo­
graphical and economic entity, and that it also manifested the
German people’s cultural mission in Central Europe.2’ From this
angle Silesia appears as a region in the German nation-state.
In 1939 Germany seized the whole of Silesia and incorporated
23 Peter W ozniak, ‘“Blut, Erz, Kohlc": a thematic examination of German
propaganda on the Silesian question during the interwar years’, East European
Quarterly, vol.28, no.3 (1994), p.321.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., pp.326-7.
202 Kristian Cerner
the region into the Reich. It fell to Poland in 1945, whereupon
the majority of German-speakers were expelled. Those who remained,
including the allegedly indispensable experts in the mining industry
and the so-called autochthonous border population, were subjected
to Polonisation. After 1989, autochthonous individuals appeared
in Silesia, who defined themselves partly as Germans, and partly
as Slonzaks. W ith the return of the latter group, the region began
to retrieve its ethno-territonal identity.26
The newly-awoken regional identity in Silesia is primarily linked
to the German element in the population, which for opportunistic
reasons increased a hundredfold after 1989, and in early 1996 was
estimated at between half and three-quarters of a million —90 per
cent of the entire ‘German’ population in Poland. About 150
German organisations were created after 1989, which suggests
that efforts to revive a German cultural identity have been largely
successful, despite the absence of a local German intelligentsia
after 1945, and despite the fact that German-language instruction
was non-existent before 1989.27 Miners had been a materially
privileged group in Communist Poland, and under the government
of Gierek (1970-80), who was of Silesian origin, the province
received a large new steelworks, Huta Katowice. This does not
imply that the region asserted itself as an actor before 1989; it
was the state’s ideology and the personal preferences of the party
leadership that gave the commitment to heavy industry' in Silesia
such importance. The region’s inhabitants did not conduct policy.
Yet the post-1989 German ‘revival’ in Silesia was accompanied
by manifestations of Polish regionalism, in the form of local protests
against the possibility that the Warsaw government would treat
the area unfairly. The background to this was the relative deprivation
faced by the Silesian population with high unemployment and a
decreased standard of living —developments that resulted from the
country now operating as a free market economy and no longer
being focused on heavy industry.28

2,1 See Kristian Gerner, 'Osteuropa sju ar efter vandnm gen’ in Klas-Goran Karlsson
(ed.), Osteuropa vid skiljeviigen (M oheda, 1995), pp.50-2.
27 Tomasz Kamusella, ‘Asserting minority rights in Poland’, Transition, vol.2,
no.3 (1996), pp.15-18.
See Gerner, ‘O steuropa’.
I

Regions in Central Europe under Communism 203

T H E VILNA AREA
By Poland’s north-eastern border lies another historical region,
the Vilna area (Wilenszczyzna), where a shift in ethno-regional
identity took place during the Soviet period. The area, of which
the city of Vilna (today, as Vilnius capital of the independent
state of Lithuania) was the centre, had been a centre of Polish
and Jewish culture since the Middle Ages. During the National
Romantic period, Vilna and its surrounding area came to occupy
a key place in Polish mythology; the national poet, Adam Mick-
iewicz (1798-1855), was from there. In 1920-39 Vilna belonged
to Poland, while Lithuanian peasants lived in the countryside and
there were substantial Polish and Jewish communities. The Jews
were murdered by the Nazis and only a negligible Jewish minonty
remains today. As for the Poles the Nazi Occupation and Stalin’s
purges in the late 1940s combined to eradicate all that remained
o f the intelligentsia. The most renowned of those who were able
to avoid this fate was Czeszlaw Milosz, who received the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1980.
