Endstation Vertreibung: Minderheitenfrage und Zwangs - migrationen in Ostmitteleuropa,1919–1949

Abstract

Final Destination: The Question of Minorities: Expulsion and Enforced Migration in Central and East Europe, 1919–1949

This article seeks to give a bird's-eye view of the phenomenon of large-scale enforced migration, expulsion, or mass deportation, in eastern Europe at different moments in time, by linking it to the ‹nationalities› question from the start of the twentieth century and to the ‹minorities› question of the inter-war period. It argues that the collective expulsion of ethnic minorities from the former ‹master nations› (Lewis B. Namier's phrase) cannot be understood merely as the product of nationstatism. Instead it portrays mass migrations as the result of factors that trans - cended the nation-state question, such as the defeat of the ‹revisionist› states in the First World War, the perception of minorities as ‹trouble-makers›, and the Soviet Union's strategy of expansion in East Central Europe. Particular attention is paid to the special circumstances of nation-creation in the territories of the Habsburg Empire, Tsarist Russia and the eastern border regions of imperial Germany. It was there that the political mobilisation of significant parts of the population led to militant nationalism among certain sections of society. The foundation of the Habsburg Empire's successor states brought radical changes among the political elites. This led, on the one hand, to revanchist sentiments among the dispossessed groups; and on the other, to the displacement of supranational elites as part of the ‹nation building› process in the new states that followed in the wake of societal modernisation and the expansion of political participation.