The New Central Europe

With the Soviet Union's collapse in the East and a rising European Union in the West, a new Europe could be seen emerging on the eve of the twenty- first century. At the same time, European history also seemed to be repeating itself. In 1989, with their triumph in the cold war, the Western democracies once again seized the mastery of Europe, not unlike in 1918 after World War I. Only this time it was under even more favorable circumstances than in 1918.

Unlike after World War I, the Western democracies were now united, not eying each other jealously as rivals in search of a balance of power favorable to their special interests. Moreover, Germany was now a partner of the democracies in building a European Community, not smarting under defeat and craving revenge for a vindictive peace settlement. And Russia, in dire straits, was now looking for Western help rather than threatening the West with Communist subversion and revolution. Furthermore, the United States was now a NATO nation tied to Europe rather than retreating into the false safety of new- world isolationism, disillusioned with the ugly squabbles of an incurable old world.

The question was whether the Western democracies have the wisdom and vision to take advantage of this unique situation and do their share to undo past mistakes. Or whether fearful of change and indecisive, as they often seem to be, they would miss the opportunity to take part in the creation of a new structure of peace. By action or inaction, Western policy was bound to play a decisive role in influencing the course of events in liberated Central Europe.

In Central Europe itself, the revolution of 1989 raised new hopes for the peace and democracy denied to that region in the aftermath of two World Wars. However, the great good luck that liberated the Eastern Europeans from Soviet domination in 1989 did not stay with them. They did not reap equally, let alone fully, all the expected fruits of their liberation. They were disappointed.

The West may claim victory in the cold war but no particular credit for the liberation of Soviet Eastern Europe. Even after liberation, Western policy toward Eastern Europe (or Central Europe by its regained old name) was slow and rather half- hearted in unfolding. The enthusiasm of the liberated to rejoin Europe was greater than the enthusiasm of the West to receive them. The surprise of Europe's unexpected reunification might have been one of the reasons for Western reserve. Other reasons, however, were not of momentary confusion. Foremost among them were mixed feelings about German unification, concern about international destabilization and fear of hurting Gorbachev's perestroika, which the West eagerly wished to succeed, not to speak of surviving World War II views, which regarded the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe as quite beneficent for the balance of power. In fact, as soon as detente took the chill out of the cold war, the West shelved the idea of European reunification.[1]

With Soviet imperialism lifted, Eastern Europe was supposed to fall prey to German imperialism according to old laws of geopolitics and past experience. However, there was no sign of anything of the sort. The Germans did nothing that would have been at odds with the interests of the European Community. They regained a position of influence they had enjoyed for centuries in Central Europe. Inevitably, though, experience with German power in the twentieth century elicited apprehension only time can dispel. As for the Russians, surprisingly, the Soviets seemed unconcerned about liquidating their influence in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev tried his best to make Europe forget Russia's recent record as an enemy. COMECON, the East block's economic union went out of business even before 1991, when it was officially disbanded together with the military alliance of the Warsaw Pact. Also in 1991, Soviet troop withdrawals from Hungaryand Czechoslovakia were carried out on an agreed schedule.

Thereafter, only Poland was left resentful for having to serve as a corridor until 1993 for Soviet troops to retire home from East Germany.

While the Russians were leaving with a visible sense of relief, the West was not rushing in to take over Eastern Europe. Government pledges of economic relief aid were disappointing. Private capital investments were limited by poor prospects for profit. The great expectation of the liberated East, a Marshall PlanEast, did not materialize. Neither the European Community nor the United States was interested in launching one, from their point of view perhaps for cogent reasons. In 1947, the Marshall Planwas launched to protect the West against the threat of Soviet conquest. By 1990, this threat was gone. Eastern Europe was liberated. Furthermore, a Marshall PlanEast could not have been a replica of Marshall PlanWest. Western Europe was one of the industrial North's most advanced regions with long established national boundaries. On the other hand, by Western standards, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were of two kinds, "backward or very backward," as Peter Calvocoressi, British expert on international affairs saw them, moreover "at odds both with and within themselves."[2]