As a result of the interwar Polish—Lithuanian conflict concerning
Vilna’s state affiliation, the few hundred thousand Poles who remained
after 1945 saw Lithuanians and the Lithuanian Soviet government
as their antagonists. The poorly-educated Polish rural population
thus turned instead to Moscow and the local Russians. For instance,
schoolchildren were taught Russian rather than Lithuanian. This
was made easier by the Soviet authorities effectively preventing
the population of Lithuania from making contact with or learning
about Poland. This alienation was reinforced by the Communist
regime in Warsaw which, out of consideration for Moscow, repressed
Poland’s historic bonds with Lithuania, W hite Russia and Ukraine,
i.e. the history of the Polish—Lithuanian commonwealth.27 How­
ever, nostalgia over Vilna persisted among the Polish intelligentsia,
who were critical of the government. A manifestation of this was
Andrej W ajda’s film A Chronicle of Love, based on a script by
Tadeusz Konwicki, which was set in Vilna during the summer
before the outbreak of the Second W orld War.
A collective regional identity remained among the Polish-speaking
29 Stephen R . Burant and Voytek Zubek, ‘Eastern Europe’s memories and new
realities: resurrecting the Polish—Lithuanian U nion’, Hast European Politics and
Societies, vol.7, no.2 (1993), p.375.
204 Kristian Gerner
population in Vilna during the Soviet era, but this was not oriented
towards Poland or the values associated with democracy and civil
rights. Such values were disseminated in Poland in the 1970s and
culminated in the Solidarity M ovement in 1980 and the change
of government in 1989. In assuming a pro-Soviet position hostile
to the Lithuanian popular front, Sajudis, in 1988-91, the Polish­
speaking population demonstrated a Soviet mentality and iden­
tification with the Soviet Union. In extended form this standpoint
indicates a link to W hite Russia and Moscow, and further alienation
from both Lithuania and Poland. During the Soviet period the
Vilna region was transformed, politically and culturally, from a
Polish cultural centre facing east into a Soviet outpost facing west.

C A R P A T H O -R U T H E N IA
Carpatho-Ruthenia, or Zakarpatska, exemplifies an emerging
ethno-region that was a potential actor during the Soviet era.
This area belonged to Hungary up to 1918, to Czechoslovakia
after 1920 and to Soviet Ukraine after 1945. In 1991 it became
part of the republic of Ukraine. Alongside those who consider
themselves Russian, Ukrainian, Slovakian or Hungarian, there exists
an autochthonous group calling itself ‘Ruskie ’, or ‘Ruthenian’ in
W estern languages, with subgroups with other names. The
Ruthenians in Carpatho-Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia have politi­
cally mobilised themselves since 1989-91 with a distinct ethno-
temtorial profile.30
Alexander Duleba, a Ruthenian scholar from Presov in Slovakia,
has claimed that Carpatho-Ruthenia is a region with a specific
character due not only to ethnic but also to geopolitical conditions.31
He argues that the ancient identity in this area survived the Soviet
period; moreover he finds a precedent for self-rule in Carpatho-
Ruthema’s autonomous status dunng the period of Czechoslovakia’s
dissolution between October 1938 and March 1939. Duleba also
asserts that since the state affiliation and status of Carpatho-Ruthenia
changed six times during the twentieth century, those who speak
30 Ivan Pop and Volodymyr Halas, ‘Ukrajina a Zakarpatsko: dilemma spolocenskej
a geopolitickej strategic’, Medzinarodne O tazky , no.4 (1993), pp.79-92.
Alexander Duleba, ‘Zakladne geopoliticke characteristiky Zakarpatska’,
manuscript, n.d.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 205
the Rusin language have maintained their sense of cohesion and
identity as a border-country despite profound international changes.
As for belonging to independent Ukraine after 1991, it has been
said that Zakarpatska is ‘as far from Kiev as it is from God’. This
quip also hints that the population does not want Kiev to interfere
in the region’s internal affairs. Meanwhile, the Ruthenians have
come to recognise that the region’s ability to assert its own identity
is wholly dependent on external factors, especially great power
relations in Europe. It was hardly possible to develop an independent
identity during the penod of Moscow’s rule (1945—91), but in
the last Soviet years under Gorbachev, these conditions changed.