With headquarters in London and headed by the Frenchman Jacques Attali, a European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was founded in 1990 to aid liberated Eastern Europe. But BERD, as the bank came to be known in its French acronym, was slow in starting operations and rather short of funds considering the enormous needs of the capital- scarce East. In any event, it did not do, and could not do, what a Marshall PlanEast might have done. A particularly debilitating burden of the struggling economies of liberated Eastern Europe was the repayment of foreign loans. Poland was the leading debtor with close to 50 billion dollars, Hungarythe leader in per capita debt with over 20 billion, all incurred during easy going detente days by corrupt Communist regimes. Partial cancellation was to be the likely end of the lurid loan story. But the creditors were slow in writing off the bad loans to Communists as a loss. Meanwhile, foreign investors were buying up formerly government owned enterprises for a song, which gave rise to angry charges that the new democratic regimes were selling out the national wealth.

Privatization of the economy with some influx of foreign capital was a poor substitute for a Marshall Plan The crisis of transition to market economics threatened the survival of the fledgling democracies. Also, it helped the Communists regroup themselves under Socialist labels. In 1989/90, apart from East Germany where the success of democracy was insured by West German guarantees, only Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary as well as the secessionists nations of western Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia succeeded in setting up democratic regimes. Later, Bulgaria and Albania joined them. But Romania and Serbia remained under the rule of unevenly reformed Communists claiming to be Socialists.

After World War II, the Marshall Planlaid down the foundations of the Common Market forerunner of the European Community (the EC, as it is commonly known by now, to distinguish it from the purely economic EEC). No such help for regional cooperation to combat nationalist dissension was rendered to liberated Eastern Europe. For want of a Marshall PlanEast, the scramble for foreign aid and capital only encouraged regional nationalist rivalry. In addition, the Persian Gulf War of 1991 diverted Western attention and resources from economic aid to Eastern Europe. Western commentators were quick to compare the Gulf War's adverse effect on aid to liberated Eastern Europe to that the Suez War had in 1956 on the Hungarian revolution. Recognizing the similarity was of no help but, at least, it was better interpretation than the denial of 1956 of any connection between the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian revolution and the British- French- Israeli war against Egypt to seize control of Suez. But the Gulf War was a momentary diversion of attention only. There were other priorities overshadowing the importance of Western aid to liberated Central and Eastern Europe. Foremost among them was the urgency and scope of aid to the defunct Soviet Union. Also security matters were uppermost in the planners' minds for a new world order. In 1991, a NATO Cooperation Council was created, incorporating eventually as many as 19 East European and Asiatic countries, successors mostly of the defunct anti- NATO Warsaw Treaty organization.

Failed hopes for a Marshall PlanEast did not diminish the expectations of the liberated Central and Eastern Europeans for joining the European Community. The EC democracies, however, were in no rush to issue an invitation to anybody. They were too preoccupied with meeting the "Single Market" deadline, which by 1992 was to bring them a decisive step closer to their long declared goal of a supranational "European Union." Nevertheless, there was hope that former Communist countries making convincing headway toward democracy and market economics would be eventually invited for some form of associate membership in the EC. By December 1991, the first three countries admitted under these norms were Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary In 1991, the London conference of the Group of Seven called the transformation of Eastern Europe with Western aid a "model" for the then still existing Soviet Union. But, apart from complacent allusions to aid already rendered by the seven leading industrial nations, nothing new was said or done to make this East European "model", truly attractive to anybody.

The countries of that fragile Middle Zone between Russia and Germany wanted no more to be puppets of a sphere of influence, but neither did they wished to be left alone. Their fear of the future was the fear of being neglected by an indifferent West. The new Central Europe was yearning to become an integral part of the new Europe. Not long ago, the Soviet bloc countries wanted to be left alone. Their dream was neutrality on the Finnish or Austrian pattern. The Soviet collapse changed all that. Not even such pioneers of European neutrality as Switzerland and Sweden wanted to be left alone as neutrals anymore. With the threat of a general European war gone, neutrality became outdated. Today, the hopes and roads of Europe are heading toward the European Community, although the time of arriving there is as yet uncertain.