Soviet domination implied that the Ruthenian political elite
were subjected to Russification and central rule, and were ap­
proached as a ‘provincial’ part of the Ukrainian elite —according
to Duleba, ‘emerging from their shadow only during the early
years of the Gorbachev regime in the late 1980s’. In 1987 Ruthenian
politicians drafted a project geared toward the regional development
of Carpatho-Ruthenia, with the aim of achieving a ‘special free
economic zone’. In 1989, a commission was set up with the
authorities’ approval to draft a plan for an economic free zone,
as well as for a recreational zone for the citizens of the Ukrainian
SSR.
The ethno-regional political mobilisation in Carpatho-Ruthenia
was already under way during the the Soviet years. The region’s
relations to the outside world possess an independent dynamic
that already existed before Ukraine’s independence in 1991.

TH E K A LIN IN G RA D OBLAST
Northern East Prussia, the Kaliningrad Oblast, constitutes a region
in the strictly cartographic sense, but one that lacked both a territorial
and an ethnotemtorial identity during the Communist period.
The region was long part of Prussia, and belonged to Germany
till 1945. The overwhelming majority of the population of ap­
proximately 1 million had a distinct ethno-regional identity. These
Germans disappeared in 1945 and were succeeded by Russians
and other Soviet citizens from various parts of the empire. The
bulk of this contingent consisted of military professionals, a group
who tend not to strike roots in the areas where they are stationed.
O ther categories of Russians, such as university staff, likewise
206 Kristian Gerner
tended to view Kaliningrad (former Königsberg), as a temporary
stopping-place on their career path. Indeed it is impossible to
discern any particular identity in this area during the entire period
1945-91. After spending a total of five months in the Kaliningrad
district between 1990 and 1993, the W est German journalist Ulla
Lachauer concluded:32
Nothing more than a waterlogged skeleton is left of the cultural landscape.
Only a rough outline of Gumbinnen remains—a few abstract lines, no
face... “The Murdered Echo” is the name of a song by Vladimir Vysotskii.
This is the most dreadful of all his songs. The singer describes a situation
which, mutatis mutandis, reminds one very much of the Kaliningrad Oblast.
Somewhere in the mountains there lived a strange echo that answered the
cnes of people. Only the echo and nothing else answered their calls for
help and sent them back loud and exactly as they had been uttered. One
night, unknown persons - presumably drunk - killed the echo, choked it
and trampled on it. The next morning they stowed away the already silent
echo. The Kaliningrad district is a place without an echo - and still today
it is all too clearly more akin to a madhouse than to a republic.... Looking
for a role of its own, the region could emancipate itself to become a
prostitute.
The Soviet residents in Kaliningrad were told nothing about
the area’s history, but were given the impression that it was a
Baltic and Russian territory temporarily occupied by the Germans
m 1941-5. The Soviet authorities attempted to eradicate every
trace of German culture from the area: the rums of the royal
palace in Königsberg were blown up, the statue of Immanuel
Kant was demolished (it was re-erected in 1992), estates and
arable land were allowed to fall into decay. Only after 1989 was
the German history in the area officially acknowledged, and that
tor economic reasons. The objective was to attract hardworking
Germans from other parts of the Soviet U nion —after 1991 from
Russia and Kazakhstan—by inviting them to settle in a ‘German’
area, and use the presence of a German-speaking citizenry to
encourage banks and large-scale enterprises in the Federal Republic
of Germany to invest in the area and extend subsidies.33 Kaliningrad’s
" Ulla Lachauer, Die Brücke von Tilsit. Begegnungen mit Preussens Osten und
Russlands Westen (Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1994), pp.63, 242, 383, 385.
33 Alvvdas Nikzentaitis, ‘Das Kaliningrader Gebiet im Spannungsfeld inter­
nationaler Interessen’, Osteuropa, no. 10 (1995), pp.327-35.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 207
tendency to function as a regional actor was wholly a product
of post-Soviet uncertainties. It was not based on any particular
dynamic rooted in the Soviet period.

Conclusions
The notion of regions emerged in Central Europe late in the
Soviet era and took on new significance after it ended. This
indicated that local politicians, economic actors and cultural officials
estimated that their home community stood to gain if it could
create a positive image of itself vis-a-vis the rest of ‘grey and drab’
former Communist Europe. It is not a question of an uninterrupted
tradition dating from the mterwar period, since there were not
regions that operated as collective actors in Central and Eastern
Europe under Communist rule. Today, when politicians in Poland
and Kaliningrad wish to bolster their regions, they try to convey
that the territory has become the bearer of ethnically determined
characteristics, that the German element remains despite the absence
of any German people, and that an area once dominated by Germans
should act as a magnet for German capital. In Transylvania the
ethnic struggle is the critical issue: the Hungarians seek to enhance
their status by making their situation known to W estern Europe
and the Council of Europe.
The question of a region’s socio-cultural character, and the
way in which it is ‘handed over’ and transformed is a complex
one. It involves the effect of psychological processes such as socialisa­
tion, perceptions and projection. In a conversation on the future
prospects of his area, a Polish politician from the Polish section
of old East Prussia claimed that in Elblag county only the native-born
pay their taxes and display financial integrity, ‘although they no
longer speak German’. Conversely, the Polish immigrants evaded
taxes.34 This suggests that it is the socialisation of the individual
into inherited traditions that determines individual behaviour, rather
than affiliation with a territory and given social norms. Those
with German roots acted in certain ways, and immigrants did not
adopt those ways. Christian Graf von Krockow, who visited Polish
Pomerania and specifically the county of Slupsk in the mid-1980s,
34 Conversation with Marek Sitnicki, m em ber of the tow n council of Kwidzyn,
at Karlskrona, 19 September 1995.
208 Kristian Gemer
provides a contrasting view. The infrastructure in Slupsk made a
different impression from that in other parts of Poland:35
A re th e burd en s o f trad itio n lig h ter in th e rece n tly -acq u ired territories,
w h ere alm ost ev ery th in g had to start fro m th e b eg in n in g ? D o p eo p le tu rn
to th e futu re m o re energetically here th an in th e old and central parts o f
Poland? T h ere, says o u r in terp reter w h o is from W arsaw , th e m ain roads
are in a w o rse state th an in Pom erania.
Regions are constructions. In this chapter we have examined a
few that have in common their location within the formerly
socialist Central Europe, as well as relatively long histories under
their own names and without independent statehood. In everyday
language they are generally accepted and recognised as concepts.
In the early Communist era Transylvania did enjoy autonomy,
but under Ceau§escu it was transformed into an arena for political
struggle between the Hungarian population and an increasingly
Romanian-nationalist state government. Towards the end of the
period, the already much-depleted German element (Saxons and
Swabians) began emigrating in large numbers, with the result that
little remained subsequently of the region’s heritage as a Hungarian
and German outpost in Orthodox South-East Europe. The name
itself, Transylvania, has retained a major symbolic function in
Hungarian historical consciousness: still today Hungarians perceive
not only the ethnic Hungarians living in the area but the territory
itself as essential to their sense of identity.
During the Communist period Silesia consisted of approximately
ten counties in Poland. An inconspicuous German population
continued to exist in the area and reactivated itself and greatly
increased m numbers after 1989. As it became economically ad­
vantageous to assert a German ethnicity the Germans ceased to
be social undesirables. It was good sense to associate with German
symbols rather than cling to specifically Silesian ones. For instance,
place names linked to the time of German occupation were chosen
over Germanised versions of older Slavic names, although the
right to local self-rule was also asserted in the name of one’s
Hcimat. In the process of reconstructing a Silesian identity, a living
Silesian tradition could be invoked, but the new political and
economic situation after 1989 was a necessary precondition for
33 Christian Graf von Krockow, Die Reisc nach Pommern (Stuttgart, 1985), p.240.
 Regions in Central Europe under Communism 209
it. It was not a question of unbroken continuity from 1944 to
1989.