Following their liberation, East Europeans were looking toward Helsinki II, the first follow- up summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) which met in Paris in 1990. Helsinki I of the detente 1970's was widely regarded as a stabilizer of the status quo. Helsinki II was expected to address itself to the changes the European revolution of 1989 wrought in the structure of Europe.

"Europe is liberating itself from the legacy of the past," announced the "Charter of Paris for a New Europe," signed November 21, 1990, by the 34 CSCE states, 32 European and two American, the United States and Canada.

The Paris Charter rehashed the lofty liberal principles of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. However, in two areas there was a new emphasis reflecting the trend of the 1989 European revolution. One was an appeal for "economic cooperation based on market economy, as an "essential element . . . in the construction of a prosperous and united Europe," the other novelty was the growing concern about nationality problems. The Charter condemned "all forms of racial and ethnic hatred" and specifically urged improvement in the conditions of national minorities. One speaker after another belabored this problem. President Gorbachev spoke of "dangerous outbreaks of nationalism and separatism." Chancellor Kohl warned against "new discord between neighbors or nation- alities," while urging "opening of national borders" and reassuring the crisis- stricken East that "there must be no borders which perpetuate the prosperity divide." Several East European leaders also warned against ethnic problems made worse by economic frustration. They appealed to the West for more credits and more investments.

As for concrete actions, a permanent CSCE Secretariat was to be set up in Prague and regular meetings of the CSCE foreign ministers were to be held. Also, several follow- up conferences on human rights, minorities and security issues were scheduled in different CSCE cities. A new European Aeropagus was in the making, growing bigger and bigger. (By 1992, the total membership was 54.) But neither its own new authority nor its relationship to the existing European Community institutions was clearly defined either at the Paris meeting or since. On Central and Eastern Europe, Alan Riding of The New York Times was more outspoken than any of the conference speakers about the nationality problems. The Paris Charter, he reported, signaled the dangers of ethnic disputes but ";created no mechanism to address the problem of minorities and nationalities that is again disturbing Hungary Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia and has already driven Yugoslavia close to the point of civil war."[3]

The "mechanism" created by subsequent conferences under CSCE auspices was the so-called "crisis- resolution" or "crisis-

management." It was meant to deal with conflicts as they arise. It was no mechanism for peacefully revising existing troublesome nationality situations. Quite the contrary. "New Europe" diplomacy was expressly aimed at preserving rather than changing the status quo. As such, it reflected the detente decade of the 1970's rather than the revolutionary decade of the 1990's.

Its first serious test in Central Europe came in 1991 with the civil war crisis in Yugoslavia Both the Western democracies and the Soviet Union were firmly opposed to territorial revisions. The Western explanation was that such changes in one small place might have destabilizing effects in all other places haunted by nationality problems, in particular, in the Soviet Union. Besides not aggravating Gorbachev's woes, another principal Western concern was to avoid the appearance of supporting nationalist causes favored by Hitler or his Western appeasers of the revisionist 1930's. Yet, hard as the international managers of the Yugoslav crisis tried, they were unable to persuade the South Slavs to live peacefully together in the same state.

In 1992, in the throes of a nasty civil war, Yugoslavia came to be dismembered into several new nation- states under European Community and United Nations auspices. It was the first internationally sanctioned example of the new revisionism in Central and Eastern Europe. And, while the circumstances and procedures were different, the case itself was reminiscent of the old revisionism of the 1930's. Not surprisingly, defenders of the status quo felt free to denounce the German role in Yugoslavia's 1992 partition by comparing it to that of Hitler's in World War II. Since World War II, anti- fascist nationalist propaganda was quite successful in concealing the fact that the origins of legitimate revisionist grievances and their abuse by the Nazis in the revisionist 1930's were two different issues.

The Yugoslav crisis prompted the European Community to adopt guidelines for the recognition of new states. The requirements to be met were based on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris. These included, in particular, respect for self- determination, the rule of law, democracy and human rights, guarantees for the rights of ethnic and national groups and minorities, as well as inviolability of "standing borders." Borders could be changed through peaceful means and common agreement, and disputes too were to be settled by agreement, with recourse to arbitration "where appropriate."[4] However, the creation of new nation- states was the easier half of the solution. The harder half was to create a new regional federative structure of peace in Central and Eastern Europe which would hasten reconciliation and cooperation between the nation states, whether new or old.

A century of revolutions witnessed the destruction of the Habsburg Empireand the collapse of two new orders following two World Wars. But so far no peace settlement was successful in solving the nationality problems of the Danube region. Nationality conflict was Central Europe's principal legacy of the past. The Paris Charter confidently declared that Europe was liberating itself from the legacy of the past. But it did not spell out specifically the legacy itself from which Europe, East, Central, or West, was supposed to liberate itself. It was no secret, however, that in order to create a really "new Europe"" there was one obnoxious legacy of the common past from which both East and West needed liberation: it was the self- centered nationalism of the nation- state. The European Community of the West could claim progress on that score, Central and East Europe none. And even in the West, as the British Euro- federalist, Hugh Thomas, once pointed out, "the unedifying history" of the European nation- state was "not yet fully appreciated."[5]

In Central Europe, the fundamental question raised by the Charter of Paris for a "New Europe" was this: will the 1990 Paris appeal for a newer "New Europe" liberate Central Europe from the legacy of the older "New Europe" of the 1919 Paris peace settlement? The legacy of the older New Europe of 1919 was vengeance. The appeal of the newer New Europe of 1990 was for reconciliation. In the aftermath of the 1989 European democratic revolution, chances of making a peace of reconciliation in Central Europe seemed better than ever since World War I. After both World Wars, ending in 1918 and 1945, there were victors to be rewarded, vanquished to be punished, and the central issue as perceived by the peacemakers was territorial redistribution. The Great Powers as arbiters meted out territorial rewards and punishments according to their special interests and selective sympathies for the smaller nations of the Danube region. None of these factors interfered with making peace in Central Europe after 1989. However, unlike after 1918 and 1945, after 1989 there was no peace conference, and it was assumed that the territorial status quo was to be upheld. Yet, since 1989, the status quo has been challenged from several sides. Nilly- willy the international community was forced to take notice of the unsolved nationality problems tearing at the status quo.

In tune with new popular international thinking, the Paris Charter held up "economic cooperation based on market economy" as a model of new internationalism for constructing a New Europe. The prosperity of the capitalist democratic Western European Community as compared with the poverty of former Communist Eastern Europe raised the prestige of market economics to an unprecedented height. Surely, prosperity may make the solution of almost any problem easier, including nationality problems. But market economics are no panacea. Nationality problems will not disappear as a by- product of prosperity, or of democracy for that matter. One of the principal characteristics of nationality is that, unlike individual human rights, the right to one's language and culture is perceived as a collective right. Such rights under the democratic rule of equality are most effectively protected by territorial autonomy.

The Danube region of Central Europe is a captive of its long- standing opposition to national equality. In part it is rooted in conflicting nationalist perceptions of the past. Such as the Romanian theory of the Daco- Roman origins of modern Romanians invented in support of Greater Romania's exclusive rights to Transylvania against Hungarys rights. Similar is the purpose of the Greater Slovakiatheory claiming Great Moravia as the origin of the Slovaks. Nothing supports these claims but an arbitrarily manipulated geographic coincidence of locations. After World War II, Soviet historiography added one more item to these extravagant nationalist fantasies by claiming that Transcarpathia (the new Soviet name of old Hungarian, later Czechoslovak, Subcarpathia) was the cradle of the Ukrainian Slavs. However, more relevant than the more distant past has always been the controversy over the recent history since World War I. It involves a dozen or so nationalities of Central and East Europe with the Czechs and the Hungarians as the two principals at the opposite poles. It runs through 70 tense years between the two " New Europes" from 1919 to 1990.