Like the kresy for the intellectuals in Poland, the Vilna area
existed as a region in historical Poland, but a shift of identity
took place there. The Polish-speaking people were Sovietised and
allied themselves with Belarussians and Russians in an effort to
counter Lithuanisation. Polish tradition ultimately died out in a
population that lacked an intellectual stratum of its own. Those
who rose in social class were Russified. To some extent the area
preserved its ethnic distinctiveness vis-a-vis Lithuania, but it was
nonetheless de-Polonised as effectively as Scania was de-Danified
between 1658 (the peace of Roskilde) and 1710 (the Battle of
Helsmgborg).
The Kaliningrad district, once a part of East Prussia, was
thoroughly Sovietised and Russified. N o specific regional identity
evolved in this area, partly because the Russian intellectuals, those
who sustain culture, viewed their residence there as no more
than a step in their career path. This was true also of the substantial
body of officers in the area. W hen the Soviet Union was near
to disintegration, the local elite began referring to a special
‘Konigsbergian’ identity in an effort to attract German funds. The
attempt largely failed, and the region has yet to carve out an
identity of its own in the post-Soviet Baltic.
Between 1945 and 1985 Carpatho-Ruthenia led a rather obscure
existence on the outskirts of Ukraine. However, the centrifugal
consequences of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost gave rise to
manifestations o f a specific Ruthenian regional identity. This iden­
tity comprised an ethnic core, but was oriented towards the entire
administrative entity. This development had a spill-over effect
into eastern Slovakia. The course of events in Carpatho-Ruthenia
indicates a certain ‘geopolitical determinism’ behind tenacious
regional identities, as has been highlighted by Ruthenian intel­
lectuals such as Ivan Pop in Ukraine and Alexander Duleba in
Slovakia. This region’s cross-border position makes it of particular
interest.
Moravia and Silesia in Czechoslovakia (after 1992 the Czech
Republic) provide examples of repeatedly failed attempts to forge
a specific identity through references to historic names. In retrospect,
it seems more than a coincidence that Tomas G. Masaryk, the
mam figure in Czech democratic nationalism and president of
210 Kristian Gerner
the republic from 1918 to 1935, was from Moravia. The historical
entity and linguistic unity of Boheniia-Moravia served as unifying
factors outweighing the separatist potential, although Moravia is
somewhat more agrarian and less secularised than Czech society.
People in Moravian Silesia apparently also identify with the Czech
state.
The emergence of ethno-regional movements in Silesia and
Carpacho-Ruthenia, and the regional image conveyed by the
leadership in Kaliningrad, are mainly indications of the desire to
attract Western capital for economic growth. In both Carpatho-
Ruthenia and Kaliningrad there has been talk of establishing an
economic ‘free zone’. Once historical arguments have been mobilised,
they can assume their own dynamic and may persuade even outside
actors to perceive the reconstructed or constructed region as ‘real’.
Thus we may tentatively conclude that the Soviet era did not
result ¡n the total eradication of the potential for regional identity.
Silesia, with its links to Germany, and Carpatho-Ruthenia,
with its cross-border character, appear to have the greatest potential
for becoming regions in the West European sense. The Kaliningrad
area seems likely to remain a province closely supervised by Mos­
cow, without the possibility of acting independently. In Moravia-
Silesia the distinction from the Czech people has been so slight
that regionally oriented actors have not gained sufficient ground
among the population to assert themselves in relation to Prague.
In the years up to 1991 the Poles in Lithuania were definitively
Sovietised and alienated from Polish culture. An enduring con­
sequence of the Soviet era is that the Vilna area, so prominent
in Polish national mythology, has forever ceased to be a Polish
region.