After World War I, the Wilsonian principle of national self- determination was supposed to end the conflicts and injustices of the past. It did not. The peace settlement was in fact a vindictive dictate. It liberated the oppressed nationalities of Austria- Hungarybut under circumstances which made a mockery of the Wilsonian principles of a just peace. The vanquished demanded plebiscites to decide controversial territorial claims. The victors, apprehensive of the outcome, refused.

The so- called New Europe of that time was a personal triumph for one of its principal architects and theoreticians, T.G. Masaryk. As an internationally recognized humanist, he lent his well deserved personal prestige to the new order of nation-

states, which it did not deserve. Masaryk's accomplishments as a statesman have been for a long time almost immune to criticism in the democratic world. But no longer. Increasingly, he is recognized for what he really was during World War I: a remarkably successful propagandist . "Masaryk was no slouch when it came to academic propaganda," as Lord Flowers, Vice Chancellor of the University of London, said charitably of Masaryk in 1986 at an international conference in his honor.[6] As Masaryk confessed in his Memoirs, his decision to work for the destruction of the Habsburg Empireto gain Czech independence in a nation- state was not an easy one.[7] As seen in historical perspective, his New Europe plan of nation- states was a tragic mistake, though not he but the Western democracies who listened to him were principally responsible for its execution. The Czechs certainly might have put the egalitarian legacy of their Hussite past, which Masaryk was so proud of, to much better use in a demo- cratic Central European federation than in a Czechoslovak nation- state which although democratic was of rather dubious ethnic composition. True, at the new order's creation nationalist sentiments ran strong. But, surely, a democratic federative Central Europe reform plan would have been received favorably by most people of the region had the victors come up with one, rather than the defeated Habsburg Emperor, whose pathetic last minute federalist imperial manifesto, not surprisingly, was ignored.

The "New Europe" as designed by Masaryk was based on the notion of a "Slav barrier" consisting of a string of nation-states, all of them Slavic with the exception of Romania. They were to protect the peace of Europe against Germany and Hungary both of whom were vengefully branded as nations standing "against Western civilization."[8] The Hungarians, in particular, paid a heavy price for this Slavic grand design, reducing the Hungarian state to a trifle of its former size. The Masaryk plan of course was not solely responsible for Hungarys unfair dismemberment. Most of Hungarys lost territories, with the greatest number of Hungarians, were pledged by the Western democracies during the war to the Romanians as a bribe to make them enter the war on their side. The new order fostering nationalist territorial greed, and destroying much of the remaining regional cohesion in Central Europe left from the long common Habsburg imperial past, was bad not only for Hungarybut for everyone else as well. Masaryk was fair- minded enough to admit that the postwar new order of nation- states was not perfect. World War I eclipsed his earlier federalist convictions. But though he became founder of a nationalist order, in his heart he remained a federalist. His hope, as he often spoke of it, was the future union of the Danube region's liberated peoples.[9]

Interwar Europe was neither determined enough to defend the peace settlement nor creative enough to revise it. The French system of alliances for the defense of the status quo was a flop. The British policy of appeasement leading to Munich discredited the revisionist idea of peaceful change. But the fact of the matter is that the faith in interwar New Europe's viability collapsed even before Hitler destroyed it. It was Hitler's war that restored the failed order's prestige. What Hitler destroyed became by wartime logic worth restoring.

Had Edvard Benes been as truly Masaryk's heir as he claimed to be, he would have endorsed the federalist reconstruction of Central Europe after World War II. Milan Hodza, prewar Czechoslovakia's last demo- cratic Prime Minister, did just that. But the gravely ill Hodza, dying in exile, was no threat to Benes's vindictive plans to take full revenge for Czechoslovakia's destruction. As restored President of Czechoslovakia, Benes opted for making the nation- state even more national. He embraced the ideology of the ethnically homogeneous nation- state to be achieved by expulsion or assimilation of unwanted nationalities. He blamed Czechoslovakia's destruction on the non- Slav national minorities. To avenge their so- called "fascist" crimes, he forced their expulsion. He succeeded fully against the Germans, but not the Hungarians, while the lawlessness unleashed by his decision struck indiscriminately the guilty and innocent.[10]

Fascist and anti- Fascist, Communist and anti- Communist, wave after wave of brutality swept across Central and East Europe since World War I. The character of the whole region changed. Czechoslovakia was no exception. Yet its Western admirers still saw it as if it were the same democratic country Masaryk had founded with idealistic expectations. In the United States, in particular, World War II propaganda embracing Czechoslovakia as Hitler's victim in collusion with the West enhanced its prestige. The cold- war years kept it intact. To an American of the "World War II generation," Czechoslovakia "has burned its way into the conscience of the democratic world," its formation in 1918 "helped vindicate the terrible sufferings of World War I," it was "the sole beacon of democracy in the East," and "a symbol of the helplessness of the West in the face of totalitarian takeover," first by the Nazis, then by the Communists.[11]

National attitudes in the two halves of divided Europe evolved during the cold- war years in opposite directions. In the West, old- fashioned nationalism was challenged by the new inter-nationalism of the European Community. Nationalism in the East never lost its intensity. In different ways, it was the refuge of both Communists and anti- Communists. As compared with the West, liberated Central and Eastern Europe had the appearance of an outdated mosaic of feuding parochial nation- states, a leftover of European diplomacy's anti- German and pro- Slav past.

In 1989, the old regimes of the Soviet bloc were swept away in an outburst of nationalist emotions. The new wave of nationalism threatened to wreck the multinational states created after W.W.I. and restored after W.W.II. In the Danube region, not surprisingly for the well informed, a crop of new revisionists emerged. In Yugoslavia, Croats and Slovenes rose against the Serbs who tried to dominate the state. For the same reason, in Czechoslovakia, the Slovak separatists rose against the Czechs. In all the Danubian states, Hungarian minorities were eager to exert their national rights by demanding autonomy. In one way or another, they were all clamoring for national equality. In yielding to the claims of the weaker, the stronger would have to give up privileged positions, which was not easy to do. The Czechs parted with not much fuss with the one- nation theory of Czechs and Slovaks, favored by Czechoslovakia's Czech founders. For the Serbs, however, not even all out civil war was too high a price to pay for saving their privileged position in Yugoslavia. Or, as a hedge against failure, the Serbs advanced revisionist territorial claims of their own against those of the Croats. They demanded rectification of Serb- Croat boundaries to rescue their fellow Serbs from the indignity of becoming minorities in an independent Croatia.

In a different setting, the Romanian revisionists claimed Moldavia back from the Soviets as soon as national disintegration swept through the western border republics of the Soviet Union. At one point, realizing that practicing revisionism in Moldavia might hurt Romanian anti- revisionism in Transylvania, Romania committed itself to respecting the territorial status quo in a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. However, Moldavia's declaration of independence and the Soviet Union's collapse reopened the issue. Renewed demands for "reunification" with Romania were not yet laid to rest. And in view of its Ukrainian and Russian minorities, the future status of Moldavia (or Moldova, its new name since independence) was also of interest to Russia and Ukraine.

Independent Ukraine itself, Central Europe's new eastern neighbor, was facing revisionist territorial problems, the conflict with Russia over the future status of the Crimea one of the most serious among them. Of lesser importance, but by no means negligible, were the complex ethnic issues of Transcarpathia (or Subcarpathia, as some natives still preferred to call it from a perspective inside rather than outside the Carpathian Basin). When Czechoslovakia seized this land from Hun-

gary after W.W.I, it became nominally autonomous but overrun by a legion of Czech colonists from faraway Bohemia. After W.W.II, when Czechoslovakia ceded it to the Soviet Union, it became an autonomous region of Ukraine, and the newcomers with the panache of power were Russians and Ukrainians from beyond the Carpathians. After the Soviet collapse, "Transcarpathia" became Independent Ukraine's geopolitical foothold in Central Europe. At the same time, the desire for independence got hold of the Ruthene natives who never reconciled themselves to their absorption into the Ukrainian nation. And the native Hungarian minority (the smallest among the Hungarian minorities in the Danube region) seized the occasion of great changes to make their revisionist voice heard by demanding autonomy.

Post- Communist neo- revisionism was just another chapter in the struggle for national rights which had turned the Danube region long ago into a cockpit of ethnic conflict. The new conflicts dominated the news. But the old conflicts, in particular between Hungaryand her neighbors, were undermining as much the peace of Central Europe as before. Romania was as adamant as ever against sharing power with Hungaryon an equal regional footing. So were Hungarys other neo- revisionist neighbors, refusing to live with the Hungarians as regional equals. No nation of the region wanted any part of its own nationals to become a minority, but it was not thought to be unjust and unfair that every third or fourth Hungarian, depending on who did the counting, should be minority. Eager to distance itself from the old discredited revisionism of the Horthy era, new democratic Hungary mother country of Hungarians divided among five countries of the region, felt itself on the horns of a dilemma. Whether it raised the issue of Hungarian minorities or kept silent about it, Hungarywas deadlocked in festering hostility with its Danubian neighbors.

The Hungarians were hopeful that the "open boundaries" advocated by the European Community would bring relief once it expanded to the Danube region. Rightly or wrongly, they believed that in a European Community of open boundaries Hungarians could live as one culture, as one people, and their language becoming an official language wherever Hungarians lived. The Hungarians imagined the European Community as sort of a Switzerland where even Romansch, the language spoken by barely one percent of the Swiss population, was an official language of the state. But such Hungarian fantasies did not please Hungarys neighbors. They clung to their privileged positions, managing the lives of Hungarians under their rule as they pleased, in opposition to Hungarian demands for autonomy. Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs and Ukrainians, owning lands inhabited by Hungarians, approved of the old "New Europe" of national privileges, while the Hungarians might have expected too much from the EC spirit of new "New Europe" egalitarian- ism. In any case, nationalist Eastern Europe was worlds apart from internationalist Western Europe. For the East to catch up with the West will not be easy.

Today there is no single power with influence and interest in the region to act as an arbiter of ethnic conflicts. Germany, the new dominant power in Central Europe, with more knowledge in the region then anyone else in the world, must avoid being caught in a revisionist stance reminiscent of the Hitler era. Hungaryshares Germany's concern. There was no hidden revisionist agenda between Bonn and Budapest in the treaty of " cooperation and partnership" signed in February 1992. The treaty was one in a series Germany entered into with its eastern neighbors explicitly based on respect for territorial status quo and, if necessary, for peaceful change.

In 1918, Oscar Jászi as Minister for Nationalities in MichaelKárolyi's short- lived democratic- republican regime, tried to save Hungaryfrom dismemberment by turning it into an "Eastern Switzerland." It was part of a grandiose plan to create a community of Middle Zone nations between Germany and Russia from the Baltic down to the Adriatic and the Black Sea.[12] It never even got a chance for a fair hearing. The defeated had no say in the making of peace. The Western Allies had already committed themselves to Masaryk's New Europe plan.[13] Jászi's federalist vision went beyond the nation- state when Masaryk just embraced it, contrary to his long- standing federalist views. Though their political plans clashed at that time, as human beings they were very much alike. Both were philosophers drawn into politics, humanist democrats, in qualities and outlook the finest products of Central Europe's late liberal era before its collapse in World War I.

It was a supreme tragedy that Jászi and Masaryk met as rivals in 1918 rather than partners in building a new democratic order in Central Europe. Later, in his exile, Jászi became a friend of Masaryk's Czechoslovakia because of its democracy. Yet he still believed that as a "guarantee of democracy, of economic progress and of peace," his new Europe plan was better than Masaryk's.[14]

It is too bad that the European Community could not have been started in Central Europe after World War I. Twentieth century European history might have been different. That particular European Community which Jászi had in mind might have even spread, as Jászi himself expected, from Central Europe to the West. Now, toward the end of a century of brief triumphs and long tragedies, the European Community is expected to spread from the West to Central Europe. In the meantime, the idea of a separate sovereign Central European Community in the Danube region has become outdated. But the need for Central European regionalism within the European Community is not outdated at all. Quite the contrary.[15]

It has long been a belief of European federalists that a united Europe would function best as a Europe of regions. And the larger the European Union becomes the more likely will grow the necessity of its regionalization. Regionalism may break larger nations into smaller units (as in the case of federal Germany), but lt may also unite smaller ones (like the Benelux combination). Regionalizations of some sort in Central and Eastern Europe were urgent for economic reasons, as European Community experts on Western aid have begun to realize. But, economics apart, there were other reasons too that militated for developing regional unions--namely, the number of unresolved nationality conflicts obstructing reconciliation. Without regional reconciliation, any membership of Central and Eastern European states would be a burden on the European Community at any stage of its development.

Peace efforts aimed at resolving nationality conflict, in the Danube region, were serving common East-West interests. Unfortunately, the West was not too eager to engage itself in affairs of the East--and the East alone was not capable at doing all the necessary peace work without help of the West. In the meantime, of course, every regional initiative with or without Western help was welcome either in the field of culture, like the Central European University with centers in Prague and Budapest, or in the realms of economics and politics. Even before the upheavals of 1989 were completed the so-called "Quadrilateral" was initiated by Hungaryand co-sponsored by Italy's Foreign Minister Gianni de Michelis. It brought Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungaryand Austria together, two landlocked and two Adriatic countries, for certain geographically useful aspects of regional cooperation. Czechoslovakia, after being liberated from Communist rule, joined it as the fifth country, changing it for a while into a "Pentagonal," only to become a "Hexagonal" when Poland feeling left out was invited as its sixth member.

Another initiative, politically even more of a novelty, was the Visegrád Treaty of February, 1991, bringing Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungarytogether. It signalled the beginning of a new era of coop- eration between two long- time regional antagonists, Czechs and Hungarians. It was a historical breakthrough of sorts. The leaders of the three new democratic republics, President Walesa, President Haveland Prime Minister Antallsigned the treaty at the site of a Hungarian medieval castle on the Danube where the kings of medieval Hungary Bohemia and Poland once met. Its expressed purpose was cooperation among the three new democratic republics in the expectation of integrating their economies with the European Community, but its potential political aspects should not be ignored. In Prague, capital of old Central Europe of the Masaryk- Benes era, President Havelat a conference of CSCE foreign ministers, January 30, 1992, boldly declared: "The old orders are falling apart, and it is our task to build new ones."[16]

In 1992, a crisis erupted in Western Europe over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union. Maastricht's narrow endorsement may affect the European Community's future policy. Its unique aim, however, remains unchanged: the transformation of the Community into a Federation of sovereign democratic nations. Surely, more battles will be fought before the war against "the rigid dogma of national sovereignty" (Jászi's favorite phrase) is won. And deteriorating chaos in the East or unmanageable disputes in the West may defeat temporarily the best intentions. But the European Union is a visionary utopia no more. It is not merely lofty idealism nurtured by memories of the Roman Empire or Medieval Christianity that urges Europe today to unite. The main driving force of the unfolding federalist revolution is a realistic evaluation of the new world situation.[17] Whatever the name of the forces driving the European democratic revolution toward a European Union, a united Europe may at last achieve true peace, and with it, also the tragedy of Central Europe come to an end.

The New Central Europe